Jing of Qianjing spent three happy years in Fujian and then came home by sea. On the sandbank he saw a man lying stiff, with blue eyes, curling whiskers and a body so black he looked like a ghost. Jing called out and asked him about himself.
He answered: “I am a merman. I was weaving the purple wedding gauze for the Third Maiden Qionghua of the Crystal Palace and I broke her nine-dragon, double-ridged shuttle, and so I was cast out. I drift now with nowhere to go. If you would take me in, I should be grateful to my last tooth.”
Jing happened to be badly in need of a servant, and took him home.
The creature had no interests and no skills. After a meal he would go and bathe in the pond, then crouch in a dark corner and neither speak nor laugh. Jing thought of him as a lone creature from the far sea, and could not bear to keep ordering him about.
On the Bathing-the-Buddha day Jing went along to the Tanhua Temple for the festivities. There he saw an old woman leading a girl of marriageable age, who bowed in prayer beneath the seat of the Merciful Clouds. Her hands were closed like white lotus, her waist bent like a willow; light moved about her, bright as a thin cloud giving up the moon.
When the prayer was done she went off with the old woman. Jing followed them and saw them go into a narrow lane. He asked the neighbours, and learned that the girl was from Wu, of the Tao family, childhood name Wanzhu. Her father had died young and her kinsmen had bullied her, and three years ago she and her mother had come to rent a house here.
Jing thought a poor widow could be bought. He went to the door and asked for her hand, offering much gold. She would not agree.
He said: “You are holding out for a rare price, madam. Will you let your daughter grow old with her hair in maiden knots?”
The old woman laughed. “What harm in asking a price for two pieces of jade from Lantian? Besides — the girl is called Ten Thousand Pearls. You must produce ten thousand bright pearls before I can agree. Otherwise, though you weave your net of a thousand threads, folk will only laugh at the man of Yue for his trouble.”
Jing went home disappointed. He thought: ten thousand pearls — if I emptied the house and ruined the family I could never manage it. By day he traced characters in the air; by night he dreamed. Ten days went by in a daze and he took to his bed and could not rise.
The doctors all said the same: “Complex diseases can be treated. Lovesickness cannot be drugged.”
He lay on the bed a rack of bones, fading away.
The merman came in and asked after him. Jing said: “Wang Boyu of Langya was bound to die of love in the end. But we have leaned on each other here at the edge of the sea for half a year now. If I go before the morning dew, where will you go?”
At this the merman clutched the bed and wept aloud, and the tears ran over the floor. Looking down, Jing saw them leaping and glittering: every one a pearl in the tray, a wishing pearl.
Jing jerked upright. “I am cured!”
The merman was astonished, and Jing told him the whole story. The merman was pleased, picked the pearls up and counted them — and they fell short of the number.
He sighed in turn. “You have the look of a starving man. The moment you got treasure you showed delight on your face. Why could you not have held off a moment, and let me weep properly for you?”
Jing said: “Can we try again?”
The merman said: “We laugh and cry from within, not like the mechanical people of the world, who are for ever turning a false face on others. There is no helping it. Tomorrow, bring wine, climb the Sea-Viewing Tower, and we will see what can be done for you.”
Jing did as he said. At first light he took the merman up the tower to look over the sea, where the mist and waves heaved and the sky floated without a shore.
The merman took a cup and grew drunk, and danced the fish-and-dragon, ever-changing dance of the Whirling Wave Palace. He gazed south to Zhuya, north to the edge of the sky; Zhifu and Jieshi lay in the bright-and-dim of the blue water.
He sighed and said: “Nothing but desolation wherever I look. Where is my old home?”
He flung out his sleeves, stirred, and turned to thoughts of going back. He beat his breast and wept once, and the pearls burst out of him.
Jing held a jade plate to catch them. “That will do.”
The merman said: “The sorrow comes from within and cannot be cut off.” He cried aloud, and did not stop until the tears were finished.
Jing was overjoyed and asked him to come home. The merman pointed east, laughing, and said: “The rose light is rising over Red Castle. The twelve mirage towers stand close across the dragon-back bridge. The Third Maiden Qionghua marries tonight, to the Angling-Immortal of Coral Island. My term of calamity is complete. Let me go from here.”
He braced himself and leapt into the sea and was gone.
Jing went home alone and sad.
The next day he brought out the pearls and went to the house to pay the bride-price. The old woman laughed.
“You really are a fool for love. I was only testing you with this. Did you think I was truly selling my own daughter, putting on a bold face to keep us alive?”
She refused the pearls and gave him the girl.
They afterwards had a son, whom they named Dream-of-the-Merman, so that the debt of the match would not be forgotten.
The Duo comment: “To borrow the weeping of a man at the end of his road and make it the go-between for a poor scholar — the merman’s art is marvellous. But I marvel more at the mother, who began by demanding the price and then refused the pearls, and so let a beauty in the women’s quarters hold up her head. Otherwise, measuring out a bushel of pearls in the Shi family manner, though it raises the price high, how is it different from selling vegetables and asking for good measure?”
