There was a fisherman named Xu who lived outside the north wall of Zichuan. Every night he took a flask of wine down to the river, and drank while he fished, and before he drank he poured a cup out onto the ground. “For the drowned of this river,” he would say. It was his habit.
Other men fished that river and caught nothing. Xu always filled his basket.
One night, drinking alone, a young man came and stood wandering at his elbow. Xu asked him to drink, and he did, freely, and they finished the flask together — and that night Xu caught nothing at all. The young man got up. “Let me drive them to you from downstream,” he said, and drifted off. In a little while he was back: “They’re coming — a great shoal.” Xu heard the whisper and snap of a thousand small mouths in the dark, and hauled in a net full of fish, every one of them a foot long.
Xu was delighted, and poured another cup for the drowned, and said so. The young man said: “You pour for us every night. It is very little to drive a few fish your way.”
So it went, night after night, until half a year had passed. And one evening, drinking together, the young man said quietly: “We have been friends all these months, and I have never told you what I am. I am a drowned man. I died here drinking, years ago, and because you pour for me I have eaten and drunk like a living man. Tomorrow someone will come to this river to take my place, and I shall be free, and you will lose your friend.”
Xu did not flinch. He only asked when.
“At noon,” said the young man. “A woman will come to the water.”
They drank until dawn, and the young man left. At noon Xu hid in the reeds and watched, and a woman came down to the river carrying a child, and waded in, and slipped — and the current took her, and she went under once, twice, and then, struggling, got her feet, and waded out onto the bank holding her child above her head, and went home dripping and alive.
That night the young man came to the wine.
“I saw her,” said Xu. “And you let her go.”
“I could not do it,” said Wang Liulang — for that was his name. “She had the child. One death frees me; two deaths free me twice as slowly. I would rather drown a hundred years more.”
Xu sat a long moment, then raised his cup. “The gods of the dead have clerks,” he said, “and clerks write things down. This will be written down.”
Some days later, the young man came to him dressed as an official, with a small retinue in the road behind him.
“I have been appointed,” he said. “City God of Wu town, far to the west. The people there are waiting for me. I have been given leave to say goodbye.”
And he told Xu: “Do not think of me as gone. If ever you want to see me, come west — and when you arrive, the people will be holding a festival. Ask any of them why, and they will tell you.”
Years passed. Xu grew old, and one year he took the road west, and came to Wu town, and found the place in festival, with lanterns and incense and the whole town pouring wine into the river. He asked a boy what the celebration was.
“Our City God,” the boy said, “was a man from Zichuan named Wang. He has been kind to us beyond anything. Every boatman on this river gets fair winds; every fisherman fills his net. He was a fisherman’s friend once, and he has not forgotten what fishermen need.”
Xu stood in the crowd and laughed aloud, and the townsfolk asked him why he was laughing at their god, and he said: “Because his name is Wang, and I knew him when he was only the drowned man in a river, and I used to pour him a cup of wine.”