Achmed Abdullah

“ With youth had come the zest for adventure and gain; and so—he, trained in his father’s craft and knowing that his countrymen abroad were punctilious about having their embalmed bodies shipped back to China thus permitting their spirits to find salvation, and Ho Tin Yu, an untrained coolie, but endowed with a shrewd brain and a stonily pagan resolve to clout his way to success—they decided to emigrate to America. ”

“ Now the realization that fate itself had cheated him, threw Shen Mok off his guard and conquered in him the long habit of outward self-control acquired by centuries of racial Mongol inheritance and years of special training. He reflected that Ho Tin Yu was dead. Ho Tin Yu, his worst enemy; Ho Tin Yu, who had stolen from him the woman who had been dearer to him than the blessed Lord Buddha’s ten thousands lotus fields. And how then could he revenge himself on a dead man? How could he cause a dead man to lose face? ”

“ Why—he considered—Ho Tin Yu would need it, when his spirit, beyond the dragon gate, was bowing before the spirits of his ancestors. For the soul, too, needed a brain to achieve perfect salvation.
SO he thought as he took the instruments and vials and bottles from the case and bent to his ghastly task with the skill and the strength of his delicate, sensitive fingers, cutting, binding, stabbing, lancing, using the tiny knives with minute precision, mixing the herbs and drug pastes according to the ancient craft, to embalm the body for the long journey to China. ”

“ Of course there was that strange law of the coarse-haired barbarians, the Asiatic Exclusion Act, which puts the yellow man below the black in human worth and civic respect, which forbids the former to emigrate to the New World of plenty, and forces him to cheat ind hide and forge if he would obtain his object—a chance to earn a pittance, to save another pittance, to live peacefully and usefully, then to return to his own land, alive or dead. So Shen Mok and Ho Tin Yu suffered untold hardships before they reached their goal. ”

“ And I—I am not a dog!”
“You are my brother, very wise and very old!”
“We are more than brothers. We are friends. Ah—by the Buddha—there are three things never hidden: friendship, a mountain and one riding on a camel!”
As the years passed, every cent which Shen Mok earned by his craft, all but his living expenses, he entrusted to his old friend, who invested the money for him, carefully, shrewdly, honestly, and again, as in San Francisco, their friendship became a byword.
“Ah!” would say Yu Ch’ang, the priest of the joss temple. “If Ho Tin Yu were to trade in shrouds, Shen Mok would die!” ”

“ Her nineteen summers have only increased her charms nineteen times. Ah—when she washes, her hands scent the water. I would have married her myself, were it not for the fact that my honorable first wife has a mouth like a running tap. ”

“ And yet I shall come and see to it, with the help of my skilled hands that Ho Tin Yu’s body be properly embalmed according to the ancient rites, so that at a future date his earthly envelop may be returned to China and there buried while his spirit mounts the dragon chariot.”
“Indeed?”
“Indeed! As to Ho Tin Yu and Mu Lan—why—a rose sometimes falls to the lot of a monkey.”
“Perhaps to reward the monkey for merit acquired in a former life?” suggested Nag Hong Fah.
“Perhaps, too, because life is three things: Illogical, sardonic, and obscene! But,” added Shen Mok, “death wipes out all scores.” ”