IV

The effect of the mountain priest’s treatment was immediately evident. From that day, Liu Tai-cheng never drank another drop of wine. Now he hates even the smell of it. But, strange to say, his health has declined little by little ever since. This is the third year since he vomited the wine worm, and there is left no shadow of his former plump round form. His sallow greasy skin is stretched over his bony face and only a little grizzled hair remains above his temples, and it is said that he takes to his bed innumerable times during the year.

But it is not only Liu’s health that has declined ever since that time. His fortune also has declined rapidly, and his three hundred acres of rich suburban fields have almost all passed into other hands. He himself has been compelled to take the spade in his own unaccustomed hands and lead a miserable day-to-day existence.

Why has Liu’s health declined ever since he vomited the wine worm? Why has his fortune declined? Such questions are likely to occur to any one who considers his ruin in the light of cause and effect. In truth these questions are considered and reconsidered by people in all sorts of occupations in Changshan and are given all sorts of answers by them. The three answers I now give here are only those I have chosen as the most representative among them.

First. The wine worm was Liu’s blessing and not his affliction. Because he chanced to meet the idiotic mountain priest, he had deliberately lost this heaven-sent blessing.

Second. The wine worm was Liu’s affliction and not his blessing. For it is quite beyond the understanding of any ordinary man that Liu should be able to drink a jar of wine at a time. If, therefore, he had not got rid of the wine worm, he would certainly have died before long. Consequently that he fell into poverty and illness one after the other should be called his good fortune.

Third. The wine worm was neither Liu’s affliction nor his good fortune. He had always been a heavy drinker. When wine was taken from his life, there was nothing left. So Liu was himself the wine worm, and the wine worm was Liu. Therefore, getting rid of the wine worm was quite the same as killing himself. In short, the day Liu stopped drinking wine, he was Liu without being Liu. If Liu himself was already dead, it was most natural that the health and fortune of the Liu of other days should have been lost.

Which of these answers is most nearly right, I do not know. I have only set down such moral judgments at the end of this story in imitation of the didacticism of Chinese novelists.