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.