But the more courage I had the more they would want to eat me in order to partake of my courage. The old man stepped outside the door and before they had walked very far, he whispered to my brother, "Must be eaten[1] without delay!" My brother nodded assent. And so you are in it too! This was a great discovery. Though it seems unthinkable, it is really quite possible that my own brother has been conspiring with the others to eat me.
So my brother is a man-eater!
And I am a man-eater's brother!
Though I may be eaten up by man-eaters, I shall nevertheless be the brother of a man-eating man!
5.
I have been trying to make a concession these last few days and grant that the old man was not an executioner in disguise but was really a doctor. Even then he may still be a man-eating man. For since it is clearly stated in the Pen Ts'ao something or other[2] written by Li Shih-chen, the father of his profession, that human flesh could be boiled and eaten, how could he deny that he does not eat human beings himself?
Neither do I unjustly suspect my own brother. When he was teaching me, he said with his own mouth that during times of famine people "exchanged their children to eat"; and once in discussing a certain wicked man he said that he not only deserved death, but also deserved to have his "flesh eaten and his skin slept upon." I was young then and my heart beat wildly for a long time. A few days ago when the
- ↑ Ch'ih, to eat, is used also in the sense of taking medicine.
- ↑ That is, the Pen Ts'ao Kang Mu, the Chinese Materia Medica as revised and enlarged by Li Shih-chen.
