In the spring of the Dinghai year, I returned with my family to Jinzhong to visit relatives. Among my cousins on my uncles’ side, most of those of my own generation were already married, and my elders reproached me often enough on that point. One day my grandmother heard that north of the city gate there was a beggar skilled in divination, and that people seeking readings went to him in an endless stream. It happened that my cousin Zusheng also meant to go and ask about his fortune, so my grandmother sent the two of us together. Beneath the old northern wall of the city there stood a wooden basin, more than four feet across and the color of jujube pits, and the beggar sat cross-legged inside it. There was more than an inch of filthy water pooled in the bottom, giving off waves of stench. Along the foot of the wall, dozens of people were lined up waiting for their fortunes to be told. We joined the end of the line and waited more than an hour before our turn came. I had always known that diviners observe four prohibitions, one of which is that the unclean are not to be divined for, so I did not believe in him at all. I let Zusheng go first to see what sort of trick the beggar had up his sleeve.
Though younger than I was, Zusheng had inherited one of the coal pits left behind by his father and so was vastly wealthier than I could ever hope to be. Only a few days earlier, a neighboring mine had suffered a major gas explosion, killing and injuring many. Zusheng was deeply uneasy. He wanted to shut his pit down and be done with it, but could not bear the losses; if he continued extracting coal, he feared the affair might come to light. He stammered out his worries and asked whether fortune or disaster awaited him. The beggar, dressed in rags, with pustules all over his face and the backs of his hands, rinsed the bronze tray before him in the water pooled inside the basin, set it on the rim, and with a sweep of his hand brushed away the dead lice clinging to it. Then in a muffled voice he said, “White means good fortune, black means ill. Let us see what Heaven grants you, sir.” With that he reached into the front of his robe, plucked out several lice, and dropped them onto the tray, then pulled a few hairs from his head and armpits and laid them along the edge. The lice scuttled rapidly across the tray. One of them touched a hair, instantly turned black, and stiffened dead where it stood. The others also died at once. The beggar flipped over the tray and said, “Ill fortune. Best make your arrangements early when you get back, sir.” He said not another word. Zusheng’s face turned ashen, and he wheeled around and left.
Standing beside him, I was secretly astonished. The Baopuzi records distinctions concerning lice: lice from the hair are black, but once they fall onto the body they turn white; lice on the body are white, but if they fall into the hair they turn black. The Miscellaneous Morsels from Youyang says that among the people of Lingnan, when they are ill they divine by means of lice: if the louse faces toward the body, it is auspicious; if it faces away, it is ominous. But this particular method of divination was one I had never heard of. I asked the beggar, “Is this louse divination?” He nodded. Lowering my voice, I said, “You have fallen to begging in the streets and make your living through louse divination, imprisoned in this wooden basin. You must already be suffering under a louse curse, the most vicious of punishments. Why do you still deceive people?” At once the beggar’s face filled with alarm and he protested repeatedly that he had never deceived anyone. “Louse divination,” he said, “has always been used by the people of Lingnan for divining illnesses. In that it is marvelously accurate. But I have never heard that it can divine anything beyond disease.” Then the beggar suddenly stood up in the basin and began pleading with me. “I was once a merchant. In a certain year I swindled a friend’s investment funds and fled. Someone cursed me into this state. Beneath my skin grow louse tumors, inside my body lice bore through my flesh, and all over me are black and white lice beyond counting. Only by louse divination can I scrape together a living. Yet no matter how accurate my divination, no matter how much money I earn, I cannot leave this basin by a single step. At first I answered only questions of illness, but as more and more people came, I had no choice but to agree to all of them. Please, sir, do not expose me and cut off my only means of life.” Seeing how pitiful he was, I sighed, left him a prescription for curing louse poison with cinnabar and strong tea, and went away.
More than a month later, just as I was about to leave Jinzhong, my cousin Zusheng was arrested and imprisoned for illegal trafficking in explosives and unlawful mining. I sat there in the courtyard stunned, unable to recover my senses for a very long time. Dimly I remembered the sly smile on the beggar’s face when I left, yet to this day I still do not understand the mystery of it.