“A literate barbarian!” Master Li yelled. “Fellow named Quintus Flaccus the Fourth, writing from a place called the Sabine Hills! Somehow or other he got his hands on one of your memoirs!” He swiftly scanned the chicken tracks. “Usual critical comments!” he yelled. “Clotted construction, inept imagery, mangled metaphors, and so on!”
“Nice of him to write!” I shouted back.
“Sha la jen la!”
“Hao! Hao! Hao!”
“Hao tao!”
“Who has taken my bronze belt buckle and my python skin belt!”
“Whangity-whangity-whangity-whang!”
That was a cobbler who had taken aim at my right ear and was advertising by smashing his metal foot-frame with a hammer. The head just chopped off by Devil’s Hand, I noticed, was rolling like a ball across the cobblestones toward two little girls who were seated facing each other, playing the handclap game: clap opposing hands, clap left hands, clap right hands, clap own hands, and so on, while singing an ancient nonsense rhyme. They watched the severed head approach with large eyes, lifted their stubby legs in unison to let it roll past, and resumed clapping. Shrill happy voices reached through a momentary pause in the din:
Did barbarian children in the Sabine Hills chant something like that while clapping hands?
Master Li leaned over and began yelling again. “Ox, this barbarian is a remarkably sound critic! Listen to this. ‘Inceptis gravibus plerumque et magna professis purpureus, late qui splendeat, unus et alter adsuitur pannus, ut proicit ampullus! Parturient mantes, nascetur ridiculus mus’ A bit prolix, but beautifully phrased, isn’t it?”