Silk Road

by Jeanne Larsen

  The Lantern Festival ending the New Year season was over the first day I was well enough to entertain a group of guests, but the late winter plum trees had not yet bloomed to herald spring. The remnants of a freak blizzard dusted the city with dry patches of white. Mama Lu hadn’t forced me back to earning money right away, but now she scolded me and reminded me of all she had spent on food and medicines while I lay ill. In fact, once I recovered, she kept her distance from me, and I never again saw the side of her that had laid a cool hand on my hot brow.

  Despite this, I felt stronger and more sure of myself than I had since the day I entered Chang-an. Mama Lu cared little for most religion, but she kept a statue of Lady Guan-yin in a back room, and that morning I burned incense and set out a sweetpeel tangerine to thank her for my reborn health. I asked the Lady to watch over the soul of the child I might have had, when the Wheel of Birth and Rebirth next turned and brought it again to the world of dust. It would surely have a better life than if it had borne the burden of flesh with no family to protect it. Lady Guan-yin smiled, gracious and unmoving as ever, but as I stared at the string of pearls looped down over the roundness of her torso, it seemed as if she had nodded benevolently, or lifted a hand to gesture. Set your heart at ease.

  Well before the guests arrived, I finished painting my cheeks and forehead, took up my lute, and played the first song I had ever learned, when I was the daughter of the garrison commander in Khotan. The music ran more easily than it had for months, but the sound of it made me restless, so I put on my padded outer jacket and walked to the small room beside the gate where Walleye kept watch. Actually, he was too arthritic to dispose of a really nasty guest, but there was little need of that. Besides, he asked less salary than would a younger, stronger man, so Mama Lu let him stay.

  ‘Nicely played. Miss Bordermoon!’ he called as I slipped inside his door. ‘Your spirit has decided to remain on earth – I heard it in the music and now I see it in your face.’ His good eye sparkled as he caught the tangerine I tossed him and placed it on the ramshackle table beside him. ‘Ah, Mama Lu bought some of these two days ago from a pedlar. Not cheap, they were, but good-looking. I thought perhaps a few might go your way, self-indulgent old vixen though she is. And now you’ve given one to me. Well, well.’ He shook his head, and his blind eye wandered from whatever unearthly objects usually held its gaze to fix itself on me. ‘You must peel it for me, and take a bite or two yourself, and I’ll let you know all that’s happened on the lane since you last crept out to keep an old man company.’

  I took a stool beside the tiny charcoal brazier that warmed his hands and feet. Carefully, I slipped the aromatic peel from the fruit in a single piece with petals like a flower, which made him chuckle.

  ‘I knew a girl once who could do that every time,’ he began, and told me stories until Lotus, one of the maids, came running out to say it was time to meet the guests. Two menservants on their way to the warmth of the kitchen saw Lotus and me hurrying towards the reception room; the one with a slight potbelly called out something I chose not to hear. The sound of their laughter at their own cleverness hung behind us in the dry air.

  One of the guests was an old friend of Bouquet’s; she was leaning over his couch to whisper something in his ear. He had brought with him two other minor officials, and a slim, slightly stooped young man with blue-black hair and the air of one who lives by his wits. I soon gathered from their conversation that this fellow, Dreamdragon Feng, was a scholar’s son who had come to Chang-an several years ago to try to win a post in the government. Somehow he had lost his money and his hopes.

  Now he claimed to be a student, but evidently spent most of his time cultivating rich friends who were willing to pay his bills for the sake of his company, picking up cash by writing letters for some shopkeeper or doing a bit of tutoring for a merchant’s doltish son.

  Feng told an anecdote about a young man’s tryst with one of the daughters of good families who stroll or ride their carriages about the gardens along the waters of the Serpentine in the southeast corner of the city. It was a springtime tale, and rather improper, but it made the party laugh, though Bouquet pretended to be shocked. For a moment my heart twisted with love-longing, yet I had no idea for whom.

  Later the conversation turned to poetry, and Bouquet, who had been born and raised only a few li from Chang-an, recited a poem someone had taught her, called ‘Moonlight on Jade Pass’. It described the far northwest as a fearful lonely place, and I felt my cheeks flush with anger.

  ‘It’s not so!’ I said, but Bouquet’s friend was praising her with loud slurred words, so no one heard me except for Feng, and he said nothing. I retreated into the cool aloofness that I had pulled close around myself when the slave girls at Old Ma’s left me out of their games and during my early days at Mama Chen’s. These others could not understand the desert lands for what they were, and clearly they couldn’t understand me. Nor –1 said to myself – did I want them to. Forced into this empty life, I would play the shallow courtesan, using them to my own advantage until a true friend came along, or I made my way to my rightful home.

  Yet when I brought up subjects that might lead to information about my father’s house, I was ignored. That night I went to bed hours before I slept. Feng didn’t return (and I wondered why I noticed), but a day or so later one of the other young men invited me out to perform at a farewell banquet for a friend who had to leave Chang-an. Mama Lu saw that my reputation as a musician was on the rise and didn’t pressure me to find a patron just yet.

  Early one morning I sat by the window and let myself fall into remembering the desert. The wind blew cold: although I had raised the blind for light, I left the gauze screen in place. The level sunrays threw the shadow of a bare branch onto the illuminated whiteness of the gauze. I thought of the winds in Khotan in the winter, and the clear dry air, and the eternal ice of Kun-lun’s peaks. Nephrite would listen to me talk of their beauty, if she were here, I thought, but no one else knew that land as anything but a place of exile; even Baby had forgotten it.

  I had taken up calligraphy again during my convalescence, though the brush Mama Lu had found for me was old and stiff. Nonetheless, it soothed me to put aside the little makeup boxes on my table, and grind the cheap ink, and begin to find a pattern of words to suit what I had to say.

  Making the poems eased something inside me that had been knotted tight since I drank down the only wine Mama Lu gave me, and those blood-releasing cramps began. But there was no one to show them to. Guests at Felicity Hall would laugh at the wine-pourer who couldn’t write a proper border poem. Baby at least would listen when I recited them because they were my words, yet how was I to get to visit Baby? The ink dried on the paper, and I rolled it up, and put it aside.

  In Chang-an, Thinking of

  the Western Borderlands

  I Winter’s moonlight frosts the city roofs.

  While colder rays fall clear beyond Jade Pass.

  The ice of home hangs down from gilded eaves:

  I dream of fires in far-off garrisons.

  II Signal beacons shine ten thousand miles

  Where Chinese troops subdue a barbarous land.

  Sand covers over pallid heaps of bone.

  Yet winds of longing chill this peaceful town.

  III I know the seasons of the distant west:

  The snow-fed rivers’ surge, the great heat’s end.

  There, subtle spring greens late down thin arroyos.

  But when, in Chang-an, do the pale plums bloom?

  IV A prince might pitch a tent on palace grounds.

  Desiring life where hoarfrost decks vast steppes.

  Though sand and gravel make a hard night’s bed.

  Behind silk blinds one tires of painted towers.

  V Well said! Chang-an’s a winter paradise.

  The capital’s canals have frozen hard.

  Yet cool gems gleam year-round on Kun-lun’s peaks:

  White metal ramparts of the Motherq
ueen.

  VI Here, the winter speaks a courtier’s tongue.

  Slick and glassy as the Serpentine.

  The west has neither flatterers nor parks.

  Only arid skies where stars shine clean.

  When Snowclouds Block the Moon

  A mother weeps for her daughter’s loss. Sickened by strong herbs and loss of blood, the younger woman’s body releases her spirit to roam unconscious through the turbulence between heaven and earth. Seagem catches sight of it in her mirror and knows: Greenpearl is bereft of her fatherly lover, alone in the city of her begetter, dispossessed of a child that might have been. The mother puts her new writing-brush aside, remembers her own losses, and weeps.

  The Hsiao River Princeling stands near his beloved and waves helpless hands in the air. Each time he touches her shoulders to comfort her – that beautiful flesh of creamy gold! – Seagem bursts out in tears anew: ‘Oh, what right do I have to be so happy, a faithless wife, the murderer of the man I was wed to, happy here in coral chambers while my daughter lies sick and despairs?’ Unable to touch her and unable to force himself to leave, the Princeling strokes only air.

  His uncle, the vermilion dragon, hears the wails that imbue with sorrow the mother-of-pearl corridors of the villa and disturb his slumbers. Again! He finds this mortal woman strangely upsetting: she is forever flicking her eyes at him, asking him to run some silly errand in the human realm, and for some reason he always agrees. But this weeping is too much for him. His head aches with last night’s wine and he wants only sleep. Enraged, he flies up, away from Cavegarden, bearing with him a tumult of black, blustering clouds. A fearsome storm sweeps over the sky, dropping great flakes of snow on the city of Chang-an and blocking the moon from human view.

  This is not right. Tonight is the first full moon of the new year, the last night of the Lantern Festival. By agreement of all the deities and spirits concerned, the Heavenly Almanac for this year decrees clear skies right through till dawn. Though Seagem’s daughter lies ill, the other men and women of Tang wish to wander the streets admiring lanterns and the beautiful white disc hanging in the heavens. Yet the driving winds and stinging white gusts of the vermilion dragon’s watch keep them huddled indoors, grumbling and stamping their feet.

  High in the keep of her crystalline palace, in a luminous banqueting hall, the Moon Lady celebrates the festival with her seven students. Their mood is merry at first, but an intangible pall settles over them: beings such as they require the nourishment of reverence and praise. Making some excuse, the moon-maid White Aureole drifts to the open window and looks down past gem-studded gardens to the human realm – and cannot see it. Dark roiling clouds block the delicate, powerful rays that even now should beam down upon the earth. White Aureole’s glistening gown of undyed silk flutters in agitation as she hurries back to the Lady’s ivory banqueting table and reports.

  Little Oyster exclaims in shock, but the next youngest of the moonmaids, a gifted rhapsodist named Selena, hushes her, and signals with a frown that she should listen to the Moon Lady’s quiet response. Having glanced over to the window and seen for herself the unlawful storm, the Lady instructs her students.

  ‘We shan’t go through the grievance procedures on this one, my dears,’ she says, pausing to sip from a goblet of opaline elixir. ‘They’d tie us up for weeks of depositions and hearings and written memorials. The point is to clear the sky right now. Selena, you seem to be keeping your head rather nicely. I think this would be a good time to put the Oragon Chant into practice. Will you do me the honour?’ She glances over at White Aureole, who seems a bit put out, and pats her hand. ‘Let me know what you think of her performance, dear Aureole,’ she murmurs. ‘Your keen observation tonight tells me you’re ready to help me judge the younger ones.’

  White Aureole swallows a quick triumphant smile and imitates one of the Moon Lady’s gracious nods. Selena looks nervous, but she moves to the window, draws in a deep breath of the chilly air, and begins a resonant invocation. Her voice is rich, musical, authoritative, efficacious. In every depth and abyss of the cosmos, leviathans and krakens, wyverns and hydras and huge komodo lizards writhe and moan. Cave-riddled ridges tremble, lake waters swirl, spring tides hurl themselves high upon the shores. The vermilion dragon knows, however, that he is the one who is summoned; groaning in protest, he hurls his sinuous body through the void, coiling it about the Moon Lady’s keep. He pokes his pop-eyed, be-whiskered head through the window so suddenly that Selena loses her composure for an instant, and hastily steps back.

  ‘Nicely done, don’t you think. White Aureole?’ says the Moon Lady, motioning Selena to return to her couch. ‘Oyster, pour some elixir to ease your elder sister’s throat. I myself will serve our honoured guest.’ Thus she distracts the youngest moon-maid – who appeared to be on the verge of disgracing herself with a fit of frightened tears – and soothes the ruffled pride of this creature of storm and stress.

  The vermilion dragon gulps down the opaline liqueur and smacks his lips. ‘Ahh, better,’ he says, ‘better by far.’ As he exhales blissfully, a tracery of frostflowers settles on the pearl-sewn blind rolled above the window. Down in the human realm, the storm abates somewhat. ‘You’ve cured my headache, madam, and I’m much obliged, though I must say I don’t think much of this little scholar’s coercive methods of inviting guests.’ He glares at Selena, but she, proud that her first formal Dragon Chant has worked so well, lifts her chin with dignity and gazes coolly back.

  Inquiring in tones of sweet concern into the source of the vermilion dragon’s discomposure, the Moon Lady hears his blustery tale of Seagem’s noisy woe. ‘I’ve heard of her, the unwilling runaway,’ she says. And: ‘You say she wants this girl from earth to join her in Cavegarden Lake?’

  The vermilion dragon is not so sure that he likes that idea, but concedes that it will probably bring peace and quiet to the watery Mother-of-Pearl Villa, which is all he really wants. After offering her scaly guest another cup of opaline elixir, the Moon Lady rests her cheek on one pale, slender finger and thinks for a moment. Then she calls White Aureole to her side and in low tones outlines a plan. Meanwhile, the dragon’s red-gleaming eyelids begin to droop contentedly over eyeballs only slightly less red. A shaft of moonlight breaks through the tempestuous clouds to shine on snow-heaped roofs.

  Soon the plan is explained to the dragon, who nods, agreeing to carry White Aureole down to negotiate in Seagem’s coral chamber beneath the waters of Cavegarden Lake and to bring her back when her mission there is completed. He hints that another cup of the liqueur would speed him on his journey, but the Lady ensures her student’s safe return by promising instead an entire flask for his trouble when he brings her back. Scarlet nostrils flare with anticipated pleasure, and tiny icicles spring into being on the nine-branched silver candelabrum closest to the window. The dragon grins. On earth, half the snowdrifts melt away as a sudden warm front sweeps in from the south, taking the last clouds from the sky. Revellers in Chang-an wipe their eyes in amazement, and laugh, and carry their festive lanterns out into the streets.

  Bravely, White Aureole climbs to the carved windowsill and straddles the dragon’s thick neck, seating herself just behind the bony plates at the base of his skull. Oyster gasps, and Selena takes her hand. The other moonmaids wave farewell, trilling out wishes for White Aureole’s success and – as tactfully as possible – for no ill fortune in her dealings with the erratic dragon. At Felicity Hall in the Pingkang Ward, a half-blind gatekeeper lights a candle now that the gale has died, and places it within a lantern shaped like a monstrous head. Its beard hangs long, its silver horns display bright tassels, its eyes pop out all gold and red. Beneath the pure light of the moon’s perfect disc, the lantern beams back an answering glow. The silk stretched over its bamboo frame tints that glow to a rich vermilion.

  PARROT

  SPEAKS:

  14

  ‘Oh yes. Empress Wu was a bad ‘un, right enough.’ Walleye scooted his stool over a few inch
es, following the warm rays of springtime sun that struck the courtyard wall behind us. ‘Now, they do say that all the brightest and wisest men of the empire were eager to serve under her, and I’ve heard more than one poetical young gentleman pass through that gate praising her for making poetry writing so important in the big exams. But for a woman to declare her own dynasty! I was just past twenty the day that happened, and you could have rocked me back on my heels with a kingfisher plume, little miss. I’ll tell you that.’

  I shifted on my own stool. I had heard enough of the old man’s descriptions of the fifteen years after the Empress Wu stopped running the country through her husband and son and reigned in her own right. Mama Lu usually looked disgusted when that empress’s name came up; she had moved the capital to Lo-yang for most of her reign, which meant poor business for the entertainers of Chang-an during Mama Lu’s first years in the profession. Yet even she conceded all ‘that woman’ had done in building temples and schools and spoke enviously of the vitality and beauty that the empress had preserved into her seventies.

  Walleye mostly liked to talk about the scandals. Empress Wu had had our Brilliant Emperor’s mother killed, and any number of other opponents. He said her lovers – a Buddhist monk, a Confucian physician, and finally a pair of beautifully painted and powdered brothers – made the palace a sink of wanton depravity. When he got onto this subject, I sometimes thought of the Brilliant Emperor’s many children: I believe he already had around twenty sons at that time, with many more to come no doubt, but of course he was not a woman.