Now Shih sat in the tower room, seeking meditation’s temporary comfort. Once again he laid open palms across his knees as Mung Po had instructed. One must feel solidity beneath one’s feet, connecting down, down through timber beams, down to the earth-truth. Yet his mind was full of monkey chatter. Questions. Half-answers. How could he evade thought? He imagined roots, thirsty for moisture, pointlessly railing at sandy soil for being dry. Was he such a plant? Only Cao understood his potential to bloom, his dear wife who he betrayed daily through lustful desires. Shih stirred uneasily, opening his eyes. Hurried footsteps were mounting the steep stairs to the tower room; then Cao’s head bobbed through the hatch.
‘Husband! Come quickly! Father has vanished!’
Shih reluctantly rose.
‘What do you mean?’
‘He is not in his room. I cannot find him anywhere.’
‘Come now, he never goes far.’
‘He is not to be found in Apricot Corner Court!’
Her eyes caught star-sheen from the open window. Shih followed her down the stairs and examined Father’s chamber by candlelight. The wide bowl of circling fish formed a yellow moon on the floor.
Those without clan must depend on their neighbours. Shih went from doorway to doorway and soon the residents of Apricot Corner Court gathered round the tree, many still in nightclothes. Clouds and constellations patterned the sky.
‘I humbly apologise for causing inconvenience,’ said Shih, holding up a guttering lamp. His neighbours waited nervously.
‘Lord Yun is missing,’ he continued. ‘You all know of his great infirmity. How could you not? It is of mind, not body. I beg you to help us search the ward. I am afraid he will come to harm.’
Old Hsu’s youngest son stirred uneasily.
‘What of the curfew?’ he asked.
Shih had no answer to that. Then Cao was at his elbow.
‘Husband, might not Captain Xiao’s name reassure the watchmen?’ she asked, quietly.
He was reluctant to rely, yet again, on the protection of his brother. Was he never to escape that shadow? Never become his own man?
The decision was taken out of his hands. Old Hsu took the lead, ordering his sons to explore Xue Alley while he searched nearby canal banks.
‘I shall go to the Water Basin,’ said Shih. ‘Madam Cao must remain here to await news.’
One by one they vanished into the humid night. Only Widow Mu hesitated.
‘Dr Shih,’ she said. ‘I could tell my son to look beneath the bridges, but I do not think Lord Yun is there.’
‘Then where is he?’
Widow Mu bowed.
‘You might find him across the canal.’
‘Do you mean in the neighbouring ward?’
‘I mean, sir, in Ping’s Floating Oriole House.’
She averted her eyes from his frown.
‘It’s only that Lord Yun once mentioned the place to my daughter. No doubt I am wrong.’
Dr Shih’s face was blank as he left Apricot Corner Court. He did not go to the Water Basin but crossed the humped canal bridge until he stood outside Ping’s establishment. Despite the curfew, a red lantern dangled from the lintel. Within he could hear laughter and the lazy twang of a lute. A woman’s voice wailed a song of betrayed love.
He rapped on the painted door. A wooden bolt scraped open and Ping’s doorman appeared. Shrewd eyes read the mood of both caller and street. Without a word, he was ushered inside.
Shih entered a central courtyard wreathed with flowering creepers. A dim lantern burned in obedience to the curfew restrictions. A few customers, mostly local wastrels protected from conscription by family influence, were listening to the singing girl and drinking yeasty, home-brewed wine. The proprietor rose to greet him and the two bowed. Ping was a wiry fellow whose heavy-lidded eyes hid many passions. Shih had often attended to the health of his girls, but never trusted their master.
‘Dr Shih! Most pleasant surprise, sir!’
‘Alas, my business is not pleasant,’ he replied stiffly. ‘I seek the dearest relative a man may have. If he is here, you will understand my meaning.’
‘Mysterious!’ exclaimed Ping, smiling at his guests, who chuckled.
Shih felt himself redden.
‘Then it seems I have disturbed you for no reason.’
The sound of giggling came from behind a screen, followed by a familiar laugh. Though it was unmannerly, Shih walked over and listened. He frowned at Ping’s insolent expression.
‘I have come to take him home,’ he said. ‘Perhaps your girls should now delight another customer.’
It was the brothel-keeper’s turn to glower.
‘I never disturb a guest,’ he said. ‘It’s bad for business.’
Shih reluctantly removed his hand from the screen.
‘Perhaps you will make an exception to your rule?’
Ping laughed hollowly and spread out his hands.
‘You can see for yourself how my business flourishes! Before the curfew my rooms were full. Now I treasure every customer like jade. Why not let an old man have fun? When his cash is gone, you may take him home with my blessing.’
The other guests applauded their host’s wit.
‘My brother, Captain Xiao, will be displeased,’ said Shih, quietly. ‘Gravely displeased.’
Ping licked his lips.
‘Ah! Captain Xiao is not a little doctor. He is a man one respects.’
Shih’s blush deepened. Indeed, the brothel-keeper had aimed well. How swiftly he resorted to his brother’s name! It had become almost a mannerism. Nevertheless, Shih slid open the door concealing his Father.
Within, Lord Yun lay on a divan, surrounded by three mirthful girls. The reason for their good humour – and Ping’s annoyance at losing such a customer – was obvious. A varnished, maple cash-box lay on the table. Shih recognised it as belonging to himself.
One of the girls raised her head from Lord Yun’s parted robe and Shih caught a glimpse of feeble ardour. He glanced away hurriedly, his legs suddenly weak. An image of the dark hall at Three-Step-House, of Aunt Qin pleading, made his heart clench unbearably. When he opened his eyes, the foul image lingered.
Lord Yun’s clothing had been hastily adjusted. The loathed reminder was out of sight.
Shih reached down for the cash-box. It was nearly empty. He scooped it up and held out a hand to Father. For a moment he thought Lord Yun would argue. But perhaps the old man also remembered that terrible afternoon, so long ago. Perhaps he was simply too drunk to resist. Shih gently pulled him to his feet.
Pausing only to check Lord Yun had his shoes on, he led him shuffling though the courtyard full of curious eyes. Ping’s mouth opened mockingly until the doctor’s expression cut him short. Bowing, he followed them to the entrance, murmuring a hope that Dr Shih’s honoured father had enjoyed himself.
When they reached Apricot Corner Court, Shih slackened his pace. A platoon of Watchmen were approaching in the distance. Without a word he bundled Lord Yun inside and closed the heavy door.
‘Do not speak!’ he hissed.
Inside the shop they found Cao waiting. Shih wiped moist palms on his robes.
‘Your behaviour is unseemly, Father,’ he said. ‘You waste our cash when what little we have is needed for food. Surely you are aware that the stipend we receive from Wang Ting-bo scarcely feeds Lu Ying, let alone us. We have nothing to spare!
Then you blatantly defy the curfew. Even now our neighbours are searching Water Basin Ward, at risk to themselves, for we feared you were in danger. And to visit a haunt of criminals! It diminishes us all.’
If he expected remorse, the old man’s bloodshot glare taught him better. ‘Hah!’ jeered Lord Yun. ‘Where is Guang? Where is my only son?’
‘I am also your son,’ said Shih, icily.
Then, provoked beyond endurance, he emptied his heart as an archer will fire frantically until his quiver is bare.
‘I am your firstborn! I am the true heir to Wei V
alley and Three-Step-House! Do not talk to me of only sons! This game of not remembering will stop, Father! It will stop now!’
Lord Yun laughed scornfully but Shih detected a flicker of unease.
‘I will not listen to Bayke’s lies, Doctor! You shame my ancestors by pretending to be my son. If you were a man you would be fighting Khan Bayke! You would avenge our ancestors. You cannot be my son.’
Shih’s expression was strange throughout this tirade. Yet his hands were busy, preparing an infusion from a jar hidden in a secret drawer beneath the counter.
‘If you were my son,’ continued Lord Yun. ‘You would have possessed your concubine! I’ll do it for you. And I always get my way.’
Shih spooned more herbs into the cup. Then he hesitated.
Was it too much? One had to be careful. But he must silence that vile, taunting voice. He dipped the spoon and stirred the infusion. While he worked, his eyes did not stray from Lord Yun’s angry face. He could sense the demons inside the man were weakening.
‘I am your firstborn son,’ he repeated. ‘Father, you are full of odious deceit!’
Cao shrieked in distress, covering her face. To abuse one’s father was to defy the law. A strange sense of power filled Shih.
With it came cruelty.
‘Do you remember Aunt Qin?’ he asked. ‘I sensed it in you earlier. Both of us shared the same thought. Oh, you remember her very well! And that afternoon in the monsoon when I found you with her.’
Lord Yun bristled as a child will, his old eyes filling with tears. He hovered between bluster and defiance.
‘Swallow this,’ ordered Shih.
He held a porcelain cup chased with blue dragons to his father’s lips. The old man gulped, once, twice, then stood panting in the dark shop. Cao moaned.
‘Lead Father to bed, wife,’ said Shih. ‘I’ve had enough of him.’
Already the thin figure was drooping and it required both of them to help him to his chamber.
Shih stood for a while by the door, candle in hand, watching the dark shapes of the circling fish and listening to the pattern of Lord Yun’s breathing. Then he closed the door and went wearily to the seat beneath the apricot tree. One by one he greeted the returning searchers, assuring them Lord Yun was quite safe, and that his whole family were in their debt.
Old Hsu came back last of all. The fan-maker grunted when Shih told his news and mentioned Ping’s establishment.
‘There’s no fool like an old fool,’ he replied. ‘At my age you hope people forgive you for it.’
Shih watched him enter his house. The first rays of dawn made the rooftops glow.
The next day Dr Shih awoke to dread. Surely punishment must follow his unfilial conduct. But when, after a tentative knock, he entered the old man’s room, he found Lord Yun in good humour. Small birds twittered in the eaves outside. A warm breeze wafted water smells from the canal through the open window. Shih bowed awkwardly.
‘I take it Honoured Father has rested?’
Lord Yun looked up from combing his straggly hair.
‘No thanks to you. But I had a strange dream.’ He smiled a secret smile. ‘A very sweet dream indeed.’
Shih’s eyebrows raised. Could Father have so soon forgotten Ping’s brothel? Perhaps the medicine he had drunk possessed deep powers. A single dose of the infusion – one familiar to all learned doctors but seldom deployed for fear of unexpected consequences – seemed to remove unwelcome recollections as a broom sweeps away ash. Shih politely withdrew, reluctant to rake the embers of last night’s quarrel.
All day this strange circumstance tinctured his thoughts.
Dangerous knowledge is not easily forgotten. Amazing the old man could be so easily tamed! A simple draught, regularly ingested, might restore peace to his household. And he knew enough herbalists to ensure a plentiful supply. Except Shih doubted the virtue of such a remedy. Was he, the son, to reduce the parent to a state of childhood? The consequences for Father’s essential breaths were also doubtful. His clutch on sanity, already insecure, might weaken further. Certainly Lord Yun would develop cravings for larger doses, until he begged his son in a plaintive voice for just a little more of the herb, always a little more, in return for being good.
The possibility of such power – or revenge – attracted Shih in an unwholesome way. He retreated to the tower room, anxious to hide his feelings in clouds of meditation. Yet a hot sun peeps through any cloud.
*
A week passed. One twilight Dr Shih left the gatehouse of Apricot Corner Court, a full bag on his shoulder. Lately his duties at the Relief Bureau had dwindled almost to nothing. As summer rains dampened General A-ku’s tactics so the stream of wounded shrank to a trickle. More importantly, Dr Du Tun-i had tightened his hold on the Relief Bureau, finding little for Shih to do. As Mung Po remarked, meaning to be kind, the new wave breaking on the shore washes away its predecessor’s foam.
At first Shih had struggled to maintain his former position until the futility of his efforts became obvious. Besides, there was no denying Dr Tun-i possessed virtues. A plentiful supply of medicine flowed from his influential uncle; and the younger man displayed a talent for administration notably lacking in Shih. Never before had the North Medical Relief Bureau’s ledgers appeared so correct – even when funds floated across the river to the Du family mansion in Fouzhou.
Mung Po complained that the new supervisor rarely took a patient’s pulse in the course of a whole day. But Shih could not guide Dr Tun-i’s hand to a suffering wrist. He could not place needles before the young man and advise where they might do good. He could only accept that all he had built now belonged to another and console himself with the thought that surrendering desire brought one closer to Emptiness.
There were more immediate benefits. The exhaustion he had once accepted as a natural fog, dulling every waking moment, lifted. For the first time since the start of the siege, he resumed his round of private patients.
Stepping out of Apricot Corner Court that dusk, bag on shoulder, Dr Shih felt strangely free, just as when he first arrived in Nancheng afire with youth and hope. Swifts and bats flickered between rooftops; the comforting silhouette of Wadung Mountain seemed to smile upon him.
He glanced back at the shop doorway. Cao was reaching up to wipe the lintel and he returned her wave. For the first time in many months, or at least since Lu Ying joined their household, he noticed her curves and grew confused.
Strange to think of her as a woman after so long a gap between embraces. It made him uneasy. How could he approach her naturally? Maybe she no longer cared for him and would turn to the wall in disgust.
Dr Shih’s first patient lived beyond Xue Alley near the Water Basin. As he entered that long, twisting street heads were poking out of tenement windows to summon children. For their part, the children pretended not to hear, stealing one last game before the curfew forced them indoors. Shih half-expected Carpenter Xue to hurry out and demand a consultation, but instead he was detained by a different voice.
Somewhere a woman was singing an ancient, wistful tune.
The melody reached down to him from an open window and Shih listened, his heart full of contradictory feelings: A handsome gentleman
Waited by the gate:
How very sad I did not accompany him!
For him I wear my unlined skirt,
My skirt of brightest silk.
Oh, sir, gracious lord,
Give me a place in your coach!’
Shih realised tears were filling his eyes. Did he think of his dear mother buried far to the West and the coach that had so cruelly taken him away from her? Or was it his last glimpse of Cao as he left Apricot Corner Court? The knowledge their treasured closeness, that had once seemed as immutable as the sun, had faded with youth? He could not say. The old tune seemed a premonition of some nameless, future grief.
Then Lu Ying stole like a fluttering shadow across the image of his wife. Shih’s heart quickened. Surely that nonsense was over
! He did not respect the girl. She was ignorant and foolish.
His only concern was her welfare. Yet Father sneered at him for not having possessed her. Why must he think of her so often?
A loud neighing startled Shih from these questions and he looked up in surprise at a warhorse blocking his path. Features almost identical to his own gazed down from a saddle decorated with silver and red tassels.
‘Sister-in-law told me I’d find you here,’ said Guang, dis-mounting nimbly.
The brothers examined each other in the fading light.
‘Come with me to Peacock Hill,’ said Guang. ‘I’ve ordered a banquet for us both.’
There was a note of entreaty in his voice.
‘What of Cao?’ asked Shih. ‘She will worry if I do not return.’
‘I’ve sent a message not to expect you. Here, climb up behind me! Remember how we would ride Father’s horse round the plum orchard above Three-Step-House? Only then you were the one in front. Do you remember how I clutched you?’
Shih laughed nervously.
‘I’ve grown more accustomed to walking since then,’ he said.
He finally agreed and Guang hauled him up, fastening his doctor’s bag to the pommel. They trotted through streets full of people hurrying to evade the curfew. Some looked up in surprise at the twin brothers, one in painted armour, the other wearing a humble doctor’s blue robes and grey hat At last they cantered through the gatehouse at the foot of Peacock Hill and Guang slowed the horse. He led Shih to a small, ornate pavilion with an upward-curving tiled roof. A servant hurried out to take the reins.
Two hours later they had drunk a dozen toasts to Wang Ting-bo, Wang Bai, the brave General Zheng Shun and Admiral Qi-Qi, even the Son of Heaven himself. They had dined so finely Shih almost forgot there was a siege. Wild duck dipped in sweetened vinegar. Kidneys in a sauce of bitter fruit. His head span from the wine. He said the first thing swirling among the fumes in his brain: ‘Guang, what is the cause of this? I hardly hear from you in months, though we live only a few li apart. Then this!’
Breaking Bamboo Page 27