A Single Petal

by Oliver EADE

  She turned and spoke crossly to two young men seated together at a table, waving her hands like a clumsy fan dancer. Without a word, they shifted sideways to make room for Tsu and Feng.

  “See!” continued the proprietress, her bright, darting eyes alighting on Feng. “Everyone makes way for Master Tsu. And who are you?”

  “Just a teacher,” Feng replied, glancing nervously at Master Tsu.

  “Just a teacher?” she echoed cheerfully. “No-one in Chang’an is ‘just’ anything. I’ll want to know everything there is to know about ‘just a teacher!’ When you’ve eaten, of course.”

  As they sat at the table, Feng felt dangerously like a painting on display for all to analyse and criticize, stupidity exposed for anyone to see!

  Eight years after Meili’s death he’d finally made it to the great capital, but why? To prove to her spirit that he could actually use the brain passed on to him by his ancestors, something he’d failed to do when she lost her hold on life? If only she could have survived until after his civil service exams, how proud she might then have been. But now, after causing the death of a good friend, unable to prevent the loss of another and, recently, a hair’s breadth away from rendering their beloved daughter an orphan and condemning the child to a life of servitude. these two young men had reason to stare at him with such contempt.

  Tsu turned to address them.

  “This is my friend, Teacher Feng. Highly respected by our emperor,” he explained. The rabbit teeth seemed to grow larger when the man spoke. “He humbly begs permission to eat from your table.”

  The scowls were replaced by blank expressions of assent.

  “Of course, teacher. Please eat at out table.”

  Master Tsu coughed and the speaker understood. He offered Feng his seat then he and his companion took their bowls and searched the crowded restaurant for somewhere else to sit. The woman in red, still grinning, asked:

  “Duck?”

  “Xiuxia, how could I ever refuse your duck?” queried Master Tsu. “And the teacher?” “What?” Feng looked up.

  “Duck?” “Duck?”

  “Yes, friend. Duck today,” affirmed the painter. “Had it yesterday and the day before that and...”

  “They say you haven’t lived until you’ve tried our duck,” explained Xiuxia.

  “Duck,” agreed Feng.

  He should have known. The whole restaurant smelt of duck; duck and sweat and the sweet sauce that went with the duck. The floor was littered with duck bones, chewed duck skin and gristle. A partly gnawed duck’s head stared up at him through a squashed dead eye, only two duckbills away from his right foot. The sightless gaze of death reminded him of his inability to help little Feier come to terms with her mother’s death. Was this, after all, the one thing he’d been avoiding all these years? Rather than seeking still to prove himself to Meili, was his life now about shirking his responsibility as a parent?

  “Master Tsu, today the duck is special.”

  “Away with you, Xiuxia! Every day it’s special. And can’t you see my friend is starving?” The painter called out to Xiuxia as she left for the kitchen: “And bring something for the teacher’s brain too. Pak choi, maybe. Teachers must feed their brains. We painters, we have no brains. Rely on our feelings!”

  Without turning, the woman in red halted and replied:

  “So this is the teacher they tell me about, then? The one who would change the lives of my sex? Have us all writing poems?”

  Change lives? Or ruin lives - allow them to be stolen?

  “Because of Teacher Feng a new wisdom will one day flow from the countryside to our capital here. But only if you feed the man’s brain, Xiuxia.”

  “Chef Wei will do as you bid, Master Tsu. But I warn you, your friend’s brain may grow so large you’ll have to carry him home on a camel.”

  She chuckled as she ran off into the kitchen and Feng closed his eyes against the wave of laughter that rippled the restaurant in her wake. He already hated the red-dressed proprietress and wondered why he’d been brought here - and who this painter really was.

  After quickly establishing there was now no-one within earshot, Master Tsu spoke quietly to Feng:

  “So what happened to Merchant Chang?”

  “You knew him?”

  “We all did. He was our best contact for materials from the west. Got me my finest colours.”

  Feng’s guilt carved harsh patterns across his mind. “But the sun wu kong... “ he began.

  “A cautious man! Has to be to survive the unrest spreading through the monasteries. So, what happened?” “My daughter found him. She... “ “The beautiful one? The girl they all talk of?”

  Feng shrugged his shoulders. Before this he had no idea people in Chang’an had even heard about him, let alone Feier.

  “She found a body covered with flies, half a face missing and that bamboo pole I brought sticking out of his belly.”

  “Your pole?”

  “Well, not mine really. I took it as evidence. Anything that might lead me to my friend’s killer is important. I knew it was him from the tattoo on his hand. And his big belly. But he’d never told me anything about the White Tiger League.”

  “Why should he? You approved of my handiwork, though, I hope!”

  “The tiger? Yours?”

  “Continue!”

  “What more is there? He was a good friend. Always stayed with us whenever he passed through our village. Feier loved his donkey, Mimi. We used to joke, talk... “

  “About?”

  “Anything and everything! We had good times together.”

  “But not your daughter, huh?”

  “I told you, she loved his donkey.”

  “Did you never wonder why his wife left him?”

  “Wife?”

  “You didn’t know?”

  Feng shook his head. It had never occurred to Feng the merchant might have been married. But Feier must have sensed it, about how his friend was when it came to women. Feng recalled that awful day he beat the child with a rod for diluting their wine. He’d never been able to forgive himself for that moment of drunken anger.

  “Chang was cautious, like all the emperor’s agents. He had to be. But his death makes no sense to me.”

  “Agents?”

  “Exactly! But... wait a minute. He was a White Tiger working for the emperor.” “Seems so!”

  “This isn’t easy. We all know about the empress and her nephew, but the emperor refuses to believe it. He showers her with gifts. And that story going around that he’s failed to mount her... well, not the whole truth. She has the problem. Let’s just say no-one can. She’s still beautiful and he treats her like a goddess, dismisses all rumours about her nephew. But we agents... “ “We agents?”

  “Me and seven others... eight for luck, until Chang... well, you know the rest. Then General Ma, agent two, disappears. Rode west with a large dispatch of troops to quell a revolt. Soon after we’d heard about Chang we got conflicting news. A messenger arrived at court to say Ma and his army were slaughtered to a man. The next day another man arrives with a report that General Ma never actually turned up. Simply vanished. With half our forces. Nor have we seen anything of Chen Jiabiao, the fourth agent. He should have been here days ago. I fear for him, too.”

  “And the other agents?”

  “You know three of them.”

  “The sun wu kong at the monastery?”

  “Of course.”

  “And?”

  “At Houzicheng. The new magistrate.”

  “Minsheng?”

  “Indeed.”

  Xiuxia arrived with a dish of steaming duck and a large bowl of rice, placing these on the table between the painter and his guest. Feng breathed in lungfuls of the aromatic fragrances b
efore selecting the most tender pieces.

  “Are you talking about me again?” the woman asked.

  “Of course, agent Xiuxia,” he replied. “Who else? But we’re starting to die off.”

  “Well, feed this man then. Keep him alive and... “ she bent forwards and whispered between their heads. “Watch out for the guard with a scar on his right cheek.”

  She straightened, gave Feng a cheeky smile, turned and left.

  “Her?”

  “The best. She’s our ears. And there’s one other. One without a name.”

  “That’s seven, without Chang. He was the eighth?”

  “And we must stay with eight. For luck. So now we’ve another. You!”

  “Me?”

  ***

  At night, after the little Miao farmhouse had been swallowed by darkness, Feier felt almost safe in her solitude. As the last flickering red and orange jewels died in the fire grate and the pigs, stirred into grumpy activity by Uncle Li, had ceased grunting, the only audible sound was the scrunch of straw as she turned over and her own breathing, and only then did she feel able to cry. She wept and prayed for dreams bad enough to make the nightmare of daily living more bearable. Her only hope, and a faint one, would be for baba to return with or without Xiaopeng. They wouldn’t dare force her to marry that old demon if he were back.

  She and Xiaopeng had never talked about what happened when a girl is taken by a man. It was a taboo subject, but the way they sneaked glances at Angwan and giggled made words unnecessary. Giggles of shame, not amusement, for each must have felt excitement in that secret alcove of her body, wondering... longing for the man who might transport her to another dimension. Ever since the younger girl started to lose blood each month, Feier played mother, explaining how this would make way for the baby that would one day come, but her longing for Angwan remained unspoken. Now that Angwan was gone, the fervour of desire set alight every female filament of her young body as she tossed and turned in the darkness.

  This desire was always most intense for the days after her flow had ceased, and that particular night even more so. She’d been dry for two days. First his face appeared like a ghost in the darkness: his gentle, lively eyes, fine nose and those lips fashioned for pleasure. That night she willed the ghost to take human form in a dream, to caress her with his searching hands, press his thighs between hers and possess her with his soul. Once possessed, she could never belong to that filthy old dog in the Han village.

  But there was no dream. Nothing... until...

  Feier tried to scream but all that emerged from her throat was a stifled rattle. A heavy hand clamped over her mouth, and her night robe was up about her waist. A weight she’d never before experienced was pressing down on her and her splayed legs were as useless as if they no longer belonged to her. Her hands cupping her virgin breasts were flattened by the man lying on top of her. She attempted to kick against the animal strength of the fiend as something hard pressed at those parts that wanted only the young priest. Her mouth moved under the hand in a futile effort to bite the strong fingers imprisoning it.

  “Quiet,” whispered a voice.

  The girl went limp and passive. The hand over her face softened, relaxed and there was no scream. How had she not recognised the smell of the young man, so alluring and secretive? The farmer smelled only of sweat and pigs. The body covering Feier now reminded her of scents carried by the winds that cut through the bamboo groves on the way back to her home village, of the colours of the sky around the sun as it set over the hills they’d traversed side by side. And as he stroked and pressed against that oh-so-secret-place, she became a lotus flower opening for the sun on the lake near the temple.

  ***

  “Why do you think Minsheng sent you to us?

  “But... I never... I mean... this is absurd. I’m only a teacher.”

  “And the best. We’re all of us ‘only’ something. What unites us is that each is the best of that something. And we find out in our own ways, in our own time. Better like that.”

  “An emperor’s agent? This is madness!”

  “Why are you here?”

  “To set right the wrong done to Merchant Chang. To find my friend’s daughter.”

  “By serving the emperor?” “If necessary. But...”

  “It’s that simple. Protecting the father of our country. That’s all we try to do. But getting back to Chang - though the man was a danger to women, he was no traitor. Besides, he was wealthy, doing well under our present father. And there was a thing with Chen Jiabiao’s house, too.”

  “That palace in the country?” Feng suggested scornfully.

  “Obviously he wasn’t going to tell people ‘til the deal was over. Like I said, a cautious man in all other respects.”

  “So?”

  “Let’s just say Chang was likely to get the house as a gift. Chen’s moving to Chang’an. To become a mandarin when this is all over. His house near Houzicheng would be a marriage gift for your daughter.”

  Feng pushed back his seat, fists tightening. He’d already had enough of the painter’s wild notions, but to think of his dead friend being betrothed to Feier was too much. He thumped the table then stood up. Silence fell like a curtain, Xiuxia appeared in the doorway, a knife in one hand and a plucked duck in the other.

  “Hush, teacher! The last thing you want to do in Chang’an is call attention to yourself. Sit before word gets around!” Feng resumed his position at the table, his fists still tight as a concubine’s bodice. “Excuse me if I said something wrong, but I’d assumed it was all arranged. From what Chang told me. So your daughter’s hair is still unpinned, huh?”

  “Still long,” replied the teacher weakly, recalling the last time he’d seen that sleek black hair that reached down to the child’s waist. “She was terrified of him. I should have known. She tried to tell me. I thought it was just the uncertainty of youth troubling her. But why would Chang go around telling such a lie?”

  “Because Chen would need to justify to the emperor the gift of his house, perhaps? I’m sure Chang meant nothing by it. Sadly, it’s no longer an issue.”

  Feng looked down at the disembodied duck head. It seemed to have taken a new significance, as if containing the spirit of Chang, now out of reach and mocking him. He wanted to stamp on the head and kick it out of the restaurant, but perhaps Tsu was right. He’d already been licked by the tongue of death. To raise awareness of who he was and why he was there could only help the teeth of death find their mark. He waited till faces had lost interest and the chattering had resumed.

  “I need help,” he said at last, unaware Xiuxia had just returned and was standing behind him, her smile replaced by an expression of concern.

  “Teacher Feng is tired,” explained Tsu.

  Feng turned, his face level with the woman’s breasts.

  Quite suddenly, for the first time since Meili’s death, he felt a yearning for female comfort, for the soft smoothness of a woman’s body and most of all, her breasts. His gaze travelled upwards to take in the woman’s face, a safer haven than her ample bosom. The face softened his anger. How he longed for a return to that other life in which just a glance from Meili would have dispelled all fear and frustration.

  “You poor man! Must be exhausted! Don’t be too hard on him, Master Tsu. Not yet. Wait for the duck to heal him.”

  “Heal? Yes, those White Tiger brigands who set upon him were so close to finishing the job the sun wu kong says they’d left our teacher friend for dead.”

  Xiuxia ruffled Feng’s hair and his yu jing flicked into life, forcing him to cross his legs. The woman left.

  “Take care,” warned Tsu. “You’ve not see her husband, Chef Wei, yet. He’s in the kitchen back there and he’s big. Many a man’s stem has fallen foul of his chopper.” Feng looked down at his lap in alarm before the ar
tist erupted into laughter. “A bit of humour, please. You need it to survive in Chang’an. And Xiuxia’s sympathy - but only her sympathy, I warn you. Don’t want the number of emperor’s agents reduced further by a meat chopper. So, you need my help? Wrong! The emperor needs your help. Needs your brain to protect himself from his gentle ways. Now, why the missing Miao girls, ay?”

  “A thousand,” answered Feng. “Collecting them ‘ til he has a thousand. A thousand petals like the imperial tree. He’ll believe that the yin flowing from a thousand girl-petals will match the strength of his yang. Give him the qi force to defeat our emperor poet.”

  “A thousand? That’s a lot of girls. Even for an emperor. And if you saw that tree you speak of in flower - well, for an artist like me not even ten thousand girls could come close to its beauty.”

  “It’s the only thing that makes sense!”

  “But where, teacher? Where is the nephew’s army hidden? That’s what we need to know. What we hoped Xiuxia’s ears might uncover. What Chen was supposed to find out - and now his cousin the general’s either vanished or been vanquished. Whatever, the man’s gone missing. These are bad omens, teacher. I fear for you.”

  “The army will be where they’ve taken the Miao girls to.”

  “Which none of us knows! Tired or not, Feng, you should learn from my painting.”

  “Your painting?”

  “I paint a rock. I make a flat thing solid. Nothing can change it. Not rain, sun, snow or earthquake. A brigand, a general, a court official and a beautiful girl like your daughter - each could sit beside my rock, yet still it remains unchanged. You understand?”

  Feng was in no mood for riddles and was beginning to find the painter irritating.

  “Be like my rock. Take strength from it. Your daughter’s safe from the dead man, but you’ll do her no favours by getting yourself killed.” “Was what you said about Chen Jiabiao’s house true?” The painter shrugged his shoulders.