Peach Blossom Paradise
Page 10
A Meicheng garrison lieutenant, Li Daodeng, had been a friend of Xue Zuyan’s for many years. Now acting on orders to bring him in, he thought he would do him a good turn. After his men surrounded the house, Li Daodeng left his guards at the door and went in alone. Sitting down in Xue Zuyan’s grand armchair, he lay his halberd across his lap and cupped his fist in greeting. “Brother! A debt of gratitude built over years is repaid in this single moment. Run!”
When Xue Zuyan, who had been trembling under his blankets next to Peach Pit, heard that he could escape, he jumped out of bed stark naked and began to gather his valuables. Lieutenant Li watched the man toss his things around and just shook his head. Xue Zuyan packed everything he wanted without even putting on his pants; he even asked Li Daodeng if he could take his concubine within him. The lieutenant smiled and said, “You’re an intelligent man, brother. What has made you so stupid today?”
“Daodeng, what you mean to say is—”
At that point, Peach Pit sat up in bed and jeered, “Strange that a man of lofty ambitions should think of sex while he faces his own death. If you run away, how could the lieutenant fulfill his orders?”
Xue Zuyan realized that even she had been eyes and ears against him; terror sent him round and round his dining room table like a mule around a millstone. Finally, he asked, “Daodeng, what you mean to say is that you’re not actually going to let me go?”
Li Daodeng turned away, unable to look his friend in the eye. It was Peach Pit who impatiently explained, “What Lieutenant Li means is that if you run, he has a reason to kill you outright, instead of handing you over to be cut into five hundred and eighty pieces.”
Xue Zuyan didn’t move. He could neither go nor stay. Finally, Li Daodeng told him that whether Xue Zuyan got out alive or not was entirely up to him; if he ran farther and faster than the army could follow, Li Daodeng would keep them off his back. Hearing this, Xue Zuyan pulled on his pants and made straight for the door, forgetting his valuables entirely. No one appeared to stop him on his way out, yet Li Daodeng had long ago posted armed guards to the left and right of the outer door. The blades dropped just as Xue Zuyan ran through; his head soared into the air, his blood spurted all over the courtyard wall. Peach Pit sauntered out of the house after him as though nothing had happened, and remarked to the onlookers, “All this time I thought he was some kind of righteous hero, but instead he turns out to be an old, dried-up stuffed shirt.”
•
Zhang Jiyuan reappeared that evening just as the family was sitting down to dinner, sauntering in lazily with pipe in hand just as he always did. His eyes had dark circles around them, and his hair, wet with autumn dew, lay stuck to his forehead. A long gash stretched down the back of his shirt. As Magpie ladled him a bowl of rice, Zhang Jiyuan pulled out a handkerchief to mop his face. With an obvious effort, he pulled himself together and assumed an air of nonchalance, saying, “Let me tell you all a joke.”
No one responded. Every mouth stayed shut except for Tiger’s: “Make a donkey noise for us first.” But the request made Zhang Jiyuan even more uncomfortable. He looked first at Baoshen, then at Mother for support, but no one met his gaze—even Magpie kept her eyes on her bowl as she shoveled rice into her mouth. Finally Zhang Jiyuan looked at Xiumi, only to find her looking just as helplessly back at him.
While the rest of the table continued to eat in gloomy silence, Xiumi spoke up: “If you have a good joke, Uncle, you should tell it to us.”
Pretending not to notice the severe glare Mother flashed at her, Xiumi put down her chopsticks and rested her head in her hands to listen. Her idea had been to lighten the mood a little by giving him a conversation partner, but instead she trapped him in his own performance. He made every effort to conceal his agitation, yet his gaze still darted back and forth, and he hesitated to speak. The joke came out disorganized and uninteresting, and even though it was clearly falling flat, he insisted on telling it to the end. The rest of the party looked at each other in shared embarrassment until Baoshen distracted everyone with a fart that was so noxious they all had to hold their breath.
Xiumi had already heard from Ding Shuze that Zhang Jiyuan was actually no cousin of hers. He was a convict wanted by the imperial court, and he had come to Puji not to recover from illness but to link up with his fellow conspirators and plot sedition. Ding Shuze’s wife told her that Master Xue, Xue Zuyan, had been their leader, and even though he’d already lost his head, six or seven of his comrades had been captured alive and taken as prisoners to Meicheng. “And if even one or two of them cracks under the filleting knife, the first person they’ll give up will be your cousin.”
But if Zhang Jiyuan was a traitor, how could Mother have known him? And how could she allow a convict on the run who wasn’t even family to stay in her house for six whole months? Xiumi could make no sense out of the situation.
Zhang Jiyuan finished his joke, ate a few more bites of dinner, then put his chopsticks down and addressed the table, saying that a full six months had passed since coming down to Puji from Meicheng to recuperate from his illness, and thanks to the boundless care everyone had shown to him, his recovery was complete. But all good things must come to an end, of course, and the time had come for him to take his leave. Mother, who clearly had been waiting for him to make this announcement, made no attempt to convince him to stay, but simply asked when he was thinking of setting off.
“I plan to leave tomorrow morning,” Zhang Jiyuan replied, and stood up from the table.
“That sounds about right,” Mother said. “Why don’t you rest in your room for a while. I want to talk to you later this evening.”
•
Only Xiumi and Tiger remained in the dining room after dinner ended. Xiumi absentmindedly played with him for a while until Baoshen came to put him to bed in the office. Xiumi made her way into the kitchen, intending to help Magpie and Lilypad wash up, but they had no space for her, so she kept getting in the way. Lilypad was so preoccupied she sliced a finger wide open on the sharp edge of a wok; she had no interest in entertaining Xiumi, who stood by herself next to the stove before removing herself from the kitchen. As she passed through the skywell, she saw Mother approach from the far end of the rear courtyard, a covered lamp in her hand. As Xiumi made for the stairs leading to her bedroom, Mother called out to her, “Your uncle wants you to go upstairs to see him. He has something to ask you.”
“What could he have to ask me about?” Xiumi asked, surprised.
“He wouldn’t tell me, so how should I know?” Mother replied sharply. “He asked you to go, so go!” She stalked off without even looking at her. Xiumi watched the glow from Mother’s lamp flicker and slowly fade on the courtyard wall until she was left standing in impenetrable darkness. What’s her problem? Xiumi thought resentfully. Why is she taking her bad mood out on me? Crickets filled her ears with a chorus of frenetic chirping, which only intensified her frustration.
The studio door was open; bright lamplight, shining in circles through a heavy autumn mist, illuminated the damp staircase. Xiumi had not been back there since Father disappeared. Fallen leaves covered everything—the corridor, the flowerpots, the stairs.
Zhang Jiyuan was sitting in Father’s chambers, playing with Father’s washbasin. Father had bartered it from a homeless panhandler, who had been using it as a begging bowl; Xiumi didn’t know why the object was so interesting to Zhang Jiyuan. He turned it and flipped it over, examining every side and quietly exclaiming, “Priceless, priceless. It really is priceless.”
Seeing Xiumi come through his door, he said to her, “You know, this antique has quite a history. Listen to the sound it makes.” He rapped the bottom of the basin lightly with one finger—it produced a clear, almost crystalline chime that poured through the heart like water, and made Xiumi feel suddenly buoyant, as if she might be lifted off the ground by a breeze and carried over mountains, streams, and rivers to some unknown place.
Zhang Jiyuan brought his ear close to the lip of the basin with childlike enthusiasm, blinking at her as he listened. He in no way resembled a convicted criminal on the run from the government. “This beauty is called a ‘carefree cauldron.’ Originally forged out of copper by a Taoist adept at Zhongnan Peak who perfected the process over twenty-plus years. Southerners are unfamiliar with it, and only see an ordinary enamel basin. Diviners with perfect pitch used to use it to tell the future, saying they could foretell good or evil based on the sound it makes.”
Xiumi considered how the sound had disoriented her, lifting her like a feather and finally setting her down in a place that felt like an empty graveyard. It seemed an unlucky omen.
“They say it has another, greater secret as well. Supposedly, when snow falls in the winter, the frost that forms on its surface will—” As he spoke, the door flew open and Lilypad walked in. The mistress had asked her to make sure he had enough oil in his lamps, she said. But the oil wells in the lamps were all full, so she pulled a hairpin out to trim the wicks and left, closing the door behind her before descending the stairs.
Zhang Jiyuan looked at Xiumi and smiled, and Xiumi smiled back, each as if knowing why the other was smiling but didn’t care to explain it aloud. Xiumi felt a wave of inexplicable pity for her mother. Her hands and body prickled with sweat. She tapped the basin gingerly with her fingertips; its ringing reply felt pained. She imagined standing in an empty Zen temple. Few people ever visited. A stream bubbled outside the temple walls, and willow branches swayed by the road. The peach trees in the mountain valley behind were in bloom, every petal a snow-white windowpane filled with evening sunlight. Wild bees and butterflies danced and whirled; flowers opened as if they were about to speak, then fell as if deep in thought. Something was vanishing, inch by inch, like tidewater retreating on a beach, or a stick of incense burning into ash. The bustle and noise of the human world seemed devoid of anything interesting.
Xiumi stood by the table, seeing nothing, utterly absorbed in her daydream. Looking up, she found Uncle looking at her with greedy energy: his expression was dark and shamelessly forthright, his face pale and his brows knit tightly together as tremors of pain seemed to twist his face. He licked his upper lip, as if he had something important to tell her, but couldn’t decide if he should.
“Are you really a public enemy?” Xiumi asked him. She put her palm on the table and lifted it, leaving an imprint of sweat.
Zhang Jiyuan smiled bitterly. “What do you think?”
“Where are you going to go?”
“To tell the truth, I don’t know myself,” Zhang Jiyuan admitted. After a pause, he continued, “I can see that you have a whole string of questions for me. Is that true?”
Xiumi nodded.
“There was a time when I could have answered every single one of them truly and completely; in fact, before you came up the stairs, I was getting ready to tell you the truth. Whatever it was you wanted to know, I would tell you—you ask and I answer, with nothing held back or hidden. Who am I? How do I know your mother? Why did I come to Puji? What’s my connection to Xue Zuyan in Xia village? Why are we fighting against the government? Who’s the six-fingered man? You want to know the answers to all of these questions, don’t you?” Zhang Jiyuan pulled out a crumpled handkerchief and mopped the sweat from his forehead before continuing:
“And yet, over the past few days, I’ve had a sneaking suspicion that all we’ve been trying to do has been fundamentally mistaken—or, to put it another way, that it is unimportant—possibly even meaningless—to me. Truly, even meaningless. Like when you’re putting all your energy into some pursuit, and all the while you suspect that it might be a mistake, that it’s been a mistake since the very beginning. Or when you’re digging for the answer to some difficult question, and eventually you think you’ve found it. But then comes a day when you discover the real answer actually resides in some distant place far beyond anything you imagined. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
Xiumi shook her head in confusion. She honestly had no idea what he was talking about.
“That’s fine. Enough of all that, then.” Zhang Jiyuan slapped his forehead. “Let me show you something.” He reached into the suitcase by the head of his bed and brought out a small box, beautifully wrought of silk brocade, which he placed in Xiumi’s hands.
“Is this for me?” Xiumi asked him.
“No, it isn’t,” Zhang Jiyuan said. “This is something I can’t carry with me at the moment. I need you to keep it safe for me. I’ll be coming back to Puji in a month at the very most, and then you can give it back to me.”
Xiumi examined the box. It was covered in sapphire-blue velveteen, like a lady’s jewelry case.
“A month, at the very latest.” Zhang Jiyuan sat down at the table beside her. “If more than a month goes by and I’m not back, then you won’t be seeing me again.”
“Why would we not see you again?”
“Because then it will mean that I’m no longer in this world. But when the time comes, someone else will come to you asking for it, and you can just give it to him.”
“What’s his name?” Xiumi asked.
“His name isn’t important,” Zhang Jiyuan said, smiling. “He has six fingers. But remember: the extra finger is on his left hand.”
“What if he never comes?”
“Then it’s yours. You can take it to the jeweler and have him make you a necklace out of it.”
“What’s inside? Can I open it?”
“As you wish,” Zhang Jiyuan replied.
Lilypad once again walked through the door, this time with a foot-washing basin under one arm, a towel over her shoulder, and a kettle in her other hand. She entered without even knocking. Setting the kettle and basin on the floor and draping the towel over the back of a chair, she said to Zhang Jiyuan, “The mistress said to tell you that it’s getting late, and you should wash up and get some rest. I’ve heated this water up twice already.” She turned to Xiumi. “Time to say good night.”
Xiumi looked over at Uncle. “Good night, then?”
“Sleep well.”
Zhang Jiyuan stood up. His face neared hers for a moment as he rose. She saw that he had small pockmarks across his cheeks.
Xiumi followed Lilypad down the stairs. She could sense the studio door closing slowly behind her. Total darkness enclosed the courtyard.
*Xue Zuyan (1849–1901), courtesy name Xue Shuxian. Precocious as a child, he was a talented horseman with a strong-willed disposition, who successfully passed the martial service exam at the provincial level in the eleventh year of the Guangxu emperor. His plan to incite revolution against the Qing government by taking over Meicheng along with other members of the Cicadas and Crickets Society was leaked in 1901, leading to his execution. In 1953, his remains were moved to the Puji Revolutionary Martyrs’ Cemetery.
12
XIUMI didn’t hear the rooster crow at dawn. She opened her eyes to find her lamp still lit and the far wall of her bedroom drenched in the crimson light of the rising sun. The smell of cold air permeated the room—late autumn had arrived. She lolled under the covers and listened to Mother calling for Magpie. A summons from Mother always sent Magpie off in a flash, rushing to appear before the elder as quickly as possible. This time Mother sent her up to the studio to strip the sheets and blankets off the bed.
She knew Zhang Jiyuan had already left.
With his departure, the house returned to its old, tranquil rhythm. To Xiumi’s mind, it seemed that more had happened in the short span from spring to fall than in all the years of her life before it. But to others the events came and went like frost on the rooftop, vanishing with the first touch of sunlight as if it had never occurred.
Baoshen began recording harvest tithes, leaving the house before daybreak and returning after dark. Trips to more distant villages sometimes took a day or two. Once he had gathered all the numbers, he buried himself in the office, the beads of his abacus clicking continually. Lilypad cleaned out the woodshed and lined it with reed mats to serve as a storage space for when their tenants brought their tithes of grain. Mother took Magpie with her on daily trips to the tailor as they made sure the family would be clothed warmly for the winter. Only Xiumi and Tiger were left with nothing to do but wander around the courtyard and occasionally accompany Mother to the tailor for measurements. When Xiumi got really bored, she would go to Ding Shuze’s place to practice her reading. Ding Shuze had already sent his wife around to ask for the year’s tuition.