Buddhist monks in brown cassocks walked in weaving lines, beating drums with their palms, fingers, fists, elbows, wrists, knees, even toes. Jewel-bedecked women stood or sat in clusters, their silk dresses heavily embroidered in so many hues, they looked like a fragrance garden. Fans of gold paper with painting on them peeked out from their sleeves. Most of them were thin, and those who weren't did their best to appear fragile nonetheless to the men who wandered around in double-breasted jackets and hats with sashes. A few of those men had long thumbnails, a sign of being part of the leisure class, and most of them were corpulent. They watched Xing Xing walk by, and they instantly perked up. They called out about how pretty she was, dressed in green, a cool, watery dream, feathers fluffing around her neck and shoulders, like a spirit about to take flight. They spoke silly words to call her to them, silly but never clever, never funny. They were dunces.
Xing Xing wouldn't look at those men. She hadn't come to advertise herself for marriage. A girl alone couldn't do that. Young people who married without it being arranged by their parents could even be put to death. In the long week that had just passed, Xing Xing had talked with the spirits of her mother and her father. She had decided that she would marry and leave Stepmother's home; she was healthy and useful—some man would surely want her. But she hadn't yet figured out how to do it without Stepmother's help in the arrangements, for she never wanted Stepmother's help in anything again. A plan would come to her when she was ready. The spirits would help her. Today she was here only to" see the spectacles. And what spectacles they were!
She passed a snake charmer and magicians and fortune-tellers. She watched an erotic play by a group of transvestites. She stared at contortionists and acrobats. In a roped-off corner young men played kickball. Nearby, others did archery. There were jugglers and people leaping through hoops and balancing on poles. And everywhere she turned, troupes of musicians kept the air singing with flutes and whistles and bells.
Large oblong tables were set up here and there, decorated with fine cloisonné vases of fresh flowers. Small round trays and carved lacquerware overflowed with precisely arranged foods. Xing Xing used a rice paddle to fill a small bowl with white rice from the huge pot on a table and covered her rice with whatever foods she wanted, just as everyone else was doing. Roast chicken and duck, of course. But also cold strips of sheep tail, which Stepmother called "Mongol food" but which Xing Xing now sampled for the first time. She was delighted to find it delicately tasty. She ate fatty pork and onions and garlic, minced and wrapped in lettuce leaves. With her fingers, she dipped fresh steamed crab into vinegar and ginger. She nibbled on shrimp and venison and rabbit.
A young man who had watched her eating with her fingers offered a set of chopsticks—those sticks for eating that had become so popular. He looked at her suggestively. Instead of blushing, she accepted the chopsticks boldly and walked on, using them to eat noodle and vegetable dishes. She sipped fine wines and munched on lychee, kumquat, loquat, tangerines. She sucked away the sweet flesh of a longan, then rolled the big black seed from the middle around and around on her palm. When men followed her, she paid them no attention, and eventually they gave up and went away, muttering in frustration.
Xing Xing had seen imported foods before. Master Tang and Mei Zi had them on their tables at special occasions, and she'd seen some foreign treats at the market earlier in the summer when she was with Yao Wang. But now she tasted them herself. She put her finger into almost every dish. She ate spinach, cucumber, eggplant spiced with jasmine and cadamom and star anise. She smiled at the bite of black pepper, chili, lemon, coriander, fenugreek, Mediterranean olives. She loved the nuts: almonds, walnuts, pistachios. She reveled in the fruits: figs, bananas, pomegranates, star fruits, coconuts, pomelos.
Hanging in cages at many of the tables were exotic birds. Beside the fruit was a cockatoo with a red beak and green plumage; it must have flown in a jungle far from here. It screamed as people chose their fruit.
Never had Xing Xing wondered much about the world beyond the thirteen provinces of Ming China. But now she wanted to know if women ever traveled far and wide, if Chinese women ever saw cockatoos flying free. And food—a thing that Xing Xing had hardly paid attention to before—she now found to be a powerful lure. She imagined herself going straight north to the Great Wall on the border of her own Shaan Xi Province, crossing that wall, and heading out into whatever might be beyond. Or going down to the village and getting on a riverboat again, going downriver, down, down, to the Han River and then the wild yellow waters of the Yangzi River, where the winds blew all the time, all the way out to the coast, then boarding a ship to the South China Sea, looking and tasting and smelling and hearing and feeling all that the world had to offer.
The day went too quickly. As the sun waned, men lit lanterns and sat around square tables listening to stories. The storytellers got the attention of the audience by opening and closing fans very quickly and smacking them hard on the side of the table. Some of them beat drums, some strummed lutes. They worked in pairs, using big clappers made of two plates of wood and little clappers made of five pieces of wood. The big clappers began and ended the story and sometimes were used within the story for dramatic effect, while the little clappers kept up a steady background beat throughout the narration. Every story began with the same claim: "If you hear the first part, you'll want to hear the second. If you hear the story today, you'll come back tomorrow for another. If you hear the story tonight, you'll think about it as you sleep." Smack went the fan, and the storyteller whipped out a long red scarf and twirled around once.
Xing Xing stood at a distance and watched. A pair of storytellers caught her attention and held it. In their story one played a teacher and the other played a student. The teacher was trying to get the student to use better language—the imperial language—focusing on mistakes in the use of pronouns: The actors were doing short comedies—xiang sheng.
"Say I'm your teacher," said the teacher.
Clack clack clack went the little clappers.
"I'm your teacher," said the student.
Clack clack clack went the little clappers.
"No, no." The teacher shook his hands in the air and jumped up and down. "You're not the teacher. Say it!"
Clack clack clack went the little clappers.
"You're not the teacher."
And on it went, with the audience laughing and laughing. Xing Xing laughed too. When a story was surprising, the men pounded the table with both hands and Xing Xing pressed her hands together.
After awhile Xing Xing wandered over to other tables where men sat settling accounts. She watched as a woman stood behind a man and listened to him negotiate. It took only a few moments to figure out what was going on. The woman was one of his wives, and he sold her. Just like that. She screamed, she pleaded, she threw herself at her husband's feet. But in the end, she had to go stand behind her new husband. Would they have a ceremony, with her face covered by a red cloth? Or was that it—an exchange of person for coins?
How many years had she lived with him? Did she feel tenderly toward him? Did they have children? Were the children all girls?
Xing Xing's cheeks felt heavy. Her eyes closed against the hot wave of questions, as though she would cry. She pressed her fingers to her nostrils to stop her nose from running in this sadness.
A man walked through the crowd loudly announcing the ci competition. People gathered to sing their poems aloud. Another man promised to read from a story he was writing that would take pages and pages. It was a new literary form called a "novel." Normally, Xing Xing would have wanted to listen to both. But now, suddenly, she longed to go home. She wanted to get away from men who sold wives and men who bought them.
She opened her eyes and turned, and there was Wei Ping, looking right at her. Stepmother was watching her too.
Xing Xing's heart raced. She ran past them, toward the edge of the park. But somehow she wound up in a stand of Torreya trees. She couldn't remember To
rreya trees in this park before, and she'd been here so many times. Branches turned to claws that grabbed and swiped at her. She fell over the roots of a dead tree. When a Torreya decays, it can become a nest for a python. She imagined a snake closing around her middle, squeezing, squeezing. She let out a little shriek and scrambled to her feet and ran, but at random, for she didn't know which way home was; she was lost. That was impossible. An evil spirit must have put a spell on her.
She panicked and changed directions and ran faster. A shoe came off. Alas, one of Mother's gold shoes. She stopped to go back for it. But as she turned she saw a man pick it up. And coming through the trees behind the man she saw Stepmother hobbling as fast as she could.
Perfect shoe. Mother's shoe. Most dreadful loss.
Xing Xing ran on, stupefied with grief.
She ran all the way home. She went straight into the storeroom and collapsed in a heap of sobs. When she could finally breathe smoothly enough to talk, she whispered, "I'm sorry." She undressed and folded Mother's lovely things away into the hole. "I'm sorry about the shoe," she crooned, holding herself in her own arms. "I'm sorry, Mother. I'm sorry, I'm sorry."
She crawled out and sat in the main cavern room looking out the overhead window as the very last memories of sunlight faded and stars appeared. She waited for the inevitable screaming of Stepmother, the inevitable cut of the switch, the inevitable banishing from this cave.
But Stepmother and Wei Ping didn't come and didn't come. Xing Xing was too anxious to just stay put. In her old dress she went outside to the jujube trees. The branches should have hung low with the weight of ripe fruit by now. But all the fruit had been picked long ago and given to Yao Wang. The trees looked empty and sad, as though they sensed their unjust loss.
And now Xing Xing remembered the Torreya trees in the park. They'd always been there, she knew that now. Of course. Her fear of Stepmother had disoriented her. Trees were not the enemy; fear was. Fear had made her lose Mother's gift to her. Oh, precious gift—the golden shoe.
Xing Xing wrapped her arms around the trunk of a bare jujube tree. Not a single date. Its thorns stuck out sharply, fending off intruders, protecting fruit that wasn't there. Poor tree. She fell asleep on the ground, hugging the base of the tree.
Chapter 27
"You wouldn't believe it," said Wei Ping to Xing Xing. "There was a young woman at the cave festival who looked so much like you."
"Not that much," said Stepmother as she popped grapes into her mouth. She had filled her bodice with fruit at the festival, enough to last them a week. "I was only confused because she wore clothes that made me think of a cloak and dress that used to belong to Xing Xing's mother. But those were buried with her, of course, along with all her other fine things. It was simple confusion. The woman at the festival hardly looked like Xing Xing at all; she was quite a beauty."
Wei Ping leaned toward Xing Xing. "Mother thought the girl looked like you so much that she expected to find you dressed in green silk when we got home and missing one shoe. The girl lost a gold shoe."
"We'd drunk wine," said Stepmother. "And it was late and already getting dark. We couldn't see well."
Wei Ping laughed. "Mother was fuming mad. And then there you were, your old tattered self, sitting in the dirt under the trees, barefoot, like a waif." She went on gaily talking about the festival and everything she'd seen there. And about the men who had told a go-between that they wanted to know more about her.
And that was the end of that. No screaming. No whipping. No banishing.
Xing Xing shouldn't have been surprised. After all, neither Stepmother nor Wei Ping ever looked at her. Not really. A change of clothes, and they didn't even recognize her.
They settled back into a routine of waiting to hear from potential suitors. Each morning Stepmother said that a suitor was sure to come that day with an offer of marriage. And each night she said the next day would bring that offer. By the end of a week, when none had come, her eyes glittered and her voice grew shrill.
Then one morning one of the old women who assisted in marriage arrangements showed up at their door. "The prince is coming," she said.
"The prince?" Stepmother opened the door wide. "Come inside and sit down at the kang beside my daughter," she said. "Would you like some tea?"
"Certainly. And what is that pungent sweetness in the air?"
"Figs," said Stepmother. She put one of the remaining figs that she'd saved from the festival onto a tray and offered it to the old woman. "Well, now, I must be having a problem with my ears. I could have sworn I heard you say 'the prince.'"
"You did. He's coming to take a wife."
Stepmother's fingers played along her lips, she was so excited. "What did you say your name was?"
"I'm Xiu Mei. That was a very good fig."
Stepmother got Xiu Mei another fig. "Tell us more, Xiu Mei."
"He's looking for a young woman who was at our own cave festival."
"Really? I was at the cave festival." Wei Ping smoothed her dress and sat up tall. "I didn't think the prince attended."
"He didn't. He heard about this woman from someone who sold him a shoe. Apparently, the woman lost it as she was leaving the festival."
Xing Xing stopped her sweeping. She stood the broom against the wall and listened.
Stepmother gave Xing Xing a sharp glance. "Get on with your work, Lazy One."
Xing Xing took the broom into her hands again, but she didn't sweep.
"Is it a gold shoe?" whispered Wei Ping, asking the question that Xing Xing was sure was on Stepmother's mind as well and that sat on the tip of her own tongue.
The old woman cocked her head at Wei Ping like a curious bird. "How did you guess? It couldn't have been you."
Wei Ping looked taken aback. "And why not?"
"They say she's a rare beauty. The shoe's been sold from rich man to richer man all week long, until it got so expensive only the prince could buy it. As the price went up so did the reports of her beauty. Now she's touted to be the most beautiful woman in the empire."
"Nonsense," said Stepmother.
"So you saw her, then?" asked Xiu Mei. "You admit that your daughter is not that woman?"
"Admit? Why would you use a word like that?" asked Stepmother.
"The prince is going from village to village with the one gold shoe. He's letting every female who attended the cave festival, young and old, try it on. So far it has fit no one. But he will continue looking until it does. And when he finds the one that shoe belongs to, he'll marry her. If you admit your daughter was not that woman, then there's no need for me to put her name on the list of girls to be interviewed."
"I admitted nothing, Xiu Mei," said Stepmother. "I said 'nonsense' because I was surprised that a single shoe could be sold as a thing of value. No other reason."
"Then I take it you want me to add Wei Ping's name to the list?"
"Indeed," said Stepmother. She ran to her money box and came back quickly. She dropped a coin in Xiu Mei's open palm. Then she added a second.
"For your slave girl?" asked Xiu Mei.
"She's not a slave. She's my stepdaughter. And it's not for her."
"Then who?" asked Xiu Mei.
"Me."
Chapter 28
"How could you?" said Wei Ping. "You're putting yourself in competition with your own daughter."
"Don't be stupid," said Stepmother. "You'll try the shoe first. If it fits you, that will be the end of that. You'll be the wife of the prince. But if it's too small, then it only makes sense for me to try it on. If it fits me, you'll be the daughter of the prince, which is almost as good."
"But you wore your mourning sackcloth to the festival. Anyone who knows you and saw you will remember that. No one would believe you were the girl with the gold shoes."
"If the shoe fits me, everyone will believe it. People believe anything. Look how people believed you composed that ci."
Wei Ping flushed and looked quickly at Xing Xing, her eyes full of sham
e.
Xing Xing didn't care. A stolen poem was a small sham in comparison to everything else. "You promised Father's spirit that you'd never marry again," she said.
Stepmother blanched. Her hands flew up, and she turned in a circle, staring hard into the air. "Have'mercy, ancestors," she said in a wheedling voice. "I'd never marry an ordinary man. But this is different. No one would want me to give up such a chance. It's a prince, after all. A prince. I've heard he lives across an arched stone bridge—marble, not the wooden bridges of the countryside—behind vermilion walls, with statues of elephants outside the gates. His palace is measured in units of the ancient yan rather than the modern zhang, because it's so big. He has legions of eunuchs who wait on him and run the household. When he visits his ancestral tombs, he goes by horseback with a one-hundred-man entourage and returns by barge. It's a level of wealth we can hardly imagine. It would be the best life for Wei Ping." She looked at Xing Xing and blinked fast. "It would be the best life for Xing Xing, too. For all the Wu children."
"I don't think Father ever cared much about riches," said Xing Xing quietly. "He loved simple things. And basic virtues, like loyalty. He expected of us only that we be loyal to him."
"I am loyal," said Stepmother. "Loyal, loyal, loyal. The prince has private gardens, full of flowering plants of all kinds—simple pleasures. The Wu ancestors could have a temple there, designated a shrine. Or, no, it would be better than a shrine—it would be a citang—big enough for the whole family."
"It doesn't matter what you call it," said Xing Xing. "They'll know you've been disloyal."
"How dare you talk to me like that! How dare you be so defiant."
"They'll add it to your other offenses," said Xing Xing.
"Offenses! What offenses? Don't talk like that. Misfortunes follow from angry, vengeful ancestors. What I intend is not an offense. How could it be an offense, when I do it for my daughter, for my husband's daughter, for my husband's daughters—both of them?"
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