Taming Poison Dragons

by Tim Murgatroyd

  Failure, of course, did not bring ruin. To reach the Metropolitan Academy required success in the First Examination. This alone earned the right to lesser office, a lifetime of dutiful clerking for one’s superiors. But we all aimed higher, whatever the price. Ambition ruined many a young man’s happiness.

  The Metropolitan Academy stood in a broad park at the edge of the government enclosure. Pavilions and learning halls, gardens criss-crossed by artful streams to aid contemplation, shrines honouring His Imperial Majesty’s ancestors and those gods favoured by scholars. Here were libraries and dining halls, dormitories where ambitious students lived like monks disgusted by pleasure.

  Sometimes I considered requesting a place in the dormitories but always held back. For all its dangers, Uncle Ming’s house offered freedoms undreamt of by those boarding within the Academy walls. And if nothing else, Uncle kept a good table. I could even bear Honoured Aunty’s scowls when the alternative was waking at the exact time a thousand others woke, eating with them, vacating one’s bowels with them, studying, performing the day’s ritual, then more study and eating, studying once again, then sleeping. Every hour regulated by the huge, bronze gong beside the Chief Examiner’s dwelling. At least the room in Uncle’s octagonal tower was my own. I have always required a private ledge to perch on.

  Su Lin gradually faded from my waking thoughts.

  Indeed, I was too busy to remember her. But at night she often stole gracefully through my dreams, and I almost smelt the heady musk of her perfume mingled with sweat, and awoke to find my thighs sticky, the bed empty. My room cold and dark.

  One may meet graduates of the Academy who complain about its strictures. Who has not? The years of laborious study like clambering up a cliff lined with jagged stones, wearying spirit and body, parching youth beneath a merciless sky. Yet I rarely knew weariness. In those years I felt especially alive.

  My joy was a love of knowledge for its own sake. My eagerness was to unlock significance through the keys I had been offered. Such intricate, fine, weighty keys!

  Naturally, the Five Classics dominated. But there were other writings, some dating back a thousand years and more. Ideas contending as flints spark fire, systems of thought which once regulated and confounded our ancestors, tradition a tangle of silken threads each generation must unpick, and re-weave to wear again.

  P’ei Ti had graduated alongside me, leaving behind most of his former companions, who were incapable of progressing further. Again we found ourselves beside each other in lessons and this proximity grew into firm friendship. Often we left our studies to sit by the West Lake, discussing our teachers and fellow students before hurrying back to read scrolls by the light of flickering lamps until our eyes smarted.

  We shared dreams of the future, too. P’ei Ti’s were exact. He wished to advise His Imperial Majesty on matters relating to administration, which he believed could be improved through small, painless reforms, so subtle no one would notice until the benefit had been attained. My own ambitions were more diverse, and vague.

  So three years passed until we were eighteen. One summer afternoon we lolled by the West Lake munching sunflower seeds. Shells spread across the water, then floated away. A hundred boats busy on the lake, fishing or carrying pleasure parties. Boatmen shouted greetings to each other. Ladies squealed elegantly.

  ‘Yun Cai,’ said P’ei Ti. ‘In a year’s time we will sit the examination. If you pass, what do you desire to become?’

  ‘Ah,’ I said. ‘I wish to win the most beautiful courtesan in the whole city for my unique appreciation.’

  He laughed, and punched my arm.

  ‘As does everyone. What do you wish to become?’

  ‘That’s obvious,’ I said. ‘I will write poems so fine and in characters so exquisite that people will sing my words in disreputable taverns and tea-houses and on street corners. Oh, and I will drink a jar of wine for breakfast then spend the whole day wondering why the world is upside down.’

  ‘That would be a proper answer if I were not serious.’

  ‘So am I!’

  P’ei Ti generally loved my mad, unconventional turns of mood, but not today.

  ‘One doesn’t endure the lectures of Old-Tufty-Beard on the venerable rites merely to get drunk. No study is needed for that,’ he said.

  ‘True.’

  ‘Well then?’

  I affected to yawn.

  ‘I suppose I will serve the Son of Heaven, while I prepare for the final Imperial examination,’ I said. ‘Everyone must do something.’

  ‘That is my plan, too,’ he said, earnestly.

  ‘I knew that already. First you will become Censor, then Chief Minister. Then the Empire will enter a golden age inspired by your wisdom.’

  ‘Your mockery is only justified because I have not yet proved myself. But aren’t you describing the duty all talented men owe, to both His Imperial Majesty and the people?’

  ‘You are so grave today, P’ei Ti! It quite shames me.’

  ‘I hope so.’

  ‘As for me,’ I said. ‘I wish to pass the Imperial Examination merely to astound my father, who I have not seen for so long. Beyond that, I imagine no further.’

  ‘It is fitting to please one’s father,’ said P’ei Ti.

  His own father had recently gained the post of Prefect in distant Nanning, leaving wife and family in the capital for three long years. I knew P’ei Ti missed him deeply. His filial piety was unfeigned; an excellent virtue, all would agree. Certainly, I honoured him for it. Good people inspire goodness among those they meet, so I was happy my answer satisfied him. He would have been less impressed that I also longed to prove my worth to a faith-less singing girl. Or to her memory. Such are the mind’s contradictions. Wisdom and folly contend, yet somehow they rub along together.

  ‘Besides,’ I added, mischievously. ‘I must pass the Imperial Examination for no better reason than it would mortify Cousin Zhi. Come to think of it, there is no better reason.’

  We both laughed. Suddenly, in that way he had of knitting his brows into a determined frown, P’ei Ti announced:

  ‘Then you and I, dear Yun Cai, must take earnest thought upon a crucial matter. I am sure you know what I mean.’

  I flicked another sunflower shell to join the others spreading out across the lake.

  ‘Look how slowly they float,’ I murmured.

  He sighed with frustration.

  ‘Surely you have given thought to a patron?’ he asked.

  ‘None at all.’

  ‘But passing the examination is not enough! Without a sponsor you could wait years for a worthy position.’

  Naturally P’ei Ti was right. Merit and talent are feeble without an influential patron; it was essential to win the goodwill of a highly placed official who might recommend one for a plump posting.

  ‘You have someone in mind?’ I enquired.

  ‘Several. That is why I wished to speak to you. We must beat others to a great man’s door or find his house already full.’

  ‘But which great man?’

  ‘Why, the most useful to us. And I have a plan.’

  This did not altogether surprise me.

  ‘If I use my family’s influence to gather a list of names,’ he continued. ‘Then you can write poems praising their virtues. After all, it is a craft at which you excel.’

  I caught his intention at once. P’ei Ti had always been an indifferent poet.

  ‘If you give me details of these sponsors,’ I said. ‘Their titles and achievements, I could write enough poems for both of us. That way, to use my Cousin Hong’s favourite phrase, ‘everyone will be happy’.’

  I sensed his shame at having to bargain for my help.

  ‘You would be doing me a great favour,’ I added. ‘I would be forever in your family’s debt.’

  He nodded sheepishly.

  ‘Then we have a pact,’ he said. ‘My knowledge will match your versifying.’

  I smiled.

  ‘Not if you t
ake these great men at their own estimation, or even the world’s!’ I cried. ‘Remember the words of Lao-tzu: knowledge studies others; wisdom is self-known. ’

  The next day P’ei Ti gave me a scroll containing information about six possible patrons and within a fortnight I had written a dozen verses lauding their sagacity, power, fame and exceptional virtue. Those I wrote on behalf of P’ei Ti were conventional and sincerely flattering, as befitted his character. They were written old style, and

  *

  modelled on the greatest of the court poets. Those composed on my own behalf employed a bolder, dare I say it, more ambiguous voice to pay my respects. There seemed no point in pretending to be someone other than myself.

  We spent several evenings perfecting our calligraphy and P’ei Ti’s mother generously paid for the scrolls to be encased in sandalwood, embossed with the names of both recipient and supplicant. On a day declared propitious by an astrologer, we toured the wide city, presenting our gifts on bended knee, with many exclamations of unworthiness. In this, we had company. Outside one mansion a dozen other students from the Metropolitan Academy were queuing to present their own poems.

  Afterwards I insisted we buy a flask of cheap wine, using the last of our cash. We drank perched on the city walls, gazing across the River Che as it flowed toward the sea. White birds wheeled and dived, their cries strangely exhilarating, and forlorn. We were like those gulls, except gulls seldom drown when fishing for the slippery eels of success.

  A face swims into view, not arch and balanced like Su Lin’s. More like my wife’s, broad and prone to an uneasy grin. Her clothes simple and practical, sewn from hemp.

  She wore her hair in the fashion of servant girls in those days, combed forward to the front of the head, bound by ribbons of blue, red, yellow – any cheap dye – above a straight fringe covering her forehead. Her hair was black and thick. Her figure already full, though she was no older than me.

  I had picked her out among the other servant girls, as one does, through the corner of my eyes. When she stooped to scrub clothes, singing a wash-song in a city accent, her wet arms glistened in the sunshine. Sometimes her eyes would meet mine momentarily, then return to her tasks of sweeping and polishing. One day I passed her as she was being admonished by Honoured Aunty, head hung in submission, yet I caught the brief glitter of her gaze. Evidently Honoured Aunty did too, for she paused in her harangue.

  Not long after, I was rooting through a box of old scrolls in the room beneath my bedchamber when she entered, carrying a square wooden bucket slopping water.

  ‘Sir, I have been ordered to keep this tower clean,’ she said, in a high-pitched, slightly whining voice, very different from Su Lin’s lively, delicate tone.

  Welcome news. The place was grey with cobwebs and dust.

  ‘What is your name?’ I asked.

  She glanced at me boldly from beneath her servant-girl’s fringe.

  ‘Peach Blossom,’ she said.

  The name suited her complexion. Unaccountably I grew confused.

  ‘Carry on,’ I said, sternly. ‘Only don’t spill water on the scrolls.’

  Most days she came in the late afternoon, so she often found me with head bowed, absorbed by my studies after long lessons in the Academy. At first I pretended not to notice her. Then, by degrees, I found myself questioning her. Peach Blossom’s father was a porter employed by Uncle Ming to carry wine. Her mother steamed rice balls flavoured with aniseed and sold them from a wheelbarrow beside Mallow Bridge. She never enquired about me, yet from unguarded slips I gathered she knew all manner of things concerning me. I found this vaguely flattering.

  When she bent over her tasks I was aware of being distracted, her scent a presence I could not ignore.

  One summer afternoon she came early and appeared in my doorway. The city was sluggish in the heat, sunlight poured through the eight small windows of my chamber.

  There are wordless understandings. I watched her for a moment and she stood very still, her head bowed as though waiting. I felt my throat tighten.

  ‘Put the bucket down,’ I said. ‘Please come here.’

  She did so. Her obedience excited me. She stood a yard in front of me. Both of us were breathing quickly. Her head remained bowed. So close, her sweat possessed a hundred lures. I reached out and pulled her towards me.

  Her low moan acted upon my blood.

  ‘Please,’ I said, hoarsely, expecting a stream of angry words. ‘Unbutton your blouse.’

  She reached across and slowly unbuttoned the bone oblongs from the loops holding them. Her small, firm breasts were revealed. I began to kiss her face and neck, hardly daring to venture down. She took my hand and led me to the bed.

  Over forty years lie between that moment and now.

  There have been many others since, but what of that? For an hour I knew nothing but intensity. Taste of her tongue, smell of her hair. My hand travelling up her plump thighs, encouraged by soft, insistent cries. Her own hands fumbling with my clothes, immodestly perhaps, though I did not care.

  *

  How long we grappled awkwardly in this way I do not know, until she was naked beneath me. I reached down and she invited me with her limbs. Emboldened, I edged forward, and release set me free.

  After that our liaisons became an agreed thing, though a great secret. Uncle Ming would be angry to learn of a shameful liaison with one of his oldest employee’s daughters. As for Honoured Aunty, I had no doubt she would dismiss poor Peach Blossom in disgrace.

  Every afternoon, I would hurry from the Academy to my room and wait impatiently, imagining the warm, soft places of her body, our hurried, awkward conversation.

  Often she did not appear, assigned other duties in the house, and I would pace with frustration, sometimes missing meals in the hope of better food. My studies suffered as they had when Su Lin deserted me, and truly I was in a bad way. Yet my situation was worse than I guessed, as later became clear.

  In the year preceding the examination, Cousin Zhi’s animosity towards me grew alongside his fear of failure.

  These were harsh and perplexing times for Cousin Zhi.

  All his life he had been assured of a particular destiny, confirmed by the best astrologers; above all by Honoured Aunty’s expectations, repeated day after anxious day. Yet everything depended on passing the Metropolitan Examination, and there his troubles began.

  As the months passed, his studies fell further behind, almost in proportion to the effort he expended. Never was there so earnest a student. Cousin Zhi listened with desperate diligence to every word from our teachers.

  When I glanced at him in lessons, I could sense the fingers of his mind groping out blindly, grasping a few confused concepts, then dragging them home, where they promptly dissipated like mist. Frustration etched itself upon his young face. A fixed, determined scowl, unrelieved by mirth. I have no doubt he felt utterly alone. Ambition such as his stands or falls by itself, for it seeks pinnacles, by their nature solitary.

  I would like to pretend my offer to help him stemmed from goodwill. That would be a lie. First I became convinced he would never pass the examination. Then, that Honoured Aunty would find someone to punish, and who was closer to hand than myself?

  One afternoon I waited for him at the end of our lessons. He ignored my greeting. Honoured Aunty had ordered he must be carried everywhere by litter, in order to preserve his essential breaths. We made a comic sight, me trotting alongside while his chair bobbed through the crowds on the Imperial Way, surrounded by sweating lackeys. On-lookers must have thought me one of them.

  ‘Cousin Zhi!’ I called. ‘Please stop! I wish to speak to you!’

  He looked pale and exhausted.

  ‘What is it?’ he snapped.

  ‘I have an idea for our mutual benefit.’

  His red-rimmed eyes narrowed as he bumped and jolted along.

  ‘Why don’t we spend some time together reviewing our studies?’ I suggested. ‘It would help us both.’

&n
bsp; A sly, thoughtful look crossed his thin face.

  ‘Ah, so you find it difficult,’ he said.

  ‘Not really. But I thought. . .’

  ‘Why should I help you?’ he interrupted, shrilly.

  ‘No, it’s not that. Can’t you ask the bearers to slow down?’

  He seemed enraged. Almost mad.

  ‘Why should I help you?’ he repeated. ‘Your arrogance makes me laugh! Don’t think you’ll ever get the better of us! Look to yourself!’

  The curtain of his litter fell and I was left breathless by the entrance to Ocean Market. My nostrils filled with the odour of decaying fish. Doubt touched me. Did he know about Peach Blossom? But that was impossible. I shrugged and walked home. Cousin Zhi’s litter disappeared in the crowd.

  Soon afterwards his nervous affliction took hold.

  First he stayed at home for one, two, then successive days, missing vital lessons. A dark cloud settled on Uncle Ming’s house, emanating from Honoured Aunty. A rule of absolute silence was imposed, lest laughter disturb Cousin Zhi’s rest. Even the porters and brewers were ordered to conduct their business quietly. I witnessed one servant being beaten for giggling below his bedchamber. Uncle Ming disappeared more often than usual to his establishment outside the city walls and Cousin Hong walked around with an unusually thoughtful expression.

  When Cousin Zhi’s affliction continued, Honoured Aunty hired an army of healers. We have a saying in the mountains: plough too often and the soil blows away. So it was with Cousin Zhi’s cure. All agreed his illness stemmed from disharmony among the separate virtues pertaining to health, especially the circulation of the breaths. That much was obvious. However none could agree which breath was deficient.

  One learned doctor diagnosed an excess of cold and dry breaths, prescribing a decoction of thirty-two ingredients, including toad-venom, earthworms, spiders and centipedes, boiled and reduced to powder. A second devised a medicine of crushed rhinoceros horn, jade and ground pearls, so costly that Cousin Hong muttered about frittering his inheritance. A third doctor attempted simple acupuncture and massage, claiming Cousin Zhi’s malady stemmed from an excess of the female principle, yin. Honoured Aunty sent him away after a single consultation.