She bit her lip.
‘But this will not answer!’ she protested. ‘You are too earnest! You know I cannot be your sole concubine. You must be sensible, both of us must be sensible. One day your parents will assign you an honourable match. Have you forgotten what I am?’
It was true I could hardly marry her. My father would fall on his sword before allowing such a betrothal. Yet I had not seen my father in twelve long years.
‘Marriage is one thing,’ I protested. ‘Love quite another.’
Again she wavered, until her face hardened.
‘I do not wish to be any man’s concubine,’ she flared.
‘Being ordered around by his official wife will never suit me! Do this, Su Lin! Fetch that, Su Lin! I would sooner live as I do.’
‘You must not doubt me! How can you doubt me? This is madness!’
‘Madness to love unwisely,’ she countered. ‘Did not your studies teach you that, at least?’
‘My studies taught me a good heart is unstoppable,’ I replied.
A poor argument. One may easily think of a thousand situations where that is not the case. We stood silently.
The water-lilies floated serenely and insects flew from flower to flower.
‘Is there another you esteem more than me?’ I asked.
Was Lord Xiao in my mind? Why pretend otherwise.
His wealth and influence eclipsed me as night drowns sun.
I realised his mansion lay near the Gardens of Ineffable Solace, higher up Phoenix Hill. . . Was it possible she had come from his house to meet me here? Su Lin shook her head to my question. Yet I sensed evasion.
‘I am free or I am nothing,’ she said, stubbornly.
Foolish words! No one is truly free!
‘Who is exempt from duty, especially the duty owed to one’s heart?’ I demanded.
‘Do not talk like that!’ she said, evidently hurt.
‘Then you feel nothing for me.’
‘Oh, Yun Cai! Why are you so cruel? You know that is a lie! It is only that I cannot belong to you as I know you would wish. As you deserve.’
‘That must be some consolation, I suppose,’ I replied.
I turned to meet her eye. For a long moment our souls were joined. But a moment is not a lifetime. All she wished to become rose like invisible hands between us, pushing us apart.
‘If you change your mind, send word,’ I said.
She nodded, her head lowered, then walked back up the path to join her chaperone. I did not look after her, but stared at the water lilies. Such delicate, implausible flowers, to grow on water rather than solid land.
*
As I left the public gardens, a familiar figure watched coldly by the gate. In my grief and discomfort I ignored him.
It was Secretary Wen, the very same who had visited Uncle Ming’s house to assess my purity, so many years before.
Through all these events, between the ages of nineteen and twenty-five, I visited Uncle Ming’s household regularly, motivated by obligation rather than pleasure. Our worlds were too far apart, the distance wider with each passing year, yet they were still family, my only family in the city.
And blood, as they say, is not the space between roof and sky.
My monthly visits assumed a settled pattern. I would arrive on the appointed day, often to find Uncle Ming absent, lodging in his establishment of concubines beyond the city ramparts. When he did admit me to his office he seemed tired, less jovial, than in my youth. I soon learned the reason from Cousin Hong. Taxes were rising year by year to pay for our fruitless war on the frontier. It was around this time that the Ceaseless War party persuaded the emperor to launch his ill-fated campaign of conquest against the Northern barbarians. All are familiar with the Battle of Hu River and its consequences, how our borders were rolled back yet further.
More damaging to Uncle Ming’s prosperity was his own neglect. I believe he had wearied of his success years before, finding comfort in pleasures which drained his essential breaths. Perhaps he spent so much time away from his business to avoid Honoured Aunty. Certainly she was worth avoiding.
After my success in the examination, Honoured Aunty withdrew into a bitter world of her own. Her only diversion seemed to be tyrannising the household servants, two of whom committed suicide in a love pact. Even Cousin Zhi forfeited her interest. After this he made a miraculous recovery from his ailments, striving instead to become a rake in the town. Needless to say, his attempts to purchase the goodwill of unsavoury companions depleted Uncle Ming’s coffers yet further.
Only Cousin Hong tried to save the wine business. A year or so after I left to live in Goose Pavilion he had married a compliant, doe-like woman who more than tolerated his temper. They set up residence in the east wing of the house and at once produced little Hongs. Even these failed to stir Honoured Aunty’s grandmotherly affection. Small surprise there, perhaps. But it disturbed me that Uncle Ming paid no attention to his heirs.
Over the years Cousin Hong often complained to me.
‘Ah. Little General,’ he’d say. ‘I sometimes think you brought good luck to our house. Why don’t you move back? Ever since you’ve gone trade has been on the slide.
Take our contract at the Palace. A highly-placed eunuch decided our wine was worse than that bastard Chou-pa’s and that was it! Order cancelled. After twenty years of getting drunk at our expense. I’ve no doubt the eunuch was bribed. But how can I buy people off unless Father authorises the payment? If it wasn’t for the rents we get from our tenants, I could barely balance the books.’
‘Have you explained that to Uncle?’ I asked.
‘Of course, but he’s in a world of his own. Do those poems you studied hold any wisdom for a man in my position?’
I sighed.
‘Only things which I suspect would annoy you. To view the world as a husk of rice. To cultivate detachment and contemplation, so one might be at peace with the Way.’
He looked at me as though I spoke a strange dialect.
‘Little use that is!’ he exclaimed. ‘All your philosophers didn’t have a wife and children to feed.’
‘Some did,’ I said. ‘May I suggest that when the time comes, I teach your children to write. That will defray some expense, at least.’
‘I’ll take you up on that,’ he grumbled.
After so many complaints and withering glares from Honoured Aunty, I was always glad to return to Goose Pavilion.
One night, soon after my meeting with Su Lin in the Gardens of Ineffable Solace, something acrid tickled my nostrils. It was not long after midnight. I stumbled half-awake from my bed and found Mi Feng outside, gazing across the lake at the city.
The whole horizon to the east glowed and the lake ripples ran red. Flames rose like distant signal flares in several districts. Fires were nothing new in the capital, each disastrous, for the buildings within the ramparts were packed close together, dense squares of wood and bamboo. In a single two-storey building dozens of families lived and cooked and lit lamps, the city crammed with peasants who had fled hunger in the countryside.
‘A real blaze,’ said Mi Feng. ‘It reminds me of the time we burned. . .’
He stopped himself. I was too enthralled by the spectacle before me to enquire who we were. Billows of smoke rose into the clear night sky, rivers of sparks flowing upwards. Strangely beautiful. Such a thought shamed me.
Loud cracks of collapsing buildings mingled with cries of distress.
‘Mi Feng,’ I said. ‘We should do something!’
He looked at me laconically.
‘Like what?’
‘I don’t know. Anything. It is our duty. Besides, I have relations in the city and there’s another person who. . .’
I peered across the lake to where Su Lin dwelt. No sign of flame there. Mi Feng scratched his chin.
‘Why not ask if the district where your uncle lives has caught fire?’ he suggested.
‘Yes! We shall go at once.’
‘ We, s
ir?’ he said. ‘Shouldn’t I stay here and guard the house?’
He looked at me and laughed unaccountably.
‘Maybe it would be best if I went with you.’
So we hurried down the high road into the city. I noticed that Mi Feng had equipped himself with a short, iron-tipped cudgel, but took little notice. Perhaps he hoped to beat down the doors of burning buildings. A bucket would have been more useful.
Soon we entered a fog of smoke and fleeing people.
Families clutched a few household possessions, their eyes dazed. Guardsmen from the palace were stationed on corners, watching the crowds uneasily. I coughed as acrid smoke blew down the street.
‘What district is burning?’ I asked a man, who was guiding his pregnant wife toward the safety of the lake.
Their eyes reflected red sky.
‘All around the Wine Market,’ he said over his shoulder, hurrying on.
As I turned, Mi Feng had the audacity to clutch my arm.
‘Dangerous,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘Dangerous.
What good would it do?’
I shook him off, hurried further into town. When I looked round he was still behind me. The Imperial Way was crowded with people flowing in the opposite direction. Every house awake, its inhabitants gathered fearfully on the street. Sparks drifted like fireflies. It took an hour to reach the edge of the Wine Market. Soldiers and fire-men from the district watchtowers ran to and fro before the blaze, spurred on by their officers. Here the blaze burned fiercest, timber roaring and cracking as it was consumed, the shadowy figures of looters fleeing with whatever possessions they could seize, obscured by dense rolling smoke. Had I wished to proceed further, I could not. Uncle Ming’s house lay behind a barrier of flames and poisonous fumes. Heat engulfed us as the fire-wind picked up. Wherever fire met vats of plum brandy or distilled rice wine, loud explosions echoed across the square.
‘We must go back, sir!’ shouted Mi Feng, in my ear. ‘We can do nothing until morning. We must go back!’
He was right, of course. We were choking fast, had to surface in air or drown. Smuts of soot covered us from head to toe. How I regained my home, I barely recollect.
Mi Feng carried me part of the way, for I had swallowed a floating ember and coughed, coughed like a beggar too feeble to hold out his cup.
The next morning I recovered sufficiently to re-enter the city and make my way to the Great Wine Market. The fire had subsided. Shells of houses still glowed, timbers charred and blackened, mourned by former occupants who stood or squatted before them, their eyes lifeless. At first I thought Uncle Ming’s house had survived the firestorm. The brick boundary walls, though smoke-blackened, stood firm. Yet when I passed through the gatehouse, desolation awaited.
The family mansion was a long rectangle of smoking twisted beams. Even the low octagonal tower where I once dwelt, had been reduced to its foundations. The brewhouse and warehouse had simply vanished, mere rubble and ash. Uncle’s office was no more. Somewhere amid the pile of embers and debris lay the wine-cooler Father had given him on his wedding day.
A few servants crouched near the gates, and I found Cousin Hong among them, clutching an elegant blue and white vase, which had miraculously survived the blaze.
His face was black as charcoal, his fine silks stained and singed.
‘Where are your wife and children?’ I demanded, as soon as I managed to stir him from his exhausted stupor.
‘At her parents,’ he replied, dully.
‘Thank heaven they survived. What of Uncle Ming?’
Cousin Hong blinked, wiped his eyes.
‘Burnt, badly burnt. I had him carried to his house in the suburbs. Let us hope his girls tend him as they ought.’
‘And Honoured Aunty?’ I demanded. ‘Cousin Zhi? Are they safe?’
‘They have left the city,’ he said, tonelessly. ‘They have gone to a small estate my uncle bought in the country.
They will be safe there.’
‘And Cousin Yi Yi? Has he gone with them?’
Cousin Hong gestured angrily at the rubble.
‘He lies somewhere in there. The fool wouldn’t stop trying to put out the fire in his bedroom.’
‘You should drink some water,’ I said, gently. ‘I will arrange it.’
After he had drunk half a bucket-load, Cousin Hong revived a little.
‘We are ruined,’ he said, simply. ‘All Father’s houses went up. Our income is at an end. We have nothing.
Nothing!’
‘You have your life. And children. And your faithful wife. Besides, there is still Uncle’s house in the suburbs and the small country estate you mentioned.’
Cousin Hong laughed bitterly.
‘One costs a fortune to maintain and the other provides an income of only six thousand cash a year.’
‘You and your family must come to live with me,’ I said.
‘There is room.’
Although, of course, there wasn’t.
I never saw Uncle Ming again. He died of his burns and a broken heart two days after the Great Fire. His former concubines stripped the house in the suburbs bare before Cousin Hong could reach it, and he gained small profit from its sale, for Uncle had used it as surety for a debt.
I spent half my month’s salary on a fitting funeral for him, although there was nowhere to keep his ashes, the family shrine having perished with the house. Many notable wine merchants attended the ceremony, for Uncle Ming had gained much respect, in his way. Cousin Hong insisted we store his remains in the single vase he had reclaimed from the fire. I sent a long, mournful letter home to Three-Step-House, recording his auspicious career and brave end. As usual, only a brief reply came. I have no doubt Father grieved deeply to receive such news.
Honoured Aunty remained on her small estate on the borders of the P’si Marshes, and I never saw her face again, except in bad dreams. But Cousin Zhi found a different destiny, one which later became entangled with my own. Using the fact that he had passed the First Examination, he gained a minor post as an administrator of enforced labour on the frontier. This, at least, provided a small salary. Only a dozen moons were to fade before we met again, in circumstances. . . Well, why think of it.
Cousin Hong lived in my house for long months, filling my rooms with anxiety; though his children’s spirits were surprisingly unaffected by the change in family fortunes.
They loved the lake, viewing it as a great adventure. I taught the eldest boy to row and fish, as well as how to write his name, although he was a dull pupil. Cousin Hong and Mi Feng struck up a sudden friendship, of the kind one sometimes finds between men who share similar natures. Even his wife, who I had hitherto viewed as an empty jar (unless full of child), surprised me by her dignity. Sages are not the only springs of wisdom in this world.
I had never forgotten my debt to Cousin Hong.
Although our characters were often opposed, I admired him for remembering how to laugh within a month of the fire. Perhaps no longer striving to hold the family business together brought a strange relief. It has always been the way of my family to relish setting out anew – with much grumbling, of course. Yet having such impoverished relatives cost me several fashionable friends. Only P’ei Ti stayed true, bringing toys and clothes, as gifts for the children.
Winter passed before I realised what must be done.
Indeed I reproached myself for not thinking of it earlier.
That same evening, I insisted on taking Cousin Hong to a restaurant he had favoured in the years of his prosperity.
He looked me over shrewdly, as we tasted our first cup of wine. He sniffed it. Took a sip.
‘What do you make of it?’ I asked.
‘Over-priced,’ he said. ‘Little General, where have you found the money to pay for this?’
‘Do you remember telling me, Cousin, that you always reclaim your debts?’
He shrugged.
‘I never remember a quarter of the things we prattle about.’
&n
bsp; ‘Well, you did. I, at least, possess a memory. For instance, do you recall that Uncle Ming gave me all the scrolls he kept in the lower room of the octagonal tower?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘Why should I?’
‘Because some of those scrolls were very old and valuable. Since working in the Imperial Library, I have learned their worth. More than that, I have sold them and they fetched a good price.’
When I mentioned the sum he almost spilt his wine.
‘You have enough to set up a business of your own,’ I said. ‘The money is entirely yours.’
Thus Cousin Hong bought his first wine shop, and my obligation ceased.
A week after Cousin Hong and his family left my pavilion for his new establishment, I received an unexpected letter, delivered by a gaudily-dressed man specially hired for the purpose. The letter read:
Most Honourable Yun Cai,
Your old friend sends respected greetings. You must excuse the badness of my characters. I have heard about the sorrows of your Uncle and his family. I am very sorry. I hear also that you have used all your wealth for your cousin’s sake. This has given you great face among your former neighbours in the Wine Market. I heard about your deeds through my former madam, whose house survived the fire, and she hardly has a good word for anyone! Are you still angry with me?
Su Lin.
I replied:
Dear Friend,
Your letter arrived on the first day my orchids opened their petals wide. My house is strangely silent since my cousin and his children left for their new home. I was surprised to hear from you. Nine months have passed since our meeting in the Garden of Ineffable Solace. That is a long time.
You ask, am I still angry with you? Of course, that is a stupid question, for I was never angry with you in the first place. Merely disappointed.
Your Old Alley Friend, Yun Cai.’
A few days later, I received another letter, carried by the same go-between:
Dear Old Alley Friend,
Your letter reproaches me for being stupid, but how am I to know your moods? Often I think of you, but don’t know what to think. I remember your face and person very well, only I sometimes wonder if you remember me. Last night I heard a patron who had hired me to sing at his garden party, talking about a poem you wrote about the Great Fire. It sounded very fine, but I have not read it so I cannot say. No doubt it would be too complicated for a poor girl like me. Often I wish for someone to talk to. I have bought many fine dresses and a head-piece made of silver. But I like your last letter more.
Taming Poison Dragons Page 17