My intention was to answer the question set by the Son of Heaven with integrity, as Confucius says all honest officials must do, whatever the consequences for themselves.
It seemed to me the dismal state of our Empire demanded nothing less. Now was the time to speak. Perhaps I secretly hoped to claim Su Lin’s admiration through a noble gesture. Cousin Hong shook me out of my reverie.
‘Little General, I hope you’ve brought everything you need this time.’
‘What?’
‘Never mind.’
Though it was cold, Cousin Hong mopped his brow.
‘Eat another dumpling,’ he said. ‘I know they’re your favourite.’
I did, chewing slowly and deliberately. Tension turned the dough to clay in my mouth. The crowd shuffled restlessly towards the huge, closed doors of the Examination Enclosure. Fire crackers were set off to scare away demons. To the east, day tinted the cloudless sky. Gold and swelling red, orange and dull silver. I saw P’ei Ti surrounded by relatives and well-wishers. When he met my eye, his face lit like the dawn. This was the moment for which he had proffered his entire life. The doubts I suffered concerning the Son of Heaven’s legitimacy were alien to him. This examination was his birthright; he could not conceive of failure. I sensed he would have come to me, so that we could enter arm-in-arm as he had promised, but for the people around him. Then the gong sounded. One by one we passed through the Phoenix Gates to be assigned our huts.
Words on plain paper can make or condemn a man. So it was for me. The question, set by His Imperial Majesty himself, was a delicate one. It concerned the famine threatening to unbalance the Empire and asked how it might be ameliorated. A broad question. A needful question. My heart swelled with love of our sovereign as I read it. Here was proof he cared like a father for his people!
At once a safe answer filled my mind. Firstly, the peasants should be obliged to work harder. Secondly, supported by choice references to the Book of Rites – all memorised in advance – that more effective supplications to the Jade Emperor in Heaven would ensure better harvests. Thirdly, the merchants should pay higher taxes in order to. . . one could go on.
I read the question several times. The need to pass at any cost, so I might support Su Lin when we were married, fled my mind. I planned my answer paying scant regard to the sensitivities of the Imperial Examiners. Such was my zeal I forgot their distaste for any form of original thought:
T he Son of Heaven is badly advised… Better administrators must be selected, the inept must be demoted. . .
*
Revenue should be diverted from the court to pay for famine relief. . . The great landowners should pay a special tax. . . The army, currently idle, should be employed in irrigation and flood control. . . The hoarding of grain to artificially raise prices should be viewed as treason. . .
A system of fixed prices for basic foodstuffs should be introduced. . .
Every brush stroke mired me deeper in controversy. The narrow walls of my hut, sealed from the vile world of compromise and greed, injustice and indifference, seemed a safe place where commonsense might reign.
How foolish I was! What did I truly expect? Yet I felt justified in every essential breath, as though the elegant sentences flowing from my pen might feed our Empire.
And those hours of enthusiasm, confined in a wooden hut six feet square, determined the course of my life.
It was customary for candidates to seclude themselves during the period of waiting for the Imperial Examiners’
verdict. Many made daily offerings to their ancestors and the Imperial Family. Less scrupulous candidates were known to seek the aid of demons. P’ei Ti buried himself in papers from the Censor’s Bureau. Perhaps official duties were his true demons. They tormented and beguiled him.
As for me, I spent the time in Cousin Hong’s wine shop, writing poems and consuming large amounts of pork.
Wine diverted me frequently. In truth I had little certainty of passing. Some of the things I had written made me wince inwardly. It was not that they were treasonous ideas, for I had uttered no criticism of the Emperor.
Indeed, some of my suggestions were stolen from a previous First Minister, Wang Shi, and I had heard the rest discussed quite openly. No, my fault, if there was one, lay in taking the question too seriously, in proposing too practical a solution to the famine. That alone made me an oddity. Only a brave Examiner would grant the prize to a maverick, lest he later prove an embarrassment and so diminish the Examiner’s own reputation. But what did it matter? I had been promised a position by His August Excellency and expected it any day.
My real worry was quite different. Would Su Lin consent to be my wife when I was posted to some obscure province to take up a lowly office? Did she love me enough for that?
Days passed. A week. Still I did not hear from her. I convinced myself that her silence was mere prudence.
After all, any woman would want to know whether I had entered the Vermilion Doors before binding her destiny to my own. Inner struggles restrained me from writing a letter, though many were composed in my imagination. In one, my tone was peremptory. In the next, pleading. In a third, reasonable and kind, while the fourth considered the matter entirely from her own perspective, anticipating any objections she might deploy against my proposal, point by point. That letter ran to a hundred pages. I am glad I did not write or send it.
However, it turned out that the letter came from her.
She wrote:
Dearest Yun Cai,
You must be surprised at my silence this last week.
I beg you to be patient. Once, when we first met, you told me that without knowledge we are dust blown from one street to another. Oh, my dearest, if only I was wise! Perhaps I would see a clear answer to our dilemmas. You must believe that I seek it always.
How mysterious I sound! I do not mean to be.
One day, perhaps, when we are old and grey together, I shall explain, and then we will laugh at the foolish alarms of today. For now, I beg you to stay away from my house until I send word otherwise. Do not fail me in this, dearest. I shall explain all when I can.
Your Su Lin
My first instinct was to hurry at once to her house by the West Lake. Instead, I called upon P’ei Ti in his office.
He was surrounded by mounds of ledgers and seemed quite dull-spirited. At the sight of me he brightened until I showed him Su Lin’s letter and asked if he could explain it.
‘Most mysterious,’ he muttered, avoiding my eye.
‘P’ei Ti! I believe you know more than you say!’
‘No,’ he replied. ‘Nothing certain. Go home, Yun Cai.
Drink some of your cousin’s wine and write a tender poem. The verdict of the Examiner will come soon. Then you will not care about wretched letters. All that will matter to you will be your new, noble position!’
I left P’ei Ti’s bureau, threading a complicated way through narrow alleys and broad streets until I entered the Pig Market. When I reached Cousin Hong’s shop, weary and hungry, another letter awaited me. It was an official note sent to me under the authority of the Chief Examiner.
I have it still in one of my chests at Three-Step-House.
Yun Cai of Wei is informed that his answer to the Son of Heaven’s question set to the Vermillion Candidates on the 6th Day of the 9th Month during the Year of the Snake has proved most unsatisfactory, wherefore the Honoured Examiners have consulted Yun Cai’s sponsor in the Examinations, His August Excellency Lu Sha, wherefore His August Excellency has expressed great dissatisfaction with the tone and tenor and tendency of Yun Cai’s submitted answer which, though not immediately treasonable in itself, is without doubt disrespectful in sundry degrees to the spirit of His Highness’s question. Wherefore, considering His August Excellency’s plea for clemency on Yun Cai’s behalf, it has been decided that this same Yun Cai must proceed to his family’s home in Chunming Province within two dawns of this letter’s receipt, on pain of a frank and scathing enquiry as
to possible treasonous implications and utterances within his answer to the Son of Heaven’s examination question on the 6th Day of the 9th Month during the Year of the Snake. It is further decided that Yun Cai should not return to the capital unless expressly summoned by the Minister of Justice, His August Excellency Lu Sha. Should Yun Cai of Wei disregard these injunctions in any manner whatsoever, he shall become subject to harsh admonishment.
I read and re-read. Scarcely believed it. The meaning was obvious and beyond credibility. His August Excellency was doing exactly the same as Lord Xiao had done, and for the same reason! He was getting me out of the way. Only my banishment was not to war and an unpleasant death but to certain exile. An exile which might last forever, if he so chose.
An hour later I stood beside P’ei Ti while he read the letter. He lowered it to his knees with trembling hands and glared at me accusingly.
‘What nonsense did you write in the examination to provoke this?’ he demanded.
I stammered like a boy rebuked by his father. Indeed I was too deep in shock to be myself.
‘Nothing, I swear. Only what is said every day, though some might not like the ideas. Indeed, I have heard you profess some of them many times.’
P’ei Ti shook his head in disbelief.
‘Why must you always act differently from other men?
Why can you never place your head beneath the yoke without some murmur or sardonic comment?’
At this jibe I regained my pride.
‘So you take His August Excellency’s side?’
P’ei Ti rose angrily.
‘It is not about sides.’
‘You know very well why this has happened to me,’ I said. ‘And it has nothing to do with my loyalty to the Son of Heaven. As ever, it is my loyalty to another that has caused the mischief.’
P’ei Ti twisted the letter in his hands.
‘I’m sure His August Excellency will recall you from Wei very soon,’ he said. ‘You must not offend such a man.’
I laughed bitterly.
‘Oh, I have every intention of offending him! Not through appealing against his decision, there is no point.
To Wei I must go, that is certain. What he does not realise is that I shall take Su Lin with me as my wife. That will offend him. For we both know that he has grown besotted with her, as Lord Xiao did before. What is it with these great men? They think everyone in the world is a trinket to dangle from their girdles. But Su Lin and I will prove them all wrong!’
I turned to leave. P’ei Ti blocked my way.
‘Has she agreed to marry you?’ he asked, in amazement.
‘Not exactly,’ I said. ‘But there is no avoiding one’s destiny, P’ei Ti, whether it is mine or hers.’
His face contorted with genuine distress.
‘Don’t rush to her! I beg you! Think, she urged you not to visit her house. Do not throw yourself into the flame!’
I tried to step round him but still he barred the way.
‘I have heard things, Yun Cai. No doubt, in your present mood, you’d just call them rumours. Oh, do not go to her! This is more delicate than you imagine.’
I swept past him, deaf to his cries that I should return.
As he had anticipated, my way took me straight to Su Lin’s house. I was full of plans. We could marry on the road. Naturally, she would need to sell most of her possessions and this would be a great hardship to her. Yet I was sure she would undertake such a sacrifice. I was like a drunken man who can conceive no other way of thinking than his own. Most of all I dreaded Father’s reaction when he met her. But surely he must come to admire what all men admired? Her elegant charm would win him over.
Perhaps she could sing a few songs. He had always loved music.
But when I reached her house, when I reached her gate, I found her leaving in a splendid carriage pulled by two fat palfreys, followed by another full of servants and musicians playing lutes and finger cymbals. She looked nervous but was laughing gaily with a man dressed in badges of high office and dazzling silks. A man more than twice her age. And at last I understood her letter.
I stood at the roadside and called out her name as the carriage rolled towards the city. At once, Su Lin and His August Excellency recognised me. Their conversation faltered. He frowned, turning to note her reaction. For a fleeting, fluttering moment she seemed distressed.
I stepped forward eagerly. Her eyes blinked as they met my incredulous gaze. Her plump lips, so often adored and kissed, parted as though about to speak. I reached up my hand, as though to take her own and help her down from the carriage. But her hands remained on her lap.
Then, with great effort, she smiled stiffly at His August Excellency and spoke quiet words. How he roared with exaggerated laughter! Yet for all his mirth, his sideways glance at me expressed pure menace.
‘Su Lin!’ I cried, desperately.
She ignored me. I might as well have been a peddler on the street, crying out wares she could not afford to buy.
‘Su Lin! You must not do this!’
The carriage gathered pace. She did not look back.
Perhaps she did not dare.
I stood alone on the busy, dusty road for a long while, jostled by people flowing round me. For a long while on that busy dusty road.
*
I left the capital at dawn the next day. P’ei Ti, Mi Feng and Cousin Hong accompanied me to the dockside. None of us wept. My entire worldly goods were loaded into the riverboat, three chests and a few bags, and while the oars-men ate bowls of lucky coloured rice in preparation for the long journey upstream, we shared a flask of wine provided by Cousin Hong.
‘I will write as often as I can,’ said P’ei Ti, anxiously filling the silence. ‘Whenever I hear of messages being sent to Chunming Province I shall enclose a letter. And you must know that I will seek an opportunity to petition on your behalf. But a suspicion of treason is no light thing, Yun Cai. It will follow you around.’
I clasped his hand.
‘You have done enough for me already. Why put yourself at risk? My dear friend, you must see that my main reason for wishing to stay here has gone. It has floated away, like those clouds above our heads.’
And they were fine, billowing white clouds. I remember them still.
I did not need to mention her name. It filled all our minds.
‘She was wrong to ignore you,’ he said. ‘I believe she did so for your own safety. I am sure she was simply afraid to do otherwise. How else could she divert His August Excellency’s ill will? Think kindly of her, Yun Cai, for your own peace of mind.’
I shrugged.
‘She has chosen. Let us not talk of her. At least I will see my family. That is something.’
Brave words could not mask the desolation I felt. To return without wealth or position or honour, except perhaps among those who sang my poems. I knew Father well enough to anticipate his respect for poems sung on the street.
‘I will write often,’ he pleaded. ‘We will never be parted if we write.’
‘P’ei Ti,’ I said. ‘Was there ever a friend like you? You are the brother I never had.’
I turned to Mi Feng and Cousin Hong. They embraced me in turn. Mi Feng suddenly flushed.
‘Forget that whore!’ he cried. ‘I’ll kill her for you if you ask. I swear it.’
A silence fell among us. We all knew he meant his threat. Indeed, for a man with his conception of honour, he had uttered a kind of oath. I understood his reasoning well. I had been wronged. She should pay.
Shaking my head, I clasped his hands, for he had offered the greatest sacrifice, trading his happiness for the cold logic of revenge.
‘Mi Feng,’ I said. ‘Just think, if I had not courted that lady, you would never have met your wife. So perhaps you should thank her. Or thank our intermingled fates. For my sake, enjoy your woman and child. Forget ill will, which is a slow poison. That way, my honour will prosper alongside your own.’
He sighed. I could tell he was relieved.
‘You’re too soft, sir. You always have been.’
‘Perhaps that is my strength,’ I said.
‘Find yourself a good, honest wife,’ broke in Cousin Hong. ‘Have a dozen sons and name one of them after me!’
We all laughed. I slapped his back as though he had read my dearest wish, but such a prospect filled me with revulsion. There could only be one woman, one love, for me. Her betrayal had shaken my capacity for affection, just as a rockslide in the mountains undermines a once secure house, so that no one dare live there again. And it was to the mountains I must go.
The ship’s captain summoned me aboard. Oars rose and fell in obedience to the drum’s rhythm. Water churned. The capital and my hopes and dreams fell behind, until with a bend in the river, the City of Heaven was lost from view.
nine
‘. . . The Provincial Capital echoes
with disorder.
Armies prowl the five directions
gorging on tattered villages that survive. . .’
It is the Festival of Ghosts. Only the foolish are unwary.
On the fifth day of the fifth month the summer solstice marks a decline. The sun is already dwindling and dark spirits lie in wait.
Throughout Chunming, I observe people taking the usual precautions. No one hangs clothes out to dry in case ghosts infect the garments and their children are taken ill.
Talismans are fixed to doors and windows. Bottle-gourds made of paper flutter on lintels so that Li Tie-guai may fend off encroaching demons.
Now is the time when hungry spirits seek revenge for neglect or insult and I grow restless thinking of Cousin Zhi. What of Honoured Aunty or the man I killed? Those who died in remote parts, far from their families, unappeased by sacrifices, will be busy tonight. Their coats are without hems, and when they speak their voices sound strange to us. We may only see them as dark clouds. Yet they are notoriously short-sighted, seeing the world as a red glow, so perhaps I will not be found out. I hang up two bottle-gourds to make sure and wait for what night brings.
Taming Poison Dragons Page 43