Taming Poison Dragons (23 page)

Sometimes doubts and fears are best unspoken. To fill my eyes with her was enough: to catch traces of her perfume amidst the clear scent of the lake, the oiled wood of the boat; to share hopes of the future, knowing they might never be gathered; to listen sympathetically and be heard in my turn – these things became world and sky, night and day, for a few hours.

Su Lin squealed at the first drop of rain. Absorption in each other had blinded us to gathering clouds. By now we were a good way from her house, even further from my own. I glanced round and spotted a small, wooded island I had often noticed, though never visited, on which stood a miniature pavilion. The sky darkened, hastening dusk. Yet for all the rain it was still uncomfortably hot. I drove my boat onto the island shore with a bump.

‘Quick!’ I cried. ‘Take that basket!’

We gathered our belongings in haste and hurried up the mossy path to the pavilion. As soon as we had entered, the rain began to fall in earnest.

The single room was deserted, as was the entire island.

Grains of rice from a previous picnic lay on the bench, which I took as a lucky sign. A faded mural covered one wall, depicting Zhong-kiu with his magic sword raised above his head.

‘We are well-protected from demons here,’ I remarked.

In the corner stood a low shrine, equipped with the means for visitors to make burnt offerings. I found flint and kindling and, after many failed attempts, lit the lamp.

The room filled with soft, flickering light.

Strange we should be so shy of each other. First we exchanged and explained our presents – for in reply to my birthday gift, Su Lin had brought me peonies to show she wished me well, bamboo to honour my strength and fruit to promise fecundity. We toasted each gift with wine and shared our food.

‘Well,’ I said, when the meal was done.

She sat back on the floor, meeting my glance with lowered eyes.

‘Well, what?’ she asked.

‘Who would have imagined this when I first heard you sing of the mountains?’

‘No one sensible,’ she replied.

‘Must we always be sensible?’

My heart choked my voice. Without reassurance, even the strongest love recoils. For a long moment she seemed to consider.

‘Not tonight, at least,’ she conceded. ‘For one night both of us may make an exception.’

And we did, our finest clothes strewn around the dusty floor for bedding. Her fragrances intoxicated me until dawn. I whispered to her, ‘You are a flower re-born’, but we both spoke more through urgent sighs than words. My heart strove to break from my breast as I touched and released her secret fragrance for the first time. Texture of skin and luxuriant hair spun frailest, firmest nets. Once not enough. Both of us hungered. And my most piercing joy lay in proof of her own. Some would call me unmanly for that. Yet her soft cries released all the ardour of my youth, tempting us to acts strangely free for new lovers.

We did not care or feel shame.

With the first light of day we sailed from that island, curiously silent. Joy lessened by a certainty of parting, for I could not afford to keep her and my prospects were poor. To taste sweetness just once makes the pleasure cruel. I could offer only my heart and, as we passed boats laden with fine silk or oil or fish for the market, a faithful heart seemed little enough.

After our night in the pavilion, Su Lin haunted my small-est actions. We had cast down the defences holding us apart as surely as any city wall. But a wall is made of beaten earth. Our barrier was a compulsion toward different destinies. Earth is composed of grains where one might grow the sweetest flower. Petals may unfurl, day by day, heady with scent. If the soil is starved, only bitterness takes root. And that is a hardy plant.

Our first meeting after her birthday took place in the Garden Of Ineffable Solace. I insisted on it, for I wished to banish painful memories of the day we met with her ugly chaperone. This time we were alone. As ever, she filled my eyes, until I saw nothing else. Blindness made me awkward.

‘Come with me,’ I said, brusquely. ‘I must show you something.’

I led her to the pond where the water-lilies floated. Five golden carp swam at their ease.

‘Are we to be as free as those fish?’ I demanded.

‘How strangely you speak, dearest Yun Cai,’ she said.

I blushed at my own intensity.

‘My love, I only mean to ask, are we to swim as they do, disregardful of each other unless they brush occasionally, then swim away?’

‘You speak in riddles!’ she declared, in her best mountain accent.

I knew she understood my meaning exactly. She peered at the pool and said, almost timidly: ‘But see, dearest Yun Cai! They can never be free for they are bound by the limits of the pond.’

I could not answer that.

‘Sit with me,’ I said.

We sat side by side on a stone bench, a decent distance apart.

‘I often think of that night,’ I said. ‘Do you?’

‘Often. Very often,’ she replied.

‘I cannot believe it ever ended,’ I said. ‘If you will come with me to my house, it could begin again. This afternoon could become our night.’

She slowly withdrew her fan from her belt, and fanned herself like a moth fluttering its wings.

‘I am free this afternoon,’ she said. ‘I have no engagements.’

It was high summer. We lay together in the soft light of late afternoon and her skin glowed. As dusk fell, she had to hasten away, an engagement to fulfil. I sat by the lake with wine and ink, sampling both to excess until the quarter moon grinned. Then I recited a poem to the moon, my voice echoing across the lazy water.

Another time I met her at a restaurant near East Canal Bridge. We sat in a curtained alcove. Voices formed a lulling drone behind our conversation.

‘It has seemed a long week since we met,’ I said, once the waiter had gone, closing the curtain behind him.

‘Yet a busy one,’ she replied.

‘For you, at least. My work in the Deer Park Library is so light, I feel compelled to present myself there several times a week, just for something to do. The Chief Librarian has grown suspicious of me, in case I’m seeking his job.’

Su Lin took a languid sip of wine. She dabbed her lips on a napkin.

‘What do you do at the library?’ she asked.

‘I read. And read. And read. Then I think.’

‘Is that all?’ she asked. ‘I am surprised you have not gone blind.’

‘No, I do other things. I study all the approved authors to pass the Imperial Examination, though my heart lies elsewhere. I make no plans to sit the Examination, but study for knowledge’s own sake.’

‘If you are studying like that,’ she chided. ‘Surely you must take the test! One like you should possess such an honour.’

I shrugged helplessly.

‘I read only what interests me,’ I said.

She became grave.

‘Ah, Yun Cai. That way years pass.’

‘But with pleasure,’ I countered.

‘And little profit to yourself,’ she replied.

‘I cannot help my own mind. Sometimes I sit down intending to compose model answers. Then I look out of the window and I notice the way a leaf falls or a bird trills.

And I grow distracted.’

She sighed.

‘You must not. Are you to be content with a modest salary until the day you die?’

‘No, I suspect not. But why are we so serious?’

So I poured her another cup and made light of ourselves, but I could tell Su Lin was somehow disappointed. It did not stop us ending the evening in each other’s arms.

*

Another time I took her sailing once again on the West Lake. Perhaps I hoped to recapture the excitement of her birthday. If so, I heard more than I wished, for she opened her heart and I was forced to drink her words.

‘Yun Cai,’ she said. ‘Do you never think of the future?’

I laughed.

‘The future is a dream. Do you see how the breeze stirs your lovely black hair? In that moment, all past, present and future are contained. It makes me happy.’

‘One day that hair will grow grey,’ she said.

Su Lin did not take her eyes from my face. When I talked as I thought, she often listened with attention. Had she been born a gentleman, I have no doubt she would have composed poems. Instead, her own poems were the lilting, delicate songs required by her trade. This time, I could tell my words did not satisfy her.

‘Does my answer displease you?’ I asked, coldly.

‘Oh, it is a fine, fine answer. But when you talk like that, much as I like it, I know your words float away.’

For all the brightness of the day, a shadow fell across us.

‘I am afraid,’ she said. ‘You think that I am someone different from myself.’

‘Then what are you?’

I let the sail go slack, so the boat drifted. A noisy pleasure boat passed by, full of young men who shouted ribald comments. I ignored them.

‘Teach me,’ I repeated. ‘What you are.’

‘What strange questions you ask!’

She took out her fan and opened it in agitation. Then she closed it, laying it across her knees like a rod.

‘I will tell you, since you ask. I am an ordinary girl who wants ordinary things! Is that so wrong? Already my beauty is showing signs of age. When it is gone I shall have little value. Now is the time for me, the time when I must gather enough wealth to set me up for the rest of my life. Can you not see I have worked and worked to win just that? I should have the friendship of wealthy gentlemen, so I may use their presents wisely. I can almost afford a carriage, Yun Cai! Imagine it! Poor Su Lin from muddy Chunming, in a carriage! Poor, nobody Su Lin with servants and dresses as fine as any lady!’

I did not reply. It seemed better to wait for the worst.

‘But when I am with you,’ she continued, miserably. ‘I forget what I must do. How can it be that the thing I take the most joy in, your company, threatens to ruin everything.’

‘Ruin is a strong word,’ I said.

‘No, you do not see! I have set my heart on things you cannot give me.’

Then she began to weep. As the boat rocked gently, I took her hand, more like a brother at that moment than a lover.

‘Oh, what is the use!’ she cried.

She laughed with forced gaiety.

‘Take me back to your house,’ she said. ‘And I will sing you songs and we shall drink wine and make love.’

So we did. And I tried to please her. I had persuaded myself each moment we shared would breed new moments. I could not think beyond her presence until she had gone, busy about her shrewd business. I even suppressed jealousy through a thousand subtle arguments; yet all the while it gathered in my heart like a clammy, black stone.

This was the time when I completed the West Lake sequence of poems, which became so popular one could hear them sung by servant girls and porters on the street, for they were written in the plainest terms, and many who heard or read them found mirrors of their own longing. I took much satisfaction from my fame. But, of course, it brought me no wealth. A poet’s words, once released, blow like thistle seeds to the Eight Winds and grow where they may without any reward. Besides, I lived in a state of constant agitation. Bizarrely, those poems worked against me, for word got about of the singing girl who had inspired them and Su Lin was more in demand than ever.

One night in autumn, when the land was dry and cold winds blew east from the hills, Mi Feng announced a visitor. I was plucking mournful runs on the lute, the chamber lit by a single lamp, shadows dancing on the wall. Sound and shadow seemed one.

‘P’ei Ti!’ I exclaimed. ‘What brings you here at so late an hour?’

He took a seat and the refreshments I offered, still dressed in his official uniform, for he had just left a long day’s toil at the Censor’s Office. His fingers were black with ink, his brow furrowed with care. As good friends will, we did not talk until he had poured himself several cups and shared the simple dinner I offered. Wind stirred the pines around my small house and sometimes the roof creaked. I watched as he ate. The boy I had known seemed far away, yet within him still. At last he laid aside bowl and chopstick, belching his satisfaction.

‘Is that better?’ I asked, gently.

He chuckled.

‘It is always better when I see you,’ he said. ‘You help me to remember myself.’

‘That’s good then,’ I said.

He settled back and looked at me frankly.

‘I do not come on pleasant business,’ he said.

‘Oh?’

He belched again. Poured more wine. For the first time I realised he was nervous.

‘Tell me, Yun Cai, is it not the proof of a true friend that he may counsel in an unwelcome way?’

‘You are building up to something,’ I said.

‘Indeed I am.’

To my surprise, he rose and began to pace.

‘You are in great danger,’ he said. ‘I would betray my duty to you if I did not warn you.’

‘This sounds grave,’ I said, pouring us both more wine.

‘I beg you to be serious!’ he cried. ‘I must speak of painful matters. Perhaps it is best if I am blunt. Your love for a certain singing girl is well-known.’

My smile faded.

‘What of it?’

‘I must warn you that she has attracted another man’s fancy, a man of great influence and renown.’

‘Who is he?’ I demanded, already knowing the answer.

‘It is one you must not offend at any cost,’ he said.

‘Especially at so delicate a phase of your career. Your entire future depends on this man’s goodwill. If you lose it, all hope of advancement will be at an end.’

I tapped impatient fingers on the arm of my chair.

‘You must be reasonable!’ he said. ‘It seems this girl has caught Lord Xiao’s fancy. He has made detailed enquiries into her background. And it is not in his nature to share.’

‘Neither is it in
mine
.’

Such a protestation was a cowardly lie. For I shared her with anyone who could pay the absurd prices she demanded. I flushed with shame, and anger soon follows that emotion.

‘You must forget her,’ he said.

It was my turn to rise and pace. We circled each other like wrathful tigers.

‘How can you say this to me?’ I cried. ‘Do you realise what you are asking?’