Taming Poison Dragons (54 page)

Your dear friend across the lake, Su Lin.

‘Will you go to her tonight?’ asked P’ei Ti, as though reading my thought.

‘Tomorrow is the day of the Imperial examinations,’ I said. ‘And I must prepare myself.’

‘Then you still mean to take your chance?’ he asked, eagerly.

*

‘Yes!’

He seized my hands.

‘I honour your strength!’ he cried. ‘You are bamboo! To have suffered as you have over the last month and still brave the hardest test! You constantly surprise me, Yun Cai. Why, I am speechless.’

‘Now
that
surprises me,’ I said.

‘Meet me at the Examination Enclosure and we will enter together, arm-in-arm!’ he said. ‘You and I shall serve the Son of Heaven as equals. Just think of it!’

I tried to share P’ei Ti’s joy. But as his carriage rolled away from the palace, we passed roadsides where landless peasants huddled, begging openly without a licence.

Children with bellies swollen by hunger, their eyes huge and strangely bright. I witnessed a group of soldiers beating a peasant with the butts of their spears.

‘If we pass the examination,’ I said, gesturing at a family sheltering beneath a bridge. ‘Is it to help these wretches?’

‘Of course,’ said P’ei Ti. ‘Of course.’

He did not explain how. And doing just that, I felt, was where true duty lay.

I stood outside the Examination Enclosure like a soldier in the foremost line of battle. Never had I been more like Father, or how I imagined him. For he feared only disgrace. And I had armed myself with many weapons. My youthful heart rejected all shades of grey. Instead of a sword, I carried brushes of tapered horsehair. My armour was ink. My shield was the dawn sky, redolent with the Way. My quiver was crammed with earnest conceptions of truth.

A fierce wind blew dust round the square. Of all the candidates that autumn morning, of all the hundreds gathered for the test, only I was not accompanied by influential relatives or wealthy sponsors hoping to gain from my success. I had just Cousin Hong and Mi Feng, awed by the nobility around them. Yet I did not lack a patron, albeit a hidden one. His August Excellency had pledged to support my candidature as a reward for testifying against his enemy.

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.