Taming Poison Dragons (55 page)

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.

‘. . . 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.

The moon forms a bright sickle in the sky. Its radiance finds gaps between clouds. Then the moon’s grinning face is obscured once more. I am back on earth. Back in my narrow attic room. Back in doleful Chunming.

So my thoughts. . .

A white cloth hangs from the window, signalling to Thousand-
li
-drunk that Golden Bells has been bought.

For several days it has hung like a flag while the hours have alternated between rain and stifling heat. Still I hear no word from him. I must assume he has reasons for silence, that he is busily seeking P’ei Ti’s release. Perhaps he has been captured.

Tonight I am just a fearful old man. Slowly, slowly the moon reappears until it, at least, is brave. The Festival of Ghosts swirls towards dawn.

In the depth of night, one must find comfort where one can. I lie on my bed meditating upon a spider’s web as it catches the moon glow. Always thought intrudes. Feelings are caught in its sticky strands like helpless flies. Youngest Son’s face is trapped there. I do not recollect him as he is now, a stern officer in a doomed army, but as a boy, often beside his mother. And it is strange to remember her.

Unwelcome thoughts. I recall returning from a week of carousing and fitful piety in a nearby monastery. It was morning, all the servants busy about their business. But Youngest Son sat patiently in the gatehouse. He must have been eight years old. I sensed he had been waiting for days. He regarded me with up-turned eyes.

‘Little cub,’ I said. ‘Have you become a gate god?’

He looked away. Bit his lip.

‘Is something on your mind, little fellow?’ I asked.

Perhaps I felt guilty. Perhaps not.

‘You do not love us, Father,’ he muttered.

Of course, I should have beaten him soundly for such impudence. Most men would. A hot breath filled my spirit. I lifted my arm. Then I saw the cringing defiance in his eyes. My arm fell. I sat beside him on the bench lining one wall of the gatehouse, throwing to the floor a bundle of poems I had written during my stay at Whale Rocks Monastery. I could feel his warmth against my own.

‘You are wrong,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘Quite wrong.’

He bristled, as a boy will. How eager he was to amend my faults! Had no one told him a father has no failings, only oddities?

‘Father, why do you stay away so often? Mother is sad when you are away.’

‘Is that why you are angry?’ I asked.

‘Yes.’

I held out helpless hands.

‘It is just that, sometimes, I need fresh winds on my face.’

He watched me intently. Every shred of his being contended to understand what I barely understood myself.

‘You go away as often as you can,’ he said, finally.

One should not deny the truth. Especially to a child.

Especially to one’s son. Your whole duty is to bring him up well, so he despises a lie.

‘I will spend more time with you,’ I muttered. ‘Yes, I will.’

For all my promise, I didn’t. Or not enough. That night I railed at my wife, drunk again, reproaching her for turning my own sons against me.

My wife. Why is it hard to remember a familiar face?

Though she knew me better than anyone in Wei, except perhaps Wudi, she eludes me.

Her breasts were firm and large, though sagging in later years. Her thighs were broad and strong from climbing steep hillsides. And, of course, she relished every kind of food and so did not resemble a willow.

My wife maintained a comfortable home for me and perhaps I did not deserve her labours. Nevertheless, she gave them dutifully. Not for my sake, I always thought, but for our children. Certainly she gained much through our marriage. I have no reason to reproach myself. If I barely recollected her for years, why think of her now?

Oh, my longings were elevated and far away, fixed on a woman who never aged as we did, one forever lithe and beautiful. Beloved, immaculate Su Lin. Every day of exile painted a fresh layer of lacquer on my disappointment.

I rise. Splash my face. The night is full of rain-sounds.

When I return to the bed, my wife’s image is not washed away. A plump face, inclined to happiness, easily delighted by small things: a pleasant gossip with one of the servants, or a good meal, or singing a mountain song with the other women as they sewed. I greet the dawn with a strange thought. Men are lessened by too much rule over their wives. That, too, is nonsense. One often thinks foolishly between sleep and wakefulness, especially on a night like this.

Light creeps into the room and I am glad of day. My wife and son will leave me now. She had a beautiful name: Fragrant Dawn. A name to set day ablaze, though her face could resemble a stubborn mare, its jaw thrust forward.

And her fragrance was variable, too.

Let her be. Let her rest. In the past I did not honour her spirit enough and that is why she haunts me.

Remembering is a kind of punishment. If I ever return to Three-Step-House I shall sacrifice a dozen scented dishes to her memory on the ancestral shrine. Then the outer will match the inner and harmony will be achieved. It was simply not our destiny to grow old together.

I am quite resolved to cease brooding over Fragrant Dawn. She has gone. Those years and all I might have enjoyed through them are gone. Now I have a new duty to justify my life, a noble endeavour. Freeing P’ei Ti might vindicate every failure.

‘Venerable Sir! Venerable Sir! See these plums! Such fruit will gladden your family!’

I brush the man aside. What use have I for plums when anxiety is giving me indigestion?

Another fellow appears at my elbow.

‘Bronze tripods! Urns for your ashes so splendid that your descendents will honour you like a prince!’

Walk deeper into the market. Ignore him. All this talk of urns may be a bad omen.

The entire contents of houses are spread out on the moist earth. Those impoverished by war or the families of those executed as traitors by the Empress-in-waiting must sell all they possess for a little food. Respectable people, parting with dearest heirlooms for a few
cash
. One cannot eat an ornament one’s grandfather scrimped to buy.

General An-Shu’s rule has carved a thousand cuts on the body of Chunming, so the city bleeds out its wealth, gash by gash.

‘You have a kind face, sir! Pity a poor widow. Buy my dumplings and luck will serve you forever!’

This makes me pause. I need luck. And I need pity, if for no other reason than to feel superior. Besides, dumplings are my favourite. So I buy a handful and eat one while the wretched woman screams to heaven itself that I should be blessed with a thousand grandsons. Will the Jade Emperor hear her among this babble of voices? It seems unlikely.

And her dumplings are stale. I move on.

A message reached me this morning, summoning me to a certain shop in the South Market. From its crazy style I believe it was sent by Thousand-
li
-drunk. Yet I have no proof. It might well be a snare, a means of confirming my guilt. And in times like these, in a desperate city like Chunming, guilt comes easily.

At last I find my destination. The message instructed me to seek out the Astrologer Mu behind a shop selling caged birds. I hear the establishment before I see it. Even in an uproar such as this the sweet, pure trill of songbirds pierces through. The merchant lolls in his doorway. He has a curved nose and expressionless, flickering eyes. He bows and gestures me inside. I follow, glancing round nervously for a sign that I am being watched. In such a crowd, who may tell?

His shop consists of a narrow, rectangular room.

Dozens of bamboo cages hang on the walls and the air is full of cheeping. Thrush and sparrow, oriole and swallow.

A man who can understand the language of birds may learn enough to avoid danger. But who is to say bird-demons do not watch from these cages? If so, their situation is precarious. A brace of thrushes is a feast to many in Chunming.