Taming Poison Dragons (7 page)

Those minutes of valour broke my father physically, but made him a gentleman. In gratitude General Yueh Fei granted him the title of Wei Valley and composed an elaborate curse lest any of his descendents seek to rescind it. I know, because the document is preserved within a hollow ox bone in my strongest chest.

As a boy I heard this story often. Father would relate it in the hall of the Upper House, his voice proud as plum wine. I sat at his feet and longed to be a hero like him. His words intoxicated me.

Yet in winter he hugged his old scars against the cold and might say nothing for days on end.

But I was remembering how we hunted crickets.

Finally I would lead Little Wudi to the topmost building, where our family slept and sat in the evening. Here dwelt the most ferocious of crickets, nesting between cracks in the walls. Crow-Head-Gold-Wings was the name of this doughty fellow. It had a green neck and purple-black wings streaked with gold. Its head was thick, body broad-backed, and its legs were long with muscular thighs. Crow-Head-Gold-Wings fed upon crumbs, shreds of fruit or flower stamens, but mostly other insects. Truly, a superior cricket! Yet rare.

I only found one fully-grown, lurking near Father’s chair. In truth, I thought it so beautiful that, notwith-standing its fierce reputation, I chose never to let it fight.

For a whole autumn it chirruped and sang in the cage above my bed, a sound so pure and hopeful it elevated my spirit. By the tenth month it was dead. I found it curled at the bottom of the cage, a crumpled, forlorn thing. Losing its companionship made me wail terribly. Mother ran to see what was wrong.

I felt guilty in the midst of my grief. As Crow-Head-Gold-Wing’s master, was I not its father? Yet I had not been able to prolong its life.

My own father mocked my tears. He reproached me for losing face in front of the servants. Even Mother shook her head sadly, chiding me for being too sensitive, warning that worse losses occur in life. I was inconsolable.

‘Trees may prefer calm,’ she said. ‘But the wind will not subside.’

In reply I composed a short poem in Crow-Head-Gold-Wing’s honour, which I recited in secret to Mother. She listened carefully, then persuaded Father that I should begin learning my characters without further delay. A monk was duly hired from a nearby Daoist monastery for that purpose.

No poem could save Crow-Head-Gold-Wing, and I never found another like him. I wonder where the dust of his tiny, valiant body has blown, fragile as a lost day, fleeting as childhood.

One morning, Father ordered me to collect wine and a bamboo basket of food from the kitchen. I was ten years old. We left the house as a flight of geese passed noisily over the valley. Father leant on his stick and peered up, muttering to himself. Then he struggled out of the village toward Mulberry Ridge. I remember longing that people would see me being useful to him.

It was a slow journey. Often he gasped with pain. On the ridge he sat for a long while, regaining his breath. I crouched in silence, hugging my knees, gazing out across the plain, until his chesty voice startled me, as if from a dream:

‘Little Yun Cai, what is it that fascinates you?’

Not knowing the required answer, I bowed in embarrassment. He grew impatient.

‘What makes you stare?’

I wanted so hard to please him. Then I recalled an educated neighbour reciting a poem in our house. Father had seemed truly delighted. Closing my eyes, I spoke uncertainly at first, then boldly:

Green green the far off willows,
Far far the town of Chunming.

Beyond the horizon only future.

I must travel toward haze and mist.

As soon as the words were spoken, I wondered where they came from. Certainly a higher, better place than Wei.

Yet I barely understood what the poem meant. Father shifted, uneasily.

‘Who taught you that?’

‘No one, Father.’

‘Do not lie to me. Who taught you that verse?’

‘Nobody, I swear.’

He glared at me.

‘Father, I thought of the words because. . . to please you. I often hear songs and verses in my head. I’m sorry.’

He looked at me in wonder.

‘You
did
make it up, didn’t you?’

‘Forgive me,’ I said, fearfully.

To my surprise, he laughed his dry laugh.

‘There’s not a gentleman for fifty
li
with a son who can compose like that! So your mother is right about your true talents. She was always shrewd. When you were born, I prayed that you would win renown in the Glorious Destiny Regiment. Now I see you are heading a different way.’

That afternoon he said nothing more, but drank his wine and ate his basket of rice and river shrimp. Though I did not know it, those lines of verse, crude and childish, but highly precocious, had determined my fate.

Everyone knows poetry is the key to wealth and office.

Only those who can reproduce the wisdom of the classics through faithful imitation dare hope to pass the examinations and enter the Emperor’s vermilion doors. Then the way to honour and esteem for one’s family lies wide open, a road lined with envy and precious things. Father was well aware that scholar-officials were the real power in the land of Sung. The Son of Heaven distrusted military men, fearing his generals might attempt to seize the throne for themselves.

That same evening, Father summoned a monk to write a long letter to his brother, my Uncle Ming, in the capital, and set about waiting for the reply. He was good at waiting, as with everything else. Yet I sensed his impatience.

For he had made up his mind I was to pass the Emperor’s examination and become a high official.

Six months were all that remained of childhood, before I had to change from a spoilt, carefree boy to an anxious scholar. My time in Wei was drawing to its end. Mother hugged me frequently, and made me a suit of clothes far too big, as though she hoped to keep warm my future self. Sometimes she wept for no reason. Once she took me aside when Father was away in the village and whispered:

‘You must promise me one thing, Yun Cai. Do you promise?’

‘What is it, Mother?’

‘Do you promise?’ she repeated, fiercely.

By now I was alarmed.

‘Yes,’ I said, wide-eyed.

‘When you reach the capital, you must never provoke or offend Honoured Aunty in any way. Do you understand?
Never
.’

Honoured Aunty was Uncle Ming’s official wife. I nodded earnestly.

‘Do not forget. She will always be mindful that you are my son. That is why you should keep on the right side of her. And do not mention any of this to Father.’

That night I dreamt of a cold, beautiful woman who I took to be Honoured Aunty. In my dream she was the Empress Lu, cruelly torturing the Lady Qi, who was Mother. I woke up screaming.

One month passed, then three, and four. Everyone in Three-Step-House began to treat me with new respect, even Father, as though I had been singled out for something auspicious and remarkable.

There is a huge boulder on the hillside above Three-Step-House, where I often sat at this time. I used to scramble up its side, nimble as a mountain goat, and resist Little Wudi’s attempts to join me by poking a stick at him.

We called it Wobbly-Watch-Tower-Rock. At the top I would settle and gaze west, a cool breeze stirring the tuft on my head. Crag and cliff rose against skies of earnest blue. Cloud like a dense plain broken by scattered peaks, snow-capped and enticing, waiting to be climbed. Those mountain-moods formed my soul.

Uncle Ming’s eldest son arrived to collect me at the end of autumn. A long procession of camels and strangely-garbed men climbed up Wei Valley. At the news of their coming, Mother stood stock still, helplessly wringing her hands beneath long, trailing sleeves. She hurried off to a private chamber to compose herself.

Cousin Hong seemed a prince. He alighted from a litter lugged by eight sweating servants and his green silks glittered like polished jade in the sun. Gold amulets and charms to preserve him on the road hung from his clothes.

His plump, pale face wore a smile of amused contempt. I glanced nervously at Father. To my amazement, even he seemed in awe of this strange, gorgeous fellow. It was our first glimpse of Uncle Ming’s wealth, and instead of admiration, it taught shame. Our Lordship of Wei, which had seemed so bright with honour, suddenly paled. Many contradictory and unwelcome sensations contend within the breast of a poor relation.

Father’s impatience for me to commence my studies meant I faced a winter journey to the capital. We left before dawn the next day, after a brief ceremony. I could not help weeping, and Cousin Hong made a great joke of my tears.

Days on road or river brought a thousand new sights and smells. Stooping peasants glimpsed in distant fields, boatwomen plying their oars, or high officials whose carriages dripped with silver – all fed my imagination in ways too subtle to conceive.

We travelled overland through a bare, wind-picked country, colours bled by the winter drought. Cousin Hong rode in his litter while I perched among the baggage on a camel’s back, wrapped in a cloak of sheep’s fur. At night we slept in village hostelries or small towns. They seemed vast cities to me. My senses and thoughts were in constant confusion.

I soon realised that Cousin Hong found me unworthy of notice. One evening, after we had dined in our usual silence, I recited the poem I had improvised for Father on Mulberry Ridge. No doubt I wished to impress him. To my surprise he grew angry.

‘So you can bleat, as your father boasted! Understand at once, I am not interested.
My
father can hire a dozen poets any time he likes. He is only adopting you because he has a soft heart. You will fail the examination and be sent back to your hut in the mountains with a scorched backside.’

His outburst shocked me. No one had ever treated me in so low a way.

‘
My
father saved the life of General Yueh Fei at the Battle of T’su Hu Pass!’ I cried. ‘We are noble, not common peddlers!’

Cousin Hong laughed dryly, but I could tell my words stung. Even he realised there are qualities beyond the reach of
cash
coins threaded on a string.

We were delayed by blizzards for several weeks and had to spend the New Year celebration a hundred and fifty
li
north of the capital, in a village whose name I gladly forget, a place where only the lice were energetic. Cousin Hong literally ground his teeth, and I started to feel sorry for him.

Holed up in a miserable inn, while a curious dog inserted its snout up his fine silk coat, he got drunk and poured out his troubles. I listened silently. As I came to learn, he was missing a fine time by his absence from the capital at New Year. Wine lent him eloquence.

He told me of the New Year markets where dishes of rice coloured green, red, white, black and yellow were auctioned. To eat them brought good fortune and he always bid the highest. He told me of painted door gods and paper streamers bearing lucky characters, covering the festival-city like blossom. Firecrackers and gongs and drums filled the streets with noise, so that only a fool bothered to think. Men dressed as gods paraded on stilts.

Chimes and flutes chased misfortune round the Pond of Dragons, then through the Gate Of The Eastern Flowering, never to return.

‘We must get back in time for the Feast of Lanterns!’ he mumbled drunkenly, as though to a dear friend. ‘Ah, Yun Cai, then you will see something.’

‘Let us depart tomorrow!’ I cried, in my high-pitched voice.

I should add that he had favoured me with a cup of strong wine, to ‘float in’ the New Year.

‘What of the snow? Only a madman travels in snow.

We would shiver all the way.’

‘Let us shiver! Father marched in blizzards when he was an officer. Order the servants to prepare our departure!’

Cousin Hong bristled for a moment. Such decisions lay with him, not a boy. Then he laughed.

‘You understand nothing. My litter is heavy. The bearers would sink in the snow.’

‘Ride on one of the camels like me. Have the litter follow behind. That way, we shall reach the city in time for the festival.’

He belched.

‘No wonder your father is called a hero,’ he said, wonderingly. ‘You’ll end up a general for sure!’

But he did as I advised, and as a result we reached the capital in time for the Feast of Lanterns. Cousin Hong never forgot this episode and afterwards nicknamed me

‘Little General’. It was good that I had one friend in Uncle Ming’s house, even an unsteady one. I had need of any friend.

We caught our first glimpse of the capital as night was falling. Here I must win honour and esteem or scuttle back to the mountains, a failure in my own and Father’s eyes. Cousin Hong had driven the servants forward all day with promises and threats. For several
li
the sky to the east glowed, as though from a great fire. When I remarked on it, Hong chuckled.

‘Wait and see!’ he cried. ‘Just you wait, Little General!’

We were in a low valley full of roadside tombs, then the City of Heaven spread before us.

It seemed ablaze, but not consumed. Small flashes, like distant lightning, sparked across the horizon. A low rumbling filled the air.

We descended the hillside in haste and found ourselves beside a jetty on the shore of the West Lake. Miles of water glittered in the moonlight, covered with boats of every size, like fireflies scattered across a grey mirror. Each bore a lantern, some many, so they were beaded with strings of light. Cousin Hong leapt from his camel and rushed to the shore. By chance a fishing skiff was moored there, rocking alarmingly. Inside a couple were disporting themselves.

‘Hey you!’ he cried, apparently blind to what was going on. ‘Hey you! Take us to the city and you’ll earn three hundred
cash
.’

The young fisherman and his wife (assuming they were married, a large assumption at festival-time) fumbled with their clothes. Unabashed, Cousin Hong jangled three strings of
cash
coins, feverishly repeating his offer. He was a man possessed by demons. I believe he would have traded half his inheritance to enjoy the festival. Within a minute the bargain was settled. The fisherman stood by the large oar at the rear of his craft and we scrambled aboard. His ‘wife’ stood disconsolate on the shore. It was my first lesson that anything was for sale in the City of Heaven. Now Cousin Hong lolled like an emperor in the prow and I was left to gaze.