Taming Poison Dragons (21 page)

‘Will you walk with me awhile?’ I asked, at last.

She nodded submissively and, staying two feet behind me, followed as I strolled, so that I had to continually turn to address her. Where was the freeness she once taught me, which I so admired, making her different from other women? She seemed encased in lacquer. All we had shared, it seemed, was to be forgotten. We were to begin anew, every remark between us constrained and foretold by elegant manners. I grew agitated.

‘Su Lin,’ I said, as calmly as I could. ‘Why are you acting so strangely? Have I offended you in some way? If so, tell me what it is. I beg you, ask your chaperone to withdraw a little, so we may talk freely.’

Su Lin’s face beneath its layer of cosmetics flushed. She stuck out her tongue a little, as a child does when afraid.

She nodded to signify agreement, and her chaperone, scowling balefully, stalked a dozen paces behind us.

‘What is going on?’ I asked, at last able to tear down the dam in my breast. ‘Is something wrong?’

Her eyes flashed angrily. Yet I was glad to provoke any reaction close to her heart.

‘Yun Cai forgets himself,’ she said. ‘We are not husband and wife.’

Now I had something to work on, and seized my opportunity.

‘Yet we are friends,’ I said. ‘Old friends, are we not? Tell me honestly, Su Lin. Did the poems I sent displease you?

If so, I will burn them.’

Her eye-lids fluttered with confusion. We had reached an ornamental lake, and stood before an expanse of floating water-lilies. Clouds were reflected in the still water and foreboding gripped me.

‘No, I liked them,’ she said. ‘A great deal, if you must know. It is not that. . . Oh, can’t you understand anything?’

At last the fiery girl I loved was joining me! I pressed home my advantage.

‘Teach me what I must understand,’ I said, softly.

‘Do you never consider the future?’ she demanded. ‘Or our mutual positions? For the first time in my life I have gained a respected place. Everyday I receive fresh commissions to perform for the very best families in the city.

You know my dreams, unless you’ve forgotten them already. It is my duty to make a success of my profession while I am young and men still bother to turn their heads when I walk by. How else will I be able to support my family? Already they have come to rely on the money I send them. Because of my work, Father has been able to buy a small house. It is my duty, Yun Cai! Surely you understand.’

I had no answer to this. The disadvantages of my modest salary swam like hungry fishes before my eyes.

‘I cannot offer wealth,’ I said, haughtily. ‘Yet I am richer than most in spirit.’

She clutched at the purse at her girdle. Let it fall.

‘I know that,’ she said, her eyes narrow with distress.

‘Do not think I am not flattered you hold me in esteem. . .

I presume you hold me in esteem, the poems you sent. . .’

She was silenced by embarrassment. Then I knew she cared for me.

‘Those poems were written across my heart,’ I said, slowly. ‘All I needed to do was copy what was written there.’

She bit her lip.

‘But this will not answer!’ she protested. ‘You are too earnest! You know I cannot be your sole concubine. You must be sensible, both of us must be sensible. One day your parents will assign you an honourable match. Have you forgotten what I am?’

It was true I could hardly marry her. My father would fall on his sword before allowing such a betrothal. Yet I had not seen my father in twelve long years.

‘Marriage is one thing,’ I protested. ‘Love quite another.’

Again she wavered, until her face hardened.

‘I do not wish to be any man’s concubine,’ she flared.

‘Being ordered around by his official wife will never suit me! Do this, Su Lin! Fetch that, Su Lin! I would sooner live as I do.’

‘You must not doubt me! How can you doubt me? This is madness!’

‘Madness to love unwisely,’ she countered. ‘Did not your studies teach you that, at least?’

‘My studies taught me a good heart is unstoppable,’ I replied.

A poor argument. One may easily think of a thousand situations where that is not the case. We stood silently.

The water-lilies floated serenely and insects flew from flower to flower.

‘Is there another you esteem more than me?’ I asked.

Was Lord Xiao in my mind? Why pretend otherwise.

His wealth and influence eclipsed me as night drowns sun.

I realised his mansion lay near the Gardens of Ineffable Solace, higher up Phoenix Hill. . . Was it possible she had come from his house to meet me here? Su Lin shook her head to my question. Yet I sensed evasion.

‘I am free or I am nothing,’ she said, stubbornly.

Foolish words! No one is truly free!

‘Who is exempt from duty, especially the duty owed to one’s heart?’ I demanded.

‘Do not talk like that!’ she said, evidently hurt.

‘Then you feel nothing for me.’

‘Oh, Yun Cai! Why are you so cruel? You know that is a lie! It is only that I cannot belong to you as I know you would wish. As you deserve.’

‘That must be some consolation, I suppose,’ I replied.

I turned to meet her eye. For a long moment our souls were joined. But a moment is not a lifetime. All she wished to become rose like invisible hands between us, pushing us apart.

‘If you change your mind, send word,’ I said.

She nodded, her head lowered, then walked back up the path to join her chaperone. I did not look after her, but stared at the water lilies. Such delicate, implausible flowers, to grow on water rather than solid land.

*

As I left the public gardens, a familiar figure watched coldly by the gate. In my grief and discomfort I ignored him.

It was Secretary Wen, the very same who had visited Uncle Ming’s house to assess my purity, so many years before.

Through all these events, between the ages of nineteen and twenty-five, I visited Uncle Ming’s household regularly, motivated by obligation rather than pleasure. Our worlds were too far apart, the distance wider with each passing year, yet they were still family, my only family in the city.

And blood, as they say, is not the space between roof and sky.

My monthly visits assumed a settled pattern. I would arrive on the appointed day, often to find Uncle Ming absent, lodging in his establishment of concubines beyond the city ramparts. When he did admit me to his office he seemed tired, less jovial, than in my youth. I soon learned the reason from Cousin Hong. Taxes were rising year by year to pay for our fruitless war on the frontier. It was around this time that the Ceaseless War party persuaded the emperor to launch his ill-fated campaign of conquest against the Northern barbarians. All are familiar with the Battle of Hu River and its consequences, how our borders were rolled back yet further.

More damaging to Uncle Ming’s prosperity was his own neglect. I believe he had wearied of his success years before, finding comfort in pleasures which drained his essential breaths. Perhaps he spent so much time away from his business to avoid Honoured Aunty. Certainly she was worth avoiding.

After my success in the examination, Honoured Aunty withdrew into a bitter world of her own. Her only diversion seemed to be tyrannising the household servants, two of whom committed suicide in a love pact. Even Cousin Zhi forfeited her interest. After this he made a miraculous recovery from his ailments, striving instead to become a rake in the town. Needless to say, his attempts to purchase the goodwill of unsavoury companions depleted Uncle Ming’s coffers yet further.

Only Cousin Hong tried to save the wine business. A year or so after I left to live in Goose Pavilion he had married a compliant, doe-like woman who more than tolerated his temper. They set up residence in the east wing of the house and at once produced little Hongs. Even these failed to stir Honoured Aunty’s grandmotherly affection. Small surprise there, perhaps. But it disturbed me that Uncle Ming paid no attention to his heirs.

Over the years Cousin Hong often complained to me.

‘Ah. Little General,’ he’d say. ‘I sometimes think you brought good luck to our house. Why don’t you move back? Ever since you’ve gone trade has been on the slide.

Take our contract at the Palace. A highly-placed eunuch decided our wine was worse than that bastard Chou-pa’s and that was it! Order cancelled. After twenty years of getting drunk at our expense. I’ve no doubt the eunuch was bribed. But how can I buy people off unless Father authorises the payment? If it wasn’t for the rents we get from our tenants, I could barely balance the books.’

‘Have you explained that to Uncle?’ I asked.

‘Of course, but he’s in a world of his own. Do those poems you studied hold any wisdom for a man in my position?’

I sighed.

‘Only things which I suspect would annoy you. To view the world as a husk of rice. To cultivate detachment and contemplation, so one might be at peace with the Way.’

He looked at me as though I spoke a strange dialect.

‘Little use that is!’ he exclaimed. ‘All your philosophers didn’t have a wife and children to feed.’

‘Some did,’ I said. ‘May I suggest that when the time comes, I teach your children to write. That will defray some expense, at least.’

‘I’ll take you up on that,’ he grumbled.

After so many complaints and withering glares from Honoured Aunty, I was always glad to return to Goose Pavilion.

One night, soon after my meeting with Su Lin in the Gardens of Ineffable Solace, something acrid tickled my nostrils. It was not long after midnight. I stumbled half-awake from my bed and found Mi Feng outside, gazing across the lake at the city.

The whole horizon to the east glowed and the lake ripples ran red. Flames rose like distant signal flares in several districts. Fires were nothing new in the capital, each disastrous, for the buildings within the ramparts were packed close together, dense squares of wood and bamboo. In a single two-storey building dozens of families lived and cooked and lit lamps, the city crammed with peasants who had fled hunger in the countryside.

‘A real blaze,’ said Mi Feng. ‘It reminds me of the time we burned. . .’

He stopped himself. I was too enthralled by the spectacle before me to enquire who
we
were. Billows of smoke rose into the clear night sky, rivers of sparks flowing upwards. Strangely beautiful. Such a thought shamed me.

Loud cracks of collapsing buildings mingled with cries of distress.

‘Mi Feng,’ I said. ‘We should do something!’

He looked at me laconically.

‘Like what?’

‘I don’t know. Anything. It is our duty. Besides, I have relations in the city and there’s another person who. . .’

I peered across the lake to where Su Lin dwelt. No sign of flame there. Mi Feng scratched his chin.

‘Why not ask if the district where your uncle lives has caught fire?’ he suggested.

‘Yes! We shall go at once.’

‘
We
, sir?’ he said. ‘Shouldn’t I stay here and guard the house?’

He looked at me and laughed unaccountably.

‘Maybe it would be best if I went with you.’

So we hurried down the high road into the city. I noticed that Mi Feng had equipped himself with a short, iron-tipped cudgel, but took little notice. Perhaps he hoped to beat down the doors of burning buildings. A bucket would have been more useful.

Soon we entered a fog of smoke and fleeing people.

Families clutched a few household possessions, their eyes dazed. Guardsmen from the palace were stationed on corners, watching the crowds uneasily. I coughed as acrid smoke blew down the street.

‘What district is burning?’ I asked a man, who was guiding his pregnant wife toward the safety of the lake.

Their eyes reflected red sky.

‘All around the Wine Market,’ he said over his shoulder, hurrying on.

As I turned, Mi Feng had the audacity to clutch my arm.

‘Dangerous,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘Dangerous.

What good would it do?’

I shook him off, hurried further into town. When I looked round he was still behind me. The Imperial Way was crowded with people flowing in the opposite direction. Every house awake, its inhabitants gathered fearfully on the street. Sparks drifted like fireflies. It took an hour to reach the edge of the Wine Market. Soldiers and fire-men from the district watchtowers ran to and fro before the blaze, spurred on by their officers. Here the blaze burned fiercest, timber roaring and cracking as it was consumed, the shadowy figures of looters fleeing with whatever possessions they could seize, obscured by dense rolling smoke. Had I wished to proceed further, I could not. Uncle Ming’s house lay behind a barrier of flames and poisonous fumes. Heat engulfed us as the fire-wind picked up. Wherever fire met vats of plum brandy or distilled rice wine, loud explosions echoed across the square.

‘We must go back, sir!’ shouted Mi Feng, in my ear. ‘We can do nothing until morning. We must go back!’

He was right, of course. We were choking fast, had to surface in air or drown. Smuts of soot covered us from head to toe. How I regained my home, I barely recollect.

Mi Feng carried me part of the way, for I had swallowed a floating ember and coughed, coughed like a beggar too feeble to hold out his cup.

The next morning I recovered sufficiently to re-enter the city and make my way to the Great Wine Market. The fire had subsided. Shells of houses still glowed, timbers charred and blackened, mourned by former occupants who stood or squatted before them, their eyes lifeless. At first I thought Uncle Ming’s house had survived the firestorm. The brick boundary walls, though smoke-blackened, stood firm. Yet when I passed through the gatehouse, desolation awaited.

The family mansion was a long rectangle of smoking twisted beams. Even the low octagonal tower where I once dwelt, had been reduced to its foundations. The brewhouse and warehouse had simply vanished, mere rubble and ash. Uncle’s office was no more. Somewhere amid the pile of embers and debris lay the wine-cooler Father had given him on his wedding day.

A few servants crouched near the gates, and I found Cousin Hong among them, clutching an elegant blue and white vase, which had miraculously survived the blaze.