Then the servants brought in jellied duck soup, tamed out from little bowls, and everybody laughed at Clear Rain’s song.
“What is poetry coming to?” Wang Wei demanded “To an old man like myself such innovations in rhyme seem to fall between bad verse and bad prose.”
Ah Lai said, from his position at the table: “When I write the poems which will make my name immortal, they will have rhymes like those.”
Liu suggested: “And now let the third member of this trio of girls do something to contribute to our pleasure. So far she has merely sat and eaten, and eaten and sat. Let her perform.”
“She has been ill lately,” Honeysuckle said. “If you would have the kindness to excuse her . . .”
“You see how pale she is under her powder,” Clear Rain added.
Liu persisted: “If she comes here to entertain us, she can surely do more than sit like the spirit of a white fox in the mist . . .”
Winter Cherry volunteered: “I can play the flute.”
“You see!” Liu cried. “She has a tongue, besides the other things which we would expect a woman to have.”
Ah Lai said: “I want to hear the other two girls sing again. She can play while they sing.”
Wang Wei, reprovingly, observed: “You are the youngest man here.”
Han Im, who had spoken little during the first part of the meal, interposed.
“I shall tell a story,” he said. “If, after that story you all feel as you felt before—well. If not—well, also.”
Wang Wei asked: “So is your story a destroyer of appetites?”
“No,” Han Im replied. “It concerns a man whose name was Tseng, who lived during the great dynasty of the Hans, and is known as the story of the man who was jealous of his housekeeper.”
“I have not heard this story,” said Wang Wei, and they all prepared to listen.
“There was once, in a city of the state of Lu,” Han Im began,” a man whose wife had, against his will, entered into a compact with the moon-spirits, so that she was unable to cook for him or to perform any of her household duties. Finding this state of affairs intolerable, he sent her back to her father’s family with a letter to explain the matter, for it seemed more fitting to him that her parents should have the necessity of breaking this compact of hers—a compact which must in some measure have been clue to a lack of proper parental upbringing—than that he, her husband, should be compelled both to endure the indigestion caused by her cooking and to undertake the no doubt lengthy process of re-education and exorcism.”
“I have met cases like that in my medical experience,” Wang Wei put in. “They are usually incurable.”
Han Im continued: “Yes. Well, when he had got rid of his wife and put up the statutory notice to that effect upon his main house-door, Tseng began to look round for a housekeeper. He felt, reasonably enough, that he would prefer not to commit himself to any permanent arrangement after the so obvious failure of his marriage, of which there had been no issue. With a housekeeper who may be dismissed at any time, a man has the advantage of the method of trial and error. After a week’s search and enquiry amongst his friends and acquaintances, he was told of a woman who seemed in every way suitable. She, too, had been driven to independence by the strange conduct of her own partner, who had excited the interest of the neighbours by stripping his wife naked at the village well and painting the Buddhist symbol of the mantse in eight different places on her bare skin. This done, he had allowed her to find her way home alone, saying that, if she followed The Eightfold Path, she could only go astray seven times.”
Liu Shen-hsu observed: “There is much of this religious symbolism even nowadays, when we should imagine that the superstitions of earlier dynasties would have been swept away by better education.”
They had finished the jellied soup, and the main dish of shredded duck, rice, peppers and mushrooms was brought in.
Han Im continued: “The man Tseng engaged this woman and settled down to a quiet life, prepared to try her in all ways. He found almost immediately that a housekeeper is more expensive than a wife, since it is needful to provide her with both salary and housekeeping money, but she seemed a good cook in ail respects save one, and that difficulty (for she proved incapable of boiling beans to the right degree of edibility) was overcome by hiring a girl who possessed some experience in the matter. The housekeeper soon found that the girl (whose name, if it matters, was Dawn Gate) could cook more than beans, and rapidly handed over to her all culinary duties. This girl’s pay, though small, had also to come from the not-too-capacious sleeves of the man Tseng. Nevertheless he felt that the absence of indigestion made up for much of the expense.
“One day he sent for the housekeeper, and when she had stood before him long enough for him to muster his thoughts, he addressed her thus: ‘When I engaged you, it was understood that, in return for your salary, you should undertake all the household duties. I do not object greatly to the hiring of the girl Dawn Gate, for certainly she can cook well, and she is not expensive, as girls go. But today I was told in the market place that you are seeking to hire another girl to do the sewing and mending. If this goes on, you will soon have as many as ten girls to do your work, and this was not my intention when I engaged you. What have you to say to this?’
“His housekeeper replied: ‘What you have said is very true, and yet, if you had not engaged me, you would be subject to the demands of all these various girls, unable to defend yourself. As it is, I stand between you and them. Thus you may in peace and confidence see your household kept in order, while I, in return for my labours in organising and controlling them, enjoy for a short time each day a little leisure and freedom to reflect on the causes which have thus satisfied both of us.’ Tseng looked at his store of silver, now not so large as before, and said: ‘That is all very well, but I think that, in order to satisfy both ourselves and our neighbours, it would be better if you came into my household permanently. Thus you would gain warmth at night and authority in dealing with the girls.’ His housekeeper answered, laughing: ‘And you would be saving my salary and gaining the right to paint religious symbols on my person! Oh, no: if the arrangement does not suit you, I can always return to my own husband. I hear from friends that he has spoken kindly of me since I left him. Then you would be able to do what you will with the girls of your house. The sewing-girl comes tomorrow. She is a big, powerful girl, and I cannot think why she has not married already. Her name is Deep Well, and I expect that the name suits her.’ She bowed and left him.”
Clear Rain observed: “He seems to have had all the trouble and expense without the usual compensations.”
Han Im went on: “Tseng was perplexed by this state of affairs, and often, when he knew that his housekeeper was sleeping soundly in her room while he, from behind the lock of his door, had perpetually to be assuring his growing number of maid-servants that he needed nothing more save quiet, he would reflect on the days when his difficulties were limited to one woman, and his store of silver was higher than now.
“Then, one day, he found that a ball of paper had been put into the lock of his room, so that the key would not turn. He went to his store, and found that his housekeeper had moved it to some other hiding-place. As he was leaving the house, his housekeeper called after him: ‘You are going out?’ But determination lent wings to his feet, and he did not answer her. He went to the nearest Buddhist temple and took vows as a novice. Here, in the peace of religious contemplation, he forgot to consider his indigestion. The housekeeper, who had chosen her sewing-maids carefully, now set a blue lantern over the door and began to invite, to the house the men of the town. The store of silver grew higher and higher. Dawn Gate proved very popular, and Deep Well justified her name. The housekeeper’s husband, hearing of this, came to live in the house on the best possible terms, since he could not be turned out by his own wife, and the only loser was the wife of the man Tseng, for the magistrate, hearing of the illegal compact with the spirits of the moon, had her whipped in public and sent to another city. The man Tseng, when he was being initiated into the full Buddhist faith, reflected that the little pastilles of burning sulphur which had been stuck to his shaven head really caused much less pain than the loss of his house, his money and his position. That is all the story.”