Then the priest said: “The Way of Tao is not possible to understand. But by not understanding it we can understand what it is. Life goes on in pairs—consciousness and no-consciousness, light and no-light, being and not-being. The essence of Tao which we cannot understand escapes us because of its very simplicity. He who follows Tao loses it because he follows it; he who does not seek it finds it because he does not seek it.”
In the still light the smoke from the incense rose like a ruler to break above their heads. There was no movement and the priest was silent long enough for Ah Lai to notice that since his last words the light had grown less. Then the priest went on.
“At birth men are weak and soft; at death they are strong and rigid. Weak grass bends to the wind; the strong tree breaks. Such is the nature of wind, of grass, of a tree. You seek Tao to find it bent out of your path and gone. Tao is everywhere and nowhere; everything lives in pairs.”
Again the sun was lower below the unseen ridge.
The priest said: “The smoke of this incense will be a thin dust tomorrow. Yet there would be no dust but for the incense. She who hanged herself here is dust. To the imaginative, her spirit still moves beneath that beam amidst the smoke which will be dust. She did not bend like the grass.”
Ah Lai nodded. The wall in front of him was very hard to see.
The priest went on: “If Tao teaches, it teaches thus. If a lesson is learned, it is learned thus. In the old books we are told to cut and then polish, but by cutting and by polishing we destroy the nature of the thing upon which we work. Tao, if it speaks at all, would say: ‘Relax; offer no resistance; do not allow the happenings of this world to rouse you into that consciousness which, truly, is the death of being . . .’”
Ah Lai nodded twice and sat up with a jerk. The cloying scent of the incense was in his nose and the room was quite dark. He waited for what he thought was too long and then rose to his feet. Feeling his way round the wall he came to where the priest had sat; past the next corner he could hear Winter Cherry breathing evenly and long. He tiptoed out, closing the door behind him and almost fell over the priest, who was sitting just outside the door.
The priest whispered as he steadied Ah Lai: “Come, my nose tells me that someone is cooking something. The girl will not overbalance. What did you dream about?”
“Nothing,” Ah Lai replied, and they moved together through the dark passage towards a glimmer, the sound of stilled voices and the smell of cooking.
“It is good,” Father Peng said when they were seated, “to see my family thus at the one table. A ceremonial separation of sexes and of ages may be appropriate to ceremonial occasions, but there are times when it cheers my heart to see three generations thus doing all the same thing for the same purpose. That we have as guests here my young supplier-of-last-lines and his friend, the Guardian of the Hidden Spring, alters my opinion not at all. As to the last, may I ask him, while we await the first course of our meal, to make a few suitable remarks? That his Hidden Spring is at least the Hidden Spring of Literature, no one can doubt who has heard him quote the great writers of the past with the same facility as he will, I trust, show with his chopsticks.”
The priest said: “On one occasion when Confucius was reproached by his disciples for saying nothing which they could record for posterity, he is said to have replied: ‘Does Heaven speak? The four seasons succeed each other: generations succeed each other. But does Heaven need to speak about this?’ Yet I would venture to comment on what I have just heard. ‘It is good,’ you said, Sir, ‘to see my family thus at the one table.’ There is, however, one of the family which is not seated here with us. Do I not hear her steps outside the door?”
Winter Cherry came in and went to the vacant seat between her mother and Mei.
The priest went on: “After a good and dreamless sleep, however short that sleep may have been, the appetite should be restored. Ah, here is the first course! Are you amazed that I, whose fellows are supposed to take their nourishment from herbs and roots, should gladly contemplate this thick broth whose purpose is to show that the edge of hunger cannot be thus easily blunted? Do not suffer surprise, for food drains the blood from the head and leaves it the clearer. Let the girl serve the broth to us.” As Winter Cherry did so, serving them in the correct order, he went on: “My young friend, you have a poem which you hoped, happily, to deliver yourself. Give it to me.”
Ah Lai took from his pocket the poem which he had written at Sui-yang, and handed it to the priest. Winter Cherry hesitated between the bowls of Mei and Mooi-tsai. Some of the broth fell on the table. She recovered and filled her own bowl last.
When she had sat down, the priest read the even lines of the poem.
Read thus, the poem hangs together, as a good poem should. Girl, since the poem was addressed to you, read me the odd lines.”
When the priest had given her the paper, Winter Cherry read, in a clear voice as if she did not know what words she was reading:
Then she stopped at the word and broke into noiseless sobbing, her face in her hands on the table before her. The Lady of the Tapestry made as if to comfort her, but the priest interrupted quickly: “Leave her alone. Girl, there are but two words remaining to scan the rhythm—two words and one more line. Read those two words and that one line.”
Winter Cherry looked up, then buried her head again in her hands.
The priest repeated: “Read.”
Everyone had stopped eating.
Winter Cherry said: “I cannot.”
The priest said: “Behind me . . .”
Then Winter Cherry cleared her throat and cried: “It was a red, veil of blood, with the sword rising and falling between me and the blood, and a gong beating in time with my heart.”
“The gong was your heart,” the priest said. “Now read the two lines.”