Winter Cherry . . . now, was different. She might not understand.
So Ah Lai said that it was late and that he must sleep well before his business at the Capital tomorrow.
Winter Cherry was a little surprised at this, but also a little relieved at the deferment. She followed him back to the buildings and sought to find the priest.
The priest was apparently sleeping in the empty guest-room.
When Winter Cherry entered he sat up and looked at her.
She said: “I wanted to ask if it is right for me to try to see clearly all that is in my mind. I am a little afraid of that.”
The priest replied: “Not to see clearly is not to see at all. You cannot see through a rounded, white pebble in a river bed; though the light comes through it you cannot know what is on the other side of the pebble.”
“But is it wise to see?” she asked. “It may be that at the other side of the pebble are things which we would rather not see.”
“That is for you to decide for yourself,” he said. “The boy is your pebble. Do you wish to turn it over?”
“I do not know,” she said. “I am afraid of what I might find. Yet you have shown me how, by facing my own fears, they may be conquered. Do I wish to face all my fears?”
The priest rubbed his stomach. “As food is not food until a man eats it, so a fear is not a fear until it is experienced. You remember the Master’s words? I mean, of course, Lao Tze, who knew Tao. He said: ‘A window may supply the scenery to fill an empty room. Yet the scenery is not in the room. Hear and see, if you like, but shut out wisdom from the mind.’ You are afraid of being afraid. Open your eyes and your ears, but do not think of what you expect to see or hear. Accept it. Does the boy offer marriage? Has he forgotten all the old formalities about go-betweens and parental arrangements? Then he has forgotten them. That is what you see and hear. Accept it.”
“He has not yet offered marriage,” she said. “His is a very famous family, and famous families observe the conventions.”
“You resemble your very capable mother,” he replied. “She is well-gone with child, yet she strives to conceal it by loose clothing, by unchanged behaviour. Is she trying to conceal it from herself? You, girl, know what is in the boy’s mind, yet you strive to convince yourself that it is proper to await a formal declaration or the visit of a go-between. You know the boy’s mind. Show him that you know it. Now I shall go to sleep again, for this is no problem at all.”
He turned his back on her.
But when Winter Cherry had gone to her room, she found she could not sleep. Somehow she had not said either to Ah Lai or to the priest any of the things which she had intended to say, and although she closed her eyes her imagination drew pictures which she did not wish to dispel. She knew that, in her fresh found clarity of thinking, her mind was playing with thoughts which should not be played with by an unmarried girl until all formalities have been completed and, in a closed and stuffy carrying chair, she is being borne swiftly towards her husband’s threshold.
What was it that the Lady Yang had said, when she and the Emperor had made their secret, solemn pledge?
She rose from her bed, lit the lamp and took writing materials.
She wrote:
“On the night of the Double Seven, in the Palace darkness, they were to be two, mating, one-winged swallows—two limbs of a single tree. This is what the Lady Yang Kuei-fei told me about herself and the Emperor. Do you think that I ought to wish for a pledge like this?”
She folded up the paper, carried it to the priest’s room and, tiptoeing silently in, put it where he would be sure to find it near his hand. Then she went back to her room, blew out the light, got into bed and was instantly asleep.
On the twenty-third day of the tenth moon, in the city of Chang-an, Ah Lai stood on the outskirts of the crowd to watch Su Tsung, the late Heir Apparent and now, by his own edict, Emperor, enter amidst a thousand shouts. Ah Lai, as he watched, was thinking of the Bright Emperor, Su Tsung’s father, whom the boy had last seen in Cheng-tu. He thought of the Bright Emperor’s self-condemnatory proclamation promising to hand over the Dragon Throne to his son. He compared the present Emperor’s behaviour with the dignity of the old man in Cheng-tu, deciding in consequence that he was himself becoming old-fashioned, conservative and a slave to ceremonial. He slipped away from the edge of the crowd and went to visit Wang Wei, who was next on his list of those officials present in the Capital during the rebels’ period of power, into whose conduct he had been commissioned to enquire very informally and with a particular care to avoid any suspicion that the Bright Emperor (and so his son) wished to have preliminary information before a formal, official enquiry was opened into their conduct. As he went, he regretted, in a way, that he was compelled to send in a card with only his name and family upon it, instead of the pleasantly grandiloquent title which he might have been able to give himself of Enquirer into Activities of Officials during Rebellion.
Wang Wei was living in a small house in Gate Street. When Ah Lai had sent in his card, the servant returned almost at once with Wang Wei ten paces behind him. Paying scrupulous attention to the old ceremonial of greeting, each went backwards eight paces and then came forward again with repeated bows. Wang Wei led backwards into the room beyond, motioned to a seat which the servant brought up and managed with success the difficult business of sitting down at precisely the same moment as Ah Lai without giving to his actions any appearance of lack of spontaneity.
And still Wang Wei had not spoken a word.
Ah Lai waited for his host to speak, waited indeed for a period greater than the most exact courtesy could prescribe. He was at a loss to account for this seemingly chilly reception.
Finally he said: “I trust that you are in the best of health. I have just come from watching the new Emperor pass towards his Palace.”
Wang Wei touched a small gong beside him. Another servant came in bearing writing materials and a small table.
Wang Wei wrote: My heart is fuller of joy than are the thousand hearts of the people of a hundred surnames who greet his Majesty.
Ah Lai, puzzled, read the paper and said: “Your brush has lost none of its skill, your characters none of their beauty and your sentiments none of their wisdom. If you will pardon the enquiry of one who is too young to know better, is it your meaning that joy can be too deep for spoken words?”
Wang Wei motioned for the paper and wrote with flying brush: I could not serve the rebels. When they brought me here against my will I drank a medicine which removes the power of speech.
Ah Lai read this and asked: “Will the power return? It would save effort if you would signal with your hands. I will try to make my questions such that an answer may be one word.”
Wang Wei signed: Yes.
Ah Lai felt himself more awkward than he cared to admit. His dutiful enquiry was plainly answered already. But courtesy could not have permitted his departure after so short though so embarrassing a conversation. He told Wang Wei what he could remember of the new Emperor’s arrival, followed it with a sketch of the happenings when An Lu-shan and An Ching-hsu had gone to the farm at Ma Wei, and the manner in which Winter Cherry had been treated.
Wang Wei wrote: I remember her at the party: a pleasant girl. Honeysuckle was here yesterday. You should go and see her.
Ah Lai managed to round off his visit with compliments which did not call for a wordy reply and finally, concealing his relief, bowed himself out backwards.