Ah Lai said: “That is only right. I and my friend will go and wash off the dust of travel. We shall look forward to seeing you again.”
Winter Cherry did not speak until they had reached the room. Then she arranged her things and said: “Ah Lai, you have hinted much of what you expect from me. But do not expect what it is not right to expect. I belong to the Emperor, and even if I have run away from the Emperor, I do not mean to give myself to anyone else. Let us be clear on that.”
Ah Lai replied: “My uncle says that I have the confidence of my youth. I know that, when we were at Chang-an, in the Porcelain Pavilion, he kept my presence secret, lest the Lady Yang Kuei-fei, who is said to have a fierce eye for men of my age, should hear of me and make trouble. How different are women! She has to be kept from me, and you tell me to expect nothing. Well, what will be, will be, and . . . .”
She interrupted: “It is only last night since I was with the Emperor.”
“When a woman speaks to you, smile but do not listen,” he quoted from the ancient Li-kin. Then they washed and went out again, and Winter Cherry knew that she felt uneasy. It was strange that men never realised what girls thought or felt, and that Ah Lai took no more seeming note of last night than he did of her warning.
The garden, bright with tended flowers under the sun, stretched behind the house, up the slope. All the others were now grouped, talking, while servants from the house were setting out a round table for the morning meal.
When they had leisurely taken their places, Wang Wei said: “I think that you will quite understand how, in view of the fact that my medical abilities are occasionally in demand amongst such as are unwise enough to desire to defer death, I have ventured to prescribe a morning meal. There are two aspects of this which must be considered—the meal and its eaters. In taking the second first, I am of course pandering to that interest in himself which is natural to man, and in doing so I shall subdivide my subject into the groups of those who, exercised and anxious, await their meal, and those who, with appetites jaded by surfeit and by a method of life which cannot medically commend itself to me, spur food down their unworthy throats in anticipation of some new and perhaps justificatory flavour.”
Ah Lai observed to Winter Cherry: “Hunger grows with air.”
Wang Wei continued: “The food must be both nourishing and appetising. The edge, therefore, shall be taken from your need by a mere preface of chicken broth with previously fried snails and nuts—strange but effective.” He waved a hand and the servants brought in a steaming dish. “Do me the favour of tasting it. It was, you will remember, said of the Master that he was never without ginger when he ate. Ginger, therefore, in fact, shall be the foundation of our second dish. It shall be not only the foundation, but the full limit and extent of that dish. In fact, ginger from jars of Kiang-su porcelain (for clothes enhance the beauty of a girl and a coffin shows the riches of the relatives of the departed) shall be brought to you when you are ready.”
Li Po said, smiling: “I am reminded of the old poem about the morning meal.”
Liu objected: “I have written a much better one.”
Wang Wei said: “The first thought is always the fresher. Let us have yours, Tai Po.” Thus, using Li Po’s social title, he recalled to the younger man that he was younger.
Clear Rain, smiling at Li Po, sang in a rounded voice:
Han Im said: “These expensive little pets know everything which they can use for our discomfiture, Liu. After that classic example of Li Po’s, can you bear to favour us with your own poem?”
“I heard it when I last ate ginger in Kiang-su,” Honeysuckle said. “It goes:
They praised the poem, and spoke of smaller things until the jars of ginger were brought in.
“Preserved in honey,” Wang Wei told them. “It is to be followed by a quite ordinary main dish of rice, chicken, bamboo-shoots and lichen, on which will be laid the foundation of the day’s energies. And now, to formalities. It is only fitting that we should thus welcome our friends the honourable Li Po, the eunuch Han Im, and these two youths whose names I did not catch. It is in the highest degree fortunate that our own stay should have overlapped theirs by one day, for we intend, as you know, to leave tomorrow for the west, away from the rumours of disorders and war which trickle from the Capital source to this, our rural backwater.”
Li Po yawned and rose to his feet. “All that you have so excellently said, we echo,” he observed. “And (since here profound effort seems out of place) I need go no further than the first chapter of the Master’s words to remind you that it is pleasant to have friends coming from distant places and it is equally delightful to be those friends. I would ask you to spare me the need for further felicitations, since I find that the sequence of Indulgence, Hunger and again Indulgence has led to an unconscionable onset of indigestion. I therefore thank you again, and sit down.”
Wang Wei hastened to prescribe a drug from his collection and, when Li Po felt better, the meal proceeded to its end.
The hour of the serpent had just given place to the hour of the horse, and over the bright colours of the garden the silent climax of midday was growing. Liu Shen-hsu caught up with Winter Cherry as she went back to the house, and steered her along a path leading through low shrubs towards a half-moon clearing on the edge of the woods.
“It is useless,” he told her when she had unwillingly sat down to listen, “to continue with this pretence of being a boy. No—do not speak yet. Any man such as myself, with experience of the world, could see at once that your clothes were buttoned on the wrong side. To such a man as I, who lives for the poetry of movement, every gesture is a betrayal of the truth. I do not know who you are, or why you thus masquerade, but the fact that you came with the eunuch, Han Im, and the dissolute poet, Li Po, suggests a puzzle whose key lies in the palace at Chang-an.”
Winter Cherry knew that he was not certain of her sex, and judged that he did not dare to put his theory to the test, preferring rather to let her betray herself. So she said: “You remember the song of Mu-lan? She went to fight the Tatars in place of her father, and for twelve years served in the army. Then, when she finally came home, her fellow-soldiers were surprised to find her to be a girl. The song ends, you know: