I am speechless. You misinterpret my shock for joy and are pleased. ‘And from you, Night Coming, I beg a small favour in return. I beg of you to be silent about the fact you are my daughter.’ You are disowning me. I reel as though slapped. ‘You are ashamed that a prostitute of the Gay Quarters is your daughter?’ I ask.
You clear your throat again, the wide cuff of your sleeve hanging down as you cough into your fist. ‘I am head of the Department of Housekeeping in the Imperial Palace. The tale of Bitter Root and Brother Coming is injurious to my reputation. Bitter Root was a feral beast, and I am grateful to the Sorceress Wu for. . severing me from him. She freed me from the libidinous throbs and urges of men and purified me for the higher purpose of serving the Emperor.’
Your calm and reasonable manner is infuriating. I would prefer your honesty. A sneer. A nose wrinkling of disgust as you sling me out, like night soil from a chamber pot.
‘Tell me,’ I say bitterly. ‘Does the Emperor repay your sycophantic and fawning love of him with love in kind?’
Annoyance flashes in your eyes. Then you regain composure with a condescending smile. ‘My love for Emperor Taizong is not a possessive love that demands love in return. My love of the Son of Heaven transcends this ordinary, selfish love. But this is more than I can expect a simple girl from Blacktooth County to understand. .’
Snow is tumbling out of the sky. The crystals of ice melt against my cicada-wing lace gown and my skin, heated by the tempest in my heart. I am trembling, but not with cold. ‘Very well, Eunuch Loyal One,’ I say. ‘I will never speak of Bitter Root again. You have my word. But I don’t want your money. Please take the silver when you leave.’
You are relieved. Now the embarrassing chore of severing ties with your illegitimate child has been taken care of, you are eager to return to the imperial household.
‘Farewell, Night Coming,’ you say.
You nod at the manservant and you both proceed to the gate, leaving the chest of silver behind. Insulted, I am about to shout after you, when a fierce and sudden wind gusts the snow sideways. A cackle of laughter, borne by the Daemons of Wind from over a thousand leagues away, startles both of us. You stiffen and pall. A primal fear creeps into your eyes.
‘Wretched she-brat,’ the sorceress laughs. ‘Are you going to let him get away with treating you like dirt?’
A gust of wind directs my gaze to the leather pouch on the belt of your robe, containing the silver trinket box of your embalmed genitals. I run over and snatch the pouch, and to my delight it comes away in my hand. Aghast, you lunge to grab it back, but I skip away, giggling. I swing the leather pouch by the drawstring in front of you, as though tormenting a starving cat with a dead mouse dangled by its tail.
‘You’ll rot in Hell without these,’ I laugh. ‘The Gatekeepers of the Otherworld will turn you away if you don’t have your precious jewels!’
You turn pale with superstitious fear. I giggle again, giddy to have the upper hand.
‘Brother Coming,’ you shout, ‘return those to me at once!’
‘I am not Brother Coming!’
Offended to be confused with the imbecile Brother Coming, I dash over to the stone well and swing the leather pouch over the dark hole. My fingers are numb and stiffened with cold, and though I do not intend it, the drawstring slips out of their grasp. There’s a moment of silent descent. Then, splash. I throw my hands over my shocked mouth. Snowflakes eddy and spin into the dark hole. You are horror-stricken. You run and leap up on to the circular stone ledge. You perch there like a bird in purple robes, peering into the depths.
‘Master!’ shrieks your manservant. ‘Master, wait! Let me fetch a slave to go down for you.’
You ignore him. Your manservant dashes into Old Temple Lane, calling for the palanquin bearers. There are hand- and footholds on the inner wall that Well-dredger Wang uses to climb down, to scoop out branches and drowned birds with his net. But in midwinter the inner walls are slippery with ice, and to go down is to risk life and limb. Determined to recover your precious jewels, however, you position your foot into a foothold and begin to descend. I say nothing. I gloat at the sight of you demeaning yourself.
A count of three is all it takes before you lose your footing. A scream. A swish of robes cuts from imperial cloth. Splash. I lean over the well’s stone wall and peer into the dark abyss.
‘Eunuch Loyal One?’ I call. ‘Bitter Root?’
I stare into the silence and fathomless dark. The Daemons of Wind moan, and once again I hear a loud and malicious cackling, borne across the Middle Kingdom from a mud-walled dwelling, a thousand leagues away.
XI
I was charged with manslaughter and sentenced to a life of exile in a Daoist nunnery on the Flowery Mountain, where I lived for another twenty-nine years, to the ripe old age of forty-five.
Twenty-nine years of celibacy, prayer and silent meditation. Twenty-nine years of singing scriptures and shaving my head. The older nuns taught me to read and write, and I worked in the nunnery’s silk farm, where I acquired some skills other than the performing act of Cloud and Rain. Every day I fed the silkworms leaves plucked from the mulberry bushes. Every day I watched them grow fat and spin silken thread for me to harvest and sell in Chang’an.
For the rest of my life I was wracked with guilt over your death. During the first eighteen years in the nunnery I was completely silent in repentance. Then I grew old, lost some teeth, and warts and hairs bristled on my chin. I became a wrinkled old crone. When my fingers became too arthritic for spinning silk, I sat on a tree stump near the nunnery, on a path up to the holy mountain peak. I started to speak again, and tell of my past. I accosted travellers and pilgrims, inviting them to come and rest a while and listen to my stories. The Tale-spinning Nun, I came to be known as. A legend of the Flowery Mountain. There is reference to the Tale-spinning Nun in the Tang Dynasty records in the national archives. Go and look me up.
I died while pruning the mulberry bushes on a rainy afternoon in the twenty-eighth year of the Gaozong reign. Many wept. But, to be honest, I was rather relieved.
7. Year of the Rat
‘WHAT ARE YOU reading, Driver Wang?’
Wang blinks up at her. Rain, her name is Rain. Seventeen years old. ‘Hip-hop baby’ T-shirt and acid-washed, hip-hugging jeans. One of the not-so-pretty ones, but not from lack of lip gloss and efforts with the curling tongs. Rain taps her foot. Her eyes are so bored and vacant they verge on hostility. The transition from past to present disorientates Wang. Reading? He looks down at the pages he has spent the last two hours shuffling in his hands.
‘A story,’ he says.
‘What kind of story?’
‘A Tang Dynasty folktale.’
‘Oh.’
‘Not interested in history?’ he asks.
Silver earrings jingle as she shakes her head. She has a dish cloth in her hand. ‘I need to wipe the table.’
Rain is from the same Sichuan village as all the kitchen girls, and came to Beijing to take over from her pregnant cousin, knocked up by Driver Li. Recently graduated from junior high, Rain’s cheeks had dimpled on her first working day, as she smiled at the drivers, full of good cheer. But four months in Beijing have changed her. Now during the lunch rush Rain has the same attitude of the other sourpusses. Humourless and efficient. Sullenly dragging her heels against the fate of marrying a driver.
‘You’re here late, Driver Wang,’ Rain says. ‘It’s three o’clock. Don’t you have a job to do?’
Wang curses. Three o’clock. Scraping back his chair, he stands to leave.
‘Happy New Year,’ says Rain.