confusing—but her words rang true.
Ju-hai made the most of his day and cleaned up the apartment. As he searched for souvenirs of Lan-yin’s days, he was wondering how Hsi-feng and Mei-yu would get along, if ever they did meet. There was no reason why they couldn’t be sworn sisters, as wife and concubine so often were in classical novels.
When he told the Old Man that the house cleaning was done, his father chuckled and said, “Son, you’re getting sense. Everybody in the village knew what was shaping up. Everyone but you. You killed all afternoon crawling around, looking for hairpins, so you don’t have to show up in the fields tomorrow.”
Chapter VI
“Find out what it’s like with a lady—” The Old Man’s words left Ju-hai in a muddle of qualms and self-doubt as distressing as his earlier worryings lest Mei-yu materialize at an embarrassing moment. It never occurred to him that a man twice his age, in like circumstance, could be in a similar emotional fumble.
That Hsi-feng stood by to serve the meal was purely ceremonial. His elbow comfortably planted, Ju-hai dipped chopsticks into every dish, gesticulated with them, picked a morsel of this, a bit of that, and paused for a nip of shao-hsing. Finally she moved, refilled the cup, and again became a Kwan-yin image of serene femaleness.
Ju-hai slapped his chopsticks across a bowl of fried tofu and black mushrooms. He might as well have been trying to eat buffalo hide. She poured a cup of wine. He gulped it.
“Little Phoenix, sit down—I’ve done eating.”
“Yes, Old Master,” she agreed and got a chair. “Where do I sit, ta jen?”
The “great man” pointed to a spot improperly near. “Bring—find—one of those teacups will do—yes, for wine. Or do you want tea?”
She set out teacups and poured wine for two. He had as good as commanded her to drink with him, and she was the perfect slave girl. Ju-hai wished he could be as serene, as poised, as elegant as Hsi-feng. All the devils in Shensi were reminding him that he was not a gentleman; he was a padi field clod, commanded to undress a lady.
Ju-hai grabbed for the refilled cup. He swallowed down the wrong throat and began coughing and choking, convinced he’d never be able to stop. Before he checked the spasm with a gulp of tea, he remembered how simple it had been, that time Lan-yin had brought in his supper. She’d announced that his father had ordered her to explain a few things to him. “It will be a lot simpler for both of us and you’ll like it better if I just show you.”
Taking him by the hand, she’d led him to his bedroom, undressing as they went. He had already had a pretty sound guess as to what was on the agenda, having had an uncommanded initiation by one of the older housemaids. Then, as she was unfastening the loops of her innermost garment, Lan-yin remembered that she’d forgotten to bathe. She set water to heat and sat on the bed, cozily bare, explaining details which he was sure would be more exciting than it had been with her predecessor.
One tub of water was enough for two, turn about, if the first one didn’t splash too much. By the time each washed the other, it was the most natural thing on earth to couple up closely.
Memory and a gulp of wine down the right throat helped him forget his apprehensions and his qualms. Then he said, “Hsi-feng, when the Moon Festival is over, I’m going to Ch’ang-an to study for the examinations.”
The perfect slave girl started as if a hot iron had touched a sensitive spot. Then her fine features were again composed. “Yes, Old Master, you are going to Ch’ang-an. This clumsy wench will—will—be—awfully—sad.”
She vainly tried to rearrange her face again. In a flash, she was on her knees. She knocked her forehead twice against the floor before he could sink to one knee and raise Hsi-feng to her feet. Unwittingly and innocently, perfect yin had shackled fumbling yang. He didn’t suspect that he’d been meshed in seven nets of witchery.
Having touched her hands, he could not let go. She spilled tears so lavishly that the mouth to mouth kiss was a salty, wet business and a feast for starved souls. He couldn’t let go until he had sense enough to fumble with her jacket and get a handful of woman. Meanwhile, she was at work with the loops of an inner garment.
It culminated in a tangle of each other’s hands.
“Old Master, I’ve wanted you, months and months and months.”
“It’s all been such a crazy muddle—”
“All the jade and ploughing and studies…and now you’re going away…”
He didn’t know whether Hsi-feng smelled like Mei-yu, or whether the Immortal had a Phoenix bouquet, and he couldn’t care less, when an armful of girl left no time for metaphysics.
Sunrise awakened the lovers. After they’d broken their fast with supper’s leftover noodles and reheated wine, Ju-hai got the jade pectoral. Having no chain for it, he found a string of twisted hemp. “This will do till I find a chain. Or you find a cord.”
“And all the times I watched you working on this—I never imagined—aiieeyah! How lovely—it looks different, now that it’s for me!”
“And I never imagined it would be a first night present—this was going to be a leave-taking gift. But maybe the jade phoenix will bring luck to my Phoenix.”
“I won’t call it leave-taking,” she declared. “I like the other name. We have from now to Harvest Moon and the Moon Goddess Festival, and I’ll save my crying until after you’re on the road to Ch’ang-an.”
Chapter VII
The full moon of autumn by no means indicated that all the crops had been brought in. The tall kaoliang stalks, green with splashes of red, had come in and so had the maize, but there were the later harvestings, the threshing, the winnowing, and the storing. Much work had yet to be done, but it was time for fun and for paying respect to Chang Wo, the Moon Goddess who ruled all living things and all growth, from the sprouting of seed to the ovum quickening in the womb, whether animal or human. Without lunar yin, solar yang was formless, useless, and had nowhere to go.
Already, the plaza was crowded. Talent from neighboring settlements teamed up with the Kwan folk. Acrobats, jugglers, and lion dancers were lashing lengths of bamboo together to make a stage. Musicians tuned up their new fangled pi-pas from Persia, and made their moon fiddles wail and sing and sometimes screech horribly. Performers raced about to join huddles of others getting their pageant costumes shaken out and unwrinkled for wearing. And voices joined all the plaza’s crowd into a happy madness.
Fires blazed, embers glowed, and spicy fumes drifted from grilles and from kettles.
There were travelers and porters from the salt wells south of the Kin-Ling mountains. The latter worked their way to whatever space they could find. Each had to help another release his burden, for each was bent double by the enormous block of salt he carried; he could rest only by fixing a cross staff to his harness and leaning against it. And among the unburdened travelers, the Mongol shaman, still limping, made his way among the faster moving Chinese whose heads came little above his shoulders. Ju-hai, circulating through the crowd, followed him to an angle of a buttress of the village wall. He began, “So many things to tend to before I start out for the big city tomorrow, I can’t take time for a bit of food and wine with you.”
The Mongol wagged his
