important sum, but it really led nowhere.
“It will be a lot more than just silver,” Lan-yin persisted. “If Colonel Tsao knows enough about where Ju-hai’s going to school, he can figure things so Ju-hai won’t qualify for the examinations. He—I mean Ju-hai—he is smart, he’s quick-witted, but he’s ignorant about big cities. Get him started drinking and playing around with sing-song girls and gambling—whatever he becomes, he won’t be an official; and if he did make it, Colonel Tsao could get the bureaucrats to transfer him beyond the Great Wall. Once he gets into trouble, Shou-chi will be the Number One favorite. Shou-chi’s a nice youngster, not really dumb, but he’s easy to deal with.”
“Dealing with Old Man Kwan never was easy work,” Chen objected.
“You’re right,” Lan-yin agreed. “But Colonel Tsao knows a lot of generals and civil officials. Suppose the Old Man is nabbed by a conscription officer rounding up another draft of recruits.”
“He’s too old.”
“If Tsao can’t take care of a few military details, then he is too dumb to manage the Kwan lands. He’ll have to have some farmer to help him—a general overseer or steward. You begin to see where we can take a hand—if Ju-hai goes crazy, the way youngsters do when they quit the farm and get among high-stepping city people, and runs up debts. The Old Man will borrow money—”
Chen began to get the point. “And Tsao buys the note? Tai-tai, sometimes I think you’re brighter than I gave you credit for being.”
“Ta jen, I’m not so bright. I’ve just been thinking for months and months…did you see that shaman hobbling about the plaza?”
“With the funniest hat with a crown as high as from my knuckles to my elbow, and not much bigger around than my forearm? And a forked beard? Yes, at the cooked-food stand, he was eating garlic sausages—what about him?”
“Ever since I saw him, I thought maybe I should get some advice. Those shamans give good answers. How much should I pay him?”
“Let him take it out in trade!”
Lan-yin made a mocking face. “You’d have a grand time with his mother. I bet she’s greasier than he is—or your farm girls.”
When, half an hour later, Lan-yin set out for the village inn, she wore a turquoise tunic slit halfway up her thigh and a brocaded jacket, gay with gold. Two jade pins secured her gleaming black hair, and white coral pendants tinkled from her ears. Her makeup, though on the dramatic side, was not glaring; it gave her style.
“Aiieeyah, tai-tai” Chen sounded off, and genuine admiration colored his voice. “If you weren’t such a contentious little bitch, I’d really love you.”
She glanced over her shoulder, gave herself a resounding slap on her silk-shimmering behind. “You don’t know what you’re missing.”
“If only the rest of you were that nice!” he retorted.
He was thinking that, if the disposition of his concubine sequestered in a nearby village could be combined with Lan-yin’s elegant body, he’d have the superior woman.
Lan-yin did not have to inquire at the inn, the Kwan Village information center. By the smoky flame of an oil lamp, she saw the shaman. He was eating pot stickers and gulping hot shao-hsing.
“I don’t know your name,” Lan-yin said, “but they tell me you’re a shaman.”
“Name is Yatu. For once, the dog-turd fools, they told you right.” He plopped a second pot sticker into his mouth. “What’s troubling you?” Yatu tossed off a cup of shao-hsing. “Speak up, woman! Take your thumb out! I’m busy.”
She glanced at the cooked-food man. He said, “I’m too deaf to hear what customers say, and I’m too dumb to understand them if I could hear.”
Lan-yin addressed the Mongol. “Distinguished sir, I need advice. Is this a lucky time for me to speculate in real estate?”
“You must have sold a farm to buy those clothes and that stuff.” He grabbed another pot sticker and gestured for another jug of wine. “You don’t seem to know a thing about shamanizing.”
“If I knew, I’d not be asking you, would I?”
He sniffed the breeze. “You smell funny.”
“I could say a thing or two on that subject myself,” she retorted.
“But you’re just ignorant,” Yatu elaborated, explaining that the drumming, the rattles, the whanging of cymbals, and the bellowings of his familiar spirit would draw a crowd. Even if she whispered her question, the answer would sound like a cavalry charge in a thunderstorm. Yatu concluded, “I live in the Mongol camp outside the wall of Ch’ang-an, west of the Jin Guan Men.” He paused and eyed her, a section at a time. “If you’re in a hurry, round up a couple of musicians to chant and sound off until I’m in a trance. We can go out into the hills four or five li so nobody would hear.”
“Thank you, Old Master, but I’m not dressed for moonlight walking in the Ta-pa Range. Do you have many female customers?”
He refilled his cup and wagged his head. “One of the best whores in Ch’ang-an consults me regularly. She started out as a street slut and now she’s the darling of a prince. Haiii! Don’t get discouraged, maybe I could do something for you.”
Yatu didn’t understand enough Chinese to know what Lan-yin called him, but he smiled and said, “Well, so are you.” Then, to the cooked-food man, he confided, “That flossy bitch is up to some land of dirty work or she wouldn’t be so shy about asking me a question.”
Chapter IV
Before Ju-hai could begin to convince himself that Mei-yu and her promises were other than hallucinations, or the whimsical doings of a devil or a fox-woman to kill an idle hour, he was called before his father instead of going to the village school; and before the talk began, he expected bad news. Nothing short of major disaster would justify cutting a class.
The Old Man, a blocky man well over forty, always looked grim unless he decided that pleasantry would not be unharmonious. His wind-burned, sun-blasted, squarish face was deeply seamed. He was half a head shorter than his eighteen-year-old son, but he stood two heads above the tallest man in the settlement, because he never had to remind even a towering Manchu that Kwan Yu-tsun was in command.
“The Old Man should have been a war lord,” was Ju-hai’s summing up—an exaggeration, yet far from absurd.
Quizzical, almost smiling, the Old Man appraised the boy.
“Son,” he began, “you’re doing well, but things have to speed up. The way it is in Ch’ang-an and the whole dung-eating Empire, I want you to take the examinations sooner than when I mentioned the matter. Do you understand?”
“You want me to get three or four years of study done in two years.”
With his short, solid neck and his head hunched forward, Kwan Yu-tsun seemed a bit hump-shouldered. “All I ever ask for is the unreasonable! My great grandfather told me that that was how the Ancestor did it. That’s why we’re not coolies today.”
“Sir, if I knew more about your
