about your age, a man could take a few risks during the fall of one kingdom and the building up of the next. With good luck and quick wit, he had a chance of keeping what he had and adding something to it, doubling it maybe. But the great days are gone, and you’ll never get it as good as I did; and I never had it as good as great-great-great grandfather Kwan did. The good soldier—today he’s turtle-dung.”
Father and son bowed in memory of the man so many generations closer to the Ancestor Kwan whose name was carved on the wooden slab of the family shrine. Then the Old Man resumed, “The Son of Heaven remembers how many Emperors were finished by good soldiers. So, instead of getting better ministers to run the country right, he lets the Civil Service Bureaucracy get stronger every day, getting all the loot, all the face. A handful of generals can’t possibly rob us the way a million bureaucrats are doing. Bastards who’ve never marched arse deep in water or ridden in the teeth of snow, never got more arrows between their teeth than they could spit aside—that’s the Bureaucracy. They grab the goodies, tax us to death, and the mother-lovers never got plough handle calluses on their fine hands—they don’t even get calluses on their lard bottoms. And soldiers and farmers get dung on their pancakes instead of honey, largely because they’re too dumb to tell the difference between the two.”
“Sir—Honorable Father—•”
“Shut up and listen! So these battle-dodging, work-dodging sons of diseased whores get the high positions. Shut up and don’t interrupt me! The reason I want you to be a scholar is so we can have a bureaucrat bastard in the family. You’ll be a magistrate—then a prefect—finally governor of a province. Get enough graft, without being oppressive, mind you—just enough honest cumshaw to buy another two or three or four pieces of land, or clear and improve wooded lands—now listen with both ears—and keep the other bureaucrats from robbing us with taxation.”
“Yes, Honorable Father.”
“That slave girl, Hsi-feng—remember? Well, good family, but not important enough, so what happened? Tough luck, so twenty taels bought her. If the Kwan Family hadn’t had enough land, I might have had to sell your sisters and either you or your brother, just to keep the family topside.
“Family is one of the safeguards against government. Particularly when the bureaucrats crap on the army that keeps the barbarians from Tibet and Mongolia and Manchuria and Turkistan from taking over. Farmers and armies made T’ang great—bureaucrats are ruining it. So I want you to stack up status, and your brother will marry into a worthwhile local landowner family.”
“Sir, Younger Brother fits into your specifications for a bureaucrat—”
“Manure! He’s a good farmer, but he’s too dumb to pass an exam, even if you gave him a book of approved solutions.”
“Well, Honorable Father, I’m not so bright.”
“No, you’re not, but he is dumber. I’m smart enough to know it’s time we got off the dung heap and did things.”
“Sir, when do I go to Ch’ang-an?”
Having got his son conditioned, the Old Man smiled. “Don’t pull such a long face. I’ll tell you when, and meanwhile, read The Book of Rites, or is it Odes? Learn how to be a gentleman. Pour me another cup!”
Ju-hai grabbed the jug and poured wine.
“Yes, revered Father?”
“No more Lan-yin for you. Is that clear?”
“Am I going to a school or to a Buddhist monastery—I tremble and I obey—but—”
The Old Man laughed heartily. “Don’t holler before you’re hurt! Why, in a year of thirteen moons, do you suppose I bought Hsi-feng?”
Kwan Yu-tsun fist-thumped the table. Ju-hai knocked over a wine cup trying to check the one his father had set rolling.
“Between now and the time you go to Ch’ang-an, you’re going to be sleeping with her to find out what it’s like with a girl of good family, instead of with a farm woman.”
Shock left Ju-hai groping. He was wondering whether Mei-yu would drop him like a honey bucket or cling to him and harm Hsi-feng. After some gulping, he said, “I hear, with fear and trembling.”
He meant exactly what he said.
The moment amorous and ardent Hsi-feng crawled into bed with him, he’d have a case of cold horrors from wondering whether Mei-yu would materialize. Or even if she did not appear at the very worst possible moment, he could not help but be apprehensive. Even if she never came to the apartment, the horrible possibility would haunt him, nag him, and he’d be helpless, useless, emasculated without surgery. He’d qualify as a eunuch in the Imperial palace.
After a long silence, the Old Man said, “You look as if the magistrate just told you that you’d be getting the death of a thousand slow cuts. If you can’t do anything else, just imagine she’s Lan-yin until you get used to her.
“Listen, son, a lady of good family is built the same as any other, or that’s what they tell me; I never tried one—I saved her for you.”
“Revered Father—I’m not worthy—you made a sacrifice—”
“Well, all right, maybe, but it’s for the Kwan Family or you’d never got this chance. Son, what’s gnawing at you?” And then the great illumination came to Kwan Yu-tsun. He slapped Ju-hai on the shoulder. “You’ve heard too much nonsense about virgins; no wonder the idea worries you.”
The Old Man’s dissertation on virgins was in line with the standard books on anatomy, gynecology, and folklore. He concluded, “That sing-song girl in Ch’ang-an, the one they said was a virgin, she was a swindle. Every farm boy this side of the Ta-pa Range had her before you came to town. She’d been the house virgin for years. Well, now you’ll know Hsi-feng is the real article.”
And finally, inspiration came to Ju-hai.
“Sir, how long can you keep Little Phoenix from moving in—I mean, without insulting her?” The Old Man looked so perplexed that Ju-hai ended his groping by continuing, “It is this way—first of all, I’ve never let her clean up around here; women always get things into an awfully confused mess.”
“Uh—well—you’ve learned something—and so?”
“There’s more to it than just that. Everyone knows I’ve been sleeping with Lan-yin. Even so, I want to go over everything, just in case she’s left an ear pendant or hairpin or anklet socks or—um—uh—”
Kwan Yu-tsun wagged his head. “Son, you are right, but you can’t win. Seven magistrates and their bailiffs could follow each other, looking for souvenirs of Lan-yin, and any half-witted girl would spot something at first glance.” He got up. “When your Little Phoenix finds a Lan-yin souvenir, tell her so many women have scattered their stuff around that you couldn’t guess whom it belonged to.”
Ju-hai bowed a perfect ninety degrees. Once the Old Man was on his way, Ju-hai fired up nine joss sticks at his personal shrine. He needed gods, Buddhas, and Immortals on his side.
Chapter V
Ju-hai pondered ever more on his unusual facility at jade-craft. Looking back, Mei-yu’s appearance and his apparent instinct for jade set him thinking. There had been a farm boy,
