Perhaps two days after our studies began, Tussah sniffed into the workroom, her son – whom everyone called Little Monkey – resting on one bony hip. Springgauze was leading Second Daughter and me in chanting a weaving song written in the women’s language.
‘Younger Brother’s Wife!’ Tussah gasped. ‘Whatever are you doing?’ Before Springgauze could answer, Tussah grabbed the text and whirled off, looking for her mother-in-law.
Springgauze smiled at us apologetically. ‘So that’s what I looked like when I snatched that scrap of paper from you. First Daughter Li.’ She screwed up her mouth and narrowed her eyes, to make herself look like Tussah. We all laughed.
Tussah may have heard us; or she may have blamed us for the face she lost when she ran to inform Widow Chian, only to learn that the lessons had been authorized by the widow herself. In any case, she ignored us at mealtimes for the next few days and kept herself too busy with Little Monkey to help out in the workroom – not that that was so unusual.
Soon her husband returned from a journey of some months.
Tussah fluttered around him, assuming girlish airs that suited her far less than her mother-in-law’s gravity would have done. Her chief goal seemed to be to get herself pregnant with another grandson for the widow, and so ensure her ascendancy over Springgauze.
She was successful. By the year’s eighth month, she was spending most of her afternoons in the coolest comer of the courtyard with a neighbour woman, discussing suitable names for the next son of the house of Chian.
Unfortunately, they also talked of other things. ‘Good news, dear mother,’ Tussah announced at supper one day towards the end of summer. ‘Auntie Ren has suggested a possible husband for the pockmarked hired girl!’
Second Daughter’s face paled, and all light left her eyes. But what could she say? Certainly it was suitable for an employer to arrange a wedding for an orphan servant. Yet I knew that ever since finding another way to leave her father’s house. Second Daughter had put the necessity of marriage quite happily from her mind.
‘And you’ll never guess who,’ Tussah continued, oblivious to the silence in the room. ‘Old Man Tuo! Can you believe the toothless gaffer is hankering for young flesh? And he’s so hard up that we should come off rather nicely in the exchange of family presents. None of our local girls will have him, of course.’ She let loose a flat imitation of Springgauze’s merry laugh. ‘Think of it. He’s so blind he’ll hardly be able to make out those craters in her skin.’
Unseen beneath the table, my hands reached out to rest on Second Daughter’s knee. We’ll run away, I tried to make the pressure say. And when she looked at me, I saw that if we didn’t someone would find her body in the well.
Then Widow Chian drew her straight spine straighter. ‘I thank my daughter-in-law for her concern,’ she said. ‘But I can manage these affairs myself. The girl’s just been trained and shows no sign of misbehaviour. We won’t bring the matter up with him just yet.’ Tussah’s narrow mouth snapped shut, and soon she carried Little Monkey off to bed.
‘She won’t forget, you know,’ Springgauze whispered later to Second Daughter and me. But for some months it seemed as if she had.
Near the Malachite Pond
Her hands pale as the purest jade from the fabulous riverbed of the Yurung Kash, the devotee approaches the Western Motherqueen. She has paced out the ritual steps on the sacred meadow, its precincts defined by brilliant feather banners. She has abstained from mortal food until her flesh achieved the lightness of a bird. She has united with a divine lover, summoning him by her longing and her disciplines, learning from him the last of the teachings that led her to this state of power and grace. She has called forth, through meditation and techniques of the breath, spirits that swell within the body, as one might recover a mother submerged within the self. Now she can fly across the great desert to Kun-lun’s peaks, to the argent ramparts of the Western Halls of Jade.
Within those high walls, in a garden of white willows and pallid coral trees near the Malachite Pond, the Motherqueen listens to her musicians play. The devotee steps forward, makes deep and reverent obeisance. A jade maiden offers her a chilled dish of herbs and mushrooms, a refreshing drink from the Glassy Alabaster Springs. She accepts. And waits.
The limpid music ends. The leopard tail of the goddess sways gracefully, once, twice, a third time. She turns to the devotee, nods permission to speak. As she nods, her starry loom-crown shines in her disordered, snowy hair.
On behalf of a certain wandering hermit who made his way from holy Flower Mountain to the Taoist vista where the devotee dwells, she would like to have one of the Amah’s blue-black ravens carry a message – a brief poem – to the young woman in the southland.
‘You would, eh?’ the Motherqueen asks. Her tiger teeth glint. ‘But has she not already been sent some scrap of poetry?’
The devotee’s lovely eyes widen. She shakes her head. ‘I know nothing of that. Amah,’ she says. ‘I would take the message to her myself, if I could travel freely. Indeed, I long to see her.’
The leopard tail curls itself neatly across the feet of the goddess. She remains silent. Perhaps she listens.
‘As I always long to see you. Amah,’ the devotee adds, hastily and sincerely. ‘Remember, please, that the request is made for a man who journeyed far to seek out wisdom, a man to whom I am transmitting sacred teachings. As you would wish me to do.’
The tiger teeth glint again, but this time in a smile. ‘Well said. I shall consider the request. But I do know something of this case. I’m certain that a poem has already…’ She gazes into the distance: considering? listening? ‘Ah!’
The jade maiden’s head whirls round. The goddess meets her knowing eyes, then looks back at her devotee. ‘That poem was sent down by the Moon Lady. Yesss. To remind your little friend –1 must tell you, she’s let herself stray from her quest – to remind her where things stood. I’ll give you a copy if you like. Well, perhaps this second poem will jar her loose. Let me have it, and I’ll have a messenger bird sent off soon. Now stay and rest awhile. Listen to this next melody.’
PARROT
SPEAKS:
22
Another poem, less cryptic than the one Redsteed had found, brought me trouble from poor malicious Tussah. It arrived in the tenth month; all the women of the household were gathered in the courtyard folding lengths of silk. I glanced up to see a blue-black raven flying towards us from the west, a slender roll of rice-paper dangling from its beak.
The raven’s feathers glowed like no mortal bird’s. Tussah shrieked. The bird perched, undisturbed, on my shoulder. Everyone stared as it hopped down to my hand, dropped the roll of paper, and flew away.
‘A demon!’ yelled Tussah. The girl’s a demon in disguise, come to spoil next year’s silkworm hatching. I had a feeling she’d cause trouble.’ She bobbed her head towards her mother-in-law. ‘Your pardon, good Mother. But I knew! I knew!’
That will do,’ said the widow. ‘First Daughter Li, I believe you’d best see what the bird has brought.’
‘Yes, ma’am.’ Unrolling the slip of paper, I read it to the group:
Poem Sent to Someone Far Away
I climb the stony path to Flower Mountain.
White clouds wrap the Flower Mountain peak.
The falling waters’ spray paints dry moss green.
Then moonlight turns the gaudy hillsides grey.
A locust casts its hollow shell aside;
A yellow crane’s born from the Primal Egg.
Who will sit alone on rocky outcrops
And, whistling, summon up ten thousand spirits?
I read every word aloud, except the signature at the end.
‘Interesting,’ was Widow Chian’s only comment. ‘I suppose it’s from one of those silly hermit fellows, run off from his family responsibilities to traipse about after sylphs.’ Practical best describes her attitude towards the spirit world. Maintaining the house of Chian, in which her own strength lay
, was the force that drove her life.
‘A poem from a hermit?’ exclaimed Tussah, narrowing her eyes. ‘ “Run-off fellow” hits the mark, I’d say. Good Mother, if the girl’s lover is so audacious, she’ll bring disgrace down on our house for sure.’
‘I don’t have a lover!’ I said with enough heat to make a lesser person doubt me. But Widow Chian only nodded, as if to say, I know you don’t.
‘We’ll accept this as a good omen,’ she said. ‘And’ – she paused just long enough to rest her gaze on Tussah – ‘we’ll say nothing of it to anyone outside the house.’
Second Daughter had guessed immediately who sent the poem. We talked late in low voices that night, puzzling out the implications of the words and wondering how Sparker had managed to have the thing delivered by a messenger from the Western Motherqueen.
Shortly before cockcrow, the sound of pecking on our little wooden shutters woke us up. I opened them and the blue-black raven flew in to perch on the rush mat where I slept. It cocked its head at me expectantly.
‘What answer will you send?’ asked Second Daughter. ‘Lucky you’re a poet! Imagine if I’d been here alone,’ She smiled.
I fought a sudden dryness in my mouth. ‘I can’t just write a poem because you want me to,’ I said.
Hurt spread across her face. But before Second Daughter could answer, Tussah’s sharp tones in the courtyard let us know we were late starting the fire and preparing the morning rice. We ran out to the kitchen and made certain that the widow saw how hard we worked that day. I felt my friend’s dissatisfaction, her certainty that the poem must be written, and from time to time a suitable phrase glimmered in the back of my mind. Yet how could I make a poem out of our failure to enter the lake?
The next morning the glowing bird pecked at the window again, though I ignored it. That evening I wrote out a simple letter, telling Sparker that all went well with us, and the news of Baby and Feng. I felt better when I’d finished, as if the telling had eased something, and looked forward to the morning, when I could send it off and have the whole thing done with. Life at Widow Chian’s had lulled me with its orderliness; I wanted no disruptions.
But when the raven came to our window and I offered it the rolled-up paper, it tapped its beak against it once, then flew away.
‘Sister,’ Second Daughter said. ‘Feng told me that poem you composed in Shamanka Gorge had a tricky verse form. He was impressed by your talent. Besides…’ She paused to place her folded quilt on the foot of her bed. ‘The poem will make Sparker happy. It may even win us the favour of the Motherqueen.’ She stepped closer. ‘And that brings us to your mother at last.’
Widow Chian bought only the cheapest paper and brushes for our writing lessons; the refinements of the calligrapher were not for her. Still, I found one sheet thinner than the rest and, by the shaded light of a candle Second Daughter smuggled to our bedroom, wrote out eight lines in the same rhyme and metre as Sparker’s poem. Once I set thoughts of failure aside and made up my mind to begin, the words came easily after all:
Thinking of the Flower Mountain Hermit
From a southern village, I watch the Yangzi’s moon
And think of you, a wanderer in the hills.
Swathed in silks, I dip my writing brush.
In rags and vines, you climb that stony path.
Your shack is bare, the doorsill banked with leaves.
Yet meditation bell-sounds cleave the thickets.
Now I know: true landscape’s not on scrolls;
The best poem is a hermit’s fishing song.
In the morning, the bird took the thread-bound poem in its beak and flew off westwards at last.
Winter came and life passed quietly. Tussah grew more irritable as her body swelled, so we avoided her as best we could. Sometimes Second Daughter spoke of going to Cavegarden Lake again. But what could we do, I argued, now that the Moon Lady had withdrawn her aid? In truth, I was not anxious to leave the household: my place there was lowly, but it was comfortable, and mine. Though I worked long hours, I loved the rhythmic clinking of the looms, the pure colours of the thread come back from the dyer, and most of all the shimmer of the undyed hanks. Towards year’s end, both of us caught colds, and our dry coughs lingered with us into spring.
Late the first morning of the third month, Tussah went into labour. By evening, there was still no end in sight. Widow Chian stayed by her daughter-in-law through the night, wiping her forehead with damp cloths and murmuring encouragement.
When day broke, the widow set us three childless ones to our weaving, saying there was nothing we could do for Tussah. Her friend Auntie Ren had come over from next door to help; she would be company enough. Widow Chian instructed Spring-gauze to get things ready for spreading the silkworm eggs on the warming trays to hatch. We would start them off the day after tomorrow, she said, after the birth and the festival on the third.
Tussah’s daughter arrived just as evening fell. The mother loosed one last exhausted shriek, the weak-lunged baby spat out a feeble wail, and Auntie Ren shouted out in tones heavy with false joy, ‘A young lady! A precious little lady for the house of Chian.’ Running into the bedroom with Springgauze and Second Daughter, I heard Tussah groan.
When I saw her, her face was turned away. Widow Chian sat beside her, stroking her sweaty hair. Auntie Ren held the baby out to us, her arms stiff, her tongue unmoving for once. The poor child’s forehead puffed out unnaturally, and even as Auntie Ren held her I could see the twist of her spine.
Springgauze began to weep at once, her delicate back shaking, violent with pity. Second Daughter smoothed one finger down the baby’s soft cheek. I pressed my hand against my own mouth, then followed Second Daughter to stand looking at the little girl. I could not speak.
Tussah hissed something too faint to be heard. In a spiteful whisper she began to scold her sister-in-law for crying, but broke off when Widow Chian held a cup of fruit juice to her lips. ‘It’s them, isn’t it?’ she said flatly a moment later. ‘My first baby was healthy, and then those two arrived. See what they’ve done – cursed me with a girl, an ugly, monstrous girl.’ In a weak and toneless voice she began to rail against us and her own evil fate.
Even the widow had been taken aback by Tussah’s attack on Second Daughter and me. When she recovered, she curtly waved the three of us out of the room. Standing stupidly in the courtyard while Second Daughter calmed Springgauze, I heard the widow order Auntie Ren to go to the kitchen and make a tonic for Tussah. We three still stood there, shocked and aimless, when Auntie Ren returned with a steaming bowl. Passing us, she quickly sketched a gesture with one hand, a sign the country people use to ward off evil.
The events of the next hour blurred even as they took place. Springgauze stopped crying and sat with Second Daughter and me in a dark comer of the courtyard, near the bedroom window. The old cat Grizzle stalked moodily past us more than once. The baby’s thin, hungry wailing rose and fell. Tussah muttered angry words. Then Widow Chian slapped her, and she fell into quiet tears of exhaustion and, I think, self-loathing.
Finally, the wretched baby’s wailing stopped. ‘Poor Tussah’s given it the nipple at last,’ said Springgauze. But before any of us could say another word, the Widow Chian came out into the courtyard, holding a candle. We three drew together, facing her.
‘The child is dead,’ she said. ‘It is a blessing. She would have hurt this family. But – hush now, Springgauze – there is something else: Tussah still says the hired girls cursed her baby and swears she will not share a roof with them.’ She paused. ‘First and Second Daughter Li, you’ll have to go.’
Faced with the imperturbable candlelit countenance, neither of us dared speak. Dryness seized my throat. This, then, was the end of my attempts to live as a proper daughter of Great Tang. Springgauze began to argue with her mother-in-law, but the widow cut her off.
‘No, I don’t suppose the two are demons. I rather doubt such creatures trouble themselves very often with human affairs, t
o tell the truth. And many a malformed baby dies earl,’ – she shifted her gaze to stare at the candle’s flame – ‘one way or another. But my first son’s wife has an active tongue. She’ll bring down the real curse of idle gossip and slander upon the house of Chian. I won’t have that.’
Springgauze argued further. The silkworm-rearing season would soon be upon us, those frantic days and nights of gathering leaves and feeding. Moreover, she added, finding and training new workers to reel and weave the thread would be impractical.
‘Indeed,’ Widow Chian replied. ‘But more impractical to lose trade because we’re thought to be a house under a curse. We cannot lose our good name. The two may stay till morning. Good night.’ She turned back to Tussah’s room. Second Daughter listened to Springgauze a while longer, then we packed up our belongings and got what rest we could.
Shortly after dawn we took our leave. At the gate, Springgauze wept, then brushed away her tears. Widow Chian pressed some cash into my hand. ‘I know it’s an odd thing,’ she said, ‘to want a girl before one has half a dozen boys at least.’ I saw in the fresh daylight how tightly the skin on her unwrinkled face was drawn. ‘But I should have liked a girl, a healthy one, who was as quick to learn as either one of you.’ The widow caught herself then and ended with a grave and brief farewell.
Without discussing it. Second Daughter and I had put on, for the first time since our arrival in the village, our swords women’s clothes. I suppose we thought they would offer us some protection. This was, after all, my first journey without a guardian – Nanny or Ghalib or the goddess of the moon.
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