“Keep your hands off me,” the fellow ordered the servants as they grabbed him. “You’ll be sorry for this,” he cried to Guanji as they hustled him out. “More sorry than you dream.”
“I’m sorry already,” said Guanji, and went back to reading his letter.
But the truth was that the interview had shaken him, and he was glad that afternoon when the visit of Mr. Yao and the two ladies obliged him to put it out of his mind.
* * *
—
It took Mei-Ling a little while to realize how perfect the general’s house was—and to understand why. It was set on rising ground above the lake. Seen from a distance one might have supposed it was a little monastery with a bell tower in the grounds.
As they arrived at the outer gate, she saw that the main building was essentially a Chinese courtyard house, not unlike her own family’s farmhouse in the south. The courtyard was about the same size, but seemed grander—perhaps because the walls were higher and the central hall taller and more spacious—almost like a mansion in a provincial town.
The general greeted them affably and led them to a doorway on the left side of the yard. Here, in what would normally have been family bedrooms, he had created a single long gallery to house his collection.
Against the wall at one end of the gallery stood a big cabinet. Paintings on silk, in protective frames, hung on the walls. But there was no other furniture or decoration. All the rest of the space was given over to the seals.
She had to admit, he’d done it beautifully. Right at the start, rather than let his little museum grow in a piecemeal fashion, he’d ordered first-rate craftsmen to construct a showcase that ran the entire way down the center of the gallery, with glass doors on either side and two broad shelves between.
“I was lucky,” he explained to them. “A good collection, the life’s work of an old scholar, came up for sale just as I was starting. It contained work from almost every period. So I bought the lot, and that formed what I call the spine of my collection. All I’ve had to do since is take good advice and add flesh and bones, so to speak.”
Mei-Ling eyed the display. It was already handsome. Some of the seals lay on the shelf with their stamp face outward. Others, whose backs were elaborately sculpted, were displayed facedown so that one could admire the carving. The majority of the seals were wood and stone, but some were bronze or other metals, or even jade. In every case, the item was accompanied by a little square of thick paper displaying the stamp in red ink.
She noticed something else. Though both the shelves had been used, the seals were widely spaced, with the lower shelf reserved for the most special articles. Given that one could view from both sides, it was obvious that there was room for the collection to grow to two or three times its present size inside the existing case without its looking crowded.
The general had made his battle dispositions well. They were thorough, but also flexible.
Mei-Ling heard a grunt of admiration from Mr. Yao. The porcelain merchant knew a good display when he saw one.
The general was an excellent guide. He took them on a journey through time, showing how the seals had developed while often retaining elements of primitive Chinese characters from thousands of years ago. Several times he also paused in front of paintings on the wall. Some were mountain landscapes. Others depicted people or animals. In each case, the painting was graced with a few vertical lines of calligraphy, to which collectors had added their red stamps.
“Whenever I acquire a new seal,” the general explained, “I try to obtain a piece of work—a painting or a book—that bears the same stamp. A great collector’s stamp often adds value to a work of art, and it may add beauty, too. Of course I’m just a beginner, but the real connoisseur builds up a huge knowledge. He comes to see into the mind of both the artist and the collector. It starts like a game and becomes like a drug.” He smiled. “A good drug.”
At the end of his presentation he led them to the cabinet at the end of the room. He opened it and Mei-Ling saw a dozen of the long, handsome, leather-bound boxes that contained scrolls, and also a number of flat books bound with silk ribbon. He took one of the books out and pointed to its title page.
“This book dates from the Ming dynasty. It’s about the conquest of China by the Mongol descendants of Genghis Khan more than five centuries ago. As you can see, it has been stamped with a fine collector’s seal just beside the title.”
“We saw that on a painting,” said Bright Moon. “I recognize it.”
“You have an excellent eye.” The general bowed, and Bright Moon looked pleased. “But there’s something wrong with the title. I wonder if anyone can see what it is.”
They all looked.
“A character seems to be missing,” said Mr. Yao.
“Indeed. We can see the gap where it was.”
“So it’s been erased,” said Yao, “yet I can’t see any sign of the erasure.”
“Nor can I, my dear sir. It must have been done with great skill. And now I’ll tell you the missing word: Barbarian.” He beamed at them all. “Although the Mongols—the Yuan dynasty, as we call them—were all-conquering warriors, the Han Chinese still considered them barbarians. When the native Ming dynasty came to rule our land once more, they usually referred to the Yuan as ‘the Barbarian Yuan.’ And that’s what was written here: the Barbarian Yuan. But after some centuries the Ming were kicked out by our present dynasty, the Manchu—who I need hardly tell you were another group of barbarians from the north, part Mongol themselves. My people!” He gave a big grin. “We didn’t like the epithet barbarian being applied to the Yuan, because then it might just as well be applied to us.”
“Was the word forbidden then, throughout the empire?”
“An attempt at censorship was made, though never with much conviction. Funnily enough, it was some of the Manchu emperors themselves—as you know, they were quite scholarly—who got bored with it first. But the collector whose red stamp we’re looking at now, having acquired the book in Manchu times, wasn’t taking any chances. So he erased the word from the title page. Then he started to erase it from the text, but it must have been too much trouble, because I discovered that after a few pages he gave up.”
“You certainly do your homework,” said Mr. Yao.
“It’s my hobby,” the general replied easily. He turned to Bright Moon and Mei-Ling. “But I want you to know, ladies, that I understand my place. At the end of the day, I’m still just a humble barbarian from the north.”
It was nicely done. An exercise in self-deprecation by a Manchu noble to the family of an upstart Chinese gentleman—not to be taken seriously, but charming. Even Mei-Ling had to smile.
And she continued to smile, until she saw her daughter’s face.
Admiration. Suppressed excitement. It was understandable. Here was a man of a type she had not met before. A Manchu noble. A soldier-scholar. A man who showed her respect. A man of experience, a man of the world, a man who had the self-assurance to laugh at himself. A superior man. Younger than her husband.
It was just as she’d feared. Her daughter was about to fall in love with the general and destroy herself, and Mei-Ling didn’t know what she could do about it.
“Is there anything more to see?” Bright Moon asked.
“The only other seals I have are the most recent acquisitions. I keep them with me and study them in my private room upstairs until I’ve learned all I can about them. Then I put them in the showcase down here.” He turned to Mr. Yao. “I’ve never taken anyone up there before, but I can show you if you like.”
“By all means,” said Mr. Yao.
“There’s a nice view,” said Guanji to the ladies.
* * *
—
They went through a small garden beside the house, then out by a gate onto the wooded slope. A curving, stepped pathway led them up about
fifteen feet to a ledge overlooking the house, where a charming little pavilion with a Chinese roof had been constructed. So this, Mei-Ling realized, was what she’d mistaken for a bell tower from a distance. “My little hermitage,” Guanji explained.
It was very simple. A good-sized single room. Against the far wall was a desk with a chair and some open shelves on the wall above it, on which she could see a dozen sealstones awaiting their owner’s attention. Some papers on the desk and a tray with writing equipment suggested that the general had been working there earlier in the day. A small cabinet beside the desk, a clothes chest in one corner, and a handsome divan directly opposite the window completed the furnishings.
Mei-Ling looked at the divan. “You sleep up here?”
“Usually.” The general smiled. “I am just ‘a hermit with a bed full of books.’ ”
She caught the reference—to a famous poem about the onset of winter and old age. She glanced at him cynically. “I am sure you find ways of keeping warm, General,” she said, then inwardly cursed herself. It might sound as if she were flirting with him.
If so, he courteously ignored it. “There’s no fire up here, as you see. But as a soldier I grew used to sleeping in tents or even in the open.” He gestured to the window. “I like the fresh air. Normally I sleep here until well into the autumn. Then I go back into the house for the winter.”
Bright Moon had already gone to the window to look out. It was a wide window, without any hangings, but with big wooden shutters to keep out the rain and the wind. The shutters were wide open now, and there was a wonderful view over the house and garden below and across the lovely waters of the West Lake. Mei-Ling joined her, and mother and daughter remained there in silence while, behind them, the two men talked.
The general was showing Mr. Yao one of his new purchases. Mei-Ling couldn’t hear exactly what the general was telling him, but she heard the merchant reply, “Ah. Most interesting.”
Bright Moon was whispering to her. “I could stay up here forever.” And she sighed. The remark itself was quite artless: She was just admiring the view.
But Mei-Ling didn’t like the sound of it. “Well, you can’t,” she replied in a stern mutter.
“I must look at this view,” she heard Yao say, and she moved back to make room for him to join his wife.
Meanwhile, a thought had occurred to her. “Tell me, General,” she began, “I noticed on our way up here, we left the enclosure around your house. Doesn’t that mean that anyone could walk up here from the road?”
“I suppose so. No one ever has.”
“You’re not afraid of a robber getting in one night?”
“The West Lake’s very quiet. I’ve never heard of anyone being robbed.” He smiled. “But I can defend myself.” He indicated something resting against the bedpost, something that hadn’t caught her eye before. It was a sword, a Chinese sabre. “An old soldier’s habit,” he confessed with a laugh.
“Oh, look,” called Bright Moon, who had just glanced back towards her mother. “He keeps a sword by his bed.”
“It’s to keep the other collectors away,” the general told her.
And now Mei-Ling saw it all. She saw how his seductions worked. His rank, the collection, his sympathetic ways, his secret lair overlooking the most beautiful lake in all of China, the military sword, the hint of danger, the adventure…That was how he did it.
And there, standing beside her husband, Bright Moon was imagining just such an encounter. Mei-Ling could see it in her eyes.
* * *
—
The general had led them down the path again. Bright Moon had walked with him. Mei-Ling had followed, as she supposed, with Mr. Yao. But reaching the bottom of the steps, she’d looked behind her and realized that, for some reason, the merchant had gone back to linger by the window, from which he was still gazing over the lake. Not wanting to seem to leave him behind, she paused and waited for him to come down so they could go together through the half-open gate into the garden.
And because she was standing there alone, in silence, she could overhear the words that passed between the general and her daughter.
“You were very quick about recognizing the seal on that book,” he remarked. “You could be a collector.”
“I don’t think so, General,” Bright Moon replied. “You see, I’d never really looked at any seals before—at the design, I mean. So the few I’d seen were very fresh in my mind. Children are the same. They notice everything, because it’s all fresh. But adults are so used to the daily things of life that we hardly notice them at all.”
“Perhaps. But I think you’re observant.” He paused. “There’s something very fine about you,” he said suddenly. “Your husband is a fortunate man.”
“I’m not sure he knows it.”
* * *
—
“Confucius says that a wife should obey her husband, but he forgot to say that none of us husbands are good enough for our wives.” He hadn’t quite said it, thought Mei-Ling, but he’d as good as said it, those words that every discontented wife wants to hear: You are too fine for your husband.
“I shall look forward to showing you all the beauty spots on the lake,” the general said, “when your boat arrives.”
“When the boat arrives.”
Mei-Ling turned. Mr. Yao was descending. He reached her.
“Here we are at last,” she said as they came through the gate.
* * *
—
The general did not, like the emperor in the story, pour the tea himself. An elderly woman servant performed the ceremony as they sat in the main hall.
They talked of this and that. The general told them that although they mightn’t think it, given the pleasant autumn weather today, he expected bad weather ahead. “I can always read the weather,” he remarked. “You’ll see tomorrow.”
“I hope,” said Mr. Yao politely, “that the next time we meet, General, you might tell us something of your distinguished military career. I know that you were engaged in the great struggle against the Taiping.”
“It is true that I fought the Taiping,” Guanji acknowledged, “but many others had far more interesting stories to tell than I have.”
“Were you ever in great danger?” Bright Moon asked.
“Any soldier is in danger,” Guanji said mildly, “because you never know what’s going to happen. You could be killed by a stray musket ball just as well as in hand-to-hand fighting. As for notable deeds, I don’t think I performed any.” He smiled. “I will tell you this: The only time I really thought I was going to lose my life, I won a single combat fight by sheer luck, which didn’t reflect any credit upon me at all.”
“Do tell us, General,” begged Bright Moon, “before we go.”
“Well,” said Guanji, “it was like this.” And he briefly told them of the fierce, snuff-taking general he had met when he was a young officer, and how they had gone from Zhapu to Hangzhou. He didn’t bother to tell them about the action and how he’d been wounded. He went straight to the moment of truth, when he’d come face-to-face with the Taiping officer.
“He was certainly quite a senior fellow in their army. But he looked more like a pirate, and he moved like a cat. I had a sword and he only had a knife. I’m not a bad swordsman, by the way. But from the way he handled that long knife of his, I knew I hadn’t a chance. ‘Prepare to die,’ he said. And as he came towards me, crouching and swaying from side to side, I thought, Yes, I’m going to die. Though I kept the point of my sword up, just in case. And then an extraordinary thing happened. The woman who’d been guiding me, who had hidden in the shadows, rushed out at him. It was just enough to distract him. So I lunged and I got him.” He grinned. “Then I ran away. I’m good at doing that, too.”
Mr. Yao laughed. “I think you’re far too modest.”
“But you kill
ed him?” asked Bright Moon.
“Oh yes, I killed him.”
Mei-Ling was looking thoughtful. “What was the name of this senior officer?”
“I never discovered.”
“What did he look like?”
“Forty, perhaps. Going grey, but very lithe. And he had a scar.” Guanji traced a line on his cheek. “Like that. Why, could you have known him?”
“How would I know an officer in the Taiping?” Mei-Ling replied. “But I’ve seen pictures of some of them. None with a scar like that, though.”
“Well, whoever he was, the fellow I killed certainly had a scar.”
Soon after that, when they took their leave, the general was particularly gracious in saying how much he hoped to see Mei-Ling again while she was staying at the West Lake.
“I think,” Mr. Yao said to her on the way home, “that the general’s taken rather a fancy to you.”
* * *
—
Mr. Yao’s new boat arrived in the morning. It was very handsome. The beam was broad, with an awning over the midsection, and there were benches covered with cushions where ladies could sit in great comfort. Mr. Yao called Bright Moon and their children to inspect it. The children wanted to go out in the boat at once, but Mr. Yao would not let them onto the lake yet because, as the general had warned the day before, the sky was overcast, and there was enough wind to make the water choppy.
* * *
—
Mei-Ling felt tired and rested that morning; and it was noon before she came to the little jetty where the boat was moored. She saw that Bright Moon was there alone, staring out across the water. She could see at once why Mr. Yao would not let the family go out in the boat that day. It was flat-bottomed, capacious certainly, but with a shallow draft. A pleasure boat, good for fine weather only.
She came and stood beside her daughter. For a little while, neither spoke.
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