5

It was dark in the book-keeper's office. The old rattan chairs had turned a greasy dark yellow, each with a round hole on the right arm to hold a teacup. A servant brought in a black kettle to add water to the tea. Third Master had taken the rattan chaise-longue but he sat leaning forward smiling at the book-keeper with a mock-earnest look, holding his own hand with elbows resting on parted knees. The deerskin sleeveless jacket he wore over his gown was buttoned across the chest with heavy black satin trimming. The latest hair style for men was 'a sky full of stars', a short fringe over the artificial high round forehead called 'the moon gate', brought in by the Manchus. As the upper part of the physiognomy corresponds to heaven and the lower part to earth, all these names were astrono-mically inspired. The fringe was so short it stuck straight out, mere dots seen from the front, therefore likened to countless stars. The curious combined effect of a receding hairline with projecting bangs did not look bad on him. That's the thing about fashion.
'All right, all right, Old Mr Chu, now don't be difficult,' he said.
Old Mr Chu shook his head picking his teeth with a bit of rattan broken off the chair arm. 'Third Master is making it very awkward for me. Nobody is to draw money from now on without asking for permission. Old Mistress has spoken.'
'Lend a hand, lend a hand. Just this once. It won't set a precedent.'
'If only it's up to me, Third Master.'
'Come on, spread it under some other items─as if I have to teach you your trade.'
'I've taken a lot of risks for Third Master, by heaven and earth and conscience. This time I really don't know what to do.'
'Then raise some money for me. You're a rich man yourself.'
The old man became agitated. 'Where did Third Master hear this? Where would I have got money after thirty years in your house?'
'Who knows? Maybe your wife has been making money for you all these years you've been away.'
'This Third Master is always like this!' The old man laughed at the familiar joke.
'Anyway everybody knows you have money, no use denying.'
'The bit of coffm money I saved up is not enough to fill the space between Third Master's teeth.'
'You'll have to do me this favour today no matter what. I leave it in your hands.' He did obeisance without bother-ing to get up, right hand over left fist, jerking them up and down repeatedly with little bows.
'Money is tight at the end of the year,' Old Mr Chu ruminated and clucked regretfully. 'Unless we go to that Shansi man. Wonder if he has that much at hand.'
'Go and see, quick.' He took Old Chu's black satin skull-cap from where it had been sitting on top of the hat vase, a cylinder of pale blue crackle-china, and slapped it on his head.
'These Moslems from Shansi, they're hard. You happen to go to one of them, then there's nothing to say, he has to have his three tenths.'
'No matter what he wants, I don't want it if the money is not here today.'
'Third Master is always in such a hurry, as if his eye-brows are on fire.'
'Go quick. I'll take a nap in your room, played mahjong all night last night.'
'Aren't you going upstairs? Just now they said Old Mistress wants you.'
'Tell them I'm gone. Once Old Mistress gets hold of me I won't be able to go out again.' On second thought he said, 'All right, I'll wait for you upstairs.' With him in the room Old Chu would not be able to open his trunk and get out his passbook and go to the money shop. Of course there wasn't any Moslem from Shansi. It's easier to talk terms by inventing a third party. Easier also to get the money back. He knew something about loans.
He came upstairs. The three women were peeling almonds in the anteroom.
'Big Sister-in-law, Second Sister-in-law,' he mumbled as he pulled a chair around, neatly flipped up the back hem of his gown, sat down astride the chair and started to pop almonds into his mouth.
'Look at him,' Yindi said. 'Here we've been slaving at it all afternoon and he comes and eats it all up.'
He said, 'Who faked the imperial dispatch? Isn't Old Mistress having her nap?'
'She'll wake up soon,' Third Mistress said.
'Third Master, what's that word you wrote for my shoes?' said Big Mistress.
'What word?'
'The foreign word. So you bully people who don't know the language, call them names. Horse hoofs.'
He could not help letting out a chuckle at which she cried out, 'It's wicked. Ruin people's shoes for no reason.'
'Isn't that so?' said Third Mistress. 'This cut-out pattern is such a lot of work too. But it seems to be the only thing this year.'
'Lucky I didn't wear it to go out.' She got up and left the room.
'Went to change shoes,' Yindi whispered.
'Had them on?' He started to laugh.
'Laughing yet,' his wife said.
He turned on her. 'Where's my fur-lined gown?'
'Now don't fly at her,' Yindi broke in. 'Your good wife was going to get it for you. It's me who played the villain, I wouldn't let her. I said don't let him have it─came home just to change clothes and go out again.'
'But Second Sister-in-law, won't your heart ache if I die of cold?' he said.
'There's the one who'll ache,' she leaned over and gave Third Mistress a little push.
'Who's like this? Unless it's you and Second Master,' Third Mistress said.
'Well, you don't see me telling lies all round for Second Master's sake and shouldering all the blame. Really, Third Master, you don't know what a model wife you have.'
Third Mistress moved the bowl out of his reach. 'All right, leave some for the almond milk for Old Mistress.'
'What's so good about it, so tasteless,' Yindi said. He got up and scooped more out of the bowl. 'Hey, look! Third Mistress, isn't it about time you put your foot down.'
'No use her putting her foot down, only Second Sister-in-law can do it,' he said.
'Listen to him, Third Mistress!' She made as if to strike him, gave Third Mistress another push instead and fell on her neck laughing. She played restlessly with the gold toothpick and ear-spoon that dangled from the other woman's lapel button and squeezed her thin shoulders as if she would like to knead her out of shape. Third Mistress had had enough of it. She got up and wiped her fingers.
'If you want the trunks opened it had better be before Old Mistress wakes up,' she said not looking at him. 'Come see for yourself. Who knows what you want, long-haired sable or short-haired sable.' She went out of the room.
'─Calling you,' Yindi said.
He did not say anything. He put out a hand to move the red paper ring up and down a narcissus stalk. Under his wet-looking greenish eyebrows and thick lashes the eyes were like the under-water black pebbles in the bowl of flowers.
'Where's my nail sheath?' she exclaimed half to herself. 'I had it on just now.'
'You must have dropped it when you were hitting at people. That would teach you,' he said.
'Give it back quick, or I'd really beat you.'
'Still want to hit people?'
She raised her hand. 'Are you going to give it back or no?'
'You'd better really hit me for once.' He tilted a shoulder towards her. 'This feels itchy all over.'
'Hand it over quick.'
'Sing a song and you can have it back.'
'I can't sing.'
'Wasn't it you that day humming and chirping by yourself on the veranda?'
'No such thing.'
'No use my asking you, my face is not big enough.' 'But I really can't.'
'Quick, sing,' he whispered, standing over her so she could sing without being overheard. The hem of his gown brushed the top of her feet, so sweetly it seemed a long while to her. The room stood around. The sun just touched a feather duster in a tall light blue crackle-china vase. Sunlight showed up the film of dust on the broad shafts of dark green jade leaves in the off-white jade pot. An enamel clock ticked in its glass dome on the scroll table. The all too fleeting moment of privacy had gone to her head like wine.
'Look what I picked up, Second Sister-in-law.' He held up his little finger admiringly with her nail sheath on it. If she pounced on it she would be in his arms. The same madness had got into him, she could tell. She glared at him from the corner of her eyes, dipped her finger in the water bowl and snapped the two-inch rose-coloured finger-nail at him shooting drops of water into his face.
She saw him duck and heard footsteps behind her. Big Mistress came in and he was back in his seat. She hoped her blush was not noticeable under the rouge.
'Old Mistress is not awake yet?' Big Mistress sat down.
'I think I heard her cough,' he said. 'I'll take a look.' He flipped up the back of his gown violently getting up and grabbed another handful of almonds.
'Put that down,' Big Mistress scolded. 'There really isn't much left.'
He tossed them back and popped into the inner room, the strip of scarlet felt curtain flapping high behind him.
Big Mistress eased the almonds into the mortar. 'What's this? Whose is this?' She laughed. 'What an expensive prescription, all this gold in it.'
'Oh, that's mine,' Yindi said. 'I was just wondering where my nail sheath had gone to. Must have slipped into the bowl.'
'Let's see if there's any more.' Big Mistress sifted the almonds in her hand. 'This time I'm going to keep it.'
Yindi shook the little gold tube dry and rubbed it on her handkerchief. She hadn't realized until then how much she had wanted him to keep it. In fact she had been worried that he would carelessly leave it around for people to see. They could tell it was hers from the pattern of the carving. But his returning it seemed to have cancelled everything that happened this afternoon. It was mere horseplay to while away an hour of enforced idleness as he waited to go back to his favourite singsong girl of the moment. Big Mistress would not forget though. How much had she seen or heard?
Later she felt somewhat better when she heard that Third Master was not allowed to go out again that even-ing. Men guests were coming for dinner and Old Mistress insisted that both her sons should be in. It was mostly their grandfather's 'pupils', examinees that he had passed in imperial examinations. Some were very old. Although there would be only men, there was no question of calling in singsong girls to help entertain. But she heard there would be some Peking opera actors coming, female im-personators. While having dinner in her room she could hear the faint sound of laughter downstairs and the singing accompanied by the Hun's' fiddle. They did not seem to be having such a dismal time after all.
After dinner she sat with her hands tucked under her jacket. There was no fire. Cold is bad for asthma but a fire is drying and binding, bad for the system. Old Mistress considered herself the only one in the house old enough to stand it. Old people with less fire in them are immune to heat. It was dark here too, with just a weak electric light darker still from the size of the room and the height of the ceiling. The room was like a huge brown jar of stale icy water. Movement was as strenuous as under water, with a feeling that a hand or foot would not go exactly in the direction it was meant to go. Like a dripping tap the tick-ing clock steadily added to the water reserve. She must get up, do something.
Second Master was lying fully clothed on the bed cross-wise facing his opium tray, hands tucked in his sleeves. He had taken up opium because it eased his asthma and gave him something to do. As opium was forbidden in the house he had to smoke on the sly. Actually Old Mistress knew about it too. After his marriage he had indulged rather more, under the impression that it would give him virility. The cloth soles of his shoes stood out snow-white in the yellow-brown gloom. They stayed new because he never stepped on the floor.
She went and sat on the bed in order to whisper, 'I died laughing today. Third Master was out all night and Third Mistress said he wasn't up yet. Dived into the book-keeper's office as soon as he came in. Closeted together for hours and had lunch together. It's said that even Big Master can't get through the New Year. Old Mistress believes in Big Master, actually the two are much of a muchness. At this rate what are we going to live on?'
At first he did not say anything. 'We haven't come to that yet.'
What she hated most about him was he knew how to talk officialese, if nothing else. Of course he had very little use for money anyway; no wonder he could afford to be gentlemanly about it. Perhaps he would even prefer to have just enough so he would not have to envy his brothers so much. With all the pomp and pleasures boiling around them he and she were condemned to their hermitage.
The Huns' fiddle was playing downstairs again. Back in her old seat, her hands tucked under her jacket she stroked the squirrel lining as she would a cat. Did she really sing on the veranda or was she just humming? Funny that Third Master had happened to hear and re-membered. He remembered. Her heart suddenly swelled out big, squeezing the breath out of her. There was loud music, a multitude that sang so long it sounded like a ringing in the ears. The afternoon came back, everything altogether, in the reflected light on the dark window pane she was looking at, with a ghostly scene floating on the brown glass and that singing that came out at you in a shining sheet.
Second Master was groping under his pillow and all round him. 'Where's my rosary?' Old Mistress encouraged him to study Buddhism and got famous monks and laymen to come and explain the scriptures to him. His favourite rosary was a string of hollowed peach stones carved intri-cately with buddhivestas crowding mountain caves and under trees.
She did not answer.
'Call Old Cheng for me.' He sounded annoyed. 'They're all having dinner downstairs.'
'Where's my rosary?'
'Isn't it lying around? It must have fallen on the floor.' 'Then pick it up. Somebody may step on it and break the beads.'
'Not everybody is blind.'
It was always like this, she would say something offensive just so that he would not speak to her any more. As usual finding him more tolerable in this state, she eventu-ally came and knelt on the bed to help him look. It was hanging on the knob of one of the built-in little drawers where he kept his sweets. She leaned over and reached for it gently from the bottom upwards, cushioning it with the yellow silk tassel that hung from it so that the carved peach stones did not give the least crackle.
'Look under the beddings,' he said.
She slipped her other hand under the neat stack of silk-faced blankets. 'It's not here. Wait till the servants come. I'm not going to crawl under the bed looking for it.'
'They couldn't have put it away, I always have it at hand.
'It must be somewhere around. It has no legs, it can't run away.'
She went to the cupboard, opened a drawer and took out a nut-cracker. She sat down at the table and cracked the peach stones open one by one.
'What are you doing?' he said nervously.
'Eating walnuts. Want some?'
He was silent.
'You don't like them without seasoning.'
The thin brown perforated shells snapped easily with the tiniest explosions.
'Tell one of the amahs to come upstairs,' he said. 'They've been gone a long time.'
'At least let people finish eating. Even thunder doesn't strike a sinner in the middle of a meal.'
He said no more. 'Old Cheng!' he suddenly shouted in a tight flat voice. 'Old Cheng! Old Hsia!'
'What's the matter with you? Getting odder and odder everyday. Stop that. I'll go and call them for you.' Her fingers were tired from working the nut-cracker. She had just been wondering how to dispose of the ones that were left. They were threaded on a strong fine greyish-green silk string which was quite undamaged. The remaining beads slipped, clattering lightly down the string as she picked it up. She saw him give a start and almost laughed aloud. Wrapping everything in her handkerchief she went out into the hallway.
There was nobody around. The large brown-lit hall had a watchful air with all the doors half open and the head of the polished staircase behind her. She unlatched a French window and stepped out on the dark veranda. There was some light from the windows. She glanced back to see if there might be anyone there. The freezing cold took your breath away but it felt good and clean. This was the only place in the house where she could ever be alone for a minute. She crossed the floor boards on to the pro-jecting part of the T-shaped veranda, paved with gravel that crunched underfoot. The silhouetted railing posts topped with round cement balls like monks' shaved heads always frightened her at night. She walked quickly up to them and bent down to feed the contents of her handker-chief carefully down the drain.
The red brick archway below stood on massive pillars, foreign-style, leading to the front door. The brightly lit area was strangely silent, the tarred road bluish, turning round here, the hedges with every leaf distinct like pale clusters of petals. You could not hear the voices and sing-ing here, just now and then a rhythmic yell in the finger game. Still she stood there in the cold. She thought she heard some stir over at the lodge. If the party was breaking up she wanted to see them leave.
The first of the horse carriages drove up clickety-clock along the asphalt driveway. Private rickshas crowded up in what space there was in between. The guests filed out bowing and murmuring. The old men leaning on gnarled sticks were half smothered in fur-lined scarlet silk hoods with long ear-flaps. Young female impersonators held turquoise silk handkerchiefs to their pink-and-white faces hiding their smiles. They wore men's gowns and little black sleeveless jackets, satin-trimmed. She thought she heard Third Master on the stoop just out of sight. She pressed against the railing, the cement surface scratching her brocade jacket noisily.
The last of the guests were gone. 'Where's Ahfu? Tell him to get my ricksha out,' his voice said.
Men padded away shouting Ahfu in relays.
'It's too cold to go out in a ricksha, Third Master,' somebody said. 'Better take the carriage.'
'They'll take all night to get it ready. All right, tell them to hurry.'
More orders were called out in relays. Then silence. She wondered if he could have gone inside to wait but she did not hear the door.
She started to sing 'The Names of the Flowers of the Twelve Months'. If he had heard her sing it must have been this since it was the only one she knew at all well. It was difficult to sing half suffocated by the north wind. But the wind snatching the notes from her mouth em-boldened her with a wild sense of irresponsibility. She sang louder. The song named each month's flower and doings, celebrating the New Year or picking tea leaves, breeding silk worms, watching the dragon boat race. Through it all the girl was waiting for her lover, trying to tell whether he was coming. There were lamp flowers─clusters of sparks on the burning wick─he would be here tonight. A lucky spider dropped on her head, he must be coming. Toss a pair of slippers on the ground and the way they fell showed he was not coming. The little tune had a twist in every note, always returning to itself. Under the cover of night and the monotony of repetition she was able to sing out evenly some passages about long nights and biting the padded blanket leaving teeth marks, hating the man for not coming. For a moment she felt enthralled by her own voice as if she were uncoiling her whole sinuous length, swimming away infinitely in the darkness above and below.
She did not hear him say to the servant. 'Funny there're street singers in this weather. A heroin addict out begging.'
He drove away when she got to the sixth moon with its lotus flowers and wearing just a scarlet silk stomacher after a bath.