Chapter 12

When he woke it was already the afternoon of the next day. At home Zhuo Siheng usually rose early with the cockcrow, and this unheard-of long sleep didn't sit well with him — his head was heavy and muddled, as if, on the contrary, he hadn't slept enough. But after another bath he had his spirit back; he first shaved his face, then changed into a clean, plain chestnut-brown old robe, and finally bound on his kerchief, and at last saw his own familiar face clear in the bronze mirror.

He was back to his usual self — but when he went downstairs to greet his landlords, he was nearly thrown out as a thief.

The two old people insisted that the man who'd rented their room was a big bearded fellow, not this handsome young man, and Zhuo Siheng didn't know whether to laugh or cry; only by producing the receipt he'd written up with them the day before could he prove who he really was. The old couple, feeling rather guilty, added an extra hot dish to his lunch.

He had no small amount to do today: first go to the postal station to send home a letter of safe arrival, and then take his full set of papers to the examination compound to see to his examination certificate.

The examination compound of Ningxing Prefecture had a very tall gate-tower with a single-eaved hip roof, close in style to the gates of Yunzhong, the Northern Capital — only the city gates were carved and lacquered vermilion, while the compound's gate-tower was solemn and severe with ink-black tiles, its bracket sets painted too in deep, heavy dark hues. In the five phases black stood for water, and compounds, academies and places where books were stored mostly used tiles and bricks of this color to ward off the calamity of fire, and for gravity and dignity besides.

Right now the compound gate was shut fast and locked, ringed round with prefectural garrison guards on patrol — such tight security only because shut inside were the examiners who'd set the questions for this prefectural examination.

This was the locked-compound system, established in the present dynasty: for all three of the prefectural, departmental and palace examinations, the officials who set the questions were, from the very day they were chosen, escorted by the government troops into the compound to reside there; once everyone had been counted, the compound was locked and sealed. During that time it opened only twice — once for the candidates to enter, and once for them to come out when the exam was done — and only after all the papers had been marked, the names recorded, and the results posted could the question-setting officials leave. This stretched to more than a month; in earlier years, it was even said, there'd been a poor official or two kept shut in for fifty days when an examination ran unexpectedly long.

Though the compound was locked, the registrars and the other Education Office clerks all sat in temporary tiled sheds thrown up in the open along the street outside, recording candidates' names for the examination, checking household statements, certificates of guarantee and other credentials, arranging the mutual bonds and the like — a mass of figures as far as one looked. By the time it was Zhuo Siheng's turn dusk was near; he handed over everything required, along with the full set of papers for transferring from Shuozhou to sit the Ningxing prefectural examination, and finally filled in his native place and age and signed his own declaration.

He wasn't a local candidate; all the verification of his identity had been confirmed correct back in Ningshuo City before his transfer certificate was issued. The clerk recording his details was brisk and capable, and with a single glance asked, "Transferred in from Shuozhou?"

"Yes," Zhuo Siheng answered.

Without so much as lifting his head, the clerk checked that the official seal was in order — no need to look further — and handed him the entry ticket for the examination nine days hence.

Sure enough, it was a great deal more proper than the qualifying examination he'd sat before!

Zhuo Siheng had just put his papers carefully away and was about to leave when he heard a commotion behind him, someone speaking sharply: "So people cut the line even for an examination? A disgrace to all decency!"

"I didn't... I'm not, I heard someone up front... I only wanted a look..."

A very frail voice kept explaining, only to be drowned out by the accusations and complaints; eyes gathered from all around. Zhuo Siheng stepped out of the shed and saw a young man about his own age, in a woad-blue round-collared long robe, being shoved out of the line — and when he made out the man's features, he was struck still.

Only this morning he'd studied his own long-unseen face in detail, familiar beyond words; and now, looking at this stranger of a scholar, he found the man resembled him by half and more — the brows and eyes especially, like a true brother's. The one difference was that Zhuo Siheng's own face was of a squarish, well-balanced shape, while the other man's was a delicate melon-seed face with a pointed chin.

In the midst of his disgrace the blue-robed scholar caught sight of Zhuo Siheng too, and the two of them just stared blankly at each other's faces.

This was too much of a coincidence, Zhuo Siheng grumbled inwardly. How could there be someone who looked so like him — even a bit more like him than Xiheng did.

By now the man had stared at him a good while, and then, as if all at once enlightened, strode quickly forward to plant himself in front of Zhuo Siheng — and then, without a single word, reached out and flipped back his cuff.

Zhuo Siheng had never seen the like. Though he'd lived from childhood in the exile district and a remote hill township, Song Liangyu and Zhuo Yan's teaching in manners had covered every side of things, and he'd never heard of any form of greeting anywhere that involved lifting a person's sleeve and feeling his wrist.

His first instinct was that the dagger his sister Ciheng had given him was back at his lodging — he should have brought it, he thought — and at the same moment he nimbly pinned down the man's presumptuous hand.

Zhuo Siheng's hands could draw a bow and loose an arrow without the least trouble; restraining a young scholar now was easy enough. But the man, for all the pain, still forced himself to keep his grip on the already-turned-back right sleeve of Zhuo Siheng's robe — and on the cuff, wrenched over, was embroidered a plump, dear little yellow duck no bigger than a fingernail.

Zhuo Siheng felt a scald on the back of his hand, and saw that it was the man's tears falling.

Had he been too rough? He hadn't gone and snapped the fellow's wrist, had he...

He let go at once.

But the man who looked so like him only stood there dazed, clinging fast to a fold of Zhuo Siheng's sleeve.

Luckily, by now the scholars registering had gradually finished and dispersed, so not many people saw this astonishing scene.

"Cousin..." the man said, smiling through his tears, seeming both joyful and grief-stricken, his voice trembling. "Cousin, I've found you at last!"

Zhuo Siheng was dumbfounded, and at once stepped closer to ask, "Is your surname Fan?"

Only now did it dawn on Zhuo Siheng: the man before him must be his aunt's son, the young master of the Fan family.

No wonder — his own looks favored his mother's side, and cousin Fan too must have taken after his mother more than his father, so that the two of them looked like true brothers; add to that the intimate token of sisterly bond that only their two mothers had known, and how could there be any mistake in the recognition?

The man nodded over and over, too moved to speak.

This was the first time Zhuo Siheng had ever met a relative other than his parents and siblings — and the very son of the aunt who bore his family such deep affection — so he too was uncommonly stirred. He was just about to make a proper greeting when his even more excited cousin seized his hand and dragged him all the way to a private room upstairs in a teahouse across the street.

The place was elegant and pleasant, few passersby below the window beyond the railing, curtains screening it off — a good spot, as it happened, for pouring out talk to each other.

Cousin Fan did not sit across from Zhuo Siheng but right beside him, his voice still trembling. "Lucky there are so few students coming from Shuozhou. I've waited here a good many days — whenever I heard anyone mention Shuozhou I'd go over and take a look. A clumsy method, but it let me find you in the end!"

"You've been waiting all this time?" Zhuo Siheng was stunned. "All these days?"

"The compound's only been taking registrations three days — I was just resting nearby." Cousin Fan didn't let the tea-server come in, but filled Zhuo Siheng's cup himself. "Cousin, what a hard road you've had all the way from Shuozhou! Let me toast you with tea in place of wine, to wash away the dust of your journey."

Zhuo Siheng felt the pure, warm gladness in him and drained his cup in one — only to see, as cousin Fan drank his tea, a stretch of bruised purple-red showing at his wrist.

Seeing that he'd pinched his cousin's wrist purple, Zhuo Siheng was full of remorse, and said gravely, "I didn't know my own strength — I'm truly sorry. Does it still hurt?" Thank goodness it was the left hand; had it kept his cousin from writing, it would have been a fault of the gravest kind.

Cousin Fan bared his lovely snow-white teeth in a bright, open smile. "You've got a strong grip, Cousin! It's nothing — I'll rub on a bit of salve when I'm back and it'll be fine! I didn't want to be so rude either, but... I only knew your surname, Cousin, not even your given name, so the one mark I could use to recognize you was all I had to go on... I had no choice but to stoop to it. It's I who should beg you not to hold it against me!"

At this, the two of them realized they still didn't know each other's names, looked at each other a long moment, and suddenly burst out laughing.

"Cousin, my given name is Xiliang, my courtesy name Rongbai."

"Your elder cousin's name is Siheng, courtesy name Yunshan."

Names confirmed between them, it would be easy to find each other from now on. Once they'd introduced themselves, Zhuo Siheng found he was two years older than Fan Xiliang. Back when his own family was condemned and left the capital, cousin Fan had been away with his father at his post; his father kept the news from them, and it was two years before his mother learned of it, whereupon she began to weep the nights through.

"Strange — why wouldn't Auntie have known my name?" Zhuo Siheng reckoned it up: when Song Liangyu bore him, his aunt had already married out. Close as the two of them were, how could she have known only that her sister had a son, and not his name?

"My mother married far away to my father; back then my whole family was still in Weizhou, and your family, Cousin, was in the capital — a thousand li apart. However deep the sisters' feeling ran, a thousand mountains and rivers lay between them... Mother said she'd exchanged letters with Auntie and knew your age; but around the time you were named, at your first birthday, my family was transferred again, to Suzhou, and letters may well have gone astray in between. Still, it's always puzzled me too — Mother sent word to the capital when I was born, so how could Auntie not have known about me?" At this point Fan Xiliang was quite baffled himself, and could only explain it to himself: "Perhaps something was lost along the way again..."

He'd been too young then to understand the world, and couldn't clearly remember much of it — it was all what his mother had told him later — so now, speaking of the past with his cousin, he wasn't too clear on it either.

Zhuo Siheng had his doubts, but thinking he'd know the reason once he asked his aunt herself, he said, "Is Auntie in good health?"

Fan Xiliang looked at him, then lowered his eyes and set down his teacup. "My mother passed away in the first year of Zhenyuan..."

Zhuo Siheng was stunned for a good while — he'd had no idea his aunt had been dead nine years... After a dazed moment he managed, "My mother went too, at the end of that same year..."

Neither spoke for a long while. Thinking how their mothers, sisters as they were, had fallen ill and died one after the other within a single year, never able to meet again to the last, both felt an endless grief.

And yet the two of them had still, by some fate, been able to meet — who was to say it wasn't the two women's spirits watching over them from heaven?

Zhuo Siheng patted Fan Xiliang's back, as if in comfort, and recalled that in the nine years from the first year of Zhenyuan to last year, things had kept arriving in the name of his dead aunt — surely his aunt had charged cousin Rongbai with it before she died, and he had held to her last wish all this while. He asked, and it was indeed so.

Fan Xiliang let a smile return to his face and explained, "On her deathbed my mother bade me never forget this matter. As her son, to labor for my mother's dying wish is a filial duty I cannot refuse; and as a gentleman, having taken on the promise, I was bound to keep my word. Your younger cousin has no rank or degree to his name yet, but I've read the books of the sages, and I wouldn't dare be slack about it."

"You and Auntie planned and provided for my family — you must accept a bow from me. This too was something both my parents charged me with before they died, Cousin, so you mustn't refuse."

With that Zhuo Siheng rose and bent low in a full bow of thanks, so alarming Fan Xiliang that he hurried to steady him and stop him at once — but couldn't budge him, and had to bear the bow through, stiff and trembling. Seeing his cousin satisfied and seated again, only then did he say, conscience-stricken, "How am I fit to accept a bow from you, Cousin... My family... after the treasonous-heir case, my father didn't like my mother keeping up ties with her old home... so she could only act in secret. The first few times she sent some jewelry and silver, but later word came that the things had vanished along the way; she understood that sent by so roundabout a route they'd never reach your family's hands, so she began to take special care — the clothes she sent were all changed to things half-worn, neither brocade nor satin, and the everyday medicine pills too were things of little worth that could still meet an urgent need. But I know all this was far from enough for an exiled family..."

"Far from enough? My second sister Huiheng fell ill during the exile and has been frail ever since; it's thanks to your sending cough-easing, lung-calming pills so often — where would we ever have bought them in that desolate place?" Zhuo Siheng comforted Fan Xiliang. "When my mother was alive she told us that Auntie surely had her reasons for doing things this way, that it must have cost her enormous care, and that our family absolutely mustn't turn around and add unnecessary trouble for her — which is why, even after the household was settled, we never sent letters or a word in writing. All these years of trouble for Auntie... and for you, Cousin, too. That little duck alone — however did you get it embroidered on?"

Fan Xiliang laughed heartily. "For every piece of clothing sent to Shuozhou, I asked the old nurse who'd served my mother in her lifetime to help embroider the mark, then checked that the clothes were clean and neat, packed them up and entrusted them to someone. From a distance your robe looked familiar to me; and then, seeing your face, Cousin, and the little duck on your cuff, it was as good as certain!"

Zhuo Siheng laughed too. "Mother used to say Auntie was clever and sharp from a young age, that she always found a way through any hard thing. You've surely inherited Auntie's wisdom and character, Cousin."

Fan Xiliang was moved, and nodded again and again. "My mother said the same of her elder sister — brilliant as ice and snow, never one to act rashly. From childhood the two of them were of one heart; in many things they needed no words." He paused, and his tone dropped back into a soft, sighing sorrow. "The truth is... I envy my mother very much."

Zhuo Siheng seemed to grasp the deeper meaning in his words, and asked, "Have you no other brothers or sisters, Cousin?"

"I have a younger brother and a younger sister." Fan Xiliang lowered his head, staring at his teacup. "But they're my father's second wife's children, and I've very little to do with them as a rule."

Zhuo Siheng suddenly understood why Fan Xiliang had so wanted to meet him: for him, his ties to his half-siblings were perhaps not even as close as the wordless, tacit understanding between their two families, who exchanged no letters at all — and on top of that, his aunt had often reminisced with him about the bright girlhood days she'd spent with her sister in her old home, and their sworn-sisterly bond, so that Fan Xiliang's heart must have brimmed with a boundless longing for it.

That he'd spared no hardship of travel to seek him out held, most likely, a hope in his heart that the two of them might be as close as brothers, the way their mothers once had been.

Zhuo Siheng took Fan Xiliang's hand, and as warmly as if he were speaking to Xiheng, said, "Our mothers were the closest of sisters; you and I should be the same."

Fan Xiliang was moved to the depths, the surging feeling in his heart welling up in his eyes; too embarrassed to wipe the tears, he could only hold them back with all his might and grip Zhuo Siheng's hand hard in return. "To be able to meet you, Cousin — surely it's our mothers watching over us..."

The two of them shared their feelings and reminisced a while longer. Listening to the funny stories of his mother's girlhood in her old home, Zhuo Siheng felt it all the more tender and dear, and a little sad too; recalling that his mother had once said she had a younger brother as well, very close to the two sisters, he asked Fan Xiliang, "Do you have any news of our uncle?"

"Uncle's in Bazhou!" Hearing him ask about this, Fan Xiliang happily pointed away to the southwest, gesturing as he spoke — then, thinking of something, lowered his head and sighed. "Only, my father forbids me to keep up with my mother's family... Usually I just send Uncle a few things in secret at the festivals and the New Year, and he's had some local produce from those parts sent back to me, but there's no exchange of letters... I don't know what he's doing now, or how his health is..."

"Give me Uncle's address!" Zhuo Siheng brightened. "Now that I've met you, cousin, and we've spoken plainly, there's no need to go on playing the old guessing game. From now on, when it's awkward for you, we'll send things and greetings to Uncle together — you tell me what you want to say, and I'll write the letters; and if Uncle sends any reply, I'll find a way to get it safely into your hands without disturbing your father."

When Fan Xiliang smiled radiantly he looked the most like himself, Zhuo Siheng thought; if he himself were happy to the utmost, he'd probably wear just such a smile.