Chapter 20

The depth of winter had the most festivals: the Winter Solstice, New Year's Eve, New Year's Day and the Lantern Festival. All four of these great days Zhuo Siheng passed at the ancient temple in the hills.

For nearly two months now he'd followed the monks' rhythm of morning bell and evening drum, as free and comfortable as at home; when his studies wearied him he'd wander the temple's fields to clear his mind, and now and then he'd go to hear the abbot Quechen's dharma lessons. In this time he found that the Buddhist teachings could still the mind, so he borrowed two sutras to read for a change during breaks.

Quechen was much taken with this diligent, quiet, easygoing young man, and often gave him some of his own fine sandalwood to burn for concentration while he studied; when Zhuo Siheng came to the dharma lessons, he'd keep him a while longer besides, to talk of the Buddha-mind and the Buddha-nature. Zhuo Siheng's talk showed real insight and roots of wisdom, and the abbot felt he had the foundation to see into his own true nature; that so clever a man should come to stay at Xishi Temple showed a deep affinity with the Buddha too, and he looked after him all the more.

In the days from after the New Year to the Lantern Festival, neither Fan Xiliang nor Tong Shipei had time to visit, so Zhuo Siheng shut himself up in the temple and studied hard. As the first month was drawing to a close, Fan Xiliang came twice; the two exchanged the essays of these past days and critiqued each other's, and talked a long while besides. Fan Xiliang passed on to Zhuo Siheng many lessons from his own failed departmental exam, and the preparations for entering the examination compound, and Zhuo Siheng shared some of the little tricks for the departmental exam he'd heard from his father. When the two parted, reluctant to leave each other, they still felt there were things left unsaid — only it was too late in the day, and they truly couldn't stay longer.

And when next they met, it was the day of the departmental exam.

On the seventh day of the second month, in the eleventh year of Zhenyuan, the departmental exam began at the Ministry of Rites' examination compound.

Zhuo Siheng, still carrying his deerskin bag on his back, stood out from the throng of scholars with their cases and hampers, for all the world like the leader of some new fashion.

At a quarter past the mao hour the compound's seals were opened; by now the roll of seat assignments was already posted, and most of those before it, dressed as attendants and pages, having had their look, hurried back to the carriages waiting nearby to tell the actual candidates and their parents — but ones like Zhuo Siheng could only stand on tiptoe and look for themselves.

There were far, far more people at the departmental exam than at the prefectural, and Zhuo Siheng searched a good while before he found he was in the Si cell.

Just then someone tapped him on the shoulder; with so many people looking, at first Zhuo Siheng thought he'd jostled someone and hurried to make way, but when the tap came lightly again, he turned and saw Fan Xiliang's signature warm smile.

Fan Xiliang's cheeks were red with cold, and only Fan Yong followed behind him. Zhuo Siheng had meant to ask why his cousin had come alone, but the words rose to his lips and he held them back.

"Cousin, our carriage is across the street; now that you've found your name, let's go and get warm," Fan Xiliang said with a smile.

The street before the compound was packed with carriages; Zhuo Siheng followed Fan Xiliang into his family's carriage cabin, which was indeed much warmer — but there was no one else in it besides themselves.

The Fan mansion, most likely, had no one to worry and run about for Fan Xiliang.

Luckily, Zhuo Siheng thought, there was still himself.

No sooner had he settled into his seat than he dug out of his deerskin bag a steaming cloth bundle and opened it: on a few dried perilla leaves laid inside sat two round, milky-white cakes.

"Cousin, one each for us," Zhuo Siheng said.

"Guanghan cake?" Fan Xiliang was astonished. "I couldn't get any along the street just now! I'd meant to bring you a piece, Cousin, but there were queues everywhere, and I was afraid I'd run out of time." He took a piece and popped it into his mouth, and after swallowing said, "You even know about this lucky custom, Cousin?"

Zhuo Siheng had already swallowed his in one bite too, and said with a smile, "My father told me about it, long ago."

"So where did you buy it?"

Seeing Fan Xiliang's mouth open even wider than when he'd been swallowing the cake, Zhuo Siheng, with great satisfaction, produced from his bag as if by conjuring a good-sized, light woven-rush food box. "I borrowed the temple kitchen and made them myself. This is five-spice cake I made too — I made you an extra portion; take it into the exam to eat. My father said five-spice cake is filling and sweet, good for the stomach and restoring the vital energy, the best thing to eat as an exam meal, far better than dry ration-biscuits. I bought the ingredients from a recipe I looked up and steamed them myself last night — here, take it."

In truth, when Zhuo Yan had spoken of the virtues of five-spice cake in the past, Zhuo Siheng hadn't taken it to heart; before the exam he'd only thought that bringing a little of a food his father had mentioned would set his mind more at ease. But who'd have thought that, on looking at the recipe, he'd suddenly realize the thing actually had a certain scientific basis to it.

Five-spice cake called for white glutinous rice and polished rice in a two-to-eight ratio, mixed with the finely ground and sifted powder of five ingredients — euryale seed, amomum, atractylodes, poria and ginseng — blended in with hot maltose syrup, and finally steamed in the pot.

This contained a great deal of carbohydrate, and carbohydrate itself was the operating fuel of the brain's driving force, the glial cells of the central nervous system; the vestibular system in particular — which maintains the body's balance, attention and visual stability — was most sensitive to the body's carbohydrate levels, so keeping carbohydrate sufficient could keep the brain at full charge at every moment, wholly given over to thinking. And the glycogen stored in the muscles and liver was likewise key to keeping the body vigorous.

The carbohydrate rich in the five-spice cake — especially a fine disaccharide source of intake like maltose — he'd poured in without the least reluctance.

How Zhuo Siheng wished the examinations tested this sort of thing — even now he could write out the molecular formula of a carbohydrate with his eyes shut. But he had no choice; in a while he'd just have to go in and obediently take up the brush and write a good essay. Nor could he teach this scientific knowledge to Fan Xiliang.

His five-spice cake, though, was only the budget version: with no money to buy ginseng, he'd gone to the apothecary and bought a little ground ginseng-whisker powder to use instead — that was cheap, and he could afford it.

Fan Xiliang was shocked. He'd always been taught that a gentleman keeps clear of the kitchen, and his cousin was, beyond dispute, the truest gentleman he'd ever met — yet Zhuo Siheng's air of an old hand in the kitchen threw him into confusion... But that five-spice cake really did smell wonderful.

As if knowing what his cousin was thinking, Zhuo Siheng gave a broad-minded smile. "Back home I had two sisters and a brother to feed; how would it do not to cook? In the face of life, perhaps the sages' great principles can't be defied — but the small principles... sometimes they have to give way."

"Cousin, you're so good at reasoning!" Fan Xiliang's eyes were bright and shining now. "I think you're better at persuading than the sages themselves!"

"Nonsense!" Zhuo Siheng was tickled into a laugh. "In a while you'll have to write an essay on the exam propping yourself up with the sages' views — it's a bit early to be tossing the sages out of your head just yet."

As the two joked, the hour drew near; Fan Xiliang was in the Ling cell, far from him, and at the final parting they exchanged words of mutual encouragement and went their separate ways to find their places in the queue.

Close to a thousand scholars were gathered. A man in the garb of an Imperial Guard officer tore away the seals on the compound gate amid a rolling of drums, then stood with the compound's chief overseer, in charge of examination discipline, beneath the plaque brushed by Taizu above the gate — "Seek the Worthy for the State"; and when the proclamations were done, they cleared the way before the main gate, and the scholars entered by it.

This time Zhuo Siheng did not look back before going in.

The search was the same as at the prefectural exam, only with an extra round of rechecking: the already-poked food was poked to worse ruin, the bedding and clothes examined finely once more, and Zhuo Siheng's deerskin bag was turned completely inside out to see whether there were any crib-notes in it.

This time Zhuo Siheng had experience; he'd brought a spoon, so he could scoop up the crumbled cake to eat.

At the departmental exam the guarantee was by threes — neighboring seats standing surety for one another — only Zhuo Siheng didn't even see the people to his left and right before he was shut into the pigeon-coop of a gallery room.

Grind the ink first, then think of anything else.

The departmental exam was again a great three-day battle — the policy essay, the discourse and poetry, one day each, no different from the prefectural — only the seals on the departmental exam papers bore the stamp of the Ministry of Rites' compound; Zhuo Siheng felt the departmental exam had the sense of ceremony cranked to the maximum, and it was really invigorating to sit!

— This was Zhuo Siheng before he'd seen the policy-essay question.

Once he saw the question, his first reaction was to want to pound on the door and shout to be let go home.

This His Honor Zeng might not care for his own life, but the Zhuo family still had a household of dependents — he couldn't die!

On the exam paper, blazing, was the hottest and most forbidden topic in all the court and country at that moment.

Of course, the prompt opened with citations from the classics, as such things must. His Honor Zeng noted that both the Records of the Grand Historian and the Book of Han have a separate chapter of "Biographies of Model Officials" — a model official being a good official, the kind of talent every ruler through the ages most craved. But open the Records of the Grand Historian and you'll see the Grand Historian listed only five, all men of the pre-Qin era, whereas Ban Mengjian's Book of Han listed six: one from the reigns of Wen and Jing, and the remaining five all men of Emperor Xuan's reign. Later scholars held this owed to their differing standards for what made a model official — do you think that's so? Then what is your own standard for a model official? Very well; now let us turn to a present matter. His Majesty has just named a crown prince, and it is for this happy occasion that a grace examination was opened and you have this paper to answer — so answer this: what kind of talent would you recommend to His Majesty to take charge of the Eastern Palace and assist his crown prince? And your reasons?

The eighteenth of the first month, still in the dead of winter — yet Zhuo Siheng could feel the damp heat of sweat on his back.

This question — perhaps for others it made no difference how they answered, but for him, the descendant of a condemned official from the treasonous-heir case, to lift the brush was to enter a contest with himself.

Was he to tell the truth, or tell a lie?

If he told the truth, then to his mind, the kind who would die for the crown prince as his grandfather had — that was the true model official for a crown prince. If he told a lie, he had ten thousand lies he could tell — but did he really want to speak them?

The examination hall was so quiet you could hear a pin drop; everyone, no doubt, was absorbed in answering. For these elite who'd come to the departmental exam through ten years of hard study, to sum up a self-consistent written logic of officeholding and the selection of officials was not, in truth, hard. But for Zhuo Siheng it was a real threshold, standing squarely between his future and his conscience.

"In truth, sometimes it does no good to read too much into what those above you want — the voice of the heart has its own enduring words. Take an examination essay: fret over which things may be written and which may not, and what you write may not be the fine essay that passes high."

Zhuo Yan's gentle voice rang up from the bottom of his heart.

"Your nature is mild and mellow, and so you don't care to make sharp, cutting remarks; your essays tend to be clear and bright in their flow, well-ordered and smooth, but a little short on barbs. Yet no one knows a son like his father: within your breast there is a blade that has never left its sheath — you make no strong assertions in words, and yet you have a decisive coolness all your own. But remember always: what Heaven gives and you do not take, you will suffer for; when the moment comes and you do not meet it, you will suffer for. When the time truly comes for you to show yourself, you must not be so full of misgivings — if the question is sharp, then answer it a hundred times sharper than it asks."

Zhuo Siheng closed his eyes and drew a deep breath. That's right — what was he anxious about? Since this question was sharp beyond compare, then perhaps what it wanted was an answer that could strike off sparks; and it would take a good blade of tough, tempered steel to meet it and make the flint and lightning flash.

Setting aside his own identity, he would let the strong voice of his heart guide the brush.

To advance or retreat without hindrance — this is called freedom.

Zhuo Siheng opened his eyes, raised his wrist, and set down the first stroke of the first character of his departmental-exam policy essay.