Chapter 62

Outside the mountain gate of the Nation-Protecting Temple, along the right edge of the open ground, someone had raised no fewer than twenty great tung-oil umbrellas. A dozen or more pretty young maids in scallion-green shirts, their hair in double buns, fanned people, boiled water, pounded legs, and fed them tidbits.

Cao De and Cao Cheng, fat as handless suckling pigs, led a crowd of rakish friends in their carousing.

The young wastrels didn't pester people to their faces. But behind a table laid with a good twenty kinds of food, they made a great clamorous din. They let out one foul noise after another and disturbed this pure ground of the Buddha's house. If any pilgrim showed the least discomfort, they pointed and jeered and roared with laughter. If a woman of some beauty caught their eye, they banged the table and let loose coarse, lewd talk, mocking her without restraint.

The wastrels were in the thick of their fun when, all of a sudden, a squad of crack troops in imperial-guard armor ran out from one side and ringed them in.

Cao De and Cao Cheng were startled at first. But once they saw clearly that the newcomers were guards, they flew into a rage. In the capital, a complaint laid at the Shuntian Prefecture would get them a beating and a lesson. The guards were a different matter. To their minds, the palace guards were just their own sister's household servants.

Cao Cheng sprang up, jumped onto a stool, planted one foot on the table, and reached out to slap the man across from him. But who would have thought this guard would be so bold? He actually dodged it.

Dared dodge, did he?

So Cao Cheng climbed onto the table and stood tall, and opened his mouth to curse the man with some fresh Yanjing filth he'd lately learned. But he only got half of it out. "You ignorant, stinking piece of..."

Then he jumped down off the table, wishing he could bore straight underneath it.

The guards fell back to either side. There stood Zheng Aman, looking on with a face of the deepest loathing, as if at a lump of stinking dog dung.

In an instant, that leaping, hopping shoal of shrimp all stood up together and lined up one behind another. Every one of them turned into a meek, lowered-eyed honest man.

Zheng Aman wasn't angry. It was no shame on his own house, after all. He just walked up to Cao De and asked, "Where's your father?"

Cao De started, and lifted his head, and answered, trembling, "Reporting to the little duke, my father's head-ailment came on him a few days back. He's resting at home."

Zheng Aman nodded. "Didn't he go into the palace to beg some Enter-Sainthood Powder?"

Cao De answered, "Reporting to the little duke, that's so. He came back, and... and used it, and slept well last night. When we came out today, my fa-fa-father hadn't gotten up yet!"

Zheng Aman gave an mm, looked around, and asked, "Cao house, who came out today to wait on you?"

At once, over yonder, one man after another dropped to sit on the ground.

Honest indeed. No need to even call a name, and out they came on their own.

Without an order given, the guards went and hauled them over one by one, to kneel before Zheng Aman.

Zheng Aman didn't even look at them. He just asked Cao De, "Just these?"

Cao De and Cao Cheng lifted their eyes and looked, and swallowed, and nodded together.

One house-servant, bolder, called straight out: "Young master! Save us! Spare us! Little duke, have mercy..."

But Cao De and the rest had wilted. They dared not speak one word to plead for him, and only shook and trembled at the knees.

Zheng Aman pursed his lip and said, with some disgust, "What are you babbling? Talking your rot on the pure ground of the Buddha's house. Take them well off, and when they've been taught their lesson, send them back to the Cao house. What sort of people do they keep? Not one word of counsel out of them, and still thinking up fancy ways to bring folk here to play. Anyone with a scrap of brains would have gone home to carry word. A house of fools, truly..."

And so these few were briskly gagged and dragged away.

Never mind that they were all famous young lords of the capital. Lords, too, come in grades.

These here were married men and fathers now. The eldest was a good ten years older than Zheng Aman, and each held a fifth- or sixth-grade sinecure. And yet, in a place like Yanjing, they ranked only as the very bottom sort of young lord.

Your first-grade young lord has a house of deep and weighty foundation, talent in himself, and the sense to strive. One light push, and his future has no bounds. Every one of them is fine seed for a high office in the Six Boards.

Your second-grade young lord has a house of deep foundation. He may have no great talent himself, but he knows the shallows from the deeps, and he's willing to strive. Once he comes of age, the family places him a few years in the Secretariat, so his face grows familiar before the Sage, until all the old ministers of the court come to feel this is a child of our own standing. In the end he draws a leisurely salary and, easy and free, turns to his amusements. He lies at home growing his flowers and tending his grasses, and plays his way into becoming a famous scholar.

Your third-grade young lord has a house of deep foundation. He has no talent himself and no will to eat bitterness, but he has a rare eye for high brows and low. He's sweet-mouthed, nimble-legged, and very good at getting things done, and he never gives offense to a soul. Once he comes of age, he lays out a little silver, finds a real connection, and buys himself a hollow title. From then on, on a name for open-handed loyalty, he makes real friends in every office within the four gates of the capital. There's not a man he doesn't know, nor a door he can't get through. Never mind that he holds no real post. He has his dignity and his influence is great. A provincial official coming up to the capital with his tribute must lay a rich gift before him too, just to buy a year's peace. Let anyone name a name, and if he says I know him, that's real face.

Your fourth-grade young lord comes from a house once of foundation but now come down in the world. Still, he can bear hardship, and he's eight parts quick besides, and he studies and passes his examinations without shaming the ancestral name. When he comes out to make friends, who doesn't feel for him and cherish him twice over? When a court elder sees such a child come begging at his door, out of pure tenderness he'll set him on a fair road, and sooner or later the boy turns his fortunes around.

Your fifth-grade young lord is a clever son of the maternal-kin houses. His most precious trait is that he knows himself, and knows when to come forward and when to fall back. He's cautious and careful, and he likes to play the simpleton and plead poverty, so that in Yanjing he has a name for an honest man. When the Sovereign grants him a real post, he neither pushes to the front for it nor shirks it. He just lives his life steady and solid, and with his good name and his loose funds he does good turns far and wide. In the end he wins a good marriage, quietly changes the fortunes of his gate, and takes firm root in Yanjing, to the good of his descendants for three generations at least.

Your sixth-grade young lord is a dragon come across the river. His origins are, as a rule, no simple ones. His elders are either among the top three officials of some region, or a frontier governor with a march in his charge. He comes to the capital in the name of study, but the truth is he means to show his lovable young face to the household mistresses of the great old houses, marry a wife of matched standing, set her up in state, and from then on live as dashing and romantic as anyone could imagine.

Your seventh-grade young lord is the golden-scaled carp. Say a man has an ancestor whose name shines down the ages, and mention a descendant of so-and-so, and it's usually one of these. They can spend the silver of the provincial gentry, and they're the most lavish of all men in their day-to-day life. This sort is the most tangled of all. You can never make out what they've come to the capital for. Study will do, examinations will do, marrying into a high house will do. Ugly or fair, it doesn't matter, so long as they land one. They're not short of money either. They just mean to cast their nets on every side and catch one match, and by leaping over, become a dragon. And if they can't be a dragon, well, a python will do. At any rate, silver scattered in the capital is never scattered for nothing. They make real, sworn-brother friendships everywhere, and when men from the provinces come up to spend silver and get something done (a vacancy filled at the Board of Personnel, a lawsuit pushed, a door found and a man reached) these fellows know every in and out of it. The silver gets spent, and the thing itself doesn't always get done. But they'll lay it all out for you clear as day, and in the end they'll tell you it's only your own ill luck to blame.

Your eighth-grade young lord is talented and handsome, ill-starred, and wild and unfettered besides. The base-born of the world dearly love to fawn on such stinking feet. He eats and smashes a wine-jar, and someone else foots the bill. He's frenzied and half-mad, and yet the idle come to cheer him on. He needn't seek out a cheap inn to sleep in, because there's a capital courtesan weeping and pleading to keep him for nothing. He's truly the dream-lover of every deep boudoir in the capital. And yet this gentleman won't deign to give any of it a glance. He does one thing only, all his life: he curses the Emperor, curses the high officials, and curses the age. His cursing is cleverly worded, ten thousand poems and a thousand phrases all gathered into one meaning: you old dogs can't tell quality! And the old dogs sit steady as Mount Tai, and won't give him an office.

Your ninth-grade young lord is the most amusing of all. He wants for nothing in house or foundation. And yet by his own efforts he lives himself down into a Yanjing dung beetle. Should the day come that a servant reports to the ancestors that he went out only to whore and chase after women, the ancestors would breathe, he's improving! These are the very seedlings of vengeance that a house raises only when eight generations of forebears have done evil enough. Not content to roll his own dung-ball, he loves to go out in public holding up three skins, and say to everyone he meets in the streets and lanes: this is my ancestor's skin, my father's and mother's skin, my noble patron's skin. Come, come now, let me do you a conjuring trick. I'll flay this skin off you all bloody and show you the dung-bag inside their bellies. Is mine, then, so sweet?

And as for your tenth-grade, the bottom-most young lord? That's simple too. Gone, done for, spoiled, rotted, past all lifting up... just like that Wu Xiu.

Beyond these ten sorts of young lord, there's a sort that is a lord and yet scarcely counts as one, because they're born, as it were, into the very elements: your father, your mother, the ancestors you buried in the ground. Should this sort mean to stir up trouble, they need spend no effort on it. Dare to provoke them, and they can drag your three generations of ancestors out of their coffins to lie exposed. They stand only half a grade below the princes. Your father might serve in the same hall as one of them, your teachers might faction against him, and your whole house fighting together might still not beat him. That's how fearsome they are. So no one dares set a grade to them at all.

Chang Lianfang, Zheng Aman, and Li Jinggui were of this sort. Chen Dasheng now, in truth, counted as half of one too, only he didn't know it himself. A man of his make, even if he'd known, would have heard it and cleaved you clean in two, with a curse besides: You're talking rot!

When the attendants had been dragged well off, Zheng Aman sat down in a folding chair someone had fetched and drank cold tea for a good while, before at last the dharma-protector monks of the Nation-Protecting Temple arrived.

How could the dharma-protectors not know that trouble had broken out at the mountain gate that day? But things now were not as they'd once been. All they could do was swallow the blood and bear it, tell the Buddha of it in silence, and pray that these men would meet their retribution in a life to come. The animal path for them, best of all.

Seeing the monks come, Zheng Aman handed off his cup to one side and stood up, courteous, and, pressing his palms together, made the assembly his apology: "Amitabha. On so great a day as your temple's is today, these few eyeless creatures have spoiled the pure land of the mountain gate, and marred the fair name of our court besides. They are eyeless and know no better. I only beg the masters will forgive it. I... have heard before that your temple has a Discipline Hall..."

The monk at their head returned the courtesy, civil: "Amitabha. It is nothing, nothing! Our Buddha's mercy is boundless and asks no bond, and his compassion is one body with all. Think nothing of it, little duke. The hundred rules of the Buddha's gate are for monks and nuns alone. These young lords are not of our Buddhist gate, so even if there were a hundred Discipline Halls, none could lay a hold on them..."

The dharma-protector thought a moment and looked at the several wastrels whose legs had gone soft under them. There was no telling why, but a secret gladness stirred in his heart, and in the end he nodded.

Cao De and the rest were frightened out of their wits. Past minding their fear now, they wept, propped one another up, and came before Zheng Aman to plead: "Little duke... we, we'll kneel to you. Won't kneeling do? We know our fault. We'll never dare again..."

But they hadn't got their pleading out before the monks hoisted them up bodily. One of them wet his trousers on the spot and struggled with all his might not to go, howling like a ghost that he would not go. Cao Cheng wept loudest of all, as though Zheng Aman meant to take up a blade and cut him down.

Zheng Aman, helpless, raised his brows. He walked straight up to the struggling Cao De, reached into his breast, and drew out a silk handkerchief. Then he turned, pinched Cao Cheng's chin, and as he wiped the snot and tears off him, said, "By rights, Xuanhe ought to call the two of you his uncles..."

Cao De and the rest stopped their crying that instant and stared foolishly at Zheng Aman, thinking, since you know we're the prince's uncles, why don't you hurry up and let us go?

Xuanhe was the Ninth Prince's milk-name. Since the child was sickly, the Emperor had given him no formal name, for fear he would die young.

Zheng Aman gave an mm, and went on: "Xuanhe was born no bigger than a scrap, and he ails and droops the whole day long. When we go to see him we dare not so much as cough aloud, for fear of startling him. The Heaven-house has so few princes! And how worn thin is the Dowager's heart over it? Let Xuanhe be the least bit unwell, and she can't sleep. She tosses the whole night through, and at daybreak takes the whole palace of consorts to worship the Buddha and pray. Even the Empress keeps a day's fast for him, on the first and the fifteenth of the month! And our Consort Jing has a bitter fate too. How did she come by brothers like you? For Xuanhe's sake she eats her vegetarian fare and tells her beads, and she's worn out three cushions in the palace's little Buddha-hall. Your Nation-Protecting Temple has so great a matter on today. How dare you come and make your riot of it? Mortal eyes may not see, but can the Buddha not see? Isn't this the ruin of your own sister's cultivation? How many sutras copied for nothing, then, how much alms given for nothing? A pity. She could wear out a hundred cushions and still not redeem the sin the lot of you have made today! You batten on the glory and wealth she gives you. At the very least, do something a human being would do... ah!"

At last there was no one left making a stir. They all stood and listened meekly, and Cao De's shoulders heaved and jerked with his sobbing.

Zheng Aman threw the handkerchief down on the ground and looked at the crowd of wastrels with a face of pure disgust. "Don't try hiding. Every last one of you, name me a single face here I don't know. Good young masters, at the very least behave like men. Our Shaoshang line has only just found its feet. We don't ask you to make anything of yourselves, but you're all fathers now, and you might at least spare a thought for how hard it is to be a parent. Don't be the reason your fathers, who stand equal with other men at court, shrink three parts the moment they meet someone. Can you not manage that?"

All around was silent as the grave. Every one of them took it to heart, and not one of the whole crowd dared make a sound. Every one of them meekly bowed to his fate.

Zheng Aman nodded to the monks and said, smiling, his manner particularly mild and humble, "It's a misfortune of our houses. They're none of them but foolish children who've seen little of the world, poor-turned-rich who don't yet know their advances from their retreats. I trouble the masters to take them off today, and don't handle them gently, mind! Just tell me anything at all. If one of them tries to run once, break his leg. If he tries twice, send him over to me and I'll teach him myself. Rest easy, their families will come pay the silver by this afternoon, and won't dare waste one grain of the temple's rice."

The lead dharma-protector master gave Zheng Aman a long, deep look, recited the Buddha's name, and made to lead his people off. But they'd gone only a few steps when they heard the little duke say, "Wait, wait!"

They all stopped, startled, and turned as one to look at Zheng Aman.

Zheng Aman, all impatience, pointed at Wu Xiu, last of them. "That one's not of them. Let him go." Then, glaring at Cao De like a man grieved that iron won't turn to steel, he cursed, "Truly, what sort of people don't you take up with, day in and day out? No wonder you've turned out as you have, raking every dead fish and rotten shrimp to your side. Not stinking enough on your own, is that it?"

That said, Zheng Aman flicked his sleeve and went, as though he'd gotten something filthy on him.

Chen Dasheng's small circle aside, who did not know the business of the Tan house? And who didn't know how Wu Xiu came to lose his finger? For Zheng Aman to treat Wu Xiu like something filthy was only as it should be.

And after this day's affair, the wastrels would never play in Wu Xiu's company again. Why? Because the circle had no more use for him.

Never mind Wu Xiu. Set Tan Weitong himself before Zheng Aman, and ask whether he'd dare put on airs.

Zheng Aman was gone, and the young wastrels were led off by the monks. Even the two Tan collateral sons, in a cold sweat lest Zheng Aman single them out, breathed easy only once they were inside the temple gates, where they recited a devout Buddha-name.

And so, on the open ground at the mountain gate, one half was devout worshippers, and the other half, under the blazing sun, was one Wu Xiu, with nowhere in the world to hide.

Wu Xiu was quite dazed. He felt himself grow smaller and smaller, and smaller yet, drifting off downwind with nothing to lean on, like a mayfly on the water, unbearably light.

Something came to him all of a sudden, and he chased after Zheng Aman's guards and shouted, "Little duke! My ancestor was the Confucian Wu Yisheng! My ancestor was Wu Yisheng!"

Over there, no one turned. Without so much as a glance, they went on into the temple.

Wu Xiu, faint-hearted, dared follow no further, and went muddling down the mountain. All the way he wished to die. Shamed so terribly, how did he dare drag out his life in the world at all?

In a rare clear moment he remembered his sister's sorrowing eyes, his elder sister on her knees, saying to him, "Brother, I dare not ask you to make anything of yourself. But you might at least win me a little face in front of others, might you not..."

He did want, now, to make something of himself. Otherwise he wouldn't have gone about with a shameless face tagging at their heels, taking others' scorn as though he didn't know it. Did he, then, not know shame?

And he remembered his old father's look of utmost bitterness and hate, roaring at him: "Unfilial, rebel son! Were you not my only one, I'd sooner strangle you where you stand! The Wu house gave up its every last coin to keep that dog's life of yours, and you are my father! My father! Shall I call you 'papa'? Shall I get down on my knees to you? Can you not leave the ancestors some scrap of face..."

Wu Xiu wept till his face ran when he thought of his sister. But he was all fear and hate again when he thought of his father.

Hmph. And the Tan house too. In the old dynasty, when his own house held power, what faces had they worn? And what faces now? He still remembered his ninth birthday, how Tan Shouyi came in person to wish him joy, gave him a horse with four snow-treading hooves, lifted him up onto it with his own hands, and called him the Wu house's thousand-li colt, its prodigy son... And how Tan Weitong, wanting his sister for a bride, went down into the river in the dead of winter to fish out her handkerchief and win her favor, and said things like, a day unseen and I long for you like a madman...

Hmph! And now what faces did these beasts wear? It was nothing but a splash of piss, and it had ruined his whole life. Nothing but a shabby seventh-grade sinecure minding a storehouse, and his sister had actually knelt and knocked her head to her own husband over it.

The people of this world were, one and all, a conscienceless pack that fawned on the mighty and trod on the low. Let them wait, then, wait and wait! No man's luck runs all his life, and one day, surely... Eh? Amid his wild woolgathering, Wu Xiu suddenly caught sight of a face he knew, going down the mountain.

It was the very type of that fawning, mighty-chasing breed, the one who, to curry favor, had cast off his ancestors and taken a eunuch for a foster-father. That dog-thief who'd once been a contract-slave in the Tan house. Chen Dasheng!

Come to think of it, the very root of his own ruin lay with this brat.

Wu Xiu wiped away his tears, dry now, and set his clothes to rights. Without much thought he called out, "Ho! Isn't that our Captain Chen up ahead, Chen Dasheng? What's this, struck it rich, have you, and grown too grand to know an old friend?"

Chen Dasheng's figure checked. He turned his head and looked at Wu Xiu, surprised, and it truly took him a good while to place him.

Honest lump that he was, it was a long moment before he asked, hesitating, "Is that... Captain Wu?" Then, as though some memory had been dragged out of him, his face went pale at the words, and he made a slight bow. "Cap-Captain Wu, good day to you."

Wu Xiu was no brainless man either. Having called out Chen Dasheng's name, he took fright at it. But seeing Chen Dasheng's manner just as it had been of old, he was quick to lift his chin again. "What, you too see me down on my luck, and mean to come set a foot on me?"

There is a sort of man in this world who is like this. However good you may be now, however high your place, so long as you once stood lower than him, he holds that you must stay lower than him your whole life, and fawn on him...

Slowly, step by step, Chen Dasheng walked toward Wu Xiu. Wu Xiu, in his fear, backed away step by step, until he'd backed to the ridge of the field at the roadside. His foot caught and he all but went over, but who'd have thought his hand would be caught in another's grip?

Chen Dasheng pulled Wu Xiu back, and once he had him steady, said, all honest good nature, "Captain Wu? What brings you here?"

Wu Xiu blinked, looked up at the mountain, then at the honest Chen Dasheng, and gave a cough. "This... why, early this morning, Consort Jing's family's Brother Cao sent to my house to invite me. Said his prince, his prince of a nephew, the Ninth Prince, the one they call Xuanhe. Have you ever seen him?"

Chen Dasheng shook his head, honest. "Never. We're only the outer-palace guards."

Wu Xiu snorted and went on. "Just as I'd have thought. A prince of the Heaven-house, of such lofty standing. And a dog-shit-lucky gate-watcher like you, as if you could see him whenever you pleased?"

He could, in fact, have seen him well enough. Only Chen Dasheng didn't go.

Seeing Chen Dasheng nod in agreement, Wu Xiu ran on with his nonsense. "Brother Cao asked me twice, and I'd no wish to come, but they insisted! Then I thought, well, let it be. Today's Master Xuanshan's coffin-rite, and steeping myself in a little of the Buddha's grace is no bad thing, and might get the Buddha to shield his prince of a nephew too. So I came. And well, come they did, and then wouldn't leave, but had to go weeping and wailing into the temple to pray for the consort and the prince! I'd no mind to go, so I came down first on my own. I've my duties, you know. I'm not with the Tan house now, I'm at the Board of War, with a middling sort of office in my charge, and run off my feet every day. Today's the first bit of leisure I've had..."

Clumsy-tongued as ever, Chen Dasheng could only nod. Since his own talk was going nowhere, Wu Xiu turned to looking Chen Dasheng carefully up and down instead.

He'd known Chen Dasheng from very early. Wu Xiu had entered the Tan army even before Chen Dasheng, a tiny scrap of a thing following at his brother-in-law's side to grind out a future. So he'd missed the good years for learning how to be a man, and got none of the ancestors' virtue, but picked up in the camp a whole hide of short-sightedness and soldierly thuggishness instead.

His brother-in-law was Tan Weitong, so of course he'd stood a head above others in the army, and in the old days he'd looked down on the men who actually led troops into battle.

Just as now, he still sized up an old acquaintance with those same old eyes, and still took the man for a gullible fool. And even though it was on his own account that the Tan house had lost its old sabers, that was mere crossed wires and mischance, he told himself, and had nothing to do with whether Chen Dasheng was a fool or not. It was only that his own luck had run ill.

Holding to his dignity, he looked him over up and down. He saw the cloth Chen Dasheng had bound round his head and curled his lip. He saw his brand-new cloth clothes and jeered inside himself. Then, following his own gaze downward, he suddenly saw... eh? This fool, a few days unseen, and truly he'd come into money.

For there, about Chen Dasheng's waist, glittered a fine treasure of a girdle.

It was a span broad, of exquisite make and harmonious color. It had a base of the finest calfskin over gold, edged all round with a frame of bright red coral. Within the coral frame sat seven pieces of the best flawless white jade, each the size of a hat-badge. And set in the heart of each white jade were three gems, red, yellow, and green, matched to each other in size, hue, and shape down to the last hair.

Fallen though the Wu house now was, Wu Xiu had seen good things in his day. A thing like this was three hundred strings at the very least, and not easy to come by even at that price. These days he might be a moocher of meals and drink, often short the taels to settle a bill, but whatever the object, he could price it close enough at a glance. In the Tan army he'd grabbed things by long habit, the old sabers' things above all. At any rate, if he didn't grab them, someone else would, and Tan the Second cared nothing for it, so they'd all fudged along at it together.

In one instant Wu Xiu ran back over all he knew of Chen Dasheng and the rest since they'd come to the capital. Mm, his brother-in-law had said the Emperor only used them as a stalking horse, to squeeze the Tan army. Which was to say, the Emperor wouldn't necessarily stand at their backs.

His brother-in-law had also said that Chen Dasheng had become a eunuch's foster-son, and that was a touch awkward. On top of it, he was one of the imperial guard now, and the guard were the most close-knit of any, so if others got wind of it and came to his door, he truly couldn't hold out...

At the thought, Wu Xiu pretended he hadn't seen the girdle at all, and suddenly reached out and hooked an arm round Chen Dasheng's neck, all intimacy. "I say, brother, it's been a good while since we two parted, hasn't it?"

Chen Dasheng seemed a man unused to such kind treatment, and it was a good while before he stammered, "Yes... it's been a few months, Cap-Captain Wu..."

Hearing him just as he'd been of old, his manner not the least changed, even with a note of grateful wonder in it, Wu Xiu's heart settled, and he sighed. "Why, we've known one another four or five years, when you reckon it up, isn't that so? A good old tie, hauled up out of a sea of blood together, one span of fate, and now we go our separate ways. How old was I when I came out to the Tan army at my brother-in-law's side? No higher than this!"

He gestured out the height and said to Chen Dasheng again, fond, "And I remember you were a thin little scrap of a thing in those days too, and forever crying!"

Chen Dasheng's face showed his bashfulness, and he scratched his head. "Heh! Captain Wu remembers all that? I'd clean forgotten it. It's a thing of long ago, and it's all different now."

Different indeed, a contract-slave turned into a man above others. But to get back into the old circle, to squeeze his way in again, the hand would have to loosen a little, and it would take some doing...

With a corner of his eye on Chen Dasheng's girdle, Wu Xiu got an arm round him and half-hauled him off down the mountain.

"Come, come, Brother Chen. We two, with our years of friendship, and today's a happy chance besides. As for all that went before, brother did do you and yours wrong here and there, it's true, and since you left I've learned my lesson too. When I've thought it over, ai, it was youthful heat, no more, and I overdid it in places! But you mustn't blame me for it. How old was I when I came into the camp? I only learned it from them. Never mind, never mind, we'll not speak of it... Today we're brought together at last, and that too is the Buddha's arranging. So you'll drink your brother a few cups of watered wine at the least, and from this day let one laugh dissolve the whole feud between us."

Chen Dasheng waved his hands, over and over, and pulled free of him. "No! No! It's nothing, let the past be past. Captain Wu, I truly have business today..."

But Wu Xiu was in no way going to let him go, and he made a show of anger. "What, do even you look down on me now?" He held up his palm, which had only four fingers on it, and said, his face twisting savage, "Is it that you take me for a useless man, a ruined man, a cripple? Do you look down on me?"

Chen Dasheng hurriedly shook his head: "No, no!"

Wu Xiu snorted and pressed him. "Then I'll just ask you this. Will you drink my cup, or won't you?"

Chen Dasheng looked to left and to right, and in the end gritted his teeth. "Very well. But, but my head for wine is a poor one. A few cups, and I'm down..."

"Heh heh, come along, then!"

Half an hour later, at a small wine-shop by the official road, the dishes were ordinary, but two whole jars of old wine were set out.

Having packed the waiter off, Wu Xiu poured Chen Dasheng a bowl. "Come, come, Captain Chen. Let's you and I drain this bowl first, and talk of other things after."

Did he not know, then, that Chen Dasheng was not what he'd been? He knew, knew it plain and clear in his heart. But he wouldn't own it, didn't wish to own it, and was set on going on looking down on this low-born whelp of a contract-slave, calling him Captain Chen still.

Honest to a fault, Chen Dasheng looked at the bowl of wine and said, hard put to it, "Captain Wu, I'll not hide it from you. I truly can't hold my drink. I've not drunk more than a few times in all my life, and I'm a man that one cup lays flat."

Flat at one cup? Why, so much the better!

Wu Xiu laughed all the more merrily. He drank first, to do him honor, and with the empty bowl in hand said to Chen Dasheng, "Brother Chen, you mustn't look down on me now, see, I've drained mine already? Or, tell you what, I won't press you hard. How's this? I'll take three bowls to your one."

Chen Dasheng seemed stung by it. He pressed his lips, and in the end took up the bowl, tipped back his neck, and, glug, glug, drank it down to the bottom...