Chapter 68

Qi Qian'er looked at the row of fresh, dewy girls seated by the rockery and the waterside of Evening-Fragrance Return, and her smile turned rather awkward.

Her memory was hazy, and she didn't know how old this Pan Shiqiao might be. It was only when the girls came that she learned Pan Shiqiao was still a little thing, but fourteen this year.

Above her were three elder sisters. And from the seventh, Pan Qiqiao, on down, they were all still maids unpledged in the boudoir.

Because Qi Qian'er's word had been over-vague, and the Pan house truly wished this match brought off, today they'd sent four girls over, ranged neat in a row, meaning, pick whichever your house pleases, and had given their word, besides, that this time they'd never dare hold back the bride-price.

The Pan house had dropped a hint, too: that to marry the seventh, Pan Qiqiao, would be best of all, a match well-suited in years and in family standing both, a match of the first order.

But it was the tenth, Pan Shiqiao, that Qi Qian'er wanted.

Evening-Fragrance Return was one of the Little Immortal Garden's sixteen courts. And among the several chrysanthemum-gardens of note, this one planted, of all the chrysanthemum-kinds, only the Gold Ten-Thousand Bells, and took one of the elegant by-names of the chrysanthemum-gentleman, "Evening-Fragrance", for its garden-name.

As for this Little Immortal Garden, it was built by the city's great merchant Ping Shen. The garden had stood since the last years of the fallen dynasty, an elegant garden built to enclose a whole hill. Within it were sixteen courts besides, kept up by sub-letting them to men of letters and to cloistered women for their odds and scraps of coin. The Ping house didn't want for that little. What it wanted was the elegant literary air of the literati. To put it plainly, it was a place where a merchant house bought itself a name.

That great merchant they called Ping Shen was a keen one, and high in his methods. The inside of his affairs was not to be known, but outsiders knew his trade and dealings ran very large. That the Little Immortal Garden had come running from the fallen dynasty into the new was proof enough of what stuff this Ping Shen was made. Even the wrestling arena that Chen Dasheng and the rest had once gone to was Ping Shen's own, run from the old dynasty's days in Shaoshang. And when the new Emperor took the throne, he'd simply moved the business over.

These tangled, sundry ties Qi Qian'er could not, of course, have known. She was only after a bit of novelty. A person lives but the one life, and not to see for once a thing one's never seen is a loss! So she'd tried sending a card, thinking to book some small court to amuse herself, and, heh! who'd have known the Qingfeng Guard Lane Chen house's name rang so loud? The card no sooner out than the answer came back: all was made ready for the madam, she'd only to come.

And so they came. And only on coming did they find it no small court at all, the court they'd been given was Evening-Fragrance Return, the most in-season of all the middle-grade courts. Called middle-grade it might be. But Qi Qian'er looked about her and clicked her tongue to herself, a court like this could receive two hundred guests without the least trouble.

This bustling party come from the Chen, the Yu, the Dong, the Tong, the Pan, six households of women, masters and servants together some sixty or seventy souls, still couldn't fill the mountain-viewing terrace where one sat to admire the chrysanthemums and watch the play.

It was too great an honor. Too spacious by half. The nobles who lived in Yanjing and in Qingfeng all knew that the courts of the Little Immortal Garden must be booked a month or two ahead.

When they'd taken one turn round the garden and Qi Qian'er and the rest had climbed up and sat, the head of the opera-troupe on the stage across from them had already sent up the play-list, inviting them to choose their plays.

Qi Qian'er had never been the one to decide such a thing. Smiling, she passed the play-list to Madam Dong, and Madam Dong, smiling, gave the tally on to Song-shi, the wife of Censor Pan. But Song-shi was timid at heart, and after a few courteous words gave the list back to Qi Qian'er in the end. And Qi Qian'er, at a loss, cut a glance at Zhang Wanru out of the corner of her eye.

This time Zhang Wanru didn't demur, but, all smiles, chose the Lesser Feast and the Greater Feast out of The Interlocking Stratagems.

Her choosing done, her mother Dong-shi set to glaring at her. But Zhang Wanru only said: "My own mother, I'm a married woman now, and still you'd manage me? At home my husband follows my lead in all things. And now, at last, it's come round to my turn to decide... When you took me to banquets in the old days, whatever they chose to sing was what I had to sit and hear. You'd never let me hear one whole play out, so pent-up was I that I'd go home and hunt out the scripts, and read them on the sly, at that! Punished for it who knows how many times. And a pity, this one Interlocking Stratagems, from the time I first understood a play at seven I've wanted to see the whole of it. And today, at last, I've caught my chance! Madams, have mercy on me..." And she pressed her palms together and bowed round the company, laughing: "It's only these last two scenes I've yet to see, and then I'll have seen the whole play through."

For a common play, too, is acted a scene a day. And so how were these girls of the inner chambers ever to see a whole play out?

Everyone fell to laughing together, and the two scenes were settled. And the troupe-head went off to make ready, and was a dozen steps gone before Zhang Wanru was still charging after him: "I say, troupe-head! I see you're a company but newly moved-camp to Yanjing. Today you're to give it your whole strength, mind! Let the heat of it be good and seasoned, you take me?"

The troupe-head turned and made his bow, and said, smiling: "That goes without saying. Even should our throats go husked today, we'll sing you a first-billing worthy of all the sixteen gardens."

Zhang Wanru was pleased: "Good! Only sing it well! And by and by I'll reward you a few great basketfuls of coin!"

The madams laughed to hear it, and bade the troupe-head go and make ready quick, for there'd surely be a reward.

When it was sure the outsiders were gone, Yu Dani came quietly up behind Qi Qian'er and tugged at her sleeve. And when Qi Qian'er looked at her, she asked: "Aunt? How is it I couldn't understand Third Aunt's words?"

At that Qi Qian'er laughed on the instant, and, not lowering her voice at all, pointed her fan at Zhang Wanru: "Don't you go learning from this stage-mad wild-thing, she'll not teach you anything good. I've no idea how she grew up at all. That whole mouth of hers is the troupe-folk's trade-slang: 'moved-camp' is a new-come company, and 'the heat' is the effort they put in, and 'husked' is when the throat's gone hoarse. Only listen to her, how many plays must a body have heard, to talk so?"

Everyone laughed again to hear it.

Zhang Wanru blinked, and gave as good back: "Heh! Listen, all of you, and how wronged I am! I'm an honest, plain-spoken body, and hide nothing, so the moment I speak I show my true colors. But I may have shown mine, you'd no business understanding it on the instant either, now!"

Qi Qian'er was struck dumb a moment, then flung down her fan and went to tickle her.

The company laughed again. And when they'd made merry a good while, Madam Dong said to the several bashful young girls: "We're all old ladies here, and the play's a while off yet. Take Niu'er and go pick some flowers to amuse yourselves, and mind you keep a good eye on your little sister. It's her first time here."

The Pan girls heard her and rose meekly and made their farewell courtesy. And, taking up the little flower-baskets they'd brought from home, they led off the Yu Dani who didn't know where to put her hands or feet, and went down together to pick flowers.

The five girls went down the steps, and played a while nearby, then wandered farther and farther off.

Seeing them so merry, the several madams could no longer sit still either. And Madam Dong, who'd been to the Little Immortal Garden before, but never so extravagantly as this, with so few people booking a whole middle-grade garden, drew Song-shi along to go and look about too, though she took no flower-basket with her.

And so the mountain-viewing terrace was left to but the three of them: the Ding Yuniang who couldn't hear and sat all bemused, and Zhang Wanru, and Qi Qian'er.

Zhang Wanru held her fan to Qi Qian'er's ear: "I can't think where you got your word of it, that tenth one's not grown yet, is she?"

Qi Qian'er's face flushed red on the instant.

But then she heard Zhang Wanru go on: "I'd say her eighth girl is the good one."

Qi Qian'er was taken aback, and turned her face to look at her.

Zhang Wanru set down her fan, and said, a smile on her face: "From where we sit, that eldest, the seventh, was very attentive to our Dani on the surface of it. But only look at her greedy way of picking the flowers. This place I used to come to, and pick a stalk or two home to mark the season by. But look, that one truly digs your roots up to the death, the moment she gets a bargain! She's changed her basket twice already in this little while."

Qi Qian'er didn't understand the ways of the place either, and, all bewilderment, craned to look too, but the girls were no longer to be seen.

As for the experience of sizing up a back-courtyard maid, she owned she'd nothing like Zhang Wanru's eye for it. The circumstances a body is born to are fixed by Heaven, and there's no help for it. Such a thing must be grown into, slow.

A cool breeze came, a nose full of flower-scent. The place was truly a beautiful one. And a little while more, and two rows of some twenty-odd Evening-Fragrance servants came up onto the terrace bearing wine and dishes, sweetmeats and every kind of fruit, and silently and in good order helped set it all out, and quietly withdrew.

Zhang Wanru took up the wine-pot, lifted the lid, bent her head to sniff, and fell to smiling. She poured herself a cup, without a thought for Qi Qian'er, and drank a mouthful before she said: "Aiya, a true Sanjiagou ten-year chrysanthemum brew. I'd only ever heard tell of it, and now I've drunk it at last."

Well! Not only was this one a play-mad thing, there was a wine-devil dwelling in her heart besides.

Married now, Zhang Wanru and Tong Jintai got on happily. Never mind that Tong Jintai had but newly learned his letters. Getting himself a wife had been no easy thing for him, and so he was obedient to her in all things. And, besides, Qi Qian'er having ruled them so strictly before, Zhang Wanru had found on marrying in that her own husband loved cleanliness even more than she did.

Zhang Wanru had a pride of her own. And though it had been a match made by parents' command and matchmaker's word, clever as she was she'd known Tong Jintai's low birth, an army-camp rough, and had reckoned on weathering wind and storm. And who could have foreseen it?, that it should be, from first to last, a road of pure gladness. That the man should be so good-looking and so spirited, and honest besides, and, taken after his big brother, obedient to his wife in everything. She thought now: why was it she'd never got herself married all those years? Why, she'd been waiting for her own Jintai to come and marry her.

Wholly at her ease, Zhang Wanru leaned back on the cushions, lazy as a wine-immortal, she was lovable and half-drunk already without a drop in her. Qi Qian'er poured herself a cup too. And, with Zhang Wanru's reckoning-up of things in her ear, she sipped it down mouthful by mouthful, and felt she'd learned a thing again.

Zhang Wanru said, careless: "Little sister-in-law's thinking is all sound: our house doesn't suit the great and grand gates, and since we've stooped low anyhow, we must pick the best of the good. Everyone knows the Pan house is poor. And we don't want a thing off them. But only look at that seventh, she'd uproot the whole garden and cart it home if she could. That won't do..."

Qi Qian'er thought about it. And sure enough it was so, the seventh had gone down and taken up the shears, and briskly brought back two baskets of flowers.

A bit too small and grasping.

"Whether it'll answer or not I can't say, you're the one to decide, sister! But what that girl's like, I do know. Tonight she'll surely go round dispensing flower-favors to her kin and her sisters, her mouth full of the Gold Ten-Thousand Bells of the Little Immortal Garden's Evening-Fragrance Return. Perhaps she'll even hunt out some of the gold-flecked cards she'd not spend on any ordinary day, and add on a few lines of verse to show off her talents, how dignified it'll all look! A pity it traps us into paying three hundred cash a stalk for the people's flowers. There's no knowing how much money we'll have to lay out before we're clear of this gate."

Qi Qian'er had never been going to fancy the seventh. And she drank a cup and laughed: "She shows her hand too plain. Ha, a young girl being a bit vain is only natural. Who hasn't a moment when she'd show herself off?"

Zhang Wanru cut her a glance, thinking: and how old are you, that you go calling others young girls?

She went on: "And then the ninth, the tenth, they were gone without a shadow the instant they got down. Too much of the playful child in them still. A girl grows up otherwise than a boy: a boy comes to manhood slow, but a girl wakes some one morning grown up all at once, in her body and her heart both. These two look better than their sisters, but they're young, one waking short of childishness yet. Get one of them for Ma Ergu, and set to teaching her slow, and we'd like as not make an enemy, she'd go about saying we'd been harsh with her..."

Which left only the eighth. Qi Qian'er called to mind the eighth, the least remarkable of them just now, and tried hard to remember, but of the last life she'd no impression of her at all.

A very plain, ordinary girl.

So she asked: "Can it be you've fixed on the eighth?"

Zhang Wanru sighed and nodded: "Mm, fixed on her! Steady, and honest. And to keep a house one needn't have any great abilities, solid and sure is enough." She turned her face to Qi Qian'er: "And who doesn't learn, from three or five years old, to keep her mother's accounts and manage her affairs at her side? Her sisters can do it, so it's not to be thought she never learned. Our Ma Ergu's the sort whose temper's off hopping every other minute, there's no guarding against his rolling about on the very rooftop. He's a jumping, scrambling monkey, and it's not a good stage he wants, but a good, appreciative audience to cheer him on. Wouldn't you say so, sister?"

Qi Qian'er was one who could take another's word. She thought it carefully over, and said with a wry smile: "It was hearsay with me too, after all. I'd thought too shallow of it... Your reasoning holds. Ma Ergu wants only someone to bear with him and take him in patience, and the eighth girl suits very well."

That said, she made an "eight" with her fingers at Ding Yuniang, who was watching hard at the shapes of their lips.

Ding Yuniang, being out, naturally fretted over her daughter, and had been watching her without once shifting her eyes. The older girl she didn't care for either. From the moment the seventh had made her own daughter help carry the baskets she'd disliked her, and the two little ones were quite out of sight now besides... It was the eighth who had, in silence, kept by her daughter and looked after her. Seeing the seventh set her to carrying the basket, the eighth had gone up and taken it over, one in each hand, yet still turned again and again to look after her Dani. Ding Yuniang liked the eighth, and put up a thumb to Qi Qian'er.

The gong on the stage sounded, and the guests who'd wandered off all came back.

The four Pan girls sat down again, bashful and coy, dear as little flower-fairies. And that seventh, being very good at the business of it, thoughtfully sent Qi Qian'er a basket of the prettiest flowers she'd chosen.

But what she didn't see was that her own sister-in-law, Song-shi, was forcing a smile, her whole face turned in apology to Qi Qian'er, for the flowers of that garden were all famous kinds, several hundred cash the stalk. It was disgrace carried to its very depths.

But Qi Qian'er took the flowers, all gladness, and even praised the seventh's fine eye. She'd invited people to come and amuse themselves, so she might as well be open-handed to the end, let the girl be.

When the gong on the stage struck up, a steward of the Little Immortal Garden carried four baskets of copper coin up onto the terrace, for Qi Qian'er to use in her rewarding.

Zhang Wanru pursed her lips and, cocking her head, said to Qi Qian'er: "I only said it in jest just now, how is it this Little Immortal Garden's steward is showing off his cleverness all over the place today?"

Outwardly open-handed, Qi Qian'er kept her smile, and held her fan to her mouth and said to Zhang Wanru: "You may well say it, today we've fallen clean into a robbers' den, I see. And unless we give up a few dozen taels today, we needn't think to get out the gate!"

Zhang Wanru cut her a glance, and slowly held up two fingers, and said, sly: "Book the garden, pick the flowers, the opera-troupe, four baskets of coin in tips, and all these servants' waiting-money besides, I was wondering, these few days, how it was you'd bring yourself to come to a place like this? And book Evening-Fragrance Return at that. Sister's family fortune runs deep!"

At that Zhang Wanru's face gave a crack. But in the end she nodded, grave. She'd brought money of her own, and had only been teasing Qi Qian'er, but she'd never have thought that this little sister-in-law, a good many years her junior, should have so steady a temper to her.

She raised a cup of the wine to Qi Qian'er: "Since we've come..."

Qi Qian'er clinked it and laughed softly: "...then be at ease. And the old lady doesn't know a thing of it, so be at ease..."

And they dissolved into laughter again.

Seated to one side, she who had never in her life enjoyed such days as these, Pan Qiqiao too raised her wine-cup and sipped shallowly at it.

She had never lived so. And, with a whole garden of fine chrysanthemums bestowed on her besides, a grief rose in her out of nowhere. And hearing the opera on the stage sing, ten thousand sorrows, a thousand threads, drowned down in wine..., she wanted, out of nowhere, to weep, and stole a look at the two madams enthroned like moon-and-stars at the head table.

On her way out, her father had told her: at the Little Immortal Garden, whatever garden it were, one couldn't get out the door under a hundred strings.

And he'd said her good days were coming!

If, if today they truly fixed on her, then like as not she'd bid the boudoir farewell from this day, and go to live such sorrow-drowning days as these. Was her life, then, to be settled off so? For that side, when all was said, was an army-thug of contract-slave origin, and whatever she said to him he'd not likely even catch, and that was a thing to grieve one to death.

Qi Qian'er little knew how much this seventh was turning over in her mind. She herself, roused by Zhang Wanru, could not help but go on looking at the eighth.

Heh... an amusing child, sure enough. Of the four girls, she was the whitest and the plumpest. Before her stood a plate of dried fruit in the shell, she'd perhaps eaten her fill, and had a mind to talk to someone. But the others were sunk deep in the play and paid her no heed, and yet she wasn't cast down for it. She quietly drew the plate over, took full possession of it, and set to shelling, and when the shells were off, she saw the folk about her well provided for, a pile here and a pile there.

Only, a pity, her sisters had each their own things in mind, and only picked them up and ate them, and would not join her in praising how good they were.

Perhaps it was so at home too. The eighth was used to it, and put her whole heart into the shelling. She shelled away until Yu Dani chanced to look down and see a pile of nuts before her, and took some up and ate them.

Dani had a mother half-deaf and unclear of speech. And, eating something good, she'd got the habit of putting up her thumb, and she signed and signed away at Pan Baqiao.

Pan Baqiao's eyes lit, and on the instant she took this girl for a bosom friend. Zhang Wanru had but a moment ago praised her for solid and honest, and who'd have thought that the girl should reach out and take back all the nuts she'd shelled for her other sisters, and split them into two heaps: one heap for herself, and one for Yu Dani.

To become friends is the work of a single moment's liking. And the two silly girls ate away, and their hands clasped together, and it seemed they'd never be parted again. In the midst of it, Pan Shiqiao made to come over and scoop up a handful, and was glared at by her sister, and had the back of her hand slapped. And Pan Shiqiao grew meek at once.

Qi Qian'er cocked her head at Zhang Wanru: "Mm, honest and solid, you said?"

Zhang Wanru giggled, and, taking up the wine-pot, said to Fourth-Moon: "We're merry today. Your madam says to change to the big cups."

Fourth-Moon would never have dreamed the Third Madam was tricking her, and, quick and clever, turned round and fetched agate cups twice the size.

And so Qi Qian'er, half-yielding and half-pressed, drank off half a pot of the ten-year chrysanthemum brew.

But what they did not know was that over there the girl they called Qiqiao had already thought her way clean to the latter half of her life, beaten and cursed and unable to speak of it to any outside soul, with only the bitter water to swallow down herself.

Those constant comings and goings. Noble mansions all, and yet a man who understood nothing of tenderness, who could only drink and gamble the day long, and every so often carry on with women outside besides. Until her frail bones were worn past all bearing, and a mouthful of fresh blood was spat out, and she fell down upon the fallen petals of the October chrysanthemum-ground...

Hurt in body and in heart, and yet forced to bear up her spirit and reckon for the family. Going out to socialize with these two unruly ones, and plied with wine, how was she to refuse it? Toss it back in one grieving gulp? Or learn of the Diaochan on the stage, and, feigning unconcern, say: I urge you, drink one cup more. The cup once in the hand, the knot in the breast is undone...?

One day, when she'd been tormented to death, they'd know at last her worth, weeping their regret at her very grave...

The girl Pan Qiqiao was dying of her misery, and, tearful, drank down another cup.

Pan Baqiao felt a chill beside her, and, turning, saw her sister start up her fit again. So she edged away toward Yu Dani.

Dani asked, curious: "What's the matter?"

Baqiao called to mind her mother's words: that a girl of seventeen or eighteen always gets the love-melancholy sickness of the moon-struck and the lorn, and that when she's grown up it mends of itself.

And though she wondered, herself, why she never got such a sickness, she was willing to cover for her sister. So she said to Yu Dani: "Nothing at all. A full belly cures every ill. Are you eating this, then?"

Seeing Yu Dani shake her head, she cheerfully hauled the girl's chrysanthemum-cake over and fell to it with a will.

Her mother had had the right of it again: though the very sky fall in, first a body must eat its fill.

The unwed girls had each their own drama going within. And over here Qi Qian'er had drunk too much, no, not too much. She was not one to be easily drunk, only her belly could hold no more water.

This visiting company sang well indeed. And on the mountain-viewing terrace there was not a soul, save her, but watched with a whole heart. Well, let it be. The money was spent, so let everyone be glad of it.

Qi Qian'er braced herself on the little table and stood. Fourth-Moon made to help her, but she waved her off, and would not let her come along, but held up her skirt and went down the steps alone toward the garden's edge.

On the way in, the steward-woman had led them all about, and had made a particular point of showing them where the privy was.

Coming out from the "returning," she found the stage over yonder had changed to the Greater Feast. And, never having cared for this piece, Qi Qian'er trod the pebbled flower-path and set to admiring the flowers, slow.

But she'd not gone far when, her hearing being sharp, she caught, from the great garden next door, someone speaking a passage strangely familiar to her:

"The pillar that props the sky and guards the realm. The three sticks of incense of the halls, north and south. Long robe, short coat, and round of collar, shoulder to shoulder, and flown clean over your very head. If you'd not eat a dark-blue dart, then count me the points: which garment do you wear? Which stick of incense do you burn? And at whose altar's incense?, and you'd come flapping your legs before our very gate?"

Over there was quiet a moment. And then several came out, and after them a young man said: "Ah! Truly these dull eyes of mine, no wonder you came flying over my wall, old sir. Old master, how many years is it now you've been down off Yuegong Mountain? This place, sir, has long since ceased to be Yuegong Mountain's branch-lodge. Be well, elder. This junior is Ping Shen, the third of this generation of the Bao gold-and-copper house... my respects to you. Come down first, sir. There's a distinguished guest next door, and a whole cellar of the Sanjiagou chrysanthemum brew, drink your fill of it as you please..."

Qi Qian'er couldn't for her life follow that martial-world cant. She knew but the three words of it, Yuegong Mountain!