Chapter 77

Yong'an the second year was a year of plenty. Early on the morning of the twenty-second of the twelfth month, Chen Siniu hurried Madam Qiao off to the capital, saying only that he had some most weighty thing to see to, and once again he would not spend the New Year at home.

He knocked his head to the old lady in farewell, and the old lady did not press him to stay. As to what became of him now, she had but one thought. So long as he had breath and did not starve, so long as he knew he was alive, that would do.

Once Chen Siniu had hurried off, the old lady set someone briskly to picking out her finest clothes and shoes, and even the head-ornaments she'd never before been willing to bring out she hung all over herself.

At the last she pulled on the soft green fleece cloak the palace had given her, woven all over with a lucky fret, and wrapped a silver-fox stole about her neck, and, leaning on her stick and a helping arm, made her way out.

When the first snow of this winter had fallen, word had come from the capital that the old lady was not to go gadding about. The affairs of the house her father did not meddle in, but when now and again he asked the family to do a thing, they must heed it.

The old lady, out at last after such trouble, saw Qi Qian'er waiting for her at the gate, and opened with a grumble: "Last year I was still driving the ox-cart all over, and dared neither die nor grow old. This wealth is no thing for common folk to enjoy. A few months only, and it's aged this old woman past knowing."

A few months on from that one funeral, the old lady had gone silver all over, without a single black hair left.

Qi Qian'er's heart ached. She came up to steady her, and coaxed her with a smile: "It's only that your son's afraid you'll fall. Deep snow's no matter, but this winter it's come in dribs and drabs, thin snow, and where we live now isn't like the place you were before. There the earth had some give, and a soft tumble was nothing to fear. Now it's stone underfoot going in and out, and these arms and legs of yours want careful keeping. Take one fall and I'm out of pocket for it again!"

At that the old lady gave a huffing laugh and poked her: "Grown that stingy, you're a sight!"

As they joked, up the lane came Lu-shi, the new wife Meng Wanquan had married, with a string of little maids behind her, bearing an armful of household oddments.

Before this the old lady had held some grudge at Meng Wanquan's marrying a widow, but from the day Lu-shi came in the door she'd learned there truly were sweet-tongued mynah-birds in this world. Unlike her Qian'er, hard of mouth and soft of heart, this Lu-shi had a way of talking that was all charm. Never mind that Quanzi went about laughing all day, the old lady herself was delighted past bearing.

Seeing the old lady, Lu-shi shaded her brow with a hand from a long way off, making a great show of peering, and called out loud where she stood: "I say, Qian'er? That handsome one at your side, all red and rosy, all fresh and green, a ring of flowers stuck round her head, whose bride is that? Standing there in the snow like a beauty out of a painting. How is it I've never seen her?"

At once there was laughing all round. Qi Qian'er stood before the old lady, and putting on a stern face argued back: "You sharp-tongued, monkey-cheeked thing, forever making mischief up and down, what sort of eyes are those? Why, this is the beauty of our house, of course..."

The words were not out before she caught another slap.

The old lady raised a hand and waved Lu-shi over, and asked her: "How is it you're out? Aren't you cold? Where's your mother?"

Lu-shi came over on her maid's arm, all smiles, made her bow to the old lady first, then pointed at the maids and page-boys: "My mother's inside at her needlework, Granny. It's only that the elder brothers are coming home today. Qian'er's ever thorough, so of course she'll have everything ready. But you've scarce had a few settled days in Qingfeng. I feared a thing or two mightn't be to hand!

"Our family used to keep a pewter-ware shop, and when the troubles came I closed it, and there's half a storehouse of everyday things left at home, candlesticks and foot-basins and wine-pots and ornaments in piles. So I picked some out and brought them for the elder brothers to use."

This was thoughtful indeed. It could not have been more thoughtful.

On Lu-shi's third day in the door, the Chen family had a letter from Dingxiang's husband, Cui You, written to the old lady in his own hand. He said he'd had his transfer order and would go before long to the Right Army Command in Yanjing. What office exactly he'd hold he did not spell out, saying only that he'd had the order together with the three, Dazhong, Dayi, and Dayong, each of them raised a grade besides, and that once the New Year was out he'd report to the Command for his superiors' orders.

Hearing it out, the old lady had a great wailing cry, and from that day set to hoping every day and counting every day.

Qi Qian'er, taking the letter, was rather at sea too, but she was used to it by now, and knew the cousins' fates had been shifted from their course. Men who by rights should have spent their whole lives in the outer commanderies were coming back to the capital. And what of it? She'd died and come alive again herself. Mightn't others be let rise a grade?

But this she did not know. Ever since Chen Dasheng became the night-guard, the Emperor, at his leisure, often chatted idly with him, and had chanced now and then to hear that the old lady at home longed for the whole family gathered under one roof. So the Emperor had bidden Guo Qian see to it a little.

There are things one man cannot do in three lifetimes with an ox's strength, and another man does with a single word.

After that, every time Madam Dong came to the house she'd grip Qi Qian'er's hand hard and rub at it seventeen or eighteen times over, till Qi Qian'er was quite at a loss.

Glad was glad, but busy was truly busy.

Four households were coming back, and the mansions claimed for them had all been let out on three-year leases, and it wasn't a full year yet, so you couldn't turn a tenant out. The rents were warming in the old lady's coffer now, and turn it over as she might, there was nothing for it but to put Dingxiang and the rest for the time being in the courtyard first claimed for Chang Lianfang.

The old lady had come out today to see whether the rooms for her grandsons were all made ready, for the word was they'd arrive today, and Quanzi had gone out at dawn to meet them.

Lu-shi's string of pretty talk had the old lady red in the face with pleasure. She was not the small-eyed thing she'd once been. Sums above ten thousand taels she'd no eye for now, and hearing Lu-shi meant to give the house some things, she took them free and open-handed, and turned to charge Qi Qian'er: "Have Jixiang take the things and set them down, and count them over, and after send First-Moon to my coffer for the money."

Lu-shi said no, and Qi Qian'er said she'd pay, but the old lady looked at the two of them in earnest and said: "Had you given a thing or two I'd not have raised it. But look how much you've brought, a hundred-odd pieces it must be. Enough! Furniture and fittings inside and out, bedding and pots and bowls, and even the changes of clothes, Qian'er's laid in a good store of them.

"What more could they want? Four households coming, mind, and every one with a family in tow. Can you small households keep propping them up forever? Those few are older than you. There's no letting the younger brothers and sisters keep them! Clear accounts are what make kin stay kin. Begin so and you'll begin so, and after there's no changing it. When was a man ever satisfied? Part ways later and you're bound to give offense. Better there was none of it from the start. They've been officers a good few years too. Poor as they are, can they not so much as light a stove? And if they're too poor even for that, this grandmother's still living, and I'll keep them. It doesn't fall to you!"

The old lady's words pleased Qi Qian'er thoroughly. It wasn't that the house lacked that little. It was that, knowing her several cousins-by-marriage as she did, she'd say they were not bad women, but flat ones. Living with them was a truly flavorless business, thin and pale and cool, for every time they came back they'd slip the old lady, and Qi Qian'er too, a little money on the quiet, and with it a faint, faint air of looking down.

Yet you couldn't call them mean, or say they scorned you. No one owed anyone. To come the once and give a little each time was already conscience enough. Meet the likes of Yu Qingguan's elder brother and sister, and you'd have nowhere even to go and weep.

In those days, far off as they were, the old lady had lived leaning on Chen Siniu, and the cousins, coming back the long road home, took a few sour words from Madam Qiao every time, and were pared of their money besides. Given long enough the heart goes cold, and had the old lady lost this kin, she'd have lost it for good.

Qi Qian'er steadied the old lady toward the house: "Granny, it's cold out. Let's talk indoors."

The old lady patted her hand and said with a smile: "Good, good, let's go in."

A few steps on, the old lady murmured most fawningly in Qi Qian'er's ear: "Qian'er, let Granny tell you. No one stands above you. In this grandmother's heart, you rank first!"

Words to hear and let go!

Qi Qian'er burst out laughing: "Fine! You've said it. Put me down the list and I'll have none of you. You can go and live with that lot."

The old lady made a face: "Threatening me!"

Round the spirit-screen and into the courtyard, Lu-shi lifted her face to the five-bay main house and marveled: "Tsk! A fine courtyard! Handsome! A civil grandee lived here before, I'll be bound. This house is far more particular than ours over the way. Tsk, tsk, look at these prop-open lattice windows, and look at your bracketed eaves. That wood's the finest sort at a glance... far airier than ours. Ours back home had only square windows front and back."

Lu-shi praised her sweet round, and the old lady was gladder still.

The truth was that when the old sabers picked their houses, they'd pushed the doors open and claimed them any which way. The houses were built by others, so of course each had its differences, and clever Qi Qian'er had claimed the very best. Only Guan Si'er's was the poorest bargain, a three-bay house of nine rooms round one court, two rooms fewer to a court than the rest, and to this day he did not know it.

Jixiang's wife was inside with a troop of odd-job women, setting things to rights. Seeing the old lady come in, she led her gaze to the back, for the front held Qi Qian'er's and the old house's storerooms and the quarters of Jixiang's servants, and the five bays facing, though empty, were no fit place to lodge a master.

Reaching the back, Lu-shi brought forth a few more blossoms of praise, and had the old lady laughing till the very flesh of her gums showed.

She Jixiang opened the east side-room with his own hands and asked the old lady in, and the old lady said, smiling: "Who's this for?"

Qi Qian'er answered from behind: "This is for the third cousin."

The old lady nodded, pleased: "Right, right. Stinky-bolt's the second branch, so your third cousin ought to live here."

There was an old order of precedence in the Chen family, but the old lady felt that the gone were gone, and reckoned it afresh by the living, else every time she counted them she'd have a fit of weeping.

And so Chen Dasheng and Qi Qian'er had become the little fourth master and the little fourth mistress.

The back too was five bays across, with three side-rooms to left and right, and the front given to the eldest branch to live in. Dingxiang's husband Cui You held the higher office, but living in his wife's mother's house he could only have the west side, for the east side was the place of the Chen family's own sons.

The womenfolk went laughing and chattering into the room, and felt at once a wave of warmth.

The old lady, well content, her eyes not enough for the looking, glanced round the whole of it, and seeing all was there that should be, murmured again in Qi Qian'er's ear: "How much did you lay out on this? Reckon it up, and when next year's harvest is in off Granny's fields, Granny will settle the account with you."

Seeing Qi Qian'er about to refuse again, the old lady caught her quickly: "Good child, hear Granny out. Early this morning your fourth uncle went and hid himself again. There's no telling how much he took from those few in the old days, and all of it pared off in my name. And now he dares not face folk, and goes hiding for shame!"

Qi Qian'er drew a breath, nodded to the old lady in earnest, and reached up to set her gleaming head-ornaments straight: "I'll do as you say, then. A little each year, we're in no hurry."

Hearing her agree, the old lady's heart went bright on the instant. She was so glad she'd found her courage, and set to rummaging the boxes and chests without the least ceremony, for it was her silver she was spending.

Lu-shi came in and fell silent. At a glance she'd seen the flat-topped side-table set in the main room, and on it a five-color porcelain vase, a little screen, and a five-drawer chest for oddments, and on the wall facing hung a pair of couplet-scrolls, and before the flat-topped table stood a square table set with dried fruits and sweetmeats of every kind, and an official's-hat armchair to either side.

Side-room though it was, the builder had thought of sons and daughters living here and receiving guests, and so, by two round-backed armchairs set against a screen to left and right, he'd marked off a little study and a little music-room.

Lu-shi had been a merchant's wife, and there were things she knew the price of at a glance. That set of couplet-scrolls on the wall was a hundred years old at the least, and the antique shops of the capital would not part with the like under thirty strings.

She clicked her tongue inwardly and thought: Quanzi had told her before that the mistress who kept this house was the most handsome and thorough of women, and she'd not believed it. Now, seeing it again, the woman was open-handed in earnest.

Lu-shi was just about to praise it when she heard laughing and joking in the courtyard. Qi Qian'er knew by the laughter who'd come, and went and lifted the door-curtain, and sure enough it was Zhang Wanru and her mother Madam Dong, and Ding Yuniang, and the two Yu girls, come at last.

Madam Dong came in first, all smiles, and caught Qi Qian'er's hand and rubbed at it a good while, till Qi Qian'er, half laughing and half not, greeted them all. Not one of the party had come empty-handed. The She family weren't rich, yet they'd sent eight sets of satin bedding, and Zhang Wanru, most practical of all, had simply had a dozen-odd bolts of this year's fashionable satin carried in.

These things were fitly given, so Qi Qian'er said nothing of money.

That Lu-shi was easy in her means, and what she gave went sometimes by the heap, and open-handed she truly was, open-handed, in the old lady's phrase, as a bottomless sieve.

The old lady came gladly out of the east bedroom and looked over each one's gifts, and above all the few quilts Ding Yuniang had made, for one touch of the hand told how honest the work was.

So she praised them all round again, and called down Guanyin's blessing on the whole family, and then asked the party into the east bedroom, where there was a kang too, and had everyone sit up on it together.

When they were settled, Zhang Wanru teased the old lady: "Granny's happy this time, eh? Your grandsons and granddaughter home again, and after this we must all step back a pace!"

The old lady laughed: "You're jealous even of this? Can they be compared with you? When they weren't here I leaned on your dutifulness. Step back a pace, indeed! You do talk nonsense!"

That said, she stroked Zhang Wanru's belly and rubbed it fondly: "This is coming along better and better. Next year another mouth to the house, and there's no knowing when I'll get to see four generations."

The old lady seldom spoke of hardship now, for fear of talking her good fortune away.

She longed for her grandsons till her very liver ached, and last night she'd truly not slept well, thinking how to do it, how to set the household right. She'd even risen in the middle of the night and taken all the money out of the coffer, and, save what was set by for Scabby and his wife, which she dared not touch, divided the rest into four heaps. And look at it how she might, it never seemed fair. Share it even, a portion to a household, and how it wronged Scabby and his wife! So great a family fortune laid up, and all of it borne on Qian'er's shoulders, who'd got them so fine a house and fitted it out besides, so that even if Siniu had once pared eight layers of grease off them, it was paid back double.

But Scabby's was Scabby's, and the sins Siniu wrought were surely not for those two to make good. This was the old lady all over, turning the money over and over the whole night, and no reckoner, and not knowing what came to what, only dividing it into portions near enough of a size, and in the end never dividing it to her own content. Only as the sky went faintly grey did she give the thing up altogether.

Madam Dong put in a merry word: "You've no need to envy her. And this is no flattery, old lady. Reckon up how many new brides your house has taken in from last year to this. Count Qian'er and her cousins-in-law, a full four! You've only to sit and be waited on. Your Bodhisattva's arranged it all. There's no forcing such things."

At that the old lady nodded: "True, true, the Bodhisattva arranged it long ago. Ai, four years since I saw them. There's no knowing what each one looks like now..."

Talking so, she was drifting toward grief again, and Qi Qian'er, afraid she'd take it hard, hurried to put her shoes on her and dragged her off to walk the back courtyard, and even lifted the lids of the rice-bin and the flour-bin and the oil-jar in the kitchen for her to see. Then she drew the old lady back to the old house. And so they waited, until dark had well fallen.

Snow filled the sky over the official road ten li out of Qingfeng, where more than twenty carriages stood along the verge. In the lee of the charity-pavilion a few burly men pissed into the wind, then tucked themselves away and went back to the train.

A strong-built fellow with heavy brows, big eyes, and a full beard went back to a cart and fetched out a wine-gourd, and tossed it to a slender youth, fine of feature and rather sweet-faced.

"Second cousin, have a couple?"

Chen Dayi put out a hand and caught the gourd, drew the stopper and drank a few mouthfuls, then looked at the bearded man with a queer face: "I say, Officer Cui? What's got into you these few days? Gone clean mad?"

That said, someone at his side reached over and snatched the gourd and drank a few pulls too, a round-faced man with phoenix eyes and rather a sweet look himself, and when he'd drunk he said: "Aiya, what's to wonder at? Wasn't it his friend in the palace guard, the other day, that said his rise leaned on our Scabby?"

Cui You felt no shame in it, and stuck up his thumb in praise: "Aiya! It's a true thing, once you're up on the phoenix's wing, into the wind and I'm running fair and free a thousand li! Third cousin, don't you go thinking me a weathercock. In the old days I sheltered you, and would you play the elder over me? That I'll not have! Now my road and my fate hang on my wife, and I've sat down to a bowl of the softest rice going, so I must lift you all up a station..."

In the midst of the joking, out of a padded-canopy cart there crawled a clean-featured man not the least bit sweet, cold even about the brows and eyes.

These four were the very ones the old lady yearned for, Stinky-melon, Stinky-egg, Stinky-bolt, and Dingxiang's son-in-law Cui You.

They'd shared life and death in the old days. Cui You had been Dazhong and Dayi's old superior officer, else the old lady would never have given Dingxiang to a man fifteen years her elder.

Through these years, by Cui You's care, Dazhong and Dayi had got on steady in the army, and though small in office were true seventh-grade captains for all that, holding a real rank, worth a hundred times what Chen Dasheng had once been. As for Dayong, who was not with them, he'd had his own fortune, and did well enough too.

It wasn't that the cousins had never once thought to save Chen Dasheng. By the very names they were given after, Dazhong, Dayi, Dayong, you might know they too had passed through the Tan house, and so knew that once you entered the Long Saber Battalion, short of dying you'd no hope of coming out alive.

For how many years, over this one matter of Chen Dasheng, had the cousins carried an unease in their hearts, a great grindstone pressing on them.

Yet who could have thought it? In the blink of an eye they'd risen in office, and by this very younger brother's hand?

The whole road the four of them had huddled in the carts, puzzling it over. A year only, and their brother's hand and eye reached to heaven, and at one stroke, with the Central and the Right Armies both, he'd helped them up in rank and had them posted to the capital?

Never mind them. The very commanders of the several marshals' tents might not have such power. However had their brother done it?

The plain fact was, their brother himself had not known he'd been looked after by the Emperor until the letter came, and had done no more than knock his head three times to the Emperor in earnest, so moved he'd have gone naked but for one robe, doing his loyal duty bare through every night.

With whole families in tow, and Dazhong's and Dayi's wives both carrying, the train dared not go fast, and dawdled along a good many days, and a few days back had met Cui You's old friend on the road.

This old friend of Cui You's was in the palace guard, and full of his own pride, so at first he'd exchanged stiff, measured courtesies with Cui You. A few words in, learning this was Chen Dasheng's own brother and own sister's husband, well! In one breath he'd put on for the party a whole performance of you-are-all-my-ancestors.

Hearing that man's flowery telling, the family learned for the first time how great a somebody their brother was now, and their hearts began to float and swim, all unreal.

Before this they'd truly believed their brother no more than a gate-watchman.

They'd all reckoned their brother a simpleton. Well! A fellow never sharp from a boy, and now in the palace? And taken a eunuch for a father besides? His father was no shame at all, but that was a place where power ran thick, and one slip meant a head off the neck.

So it was, with a bellyful of cares, that they'd pushed at last to the charity-pavilion outside Qingfeng, and there the fine snow began to fall. The train took the road again slower still, and by hard going, just as the sky went wholly dark a little after seven, they met Meng Wanquan waiting at the ten-li pavilion.

Meng Wanquan led the way, and it was close on nine when they came into Qingfeng's new ward.

Chen Dazhong's wife Li-shi, holding her belly, lifted the padded curtain to look out, and asked Meng Wanquan, unbelieving: "Quanzi? This is Qingfeng? How's it in such a state?"

Qingfeng was all under works now, the main street heaped everywhere with the stopped piles of brick and tile. Meng Wanquan pulled the cart along and, blowing on his cold hands, turned to say: "Aiyo, big sister-in-law, these works'll take a good three years whatever comes. When we go to Yanjing after this, we take the little road through Quanhou Street. You've come by the old official road, so there's no getting round this way."

Chen Dazhong nodded and pressed his wife's head back into the cart, and said to Meng Wanquan with a smile: "We've truly put you out today, Brother Quanzi, suffering all this in the bitter cold!"

Meng Wanquan waved a hand and laughed: "Hai! We're none of us strangers!"

That said, he led them into a two-cart lane, let out a breath, and said: "A little further on, past the raw-medicine storehouse where I'm on duty, and we're home!"

His own heart was flying homeward too. Where the road was clear he climbed onto his mule-cart and led them on the well-known way, and after about half an incense-stick's time Meng Wanquan drew rein and pointed ahead of a sudden, calling: "Look! Brothers! See there, the family's come out to meet us..."

At his word the Stinkies started, and one and all lifted their eyes to look.

No people could be seen over that way, but there were a full twenty or thirty torches, cutting through wind and snow in the dark of night.

"You there ahead! Granny's asking. Is it her little Dingxiang, her Stinky-melon, Stinky-egg, Stinky-bolt?"

The one calling was a woman, her voice ringing clear and carrying a great way.

Chen Dazhong looked at his two younger brothers, and could hold himself no longer. He sprang straight down from the cart, his head all full of his granny clinging to the recruit-camp fence and crying, don't be afraid, your mother's here! Granny's good boy, don't be afraid, Granny's here...

The pent grievance of years burst out of him in a moment, and Chen Stinky-melon ran toward those torches without a look at the road, crying the whole way: "Granny! Granny! Granny..."

And from over there at once came the answer, in the voice he'd dreamed of a thousand times, ten thousand times.

"Ai! Ai! Granny's here... Granny's here!"

"Granny!"

"Ai!"

"Granny!"

"Granny's here!"

"Granny... Granny!"

"You stinking imps! Mind the road! What's all the shouting for! I'm not dead. Mind you don't fall..."

The old lady was not done before two of them tripped over up ahead.

Nor had she time to scold before three shapes came whistling past her, and behind them a woman crying and sobbing: "You said you'd wait for me. Off the three of you great fools ran? You said you'd wait for me... I can't see a thing. Granny, Granny... I've come home. It's me, it's Dingxiang, Granny..."

Chen Dazhong, weeping and laughing, rushed up before the old lady, and was checked a moment by the wealthy old woman there. He hesitated and looked at the face. No mistake, it was Granny!

And he went on crying, and blamed her through the crying: "Look at you. At your age, in such snow, couldn't you have waited indoors? Look at your hair... all snow..."

He reached to brush the drifted snow from her hair, and his hand met a head of frost-white... Granny, your hair's gone all white.