Authors: Ye Zhaoyan
Instantly, the sudden death of the master of Zhen Estate became the talk of the small town. Since the master's only son, Naixiang, was an invalid and because the master had departed so abruptly, the family's vast wealth and property passed in its entirety to the master's only daughter, Miss Yu. Miss Yu was an old maid, and at one time before the old master's death the question of her marriage had at one time drawn the entire town's attention. When the master died, the first thing everyone thought ofâthe immediate question on everybody's mindâwas the question of Miss Yu's marriage.
T
he master drew his final breath at the very moment the sun had risen above the Mystery Chambers. At the time his son Naixiang was sitting in his wooden wheelchair, being wheeled about the Estate grounds, just as the old master had stipulated long ago. In the ten years since his accident, Naixiang had been able neither to move nor to speak, and lived the life of a vegetable. He was afflicted by serious insomnia, and the long nights always seemed to him like the end of the world. The expression on his face was always so rigid, so stiff and ugly. He lingered on like a living corpse, seated in his custom-made wooden wheelchair, at the mercy of anyone, like a specter. Every day after breakfast, the first thing to happen was invariably that his concubine Ai'ai would take his wheelchair out to go wheeling aimlessly about the great Estate.
They walked down a long passage, Naixiang in his wheelchair, Ai'ai pushing, the wheelchair grating on the ears as it squeaked along. Naixiang wore a thick fur coat and a fur hat, the outfit of any rich young dandy. His expression was something between stiff and ridiculous, his gaze stupid and fixed directly in front of him. The squeaking broke the stillness of the empty Estate. Ai'ai pushed the wheelchair to the end of the passage, turned around, and began to walk slowly back the other way.
Ever since Naixiang's paralysis, Ai'ai had always been there to push his wheelchair. She resembled a little porcelain doll, young and beautiful, with faint sorrow buried in the depths of her eyes. In fact, among Naixiang's many wives and concubines, Ai'ai was the one of least consequence. She was the second of four daughters, and twelve years earlier her father had brought her for the first time to the Zhen Estate. The purpose of her visit had been to go see her mother, who was a servant to the family. Her mother, Mrs. Wu, had been Miss Yu's wet nurse, and since the old master doted on his only daughter, Mrs. Wu had been kept on as Miss Yu's private maid. When Ai'ai had come to the Estate with her father, her mother had drawn a jade bracelet over the girl's hand and sent her to go play in the garden while she talked something over with Ai'ai's father.
It was in the garden that Naixiang had caught sight of her. Just then it was the season for apple blossoms, and Ai'ai, who had grown up in the village, was stunned by the sight of the garden brimming with gorgeous blooms. It was like an ocean of flowers, and the earth was covered in a layer of crimson petals. With a child's mischievousness, Ai'ai had broken off twigs from the apple tree, one after another, carefully fashioning a crown of flowers out of them. As she was preparing to set the crown upon her head, she caught sight of a fashionably dressed man, attended by a number of women behind him, standing at no great distance, looking at her with exhilaration. One of the women standing behind him had screeched at her in fury, "Filthy little girl, who asked you to come in here, making trouble?"
Ai'ai stood motionlessly and helpless, stunned and frightened, frozen foolishly on the spot, her heart pattering erratically. She knew she was in the wrong, because her mother had always impressed upon her that she was allowed to touch nothing in the Estate. Naixiang, in his fashionable suit, neared her, took the crown of blossoms from her hands, and solemnly placed it upon her head. Ai'ai stood there, petrified, and let it be done to her. Naixiang took a step back, looked her up and down, removed the crown of blossoms, re-positioned it and crowned her with it once again. Then he smiled in satisfaction.
"These flowers suit you perfectly." he told her, gravely.
The women standing behind him fumed. Ai'ai didn't herself know why, but in any event she found herself blushing. She turned and fled. Naixiang's smile had left a deep impression on Ai'ai, who was feeling her first awakening. That evening, Ai'ai's parents were summoned by Naixiang. No sooner had they entered the room than they saw two high stacks of silver coins on the bed. Ai'ai's mother Mrs. Wu understood instantly what was afoot, and didn't even wait for Naixiang, sitting in the rosewood chair, to finish what he had to say before she began to stammer that her daughter was still too young.
Naixiang laughed and said, "Too young? Not at all!"
The high piles of silver coins were dazzling. Ai'ai's father had come to the Estate on an errand, namely to get some cash from his wife to fix the leaks in their old house, and had brought his daughter along. But those silver coins were enough to build a few new houses. "Young master, it can't be done, really it can't." Ai'ai's father was rambling incoherently, but whether this was on account of his fondness for the money or for his daughter was unclear, "Naturally, it honors her greatly that you've taken a fancy to this daughter of ours, and we're very honored also, but she really is still too young, I'm afraid it's all a good deal more than she deserves."
"How old is your daughter?"
"Thirteen."
"I've deflowered younger girls than that." Naixiang said, a little put off. "You really are a fool. Since I've taken to her, would I let any harm come to her?"
That night, after Ai'ai went to bed, her parents stayed up half the night debating, heaving sighs, arguing. At last they reasoned that she would have to be married sooner or later, and with that resigned themselves to her fate. So they turned off the lights and went to sleep, though after a moment, Ai'ai's father crept over and climbed onto Mrs. Wu, making the bed creak and whine. Mrs. Wu said "You're no better than a beast, to have this in mind at a time like this." Ai'ai's father answered, "Young Master Zhen has so many concubines, and now he's taking another one, a young one. But I have only one woman, and I've travelled a long way. I don't want it to have been for nothing."
The following day, Ai'ai's father was gone, the silver coins wrapped up in his bundle. Under her mother's supervision, Ai'ai boiled a great pot of water, washed herself with it, and, dressed in new clothes, was shown into Naixiang's chambers. Naixiang, beside himself with pleasure, was at the door waiting for her, and showed her to the heated bed, where they sat together and drank some rice wine. Her mother was standing awkwardly to one side, and now looked rather like she wanted to leave. Naixiang smiled and said, what's the hurry, tell your mother to sit down and have a cup too. Ai'ai had already grasped what was about to happen, and she sat there uneasily, blushing and blanching in turns. Naixiang tried to comfort her, saying, "Don't you worry, this is some medicinal wine I've had mixed especially for you. Just drink this down, then it won't hurt a bit." No man had ever spoken to Ai'ai so softly and gently before, and she could feel his warm breath tickling her throat. Naixiang continued, "After the first few times, you'll start to like it, you'll begin to need it."
Ai'ai surrendered to the vagaries of fate. She left off being a little village girl, and became instead the youngest of Naixiang's concubines. She was also the final concubine Naixiang would formally marry before his attack. Because she was so young, Naixiang did not show her very much love, but nor would it be right to say he hadn't loved her. In fact, once her novelty had worn off, she fell out of his favour and was largely ignored. She was too young to grasp the joys of physical love, and even had she understood them, he was duty-bound to all his women, and couldn't expend too much energy on an immature little girl like Ai'ai. It was fortunate that, also because of her tender years, she stood completely outside the spats and petty jealousies which the many other women engaged in. Not long after she had so lightly passed from girlhood into young womanhood, the suave and distinguished Naixiang was suddenly stricken and become a vegetable. Before Ai'ai had understood the matter or been able to take it all in, the terrific burden of Naixiang's care had been settled entirely on her shoulders.
For ten years, she had pushed the wooden wheelchair without a shadow of complaint. She was accustomed to her duties, and used to thinking of them as a fixed part of her destiny. Nonetheless, that early spring a cold front had come from afar and descended quickly upon them. The morning of the old master's sudden death, Ai'ai had gone to the main hall without the slightest premonition of the great events. A magpie had been chattering on the eaves, and Ai'ai felt that her hands were a little cold. So she lifted up her hands, and blew some warmth into them, then rubbed them a little. And just at that moment, a long shriek of horror resounded, coming from somewhere quite nearby.
Dressed very lightly in rumpled clothes, Peach Blossom rushed out and ran up to Naixiang. "Young master, it's the old masterâhe's dead!" Peach Blossom cried, badly shaken.
Naixiang's fixed expression did not change at all. Ai'ai noticed that Peach Blossom was panting so hard that her firm breasts were leaping restlessly about, like a pair of rabbits caught in her unbuttoned clothes. Ai'ai was especially sensitive to women's bodies, and she could not tear her eyes away from the breasts. Peach Blossom grabbed hold of Naixiang by the front of his shirt, and spluttered again:
"The old master's dead, young master."
Still Naixiang's fixed expression did not change at all.
A
large portrait of the deceased was placed on the mourning altar. It was a charcoal drawing, done from a photograph, hastily executed by an artist of no great skill. It jarred horribly with the solemnity due to a mourning hall. In the portrait, Old Master Zhen looked ecstatic, exceedingly compassionate and endearing. One could hardly look at it without wanting to giggle. They had placed the mourning altar in the Great Hall where guests were generally received, in the northeast corner. An enormous white cloth hid the bier and curtained off the coffin from the rest of the hall. The portrait was hanging from the white cloth.
As the cold front arrived, sleet began to fall heavily. The snow reached the ground and melted almost immediately. On account of the old master's extraordinary proclivities, the hall was packed with stunning beauties, a genuine universe of women. Whether it was light work or heavy workâwomen did it; even the Estate gardeners were women. Women were everywhere, every manner of woman running in and out of the Great Hall, this way and that, as if nobody knew quite what they were about.
The great gates, otherwise kept closed, were opened in honor of the grave occasion. Everyone was accustomed to coming in through the small side doors. Now, as soon as one came in through the great gates, one encountered a mourning canopy made of white cloth and held up by great thick shoots of tortoise-shell bamboo. This foyer led to the sedan chair hall and from there on to the main hall. Long, broad wooden boards had been set up, forming a walkway between the halls. The courtyard floor had thus been raised level with the Great Hall, and one could take in everything for a considerable distance at a glance. The floor had become like a long level road, spacious and magnificent. All the carpenters of the little town had been summoned to construct this floor, and it had taken them all day and all night. Uncounted quantities of wood had been used, and the air was filled with the crisp smell of newly sawn wood.
All kinds of suspicious-looking men appeared one after the other at the great gates, having swiftly covered a considerable distance to attend the mourning, each of them a representative from some branch of the clan. They were dressed in long grey gowns, with muddy shoes, standing beneath umbrellas of oilcloth or of paper, casting furtive looks this way and that. The Zhen family was one branch of a very large clan, and it was obvious that for many this was their first opportunity to cross the threshold of this Estate, redolent with its legend. As they came in, they were dazed by the Estate's mystique.
An old man known as Seventh Grandfather, thronged by a number of clan members who looked like country gentlemen, entered the Zhen Estate. Of all members of the Zhen Clan, Seventh Grandfather held the most senior position. When he appeared, it always meant that the clan was on the brink of a momentous decision. In fact, when the news of Old Master Zhen's demise had reached them, the Zhen Family had held a meeting in the ancestral hall directly. After much noisy deliberation, it had been unanimously decided that Seventh Grandfather would announce to the heiress Miss Yu the decision they had taken on her behalf.
The Zhen clan's ancestral hall was in Yaoshan Village, at three miles' distance from the small town. In life, Old Master Zhen had seldom bothered much about his clansmen, and even on the days of ancestral worship, he had generally been too lazy to make an appearance. He was naturally rebellious against the feudal and Confucian order, and he harbored no warm feelings for his clansmen. But since he owned a great many fields in the countryside, he gave some money every year to the clan, and so they didn't dare offend him either. Ever since Naixiang's attack, the clan had held a number of meetings discussing what was to be done regarding the inheritance of Old Master Zhen's enormous property. Naixiang was incapacitated, and Old Master Zhen had no other male descendants. According to the old ways, Old Master Zhen's only daughter Miss Yu, being a woman, could not inherit property. The clan had been in agreement about the matter: Old Master Zhen ought to select an honest, able nephew or other young male relative and adopt him. That man could then take on the management of the Zhen Estate in due time.
This subject had been tactfully broached, provoking on each case a violent dressing-down from Old Master Zhen. "I'm not dead yet, but you have the nerve to stand there and make calculations about my property!" Recklessly, Old Master Zhen heaped scorn on his clansmen until they blushed to the roots of their hair, standing motionless as statues without daring to make any response. Old Master Zhen had been well-known for his strange tempers, and he had never paid the slightest heed to the risible decisions of the clan. Nothing beyond his own pleasure was worth considering. He had been unwilling to take any great trouble about his son's incapacity, nor was he going to lose sleep over what might happen after his death. His son Naixiang might be past helping, but the old master still had a bevy of concubines, and perhaps one of them might yet produce a nice little heir for him.