“Listen,” he said. “Can you hear the magpie calling?” She smiled. “It is a sound of good omen, husband. Maybe it will come and perch on your head. . . .”
He laughed, recalling the tale. It was said that Nurhaci, the founder of the great Manchu Dynasty, had been fleeing from his enemies when a magpie came and perched on his helmet. His enemies, seeing this, called off their pursuit, and Nurhaci, in thanks to the bird, declared it sacred. He squeezed her shoulder, his happiness shadowed by the memory of recent events. “We need its eggs to heal our sick, neh?” She pushed back at him gently with her head. “You take too much upon yourself, husband. You cannot do it all.” “Maybe so. Yet I am their Father, Wei-kou. If I do not worry for them, who will?”
“This once let your servants worry. You have a Chancellor, neh? Well, let him carry more of the burden, as Li Yuan does with Nan Ho.” “Li Yuan would do more, were it not for the grief he has to carry. Three wives he lost. To think of even losing one . . .” He squeezed her tenderly again. “Well. . . Let us go inside.”
She looked up at him and frowned. “You do not wish to see the sunset, husband?”
Wu Shih shook his head. “It has been a hard day, my love, and I am getting no younger. It would be best if I got some rest.” He turned, hearing a noise behind him. His Master of the Inner Chambers, Pao En-fu, stood in the arched doorway, his head bowed. “What is it, Master Pao?”
“There is something on one of the media channels, Chieh Hsia. I thought you might be interested.”
He gave his wife’s shoulder a brief pat. “Excuse me, Wei-kou. Prepare my bed. I shall be with you when I can.”
She nodded and turned away. He watched her go, then went across, letting Pao En-fu usher him through to the upper study. The big, slatted blinds had been pulled down and the big screen on the far side of the room was already lit. He went across, then stood there, light spilling down over his silk-cloaked figure.
It was Lever’s wife. He frowned, then signaled for the volume to be raised slightly. She was dressed strangely—austerely—as if in some odd form of mourning clothes, and her hair had been cut even more severely than he remembered it. He listened for a moment, then turned, looking across at Pao En-fu.
“Run this back. From the beginning.”
At once the image jumped, and the program began again.
“Is this a news item, Master Pao?”
“No, Chieh Hsia. It seems Madam Lever bought the airtime. Shall I find out more?”
Wu Shih nodded and dismissed him, then turned his attention back to the screen.
For a moment the screen was black. Then there was the sound of a bell being struck and a faint illumination rose from the darkness at the very center of the screen. After a moment he realized what it was. A lamp. He watched as it approached. The faint, flickering pool of light surrounding it revealed a long, expensively decorated corridor, set with vases and statues, the walls hung with tapestries and ancient paintings. Holding the lamp, her features carved, it seemed, from the darkness, was Mary Lever. He nodded, then pulled at his beard, impressed. As she came close to the camera, she slowed, looking directly into the lens, then set the lamp down on a table at the side.
“Come,” she said simply, beckoning the camera. “We need to talk.” He shivered. Powerful, he thought, watching as the camera followed her to the left, into the darkness there, then out into the sudden brightness of a tiny walled garden.
It was an illusion ... of course it was ... yet for a moment he had been fooled by it. The light had seemed so real, so natural. . . . She turned. Behind her was an apple tree, its crown bright with leaves, heavy with fruit, while beneath her feet—her bare feet, he realized with a shock—was a carpet of lush green grass.
Brown she wore. The brown of autumn.
“You know me,” she said, as if confiding something to the camera. “At least, you know the image of me. You know my name, Mary Lever, and you know that my husband, Michael, was almost killed by the Old Men who run things in our City. And now my husband, in his turn, is rich and powerful, and so I, too, am rich. At least, that’s how it seems, neh?” She turned and plucked a fruit, then turned back, holding the apple up so that the camera could see it. It glinted in the false daylight, fresh, perfectly formed, the very ideal of an apple. “This tree is mine, and all its fruit. I can eat what I wish, when I wish it, and more will grow, for that is the way of things. Yet all is not well. I have enough—more than enough—to feed myself, and yet others have nothing, and so I must build a wall to keep those others out. . . . A whole world of walls.”
She looked down, and as she did, the apple in her hand became a tiny skull, a child’s skull.
“Our world is dying,” she said. “From where we stand, up here above it all, it has the appearance of a healthy thing, yet it is diseased. The apple is rotting from within.”
He shivered. Behind her the tree had changed. Its leaves were now brown and dry, its fruit blown and maggot-ridden. The grass beneath her feet was sere and the light had grown unnatural.
“We live in a blemished world,” she said, the camera closing in on her eyes, her strong, attractive mouth, “a world in which one whole side of us has been forgotten. We talk of the great Father who looks after us all, but where is our Mother? Where is she?”
There was the sound of a great wind soughing through the dry leaves of the tree. The sound of emptiness.
“Who minds the home? Who tends to our deeper needs while the menfolk go about their business?”
Slowly the camera pulled back.
“No one,” she answered, her voice clear now, like a tolling bell. “We are hollow, unfulfilled. There are walls everywhere we look and an emptiness within that cannot be filled by any amount of things. Yes, and all the while, down there, beneath our feet, hidden from sight in the depths of our great City, lies the source of our despair and inner emptiness, the cause of all our guilt.”
Her face was urgent now, her eyes lit from within. She nodded. “Yes . . . guilt. Yet why should we feel guilty? Did we make this world of levels? Did we create those teeming billions? No. And yet they are there, like ghosts—there at the table as we eat.” Behind her the tree had changed. Now, instead of fruit, tormented faces hung from the blackened branches, their eyes pleading, their mouths silently supplicating.
And in front of it, so still, so filled with power that, for a moment, she seemed unreal, stood Mary Lever, staring out at the world, her eyes like small, dark points of certainty.
“Ahead the path divides. We can either feed that dark flame of despair that burns in each of us, or we can try and fill that inner emptiness. The choice is ours. We did not make this world, yet we can change it. If we have the will.”
The garden slowly faded. Now she was standing in a book-lined room, the portrait of a blond-haired child behind her—a young Michael Lever, Wu Shih realized with a start.
“We have lived too long without a mothers tender care. We have forgotten how it feels to be whole. Ours is a Yang world, a hard, dry, masculine world. A harsh world. And that harshness has hardened us to the fate of others. We have grown indifferent to their suffering. And yet their fate is ours. Ignore them and we ignore ourselves. Hurt them and we hurt ourselves. Help them . . . yes, and we help ourselves. It is the Way.” Again there was the sound of a bell being struck, and Wu Shih, hearing it, felt a ripple of awe pass up his spine, making the hairs of his nape stand on end.