Her long lashes tickled his senses, almost beyond what he could bear. He released a little cry. He tried hard to make his ‘oh!’ reflect admiration and feeling. Admittedly this was a difficult thing to bring off, but he did it easily. Going even further, he plunged straight into an elaborate, silent contemplation, and his silence was just perfect, for a long-winded man who sought to get to the bottom of things would have seemed boring and lacking in intellectual prowess.
Mengliu was smart, and he remained completely focused on the woman in green. At the most appropriate moments, he would say things like, ‘Do you engage in the art of dancing?’ as a way of suggesting that her body was beautiful, or ‘You’re like the goddess in The Rhapsody of the Goddess of Luo.’ In this way, he quickly shifted the atmosphere from a stiff awkwardness to more yielding ground.
‘Oh no! No, I’m just a teacher. I teach sculpture and painting.’ She waved him off with a limp hand. ‘I’m just an ordinary woman. But thank you for the compliment.’
Mengliu, sparing no effort, continued to employ his genteel manners in this nauseating play. The woman in green was obviously not the sort whose head would start to spin from the sound of a little flattery. If he did not appreciate the need for moderation, all his efforts would end up being counterproductive. So he used food to stop up his mouth, showing by his expression how delicious it was. He wasn’t very hungry, but he was happy. His knotted feeling from a while back had disappeared, and he went about it all with an easy, carefree manner.
They chatted, and as they entertained themselves, the food diminished and the bottle emptied. With his body swathed in comfortable clothing, filled with the appropriate amount of wine, and faced with an appropriately fair female, everything seemed just right. He glanced at the foliage of the tree in the garden, and his heart overflowed with a special kind of wealth. Just then, the small raccoon-like boy he’d seen earlier jumped into the garden and trotted straight over to the woman in green. ‘Mum,’ he complained, ‘I don’t want to wear these things.’
The woman in green took the diamond jewellery off his body and threw it in the trash. It was as if she was picking strands of grass off him.
‘Shanlai, this is Mr Yuan…remember your manners.’
One can never avoid one’s nemesis for long. Mengliu mockingly prepared to accept Shanlai’s greetings, but the latter gave him a supercilious look and ran out through the front door.
‘As long as there’s a debate going on, he doesn’t bother about anything else.’ She spoke as a mother, and didn’t try to make excuses for her son.
‘That was your child?’ Mengliu knew he had asked a redundant question, but to push aside the surprise he was feeling, he quickly added a second question, ‘Those things…you just throw them away?’
‘Things made of jewels and diamonds are just ornaments children wear to ward off evil.’ The woman in green started to put the dinner things away. ‘Let me clean up. If you’ll wait for a while, we can have tea in the garden.’
Mengliu bowed in her direction. From various details he had deduced that this was a very well-mannered place, and so he too had become more courteous.
The garden was filled with the scent of flowers, and lots of fruit. They were green, red, yellow, round, long, flat — the greatest variety he had ever encountered. A hammock stretched between the trees alongside some lounge-chairs. A stone table, carved with a multi-purpose playing board, was surrounded by four wicker chairs and two round stools. He sat in one of the chairs, and watched Juli carry the tea things over. She was just like Chang’e, the famed Lady of the Moon.
‘Along with their formal careers, all the people of Swan Valley learn a handicraft.’ She put the tea set down and opened the box of leaves. The scent of tea escaped from the box like a pack of demons. ‘I learned how to roast fermented tea over a fire, and how to pick the tea leaves myself. Those picked and brought back before rainfall have the best quality.’
‘It seems you get a lot of rain here in Swan Valley. I didn’t know the weather was so important in tea-picking.’ Mengliu admired the cups and sniffed at the tea leaves with an affected panache, trying to demonstrate some level of expertise.
‘I’ve heard that China’s fermented tea is also pretty good. It has quite a long history there.’ She added plain hot water to rinse the tea set, put in more leaves, then brewed the first pot. ‘Our fermented tea comes from a different strain, but we use the same methods for preparation, heating, crumbling, soaking and drying. It’s not uncommon for us to store the tea in a cellar for more than five years before taking it out to drink. This has been kept for twenty years. Try it.’
‘I don’t know much about tea. I like to drink sorghum spirit. Rice wine is also good.’
‘Swan Valley prohibits the consumption of spirits. Liquor is a source of trouble.’ She had made the tea, and was waiting for its colour to deepen.
Mengliu replied, ‘Alcohol is innocent. To put the blame on alcohol is like a conquered people putting the blame on women for the death of their country.’
Juli said, ‘Your institution of marriage…’
‘According to the law, it is one man, one wife. In reality, if a man’s rich, he can have concubines, mistresses, bastard children.’
She poured the tea into a small porcelain cup. The cup’s surface glistened like jade against the golden hue of the tea. The aroma was light, though the tea was concentrated, and the bottom of the bowl was visible through the liquid.
The young woman was suddenly quiet, taking her tea very seriously.
‘Have you seen an instrument like this before?’ Mengliu pulled out his lady-charming chuixun.
Juli took the flute from him and inspected it for a while. ‘I know it’s a xun, but it’s the first time I’ve seen a real one. It looks very old. Oh! and your name is carved on it.’
‘Yes. It’s an antique. At least six-hundred years old.’
‘That’s priceless. Where did you get it?’ She returned the chuixun to him.
‘My mum left it to me.’ It was the first time he had ever uttered this strange word ‘mum’ in the presence of a woman he hardly knew. He was surprised by it. He almost went so far as to share his most personal information, that his mother had given him the instrument at the time when she abandoned him in his swaddling clothes.
To rescue himself from further embarrassment, he said, ‘You want to hear it?’
She nodded, and he began to play the soothing notes of his old favourite, ‘The Pain of Separation’.
As he played the low, sad melody, the night fell quietly about them, as if the dark eyes of a multitude of small animals were peering from the shadows.
9
His bedroom was next to the garden. Its decor was simple and it smelled like it had been vacant for a long time. The smell of loneliness resembled that of a dried melon. But when Mengliu walked in, that smell disappeared, and the room became warm and pleasant. He paced slowly around it, a smile on his face, knowing that he already liked it here. He looked about him and noticed a moderately-sized painting on the wall. It was of a white cathedral, its steeple covered in red tiles and its windows filled with gorgeous colourful images. The cathedral was surrounded by trees with golden leaves and white clouds billowing overhead. A bust of crude appearance sat on the wardrobe, its hair bristling and a rough beard curling beneath its protruding chin. Books rested on a small bookshelf, alongside a stack of blank paper. On the desk there was a framed photo, and the back of the frame bore the name Juan. Mengliu turned the frame around again, and saw that the soldier had a commanding presence with his long face, deep-set eyes, bright teeth and glossy dark skin, holding a hat under his arm. He was dressed in riding breeches and black boots, and his legs were very straight. He was young, about twenty-four or twenty-five.