With an audible gulp, Meng said, “I had a lunch engagement.”
“So you’re not staying,” she said, and then turned to the elderly nun. “You may continue with what you were doing.” The nun smiled, then opened the door and walked out.
An hour later, Meng Yunfang walked out of the Clear Void Nunnery and trotted back to the intersection, where he saw a Magnolia motor scooter parked by the side of the road. It looked familiar, so he inspected it more closely. Some paint had been chipped off the right handlebar, and a large brick was tied to the rear seat. He looked around, and there, in front of a used-book stall, stood Zhuang Zhidie, who spotted him as he walked up. “Come here, Yunfang, look at this. You’ll get a kick out of it.” He pointed to a secondhand copy of Selected Works of Zhuang Zhidie, with Zhuang’s signature and an inscription—“For Mr. Gao Wenxing”—on the title page above the date. That was accompanied by an imprint of his personal seal.
Feeling a sense of embarrassment for Zhuang, Meng fumed, “Who sells a book that was personally presented to him by the author without at least tearing out the title page? Is that all a book by Zhuang Zhidie is worth?”
“Do you know this Gao Wenxing?” Zhuang asked. Meng could not place the name. “He’s one of Zhao Jingwu’s friends,” Zhuang said. “When he met me the other day, he told me what a fan he was and asked for one of my books.” Zhuang then bought the book for what the seller was asking. Beneath the first inscription, he wrote “For Mr. Gao Wenxing — again.” He added the date and where he had signed it: at a secondhand bookstall.
“Give it to me,” Meng said. “Now it’s really worth something.”
“No,” Zhuang said, “I need to send it to him.”
“Then you might as well put a noose around his neck.”
They retrieved the motor scooter and pushed it along. Meng told Zhuang that Zhou Min was nearly out of his mind waiting, and wondered why he was so late. Zhuang said that as he was riding past the eastern section of the city wall, he spotted a pile of used bricks. He stopped to dig through the rubble, and found the one that was now tied to the scooter. It dated from the Han dynasty. “Where else,” he wondered aloud, “can you find an undamaged brick more than two thousand years old? This is the Clear Void Nunnery neighborhood,” he said. Have you ever been there?”
Meng turned red. “Why would I want to go there?” he stammered. “Let’s hurry.”
Zhuang told him to go on ahead while he went to mail the book.
Meng returned to tell the others that Zhuang would be there soon, then went into the kitchen. The news flustered Tang Wan’er, who rushed downstairs and, keeping her voice low, asked Zhou if he thought her hair was glossy enough. He said she needed to tuck the stray strands behind her ears. She told him to let her know whenever they came loose.
“I’ll signal by coughing.”
Just as she went back upstairs to continue the chess game with Xia Jie, they heard the sound of a motor scooter.
“He’s here!” Meng bellowed from the kitchen. He and Zhou Min ran to the gate.
Tang Wan’er looked out the window in time to see the scooter pull up and stop. A small man jumped down off the seat. He was wearing a dark red shirt over gray slacks and a pair of sneakers — no socks. She could not contain her surprise. “That’s Zhuang Zhidie? I expected him to be a big man. And that’s a woman’s motor scooter.” Strangest of all was that instead of taking out his comb to touch up his hair, he reached up and mussed it with both hands. She heard Meng introduce Zhou Min to Zhuang, who cordially shook Zhou’s hand and commented on his slicked-back hair. Then, after a quick look around, he wondered how they had managed to find this place. “It’s so quiet!” he complimented them as he walked into the yard, with its pear tree and grapevines. “I’m like a bird; I live in a flat, and have no contact with Mother Earth.”
To Tang Wan’er, the man seemed intriguingly casual for someone so famous, and that helped ease the tension. She waited till Zhou Min called her to come downstairs, but the minute she lowered her head, her Yunnan ivory hair ornament flew off and shattered at Zhuang Zhidie’s feet. Zhuang and Meng looked up, heard gasps from the two women, and saw Wan’er’s loosened hair cascade down. She quickly gathered it into a bun as she walked downstairs, finishing just as she stepped into the yard.
There were two women on the staircase: Xia Jie, in her forties, was in a red knee-length dress that exposed her muscular calves. Though heavily powdered, her face seemed somehow not quite clean. Tang Wan’er, in her mid-twenties, was encased in a tight light yellow dress that highlighted every curve. Though she did not have the oval face of a classic beauty, her skin was glossy under a light coating of powder. Her thin, arched brows almost seemed to dance, but the most eye-catching feature was her long, thin neck, like a piece of fine jade, encircled by a necklace that enhanced the beauty of her high collarbones. The sight got Zhuang Zhidie thinking: Meng Yunfang had said that Zhou Min had left house and home to elope with a woman to Xijing, and he had wondered what sort of beauty could have made him do that. Now he could see for himself, and there was no question that Xijing boasted few to match her.
Seeing Zhuang smile at her, Wan’er said, “I’m so embarrassed!” And yet she held her head high and, with consummate poise, reached out to shake hands. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Zhuang Laoshi,” she said. “I can’t tell you how fortunate we are to have you honor us with your presence. For a while I wasn’t sure you would come.”
“I may not go to many places, but I never miss a chance to meet someone from my hometown.”
“Zhuang Laoshi, you haven’t lost your Tongguan accent.”
“What did you expect?”
“Most people come to Xijing and lose their accent within weeks. I assumed you’d be speaking standard Putonghua by now.”
“Chairman Mao didn’t speak it, so why should I?” That got a laugh out of everyone.
“Let’s continue this inside,” Zhou Min said. “It’s too hot out here.” Back inside the house, Zhou poured tea and handed his guest a cigarette, apologizing for the cramped quarters, which he said were not deserving of Zhuang Laoshi’s status.
“There’s no need to be so modest, Zhou Min,” Xia Jie said. “You and Meng Laoshi look after the food, and I’ll take care of our guest.”
Meng and Zhou went into the kitchen, leaving Xia Jie and Tang Wan’er standing there, spraying jasmine perfume in the direction of the rotating fan.
“Come sit by me, Zhidie,” Xia Jie said. “You were away so long, people had begun asking about you.”
Zhuang smiled. “I thank my good sister for her concern,” he said. “What have you been doing lately, choreographing a new dance routine?”
“I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that. The mayor has asked us to put on a new show, but nothing we’ve tried has worked. I’m losing hair over this.”
“What do you need me for when you have Yunfang?”
“Him? His ideas are worthless. One minute he lectures us on classical Chinese dance, the next minute it’s modern Western dance, and before you know it, he’s the choreographer. He’s got all the dancers up in arms. Come see for yourself. I trust your judgment.”
“What are your themes?”
“We have three: ‘Knocking down Sour Dates,’ ‘Bickering,’ and ‘Carrying Water,’ all about couples who fall in love beside a well, followed by amusing scenes from their marriage. In the end the woman gets pregnant, and craves something sour.”
“Not bad,” Zhuang said.
“I’m happy to hear you say that,” Xia Jie agreed, “but it needs more.”
“Have you seen Tongguan’s Chen Cuncai in the flower drum opera Hanging a Painting?”