“Then keep them for yourself, Jingwu,” Huang said. “Since Mr. Zhuang prefers Chinese brands, I’ll bring him some Hongtashan cigarettes next time. Fighting over these little gifts makes me look tacky.”
Zhao accepted the gifts, then looked at Zhuang and smiled. “I know you’re hungry, but you don’t drop by every day, so how about marking your visit with a piece of calligraphy? Just one. That won’t keep you here much longer.”
“You are a sly tiger. I know something’s up any time I see you smile. But you already have everything, so why do you want a piece of my calligraphy?”
“I collect famous people’s calligraphy.”
So they set up a table and spread out a sheet of rice paper. Zhuang picked up a writing brush, but hesitated. “What should I write?” he asked as he cocked his head.
“That’s up to you. Something you’ve recently come to understand. When your fame reaches the heights, people will want to study your life, and I will have primary material.”
Zhuang thought for a moment, then wrote:
The wind dances gracefully when the butterfly comes
The person departs and the moon laments
“What does that mean?” Zhao asked. “The butterfly [die] in the first line is clearly from your name, and the moon [yue] in the second line is probably your wife, Niu Yueqing. I can figure out your use of ‘gracefully’ and ‘laments,’ but not ‘comes’ and ‘departs.’”
Zhuang ignored him as he wrote in smaller characters on the side:
Zhao Jingwu asked me for this, so I copied some ancient lines. I know what I know and I know what I do not know. My words may not be worth a thousand apiece, but in three hundred years they will be cultural artifacts and can sell for eight hundred. If Jingwu has descendants, they will inherit tens of thousands.
That’s it, I’m done. Zhuang herewith lays down his brush.
Zhao clapped in joy. “Terrific,” he said with a laugh. “Definitely worth thousands.”
Huang, the plant owner, salivated over the scene. “How about one for me, Mr. Zhuang? I’ll have it professionally mounted and hang it in the main room.” Without waiting for a reply, he began adding ink, splashing some on his hand when he pressed too hard. He ran into the yard to wash it off.
“He’s washing off all my glory,” Zhuang said softly. He and Zhao laughed. “Write one for him,” Zhao said. “These wealthy upstarts are always in the market for a little refinement.”
“Ah,” Zhuang sighed. “People these days are transformed into experts in everything the day they become officials. Our mayor studied soil sciences in college, but now that he’s in office, he delivers talks on industry at gatherings of industrialists, commerce at business meetings, and art and literature at cultural gatherings. And every word must be recorded.”
“No matter how great his wealth,” Zhao said, “for refinement he still needs you.”
So Zhuang wrote:
There is no heavenly message for savage demons
The moon is dark in the presence of starlight
“Perfect!” Zhao complimented him as the bamboo curtains parted and a voice said, “Which of you is the writer Zhuang Zhidie?”
Zhuang saw that it was the young nanny from across the way.
While Huang was washing up outside, she’d asked him how his hand had gotten so black. He’d told her he had asked the writer Zhuang Zhidie for a piece of his calligraphy. It just so happened that the book she was reading was by Zhuang, so she stuck a pacifier into the baby’s mouth and rushed over. This was Zhuang’s first encounter with someone who called him by name without adding “laoshi,” but for some reason he liked her straightforward nature. Looking into that pretty face, he said, “I’m Zhuang Zhidie.”
The girl eyed him closely. “Liar. How could you be Zhuang Zhidie?” The startled plant owner gulped and cast a glance at Zhao Jingwu.
“What do you think Zhuang Zhidie ought to look like?” Zhao asked her.
“He has to be taller than you, about so tall.” She held her hand up in the air.
“Ai-ya!” Zhuang exclaimed. “The price of everything keeps going up, everything but a man’s height. I could never be Zhuang Zhidie.”
Now pensive, she took a good look at him. And as her face reddened, she hastened to say, “I’m so sorry, I’ve offended you.”
“You work for the family across the way, don’t you?” Zhuang asked.
“I’m a nanny,” she said, “so go ahead, laugh at me.”
“Why would I do that? I said to Zhao Jingwu a while ago that you don’t often see a girl reading a book while she’s taking care of a baby.”
“Well, if you don’t find me undeserving, then you should give me a piece of your calligraphy.”
“The way you say it, I can’t refuse. What’s your name?”
“Liu Yue.”
“Another moon,” Zhuang muttered before writing a couplet from an ancient poem:
In the wild the sky presses down on trees
By the clear river the moon comes near people
“You are a lucky girl, Liu Yue,” Zhao said. “I laid out the ink, paper, and stone, but you get the poem. To pay for this gift, you must get a girl from your village to come work for him.”
“Our villagers are too clumsy to serve someone as august as Zhuang Laoshi.”
“Just seeing you tells me all I need to know about them,” Zhuang said. “You will be able to find one for me.”
“Then it will have to be me,” she said after a thoughtful pause.
Zhao Jingwu couldn’t have imagined that those words would come out of her mouth, and he tried to signal her with his eyes.
“That is precisely what I had hoped to hear,” Zhuang said with a clap of his hands.
Encouraged by that statement, Liu Yue taunted Zhao Jingwu: “What were you trying to say with your eyes? I knew I’d be his maid the minute I discovered who he was.”
“Impossible. You have a contract with the family across the way,” Zhao insisted. “If you leave and they find out that I introduced you to someone else, I shudder to think what they’ll accuse me of.”
“It’s not like I’m expected to marry into their family, is it?”
“How’s this,” Zhuang said. “Once you’ve fulfilled your contract with them, ask Jingwu to notify me.”
. . .
Back on the street after lunch, Zhuang Zhidie commented that Liu Yue was too charming to be a country girl.
“She was a fast bloomer,” Zhao Jingwu said. “When she showed up, she was dressed in handmade clothes, she kept her eyes down around people, and you couldn’t get a word out of her. Then one day, while her employers were at work, she went into the closet and tried on the mistress’s dresses, modeling them in the mirror. A neighbor spotted her and told her she looked like the actress Chen Chong. ‘Really?’ she said before bursting into tears. Why that made her cry, no one knew. When she received her first wages as a nanny, the mistress told her she should send some back to her family, since life was so hard for farmworkers. She didn’t. Instead she spent it all on clothes. Clothes make the woman, a saddle makes the horse. Overnight she became a dazzler. Everyone in the compound said she did look like Chen Chong, and she grew livelier by the day. Her personality changed drastically.”
Zhuang had tossed off his comment about hiring the girl because she had caught his fancy. “Are you serious?” Zhao said. “Don’t make the mistake of hiring a maid and acquiring a pampered young mistress.”
They spotted a lush persimmon tree in a private compound as they passed a narrow lane. A dead leaf whistling on the wind landed on Zhuang’s right eye. “Jingwu,” he said, “isn’t the Clear Void Nunnery down this lane?”