Читать книгу The Jade Enchantress - E. Hoffmann Price - Страница 6

Chapter II

Ju-hai’s crowded life was quite too diversified to permit monotony: with an early morning start as a farmer, he put in more than half a day, sometimes working, sometimes overseeing; then, three or four hours were spent at the Kwan Village school, where he was becoming a literate countryman, a status by no means rare, yet, a step upward. After evening rice came the diversities—calligraphy, reading of classics, or several hours of pursuing his avocation, the working of jade.

One of the bedrooms of the apartment had been converted into a workshop dedicated to what had been a dominant passion until Hsi-Feng’s ripening femaleness became a distraction, a competitor, at least and thus far, on the emotional level.

Details of his patterned life-style varied according to circumstance. He might eat with the family on holidays and birthdays, and certainly would join in all festivals. There were conferences with the Old Man, in his office, where Ju-hai was briefed on the season’s prospects and how to offset tax collectors, the Bureaucracy, recruiting officers, and every other plague. Finally, there were occasional discussions on neighboring landowners, one of whose daughters it might be advantageous to marry. As an additional safeguard against the Government, the looter and the spoiler, each marital alliance with a worthwhile family made for greater security when influence and bribery were required, whether for survival or for advancement.

Aside from the Kwan dwelling, which occupied a quarter of the entire walled enclosure, the rest of the village consisted of the inn, the cooked-food stall, a few shops, and the plaza, on which the dwellings of tenants and neighboring landowners fronted. When disbanded soldiers or bandits—the distinction between the two was purely academic—prowled the fringes of Shensi Province, the farmers manned the wall and repelled the would-be looters with flights of arrows and rockets.

Ju-hai had scarcely bathed and changed when the slave girl brought a tray crowded with spicy-sour soup, “pot stickers,” a smoked duck, steamed, and a miniature tub shaped from wooden staves; steam still escaped from the rice which the cover protected. Finally, there was a jug of shao-hsing, the yellow wine which tasted as if it had set out to be dry sack but had taken a few detours to a destination all its own.

Once Phoenix put the meal on the worktable with its clutter of books, brushes, brush holder, sticks of ink, and the slab for grinding ink, she fired up the charcoal brazier to heat water for after-supper tea.

Despite farm work, school, and enough time with Lan-yin, the joint concubine of the Kwan brothers, Ju-hai found Hsi-feng ever more disturbing. Her jacket, a hand-me-down from one of the Kwan women, was becoming a bit more snug, and the wearer a little more luxurious, yet short of opulent—an exciting understatement. And when not-so-little Phoenix bent over the table, meticulously careful in setting dishes out in a harmonious pattern, Ju-hai was quite too appreciative of her three-dimensional geometry to extemporize a verse. Leave that to Li Po! The devastation began when Phoenix half straightened up, slanted her glance, and moved the shao-hsing. Then, as if he had given her the final approval, she shifted it ever so slightly and contentedly wagged her head of ultimately black hair. She had done it exactly as it should have been done…the positioning of the rice wine, of course.

But the stray lock which sneaked almost to her left eyebrow, while the remainder of her bangs almost grazed her right, and the slantwise glance of amazingly luminous dark eyes…! The nice thing about it all was that Hsi-feng was very innocently being female. Only a female bungler or a supreme artist would have risked Hsi-feng’s instinctively perfect baiting.

Her eyelids were almost tangent to the pupil; and while she’d be eye-catching in any position, the angle was perfect and made the utmost of dainty features and fine facial contours. She was a lady, a very young one, but time would tend to that by refining and maturing an elegant beginning. From cheekbone to jaw was a smooth, squarish contour, tapering to a fine little chin.

Dimples lurked, and she almost smiled and then remembered the proprieties—

Ju-hai silently cursed his stupidity when, on the way from woodcutting, he’d told his brother, “I’ve got to work on those earrings for the Old Man’s Number One Lady—you take care of Lan-yin tonight.”

The most dangerous creature on earth was the human female, fully aware of her femaleness, and burning with the urge to try it out, to fascinate, devastate—

Quite aside from the Old Man’s views and warnings, Ju-hai’s own integrity and the Confucian ethics he’d been studying had kept him from approaching Phoenix. But for this accursed business of going to the capital to prepare for the Imperial Civil Service examinations, there was no reason why he should not have her; even though her family’s poverty and consequent unimportance made such a marriage useless as an alliance against the Government, hers was a good family, and the early Kwans had done well enough without any important alliances.

But a student was quite too busy to be handicapped by a wife; and by the time Ju-hai passed the examinations, Hsi-feng should be properly married. And if she lost her virginity, the Old Man could not arrange a marriage as good as he had agreed to.

He told himself that tomorrow night Lan-yin’s insatiable desires would make virtue quite easy. The fact was that when he was with the concubine of the Kwan sons, he’d begun to close his eyes and imagine that he was making love with Hsi-feng; and when Lan-yin had left him comfortably depleted, he still had a mental craving for Hsi-feng.

“Old Master, when you’ve eaten—shall I come back to brew your tea? Or may I serve your meal?”

“I don’t know what would be nicer—” He made a vague gesture to indicate papers and books. “Thank you, maybe tomorrow.”

Ju-hai was learning why the daughters of aristocratic families were guarded day and night until marriage.

Each regarded the other. He knew that she had seen through him; she knew that she had not been rejected. Not this night, not tomorrow, but she’d be back, and he’d eventually let Phoenix serve evening rice and stay until he gave permission for her to leave. And she’d not beg permission to depart; she’d wait for him to speak the words. Her eyes, dark and magnificent as never before, predicted and promised.

After a moment longer than propriety permitted, she modestly lowered her glance; with his permission, she left.

Ju-hai savored his final glimpse of the girl’s elegant backside. If Younger Brother weren’t so dumb, he could pass the examinations and Td he a happy farmer, he thought.

Though he ate heartily, the skill of the Szechuanese cook was wasted. He didn’t know whether he ate smoked duck or sorghum stalks. Abruptly, he got up and made for the jade shop adjoining the bedroom.

The shop centered about a workbench made of wood smoothly squared with an adze. Two X-frames, a couple of feet apart, fitted snugly into cuts in the bench edges. A horizontal bamboo shaft rested in the vee of the X-frames.

A foot length of bamboo was covered with rawhide which, after being soaked to make it flexible, had been tightly wrapped about the central portion of the shaft, one end of which was fitted with a bamboo drill. This was spun back and forth by belts drawn tightly over the hide-covered portion of the shaft. At floor level was a foot treadle which moved the belts.

Beneath the end of the drill was a small dish of kitchen grease mixed with ruby dust or emery powder. There were also polishing discs and blades of bamboo, as well as saw frames with blades of soft iron or copper wire. These implements got their cutting, grinding, and polishing surfaces from the same mixture which gave the drills their bite. Jade was not, properly speaking, carved; it was abraded.

By the light of an oil lamp, Ju-hai looked at the flat piece he had sawed from a chunk of jade. He reached for the bow with which he would spin the drill to pierce holes which would give the abrasive-loaded wire a starting point in sawing the floral scroll design which he had sketched. Perplexed, he backed away. He blinked, shook his head, and picked up the thin plaque of jade. He turned it over, cocked his head, and squinted at the blemish near the edge—a flaw he had noticed the previous work session.

This was the same piece of jade. The color striations, deep green, the paler tint, the nearly colorless shadings—it was the very piece he had cut from the chunk. But the design he had inked was gone; in its place was a new one drawn by a hand more skillful than his own. He went back to the study room, where he examined the ink slab and the brushes in the holder. Whoever had changed his design had carefully cleaned the writing gear.

Reciting a mantra undoubtedly would drive away the devils who had played this silly trick, but that would not give him the meaning of what had happened. Extinguishing the light, he sat by the ash-veiled coals of the brazier. Because of the towering Ta-pa Range, sunset and darkness came earlier to the eastern slope which cuddled the Kwan lands. He stepped into the little courtyard to watch the moon rise from where the distant Wei River joined the Huang-Ho. Ju-hai had problems enough without devils meddling in his avocation, the work he loved.

Something had kept him from wiping the new design from the plaque. That he had not done so puzzled him. And then he admitted ungrudgingly that the beauty of the endless knot and the phoenix had checked him. He couldn’t obliterate it. But he could saw another plaque, draw his original design, and perhaps improve it.

And then, though he heard no sound, something urged Ju-hai to quit moon-watching and go back to the study room, grind some ink, and make a new sketch.

Someone was prowling in the shadows! She was about of Hsi-feng’s build and making herself very much at home. The faint glow of the coals made her seem translucent as jade, a fascinating illusion. She beckoned as if inviting him into her own home. As he stepped toward the threshold, she retreated, beckoning again.

Although moving from brilliant moonlight into shadow thinned only by the ash-filtered glow, Ju-hai saw that she was not a village girl. From gilt-embroidered shoes to velvet hood and silver-twinkling foliate figures which gave her headgear the appearance of a coronet, she was stately; stately, although a head shorter than Ju-hai.

Her graciously welcoming him as if to her own home took him aback. Even without the benefit of a tunic worthy of an imperial concubine, the stranger would have had presence. Long pendants reached from her earlobes almost to her shoulders. She had ears small and close to her head and a fine nose a shade longer and narrower than most women of her race, with nostrils not quite as flaring; nor were her lips quite as full.

“Ju-hai, you’re right. I’m not of pure blood. One of my ancestors was a barbarian from the City of Jade.”

“Ah…Ho’tien?”

“Is there any other City of Jade? Though many ignore the Son of Heaven and still call it Khotan.”

She gestured toward the shop. As if reading his thought, she forestalled his unspoken objection. “Never mind the lamp, we won’t be long.”

To say the least, this person not only knew what she was doing, she likewise knew what Ju-hai proposed doing, and before he himself did. He pulled up abruptly. He had just realized that neither he nor his visitor had been articulating. As the moon path shifted, he could see the whiteness of teeth and the carmine of skillfully made-up lips, lips which moved to smile but not to speak.

“You’ve not been mouth-making words either, Ju-hai. Don’t look so amazed—when you talk to people in dreams, you don’t mouth-shape your words, except when you actually talk in your sleep, and that wakes you up.”

“You mean, I am dreaming now?”

“Ju-hai, children have to ask questions, but a grown man keeps his mouth shut, and simply observes facts instead of wanting other peoples’ answers. My time is short—and don’t ask me why! Either listen to me, or I’ll leave right this instant!”

Her bewitching smile took the sting from her direct communication. “Mouth-talking makes stupid mistakes.”

Things did not shape up in elegant Chinese, but the exchange was undeniably clear.

From one of the main corridors came the slip-slop-shuffle of felt boots, and a murmur of two voices.

“Your brother and Lan-yin would have to come in if they heard us or saw lights.”

The footfalls and voices faded.

“I forgot to tell you I’m Mei-yu. Yes, I rubbed out your inked sketch. It’s lovely but I had a better idea.”

Mei-yu—this meant true, precious, superlative jade. It also implied not-other-precious gems, such as were included in mere yu, jewels of all sorts, all of which were inferior to jade. If she had called herself Tai-yu, it would have been about the same as Mei-yu, but a bit on the grandiloquent side.

“Aiieeyah! You do know jade talk.” She was delighted and she gestured magnificently, all the more so because of sleeves which trailed to her knees when she spread her arms. He’d never seen a garment with such Imperial sleeves.

Mei-yu continued, “You had the darlingest design, and it was clever the way you got two earring blanks out of one small cutting of jade. The color veins contrast and at the same time harmonize, so the pendants will be mates but not duplicates—if you’d made ear pendants for your father to give his Number One Lady, you’d have embarrassed him and yourself—before you could shape a second pair, she and his other concubine would be enemies. And the Old Man has enough problems already.”

The Old Man’s one and only wife, Ju-hai’s mother, had died a good many years ago.

Mei-yu turned, and as if she had been blocking the moonlight, he clearly saw the lines sketched on the jade plaque.

“This is a single piece—it would make a beautiful pectoral, but the situation would be no different from a pair of ear pendants. You started a wine cup for your father—finish it, and when the plaque I designed is done, save it for a girl who doesn’t have a sister concubine to hate for being Number One.”

Mei-yu came nearer and for the first time he was aware of her perfume. Though the sweetness left him as if dizzy-drunk, he couldn’t help but wonder how he got the scent of this fascinating girl when he could not hear her voice.

“Old Master, that’s spirit-bouquet, and nose smelling has nothing to do with it. With all the problems you have for thinking about, why have wonderings about friend or lover? Do you have to understand me all at once—”

This was a declaration; it was as if she had parted curtains which concealed a realm of wonder.

Moonlight shifted from the workbench, leaving Ju-hai and Mei-yu in cozy darkness. Her warmth and the tantalizing touch of her body were a promise rather than a fact, an almost touching, from knee to breast and mouth to mouth, a moonbeam’s breadth short of completeness.

She gasped. “Don’t squeeze me—” Her dismay checked him. “I’m all moon-misty—kiss me a not-quite touch—” Her tongue traced the width of his mouth, and then, swaying half the distance that separated them, Mei-yu shaped the kiss. Ju-hai forgot her warning, but she evaded his arms, leaving him with an embrace of emptiness.

His exclamation made her recoil.

“I’m awfully sorry—I didn’t mean to tease you—it was a crazy impulse—I couldn’t help it, really, I couldn’t—I should have known you’d sense my wantings.”

“O mi to fu! What is—who are—what are you?”

“I don’t know what to tell you—” She came toward him, then checked herself; she opened and closed her hands, clutching air. “Aiieeyah! I’m crazy!”

Ju-hai outgrew his dismay and confusion when she wavered, on the verge of tears. “If you’re crazy, then what am I?”

She drew a deep breath. “I’m an Immortal—one of the servants of the Moon Goddess, Lady Chang Wo. She could not spare the time to see the Kwan Village Moon Festival last year, so she sent me to have a look and tell her all about it—and I got a sensing of you and how you love jade—I saw your work.”

Details bewildered Ju-hai, but a shade of sanity came to help.

“I met a man in a Taoist monastery—they said he was a hundred and eighty-one years old, but he looked about my age. When he sat on a cushion, it bulged from his weight. Everyone in the neighborhood knew he wasn’t a fraud—grandfathers remembered him.”

Mei-yu brightened. “Then you do understand enough to hear more. I’m not a Goddess like Lady Chang Wo, and I’m not solid like your tao-shih—there are different sorts of Immortals—from saints that still wear human bodies to the Pah Hsien, and Tien Hou, and Lady Hsi Wang Mu—well, I used to be a Buddhist nun.”

“So that’s why I shouldn’t kiss you. But your hair isn’t cut—your hood doesn’t hide it all. Why don’t you sit down?” He pointed to the bench. “You’ve let your hair grow.”

The cushion did not sink when she seated herself.

“Ju-hai, you’re precious! You’re fabulous! Keeping your wits about you that way! Of course the cushion doesn’t sink; I really have little weight; and in your world, I don’t have any.” She patted her hip. “Looks good, but simply not solid enough. None of me. Well, not yet.”

“But you changed my inked lines on the jade and you drew new lines.”

“You’re impossible! If I did have a solid body, you’d not love me to death, you’d question me out of existence! So I’ll tell you all about it. I was a nun and I did so much good work, as they call it, that the Emperor of Heaven made me an Immortal, and I went to work for Lady Chang Wo—jade is made of moonbeams, you know.”

“You make all the jade—”

“No, I race around wherever jade is found in the entire world and I see to it that the elemental spirits who turn moonbeams into jade do their work properly—and—and—” Mei-yu rose to her feet and laid a hand on his wrist. Her eyes were misty, glowing, a luminous, dark wonder. “I was a virgin when I became an Immortal; I’ve never had a lover—and you’re wondering just how—”

“With a Buddhist nun, o mi to fu! But with a Goddess—”

“Ju-hai, I’m not a nun, haven’t been for years, and I’ve never been a Goddess. I’m simply a woman, only not as solid as Lan-yin.”

“But I’m not an Immortal—do I have to—”

She swayed toward him. “We’re going to meet again; and next time, you won’t have to wonder how to become as frail as I am now.”

Mei-yu reteated to the court. He stood for moments before he could accept the fact that somewhere short of the shadows of a bamboo she had become entirely moon glamour enveloped by darkness.