Читать книгу The Jade Enchantress - E. Hoffmann Price - Страница 7

Chapter III

As usual, Lan-yin and her husband, Chen Lao-yeh, were haggling some well-worn subject. That evening the topic was their son, Chen Yin-chu, recently conscripted because of trouble in Turkistan. The Chens were speculating on how lavish was the bribe which Old Man Kwan had offered the captain to make sure that neither Ju-hai nor Younger Brother, Shou-chi, would be taken into the army.

The brothers had been in the next higher foothills of the Tai Pai Shan, cutting firewood, as everyone knew. The debate centered on how it had happened that the Kwan sons were away just when the recruiting officer made his rounds.

Each villager, male or female, slave or free, was listed on the census rolls. Law required that on the door of every house there must be a list of the dwellers. The captain, after declaring that he’d pick up the missing on his way back and en route to Ch’ang-an, had not returned. There were many approved solutions which helped the military stave off madness because of the Bureaucracy. Any officer worthy of his rank would have sense enough to pay the jailer of the nearest city a reasonable sum, whereupon every prisoner, regardless of offense, would become a soldier. The jailer split the cumshaw with the magistrate. The officer was reimbursed for expenses in getting the recruits missing the first time around, and all balanced out.

Chen Lao-yeh had automatic responses which made it seem that he was listening to his wife, who was busy in an adjoining room. Although Master Chen, who was nudging his fortieth year, wore the dark blue jacket and knee length pants of the Shensi farmer, there was something about his easy, graceful posture, his long slender hands, and his thin, sensitive face which gave the overall impression that this man normally wore the robe and cap of scholar and for some unspecified reason was disguising himself. The few lines of his smooth face were about the eyes, and largely sun squint. His expression was benevolent, serene, and his attention, like his gaze, was far away from the little farmhouse with its rammed earth floor and whitewashed walls.

The Chens had done nicely; he and his late father had put undeveloped farmland into production, starting as had the Kwans, though three centuries later. And a good deal still depended on his temporarily soldiering son.

Lan-yin was busy. Between dipping a finger into the pot of water heating over the coals of the hearth, then dipping strings of cash from a more or less secret wall niche, slapping them on the table, and all the while declaring herself to her husband, the mistress of the house was fully occupied.

Now that the crypt was emptied, the strings of cash were heaped, and the water sufficiently hot, Lan-yin grabbed the pot and, without skipping a beat, headed for the adjoining room. There she outvoiced her splashings in the little tub until at last she paused in the tirade. His Honor, Chen, who was unaware that she had changed the subject several times, felt that it was time to say something.

“You’re going to be with one of the Kwan sons this evening?”

“If you’d been listening to what I was saying, you’d know that Ju-hai is going to Ch’ang-an to study for the examinations and the Old Man wants him to sleep with that little snip of a slave girl, that Hsi-feng, so he’ll get used to doing it with a lady—mind you, a lady slave girl!”

While she was laughing that one off, Chen prepared his retort. “And since when,” he asked with elaborate smoothness, “has Old Man Kwan begun telling you his plans? When he finally got you knocked up and you spewed out that son of yours, he had his fill of you.”

“Your Excellency, Master Chen, in the first place the Kwan sons are more fun than he ever was, and in the second place, his Number Two Concubine told me all about the plans for Ju-hai to go to the capital to study for the Imperial Civil Service.”

Every once in a while Chen won a round, so he pursued his opportunity. “And of course the concubine knew all about Hsi-feng? Mmmm… She is getting to be luscious and I bet Ju-hai is drooling. The change will do him good.”

“You’d never get as much as a look, much less a smell of that!” Lan-yin mocked. “And so you think I was waiting for concubine chatter? The other night Ju-hai woke up and still more than half asleep, he called me Hsi-feng; and then, when he was fully awake, he felt awkward and told me all about the girl and how he was going to persuade his father to send her to Ch’ang-an to keep house for him.”

Chen snorted. “Anyone persuading Old Man Kwan to do anything has his life’s work cut out for him.”

“Whether he can or can’t talk his father into line, I’ll not be collecting as many strings of cash for you to buy silver in Ch’ang-an.”

Lan-yin could buy silver in the village market, but that would tell the entire village how much she was hoarding. The total which she had amassed since the Kwan boys had been interested in women was buried where only Lan-yin knew. The arrangement, having become a tradition, was hallowed, accepted by the villagers as entirely respectable. This, of course, was because of their politely pretending to ignore Lan-yin’s being a polyandrous concubine.

Trying to estimate the effects of Ju-hai’s leaving the village and going to the capital alone to study, and then to repeat the calculation, after taking into account Hsi-feng’s entering the Kwan heir’s life, kept Chen too busy to get more than scraps of what his wife was saying.

And there was another factor which for some while had contributed to Chen’s cogitations: it was an outright nuisance, keeping his concubine in a neighboring village—it was not so much the distance as simply the principle of the thing. He’d gain face if ever he moved his Number Two Lady into the Kwan Village. The house was large enough. The only obstacle was Lan-yin.

Then he realized that she was and had been saying things.

“You splash so much I missed something. What did you say?”

“I said you’re missing the point of everything! Don’t argue with me, shut up and get the facts! Once Ju-hai gets accustomed to a lady, he’ll realize that it takes three of her to equal one of me!”

Chen was about to dispute that estimate, but his Number One Lady interrupted. “Once he’s passed the examinations—”

Chen triumphantly shouted her down. “He can’t even take them for another two or three years.”

That was more than a patient woman could endure. Lan-yin pounced from the bathing room, towel in one hand, fresh garments in the other. “If Ju-hai makes it and gets an official position, we won’t have a chance to get anywhere—the Kwans will gobble up more and more land!”

“They can’t take what we have; and, with that buried silver, we can get a red certificate for uncleared land.”

“What makes you so sure?” she challenged, flipping the towel into a corner and sorting an undergarment from the outer jacket and trousers draped over the crook of her elbow.

They had wrangled so many years that her unusually attractive body didn’t interest him. Whereas the years made haggard wrecks of so many women, there was a significant proportion of ageless ones with timeproof bodies and unblemished chinlines; when these favored ones nudged fifty and more, their smooth skins were finer of texture than any female teen-age barbarian. And Lan-yin was one of these. Farm work had left her legs elegant, without knots. Aside from a few fine, white stretch lines, she was as unblemished as she’d been a good nineteen or twenty years previously.

“What makes me so sure?” Chen echoed. “Just a rough estimate.”

“We could buy twice as much land if you’d not squandered so much on part-time, unwashed village whores! You’re so used to wenches carrying honey buckets to the fields till they’re too tired to wash up, the minute I take a bath you think I’m sleeping with one of the Kwan boys.

“And before I forget it—when you go marketing in Ch’ang-an, I’m going along to make sure you don’t let that Colonel Tsao talk you into something stupid. He was getting impatient, last time he came to see us.”

Lan-yin referred to the retired Colonel Tsao’s talk with them at their farm, some distance from the walled village. To have him come to their home would have been fatally conspicuous.

“I don’t see where we come in on his impatience. We’re not selling property. He ought to know that; he must know by now. He’s after a chunk of Kwan land.”

Lan-yin sighed, praying for patience. “Chen Lao-yeh, before, he finds out that Ju-hai is going to school in Ch’ang-an, you and I are going to let him in on something important, if he gives us a commission. Knowing about the plans for Ju-hai ought to be worth a hundred taels of silver.”

Chen admitted that it would take a lot of sleeping with Ju-hai and Shou-chi to total a hundred ounces. Certainly it was an important sum, but it really led nowhere.

“It will be a lot more than just silver,” Lan-yin persisted. “If Colonel Tsao knows enough about where Ju-hai’s going to school, he can figure things so Ju-hai won’t qualify for the examinations. He—I mean Ju-hai—he is smart, he’s quick-witted, but he’s ignorant about big cities. Get him started drinking and playing around with sing-song girls and gambling—whatever he becomes, he won’t be an official; and if he did make it, Colonel Tsao could get the bureaucrats to transfer him beyond the Great Wall. Once he gets into trouble, Shou-chi will be the Number One favorite. Shou-chi’s a nice youngster, not really dumb, but he’s easy to deal with.”

“Dealing with Old Man Kwan never was easy work,” Chen objected.

“You’re right,” Lan-yin agreed. “But Colonel Tsao knows a lot of generals and civil officials. Suppose the Old Man is nabbed by a conscription officer rounding up another draft of recruits.”

“He’s too old.”

“If Tsao can’t take care of a few military details, then he is too dumb to manage the Kwan lands. He’ll have to have some farmer to help him—a general overseer or steward. You begin to see where we can take a hand—if Ju-hai goes crazy, the way youngsters do when they quit the farm and get among high-stepping city people, and runs up debts. The Old Man will borrow money—”

Chen began to get the point. “And Tsao buys the note? Tai-tai, sometimes I think you’re brighter than I gave you credit for being.”

“Ta jen, I’m not so bright. I’ve just been thinking for months and months…did you see that shaman hobbling about the plaza?”

“With the funniest hat with a crown as high as from my knuckles to my elbow, and not much bigger around than my forearm? And a forked beard? Yes, at the cooked-food stand, he was eating garlic sausages—what about him?”

“Ever since I saw him, I thought maybe I should get some advice. Those shamans give good answers. How much should I pay him?”

“Let him take it out in trade!”

Lan-yin made a mocking face. “You’d have a grand time with his mother. I bet she’s greasier than he is—or your farm girls.”

When, half an hour later, Lan-yin set out for the village inn, she wore a turquoise tunic slit halfway up her thigh and a brocaded jacket, gay with gold. Two jade pins secured her gleaming black hair, and white coral pendants tinkled from her ears. Her makeup, though on the dramatic side, was not glaring; it gave her style.

“Aiieeyah, tai-tai” Chen sounded off, and genuine admiration colored his voice. “If you weren’t such a contentious little bitch, I’d really love you.”

She glanced over her shoulder, gave herself a resounding slap on her silk-shimmering behind. “You don’t know what you’re missing.”

“If only the rest of you were that nice!” he retorted.

He was thinking that, if the disposition of his concubine sequestered in a nearby village could be combined with Lan-yin’s elegant body, he’d have the superior woman.

Lan-yin did not have to inquire at the inn, the Kwan Village information center. By the smoky flame of an oil lamp, she saw the shaman. He was eating pot stickers and gulping hot shao-hsing.

“I don’t know your name,” Lan-yin said, “but they tell me you’re a shaman.”

“Name is Yatu. For once, the dog-turd fools, they told you right.” He plopped a second pot sticker into his mouth. “What’s troubling you?” Yatu tossed off a cup of shao-hsing. “Speak up, woman! Take your thumb out! I’m busy.”

She glanced at the cooked-food man. He said, “I’m too deaf to hear what customers say, and I’m too dumb to understand them if I could hear.”

Lan-yin addressed the Mongol. “Distinguished sir, I need advice. Is this a lucky time for me to speculate in real estate?”

“You must have sold a farm to buy those clothes and that stuff.” He grabbed another pot sticker and gestured for another jug of wine. “You don’t seem to know a thing about shamanizing.”

“If I knew, I’d not be asking you, would I?”

He sniffed the breeze. “You smell funny.”

“I could say a thing or two on that subject myself,” she retorted.

“But you’re just ignorant,” Yatu elaborated, explaining that the drumming, the rattles, the whanging of cymbals, and the bellowings of his familiar spirit would draw a crowd. Even if she whispered her question, the answer would sound like a cavalry charge in a thunderstorm. Yatu concluded, “I live in the Mongol camp outside the wall of Ch’ang-an, west of the Jin Guan Men.” He paused and eyed her, a section at a time. “If you’re in a hurry, round up a couple of musicians to chant and sound off until I’m in a trance. We can go out into the hills four or five li so nobody would hear.”

“Thank you, Old Master, but I’m not dressed for moonlight walking in the Ta-pa Range. Do you have many female customers?”

He refilled his cup and wagged his head. “One of the best whores in Ch’ang-an consults me regularly. She started out as a street slut and now she’s the darling of a prince. Haiii! Don’t get discouraged, maybe I could do something for you.”

Yatu didn’t understand enough Chinese to know what Lan-yin called him, but he smiled and said, “Well, so are you.” Then, to the cooked-food man, he confided, “That flossy bitch is up to some land of dirty work or she wouldn’t be so shy about asking me a question.”