Читать книгу In a Yün-nan Courtyard - Louise Jordan Miln - Страница 3

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Fifty miles or more, as the crow flew, from Chiao-chia T’ing in Northern Yün-nan, So Wing gave a grunt of satisfaction as his boat jerked through the rapid’s last curling edge and slid into the smooth safety of a long placid stretch of the narrowing river.

They had fought and schemed their dangered way through rapid after rapid in their long quest; So Wing and his square-sailed craft. They would have the same river death-traps to breast on their way back. But what of that! They had reached their first goal. And So Wing was well paid for the peril he had eagerly accepted. A Chinese life weighs light against a heavied purse. Years ago he had been one of the fearless crew that repeatedly shot the Yang-tsze rapids again and again for a smaller wage than this less risky journeying to the twisted river’s more placid Yün-nan stretch would earn him, if he lived to deliver Ko Ching-lin’s business to Q’ūo Chung and lived to carry Q’ūo’s answer back to Ko. Too, So Wing could rest now, perhaps for a moon’s full quarter in the plentied home of Q’ūo Chung the wax-insect breeder.

The boy—So Wing was no more—flung his long, heavy push-pole down on the running deck, wiped his streaming face on the soaked drip-pad he unwound as he pulled it from his brow, hauled down and furled the creaking mat sail, and made solemn sacrifice—in gratitude to the River Dragon that had deigned to let them live and prevail through the Yang-tsze’s angry, swirling rapids. Death and Death’s henchman, the River Dragon, took heavy toll of those who journeyed on the Great River almost anywhere between I-chang and Sui-fu. So Wing often had looked into the Great River Dragon’s angry eyes and seen the gnashing of his great bared teeth. This was the weaker devil-one of a weaker stretch of the Great River—almost where the Niul An Kiang poured its water tribute into the Mighty River. But dangerous enough it had menaced him all the way from Sze-ch’uen, and would again on his returning. He would propitiate it scrupulously.

So Wing brought a square of braided bamboo, a two-string, long-necked fiddle, a small-bowled, long-stemmed pipe, a tobacco-pouch and a beehive shaped reed basket from the mat-domed shelter where he slept when he dared, spread the bamboo mat on the soaking deck, balanced the precious fiddle dexterously on the dry basket’s rounded top, squatted down on the now wet mat and drew a flint-bladed knife out of his only garment—his loin-cloth—tried the knife’s edge on his own calloused thumb, and grunted his approval of its murderous sharpness, opened the basket-cage cautiously and pulled out a terrified old white cock, and pinned it securely to the sopping deck with a thrust of the flint knife’s keen point. It would bleed less so. All the blood that ran was the River Dragon’s. But warm blood was nourishing and precious; So Wing was not minded to be prodigal of it even in the sacerdotal rites of worship. To have slashed the bird’s head off and then hung it up by its tethered feet to bleed to final death would have been pleasanter torture for the poor old cock, even more pleasing, perhaps, to the blood-greedy River Dragon; but So Wing saw no necessity for such extravagance—now that immediate peril was over. And he had sacrificed several birds already on his imperilled journey. The cock-crate was cockless now. He hoped, and prayed the gods, that white cocks were cheaper here than they were in Sze-ch’uen.

He tuned and plucked his fiddle, waiting contentedly until the Dragon-offering bird had made its slow end.

And Q’ūo Ssu heard him, found the music sweet, peeped out of the Ch’ung shu-tree she was climbing to see how the worm eggs were forming on its top branches, looked, and saw So Wing sturdy and well-favoured.

So, absorbed in his music, let the cock suffer neglected.

So Wing grunted an angry oath when, his music done, he saw that the sacrificial fowl had wrenched its neck so desperately that its gullet was half severed and its blood was running out extravagantly. And there was nothing to do about it! He had offered it to the River Dragon, and the offering must remain as he had made it, even if all the bird’s nourishing red ran never to be recovered for So Wing’s own cooking-pot. So Wing was no stickler regarding ceremony. But all the dragons are adamant sticklers, and the River Dragons of the Yang-tsze and its turbulent tributaries are the fiercest sticklers of them all.

So Wing shrugged and played another tune. And Q’ūo Ssu leaned so far out from her tree-perch that So Wing saw her, and smiled and played his softest, sweetest.

Q’ūo Ssu giggled and drew back. But she knew that the strange man-one had seen and approved her. She was glad.