Not long after Liu Xianyang came to Mud Vase Lane, the little alley received another rare visitor — a graceful young scholar in a blue scholar's robe named Zhao Yao, whose bearing carried more than a hint of the schoolteacher Qi Jingchun about him.
Zhao Yao was the eldest grandson of one of the town's four great surnames. Unlike the idle young wastrels of Lu Zhengchun's sort, who came of equally wealthy houses yet spent their days in idleness, Zhao Yao enjoyed an excellent reputation. Many of the town's lonely old widowers and aged orphans had received the youth's kindness. If one took this for the tactics of "a famed scholar nurturing his reputation in the wilds," the way the books describe it, that would seem to overestimate Zhao Yao's ambitions — a case of judging a gentleman's heart by a petty man's measure. For since the age of ten, the youth had been given to doing good to others, and year after year he had never once slackened. Even the elders of Fortune & Rank Street who had watched the boy grow up could not help but offer a thumbs-up, and each time they scolded their own children, they would drag Zhao Yao out as the model of excellence. This very habit, in turn, left the boy with scarcely a single friend of the heart among his own age.
Lu Zhengchun's crowd were untrammeled souls who wanted nothing to do with a bookworm forever spouting "howbeit" and "wherefore." Imagine the entire lot eagerly scaling a wall to peep at the pretty widow, only for someone beside them to recite the classics, "to look on what is improper is not ritual." Would that not spoil the whole sport? In any case, in these years the youth Zhao Yao had come to deal mostly with folk outside Fortune & Rank Street. Lanes and alleys great and small, he had walked nearly all of them — except Mud Vase Lane, because in that alley dwelt Song Jixin, a young man of the same age who often left Zhao Yao feeling diminished by comparison.
But were one truly to speak of friends, Zhao Yao would only ever count Song Jixin as his chess-playing companion. Though he had lost to Song Jixin for years on end, the sting of defeat was one thing and the stubborn craving to win another, and for Song Jixin's towering natural talent Zhao Yao had in his heart all along a genuine admiration. The only thing that left Zhao Yao rather bleak was a certain intuition: though Song Jixin bantered and laughed with him without reserve in daily amity, he suspected the other had never truly regarded him as a friend of the heart.
Zhao Yao had never before paid a call on Song Jixin's home, yet the moment he laid eyes on a certain residence he knew at once it must be Song Jixin's. The reason lay in the spring couplets pasted beside the gate — an extraordinary number of characters, and plainly in Song Jixin's hand. The reasoning was simple: the style varied so wildly that each character seemed altogether different from the next. Take those two characters meaning "riding the wind" — written in a single connected breath, following the heart's fancy, with a great air of drifting lightness. The character meaning an abyss, its water-radical on the left, carried a deep and lingering intent. The single character meaning "marvel," in one great uplifting stroke, brimmed with a boldness of spirit like a thunderclap of ten-thousand jun! While the character meaning "kingdom," was written upright, balanced, harmonious, like a sage seated in dignity, with not the faintest flaw to be found in it.
Zhao Yao stood at the courtyard gate, nearly forgetting to knock. His body leaning forward, he gazed at those characters as one bewitched, his spirit quite lost, feeling that he had almost lost the very courage to raise his hand to the door. Precisely because he had labored so diligently at calligraphy, copying model after model, did he all the more know the weight of the force, the depth of the substance, the fullness of the spirit within those strokes.
Sorrow welling in him, Zhao Yao drew out a money-pouch, stooped to set it before the gate, and prepared to take his leave without a word.
At that moment the courtyard gate swung suddenly open. Zhao Yao raised his head to see Song Jixin, apparently about to go out with his maidservant Zhigui, the two of them laughing and chatting.
Song Jixin feigned surprise, teasing: "Zhao Yao, bowing so low before my door — what business could you have in mind?"
Flustered, Zhao Yao snatched up the pouch and was opening his mouth to explain when Song Jixin whisked the embroidered purse from his hand, grinning: "Oho! Zhao Yao has come bearing gifts to my door — accepted, accepted! Only mind you, I'm a poor man's household; I've no gift worthy of Brother Zhao's notice. Since for every gift there should be a gift in return, let me for this once fail in courtesy."
Zhao Yao smiled ruefully: "This pouch of Warding coins — take it as my parting gift, and there's no need for any gift in return."
Song Jixin turned his head and exchanged a knowing smile with his maidservant, handing her the pouch. "See? I told you Zhao Yao is the most courteous man of letters in all the town. What do you say?"
The girl took the pouch, held it to her breast, and her eyes narrowed into slits with delight. She stepped a little to one side and made a deep bow of greeting — a wanfu — and said: "I thank Master Zhao for his gift. My master has said that the house that gathers good deeds will have a surplus of blessings, that those who do good reap a field of fortune. Your servant here wishes Master Zhao rise straight up to the blue clouds, a roc's journey of ten thousand miles."
Zhao Yao hurriedly bowed in return: "Thank you for the auspicious words, Mistress Zhigui."
Song Jixin scratched the back of his head and yawned. "Aren't the two of you tired?"
Zhigui said, beaming: "If I could pocket a full pouch of coins each time, your servant could bow ten thousand wanfu and never grow weary."
Zhao Yao said abashedly: "Then Mistress Zhigui will be disappointed."
Song Jixin waved a broad hand. "Come, let's go drinking!"
Zhao Yao's face turned awkward, and Song Jixin goaded him: "You great dunce, you! To read the books and come out only with dead-letter rules, and not a scrap of a famous scholar's easy grace — how's that fit to live?"
Zhao Yao ventured: "A small cup, to warm the spirits?"
Song Jixin rolled his eyes. "A great drunk, dead to the world!"
Zhao Yao was about to speak when Song Jixin hooked an arm about his neck and dragged him off.
When the maidservant Zhigui locked the gate, the four-legged lizard made to slip out on the sly and was sent tumbling back into the courtyard with a kick.
As she passed the neighboring house, she quietly rose onto her tiptoes, slanting a glance or two, and caught sight of Liu Xianyang's tall figure. The latter noticed her in turn and at once his face bloomed into a brilliant smile. He was about to greet her when she had already gathered back her gaze and strode away at a quick pace.
The town had an inn of wine, as it happened — only it was not large at all, yet its outlay was no small matter. Still, Zhao Yao was after all a scion of the Zhao clan, with an excellent name to boot, and the innkeeper, notorious townwide as the "iron rooster," had that day taken leave of his senses, thumping his chest to swear he would not accept a single copper. That two such scholars would deign to drink at his humble establishment, he said, was an honor that brightened his hall; truly, it was they who should be charging him money. Song Jixin at once stretched out a palm, all smiles, to demand the silver on the spot. The innkeeper, discomfited, scrambled to give himself a graceful way out, saying he'd owe them, owe them — come tomorrow he'd have a few fine jars of wine sent round to Master Song's home. Zhao Yao wished at that moment he could dig a hole and crawl into it. But the innkeeper, long acquainted with the odd temper of the great young master of Mud Vase Lane, was not truly angered; he saw to it himself that the three were seated by a quiet window on the second floor.
Song Jixin and Zhao Yao spoke but little, and Song Jixin neither pressed drink nor played tricks to feed the other wine — which left Zhao Yao, who had steeled himself as one going to his death, quite taken aback.
From the window of the tavern's second floor one could look straight out at one of the plaques of the Twelve-Pillar Memorial Arch, bearing the four characters — "yielding to none when duty calls."
Song Jixin asked: "Master Qi truly won't leave the town with you?"
Zhao Yao nodded: "Master changed his itinerary on a sudden, saying he means to stay at the schoolhouse and teach out the second-to-last lesson, 'Understanding of Ritual.'"
Song Jixin mused: "Then Master Qi will be expounding a great principle, to pass down to all the world the teaching of the most Holy of the Confucian line — to tell us that in the beginning of the world there was no such thing as law, and so the sages used ritual to transform and educate the multitude. In those days, all sovereigns revered ritual, holding that to go against reason and ritual was to enter into punishment, and from that came law. Ritual and law, ritual and law — first ritual, then law…"
Zhao Yao, already half drunk, spoke with a thickened tongue: "And do you think it right? And why does Master not simply go ahead and teach the final lesson instead — 'Reverence for Ritual'?"
Song Jixin answered without answering: "Before one steps out of this town — the mountain-fiends and water-ghosts, the immortals, the gods, the spirits — believe and they are; believe not and they are not. As for how Master Qi teaches, as for how the student listens, let each go as fate ordains."
The maidservant Zhigui had also drunk a cup of wine, and wore a dizzy, charming, roguish air, and from first to last never once set eyes on that towering arch.
The Twelve-Pillar Memorial Arch — at the base of its stone pillars were carved the nine strange beasts that are the Nine Sons of the Dragon, and beyond them the White Tiger, the Black Tortoise, and the Vermilion Bird.
The townsfolk, dwelling here generation after generation, had long since grown used to the sight.
Zhao Yao could not hold back a belch, rose swaying from his seat, and said: "Parting from you, sir, I hope we meet again."
Song Jixin thought a moment, rose as well, and said with a smile: "Certainly we'll meet again, Zhao Yao. Grieve not that the road ahead holds no one who knows you."
Zhao Yao, his two eyes swimming, bit his tongue and spoke with all sincerity: "Song Jixin, leave the town soon yourself. Throughout all the world, who does not know your name? You're certain to succeed!"
Song Jixin evidently took no such words to heart, and waved him off: "Off with you, off with you — a string of drunken nonsense, insulting to all learning and breeding."
Once the two of them walked out of the tavern they parted ways. Before he left, Zhao Yao — and the wine, as they say, emboldens a coward's heart — asked one question: "Song Jixin, how about a look at the kiln-bureau superintendent's offices? I could persuade the gatekeeper…"
Song Jixin's face turned cold and a single syllable came through his gritted teeth: "Scram!"
Zhao Yao went on his way, dejected.
The maidservant Zhigui watched that retreating back and murmured: "Master, he meant well."
Song Jixin sneered: "In this world, how many good intentions of good folk end in bad deeds and bitter fruit? Are they few?"
She thought it over, and it did seem to be just such a dull and flavorless truth, so she pressed the matter no further.
Zhao Yao's home on Fortune & Rank Street lay in the north of the town, while Mud Vase Lane was in the west, where the paupers clustered. As Song Jixin and his maidservant walked past the arch side by side, she raised her eyes to the plaque bearing the words "Soaring Spirit Piercing the Dipper and Ox," looking yet again like some aged crone.
The girl, whose true name was Wang Zhu, smiled with her lips closed and her teeth unseen.
Back at the ancestral hall on Fortune & Rank Street, the servants told him the old matriarch was waiting for him in the study, and he must come at once, without a moment's pause. The blue-robed scholar, stinking of drink, felt his head swim at once, yet braced himself and hurried over.
The Zhao clan showed no sign of its wealth around the town; its riches were kept well concealed within, unlike the Lu clan with its blustering, self-styled air of a family of halls and books. The study, too, was furnished in a classical, antique taste.
A crone leaning on a walking stick stood beside a writing-desk, stroking its surface, her weathered face full of a grieving, wistful reminiscence.
Smelling the thick reek of wine on her eldest grandson, the crone showed no anger; she smiled and waved him in. "Yao'er, come in now. What are you doing, stuck planted on the threshold like that? What's a lad drinking a bit of wine? It's not as though he's swilled horse-piss — nothing to be ashamed of!"
Zhao Yao smiled wryly and stepped over the threshold, proffering his most respectful salutation to the old matriarch. The crone snapped, impatient: "That's the one bad thing about reading too many books — all that rule upon rule, hemming in a scholar's whole life till he runs circles like a ghost against a wall. Sickening, it is. Take your grandfather, now — absolutely first-rate at everything, only when he set to talking great principles with me, he'd drone on and on, enough to drive a body mad. And that air of his, that posturing — my, my, positively begging for a beating. And I could never win an argument against him, which made me want to just smack him one with my cane…"
Suddenly the crone found her own rambling hilarious and burst out laughing. "Nearly forgot — back then I'd no need of any cane."
She asked, laughing: "And what, you've been drinking with that little white-eyed ingrate surnamed Song?"
Zhao Yao said, helpless: "Grandmother, how many times must I tell you? Song Jixin is a man of great talent, quick of comprehension — whatever he learns, he's a step ahead of the rest."
The crone snorted: "Him? Clever's clever enough, I grant you. But your grandfather read him at a glance long ago, 'judged at three, known at eighty' — saw the little wretch right through. His nature was fixed from the start. Want to know what your grandfather said?"
Zhao Yao hurriedly answered: "Grandson does not wish to know!"
The crone paid her treasured grandson's wishes no mind at all, and went on of her own accord: "Your grandfather said: 'Young in years, deep in scheming. Pity, but the one who brings our ancestors' name to ruin — in a way, it must be he.'"
Then she pointed at Zhao Yao. "And your grandfather also said: 'Gentle and mild, courteous and frugal — nothing extraordinary at first glance, yet he who shall nourish the very life-force of our descendants — that must be my grandson!'"
When she had finished, the crone smiled. "That dead old fool — sour as a pickle his whole life long, and at the last he finally said one pleasing, good word."
Zhao Yao, somewhat puzzled, was about to speak when his grandmother sighed with feeling: "Old, old!"
The youth held back his words, and stepped forward with a smile to take the old woman's arm. "Grandmother lives as long as the Southern Mountain; you're still young and hale."
The crone stretched out a withered hand and patted the back of her treasured grandson's hand. "Better than your grandfather, you are. Reading the books, you've learned not only to spout dead-letter precepts, but to say pleasant words to cheer a body."
The youth smiled: "Grandfather was a man of true learning. Master Qi himself said Grandfather had a proper method in scholarship, and a singular insight into writing the character 'righteousness.'"
At this the old woman's fox-tail showed at once, an uncontainable smugness she could not hide, though she put on a snort: "And why wouldn't he? Get a look at what a man I picked!"
Zhao Yao pressed his lips tight to hold back his laughter.
The crone led him to the chair behind the writing-desk, and the youth saw that upon the desk stood a carved wooden dragon lying coiled, carved with lifelike craft — only, for reasons he could not tell, on close examination this green wooden dragon had eyes without pupils.
The crone took up a writing-brush already dipped and steeped in ink — a fresh fine-pointed brush whose handle was made from a branch of an old locust — cradled it in both hands, trembling, and offered it to her eldest grandson.
As the bewildered Zhao Yao received the brush, his shoulder sank — his grandmother had laid her hand upon it — and he let himself settle into the seat whose right belonged only to the head of the Zhao clan.
Stepping back a pace, the crone said in utmost solemnity: "Zhao Yao, be seated! Today you, in the place of the arrayed ancestors of the Zhao clan, shall dot the dragon's eyes!"
——
Row upon row of ruined, crumbling clay idols lay strewn across a ground thick with wild weeds, tilted this way and that, untended and unlamented.
So it had been for a thousand years and more, and ever more clay figures would keep tumbling into this place. The townsfolk had long grown indifferent not only to countless everyday things; truth be told, when they came upon these idols, they had little reverence left for them either.
The old folk would sometimes grumble to their children not to come play on this ground, yet the little ones still delighted in hiding among the idols and catching crickets and the like. It might be that once these children grew up and withered into ancient graybeards, they too would warn their own young not to romp here — and so it passed on, generation after generation, in no wind nor wave, flat and unremarkable.
Here one might see a head rolled to the ground, a trunk snapped in two, a palm parted off — as though some hand had patched the fragments together in rough accord, just barely preserving the semblance of a whole; yet only that scrap of dignity remained.
A straw-sandaled youth came hustling here from the direction of Mud Vase Lane. His palm clutched tight three Offering coins. Once he reached the place he wound his way round and about, muttering to himself all the while, until with surpassing familiarity he found a certain idol, crouched down, looked all about him — and saw not a soul — then quietly slipped the copper coins into a crack in the idol's broken body.
Afterward he rose and sought out a second idol, a third, doing the same for each.
Before he went, the youth stood alone in the lush green grass, his palms pressed together, bowed his head, and murmured: "Peace in fragments, peace in fragments. I pray you watch over my father and mother, that in their next life they may not suffer hardship… If you are able, then please tell them I am doing well now, and they need not worry…"