A Flower’s Shade Read online

  When she was sure of his identity, she grew instantly sarcastic, saying, "Didn't I say it was you? I haven't seen you in so many years. Haven't you become impressive?"

  Flustered, Xiaoyun reached out to grab back the glasses she had in her hands. Very earnestly, he put them on again, and once he was wearing them it was as though his confidence was instantly restored. Full of pride, he looked at Miss Yu and Huaifu. He had long ago become familiar with Miss Yu's despotic temper, and had also learned that the best way of dealing with her was to ignore her. Indeed, now she began pleasantly, "It really has been many years. That's right, it was when my brother got sick, after that I never saw you again. Where did you run off to?"

  Xiaoyun considered the question and said, "I was at school."

  "So you went away to school. And all these years, you've been at school the whole time?"

  It seemed he was tired of answering Miss Yu's questions. He stood, silent and immobile, delivering giving Miss Yu the cold shoulder. After a moment, he turned his face disapprovingly to Miss Yu and looked coldly at her.

  "Incredible, so you're a modern-style student now." Miss Yu obviously envied him, but since she had been hurt by his coldness, she was speaking to him with sarcasm. Something like a smile was tugging at the corner of Xiaoyun's mouth, as though he was looking eagerly forward to the next words she would speak. But she had nothing left to say.

  Huaifu was standing silently by, listening to their conversation. He was astonished to find that there were people who dared speak like this to Miss Yu, and that it didn't seem to anger her very much, either. Huaifu had only studied for three years, in a countryside primary school. His family was very poor, and there had never been any prospect of real studies. He was filled with envy for those who were in a position to continue their studies, especially those who were studying in the modern, Western style. Xiaoyun walked proudly back to his bicycle and hung the birdcage from the handlebars. Then he began to walk off, pushing his bicycle. Miss Yu, curious, followed behind for a few steps, and watched how Xiaoyun went out the great gates, bestrode his bicycle, and rode off into the distance.

  4

  It was true that Huaifu had once nearly been adopted as the son of Old Master Zhen. If he really had been formally adopted, then things today might have been entirely different. If he had been taken on at the Zhen Estate a little earlier, more than likely he too would have become renowned for his dalliances.

  The year following Naixiang's accident, Zhushan Uncle had taken Huaifu to the Zhen Estate. There had been a clan meeting at that time, for it was felt that Old Master Zhen ought to adopt Huaifu. The whole thing had been Zhushan Uncle's idea. Huaifu had been fifteen that year. In brand-new clothing, with a feeling of uneasiness, he had entered the great Estate. Before he had left the countryside, he had already been told how magnificent the Estate was, and now he finally had the opportunity to see it. Because there were carvings of auspicious historical stories or animal motifs on the beams and columns of all the doors and windows, Huaifu's first impression was that he had entered into some unreal legendary world, and that those who lived here couldn't possibly be ordinary mortals. It was also the occasion on which Huaifu had had the opportunity to see Miss Yu again. By that time, she was already a grown-up girl. They had met in the courtyard, and Fourth Uncle anxiously told Huaifu to call her name. It was much the same as the first time, with Huaifu staring and unsure what would be the proper way to address her. Miss Yu had grown prettier since he had last seen her, and prouder. In an old-fashioned, reluctant way, she greeted Fourth Uncle and then looked Huaifu up and down as though she had been presented with a monster. In an unfriendly manner she asked Fourth Uncle, "What's wrong with his head? What hole did he crawl out of?"

  Fourth Uncle explained, while signaling Huaifu to greet her. Huaifu timidly greeted her. Miss Yu seemed to be aware of the possible adoption, rolled her eyes and said "Don't call me sister, you're not my brother." Instantly, Huaifu felt deeply wounded, and he had all but cried. When she had spoken, she turned and left, while Fourth Uncle smiled affectedly in order to cover his retreat. The whole day had been thoroughly unpleasant, they were welcome nowhere. Meeting with Old Master Zhen, Huaifu felt so unjustly treated by his contemptuous glare that he had almost burst into sobs. Apparently because there were things he didn't want Huaifu to hear, Fourth Uncle had told him to wait outside in the courtyard for a while. He had stayed by himself in the courtyard, feigning an interest in the carved pictured on the wall tiles, feeling as abject as though a knife were twisting inside him. Miss Yu had shown such a vile attitude towards him, and all he could hope for would be to leave sooner rather than later.

  That day they weren't even asked to stay for a meal. When their visit was over, Fourth Uncle had to take him to a little noodle shop for a bowl of noodles. "They might seem impressive just now," Fourth Uncle said consolingly when the noodles had arrived, "But sooner or later they will need you." Huaifu could no longer remember what those noodles had tasted like, but what he could not forget was not only that he had been humiliated in the Zhen Estate, but also—which made him feel even more miserable—that he dreamt of meeting Miss Yu that night. In his dreams, Miss Yu was just as arrogant as in real life, and she humiliated him once again, and even gave him a hard slap in the face. The strange thing was that the slap didn't hurt, and that when he touched his own face, he smelled an alluring fragrance. The fragrance drilled into his mind and he felt an insuppressible pleasure. It was then that he realized he had had a wet dream.

  When he was with Miss Yu, he would often blush on account of this memory that he wished would disappear. He would frequently be subject to sudden attacks of shame on account of this unforgotten recollection. He had never thought that, years later, he really would become a part of the Zhen household. He had never thought that he really would be in such proximity with her, morning, noon and night, her closest companion. It seemed that Miss Yu had already seen through him. Huaifu was sure that such a heavenly woman was sure to know everything, could find anything out. Everything was predetermined, from the first meeting, Huaifu had had a premonition that he and Miss Yu would share a bond that could never be severed. The joys and sorrows between them had long been preordained. It was preordained that they would share the same stage, to act out the same tragedy.

  "What's the big deal about this Estate?" Miss Yu had asked him more than once. It was obvious that she no longer detested him as much as before. Huaifu was a humble man, but Miss Yu could not understand why a perfectly fine man would let himself be ordered around like a servant. "Don't you have any character at all?"

  Ever since Huaifu had appeared, it was as though she had acquired a personal houseboy. She could take him with her on any of her wanderings through the great Estate, and sometimes even took him along when she went outside. For many years, Miss Yu had led a reclusive life in the Estate. Her father had never allowed her to go out. Although by that time, modern education had already become popular, her father had been old-fashioned on the point of her upbringing. On the pretext of her addiction to opium, he had engaged private tutors. Miss Yu was welcome to get up to whatever mischief she liked on the Estate, but she was not allowed out.

  "Huaifu, let's go outside for a walk sometime." Miss Yu whispered impulsively one day.

  5

  In the bright sunshine of the secondary school's sports track, Miss Yu tried clumsily to learn to ride the bicycle. Xiaoyun stood at no great distance, making lazy gestures, obviously reluctant to teach her. When she had first asked him to go out with her, his reluctance had been evident. First he had put on airs and wouldn't commit himself one way or the other. Then he refused, until Suqin interceded and he reluctantly agreed. Because he wouldn't hold the bike steady, Miss Yu had swallowed her anger and asked Huaifu to do it. Huaifu had obediently obliged, clumsily steadying the bike and exhausting himself in the process. Miss Yu had almost fallen off more than once, and Huaifu was breaking his back to help her, but he was getting precious little thanks
for his efforts.

  Xiaoyun looked on coolly from the side, still wearing his highly peculiar dark glasses, and from time to time revealing a barely perceptible sarcastic smile. Since he had run into her in the corridor a few days earlier, he had been waiting for this day. Although he had left the Zhen Estate ten years before, he remembered her headstrong temperament. He knew that his bicycle, which was the talk of the whole little town, would be certain to draw Miss Yu's attention once she had come upon it. Miss Yu had grown up in a closed environment, and so when new objects appeared, she exhibited a particularly intense curiosity.

  The students were in class. Their clear voices, chanting their lessons, could be heard. Huaifu was drenched in sweat. Every time Miss Yu climbed on the bike she would lose her balance and start wildly pedaling. Nervous, she would blush a deep red. Biting her lip, she tried time and again.

  A youthful hand flashed before Xiaoyun's eye. Bygone years rushed at him, and Xiaoyun was drawn helplessly into his memories of the past. He saw a rather girlish hand, swiftly and very skillfully forming the opium pill. He saw that same hand taking an exquisite snuff-bottle and shaking out some white, powdery stuff. Then he saw how the powdery stuff was kneaded into the opium pill.

  With a crash, Miss Yu had finally and heavily fallen. Pouting, she got up, clapped her hands, and abandoned her effort to learn.

  Deep in thought, Xiaoyun watched her approach.

  Livid, she said, "I asked you to teach me to ride a bike, but you refuse to help me at all?"

  "I didn't refuse to help."

  "Didn't you?" Miss Yu snorted.

  Xiaoyun still seemed not to have emerged from his reverie. "In order to learn to ride a bike, you have to fall off," he said, absent-minded and vague.

  Miss Yu, "I fell off, and you just looked pleased."

  "Why should I be pleased?" Xiaoyun said, smiling coolly, "You're the one who wanted to learn. You went to find me and made me come out here. If you fall, you can't blame me."

  "I give up!"

  Xiaoyun watched Miss Yu with indifference. The illusion reemerged, the powdery stuff being poured from the snuff-bottle, a steady stream of it coming out. "What's so wonderful about this stupid bike? I give up!" He heard Miss Yu, but it did not affect him. Whatever Miss Yu said, it had lost all importance to him. He wanted to escape from this incessant illusion, and return as quickly as possible to reality. But the more he wanted to do this, the more he was bound by the temptation of the illusion.

  As he walked back home with the bicycle, accompanied by Miss Yu and Huaifu, Xiaoyun still couldn't rid himself of this illusion. He seemed dejected, and capricious Miss Yu thinking this odd, asked, "Hey, why are you so out of it?" She looked at him carelessly, not knowing what was on his mind. Xiaoyun smiled at Miss Yu apologetically, a smile which appeared to her even stranger and more incomprehensible. "What's with you?" Miss Yu had forgotten all about the unpleasantness of the bike-riding lesson, and now she couldn't suppress a laugh.

  Miss Yu seldom left the Estate, and now followed Xiaoyun and Huaifu like a child. Leaving the school's sports grounds, they headed towards the town, the county seat. The school was on the edge of town, while the Zhen Estate was located inside it. In order to get home, they had to cross a field. Miss Yu really knew far too little about the outside world. When Old Master Zhen had been alive, everything outside of the Estate had been forbidden territory. For many years, she had been hidden in the Estate, a girl waiting for people to come blow opium for her, and her only distraction was the calligraphy she practiced by copying classical inscriptions. Now that Old Master Zhen had died, the gates to the outside world were wide open for Miss Yu. But instead she had become helpless, like someone who had suddenly come into money and doesn't know how to make use of it.

  Practically everything one could see outside was fresh and new to Miss Yu, and she was looking right and left, brimming with curiosity. Two dogs scuffling in a field, a herding boy drowsing on the back of an ox, and not for away, a classically Yangtze-River style bridge, with sailboats in the distance gliding closer. Xiaoyun pushed his clattering bicycle along. Miss Yu wanted to speak to Xiaoyun, wanted to ask him about the outside world. But Xiaoyun wouldn't snap out of it, and didn't really seem ever be paying attention. On the bridge, they encountered a girl who looked like she was probably a student. Evidently, she and Xiaoyun knew each other well, for, catching sight of one another, they stopped on the bridge and began a very friendly conversation.

  Miss Yu was standing right beside them, and had assumed that he would introduce her. But he entirely ignored her presence, and continued to banter with the girl student. There was an obvious contrast between the affection he showed towards the girl and the coolness he exhibited to Miss Yu. The girl student obviously knew they were walking together, and nodded at her smilingly, which had to pass for a greeting. With something like a smile, Miss Yu looked at the girl. Then her expression changed to one of uncontrollable displeasure. She gestured at Huaifu to keep walking, and once they were off the bridge she waited for Xiaoyun, nursing her wrath.

  Xiaoyun and the female student kept on bantering. It seemed like he was bent on angering Miss Yu. The girl said, "Last time, when you spoke at our school—that was wonderful, really. After you left we all kept discussing the matter." Xiaoyun said, "Not at all. I almost drove your headmaster round the bend, didn't I? He was coughing the whole time. I knew he didn't want me to go on, but I kept talking anyway, just to watch him squirm."

  Miss Yu could contain herself no longer, and shouted at Xiaoyun, "Hey, are you done yet?"

  Xiaoyun looked down on her from his position on the bridge with an expression of displeasure at the interruption.

  "Are you coming or not?" Miss Yu said commandingly.

  "You needn't wait for me." Xiaoyun said casually, and then continued speaking to the girl.

  "You—" Miss Yu's eyes were ablaze.

  But Xiaoyun was engrossed in his conversation, and had completely forgotten about Miss Yu's existence. In exasperation, Miss Yu wanted to fly into a rage at him, but in the presence of this young and beautiful girl student, Miss Yu felt for the first time rather ashamed of herself. She suddenly remembered that she was only an old-fashioned girl who didn't know the ways of the world, an old spinster who hadn't even read any of the new books. She knew that all these people in the new mold would certainly look down on those in the old. Miss Yu suddenly felt terribly sad, feeling that she had no understood the key reason for Xiaoyun's indifference to her. In the Zhen Estate, she was a tyrant who could do whatever she liked. But once she passed its gates, she was nothing at all.

  "Huaifu, we won't wait for him, he's no big deal, let him fart around if he wants to." In humiliation, she clenched her teeth and pinched Huaifu's arm so hard that he grimaced.

  6

  Two days after the death of Old Master Zhen, Xiaoyun had returned to the Zhen Estate on the sly. He had never thought that he would return to this decaying mansion, but he had taken the bull by the horns and come back to the haunts of his youth. Ten years earlier, when he had resolved to leave this place behind, he had been only just sixteen years old. In the past ten years, he had studied in various locations, taken odd jobs in bookstores, taught elementary school, had even wasted a few months at one of the newspaper offices in the provincial capital. His haughty personality and his incompatibility with life in the real world had caused his stay everywhere to be short. Wherever he went, he fought with people, and had even been beaten black and blue on more than one occasion.

  From the moment he set foot in the Zhen Estate, Xiaoyun was gripped by profound regret. He knew he shouldn't have returned, that he shouldn't once again make himself a burden to his sister Suqin. The confused atmosphere of the Estate during the period of mourning had diluted his memories of the past. Ten years had passed, and now it seemed as though everything had become strange. People seemed to have forgotten who he was. Everyone was busy with their own affairs, and even Suqin seemed preoccupied with her own thought
s, and never had time to exchange a few words with him in private.

  Besides returning to the Zhen Estate to eat and sleep, Xiaoyun whiled away most of his time in the world outside. He called on the so-called "new people" in the little town, seeking to befriend them, but soon left off, finding that from the looks of it, the "new people" in that little town were at least as irritating as the old conservatives. A madam in one of the brothels had once explained the difference between the old-fashioned and the new people in this unique way: they both liked to visit the girls, but the old-fashioned ones liked to come at dusk and spend the night at the brothel, while the new people liked to come openly and in broad daylight to sleep with the girls they fancied.

  The nifty new gimmicks that Xiaoyun had brought to the new town soon lost their swank and charm. The first time he had put on his dark glasses and ridden his bike through the streets, a pack of children had followed him around like mad.

  Because he had returned from the provincial capital, the little town's middle school principal, who had the reputation of never rejecting the new currents of thought, had paid a courteous visit to Suqin, asking her please to convince Xiaoyun to give a talk at the school. The principal was a laughable old curio, his head chock full of pedantic old ideas, but he liked to flaunt his penchant for the new, to show his enlightenment.

  The result was that the predominant reaction to Xiaoyun's talk had been pure astonishment, with the exception of a few school radicals who made the occasional approving comment. In the several hours of his talk, Xiaoyun had pulled out all the stops, blustering of violent revolution, of the popular anarchist movement. While condemning the warlords, he himself seemed to have the unparalleled arrogance of a warlord, with millions at his command. His speech was incoherent, and not to put too fine a point on it, it was little more than a collection of popular slogans strung together. The excessive fierceness of this speech, if it were known, might incur the displeasure of the local authorities. The somewhat frightened headmaster had been forced to this pretense of a cough, attempting time and again to interrupt Xiaoyun's speech.