Encountering a Snake C14

Chapter 14: The Matchmaker

For anyone else, a first night of cloud and rain like that would have meant exhaustion to the limit: pull up the quilt and sleep beyond knowing. Shen Qingxuan had never been a man of easy heart. His thoughts were already heavy; he had never slept soundly. Tonight body and mind were both spent. He was so tired he could not keep his eyes open, and still he slept lightly. All night he dreamed strange, jumbled dreams and stole a whole body’s sweat. Only when the night beyond the window had paled toward white did he sink, dazed, into true sleep. Once he slept, he slept until the sun was high—until it stood at the center of the sky—and still did not wake.

He rarely slept so greedily. Today was an exception. The servants who did the rough work in the courtyard noticed nothing. Only Shen Qingxuan’s personal maid felt that something was unusual. She had come early with basin and things and waited outside the door, yet the brass bell inside never rang. Doubt rose. Afraid the Young Master’s body had met with some accident, she quietly pushed open the side-room door and went in.

This maid had entered the Shen house at five. At first she served before Shen’s mother. She had come young, with sweet brows and a clever tongue, and the mother had never used her as an ordinary servant. Seeing that her son was withdrawn, she had sent the girl to Shen Qingxuan’s rooms, thinking a child at his side might keep him company and perhaps open his nature. By degrees the girl had grown to the age of cardamom. She still knew what was proper, modest and generous. The mother then thought of giving her to Shen Qingxuan as a secondary wife, so that there might be a son or a daughter. Born of a maid, they would still be Shen blood.

The mother’s intention was known through the household. The maid’s standing in the rooms was therefore not ordinary.

Shen Qingxuan knew his mother’s mind. He simply had not a scrap of man-and-woman feeling for the girl he had watched grow up, so he pretended not to understand. He had thought of speaking plainly and never found a fit moment. Besides, the girl had waited on him more than ten years and counted as someone close. He did not like to wound her. In the past he was withdrawn with everyone; only toward this girl was he a little milder. She had not sensed his refusal. She took it that the Young Master was thin-skinned, and that she was a girl, so the words were hard to say. The matter had dragged on like that.

In recent years the mother often drew the girl aside for private talk. In those talks the affair was put on the calendar.

Though only a secondary wife, it would be the first person added to Shen Qingxuan’s rooms, and counted as a joy. The day was set for after the new year. They had not discussed it with Shen Qingxuan. The girl knew it in her heart, though. In speech and act there was more shyness and reserve—and a little overstepping.

She pushed the door. The air inside was still. Dust floated in the light. There was no human sound, only pages torn to snow scattered on the floor, as if to show that a surge had once passed through the room. Seeing the fragments, her heart jumped. Shen Qingxuan was withdrawn, but he never showed anger on his face, still less tore books. That had never happened.

She stepped carefully over the scraps to the bed. The curtains were down. The scene within was shadowed, unclear. The shape on the bed could be seen in outline; nothing seemed wrong. The man on the couch breathed evenly, deeply asleep, knowing nothing of her arrival.

She steadied herself, put out a slender hand, and lifted one corner of the curtain. Her eyes swept the inside. Color rushed over the white-and-rose oval of her face until it was red as peach blossom in the third month.

The bed was a ruin. Wrinkles ran everywhere across the embroidered brocade, clearly wrung out by a clenched hand. In the air under the curtains moved a scent hard to name, one that made the face burn and the heart race by instinct. On the lake-green cover there were already dried white marks. What had happened here was plain as day.

She turned to flee, then stopped hard. She thought: this wild mountain, and only Shen Qingxuan on the bed—how could such an unseemly thing have happened? Even for a secret affair, there was no maid in the villa whose looks surpassed hers. After a hesitation she carefully lifted the quilt over him to look.

Shen Qingxuan had not thought anyone would stumble on this. He was careful by nature. After it was over he had struggled into his clothes before lying down again. His strength was gone, and he rarely dressed himself, so the clothes were disordered but still complete. The maid only felt that the Young Master’s inner robe was a disgrace of disorder. She found no great flaw. Flushed, she tugged the quilt over his lower body up a little and glanced sidelong. Seeing the clothes intact, she dropped it in a panic. She thought no further, and took it that he had been lonely in the night and brought it on himself. Still, a thread of doubt remained. Marks like those on the bed were not easily made by a cripple such as Shen Qingxuan. She had no way to guess. She closed the door and withdrew.

He knew nothing of any of this. When he woke he only felt exhausted. He managed to ring the bell for a maid, leaned against the headboard, washed his eyes with tea, rinsed his mouth with green salt, washed his face, ate a little, and lay down to sleep again.

The next time he woke, most of his spirit had returned. He sat in the wheelchair once more, bent to the desk to read and paint, his face all quiet, showing nothing. The maid waited at his side and could not pick out a single clue.

How could she know that the place in him that had been entered so deeply still gave off a strange feeling for days on end, reminding him at every moment that he had had that one night of folly—folly so great he himself did not wish to remember it.

Strange, though: after that night of torment his mood had clearly recovered. The earlier restlessness and gloom were gone together, as if washed clean by that night’s storm of feeling. When no one was near he would think: had more than twenty years alone simply pent him up like this? How else to explain that once he was satisfied, the beast that had bared its teeth in his chest crouched down again? From then he began, in earnest, to consider marriage.

No man likes being pressed under another man for that act. Shen Qingxuan was the same. The feeling had been good; he had been willing; he had even been glad. He was not a fool. He had seen at a glance that Yi Mo’s heart was not in it. The sash never undone; he had not even been willing to spend inside him. He had brought him to the peak and withdrawn, standing high above. To call it love-making was less true than to call it a kind of charity.

Besides, one man and one yaoguai, one with a heart and one without: the distance was so great he was willing to admit defeat. He knew he had no power to close that huge gulf. Some things even a yaoguai could not do, let alone a man.

Since that night Yi Mo had not come again for many days. Smiling in his eyes, Shen Qingxuan looked at ease through the window at a clump of flowers in full, brilliant bloom, and counted the days. His birthday was near. In these two days he would go down the mountain. Every year at this time he returned to the mansion to gather with his family. Then let him go back. In days to come he would take a wife and have sons, be Young Master Shen, an ordinary, tiny mortal—and not yearn after a snake demon he could look at and never reach.

Strange again: thinking this, he did not feel very sad. Only a little empty, as if a piece of his heart were missing. Neither grief nor joy. As if he had accepted his fate.

Five days later he sat in a carriage. Servants followed behind with loads of wild goods. The personal maid sat with him in the carriage. The driver urged on the date-red horses, calling out. The party went down the mountain in a long line. On the way he lifted the curtain and looked back. The peaks that rose into cloud grew farther and farther, until he saw only dark green mountains, half lost in the sky, half blocked by things near at hand. He looked a long time, then put the cloth down with decision, sat properly again, and swayed a little with the turning wheels. The depths of his eyes were still as water. Nothing in them stirred.

The Shen mansion had been repaired only the year before: upturned eaves, new tiles, fire walls eight zhang high. A year had passed, and they were still snow-white. In the seams of the grey tiles on the wall-tops even weeds had not had time to grow. All was clean and bright. The carriage followed the fire wall east, went a while longer, then turned to the small southern gate: a moon-arch, double doors in fresh vermilion lacquer standing wide. On either side stood two rows of well-dressed servants and maids. At their head, in a long green robe, hands in his sleeves, came the old steward to receive them.

The carriage stopped. A maid lifted the curtain. Shen Qingxuan sat within and opened a smile toward the steward, put out a hand to the steward’s shoulder, and, with two servants supporting him, left the carriage and sat in a rattan sedan.

Others led the horses away to feed. Four servants carried him on the bamboo chair through courtyard after courtyard, halls, corridors, passages. At the mouth of the main hall’s court they set the chair down, changed to the wheelchair, and a servant pushed him on. Wooden wheels rolled over a path of smooth, clean cobbles through two more courtyards before they entered the main hall.

Shen-laoye, the ladies, and the kin were waiting there. Only when a corner of Shen Qingxuan’s moonlight-white robe showed from behind a tree trunk did they set down their teacups, rise, and come to meet him.

He was to stay in the southern court. After the evening meal he crossed the courtyard and returned to his own small building. The nanmu house was already bright with lamps. Every piece of furniture had been changed for a new pattern, dustless, shining with a clean gloss under the candles. It was no longer the simple hut of the mountain villa, but a design of stacked storeys. The living rooms alone had three gates. The innermost, of course, was Shen Qingxuan’s. The middle layer was where the personal maids lived; the side rooms there were also bright and fine. The outermost was for the maids who rose at night to heat water and add tea.

He was used to a simple life. Suddenly back at the mansion, the heavy rites still sat poorly on him. Impatience rose; he did not show it. He had them wait on him to wash early and, when it was done, went to rest.

The next day he rose early, paid morning respects to his parents, and when he came to his mother’s rooms he stayed, to speak with her of marriage.

She had long known he had no heart for taking a wife and had given up the thought, saying only that a maid would do. She had not expected him to raise it himself. In her great joy she first burned three sticks of incense before the Buddha, kowtowed, and recited the Buddha’s protection, then happily had people call Shen Qingxuan’s Second Mother so they could talk together of his great matter: whose daughter was of a fit age, whose daughter had a proper nature, and so on.

He only smiled and wrote on paper: It is all for Mother to decide.

The two sisters talked a while. Then Second Mother said suddenly, “Xuan-er, that girl in your rooms—have you thought how to dispose of her?”

He froze, knew at once she meant his personal maid, thought a moment, and agreed. He wrote: That will do as well.

Three days later the matter was settled. The other party was Miss Wang of the same city, childhood name Huinian, also in her sixteenth year, clever from childhood. The Wangs had once been a great clan. They had fallen, but a starved camel is still larger than a horse, and the Wang house style had always been proper. Huinian was a young lady of a good family. He had seen her looks: not a beauty to sink fish and drop geese, yet she had considerable grace. The mother sent the betrothal gifts. The wedding day was set for after Mid-Autumn of the coming year. As for the maid, better to take her early and add her to the rooms. She had been at his side since she was small. If she were at the pillow first, then if Miss Wang proved the sort who would not tolerate others, she would still hold some advantage and not be bullied.

As for the day, the mother said, “Since it is the joy of a birthday, why not pile joy on joy.”

The day was set for Shen Qingxuan’s birthday. A small sedan would bring the maid in by the side gate, and that would count as giving her a name.

When the words reached him he still smiled, and still gave the same answer: It is all for Mother to decide.

Taking a wife and taking a concubine were settled like that. From first to last he did not let himself think again of that person in the mountains, unmatched in the age.