Chapter 43: Those who love are mocked by those who do not (IV)

Song Shijiu, having received a suggestion, practised the skills with incredible diligence; but she was entirely without a foundation, and without method, only relying on holding her breath with rapt attention; it really caused one embarrassment; having practised for a few days, there wasn’t even any progress. So, she went to plead with A Yin, saying that before she’d given the incantation “as lovely as a flower”, which had been very useful; and, she thought about others’ magic; most of the time, they also needed incantations to be recited to work, and she asked A Yin to use her mind, and gift her another one.

A Yin cracked a melon seed, and spat the shell into the handkerchief, carelessly getting a small amount on the corner of her mouth; she raised her hand to grab it, considering carefully. It had to be fierce and succinct, as well as useful.

“Then…” She wrapped the melon seed in the handkerchief, and said, “Go drop dead.”

Tu Laoyao snorted, laughing with more liveliness than a pig.

Song Shijiu swallowed her saliva, determined to go peacefully water the plants.

By dusk, after she’d made a meal, she went as usual to the entrance of the residence to wait for Li Shiyi; for convenience in training, she only wore a long, blue gown which had faded from washing, her hair draped over her shoulders as she leaned against the door, remarkably like a bride waiting quietly for someone to return home.

Tu Laoyao, passing by, let out a sound of disapproval, and moved a stool nearby her leg; then he turned his head to head into the courtyard, muttering, “Standing for more than half a shichen, not even knowing if her legs are aching; fool.”

Song Shijiu sat down with a smile, and then, after not to long, stood up again, still near the wooden door, gazing at the mouth of the street; it was a clear, narrow alley, and it could be seen in its entirety in one glance, but she always felt that by standing up a bit taller, her field of view could be widened a bit; if Li Shiyi turned and came down the street, she could capture a greater degree of her shadow at the front, and she would be a bit more contented.

Her fingertips picked at the doorframe a great number of times; the afterglow of the sunset filled the small alley with a tranquil, dark red plum colour, and, finally, she’d waited until Li Shiyi came.

Li Shiyi’s stature was tall, her shoulders and back slight, and she wore her common shirt and pants attractively; she came out from the shadows, her hand still in her sleeve; one hand carried a bag, and the plaster covering her face; she hadn’t worn her hat, and half her half-length hair was tucked behind her ear, the other half faintly brushing against her cheek, pale and spotless as the moon. As was her habit, her head was lowered and her lips were pressed together, and she raised her eyes in a slightly bored manner, and the image of Song Shijiu filled her eyes.

Song Shijiu raised a hand to push aside her messy bangs, the tip of her foot pressing against the doorstep lightly; she reached out exploratorily, and then she drew it back, and only after a while did she smile at her.

The sense of longing came without warning, appearing hurriedly from when her footsteps sounded, and by the time she came before her, it still hadn’t been able to be organised much. She thought a moment; since she’d been born, she hadn’t been parted with Li Shiyi for even a few days; a few days were too short, short enough that saying “since they last met” was inadequate, but it was also incredibly long, long enough that the person before her had been stained by an aura of unfamiliarity, making her ill at ease and tense, picking and discarding a great number of expressions, and still being unable to find that one that wasn’t too distant or too close.

Song Shijiu curled the corners of her mouth, and said sweetly, “You’ve come back.”

Conventional greetings were all, without needing to be said, probably superfluous, but there were always people who enjoyed and never tired of them.

Li Shiyi stepped onto the flight of stairs. “En.” She stood still before Song Shijiu, bringing along a familiar fragrance, and asked her, “Then, what are you doing?” As she spoke, she took her hand out of her sleeve, and tugged at her hair. 

Only then did Song Shijiu discover that her own hair had grown quite a bit longer; at the start, it was short, only just passing her chin, but now, it had already fallen below her collarbone. Song Shijiu stooped and picked up the stool. “Waiting for you, of course.”

Li Shiyi raised a brow. “How did you know when I would come back?”

Song Shijiu replied, “The heavens are the kindest when the sun falls into the mountains; most of the time, the person being waited for will arrive.”

“Who said that?”

“My mother.”

Nonsense. Li Shiyi’s nose twitched, and her lips curved into a smile as the ice broke, casting a well-aware glance with her bright, clear eyes; then she lowered her head, walking inside.

“Did you find the Teng serpent?”

“I didn’t.”

“Was there anything of value in the brothels?”

“There wasn’t.”

Song Shijiu carried the stool diligently at the rear; only once her dignified concern was abandoned did she ask, “I missed you a bit; did you miss me?”

Li Shiyi let her pursed lips loosen, and blinked. “I didn’t.”

Song Shijiu was startled, and thought a bit, then plucked out the last sentence: “Did you go to a brothel?”

Li Shiyi paused a moment. “I didn’t.”

Song Shijiu withdrew her gaze with meaning, delightedly narrowing her eyes; just then, she’d said she’d found nothing of value in the brothels, and this time, she’d added that she hadn’t gone; this obvious lie of of Li Shiyi’s was called a margin. This margin was enough that an attentive young lady could infer that what the negation of the previous “I didn’t” wasn’t that firm, and it was enough that Li Shiyi retained an unassailable innocence.

And Song Shijiu, she was precisely that attentive woman.

On returning to the courtyard, they ate another half a nightly meal together. Tu Laoyao, having greeted Li Shiyi previously, actually didn’t ask about all of this and that; A Yin, who had always understood Li Shiyi in the past, didn’t say much about things she didn’t want to talk about with her, and the meal was eaten in a manner more peaceful than usual; once the bowls and chopsticks had been cleared away, returned to her room to rest.

When the east courtyard only had the Tu husband and wife, Tu Saozi asked as she wiped the table, “How old is Li-guniang?”

“What?” Tu Laoyao blinked beady eyes. He usually called her Shiyi-jie, for the sake of respect, and didn’t know, when it came to it, whether she was a senior or a junior.

Tu Saozi laughed, and straightened her aching, swollen waist; with fists that didn’t dare to use too much force, she thumped it, and said, “Li-guniang is young, yet she has a residence this large; her conduct is polite, and she’s scholarly and knows rites.”

The residents who had lived in the city all their lives were customarily blunt, not this sort of half-swallowed, half-kept words, to say nothing of adding four-character chengyu sayings to the end. Tu Laoyao intuited that this point had an inroad, and helped Tu Saozi to sit down, restraining himself as he asked her, “What do you mean?”

Tu Saozi drank some water, and asked him, “My father’s third maternal cousin, do you still remember her?”

Tu Laoyao pondered it a bit, and crossed his legs. “How could I not remember? We went to call on her when she’d just gotten married, and she held her nose and looked at us, negative with one phrase and positive with the next; actually, the stone step at the front gate, I’m pretty sure, was a rampart made with jade.”

Poor people always had relatives of wealth within three degrees; in Tu Saozi’s extended family, it was her father’s third maternal cousin, who couldn’t much stand Tu Laoyao, who idled about, and by happy coincidence, Tu Laoyao couldn’t much stand her, either.

Tu Saozi cast him an annoyed glance, and said to him, “Her family’s youngster has great prospects; when he came back from studying abroad in Japan, he was in his twenties, and he hasn’t been married.”

The words were left halfway, leaving something for Tu Laoyao to ponder, and Tu Laoyao bared his teeth, letting out a hiss as he drew his brows together. “How could that be?” he said a moment later, smiling with the vague phrase.

His wife didn’t know about it all, but he couldn’t understand more clearly; if a red string were given to Li Shiyi and someone else, Song Shijiu, he was afraid, would take a bite of flesh out of him.

Tu Saozi, seeing his reaction, knew in her heart he was hiding something, and only laughed as she said, “Just take it as nonsense,” and, supporting her back, went inside.

A couple more months passed like this, and the conversation from that day wasn’t mentioned again; the summer heatwave was as punctual as the spread of flourishing blossoms across an embroidery piece, making the floors warp in the broil; Tu Saozi’s belly was as swollen as a watermelon, about to burst, weighing her down so that she had to pant three times for each step she took, and couldn’t do much work. The fruits of the seasonal fruit trees were heavy as her belly, glossy and shiny and attractive.

Li Shiyi’s courtyard was as Song Shijiu had imagined; with the lively summer flowers in bloom, the beautiful purples and brilliant reds crowded within the alternating light and dark leaves, tossed about by the winds in motion was a cloud of fragrance which penetrated and gladdened the heart. Originally, it was meant to be beautiful branches and leaves, a fairyland in the human world, but Li Shiyi was a bit irritated, having sat in the courtyard to enjoy the cool air, holding a book, and from time to time, diverting her attention to chase away the lingering flies and mosquitos.

As Song Shijiu watered the plants, she cast guilty glances at her; seeing her brows wrinkle once more, she shook the water ladle, and walked up behind her, using the gourd dipper to take her place in driving away the flying insects.

Li Shiyi raised her scale-like brows, and looked at her for a good while, then turned her face to flip a page of the book, her face expressionless as she recited a phrase from “Autumn Evening”.^[1] “Frolicking, a small fan in hand, with the fireflies.”

“What?” Song Shijiu, uncomprehending, gazed at her.

The large, yellow ladle chased away the insects. Li Shiyi smiled gently.

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Translator's notes:

[1]: The poem 秋夕 (Qiu Xi) by Du Mu. You can read alternate translations for this portion (the second part of the first line) on Youtube by Chinagrep or on the blog Classical Chinese Poems in English.