Chapter 55: Who sent my longing to Du Heng? (IV)

Li Shiyi gave A Yin a strong medicine; A Yin only realised it once she had woken. So, she had no choice but to accept, going in circles, that Li Shiyi was still the one who understood her the most; if it wasn’t her who had scared her into fleeing in defeat, it would probably have been a great many years before A Yin would have uttered this phrase. She laid on A Luo’s arm, and said, “I don’t want to like Li Shiyi anymore.”

From childhood to adulthood, in the course of her quarrelling with Li Shiyi, Li Shiyi usually didn’t speak, allowing her to vent her feelings hysterically; not even if she was hurt would she coax her, nor would her cool gaze glace at her if she cried; she would wait until she had scolded her to her heart’s content, and then use a retreat to advance with a couple sharp phrases. Oftentimes, A Yin herself would feel that it was without meaning, and would weep and wail endlessly like a woman with a grudge, losing face all the way up to her grandmother’s family. After that, she would find a way out of the embarrassing situation for herself while whining, and Li Shiyi would press her lips together and smile, leading her to the mouth of the street to eat a bowl of plump, tripe wontons with thin skins.

She had never before declared her affections to Li Shiyi with her mouth; so, these years, she had only for the first time used these three characters, “without meaning”, to describe the matter of liking Li Shiyi. She suddenly realised that when she had previously placed her in her heart, it was, after all, not enough dear love; it was like heated water boiling a frog; with one carelessness, it was boiled until the skin was wrinkled and sloughing off, yet she had never felt that there was anything difficult about it; yet Li Shiyi had given her a resounding slap to the face, causing her skin to peel and her bones to be pulled out, saying to her, look at what sort of state you’ve become.

An state of love that wasn’t beautiful.

A Luo raised her hand, pulling her into her embrace, and stroked her hair, saying, “Then don’t like her anymore.”

A Luo was rarely tender, and A Yin was disinclined to refuse; she stretched her fingertips to brush the scattered tips of her hair on her chest, blinking a couple times, and talking aloud. “Then, who should I like?” One person had been hidden in her heart for too long; long enough that, if it wasn’t decorated up with something, it wouldn’t be very suitable.

“How about me?” A Luo suggested in a soft voice, her words still remaining courteous.

A Yin paused, biting her lip and smiling, and rubbed against her bosom; it was as soft as a cat, yet her words were a rejection with absolutely no margin. “That won’t do.”

A Luo wasn’t upset, only asking her in a gentle voice, “Why?”

A Yin raised her eyes, rising above her peach-scented cheeks, gazing into her lowered eyes, not moving as they gazed at her appearance, and looked for a good while, then asked her, “You’ve always had this appearance, age, and physique?”

A Luo nodded. “Yes.”

A Yin said, “That’s it exactly; you’ve always been a youthful woman, yet I’ve been born, and will grow old, get sick, and die; right now, we’re sisters, but after a few years, we’ll be aunt and niece, then after a few decades, my brightness will fade, my teeth and face growing wrinkled, and we’ll become a grandmother and a granddaughter; how could we hold hands and speak words of endearment, appearing like the beauty Xishi only in each other’s eyes?”^[1]

A Luo opened and closed her mouth, wanting to speak; A Yin extended a finger, tilting her face to ask her, “When I die, and enter the Taishan registry to become a ghost, you’ll be Yama-daren, right?”

“Yes.”

A Luo clapped her hands. “Exactly; a ruler and ministers, passion across the classes would be prohibited and cut off.”

Clever and eloquent, like Fu Wuyin; clear eyes full as peaches, squinted and taut, yet posturing and looking askance at others. A Luo breathed, embracing her and smiling mildly. A Yin tilted her face to look at her; her dealings with A Luo truly weren’t that many, to the extent that she had never properly gotten the full force of her smiling expression; she didn’t understand fully why the smile that had been born out of that demonic place could be this clean and genuinely sentimental, soft and gentle as the hoarfrost on grapes. Minding her own business for a while, she said to A Luo, “Let’s go.”

“Go where?” A Luo asked.

“Dash about the jianghu.” Go far, far away from Li Shiyi.

Seeing A Luo was silent, A Yin urged her, “Your body is fragile; you’ve certainly never properly left home to make your way in the jianghu; I came from the South to the North, and can take care of a good deal of authentic foods for you. And I…I can’t leave you for a short while either; I’ll be your pageboy, your maid, your sweeping auntie; no matter what sort of errands, they’re all alright; you can take me along like you take Wu Qian, how is that?” She rarely spoke this lowly and casually, causing A Luo to feel that she was a stalk of resilient rice straw. She declined to comment, and got up from the bed to sit before the vanity, yet didn’t move, only gazed through the mirror to A Yin. A Yin approached, asking her, “What are you doing?”

A Luo shifted her face, commanding her, “Comb my hair.”

Little yatou.^[2]

There wasn’t much luggage; before it was noon, it was all put in order; A Luo had, in advance, sent Wu Qian to bid goodbye to Shiyi, Shijiu, and Tu Laoyao, and, going downstairs, she saw Li Shiyi standing by the door, waiting.

Tu Laoyao sat on the doorstep, worried to fits. He feared taking different roads and urging the horses on, and even more, didn’t know how that foolish Yama had cleanly taken that devilish A Yin away, and he pondered it with a lowered head, and saw that A Yin and A Luo had come before Li Shiyi.

A Yin’s head was dipped; her neck remained arrogantly raised, yet her expression didn’t much dare to be brash, and it seemed as if she was indifferently watching the dust on the ground. Yet it was A Luo who exchanged a few phrases with Li Shiyi; Li Shiyi’s hands were in her pockets, and her spirit didn’t seem to be in too good a state. Intending to finish speaking with A Luo, she suddenly left the doorframe, walking before A Yin, and pulled her hand out of her pocket, holding a parchment letter tightly. She didn’t say anything else, only passing the letter to A Yin, her shapely fingers pinching the end, her extended fingertips faintly trembling, as if suggesting one to take what was offered.

A Yin gazed at that letter, not wanting to take it. Yet, suddenly, she felt a stubborn sense of grievance, and a small amount of hard to release disappointment and frustration; she looked out of the corner of her eyes at Li Shiyi with restraint appearing; her under eyes were swollen and dark, and there was a hard to overlook nasal quality when she spoke. She heard Li Shiyi let out a sigh.

She raised her eyes to glance at her, and took the letter, grasping it in her hand, and then tugged A Luo out.

When the nail-like heels disappeared from the courtyard, Tu Laoyao pressed against his numb legs and stood, asking Li Shiyi, “So, she’s just gone?”

“En.”

Tu Laoyao was even more fretful. “Just now, I pondered a matter. This residence of ours, it’s been rented for a good few days; that foolish Yama has gone, so who’ll pay the rent?”

Li Shiyi turned her head, gazing at him silently.

The rickshaw jangled as it raced along the main road, blowing the parasol tree leaves off the ground; A Yin, from the back of the carriage, didn’t say a word; she clutched the letter that Li Shiyi had given her, placing it on her knees, her calves pressed against the very hard leather suitcase.

“Take a look,” A Luo said to her, crossing her legs. She wouldn’t give any sort of roundabout consolation; as was customary, she only used a few characters, yet they could always fall upon A Yin’s mind.

As she unfolded it, A Yin said, “Alright; once it’s looked at, it can be thrown away, so as to avoid letting this lady here carry it for the whole trip, hand hurting.” Her face had taken up an expression of disdain lower than contempt, so much so that she smiled towards A Luo bewitchingly and delicately, yet when she turned her head to unfold the letter, she was startled for a moment. A Luo heard an extremely controlled inhalation, and then a pa-da, like teardrops rolling down from the rims of A Yin’s eyes, rain drumming against banana leaves, smudging on the paper. A Yin couldn’t even pay attention to wiping away the tears, only cursing a phrase, “That bastard…”

On it was the dog-clawed handwriting of a girl, written both large and aggressive—I, A Yin, owe Li Shiyi one-thousand three-hundred seventy-six buckets of water.^[3] In the midsts of the hot tears in her eyes was a girl laying on her stomach on the bed with her hair bound up, writing characters, consulting with the person standing by the side, “The two buckets from yesterday, added on top, right?”

“Yes.” The slender Li Shiyi leaned against the side of the bed, involuntarily stroking the calluses on her hand.

A Yin signed her name, smiling as she inverted black and white, deliberately misrepresenting the facts. “You really have good luck.” She was very lazy; she had innumerable excuses to swindle Li Shiyi into carrying water and chopping firewood in her place; at that time, she would open her mouth without thinking and spout nonsense, saying that one bucket of water would be exchanged for a wish; in the future, when she was grown up, she would invite Li Shiyi to talk, some Shaoxing yellow wine, lotus leaves and fowl; as much as she wanted to eat, she could.

The years scattered, accumulating bit by bit; unexpectedly, it was this many; she feared that her own belongings had all been lost, and had still skimped on the job and stinted the materials to save five or six hundred buckets.

A Yin’s spirit returned, and she saw that under the crooked handwriting, there were to graceful characters, the calligraphy having some agedness, not having been added on recently. It was Li Shiyi’s handwriting.

At the bottom, she’d written two, small characters: be well.

For one-thousand three-hundred seventy-six buckets of water, she’d exchanged a well wish for A Yin. Now that she wanted to leave, she didn’t have any other words to gift her; it was only these two characters. A Yin wanted to extend her hand and crumple the paper, her fingers opening and pausing, unable to bear closing, and so she held the letter, which was muddled and made a complete mess by tears.

A Luo was given a fright, and hurried to ask her what was wrong.

A Yin wore a mournful expression, gritting her teeth, as if it were Li Shiyi’s flesh, and said, “Damn it,^[4] this lady here…really can’t leave.”

A Luo calmly gazed at her, and before long, she raised the corners of her mouth, wanting to have the driver turn around. A Yin tugged at her sleeve, wiping her face, sobbing. “Don’t. Let’s go enjoy a few days, and then go back,” she said, choked with emotion.

One sightseeing trip was almost half a month; A Yin led A Luo to wander about the surroundings for a few times; the black awninged canal boats along the patchwork of Jiangnan waterways, the thousand mountains dropping onto the island in the centre of the lake, the modulated pitch of Suzhou’s pingtan, and Qinhuai’s splendid pipa xiaodiao songs.

When A Yin once more strode into the courtyard, she had gotten a bit plumper, her lotus root-like arms were bound by cuffs of gold thread, and, unexpectedly, she exhibited and even more charming, gentle bearing. A Luo’s face seemed to have been tanned to something a bit more suitable, not like the previous wanness, faintly having a bit of pinkness.

When the two entered the courtyard, Tu Laoyao had just bought a hen, and was just throwing off the rope to run about the courtyard; seeing the arrivals, he stopped his efforts to clutch the chicken, and, extremely astonished, called out, with a smile so large his teeth were visible and his eyes hidden, “Hei, you’ve come back!”

If a simple-minded, good friend was spoken of, usually it would cause one to be worried, yet there was also his unique function; just like this “you’ve come back” of Tu Laoyao’s, the lack of courtesy seemed to be as if A Yin had merely gone out for a stroll. A Yin cast him a glance, the movement of her neck counting as a greeting; when she raised her head again, Li Shiyi came out with a wrung-out hemp rope, her other hand dripping wet, recently washed, dripping sparkling, translucent beads of water.

She gazed at A Yin, lips pressed together as she smiled faintly, and also said, “You’ve come back.”

Of all the embarrassment and hostility A Yin had anticipated was dispelled like smoke vanishing in thin air by these three characters; for the first time, Li Shiyi had given her a way out of an embarrassing situation, with the pairing of the water droplets on her hand and the hemp rope, using words to smooth the conversation into the mundane, like a family.

A Luo tilted her head, having Wu Qian bring over the hemp rope in Li Shiyi’s hand, and take Tu Laoyao’s place chasing the chicken; herself, she walked to the foot of the wall, indifferently watching, from time to time offering a few words of guidance.

A Yin flexed her not too sturdy heels, as if storing up some force, and unhurriedly walked before Li Shiyi. “If I didn’t come back, who would help collect your body? Old, weak, sick, and injured?” She opened her eyes wide towards Tu Laoyao, who had come over, these four characters all his.

“Hei,” Tu Laoyao swallowed back his words of concern, and, from her glance, went to sit on the stool by the side.

A Yin’s right hand carried the letter Li Shiyi had given her, and she hit it against her left palm a few times, saying haughtily and arrogantly, “What is it, demanding repayment?”

Li Shiyi raised her brows, neither nodding nor shaking her head.

A Yin scoffed cooly, stuffing the letter into her hand, and said, “You want to settle the accounts with a few buckets of water? This lady says to you, ten thousand wouldn’t be enough. From calculations, it’s still you who owes me more.” She unexpectedly raised her arched brows, and said, “I’ve thought and understood; I always wanted you to owe me; to owe me in this life, and still owe me in the next life; your son and daughter, your grandson and granddaughter, down one hundred eighty generations, for countless generations, all of them must owe me.” She pouted enchantingly and delicately, and said, “Only then will I be at ease.”

Li Shiyi’s eyes had a faint smile in them, and she said, “Yes.”

A Yin gazed at her smiling expression, and suddenly a wonderful type of illusion arose, as if she had seen that Li Shiyi of before, docile and obedient to her. That girl she’d loved for the entirety of her youth, who had used a merciless yet gentle method to say to her that she could only give her the position of sisterhood to her, but she would always, always set it aside for her. She lowered her head and stroked the little A Yin in her heart, and said to her, let’s say goodbye at this point; the mountains are high and the river is long; we’ll meet again at some indefinite date.

Suddenly having sunk into a wordless silence, it was still, in the end, A Yin who remembered what was critical, and said to Li Shiyi, “That Teng serpent, you don’t have to keep looking for it; I have a solution.”

Li Shiyi knit her brows. “What sort of solution?”

A Yin stole a glance at A Luo, not too far away, and said in a quiet voice, “Her; she’s masculine.” She didn’t know how to explain it, and, somewhat, couldn’t open her mouth, only using fantastical nonsense to cover up some embarrassment.

Li Shiyi’s brows rose in astonishment, yet in a couple moments, understood A Yin’s meaning; thinking for a moment, she only asked her, “Is is effective?”

A Yin had some awkwardness, and shifted her gaze away. “It’s passable.”

The smile by the side of Li Shiyi’s lips was incredibly light, and, in an instant, it disappeared, and she knitted her brows as if genuinely and sincerely concerned, said, “Is it adequate?”

A Yin hissed; these words sounded rather familiar; yet, coming out of Li Shiyi’s mouth, they had a different, distinctive feeling. She didn’t much want to reply, but she heard the faint words come from Tu Laoyao, “If I’m not mistaken, you slept with that foolish Yama.”

A Yin turned her head, her fierce expression causing a fright, and Tu Laoyao’s complexion darkened like the bottom of a pot, the expression looking at her incredibly complicated. Seeing A Yin’s tacit agreement, Tu Laoyao called out, “You truly are living together sweetly, you fucker! Sleeping with Yama!” He was incoherent, finding it as hard to believe as being struck by lightning, and circled A Yin, asking her, “Are you still alive? You’ve already half died. Can you still investigate bones? Go on, feel your own bones.”

A Yin rolled her eyes, not wanting to acknowledge him, wanting to cross by Li Shiyi to go inside; she’d just taken a step, when she heard Li Shiyi mutter to herself, “The Teng serpent…can’t not be found.”

She turned her head, looking pensively at the room on the second floor, within which was the Li Shiyi she hadn’t seen in a long time. Li Shiyi’s eyelids lowered, her eyes unusually cold. “This grudge has become a great one.”

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Translator's notes:

[1]: Referring to Xishi (c. 450 BCE), a legendary beauty given to the king of Wu as a concubine by King Gou Jian of Yue to destroy the Wu state. The phrase 眼里出西施 (yan li chu Xishi) is used to say that one appears beautiful in a lover’s eyes despite not being so.

[2]: 丫头 means “servant girl” or “maid”, but it can also be used as an endearment.

[3]: All of the numbers are written in banker’s anti-fraud numerals, to make certain that they can’t be altered or misread, unlike typical numeral characters.

[4]: Literally “stab with a thousand knives” (杀千刀的, sha qian dao de).