Han Im said: “These expensive little pets know everything which they can use for our discomfiture, Liu. After that classic example of Li Po’s, can you bear to favour us with your own poem?”
“I heard it when I last ate ginger in Kiang-su,” Honeysuckle said. “It goes:
They praised the poem, and spoke of smaller things until the jars of ginger were brought in.
“Preserved in honey,” Wang Wei told them. “It is to be followed by a quite ordinary main dish of rice, chicken, bamboo-shoots and lichen, on which will be laid the foundation of the day’s energies. And now, to formalities. It is only fitting that we should thus welcome our friends the honourable Li Po, the eunuch Han Im, and these two youths whose names I did not catch. It is in the highest degree fortunate that our own stay should have overlapped theirs by one day, for we intend, as you know, to leave tomorrow for the west, away from the rumours of disorders and war which trickle from the Capital source to this, our rural backwater.”
Li Po yawned and rose to his feet. “All that you have so excellently said, we echo,” he observed. “And (since here profound effort seems out of place) I need go no further than the first chapter of the Master’s words to remind you that it is pleasant to have friends coming from distant places and it is equally delightful to be those friends. I would ask you to spare me the need for further felicitations, since I find that the sequence of Indulgence, Hunger and again Indulgence has led to an unconscionable onset of indigestion. I therefore thank you again, and sit down.”
Wang Wei hastened to prescribe a drug from his collection and, when Li Po felt better, the meal proceeded to its end.
The hour of the serpent had just given place to the hour of the horse, and over the bright colours of the garden the silent climax of midday was growing. Liu Shen-hsu caught up with Winter Cherry as she went back to the house, and steered her along a path leading through low shrubs towards a half-moon clearing on the edge of the woods.
“It is useless,” he told her when she had unwillingly sat down to listen, “to continue with this pretence of being a boy. No—do not speak yet. Any man such as myself, with experience of the world, could see at once that your clothes were buttoned on the wrong side. To such a man as I, who lives for the poetry of movement, every gesture is a betrayal of the truth. I do not know who you are, or why you thus masquerade, but the fact that you came with the eunuch, Han Im, and the dissolute poet, Li Po, suggests a puzzle whose key lies in the palace at Chang-an.”
Winter Cherry knew that he was not certain of her sex, and judged that he did not dare to put his theory to the test, preferring rather to let her betray herself. So she said: “You remember the song of Mu-lan? She went to fight the Tatars in place of her father, and for twelve years served in the army. Then, when she finally came home, her fellow-soldiers were surprised to find her to be a girl. The song ends, you know:
So your wild guess amuse me, and will amuse my friend Ah Lai.”
He smiled. “A better thing,” he said, “will be to put you in the same room as Honeysuckle and Clear Rain, and let them discover. I am prepared to bide by their opinion.”
Winter Cherry got up and started to walk back to the house. As she went she said over her shoulder: “Now of Han Im you could not be sure.”
Ah Lai was waiting for her. “Where have you been?” he asked. “I have looked everywhere for you. Tonight there will be a difficulty, for if you sleep with me, or with the girls, your secret is sure to come out.”
She told him of Liu’s words. “I think that he guesses, but is not sure,” she said. “And why, if I sleep in the same room as yourself, should my secret come out?”
Ah Lai replied to the first part only: “I will manage Liu. He will not trouble you.” With that she had to be content.
Han Im came to see her shortly after the sun had begun to fall.