Ah Lai drained his cup of wine and rose to his feet
“I cannot converse in verse,” he said, “nor con the pros and cons in prose with brilliance inverse to their meaning, but I find Liu’s suggestions almost . . .” he hesitated, and knew that the wine was strong, “. . . shocking. Even my absent uncle’s past pales before them, and I, like a snail yet short of the winning-post, passed by the speedier, or an archer, plucking his erring string to hit the gold but finding the easier outer . . . that was going to be a good sentence,” he concluded, “but the beginning of it has escaped me.”
He sat down suddenly, and Honeysuckle giggled as she picked up her lute. “I shall sing you a love-song,” she said and began:
They all applauded her as the last notes of her lute put a period to the song. Clear Rain sang, without accompaniment:
Then the servants brought in jellied duck soup, tamed out from little bowls, and everybody laughed at Clear Rain’s song.
“What is poetry coming to?” Wang Wei demanded “To an old man like myself such innovations in rhyme seem to fall between bad verse and bad prose.”
Ah Lai said, from his position at the table: “When I write the poems which will make my name immortal, they will have rhymes like those.”
Liu suggested: “And now let the third member of this trio of girls do something to contribute to our pleasure. So far she has merely sat and eaten, and eaten and sat. Let her perform.”
“She has been ill lately,” Honeysuckle said. “If you would have the kindness to excuse her . . .”
“You see how pale she is under her powder,” Clear Rain added.
Liu persisted: “If she comes here to entertain us, she can surely do more than sit like the spirit of a white fox in the mist . . .”
Winter Cherry volunteered: “I can play the flute.”
“You see!” Liu cried. “She has a tongue, besides the other things which we would expect a woman to have.”
Ah Lai said: “I want to hear the other two girls sing again. She can play while they sing.”
Wang Wei, reprovingly, observed: “You are the youngest man here.”
Han Im, who had spoken little during the first part of the meal, interposed.
“I shall tell a story,” he said. “If, after that story you all feel as you felt before—well. If not—well, also.”
Wang Wei asked: “So is your story a destroyer of appetites?”
“No,” Han Im replied. “It concerns a man whose name was Tseng, who lived during the great dynasty of the Hans, and is known as the story of the man who was jealous of his housekeeper.”
“I have not heard this story,” said Wang Wei, and they all prepared to listen.