“You are always alone,” he said as he stood looking down at her. She had dutifully risen to her feet, and his body cast a sound-shadow over her, so that the voices of the others in the Pepper Rooms seemed suddenly an octave higher, like the sound of the big bats which would soon come out.
She replied: “You should know why I am always alone. You, too, value at their true worth the moments which succeed each other, the people who speak, the favours which come unasked. Have you, oh Han Im, altered your mind from what it last was? Under this very plane-tree you told me that you valued these things as a man values a grain of rice.”
He said: “Sit down again. You have guessed rightly, for the Emperor desires your presence. Nevertheless, in answer to your last question, I have not changed my mind.” He moved past her and rested his hand upon the bark of the tree.
“When?” she asked as she sat down. “It is early for such an invitation.”
He laughed. The girls in the Pepper Rooms had begun to make the noises which denote a game or a quarrel.
“The dew descends upon the grass,” he replied, “and serves as clock to the glowworm. If you, who care no grain of rice for an invitation which others in the aviary yonder, would barter against their eyebrows, cannot so arrange the hour of your arrival as to space it between awkwardness and awkwardness, you are not whom I think.” He took his hand from the tree as if to move away again. “I have duties,” he reminded her, as if explanation were needed.
“I will use the glowworm’s discretion,” she answered. Then, as she stood up for his going, she said to his back: “Your speech grows every day more like my father’s speech.”
He did not turn round, but said over his shoulder: “They are by the Hwa Ching Pool.”
She uselessly set a hair in place, powdered her knees and followed.
In the Imperial Park it seemed that bright butterflies hovered round the Flower-clear Pool. The colours of the flowers which were everywhere seemed dulled in comparison with the colour of men’s garments. The glow of peonies yielded to scarlet silk. And all this slowly turning, vibrating mass of colour centred round one man: all thoughts hinged on his thoughts, all actions hung on his actions. Every will was the Emperor’s.
Yet, as she watched, she saw that there were two clusters, and (of the two) that round the Emperor showed less motion, less quickening of the living colour of
“Where am I?” he asked, when they had not gone.
One told him: “You are near the Hwa Ching Pool, and over there, in the Aloe Pavilion, sits the Emperor.” Han Im added: “The Emperor has sent for you. He desires a poem.”
Li Po closed his eyes again and lay down, a lean brown shadow under the bamboos. “Wine brings dreams of poems,” he said. “It scares the words like birds from grain. Bring wine.”
They fetched more water.
Winter Cherry came to them just as Li Po sat up again. She went down on her knees and dried his face with her sleeve. He opened his eyes wearily.
“Commands and kindness consort ill,” he said. “This is no Emperor. Who are you, girl who are wiping my face?”
She told him. “I am called Winter Cherry, and you must come and write verses for the Emperor for, if you do not, his wrath will fall on all of us.” She helped him to rise. One saw that dissipation had not wholly sapped his strength; though his legs were the narrow legs of one accustomed to riding horses.
One of the courtiers said in a reproving voice: “The philosopher Mencius told us that men’s hands and women’s hands should not meet.”
Han Im brusquely replied: “Mencius also said that a general rule was to be broken in emergencies. Li Po, here, is an emergency.” He took the poet’s arm. Winter Cherry followed them both.
“I am coming,” Li Po cried. “It is a duty which I owe to one who wiped my wet face with her sleeve.” And suddenly he seemed not to be drunk at all, for he shook off Han Im’s supporting hand and walked steadily towards the Emperor. The attendants made way for him.
In the Aloe Pavilion the Emperor sat on a throne of ivory and red damask. Near him, a picture with yellow-tiled eaves and red upright pillars for frame, Yang Kuei-fei leaned on the rail. So she had leaned when Hsuang Tsung had first loved her. She had been brought up by her attendants out of the warm water of the pool, and love had come with her. Everybody knew this. Now she stood, in a long robe of deep blue, her hair high above her high forehead, her dark eyes empty, waiting for a word.
Yang Kuei-fei yawned behind her fan.