Sitting at a table in a room which she had never seen, Winter Cherry watched Lu-shan and his son eating. Silent servants brought dishes of food from the taster at the door and set them on the table. Winter Cherry felt herself wondering whether a sorrow could be so deep, a fear so pressing, a revulsion so powerful that the effects of these cancelled each other out and the body went on living, eating, moving and giving speech as if there were no sorrow, no fear and no revulsion.
Lu-shan was saying: “You did not behave today, my son, as your past conduct has led me to expect. Always you were the careful, thoughtful person, swift to avoid swiftness, ready for the local compromise. And then, because you see some little drab whose eyes are not on you, you forget yourself and, whipping out your uncharacteristic sword, do to the drab’s companion what I now do to this very pleasant pear. I am disappointed in you.”
Ching-hsu replied: “One cannot always be icy. And, indeed, I think that you, who used to be an impulsive example to your family, expect too much of me. After all, he had seized a common hoe and pretended to be threatening me with it. The girl watched with wide eyes, and I felt that my reputation was in question. How could I do else?”
Winter Cherry said: “He was my brother.”
Ching-hsu replied, laughing: “That could be remedied, had your father the making of a man.”
Lu-shan observed: “To implant in this girl the precisely exact degree of suitable emotions is my affair, not yours. That she will run through the gamut of these emotions is as probable as I can manage to make it. Yet I would not owe anything of their inception to you, lest you should, claim for your own mind a vicarious pleasure in my pleasure, an unearned surfeit of my surfeit. In short, our meal is over, and you have your own apartments. These are mine. Come girl.”
The next room, and the next she had not seen. She did not see them now, if seeing meant more than mere appreciation of change. She was numbed, regarding the fingers of her left hand as though with surprise. She was cold, too, cold as the back of his sword blade that slid easily between silks and skin. Her voice, also, did not seem to be her own now and the great gong that boomed forever was her heart. Straw figures at the sacrifice have jointed limbs, and these limbs move as though they were men’s limbs. But the jointed, straw figures do not live. They are, indeed, offered as simple sacrifices to Gods who were once thought to to demand real sacrifices.