feng /9

小品 / vignettes

一

A peach tree stands resolute in the centre of the home, contained within a small inner courtyard surrounded on all sides by a covered walkway made of polished pine. Though twisted in its old age, it stands tall, taller than a peach tree should ever hope to grow. Branches snake up and out over the buildings surrounding it, grown over the manmade structures, draping over the eaves.

Their integration is so complex, so complete, It's uncertain if the tree simply grew like that after the home was built or if the home was built around it.

In the autumn, the leaves slowly turn from a rich jade to a bright citrine until one day, they fall, half-dead and coating the small square in a bed of molten gold. The leaves dry out slowly like that, withering, curling into themselves until the cold winds scatter them down the walkways of the veranda and out towards the gate.

Then the tree is silent in the winter, dormant. Weak light floods into the small space and snow falls slowly, settling on the stone tiles, undisturbed until the paper lanterns are hung from its gnarled branches at the beginning of the year, wishes waving gently in the wind.

Every spring, the branches flower and petals fall thick like snow. They flutter away with the breeze, through the endless hallways and courtyards of the estate, then out into the streets of Nine and further still. Those that live in the area have grown up with the strange phenomenon and have always used it as a herald to mark the end of spring.

By the end of summer the branches hang low, so overladen with fruit that they smother the small square. As it ripens, it breaks from the stem onto the roof, where it rolls off and falls into the small courtyard below to meet its end. The fruit splits, exposing their pockmarked mottled brown cores and are left to rot on the tile.

The tree is so burdened with an abundance of leaves and fruit that sunlight can barely get in. Shaded, soft light dapples the ground, golden, biting hands outstretched towards the earth.

They whisper, "You are out of time."

二

After many seasons of girls a boy is born and the home rejoices. He is named Baoyu, Precious Jade. They baby him, give him everything he could need and then more. He grows in the house against the East inner wall and spends his days reading or enjoying the garden with his sisters. His existence is simple, charmed, and the world that exists outside the walls is a foreign one.

His family is large, and sprawls through the houses in the siheyuan, filling first the inner courtyard, then spilling into the outer, where the gardens and the guest houses are. Their home is lively and exists in a constant state of coming and going. No matter what, everyone makes an effort to be home for dinner. Every night, the servants light the lamps in the gardens and the family spends their evenings together, precious still despite their abundance.

Baoyu, who has never known a life less than this, ages slow into his teens. He spoils from within like the peaches at the end of August. He is bored with the monotony of his comfortable life, only ever leaving the complex for the reaping. Then one day, an uncle comes home with oil paint on his face, wearing fine silks and the scent of magnolia. "Junban," he says, when he notices Baoyu's stare, "For my role."

"I want to see," says Baoyu.

If his family raised him, it was the opera that created him. Through his time there, he rarely gets cast in a main role but on the occasion that the opera calls for a xiaosheng, he shines in the spotlight. Heart racing, sweat dripping down his back under the heat of the stage lights, Baoyu comes alive.

It's no wonder that Daiyu falls in love with that side of him.

三

"We have found you a match," his father tells him on the day he turns eighteen, as if that in itself is a gift.

She is the daughter of an acquaintance, a man Baoyu's father would very much like to make a friend. From his own youth, he has watched his family's standing degrade since the end of the dark days. There are few who need his family's services anymore and even fewer friends he can call on for favours. The Capitol has grown only stronger and its great gaze has been resting on their home for many weeks.

A marriage between their families could save them.

Her name is Xue Baochai and she is lovely in a way that never translates well. Her features are delicate but firm and there is a light in her eyes that no camera could ever hope to capture. The very air around her is electric and wherever she goes, every gaze in the room is drawn to her, but Baoyu can't see her for what she is. Not with his heart sinking in his chest, and the memory of another woman's lips on the back of his neck in the dressing room of the báishé opera house.

"I won't do it," he answers, crossing his arms like a petulant child, "I'm in love."

"You will," says his father.

四

They are wed at the very end of summer, when the peaches on the tree in the innermost courtyard are at their ripest. Baoyu stands beneath it, a fresh-picked peach in his hand, bruising under his thumb. A name is tied to his now, one that he always thought would be someone else's.

Baochai is a good person, he knows he could learn to love her, but it is strange to try. It is painful to be asked to unravel his soul from someone else's and hitch it to another. He thinks of the way Daiyu looked at him when he told her of the arrangement and the promise he tried to make to her then.

How she pushed him away, tearful, like she had already lost.

He turns slowly, as if in a dream, then travels through the walkways back to the garden where his family celebrates his new life. The woman he does not love waits for him and as he comes back out into the evening, Baochai sees him and she smiles, only at the sight of him. For a moment, it is like the sun.

So he offers her the peach. 

五

On one of the coldest, longest, winter nights at the very peak of darkness, the outer gate is flung open and light floods the courtyards. Men and women in stark white uniform flood the home. Their Boots trample over the grounds, indiscriminate where they step, pressing down flora and fauna into the snow.

The walkways become muddy with their footprint, the hedges in their path lit aflame to make way. Family members run from their homes, roused in the middle of sleep by the peacekeepers. Baoyu, asleep with his wife in the inner courtyard of the complex is one of the last to rise. He leads Baochai out a side door, tender with her after a few months of marriage, and she heavy with their first child.

But the peacekeepers are everywhere and it isn't long until they are herded onto the walkways of the inner courtyard, where the peach tree stands. At this time of year, the tree is devoid of life, dead leaves buried at its roots beneath the snow.

Baoyu's father stands beneath its gnarled branches, a gun, polished of any markings tucked into the back of his pyjama pants. There is a woman there too, her uniform denoting something grander than the rest. The entire family and household watches silently, surrounded on all sides by soldiers in white.

Snow falls, silent, already trying to cover the tracks of the intruders but the scent of smoke lays over everything and ash falls along with the white flakes.

The woman is shorter in stature than Baoyu's father but, her presence is larger than life. She looks down on the head of the household as if he is nothing. "You never should have aligned yourself with the Xue family," she tells him. Baoyu's father says nothing, staring through her, as if she is only a dream.

Baoyu sees the movement first, palm flat against the shoulder of his mother as he tries to slip through the line, but she does not yield to him and his sister steps further into his path.

Then there is a knife in the stranger's hand and she is driving it into his father's chest, pinning him against the trunk of the peach tree.

Nothing is ever the same again.

小品 / vignettes

一

Bao Yu disappears early in the morning under a grey sky. His mother does not see him go, but she does find the letter pinned beneath a jade stone on the veranda facing the outer gardens. It is addressed to his child, still in the womb.

Wordless, she takes the letter and tucks it into the pocket of her dress, still sealed. As for the stone, she runs her thumb across its smooth surface and then hefts it once. It fits nicely in her palm and it is still warm, as if her son only just disappeared.

But his heart has been absent since the night his father died.

Without thought, she raises her arm and throws the stone as hard as she can. She turns away before she sees where it falls. It lands on the far side of the koi pond with a gentle splash, then sinks slowly to the shallow bottom.

Later that morning, the first of the spring rains fall. It cuts through the cloud that had been laying heavy and low over the home since the fire and clears the last of the winter snow.

That night, the sky is clear for the very first time in months. Stars light the sky, glimmering like distant, unreachable gods in the darkness. The moon brightens the courtyards, running tender silver fingers over the dormant gardens in an attempt to wake them from hibernation.

A crane swoops down over the pond, skimming its talons along the water, finally coming to a full stop amidst the tall grasses near the foot bridge.

That is the day you are born.

二

Your mother names you Feng because she wants you to be strong. She wants you to be the knife that comes before all others. In your first week on earth, she whispers that to you every night as she cradles you so that it will be something you will always understand but you're too young to discern the anguish in her tone or to ever hope to remember it.

Everything is brand new, every moment is a revelation.

When you are old enough to stand, you move through the home on shaking legs as if you built it yourself, small hands touching everything. There is this hunger within you to record it all, to learn and see everything, but no one ever has enough time for you, the youngest by many years and the first of your generation. You become nothing more than a chore at the end of a long day for a family that has had to learn how to make a living.

But it was okay.

Even at that age you were quiet, still, like the cranes that came to fish in the garden pond. You'd watch them for long minutes, amazed on the blanket your mother set out for you while she tended the garden. It was the cranes that taught you patience, whether you knew it then or not.

三

At six years old, you find a sparrow at the roots of the peach tree in the central courtyard. Its wing is angled oddly at its side and it chirps, voice weak. It's small for its kind and its feathers are still sheathed, it has yet to reach maturity. You cup it gently in your hands, moving slowly so as not to frighten it and then you bring it inside to nurse it.

Later that night, you learn about death.

Your thumb is pressed against the sparrow's chest when it beats for the last time and there is a distinct absence when it doesn't beat again. You watch the light leave the sparrow's eyes and feel the softness of its feathers beneath your touch. It takes a moment for you to understand what's happened, that the bird is gone.

Even at your young age, the pain is dull. This loss is just one of many other hurts.

In the morning, your mother wraps the bird in a bit of silk for you and you bury it in the garden outside the inner wall near the pond. It's your favourite part of the gardens. There are fish, shining like gold in the murky water and moving ponderously, bumping against each other. You like to watch them, like it better when they churn up the surface at feeding time.

You stand over the sparrow's grave for a long time, loss settling over you heavy. It's a pain you will feel so many times that it will soon become nothing.

When you finally turn to go back, you see something glinting beneath the surface of the water. You have to wade in to reach it and so you do, barefoot. The fish scatter as you enter their realm and the bottom of the pond is slimy beneath your feet. You almost slip more than once but still you continue on doggedly.

When you finally bend down to reach into the murky water, your hand closes over a small, smooth object, polished and marbled green. It is a jade stone.

Since then, you've always carried it with you.

四

Your family has claimed to be here for centuries. There's so much pride still in their tone when they gesture at the peach tree in the centre of the inner courtyard, planted upon completion of building, branches now towering over the main house. The blossoms are a wonder to everyone but you, who is the only one sensible enough to remember to sweep them away before they rot against the stone ground and stain it.

When fruit makes the branches heavy in the summer, it's you who picks them before they can fall onto the stone below to waste away. You're the one who figures out how to preserve peaches, then how to bake them into pies and even how to ferment them into wine. You don't let a single fruit go to waste. Everything is precious to you.

As you grow, your hands become busy quickly. No matter what the job is, you gain a reputation for always wanting to help. There is no chore within the siheyuan that you haven't tried. You make your days long with work, serious expression focused on whatever you're doing. There is no one as dependable as you within the compound. 

It isn't enough.

Your family has been fracturing ever since you can remember. Everyone around you seems to be in an endless state of mourning, unable to accept the life that they have. They're always wanting to go back to a time before you were ever even there, to before your father left and before your grandfather passed away.

Your Grandmother Weng tells you stories of how your home used to be lively and it's difficult to wrap your head around. She speaks of servants and so many people that every single living quarter was filled and there were endless guests and every night was filled with light and laughter.

But all your life, the homes in the outer courtyard have lain dormant and you're not even entirely certain what parties are. There are no celebrations in your household, nothing to mark the passage of time except the change of season. You're not a fool, you've heard about birthdays and Christmas but they don't exist in your world, not really.

You don't mind that, you've never had much time for silly things.

This is the only life you've ever known and to you it is good. Your hands are cunning, quick to learn whatever you decide to focus on. You love the gardens and you have never minded the chores that need doing. For every cousin or uncle that bitterly complains about getting their hands dirty, there you are, tar on your cheek as you lovingly rethatch the roof of the garden shed.

You cannot live in a past that you never had.

You come to accept the sadness that you've been raised in, you hold it up against the light and see right through it and one night, you decide that it isn't yours to carry.

So you don't.

五

You've always liked hard work, you like laying down to sleep at night, exhausted from the day with new calluses forming on your hands, muscles aching. Your uncle tells you long wistful stories about the opera and your family's connection to it. He paints pictures with his words of your father and the way he could hold a room full of people in the palm of his hand with just his voice. He tells you that for a moment, he was one of the brightest stars in Nine and while he's doing that, you're thinking of how you need to feed the koi fish or collect the eggs from the chickens in the West Garden.

As he drones on about this and that you're thinking of the science books you found in one of the empty houses and how you didn't sell them even though you could tell by the binding that they could fetch a good price. When you picked one up it fell open to a page about the anatomy of a bird and the image made you think of the sparrow and how little you could help it back then.

Your uncle is trying to tell you about an opera your father starred in but you're busy deciding to become a veterinarian and his story falls on uncaring ears.

You have no thought to spare for the man who broke your mother's heart.

六

Ever since you can remember, your family has been slowly moving out of the siheyuan. There is never a formal goodbye, only a letter in an empty room and an exit in the dead of night. You've never understood this method but no ever speaks on it, there's an unspoken rule not to.

This happens every now and then as you grow but then your grandmother passes away when you're fifteen, and he person keeping everyone together is gone.

The funeral is long but empty of feeling. Your mother lights the candles, uncle Lian lights the incense and your aunt Xichun prepares the body. Then you dig the grave at the back of the outer courtyard beside your grandfather and you're glad for the job. It's hard to think when you're digging.

The burial is a few days later. That evening you light the lanterns in the gardens and sit on blankets amongst the flowers. You drink last year's peach wine and your family tells stories about your grandmother Weng and you learn things that you never knew about her.

The night is wonderful and bright and bittersweet all at once. You wonder if this is something like the parties you've spent your life hearing about and you understand why the loss of them has wounded your family. You've never felt so part of them.

You wish that your grandmother could be here to see it.

Uncle Lian reads her will before you all part ways. Everyone gets a share of your grandmother's fortune, all the money she was holding for emergencies is split and it's enough for each person to live comfortably. The expressions on your family's faces turn from sadness to relief. The wine turns sour in your stomach.

Later, when you're folding the blankets up and your cousin is gathering the dishes, your Uncle pulls you aside and hands you another envelope with your name on it. He tells you, "Open it later, alone," like it's a secret.

And you're patient. You finish with the tidying before you sit down on the veranda outside the main house where your mother and you live to open and read the letter. The calluses on your hand feel rough against the soft paper and you have to pull your knife out to cut through the wax seal.

You get the envelope open and inside there are four things: a key, a deed, a transference of account to a lock box and a second sealed envelope addressed, 'To my child' in handwriting that you don't recognize.

You just sit there with all of these things in your lap for awhile, looking at them. Then after some time, you tuck it all away, back into the first envelope, and you go inside.

八

Your sleep is heavy after all the digging and the wine. In your dreams, there are fingers brushing your hair back and a voice telling you goodbye. You think that it's your grandmother but when you wake up in the morning your mother is gone.

Her bed is stripped and there is a letter on her linens, neatly folded at the foot of it. You open the letter and read it before slipping it into your pocket. Then you go to collect the eggs from the chickens, but the chickens are loose. Your cousin is the one who is supposed to get them back in their house at night so after you corral them, you go to check on him.

His room is empty, there is a note.

So you decide to eat breakfast with your aunt from then on but a week later, she's gone too. One of your uncles insists that everyone will come back but you know that once they've left, they never do. Over the next few days, more of your family disappears in the night. You sit on the veranda and you watch your cousin slip out of her house at two in the morning, a bag on her shoulder.

Then one day near the end of summer, you wake up in the morning and you are the last one left.

七

The first stray limps through the front gate in October. You can't tell the breed of the dog, its hair is so matted with blood. Its too dirty to even tell what colour it's meant to be. At first it growls at you every time you try to get near it but you're patient. You offer it food, first at the gate, then that night within the courtyard. In the morning you coax it into the pavilion and by the third night you have it eating out of the palm of your hand.

This time, you save a life.

The dog is so grateful that no matter where you go in the grounds, it follows you. Under your care, it becomes healthier and it is so cheerful that you name it Yijun.

One evening you go into the inner courtyard to find a cat with a bad case of mange under the peach tree. It doesn't occur to you to shoo it away. You just do the same thing that you did with Yijun and coax it with food into letting you care for it.

And it's by this method that you one day find yourself with sixteen dogs and a hairless cat under your care. Sometimes you help an animal and then it leaves you within a few days, other times it refuses to ever go out the gates again. You don't mind though, the siheyuan is too big for just you. On the other hand, pet food isn't cheap. You don't want much for money thanks to the lockbox that was left to you but that won't last forever.

You decide to find a job.

That night, you go to find your uncle's beloved opera house. He told you it closed but even you remember him saying something about it reopening last year and then he was gone a few weeks later. The idea of working there is awful to you but you tell yourself it's just until you can save enough to go to school. You still want to be a veterinarian, that hasn't changed.

When you give them your name they're eager to hear you sing but that's not why you're there. So they take you on as a busboy and security but with the way you work, that doesn't last long. You're running the bar by the time you're seventeen.

You keep yourself busy but there are old photos on the wall and playbills saved from the first opera house that always make you pause. Your father's name is listed in some of them. Sometimes your eyes catch on a frame, the face smiling out at you is so familiar, but you never let your gaze linger. Everyone always seems to need something from you anyway, you don't have time. You grumble about their neediness but you like being useful, you always have.

There are many things that need your attention. Your routine becomes split between household chores, caring for the strays and working at the opera. You barely have time to fit sleep in and when you do it's always so deep that it's dreamless.

But you didn't know you could be this happy.