THE NEW INSPECTOR’S HOUSE is both elegant and impressive, with three full stories, glass windows, a cobbled courtyard. Passing through the moon-shaped gate, Yuliang is forced to admit that it’s certainly the nicest house she has visited. Still, outside the doorway there’s a sharp, shrill urge to flee. Not just because she is still mortified from their encounter, but because the situation presents her best chance yet. The Hall’s sedan chair is needed elsewhere, as is the manservant; the Hall hadn’t planned on a last-minute call, and she won’t be expected there now until morning. What’s more, she has Yi Gan’s deposit in her purse.
For a moment—just a moment—Yuliang lets herself consider it: lying. Leaving. She sees herself on a boat, sailing away. When her thoughts delve beneath the water, though, there’s the girl in Wuhu Lake.
The Japanese maple tree in the courtyard’s center stirs in the wind, and in its whispers Yuliang hears the voice she misses most: The only way to escape this place is by doing it their way.
Oh, Jinling.
Yuliang wipes her hands on her jacket. “It’s just skin,” she reminds herself.
She knocks once. And again.
AS HER EYES ADJUST to the dim light inside, Yuliang surveys the foyer’s offerings: a long redwood table. A carved sofa, simple but of superior quality. On top of the table is a Ming vase filled with chrysanthemums. Above that, a large picture-poem. The little image exudes loneliness like a damp aroma. The mountains are black and craggy, wreathed in mist so real she actually feels a chill. The poem is a delicate spider-dance on the right that she can’t read. Shadowed pines blanket the peaks, dappled by raindrops so real that Yuliang reaches a finger reflexively toward the wetness. All this from ink. Mere ink! It seems to her an almost godlike act. Like Pangu’s eighteen-thousand-year battle to separate the earth from the sky.
Yuliang is still standing there, her nose nearly against the picture’s glass, when the amah who’d admitted her reappears. Her seamed face is still tight with barely concealed outrage, and when she sees Yuliang by the painting, she all but crackles. “Don’t touch that,” she says indignantly. “It’s worth more than your whole life, from start to finish.”
Reluctantly, Yuliang steps away. “Will—will he see me, auntie?” she asks.
“Hmmph” is all she gets in return. Turning on her tiny heel, the old woman starts hobbling back toward the hallway. After a few steps, though, she looks over her bent shoulder. “Come along,” she croaks. “He is a busy man.”
PAN ZANHUA HAS CHANGED. Instead of his Western suit he wears a Chinese robe, scholar-style. A book lies open on the desk before him, and a notepad. His writing is neat, with disciplined curves, succinct slashes. Yuliang waits in the doorway while he finishes, the amah at her elbow like a stooped jailor.
When he finally looks up, the inspector’s eyes widen. He puts down his pen in careful alignment with his inkstone. He has an ink smear on his left cheek.
“Good evening,” Yuliang says, and then finds herself fumbling for the remainder of her introduction. “I—that is, the Merchant’s Guild, Master Yi…”
He picks up his pen, and Yuliang finds herself laughing a laugh that sounds more like a nervous hiccup. “I hope you’re not planning to write that down.”
He eyes her as though she has just tumbled from the sky and broken his roof. But she has no choice but to continue. “I’ve been sent by friends,” she stammers on. “They know that it’s hard being a newcomer in a strange city. And the nights are cold now. So damp and lonely…” On the way here the statement had seemed sophisticated and poetic. Uttered, it’s unambiguously absurd.
Losing her nerve, she pulls out Yi Gan’s wad of cash, sending the inspector’s eyebrows flying toward his hairline like alarmed little birds. “What’s that?”
“Your deposit. Master Yi paid it on your behalf. He humbly requests that you keep it.”
The amah snorts in disgust. The inspector frowns at her. “You can leave, Qian Ma.” When the servant doesn’t move, he repeats the command. “Out, please.”
“Aiyaaa,” the amah mutters. “I’d rather have died than seen this.” But she backs out the door, stepping exaggeratedly around Yuliang as though she is the night-soil man come for pickup.
The inspector watches without expression. After she has disappeared, he beckons to Yuliang. “Come all the way in, please.” He indicates the chaise longue with his chin. She sits, feeling like a little girl about to be punished. She even has the urge to swing her feet.
“Do you always work so late?” she asks at last, if only to break the silence.
“It’s not work. At least, not the work your friends are so interested in influencing.”
“They’re not friends.” The phrase darts out with the same unplanned impulse with which her hand had darted for his glass. She cringes, expecting her impudence to close him up again: snap. But his face reflects just mild surprise. “I’m sorry,” he says.
You don’t need to apologize, she almost says; men do that too much. But that too seems rude. As well as false: in her experience, men never apologize. Which also sets him apart. “It is work, a little bit, I suppose,” he goes on, indicating the book with his chin. “After our discussion, I felt the urge to reexplore Li Qingzhao.”
“You just don’t want to lose another wager.”
He smiles slightly. “Maybe so. At any rate, I keep coming back to this line.” He points to a sentence. Yuliang just shakes her head, embarrassed. “It’s the one called ‘Stream,’” he says, understanding quickly. “It begins like this: ‘Thousands of light flakes of crushed gold/for its blossoms—’”
“‘And of trimmed jade for its layers of leaves,’” she interrupts. Which, again, is unspeakably rude. But for some reason she needs for him to know she knows it. “‘Plum flowers are too common,’” she continues. “‘Lilacs, too coarse, when compared with it./Yet its penetrating fragrance drives away my fond dreams of faraway places./How merciless!’”
Another short silence. He is watching her again, with that strange look of trying to solve a puzzle. “What do you think that means?” he says finally.
Yuliang thinks a moment. “I’m not a scholar,” she says at last. “But I’ve always thought she was telling us that…that no matter how we long for the past, we are rooted in the present.” She drops her eyes. “Coarse as it might be.”
He picks up his pen, scribbles something on his pad. Blacks it out. “You said you know almost all of her poems.”
“Yes,” Yuliang says, and feels a small pride in spite of herself. “Though she’s only a woman, she is my favorite of the poets. Not just because her works are so lovely, but because she was so strong. She lived through such hardship—losing her land, her husband. Living in exile.” She hesitates. “She bent but did not break. I think that perhaps it was her poetry that helped her survive.”
He looks at her curiously. “Why do you say so?”
“It helps me survive,” she says honestly. “The words are comforting, don’t you think?”
“And you—you need comforting. Sometimes.”
The thought that he might think otherwise is so disconcerting she can’t answer.
“Will you recite another?” he asks quietly. “For me?”
Don’t, Yuliang thinks. Don’t, don’t, don’t. Nothing’s less seductive than a woman pretending to be intelligent. But the poem spills out anyway, almost of its own accord: “‘Who planted the bajiao tree under my windows?’” she begins. “‘Its shade fills the courtyard;/Its shade fills the courtyard…’”
The words come faster and freer, liquid from a tipping cup. But Pan Zanhua’s expression isn’t one of distaste. He is leaning forward, his brow furrowed. And as Yuliang finishes—“‘Lonely for my beloved, grief-stricken,/I cannot endure the mournful sound/of rain’”—his fine hands seem to tremble slightly.
“You said, I believe,” he says, “that you learned this from your uncle.”
Yuliang nods. “He is—was—a scholar of the classics.” Which, given Wu Ding’s untutored upbringing and muddled grasp of literature, is as far from the truth as calling the moon’s reflection the moon. Still, she finds herself adding, “He was an official too. Back in Zhenjiang.” Even less true: her jiujiu took the local-level civic exams three times and failed them three times as well, before the halcyon dreams of the den washed away his ambitions.
“What’s his position?” the inspector asks. “I go to Zhenjiang on business.”
“He died,” Yuliang invents quickly, wondering Why do I keep lying? “He…he fell off a boat. Four years ago. Bringing me here.” Stop talking, she tells herself. Just stop.
There’s a small scuffle in the hallway outside. “Hmmph,” Yuliang hears.
“Qian Ma!” Inspector Pan calls. “Go to bed!”
The thin voice filters through the door again: “Hmmph. In all my days…” But again, the complaint is followed by the stilted patter of retreat.
Pan Zanhua smiles self-consciously. “You’ll have to forgive her. She still believes respectable women don’t even speak in public if they can help it. Much less visit male friends.”
Respectable? Friends? Yuliang looks at him incredulously. But his face and voice both remain blithe. Still, the interruption brings her back to her mission: she looks down at the money stack still clasped in her hand. She thinks of Mingmei, raped and beaten. Of Dai kneeling in the rain. She stands, puts her purse, handkerchief, the money on the table. “Well,” she says softly.
As she approaches him she tries to ignore the look of panic on his face, the way he leans back as though to maintain distance between them. As she leans over, she has a fleeting glimpse of his neck. Like his hands, it is white and taut. She’d planned to sit in his lap. Facing him now, though, she sees that this would be as graceful as standing on her head. She kneels instead. “It’s late,” she whispers. “Aren’t you tired?” Taking his palms in hers, she lifts his hands to her cheeks, half worrying that he’ll see how they are shaking. After the callused press of Yi Gan’s thick fingers, Pan Zanhua’s feel as soft as a woman’s.
Then, quite suddenly, her cheeks are cold. He is pulling her to her feet. “I’d like,” he says, “for you to leave.”
“Leave?” She opens her eyes.
“I can’t do this.”
She stands shakily. “It’s all right,” she tells him. “Really. It’s all taken care of. I am, I mean. Even if you don’t want—this. The money.” She holds it out. But he strikes her outstretched hand away from him, almost violently. Bills scatter to the floor like debris. Yuliang blinks in surprise. She hadn’t thought he’d be a beater.
She steps back warily. But he doesn’t touch her again. He just runs his palm down his left cheek. Where the smudge is. “I didn’t mean to do that,” he says hoarsely. “It’s just that you are…that I’m not…” He covers his eyes. “Aiyya. Don’t you see? This is just the sort of thing I’ve come here to fight.”
“Love?” she asks, idiotically.
His lips twitch. “Corruption. Exploitation of society’s vulnerable elements. You’re a beautiful girl…” he continues. Then stops. “You see? I don’t even know your name.”
“It’s Yuliang. Zhang Yuliang.”
“Of course. Good Jade.” A wry smile. “The little jade boar.”
She nods numbly. She’d forgotten their brief talk about birth signs.
“You know, don’t you, Zhang xiaojie,” he continues, “if you stay here, then they’ve won. Not only will I be in their debt, but they’ll be able to hold our—hold whatever would happen over me. That’s what they really want.”
Her head is spinning, though even through her confusion what he is saying does make a sort of sense. Pan Zanhua will pay if he sleeps with her tonight. The same way she’ll pay if she doesn’t sleep with him. Yuliang snatches desperately at solutions. She could stay with the amah for a few hours. She could go back in the morning, just as though she’d completed her mission. Give them the deposit money, say the rest was coming soon. It could work. For a while, anyway…
But really, it couldn’t. Yuliang knows that. She imagines the conversation the young inspector would have with Yi Gan later: Did you enjoy our gift, Master Inspector? Oh yes. She slept on the floor with my amah.
“I can’t just go,” she says.
“Why not?”
She kneels, scraping the scattered money toward her. He crouches beside her, hands her two bills that have landed near his feet. “All right, then. Here’s what you will tell them. Tell them I wasn’t feeling well tonight.” He’s still frowning, working it out as he speaks. “Tell them that you…caught me off guard. That I’m not refusing their gift, I’m just postponing it. I’ll take it in a different form. Not as…” He gestures awkwardly. “But as something else. As a tour of the town.”
“A tour?” Her first thought is that it’s one of those rare trade terms she hasn’t learned yet, the same way climbing beneath the warm quilt is a euphemism for early morning visits to the Hall.
But he means just what he’s saying. “We’ll take my chair into town. You can show me key landmarks. Help me know what’s what. It will be a business-related service.” He looks over her shoulder; she follows his gaze to the tall boxed clock by the window. “We’ll leave here at nine,” he concludes, authoritatively.
“Nine,” Yuliang repeats in dismay.
It’s sheer madness; the mere idea of leaving now, at three, then coming back just six hours later exhausts her. Then there’s the thought of the two of them traipsing about town together. Does he really think that will save him from the gossip? You don’t understand this town, she wants to tell him. It’s not Shanghai.
And yet as he helps her up, neatly stacking the bills and folding them warmly into her hand, Yuliang finds herself looking into his eyes, and again, there is that sense of interest. That feeling that he is not just looking back at her but listening to her. Even when she isn’t speaking at all.
Which, perhaps, is why she finds herself taking the money and nodding obediently. As though this all made all the sense in the world.
IT TAKES MORE THAN AN HOUR for Yuliang to convince Godmother that she hasn’t failed her, and another to convince the madam to let her leave again, alone. In the end she gains permission only after swearing that this day, at least, will end up in the bed business that was supposed to begin it.
“I’ll say this once,” Godmother says grudgingly. “Think of this as a test. If you come back without his seed inside you and his money in your hand, you will have a worse time of it than Mingmei did.”
When the madam finally dismisses her the sun is already rising. Yuliang flees to her room and paces, too apprehensive to sleep. As the light strengthens, she sits at her toiletry table, doodling aimlessly with a pencil. Images rise and fall: the wispy sorrow of the painting’s painted mountain. The feel of his palms on her face. The strange, sharp stirring she’d felt reciting “Ai Lian Shuo” for him…She imagines that things had gone differently. That rather than leaving her face, his hands had done what she’d expected and lingered. And descended. If they had she could sleep now without worry of punishment or humiliation. But then she probably wouldn’t be seeing him again, either.
The thought is inexplicably depressing. As she climbs into bed, a vague, leaden sadness seems to coil itself in her chest.
Still, two hours after finally sleeping, she leaps up easily. She even hums a little as she gets ready. She sees for the first time the way morning sun forms rainbows in the glass’s edges, surrounding Mirror Girl with all the colors in the world. Yuliang washes and dresses with care, in her soberest clothes. She dusts her face with powder and leaves everything else bare. She even arranges her hair in a virgin’s style. Why not? she thinks. Why not?
And the oddest part is, it works. This time when she knocks, the amah doesn’t even recognize her: “Come in,” the old woman says, with just a hint of hesitation. Not about Yuliang’s identity. Rather, about why a clean-faced young woman would be knocking on her master’s door, alone and at this hour. Which is early, but still unmistakably respectable.