WE MADE FAST TIME on our way home. That was the servants’ idea, not mine. I wasn’t a demanding master, and didn’t tell them to slow down.
Anyone who has made a name for himself away from home should return at a leisurely pace, knowing that people are waiting expectantly for him.
On the morning of the fourth day, we reached the last mountain pass, where we could see the Maichi estate in the distance.
Looking down from the mountain, we saw cypress trees scattered here and there, making the riverbank appear wide and empty. Beyond the cypresses was a vast field of barley swaying in the wind; the estate house stood quietly amid the barley waves like a large island. When the horses galloped down the mountain, the silver on their backs and the copper bells around their necks rang out crisp and loud, filling the spacious valley. The house was still off in the distance, quiet, with an indulgent, dreamlike quality. We passed some fortresses, whose people, led by the headmen, followed us cheering thunderously.
More and more people joined us, and their cheers grew louder and louder, waking the people in the houses from their afternoon naps.
Even knowing that it was his son coming home, Chieftain Maichi was nervous when he saw so many people and horses tearing down the spacious valley. We saw family guards scampering to the towers.
Tharna smiled. “They’re afraid.”
I smiled too.
When I left, I’d been an unimportant idiot, but now I frightened them. Even when we were close enough for them to see that we were family, the chieftain still would not let down his guard. I must really have worried them, created a fear that I might attack the estate.
“How could your father act like that?” Tharna asked.
“It’s not my father,” I said. “It’s my brother.”
That’s right, I could smell my brother’s presence amid the clamor and chaos. His disastrous defeat down south had made him skittish.
Tharna turned to me, and said sweetly, “Even your father is on guard against you; it looks like they’re treating you as a member of the Rongong family already.”
We drew nearer to the house, which was shrouded in an ambiguous silence behind its heavy stone walls.
It was Sangye Dolma who broke the awkward silence by opening a large sack on the back of her horse and taking out some candy that had come from the Han area. She threw handfuls into the air, the adept benefactor, a dispenser of favors from the second young master of the Maichi family. My two young servants followed her example.
In days past, we’d so seldom seen candy that even members of the Maichi family rarely tasted it. But once I’d begun trading on the northern border, such candy was no longer a rarity.
It fell onto the crowd like hailstones. Waving the colorful wrappers and sucking on candy as sweet as honey, the people shared in the taste of my remarkable successes on the northern border; they surrounded us and cheered loudly for me and the beautiful Tharna in the yard outside the house. Dogs chained to the gate barked like mad. “Is this how the Maichi family welcomes its daughter-in-law?” she asked.
“This is how smart people welcome an idiot,” I yelled back.
The cheers drowned out her reply and the barking of dogs. Amid the thunderous cheer, I heard the heavy gate creak open. The people fell silent. Through the opened gate walked the chieftain and his wife, followed by a contingent of women, including Yangzom and the other Tharna. My brother was nowhere in sight. He was still in the tower with the family guards.
Life didn’t seem to be treating them very well. Father’s face looked like a turnip after a frost, and Mother’s lips were parched. Yangzom, on the other hand, had retained her beauty, though still with that sleepwalker look. As for the maid Tharna, she looked truly stupid as she stood amid a group of maids and stared at my beautiful wife while gnawing on her fingernails.
The chieftain’s wife broke the ice, as she walked up and touched my forehead with her lips; they felt like dry leaves falling on my head. She sighed and walked over to Tharna and put her arms around her.
“I know that you’re my daughter. Let me look at you. The men can take care of their business. I want to take a good look at my beautiful daughter.”
The chieftain smiled and shouted at the people, “You see that! My son’s back. He brought back untold riches and the most beautiful woman in the world!”
The crowd shouted, “Long life!”
I felt that it was the sound of the cheers, not our feet, that carried us into the compound.
While we were still in the yard, I asked Father, “Where’s my brother?”
“In the guard tower. He said you might be an enemy force coming to attack us.”
“No wonder, since he was defeated down south.”
“Don’t say his defeat threw fear into him.”
“You’re the one who said that.”
“Son, I think your illness is cured.”
At that moment, my brother appeared atop the tower, looking down on us. I waved to show I’d seen him. Since he couldn’t hide anymore, he came down. The two brothers met on the steps.
He scrutinized me.
In front of him stood a renowned idiot who had accomplished what smart people could not. To be fair, he was not someone who cared so much about fame and power that he had to be the chieftain. What I mean is, if his younger brother hadn’t been an idiot, he might have yielded to him the title of chieftain. The business at the southern border had taught him a lesson, and he didn’t want to trouble his head too much. But his brother was an idiot, so things could only be the way they were now. Even though he had suffered defeat, he patted my shoulder with a haughty air, before his gaze fell on Tharna.
“Look at you,” he said. “You can’t even tell if a woman is pretty, yet you wind up with a true beauty. I’ve had many women, but none as pretty as she.”
“Her maids are all very pretty too,” I said.
So that’s how my brother and I met, not at all the way I’d imagined. But at least we met.
From where I stood upstairs, I waved to Sangye Dolma, who had the servants unload the crates of silver. When I ordered them to open the crates, shouts of astonishment rose from the crowd. The Maichi estate owned plenty of silver, but most people—the headmen, our subjects, and family slaves—had never seen so much in one place at the same time.
As we walked toward the dining room, I heard the rumble of the warehouse door being opened in the basement. Once inside, Tharna whispered to me, “This is exactly how things are in the Rongong family. How come?”
Mother overheard her. “Chieftains are all the same,” she said.
“But things are different at the border.”
“That’s because your husband isn’t a chieftain.”
“He will be someday.”
“I’m glad you think so,” Mother said. “But it makes me sad to think that he’ll be living with your family, and not ours.”
That ended the conversation between Tharna and Mother.
I then summoned my two young slaves and Tharna’s two pretty maidservants to place a lavish gift in front of everyone. The jewelry sparkled, and they had trouble believing that all this could have come from a desolate place like the border region.
“There’ll be even more in the future,” I said.
I omitted the second half of that sentence: If you don’t treat me like an idiot, that is.
At that moment, our maids shuffled their way into the room and knelt behind us. The Tharna who was a groom’s daughter was on her knees behind the Tharna who was the daughter of a chieftain, and I could sense her trembling. I couldn’t understand why I’d ever slept with her. Yes, back then I hadn’t known what kind of woman could be considered beautiful, so they had sent any woman they wanted to my bed.
Tharna looked at the maid out of the corner of her eye. “You see,” she said to me, “it’s your family who has treated you like a hopeless idiot, not me. You can see that by the sort of woman they gave you.”
Then she laid a string of pearls in the maid’s hand and said loudly enough for all to hear, “I’m told your name is the same as mine. Well, from now on, you can’t use that name anymore.”
The maid answered in a tiny voice, like that of a mosquito, “Yes.”
Then I heard her say, “Won’t you give me a name, Mistress?”
Tharna laughed. “Everyone around my husband is so sensible. He’s a lucky man.”
The now nameless maid continued in her mosquito voice, “Please give me a name, Mistress.”
Tharna turned her radiant face to Chieftain Maichi and smiled. “Father.” That was the first time she’d spoken to him. And by doing so, she confirmed their relationship. “Father, please give our slave a name.”
“Ermy Gyami.”
So that was how the groom’s daughter got her name, one that wasn’t really a name at all, since it meant “nameless.” Everyone smiled.
Ermy Gyami smiled too.
Then my brother spoke to my wife for the first time. “A beautiful woman shows up,” he said with a snicker, “and other women lose their names. Fascinating.”
Tharna snickered too. “Beauty is there for all to see. It’s much the same as how the existence of smart people shrouds the future of those who are considered stupid.”
My brother’s smile vanished. “That’s how the world is.”
“Everyone knows that,” Tharna said. “It’s the same logic as ‘There are only victorious chieftains, no vanquished ones.’”
“Chieftain Rongong is the vanquished one, not Chieftain Maichi.”
Tharna replied, “Yes. Elder Brother is a smart man, and all the other chieftains hope for you to be their opponent.”
The second round went to Tharna as well.
As we were leaving, he took me by the arm, and said, “That woman will ruin you one day.”
“Shut up,” Father said. “Ruin can only come at one’s own hand.”
My brother left. But now that Father and I were alone, he was at a loss for words.
“Why did you order me back?” I asked.
“Your mother missed you.”
“The Maichi enemy has come,” I said. “Two brothers. They plan to kill you and my brother. They chose not to kill me. One of them gave me liquor but wouldn’t kill me.”
“They probably didn’t know what to do with you either. I’d like to ask them if it was because everyone says you’re an idiot,” Father said.
“Father doesn’t know what to do with me either. Is that it?”
“Are you a smart person or are you an idiot?”
“I don’t know.”
So that was how my homecoming went. See how they treated the person who had made the Maichi family more powerful than ever?
Mother and Tharna were inside talking about things only women would find interesting.
On my first evening home, I stood alone, leaning against the railing and watching the moon rise.
Once it was high in the sky, it threaded its way through the flimsy clouds.
Somewhere in the house, a woman was plucking a bamboo mouth lyre. The sound was dreary, bewildering, and forsaken.