Guest from Afar

WALKING NORTH down the street, I reached a river, where the steward had erected a lovely little wooden footbridge. The far end faced my open compound, where the steward was waiting.

“Guess who’s coming to dinner?”

I had no idea. So he smiled and led us to the dining room. Sangye Dolma, dressed in nice, new clothes, was standing there to greet us.

“Well, well,” I said. “I’ve yet to become chieftain, but you’ve already been promoted.”

Hiking up her skirt, she began to kneel, but I stopped her.

“The steward asked me to guess who was coming to dinner,” I said.

She laughed, and whispered, “Don’t mind him, Young Master. You’re not an idiot if you can’t guess and it won’t make you smart if you can.”

My God! It was the Maichis’ old friend, Special Emissary Huang who stood there before me.

His face was still gaunt, and he still sported a pathetically scraggly yellow beard. The only change was in his eyes, which seemed calmer. I said to our guest from afar, “There’s no more weariness in your eyes.”

His answer was quite direct: “That’s because I don’t have to worry on behalf of others anymore.”

I asked after Regiment Commander Jiang. He told me that Jiang had drowned in a river after being sent to a remote spot to fight the Red Chinese.

“He didn’t stink, did he?”

Special Emissary Huang opened his eyes wide, not knowing why I’d asked a question like that. Maybe he’d finally realized that he was talking to an idiot, so he laughed, and said, “It was a hot day on the battlefield, so of course he stank. When a person dies, there’s nothing left but flesh and bones. We’re no different from dogs or cows.”

We sat down at the table, with me at the head. I clapped my hands and Dolma relayed the clap at the door to summon a parade of maidservants.

Rectangular wooden crimson platters decorated with gilded fruit in strange shapes and giant flowers said to be popular in India had been placed before us. They contained porcelain from the Han area and silverware made by our silversmiths. The wineglasses were made of blood red Ceylonese agate.

I waited until we had downed three glasses of liquor before asking Special Emissary Huang what he had brought us this time. Years back, of course, he had brought the Maichi family modern weapons and opium. In our experience, every time Han people came to our land they either brought us something or took something away with them.

Huang Chumin said, “I have brought nothing but myself. I have come to stay with the young master.” He was very candid in telling me that he was no longer welcome in his homeland. When I asked him if he couldn’t stay in his homeland anymore because of the Red Han Chinese, he shook his head. “You might say it’s because of relatives of the Red Han Chinese.”

“Han people all look the same to me. I can’t tell the Reds from the Whites.”

“That’s a distinction only the Han themselves make.”

“I’ll give you a room.”

He tapped his head, his beady eyes shining. “Maybe something in here will be of use to the young master.”

“I don’t like to communicate through an interpreter,” I said.

“I’ll start learning your language today,” he said. “It won’t take more than half a year before we can speak without an interpreter.”

“What about girls? I don’t plan to give you any.”

“I’m too old.”

“You’re not allowed to write poetry.”

“I don’t need any more posturing.”

“I never liked how you acted before. I’ll give you a hundred taels of silver every month.”

Now it was his turn to show what he was made of. “I don’t want your silver. I might be old, but I still can find ways to earn my own keep.”

So that was how Huang Chumin came to live with us. I did not ask why he’d come to me instead of to Chieftain Maichi. I figured that would be a tough question to answer, and I didn’t like to ask people tough questions.

One day, I went for a drink at our enemy’s inn. The innkeeper blurted out that his brother had returned the night before. I asked where the killer was. The innkeeper looked at me, studying my expression, which told me that his brother was there with us. I had only to pull back the door curtain to see him sitting by the tiny window with a bowl of liquor in his hand.

“It would be best for him to be gone from here. Rules are rules, and I can’t violate them.”

“My brother spared you once,” he said, “so you ought to spare him this time.”

He was tempting me with a new rule. When a person is born into this world, he quickly discovers that others have set up many rules for him. Sometimes these rules are a form of bondage, but sometimes they can be used as weapons. Take the rules of revenge, for example. Chieftain Maichi killed the innkeeper’s father after exploiting him, so it was only natural for his family to avenge him. The rules require it. The innkeeper’s brother had not killed me by the river because I wasn’t the Maichi chieftain. He would have violated the rules of revenge and been mocked by everyone if he had.

I said, “He didn’t kill me because he shouldn’t have. Now I must kill him because he killed my brother. I would be a laughingstock if I met up with him and didn’t kill him.”

The innkeeper reminded me that I should thank his brother for giving me the opportunity to become a chieftain.

I then reminded him that he and his brother did not kill just to give me that opportunity. “I don’t know about you,” I said, “but your brother is a gutless killer, and I prefer not to see him.”

A sound emerged from the window inside the room, followed by the echo of horse hooves as they headed toward the edge of the earth.

“He’s gone now,” the innkeeper said. “I set up a little nest here, a place for us to stay once the unavoidable deed was carried out. Now the young master has forced him out of his home.”

I smiled. “That’s the rule.”

“I was wrong to think you don’t follow rules. We were all wrong.”

The tabletop in front of me was covered with all sorts of images carved by knife-carrying customers. There were mysterious signs and incantations, hands, birds, the figure of a head on silver coins, even something that looked like a mouth. I said it was a woman’s private parts, but the innkeeper insisted that it was a wound. He was actually telling me that I had wounded him. My fist landed on his face the third time he mentioned the so-called wound. When he got back up to his feet, his face was smeared with dust and flames were shooting from his eyes.

At that moment, Huang Chumin swaggered in and ordered liquor. Then he said he wanted his personal bodyguards to join my soldiers.

“I don’t want anything of yours.”

“Should I be concerned with my own safety when I’m here, then?”

Talk about smart people—Huang Chumin was definitely one of them. After his situation turned ugly, he put his fate in my hands, knowing full well that a few bodyguards would not make any difference if someone really wanted to kill him. By passing them on to me, he wouldn’t have to worry about his own safety. That would now be my responsibility. All he would really give up was the grandeur of walking on the street surrounded by bodyguards. But what did that matter, if he no longer had to keep looking over his shoulder or cocking an ear when he slept? He drank down a bowl of liquor and laughed, a few drops of wine hanging on his scraggly yellow beard. I told him that this inn was the place to come for a drink, and he asked if that meant he’d lost his freedom, that he was to drink at an assigned place. I told him he’d get free drinks here, and he asked if the inn was exempt from paying taxes.

“No,” the innkeeper answered him. “I write down the amount, and the young master pays.”

“Are you his friend?” Huang Chumin asked. “The young master has many strange friends.”

“I’m not sure, but I think it’s because my brother is a killer.”

Huang Chumin choked on his liquor, and his yellow face paled.

He was stumbling like a drunk when I escorted him out of the inn. I told him that the killer was someone who had avenged a wrongful death in the family, and that put his mind at ease. I, on the other hand, was feeling the liquor’s effects, which got worse when a wind blew off the river as I was crossing the bridge. Huang Chumin told me to lean on his shoulder. “Is his brother really a killer?” he asked.

“That I know for sure. What I don’t know is what you have in mind.”

After a thoughtful pause, he said, “My situation is so bad, I have no idea. What do you say to this? I’ll be your shiye.” He used the Chinese word, shiye, for adviser. That idiot head of mine was buzzing, as if a swarm of bees were singing inside. “Then who will I be?” I asked him.

He thought about that for a moment. “You’re nobody now, but you can be whomever you want to be,” he finally shouted into my ear.

He was right. You’re nobody if you’re a chieftain’s son but not his heir. After my brother’s death, Father gave no indication that he wanted me to be his heir. Then my mother-in-law wrote to say I needn’t go and see her. She said she couldn’t snatch away Chieftain Maichi’s only son to be her heir in light of the chieftain’s heartrending experience. But the steward hinted that someday I might be chieftain of both families. Now Adviser Huang had made that possibility seem even more likely.

And, of course, they both told me that I had to wait patiently for all this to happen.

All right, then. I told them we’d wait. I was in no hurry.

So the days passed, with spring flowers being replaced by autumn moons. The steward and my adviser took charge of the affairs at home and the business at the market, while my two young servants and Sangye Dolma took care of odds and ends. Within a few years, the idiot son of the Maichi family became the wealthiest person on this land, or so the steward said when he brought over the account books.

“Even wealthier than my father?”

“Much wealthier,” he said. “The young master knew that opium had long since become worthless. Business at our market, on the other hand, is starting to take off.”

That day, I rode out with Tharna and gave her the good news while we were on the road. After returning to the border, she hadn’t been with any other men, and that made me feel good.

“Are you really wealthier than any chieftain?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t believe you,” she said. “Just look at the people around you.”

I took a look at the people closest to me. Tharna raised her eyes to the sky, and said, “My God, just look at the kind of people you’ve handed the world to.”

I knew she said things like that only when she was happy.

Yes, just look at them. My steward was a cripple and my adviser was an old man with a scraggly yellow beard. As for my two servants, possibly because they’d been with me so long, each was reduced to a single trait: Aryi’s shyness and Sonam Tserang’s fierceness. Sonam Tserang had become my tax collector, and was extremely pleased with the uniforms I’d had made for him and his underlings. Dolma, who was in charge of the maids and cooks, had grown heavy; men were no longer important to a woman her age. Gradually she had forgotten all about the silversmith and, it seemed, the time when she’d been my personal maid.

Tharna asked me, “Why hasn’t Sangye Dolma ever been pregnant? She has slept with you, the silversmith, and the steward.”

It was a question I couldn’t answer, so I turned it back on her. Why hadn’t she given me a child yet?

She answered by saying she still wasn’t sure if I was worth getting pregnant for. “What if you really are an idiot? Am I supposed to give birth to an idiot too?”

My beautiful wife still wasn’t sure if her husband was an idiot. “I am an idiot,” I said, “so your belly will be barren all your life.”

“On the day I’m sure you’re an idiot, I’ll find someone else to give me a daughter.”

I found it hard to believe that someone could choose whether or not to have a child. So she showed me some pink tablets that she said came from India. Now, India already had many wondrous things, and the English had taken even more wondrous things there. So when someone said that a thing beyond our comprehension came from India, it immediately earned our trust. That was the case even with the poppies, since Adviser Huang had said that the English had brought them to the Han from India decades before. And so I believed that the pink tablets could help Tharna decide whether and with whom she could have a baby, sort of like deciding which cook would make our meals. Tharna and I had always been frank with each other, something I preferred; I admired her ability to set the tenor of our relationship. She was good at controlling things and knew how to pick the right moment for a discussion.

With the wind at our backs, we ran our horses for quite a distance before stopping at the crest of a hill, where the broad plains rose up majestically below us. Hawks were poised high up in the sky, their outstretched wings keeping them virtually motionless. At such moments, real things became abstractions. Even matters that normally caused a searing pain in the heart were turned into burning bullets that could have been fatal but merely scraped the skin and scorched a few hairs. My wife said, “Listen to what we’ve been talking about.”

My heart could tolerate anything because of the panorama before me. I said, “So what!”

Tharna laughed, showing her white, even teeth. “It will cause you heartache after we go back,” she said.

That woman, she knew everything!

Yes, what we talked about would cause me heartache when I woke up at night back at the house; it would turn into a slow poison. But now, as the wind pushed masses of clouds across the sky and caressed the boundless green grass below, words meant nothing. We talked of many other things, but they were all blown away by the wind, leaving not even a shadow on my heart.

All of sudden, Tharna flicked her reins, turned, and galloped off. She was going to relieve herself. Sonam Tserang took that opportunity to gallop up alongside me. He had grown into a big fellow over the years, with a thick neck and a large Adam’s apple. Avoiding my eyes, he said, “I’m going to kill that demon one of these days.” His brown tax collector’s uniform made his face look especially dark and somber. “Rest assured, Young Master, that I’ll kill her for you if she acts the whore again.”

“I’ll kill you if you kill my wife,” I said.

He didn’t reply, since he often didn’t take the master’s words seriously. Sonam Tserang was the dangerous type. The steward and my adviser both told me that someone like him could be valued only by a master like me. I asked them what kind of master that was. Stroking his yellow beard and observing me closely, my adviser nodded, then shook his head. The steward said that Sonam Tserang felt at ease following orders. He also said that a servant needn’t worry about a master’s suspicions about betrayal if the master isn’t a chieftain.

Tharna came riding back.

That day, I seemed to see, however vaguely, a glorious future: I am spurring my horse through the fields, with the others straining to keep up. Startled birds fly up before my horse, and each undulation of the earth produces exquisite scenery.

I received a letter from a Han place called Chongqing that day. It was from my uncle. The purpose of his last visit, in addition to negotiating a dowry for the wife of an impoverished British aristocrat, had been to escort the Panchen Lama on his return to Tibet. But the great lama had passed away on the journey, so Uncle returned to the Han area.

There were two copies of the letter, one in Tibetan, the other in Chinese, but both said the same thing. That way, Uncle said, no one could convey the wrong meaning to me. He knew of my successes at the border and wanted to borrow some silver, now that I had become so wealthy. The Japanese were on the verge of defeat, he said, and everyone must pull together to finish the job, in answer to the Panchen Lama’s prayers. It was critical for everyone to bear down for the final push to crush this cruelest of all demons. He said he’d repay me with gemstones when he returned to India after the war was won. Everything he owned would be mine, once he changed his will, replacing the English lady’s name with mine. He also said he’d be immensely proud, especially for the Maichi family, if his nephew could treat the money as a personal contribution to the country.

I ordered horses prepared to transport silver to Chongqing, the place Uncle mentioned in his letter.

But Adviser Huang said we didn’t have to go to all that trouble. Transporting silver back and forth like that would get in the way of continuing our business, and it would be better to open an account. So that is what we did. Adviser Huang wrote out a note, stamped it with the red seal of our account, and had one of my servants deliver it to the city of Chengdu. My uncle could then withdraw a hundred thousand silver dollars anywhere in China. At least that’s what Adviser Huang told me. Later Uncle wrote to say he had received the money. From then on, our people no longer needed to travel with piles of silver when doing business with the Han people. Likewise, they had only to bring a note from an account we could honor when they came here. Adviser Huang took charge of all our banking affairs.

The historian said this was a momentous event.

“Is anything that happens for the first time momentous?” I asked him.

“Momentous events are momentous on their own terms.”

“What you just said doesn’t sound momentous in my head.”

My historian laughed. He had become more serene over the years, just recording things he observed. When he was free, he liked to sit in the sun and savor a bowl of liquor with a bit of honey added. Once some of the poplar trees we’d planted were tall enough, he moved his chair from the veranda out into the shade.

He was sitting under a tree that day. “Young Master, the days are passing slowly.”

“Yes, they are,” I said. “They’re barely creeping by.”

My lamentation was overheard by the steward, who said, “Young Master, what are you talking about? Time is passing much faster than before. So many unimaginable things have happened. In the past it would have taken at least five hundred years for all of them to happen. Are you aware of that? My dear young master, even five hundred years might not be enough, and here you are, saying that time is passing too slowly.”

The historian agreed with him.

With nothing to say and nothing to do, I went to the inn for a drink.

By then, the innkeeper and I had gotten to know each other pretty well, but I still didn’t know his name. I’d once said to him that our relationship was unlike that of mortal enemies. He said that his family’s enemy was the Maichi chieftain, not the young master who had opened up business on the border, collected taxes in the market, and ran a bank.

“One of these days I’ll be a chieftain.”

He smiled. “Then you’ll be our enemy, but that belongs to the distant future.”

People here liked to place imminent events in the distant future. I asked him if he felt that time was passing faster and faster.

He laughed. “Well, well. Time. The young master is now concerning himself with time.”

He said this so sarcastically that I had no choice but to bathe his face with my liquor. He sat down, lost in thought for a while; he clearly wanted to speak but held back, as if something had gone wrong with his head and prevented him from saying what was on his mind. In the end, he wiped the liquor off his face, and said, “Yes, time is passing faster than before, as if being driven by a whip.”