Chapter 11

After the wedding, I seldom returned home.

Nor did I live in the Sheng household.

With Sheng Yi, I moved out.

We lived wantonly.

Sometimes we burned the qin and boiled the crane, drinking and making merry; sometimes we brewed tea on spring water, doing all the elegant things of the world.

But Elder Sister grew ever less willing to heed Mother.

She said, “I live unpleasantly; my sister too. Are you satisfied now?”

Mother pressed her to present herself for the lady official beside the empress.

She did not go.

Instead she had Xie Changyu help her, and with the papers arranged, left the capital alone.

It was heard she became a woman teacher.

Teaching young girls the qin, chess, calligraphy, painting, and the Four Books and Five Classics.

Great households offered her riches to hire her; she would not.

She would only teach those small girls she chanced upon—never before valued, never well reared.

Mother blamed her.

That first Mid-Autumn, she did not return to the capital; at New Year, she did not return either. Blame turned to loss, heartbreak, and regret.

Mother often came to me too.

One daughter famed through the realm, one daughter at her knee—that was her lifelong wish.

But I would not see her either.

Now both wishes were dashed.

She lived lonely and bitter; when we met at a banquet of late, a woman just forty, she was already aged and weathered much.

Sheng Yi seemed a dissolute young lord, yet read no little.

In a spring day he placed third (tanhua) in the palace examination. Scions of great houses oft gained office by grace; to win it by exam was rare. He took up the heir’s seat by right.

And I, fortunate too, entered the palace several times to teach the princess to paint.

I am not one of great gift. At the qin, I play mediocrely; at chess, I lose to others; only in painting do I have some spirit.

Having found what I am good at, I am glad.

Each day it is thus.

Sheng Yi leaves the yamen; I leave the palace.

The young man’s look was rarely serious; in his crimson official robe, his fair face like jade, he offered a hand of clear-knuckled fingers, for me to take into the carriage.

Once the curtain fell, the man showed his true colors.

“I tell you, that Lord Li, truly…” He laughed again, sighed again.

The carriage rolled forward.

The clear stream rushed swift, heedless of the green hills’ hindrance.