Chapter 2
After we married, Lu Jin did treat me well.
In his spare time, he took me strolling through the streets and guided my wrist as he taught me to paint. When the mood took him, he played his flute, and I danced to the music.
However busy his official duties kept him, he always hurried home before dusk settled.
In those days, I thought my life was like a dream.
Sweet as candied fruit, soft as spring warmth—it held me so completely that I never wanted to wake.
Yet every year on my sister’s birthday, he carried a bouquet of pomegranate blossoms to her house himself.
At first he came back as soon as he delivered them. He was gone no more than two hours.
Later, he stayed for lunch.
Later still, he came home increasingly late.
Only when dusk had deepened and few candles remained alight would he push open the door, the evening breeze still clinging to him.
By the fourth year, it had begun to rankle.
But whenever I showed even the slightest displeasure, he answered with the same indifferent words.
“Once a promise is given, not ten thousand mountains can stand in its way.”
And he told me not to ask again.
What truly stuck in my throat was hearing him call our daughter’s name.
My sister’s given name was Yao, so our daughter was named Lu Yao.
Whenever he called her, Lu Jin would add, “You have an aunt named Yao too. So lovely, so graceful, such a beautiful lady.”
Or he would stroke her hair and say with a smile, “One day my Ah Yao will grow up to be every bit as lovely as your aunt.”
Under his influence, Ah Yao grew more like my sister with each passing day.
She loved pomegranate blossoms, wore dresses in the same colors as my sister’s, and favored the same cakes.
Once, I couldn’t help taking her hand. “You only need to be yourself. You don’t have to copy your aunt in everything.”
Ah Yao tilted her face up, her eyes bright and clear, her voice full of earnest admiration.
“But Father says Aunt is beautiful, and she’s good at music, chess, calligraphy, and painting. I want to be just like her when I grow up.”
A faint unease stirred in me.
Ah Yao had merits of her own. Why did she need to imitate someone else in every way, to live as another person’s shadow?
Every year on Ah Yao’s birthday, my sister sent gifts. Among them there was always a bouquet of pomegranate blossoms.
My daughter adored them, turning them over and over in her hands. She dismissed the peonies I grew as vulgar and said pomegranate blossoms were truly elegant.
In time, receiving gifts was no longer enough. She pestered Lu Jin to help her write thank-you notes.
When she learned to read and write, she began sending my sister letters herself, asking Lu Jin to write any characters she didn’t know.
Little by little, it became a correspondence between Lu Jin and my sister.
Jealousy began to gnaw at me.
Whenever a letter arrived from her, I stood beside them to read it.
Ah Yao accused me of prying into her private affairs. Lu Jin said I was so controlling that he couldn’t breathe.
But why were they allowed to read them while I was not?
He was my husband. She was my daughter. Was I not even entitled to a glance?
Once, Ah Yao poured a pot of hot water over the roots of my peonies.
I had planted and tended them myself for years.
She said she wanted to make room for pomegranate flowers.
I stared at the wilted petals on the ground. Rage rushed to my head, and the words escaped me. “Do you want your aunt to be your mother?”
Before I had finished, Lu Jin happened to come through the door.
His face darkened. He took Ah Yao by the hand and led her away.
As he left, he threw a cold remark over his shoulder. “When did you become so unreasonable, so suspicious of everything?”
After that, he grew steadily more distant.
We sat at the same table without speaking, facing one another across what might have been mountains and rivers.