Chapter 8
Chapter 8
After drying my hair with a smoking basket, I pinned it up again, changed clothes, and drank a large bowl of bitter medicine to ward off a cold. Then, feeling a bit unsteady, I went to the front to look for Feng Niang and Ah Rong. I wondered if what happened earlier had frightened them.
As I approached the main hall of Chunhua Temple, Ah Rong’s soft voice drifted over:
“Which bouquet should I buy to offer to the Buddha? I can’t decide-what do you think, Feng Niang?”
When I entered Chunhua Temple, I had noticed a novice selling flowers under the eaves of the main hall. They still had the mind to pick flowers for offerings, so they probably weren’t too startled by me.
Before Feng Niang could answer, a clear, unfamiliar female voice suddenly cut in:
“This lady, the gardenia on your left will do nicely.”
The rustle of clothing and tinkling of ornaments could be heard. Ah Rong must have turned to look at the speaker and exclaimed in surprise, “Xiao Chun?”
I stopped in my tracks, standing still, and continued listening quietly to what was happening inside the main hall.
“I think you’ve mistaken me for someone else, miss.”
Through the wall, the voice spoke again. Ah Rong seemed to realize her mistake, her tone apologetic: “This lady looks very much like my mistress. Please forgive my rudeness.”
The person laughed: “It’s no matter.”
After a pause, Ah Rong said with some difficulty: “The gardenia you recommended is very fragrant and sweet, but one of the petals has yellowed on the edges. What a pity.”
“These flowers come to Chunhua Temple with the mission of being offerings to the Buddha.”
“This bunch of gardenias, because its petals have yellowed edges, others might not choose it.”
“But if you buy it and offer it before the Buddha, then you will have fulfilled this gardenia’s purpose.”
“It will also be a good karmic connection between you and the gardenia, and you will unintentionally accumulate merit.”
The woman spoke with a smile, persuading Ah Rong. Each sentence seemed to carry Zen meaning, yet also seemed casual.
Ah Rong had a sudden realization; she happily took out some copper coins and bought the gardenias.
After Ah Rong pulled Feng Niang into the main hall to offer the flowers, I slowly stepped out from behind the screen wall. The flower-selling novice seemed to have been given instructions; upon seeing me, he pressed his palms together, said “Amitabha,” and hurried away.
For a moment, under the eaves of Chunhua Temple’s main hall, only I and the unfamiliar woman in light yellow robes remained. Hearing my footsteps, the unfamiliar woman turned her head, revealing her picture-perfect eyebrows and a corner of her crimson lips. Even though I had mentally prepared myself, I was still stunned for an instant. The woman’s skin was as tender as freshly picked wild rice stem, translucent and crystalline under the oil lamps in the main hall, almost see-through. Her features were graceful and elegant, and she carried herself with a gentle, scholarly air. She was a beauty not inferior to the Grand Princess. If not for the fact that her eyebrows and eyes were eighty percent similar to mine, revealing that she was from the Lei Family, I would have risked being beaten to death by the abbot to proposition her in this sacred Buddhist ground again.
“Do you need me to introduce myself?” The woman gazed at me quietly, then suddenly smiled.
No need.
I know you.
My own elder sister, the only legitimate daughter of Chancellor Lei and the First Madam.
Lei Shouxue.
I repeated these three words in my heart, suppressing the faint urge to kill welling up in my chest. Since I don’t know her intentions, it’s best to let her speak first.
“When I was twelve, a servant woman by my mother’s side slipped up, and I learned I had a younger sister.”
Lei Shouxue stood below the steps. She did not turn back, only lifted her head to watch the last drops of rain fall from the roof tiles.
Little sister.
What a laughable form of address.
I stared fixedly at the pale, delicate stretch of neck revealed above Lei Shouxue’s soft yellow collar.
For such a graceful, refined beauty, surely even the sound she made when her neck was snapped would be pleasant to hear.
“Mother regarded you and your concubine mother as taboo. I was young then as well, so I never left the Chancellor’s estate to look for you.”
“After my coming-of-age ceremony, I found out you were at Yujing Tower, so I made time to go there.”
“What I saw was the manager of Yujing Tower hanging you up and beating you.”
That had been the time I fled Yujing Tower with my mother, only to be dragged back because of my lowly registered status.
So Lei Shouxue had been there, watching me be beaten?
An indescribable sense of humiliation surged up in me once more.
And because the person before me stood on the opposite side from me, that shame nearly bent my spine until it broke.
“But what I noticed was not the wounds on your body. It was that your eyes were burning with hatred.”
Lei Shouxue’s skirt swept up in an elegant arc as she turned back to face me.
“I had intended to redeem you and settle you somewhere.”
“But your anger was far too deep, Xiao Chun.”
Her face was filled with regretful pity.
By now the dark clouds had dispersed. Outside the main hall of Chunhua Temple, the puddles on the bluestone slabs reflected the setting sun, shimmering with ripples of light.
I looked quietly at the scene before me, then suddenly let out a caustic laugh.
“Lei Shouxue, you really are a hypocritical bitch.”
She could sit and discuss Zen. She could be serene and detached. All of it was only because she happened to be lucky.
Lucky enough to be born into Chancellor Lei’s estate as a noble young lady.
Lucky enough to crawl out of the lawful wife’s belly and become the legitimate daughter.
That was why she could not understand a courtesan humiliated by fate.
And because she could not understand, she inflicted humiliation upon the humiliated under the name of pity.
I truly wanted to know-if the one sold to Yujing Tower had been her, if the one spreading her legs like a whore had been her…
Would she still be able to smile?
Perhaps she really could.
After all, when one sells smiles at the door, is that not still a kind of smiling?
The flawless smile on Lei Shouxue’s face shattered in an instant at my word “bitch,” like a crystal vase smashed to pieces.
She did not lower herself to trade curses with me. She only looked at me deeply, then flicked her sleeve and left.
Only after Lei Shouxue had been gone for a long while did Ah Rong walk hesitantly to my side and hand me a purse inlaid with pearls.
“Xiao Chun, that was from the lady just now.”
I took the exquisite purse and slowly opened it.
Inside were two thin sheets of paper.
One was an official manumission document, stamped with a vermilion seal. The signature line was blank.
As long as I picked up a brush and wrote my name, I would no longer be counted among registered lowborn courtesans and their like.
The other was the deed to a residence somewhere in Yuhang, Jiangnan. Its signature line was also blank.
A six-courtyard residence right on the edge of West Lake. Its value was far beyond a thousand pieces of gold.
Too late.
If my mother were still alive, perhaps I would have accepted it without the slightest hesitation.
Weary, I closed my eyes for a moment, then walked to the Buddhist shrine in the main hall. With trembling hands, I threw both sheets of paper into the incense burner, where green smoke curled upward.
The vermilion seal on the manumission document slowly curled in the flames.
In the end, it turned into warm ash.