Chapter 4

Chapter 4

The Ninth Young Master’s name was Bai Yupu.

He had originally been the third son, but because two elder brothers before him had died young, the whole household called him Bai Jiu.

I heard people say he had been extraordinarily gifted: at nine he passed the scholar’s examination, at thirteen he became a provincial graduate, and he even possessed the ability to remember anything he saw at a glance. Yet for some reason, after that he refused to study any further. Instead, day after day, he gathered friends around him, rode horses, and dallied with courtesans…

After a few years, he had somehow become a wastrel among flowers, the very ancestor of all dandies.

Lady Bai had scolded him and beaten him with a rod, but he still went his own way. That day, because he had made sport of me, his mother punished him by sending him to the ancestral hall for instruction.

I chanted sutras behind the curtain while he knelt outside.

His long, slender neck was bent, like a crane with its neck broken.

When I finished chanting and looked out, he had already pillowed his head on a prayer mat, sleeping dead to the world beneath the lowered brows of the clay idol.

One clay bodhisattva.

One jade bodhisattva.

The two faced each other, reflecting one another’s radiance.

Lady Bai took pity on my loneliness and allowed me to stay for a while.

During the day, I kept to myself and rarely went out. Only at dusk would I go to the small courtyard and recite a passage of the Infinite Life Sutra for her.

Eldest Sister Bai had a lively nature, but she was not at all unpleasant. Whenever her mother listened to the sutra, she would run off to play without even looking back. Once the recitation was over, she would come darting back in and cling to her mother, acting spoiled and wheedling her.

I had thought this was merely her habit.

Until one day, Lady Bai retired early. When I came out of the ancestral hall, I saw a young man hurrying out from the small courtyard opposite.

He wore a black straight robe and a square scholar’s cap. He looked like a steward of the Bai Family.

But he was an unrelated man. How could he enter the inner courtyard?

I stood behind the rockery and saw Eldest Sister Bai follow him out of the courtyard as well. Before they parted, their lips met, like a pair of birds with intertwined necks.

Afterward, the man took advantage of the night and quietly left.

Even though I knew little of worldly affairs, I knew Eldest Sister Bai had overstepped propriety. I had meant to tell Lady Bai directly, but halfway there I felt it would be improper, so I turned back to ask the old nun instead.

The old nun loved quiet, and so she lived alone in another guest room.

But when I entered, I could not find her anywhere. I only heard, amid the drifting dust, a thread-thin singing voice.

“A little nun, just sixteen years old, in the bloom of youth, had her hair shaved off by her master~”

“Each day she burns incense and changes water in the Buddhist hall, and sees young men playing beneath the temple gate~~”

“He casts his eyes at me, and I steal a glance at him!”

Following that tuneless little melody, I found a curled-up figure in the corner.

Seeing her graying hair, the red flower pinned in it, and that strange, self-pitying manner, I hurriedly helped her out. “Venerable, what happened to you?”

“Venerable Jingru!”

No matter how anxiously I called to her, the old nun remained lost in herself. She even tried to run outside while singing.

I hurriedly called two old serving women over to help. Yet the frail old woman seemed to possess endless strength. In one careless moment, she still managed to charge out into the blazing sun.

In front of all the servants, Venerable Jingru stripped off her clothes, baring her chest and breasts, and spun around the courtyard as she sang.

“He and I, I and he~~”

“Between the two of us, such longing~~”

Looking at that shy, bashful expression on her face, I finally understood one thing.

…She had gone mad.