Chapter 2

I wanted to ask why he had appeared on Vermilion Bird Bridge at precisely that moment. Had he known Grandfather and I were coming back, and gone there specially to meet us?

But the more I considered it, the less likely it seemed. He had countless affairs to attend to each day. Something as trivial as our return could hardly concern him. It must have been chance.

Crabapple Lane seemed narrower than before. Peach blossoms knocked down by the rain lay in thick drifts of pink along the roadside.

Of course. In fine weather, this would have been the season for peach blossoms massed like clouds.

His mother liked to pick them, steam them, and dry them for tea in winter.

“Does your mother still dry peach blossoms for tea?” I stepped over a puddle, unsure why the question had suddenly come to me.

In truth, there was no one in the world I liked less than his mother. Truly.

He stopped and turned to look at me.

“Wen Sheng, must you be so unwilling to tolerate her?”

“Haven’t you got that backward? She’s the one who can’t tolerate me.” I lowered my eyes, unwilling to look at him.

It was his mother who could not tolerate me. Grandfather had been forced to take me traveling, and we had stayed away for six years.

He had only brought me home after hearing that Song Jin was engaged. What Song Jin did not understand, his mother understood perfectly. She understood far too well, and that was why she could not tolerate me.

When we arrived, the old gray donkey was already tethered to a gatepost.

It probably would not be admitted through the gate of a fifth-rank official’s house. Father’s new wife came from an aristocratic family and could not bear anything vulgar.

The donkey and I were equally vulgar.

But it did not matter. We were only staying two days. Grandfather said we would go and live at the estate outside the city.

We wanted a little freedom, and neither of us wished to watch Father trying to please both sides.

I followed Song Jin through the courtyard gate. Just inside stood the spirit screen. The old one, carved with an enormous character for good fortune, had long since disappeared. Its replacement bore the Four Gentlemen: plum, orchid, bamboo, and chrysanthemum.

Everything in the courtyard was exquisitely arranged. Even a clump of grass had been placed exactly where it belonged.

As a child, I had known no better. When his mother dug up my mother’s vegetable garden and planted flowers, I ran to Father and asked what was wrong with vegetables. Didn’t rapeseed flower, too? And you could press oil from it to eat.

Father stroked the hair above my forehead and told me flowers were elegant and pretty.

When I grew a little older, I understood. My mother was dead. The new wife Father had married was different from her.

My mother had loved the bustle and warmth of ordinary life. Every day she thought about how to make our lives better.

The new wife was different. She came from a great family and had married beneath her station. She liked refined and elegant things. After she entered our home, not a trace of my mother’s days there remained anywhere except in my own courtyard.

Elegant people did not concern themselves with whether there was enough to eat. They seemed to live in the heavens, feeding on wind and dew, with room in their hearts and eyes for themselves alone.

Yet Father was a fool, determined to marry someone from the heavens.

Later, I would think about it.

That foolishness really did run in the Wen family. Why did we always fall for people who lived so far above us?

We were ordinary mortals, yet still we dared dream of immortals.

Grandfather was already drinking tea in the main hall. It must have been a rest day, for Father was home as well.

Song Jin looked very much like his mother, though her chin was sharper. Her long eyes shimmered, her dark hair rose in cloudlike masses, and every movement could take one’s breath away.