“I came to see the young man, Nio,” Second Son explained. “Mei-Ling wants me to talk to him.”
“Oh.” Her father looked distressed. “I am very sorry. Very sorry.” He bobbed his head again. “Nio is not here.”
“Will he be back soon?”
“He has left. He went away before midday.” The old man shook his head. “He went to the big city. Not coming back.” He looked sadly at his son-in-law. “I think maybe we shall never see him again.”
◦
The red sun hung in the evening sky. Leaning on his ebony stick, old Mr. Jiang stared down the slope from his family’s ancient house, across the great flat sweep of the valley in which the Yellow River ran—almost a mile across—like a huge volcanic flow of gold.
Yellow River. Its waters were clear when it began its journey. But then the river snaked through a region where, for aeons, winds from the Gobi Desert had carried the sandy soil known as loess, depositing it there until a vast orange-brown plateau had formed, through which the river waters churned, emerging as a yellow stream. Here in Henan Province, in the heart of old China, the waters were still yellow, and would remain so for hundreds of miles until they reached the sea.
Four thousand years ago, the legendary Emperor Yu had taught his people how to control the mighty river, dredge it, and irrigate the land. That had been the true beginning of China’s greatness, the old man thought.
Of course, as in all things, vigilance was needed. For the river dropped so much silt that it was creating a new riverbed all the time. This was not obvious to the eye because, with the water’s seasonal rise and fall, it carved new banks on either side. In fact, the current was now higher than the surrounding land. Dredging and maintenance were needed every decade. Indeed, a new dredging was due in a year or two.
Well, that would be after his time, he thought. And he smiled.
—
He was glad that the last evening of his life—at least in this incarnation—should be so beautiful.
His plan was quite simple. He’d wait until after dark, when the household was asleep, before he took the poison. It was hidden in his bedroom, in a little Chinese box that only he knew how to open. The poison was carefully chosen. His death would look natural.
He was going to make things easy for his sister and his son, Shi-Rong.
Fifty feet behind him, the narrow gateway to the family compound—its tiled roof elegantly curved and splayed, in the best Chinese manner—seemed ready to welcome a new ancestral owner to the courtyards it protected. Farther up the hill, the wooden cottages of the village clustered beside the track as it made its way into the ravine, past half a dozen small caves in the hillside—some used as storehouses, others as dwellings—until it reached the steeper path that led, like a series of staircases, up the high ridge to an outcrop where a little Buddhist temple nestled among the trees.
As he turned to look westward at the sun behind the hills, he had only one regret. I wish, he thought, that I could fly. Now, this evening. Just once.
It was more than a thousand miles to the great Tibetan Plateau, that vast rooftop of the world, fringed by the Himalayas, over which the sun seemed to be hovering at this moment. One was nearer to the eternal blue Heaven up there, he supposed, than anywhere on Earth. From those celestial heights came the greatest rivers of Asia: the Ganges, Indus, Irrawaddy, Brahmaputra, and Mekong, all flowing to the south; and flowing eastward, the two mighty rivers of China—the Yangtze, making its stupendous loop down through the valleys and rice fields of southern China, and the Yellow River, moving like a huge serpent across the grain-planted plains of the center and north.
The Tibetan Plateau: the silent land of frozen lakes and glaciers, the endless plain in the sky where the heavens and the waters met, and from which all life descended.
He’d been there once, when he was a young man. He wished he could go there again, and he envied the red sun that could see it every day. He nodded to himself. Tonight, he thought, that plateau, and nothing else, was what he’d keep in his mind’s eye as he sank into the sleep of death.
—
His sister was sitting at a small table. She was grey-haired now, but still beautiful; and since his own wife and daughter had both departed this life, he’d been lucky to have her for company.
On the table, he saw some piles of I Ching sticks. Without looking up at him, she spoke: “I know about the poison.”
He frowned. “The I Ching told you?”
“No. I opened the box.”
“Ah.” He nodded resignedly. She’d always been clever.
Their father had spotted that at once, when she was a little girl. He’d hired a tutor to teach them both to read and write, along with a peasant boy from the village who had shown talent.
The peasant boy was a respected teacher in the city of Zhengzhou nowadays, with a son of his own who’d passed the provincial exams. It was a noble feature of the empire that peasants could rise to the highest office through the education system—if somebody helped them by paying for their studies. By doing so, his father, who’d been a good Buddhist, had no doubt earned much merit.
His sister had been frighteningly quick. If girls had been allowed to take the imperial exams, he thought wryly, she might have done better than me. As it was, she was one of a small group of highly literate women, perhaps only half a dozen in the province, who were held in high regard even by scholars.
“You have been eating almost nothing for a
