Under Heaven

It doesn’t. He stops where he stands. His mouth opens. He stares—it is too upsetting—at the poet on his raised platform. The new arrival’s expression is awed, disbelieving.

He has money to spend, Lotus has signalled it. He’s young, presentable. You might even call this one handsome (unusual, deep-set eyes). Amber wants him to look at her with that dazzled expression, as she unbinds her golden hair and slowly, teasingly, discards silken clothing in a private room and kneels gracefully to attend to him.

She swears, not quietly enough. Two of the older women turn back to glare at her. Amber offers the response that makes the most sense at this particular moment: she sticks out her tongue.

In the teachings of the Path, beliefs to which he’d tried, erratically, to adhere, Tai knew that coincidence, the fortuitous encounter, was to be accepted with composure.

If grim and unpleasant, such moments were properly understood as tasks, lessons one was meant to master. If benevolent, they were gifts to be humbly received.

Sometimes there was no obvious tilt towards one side or other of that balancing, there was simply a moment, an event, that startled in its unexpectedness.

Regarding these, there was a dispute among teachers. Some said the wayfarer’s task was to interpret the meaning of the moment as best he could, and respond appropriately. Others taught that there were moments in a life that did not admit of understanding until long after. At such times, they counselled, one was merely to experience, and strive towards comprehension in the fullness of time.

That Sima Zian, the Banished Immortal, most beloved poet of the empire, should be in the reception hall of the White Phoenix Pleasure House of Chenyao, declaiming one of the poems Tai loved most in the world, felt— immediately—to be one of those moments that could not possibly be grasped.

There was no point even trying. Be in the room, Tai told himself. Be aware of all of this. Gather it.

Before anything else, however, it made sense to close his mouth, which was hanging open like that of a child watching fireworks at the Chrysanthemum Festival.

He took a few cautious steps forward. The women, their silks in many colours, like butterflies or flowers, were exquisitely trained in an expensive house. Perfumed deliciously, they made way for him, lingering close in subtle and less-subtle ways to read how he responded, what he liked.

Girls like these, and the wine they offered, and their flute and pipa music, had been what he’d dreamed about for two years. They almost didn’t matter now.

He moved forward a little more, among other men around the platform. Merchants and soldiers, provincial bureaucrats in their belted gowns. No students, not in a border town, or a house this expensive.

Up close, there was resistance as Tai tried to get nearer to the poet. He saw a willowy girl bend, her hair swept up stylishly, the curves of her perfect breasts showing, to pour for Sima Zian as he paused between verses. He waited for her, smiled, drank off the entire cup. He hesitated, resumed:

I remember my careless maiden time.
I did not understand the world and its ways
Until I wed you, a man of the Great River.
Now on river sands I wait for the wind to change.
And when, as summer begins, the winds are fair
I think: husband, you will soon be here.
Autumn comes, the west wind whistles,
I know you cannot come to me.

Sima Zian paused again, lifted his cup. It was refilled from his other side, another girl, lissome as the first, her dark hair pleasingly disordered, brushing the great man’s shoulder.

He smiled at her and Tai saw—for the first time, so near—the poet’s notorious tiger-eyes, wide-set.

Dangerous, you might even say. Eyes that would know you, and the world. On the other hand …

The poet hiccupped, and then giggled. “Oh, dear,” he said. “I have friends in Xinan … I do still have friends in Xinan … who would be disappointed in me, that this small sampling of a good wine should cause me to lose the thread of my own verse. Will someone …?”

He looked around, optimistically.

Tai heard himself, before he was aware that he was speaking:

But whether you go or come, it is always sorrow,
For when we meet you will be off again too soon.
You’ll make the river ford in how many days?
I dreamt last night I crossed the waves in wind
And joined you and we rode on grey horses
East to where the orchids are on the Immortals’ Isle.
We saw a drake and duck together in green reeds
As if they were painted on a silk-thread screen.

The crowd by the raised platform parted, turning to look at him. Tai moved forward, aware that he wasn’t entirely sober himself, light-headed with what he was doing, overwhelmed to be among this many people after so long alone, all these women. His gaze was met—and held—by tiger-eyes.

He stopped. Had reached the last verse.

Sima Zian smiled. No danger in it at all, only good-natured, inebriated delight.

“That was it!” he exclaimed. “Thank you, friend. And have you left the ending for me?”

Tai bowed, hand in fist; he didn’t trust himself to speak. He had loved the words of this man, and the legend of him, since he’d left childhood behind.

When he straightened, a tall girl in crimson silk attached herself to his side, hip against his, a long arm lightly around his waist, head tilted to rest on his shoulder. He breathed the scent of her, felt a surge of desire, over and above and through all else.

Sima Zian, the Banished Immortal, who had never held a single post in the imperial civil service, never even sat an examination, who had been banished from Xinan (as well as heaven!) three times that Tai knew about, who was reliably reported to have not been entirely sober in decades, who could nonetheless extemporize a poem, write it on the spot with immaculate brushwork, and break your heart, said softly, into the hush:

Take pity upon me now. When I was fifteen years old
My face and body were ripe as a summer peach.
Why did I wed a merchant who travels the Great River?
Water is my grief … my grief is the wind.

There was a further silence. Surely there would always be, Tai thought, a silence after this, everywhere. The hand around his waist lingered. There was musk in her perfume, and ambergris. Both were expensive. This really was, he thought, the best house in Chenyao, if the girls wore such scents.

“Thank you, master,” he said.

Someone had to say it, he thought. Sima Zian didn’t turn his head at first. He lifted a hand, holding the empty cup. The first girl moved beside him and refilled it. The poet drank it off, held it up again. The second