A Flower’s Shade Read Free Page A

was at the door waiting for her, and showed her to the heated bed, where they sat together and drank some rice wine. Her mother was standing awkwardly to one side, and now looked rather like she wanted to leave. Naixiang smiled and said, what's the hurry, tell your mother to sit down and have a cup too. Ai'ai had already grasped what was about to happen, and she sat there uneasily, blushing and blanching in turns. Naixiang tried to comfort her, saying, "Don't you worry, this is some medicinal wine I've had mixed especially for you. Just drink this down, then it won't hurt a bit." No man had ever spoken to Ai'ai so softly and gently before, and she could feel his warm breath tickling her throat. Naixiang continued, "After the first few times, you'll start to like it, you'll begin to need it."
    Ai'ai surrendered to the vagaries of fate. She left off being a little village girl, and became instead the youngest of Naixiang's concubines. She was also the final concubine Naixiang would formally marry before his attack. Because she was so young, Naixiang did not show her very much love, but nor would it be right to say he hadn't loved her. In fact, once her novelty had worn off, she fell out of his favour and was largely ignored. She was too young to grasp the joys of physical love, and even had she understood them, he was duty-bound to all his women, and couldn't expend too much energy on an immature little girl like Ai'ai. It was fortunate that, also because of her tender years, she stood completely outside the spats and petty jealousies which the many other women engaged in. Not long after she had so lightly passed from girlhood into young womanhood, the suave and distinguished Naixiang was suddenly stricken and become a vegetable. Before Ai'ai had understood the matter or been able to take it all in, the terrific burden of Naixiang's care had been settled entirely on her shoulders.
    For ten years, she had pushed the wooden wheelchair without a shadow of complaint. She was accustomed to her duties, and used to thinking of them as a fixed part of her destiny. Nonetheless, that early spring a cold front had come from afar and descended quickly upon them. The morning of the old master's sudden death, Ai'ai had gone to the main hall without the slightest premonition of the great events. A magpie had been chattering on the eaves, and Ai'ai felt that her hands were a little cold. So she lifted up her hands, and blew some warmth into them, then rubbed them a little. And just at that moment, a long shriek of horror resounded, coming from somewhere quite nearby.
    Dressed very lightly in rumpled clothes, Peach Blossom rushed out and ran up to Naixiang. "Young master, it's the old master—he's dead!" Peach Blossom cried, badly shaken.
    Naixiang's fixed expression did not change at all. Ai'ai noticed that Peach Blossom was panting so hard that her firm breasts were leaping restlessly about, like a pair of rabbits caught in her unbuttoned clothes. Ai'ai was especially sensitive to women's bodies, and she could not tear her eyes away from the breasts. Peach Blossom grabbed hold of Naixiang by the front of his shirt, and spluttered again:
    "The old master's dead, young master."
    Still Naixiang's fixed expression did not change at all.

2
    A large portrait of the deceased was placed on the mourning altar. It was a charcoal drawing, done from a photograph, hastily executed by an artist of no great skill. It jarred horribly with the solemnity due to a mourning hall. In the portrait, Old Master Zhen looked ecstatic, exceedingly compassionate and endearing. One could hardly look at it without wanting to giggle. They had placed the mourning altar in the Great Hall where guests were generally received, in the northeast corner. An enormous white cloth hid the bier and curtained off the coffin from the rest of the hall. The portrait was hanging from the white cloth.
    As the cold front arrived, sleet began to fall heavily. The snow reached the ground