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31_days2006-05-25 04:52 pm
incandescens) wrote in 31_days2006-05-25 04:52 pm
[May 25th] [Original] across the River of Stars
Title: across the River of Stars
Day/Theme: May 25th / If God must take, she thought, let him take all...
Series: Original (set in late nineteenth century Shanghai)
Character/Pairing: Original
Rating:G
She remembered the walls of her father's compound, the long cool corridors, the rain on the tired roof. The compradors would come to discuss business with him, and she would be sitting and sewing her sampler in the next room, hearing their voices, waiting for that pause in the conversation where it would be appropriate to send a servant in with tea or wine.
She was the daughter of an English merchant in Shanghai. She knew the walls of her father's compound. Beyond the walls was a different place.
She was aware that her father would eventually choose a rising young business associate of his for her. She would marry this man, he would be her father's heir, and everything would be the same. Armies would rise and fall, would take Shanghai and would leave again. People would live and die. The opium trade would swing from profit to profit.
How Doth the Little Busy Bee, she sewed, and bowed her head.
---
It had been during a visit to the theatre that she had met Wen Shi. Her father had stepped out of the box to meet with associates of his -- criminals, of course, thieves and thugs and drug-runners and protection agents and all the people she was not supposed to know existed. She sat in the box with her hands folded and watched the people below, the closed curtains of the stage.
"Do I disturb you?" a woman's voice said from behind her.
She turned -- gracefully, always gracefully -- to see a Chinese woman standing there. She was dressed in proper native clothing rather than a Western dress, silk of a shade of old yellow that made her fingers itch to touch it. Her hair was pinned back with jade hairpins, and she moved with perfect ease on her tiny bound feet.
"Not at all," she replied politely. "I beg your pardon; I am afraid that we have not been introduced."
"My name is Wen Shi. May I join you?"
"Of course."
Wen Shi took the seat that her father had been occupying. Her nose wrinkled very slightly at the smell of sweat and tobacco. "Please forgive this intrusion," she said, her English perfect. "I understand that you enjoy embroidery."
"I am only an amateur, and deeply unskilled." The words came without thinking, no more than proper behaviour.
Wen Shi smiled. "I also. But since the men of our families are talking in private, perhaps we may do the same?"
It would have been unthinkable for a gentlewoman to make a guest feel unwelcome. And beside, she was not curious about -- that side of things. She merely wished to discuss her visitor's silk gown.
"Of course," she agreed.
---
"I admit that I would not normally have spoken to you," Wen Shi said, months later, "but it would have been profoundly discourteous simply to walk out again as though you were not there. Certain things are expected of those of my family. Better yet, we expect them of ourselves."
---
Her father had no objection to Wen Shi visiting. Her father did not even notice it. Her father was preoccupied with a man's business and a man's affairs.
She and Wen Shi compared silks and sewed together.
Wen Shi took her out to the market -- their escort, a young man whom Wen Shi described vaguely as a family connection, glowered at her for a moment, but lowered his eyes again when Wen Shin glanced at him, and was utterly polite for the rest of the day. He too spoke good English.
Obedience Is Owed, Respect Is Earned, Loyalty Is Given, she sewed.
---
"I have so little to offer you," she said one day as they shared some tea which Wen Shi had brought. "You are a scholar and I am only an ignorant young woman. You are a lady of position and power, while I am an untried daughter."
Wen Shi smiled at her kindly. "My dear, only a fool blames someone for missing opportunities that they have never had. Your language improves, and your learning with it. Your embroidery is beautiful. Your manners have never been less than perfect. I wish that I could have known your mother."
"So do I," she said.
She never had.
"Console yourself," Wen Shi suggested. "I am pleased by your company. And -- if you will forgive me for saying so -- you are a beautiful young woman."
She blushed.
---
That night she heard the rain shattering itself against her shutters, and Wen Shi's voice calling to her from the garden outside. She went barefoot through the house, cotton gown drawn close against her in the hectic air, the fabric whipping around her legs in the gusts of wind.
The garden was torn by the rain and illuminated by the lightning. The trees bowed down their heads and the ornamental pond thrashed and shuddered with each drop of water that struck it.
Wen Shi stood there without a single hair disarrayed, without a single fold of her clothing imperfect. Her robes trailed down around her feet and into the water of the pond, silk gleaming in the thunderlight, and her jade hairpins flashed like stars. Her hands were folded, long nails intertwined, and her dark smile was reflected in her eyes.
She went to Wen Shi and knelt in front of her until she was raised into the other woman's embrace. Through the silk robes, Wen Shi's flesh was as cool as jade.
"It doesn't matter," Wen Shi said gently, and kissed her.
---
Three months later, as they sat together over their embroidery, she said to Wen Shi, "I am with child."
"I know," Wen Shi said.
"This seems -- not possible."
"Apart nothing is born; together a child is engendered."
She put aside confusion. "What am I to do?"
"Have no fear," Wen Shi answered her calmly. "This has happened before. I shall see to it that all things are managed."
"But my father --"
"You will not be required to transgress those bonds of duty. We shall find a way."
Beneath her fingers, a dragon curved above a phoenix on the silk.
---
For five days, Wen Shi did not come. On the sixth day, the sullen young man who had escorted them to the market came to the door and asked to see her.
Her father was out (and truly, such things did not matter to her as once they had done) and so she admitted him and asked how she might be of assistance.
He bowed politely. "That person with whom we are both acquainted has been required to travel elsewhere. In her absence, I am to be of any assistance that you may require."
"Elsewhere?" she asked, surprised at the calmness of her voice.
"The name of the place would have no meaning to you." He bowed again.
"I cannot leave my father," she said quickly. "He does not know, yet -- that is, I will find a way to tell him, and I know that my conduct has already been unfilial," Wen Shi's vocabulary came to her, "but this I cannot do."
He hesitated, then drew a business card from his sleeve and offered it to her. There was no name on it; only an address. "Should you require assistance," he said, "come here."
That evening, she embroidered a carp that jumped upriver, its tail on fire, gold spreading upwards round it.
---
Her father kept her in the compound, inside the house, and ordered her to keep to her room.
Out of the window she could see the garden. It was winter. Snow lay on the branches and ice locked the pool.
Outside her bedroom door, she could hear him talking to the doctor that he had summoned. He did not even bother to lower his voice. Everything was going to be swept under the carpet, and her child with it.
He had taken away her embroidery silks but left her sampler.
Her hands lay idle in her lap as she looked out of the window.
---
Once there had been a time when she would not have escaped from her father's house and walked alone through the streets of Shanghai, but that had been before Wen Shi.
I have always been the most respectable of daughters, my dear, except when I am not.
Once there had been a time when she would not have knocked on a strange man's door and asked him for the help which he had promised, but that had been before Wen Shi.
If I had seen you as a child, my dear, I would have waited by your garden wall until you had grown, and then sent you a poem together with a flowering branch.
There was before Wen Shi, and now there was after Wen Shi, and she was cold, and --
I would have sought you across the River of Stars.
The man's voice. "I will see that the child is cared for, madam. You have my word."
I will find you.
"Is she there?" she whispered.
"No." His voice was flat and pained. "She cannot come."
"Tell her that I am sorry that I could not wait," she whispered, and shut her eyes.
---
(http://community.livejournal.com/31_days/418355.html is another part of this story.)
Day/Theme: May 25th / If God must take, she thought, let him take all...
Series: Original (set in late nineteenth century Shanghai)
Character/Pairing: Original
Rating:G
She remembered the walls of her father's compound, the long cool corridors, the rain on the tired roof. The compradors would come to discuss business with him, and she would be sitting and sewing her sampler in the next room, hearing their voices, waiting for that pause in the conversation where it would be appropriate to send a servant in with tea or wine.
She was the daughter of an English merchant in Shanghai. She knew the walls of her father's compound. Beyond the walls was a different place.
She was aware that her father would eventually choose a rising young business associate of his for her. She would marry this man, he would be her father's heir, and everything would be the same. Armies would rise and fall, would take Shanghai and would leave again. People would live and die. The opium trade would swing from profit to profit.
How Doth the Little Busy Bee, she sewed, and bowed her head.
---
It had been during a visit to the theatre that she had met Wen Shi. Her father had stepped out of the box to meet with associates of his -- criminals, of course, thieves and thugs and drug-runners and protection agents and all the people she was not supposed to know existed. She sat in the box with her hands folded and watched the people below, the closed curtains of the stage.
"Do I disturb you?" a woman's voice said from behind her.
She turned -- gracefully, always gracefully -- to see a Chinese woman standing there. She was dressed in proper native clothing rather than a Western dress, silk of a shade of old yellow that made her fingers itch to touch it. Her hair was pinned back with jade hairpins, and she moved with perfect ease on her tiny bound feet.
"Not at all," she replied politely. "I beg your pardon; I am afraid that we have not been introduced."
"My name is Wen Shi. May I join you?"
"Of course."
Wen Shi took the seat that her father had been occupying. Her nose wrinkled very slightly at the smell of sweat and tobacco. "Please forgive this intrusion," she said, her English perfect. "I understand that you enjoy embroidery."
"I am only an amateur, and deeply unskilled." The words came without thinking, no more than proper behaviour.
Wen Shi smiled. "I also. But since the men of our families are talking in private, perhaps we may do the same?"
It would have been unthinkable for a gentlewoman to make a guest feel unwelcome. And beside, she was not curious about -- that side of things. She merely wished to discuss her visitor's silk gown.
"Of course," she agreed.
---
"I admit that I would not normally have spoken to you," Wen Shi said, months later, "but it would have been profoundly discourteous simply to walk out again as though you were not there. Certain things are expected of those of my family. Better yet, we expect them of ourselves."
---
Her father had no objection to Wen Shi visiting. Her father did not even notice it. Her father was preoccupied with a man's business and a man's affairs.
She and Wen Shi compared silks and sewed together.
Wen Shi took her out to the market -- their escort, a young man whom Wen Shi described vaguely as a family connection, glowered at her for a moment, but lowered his eyes again when Wen Shin glanced at him, and was utterly polite for the rest of the day. He too spoke good English.
Obedience Is Owed, Respect Is Earned, Loyalty Is Given, she sewed.
---
"I have so little to offer you," she said one day as they shared some tea which Wen Shi had brought. "You are a scholar and I am only an ignorant young woman. You are a lady of position and power, while I am an untried daughter."
Wen Shi smiled at her kindly. "My dear, only a fool blames someone for missing opportunities that they have never had. Your language improves, and your learning with it. Your embroidery is beautiful. Your manners have never been less than perfect. I wish that I could have known your mother."
"So do I," she said.
She never had.
"Console yourself," Wen Shi suggested. "I am pleased by your company. And -- if you will forgive me for saying so -- you are a beautiful young woman."
She blushed.
---
That night she heard the rain shattering itself against her shutters, and Wen Shi's voice calling to her from the garden outside. She went barefoot through the house, cotton gown drawn close against her in the hectic air, the fabric whipping around her legs in the gusts of wind.
The garden was torn by the rain and illuminated by the lightning. The trees bowed down their heads and the ornamental pond thrashed and shuddered with each drop of water that struck it.
Wen Shi stood there without a single hair disarrayed, without a single fold of her clothing imperfect. Her robes trailed down around her feet and into the water of the pond, silk gleaming in the thunderlight, and her jade hairpins flashed like stars. Her hands were folded, long nails intertwined, and her dark smile was reflected in her eyes.
She went to Wen Shi and knelt in front of her until she was raised into the other woman's embrace. Through the silk robes, Wen Shi's flesh was as cool as jade.
"It doesn't matter," Wen Shi said gently, and kissed her.
---
Three months later, as they sat together over their embroidery, she said to Wen Shi, "I am with child."
"I know," Wen Shi said.
"This seems -- not possible."
"Apart nothing is born; together a child is engendered."
She put aside confusion. "What am I to do?"
"Have no fear," Wen Shi answered her calmly. "This has happened before. I shall see to it that all things are managed."
"But my father --"
"You will not be required to transgress those bonds of duty. We shall find a way."
Beneath her fingers, a dragon curved above a phoenix on the silk.
---
For five days, Wen Shi did not come. On the sixth day, the sullen young man who had escorted them to the market came to the door and asked to see her.
Her father was out (and truly, such things did not matter to her as once they had done) and so she admitted him and asked how she might be of assistance.
He bowed politely. "That person with whom we are both acquainted has been required to travel elsewhere. In her absence, I am to be of any assistance that you may require."
"Elsewhere?" she asked, surprised at the calmness of her voice.
"The name of the place would have no meaning to you." He bowed again.
"I cannot leave my father," she said quickly. "He does not know, yet -- that is, I will find a way to tell him, and I know that my conduct has already been unfilial," Wen Shi's vocabulary came to her, "but this I cannot do."
He hesitated, then drew a business card from his sleeve and offered it to her. There was no name on it; only an address. "Should you require assistance," he said, "come here."
That evening, she embroidered a carp that jumped upriver, its tail on fire, gold spreading upwards round it.
---
Her father kept her in the compound, inside the house, and ordered her to keep to her room.
Out of the window she could see the garden. It was winter. Snow lay on the branches and ice locked the pool.
Outside her bedroom door, she could hear him talking to the doctor that he had summoned. He did not even bother to lower his voice. Everything was going to be swept under the carpet, and her child with it.
He had taken away her embroidery silks but left her sampler.
Her hands lay idle in her lap as she looked out of the window.
---
Once there had been a time when she would not have escaped from her father's house and walked alone through the streets of Shanghai, but that had been before Wen Shi.
I have always been the most respectable of daughters, my dear, except when I am not.
Once there had been a time when she would not have knocked on a strange man's door and asked him for the help which he had promised, but that had been before Wen Shi.
If I had seen you as a child, my dear, I would have waited by your garden wall until you had grown, and then sent you a poem together with a flowering branch.
There was before Wen Shi, and now there was after Wen Shi, and she was cold, and --
I would have sought you across the River of Stars.
The man's voice. "I will see that the child is cared for, madam. You have my word."
I will find you.
"Is she there?" she whispered.
"No." His voice was flat and pained. "She cannot come."
"Tell her that I am sorry that I could not wait," she whispered, and shut her eyes.
---
(http://community.livejournal.com/31_days/418355.html is another part of this story.)