The Best of Electric Velocipede (39 page)

Her words, though, still haunt him.

Don’t you remember what it felt like?

He remembers a boy flying a dragon kite, and laughing at the way the thin aluminium sails flexed against the wind; he remembers cutting the string, and standing on the red hill, watching the kite flying high in the sky—growing smaller and smaller, taking away his sorrows and bad luck. His father had smiled, then, and said this presaged success at the exams, and many happy marriages—but that was before everything changed, became as dead as the wilted plum flowers in the garden . . .

Don’t you remember the life you were promised?

“I don’t,” he whispers, when he wakes up, shivering in the night. “I was never promised anything.”

He wasn’t—not then, not now. He has his life and he manages Husband’s household, and that is all he needs.

It is enough. It has to be.

*

When Fourth Spouse’s seclusion ends, the whole family accompanies her to the Monastery of Cleansing Mercy, to receive the monks’ formal blessing. All, except Liang Pao’s third son, born only one moon ago and still too young to risk the harsh air of outside.

Liang Pao himself has come, hiding the slight quiver of weakness, the slight dizziness that threatens to blur the world around him: the last remnants of a mostly untroubled birth, a night spent in labor before he beheld the wrinkled, crying face of Third Son—and warmth flooded his chest, tightening like a fist around his heart.

He stands in the temple, already missing the familiar touch of the baby nestled against him. His breasts are heavy with milk, longing for Third Son’s lips to close on them; and he wonders how long it will be before he gets back to the nursery.

He holds First Son’s hand, and feels it quiver in his own, feels the boy’s eagerness to leave the staid ceremony and run in the temple’s gardens. An eagerness that was his, once—but he doesn’t remember that.

Before the image of Guan-Yin, bodhisattva of Compassion, Husband and Fourth Spouse kneel, humbly accepting the sutras recited by the saffron-garbed monks. The air is saturated with incense and sub-vocalized prayer chants from the choir. The goddess herself is represented snatching a boy from hungry waves, her eyes directed towards the viewer—her unreadable gaze not unlike that of Fourth Spouse.

The children fidget, and Third Spouse sharply calls them to order. Liang Pao is watching Husband and Fourth Spouse—but he sees nothing untoward until the end of the blessing.

An elderly monk brings a cage containing a pair of
lang
birds, their shimmering wings beating against the metal bars. They attempt to peck the monk’s hands when he reaches inside and withdraws the first one—they struggle and shriek, and at least one finger is bleeding, but the monk is used to it; and with a smile he throws the bird upwards. “Thou shall have a heart of compassion, a heart of filial piety . . . Thou shall use all expedient means to save all living beings,” he intones.

The second bird joins the first; they wheel together in the sky, hesitant at first, but gaining speed as they realise they’re no longer confined. Soon, they’re both lost to sight.

“He who hurts not any living being, he in truth is called a great man . . .”

Husband and Fourth Spouse turn to face the family. Husband is smiling, looking fondly at Fourth Spouse; but she in turn is looking straight at Liang Pao, and her gaze is a reproach.

Don’t you remember the life you were promised?

They walk back to where Liang Pao is standing, side-by-side—the only time in their lives when they will be positioned as equals.

Liang Pao bows, and hands Husband a scroll commemorating the event: two mandarin ducks, holding a lotus blossom and a lotus fruit in their beaks. “May you find bliss and harmony for a thousand cycles.”

Husband smiles, and shakes his head. “No need to be so formal. Walk with us, will you?”

In the gardens, monks watch automated units as they hoe the rough, dry soil of the planet—few things grow on New Zhongguo. From time to time, they unscrew the filter container, and release the underground insects trapped against the grid.

“Hard at work,” Fourth Spouse says, non-committal.

Husband shrugs. “They serve New Zhongguo. As we all do.”

Even wives. Even
caihes
.

Husband’s gaze turns back towards the monastery. The abbot, accompanied by a few of the monks, is making straight for him. “That will be for my donation. I’ll leave you two alone,” he says—and the way he says it makes Liang Pao sure that he’s intended this all along.

He and Fourth Spouse watch Husband start an animated conversation with the abbot, waving his ample sleeves.

“He’s a good man,” Liang Pao says, though he doesn’t know why he says that.

“And I’m his wife.” Fourth Spouse’s tone is lightly ironic. He expects her to talk about leaving, or to mock him once more—but instead she holds out her arm to him, in the prescribed position for a chaperone. “Come,” she says. “Nothing says we have to revolve around him.”

As on most of New Zhongguo, the gardens are sparse: the few fields are devoted to the production of natural grain. Further on, a small fountain breaks the monotony of wheat, its spout of water shaped like a blossoming lotus flower. Monks toil in the fields, supervising the automated harvesters, or carefully trimming the stalks—an atmosphere of reverent industry almost alien to Liang Pao, who cannot remember the last time he did manual work outdoors.

Fourth Spouse’s arm is warm against his skin—and his breath has quickened again. With the pregnancy over, he isn’t as strong as he usually is; and he fights an overwhelming urge to bring her closer to him, and to . . .

No.

“What do you want?” Liang Pao asks, when they’re out of earshot.

Fourth Spouse shrugs. “Some time on my own, I guess,” but he sees that’s not it—and she’s pressing herself closer to him, her grip changing, becoming a caress through the silk.

There’s the same smell in the air as when he first met her—except much, much stronger: flowers and sweat, the faint odor of sugared ginger overlaid with a stronger, more acrid one, and his breasts tightening, hungering for her touch . . .

Spring-scents, he thinks, desperately. That’s all there is to it. Spring-scents.

But he’s reacting, unstoppably—his
yin
-humours just aren’t as efficient now that the pregnancy is over. He’s free of the languor, and something tingles within his womb, spreads to his whole skin, a haze of desire he’s never felt in his life . . .

He wants to . . .

Almost instinctively, he reaches out, tipping her face upwards, bringing those wide, enthralling eyes closer to his own—breathing in the sweet smell of her scent, imagining her skin brushing his, her sweat mingling with his—he’s not thinking, not any more—save of the need burning through him, the ache deep within to be more than what he’s been turned into . . .

And in her moist eyes, too, he sees only the reflection of that need—a fire that sears away prudence and reason and education.

He needs . . .

Her lips part, revealing teeth the color of white jade—they brush his, and the fire arches in him, from breasts to womb, reaches its crux.

“So you’re a man after all,” she whispers, and he doesn’t care, he doesn’t know if she’s right or not, it doesn’t matter.

But, against the wave of desire, something within him is reacting—beating fists against a glass panel, struggling to be heard. He brings her closer to him, for a second kiss, a second brush of fire, frantically seeking the warmth of her hands through her loose sleeves . . .

We used to lie against each other afterwards and whisper sweet nothings on the pillows . . .

And he sees it in her eyes, in the set of her jaw, in the name her lips open on, which isn’t his own. He sees it in her arms and in her stance—the coiled muscles of someone straining to be free, to flee by any means possible.

His breasts ache—heavy with milk, and not with this alien, frightening desire. Gently, he releases her. She watches him, panting, her cheeks flushed.

“I’m not her,” he says, slowly, softly.

“Do you think it matters?”

“Yes,” he says.

He remembers the kite, cut free of its string—and the way it disappeared from sight, taking his sorrows and sadness.

“Of course it does,” he says—but so low he isn’t sure she can hear.

*

He goes to see Husband, afterwards. He finds him ensconced in a chair within the library, watching a multi-sensorial shadow-play to the plaintive music of oboes and the smell of sandalwood.

Husband shifts positions when Liang Pao comes in, surprised. “First Spouse? What is—”

Liang Pao cuts him short—something he wouldn’t have dared do, only a day ago. But desperation makes him brave. “Flowers can’t bloom, if the earth isn’t right.”

“I don’t understand,” Husband says.

Liang Pao kneels, putting his left hand on the floor in front of him, and the right arm against his back—the posture reserved for a supplicant before the Emperor. “I humbly and reverently beg you to let your spouse Qin Daiyu go.”

He stares at the ground, hearing only a swish of robes as Husband comes to tower over him. “I thought you’d talked to her,” Husband says.

Liang Pao doesn’t move. He forces himself not to. “I have.” And, more quickly, before he can remember what he’s doing, “Her place wasn’t with a High Official. Her place isn’t here. Flowers wither if the earth is too shallow, and caged animals only waste away. I beg of you—”

“Enough.” Husband’s voice is curt. “Do you have any idea how much I paid for her, Pao? How many favors I had to ask from High Officials?”

Liang Pao says nothing. There is no answer he can make.

“I rescued her,” Husband says. His voice, too, comes fast, the words tumbling one atop the other, like a children’s game with paper cubes. “I took her inside this house, where she’d be happy. I . . .”

Liang Pao lets Husband’s voice fade into silence before he speaks. “I know,” he says. “And it is not a humble spouse’s place to tell you what to do. But Fourth Spouse is not someone you can cage. She—” He knows he cannot mention the woman—whoever her name is. To Husband, that relationship will only be an abomination.

There is only silence, in the wake of his words—broken by the bursts of music from the shadow-play in the background.

Finally, Husband says, “She’s not happy, is she?”

Liang Pao tilts his head backward, sucking in air through his teeth—signifying, without words, that it’s very difficult. The message is as clear as he can make it, without saying “No” outright.

He hears nothing; only Husband’s slow, steady breath. Even the shadow-play has fallen silent.

“I see,” Husband says. “I will consider this.” Which, coming from him, is a good as an affirmative.

“I humbly thank you,” Liang Pao says. He rises—only to meet Husband’s piercing gaze. He’d throw himself to the ground again, but Husband raises a hand, preventing him from doing so.

“Stay here, Pao. Tell me something.”

“Yes?”

“What about you?”

What about—? He says nothing. He thinks of Husband standing by his side in the examination room, worry etched on his face; and of the sweet smell of lips brushing his, kindling a fire in his womb. He runs his hand against his breast, squeezes and feels the milk seep into the silk of his tunic.

“Not all
lang
birds long for the sky,” he says, finally. Not all birds will see the bars of their cages open; nor do they wish to. It’s enough, sometimes, to be reminded of who you are and what you chose. “My place is here.”

He sees Husband smile—a small, barely visible upturning of the lips, soon hidden. Emotions destroy, he thinks, but he knows it’s not quite true.

Sometimes, like metal, things need to be destroyed—fed through the fire so they can emerge stronger.

Moons later, he receives a package, and a letter traced in a quick, deliberate hand that breathes strength onto the paper. It’s not signed; but he knows who wrote it.

I humbly thank you for everything,
the letter says.
I have the audacity to hope that the following gift is acceptable—in remembrance of our meeting.

Inside is a small, round box engraved with the characters for “dragon” and “phoenix”—the symbols for man and woman. When he opens it, he sees that a miniaturized refrigerant unit occupies most of the inside—and that the small, rectangular sheath at the centre contains a liquid he knows all too well: nitrogen. Within, suspended, is her gift: one of her last eggs, the most precious thing a woman can give to a man.

He sits in his chair for a while, staring at the characters sprawled on the page—Third Son blissfully suckling milk at his breast. From outside come the noises of steel-yarn unfolding in the breeze: First Son, Second Son and Husband flying their kites, challenging each other to go higher and higher.

Liang Pao feels, once more, the tightening in his womb, the alien feeling he associates with her and dares not name.

So you’re a man after all
.

Gently, he sets the box apart—out of his reach.
No
, he thinks, realising that she never really understood him.
I am what I am. I have no regrets. I am
caihe.

Rising, he descends into the courtyard, to help his family cut the strings of sadness and misfortune.