The Terracotta Bride

BOOK: The Terracotta Bride
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The Terracotta Bride

by Zen Cho

http://zencho.org

 

The Terracotta Bride

© Zen Cho 2011

All rights reserved

 

Cover image © Likhain 2015

http://likhain.net

The Terracotta Bride

by Zen Cho

 

Even the housekeeper knew about the terracotta bride before
Siew Tsin did. Siew Tsin only found out when she ran down the stairs one day, a
day like any other, and saw the girl coming in through the main doors in full
bridal gear, her ornamented headdress tinkling.

Siew Tsin crouched on the stairs in her old samfu and felt
the winds of change raise the hairs on the back of her neck. She had ten
seconds before anyone looked at her, ten seconds to rearrange her face so that
nobody would know what she felt.

Their husband Junsheng took the terracotta bride by the
hand and presented her to Siew Tsin with an ironic tilt of the head.

"The whole family has come out to greet you," he
said to the girl. To Siew Tsin he said:

"This is my new wife. Please look after her."

The girl shone out from her extravagant silk robes like a
pearl nestled in a red velvet box. She was beautiful, with skin as smooth as
jade and hair like a lacquered black bowl.

Her eyes were black commas, no whites in them. She was not
human. She had never been alive.

"You must be like sisters to one another," said
their husband.

"What is her name?" said Siew Tsin.

"She can answer questions herself," said
Junsheng. "She has a working brain. She is as intelligent as you and me.
What is your name, my wife?"

"You haven't given me one," said the terracotta
bride. Her voice was throaty and surprisingly deep. She spoke without affect.

Junsheng seemed to like this answer. "Precious, we'll
have to think of a good name for you," he said. The last time Siew Tsin
had seen him so pleased was when he'd been burnt a new car.

 

Siew Tsin had not given much thought to what happened in
the afterlife until the afterlife happened to her. She was young when she died,
and it had been sudden. While running across the road, she had been hit by a
motorcar and dashed against the curb. One moment she was brimming with life,
possessed of ambitions, interests, an affectionate family—the next she
was dead.

Hell came as something of a shock. What education Siew Tsin
had had was from the blue-eyed nuns at her convent school, with their soft
voices and implacable religion. Their lectures, given in warm classrooms on
sunny dozy afternoons, had given her a fluffy idea of the afterlife—all
clouds and angels and loving Fathers.

They had not prepared her for the reality. This was
strangely like life. Hell was hot and full of unkind people in a hurry; there
was far too much red tape; and the bureaucrats were all shockingly corrupt.

It had been a relief to Siew Tsin when she had been scooped
up by a long-dead great-uncle. Fourth Great-Uncle had seemed kind enough,
though he was preoccupied by his children's lack of filial feeling.

"Why don't they burn me more money? Why don't I hear
their prayers?" he said. "Are children's memories so short now? Are
they too poor to afford the hell paper, or too miserly?"

Siew Tsin mumbled, "I don't know Auntie and Uncle very
well. They live up in Alor Setar. We don't see them often."

She was too embarrassed to explain that they were
Christians and did not believe in the rites anymore. They probably thought he
was safe in the Christian heaven, kit out with his own harp and in no need of
cash.

She might as well not have tried so hard to save his
feelings, because the faithless old man went on to sell her. Again, the
procession of events was so fast and illogical that she did not know what was
happening until it had happened. One day she was scuttling across the black
volcanic floors of hell, trying her best to understand the rules of this new
world; the next day she was married off to the richest man in the tenth court
of hell.

The marriage worked out well for Fourth Great-Uncle. He got
enough money from it to buy himself a house in the tenth court and bribe the
officials to turn a blind eye to his continued presence.

The tenth court was the most desirable postcode in hell.
The other courts were taken up by spirits busy in the expiation of their sins,
and the hell officials who facilitated their moral rehabilitation, using
whatever tools were available to them—fire, chains, whips, spears and
hammers for choice. Such work made demons short-tempered and violent in their
integrity. What it did to the spirits did not bear thinking about.

The tenth court was for souls who had worked off all their
sins, or who had not had sins worth speaking of, or who'd simply had a grand
enough funeral—and hence, sufficient hell money—to buy their way
out of the torments. It was a waiting room, where spirits waited for their new
lives to be prepared for them. This meant that it was a considerably more
tranquil place to be dead than every other court of hell. The demons, grown
soft from lack of exercise, were as pleasure-seeking and corrupt as any human
official.

Peace and stability meant the development of a society. The
tenth court was where souls could enjoy the hard-earned fruits of their deaths:
the mansions their descendants had burnt for them, the incense that floated
down from the living world straight into their grateful nostrils. If a spirit
was rich, or powerful, or simply intelligent, he could manage it so he went on
residing in the tenth court for a long time, avoiding the invitation to tea
with Lady Meng that heralded the change to the next life.

Junsheng had been a rich man in life. He had left many
children and grandchildren to tend his grave and burn him gifts year after
year, so that the condition had persisted after death. When Siew Tsin met him
he had been dead for twenty years. This was a long time to have evaded the loss
of self entailed by reincarnation, even taking into account the inefficiency of
hellish bureaucracy.

Fourth Great-Uncle must have meant well. He must have
thought that Junsheng would look after his great niece, give her a better death
than she could otherwise expect. After all, Fourth Great-Uncle had been dead
for a long while when Siew Tsin came to the underworld. In his lifetime women
had had lower expectations. His sister, Siew Tsin's grandmother, had been named
Chiu Dai:
come, little brother
.

Siew Tsin had lived in a more modern time. Her parents had
wanted her to be happy as well as docile. Resignation to unhappiness didn't
come naturally—she had to learn it.

 

Three months after her wedding, Siew Tsin had run away from
Junsheng. She had still had the loved child's belief that it would not be
allowed for anything too bad to happen to her. Her plan had been that she would
tell a god or kindly functionary what had happened to her and they would
somehow restore her to her parents. Perhaps they could arrange for her parents
to be blessed with a child in their old age, like Elizabeth in the Bible. The
child would of course be their dead daughter, come to them again.

She was not a hundred paces from Junsheng's house when she
found the functionary she had been looking for. A fairy from heaven in shining
silk robes, standing discontentedly by the entrance of a grand house. A
fragrance of sunshine and fresh air billowed from her, cutting through the
smell of sulphur and stone. The crowd of spirits and demons that filled the
streets left a wide space around her.

A visitation from the Heavenly Court was so unusual that it
could be nothing but a good omen. Siew Tsin plunged through the crowd towards
the fairy.

When Siew Tsin had explained her situation, she said:

"Can you help me, elder sister? My mother and father
live in Klang. Perhaps it is not on your way to heaven."

The fairy had looked on her with compassion.

"It is not, but that is of no account," she said.
"I will see that you are looked after."

Half an hour later Siew Tsin was bundled into a sedan chair
by four stern hell officials and whisked back to Junsheng's. It appeared the
fairy's understanding of what it meant to be looked after was the same as
Fourth Great-Uncle's.

Junsheng had not been unkind. He had been extremely
definite.

"I am too old and indolent to lecture you," he
said. "But you should remember that I have every right to do so, if I
wish. Considering the unusual circumstances of our marriage, I cannot be said
merely to be your husband. I am your mother and father as well—I have their
authority over you, and you have the same obligation to me as you would have
had to your parents in life.

"I will treat you as well as they themselves could
wish for. In return, you must honour me as you would honour your mother and
father. You are young, and I will forgive this mistake. I will say nothing of
the inconvenience and embarrassment you have occasioned me. If I had beaten you
and thrown you out on the street, or indeed if I had killed you, everyone would
have agreed that I was perfectly within my rights. But I am too old, and too
fond of my comfort, for this kind of violence. Out of consideration for my
feelings, Siew Tsin, you must be a good girl from now on. I cannot countenance
any more silliness."

To be fair to Junsheng, he never cast it up to her again. But
then again, there was nothing to cast up. Siew Tsin was a fast learner.

 

"Does elder sister know?" Siew Tsin said to the
housekeeper one evening when the terracotta bride had gone to bed. The
terracotta woman did not sleep, but Junsheng preferred her to keep up the
pretence of being like the rest of them.

Siew Tsin wondered what she did all night: whether she
turned herself off like a wireless, or whether she simply lay unmoving on the
bed, her black eyes fixed on the ceiling, until it was morning and she was
allowed to get up.

"Mistress Ling'en has not been told," said the
housekeeper.

"What will she think of it?" Siew Tsin said.

The housekeeper did not say,
She will not be as angry as
she was when he married you.
But there was no need to say it. Even Siew
Tsin knew that.

The problem was that Ling'en and Junsheng had once been in
love. This was a long time ago, when they were still alive. Junsheng had taken
concubines in life, of course, but they had not mattered. It was known that he
consulted his wife in everything—in the old days. It had gone sour long
before his second wife had arrived on the scene. Ling'en had been living on her
own for years when Junsheng married Siew Tsin.

This was unusual. It was hard enough to survive in hell
when you were a rich, powerful man with many faithful descendants and the hell
officials' favour. There were so many other dangers to contend
with—demons promoted from other courts, furiously upstanding and eager to
hurry on the cycle of rebirth. The eight thousand terracotta warriors who had
been buried with an emperor, now lost. Left masterless, the warriors roamed the
tenth court, looking for trouble. And worst of all, the dead. In hell, as in
every other world, man was man's greatest enemy.

"A woman needs protection," Fourth Great-Uncle
had said to Siew Tsin when he'd told her he was marrying her off.

Ling'en had not listened to tiresome old men like Siew
Tsin's great-uncle, or to her furious husband. Ling'en lived alone, in a very
nice house her favourite son had burnt for her, and so far none of the
disasters predicted for unprotected women in hell had befallen her.

Because she found Junsheng tedious and avoided visiting, it
took her a while to find out about his second wife. Siew Tsin had been married
for several months when Ling'en came to see her.

Siew Tsin remembered her first glimpse of Ling'en vividly.
A slender woman, shorter than Siew Tsin, graceful as a willow tree, and
youthful-looking despite the grey in her hair. She'd walked into the drawing
room where Junsheng and his new wife sat without waiting for the housekeeper to
announce her, as if it was still her own house.

Junsheng had said, "So, you finally condescend to
visit your husband."

This was when Siew Tsin found out that she was a second
wife. It was the start of an unhallowed tradition of her being the last to know
anything important.

Ling'en had glanced at Siew Tsin, and drawn her eyes away
quickly as if she was not worth being looked at.

"This is what you bought to entertain yourself in my
absence?" she said. "I would have thought you could afford something
more expensive."

"If you had stayed as I had asked, dear wife, I would
have consulted your impeccable taste before I made my decision," said
Junsheng. "Since you were not here, I am afraid we will have to settle for
what my crude judgment told me was appropriate."

"She is young enough," said Ling'en. It was as if
she was talking about an object of dubious value that Junsheng had bought at a
flea market. "But that won't bring you any sons."

"I did not choose her for that," said Junsheng.

"Then why marry her?"

"She is a respectable girl," said Junsheng.
"Her great-uncle was concerned about her welfare, and asked me to offer
her what protection I could give. He is a learned man, and we have a good
relationship."

"You haven't lost your gift for lying," said
Ling'en. "How sordid!—But I suppose men feel differently about this
kind of thing."

BOOK: The Terracotta Bride
10.26Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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