The Terracotta Bride (2 page)

Junsheng did not like this. He liked to think of himself as
an honourable man, a patriarch in the good old-fashioned mould. A man of whom
Confucius would have approved.

"You are being vulgar. But that is what comes of your
unnatural mode of living," he said. "It is no surprise that you have
become coarse from having to fend for yourself in such a world. If you could
bring yourself to behave with some modicum of propriety, you would not have to
struggle. I am not an unreasonable man. I don't think my demands are so
outrageous."

"You wouldn't," sneered Ling'en.

"All I ask is that we treat each other like civilised
beings," said Junsheng with exasperating patience. "We have been
married for so long. I have tried to be a good husband. If you have any
complaint about the way I have treated you and our children, you are welcome to
express it. All I ask is that you do not work out your grudge in this unseemly
way. Feelings are one thing, but think how it makes the family look."

"The family no longer exists," said Ling'en.

"I am trying to be reasonable," said Junsheng.

Ling'en let out what in a less elegant woman would have
been a snort.

"Try instead to be intelligent," she suggested.
"We are dead and things are different. If you understood this, you would
see that I am not coming back no matter how many young girls you marry."

"It was not for that," said Junsheng.

Even Siew Tsin knew this was a stupid thing to say, but
Ling'en had apparently made him too cross to be sensible. Ling'en did not
bother dignifying his remark with a response, but left the house.

She was not any nicer to Siew Tsin when she saw her later.
Their meetings were infrequent, but Ling'en had not cut all ties. Her
relationship with Junsheng impressed on one the dreadful lastingness of
marriage. They still operated as a team. They met to discuss money, strategies
for keeping the hell officials satisfied, and the latest rumours in the tenth
court.

They still argued about Ling'en coming back to live with
Junsheng, but eventually the arguments grew tired, half-hearted on Junsheng's
part. When he realised that marrying Siew Tsin had not insulted Ling'en enough
for her to want to return, he lost most of his interest in his new wife. The
sex stopped, to Siew Tsin's relief. And she, now an unnoticed part of the
household, retreated into herself. Junsheng had a large library of Chinese and
English books. There was Chinese chess to play with any servant who could spare
the time. If she got really bored, a thoughtful descendant had even burnt
Junsheng a piano.

It was a quiet death, but not an objectionable one. Siew
Tsin sank like a stone in the river of quotidian incident, ignoring the scent
of brimstone that gusted in at the windows. She closed her ears to the stories
of the depredations of the terracotta warriors, the machinations of the
spirits, and the intricate bureaucracies of the hell officials. She lived,
dead, unnoticed by her husband, the household, and even by her own self.

Until the terracotta bride came.

Junsheng named her Yonghua, his elegant lady. What Siew
Tsin didn't understand was what function she performed.

"Men have their needs," said the housekeeper. In
the living world she had been paper, crumpled, folded, rolled, and painted into
the form of a woman, burnt as an offering to the revered dead. Here in the
afterlife she gave a convincing impression of being flesh, and of possessing
all the sad wisdom a real old woman would have had.

"Junsheng is not a man who thinks much about the
pleasures of the flesh," said Siew Tsin. Because she had gone to a convent
school when she was alive, she did not wonder aloud about how much pleasure a
terracotta body could yield.

The housekeeper replied, sensing the thought: "You'd
be surprised. With Yonghua in his bed, any man would be interested." It
was also part of her persona to be earthy.

Yonghua was a marvel of engineering, far more advanced than
the Qin-era warriors who looted shops, preyed on spirits, and made death hell
for humans and demons alike. The terracotta warriors were painted to look
human, but Yonghua's creators had coated her in a flexible material that acted
and felt like skin. Her cheek was soft and downy, her eyelashes lush and long.
Her hair stood out from her head and the flesh of her arm sprang back to the
touch, like fresh dough pressed by a thumb.

Her creators had made her the most tempting of women.

"And seeing as they put so many thoughts into her
head," said the housekeeper, "you can be certain they made her for
other things as well."

"Who created her?" said Siew Tsin.

The housekeeper flicked a beady-eyed glance at her. Siew
Tsin had an odd sense that she had been examined and found wanting.

"Dirty-minded men, as they all are," said the
housekeeper, with a lightness that seemed even falser than usual. Siew Tsin
would have questioned her further, but the housekeeper went on:

"These busybody men, one day they will make it so it's
impossible to tell between the truly dead and the never alive. The girl is
forever asking questions. When the servants dress her, it's talk, talk, talk.
When we asked her where she'd got all her questions from, she said, 'I was made
to be capable of learning. A perfect wife must know her husband.' Now isn't
that clever, when she had no mother to teach her?"

"Very clever," murmured Siew Tsin. The last time
she'd had this feeling was when she was still alive and her mother and father
talked about her cousin Ming Yen, who was brilliant at school, played the
guzheng, spoke in a soft voice, took small mouthfuls when she ate, and never
answered back to her parents.

When on a dull afternoon Siew Tsin wandered into the music
room and found Yonghua sitting at the piano, this seemed like an unpleasant
joke played by the gods. Of course Yonghua played the piano. Probably she
played it wonderfully.

Siew Tsin backed out of the room, but Yonghua turned and
saw her.

"Ah! Second sister," said Yonghua. She stood up.
"I am sorry. I have intruded. I should have asked you before touching the
piano."

"No, no," said Siew Tsin. Was it embarrassment
that made Yonghua bow her head? Did she have feelings, or just reactions? The
wild terracotta warriors seemed to be animated only by their own lust and rage,
seemed to pillage on their own account. But Junsheng said they were driven by
pure instinct—that once the enforced bonds of duty and fealty had fallen
away, only the dregs of their creators' desires were left to drive the
machines, unrestrained by human reason.

"It belongs to Junsheng," said Siew Tsin. "I
have no authority over the thing at all."

"But you are the only one who plays it, aren't
you?" said Yonghua. "The paper women told me so. That makes you the
natural master of the instrument."

"Please do not let me interrupt you," Siew Tsin
was mumbling as Yonghua spoke, still hoping to escape.

But Yonghua said, "I do not play. I was looking at it
out of curiosity. I had never seen such a thing before."

She paused. "Will you play it for me? I would like to
hear how it sounds."

"Oh," said Siew Tsin. Worse and worse! "I'm
not sure that I would give you the right impression. I only had a few lessons
when I was a child. I am very inexpert."

"As someone who was alive, you will have a better
understanding of such matters than me," said Yonghua. "I do not know
anything about music or art. Please teach me."

Her directness disarmed Siew Tsin. She sat down and played
the only piece she could manage with any respectability—a minuet by Bach.
Yonghua watched her all the while, her head bent, her forehead creased, as if
she was focusing all her powers on swallowing up the sound.

"That was not very good," said Siew Tsin when she
was done. An idea came to her. "Junsheng has a gramophone in his study.
I'll play you some recordings of decent pianists. That'll give you a better
idea of music."

"Thank you, sister," said Yonghua. There was a
glow in her eyes; they were not so strange now Siew Tsin was used to them.

Siew Tsin could not remember the last time she had pleased
anyone so much. She found she liked it.

When the housekeeper told them Ling'en had come, Siew Tsin
felt an unexpected impulse to hide Yonghua. It was one thing for Ling'en to
make unpleasant insinuations about Siew Tsin. Yonghua, blank and innocent as a
piece of paper, deserved better. She had no sins to work off, that she should
be tormented by restless spirits.

But Siew Tsin could hardly squirrel Yonghua away under the
sofa and pretend she was not there. She closed their book and told the
housekeeper to bring Ling'en in.

Ling'en gave the room her usual quick once-over when she
entered, as if she were casing out the exits. Then she cast Siew Tsin and
Yonghua one of her veiled looks, which were like being stabbed by a knife
emerging from mist.

"What a charming picture," she said. "The
sister-wives studying together. It must delight Junsheng's heart that you get
along so well. What have you been reading?"

Yonghua did not look afraid. Siew Tsin was coming to
realise that she was not only better at being a wife than Siew Tsin, but better
at being a person.

"Second sister is teaching me the poetry of her
country," she said.

It was a peculiarity of Yonghua's that she looked people
straight in the eye. She did not mean it as impoliteness. It was one of the
subtle things that marked her out as inhuman.

"Poetry?" said Ling'en. She laughed. "Did
they write poems where you came from, Siew Tsin? I knew our cousins in the
southern seas were enterprising, but I had no idea they were artistic. I didn't
know you had such an interest in language."

Siew Tsin felt her cheeks warm. It was one of the things
that Ling'en liked to torment her about, her odd accent and the occasional
awkwardnesses that arose in her Mandarin, when she used phrases they had used
in Malaya but nowhere else, or when she translated directly from Malay or
English or another dialect.

"I believe there were Chinese poets in Malaya,"
she said. "But I was teaching Yonghua Malay pantun. She had not heard of
the form before, and asked if I would show her examples."

"Yonghua speaks Malay, does she?" said Ling'en.

"I'm a fast learner," said Yonghua.

"Of course," said Ling'en. "That is how they
would have made you."

Siew Tsin stiffened. In all their days of reading and
playing music, she and Yonghua had not touched upon the subject of her
provenance. It had seemed to Siew Tsin that it would be indelicate to mention
it.

"Junsheng would not have married you, after all,"
said Ling'en, "if you were not the best technology could offer."

"I am that," Yonghua agreed, "of a
certainty."

Siew Tsin could not stop herself from shrinking as Ling'en
came over to them, but Yonghua next to her did not so much as twitch.

Ling'en reached out and took Yonghua's chin between
slender, sharp-tipped fingers. Yonghua's skin would be cool, Siew Tsin knew,
and Ling'en would feel along the line of her jaw, under her finger pads, a
steady pulse, its beat as regular as clockwork.

"What is he playing at?" whispered Ling'en. But
though she spoke about Junsheng, she was looking into Yonghua's eyes. Siew Tsin
did not know what she saw there.

"Getting to know your new little sister?" said
Junsheng's voice at the door. "How nice to have a visit from you, Ling'en.
The whole family under one roof, for once."

"In your dotage you are becoming like a woman who
cannot open her mouth without reproaching her grandchildren for neglect,"
said Ling'en.

She dropped her hand. Yonghua's ink-pool eyes were still
fixed on her, wide and dazzled.

"Hell is not the most interesting place I have lived
either," Ling'en continued. "And old age in death is less rewarding
than old age in life. But surely it is going a little far to start trading in
blasphemy."

"What could she mean?" said Junsheng. He was
smiling with his mouth but not his eyes.

"The thing's an abomination," said Ling'en.

"You are becoming pious in your old age."

"You know I am not generally concerned about appeasing
the gods," said Ling'en. "But I'm not in the habit, either, of
putting them out. It is none of my business. It simply seems odd that you have
spent all these years exhorting me to return for my own safety, only to start
playing with fire yourself."

Junsheng shrugged.

"There's always someone who will overthink these
things," he said. "I am an old man, and I've worked hard for my
pleasures. Don't I deserve some fun at my age?"

"How stupid you must think me," she said.
"You used to pay me more respect, Junsheng. This isn't about
lust—not for sex, anyway. But far be it for me to meddle in affairs not
my own."

"Are you leaving already?" said Junsheng.