Auntie Lan and Chun Chi fought constantly. Chun Chi was over-sensitive and demanding, never satisfied with anything Auntie Lan did. Chun Chi felt I was becoming slovenly and ill-disciplined. The house, she said, was full of a strange odour, like mould. Even the garden Auntie Lan lovingly tended was found to have too many thickly-scented osmanthus. Her porcelain teacup, unused for so long, was filled with the same mouldy smell, even after careful washing. All these things fuelled her loud rages. Each time Chun Chi returned, no matter after how long, she expected everything to be exactly as it had been at the moment of her departure.
Auntie Lan endured all this with her naturally mild temperament and affection for me. It was only when it was time for her to leave that she realised how much time had passed, more than ten years. The mewling infant in her bosom had become a young man, a head taller than her, wearing a dark-coloured jacket of her own making.
And so she went, having decided that at her age there was no point living such a difficult life. I was thirteen years old at the time.
"Xiao Xing," she said, "Come with me. She doesn't care about you. Why stay? She spends more than half the year on that boat. Why, at her age? Singing, smiling at those men. Even when she's home, all she does is fiddle with those seashells. She's completely blind, yet knows everything that happens around her. Perhaps she's a demoness."
Even after all that time, Auntie Lan had never understood me. She didn't realise how much I hated her as she said those things about Chun Chi. I felt as if she was grubbing at my relationship with Chun Chi with her dirty, coarse hands, sullying it.
I kept my head down, and helped her arrange her bundle of clothes. Seeing me silent, she went on, "I've been putting aside some money. If we're careful, the two of us can live on that for a while. And I'll be able to find other work. Whatever happens, you won't have to suffer if you're with me."
Still I said nothing. She clutched at a last thread of hope. "Do you remember, when you were nine, she took you to see the flower lanterns? I'd made you a new coat that year, dark blue. All of a sudden she turned good-hearted, said she'd take you on an outing. Do you remember how happy you were? And look what happened. Do you think that was an accident, leaving you there to walk all the way home? She abandoned you. She didn't want you anymore."
I remembered, of course I remembered. But the strange thing was, this memory had never caused me any pain. Quite the opposite, it filled me with a bottomless tenderness, as if I were slowly being enveloped by warm spring rain.
"I've always known that's what happened," I now said, my voice flat.
"And do you know why she did that?"
I shook my head.
"Just before that, I'd spoken to her about you. I said, 'Xiao Xing is becoming more and more handsome. Such deep blue eyes, like a Persian. They say boys grow to be like their mothers. His mother must have been a great beauty.' I meant nothing but good. She'd brought you up all these years with no idea what you looked like, and I pitied her. Yet her face changed to fury. When I asked her what was wrong, she laughed coldly and said — can you guess?"
"What did she say?"
"'Xiao Xing's mother was indeed a great beauty, but a short-lived one. If Xiao Xing truly resembles her, I'm afraid he isn't much longer for this world.' Such poisonous words! For all we know —" She looked steadily at me. "She was the one who caused your mother's death."
Her last words washed over me like demon fire. Auntie Lan's face gleamed, and I no longer recognised her.
"I know," I said slowly, and continued helping her pack. She was stealing some of our antiques, a Ding vase, a Zun goose-neck bottle, and these I carefully wrapped in her clothes. "I'll summon a carriage for you. If you wait any longer, the roads will be too dark."
Auntie Lan looked at me with disappointment. This cold youth, already beginning to sound like Chun Chi, who'd once loved her embraces, her soft bosom and milk-stained clothes. Auntie Lan began to weep, shouting that I didn't know what was good for me, that my conscience had been eaten by dogs, that I was forgetting whose milk had nourished me. Who cooked and cleaned for me? Who waited at the schoolhouse when it rained?
I'd always known such a day would come. Through no fault of her own, she had never understood me. Her words would never change my mind, and served only to erode the affection between us. I've always been a man of few words, and prefer to go about my business in silence, untouched by what other people demand of me. I want to pass through the world like mist, unencumbered.
Auntie Lan finally stopped, exhausted from crying, her voice hoarse. She snatched her bundle and took a step towards the door, then suddenly turned back to say in a low voice, her mouth right against my ear, "What is it you hope to gain from her?"
She smiled craftily and strode away. I watched her go, trying to see her with clarity. Her tightly-bound little feet, her swaying breasts. It might not be long before I forgot what she looked like.
This vulgar wet-nurse. She knew that I preferred fish to pork; that I loved the rain, even though it made me catch cold; that my greatest ambition was to go to sea, to become a sailor. My smallest dislikes, my greatest dreams — she knew all of them. And yet she couldn't see into my attachment to Chun Chi.
With each passing year, I discovered myself to be cool and detached, very like Chun Chi. The people around me didn't inspire feelings of tenderness or warmth. They were a kind of weather: no matter how they changed, they wouldn't affect me. Only Chun Chi was an exception to this.
Auntie Lan's evil guess — that Chun Chi was responsible for my mother's death — left a shadow at the bottom of my heart. As the memory of Auntie Lan faded, the idea became my own. If the days grew too dull or I missed Chun Chi too much, I only had to retrieve this thought — it had the same effect as biting my lip hard, the quickening scent of blood.