Chun Chi couldn't be allowed to find out about me watching the fireworks. We had unspoken rules of conduct; she would have loved for me to be as detached as her, unmoved by things others found pleasure in. And of course she wanted me never to acquire friends, the surest way to disrupt a person's solitude. She wished my isolation to be complete. I sensed that she preferred the me who had struggled home alone after being abandoned, my body brimming with life-force, like a weed.
When I realised I had slipped into friendship with Hua Hua, I felt I'd let Chun Chi down. Chun Chi was a tightly-wrapped riddle. Since Auntie Lan's departure, there had been no one to help me unravel it. Now, there was Hua Hua.
Hua Hua was not beautiful, but vivacious. When she smiled, her eyes slanted and the corners of her mouth deepened, which made her prettier. If a girl becomes better-looking when she smiles, then she is unfinished, requiring something outside herself for attractiveness. Because Chun Chi was a complete woman, she remained striking whatever her mood, however melancholy.
When Hua Hua came back into our lives after several years away, she had become elegant, the young-girl awkwardness gone from her face. She told me that a woman with love in her heart will grow more and more beautiful. If she was right, then Chun Chi's heart must have contained a powerful love; longing made her grow beautiful, and then withered her.
11
The next time Master Zhong came, instead of waiting outside for him, Hua Hua stepped gingerly into the courtyard and stood staring at the gorgeous flowers, the trough full of mysterious seashells. After that, whenever I saw MasterZhong arrive, I slipped silently into the courtyard where Hua Hua would surely be, bent over a flower stalk like a greedy little butterfly sipping nectar, or her sleeves rolled up, pale arms plunged into the water, making the sleeping shells rub against one another, producing little whispering noises that, if we shut our eyes and listened, sounded like they were from another world — rumbling and low, the voice of prophecy.
It may have been nothing, but when Hua Hua and I opened our eyes again, everything seemed coloured with magic. Her eyes wide, she asked, "What did you hear?"
I shook my head and smiled as if to say: the secrets of heaven are not to be revealed. Stung, Hua Hua pouted and stared at the shells in silence.
Inside, I was nowhere near as calm as I strove to appear. Seeing Hua Hua, listening to the music of the seashells, had become a monthly ritual.
If Chun Chi was in the main hall, or if the door to the courtyard happened to be open, I made a gesture to the waiting Hua Hua and she stayed away. Hua Hua never met Chun Chi, although she must have longed to — that divine garden, the prophesying shells: these must have made Chun Chi seem altogether supernatural.
One winter, on a snowy day, I saw Hua Hua outside —studiedly casual, but I knew she was longing for me to come to her. Instead, I remained in the comfortably warm room, waiting for Chun Chi. In front of me, on the eight immortals table, was a pot of dragon's well tea brewed with clear spring water. The young tea leaves had been picked in March, their fragrance dizzying. Hua Hua sat on a wooden stump, shivering. She stamped her feet, sang softly to herself, and before her hands went numb managed to write my name in the snow with a twig.
Night came, and Chun Chi remained in her room. I gave in and drank the tea myself. It had become cold and bitter, smelling faintly of decay. I thought I must be the saddest person in the world, unmindful of the girl who, at that moment, was walking home on frozen feet, her only comfort the snowflakes caressing her shoulders.
12
Summer. The cicadas' racket mingled with Hua Hua's sobbing. She stood outside, howling my name, making so much noise that shoals of flowers were shaken off the locust tree. I ran out to see her slumped at the base of the tree, her body shrouded in white petals.
Hua Hua said her Daddy had taken ill after working through the night. His health had been bad for a few years now. Chun Chi wasn't at home, so I followed Hua Hua to see how Master Zhong was. It was borne home to me all of a sudden how important he had become to Chun Chi — a door now slowly closing to her. I ran as fast as I could, but Hua Hua was faster yet, a deer sprinting towards the sun.
Master Zhong's room was furnished with great simplicity, only a wide desk and, pushed into a corner, the couch he was sleeping on. An oil lamp stood on the desk, illuminating the seashells that greeted me like old friends.
I crossed to the bed and bent to see him. He looked as neat as always, unsmirched by illness. All that was left of him was gratitude and concern, as loosely held together as a cloud about to dissolve into rain.
He opened his eyes: a flicker of disappointment that Chun Chi hadn't come, but then he murmured, "Xiao Xing." He grabbed my hand with surprising strength, perhaps all he now possessed. "Take care of her. She's very lonely, you're all she has."
I should have nodded, but precisely because I wanted so much to take care of her, I couldn't admit it, not even to please a dying man. "She doesn't need me. She doesn't need me in the least."
"Then you don't know what she needs." Master Zhong's mild rebuke was filled with hurt. "Do you want her to need you? Will you help search for what she needs?"
He was right, I didn't know what Chun Chi needed. She seemed entirely self-sufficient, as if life had already ended, and only the husk of her body now walked the earth.
"I will."
"Come here."
I sat by the bed, my ear pressed against his soft chin.
"Do you know what Chun Chi does with all those seashells?"
"Fortune-telling?" I remembered Hua Hua's words.
He shook his head. "She's never wanted to know the future. It's only the past she cares about."
"I didn't know that." My heart was beating very fast. Finally, I was approaching Chun Chi's secret.
"She's searching for the most important thing in the world to her."
"What is that?"