Go Ask the River. Evelyn Eaton
be such a golden time.
She was shy and embarrassed at first, but once she got over the discomfort of being stared at and appraised she settled down to enjoy herself. There was no Elder Sister with them to hurt her by malicious asides, just her brothers showing her off to the world. They were watching her smugly, signaling to each other…she hoped it was to each other…behind her carefully turned head. They seemed pleased.
There was a certain excitement in gauging the effect she made. It was a nuisance to have to remember never to look directly at anything one wanted especially to see. She was used to that, an adept at the swift oblique glance when a watcher’s attention went elsewhere. Sometimes she thought women saw more than men, or at least they were more observant of what they saw. They had to work so hard collecting indirect impressions and interpreting snatches of fragments that in the end they “saw” a surprising amount of the whole situation clearly, and were able to reveal it to each other and sometimes to their men. It was a tedious strain, this “polite-looking-downward-vision,” this “veiled-in-the-mist” demeanor, this crazy roundabout…but it was the way things were.
Her brothers were unobservant. When they were little boys they hardly saw anything that she hadn’t seen already. Half the time they missed the significance of what they saw until she pointed it out. They hated that, so often she held her tongue and they missed that hummingbird, that dragonfly, that changing cloud, that mouse. When they missed something she saw, she felt shut out, as though it were she who missed it. She was lonely then, as she was now, in this boat, with them watching her.
Fortunately, though they took their duties seriously, sometimes they forgot her, busy with their own affairs, ogling pretty faces, competing with their friends. She wished they would forget her altogether, but sooner or later they remembered and showed her off to whatever spectators there happened to be. When a lull came in the traffic Hsueh-Tai was struck by an idea. He motioned to the boatman to change course and put in toward the right bank of the river. Then, casually, he asked Hung Tu to sing. She took up her guitar obediently, Hsueh-Ts’an brought out his reed flute and they began to harmonize together. It would have been enjoyable if it had been what it seemed, but they were drifting close, too close, to the landing of a rich man’s house, where a group was gathered on the lawn. Hung Tu felt uncomfortable. She tried to keep it at that, just uncomfortable, but she slid to shy, to ashamed, to miserable, to angry.
The tableau was too obvious. There was some ironic applause, when Hseuh-Ts’an blew a fountain of particularly brilliant trills. He was a fine musician. Perhaps the comment she heard was well meant after all, a tribute to his skill. She wished it so, but she was aware from the looks they were giving her, and the clumsy slowing down of the boatman’s pole, that she was on display to someone they considered important. Even looking rigidly downward she could see robes so close that another step would bring them into the boat beside her. Green robe, white robe, gold robe, which? Or were they all important?
Her throat closed convulsively. She stopped singing. It was all she could manage to go on plucking chords and harmonizing with Hsueh-Ts’an, until at last they drifted beyond that hateful place. They picked up speed and headed back toward midstream, where there were more things to distract people’s attention, where, if she were still on display, it was not so much like the laying out of a peddler’s pack in front of indifferent feet.
Her brothers’ friends in the passing boats stared, but they were young. Those rich robes on the bank were old men’s robes. The way the old men stood was cold, stiff; if they looked at her with any warmth it was only the warmth of a moment’s titillated lust. She did not believe it was that…even their lust was cold, burned-out…
Now the punt scraped the side of a pleasure boat full of shrill-voiced girls who knew her brothers. They waved and called out greetings. Hsueh-Ts’an was pleased. He laughed and waved back, but Hsueh-Tai was annoyed and looked down at her sharply, the way he used when she was a child stepping out of her place. This time it was nothing she had done, just another of the obvious things she was not supposed to notice or to understand.
There was a great exchange of jokes and proposing of toasts, which made her thirsty to overhear. When the pleasure boat at last went on its way, she suggested they unpack the hamper, and they ate the sweetmeats and drank the heady wine. That was better. She had begun to feel weary, discouraged, set apart. The wine brought back her pleasure. It deadened self-consciousness.
Now there was a bustle of clearing the midstream channel and crowding the traffic to both sides of the river. Beating gongs and distant shouting announced the start of the Dragon procession. First came a lacquered guard boat full of soldiers, rowing so fast that it churned up a wash that rocked all the little boats, whirled some around, set others adrift. Across the river from the Hsuehs someone fell in and was fished out swearing, in a flurry of confusion.
Then came the Governor’s longboat, passing slowly, painted green and purple, with a great gold dragon on its prow. Governor Wei Kao sat on a raised dais in his official robes. This was his annual appearance among the people he governed in the Emperor’s name, and he was worth looking at for more than his magnificent clothes, woven for him in Cheng-tu, each year more sumptuous, to encourage the industry of the City of Silk. He was a vigorous, handsome soldier in his prime, an astute administrator, one of the best magistrates in the Empire, it was said. Hung Tu had never seen him, but she felt she knew him well from the things her father quoted and told about him daily. He was part of the Hsueh household.
Everyone stood up in the boats, waving and shouting. Hung Tu stood up too, clutching at Hsueh-Tai’s arm. She forgot to look down as she stared after the Governor, and so she saw clearly, full face and frankly, a young man in the boat beyond theirs looking as frankly at her.
She should have turned her head at once, but something got into her, some excitement from the Governor passing, some wayward ripple from the river. She went on looking at him as boldly as those women in the pleasure boat had looked at her brothers, only this was different. She knew that he knew this was different, however surprised he might be.
Not more surprised than she. It was the best, most honest thing she encountered that day, and for long before it. It restored an essence she had almost lost. She would have liked to tell him in spoken words, “Thank you, for being young and true.”
He smiled, he bowed toward her, he received her thought, this stranger, who was not a stranger though she had never seen him before except in dreams and daydreams, standing, smiling, looking deeply at her, while she looked deeply back.
Barges were passing, with tableaux and pageants on them. She saw none of them. Neither did he. While everyone round them shouted and waved and exclaimed, they stood in silence, exchanging essences.
Hsueh-Tai wheeled round toward her and now she looked away, hastily exclaiming something, she knew not what, about the vanishing procession. She reseated herself on her cushion. Her brothers sat down on theirs, the boatman pushed in his pole, the punt began to move forward, upstream again, then it turned and went downstream, and then upstream again, threading its way through the traffic, as everyone else was doing, until it should be time for the evening fireworks.
Wherever they went he was there, watching her from his little boat, passing, turning, returning, trailing her, sooner or later arriving where she was. Her brothers did not see him at all. He had a face they were used to, or unaware of, a blank face to them, not a rich, important face they would bother to launch her toward. Not even, she must admit, the handsomest face in the world…it was lopsided, there should perhaps be more space between the large eyes, more bridge to the nose… She longed to know his name, but how could she ask? She sat silent. Her brothers forgot her, busy with schemes of their own.
It was the best part of the day. People were friendly, relaxed, a little tipsy, a little tired, pleased with the bets they had placed, the plans they were making, each other. The music was softer, the singing more serious, night was ahead.
Now the last time downstream, through the descending darkness, warm, drowsy, her mind full of sights and sounds, faces seen obliquely, and one face, framed in the fireworks falling over the river, this side, that side, moonlit, shadowed…the prize she brought back with her from the Dragon Festival.
IX