The Jade Enchantress. E. Hoffmann Price
she had amassed since the Kwan boys had been interested in women was buried where only Lan-yin knew. The arrangement, having become a tradition, was hallowed, accepted by the villagers as entirely respectable. This, of course, was because of their politely pretending to ignore Lan-yin’s being a polyandrous concubine.
Trying to estimate the effects of Ju-hai’s leaving the village and going to the capital alone to study, and then to repeat the calculation, after taking into account Hsi-feng’s entering the Kwan heir’s life, kept Chen too busy to get more than scraps of what his wife was saying.
And there was another factor which for some while had contributed to Chen’s cogitations: it was an outright nuisance, keeping his concubine in a neighboring village—it was not so much the distance as simply the principle of the thing. He’d gain face if ever he moved his Number Two Lady into the Kwan Village. The house was large enough. The only obstacle was Lan-yin.
Then he realized that she was and had been saying things.
“You splash so much I missed something. What did you say?”
“I said you’re missing the point of everything! Don’t argue with me, shut up and get the facts! Once Ju-hai gets accustomed to a lady, he’ll realize that it takes three of her to equal one of me!”
Chen was about to dispute that estimate, but his Number One Lady interrupted. “Once he’s passed the examinations—”
Chen triumphantly shouted her down. “He can’t even take them for another two or three years.”
That was more than a patient woman could endure. Lan-yin pounced from the bathing room, towel in one hand, fresh garments in the other. “If Ju-hai makes it and gets an official position, we won’t have a chance to get anywhere—the Kwans will gobble up more and more land!”
“They can’t take what we have; and, with that buried silver, we can get a red certificate for uncleared land.”
“What makes you so sure?” she challenged, flipping the towel into a corner and sorting an undergarment from the outer jacket and trousers draped over the crook of her elbow.
They had wrangled so many years that her unusually attractive body didn’t interest him. Whereas the years made haggard wrecks of so many women, there was a significant proportion of ageless ones with timeproof bodies and unblemished chinlines; when these favored ones nudged fifty and more, their smooth skins were finer of texture than any female teen-age barbarian. And Lan-yin was one of these. Farm work had left her legs elegant, without knots. Aside from a few fine, white stretch lines, she was as unblemished as she’d been a good nineteen or twenty years previously.
“What makes me so sure?” Chen echoed. “Just a rough estimate.”
“We could buy twice as much land if you’d not squandered so much on part-time, unwashed village whores! You’re so used to wenches carrying honey buckets to the fields till they’re too tired to wash up, the minute I take a bath you think I’m sleeping with one of the Kwan boys.
“And before I forget it—when you go marketing in Ch’ang-an, I’m going along to make sure you don’t let that Colonel Tsao talk you into something stupid. He was getting impatient, last time he came to see us.”
Lan-yin referred to the retired Colonel Tsao’s talk with them at their farm, some distance from the walled village. To have him come to their home would have been fatally conspicuous.
“I don’t see where we come in on his impatience. We’re not selling property. He ought to know that; he must know by now. He’s after a chunk of Kwan land.”
Lan-yin sighed, praying for patience. “Chen Lao-yeh, before, he finds out that Ju-hai is going to school in Ch’ang-an, you and I are going to let him in on something important, if he gives us a commission. Knowing about the plans for Ju-hai ought to be worth a hundred taels of silver.”
Chen admitted that it would take a lot of sleeping with Ju-hai and Shou-chi to total a hundred ounces. Certainly it was an important sum, but it really led nowhere.
“It will be a lot more than just silver,” Lan-yin persisted. “If Colonel Tsao knows enough about where Ju-hai’s going to school, he can figure things so Ju-hai won’t qualify for the examinations. He—I mean Ju-hai—he is smart, he’s quick-witted, but he’s ignorant about big cities. Get him started drinking and playing around with sing-song girls and gambling—whatever he becomes, he won’t be an official; and if he did make it, Colonel Tsao could get the bureaucrats to transfer him beyond the Great Wall. Once he gets into trouble, Shou-chi will be the Number One favorite. Shou-chi’s a nice youngster, not really dumb, but he’s easy to deal with.”
“Dealing with Old Man Kwan never was easy work,” Chen objected.
“You’re right,” Lan-yin agreed. “But Colonel Tsao knows a lot of generals and civil officials. Suppose the Old Man is nabbed by a conscription officer rounding up another draft of recruits.”
“He’s too old.”
“If Tsao can’t take care of a few military details, then he is too dumb to manage the Kwan lands. He’ll have to have some farmer to help him—a general overseer or steward. You begin to see where we can take a hand—if Ju-hai goes crazy, the way youngsters do when they quit the farm and get among high-stepping city people, and runs up debts. The Old Man will borrow money—”
Chen began to get the point. “And Tsao buys the note? Tai-tai, sometimes I think you’re brighter than I gave you credit for being.”
“Ta jen, I’m not so bright. I’ve just been thinking for months and months…did you see that shaman hobbling about the plaza?”
“With the funniest hat with a crown as high as from my knuckles to my elbow, and not much bigger around than my forearm? And a forked beard? Yes, at the cooked-food stand, he was eating garlic sausages—what about him?”
“Ever since I saw him, I thought maybe I should get some advice. Those shamans give good answers. How much should I pay him?”
“Let him take it out in trade!”
Lan-yin made a mocking face. “You’d have a grand time with his mother. I bet she’s greasier than he is—or your farm girls.”
When, half an hour later, Lan-yin set out for the village inn, she wore a turquoise tunic slit halfway up her thigh and a brocaded jacket, gay with gold. Two jade pins secured her gleaming black hair, and white coral pendants tinkled from her ears. Her makeup, though on the dramatic side, was not glaring; it gave her style.
“Aiieeyah, tai-tai” Chen sounded off, and genuine admiration colored his voice. “If you weren’t such a contentious little bitch, I’d really love you.”
She glanced over her shoulder, gave herself a resounding slap on her silk-shimmering behind. “You don’t know what you’re missing.”
“If only the rest of you were that nice!” he retorted.
He was thinking that, if the disposition of his concubine sequestered in a nearby village could be combined with Lan-yin’s elegant body, he’d have the superior woman.
Lan-yin did not have to inquire at the inn, the Kwan Village information center. By the smoky flame of an oil lamp, she saw the shaman. He was eating pot stickers and gulping hot shao-hsing.
“I don’t know your name,” Lan-yin said, “but they tell me you’re a shaman.”
“Name is Yatu. For once, the dog-turd fools, they told you right.” He plopped a second pot sticker into his mouth. “What’s troubling you?” Yatu tossed off a cup of shao-hsing. “Speak up, woman! Take your thumb out! I’m busy.”
She glanced at the cooked-food man. He said, “I’m too deaf to hear what customers say, and I’m too dumb to understand them if I could hear.”
Lan-yin addressed the Mongol. “Distinguished sir, I need advice. Is this a lucky time for me to speculate in real estate?”