Chapter 7

Dusk had fallen. Pang Liangji still wanted to stay for a serious bout of drinking, but the thought that the countless wedding arrangements would never be finished finally made him reluctantly climb into his sedan chair and head home, surrounded by his steward and servants. Huo Qilang had promised to walk the bridal procession's route beforehand, so she went along too.

Once those noisy, clamorous fellows left, the inn immediately grew quiet. Wei Xun visibly relaxed. Even with peerless martial skills, his ears had no defenses; after half a day of harassment by two chattering fellow disciples, he might have resorted to throwing them out by force if they had stayed any longer.

Baozhu did not think he was the sort to obediently attend someone else's wedding either. Burning with curiosity, she asked, "What enormous favor do you owe that wastrel, exactly?"

Like a lynx with its ears pricked and fur bristling, Wei Xun blinked warily, stood up, and said, "That bronze mirror of yours still hasn't been polished. Didn't we agree to have someone come dress your hair tomorrow? I need to take it out right away..." Before she could react, his blue-clad figure flashed past, fleeing at top speed.

If this man wanted to slip away, all the constables in the city together could not catch him. Left high and dry, Baozhu grew even more suspicious. She turned and seized Thirteenth Son to question him. "You tell me. Why was Pang Liangji expelled from your sect?"

Thirteenth Son waved his hands frantically. "That happened before I joined. My senior brothers and sisters avoid talking about it. I don't know anything." He added a few remarks about how "those who leave the worldly life do not lie," leaving Baozhu unable to grab his ear and force an answer out of him.

Outside, rain began pattering down again. Baozhu went to look in Yang Xingjian's room and found him still lying unconscious on the bed, his condition unchanged. She ate supper with Thirteenth Son and had been about to return to her room to rest when a middle-aged man in a shabby scholar's robe entered the inn to shelter from the rain.

The innkeeper seemed to know him. He poured him a pot of boiling water and said, "It's raining today. There's no business."

The man shook his head miserably, set an old folding fan and a storyteller's block on the table, then took some tea dust from inside his robe and dropped a pinch into the pot.

One look at his attire told Thirteenth Son he was a storyteller. He was delighted at first, but then realized that without customers, the man would not begin his performance. It seemed there would be no free story to hear, and his spirits sank again.

Baozhu asked in puzzlement, "Why does he have a magistrate's block with him? He doesn't look like an official."

Thirteenth Son explained with a smile, "He's a storyteller. That wooden block is a prop he uses while telling stories, not for trying cases."

Hearing this, Baozhu became interested too. She asked him, "What stories can you tell?"

Seeing her distinguished bearing, the storyteller hurriedly put down his teacup. "What would you like to hear, young lady? For martial tales, I know stories from Three Kingdoms, such as 'The Dead Zhuge Liang Frightens the Living Zhongda.' For romantic tales, there are The Story of Yingying, The Story of Li Wa, and The Story of Liu Yi."

Baozhu had Thirteenth Son give him a handful of copper coins. "Pick one of the most popular."

The storyteller judged Baozhu to be at the age when love first stirred in the heart. Thinking a tale of young lovers would please her, he swept his folding fan open and began The Story of Li Wa.

Although storytelling and theatrical performances were common entertainments in the palace, anything presented for the imperial family was generally a lofty, refined tale of history or religion. Even plays involving romantic love between men and women were as elegant and restrained as possible. Folk storytelling had no place in such august halls; to attract common customers with earthy tastes, it could not be so genteel.

The author of The Story of Li Wa was Bai Juyi's younger brother, Bai Xingjian. It centered on the romance between Li Wa, a courtesan in Chang'an, and a young gentleman from Xingyang. The original featured beautiful language and a plot full of twists and turns. Popular adaptations, however, added many explicit episodes from the pleasure quarters, along with erotic verses such as "In jade chambers, on cool bamboo mats beneath mandarin-duck brocade, fragrant sweat melts powder and streams over mountain-shaped pillows," and "Mandarin ducks dance with necks entwined; kingfishers share a cage of pleasure"-words no one would ever dare recite before a princess.

It was Baozhu's first time hearing a story told this way. Understanding only half of it, she could not help feeling her face and ears grow hot, yet the story itself gripped her so tightly that she could not resist listening on.

The storyteller left a hook at the end of each passage, stopping to drink tea and rest, and Baozhu immediately opened her purse with generosity. Autumn rain fell intermittently outside. He had expected no business, but his luck had brought him such a generous customer that, despite having only two listeners, he told the story with renewed enthusiasm. Before they knew it, night had fallen completely.

When independent performers entertained at inns, taverns, and eating houses, the proprietors could take a percentage as a venue fee. Seeing that the storyteller had found business, the innkeeper even went to the expense of lighting an oil lamp for them.

In the dim night, with the flame's shadow flickering, Baozhu was immersed in the twists and turns of the tale when the hazy silhouette of a woman gradually emerged through the mist-laden curtain of rain.

Holding a worn oil-paper umbrella and cradling a pipa, she appeared soundlessly outside the inn. She was tall, with snow-white skin, and her features suggested Xianbei or other foreign ancestry. She wore a faded five-panel skirt, her hair loosely arranged in cicada-wing side locks, with only a single bone hairpin tucked into its black strands. Her attire looked decidedly down-at-heel. Though alluring and graceful, she showed her age around the eyes and brows; she might have been in her thirties, or perhaps her forties.

The woman drifted forward, swaying with every step. She closed her paper umbrella and leaned it against the wall to drain, brushed the raindrops from her clothes, and silently took a chair in a corner. Now and then, like the beauty Xizi clutching her heart, she pressed a hand to her chest and coughed, struggling for breath. Her slender frailty stirred pity.

Hearing the cough, the innkeeper came out to see whether a customer had arrived. But at the sight of this woman, he refused to serve her. Without even giving her a sip of water, he turned and went back inside.

His mouth dry from speaking, the storyteller took a sip of hot tea, glanced toward the woman, and said quietly to Baozhu, "They're pitiful when they grow old. No matter how beautiful they were in their youth, if no one buys their freedom before they age, they can only eke out their remaining lives as wandering prostitutes. Once they fall ill, all they can do is wait to die."

The woman's beauty had already drawn Baozhu's gaze several times. Puzzled by the storyteller's words, she asked, "What's a wandering prostitute?"

The storyteller chuckled, an expression of contempt unwittingly showing on his face. "A woman from the pleasure quarters, like Li Wa. When she gets old and has no fixed home, she wanders the streets taking customers. That's a wandering prostitute."

Baozhu was startled. At palace banquets, government courtesans-female relatives of convicted officials condemned to servitude in the palace-also performed songs and dances, but this was her first time seeing a prostitute from outside. She did not know how others recognized one. Did a beautiful woman walking alone at night carry some special meaning?

Curiosity made her steal a few more looks. The woman glanced back and met her eyes, then rose and walked gracefully over with her pipa in her arms. Sitting opposite Baozhu, she asked with a tender gaze, "Would you like to hear a tune, young lady? I'm quite skilled at the pipa."

Her voice was soft and seductive to the bone, winding through eighteen turns in a single sentence. The last notes trembled sweetly, as though seeking to tickle their way into the deepest recesses of the heart. Even Baozhu blushed for no clear reason. Yet as soon as she finished speaking, the wandering prostitute frowned and covered her mouth with her sleeve to cough softly, her sickly features revealing utter exhaustion.

Seeing someone trying to steal his only customer, the storyteller immediately attempted to drive her away in disgust. "Keep your distance, you consumptive wretch! Mind you don't dirty the chair with your flesh. How is anyone else supposed to sit on it?"

The wandering prostitute took no offense. Smiling, she said, "Don't be so stingy, sir. We're all scraping a living off the streets. Let me have a little of the good fortune too."

Baozhu thought that prostitutes made their living by keeping people company and entertaining them with songs and dances. Hearing the woman offer to play the pipa, she said, "Then play a tune for me."

The wandering prostitute agreed with a smile and took a five-stringed pipa from a waterproof leather bag, cradling it in her arms. The storyteller snorted, set down his folding fan, and began drinking tea, treating this as an intermission.

The wandering prostitute drew her hands from her sleeves. To Baozhu's surprise, she used no plectrum, plucking the strings with her fingers alone. Those weathered hands were a size larger than an ordinary woman's, with blue veins standing out on their backs and ten long, powerful fingers. She had not grown her nails long, yet the notes she coaxed from the strings with her fingertips were even clearer than those produced by a plectrum. It was truly remarkable.

Ever since Emperor Xuanzong's reign, the imperial family had loved music, song, and dance. The finest talents in the realm had all been gathered in the palace, where countless musicians painstakingly honed their craft. Baozhu's mother, Consort Xue, was the greatest master of music in the Great Tang, excelling above all in dance and the pipa. Though Baozhu herself had never studied these arts, she had an exceptionally discerning ear and eye for them.

The wandering prostitute played "Green Waist," a widely popular pipa tune that every player learned, from the palace down to the common folk. Originally composed to accompany women's soft dances, it emphasized lightness and grace. Beneath this woman's fingers, however, it acquired a ringing, powerful rhythm that gave it a distinctive flavor.

As she played, the wandering prostitute spoke with lingering sorrow. "My singing voice used to be excellent too. Unfortunately, a heartless young gentleman attacked me and injured me badly, damaging my lung meridian. Whenever the weather turns gloomy and rainy like this, I cough without stopping. I can no longer sing."

Moved by her pitiful account, Baozhu asked, "Was someone truly so stonehearted that he could bear to strike a woman as frail as you?"

The wandering prostitute replied mournfully, "Yes. I admired that young gentleman and had given him my heart. I meant to test his feelings and laid myself bare before him. Who could have imagined he would wound both my heart and my body? It is unbearable to look back on."

The pipa's melody became tender and anguished, sorrowful in the extreme, as though it had tangled the autumn rain outside into its strings. Baozhu could not help recalling The Story of Li Wa, which she had just heard, and imagining the web of love and resentment between this woman and her cruel lover.

Night had fallen completely. Though an oil lamp burned indoors, the room remained dim. Baozhu had keen eyesight, and as she examined the wandering prostitute's pipa, she noticed that despite its somewhat aged appearance, certain details were unusual.

On an ordinary pipa, the middle of the soundboard where the plectrum struck had a patch of leather three or four inches wide, called the plectrum face or plectrum skin. This patch was often painted with exquisite designs, depicting landscapes of green mountains and clear waters, auspicious Buddhist images, and the like.

The plectrum face of this woman's pipa, however, was painted with a bed of blood-red spider lilies. Among the flowers, two human skeletons embraced, one wearing a woman's gauze skirt and the other a man's silk robe. There was no telling what they were doing.

The headstock and tuning pegs were usually made of red sandalwood or mulberry wood, but these parts of the woman's pipa were made of white bone. Nor did its sinew strings look like the usual pheasant sinew. Baozhu could not tell what animal they had come from; each strand looked starkly white.

The longer Baozhu looked, the stranger it seemed. Suddenly, she remembered something odd: ever since this wandering prostitute had entered, Thirteenth Son, who had been listening intently to the story, had not made another sound. She turned to look at him and was astonished to find the little novice's face and head drenched in cold sweat. With his head bowed, eyes closed, and palms pressed together, he was murmuring a scripture. Listening carefully, she realized it was the demon-banishing Shurangama Mantra.

Once she noticed this, Baozhu was filled with uncertainty and alarm. She turned to examine the wandering prostitute again and saw that the single white bone hairpin among her misty locks and cloudlike coils was carved into a hollow skull. At once, the hairs on the back of her neck rose one by one. The woman suddenly seemed steeped in ghostly menace, from head to toe, inside and out. Even the sound of her pipa felt wrong.

The pipa's notes gradually faded, like a lone wandering soul sobbing softly in the Yellow Springs. When the tune ended, the wandering prostitute raised her head and gazed at Baozhu with tenderness and sorrow. "Young lady," she asked softly, "did my playing please you?"

Her raven-black hair framed her snow-white skin, and her eyes shone with an uncanny green light. Baozhu's hair stood on end with fright. Not knowing how to respond, she panicked and even forgot to invent a lie, stammering out the truth. "It was q-quite good. It's just that the pipa sounds a little muffled, as-as though there were something hidden inside it."

The woman froze, and her expression changed abruptly. Then she smiled chillingly. "You really are rather different."

Before her words had faded, Baozhu felt a cold wind pierce her skin as an icy, murderous presence rushed straight at her.

The strange woman who had appeared silently in the rainy night held an uncanny pipa in her arms, her entire body radiating a cold intent to kill.