The days were dull; put nicely, of course, they were leisurely. In that stretch of rainy weather he played five-in-a-row with the girl, practiced his brush calligraphy now and then, and read old books. As entertainment they could not compare with modern novels, but he had always been a man who could endure monotony. Having come to ancient times, he could spend half a day over a book with no punctuation in it, working out the meaning word by word and sentence by sentence, and it did not strike him as any particular torment.
Of course, over those few months there were plenty of other messes as well.
A new son-in-law had entered the house—and a live-in one at that. In this era such a man had no standing to speak of, and the Su family's situation was in fact rather complicated. The real authority in the Su family now was Su Tan'er's grandfather, still living; ordinary people called him the Old Master.
The Old Master had three sons of his own, dividing the family into the first, second, and third branches. The branch that held power to the outside world was the first, that is, Su Tan'er's father, Su Boyong, and Su Boyong had only one daughter, Su Tan'er.
As it happened, Su Tan'er was quite capable in business, and she simply overshadowed the male offspring of the other two branches—which was the chief cause of all this tangled feeling.
The men of those two branches had always hoped that Su Tan'er would one day marry out and become water poured out of the door, leaving them a chance to inherit the Su family in the future. Now a live-in son-in-law had arrived and dashed their hopes.
Meeting him day to day, even if they restrained themselves from open mockery, a dirty look was the least he could expect.
Beyond the three branches of the main line, Old Master Su had brothers and sisters of his own, and the Su clan had long since branched out and spread, and there was nothing wrong with that either. So living at the Su house was perfectly legitimate, in name and in fact.
As for leaving—with not a single acquaintance to his name at present, that was not worth thinking about. Even in modern times a man needed decent connections to live well, and in ancient times it was all the more so.
Though he had once built a commercial empire of that scale, he was not about to imagine that a few taels of silver would buy him the run of the world here. In any case, the Su family was for the moment the best harbor he had.
The rain fell for several days straight, and he stayed indoors for those days too. Now and then he would see the three of them—mistress and maids—hurrying out under oil-paper umbrellas, and later see their figures coming back through the rain.
Corridors and courtyards, towers and pavilions, gardens and terraces; the fine drizzle pattered down and washed the white stone and grey tile to an uncommon clarity. They would come across from that side, in skirts of lake green, or white, or pale red.
The ladies of this age truly had the air of ladies, unlike the packaged women of modern times, who no matter how they played the part always carried a whiff of the kitchen or of coin. Only looking at this did he feel that everything was like a painting in ink and water.
They would hurry back from outside, duck under the dripping eaves, pat the damp from their clothes by the stairs, and then go up…
Toward dusk, lamps began to come alight one by one among the long spread of courtyards, halos of deep red and dark red, some fixed, some drifting—at night it had exactly the feel of an old, deep mansion of ancient times.
Of course—it was an old, deep mansion of ancient times.
Five-in-a-row was easy to pick up, and not hard to master either. Xiao Chan learned it quickly and became a grandmaster; in the days that followed, whenever Ning Yi played her, he lost far more than he won. The pastime spread to the little building opposite at remarkable speed.
Three evenings later, Ning Yi lit an oil lamp to read; Xiao Chan came in several times and only left once she was sure he had no orders for her. When Ning Yi closed his book and stepped out onto the walkway, he saw below, in the courtyard corridor, the girl carrying a Go board toward the building opposite.
Then she went into a ground-floor room there with Xing'er and Juan'er; the lamps came on, and he could see the three of them playing inside, their silhouettes now and then gesturing and exclaiming in delight. The girl Xiao Chan was probably chattering away, teaching her two sisters how it worked. He could not help but smile.
The heavy rain lasted several days before it stopped. He had told Xiao Chan that he had better not go back to the Qinhuai River to watch Go, but that had of course been a joke. Sure enough, when he went this time, the old man surnamed Qin who set up the board noticed him and greeted him.
Before long the old man finished a game with his friend and beckoned with a smile to Ning Yi, who had been watching from the side. First he introduced him to the friend he had been playing, and then naturally Ning Yi and the man greeted each other.
Once the basic courtesies were done, the old man had him say a few words about the game just played.
Nothing too serious, but after every game, if there had been a brilliant move, players were bound to review it or show it off to each other—the equivalent of saying a few lines afterward like "if I hadn't done that, I wouldn't have lost…"
Since the old man had invited him to join in, he was plainly acknowledging Ning Yi's level at Go, and then he made his invitation.
"Is Master Ning interested in another game?"
Ning Yi smiled and nodded in agreement, and as Ning Yi cleared the stones, the old man spoke with a smile.
"Shut in by the rain these days, this old man recalled that game with a few friends. Master Ning had a great many brilliant moves; they give a man much to think about. So this old man has been itching for days. Today the rain stopped and I came out, and sure enough, you came, ha ha…"
Though that day he had rather felt Ning Yi's way of playing to be less than "gentlemanly," he had not taken it much to heart. As a player, though, suddenly encountering such a novel style, the longer the time passed, the more he turned it over in his mind and worked it through, the more it began to nag at him. So they chatted and played a game, and the old man lost again. Ning Yi worked through a few positions with him, they played one more game, and he went home only when the sky grew late.
The next day he came again, and before long the question of his future "employment" was settled at last.
On the first day of the seventh month the whole family ate together, and Old Master Su asked after Ning Yi's recovery. Then he brought up the fact that a teacher at the family academy would soon be leaving on a long journey, and asked whether Ning Yi would be willing to go teach there.
The old man's manner was kindly, but given his position in the household, once the words were out the matter was basically decided. Ning Yi had already braced himself for it and naturally nodded in agreement.
The Old Master then called in Su Zhongkan of the second branch, who managed the family's academy, and told him to make the arrangements once the previous teacher had left.
There was still some time before that teacher left. His main way of killing time was still to go play Go; the rest was reading, practicing calligraphy, and playing five-in-a-row with Xiao Chan. Another month and more passed in this fashion. His relations with the Su family had not developed much, but he had grown friendly with a number of people on the streets along the Qinhuai River.
The street was pleasant enough, shaded by green trees, but it sat a little off the beaten track and had no large shops. Apart from the tea stall beside it, which was more or less permanent, a few peddlers came in the morning selling breakfast or vegetables, and the houses around were sparse. Some of the houses built along the river thrust one end out over the water like the stilt houses on the bank, and now and then you would see someone go down to the river to wash clothes or draw water.
The old man surnamed Qin seemed comfortably off—a learned, broad-minded scholar who had seen a great deal. People said the scholars of ancient times were pedantic, but this old man was not like that at all. He never spouted classical tags, nor was he forever quoting the sages. In his talk and in his way of seeing things he knew how to bend, yet if you chewed on it closely, the core never left the way of Confucius and Mencius. That was what a man who truly understood Confucius and Mencius was like.
Strip away the outer garment that the study of Confucius and Mencius had worn since it was altered to serve rulers, and the core was still the wisdom about living that the ancients had summed up; on the philosophical level, a great deal of it holds true anywhere in the world.
Ning Yi and the old man could talk together, and in idle chat he did not have to be too guarded. The old man had probably been an official once; now that he was old, he came out every day, bored, and set up his Go board. His house was nearby.
He had a wife in her fifties, and also a pretty concubine of about thirty who would occasionally bring out his lunch; Ning Yi had seen her twice.
The old man had his regular Go partners too, mostly learned old men, some well off and some who looked as if they hadn't two coins to rub together. At first Ning Yi mostly sat to one side and watched; later he gradually came to be able to join in and say a few words when they reviewed a game.
Naturally there were those who stood on their dignity and criticized what a youngster said—an old man surnamed Dong, for instance, had faulted his unscrupulous little tricks. The man was arrogant, and Ning Yi could not be bothered with him; arguing over principles with that kind of old man was the most pointless thing in the world.
Sitting by the tea stall every day, he naturally had to eat and drink something, and he grew friendly with the tea stall owner's family. Xiao Chan, bored, would sometimes sit off to one side chattering with the owner's daughter.
For a while at first, so it was said, the owner's daughter had shyly asked around about Ning Yi's background, and only showed her disappointment once she learned that Ning Yi was the Su family's live-in son-in-law.
Because it looked as though Ning Yi were a young gentleman from a well-off family—the proof being that he could walk about with a maid in tow every day—and the fact that he could talk with Old Qin and hold a conversation, occasionally saying things other people could not follow, proved that he was learned.
If she could marry him… what a pity he was a live-in son-in-law.
Talk during their games was at first carried on, naturally, in a harmonious and friendly atmosphere; after two weeks they counted as acquainted. The old man might find some casual remark of Ning Yi's thought-provoking, but of course there were also times when he found it heterodox—that was the difference in customs. Ning Yi did not stand on trifles, and the two of them would discuss matters as they played; after a month they began to speak seriously of the question of his status.
Ning Yi had never made much secret of his status; it had come up before, and the old man had only said "Oh" and nodded. In those days he had merely been a newly met Go partner. Now that they could talk easily together and just about counted as friends across the generations, bringing it up meant something different.
"You're a man of no schooling but real skill, and as for the live-in marriage… it really is a pity…"
Ning Yi had not ranged widely over the classics, histories, and philosophers; he was poor at lessons that called for rote memorization, no product of proper training. Old Qin was a great scholar in that line, and after all this contact he had naturally seen it, which was why he gave him the judgment "no schooling, but real skill"—in fact high praise. Ning Yi only smiled.
"There's nothing so bad about marrying in. Look at me—out every day drinking tea and playing Go, money handed to me by Xiao Chan, food and lodging first-rate, and in a while I'll go teach a pack of students with no burden at all. I'm a lazy man who likes his comforts; it suits me fine."
That was what he said, but in this era the standing of a live-in son-in-law was lower even than that of an ordinary man's legal wife.
When a wife enters the house, after her death her spirit tablet may be placed in the ancestral hall; a live-in son-in-law is not even qualified to enter the ancestral hall, no different from a concubine.
Whatever he did, he would be looked down on, and every road to fame and profit was basically cut off; he could only strive as an appendage of the Su family. Ning Yi had seen through all the world's splendor in his former life, but what ordinary young man had such a frame of mind?
Old Qin likely felt he had some learning in him and could not help but lament it.
"…And besides, the Su family are merchants. Merchants chase profit, and though they like a good name as well, even if you have talent and learning, I'm afraid fame and office will never fall to you in the end."
The old man said this because he saw deep. Setting aside for the moment how the world at large regarded a live-in son-in-law: even if Ning Yi truly had learning, the Su family would not want him running off to the examinations and winning office and fame.
When they had taken him in, it was precisely because they saw him as a bookworm.
Old Master Su was a man who valued honor and remembered an agreement with Ning Yi's elders, and Ning Yi had a touch of the literary about him without being truly learned, so that once he married in, Su Tan'er could keep him in hand.
Even from Ning Yi's own point of view, the bookworm of the past had actually come out ahead on the deal; he bore the Su family no ill will and merely laughed it off.
But hearing the old man pass judgment on the Su family's affairs, Xiao Chan, sitting nearby and catching it by accident, flushed red and could not help but edge over.
"O-old… old sir, since the son-in-law came to the Su house, the young miss has never treated him badly! The young miss is a very good person, and she won't treat him badly in the future either!"
The little maid was tense, and desperately in earnest. She had grown up at Su Tan'er's side, as close as a sister, and at this moment she likely could not catch the deeper meaning behind the old man's words; she only understood in a general way that he was finding fault with the Su family.
When the master of a house conversed with an outsider, a little maid generally had no room to cut in—but a live-in son-in-law's status was peculiar: some families gave him great face, and some had maids who would not even deign to look at him.
Xiao Chan, however, had been raised at Su Tan'er's side and was very well brought up, so she was certainly not one of the latter.
She was simply anxious for the young miss's—and indeed the Su family's—good name, and who knew how much courage she had scraped together to say something that carried a note of retort, her small fists clenched in front of her, all aflutter.
Xiao Chan was usually quiet at his side, well-behaved and sensible, and Old Qin had grown used to the little maid's presence. Now he was slightly taken aback. Ning Yi glanced at Xiao Chan a few times, then burst out laughing and raised his hand to set down a stone.
"Haha, you old man—salted-radish worrying over nothing. Now you've gone and offended Xiao Chan, haven't you? If that talk of yours got out in the Su house, the one who'd pay for it is me."
The old man laughed too. "Haha, a slip of the tongue, a slip of the tongue. Let Miss Xiao Chan know that this old man meant no reproach to the Su family. Still, to recklessly discuss another man's family affairs was indeed a slip on my part. My apologies, my apologies…"
He apologized to Xiao Chan with an open heart, and Xiao Chan did not seem to be angry—only serious. That tense, earnest expression had not faded even as she left with Ning Yi; if anything it had deepened. All the way along she followed behind him with her head down, and her already small frame seemed to shrink further in that silence. Ning Yi grimaced helplessly, turned back, and tried to comfort her. "What's the matter? Still angry?"
Before he had finished speaking, Xiao Chan's shoulders hunched, her little mouth puckered, and tears rolled from her eyes like pearls off a broken string.
This looked fairly serious… Ning Yi was taken aback for a moment, then softened his voice. "What is it, really?"
"Xiao Chan…" The girl choked out a sob and looked up at him. "Xiao Chan may be a little maid who doesn't understand anything, but she would never go around gossiping about a thing like that. Son-in-law, when you said that if the words spread it would mean Xiao Chan—mean Xiao Chan… wasn't… proper…"
Xiao Chan's shoulders heaved and her sobs grew worse. Ning Yi looked at her for a while. He had thought the girl had been sulking the whole way home over what the old man said; who would have guessed it was his own joke that had hurt her feelings. Then he could not help but laugh out loud.
"Son-in-law… you're still… guh—"
Before the girl could sob her way to the end of the sentence, the words leaked away in a squeak: Ning Yi had suddenly reached out both hands, pinched her cheeks on either side, and pulled her face out into a great flat pancake. Now it was the little maid's turn to stand there stunned, both eyes round as lanterns, blinking twice. Ning Yi let go of her face, patted her shoulder lightly—"Let's go"—and turned to walk on.
After a moment the girl caught up, looking thoroughly startled and at the same time red all over. "Son-in-law, son-in-law, you…" She wanted to take him to task for what he had just done. In truth this was either a small thing or a large one. In the months past the two of them had been together morning and night; sometimes Xiao Chan helped him measure for clothes, and more often helped him dress. There had been physical contact, but it had all counted as accidental touching.
The history Ning Yi had arrived in had already gone off the rails, but the Wu dynasty was in fact very much like the Song. Though Cheng-Zhu Neo-Confucianism had not appeared down to the last detail, by this time the strict separation of the sexes was already much insisted upon.
Xiao Chan was a maid and had to wait on those around her; she could not be held to the same standard as an ordinary girl. Had Su Tan'er married Ning Yi, then Xiao Chan, as one of the three maids, would almost certainly have become his bedchamber concubine in time, and there would have been no problem.
But now Ning Yi had married into the Su family, and everything was in fact for Su Tan'er to decide.
A live-in son-in-law's standing was low, after all.
Among the common folk it was generally held that no man with a bit of backbone or principle would marry in—and that was because in many households the live-in son-in-law's position was in truth no different from a slave's, and most families of the bride regarded the man they took in as little more than a long-term hired hand.
Of course, households differed greatly. Where husband and wife were fond of each other, or where the son-in-law had real ability, he could naturally carve out a place of his own in the house; that was nothing strange.
In the Su family, Old Master Su, mindful of the friendship of earlier generations, was actually quite considerate toward Ning Yi, and so the family did not openly despise him. Su Tan'er had once resisted the match, but her attitude toward Ning Yi now could be called even-tempered.
Even so—or even if their relationship developed further and they became a true husband and wife—there was little chance she would in future permit Ning Yi to be intimate with Chan'er.
All three maids had followed Su Tan'er since childhood, and in all she did hereafter Su Tan'er would probably never let these three home-raised girls go for the rest of her life; but what was more likely was that she would marry them off to certain loyal servants with some prospects, and keep them in the Su house for life.
Of course, this was only a bit of casual mischief; Ning Yi had probably not thought that far, and the girl naturally could not think of anything so complicated either. But even if she was not angry, she was still rather embarrassed. Now, red-faced and puffing with fury, she came at him, striving to marshal words that could describe this scoundrel's behavior, and in the end all she said was, "Son-in-law, you—you're bullying me!"
"Mm." Ning Yi nodded and shrugged. "So I bullied you. What are you going to do about it?"
"Do about it…" Chan'er blinked, then grew angry again. "Saying things Chan'er doesn't understand again…"
"Haha." By the side of the street, Ning Yi laughed with some delight.
When he had first arrived, his mood had in fact been rather gloomy, but after idling about for so long lately the gloom had gradually dispersed. He felt as though he had come to ancient times just to bully people: bullying an old scholar over Go, and now bullying a little maid. It was really rather fun.
So they went on toward home, Xiao Chan skipping along behind him and chattering. At first she was still a little shy, and then she prattled on and on, drifting to this and that trifle. When they reached the relatively busy street not far from the Su house, a man suddenly came over to greet them and barred their way.
The Su household had many members, and coming back this way he often ran into some of them—some willing to greet Ning Yi, some who would not deign to speak to him, and once in a while Su Tan'er herself on her way home, since there was a Su family cloth shop right by the street.
This man had just come out of the Su cloth shop: a fellow in his early twenties carrying a folding fan, looking like a romantic young talent. From a distance he raised his hands in salute with a laugh.
"Brother Ning, what a coincidence."
Then he came over with two servants.
He was probably someone the former owner of this body had known, but Ning Yi could not place him. As he wondered, his gaze swept past and he saw that Su Tan'er's carriage was also stopped at the roadside not far off. In the cloth shop a small head bobbed and glanced toward them, then darted back inside. That was Xing'er, who followed Su Tan'er; she had seen Ning Yi and Chan'er and run to call Su Tan'er out.
The man came closer, smiling. Ning Yi did not know his name, but handling this sort of thing was very simple; he was just about to smile and greet him when Chan'er tugged at the corner of his clothes from behind. "Son-in-law, that's Young Master Xue of Dachuan Cloth." There was a faint unease in her voice.
Ning Yi understood. He had never met the man, but he had certainly heard of him.
Since arriving in this era he had pretended memory loss, and he had asked around about his former identity. It was a simple enough life, but when the Su family—Chan'er and Xing'er, say—spoke of it, there were always things they skirted: Su Tan'er running off on the wedding night, for instance, and the time someone hit him over the head with a brick.
But skirted or not, in a few months Ning Yi had learned what he ought to know. The one who had sneaked up and hit him with a brick was probably this Xue Jin of Dachuan Cloth, standing right before him now. Xiao Chan's unease was likely fear that Ning Yi would lose his temper and do something that would only cost him.
But Ning Yi was not about to wear anything complicated on his face. He only smiled and nodded. "Ah, Young Master Xue. How do you do."
His smile was natural and his manner mild; Xue Jin, across from him, was rather taken aback. He glanced at the two attendants beside him, then smiled again. "I heard that Brother Ning was unluckily injured on the day of the wedding, and that it left you with some memory loss. I was there that day as well, but I had business and left early, and afterward never found the time to come and visit. So then… is the memory loss real? Can Brother Ning truly not remember me?"
Across from him, Ning Yi seemed a little embarrassed. With an earnest, deep apology, he put on a smile of atonement. "The things of the past, really… heh. Do forgive me, Brother Xue, forgive me…"
Xue Jin stared at him with a complicated, suspicious look—and just then, at the shop doorway across the way, Su Tan'er had already hurried out, her brows drawn together.