“I’m sorry,” she said, laying a hand on his. “I meant no reproach. I’ll tell nobody, of course. I’ll clean this out and from now on take care of such things for you—for us.”
“Thank you,” he replied uncomfortably. “Still, well, I meant to tell you you’ll have to stay in the back rooms till nightfall.”
“A woman is coming to you,” she said in a voice as leaden as the knowledge.
“They expect it.” His own voice loudened. “So it’s been since—since the beginning. What else was there for me? I can’t suddenly withhold my blessing from their households. Can I?”
“And she’s young and pretty.”
“Well, when they aren’t, I’ve been kind to them anyhow.” He forced indignation. “Who are you to call me faithless? How many men have you been with in your time, and you a nun?”
“I said nothing against you.” She turned around. “Very well, I go.” She felt his relief like radiance at her back.
The four disciples huddled together in one room of their quarters, blurs of darkness by lamplight, and played a game with slicks tossed on the floor. They sprang to their feet when Li entered, bowed awkwardly, stood in abashed silence. They knew quite well why she was here, but could not think what to say.
How young they were, she thought. And how handsome Wan, at least, was. She imagined his body on hers, lithe, hot, delirious.
Perhaps later. There would be boundless later. She smiled at them. “The Master wants me to rehearse you in the Diamond Sutra,” she told them.
IT WAS raining when the village buried the first child of the Master and the Lady, They had hoped for sunshine but the wizard and the tiny corpse both told them they could not auspiciously wait longer than they had done. Spring that year had come late. Its bleakness and damp stretched on into the summer. They slipped through to the lungs of the girl-child, who gasped for a few days before she lay still. Oh, very still, when she cried and sucked and snuggled no more.
With Tu Shan, Li watched the wizard lower the coffin into a hole where water sloshed. The disciples stood close, the rest of the people in a rough ring. Beyond them she saw mists, shadowy hints of hillside, grandeur dissolved in this formless gray that tapped on her face and dripped off her hat and weighted her hair. Wet wool stank. Her breasts ached with milk.
The wizard rose, took up the rattle tucked under his rope belt, and shook it as he pranced around the grave screaming. Thus he warded off evil spirits. The disciples and those few others who had prayer wheels spun them. Everybody swayed to and fro. The chant sounded as raw as the air, “—honored ancestors, great souls, Honored ancestors, great souls—“ over and over, rite of a heathendom that the Tao and the Buddha had barely touched.
Tu Shan raised his arms and intoned words more fitting, but blurred and mechanical. He had spoken them too often. Li hardly noticed. She likewise had known too many deaths. She could not at the moment count the number of infants she had borne and lost. Seven, eight, a dozen? It hurt more to watch children grow old. But farewell, daughter of mine. May you not be lonely and afraid, wherever you have gone.
What Li felt now was the final hard freezing of resolution within herself.
Things ended. Folk mumbled words and went back to their work. The wizard remained. His task was to fill the grave. At her back, through his ongoing quavery song, Li heard clods fall on the coffin.
The disciples sought their parents’ homes for the nonce. Li and Tu Shan entered an empty house. He left the door ajar for light. Coals aglow on the hearth had somewhat wanned the room. He shucked his coat and tossed it on the bed. A sigh gusted from him. “Well,” he said. “That’s done.”
After a span, into her silence: “The poor wee girl. But it happens. Better luck next tune, eh? And maybe a son.”
She tensed. “There will be no next time, here,” she answered.