"I'd do anything for you." My own voice startled me with its clarity. The sight of the forlorn man in the rain beneath his tortoise shell had left me shaken. These words, which had reverberated through all the years of my childhood, were finally spoken. I was a young man standing before his queen, sincerely honouring her as was her due, offering up the heart that had forgotten how to beat because of her.
She stood there, glimmers of light flickering across her blind eyes. The stolid youth had finally moved her.
But in the end, she shook her head, one hand groping until it found the edge of the door, burrowing back into her tightly closed shell.
9
On certain days, Master Zhong was accompanied by a little girl, his adopted daughter Hua Hua, a year or two younger than me. Wholesomely round-cheeked, she stood under the great locust tree by the outer door, looking for all the world like a fallen apple. She never once stepped inside the courtyard.
Once a month, I'd see Hua Hua beneath the tree, quietly playing by herself. After several years, the little girl blossomed into a young lady on the verge of beauty, like one of the jade ornaments that hung from Master Zhong's belt.
I will always remember the day she appeared at the courtyard entrance, pale and terrified. I knew nothing about her, only that she looked helpless.
She was thirteen years old. While she waited for Master Zhong, she often had with her a white long-haired Persian cat that mewed delicately. That day, the usually placid cat had struggled from her embrace and dashed inside, drawn by the briny smell of the seashells Chun Chi had left soaking in a stone trough.
Hua Hua stood in agitation, trying to see into the courtyard. A spring breeze shook the metal door knocker. She brightened suddenly, realising she finally had an unimpeachable reason to step through the forbidden doorway. She was short, her head barely brushing the door handle. Her hair was pulled back into a loose cloud without pin or ornament. Perhaps because she had been silent for so long, her voice was sandy. "My cat. White, long fur. Have you seen it?"
And so Hua Hua entered our courtyard. It took her a long time to reach the stone trough, she was so captivated by our plants: oleander, peony, dainty flowers loved by girls. When she looked into the water and saw all the shells, she was stunned into silence. From the dull purple of a floral shell to the orange starburst conch, from a clear sea-hare to the pagoda-shaped phoenix shell, these shells were gleaming gems in a crystal sheet. The locust tree shed tiny petals like stars. The outside of the trough had an carved pattern of children amongst lotus blossoms. Hua Hua carefully ran her hands over this, as if she wished to become a part of the engraving.
Reunited with her cat, she didn't leave immediately. Indicating the trough, she asked, "Are all these yours?"
"No, my aunt's," I said with some hesitation. I'd never had to discuss Chun Chi with an outsider, and didn't know what I should call her.
"Daddy mentions her a lot. She must be very pretty."
"Naturally."
Hua Hua was silent, bending to look closely at the shells, her face almost touching the water. "Are these shells for fortune-telling?"
Her eyes met mine, honest, direct. The air between us seemed to solidify. I looked at her, certain she was a spirit sent to help me. Yes, fortune-telling. That must be what Chun Chi was doing.
Hiding my shock, I nodded calmly. "Yes. She can see into the future."
Hua Hua stroked her big white cat and sighed in admiration. "How wondrous. Has she told your fortune? What's going to happen to you?"
"Of course she has, but I can't talk to you about such things," I said crisply.
Hua Hua sighed again. "I'd like her to tell my fortune. I want to know … who my husband is going to be." She blushed.
A girl's exuberant growth slows down at fourteen or fifteen, the road ahead unclear. She grows tired of herself, feels her body becoming dangerous. That's when she begins to yearn for marriage, wanting to pass herself on like a parcel, so she can stop worrying.
Those were the first words we exchanged, that late spring afternoon, around a stone trough full of mysterious shells. The formless atmosphere tugged at us, filled us with melancholy. Only many years later were Hua Hua and I able to understand this exquisite sadness: locust flowers falling in drifts across the courtyard, two lost travellers meeting at a junction, knowing only that they will journey together.
Different routes to the same destination. I never asked Hua Hua if she was disappointed when the truth about the seashells was revealed, not even many years later when she had become my wife. Perhaps that moment, staring at the jumbled shells with an order all their own, she had already guessed the riddle.
10
In all those years, Hua Hua was the only one who burst into my life. We had no family, no friends, no dealings with any outsiders. Even at the New Year, our house remained lonely. As a child I shied from such a bleak start to the year, and slipped away to watch our neighbours set off fireworks instead.
Children, their faces ruddy, ran about in the snow. Everyone quietened the second after a fuse was lit: a burst of flame like an overhead chrysanthemum, a thousand silken threads of light drifting slowly to the ground: the bars of a bright cage surrounding children like canaries flapping their wings in hysterical joy. In that chaotic scene they seemed almost likeable, less prideful than usual. I was the only empty-handed child, huddled in a snowy corner. Many years later, Hua Hua told me she'd been watching me, neatly-dressed and aloof, too grand to light a firework. As each rocket soared into the night sky, I laughed and continued muttering to myself.
