Purely by Accident – Extra 2
***
I’d been living at the foot of Mount Qiyun for nineteen years, supporting myself as a hunter. Just before I turned twenty, I decided to join the outlaw band whose stronghold stood atop that mountain — because I’d fallen in love with their leader’s wife.
‘The thought of one fair face flung him into an empire-destroying rage,’[1] was what the ancients had said of a legendary general. And now, like him, I was determined to take up a life of banditry for the sake of ‘one fair face’. I was quite the man, I couldn’t help thinking.
The day I presented myself at the bandit stronghold, I put quite a lot of thought into my appearance. I tied a headwrap around my hair, dressed in my favourite tigerskin jacket, and hung my wood-axe from my belt. When I peered at my reflection in the little stream just in front of my hut, I saw a swashbuckling fellow, whose wild soul was tempered by his gentle manner. The mistress of the stronghold should like that, I thought. And then I marched gallantly up the mountain.
What I hadn’t realised was that there were actually two bandit strongholds on Mount Qiyun. Halfway up the mountain, the narrow path split in two. Over the left-hand path stood a wooden arch, with a sign hung across it that said ‘Weile Fellowship’. Across the right-hand path, meanwhile, flew a banner that read ‘Qingyun Brotherhood’.
This put me in a rather tight spot. I had no idea which of these strongholds the woman I loved was the mistress of. In the end, I decided to trust in the fate that had brought us two together. I tossed out a copper coin, and when it landed on the right-hand path, I strode decisively towards the Qingyun Brotherhood’s stronghold.
It turned out that the Qingyun Brotherhood was recruiting new members, and with quite a lot of fanfare at that. The young lad standing guard at the gates was overjoyed when he heard why I’d come, and led me straight into the stronghold’s rather grand main hall.
Ten or so other men stood in a row across the room — like me, they were probably here seeking a place in the Qingyun Brotherhood. I ran a quick eye over them, and felt that none of them looked as much of a warrior as I did. This lifted my spirits even more.
But when I got a good look at the figure who was lounging in the big chair at the front of the room, I was suddenly sure that I’d come to the wrong stronghold. If this person was the chief of the Qingyun Brotherhood, how was it possible that he had won himself such a beautiful wife? Why, he was just a foppish little pretty boy!
And then the pretty boy said, in a voice so listless that he sounded as if he hadn’t had enough to eat, ‘Tell me what skills you have.’
The other men fell over themselves to show off. ‘I know the Fist of the Azure Dragon!’ ‘I know the Crouching Tiger Kick!’ ‘I know the Cloud-Piercing Archery Technique!’ ‘I know the art of grappling!’[2]
These were all very respectable fighting techniques, yet the pretty boy seemed completely uninterested in them. His brow gradually furrowed, giving a sickly cast to his face, which made him look more effete than ever.
I decided that there was no way I could put myself under the command of a man like him. So when it came my turn to speak, I straightened my shoulders and said very solemnly, ‘I know how to cook!’
The other men around me burst into boos and hisses. The pretty boy’s eyes lit up, however, and he flashed me a brilliant white grin. ‘We’ll take you!’ he said, smacking the table in front of him. ‘You, stay!’
What?
I was too dazzled by the whiteness of his grin to respond. Before I could say anything, the pretty boy rushed up to me, clapped me on the shoulder, uttered a single hurried sentence, then turned and disappeared through the doorway that led to the inner chambers.
‘Work hard,’ I thought I’d heard him say. And then… ‘I’m going to keep my wife company now’?
Was this outlaw band in the business of recruiting fighters, or cooks? And what was their chief doing, frolicking with his wife in broad daylight? Could he be any more frivolous?
And that was how I ended up staying at the Qingyun Brotherhood’s stronghold. To be more precise, in the stronghold’s kitchens.
The kitchens stood quite far from our pretty boy chief’s quarters, separated by a large vegetable plot. I would often lurk outside his door, using the excuse of harvesting some fresh greens, hoping to run into his wife. Unfortunately, I never did.
Once, however, I did chance across our pretty boy chief squatting in the middle of the vegetable beds. At first I thought he’d heard the call of nature and decided to answer it on the spot, which made him seem rather more of a man in my eyes. But then he stood up abruptly, and I saw that he was still neatly dressed. He grinned happily when he saw me, and motioned for me to come closer. Very reluctantly, I shuffled forwards.
He pointed down at the young shoot of some vegetable I couldn’t name. ‘Isn’t that adorable?’
What kind of question was that? As the chief of an outlaw band, he should be plotting how to rob passing travellers of their coin and livestock, even women — and yet here he was, pondering over whether some vegetable was ‘adorable’ or not. How could anyone take him seriously?
I said nothing, though it didn’t seem as if he needed me to answer. He went on gazing happily at the little green shoot, as if he were looking at a woman he loved. ‘It doesn’t rain as much here as it does in Tengzhou, so I was afraid it wouldn’t grow. But look at this — it’s wonderful.’
Tengzhou was the capital of the Yan Empire, so that must mean our pretty boy chief had once been there? It did make sense: only the most unsavoury corners of that city’s pleasure quarter could have birthed a creature as bizarre and effeminate as him.
And so, I worked away in the kitchens day after day, and had no idea how I should set about trying to catch a glimpse of our chief’s wife. This caused me quite a great deal of grief.
The head cook did mention her in a vague fashion once, but only while praising our pretty boy chief himself. ‘Our mistress is so lucky,’ he’d said, ‘to have such a loving and attentive husband. Why, he’s always going on about the kinds of food she likes, and making sure we serve up new dishes regularly.’
This, I felt, was very misguided. A woman was lucky if she’d married a strong, powerful man capable of accomplishing great deeds. What good was a foppish husband who spent his days fussing over recipes?
Soon after that, however, I was able to confirm that our pretty boy chief’s unlucky wife was indeed the woman I’d fallen in love with. Because I finally laid eyes on the leader of the Weile Fellowship, and learned that she was a woman.
The weather had been rather fine that day, and our pretty boy chief was on the training field, leading a group of brothers-in-arms through a rehearsal of some opera on the theme of ‘the bandit chief steals himself a wife’. Suddenly, a graceful figure swooped in from nowhere and called out, ‘Wei Zisong, hand over your wife now!’
That sounded like a possible rival for me, so my ears pricked up immediately. I turned to look in the speaker’s direction, and saw a slender, bright-eyed figure. It was a woman!
That took me aback. A woman, trying to steal our chief’s wife? What was the meaning of this?
The pretty boy seemed to know her. ‘I say, Chief Yan,’ he called out, a teasing note in his voice. ‘You keep turning up at my stronghold every few days to stir up trouble. Why, I could almost believe that you were planning to switch your allegiance to our Qingyun Brotherhood!’
He sounded very forward, almost impudent. The female bandit flung him a sharp look, and our pretty boy chief smiled to see her annoyance. The way they were exchanging glances, they almost seemed to be… flirting?
Then they began to fight. As their swords flashed and flashed again, I finally understood what was going on. The female bandit wasn’t planning to carry off the mistress of our stronghold — she was simply using it as an excuse to flirt with our pretty boy chief! This filled me with rage on behalf of his wife, the woman of my dreams.
After that, the female bandit turned up at our stronghold quite often. The oddest thing was, the morning after each of her visits, our pretty boy chief would emerge from his quarters looking completely exhausted, with big dark circles under his eyes, walking in a comically bowlegged fashion, as if he’d gone through some enormous hardship.
This was nothing to do with me, of course, but seeing the pretty boy suffer made me rejoice, so I secretly hoped that the female bandit would come even more often. To make things easier for her, I bored a secret door through the high wall that surrounded our stronghold.
One particularly windy night, I became worried for the straw I’d laid across the secret door to hide it, so I went down to the wall to take a look. To my surprise, I ran into our pretty boy chief there.
I was completely unprepared for the encounter. Just as I was frantically trying to come up with good excuse for what I was doing there so late at night, the pretty boy put a finger to his lips in a shushing gesture.
Obediently, I closed my mouth.
The pretty boy shrugged his shoulders. His eyes were glowing brightly in the sparse moonlight. ‘Aren’t you going to ask me what I’m doing here?’ he whispered.
Before I could reply, he’d already spun around indignantly. ‘I’m running away from home!’
Now this was good news. Trying not to smile, I bowed to him and said, ‘Safe travels, sir.’
Instead of leaving, however, the pretty boy turned back and stared into my face. ‘Why aren’t you trying to talk me into staying?’
A gust of wind blew past, and I caught a strong whiff of wine. He had been drinking!
And then, somehow, I found myself sitting next to him at the foot of the wall, passing a bottle of wine back and forth between us. It turned out that, while our pretty boy chief might look like a milksop, he was a very hearty drinker indeed. As I prided myself on being much manlier than him, I couldn’t let myself be outdone, and so I began knocking back gulp after gulp of wine as well.
The result of this was, I soon became quite drunk.
‘Have you heard of the seven-year itch?’ the pretty boy was asking me.
Of course I had! It was when a couple had been married too long, and grown tired of each other.
The pretty boy threw his head back and tossed back another swig of wine. ‘It hasn’t even been seven years yet, so why is Chu Feichen already itching?’
Chu Feichen? Who was Chu Feichen?
‘She’s stopped telling me how pretty I look when I wake up in the mornings, she doesn’t even call me by my name all that often now. She got a new puppy a few days ago, didn’t she, and she babies and fusses over him like anything. I only picked him up by the scruff of his neck once — just once — and she shouted at me! I’m running away from home! This time, no matter what anyone says, I’m definitely leaving!’
What he was saying made no sense at all, especially since my wine-soaked brain felt as if it had turned into glue. I turned to look at him. His face was flushed, and his lips were pursed in a tiny pout, at an unexpectedly fetching angle. In that moment there seemed to be something familiar about him, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.
Forget it, I thought, and gulped down another mouthful of wine.
The pretty boy smiled. ‘Ah, but there’s no point telling you about such things. You’re so young. You don’t even have a sweetheart yet, do you?’
That was too much of an insult. ‘Of course I do,’ I sniffed.
‘Oh?’ This seemed to pique his interest, and he shuffled closer to me. ‘Tell me about her.’
Curiosity was written all over his face. The wine I’d just drunk swirled in my head. Suddenly, I felt as if I had to get it all off my chest. And so I closed my eyes and slowly recalled the day I’d met the woman of my dreams.
‘I used to live at the foot of Mount Qiyun, making my living as a woodcutter and hunter. One day, as I was chopping down a tree, a pretty girl fell right out of it — a very pretty girl. She seemed groggy, as if she’d just woken up from a nap, but that did nothing to hide her radiance. I decided then and there that I wanted to make her my wife. So I asked her what her name was and where she lived. She told me—’
I live just on top of this mountain. There’s a bandit stronghold up there, and I’m the chief’s wife.
When I reached this part of my tale, my eyes flew open. Although I was a little tipsy, I still understood that that last sentence was not something I could repeat, under any circumstances.
The pretty boy was staring at me as if he’d been struck by lightning. Jabbing a finger at me, he sputtered, ‘You— you—’
He repeated ‘you’ a few more times, but seemed unable to continue. Just then, a musical voice spoke up through the night wind. ‘Zisong,’ it called in leisurely tones.
That gave the pretty boy quite a shock. Seemingly by reflex, he began to hide the wine bottle under his robes, then seemed to think better of it. He looked up at the speaker, his lips drawing into a pout. ‘What are you doing here?’
I looked up as well. Ah, a goddess.
The goddess lifted an eyebrow. A little half-smile hovered about her lips. She was very beautiful, but in a rather forbidding way. ‘I’ve come to look for my wife,’ she said. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Me?’ The pretty boy stared at her blankly for a long moment, swaying slightly where he sat. Then suddenly he seemed to come back to his senses. ‘I’m running away from home!’ he said. Defiantly he scrambled to his feet, but something — likely the wine — made him stumble, and he fell straight into my lap. I reached out to steady him, and met the goddess’ eyes. The look in them froze me to my very core.
‘Wei Zisong!’ she said warningly, tapping a knuckle lightly against her temple, Her voice was also noticeably colder than it had been a moment ago.
The pretty boy trembled, but still he didn’t yield. ‘I’m leaving the stronghold, whatever you say!’ he declared, sitting up. And then, perhaps feeling that the effect wasn’t quite strong enough, he pointed at me. ‘Look, this man’s fallen in love with me. I’m leaving with him!’
The goddess’ expression turned positively murderous. I didn’t dare move a muscle. Oh, how unlucky I was! The pretty boy seemed bent on dragging me down with him, and he’d quite baselessly slapped the label of ‘cut-sleeve’ on me too!
The goddess and the pretty boy glared at each other for a long, long moment. I hardly dared to breathe.
Then the goddess spun on her heel and stormed off. Instantly, the pretty boy — who’d seemed too drunk to walk just a moment ago — sprang forward and pounced on her, hanging from her shoulders like one of those massive bamboo canisters used for carrying oil.
I could see very clearly what happened next. The goddess turned and pinched the pretty boy firmly on the waist. Then, amid his most unmanly yelps, she carefully wrapped an arm around him and tucked his head gently into her shoulder. Arms around each other, they walked off into the distance. A few stray murmurs came to me on the wind.
‘Why did you drink so much?’
‘Feichen, I’m so thirsty.’
‘You can die of thirst for all I care! You really think a lot of yourself, don’t you, carrying on about running away like that!’
‘Feichen, I feel so hot.’
‘Stop wriggling, oh you—’
‘Feichen, I miss you.’
‘Be good, let’s go back to our room…’
The first thing I saw when I woke up the next morning was our pretty boy chief. He looked even more worn out than usual, and was walking in an even more comical way than before. Rather sheepishly, and with a great deal of tact, he told me two things that left me thunderstruck.
First, the goddess I’d glimpsed the night before was his wife, the mistress of this stronghold.
Second, in accordance with the mistress’ orders, I was to leave the Qingyun Brotherhood immediately after receiving my month’s stipend.
I had no choice but to leave now that I’d been given my marching orders. Once I’d gone some distance along the winding path that led down the mountain, however, I turned back to look at the Qingyun Brotherhood’s banner, fluttering against the green hillside. I still couldn’t work it out. If the goddess from last night was their chief’s wife, then who was the woman I’d lost my heart to?
***
Footnotes:
- In Chinese, 冲冠一怒为红颜. This originates from the qu poem ‘Song of Yuanyuan’ (圆圆曲) by the poet Wu Weiye (吴伟业), who lived during the late Ming Dynasty to the early Qing Dynasty. The line refers to the historical incident when the Ming general Wu Sangui (吴三桂) joined forces with the Manchu armies against the rebel peasant leader Li Zicheng (李自成), who had just overthrown the Ming Dynasty and was ruling over northern China as emperor. This earned Wu Sangui the label of traitor to the Han people. In popular accounts of this incident (which are reflected in the poem), Wu Sangui is said to have been spurred on in this betrayal by Li Zicheng’s capture of his beloved concubine Chen Yuanyuan, after whom the poem is named. [return to text]
- In Chinese, 擒拿手, literally ‘catch hold hand’. This is a set of techniques used in martial arts to control or lock an opponent’s joints or muscles so as to immobilise them. [return to text]
douqi 随笔 