Chapter 139
I contemplate the books that rest on the desk with the satisfaction one reserves for the things that have cost much more work than they appear to.
They are no great thing at first sight, only a small group of volumes of sober binding, without a single flourish on the covers, without silk, without golden characters, without anything that invites looking at them twice. And, nevertheless, I have spent a good while contemplating them as if they were a treasure because, in their discreet and silent way, to me they are.
Since what I have before me is my adaptation of the Yǔwén.
Or, being more precise, my version for this world of the manuals with which in modern China children are taught to read, books whose efficacy is so amply demonstrated that they have gone generations almost without changes and that have resisted a multitude of educational reforms. If I am sure of anything, after having dedicated a whole life to languages, it is that there exists no better foundation on which to teach reading than a method that has already proven to work with hundreds of millions of people.
But the problem, how could it be otherwise, was in the details.
Because the manuals of the Yǔwén are sustained on the Pīnyīn, and the Pīnyīn is written with the Latin alphabet, an alphabet that in this world no one uses. Or almost no one, if I set about counting certain engravings on a certain stone that I prefer not to remember at this hour of the morning. And without those letters at hand, the entire phonetic scaffolding of the method threatened to come crashing down like a house whose pillars are torn away.
For quite a few days I came to believe that that detail was going to throw the entire idea to the ground. After all, without a clear way to note down the pronunciation, a manual for learning characters remains half-finished, reduced to a list of drawings that must be memorized one by one, which is just the slow and clumsy manner with which my unreliable first tutor intended for me to learn to read a whole lifetime ago now.
But it turns out that, if there is something I know how to do, it is exactly this.
So I did the only thing I could do, which was to completely dismantle the Pīnyīn part and reconstruct it from the foundations employing the alphabet that does exist in this world, patching sound by sound the correspondences until they fit. It has not been by a long shot a clean transfer, because the inventory of sounds does not coincide, the signs do not coincide, and more than once I had to invent new conventions to cover gaps that in the original system don’t even exist. I have had to vary that part so very much that, strictly speaking, it is no longer Pīnyīn, but something else that only shares with it the intention.
And even so, looking at the result, I cannot help feeling that so-concrete pang of professional pride, that of the linguist who faces a puzzle that seemed impossible and ends up solving it. Because what I have before me, with all its patches and its improvised solutions, is a more than acceptable adaptation.
Because it works. A child could learn with these books, and would learn quickly.
I slide my fingers along the spine of the volume I have nearest and allow myself a small smile, because the best of all this is not the linguistic achievement itself, however satisfied I may feel. The best of all this is the money it is going to provide.
And to think that the idea was given to me by my own mother without her meaning to.
It was a few days ago, in one of those loose conversations we hold during breakfast, when she mentioned in passing that the Lǐbù had begun to make orders for books. A trivial comment, one of so many, and nevertheless it sufficed for something to click in my head, because a ministry dedicated to the rites, the examinations and the instruction of functionaries is, by definition, a ministry that needs to teach many people to read and to do it well.
And suddenly I saw it crystal clear.
When those in charge of the printing press show these books to the functionaries of the Lǐbù, they are going to want them. It is not that I believe they are going to want them, it is that I am completely sure they will, because a method that teaches reading faster and with less effort is, for a ministry like that, a direct increase in efficiency.
And an increase in efficiency in their ministry is an increase in reputation for the functionaries in command, the kind of merit that creates careers and then translates into promotions. The moment a single one of them understands what they have on their hands, they are going to want to extend it everywhere, and are going to drag along all the rest out of pure ambition.
But the truly beautiful thing, what turns this idea into something much better than a simple source of income, is its discretion, because these books are not like Journey to the West.
Journey to the West was noisy. It was an epic novel, entertaining, with a charismatic protagonist and adventures that were practically crying out to be read, presented to the Emperor before the whole court as the first book to come out of the printing press. It was, in two words, a showcase, and it worked exactly as I wanted it to work. The problem is that it worked too well, to the point that it drew the attention of the very person it least suited me, and I still have very fresh the memory of the Elder Feng using that same printing press as an argument to try to get the Sect’s council of elders to claim me, with the tale that a mind capable of conceiving something like that should not be wasted outside their walls.
These books, on the other hand, are the opposite of noise.
They are manuals for learning to read. Gray, functional, without a single drop of glory. They are not going to spread through the salons of the nobility nor are they going to be exhibited at receptions, but rather they are going to stay confined to the academic sphere of the Lǐbù and, in all probability, will end up associated with the lower classes, with the children of minor functionaries and with the aspirants without a surname who study for the examinations.
No one looks twice at a book with which commoners are taught to read. No one considers it worthy of attention. And that invisibility is precisely what will keep them off the Sect’s radar while the income begins to grow, not little by little, but exponentially, because a method that works and that an entire ministry wants to adopt is not sold by units, it is sold by thousands.
It is, in summary, the perfect way to make money. Silent, constant and utterly boring in the eyes of anyone who doesn’t know what they are looking at.
I lean back in the chair, incredibly satisfied with myself, and pick up the cup of tea Lianhua brought me a while ago, from which there still stick out, stubborn, a couple of pieces of ice that refuse to melt entirely. I take a sip, appreciate the coolness with all my soul in the middle of this swelter that has installed itself in the Pavilion like a guest who has no intention of leaving, and I decide that, however round the idea may seem, the most delicate part still remains.
Because one thing is to have the books ready and quite another is to release them at the right moment. And for that, the most prudent thing is to consult beforehand with my mother, who knows the timings of the court infinitely better than I do and will know how to tell me when it is advisable to get the books to the printing press so that they reach the Lǐbù without raising suspicions.
I am turning over the best way to raise the matter with her when the door of the study opens and Lianhua enters.
I lift my gaze toward her, puzzled, because at this hour I normally don’t see her unless I call her, and I certainly did not expect her to enter like that, without my having warned her of anything.
“Has something happened?” I ask her, leaving the cup on the plate.
“Nothing bad, Zhāohuán Wen”, she replies to me with that serenity of hers that serves to reassure even before she explains what it is about. “But Guifei Xiang has given the order that you must prepare yourself, since later there will be a small luncheon with the Fei Zhi.”
I arch an eyebrow upon hearing her, because I did not expect those words at all.
“A meeting with the Fei Zhi?” I repeat. “Has something happened for it to be organized so suddenly?”
Lianhua shakes her head slightly.
“By what I know, no”, she tells me. “From what I have been able to find out, the Fei Zhi, now that she has returned from her exile, is simply going to begin visiting one by one all the other consorts. And the first one she has decided to visit is Guifei Xiang.”
I stay an instant processing that answer, and there is something in it that doesn’t quite fit for me.
“The first?” I ask, and I notice how my eyebrow arches a bit more still. “How is it that she is going to visit my mother before the Fei Lan? The Fei Lan is the first consort, the most senior of the harem. If this were a simple matter of courtesy, the logical order would be to begin with her.”
“I don’t know, Zhāohuán Wen”, Lianhua acknowledges, and for once her tone admits that there is a limit to how far what she has been able to find out reaches. “But what I do know is that the Fei Lan is the last of the whole round of visits. And otherwise, those visits don’t seem to follow any order that makes sense at a glance.”
I stay pensive a moment, turning the matter over, because a round of visits without apparent order that, coincidentally, leaves the first consort for last is no coincidence, it is a message.
“The only thing that occurs to me is that the Fei Zhi wants to snub the Fei Lan”, I say finally, more to myself than to Lianhua. “To visit all the others before her, to leave her for the last place as if she were just one more of the bunch instead of the first consort, is the kind of gesture that humiliates without saying a single word.”
“And if it has occurred to me, who has neither contacts nor experience in these things, in a matter of seconds, it is crystal clear that half the court has had exactly the same thing cross their mind as well”, I finish while I add the obvious.
I could keep pulling the thread. I could ask myself why the Fei Zhi would choose to return from a ten-year exile and, the moment she sets foot in the palace, dedicate her first move to humiliating precisely the Fei Lan. I could ask myself what the Fei Zhi knows that I don’t know, or what accounts the two of them have pending.
But I decide not to do it, because the conspiracies of the court are better left to the people who know them in depth and who have better contacts than I do, and I know that meddling where you are not called has never brought anything good to anyone.
So I push the matter from my head and return to the practical.
“In any case”, I tell Lianhua. “If my mother wants me to prepare myself, then take me to my room so that we can begin.”
Lianhua nods without a word, positions herself behind the chair and pushes it with the softness of always to take me out of the study. The trip through the hallways of the Pavilion passes in the accustomed silence, with the morning light filtering between the columns and the handmaidens bowing discreetly at our passing until we reach my room and Lianhua sets to work.
And the truth is that she takes her time, because a meeting with a consort, even if they call it small, is not a matter of presenting oneself just any old way. She dresses me in one of the best outfits my mother’s dressmaker has made for me, one of those pieces whose fabric alone costs more than what many families see in a year, and she grooms me with that patient meticulousness she reserves for the occasions on which she knows I am going to be under the gaze of someone who notices everything.
I am finishing getting ready when I hear a commotion in the courtyard of the Pavilion, with voices that overlap, steps that come and go, that characteristic murmur that rises when someone important arrives and everyone tries to seem busier than they were a moment before.
“It seems the Fei Zhi has arrived”, I tell Lianhua, glancing sidelong toward the window. “It will be better for us to finish and be ready for when my mother calls me.”
And I don’t have to wait long, because barely has Lianhua given the last touch-up to my hairstyle when a handmaiden appears in the threshold of my room, bows and announces to me with a careful voice that Guifei Xiang calls me and that I should come to her personal garden.
I make a sign to Lianhua the moment the handmaiden leaves, and she positions herself again behind the chair to take me to the garden where my mother likes to spend the hours, that corner of the Pavilion that she herself designed and that she tends with the same care with which she tends her paintings, because, if it were up to my mother, she would spend her entire life among brushes and flowers without the rest of the world bothering her.
When we arrive, I take a quick look at the scene.
There is my mother, with Lingxi a step behind her, in her usual spot, discreet and attentive like a well-mannered shadow. And beside my mother there is another woman whom I only half recognize, a face I vaguely remember from when I was barely two years old, blurred by time and by distance, and who can be none other than the Fei Zhi. She is accompanied, in turn, by a second woman whom I suppose will be her own Fei Yi, positioned behind her with the same discretion with which Lingxi accompanies my mother. Around them, several handmaidens busy themselves serving on the table a luncheon whose smell awakens my appetite at this hour of the morning.
Lianhua brings me closer until I am at an appropriate distance, and I incline my head with the formality that corresponds.
“Mother”, I greet first, and then I direct the greeting toward the guest. “Fei Zhi. It is an honor.”
My mother returns my greeting with one of those smiles of hers that she reserves for when we are surrounded by people but she wants me to know that she is still herself.
“Wen”, she says. “You arrive just in time. Come, come closer to the table with us.”
The Fei Zhi observes me while Lianhua places my chair in the spot they indicate, and she does it with a tranquil attention, without the crudeness with which so many people of the court examine my legs the first time they see me, but rather with the evaluating gaze of one who is considering options without letting it show too much.
“So this is the little Zhāohuán”, she says at last, and her voice has a polished elegance, measured down to the last syllable, but beneath that courtesy one can make out an edge that ten years of exile have sharpened instead of blunting. “I hadn’t seen her since she was two years old, but one has to acknowledge that you are not at all what the court tells of you. With everything that is murmured out there, I expected to find anything but someone so composed.”
“The court murmurs a lot, Fei Zhi”, I reply with all the lightness I am capable of. “And gets it right little, despite it being one of its favorite pastimes.”
Something resembling a smile crosses her lips, and for an instant I think I intuit that that comment has pleased her more than she lets show.
The luncheon proceeds from there along placid channels. We talk about minor things, of those that serve to fill the space between one bite and another without committing to anything, about the impossible heat we have been dragging along since the fire Qi surge arrived, about my mother’s paintings, which the Fei Zhi praises with what seems a sincere appreciation, and about the small novelties of the palace that a consort newly arrived from a ten-year banishment needs to catch up on so as not to stumble.
And at some moment, as could not be otherwise, the conversation brushes the name of the Fei Lan.