Chapter 145
Four days of road with only Xia and Lianhua to talk to, and moreover limited in what we can talk about due to the risk that our escorts might overhear us, can make time pass very slowly.
The first days the landscape still offered some variety, parched fields that gave way to wooded hills and hills that gave way to the first forests, but since yesterday afternoon the only thing to be seen through the crack of the little curtain is how the forest grows denser as it climbs the slopes of the mountains that, since yesterday, rise before us.
So, when I finally hear Bai Zhen’s voice calling the procession to a halt, I receive it with the same relief with which one receives the end of an especially boring class.
“We stop”, he orders from outside, with that dryness that at this point I would recognize among a crowd.
The carriage stops with one last jolt, I hear the tired snorting of the horses and, an instant later, some footsteps that approach along the side until they halt right next to my little window. There’s no need for me to draw back the curtain to know who it is, because there is only one person in this whole group who walks with that self-assurance so loaded with contained impatience.
“We have arrived at the entrance of the Sect”, Bai Zhen announces to me from outside, without even bothering to look in. “The carriage cannot continue beyond this point.”
Inwardly, I cannot help a small sigh of satisfaction while I think that it was about time, so I don’t waste time and turn toward Lianhua who, as always, observes me in silence, waiting.
She nods without my having to tell her anything and, with a barely perceptible movement of the chin, makes a sign to Xia.
Between the two of them they set to work and the first thing they do is bring my wheelchair down from the carriage, which comes out through the slightly wider than usual door without problems. Then Lianhua climbs back into the carriage, where she surrounds me with her arms, lifts me from the seat, takes me outside and deposits me in the chair, and the moment I am well settled, the two of them climb back up for the backpacks.
I notice, while I watch them load them, that Xia’s is clearly emptier than Lianhua’s, and I don’t have to think much to know why. Four days feeding five people, counting ourselves and the Nei Wei, have carried off almost all the provisions she brought, and what was before a backpack bulging to the point of bursting now hangs from her shoulder with a slackness that attests to how well she has done her job.
And since they have left me alone a moment while they finish gathering up, I take advantage to take a look at the place where we have stopped.
We are in a small clearing to one side of the road, a natural widening of the path in the middle of the forest, right at the foot of the mountains whose mass rises before us until it loses itself among the mist of the heights. It is a tranquil spot, almost pretty if it weren’t because it has that sinister nuance of forests too silent, and the first thing I ask myself, with a curiosity I cannot repress, is what is supposed to happen now with the carriage.
So I turn toward the three Nei Wei, who have already dismounted from the coachman’s seat and occupy themselves with the horses with the efficiency of always.
“Excuse me”, I tell them kindly, earning the attention of the three. “Now that we have arrived, what are your orders? I acknowledge that I feel curiosity to know what you are going to do while I am at the Sect.”
One of them, the one who seems to be the spokeswoman of the three, approaches a couple of steps and slightly inclines her head before replying.
“You need not worry about us, Zhāohuán”, she tells me with an impeccable courtesy that contrasts in a notable way with the harshness the disciples of the Sect have accustomed me to. “There is a village not far from here that offers services to the Sect, with inns and stables prepared precisely for cases like this. We will lodge in it and there we will wait until we are notified to return to fetch you when the moment of your return arrives.”
I nod slowly, satisfied that such a simple and orderly answer exists, although I cannot help feeling a pang of something resembling guilt at the thought of having them there, waiting indefinitely on my account.
“I understand”, I reply. “In that case, I will try by all means for your wait not to drag on too long. Although I must warn you that that does not depend entirely on me, since it will be the elders of the Sect who decide how long they intend to retain me.”
The Nei Wei sketches the hint of a smile, barely a brief curve at the corner of the lips, and slightly shakes her head.
“Don’t worry about that, Zhāohuán”, she replies to me. “We are more than accustomed to this kind of assignment. We know how to wait, so occupy yourself calmly with your affairs and leave ours to us.”
And in those words, said with that so professional tranquility, I recognize once more what I already suspected from the beginning, which is that these three women are considerably more than mere coachwomen. But it is not the moment to pull that thread, so I limit myself to thanking them for their willingness with an inclination of the head.
Just then, Lianhua and Xia come down from the carriage with the backpacks already on their shoulders, and Bai Zhen, who has not stopped watching the process with his customary impatience, takes advantage to press us.
“If you are ready now, it is time to continue”, he says without any kind of consideration. “The rest of the road is done on foot, and it is not short.”
It is not worth arguing over his tone, so I take my leave of the Nei Wei with a last gesture and turn toward my handmaiden.
“Lianhua, you have heard him”, I tell her. “Let us continue.”
Lianhua positions herself behind the chair, rests her hands on the grips and begins to push me along the path after Bai Zhen’s group, which has already set off with Xia following us closely.
And I am not long in discovering that this last stretch of the trip is going to be, by far, the most uncomfortable of all.
Because one thing is to roll over the tiled floors of the Imperial Palace, polished to a shine, or over the paved and regular roadways of the great cities, and quite another very different one is to travel a country road, one of those paths made of stones worn down by centuries of footsteps and of rains. My chair, however good it may be, however much Master Zhao Liang took pains in manufacturing it, was not conceived for this. Each moderately large unevenness becomes a small obstacle that Lianhua has to skirt or push through with force, and each bump is transmitted directly to my body in the form of a dry jolt.
And, as could not be otherwise, my head goes without remedy to the most obvious detail.
If these wheels had a rubber band, a rubber tire that cushioned the blows instead of being a bamboo hoop that transmits even the most minimal irregularity of the terrain, this journey would be infinitely more bearable.
It was something that in my previous life was taken for granted, a detail so everyday that no one stopped to appreciate it. But here, right now, while each stone of the road punishes my spine, that knowledge is of absolutely no use to me, beyond reminding me once more of all the small comforts I lost upon opening my eyes in this world.
So I have no choice but to clench my teeth and endure, consoling myself with the idea that, sooner or later, this road has to end.
And it ends, after what strikes me as an eternity of jolting, in another small clearing, and upon lifting my gaze I understand why it was not necessary for the carriage to reach this far.
Because before us, rising against the slope of the mountain, there is a staircase.
And not just any staircase, but an enormous, steep and apparently interminable succession of stone steps that ascends straight upward until disappearing among the trees and the mist, with the clear and sole intention of leading whoever climbs it to the top of the mountain.
The procession stops before it, and I notice immediately that a small moment of uncertainty occurs.
Bai Zhen, who until now has not hesitated a single time in the whole trip, stays stopped at the foot of the steps with an expression that, for the first time, betrays something resembling bewilderment. His eyes go from the staircase to me and from me to the staircase, and I don’t have to be a fortune-teller to read his thought. He is calculating, with evident annoyance, how the devil he is supposed to make a cripple in a wheelchair climb all those steps without the task taking him the rest of the day.
And here is where I smile to myself.
Because, if there is one thing I am clear about regarding my arrival at this Sect, it is that I do not intend to make a pathetic entrance. I do not intend to allow the first image its members have of me to be that of a useless burden that must be carried up on shoulders like a bundle, nor that of an invalid to be pitied. If these disciples and their elders have made me come all the way here to examine me like a fairground oddity, then let them start examining as soon as possible, and let them do it with the appropriate image engraved on their retina, something that might even help me later when I'm interviewed.
So I let out a small sigh, half of resignation and half of theater, and turn toward my handmaiden.
“Lianhua”, I tell her. “Take out the Talismans.”
Lianhua does not ask, nor raise objections, she simply limits herself to taking the backpack off her shoulder, opens it, rummages a moment in its interior and takes out a small block of talismans tied with a cord, after which she puts the backpack back on her back with the same naturalness with which she had taken it off.
Bai Zhen, who has followed the gesture in silence, furrows his brow.
“What does she want talismans for?” he asks, and in his voice there is, for once, a pinch of genuine curiosity buried beneath the harshness.
I dedicate to him my most serene smile.
“Now you will see”, I reply to him.
Lianhua pushes me to the foot of the staircase, with Xia glued to our heels and an expression on her face that needs no translation. Because Xia already knows what is coming, and her enthusiasm, that enthusiasm so her own that makes her eyes shine before anything that departs from the ordinary, is simply impossible to disguise.
And under the curious and questioning gaze of all the members of the Sect, who evidently have not the remotest idea of what we are about to do, Lianhua peels one of the talismans off the block, leans over and adheres it firmly to the side of my chair, at the height of the armrest.
The effect is immediate, since the talisman lights up an instant with a faint glow and, a second later, the chair rises. Not much, barely a few fingers above the ground, just enough for the wheels to stop touching the earth, but sufficient for the entire weight of my body to pass to floating in the air with a softness that no longer frightens me as it did the first time.
A murmur runs through the disciples of the Sect.
Without giving them time to take it in, Lianhua positions herself again behind the chair and begins to push it up the stairs, and now, freed from the friction of the ground, the floating chair ascends the steps as if it slid over an invisible surface, with Xia climbing behind us at a brisk pace.
And while we begin the ascent, I raise my voice a bit as I turn my head to address the group that has stayed below, still openmouthed.
“I warn you of one thing”, I say, with all the tranquility in the world as I look at them. “The duration of these talismans is not eternal, so the sooner we climb the staircase the fewer of them I will have to spend, since I only have a limited quantity.”
My words produce an immediate effect on Bai Zhen, since I see how his expression changes and for a moment I have the very clear sensation that he is about to riddle me with questions about the talisman.
But he does not do it, he simply presses his lips together and, with a dry gesture, orders his subordinates to follow him up the stairs. An instant later, the five disciples of the Sect climb behind us, and although none says anything, it does not escape me that more than one does not take their eyes off the talisman stuck to my chair.
The ascent passes without major incidents, with a single exception halfway.
Because, just as I had warned, the duration of the talisman is not infinite, and at some point of the central stretch, when we have already climbed more than half of the interminable staircase, the glow of the paper flickers and goes out, making the chair fall.
It is barely a fall of a few fingers, the exact distance that separated the wheels from the step we were on, but it is a fall onto some steep steps, and for an instant I feel how my whole body tilts backward dangerously while the wheels strike the stone and seek to slide downward.
My breath catches, and at my side I hear Xia’s small stifled cry.
But Lianhua reacts before I have even finished getting scared. Her hands grip the handles with a force that prevents the chair from rolling backward at the root, hold my entire weight without a single tremor, and in the same movement, without hardly letting go of the chair, one of her fingers peels another talisman off the block she holds and adheres it to the side, over the previous already-consumed one, which makes the chair rise again.
“Well done”, I murmur, without turning fully but loud enough for Lianhua to hear me.
She does not respond, but I don’t need to see her face to know that not for a moment has she doubted that I could resolve it.
And at last, after that long and exhausting climb, we crown the last step and reach the top of the staircase.
And before my eyes there unfolds, in all its splendor, the headquarters of the Sect.
Although the first impression I take away is that it is not too large, and it is not at all a criticism, but simply an observation. We are not before one of those colossal sects the legends I have read in the Imperial Library speak of, with hundreds of thousands of disciples and entire mountains covered with pavilions. What I have before me is much more modest, and I suppose much more logical than what all those stories described.
But, even without being something taken out of a fairy tale, it does not cease to have its charm.
The Sect extends along the slope of the mountain, taking advantage of each level and each projection of the terrain, and it is organized in a succession of levels or terraces that ascend in steps as the mountain grows steeper. The buildings are of that sober and elegant architecture so proper to these places, with walls of dark wood, roofs of curved tiles whose eaves rise gracefully toward the sky and red columns faded by the passage of time. I make out what seems to be a main pavilion, larger and more imposing than the rest, presiding over the highest level I can make out, and around it, distributed across the different terraces, other smaller buildings that I imagine will be residences, practice halls, storehouses and other dependencies.
Here and there, among the buildings, I see small gardens carefully delimited in which grow plants of a green too intense and vivid to be ordinary herbs, which makes me suppose that they are fields of spirit herbs. A fine mist floats lazily among the constructions, and in the air I perceive, even without concentrating, a slightly superior density of Qi that betrays that here the density is, for some reason, greater than normal.
It is, in summary, a precious sight, the kind of place that in my previous life would have appeared on the cover of any magazine about travel or tourism.
But my enraptured contemplation lasts exactly until I notice a detail.
Staircases, staircases everywhere.
Because, of course, if the Sect is built in stepped terraces along the slope of a mountain, the only way to go from one level to another is, how else, going up and down staircases. Small stone staircases that connect each terrace with the next, scattered throughout the whole enclosure like a plague expressly designed to embitter my existence. They are not enormous like the one we have just climbed, but they are many, very many, and with that I have enough to form a fairly depressing idea of what moving around this place is going to entail.
I let out a sigh that comes directly from my soul while I think what a shame it is not to have more Minor Levitation Talismans.
Because the truth is that the ones I bring are few, and not for lack of desire, but simply because it has been very recently that I have begun to be capable of manufacturing them with a minimum of success, and in that time I have had to divide my efforts between these and the Freezing Talismans, which means that my reserve of Minor Levitation Talismans is anything but generous, and spending them left and right going up every little staircase of the Sect is not, by a long shot, a viable option.
So I resign myself to the obvious, which is that, except for spectacular or especially problematic cases, I am going to have to manage on these staircases as best I can, probably on the basis of Lianhua’s and Xia’s arms.
While I do my calculations and contemplate the panorama, Bai Zhen has advanced a few steps toward a group of disciples who seem to be on guard beside the beginning of the enclosure.
There are several, all dressed in the tunics of the Sect, and from the first moment they observe us, above all me, with a curiosity they do not even bother to disguise. Their gazes run over my wheelchair and, of course, my own person, with that mixture of strangeness and contained disdain that I have already begun to recognize as part of the members of the Sect.
Bai Zhen plants himself before them and goes straight to the point.
“We are here to complete our task of escorting the Emperor’s daughter to the Sect”, he tells them.
The one who seems to be in command among the guards, a young man of haughty bearing, directs a last evaluating look toward me before replying.
“In that case, I will send someone right now to notify of your arrival”, he says. “But you will have to remain here until someone comes to take charge of them.”
Bai Zhen shrugs his shoulders with an indifference bordering on rudeness.
“That is no longer my problem”, he replies without any reservation. “My task was solely to bring her to the Sect, and the task is fulfilled. What happens from here on does not concern me.”
And after settling the matter thus, he turns toward his four subordinates.
“Let’s go”, he orders them. “It is time to go to the Mission Hall to report our arrival.”
The four Outer Disciples nod and, without further ceremony, begin to walk after him toward the interior of the enclosure.
But I do not intend to let them all go just like that.
“Song Yan”, I call, raising my voice just enough for her to hear me. “Wait a moment, please. I would like to tell you something before you leave.”
Song Yan stops and turns toward me, and unlike her companions, who do not even slacken their pace, she retraces her steps and approaches my chair with a curiosity that has nothing of the wariness of the guards.
“What is it you want to tell me, Zhāohuán Sun Wen?” she asks me.
I smile at her sincerely.
“I wanted to thank you properly for all the kindness you have had with me during the trip”, I tell her. “And since I know that words are carried off by the wind, I have thought of something a bit more tangible. So, if it seems all right to you, when they have settled me and you have a free moment, I would like you to come see me with your copy of Journey to the West so I can sign it for you.”
Song Yan looks at me, blinks, and then slightly furrows her brow, more bewildered than anything else.
“Sign it for me?” she repeats. “And what would I want you to sign the book for?”
And her question, formulated with that so genuine perplexity, involuntarily draws a small smile from me, because it brings back to me all at once a very concrete memory, that of my mother asking me almost exactly the same thing, with almost the same words, the day I gave her her signed copy.
The same face of not understanding, the same question of what the devil a signature on a book is good for. By the look of it, it is a reaction considerably more universal than I thought in this place where something like book signings does not seem to exist.
So I give Song Yan the same answer I gave my mother at the time.
“You see”, I explain to her patiently. “A book signed by me is, in a certain way, a proof. A proof that you have known me in person, and that that dealing has been close enough for me to have agreed to sign it for you. It is not something that just anyone can have, but only someone who has truly crossed paths with me.”
And here, since we are at it, I don’t resist adding the small detail that I know is going to clinch the play.
“Besides, as of today, in the whole world there exist only two copies of Journey to the West signed by me”, I continue as I widen my smile. “One I gave to my mother, and the other was the one I gifted to the Emperor on his birthday. If you accept that I sign yours, it will be the third.”
The effect of those last words does not make itself wait.
Song Yan’s eyes suddenly shine with a gleam I had not seen in her until now, and the reason does not escape me. Because, although I have the clear impression that she still does not grant too much value to my signature in itself, the mere fact that only two other signed books exist in the whole world, and that both are in the hands of the Guifei and the Emperor, turns that third copy into something extraordinarily rare. And a thing like that, however little the signature itself is appreciated, is not something anyone in their right mind would let slip away.
“In that case, don’t worry”, she tells me, and her tone has suddenly lost all trace of perplexity. “Within a few days, as soon as I have the chance, I will go visit you with the book.”
“I will be waiting for you”, I reply to her, delighted that she has bitten just as I expected.
Song Yan then casts a quick glance toward the direction in which Bai Zhen has left and composes a small gesture of haste.
“I should go now”, she says. “Lest Bai Zhen grow impatient over my delay and then I have to hear about it.”
“Of course, hurry”, I tell her, returning the gesture with a smile. “The last thing I would want is for you to get into some trouble because of this conversation. Go with ease, Song Yan, and thank you again for everything.”
She dedicates to me a last inclination of the head and, immediately after, sets off at a run in the same direction in which her companions were lost, leaving the three of us finally alone.
Although not entirely alone, because the disciples on guard are still there, watching us with a distrustful curiosity they have not abandoned for a single instant, as if they feared we were going to break into a run through the Sect at any moment. The idea, coming from someone who goes about in a wheelchair, would strike me as even funny if it weren’t because the scrutiny begins to become a bit uncomfortable for me.
Fortunately, we do not have to wait too long.
After a while that becomes barely bearable under so many gazes, the disciple who was sent to notify of our arrival returns, and he does not come alone. He is accompanied by another disciple, one whose tunic sports a symbol different from that of the guards, a symbol that, just like the one Bai Zhen wore, identifies the Inner Disciples of the Sect.
The newcomer stops before us, runs over the three of us with a quick and dispassionate look, and without even bothering to introduce himself, nor to greet, nor to dedicate to us the slightest courtesy, goes straight to the matter.
“I have been sent to guide you to the place where you will lodge during your stay at the Sect”, he tells us without further ado.