Chapter 146
The Inner Disciple remains planted before us, with his hands crossed behind his back and his chin just high enough to make clear, without need of saying it, that he considers being here a waste of time.
And I, from my chair, take a moment to observe him closely.
Because there is something profoundly familiar about him. Not in his face, which I have never seen in my life, but in everything else. In the way he has run over the three of us with a quick and dispassionate look, in the manner in which he has let loose his sentence without introducing himself, without greeting, without dedicating to us a single one of those formulas of courtesy that in the Imperial Palace are employed even to address the one who cleans the stables. In that contained disdain, so well calibrated that it does not quite become an insult and therefore gives no grounds for any complaint.
He is exactly Bai Zhen. He does not resemble Bai Zhen, it is that he is Bai Zhen, with another face and another voice, but formed from the same mold.
And there, while I look at him, I confirm the idea that has been circling my head for days, which is that this is not a question of bad luck. I have not been assigned the most disagreeable escort of the Sect, nor has the disciple with the worst day of them all received me. This is, simply, the default behavior. The norm.
Song Yan already warned me, although with more tact than the situation deserved. The disciples of the Sect are proud people, and to that sentence, after what I have seen, I would add a second part that she had the delicacy to omit, and it is that that pride springs from an absolute, almost religious conviction that everyone who does not wear their tunic is, by definition, someone less important than they are.
And it is not that it surprises me too much, truth be told. It is the same logic I have seen functioning all my life at court, only that there it disguises itself as protocol and here they don’t even bother to disguise it.
What does leave me with a strange aftertaste is realizing that Song Yan, the only person of the whole group who has treated me like a human being in five days of road, is not the norm but the exception. The honorable exception, in fact. And that, more than anything else, is what tells me exactly what awaits me in here.
So I do the only sensible thing that can be done with a conclusion like that, which is to accept it and act accordingly.
Because one thing I am clear about, and it is that the fact that they are rude is not, by any means, a reason for me to be so. Rather the contrary. If I am going to spend a spell here surrounded by people who are going to look down their noses at me no matter what happens, the last thing that suits me is to give them a real motive to make an enemy of me. Song Yan was very clear on the matter, that here an unfortunate word turns into an enemy, and that offenses are not forgotten. Well then, if the game consists of not offending anyone, I intend to play it better than they do unless they leave me no other way out.
And along the way, if I manage to make my manners show any of them up, neither am I going to be the one to complain.
So I rest my hands on the armrests, lean my torso forward in the chair as much as my body permits me, composing the most correct bow that someone who cannot get to her feet can offer, and I speak to him with the warm and perfectly polite voice I have spent years polishing at court.
“I truly thank you for having taken the trouble to come fetch us”, I tell him. “I understand that stepping away from your obligations to attend to some newly arrived guests cannot be a pleasant task, so I am sincerely grateful to you. You may guide us whenever you consider it appropriate, we are at your disposal.”
The silence that follows lasts barely a couple of seconds.
The Inner Disciple looks at me, and he does it in that way in which one looks at a piece of furniture that, against all forecast, has just said something. There is a blink, only one, and a very slight contraction at the corner of the lips that could mean anything, from bewilderment to annoyance.
And then, without answering, without returning my greeting, without dedicating to me half a word of courtesy, he turns around.
“Follow me”, he says over his shoulder as he begins to walk.
Behind me, I notice perfectly how Lianhua takes in air through her nose in a very concrete way, that silent sigh she lets out when something strikes her as intolerable but she knows it is not her place to say it. An instant later, her hands close over the grips of the chair and she begins to push me, with Xia glued to our flank like a small shadow.
And so, in file and in silence, we finally venture into the Sect until the first disaster occurs, something that takes exactly forty steps.
Because the flagstone path along which we advance, wide and pleasant, with its stones fitted together with a care I appreciate from the bottom of my soul, ends all at once in a small flight of stairs. Four steps, nothing out of this world and the kind of staircase that anyone climbs without paying attention to it.
Lianhua brakes, Xia stops at her side and I lift my gaze toward those four steps with the same enthusiasm with which one contemplates a molar that has to be pulled.
Our guide, three steps higher up, turns, looks at us and waits.
He says nothing, offers no help and, evidently, makes no move to approach. He simply stays there, planted, with the polite impatience of one who is calculating how much time of his precious life this interruption is going to cost him.
Lianhua and Xia exchange a quick look and right away coordinate to, between the two of them, carry my chair up the steps.
Four steps. And when the wheels touch firm ground again at the top, Xia lets out a gust of air that she strives to disguise and I oblige myself not to comment on anything.
The Inner Disciple, without a word, turns around and keeps walking.
The second flight appears barely a hundred steps later. Eight steps this time, and steeper.
The third arrives before we have finished recovering from the second, and it is the one that makes the cup overflow, because when the chair comes to rest on the ground again with a muffled thud, I turn my head and see Xia’s face, and that face tells me everything.
Because Xia is having a considerably worse time of it than Lianhua, and not for lack of strength, but out of pure and simple geometry. She is small, very small. And however much effort she puts into it, with her stature it costs her a great deal to get a firm grip on my chair.
She has her face flushed, a lock of hair stuck to her forehead and that expression of a stubborn mule she puts on when she has decided that she is not going to complain even if they split her in two.
I let out a sigh while I make a quick calculation and arrive at a fairly evident conclusion, which is that we cannot go on like this.
It is not only that it is humiliating, which it is, nor that it is slow, which it also is. It is that at this rate, and with the quantity of staircases I have seen dotting this mountain like a biblical plague, either Xia finally commits an error or we reach the residence when night has already fallen, so I decide to ask first.
“Inner Disciple”, I call, raising my voice just enough for the man walking ahead to hear me. “Would you mind telling me whether the residence that has been assigned to us is very far?”
He stops, and takes long enough to turn around to make clear that the question strikes him as an impertinence.
“It is in the inner part of the Sect”, he replies at last, and then, as if the sentence escaped him without permission, he adds something more. “Since, for some reason I cannot manage to comprehend, the Elders have decided to assign you one of the caves reserved for the Inner Disciples.”
And he says it, that last part, with a tone that leaves absolutely nothing to the imagination. It is a bitter tone, of those that stay between the teeth when you repeat a decision with which you are in profound disagreement but which it is not your place to dispute. It displeases him, it displeases him a great deal, and he does not even bother to feign otherwise.
I file the fact away with care, because he has just given me two very valuable pieces of information without meaning to. The first, that the Elders have made a decision regarding me that their own disciples consider disproportionate.
And the second, that it is certain that no one around here is the least bit pleased about it, but I will worry about that later.
Right now, what interests me is the part I do understand, which is that the inner part of the Sect probably means, translated from the language of the sect, higher up.
And higher up, in this place, means staircases, so I sigh again and turn my head toward Lianhua.
“Lianhua”, I tell her. “I’m afraid we are going to have to spend more talismans.”
Lianhua does not respond immediately. Instead of that, her eyes deviate an instant toward Xia, who continues with her breathing out of rhythm and discreetly shaking her arms to return the feeling to them, and I see perfectly the moment in which she makes the same calculation I have made and arrives at the same result.
“You are right, Zhāohuán Wen”, she concedes. “Carrying you up by hand through each flight is too cumbersome.”
And without further discussion, her hand disappears among the folds of her clothing and reappears with the small block of talismans, she peels one off, leans over and adheres it firmly to the side of my chair at the height of the armrest.
The paper lights up an instant with a faint glow, and a second later the chair rises.
Barely a few fingers above the ground, just enough for the wheels to stop touching the stone, but sufficient for all my weight to pass to floating in the air with that softness that is already beginning to turn out comfortable to me.
And it is then that I see it out of the corner of my eye, and it is that in the Disciple’s perfectly constructed facade of indifference there appears, for a fraction of a second, a flash.
It lasts a sigh, and a blink later the mask returns to its place, the chin recovers its angle and the expression goes out again into that neutral and comfortable disdain.
But I have seen it, and inwardly, while I maintain the most serene face in the world, I smile.
Because this man is going to tell someone about it, it is practically inevitable, and that will end up reaching the Elders who want to interview me, which suits me so that they end up asking the question I want.
“I would appreciate it if you continued guiding us”, I tell him with all the kindness in the world without giving any sign that I have seen his curiosity. “These talismans, unfortunately, do not last eternally and my reserve is limited. The sooner we arrive, the fewer I will have to spend.”
His lips press together a thousandth, and then, without saying a word, he turns around to resume the march, this time at a notably brisker pace than before.
And with the chair floating and Lianhua pushing it as if she were pushing a balloon, we finally begin to advance in earnest.
And finally, too, I can permit myself to look around.
The Sect, seen from within, is even prettier than it seemed from the top of the staircase, and also much more disconcerting, because I understand almost nothing of what I see.
We climb along flagstone paths that wind from terrace to terrace, flanked by low stone walls covered with moss and by twisted pines that grow directly out of the rocks with an admirable obstinacy. The mist is still there, fraying among the buildings, and the air has a clean freshness that resembles nothing of the sticky heat outside.
We pass beside what can only be a training field, a great esplanade of packed earth where a score of disciples repeat the same movement with a wooden sword over and over again, all at once, with a dry and rhythmic crack that resounds against the slope. A bit higher up, we cross beside a circular stone platform raised above the ground, empty at this moment and which who knows what it is used for.
We see gardens of spirit herbs, delimited with stakes and cords, tended by young disciples with their sleeves rolled up to the elbow. We see closed buildings from which comes a sweetish and medicinal smell that gets into my nose and does not abandon me until quite a while afterward. We see an enormous bell hung beneath a little roof and which I have not the remotest idea what it is for. We see closed doors with names like Hall of Discipline or Chamber of the Scriptures.
And that is, deep down, the sensation that accompanies me throughout the whole journey. That of traveling through a foreign city whose language I do not speak. I know that each thing I see has a function, a name, a hierarchy and a meaning, and I know that probably any kid of the Sect could explain it all to me in two sentences. But I have nothing, absolutely nothing, save the little that Song Yan had the patience to tell me beside a bonfire a few nights ago.
But what I do understand perfectly, because that is universal, are the looks.
Because every disciple we cross paths with stays looking at us, and not out of the corner of their eye, but openly, without the least dissimulation. They see the chair, they see the talisman shining on the side, they see the girl loaded with backpacks, they see Lianhua pushing, and they see me, in the middle of all that with my back straight and the most dignified face of circumstance I am capable of composing seated in the floating chair.
Some stop, others nudge each other, a couple of them begin to whisper even before we have entirely passed, but not a single one approaches.
And that, I realize right away, has nothing to do with me, but rather is probably the fault of the man who guides us. It suffices for them to lift their gaze and see him for the curiosity to stay frozen on their faces while they look away, and on more than one occasion I see how someone steps directly off the path to give us way.
So it turns out that the same disdain that is embittering my afternoon is, at the same time, the only thing that is protecting me from a more than probable crowd that would approach to ask us who we are.
I almost thank him. Almost.
The first talisman goes out halfway, without prior warning, and the chair falls the few fingers that separated it from the ground with a dry thud. This time, at least, we are on flat terrain, and Lianhua has the second one stuck on and active before I have time to finish furrowing my brow.
And so, with the second talisman slowly consuming itself, we finally reach the upper part.
The Inner Disciple stops before the bare slope of the mountain and there, fitted against the rock as if it had grown out of it, there is a house.
The house is not large, with a roof of dark tiles, walls of aged wood, a simple door and a couple of windows. Nothing luxurious, nothing that, at first sight, draws too much attention, save for one detail, which is that it has no rear wall.
Or, rather, its rear wall is the mountain itself. The building rests directly against the rock, sunk into it as if someone had built the house by wedging it into the slope under pressure.
“This will be your residence during your stay at the Sect”, our guide announces without even turning fully around.
And then, with the same tone with which the conditions of a sentence are recited, he adds what evidently strikes him as the important part.
“You are forbidden to wander around the Sect without permission, and even less to do so unaccompanied”, he tells us with a more than evident attempt to make it quite clear.
And with that, without a farewell, without an explanation, without having introduced himself a single time in the whole journey, to the point that I still have not the remotest idea what his name is, he turns around to leave.