Death Watch (53 page)

The Fretful Porpentine had two doors. One, Silas had seen before. It led to the tavern, where the living drank and met to share news. The second door, which he had never seen, was far older and led—the ladies of the Sewing Circle had told him—to a shadowland of the dead. In truth, they’d said, both doors shared a frame—each leading to a room where the forgotten gathered to forget.

Stepping back, Silas saw the front of the tavern was much larger now as it rose from the mist, and horses stood at a post a little ways away from the door. As he again approached the tavern, those familiar voices behind him fell aside, and he could hear raucous shouts just ahead, coming from inside. The noise rattled the hanging lanterns on their hooks and the glass of the candlelit windows, which cast a jaundiced yellow light out onto the cobbles of the street. Just over the door hung a hand-painted sign he’d never seen before, depicting a porcupine with its quills standing straight up from its back.
THE FRETFUL PORPENTINE
—
TAVERN, INNE, AND TRAVELLER’S EASE
was written below the startled animal in bold red letters. As Silas stood looking at the tavern-as-it-was, ghost after ghost flowed past him and into the place. A loud cry of greeting burst
through the doorway as each one went in. Silas also noticed, as he crossed the threshold that, while many ghosts were going in, none were coming out.

Silas had seen hastily written notes regarding the limbo of the Tavern in the ledger, but as he tried to recall them, he could no longer discern whether the words that swam in his mind were in the past or present tense … the third person or the first….

Just inside the door of the tavern, a sign greets all weary travelers with the words:

Wand’rers, be welcome

Sit down at your ease

Pay with a story

And drinke what ye please!

Here you will always find a lively company, still drinking hard, laughing, cursing, lamenting their losses, and bragging about whatever unspent joys still fill their pockets. Only those who’ve lost something they don’t want to find come here. A wife. A child. A job. A family. A way. If you’re missing something and want to forget about it, there is a stool waiting for you just by the door. And there’s always something to stay for
.

Though always forgotten by dawn, a thousand stories are told each night. Incline your ear
.

Just listen to the man with seven sons by the table in the back. He’s been here in his cups a long time
.

A daughter drowned
.

An awful tale. But not unusual, for good girls sometimes come to bad ends. His sons tell him it was their sister and a boy. She went there to meet a boy from one of the big houses. That’s what the sons tell their father. The father doesn’t look up from his drink, but asks, where is your
sister now? Lost, the sons say. That’s what they say. Every time
.

And the first son, the oldest, looks his father in the eye and nods
.

This is not a new story
.

Drowned in the millpond, the first says. We were too late, says the fifth son. Gone there to meet a boy. At night. And we were too late. She must have fallen. Fallen. In the dark. But we couldn’t help her, says the sixth of the sons. The seventh is silent and looks away from the others
.

The father notices the first son’s shirt is wet and a little green, just the arms up to the shoulder, as though he’s been holding something down under the surface of the water. Another round, says the father, closing his eyes
.

And here we go again
.

It’s the same every night. The family’s proud. And she never learns
.

Everyone’s always losing something. So folks always feel at home. Drink up. Your money’s no good here. But everyone must pay. Everyone must put a tale in the till, or who could bear it?

And here’s a young man, looking a little lost
.

“Get him a drink,” someone shouts
.

“C’mon,” yells another, “let’s hear your news from beyond the door!”

He doesn’t know they are speaking to him. He stands there gaping
.

Down from the end of the long, polished bar, someone calls out, “How about a story?” and throws a handful of peanuts that pelt him, rousing his attention
.

“Looking for my father,” the young man says, startled, and half a hundred heads look up at him
.

“You’ve come to the right place! Plenty of lost fathers here,” someone says. A bunch of men with faces like shipwrecks raise their hands, their eyes still guiltily in their cups
.

The young man looks. None of them are known to him
.

He says again, louder now, “I’ve lost my father,” hoping someone will stand up and meet his gaze, that someone he knows will know him.
His dad, maybe just drinking at one of the back tables, unaware of how long he’s been there. Forgetful of how much time has passed, ready to put on his coat and come home
.

No one stands up. No one stands out
.

But someone shouts, “Not again!”

“Heard it a hundred times!” another hollers, belching his words out from a gut full of beer and ennui. “We’ve all heard that one before!”

Never raising his voice, the young man asks, “Then do you know how it ends?”

And the whole back room answers as one—the travelers, the wastrels, the lost—all cry out: “No! Do you?”

And the room erupts in laughter as the young traveler takes to his road
.

Silas walked on and farther on, and though the Peony Lantern Teahouse had seemed, in the tapestry, to be just around the corner from the tavern, he was walking and walking through the Narrows, all the way back up to what might have been Coach Street, then down the Sloop and along the sea, up Pearl Lane and through a back alley, finally to the place where he knew a ruined building stood in his own time.

Mother Peale had told him that the building had once, at the turn of the century, been owned by a Chinese family, and catered primarily to those folk who had come to Lichport from the west coast by train as laborers, traders, and importers, bringing urns and carvings to be used in funerary rites by wealthy families who found the foreign fashionable at times of death.

Here, within this building, those folk came who longed for a taste of the East. It had been a teahouse but also served as a market, importing familiar items for those far from home, and as a parlor of gossip, where news from faraway families might
be obtained. A place to wait for ships or trains that came and went from the other towns and other coasts, bringing news or the arrival of a loved one, or rarely, the beginning of the long journey home.

Mother Peale had showed him a ruin—leaning rooms of skeletal beams; broken benches; an old, abandoned chest in a filthy corner—but before him now, risen in the mist, Silas gasped at what he saw. The sweeping curved roof was tiled and adorned with ornate ceramic dragons. Roosting atop the teahouse and in some of the trees now standing next to it were large nests of cranes that sat patiently, waiting for those who exited the teahouse, although departures seemed to be few and far between. The teahouse stood on carved posts as though it were resting in the water. And indeed, the street below it had become translucent, and under the clear glass cobblestones, Silas could see enormous koi swimming in endless, dreaming spirals.

When the traveler enters the Peony Lantern Teahouse, there is always a place to sit. A bowl of lemons rests on each low table, and your first cup of tea will come quickly, though not always your second
.

Lu Yu is the keeper of the Peony Lantern Teahouse, and it is Lu Yu himself who welcomes all who visit. The first cup is always poured for guests from his hands. So as the youth approaches the lacquered threshold of the teahouse, Lu Yu speaks first, joyfully, from within
.

“Xiansheng hao ma? Chi fan le ma?”
says the keeper of the teahouse
.

“I am well, and I have eaten, thank you,” says the youth, as he steps within and shakes hands with Lu Yu without hesitation, for here, at the edges of the suburbs of Fengdu, the City of Ghosts, all words are familiar to the ears of a traveler
.

Vast as a province, yet cozy as its many private screened rooms,
the teahouse is ancient, and in its gathering chambers, the dead eat and drink and wait to be served again. Many have lingered here for a long time, although the dead who pass through the doors of lacquered ebony do not mean to stay. But the teahouse seems familiar to them and reminds them so much of home, so they sit on silk cushions underneath lamps of jade the color of flowers and forget where it was they so desperately wanted to go
.

Ah! How delight in sensual pleasures may overcome even the cherished longings of the heart
.

They eat. They drink. They savor and listen to the sound of music and recline on the cushions and take familiar comfort in all the trappings of the teahouse, and forget
.

Though the food is tempting, the youth does not eat, does not drink. He sees that at some of the tables—when no second cup of tea is served by Lu Yu—the guests look anxious, even embarrassed at having to ask someone else, a stranger, to fill their empty cup
.

For some, it is like this. They wait and wait, and eventually begin to pour cup after cup for themselves. This is because they have been forgotten. No children, no grandchildren make offerings to them. No one speaks their names before a shrine. No incense is offered. Their names are not written with a brush onto the scroll of the names of revered ancestors and so, at the teahouse, they must wait to eat and drink, or serve themselves, which many find disgraceful. And because they have wandered so far from home, the ghosts of their children and grandchildren are not here to pour tea for them. These ghosts of the forgotten think: I will leave after a few more cups. But, oh! How excellent are the dumplings! Just one more
.

Some visitors to the teahouse stay longer than others. Some are ghosts of those who traveled far in life, those who settled where they found themselves and then seldom thought of home. Yet in old age they began to think once more of lands across the sea, and so longing
entered their hearts. They long for the distant homes and familiar sights their ancestors knew: the green mountains of Wuyuan, the pavilion of Tengwang, the peaks of Jinggangshan, the villages of Xidi and Hongcun, the ancient river houses of Zhujiajiao. But the teahouse is so like the places they once knew, or heard of from parents, and so, why leave? They dream of something so far removed that they no longer know what they long for. Easier to sit and sip and dream. For some, it is easier to imagine a thing than to try to attain it
.

Some will never leave, either because of fear or forgetting. Though you may be a wanderer, living out your days in exile, home is with you always, in blood-song and bone map, and in the echo of your mother’s voice as you tell her favorite tale to your children or the children who gather around you in the land of your exile. Home is your most constant companion. When that is forgotten, the doors of lacquered ebony close before you and the land of your ancestors is lost. Then here, in the Peony Lantern Teahouse you shall remain. You may make friends, even meet someone you once knew. If you are kindhearted and pour tea for others, they may repay the favor. Then you may drink, and eat, perhaps, but the joyous cry of your ancestors that might have accompanied your return is a song your ears shall never hear, and the special flavor of the food is diminished, just slightly. So you eat and eat, and hope to regain the savor of your meal
.

But be comforted. You will find it is easy to forget what you will never know. And there is music at the Peony Lantern Teahouse, the
gu zheng, ruan, pipa,
the gourd flute. Listen. One of the flute players is very fine and can imitate the sound of birds
.

The more fortunate stop at the teahouse only briefly. For them, the tea tastes robust, the dumplings full of joyous savor. But just one cup. Just one mouthful, then they pass once more through the doors of lacquered ebony to make their way home
.

The youth looks upon the lounging ghosts with a heavy heart, for
what right has he to trouble them with his own grief, to press them with questions? But there is something about the floral hues of the light
,
perhaps the music, that makes him long to sit and rest. He passes from table to table, perhaps waiting for an invitation, yet few do more than incline their heads toward him briefly, and most seem not to notice as he walks among them. They only hold their cups up again and again to be filled
.

But there, at a table by a window that overlooks the ornamental pond, is an empty seat, and on the bench, a folded robe in pleasing white and gray silk, with a red sash, that the youth is sure would fit him. Lu Yu brings tea to the table, and shakes the youth’s hand again, as he helps him take his ease, encouraging him to drink and enjoy the excellent view. But as the youth sits down and lifts his full cup, one ghost looks up at him from the far wall of the room, where music is being played. This ghost looks at the youth as though she has been waiting for him; she holds him with her eyes, and the youth puts down his cup. She stops playing the
gu zheng,
and rises and gestures to him without words
.

He leaves his tea to cool in its cup and rises from the table to ask the ghost the question that had fled his mind when the light of the lamps of the teahouse so enraptured him: “Do you know where he is?”

The girl shakes her head, but beckons the youth to follow her
.

Her white gown trails far behind as she walks past him. He can just see at the hems and seams of her dress a flash of bright red silk
.

The ghost leads the youth toward the back of the teahouse, where a constellation of staircases rises to upper floors. The ghost walks up the stairs without pausing, never looking to see if the youth is still behind her. She drifts up like rising steam, and as if in a dream, the youth follows
.