Sheng Keyi - Death Fugue

‘Absurd! Absurd! Absurd!’ Mengliu shook his head repeatedly. ‘What a cock and bull story! Can you even believe this nonsense? Are you obeying it?’

Rania’s face was like a full moon, like flowers in full bloom protected by strong leaves from the freezing wind. She wiped tea from the table, her clothes rustling with the movement, without showing any response.

‘Rania, we do not like one another, and yet we are commanded to become husband and wife. Don’t you find that ridiculous? If I haven’t guessed wrongly, the person you like is Esteban. You should tell him. We should each pursue our own happiness.’

Mengliu felt that this beautiful girl was like a medicine. Nourishing, adding supplement but not too overbearing, gentle on the liver, stopping pain and harvesting sweat. It was difficult for him to view her as a flower, but maybe this was her misfortune. She was the opposite of Juli.

Swanese girls were not rash. At this critical moment Rania remained quiet and calm.

You could say she was confident, or apathetic, or just dispassionate when she said, ‘Happiness is in the heart. You do not need to pursue it, or even seek it. Whom one likes and whom one marries are different matters. There is no conflict. You Dayangese are used to taking good things for yourselves, turning beauty into something ugly, whole things into something broken. As a result, everything is ruined, and you become disillusioned. You say you want to become a monk, or to migrate, but in fact, you just want to escape.’

‘Rania, don’t you have anything to say about this arranged marriage?’ Mengliu was deflated. ‘I’m a layman, not at all a part of your world…If you don’t know that love can sometimes demand one’s whole life, then you can never understand real love…’

‘Who says a marriage has to have love? For you the world is big, but not as big as your heart. Is there nothing, or no theory outside the heart under heaven?’ Rania had a point of her own to make.

‘Your system in Swan Valley, whatever your observances, has nothing to do with me. I want to choose the person I love and marry her. That is my right.’

‘Well, it seems you really don’t know anything. You’ve been appointed the Head of a Hundred Households. I want to congratulate you on your official position, your contribution to Swan Valley. Your Certificate of Citizenship and letter of appointment will be issued soon and sent to you.’ Rania’s nostrils flared and she snorted. ‘I really do not understand what use Swan Valley has for a washed-up poet. But anyway, please be less selfish and think more for the collective good.’

‘Official? You think marriage is for the collective good?’

‘You don’t love Swan Valley?

‘I love my own country.’

‘But your own country doesn’t love you.’

‘You’re talking nonsense. I won’t marry you. I don’t want to create a child prodigy.’ He thought of the raccoon-like Shanlai becoming a miniature wizened old man, with the verses rotting in his belly and causing indigestion, gallstones, kidney stones, intestinal ulcers. His blood would cease to flow, and he would no longer be able to hold the knowledge inside. They would use a scalpel to dig it out, opening the diseased organ and removing tens of thousands of archaisms and countless useless words.

‘It’s just pride on your part. The match is right. Forget other women.’ Rania thought for a moment, then added, ‘Do you know what I’m talking about?’

Mengliu’s angry exit from the house brought an end to their unpleasant conversation, but an hour later, when his feelings had calmed, he found that Rania’s attitude had also changed. She was respectful towards him now, and more careful with her words, and even her silences expressed a more reverential obedience. She referred to him as Master Yuan, and she looked like a perfectly submissive wife and a good mother.

‘I think I offended you earlier. Never mind if you write poetry or not, I should still show you the respect I would a poet. I have not done so, but now I know what I should do.’ Rania offered him a pile of clothing, and a scarlet mandarin robe, its collar and cuffs embroidered with birds and flowers. On its hem, the swans were so finely sewn that the wings looked alive. She held up the new robe, and Mengliu involuntarily opened his arms and slipped them into the sleeves. As she helped him dress she said, ‘This was made especially for you, a combination of styles befitting the Head of a Hundred Households, and a bridegroom. You don’t know this, but the position is only given to those who are highly respected, so it’s an honour. I believe you will be able to take the lead in dutifully doing good deeds.’

As if under a strange hypnosis, Mengliu began to feel a little smug. He looked at Rania as she buttoned his robe. As she clasped the next to last button she squatted down, and her breasts swelled as her knees pressed against them. When she finished, she twitched the hem and stroked the birds that were embroidered there. Perhaps because she had squatted down, and her blood flow had been blocked, her pale face was flushed. Her hair was flowing. A red shell hung between her breasts.

Mengliu stepped back, spread out his arms and looked down at himself. His body was covered with birds with strange eyes and gloriously overlapping feathers. It was like a magical robe, and as he wore it, he felt a burning sensation in his chest. His mind was in chaos, and his legs seemed to float, as if he were in the clouds.

‘Tonight at the bonfire party we are to take the lead. We need to arrive on time.’ Rania’s expression was submissive, like a humble wife’s, a lowly sort of humility.

Once it was dark, she was a different person again. She wore a white wool dress, spread her wings and flew out the door, bouncing like a Mona Lisa and singing the wedding march in a shrill voice. He did not know this dance of hers, whether it was tap dancing, or a tango, or line dancing. It was a bit like all of them, and also unlike each. It was dissipated and yet restrained. It stopped as it reached a frenzy. It was a rhythmic pulsing, like waves of flesh. She danced wildly all the way, bringing Mengliu to the square.

There was a lot of people there. The fire had been lit and the drums were beating. It was a masquerade, many of the people were dressed like savages and wore animal masks. Women suddenly exposed their flesh, draping branches over themselves, leaves dangling as they shook their breasts, twisting their bodies in madness and desire. Some people were using metal skewers to roast rabbits, seasoning them with marinade or sprinkling them with herbs. They were also cooking squid, chicken wings, pig hearts, potatoes, onions, cabbages, sending up fragrant aromas.

Mengliu spotted Juli. Even though she was wearing a vulture mask, her eyes were uncovered, and dazzling. Her hair fell like a waterfall, and her painted body was glittering in the light of the fire. Her breasts were clasped in two melon shells, and she wore a string of red cherries around her neck. Her lower body was wrapped in a skirt of corn husks, and her legs were smooth and as sinuous as a swimming dragon. Earlier, when Rania had told him that at parties of this kind the Swanese people were allowed to abandon all modesty and engage in wild pleasure, he did not expect to see such scenes. He wondered what a carnival amongst these aesthetes, the Swanese, would really be like and what the limits of their revelry would be. The beauty of the women and the smell of the food stimulated him. The music was lively, the drums and flutes were playing with abandon. Men and women alike were stirred into action, whipped to intensity, their legs flailing and hips gyrating in a danse macabre . They leapt into any space that became vacant, rubbing hips and shoulders against one another in play that was rough and wanton, full of provocation and seduction, like a grand orgy.