Daylight on Iron Mountain Read Online Free PDF Page B

reminder sobered Jiang.
    ‘Forgive me, Ho,’ he said, ‘only… those men. Those monkeys in silk…
aiya
!’
    He sat again and reached for his wine, drained it at a go, then held the empty cup out to be refilled.
    ‘Master…?’
    Jiang shook the cup. ‘Quick, Ho! More wine!’
    But Ho shook his head. ‘No, Master. You cannot…’
    Jiang sat round, staring at his steward as if he’d now lost
his
mind. ‘
Cannot?
’
    ‘No, Master. You have visitors. They have been waiting this past hour…’
    Jiang Lei stood, surprised.
Visitors?
    ‘Very aristocratic-looking gentlemen,’ Ho went on. ‘Real
ch’un tzu
.’
    Jiang frowned.
Aristocratic?
He didn’t know anyone aristocratic.Not these days.
    ‘You wish me to show them in, Master?’
    ‘Have you no names for these… these
ch’un tzu
?’
    Ho looked puzzled at that. ‘Names, Master? They seemed to know you very well, so I thought… One has too little hair, the other…’
    ‘… too much.’ Jiang Lei laughed. Now he knew whom Ho was talking about. ‘Send them in, Steward Ho. And bring more wine. I have not seen my good friends these past fifteen years and more!’
    Ho grinned then did as he was bid. Less than a minute later, two men stepped into the room. One was small and completely bald, the other tall, with a great lion’s mane of hair that ended halfway down his back. Both were Han, and both looked decidedly aristocratic with their colourful silks and long fingernails.
    Jiang rushed towards them, delighted to see them after all this time.
    ‘Pan Tsung-yen! Hsü Jung! How wonderful to see you!’
    Jiang embraced one and then the other. By the look of them, they were every bit as glad to see him.
    He bade them sit, then had Steward Ho serve wine. Only then did he ask what he was burning to know.
    ‘How is Ching Su? I thought, perhaps…’
    ‘Ching Su is dead, Jiang Lei,’ Hsü Jung said in a low, mournful voice. ‘He died ten years ago. He was exiled…’
    ‘Was he?’ Jiang said, but he was still suffering from the shock of that awful news. Once the four of them had been inseparable. They had sat their exams together and, afterwards, joined Tsao Ch’un’s ‘Brigade’ together. They had shown their poetry to one another, drunk wine on endless moonlit evenings, and sung – tunelessly in Pan Tsung-yen’s case, drunkenly in theirs – a thousand romantic songs.
    As Hsü Jung told the story of Ching Su’s sad fate, Jiang found himself remembering moments from his past; seeing Ching Su vividly in his mind laughing and sharing a joke with them all. They had all been much younger then, of course, barely in their twenties. Before life had turned serious.
    ‘Ten years,’ he murmured, and shook his head sadly. Ten years ago Ching Su had died. And no one had thought to tell him.
    As the wine flowed, so the talk became less sombre, more ‘upbeat’ as the
Hung Mao
called it. Jiang had picked up a smattering of such terms and phrases from his time on the Western Isle – in fact, he had started a notebook to try to capture them before they disappeared.
    As they will
, he thought.
Now that we Han are in control
.
    ‘I read your last collection,’ Pan Tsung-yen said, butting his bald head forward as he spoke, in the old familiar manner.
Like a boxer
, Jiang thought.
He uses words like punches
. Not that Pan Tsung-yen was physically belligerent.
    ‘It was good,’ Hsü Jung joined in. ‘Very good. I must have read each poem a hundred times, Nai Liu. Only…’
    Jiang smiled at the hesitation. Again, like Pan Tsung-yen, Hsü Jung may have aged, but he hadn’t changed. Not in essence. He spoke his thoughts in parts, bringing each new aspect to the discussion like it was a parcel, especially wrapped.
    ‘Only?’ Jiang coaxed.
    ‘Only it is four years since it was published. I had hoped… well… I had hoped you would have kept on writing.’
    Jiang sat back, smiling. ‘I did. In fact, that’s one of the reasons why I’m here. To see my