The first watch has begun. Old Sun is on the clapper tonight. I can tell. His clapper sounds lighter than othe…
The first watch has begun. Old Sun is on the clapper tonight. I can tell.
His clapper sounds lighter than other men's, light and faintly trembling. It was not always so. In years past he struck it hard and sharp, but after that day it was never the same again.
One strike, then another. Old Sun walks slowly, but the sound still drifts farther and farther away. He alone never looks toward the lattice windows of this hall. His eyes are empty, like a well veiled in autumn mist.
So are mine.
We were both soaked through in that rain.
It was in the autumn of 948. The rain that day was fierce, hammering on the palace tiles as though Heaven itself were beating a drum to cry out against injustice.
And yet inside the hall, the silence was more terrible still.
The officials stood there in a dark mass, like a stand of black trees. Their eyes sat high above, their hearts buried below.
They all knew why Lord Li had died.
He died for loyalty. He died for gratitude. He died in the ruin of factional strife.
But once the imperial will had fallen, his death had to be given another name.
"He endangered the altars of state, consorted in secret with traitors and villains, and plotted rebellion."
Word by word, they pressed him down into the mud. No one spoke again. No one could.
When wind and rain demand that bamboo bend, then bend it must, until at last it breaks. The whole hall watched it bend, watched it split, watched it be swept away in the mire. Then they turned in silence, and each raised his own umbrella.
I had an umbrella too. I gripped it so hard my nails bit into the handle.
But in the end, I did not step forward.
And so Lord Li's sigh dissolved into the sky above the palace, no different from the way the music of a grand ceremony rises and fades.
The rain kept falling, drop after drop, striking the bricks more clearly than even Old Sun's clapper now.
I was not wrong. I was only a young palace attendant. I could not even hold up the half inch of sky above my own head, much less contend with a judgment already sealed.
For two years now, I have whispered this to myself every night, like a charm to keep myself alive.
But no charm can quiet a dream. In the dream, the rain falls hard and never stops.
Last month I drank with Old Sun. The wine had gone cold when he suddenly said, "Lord Li... used to laugh most at the sound of my clapper." Then he laughed too, and the sound of it was uglier than weeping.
He used to say a man should live so that he could face his ancestors' tablets without shame. Now he says only that the wine has gone cold and ought to be warmed.
We have both learned to drink cold wine and speak warm words.
Drop by drop, that rain has gone on seeping through the years. From the cracks in the bricks outside the hall, onto the floor within, and into my very bones.
And still I write.
These words will be eaten by insects, buried in dust, perhaps never seen by anyone at all.
Then why do I write? To let myself hear them. To leave them for those who come after.
I do not know.
I know only that I am cold. Moonlight falls on the bricks at my feet, but it does not reach me.
Not on this night. Not on all the nights already gone. Not on all the nights still to come.