When Ju-hai got his daily exercise by walking from Master Wu’s home to his own cozy refuge, Orchid’s welcome enriched the day.
“I’ve been out shopping, thinking up surprises for you,” Orchid began, with a glow in her splendid eyes that set him wondering whether her thoughts were shifting from evening rice to the broad mattress behind the alcove curtains. “You’ll never guess what I found!”
If she’d allowed him another instant, he’d have blurted out, “The frailest silken shift. It must’ve been woven of moonbeams.”
But she chattered him down, most happily. “Sit down, and I’ll show you. I was prowling the market—” Orchid raised her voice so that he could hear her from the kitchen annex. “—and there was a very special duck roasting, but I talked the man out of it—he had time to do another for his promised customer.
“But first you’ve got to have some ng lea pai. You need a tonic after all day at school.”
Orchid danced into view with a small tureen on one upraised hand; on the other, she had a wine heater in which an onion-shaped jug barely raised its neck out of the hot water. Pot-lifters protected each hand against its steaming burden.
All on edge, Ju-hai bounced to his feet and sidestepped, ready to dodge when everything smashed to the floor.
Nothing dropped.
“Fooled you, didn’t I?” Triumphantly, the question came an instant after she got the little tureen to the table and slid the wine heater into place beside it. “Neat, wasn’t it?”
Ju-hai let out a long, quavering breath. “How’d a Buddhist nun learn a trick like that—”
Perplexed, Orchid blinked; then, instead of eying him, she picked it up, smoothly. “Master Wu got you more than you counted on! And you guessed wrong—ng ha pai’s really a tonic, and it’s good for you, and it’s not just for pure-awfully-pure Buddhists who want a high-powered drink without going against their religion. Aiieeyah! Maybe there is ginseng in it, but you need something to pick you up after a long day at school.”
Ju-hai began to suspect that his housekeeper knew that something had happened to her the previous night, and that she was still puzzled, groping for the answer; and he was asking himself how much tonic she had gulped while awaiting his return. Although let down because Mei-yu had been called away by the laws of her being, her dharma, his curiosity regarding Orchid-as-Orchid had a good chance of being satisfied.
And some day, there’d be Mei-yu in a body all her own.
Then Orchid brought him back to Ch’ang-an. “While you’re busy with duck soup, I’ll get the big event!”
The soup, made of the fowl’s bones and spare parts, was not the ninth or thirteenth heaven of Chinese gastronomy—not in the way of a tree fungus, or bird’s nest or shark’s fin soup—but it had body and flavor which a farmer could appreciate, as did all the non-elite Chinese soups.
And then Orchid brought what had become a not-surprise.
She uncovered a platter heaped with thin slices of fowl, a stack of pao-ping—paper-thin crêpes, almost as thin as the Mei-yu-plus-Orchid gown—thread-fine, slivered leeks and scallions, and a little dish of plum sauce.
Before he quit blinking, Orchid was busy with ivory chopsticks, the nastiest, the most treacherous, and the most elegant of eating gear, except, perhaps, for jade.
First, she set out the crisp skin of the duck—square flakes of it. That Ju-hai could have done, and so could any Chinese person, even half asleep and dead-drunk. Next Orchid plucked a pao-ping and set it on his plate. She arranged sliver-thin strips of duck and laid thread thin lengths of leek and scallion over the plum sauce she’d spooned on the supreme duck.
Then Ju-hai learned that he was a farmer!
Daintily, with supreme legerdemain, Orchid plied the chopsticks and quickly had the pao-ping rolled, enclosing the filling.
Mo-shu pork—any down could roll that one—but this—!
“Tai-tai, you’re too formal—too stately. Sit down and roll yourself one, so I can watch closely.”
Wide eyed, she regarded him. “Old Master—really—you don’t mean it—”
“Of course I mean it! Why not sit and eat with me. I’ve been wondering why you waste time as a student’s housekeeper.”
Watching the flicker of chopsticks and listening to her answer kept Ju-hai busy. Her explanation, that she had begun by taking the job to oblige a friend who had not been able to accept at the time required, was entirely convincing.
“So, it was to be temporary, until Mou-lan could take over—”
“Temporary? We’ll go into that later!”
He gestured and she got a chair for herself.
Ju-hai knew that he couldn’t have rolled that crêpe with chopsticks, but he picked up pao-ping and contents, biting off a bit at a time without letting it fall apart or spill its filling.
“You could cook duck like this?”
“I’m not too sure.”
She poured ng ha pai.
“You’re all the tonic I need.”
“And Tm not rolling the next pao-ping—not with you watching!”
“Tai-tai, I’ll watch you and learn how!”
Addressing her as tai-tai was a gross social error, or else a declaration, a proposal, or a proposition—but whatever it might be, it was not the appropriate honorific for a temporary housekeeper.
Orchid neither accepted nor declined promotion to Supreme Number One Lady, with connotation of affection and great respect. Meanwhile, it was amazing what she could do with those chopsticks—Twinkle-flick-flip—
The crêpe was rolled, duck, leek, onion, and sauce inside.
“Simple, isn’t it?” She answered her own rhetorical question affirmatively and waited.
“Of course,” Ju-hai said. “Slowly, now, real slowly, roll one for yourself and let me watch.”
One thing was sure: she’d not learned the trick in any cooked-food stall.
The especially fed and especially roasted duck, and Ju-hai’s inviting Orchid to eat with him…
They’d been reading each other’s minds and moods, until neither could separate what had been sensed from what had been spoken. “Old Master—I’ve been puzzled silly—all day—about things—I can’t put it into words—”
“Another surprise in the kitchen? Let’s wait for that and you tell me what’s on your mind.”
“You’ve been so gracious—I’m frightfully presumptuous, asking for explanations—” Orchid got to her feet, and blurted it out: “When I made up your alcove—aiieeyah! I’ll show you!”
Orchid caught his hand, and he followed her. The bed had not been made up. She plucked a long strand of hair, almost black and with the faintest wave, like her own. And then, from the far corner, she picked up a garment of fragile silk. “It’s mine. I’ll show you others like it… I must have been sleepwalking.”
Orchid, who always thought of everything and knew every answer had met more than she could handle. “I must have been wearing this, and that’s what’s so puzzling—this isn’t what I would have worn. It would have been a robe.” She explained with a gesture; a robe would part, flip wide open, with nothing to be flung into a corner.
“Was I—but of course I was—”
“You were, and of course I asked you to eat with me tonight. You mean, you didn’t know?”
Each moved to the