Elio’s Notes: The title is the opening line of Li Yu’s Written on the Back of a Pipa, an elegiac poem associated with Ehuang and the pipa she left him: “Her shoulders were slender as if carved, too delicate to bear even several ribbons.” The poem imagines her fragrance and lingering warmth remaining on the instrument after her death.
As Mid-Autumn approached, Li Yu finally emerged from the Buddhist hall. Dusk was gathering. He lightly smoothed his sleeves and stood beneath the covered corridor, lifting his head as though to stretch himself back into the world. Suddenly he caught sight of an extraordinarily bright band of sunset at the horizon. Vermilion and violet burned against the encircling mountains, so striking that he stared until his vision blurred. Only then did he come back to himself. Slowly pressing his fingers to his temple, Li Yu called, “Liuzhu?”
He did not know how long he had spent in that haze. Now that he had abruptly returned to the world, everything around him felt hollow and silent. Far away, a palace maid in plain robes approached carrying a lamp. Li Yu narrowed his eyes and looked toward Yuxiao Pavilion at the highest point of the palace, its jeweled radiance unchanged. Ehuang’s final, peerless notes seemed to thunder in his ears again. The white-clad man suddenly turned around. There was nothing behind him.
The wind moved. The wooden door drifted open and shut.
Inside the secluded Buddhist hall, black gauze floated and the eternal lamps flickered without going out.
A golden Buddha. Break attachment to the self.
My attachment lies in my own heart. While the heart survives, how can the self be broken?
＊
His double pupils darkened, sorrow impossible to hide. I forgot. I turned around, and you were already gone.
“Your Majesty.” The palace maid had come close and called softly. He turned to look. It was not Liuzhu. The girl was younger, with lively eyes. “What is your name?”
“Jingchan. Liuzhu is ill, so she sent me to attend Your Majesty.”
“Liuzhu… still has not recovered?” Li Yu asked. After Ehuang’s death, Liuzhu had grieved so violently that she nearly tried to follow her into death, and she had remained sick ever since. Jingchan lowered her head. “She improved a little the day before yesterday and forced herself to come out, but caught a chill again.”
Li Yu fell silent.
“What day is it?” He had lost track of what night or day it was. He only remembered that something in the eighth month would force him to emerge. After so long shut away, merely walking made his whole body stiff and sore. Li Yu had called for Liuzhu out of habit, and now slowly wandered along the palace corridors with Jingchan following him.
“Your Majesty, it is the fifth day of the eighth month.”
“Ten days left.” He murmured the words, remembering something. “Are the ceremonial preparations complete?” Jingchan reported each item in turn, then said, “Your Majesty, on that same day the Northern Court will also hold an investiture ceremony for its Empress.” Li Yu stopped. A faint smile appeared. “Is that so?” Jingchan nodded. “Piaopeng came to report it several days ago.”
Li Yu waved a hand. “Perhaps I heard him. I was reciting scripture and paid no attention.”
He stopped beneath a tree in the corridor and did not move. Jingchan could only wait beside him. Li Yu’s face remained as calm as ever, without sorrow or joy. Jingchan saw no visible ripple, yet he stood there for a very long time.
At last the man in white seemed to return to himself and lifted his head. The tree above him happened to be a peach whose blossoms had long since fallen. Evening clouds hung low, and his thin, solitary silhouette was startlingly bleak. Suddenly Li Yu’s lips moved. Jingchan thought he was about to give an order, but instead heard only a sigh. “I had forgotten. It has not been spring for a long time.”
It was no longer the weather of the fourth month, when he had seen that man beneath a peach tree heavy with green leaves and blossoms, smiled faintly, and asked whether he had ever tasted peach blossoms.
Looking back now, the answer had been given from the beginning.
“Jingchan, pass down Our decree. On the fifteenth day of the eighth month, Nüying will be invested as Empress. Let the entire realm celebrate. I want a ceremony worthy of an age of splendor.” His tone did not change. After so many days behind closed doors, weariness seemed to have settled more deeply between his brows. He tossed out the order lazily, but Jingchan grew anxious. “Your Majesty, after all… forgive Jingchan for speaking out of turn. Your Majesty has forgotten that Song will hold its own imperial wedding and investiture on Mid-Autumn. Our court should not be too extravagant…” Only after finishing did she realize that she had reminded him of the humiliation of nominal submission to Song. Alarmed, Jingchan covered her mouth. “Your Majesty, Jingchan did not… mean…”
Li Yu showed no anger at all. If anything, he seemed even calmer. “It does not matter. You only stated the truth.”
Jingchan relaxed. She had heard what the Emperor was like, after all. “Your Majesty. Then perhaps it should still be kept simple.”
The man in white smiled again, warm and beautiful. Jingchan had entered the palace only after Li Yu’s accession and had not served him for long, but she remembered that in the old days, whenever the Empress scolded him, His Majesty would always smile exactly this way. Had she never seen him herself, Jingchan thought she might have gone her entire life without knowing that someone truly could smile like the spring wind of the third month.
Gentle. Elegant. Flawless. The strange depth of one eye with double pupils seemed to spread outward until it drew the heart helplessly after it.
A streak of cloud-glow hung in the sky, and Jingchan’s eyes almost became intoxicated by it. Yet she was still worried. Li Yu seemed lost in thought. Reaching out to touch the bare peach branch, he said something that startled her. “Zhao Kuangyin… he did it deliberately…” The pale figure was visibly thinner than the one she had seen at the accession ceremony. “What does extravagance matter? He already thinks the Li house is addicted to luxury. Then I may as well give him what he expects. Li Yu’s reputation for extravagance was hardly born yesterday.”
“Your Majesty…” He had actually spoken Zhao Kuangyin’s personal name outright. Jingchan did not know how to respond.
Li Yu found the change in her expression amusing. “Afraid?” Light shifted through his double pupils. Jingchan gathered her courage and looked directly into his eyes. His white clothes snapped softly in the wind, and the colors of the sunset reflected inside his gaze.
She unconsciously stepped back twice. The sight was almost uncanny, though he wore nothing but white, the palest possible silhouette without even a trace of imperial yellow. This man… the Emperor… was not the person rumor had described.
And yet she could not say which version of him was more real. Both lived behind eyes no one could see through.
“Jingchan is not afraid. I will pass down Your Majesty’s decree at once.”
Li Yu gave a slight nod, released the peach branch, and continued walking. He had no destination, simply wandering. When he next raised his head, Fengque Palace stood directly ahead.
“Your Majesty, perhaps we should go this way.” Everyone in the palace knew that Empress Zhaohui’s death had struck him so deeply that he refused to enter Fengque Palace again.
Li Yu stared at it for a long time. “Open the doors.”
Fengque Palace would soon receive a new mistress. It had already been renovated from top to bottom. Pearls from the Eastern Sea had been set throughout the rooms in place of candlelight, and palace women came every day to prepare for Mid-Autumn.
＊
Li Yu ordered Jingchan to wait outside and walked in alone. Palace maids came forward to bow, some apparently wanting to report something, but he waved them all away. When he reached Ehuang’s bedchamber, the wooden doors were tightly closed.
On the day of his accession, he had held her hand here and walked out with her to face the sun, moon, mountains, and rivers. On the day she died, he had stood here and watched helplessly as she left.
Something surged in his throat. He could not suppress it and coughed blood again. Fortunately everyone else had withdrawn, or panic would have erupted all over again. Li Yu covered his mouth with his sleeve. Just as he was about to push the door open, he unexpectedly heard a voice inside.
He lowered his hand and stood quietly outside. It was Nüying.
＊
Nüying lay against the soft couch where her elder sister had once slept. She had slipped in secretly because she only wanted somewhere to speak for a while.
Her wedding was approaching, yet the Emperor would not see her.
“Elder Sister.” She called the name many times. Had Ehuang not truly gone, Nüying might never have realized that somewhere in her heart she had still always regarded her as an elder sister, just as she had depended on her and followed her as a child. It was simply that people grew up and formed convictions of their own. The world in Nüying’s eyes had long since become larger than the courtyard of the Zhou residence.
But you truly left just like this. Not like the year you married and moved away, but gone so completely that there was nowhere in the world to find you again.
This kind of sudden disappearance was the first Nüying had ever known in her life.
She suddenly began to question everything she had ever wanted.
“Elder Sister, how many people once envied you because you could stand beside him…” Even today, the marriage between Sixth Prince Li Congjia and Ehuang of the Zhou family remained a legend praised throughout Jinling. Nüying had been too young back then, but as she grew older she could read the memory of that splendor in the eyes of her elders. The two of them had seemed to fulfill every beautiful expectation. How could a marriage in the mortal world have been so perfect? Ehuang was never eclipsed by Li Yu’s brilliance. On the contrary, she had become an indispensable part of his legend. “You gained so much…” Nüying murmured, tracing the embroidered mandarin ducks across the newly made quilt. “Elder Sister, was my choice right or wrong?”
“With a temperament like yours… you still went this far for him.” Nüying buried her face in the quilt as she spoke. Certain no one could hear, she whispered to herself. “Li Congjia… Li Yu. Why is it that when I say the name Li Yu, he no longer feels like the same person? Why is everything different from the brother-in-law I remember from childhood? What changed? Elder Sister, why did you insist on letting go?”
The door suddenly opened. Nüying jerked upright, tears still shining at the corners of her eyes. She sat frozen on the couch and stared at the figure in white. There was blood on his lips, and for one dazed instant his pallor made him almost unrecognizable.
After a long moment their eyes met. Li Yu walked slowly to a chair and sat. Only then did Nüying scramble down to bow. She had not seen him for days. His face was much the same, yet he had plainly grown thinner.
He sat watching her kneel before him and did not speak for a long time.
Nüying eventually steadied herself. She was wondering whether he had heard what she said when Li Yu finally spoke, and the moment he did, her tears began falling uncontrollably.
His tone was light, neither sorrowful nor joyful. “Your sister never bowed to me like this.”
Nüying sprang to her feet. She cried without restraint and looked at him through tears. “Then I will never be my sister either.”
Li Yu only smiled. The blood on his lips was shocking against his skin.
Nüying stared at him, her voice trembling. “…Your Majesty… what happened?” Li Yu paused before realizing what she meant. He casually wiped away the blood, as though it were the most ordinary thing in the world. “Nothing. It has been like this lately.” Then he propped his forehead against one hand at the table. “Do not ask why. If you mean to remain beside me, then do not ask why.”
Nüying thought he must have heard everything she said.
“Because the truth is, even I… do not know exactly why…” For one instant his expression became lost, but only for an instant. Very quickly he was once again the calm, unruffled Li Yu. “Stop crying.” His voice was slow and soft, and Nüying truly forced herself to stop. She wondered why this man always possessed such power. Another why. Another question with no answer.
Li Yu suddenly smiled more lightly and rubbed his wrist as he looked at her. “I never really paid attention to your playing before. Go bring your pipa.”
Nüying agreed and hurried away to fetch it.
＊
When Nüying began to play, there truly was something of Ehuang in her technique, though her brows held quick cleverness rather than pride. Her slender fingers moved over a very slow melody.
Li Yu half closed his eyes and folded over the table, at last finding a moment of peace. In the darkness, both body and mind were exhausted. A faint pain in his chest dragged heaviness through his limbs. He only wanted to rest, yet somehow he had returned to Fengque Palace after all.
The pale figure let out a long sigh. Nüying knew perfectly well how accomplished he was, and her sister had been renowned throughout the realm for the pipa. Anxiety inevitably rose in her. Hearing Li Yu sigh, her hand trembled. Li Yu frowned slightly. “You are still afraid.”
Nüying continued playing, unwilling to concede.
He spoke slowly. “I am only an ordinary man, neither immortal nor demon. Why be afraid… Han Xizai once said I do not treat myself as human. But the truth is that, except for her, no one beside me ever treated me as human either. What does Li Yu look like in all of your eyes? Even I am curious.”
Nüying could not see his expression, but the words stopped her strings.
“Continue.”
The pipa sounded again. His voice grew softer and softer. “Zhao Kuangyin… too many people in this world think too highly of me. So all along, this is how lowly I was in your eyes. What use was all your scheming when it cost Ehuang her life… You and I must still each accept what Heaven gives us… Mid-Autumn, the full moon…” By the end the words were almost inaudible, and Nüying, concentrating on the pipa, could no longer make them out.
Li Yu lay over the table until the sleeve of his plain white robe grew damp. Zhao Kuangyin… everything today was bestowed by that arrow you shot beside the river. How cruel.
Utterly merciless.
In his haze, Li Yu actually fell asleep there.
The sound of the pipa continued through Fengque Palace all night.
＊
“Jade beads fall in clusters beneath the moon; before the hall I gather them, fresh with dew. To this day I do not know what happens in Heaven; perhaps Chang’e cast them down for mankind.” On the day of the full moon, north and south of the same river, he and the other man looked across mountains and rivers they could not bridge, then turned away to invest their separate Empresses. Heaven’s order and human convention could not be defied. Affairs of the mortal world always seemed to follow tracks already laid.
Elio’s Notes: These lines are from Pi Rixiu’s Mid-Autumn poem On Osmanthus Blossoms at Tianzhu Temple on the Fifteenth Night of the Eighth Month. The “jade beads” are fallen osmanthus blossoms imagined as something Chang’e might have scattered from the moon.
Throughout Jiangnan, trees of fire and lanterns lined the streets. Every household in Jinling hung gold-and-red lanterns in celebration, bright pearls suspended above. Kingfisher feathers and ornaments glittered everywhere; golden bells were tied to blue brocade spread like layers of cloud beneath their feet, while ranks of weapons gleamed with carved silver. The spectacle approached divine extravagance. The new Empress wore splendid red ceremonial robes. Gold foil formed a phoenix upon Nüying’s brow, and her lively eyes now held themselves with proper dignity. She too had become another radiant lotus among mortals.
Inside Weiyang Hall, Nüying received the golden seal. For the first time she touched his hand, and the brief coolness went straight into her heart. The elaborate ornaments at her brow shadowed half her lashes. Through the strings of pearls she could see only the dark red soft-gauze outer robe he wore. Beneath the haze of smoke-thin silk, his red seemed to darken, making her own ceremonial crimson blaze even brighter.
He took her hand and led her step by step up to the highest Yuxiao Pavilion, where once the surviving echoes of a golden age had been brought back into the world. “An ancient Ronghua tripod, a golden phoenix-mouthed vase…” Behind them, palace attendants recited the inventory of gifts the Emperor had bestowed upon Fengque Palace. Every item was precious beyond measure.
The final item was the Shaocao pipa.
On the long jade staircase, Nüying stopped.
Everything that was hers, I will give to you. Will that be enough?
＊
“Across a thousand li, the rivers and mountains lie distant beneath cold colors; deep among reed flowers a solitary boat lies moored.” From Yuxiao Pavilion, beyond the golden trees, water and sky joined in one line. Green branches covered Phoenix Mountain, while the river surged below in dark, magnificent breadth. This was Jiangnan as it truly was. Nüying remembered the wish she had carried for years. At last there had come a day when she could stand here beside him, hand in hand.
Elio’s Notes: The line about the distant rivers and mountains comes from Li Yu’s Wang Jiangnan: An Idle Dream Travels Far, which imagines Jiangnan in clear autumn from a distance. The novel uses it here as foreshadowing of the separation that later comes to define Li Yu’s poetry.
The man beside her, wearing the imperial crown, suddenly sighed. “Nüying, you have married a man who possesses nothing. One day you will regret it.” He remembered his father’s words before death. He could see these mountains and rivers, but beyond them…
Cloud-seas surged and dissolved. How bitter that even this body is not mine to command.
Nüying turned to look at him. Li Yu wore a smile, yet it held an almost compassionate sorrow. The man at her side looked across his own rivers, mountains, and living people, then told her he had nothing.
As he led her down from Yuxiao Pavilion, Li Yu proclaimed that from this day onward monasteries would recruit monks throughout the realm, Buddhist rites would be greatly expanded, and meditation halls and pagodas would be built within the palace. Nüying bit her lip when she heard it. The humiliation could hardly have been clearer: on the very day the new Empress was invested, the Emperor devoted himself openly to Buddhism.
＊
Phoenix music rose while Bianjing blazed red. Inside Wende Hall, the Empress rested briefly before going out to receive the formal investiture. Yunjie sat quietly beneath the phoenix crown, waiting for the auspicious hour, when a sound suddenly came from beneath the window.
Ling’er murmured, “Don’t tell me His Majesty has come…” Yunjie was puzzled. Zhao Kuangyin should have been in the front hall at this hour. Instead, a low stream of recitation slipped through the gap beneath the window.
Someone was chanting a long passage of scripture, without melody and without the slightest emotion. “Those who harbor love and desire cannot see the Way. It is like clear water stirred by a hand: though people gather around it, none can see their reflection. Desire intermingles within a person, raising turbidity in the heart, and so the Way cannot be seen. You monks should cast off love and desire. When the defilement of desire is exhausted, the Way may be seen.” The voice went on, low and unbroken. Ling’er frowned. “Did one of the monks praying before the halls lose his way? How did he wander here without anyone stopping him…” She was about to go outside and investigate when Yunjie suddenly caught her arm. “Leave it. We will be going to the front hall soon. Let him be.”
Ling’er could only stand quietly to one side. Yunjie, however, stared fixedly at the window. Only she understood that this was not meaningless recitation.
This was the first scripture Zhao Guangyi had ever recited to her. The voice outside was very low now, blurred enough that she could not make out every word, but Yunjie knew perfectly well who had come.
She had meant to rise and close the window. After hesitating again and again, she remained where she was.
Zhao Guangyi clenched one wooden hairpin so tightly that his fingers had gone rigid, yet his face remained calm, as if none of this had anything to do with him. Beneath a tree beside Wende Hall, his lips moved softly through the scripture. His eyes were full of the past.
He remembered once thinking that, in the end, there had never been any remarkable reason. He simply did not want to see her tears. Nor was this the first time he had felt that way.
At Andong Temple, he had failed to protect him. So here and now, would he fail to protect her as well?
Zhao Guangyi suddenly felt sorrow. Yet Yunjie marrying Big Brother was not necessarily a bad thing. The two thoughts rose and fell against each other until sweat dampened the wooden hairpin in his palm.
Behind him, ceremonial cannon thundered. The auspicious hour had arrived.
The man beneath the tree could hear palace attendants inside urging the Empress to rise. Suddenly Zhao Guangyi said, “If fortune ever allows me to travel Jiangnan again, would Yunjie be willing to go with me?”
Yunjie’s phoenix cape stilled. Years ago, before the Buddhist hall in the old residence, thunderclouds had been gathering when Zhao Guangyi asked her exactly the same question. The words today were unchanged, yet suddenly she heard within them something she had never expected.
For a moment, countless thoughts twisted through both their hearts. Palace attendants hurried around inside and paid no attention to sounds outside. Zhao Guangyi had spoken in one seamless breath. Had Yunjie not been listening for him, no one else might even have realized that the sentence was not part of the scripture.
After a long pause, she finally answered toward the half-open window. “No.” It was very soft, but enough to silence the man outside at once.
The attendants looked startled. “Your Majesty… is something wrong?”
Yunjie shook her head. “Nothing. To the front hall.”
＊
Once, Yunjie had answered him lightly, without the slightest burden in her heart. Now she understood the meaning beneath his words, but her life was no longer hers to choose. I want to go see Jiangnan with you. But I cannot go.
When she left the hall, Yunjie hardened her heart and refused to look back. Beneath the tree behind her, the man slowly lowered the hairpin in defeat. She did not see that he truly wore a monk’s robe, his hair already shaved away.
Today, Zhao Guangyi would set out for Jiangnan.