The Blossom in the Middle of the Water

They left Nanpu on the twenty-second, and the wheels sank twice on the dirt road. Gu Qing got down to help push. Thick clods of mud caked her soles, and her feet felt heavier to lift than they had on the boat. Shen Su sat on the cart and listened to Gu Qing and the driver call out on either side as they heaved. She added a quiet call of her own, out of time. The driver laughed and said that if Granny called like that, even the donkey wouldn't know which way to go. She stopped and waited until they had pushed the cart free before laughing at herself for getting in the way.

Heze was some way from the city gates. They passed rice fields, bamboo fences, and a few houses with fish drying in the yards. The cart turned twice, and suddenly layers of leaves gleamed in the distance. The water was narrow close by, where chickens scratched for food along the muddy edge, and the wind carried the smell of drying rice straw. Shen Su said nothing about how glad she was to be there. She craned her neck for a glimpse of red, but for the longest time she saw only green, unaware that the brim of her hat had slipped down to the tip of her nose.

Gu Qing lifted the brim for her and felt a moment of disappointment herself. The leaves were unlike those in a pattern, each turned neatly toward the viewer. Some faced away, some curled in on themselves, and some had ragged edges. Under the water lay stems that had rotted the year before. The red was a long way off, two or three spots that looked as though someone had dropped them there at random. They refused to come together into the lovely scene she had been preparing for so long. She shifted her bag to her other hand, wanting to ask if they had been brought to the wrong pond.

The driver took them to a farmhouse that lodged travelers. The owner knew Pang Yun and charged them the usual price for the room, though he was willing to lend them a bench with a back. The room was dry, and they could see water beyond the yard. Once Shen Su sat down, she stayed put. Gu Qing was about to call for a boat, but the old woman said she had had enough rocking on the cart for one day. They could eat first. After waiting so long, she was in no hurry to get the last bit over with.

After dark the wind passed through the leaves with a sound Gu Qing had never heard before, unlike either the fine rustle of plum leaves or the scrape of a paper tray against a rack. She lay by the window listening to leaf touch leaf and thought of every silk leaf she had made, all of them alike in their silence when she ran a hand over them. Grandmother turned over on the inside of the bed and asked quietly if it would rain tomorrow. Gu Qing had no idea. She said they would get up and see.

On the morning of the twenty-third, light showed through thin clouds, and Shao Shuang rowed her little boat to the low landing. It was small enough that the two of them had to sit on the low seat in the middle, with no room to stretch both pairs of legs toward the same end. Shen Su saw the gangplank and stopped again. Gu Qing kept her hand down and helped the boatwoman steady both sides first. The old woman said to wait a moment, lifted her right foot to try the plank, and held out her hand to Gu Qing only after stepping into the boat. Her palm was damp with sweat.

The boat left shore very slowly. Shao Shuang did not push into the thickest growth, first skirting the shallow mud. They saw a small emerald insect land on the edge of a curled leaf. Shen Su bent to look more closely, but the boatwoman told her not to lean out. The old woman immediately sat straight and gave Gu Qing a small smile, like someone called out in class. Gu Qing reached to support the bag beside her instead of pressing her shoulder, and drew her own legs closer to the middle.

The first lotus was ahead on the left. Its petals had opened rather loosely and were turning pale brown at the edges, past what people called “just right.” Gu Qing was about to ask to go around it and look at the red ones farther off, but Shen Su called for them to stop first. Shao Shuang planted her pole firmly and let the wind turn the boat slowly halfway around. The flower came into view from the side. A little bee at the top went in and came out again.

Her grandmother looked at it for a long time before she spoke. “It's bigger than the one I made.”

Gu Qing was taken aback for a moment, then laughed out loud. Shen Su laughed too and used her hands to show the size of her own gray lotus against her knees, lowering her voice as if the real flower might take offense. She asked if this one was past its best. Shao Shuang said the petals would spread a little farther today and tomorrow, and once the flower was spent it could still form a seed pod. Shen Su showed no disappointment that the petals would soon fall. She looked more closely, as though she'd finally realized that the day or two she'd missed had brought her something as well.

Gu Qing felt for the scrap of paper she used to record designs, meaning to work out how many layers of petals she could see. The little boat turned gently. She had just counted seven when three more came into view from behind. She counted again, the wind turned the boat again, and there was no getting them all. She frowned. Beside her, Grandmother said softly that there was a half-open one over there. Gu Qing looked up and answered, though her eyes still wanted to go back to the paper in her hand. Damp had softened the corner and blurred the charcoal into a little smudge.

“Would you like one picked for you?” Shao Shuang asked. “Someone here sells them. You needn't break off a stem yourselves.”

Gu Qing looked at the flower close by. If she held it in her hand and turned it over, she could make out every layer of petals. She could even take it back to their lodgings and pull it apart carefully. She folded up the paper and said no, asking instead if the boat could move a little so Grandmother could see the half-open one. She kept her reasons to herself and pushed the little bundle for recording patterns under the seat. The boat turned away. The flower left in the water gave off no more scent for having been refused, but she felt lighter all the same.

The half-open flower stood among wide leaves, with only its tip showing. Shao Shuang was unwilling to pole her way in by force and risk scraping the leaves or the boat. She stopped where they could see. Shen Su held the edge of the seat and turned her face a little to one side, light from the water flickering in her eyes. She shed no tears and called out to no one absent. Her lips parted slightly, and for a long time she seemed to have forgotten how to finish what she was about to say.

Gu Qing looked at her and suddenly wanted to ask if she’d seen enough, if she’d really seen it, if it was the way she’d once imagined. The questions crowded her throat. Asking even one would turn the moment into something that called for an answer. In the end she just shifted the light parasol to shade the back of the old woman’s neck, where the sun was beginning to feel hot. With half her own face still in the sun, she narrowed her eyes a little and looked at the flower too.

The flower was paler than they had imagined, white near the stalk and red only at the tips, with no heady fragrance rushing at them across the water. Shen Su suddenly said that if she were dyeing it, she would make the tips darker. Gu Qing said she would too. They laughed, then fell quiet. When the wind came, the half-open petals parted a little. Both thought they would go on opening, and watched for a long time, but that was as far as they went. Gu Qing’s feet went numb from sitting, and still she could not bear to be the first to move.

Shao Shuang asked if they wanted to go farther west, where there was another patch. Gu Qing turned to her grandmother, who was rubbing her knee and took a while to answer. She had always thought that when you had waited so many years for something, you had to see more of it in one go than anyone else. Now she looked at that right knee and finally shook her head. “Let's leave the west side. We'll stay here a little longer, then go back.”

Before they returned to shore, the boat passed a drooping leaf. Pale veins spread across its underside, and Gu Qing felt the urge to trace them again. Her hand moved a little, but all she did was draw the rim of the umbrella back. She looked once and would take away what she could remember. Behind them, Shao Shuang said the light on the water was brighter there in the afternoon. Gu Qing asked her grandmother what she wanted to do and left the answer to her. Shen Su said she would sleep in the afternoon.

Lunch was fresh beans and a small bowl of fish soup. At first Shen Su complained about all the fish bones, but she grew sleepy as she picked them out. Gu Qing took the bowl from her. The old woman started to say she could eat on her own, but her eyes closed before she finished. Gu Qing helped her lean back against the head of the bed, set her shoes beside her feet, loosened the knee wrap, and left the window half open. Outside, the lotus flowers she had waited so many years to see were still rustling, and the old woman really had fallen asleep.

Gu Qing sat on the bench outside the courtyard and looked out over the water by herself. For the first time she felt that this journey also held part of an afternoon that was hers alone. Here she could sit a little longer as a young woman who had come from Yunjin, with an ache in her wrist from making flowers and the tail of her hair ribbon blown about by the wind, free for a while from being her grandmother’s legs or the hands that counted stems. She stretched out her legs. The mud on her soles had dried, and a small piece fell away at a touch.

Shen Su woke at dusk and asked how long she'd slept. Hearing it had been more than two hours, she grew rather cross and said she'd slept through all the best views. Gu Qing didn't try to silence her with how happy she'd been that morning. She smiled and said they could go out and see what the evening looked like. They left the boat alone and walked slowly along the level path in front of the farmhouses. They couldn't get as far as the blossom they'd seen earlier, but in the distance they saw a red one turn deep crimson. The old woman said the evening colors were rather good too. Then she pressed her lips together, as if she still couldn't quite bring herself to admit that her nap had left the day intact.

When they washed that evening, there was a little red patch on the back of Shen Su’s neck where the sun had caught her when the umbrella moved that morning. Gu Qing felt the heat of it and hurried to get a cool cloth. The old woman stopped her, saying it was hardly an injury and there was no need to go over the whole morning looking for mistakes. She still let Gu Qing hold the cloth there for a while, sitting very still with a little smile lingering on her lips. By the time the cloth came off, the old face reflected in the washbasin was too blurred to make out. It was only when Gu Qing carried the water outside that she realized she was smiling too.

A light rain fell on the twenty-fourth, and they stayed in the farmhouse. Shen Su took the gray lotus from its box, and Gu Qing was in no rush to take it apart. They held the artificial flower up to the window against the color of the water outside. It was almost laughably gray, and much too flat. The old woman made no excuses for it. She put out a finger to move one petal back, then suddenly stopped and said not to change it so much that it lost its likeness to their first flower. Gu Qing agreed and left only a few lighter curves on the paper.

The twenty-fifth was clear. They sat by the bank for another half-day, without insisting on taking a boat again just to see how much farther the flowers had opened. Shao Shuang passed on the water and raised her pole in greeting. Shen Su raised a hand in reply, as though she too now knew someone here. An old woman on the bank was shelling lotus seeds, saying they were not yet this year's new seeds from this pond. Her grandmother had meant to ask how to buy them, but on hearing that, she took only one to taste and nodded, without insisting on fitting every good thing into this one trip.

They returned to Nanpu on the twenty-sixth. As the cart passed through the rice fields, Gu Qing looked back. A few houses already hid the water, and the flowers were gone from view. Her grandmother didn't crane her neck to look for them again. She held on to the gray lotus box and swayed gently with the cart. Gu Qing asked whether her knee hurt. The old woman said it did, then pointed to a little patch of nameless yellow flowers beside the cart and said they were pretty too. Gu Qing stayed on the cart and looked with her grandmother. Only when that touch of yellow had fallen behind them did she turn her face forward.