Dao of Language

By the time the carriage arrives at the plaza where the Hùbù is located, the same plaza with the garden where my brothers laid an ambush for me, I have had more than enough time to review, once more, each of the things I intend to say.

It is not that I need to review them, since I have the speech so rehearsed that I could recite it asleep, but the review helps me not to think about the other thing, which is how much I detest this clothing despite the fact that this time it was I who insisted on putting it on.

Because the best thing is for me to present myself before the Hùbù with the full weight of my rank, which translates into several layers of rigid silk, a headdress that weighs its fair share, and a quantity of embroidery that, I suspect, is worth more than the entire house of any of the functionaries awaiting me. And that without counting my portable throne, which is what I call the chair my mother gave me to attend my father’s birthday.

Upon stopping in front of the Hùbù building, it turns out to be exactly what I expected of a place dedicated to counting other people’s money, that is, sober to the point of bordering on boring. None of carved dragons or golden lotuses, but dark wood, gray stone and an order so obsessive in the arrangement of the archives that it can be seen from miles away.

While Lianhua lowers me from the carriage and settles me in my portable throne with the silent efficiency of always, I cannot help remembering the Yushi Xuang and his little trap in the study of the Ruīyī Junning. That day they resorted to an ambush, presenting themselves by surprise in the middle of a medical examination just to be able to interrogate me far from my mother.

Today, on the other hand, everything is done in broad daylight, with prior summons, with a date and with my mother walking at my side by her own right. That they were able to exert influence to conspire against me in both ways says more about the adversary I am facing than anything else.

They lead us to a wide and high-ceilinged room, presided over by a low dais on which rests a long table covered with a dark green cloth. Behind the table there are three seats, although only two are occupied. To one side, at an auxiliary little table, a scribe of grayish face waits with the brush already loaded with ink over a pile of official sheets, which reminds me, inevitably, of the agent of the Bàizhān of the Yushitai and of the eagerness these people always have to leave written record of even the last throat-clearing.

My mother and I have been arranged with two seats in front of the dais, slightly elevated with respect to the floor, although it is clear that the one they have arranged for me is not necessary, so Lianhua positions me beside one of the two chairs and my mother sits in it, leaving the other empty.

Lianhua takes a lacquered box from the hands of one of the two Nei Wei who have accompanied us, who remain by the door, motionless and attentive like two statues, and positions herself at my side in silence.

The man who occupies the central seat rises as soon as we enter and dedicates to us a reverence so correct that it shows he has measured it to the millimeter, not a finger’s width more so as not to seem servile, nor one less so as not to offend the most favored consort of the empire.

“Guifei Xiang, Zhāohuán Sun Wen”, he greets us with a measured voice. “I am the Shilang Cao, second in command of this ministry. I thank you both for your presence and deeply regret the inconvenience that this appearance may have caused you.”

I observe him for an instant as I slot into place the most interesting fact of his presentation, which is not who has come, but who has not. The Minister of the Hùbù, the visible head of this entire ministry, has not deigned to appear, and in his place he has sent his second. And a high official only delegates a matter to his subordinate when he considers that matter to be beneath his attention or when he would prefer to have nothing to do with it, although I suspect that in this case it is both things at once.

Which tells me, even before beginning, that half this ministry knows perfectly well that this whole story is a farce and that they have been dragged into it much against their will.

The second man, on the other hand, has not risen with the same diligence. He is younger than the Shilang, of sharp face and a thin smile that stays hanging from his lips as if it had been sewn there, and when he finally bows he does so with a touch of theatricality that betrays someone who enjoys the moment.

“And I am the Langzhong Pei”, he presents himself without waiting for the Shilang to do it. “I am in charge of the office that supervises the merchant guilds of the empire and the one who has requested this appearance in the name of the good order of the records.”

In the name of the good order of the records. It almost makes me laugh upon hearing it, since it is a very elegant way of naming the bag full of silver that someone has had delivered to him, but I acknowledge that the phrase has its charm, and I file away in my head the Langzhong Pei as the true protagonist of the little theatrical work that is about to be performed, with the Shilang Cao in the thankless role of arbiter who would prefer to be anywhere else.

My mother takes the floor before I do, and she does so with that gelid courtesy she reserves for when she is going to establish some limits.

“Before you begin I want it placed on record that my daughter is still a minor, and that therefore her testimony cannot be taken without a recognized companion”, she says. “That companion is me, and I will remain at her side throughout the entire appearance.”

“Of course, Guifei Xiang”, replies the Shilang Cao immediately, without the least hint of objection. “So the procedure stipulates, and so it shall be noted. The Hùbù would not do things any other way.”

And I notice the very small muscle that tenses in the jaw of the Langzhong Pei upon hearing it, so I would bet my best brush that he would have preferred, by far, to find me alone and with no one at my side capable of clipping his wings should it be necessary.

Although it is not as if it is going to be necessary, if everything goes as I want.

Once the matter of the accompaniment is settled, the Shilang Cao makes a gesture to the Langzhong to proceed, with the face of someone yielding his turn to a dentist.

The Langzhong Pei clears his throat, unfolds a sheet with more ceremony than necessary and begins to read.

“It has come to the knowledge of this ministry a reasonable doubt concerning the true authorship of a certain number of inventions commercialized in recent times under the protection of the name of the Zhāohuán Wen”, he recites. “It is difficult to admit, according to the sentiment of several functionaries of this institution, that a young woman of such tender age could have conceived, all by herself, so many artifacts of proven usefulness. From which follows the suspicion that said inventions may have in reality been developed by the merchant guilds themselves who sell them, which would shelter under the rank and prestige of the Zhāohuán to clothe their purely mercantile interests in respectability.”

He finishes the reading, lifts his gaze toward me and the smile widens a couple of millimeters.

“The Zhāohuán will understand that the ministry cannot register an invention’s authorship as hers without first clearing up any doubt”, he adds with false softness. “It is not an accusation against your person, but a simple matter of order.”

I listen to him with my hands crossed over my lap and an expression I have striven to keep as placid as the surface of a pond, because I have learned that nothing irritates a man who believes himself astute more than an audience that does not flinch.

And, inside, while I watch him roll up his sheet again with a satisfied air, I cannot help thinking that this resembles a great deal something else.

Because in my previous life I spent hours, too many to confess out loud, embodying a defense attorney with impossibly spiky hair in a series of games that consisted of exactly this, of a solemn room, a presumptuous accuser letting loose a theory with more holes than a colander and a pile of evidence waiting patiently in a folder for the moment to arrive to pull it out, leaving all those present astonished.

And, right now, while the Langzhong Pei reclines in his seat believing he has the case won, the only thing that truly costs me is to contain the urge to stretch out my arm, point at him with my finger and shout a good “OBJECTION!” right in his face.

But since theatrics are better not done in front of a scribe who writes everything down, notes that moreover someone may later use against me, I limit myself to inclining my head slightly and to replying with the most serene voice I have.

“I understand perfectly the position of the ministry”, I tell him. “And, far from being offended, I am grateful for it, because it offers me the occasion to dispel the doubt once and for all and in the simplest possible way. If you will allow me, instead of discussing whether a young woman of my age can or cannot invent something, I propose that we limit ourselves to looking at the evidence and that afterward each of us draw their own conclusions.”

I make a barely perceptible sign to Lianhua, who takes a step forward, leaves the lacquered box on the scribe’s little table and opens it to begin taking out of it a series of bundles of papers that she goes depositing, in orderly fashion, on the green cloth of the dais before the increasingly less comfortable gaze of the Langzhong Pei.

“What you have there before you is the complete trail of my work”, I explain while Lianhua finishes placing them. “Not the finished inventions, nor the clean drawings that a copyist would make from an already completed object, but the original sketches, with all their crossings-out, their failed tests and their corrections. And I would like you to pay attention precisely to that, to the errors, because they are the best proof of authorship that exists.”

I see that the Shilang Cao leans forward to look at my drafts with an interest he no longer bothers to disguise, so I continue.

“Anyone can copy a solution once they have it before them, that proves nothing”, I tell him. “But only the one who has thought something from scratch preserves the road they traveled to arrive there, with all the dead ends they had to abandon along the way. An impostor shows a perfect object, an inventor shows their mistakes.”

I point from where I am at the first pile of papers, the most handled of them all.

“Let us begin with the mop, which is the only one of my inventions that truly sells on a large scale and, therefore, the one that best fits your theory”, I propose. “Those are the first sketches. As you will see, my initial idea was to fasten the strips of fabric with a metal clamp, and here, two pages further on, it is noted that I discarded it because the metal oxidized the wood with the humidity and besides turned out too expensive. It took me three more attempts to hit on the wedge-and-crossbar system I finally used, which is the one that allows the fabric to be fixed in an economical and practical way. If the guilds had designed this for me, tell me one thing, why would I bother to keep three bad versions of something that already worked for them?”

The Langzhong Pei opens his mouth, but I am faster and interrupt him before he can ask his question.

“Ask me whatever you want about it”, I offer him with a courteous smile. “Why the crossbar goes where it goes, what happens if the handle is shortened, what woods I tried and which I rejected. I answer everything, and I assure you that a merchant guild that simply manufactures someone else’s design would know how to answer half of those questions.”

The Langzhong Pei, who has not the slightest intention of getting into a technical debate he knows is lost beforehand, opts to change terrain.

“Only the mop, however well documented it may be, is not enough to silence a suspicion that encompasses several inventions”, he replies with the smile a bit more strained. “The matter is not whether you invented one thing, Zhāohuán, but whether you could invent them all.”

“That seems very fair to me”, I concede immediately, because he has handed it to me on a platter. “Let us speak then of the others, since it happens that I bring them all here.”

I point at the second bundle, the one in the center of the table.

“The backpack”, I tell him. “This one isn’t even sold by any guild, because its sketches, its measurements and a report with the improvements that could be made to it were handed over at the time to the Office of Military Affairs, at their request. If you harbor any doubt about its authorship, you need only submit a query to that office and verify from whose hand the plans came. I find it hard to imagine a merchant guild gifting its commercial secrets to the army out of love for the Empire.”

“Besides, if you wish I can call the numerous Nei Wei escorts who protected me during my exile to the city of Xi’An”, I conclude to round off the move. “Many of them were witnesses to how I designed it and the first prototypes.”

The Shilang Cao nods slowly, like someone going on adding up, and I take advantage of the momentum to point at the third pile that is alongside the other two.

“And here is the printing press, with which I spent a long time turning over a very concrete problem, which was how to get the types to always stay at the same height so that the ink would not mark some letters more than others”, I continue. “You have all my notes on it, the schematics I discarded and the one that finally worked.”

I make a pause and look at the two of them, first at one and then at the other.

“Take note, if you would be so kind, of one detail”, I tell them. “The mop is sold by a company of merchants, the backpack is held by the army and the printing press by a third party. Three inventions, three completely different destinations, and no common guild behind the three. For your theory to hold up, it would take not one guild, but several, all in cahoots, all willing to gift me the authorship of their best ideas, and all, moreover, intelligent and foresighted enough to manufacture me as a bonus a trail of failed sketches that only serve in case of an accusation that no one knows whether it will exist. If there are so many guilds full of geniuses, I beg you to introduce them to me because I would love to meet them.”

By the door, one of the Nei Wei lets out something that, in a woman trained to express nothing, could easily be mistaken for the beginnings of a smile.

The Langzhong Pei, on the other hand, has begun to lose color. His smile holds with difficulty and it is noticeable that he is searching, in desperation, for something to grasp onto.

“Even so the underlying doubt remains”, he insists, and now his voice comes out a bit higher than he perhaps intended. “It is simply difficult to believe that a girl, without artisan’s training and without her own workshop, has brought forth so many things in so little time. Precocity has a limit, Zhāohuán.”

And there it is, just where I wanted him to arrive.

Because he has just repeated, for the third time, the only argument that truly sustains the whole accusation, which is the idea that I am too young. It is the master beam upon which the rest of the contraption rests, but it turns out that beam has a fatal defect.

“You are completely right about one thing, Langzhong Pei”, I tell him calmly. “Precocity has a limit. And that is why I propose that we stop talking about my recent inventions and go back to the first of all, the one that started everything.”

Lianhua, who knows my pauses better than anyone, takes advantage of just this moment to deposit on the table the last object that remained in the box, which is not a paper, but an abacus of colored beads, worn by use but perfectly preserved.

“This is an abacus”, I explain even though there is no need. “I invented it when I was four years old. I made the first one with my own hands and presented it as a gift to the Emperor himself, who received it, examined it and by all accounts has kept it ever since. All of it was duly registered, and these are facts that any of those present can verify without barely moving from this room.”

I let the silence settle a moment before driving in the last stake.

“So let us do the math, since we are in the appropriate ministry for it”, I continue, and I cannot resist the small jab. “When I invented the abacus I had no dealings with any guild and traded with no one. I had no associates, nor companies, nor was I even old enough to understand what a contract is. I was nothing more than a four-year-old girl who came up with a more comfortable way of doing sums.”

“And, nevertheless, there it is, recognized by the Emperor himself as my work”, I tell them rounding off my speech. “So, either you accept that I am capable of inventing things on my own, which was proven many years ago now before the highest authority of the empire, or you maintain that the guilds also developed the abacus in secret, conspired to give it to me when I was four years old and slipped it to the Emperor without him noticing.”

I look fixedly at the Langzhong Pei, who at this point has the color of an old sheet of paper.

“I leave it to you to choose which of the two things you prefer to defend”, I tell him. “But I warn you that the second implies affirming that the Emperor was deceived in his own court, so I, in your place, would think twice before saying it out loud in front of a scribe.”

And there, at last, the silence I had been waiting for all morning settles upon the room while I thought about my defense.

It is that thick silence, almost tangible, that occurs when all those present understand at once that the game is over. The Langzhong Pei opens his mouth, closes it again, glances out of the corner of his eye at the Shilang in search of an aid that is not going to come and, finally, lowers his gaze toward his own rolled-up sheet as if in it he could find, too late, some way out.

There is none. He knows it, I know it, and, above all, the Shilang Cao knows it.

The second in command of the Hùbù lets one more instant pass, just enough for it to be clear who is in command now in the room, and then he clears his throat with the tired solemnity of someone who is going to put things in order at last.

“I believe this ministry has seen more than enough”, he says measuring each word. “Let it be placed on record that the Zhāohuán Sun Wen has presented, of her own will, the documented development of each of her inventions, as well as the proof, recognized by His Majesty, of a trajectory as an inventor that goes back to her age of four years. Let it equally be placed on record that she has demonstrated a detailed knowledge of each artifact by offering to answer any technical question about them.”

He makes a pause and directs at the Langzhong Pei a look that needs no words.

“And let it be placed on record, lastly, that this ministry finds no foundation whatsoever in the doubt raised and that the authorship of the inventions in question is established, without reservations, in the name of the Zhāohuán Sun Wen”, he adds with a touch of steel in his voice. “The matter is closed.”

The scribe writes at full speed, the brush scratching the paper with a hurried whisper, and I let out, very slowly, the air I had not realized I was holding.

The Shilang Cao rises to his feet and dedicates to us another reverence, this time a touch deeper than the one at the beginning, as if he wanted to compensate for the bad moment with a bit of added courtesy.

“Guifei Xiang, Zhāohuán Sun Wen”, he tells us. “I renew my apologies for the time we have made you lose. The Hùbù regrets the misunderstanding.”

“It is of no importance, Shilang Cao”, I reply, and I say it almost sincerely, because with him I have no quarrel. “The misunderstanding was not your doing.”

And, in saying it, I let my gaze rest a second too long on the Langzhong Pei, just enough for him to understand perfectly whom I do consider responsible.

While Lianhua gathers my papers one by one and returns them with care to the box, together with the abacus, I allow myself at last to relax my shoulders and to acknowledge to myself how absurdly easy everything has ended up being.

And it is that, deep down, the accusation never had a single chance. The Fei Lan knew it from the start, because she never expected to win this case. The only thing she sought was to plant a seed of suspicion, a small stain that she could water later on. But a seed needs soft soil where to take root, and what I have brought to this room today is not soft soil, but a slab.

When we finally come out to the plaza in front of the Hùbù, my mother, who has remained silent throughout the entire appearance letting me carry the weight of my own defense, walks a stretch at my side without saying anything. And then, without entirely turning her head toward me, she lets out under her breath a comment that, coming from her, is equivalent to an entire compliment.

“You have done well”, she tells me. “Better than many functionaries with double your years.”

I smile at her without looking at her, because I know that she too is not too fond of excesses of affection in the light of day.

“I have done the only thing I had to do, Mother, show my work”, I reply to her. “It turns out that it is very complicated to accuse of being an impostor someone who knows their own inventions better than anyone in the room.”

“And something even more complicated”, I add with a small smile. “To dispute the falseness of the abacus that a four-year-old girl gave to the Emperor.”

My mother then lets out something that in any other person would have been a frank laugh and that, in her, does not go beyond a brief snort through the nose, but it is enough.

And, while Lianhua helps me climb back into the carriage with the box of my old papers held firmly between my hands, I cannot help thinking that the fight was not in the wit nor in the words, but simply in having kept each of my drafts for years instead of throwing them away.

Sometimes, winning a battle in the imperial court simply consists of being orderly enough never to lose a single paper, which is not so strange either in a government as bureaucratized as this one.

But, sincerely, after a morning dressed in this impossible clothing, the only thing I truly feel like doing now is to return home, take off the blessed outfit and dedicate the rest of the day to much more interesting things, like for example reading books about formations.

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