Dao of Language

I take a sip of the tea while I wait for my mother to specify that small favor she has to ask of me, and my mother, faithful to her custom, lets another instant pass, just enough for curiosity to begin eating at me from within, and only then does she decide to speak.

“You see”, she tells me, and her smile sharpens barely a degree. “These past days I have held several most interesting conversations with Lianhua.”

I lift my gaze from the bowl with a certain caution, because Lianhua’s name in my mother’s mouth, accompanied by that smile, does not usually augur anything good.

“Conversations”, I repeat, leaving the chopsticks suspended halfway. “About what, if I may know?”

“About your latest invention”, she replies with all the tranquility in the world. “That inner garment you made for her and that she has been wearing for a few days now. I have been asking her about it, about how it feels to wear it, about whether it presses on her, about whether it turns out comfortable throughout the day, during training, and, in short, she has told me the most revealing things.”

And here, I acknowledge it, I stay a moment frozen with the mouthful halfway.

Because one thing is for my mother to have surprised me that day leaning over Lianhua’s half-naked chest and to have been duly scandalized, as the canons dictate, and quite another is to find out now that, since then, she has been holding what I can only imagine as a series of meticulous interviews with my Fei Yi about the virtues and the defects of the brassiere.

The image of the two of them, my mother with a cup of tea between her hands and Lianhua as straight and formal as ever, exchanging opinions about what fits and what doesn’t, strikes me as so disconcerting that I take a second too long to recompose my face.

“In any case, I have arrived at the conclusion that that garment of yours has much more potential than you yourself grant it”, my mother continues, completely oblivious to the small short-circuit that has just occurred in my head. “So the favor is the following. When you go to see my dressmaker, besides commissioning your own things, I want you to explain to her in detail the design behind the garment, as well as the exact way in which you made it. Let her and her team take your idea and, from there, develop a rather more refined model, because, let us be honest, for those things they are far better than you.”

That last comment draws from me a grimace halfway between offense and resignation, but I have no choice but to keep it to myself, because however much it pains me, on that she is completely right. What I made was a prototype sewn by eye, and a real dressmaker can do with that same idea something that would not even cross my mind.

Even so, there is one thing that worries me, so I raise it before committing to anything.

“Mother”, I tell her after finally swallowing the mouthful. “Aren’t you afraid that something like that might end up drawing the attention of the Sect?”

My mother does not flinch in the slightest at my question. On the contrary, her smile becomes almost indulgent.

“Not at all”, she tells me with a certainty that leaves no crack for reply. “As long as it doesn’t occur to us to set about selling it and we keep it solely for personal use, within the Pavilion, there is absolutely nothing to fear. Think about it well, Wen. Can you imagine an Elder of the Sect presenting himself to ask about the intimate garments of the women of the Emperor’s harem? It would be so scandalous that the poor man could not look anyone in the face again for the rest of his life.”

I stay turning her words over a moment, and however much I examine them, I have to admit that the reasoning is impeccable. The Sect can claim a printing press, a mop or any other of my inventions without batting an eye, because they are public, neutral objects, ones that can be spoken of out loud without anyone’s color rising. But a feminine inner garment falls squarely into that territory that everyone knows about and that no one talks about, and an Elder who decided to take an official interest in it would cover himself with a ridicule from which he would never recover.

“All right, on that I grant you complete reason”, I concede. And then, since we are on a roll of favors and requests, I decide to take advantage of the moment to slip in my own. “By the way, Mother, there is a question I wanted to ask you.”

“Ask me whatever you want”, she replies with a dismissive gesture of her hand as she picks up her cup again.

I smile at her, leave the chopsticks to one side and let loose the lie I have prepared with all the naturalness I am capable of at this hour of the morning.

“Master Mu, before leaving, left me a good pile of talismans”, I tell her. “Talismans that, according to her, could serve me to combat the heat of the fire surge. The thing is that I would like to know your opinion about how useful they can really turn out to be.”

My mother observes me an instant over the rim of the cup with a look I know all too well. It is the same one she puts on when she has caught on the fly exactly what I am trying to say and is deciding, with all the calm, how to continue the farce.

“To be able to give you an opinion I would first have to see what those talismans do”, she tells me at last, choosing the words with care.

“I have brought one with me precisely to show you”, I reply quickly.

And having said this, I turn my head toward one of the handmaidens who wait in silence beside the wall of the breakfast hall.

“Would you be so kind as to bring me a bucket full of water?” I ask her.

The handmaiden blinks, clearly not quite understanding what the devil I want a bucket of water for in the middle of the breakfast table, but she bows and goes out of the hall at full speed. She does not take long to return carrying a wooden bucket filled almost to the brim that she leaves with care on the floor, beside my chair, before withdrawing again to her place against the wall.

I lower my gaze toward the bucket and calculate by eye that it will hold some five liters of water, perhaps a bit more. It is, deep down, a waste, because the talisman I intend to use is capable of affecting a rather greater quantity, close to twenty liters if my calculations don’t fail me, but for what I intend, which is nothing other than a demonstration, five liters is more than enough for me.

“Lianhua”, I tell her turning toward her. “Use the talisman on the water of the bucket, please.”

Lianhua nods without a single word, takes out from among the folds of her attire the talisman I handed her before coming down to breakfast and leans over beside the bucket. She activates it with a gesture and the effect is almost immediate.

The water, which a second before reflected the morning light, begins to change. First a fine film of frost appears that creeps across the surface from the edges toward the center, then the water becomes cloudy, milky, and lastly, with a muffled and satisfying crack, the entire content of the bucket sets all at once into a solid block of ice that, fortunately, does not burst the bucket.

I look at my mother, who has followed the whole process with an attention she does not bother to disguise, and I point at the bucket with a gesture.

“Of all the ones she gave me, this is the most useful”, I tell her. “The Freezing Talisman. And what you have seen is not by any means its limit, because one of these is capable of freezing close to a Dan of water in a single go.”

My mother leans barely toward the bucket to look at the block of ice more closely, contemplates it a moment with a pensive expression and nods slowly.

“That could indeed turn out quite useful”, she admits, and I notice she says it seriously, without the irony I would have expected. “At the very least, it would serve to preserve food. With this heat, the kitchens will probably lose a considerable quantity of food each day, and a few well-placed blocks of ice could save us a good part of that waste.”

Encouraged by her reaction, I decide to pull the thread and show her the rest of my cards.

“But the thing is I also have more types of talismans”, I add. “I have another talisman that generates a current of air and keeps it blowing for half a period. By itself it is no great thing, but if you make that current blow over a block of ice, it is quite probable that it would serve to cool an entire room.”

My mother listens to me, and when I finish speaking she sketches a smile I recognize all too well, the one she puts on right before making me land all at once from one of my bright ideas.

“Wen”, she tells me gently. “Instead of going around spending hundreds of talismans to cool a room, it would come infinitely cheaper to you to commission a temperature-regulation formation. It is true that they are almost never needed and that up to now they have not been too popular, but they exist. And something tells me that, starting with this surge, they are going to begin being one of the most sought-after things in the Empire.”

I stay quiet after hearing her while I deal myself a good mental blow for not having realized something so obvious. Of course temperature-regulating formations exist, since a mere formation that keeps a room cool cannot be, by a long shot, something so complicated to create that no one has thought of it before.

And, while I’m at it with the self-flagellation, I also realize that there surely exist enchantments for clothing capable of doing exactly the same, keeping cool whoever wears it.

Faced with this list of obvious things that have escaped me, I have no choice but to sigh and pick up the chopsticks again to keep having breakfast with my dignity a bit bruised.

My mother, however, does not let me sink entirely.

“In any case, that there should exist better ways of combating the heat does not take away from the fact that your talismans are going to be tremendously useful right now”, she continues, and her tone softens. “The ones that create ice, above all, are going to be most sought after while the surge lasts since it can have several uses. What’s more, if from time to time you can use some of the ones Master Mu left you in the cold rooms of the kitchens, I assure you the cooks will thank you for it.”

“I will tell Lianhua to take care of that as soon as she has a moment”, I reply, now in better humor after my mother encourages me.

And then, looking at the block of ice in the bucket, and then at my cup of lukewarm tea, an idea occurs to me that, at this precise instant and with the heat there is, strikes me as simply brilliant.

“Lianhua”, I tell her. “Can you break a couple of small pieces of ice and put them in my tea for me, please?”

In the hall one of those pauses that say it all occurs. My mother arches an eyebrow, Lingxi discreetly lifts her gaze, and even the handmaidens at the wall look at me with an expression that oscillates between bewilderment and frank concern for my sanity, because no one in their right mind in this world would think to put pieces of ice inside a hot beverage.

Lianhua, on the other hand, faithful to her custom of not questioning my oddities, raises no objection. She approaches the bucket, breaks off with care a couple of pieces the size of a finger and lets them fall into my cup with a clean tinkle before returning to her place behind my chair.

I continue having breakfast with all tranquility while I wait for the ice to do its work, and when I calculate that the tea has now cooled enough, I lift it and take a long sip.

And I smile.

Because there is absolutely nothing in the world, neither in this one nor in the previous one, that can compare with a good cold beverage when one is melting from heat. The coolness goes down my throat and leaves me, for a few glorious seconds, with the sensation that the fire surge is not, after all, such an unbearable catastrophe.

I enjoy the rest of breakfast with that small victory newly conquered, and when I at last consider the meal finished, I leave the chopsticks on the plate and direct my gaze toward the handmaiden who brought me the bucket.

“Take the ice to the kitchens”, I indicate to her. “Let them use it for whatever suits them.”

The handmaiden hastens to obey, lifting the bucket with the block inside, and I turn toward Lianhua.

“Take me to see my mother’s dressmaker”, I tell her. And then, turning toward my mother, I add with an inclination. “With your permission, Mother.”

“Of course”, she replies. But before Lianhua gets to move the chair, my mother raises a finger with a smile that leaves me no escape. “And don’t forget what I have asked of you, Wen.”

“Don’t worry”, I assure her as Lianhua begins to push me toward the exit. “I will do it, I promise you.”

The trip from the Pavilion to the artisans’ zone becomes, as always, a small parade. Every handmaiden, every functionary and every guard we cross paths with stays looking at my attire with a mixture of surprise and curiosity that none manages to disguise, and I, who at this point of the morning have already decided that this is going to be the norm for a good while, ignore them with the serenity of one who knows that within a few weeks it will be half the Palace going dressed more or less the same.

Let them look and criticize now while they can, since they will change their opinion as soon as the heat really presses on them and they cannot afford an attire with an enchantment that allows them not to be hot.

My mother’s dressmaker’s workshop is located in one of the most well-kept areas of the artisans’ zone, and a woman of middle age, of fine hands and alert gaze, comes out to receive us as soon as they announce who I am, bowing with a reverence so measured that it immediately betrays her long experience dealing with the nobility.

“It is an honor to receive you, Zhāohuán”, she tells me. “I am the Jiǎngshī Yun. The Guifei Xiang had warned me that you would come to see me.”

“The honor is mine, Jiǎngshī Yun, since it is a pleasure to finally meet in person the one in charge of making my clothing”, I reply with a smile. “And I warn you from the start that I come to give you the strangest commission of your whole career.”

The dressmaker, far from being discomfited, sketches a small professional smile, one that clearly reveals that she has spent decades hearing ladies of the palace ask for impossible whims and has rarely come across one she could not resolve.

“In that case, it will be a pleasure”, she replies. “If the Zhāohuán is so kind as to explain to me what she has in mind, I assure you we will do everything within our power.”

And then begins the difficult part, because what I have in mind resembles nothing she has ever made.

Lianhua positions me in front of a wide and clear work table, and the dressmaker, anticipating, brings me paper, brush and ink, intuiting with a good eye that words are not going to suffice. And she does well to intuit it, because the moment I try to describe in words what I want, I run into the same wall as always, that of trying to explain something no one here has ever seen using only concepts that do exist here.

So I resort to what I do best, which is to draw.

I begin with my own garments, since my rank obliges them to be the most elaborate, and I go tracing on the paper the designs I carry in my head, tunics of light fabric and straight fall, pleated with fine and tight pleats that let the skin breathe.

I draw for her the short skirts fitted at the waist, the shawls that cross over the shoulder and I explain to her, drawing by drawing, what fabric I want for each piece, how the pleats should fall, where the golden trims go and what color the embroidery has to be, insisting that, above appearance, everything must be conceived to be cool and comfortable under this heat.

Jiǎngshī Yun turns out to be exactly the professional she appears to be. She does not dispute my ideas nor become frightened before the unknown, but rather receives them, studies them and right away begins to ask me questions that betray that she is already calculating how to put them into practice. She asks me about the width of the pleats, about the exact way in which the straps cross over the shoulder, and each time I draw something she considers impossible, she proposes an alternative that comes close enough.

Once my commissions are resolved, I move on to those of Lianhua and Xia. Here the style is the same, the same lines and the same light fabric, but adapted to the rank of each one, because however much I appreciate them, it would be neither prudent nor appropriate to dress my Fei Yi and a handmaiden in the same style as a Zhāohuán.

For Lianhua I draw some sober and elegant garments, of good make but without the profusion of adornments of mine, with cuts conceived so that she can move and, should the case arise, fight without the clothing getting in her way. For Xia, the simplest of the three, practical and resistant for the bustle of the kitchens, but equally cool, since this whole story was born from her complaint for a reason. I indicate clearly what fabrics and what finishes correspond to each one, so that at a glance the difference of position is patent without any of them clashing with the whole.

This whole task, between drawings, explanations, corrections and the adjustments that Jiǎngshī Yun herself goes proposing on the fly, drags on for several hours. The sun has traveled a good stretch of the sky by the time we consider the catalog of garments closed, and I have my hand stained with ink and my back a bit sore from leaning over the table so much, but the result is worth it, because I know that what is going to come out of this workshop will be infinitely better than what I could ever sew.

And only then, when the matter of the wardrobe is settled, do I remember my mother’s favor.

“There is one last thing, Jiǎngshī Yun”, I announce to her. “And this one is not for me, but a commission that comes on behalf of the Guifei Xiang.”

The dressmaker straightens her back slightly upon hearing my mother mentioned, disposed to lend all her attention, and I turn toward Lianhua.

“Lianhua”, I tell her gently. “You are going to have to show her the garment.”

Lianhua lets out one of those almost inaudible sighs she reserves for my most uncomfortable bright ideas, but does not protest. After asking the dressmaker to clear the apprentices from the room for greater discretion, she withdraws a moment to a secluded corner and, when she returns, brings the garment in her hands to show it, sparing herself this time the ordeal of having to undress in front of a stranger.

Jiǎngshī Yun takes it with care and examines it turning it over between her fingers, with her brow furrowed and the concentrated expression of one who has before them an object they do not quite comprehend. And I, before she gets confused, launch into explaining it all to her calmly, just as I explained it to Lianhua at the time, translating each idea into a language that makes sense here and taking great care not to let slip any term I should not know.

I explain to her that it is a piece conceived to replace the Xiyi, that instead of flattening the chest against the body it gathers and holds it giving it room. I point out to her the two hollowed parts that envelop each breast, the straps that distribute the weight over the shoulders and the cord that ties at the back to keep the whole in its place.

I also tell her that, not having a flexible and firm material that would give shape to the cups without digging in, I resorted to hemp worked until achieving a soft rigidity, and that I made it in silk so that the feel would turn out as soft as possible against the skin.

Besides I warn her of the limitations I have found with my abilities, such as for example that the knot at the back ends up a bit high and uncomfortable to tie, defects I trust she will know how to resolve better than I.

And, above all, I make clear to her what is the principle that must guide everything else.

“I want you to understand one thing above all others, Jiǎngshī Yun”, I tell her, and I make sure the tone conveys how important it seems to me. “This is a garment that goes hidden beneath the clothing, that no one is going to see save, at most, the husband of the woman who wears it. For that reason, its principal purpose, what truly matters, is that it turn out comfortable while it fulfills its function. That is the absolute priority and one that must not be sacrificed for anything. If after that one wants to make it prettier, perfect, it can be achieved with embroidery or with some discreet detail. But never, under any concept, on the basis of adornments or extravagances that make it uncomfortable. A beautiful garment that digs in or presses serves absolutely no purpose.”

The dressmaker listens to each word with an attention I appreciate, nodding from time to time while she goes noting down on a small tablet the points I go indicating to her on the garment itself. When I finish, she lifts her gaze and bows before me with a formal reverence.

“I have understood perfectly, Zhāohuán”, she tells me. “I will follow your instructions to the letter, just as the Guifei Xiang has requested. I give you my word that comfort will always come first, and that every improvement we introduce will respect that principle.”

Satisfied with her reply, and aware that I have at last fulfilled my mother’s favor, I consider the visit concluded. The truth is that it has been a long and productive morning, and I still have one last thing pending before I can consider the day reasonably on track.

“I thank you very much for your patience, Jiǎngshī Yun”, I take my leave with an inclination of the head. “I know I have not brought you precisely a simple commission.”

“Simple commissions have no fun in them at all, Zhāohuán”, she replies to me with a smile that, for the first time, seems entirely sincere and not only professional.

I return her smile, and then I turn toward Lianhua.

“Lianhua”, I tell her. “Take me to the study. I want to check how many Freezing Talismans we can have available, because between the kitchens, the cold rooms and my tea, something tells me I am going to need all the ones I have.”

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