The old man, with the help of the driver, emerges from his car slowly. He doesn't really need the man's help; but he's emotionally weak and can't really focus on the mundane task of stepping out of his car. The driver also has the umbrella ready even though it's just drizzling. The Madam is already waiting for him, eagerly, patiently, but he doesn't see her yet. The door man opens the door that separates the street from the courtyard inside, and only after he enters the courtyard does he see her. He smiles, but the smile belies a pain that augmented at the sight of his young wife. He is three times her age, and although it was quite common at the time, his pain doesn't stem from shame but from the stark reminder that she has a lot more years left than he does.
They sit in silence in the the living room. It's a spacious room with very high ceilings. The furniture is all hand carved, and for an artist, the skill was nothing less than the highest in the capital of this aging nation.
He speaks up first, "How was your day?"
With her head dipped, she answers, "Good." Having now the permission to speak, she asks, "How was the funeral?"
There was a moment of silence, in which she waits patiently. He is a very mild manner man, only gets emotional and excited during discussions with his poetry and art friends. But he always smiles at her, at least once a day.
"Sad," he replies. That single word hardly embodies the pain that the poet in him can't describe or the artist in his heart can't paint.
The sound of the rain grows louder. The door is wide open, as was the custom at the time. The wind comes through while you can admire the water fountain in the courtyard. After long pause, he murmurs so quietly that she could barely hear him saying, "He's the last of my original group of artist friends." He hasn't looked at her since they sat down, but he knows she is attentive. They have been together for nearly ten years now, already two sons, there's little a man, especially in his age, could ask more in the final days of the Qing Dynasty.
He picks up his tea, takes a sip, at which point she follows suit, and he asks, "Have they come again?"
"No," she says, "they haven't come this whole week. I guess they got the point that you don't want to sell your art."
It doesn't really matter, though, if the Japanese art dealers are coming or not. He has other plans. He puts down his small tea cup, and at the slight sound of the porcelain tea cup landing on the tray, he says, "I would like to go back to my old home and pay my family a visit."
She lowers her head and her silence means agreement.
"I'd like to at least see my son's grave, you know, the second eldest that died last year," he says. Though no one else says anything, a voice in him reminds him that he hadn't been to that funeral. His other family, the first one, the one he had to leave behind in his village of birth so he can make a name here in the capital. The family he had for thirty years where his former wife still lives along with his sons, daughters, and grandsons and granddaughters. He has gone back a few times, but there was always a reason to leave them behind. The country was destabilizing everywhere sporadically, and the only place to really focus on his work was here, in the capital. It was his wife's idea that he stay in the capital and remarry. She was worried that he would be lonely, all alone there without family. It was she who found this young wife for him. It was she who had to swallow her tears and leave him in the safety of this metropolis in order to get back to the village and take care of everyone, including her in-laws.
How would he greet her? It has been over ten years since he had seen her. What would there be to talk about? Everything was depressing, personal life as well as the constantly changing events around them. But motivated by guilt, motivated by a desire to see the people he doesn't have much time left to see, people who still mean a lot to him, he has decided to go again. He made this decision while standing there in front of his friend's grave. It was another painful day of saying goodbye without hearing the other person saying the same. And one day, he would not be able to return the farewell to those who love him, or those, like his grand children, who don't even know him.
He doesn't say any of this to his wife. He only lets her know that they, just the two of them, would leave tomorrow morning, catching the first train that would take them three days to reach the village. She dutifully complies, gets up and leaves the huge living room in order to give instructions to the cook for supper.
He is now alone. He looks at his right hand, the old, wrinkly hand that has made so many paintings, calligraphy, carved out so many pieces of engraving, written so many poems, and shook so many times hands familiar and not. And for the first time this day, he uses it to wipe away the tears that have forced themselves out of his old, tired, brown eyes.
