Fortune Is a Woman - Elizabeth Adler [130]
“Well, well, Number One auntie’s son,” he exclaimed, for concubines were traditionally given the honorary title of “aunt.” What brings you home after all these years?” He stepped back with an oily smile, waving him inside. “Welcome, welcome, Lai Tsin.” Calling his wife, he roughly ordered her to prepare tea for their illustrious visitor. “For I can see you have come far in the world, Lai Tsin,” he added. “Of course, it was wrong of you to run away and leave your brothers to take up the burden of the extra work necessary to keep this humble roof over our heads, and care for Ke Chungfen in his final years. But now you have returned to make reparation for such wrongdoing.”
“I will not take tea with you, Elder Brother,” Lai Tsin told him quietly. “Nor will I discuss my business with you. I am here to ask you one favor, for which I will pay you well. My mother, the mui-tsai Lilin, was not granted the honorable burial her ancestors would have expected. They are angry and upset that her soul still wanders far away from them. They have asked me to build her a temple where her spirit will join that of her son, Little Chen, so that she may be remembered on this earth forever, and their spirits may rejoice again in the company of their ancestors.”
He reached into his pocket and took out a leather purse. “In here is sufficient money to buy the best materials, and to pay for expert construction. I know about these matters, Elder Brother, and cannot be fooled. I have already purchased the plot of land on the hill sometime ago and in six months I will return to inspect your work. If it is good, then I shall pay you handsomely, and I shall pay you a small sum each year after that to maintain the temple. If you try to cheat me I shall have you run out of this village and cast to the very dogs they gave my little brother to.”
Elder Brother nodded his head eagerly, he could hardly believe his luck. “How much shall you pay me, Ke Lai Tsin?” he asked, magnanimously adding “Ke,” the honorable family name of his father, to the concubine’s son.
Lai Tsin stared at him, remembering the years when he had slept on the grass bedmat at his mother’s side in the freezing little room with the ricepaper windows, his belly crawling with hunger and his limbs aching from his work in the fields, while Ke Chungfen and his brothers slept cosily by the charcoal stove covered in padded quilts, replete with rice and meat. He flung a handful of coins onto the earthen floor, watching contemptuously as Elder Brother groveled to pick them up, his lips moving as he counted them gleefully.
“You are generous, Little Brother,” he exclaimed, beaming.
Lai Tsin shook his head sorrowfully as he walked to the door. He knew poverty only too well; he understood that it could turn men to demons selling their souls to find food and shelter for their families or opium for the pipe of oblivion. But the man before him had sold his soul many years before for far lesser reasons, and he despised him.
“Do not forget, I shall return to the ancestral temple in six months’ time,” he called over his shoulder.
Elder Brother bowed his head, dithering excitedly on the doorstep, the money still clutched in his hand. His haggard young wife peeked from behind him as he called, “It will be done, Honorable Little Brother, just as you wished.”
Lai Tsin walked to the village burial ground, but though he searched every inch, there was no place marked with Lilin’s name and he could not remember its position. Nevertheless he knelt and bowed, touching his forehead to the yellow earth nine times, and in his prayer he told her that soon she would roam the spirit world no longer. At last she would have a home where her ancestors could find her and she could join them in their