The Secrets of Jin-Shei. Alma Alexander

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       Five

      Nhia had started out thinking of the Great Temple of Linh-an as a deliciously confusing maze, a labyrinth, a box within a box.

      To the child that she had been, the place was enormous, layered like a lotus flower, and full of mystery. Its outer walls were whitewashed with lime, like some of the poorest houses in the city; its three massive gates, cut into this white expanse, were old and scarred wood and had no air of holiness or even magnificence except maybe for their immense size. But they always stood open – except for one single night of the year on the Festival of All Souls when the Temple was closed to be purified – and they were gateways to a constant stream of worshippers hurrying in and out.

      Nhia, who had practically grown up on the Temple’s doorstep, knew the outer rings of the Great Temple intimately.

      The First Circle, running right around the inner perimeter of the whitewashed walls, was primarily taken up with Temple vendors and the stalls of diviners and soothsayers – and Nhia claimed the acquaintance of most of them, at least by sight. Some had been there for as long as she had been coming to the Temple – old Zhu, and his incense booth so meticulously devoted to one particular scent a day (‘It only confuses the customers when you show off everything you’ve got,’ he had confided to Nhia once, nodding sagely); the Rice Man, whose name she had never learned but whose family of eight children and their ailments and joys Nhia and her mother had known for years; So-Xan the yearwood bead-carver and his young son and apprentice, Kito.

      Trestles within individual booths were neatly laid out with such merchandise as incense sticks suitable for individual deities or specific prayers, bowls in appropriate colour or pattern, flasks of rice wine or tea, grains of rice or of corn and powdered dyes. When Nhia was a curious toddler only just starting to lisp questions – before life had made her mother taciturn and edgy – she had demanded explanations for all of these mysterious offerings and paraphernalia.

      ‘Why yellow bowls, Mother? Why only thirteen grains, Mother? Why tea and not rice wine, Mother?’

      ‘Yellow bowls for Lord Sin, because he is Lord of the East and that’s where the yellow sun rises. Thirteen grains because of the thirteen lessons of Ama-bai. Tea and not rice wine because the Sages are lower than the Emperors.’

      Nhia was to remember those times with a pang of regret. It had been years since she had asked her mother a question like that. Years since she had expected a reply from her.

      Other stalls in the outer cloister housed the makers of carved yearwood sticks, or sold funeral arrangements, preparation of the paper effigies of the things the deceased needed to take with them into the next world, amulets or talismans, marriage and betrothal tokens, or – slightly clandestinely, because the Temple officially frowned on these – low-level alchemical potions guaranteed to increase fertility, virility or long life. Ganshu diviners elbowed one another for space here, their clients waiting in patient queues for their turn inside the screened booth where the diviner performed his or her work.

      An open corridor cut across this cloister from each of the three gates, and led through into the courtyard. Beyond a narrow strip of grass rose a clay wall with three arched openings in line with the three gates; it was painted a ghost-blue, a colour which was almost white except for the wash of blue that made it look like the sky of Linh-an in the full blaze of the summer sun. The wall surrounded a perimeter precisely one flagstone wide around the next level of the Temple, the Second Circle, a building painted the same colour as the wall around it, itself boasting an inner cloister surrounding an open court. But this cloister was clear of anything requiring an exchange of money. It was two storeys high, with an open balcony above the lower cloister. The entire inner wall of the building, on both floors, was a catacomb of wall alcoves and niches, with space for incense and offerings; each niche held an image or a figurine before which some devotee was praying with a fragrant incense stick smelling of cinnamon or flower essence or rain grass in one hand and a bowl with precisely counted rice grains in the other.

      Many niches were empty, their own particular deity yet to appear. These were the Later Heaven deities and spirits, the lesser Gods, the spirits of Rain and Thunder and Wind and Fire, Tsu-ho the Kitchen Spirit of Plenty, Hsih-to the Messenger of the Gods, the Syai Emperors of old, and the Holy Sages. This was the place of propitiation, of honouring the Wise, of paying respect to the Great, of asking for advice. Nhia would sometimes drift past the niches with supplicants (sometimes more than one, companionably sharing a deity’s time and attention and often the offering) and absorb the whispers going on around her – whispers asking for help, giving thanks, telling the Kitchen God of the success of a particular feast which was held in the midst of plenty and humbly giving him credit.

      ‘Please, Rain Spirit, our fields are parched and drying, we humbly come to ask …;’

      ‘I offer rice and grain in humble gratitude, for my son has found a good bride …;’

      ‘O Holy Sage, who knows of these things, I come to ask for guidance, for the examinations are near and this problem is too great СКАЧАТЬ