A Toast

"What were those two doing just now?" Xuxian asked as he put down his bundle on the table.

Suzhen folded up his coat. "Oh, you know them. Xiaohu had gotten some snacks and they were just sitting here talking nonsense and eating them." she said lightly, with only the slightest twitch at the corner of her mouth.

He undid the knot in the bundle, talking absent-mindedly as he did so. "I wonder sometimes about Qingqing. She's such a clever girl, one of the wittiest and most confident people I know. But yet she behaves like a child in so many ways. Food, fun, and mischief is all she thinks about. In some respects, she's so easily satisfied she's almost naive sometimes. No wonder she's such good friends with Xiaohu. It's beyond me, how one could be so clever and so childish at the same time."

He busied himself with sorting through his herbs and putting them lovingly into the right drawers of his medicine cabinet.

Suzhen did not seem to have heard him, but she said softly to herself, "A person can be more than one thing at a time, after all."

Xuxian dusted off his hands and turned to the bundle on the table. He glanced at Suzhen at the side and hesitated, then said suddenly, "Shall we eat? I'm famished! I'll show you your surprise after dinner."

She nodded with a smile. "Just look at you. You're like a child yourself, I can see the excitement written all over your face. You couldn't hide a secret to save your life."

Xuxian stashed the bundle hastily under the bed. "I'll get the chopsticks and bowls," he volunteered, hurrying out to the kitchen.

They ate quietly in a comfortable silence, listening to the wind cooing outside as it gently rustled the bare wisteria branches. The fragrant steam from the fresh rice bathed their faces, creating wispy halos for them from which they emerged glowing. It was a simple meal; steamed tofu with shallots and spring onions, dried mushrooms fried with a precious sliver of cured meat for flavour.

Xuxian put down his chopsticks with a sigh, cleaning off a last pearl-like grain of rice from them.

"Tonight we are not going to do the dishes. They can wait for morning. I got something from town to celebrate your recovery. Go sit on the verandah and wait for me. Wait--bring your cloak in case you get chilly."

He took the bowls from her hands before she could clear them."Come on, it won't kill us to leave the dishes!" he insisted.

"It's hardly cold now," protested Suzhen, but he had already taken her cloak and whisked it around her shoulders.

"Are we going somewhere?" she asked, bewildered, as he hustled her out of the door.

"We're not going anywhere, unless you'd like to take a trip to the moon. Now just sit there and wait for me. I won't take long."

He disappeared into the house again after making her sit down on the verandah. The moon was brilliant. It was one of those nights where the clouds had all disappeared, leaving the moon to glow in all its glory like a luminous pearl of the night on a sea of black silk. It was beautiful, and Suzhen looked at it for a long while in silence.

Finally Xuxian reappeared, bearing a tray. On it were a flask of wine, two drinking bowls, and a small dish of sweetmeats. Carefully he laid it down beside her and sat down.

He laughed out loud as he saw her face light up. "There. I just knew you would be pleased with this. Looks like wine is always the best present to get you. Ah, woe is me for having married a little alcoholic."

She poked him, offended. "Who was the one who bought it, anyway?" she retorted.

He held up his hands in defeat. "All right, I know I can never win. Please accept this humble peace offering from your servant."

Picking up a sweetmeat, he put it into her mouth and kissed the bulge it made in her cheek, smiling.

They sat there munching their sweetmeats, glancing at each other with wordless laughter on their faces.

Xuxian closed his eyes and breathed in deeply. "Soon, it will be spring again," he murmured. "The wisteria will blossom again and the air will be full of its perfume."

"It will mark one year since our marriage," Suzhen said softly.

"A happy one, I hope," he said, glancing at her.

She looked up at the moon and smiled. "The happiest."

There was a contented silence for a while, then she leaned over and snuggled against him, winding her arm through his.

"One day, you must compose a poem about our wisteria tree for me," he said, taking her hand.

"I will compose the first line tonight. With such a beautiful moon, and wine by my side, not to mention the company of my beloved, it would be a shame to pass by such a perfect opportunity. It would make Gong Yezi happy."

Xuxian squeezed her hand. "Yes. It would."

"The wind dances with the wisteria, unleashing a fragrance from another world," Suzhen said dreamily.

Xuxian shook his head decidedly. "No, that reminds me of what you said my burp smells like. Another line."

Suzhen burst out laughing and almost choked on the stone of her sweetmeats, so that Xuxian had to pat her on the back.

"I am no poet, but I feel the second line should be 'Catching the smile of a beautiful woman, my heart dances together with them.' "

It was Suzhen's turn to shake her head. "We'll compose the second line another day. You'll have to buy me more wine if you want to stimulate my genius." she said airily.

Xuxian shook his finger at her. "You're quite the crafty one. I'd better put a limit to how many lines this poem is going to have, or you'll drink me out of house and home."

He disengaged her arm and reached for the wine. Pouring it out into the bowls, he handed her one with a smile. "A toast to my wife."

Suzhen cupped the bowl in her hands and gazed back at him affectionately over its rim. "A toast to my husband," she said softly.