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The year my father forgot Fengren, he brought a man down from the mountain. Or perhaps one could say a man brought him—when they entered the courtyard, he was in front, my father behind, guided by the sheath of his sword.
He was a taciturn man with a faint smile, skin weathered and brown with sun and age. My father did not introduce him, and he did not give his name, but he came to stay in our home and I addressed him as an uncle. My father had not needed guidance around our home, not for a long time. I had dim memories from childhood of my mother leading him by the hand, back when the home was new.
“I can just hold your arm,” he used to say. “So you can have use of both hands.”
“I like holding your hand,” she would reply. I could remember my father smiling and the way his fingers entwined hers, the way his head would tip slightly towards her voice.
My father did not need guidance, but he accepted it from this man regardless. When they walked, they walked in tandem. I didn’t think to question it. My father was happy.
The first time the man cooked a meal for us, my father huffed a small laugh.
“What is it?” the man asked. “Is there something wrong with the food? Your appetite?” The corner of his lips were quirked. I looked at the dishes laid out before us. Simple food.
“Not this time,” my father answered, and picked up his bowl. “Besides, I’m not particular about such things.”
“How old are you?” the stranger—no longer quite a stranger—asked me during my studies.
“Seventeen,” I told him, making another careful stroke on the paper.
“You look just like him,” he said, taking a seat across the table with the quiet sigh that older men often give when bending their joints.
“I know,” I said, setting down my brush. I smiled at him. “But I have my mother’s expressions.”
“Do you now?” he asked. “What was she like?”
“Can’t you guess, now that you know me?”
He laughed. “I suppose she must have had some sense of humor. You didn’t get it from your father.”
“My father can be funny sometimes.”
“He probably got it from her too.”
“Perhaps,” I said. “I wouldn’t know. I didn’t know him before he met her.”
He laughed again, louder. He had an interesting laugh, like his voice—hoarse and slow. “That’s true.” He grew quiet again, watching the birds flittering in the nearby trees. I picked up my brush.
“Was she beautiful?” he asked thoughtfully.
“No,” I answered, my tongue between my teeth as I considered my characters. The last line had come out crooked. “But it’s not like it would matter either way to my father. She used to joke that it was just as well, since it wasn’t like he was missing anything, but my father never laughed.”
“Of course he wouldn’t,” he said. “He’s soft-hearted.”
I shrugged. “She was right.”
“Did it matter to you?”
“No. She was my mother.” I looked at him. “Was your mother beautiful? And did it matter?”
“I don’t remember,” he answered. “She passed away when I was very young.” He smiled. “But no, it didn’t matter to me.”
“There you are then.” I set down my brush. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
“It was a long time ago,” he said. “It’s no longer hard to bear.”
In the evenings, he and my father would take long walks, sometimes up the mountain, sometimes out in the gardens, sometimes into town. Sometimes they spoke—they were both quiet men, and they leaned close to each other, keeping their words in the space between their lips like fluttering moths. Sometimes, I heard their conversations. Usually, I did not.
Winter gave way to spring, and the man stayed. He helped weed the garden, squatting down with his robes tied up and his trousers rolled to the knees.
“You don’t need to, you know,” I told him as we worked together. “There are servants.”
“You’re here.”
“Yes, but I’m young.”
“Your father insists, does he?”
“Yes.” I pulled another stalk from the earth, the tendrils of its young roots clinging weakly to the soil. “But I like it.”
“Maybe I like it too.”
“Doesn’t it hurt your joints?”
“Brat.” He flicked a bit of dirt at me. “I’m not so old yet.”
“You’re older than my father,” I replied, undeterred.
“Yes. Not by much, less than ten years, I think.”
“That makes you old.” He flicked more dirt in my face.
“Poxiao,” he said that night at dinner. “Your son’s got a mouth on him.”
“Oh?” my father asked. “What makes you say that?”
“He said I was old.”
“You are old.”
The man snorted. “I see how you’ve been teaching your son.”
“Honesty is a good quality, wouldn’t you say?” My father tone was humorous and pointed. He smiled and felt with light fingers across the table until he found the watercress dish and handed it to the man. “Here, have some. The first of the season.”
“Perhaps I would.” The man accepted with both hands. “Thank you.” After dinner, he covered my father’s shoulders with his cloak. “The nights are still cold,” he chided. “Take more care with your health.”
“I could say the same to you,” my father replied, but he curled his fingers around the edges of the heavy fabric, pulling it closer around himself.
“I have another cloak,” the man said. “I’ll go fetch it.”
“I’ll come with you,” my father said, rising, and the man did not protest. “Yuguang, go see to the fire, would you?”
“Yes, Father,” I said. When they returned, my father fastened my own cloak about my shoulders, and the three of us sat in silence as the moon rose.
“Who named you?” the man asked me the next time we worked in the garden together.
“Guess,” I said.
“Your mother,” he said.
“Of course.” I pulled a snail from one of the plants and tossed it gently out of the garden. “She was the funny one, as you say.”
“And did she name the dog, or did you?”
“I did,” I said, craning my neck so I could see the undersides of the leaves. “The dog was born when I was five, so my parents let me name her.” I glanced at him. “Did you think a grown woman would pick such a name?”
“Well, I didn’t know your mother. Maybe she would have.”
“My mother was more refined than that. She would never have named our dog ‘mud biscuit’.”
“She looks like a mud biscuit.”
“She does,” I agreed. “My father says she feels just like his first dog, though. He says they have the same snout.”
“His first dog, hm?”
“Yes, the one that followed him out of Wuliang Manor,” I said. “He thought it had died, but it found him again outside the city gates.”
“How did he know it was the same one?”
“That dog had a scar over its left eye from an old injury. He could feel it beneath the fur.”
“I see.”
“That dog was Nibing’s grandfather.”
“But you have just the one dog in your family?”
I shrugged. “Some were taken in by the Wuliang Manor. Some died. In the end, Nibing is the only one now. But she was our favorite anyways. Also, I know you sneak her your food scraps.”
“She’s an old dog,” he answered. “She should enjoy herself, don’t you think?”
“Oh yes. I only meant you don’t need to sneak them. Father does it all the time. You’re not good at hiding things from him.”
The man paused, his hands buried in the soil. “I don’t want to be anymore.”
In summer, the man played weiqi with my father in the courtyard, and I suspected he let my father win. My father had never quite mastered the game. “Even when I had sight, I was not a strong player,” he told me. “And it never seemed a priority, after.”
I played the man, and I won too. So perhaps he was simply a terrible player. The losses never seemed to upset him. He would smile as he conceded defeat, and we would clear the stones away together, sorting them into their bowls.
He taught my father a dance from his hometown, leading him in clumsy steps while he sang with his hoarse, slow voice, and when my father finally laughed and begged off to rest, he pulled me to my feet and swung me around, his song still carrying in the air.
He helped my father with his clothes, massaged his hands when they were stiff. In the evening, he removed my father’s shoes, drew my father’s bath.
“There are servants,” I told him again. It had become a joke between us.
“Maybe I like it,” he replied.
Autumn came and went, and in winter, the man was still here. He poured us tea. As he left to see to something in the kitchen, I said to my father, “He is the picture of service.”
My father paused, the tea halfway to his lips. “No,” he said. “Of devotion.” He smiled, so faint I hardly saw it. “It is not the same.”
My father did not go to Fengren’s grave that year.