Shadows on Water
"You well know I don't follow the rituals. To bury is hygienic, to keep going back to give offerings is....well, obsessive." you reply.
"Respectfully, I suspect there is more to this." he says, with eyes lowered to his empty bowl.
"Perhaps. My father was a man of the Old Han, we agreed on little. My mother died when I was fifteen, father took another wife, we became estranged after that. I moved to the capital when I became a man, so I didn't see much of my half-brother. I served the last Han emperors, but I was always out of favour. Five years ago my father died, I returned home to take care of the farm. I see my half-brother every year during ghost-month, but I don't practise the traditions. They are little more than superstition to me. What's dead is dead."
"But something lives on, if it is only through you and your brother. If the dead aren't remembered then truly they are nothing. Or worse."
"You mean they become ghosts."
"Perhaps. Or perhaps all I mean is we must learn from them, rather than reject them outright."
"Hah! You cut the cloth of your words to suit a cynical old man. Do you presume to teach me, young captain?"
"I am gravely sorry, master. Forgive foolish youth." he says, meekly, with eyes lowered.
"No, no need for apologies. There is truth in what you say. When a family member dies, the presence, or rather the absence, lingers....much like a ghost. A spirit seems to reside in certain things, like that sword above the hearth. And in certain places,.... near the lake where he taught me to play music. You see that zither, by the far window? That hasn't been played since he died. How long is it before the sound of a plucked string dies away into silence?"
Fang shakes his head.
"It depends as much on the sensitivity of the listener. On still soundless nights, I used to fancy I could hear him playing, though he had been under the cold earth for years. But that no longer happens. You must know there is a second death, when even the memory of...someone...,starts to fade. The absence is no longer felt."
"Then can you not mourn for that?"
Honouring your dead father may give you a chance to think over whether you will return to the capital to meet the emperor. Or have you already decided?
"Respectfully, I suspect there is more to this." he says, with eyes lowered to his empty bowl.
"Perhaps. My father was a man of the Old Han, we agreed on little. My mother died when I was fifteen, father took another wife, we became estranged after that. I moved to the capital when I became a man, so I didn't see much of my half-brother. I served the last Han emperors, but I was always out of favour. Five years ago my father died, I returned home to take care of the farm. I see my half-brother every year during ghost-month, but I don't practise the traditions. They are little more than superstition to me. What's dead is dead."
"But something lives on, if it is only through you and your brother. If the dead aren't remembered then truly they are nothing. Or worse."
"You mean they become ghosts."
"Perhaps. Or perhaps all I mean is we must learn from them, rather than reject them outright."
"Hah! You cut the cloth of your words to suit a cynical old man. Do you presume to teach me, young captain?"
"I am gravely sorry, master. Forgive foolish youth." he says, meekly, with eyes lowered.
"No, no need for apologies. There is truth in what you say. When a family member dies, the presence, or rather the absence, lingers....much like a ghost. A spirit seems to reside in certain things, like that sword above the hearth. And in certain places,.... near the lake where he taught me to play music. You see that zither, by the far window? That hasn't been played since he died. How long is it before the sound of a plucked string dies away into silence?"
Fang shakes his head.
"It depends as much on the sensitivity of the listener. On still soundless nights, I used to fancy I could hear him playing, though he had been under the cold earth for years. But that no longer happens. You must know there is a second death, when even the memory of...someone...,starts to fade. The absence is no longer felt."
"Then can you not mourn for that?"
Honouring your dead father may give you a chance to think over whether you will return to the capital to meet the emperor. Or have you already decided?