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It is just a few days, or possibly a week, after that disastrous fall garden party when she stumbles across the eunuch.
Maomao has been out foraging for the last of the season’s medicinal roots before the wilting stems are covered by drifting autumn leaves or cleared by zealous groundskeepers. (Slacking off, Hongniang would call her activities). She is grubby, her arms ache from digging, her basket is full of (illicitly harvested) goodies, and the sky is darkening rapidly, heavy clouds threatening cold rains to dash away the last of the leaves. Nevertheless, Maomao is as content as a servant in the Rear Palace can be at this moment.
Keeping an eye out for rain, Maomao skirts the edge of the cherry orchard, bare now, save for a few straggling leaves. The dark, twisted branches of the trees seem to reach out to the gloomy skies in supplication. And there, his dark robes blending in with the naked tree trunks, stands the tall man, no, tall eunuch. His face is upturned, and his eyes seem to track the leaves scudding across the sky in the freshening wind.
Maomao casts a wary eye around for this man’s master, but there is no sign of the celestial nymph. Curious now, she approaches closer; she is not sure the eunuch has yet noticed her. The man’s back is straight, his hands hidden in his sleeves; perfect posture for a soldier or a civil servant, wasted here in this neglected corner of the Rear Palace. His face is all sharp planes and deep-set shadowed eyes, beneath a prematurely lined forehead. It is a strong face, if not exactly handsome. (Maomao has little use for handsome anyway).
And at this moment, that strong face, normally schooled into reserved neutrality (when gliding along behind his master in public), or weary exasperation (a look Maomao has noticed more and more in her own presence, but has chosen to attribute to the japes of his loathsomely honey-tongued master, rather than her own actions), now bears a look so bleak that even Maomao, who has a hard time reading people, understands that he must be hurting.
She is embarrassed to be there, to have witnessed a sight she should not have seen. Really, she wants to run and leave him to his solitude and his thoughts. It would be the polite thing to do, the safe thing to do. The smart thing to do.
And yet. Maomao finds herself staying, her feet betraying her. In fact, she approaches closer, stands near the silent man, as if to offer her support.
He glances briefly at her, then resumes his vigil, eyes focused on the leaves tearing one by one off the branches of the trees. She takes his silence as permission to stay.
After a while, after Maomao has grown cold, and thought to herself she really should leave, he finally speaks.
“When you are called to serve, they tell you it is an honor and a duty. And it is an honor to have shared my master’s joys and triumphs, to have supported him in his travails, to be needed, to be trusted, and relied upon. But no one ever warns you of what you will lose.”
Maomao looks up at him, but the normally quiet, annoyingly perceptive eunuch seems to be far, far away.
“Like leaves, blowing away in the breeze.” He watches another one whirl in an eddy.
“I missed out on raising my children, because I was called upon to raise my master's.” Maomao does not think the master he is referring to is Jinshi.
“My only daughter despises me, because I was not there for her.” Maomao can relate. She despises her own sire too.
“My name, my clan, my honor. My master demanded those too. One by one, everything dear is stripped away."
“Your manhood?” Maomao finally dares interject, attempting some brothel levity.
“Yes, Xiaomao, even that too.” Gaoshun finally looks at her. “The births of my grandchildren, the love of my wife. What is left when all my leaves are stripped away?
“Honor, duty, service.” He utters the words so tonelessly, as if these are worth nothing.
“And a dab hand with administration of emetics.” Maomao mutters, just to see if the corners of his lips will lift even a little. But they do not.
If Maomao were the touchy-feely type, and if this man did not outrank her considerably, she might have had to urge to give him some form of comforting touch. A pat on the arm, perhaps? But she is not, and, eunuch though he may be, he is yet not a man a lowly servant may touch without permission.
If she were good with her words, she might offer something of comfort, to remind him of the strength of a tree, even when the leaves are gone. To say that where the core remains, there is hope for spring. But she is not poetically minded, nor is she an optimist. So Maomao holds her tongue.
She stands in mute support at the side of the stoic eunuch, watching until the last of the leaves are torn away in a sudden gale. Together, yet apart, they turn to their separate destinations, just as the first drops of rain begin to fall.
Maomao knows how to keep her silence, to keep others’ secrets and her own. She will say nothing of what she saw and heard.
The next time she sees Gaoshun, he is at Jinshi’s back, as usual. His expression is one of weary exasperation, eyes pleading with her not to look at Jinshi like a wriggling maggot. There is no sign of the bleak melancholy of that day in the orchard.
Maomao suspects Gaoshun’s mask is better than she’d previously given him credit for. And so, when Jinshi’s back is turned, distracted by a bevy of fluttering concubines vying for his attention, Maomao slips Gaoshun a bag containing several packets of medicine. She does not know of a remedy to regrow his manhood. She does not know of a remedy for heartache. But chamomile and lemon balm to soothe, ginsing for clarity of mind, freshly harvested valerian root for sleep. She thought too of mugwort for moxibustion, but wasn’t sure who would perform the therapy, so left that out.
Maomao is not good with her words or with physical contact of any kind, but providing medicines is the least she can do for the eunuch whose steady presence in the Rear Palace has planted a small seed of contentment in her heart.
Perhaps that seed may grow, and one day, she may even blossom like a tree in spring. Could she then share her leaves with him?
For now, though, they must endure the winter.