Sun and Moon

The clear sun of July shone through the garden foliage, making circles of light on the grass wherever the inter-woven branches of the locusts allowed its passage. Summer rains had washed the air of all dustiness, swept the flags of the courtyards neat and clean, given new life to the climbing trumpet flowers and a mossy springiness to the path round the overflowing pool, into the waters of which the strong confident sunbeams seemed to plunge deeper than they had ever before dared dive, and to stay, joyfully exploring the green underdepths which matched the opulent color of the garden. For the garden too promised joyful exploring. One had to pass through courtyard after courtyard, through many large-timbered doors swinging on wooden axles and through each hallway of the Chinese house, sprawled out in section upon section, before entering this remote spot where the walls of gray tile shut out the city so completely and gave the impression of such space hidden in what really was quite small compass. Here, like a hundred other wealthy families in their own unseen gardens, the household were able to enjoy rest from the urgent life of Peking yet never stray beyond the gates of the Tatar city. There was a sheltered pavilion in which to sip hot tea, a zigzag bridge of wood crossing the pool at its narrowest, shady nooks to suit the lazy reflective moods of the angler, best of allif there were childrena labyrinth of stones, all heaped into grotesque mountains, through which the child, his imagination nimbly excited, could follow the circuitous path, absorbing the landscape of miniature lakes and tiny waterfalls and diminutive pagodas, and descend into the darkness of dripping grottoes as if he were the hero of them all. Children there were; from behind a round moon gate came the clamor of their voices. But one stopped, astonished at the sight, for they were not the sedate children, the long-gowned boys and gracefully clad girls, one expected in so meditative a garden. They were not the offspring of Ming scrolls, as they should have been, transferred into life itself from the leisurely brush-strokes of old paintings, but strange barbarians, violent in their play, electric in the energy with which they defied the sun and its heat. The moon gate opened on a place apart, a place of shrubs and formal pathways, but with two large pine trees, gnarled and misshapen as though they had outgrown human efforts to distort their branches, and with bamboo brake on all sides springing up in untidy profusion, yet with the mystery of its deep shadows making the walls seem more distant than they were.

Dettagli