Goethe: „Die Deutschen sind übrigens wunderliche Leute! – Sie machen sich durch ihre tiefen Gedanken und Ideen, die sie überall suchen und überall hineinlegen, das Leben schwerer als billig.“(page 53)
Goethe: “By the way, the Germans are strange people! – With their deep thoughts and ideas, which they seek everywhere and put in everywhere, they make life harder than it should be.”
Cicero: “Memory is the treasury and guardian of everything.”
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Sister Augusta, not yet so old as she will be, but no longer young as she was, set a marble cake she had baked onto the Timothy grass, and sat down beside it in this seaside meadow, to wait. The coastal forest was around her, and not far was the high moor. It was slightly too far to hear the waves, but she fancied she could, as she smiled to herself. The air was a mix of forest and sea, and the mews flew over the treetops.
The person she was waiting for came. It was a young Cathayan woman, with a fresh scar across her neck, and a young clouded leopard by her side. Behind her, with a face smooth, impassive as marble, was a Cathayan man. Hanging beside his left thigh was a simple sword in a threadbare sheath. It looked a valueless leftover piece of steel in a forgotten holey scabbard. He wore it carelessly, without arrogance or even seemingly noticing. But Sister Augusta, who as a girl had seen many a young man fence, from her brother Laertes to her lover Hamlet, from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to Prince Fortinbras and Horatio, took one look, and did not underestimate him.
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That was then, this is now. Sister Augusta recalled that fateful meeting in the meadow, on the Timothy grass, over her marble cake, with Tang Lili and Wang Xiaolong. Tang Lili with her Yunbao, the clouded leopard who nuzzled her free hand, the hand not holding a dagger waiting to fly. And Wang Xiaolong, whose simple sword brought so much trouble.
Tang Lili, whose laughter was like golden, tinkling bells, whose flying dagger split the wind. Wang Xiaolong, whose laughter was like bronze pagoda bells, whose sword could parry daggers, even those flying through and splitting the wind. The dagger was a simple one, plain steel, made by a Jiangnan swordsmith in only six hours’ time. In anyone else’s hand, it would be just a dagger, capable of striking, slicing, throwing. But in Tang Lili’s hand, it could split the wind. The sword was even simpler. It had no jeweled hilt, no embossed qingtong. The skill was in the young man, not in the metal.
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Out in the waters by old Kopenhagen in old Denmarke, a ship was sailing, a wedding ship. The Prince was marrying, but the bride was not the little meer-maid. The ship sailed away from the setting sun, for the sun and old Kopenhagen were to the west, and the ship, taking the Prince of Denmarke, his bride, and the third-wheel little meer-maid was going to the east across the Baltic waters. Away from the celebration, the little meer-maid’s sisters, their hair shorn and given to the seawitch in payment, were imploring her to take the seawitch’s stone dagger, so she could spill the prince’s blood, and through it regain her life. If the little meer-maid were to plunge the stone dagger into the prince’s heart as he sleeps tonight, and were his blood to spill onto her feet, they would turn back into fin, and she need not die. Otherwise, at the sun’s first ray, the little meer-maid will die. That was the bargain. She had given her voice to the seawitch, for legs and the chance, the chance, to win the prince’s love. The possibility of not succeeding had been ephemeral as seafoam. Until now. It’s all in HC Andersen, all in HC Andersen: Bless me, what do they teach them at these schools?
Sister Augusta, who had been Ophelia, who in her heart, was still Ophelia, who underneath her wrinkles and white hair, whose heart still beat fast, said the prayer of absolution and indulgence, in anticipation.