I Ran Away With His Child novel · Chapter 11 of 24

Chapter 11: The Study

Old Madam's room was at the back of the third courtyard, and Xu Zhengyuan had not been invited into it since he was fifteen.

It smelled of camphor and old paper.

A single lamp stood on a lacquer table, and the old woman sat beside it in a carved chair with her cane across her knees.

She looked at Ran for a very long time.

Ran stood in front of her with his hands behind his back and looked straight back.

"You're the great-grandmother," he said. "Tai Nainai."

"Am I."

"You have the same eyes as Uncle Xu. Not the chin."

"Which of us has the chin?" asked Old Madam, drily.

"Grandmother," said Ran. "The one with the pearls."

Something moved at the corner of the old woman's mouth, and was suppressed.

"Zhengyuan," she said, without looking round. "Take the child into the garden. There is a pond with a very bad-tempered carp. Show him."

"Nainai."

"I intend to speak to this young man alone."

Xu looked at Mu Qing.

Mu Qing's face was calm and pale, and he gave a small nod.

So Xu took his son out through a round door into the cold garden.

He stood by the pond with a five-year-old while a fat orange carp looked at them with contempt.

He did not hear what was said inside.

Afterwards Mu Qing told him only the end of it.

"She asked if I had taken money from your mother," he said, when he came out. "I told her I had not spent a yuan."

"That's all?" said Xu.

"She said that was a lawyer's answer. I said it was the true one."

"And?"

"And she said Ran sleeps in her rooms tonight," said Mu Qing. "The maid is making up a cot beside her bed."

"She has not had a child in them since you were small."

"Ran asked if she snored. She said that was a matter for the minutes."

Xu nearly smiled.

"Where are you sleeping?"

"The annex."

Xu went still.

"She named it," said Mu Qing. "She did not say why."

"My grandmother has never named a room by accident," said Xu.

Mu Qing looked away across the dark garden, and his ears were red.

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