A Capable Minister in Peace, a Cunning Hero in Chaos (9)
Finding lodging for Cao Cao and her party, who had descended on me without a word of warning, was no trouble at all.
Frankly, for a man who had climbed as high as I had, hunting for something impossible was the faster undertaking.
The foremost man of the military, basking in the Emperor's favor? Merely hearing the title made it sound as though one could knead the whole world into whatever shape one pleased. What's more, my support base — Her Majesty aside — was rock-solid to boot, so unless I truly lost my mind and plunged into tyranny, there was little chance of my political footing ever shaking. All that remained was to puzzle out how, once every last task was done, I could live out my days in idle comfort — and then my life would be perfect…
"What has you brooding so deeply?"
"……"
I regarded Cao Cao, who had addressed me out of nowhere, and held my silence. If I admitted I was pondering how to make a graceful exit from political life, what sort of reaction would this woman show, I wondered.
"I would cling to the very leg of your trousers if I had to, to stop you. And just where do you think you're going?"
Should I answer like Sima Yi, who still nursed an adorable grudge over my having dragged her — dead set against ever taking office — into the bureaucracy all the same?
"If that day ever comes, you're taking me with you! I wanna kick back and have fun too!"
Or should I answer like Lü Bu, who had piped up with her own opinion that she'd laze about and play right alongside me?
"……"
Well, pondering it now wasn't going to produce an answer either way, so I replied in an even voice. "There was something on my mind just now. It's nothing serious."
"Hmmm…."
Hearing my answer, Cao Cao let out a single unreadable hum, then blurted: "Truly a wretched father, you are."
"Hm?"
"To stand before the wife you have not seen in an age and the child you are laying eyes on for the very first time, and still drift away into other thoughts…"
Cao Cao let the words hang for a beat, then favored me with a sly smile. "What else would you call such a man, if not a wretched father?"
"…Ahem."
Ordinarily I'd have some retort cocked and ready in my head whenever this woman opened her mouth, but this once I had nothing to offer.
Watching my reaction, Cao Cao held out the swaddle she had been cradling so preciously all this while. "Come now, enough of those other thoughts. Take your child into your arms."
"…Would that be all right?"
"Hm?"
When Cao Cao tilted her head as if to ask what I meant, I continued in an awkward voice. "I was not there beside you when you brought our child into the world."
"……"
A husband who had failed to stand by his wife at the hardest moment of her life. Even by my own reckoning, an irresponsible father. State affairs or no, the plain fact remained that I had left a woman carrying my child behind in a distant province.
Public was public, and private was private — the saying that official duty and personal matters were to be judged strictly apart. As an answer from an official charged with governing a realm, it was worth a perfect hundred. As an answer from a father charged with a household, it was not worth a single point.
"Circumstances being what they were, I could hardly do otherwise than watch how you would take it…"
"Hahahaha!"
Before I had even finished, Cao Cao threw her head back and laughed heartily. "It seems my eyes have not failed me after all."
"……"
"Set your mind at ease. Do I look to you like a woman who cannot understand so small a thing?"
Having lifted the weight from my heart as though it were nothing at all, Cao Cao went on. "If my heart had its way, I would wrap you in my arms this very instant — but I am afraid a certain guest has claimed me first."
She gave the swaddle she held out toward me a little shake. "What are you dawdling for? Hurry and take your child into your arms."
"…All right."
With the same careful hands I had used the first time I ever held each of my other children, I received the swaddle. The precious weight of a small life settled onto my arms — and feeling it, I soon found myself meeting the eyes of an infant blinking up at me from inside the little blanket.
"……"
At first I had worried the face of a stranger might set her bawling, but the reaction the child gave surpassed anything I had imagined.
"Kyah-oo!"
The baby who had been gazing up at me so steadily broke into a beaming smile.
"Oh ho?"
Watching the scene, Cao Cao looked intrigued. More astonishing still, the child's performance did not end there.
"Abu… abubu…"
Inside the swaddle, her hands wriggled without pause, as though something she wanted sat just out of reach. Confronted with a cuteness that, left unchecked, looked likely to stop my heart outright, I hurried to loosen the swaddle a little.
And the act Cao Ang performed the instant she was freed from that seal was, for a parent, genuinely staggering.
"Baah!"
Arms thrust straight up, then waved at me with all their might — precisely as Yeo Hwa had once done to me. Cao Cao's child smiled and smiled in my direction, and said:
"Abu-a!"
"…Papa?"
At that word, I doubted my own ears for an instant.
Oh, come on. It had to be coincidence. Nothing but meaningless babble that had happened, by sheer luck, to land somewhere meaningful…
"Abu-a!"
But the child cried it out once more, as if to insist it was no coincidence, and I found myself at a loss for words.
Papa. Everyone knows it as another word for one's father.
In truth, the words for one's parents — Mama and Papa and their like — are built from much the same sounds in most countries. English speakers say Mama and Papa; in Chinese, too, Mama is Mama all the same, while Papa becomes Baba. The Japanese apparently say Mama and Papa as well, though that one I can't quite vouch for.
In any case, as noted just now, the reason for the resemblance is simple: these are words built from the sounds a baby's mouth finds easiest to form.
Babbling that even Seo Hui, the firstborn of my children, had yet to manage. Watching Cao Ang do exactly that, I asked in a bewildered voice:
"…Mengde."
"Hm? What is it?"
"Could you tell me when the child was born?"
"Ah… you mean that?"
Cao Cao answered my question with a perfectly level expression. "About three months ago, I should say."
"……"
Considering that Seo Yeo had given birth a mere month ago, the moment her ten months of pregnancy ran their full course, this meant Cao Cao had delivered her child a good two months earlier than that.
Eight-Month Baby. The term for a child born after barely eight months inside its mother's womb.
At the realization that my child had come into the world premature, I very nearly sagged where I sat.
It stood to reason. Premature infants, as a rule, survived at far lower rates than ordinary babies. And a premature infant in an ancient age — an age of primitive medicine and steep infant mortality, no less? How much fortune and struggle must it have taken for such a child to survive all this way and arrive before me? I dared not even venture a guess.
I let the child — still beaming, still reaching up that tiny hand — close her fingers around mine, and asked, "Were there any real troubles on the road here?"
"None to speak of. For all she came early, Cao Ang has weathered it remarkably well."
Having answered me, Cao Cao went on in a voice gone faintly chilling. "A few bastards did see fit to mock the child as an 'Eight-Month Baby'… but that is no longer a problem."
"……"
Good grief. What on earth could have possessed them to say such a thing?
Eight-Month Baby meant, literally, a child born at only eight months — but it doubled as a jab at someone a few beats slow. Considering that the famous Newton, Einstein, and Darwin all numbered among the prematurely born, it hardly deserved to be written off as purely a bad thing…
…Though now that I'd mentioned them, they were all scientists, weren't they. Well — they were the only names I could recall, so there it was.
In any event, I did not imagine for a moment that anyone who had said such things in front of Cao Cao — a woman who killed without the slightest qualm — still drew breath. This was the woman who, the great Xuzhou massacre aside, had buried alive the surrendered Yuan Shao troops from the Battle of Guandu, citing a shortage of provisions. As if she couldn't manage this much.
With that thought settled, I rose from my seat and said, "…Be that as it may, this is no time for sitting about."
"Mmm?"
"I'm taking the child to a physician this instant for a proper examination."
The infant nestled in my arms had cleared only the most grueling hurdle of all; countless more efforts would be needed before she could grow up safe and sound.
"Now, hold a moment. I shall come along as well."
My sudden movement briefly rattled even Cao Cao, but true to a woman whose wits turned as fast as her feet, she fell in beside me at once.
How long had we been walking when it came to me? "Ah."
"…?"
A question had occurred to me out of nowhere, and I stopped dead in my tracks and threw it out. "Come to think of it — this child. Is she a boy or a girl?"
"…Heh heh."
Cao Cao laughed as though delighted. "Asking me that only now — how very like you it is."
"……"
"A girl. Do commit it to memory."
Another girl. Why did no son ever come? Not that I subscribed to any doctrine of preferring boys, but with this making four daughters in a row, curiosity was only natural. Was I fated to end up a father rolling in daughters?
There was, after all, a standard script for a father with a daughter, when a would-be son-in-law came calling to ask for his little girl:
"I swear I will make her happy! Please give me your daughter's hand!"
"You insolent whelp──!! Not until dirt gets in my eyes──!!"
Of course, given that a few of my daughters possessed rather more initiative than most, there was a real danger of the scene ending with me actually eating a mouthful of dirt — better to draft some alternate lines.
Hmm. At the very least, no suitor would stand a chance until he could beat Seo Yeo.
…Was that asking a touch too much of anyone's conscience? Very well. Then let me compromise and settle for beating Lü Bu instead. And if a contest of strength was beyond them, I'd simply have to order them to go best the pint-sized strategists first…
And so, entertaining these thoroughly useless thoughts, I walked on.