The Apothecary Diaries - Volume 12 - Chapter 2

Chapter 2: The Greenhouse and the Chapel

When Maomao had tidied up her new room, she went to see the rumored greenhouse.

“Oh! My! Gosh!” she exclaimed, her eyes shining, as she observed the facility. It was a building of brick and wood, parts of the ceiling and walls made of transparent glass so sunlight could get in. Inside, they were growing exotic succulents and even cucumbers. Cucumbers were a vegetable you could pluck out of the fields in summer, an easy way to get some water, but in the western capital they were treated as rare and valuable goods.

“It’s difficult to grow cucumbers in the west, so they’re considered a sign of wealth. For that reason, we often serve fresh cucumbers when we have visitors from farther west. They also happen to be a favorite of Master Gyokuen; he likes to eat them sandwiched between pieces of thin-sliced bread.”

This explanation was being proffered by the gardener who ran the greenhouse. He’d even kindly prepared some bread and butter for a taster, and looked ready to whip up a little something for them to try right there.

However...

“Miss Maomao, you’re starting to dance!”

“Yeah, miss, take it easy. There’s people watching!”

Chue and Lihaku looked at her, vaguely concerned.

“Hey, I know that!” Maomao said, even as she whipped a pair of scissors out from amidst the folds of her robes. “Cuuuucumbers!” she sang out. “Cucumber leeeeaves! Cucumber steeeems!”

The moment she took one of the vegetables by the stem, however, the gardener had a hand firmly on her shoulder. “Forgive me, but what, may I ask, do you think you’re doing?” A vein pulsed on his forehead.

“I just thought, cucumber season is almost over. You won’t need these much longer.”

It was only going to get colder. Greenhouse or no greenhouse, Maomao suspected, it would soon be impossible to grow cucumbers.

“They can still be harvested.” The gardener’s grip got firmer.

“The leaves and stems, to say nothing of the fruit itself, of course, are all potential medicinal ingredients, but they’ll be useless if they wither first. If I don’t take them now, when will I have the chance?” Maomao said, meeting the gardener’s gaze and refusing to back down. They found themselves locked in a staring contest.

“These are for food,” the gardener said, his eyes bulging.

“The western capital is facing an unprecedented crisis. Medicine is in desperately short supply. Don’t you think you should help?”

By now, they were using substitutes for many medicines. This was no time to be growing vegetables just to indulge someone’s culinary inclinations.

“I’m given to understand that you’ve received permission to use the greenhouse. I have to wonder, however, if they also told you that you could just do whatever you wanted with the plants that are already here.”

“These cucumbers are on their way out, and they’ll have hardly any nutritional value, anyway. Don’t you think the obvious thing would be to use them as medicinal ingredients?”

Maomao and the gardener continued their standoff.

After a brief stalemate, Chue arrived with the gardener’s superior. The boss gave the gardener the rundown, but the man refused to capitulate.

“I don’t think things here are quite what they told the Moon Prince,” Chue observed.

“I think this boss is the kind who avoids telling his people any bad news in order to put on a good front for the dignitaries from out of town,” replied the surprisingly perceptive Lihaku, capably reading the situation.

He was exactly right, and the gardener was the unfortunate victim. Here was a man who’d even had bread made so that they could try the products of his beloved greenhouse. Maomao had to admit she felt a little bad for him, but this wasn’t what they had been told.

Why does he think I came to the main house?

In the end, it was decided that Maomao would use only one-third of the greenhouse. The soon-to-be-out-of-season cucumbers would go to her, however. With many an aggrieved look at Maomao, the gardener, on the edge of tears, set about making an Authorized Personnel Only sign to keep her out of his succulents.

“What kind of medicine can you make with these?” Lihaku asked as he helped Maomao gather the cucumbers and harvest their leaves and stems.

“They’re very common in antipyretics. They’re also effective against food poisoning and encourage urination. They can be used to induce vomiting as well.”

“Wait, when would you need to induce vomiting?”

“When you’ve taken more than the necessary amount of poison, for example.”

“That’s not a thing people normally do!” Lihaku smiled genially even as he delivered the sharp quip. It was one of his virtues that he wasn’t quick to anger, but if Maomao could have anything she wanted, she might have wished for him to have the particular quickness of wit that Lahan’s Brother possessed.

She and the others collected the vegetables, the leaves, the stems, and even the vines. Then they pulled the naked cucumber plants up by the roots, leaving only empty earth behind. The gardener looked at Maomao as if she had killed his parents, but she paid him no mind.

Somewhere along the line the duck, a perfectly ordinary duck like you might see anywhere, arrived and started pecking at the insects that emerged from the freshly turned earth.

“What are you going to plant now that you’ve got a plot to work with?” Lihaku asked.

“Good question. I was thinking maybe I’d start by just planting every kind of seed I have on hand. I don’t know what’s going to grow in the greenhouse, so maybe I can start by seeing what takes.”

“Every kind of seed? Is there space for that?”

Maomao paused. “Maybe if we tear up that other cucumber plot too.”

It looked like sparks would fly once more between her and the gardener. Two people who refuse to give an inch are always far from the path of peace.

“Miss Maomao, Miss Maomao!”

“What’s the matter, Miss Chue?”

Chue seemed to have spotted something. She was pressed against the glass wall and peering outside.

“There’s a chapel over there! Mind if I go take a look?”

“A chapel?”

Chue pointed, and Maomao saw a building in the distinctive western style. There were plenty of similar ones dotting the western capital; most of them seemed to have religious functions.

It’s not quite like the one we were in before, though.

There had been a chapel-like building on their visit last year, but this was different. Curious, Maomao followed Chue over.

She’d heard that chapels were something like shrines. It certainly has the same somber atmosphere, she thought as they entered. It was a simple hexagonal space, a single room. However, light poured through the windows, which were adorned with pictures made of colored glass, dappling the otherwise plain floor with beautiful colors. It did indeed leave Maomao with an indescribable feeling of wonder.

Chue seated herself in the very middle of the room and started mumbling something. Maomao sat beside her. She didn’t really know what was going on, but stayed quiet until Chue was done talking. Lihaku waited outside; the chapel would be a little crowded with all three of them in there.

“Phew...” After a moment, Chue looked up. Coming from her, this was all a little bit odd.

“Miss Chue, what were you doing there?” Maomao asked.

“I was using an old language from another country to ask, ‘O Lord, do You see us?’”

“I don’t get it. What’s that mean?”

“It’s a line from the holy text of a foreign religion. You know, there are lots of very pious believers in the western capital. If you can work in a line of scripture here or there while you’re chatting, it can do wonders for your business!”

Chue took some writing utensils from the folds of her robe and jotted something down. “Here, Miss Maomao. It looks like you’re going to be living here for the foreseeable future, so you might as well learn it.” On the paper, she had written the words she had been speaking, spelled out phonetically so that Maomao could read them.

“I really don’t think I need to.” Maomao couldn’t have cared less about this subject, and had no interest in learning these words.

“No, no. I think you should!” Chue didn’t back down; she gripped Maomao’s shoulders and looked her squarely in the eye. She wasn’t leaving the apothecary with much choice. “Here we go! One! Two! O Lord, are You there, Lord?”

“O L— Lard, arr you therre, Lard?”

“Hmm. You sound like a babbling baby.” Maomao thought she had said the words just the way Chue had written them, but apparently there was something wrong with her pronunciation. “Let’s try again!”

“Let’s not and say we did.”

“Come on! This is the perfect opportunity.” Chue was proving unusually stubborn.

When they’d repeated the phrase several times and Maomao’s diction had begun to improve, Chue finally let her go. While she was at it, she taught Maomao the proper gesture of prayer, although Maomao doubted how much good it would do her.

As they came out of the chapel, they caught Lihaku yawning. Bored, probably.

“I’m gonna give you a pop quiz on this the next time we come by,” Chue warned Maomao.

“Yeah, okay,” Maomao said. As far as she was concerned, there wasn’t going to be a next time. “Let’s go back for now and get some food, Miss Chue.” She was confident the subject of food would divert the ever-famished attendant. Chue liked to take her meals with Maomao in order to avoid her mother-in-law, and Maomao anticipated prompt agreement.

“Good idea. Mister Quack must be starving too. By the way, how is he attending to his bathroom needs?” Chue showed no shame in the question.

“I take him to the toilet whenever I’m there,” said Lihaku, who could carry the quack around in his arms.

“He should be fine. I left him with a bedpan. It’s for female use, so I think it should work for him,” Maomao replied, as unconcerned as Chue. The quack was a eunuch, so he lacked the distinguishing feature of most men.

“Gee, I suddenly feel bad for the old guy. Let’s get back, huh?” Lihaku said, picking up his pace. He really did look unusually concerned.