On the morning after the door of the thatched hall (草堂) had opened upon the third visit, a great map was spread upon the low table of the hall.

Zhuge Liang (諸葛亮) took a brush and drew three regions upon the map. To the north lay Cao Cao’s (曹操) Huabei (華北); to the south, Sun Quan’s (孫權) Jiangdong (江東); to the west, Liu Zhang’s (劉璋) Yizhou (益州).

Zhuge Liang offered his counsel in a low voice. “Governor. After his great victory at Guandu (官渡), Cao Cao has already gathered a million men. To stand against him directly is difficult. Sun Quan’s Jiangdong has passed through three generations (三代) of firm rule. Take him not as foe, but as ally (同盟).”

Zhuge Liang moved his brush toward the west. “Liu Zhang’s Yizhou holds rich (肥沃) land, yet Liu Zhang himself is weak. If Your Lordship, a royal kin (宗室) of Han, obtains Yizhou, you shall hold Jingzhou (荊州) and Yizhou together. These two lands become the axis (軸) of a tripartite division (三分) of all under heaven.”

Liu Bei (劉備) opened his eyes wide. “Kongming. Today’s vision of sanfen (三分) is the lifetime path of this body.” Zhuge Liang gave a low smile.

Zhuge Liang drew three circles upon the map. One circle for Jingzhou; one for Yizhou; one reaching toward Jiangdong as an alliance. The three circles lay together upon the map. At their center, Liu Bei’s name was inscribed low.

Liu Bei folded his hands and took Zhuge Liang’s hand. “Kongming. Today’s dialogue has opened the final path of this body. Please stand with me upon this road.”

Zhuge Liang swallowed a long silence. In a low voice, he let slip a single word. “Governor. After today’s dialogue, I shall step out of the door of this hall together with you.”

Upon the road of the three circles, the two names of Liu Bei and Zhuge Liang lay side by side. The flower of the Three Visits (三顧) bloomed today as the vision of sanfen.

Outside the hall, Guan Yu and Zhang Fei received from the young lad a small tray of tea cakes. Three cakes there were, one for each of the three visitors as was proper, yet the lad had laid them upon a single tray rather than upon three plates. A lad of twelve who has served a sage for four years rarely sets three cakes upon three plates; he sets them upon one tray so that the three may eat as at a single seat. Guan Yu took the first cake; Zhang Fei took the second; the third they left upon the tray for their elder brother. The third cake would remain uneaten on the tray until well after the sun had begun to slant west that afternoon; and when Liu Bei finally came out, he would not eat it himself but hand it back to the lad. The lad would eat the cake. Some cakes travel through four hands before reaching a mouth.

Inside Zhuge Liang’s back room, after the map had been rolled and laid upon a high shelf, his wife, Lady Huang, sat upon a low stool and folded a plain cotton robe that her husband would wear upon the road tomorrow. She did not weep; she had long prepared for this morning. A sage’s wife who has, for eight years, watched him plough his beans upon a small hillside rarely weeps when the last harvest approaches; she only folds a plain cotton robe. The robe would, in the coming decade, be patched many times; at the end, it would be many cottons layered upon the first. Tonight, however, it was still only the first cotton.

Across the low wall of the back courtyard, a slow afternoon wind moved through the tops of the pine trees. The wind carried no scent; it carried only coolness. A pine at the back wall of a sage’s hall, when brushed by coolness in the afternoon, rarely drops a needle in the same hour; it only sways a little. The tree swayed. A single needle, for some weeks only loosely attached to the lowest branch, detached and fell toward the ground. Before it reached the earth, it lodged in the thatch of the hall’s roof. There it would remain, forgotten, until a summer rain three years later would wash it down. Some needles travel a shorter path than their branch ever intended. The roof, at the hour the needle lodged, held the first plans of a new age beneath its thatch; the needle rested as a small companion to those plans. The plans themselves, rolled upon the high shelf inside, did not know of the needle, and the needle did not know of the plans; yet the roof knew of both, and held them beneath a single thatch.

The hundred and second morning of Book 4 was opening quietly upon the map of Longzhong’s hall. The three characters Yungjung-dae (隆中對, the Longzhong Dialogue) were planted as a seed: Cao Cao of the north, Sun Quan of the south, Liu Zhang of the west, the three circles of alliance, and the axis of sanfen all at one seat. The flower of Day 101’s Samgohwa (三顧花) had, this morning, bloomed as the vision of sanfen.

—

WIA Code 스캐너로 비추면 인터넷 없이 발행 사실과 위·변조 여부를 확인할 수 있습니다.
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