The man in the dream, who both is and is not Old Man, turns away. “I cannot save you,” he says.
In the morning, remembering the dream, Lao Mama thinks, I am not fine. I am not fine at all.
14
BIRDS OF SADNESS
Jinhua
She has been groaning in her sleep; Jinhua hears the sound of it, and this is not a dream, and there is no part of her that feels all right. The bed is hard, and it is not her bed. The places that Banker Chang has injured burn and throb and ache, but he is not here. A moment later, eyes wide open, Jinhua isn’t sure where she is. The room is barely larger than the bed on which she is lying, curled around herself; it is a room without a window or furniture, with a broom leaning against the wall and a pile of rags on the floor.
It is Suyin’s room. It is the closet where she sleeps.
Jinhua touches the swollen place between her legs and looks at her fingers. Her hand is red with blood, and she holds it far away from herself, fingers loosely curved and dangling downward. She begins to sob. Her mind is busy remembering every single thing that Banker Chang did, and it is as awful and as painful now as it was when he did these things last night.
“Call me Baba,” he said.
She is fully awake now. There is a bucket near the bed, and Jinhua needs to pee but she doesn’t dare; it hurts too much down there.
Did he really say it? Call me Baba—
When Suyin comes, she says, “Good morning,” and Jinhua sobs harder. She shows Suyin the blood on her fingers, and she is helpless as she watches Suyin wipe one finger at a time, firmly, thoroughly, the way one cleans muck from a baby’s hand. She asks through tears, “Is it the red dragon? Will I bleed each month? Will I be in Lao Mama’s moon cycle book from now on?”
Suyin shakes her head. “No,” she says. “That will happen later, maybe soon and maybe not so soon.”
“It is bad, isn’t it, when blood pours out for no reason?” Jinhua is looking at her fingers, her nails still rimmed with blood. Suyin touches her arm.
“It is not the worst thing,” she replies. “Now, drink some tea. It will help you to heal. It will make you feel better for a while.”
First she needs to pee. Suyin lifts her over the bucket. She strokes her hair. Jinhua holds her breath, and the pee comes in burning dribbles. It is strong smelling, a dark color in the bottom of the bucket. Afterward she drinks the tea, greedy to quench a terrible thirst, and Suyin brings a bowl of heaving liquid. “Medicine,” she tells Jinhua. “Lie down.” She pushes Jinhua’s legs apart. When she bathes her, Jinhua flinches, drawing her knees in toward herself. Liquids trickle. Suyin folds a soft, dry rag and wedges it between Jinhua’s legs. With a cord, she binds it around her waist, tightly, so it won’t slip.
“There,” she says. “Now get dressed. Lao Mama wants us all to come downstairs. She has a surprise. For everyone, she said.”
Long, long ago—in another life—surprises were enchanting things. Now, pulling her tunic over her head, Jinhua says, “Tell me what it is, Suyin.” Tears are running down her cheeks, and Suyin shrugs her shoulders. “If I knew what it was,” she says, “it would not be a surprise.”
The courtyard is loud with bird sounds, and the sun is warm already. Lao Mama’s face looks strange without powder or color or paint. She has no eyebrows, her lips are gray, and she smells of smoke and incense from the City God Temple, where she has been this morning to pray.
“The little one will go first,” Lao Mama says, and she is pointing at Jinhua. Old Man is holding a brown sack.
Jinhua doesn’t want to be the first. The sack in Old Man’s hand is moving, and Old Man growls and thrusts it toward her, and she can smell the earthy, gnarly smell of hairy, old-sack fibers and the stink of his sleeve. She hears a small sound and pulls her hands behind her back.
“Go on. Take one. They don’t bite nearly as hard as Banker Chang does.” Lao Mama’s morning laugh is like a tiger’s roar, and now everyone is laughing at Jinhua. From the place where she is standing at the edge of the courtyard, Suyin gives the smallest nod, and the nod says, Jinhua, you must do this thing.
Old Man holds the bag open. Jinhua reaches in. Her fingers still feel sticky. Everyone is watching and giggling, and Jinhua is afraid of what is in the bag—and her hand closes around a tiny heartbeat.
“All the beings in the Six Paths of Existence are our parents,” Lao Mama announces, and it is a tiny bird, as round as a meat bun, the softest thing Jinhua has ever touched, and she pulls it out of the sack and uses two hands to hold it so it won’t fly away. Jinhua lifts the bird up close to her face, and it is the best thing that has ever happened, this little bird in her hand with bones like twigs that could break so easily and eyes like bright beads; with every feather twitching, his feet pricking the palm of her hand, his head swiveling this way and that to look here and look there.
“To release a bird to the sky is to honor our ancestors,” Lao Mama is saying, and Jinhua wants to keep this precious thing forever and for always.
“Today,” Lao Mama continues, “we will all honor our fathers and mothers and grandfathers and grandmothers—and all who came before them. All six of you girls and Old Man too. And me, of course. I will do this thing as well. All of us will gain merit for the future.”
Jinhua and the bird are looking at each other, and Lao Mama has not said anything about a bird for Suyin, but she is saying a prayer with her lips and no words—and Jinhua doesn’t want her bird to fly away.
“Well?” Lao Mama says now, flicking fingers in Jinhua’s direction. “Let it go. That is the point, stupid girl.” She pauses. “It is only a stupid bird.”
Hongyu is hovering, talking into Jinhua’s ear, and Jinhua’s fingers are tight but not too tight around the little bird. “You can’t keep him,” Hongyu is saying. Then she whispers, “He won’t get away to the sky, you know. The bird seller is waiting. He is there with his cage on the other side of the wall. He’ll get them all back, every one of them, and sell them for karma to someone else. That is what the bird seller does, over and over. He sells the same birds.”
Jinhua glances at Suyin. Hongyu won’t stop talking, and Jinhua doesn’t want this to be true—what Hongyu has said.
“This is the way it is for birds,” Suyin says, and her voice is bright, and Jinhua can tell that she is pretending not to mind even a little that she did not get a bird for her karma. Lao Mama’s bird has flown away over the wall, and now Lao Mama is saying that she wants to speak with Suyin in the parlor. She says she has a different surprise for her that isn’t a bird but something else, something better. Suyin is looking at the ground and isn’t saying anything, and Qingyue’s bird has gone as well, and now Old Man’s.
Jinhua waits, and she opens her hand, and she can feel the blood trickling out of her into the rag inside her trousers. The bird sits quite still for a moment on her palm. And then with a shake and a quiver, he spreads his wings and flies up into the branch of the ginkgo tree. His yellow throat is beautiful amid green leaves, and he opens it to sing, and Jinhua cannot remember exactly how it is that Baba looks, but hearing the bird she remembers something else. A bird does not sing because it has an answer. It sings because it has a song.
15
LIKE A PIECE OF PAPER
Suyin
Some things have changed in the days since Lao Mama said that she would adopt Suyin, but Suyin’s life is definitely not better than it was before. Sometimes Lao Mama calls her Daughter; sometimes she says Suyin’s name properly, but when she is angry she forgets and calls her Dirt Dumpling or Little Cunt, the way she always did before. And now it is Suyin who must change the bandages on Lao Mama’s feet whenever they smell bad, and when Lao Mama has an angry day, she beats Suyin and she still beats her harder than she beats the girls who are her money trees. It makes no difference, Lao Mama says, if Suyin’s face is ugly with cuts and bruises, and she already has a limp. Even when Suyin has had a beating and her eyes are swollen almost all the way shut, she can s
weep and wash clothes and carry the night-soil buckets out to the street the way she always has done.
She can still change Lao Mama’s bandages.
Another thing that hasn’t changed is Lao Mama telling Cook to give Suyin the maggoty rice, because she does not need to be plump and soft to please the customers the way the money trees do. Lao Mama just needs Suyin to stay alive so that she can be filial, and burn incense and paper money for Lao Mama when she is dead.
One other thing is different now. It happened yesterday. Old Man found the first houseboy and brought him back, and Lao Mama whipped him on the soles of his feet first and then on his head and his shoulders. Now he can’t walk, and he can’t wear slippers or a shirt. The second houseboy died from vomiting feces on the street; that is what Lao Mama says, and Old Man says, “Yes, that is what happened to him. His tongue was like a fat gray fish hanging out of his mouth, and his eyes were left wide open even though he was dead, and the dogs on the street were biting him.”
Suyin isn’t certain that what Old Man says is true. The second houseboy isn’t here, and that is all she knows for sure.
Jinhua
She has done bed business fourteen times. Twice with Banker Chang and the rest with other men. Cuilian told her, “You will get used to it,” and Sibao said, “After a while it doesn’t hurt and the customers will give you presents.”
Qingyue laughed and told her, “You will never be as good as I am.”
It still hurts to do bed business, every time, and Jinhua bleeds and doesn’t want to be a money tree. She would rather eat maggoty rice with Suyin. She would rather sweep the floor. She wonders about the second houseboy and whether he is really dead with a gray-fish tongue. Maybe, she likes to think, he got away and Lao Mama doesn’t want anyone to know.
Suyin has stopped telling stories now that she has become Lao Mama’s daughter. She says that stories are of no use. They are no better than dreams. Jinhua told her that “a story is like a garden you can carry in your pocket,” which is what Baba said—but Suyin just shook her head and said, “No.”
16
THE EYE WILL SEE
Suyin
When Suyin opens the gate, she thinks, This man has come to the wrong house. He is a gao guan, a high official. Probably he is looking for one of the changsan houses on the other side of the bridge, where the wine is not thinned with water and where the guests are rich men who have three or four or five concubines, and each of them has her own courtyard.
This is what Suyin thinks as she cracks the gate open just wide enough for one eye to see who has rung the bell. The man is standing there alone, studying the girls’ nameplates on the wall outside, his hands clasped behind his back. He is wearing a velvet winter hat with a gold ornament at the top, which is how Suyin knows that he is a very important man. Suyin opens the gate a little wider now to look with two eyes, and the creaking of the hinges frightens a pigeon overhead. The bird flies off the roof, making a tight snapping sound with its wings. Suyin and the man both look up. The pigeon makes a circle and comes back to land on the roof of the hall. It comes right back to where it started. Foolish bird, Suyin thinks. It can fly away. It doesn’t need to come back to the Hall of Round Moon and Passionate Love. She sees now that the man is wearing a gown that is neither blue nor black nor green nor gray, but all four colors woven together like the feathers on the pigeon’s breast, and Suyin can see right away that the cloth is of a fine quality from the way the threads gleam in the sun.
It is early still, not even noon. Suyin has been doing the washing in the courtyard and the wind has been blowing cold and her hands are raw and red. She had just been thinking that it is time to send for the window-paper man to repaper the windows for the cold weather that lies ahead. And then she remembered that today is the eighth day of the eighth moon, which is the day, six years ago, that Aiwen ate opium. Thinking about Aiwen, Suyin couldn’t cry this morning. Not at first. But then she remembered Aiwen in a bright dress hugging her, for no real reason, in a way that made her feel warm and good. It was the first time Aiwen called her Little Sister, and Suyin wished for the hug never to end. With Aiwen’s arms around her like that she felt as though maybe someone could love her deeply and forever, and remembering that made the tears come after all, the way they do when she thinks about the past.
The man is telling her his name now. “I am Subchancellor Hong,” he says, and Suyin’s hands and her sleeves are wet from the washing, and her nose is running, and she is sure her eyes are as red as the tassels on the lanterns outside. She didn’t expect such a fine man to be there, or she would at least have gone to blow her nose first. He asks if he may come inside. He bows deeply although Suyin is only a maid, and he doesn’t seem to be mocking her. She sniffs and pinches the cold tip of her nose and invites him in because it is the only thing to be done even though it is early—too early for banquets or opium or bed business. The girls are all asleep after a hard night of working.
Suyin doesn’t like to go to the gate, and usually she doesn’t. She doesn’t like to know that people are looking at the back side of her when she leads them through the hall. She worries that they will think she is nothing but an old cripple. Some people call her bozi out loud, as though she didn’t know herself that she was one of those, and it makes her feel ashamed.
Subchancellor Hong takes one last sideways look at the nameplates on the wall, and then he steps through the gate. The soles of his velvet boots are almost perfectly white, as though he has never worn them before or maybe everywhere he goes he is carried in a sedan chair. Suyin shows him into the parlor and brings a tray of scented towels, three of them, steaming hot and neatly rolled. He has put on a pair of round eyeglasses and is studying the erotic paintings on the wall, leaning in to see them closely. Seeing the towels, he bows and apologizes for bringing Suyin trouble and seems embarrassed. She offers tea. She is unused to such courtesies, and she, too, is embarrassed by this important man’s politeness. When he takes a towel and dabs at his forehead, Suyin notices that the man’s hands are elegant. He is wearing a mahogany ring on his thumb.
And now she has to wake Lao Mama, who is sleeping soundly, snoring loudly after the goings-on last night. The shutters in her room are closed, and it smells bad in here. Suyin calls Lao Mama’s name in a whisper and carefully touches her wrinkled old shoulder. When Lao Mama rolls over in her bed, Suyin can see that she is naked underneath the quilts with the little dog curled up beside her, and before a single word comes out of Lao Mama’s mouth, Suyin knows she will be angry and say rude things.
“Stupid cow,” Lao Mama says before her eyes are even half open. “Cunt.” She lifts a hand to her forehead, and Suyin sees the flash of her emerald ring, which she always wears so that no one can steal it.
“An official in the parlor,” Suyin tells her. “Waiting.”
“An official?” Lao Mama sits up, clutching the quilt to cover herself. Her eyes are open now. “Fang ni made pi,” she says. “What does he want at this ridiculous hour?” And then she says, “Official or not, he will have to wait.”
Of course. Rousing the girls. Painting the eyebrows, the lips, the face. Arranging the hair. Deciding the clothes. These things take time.
“Tell him just a moment,” Lao Mama says. “Tell him that I have many beauties, that no matter his taste I have a girl for him. Go on, you worthless slave of a daughter, tell him that.”
Subchancellor Hong is sipping tea in the parlor when Suyin returns. Already she is wondering which of the girls a man like this will choose. Always, she hopes, it will not be Jinhua. Often it is, because she is the youngest and most beautiful—she has the gift of talking nicely and remembering songs—and she has more charm than anyone.
Bowing, Suyin says, “Please. If the honorable guest would wait for just a moment, the girls will come, and you will doubtless find one, no matter your taste.” She is trying hard to speak in a way that is suitable for a man like this.
Subchancellor Hong nods. He seems a decent
man but a strange person. “I am looking for one courtesan in particular,” he tells Suyin. “She is the one I must find, and no other.”
Jinhua
Jinhua is last in line. Lao Mama has arranged the girls in the parlor—all six of them painted, powdered, and sleepy. She has lined them up like teeth in a comb so that the important man can have a look. Jinhua is trying not to yawn.
“The venerable subchancellor does us a profound honor with his presence in our humble hall,” Lao Mama is saying, bowing deeply. She has never said such a polite thing before. She never bows so low for anyone. The man does not rise from his stool. He is neither handsome nor ugly. He has a straight, thin nose, a well-shaped head, and small shoulders. He is older than some who come here, but not as old as others. He isn’t fat.
Lao Mama unfolds herself from her bow. “Have a look.” She gestures with her hand toward the line of girls. Her ring flashes. Her voice goes up and down. It has a shape today. It curls and swivels; it is like a needle hidden in a silk glove.
“Take your time,” she says to the man. “Man man kan.”
The man says nothing. He doesn’t look in Lao Mama’s direction. He is making her wait. It is as though, Jinhua thinks, he is thinking of someone or something that is not here. All of the girls are fidgeting, swaying on their feet. Jinhua is swaying too, and wondering.
“No charge at all for looking at my fragrant beauties,” Lao Mama says now, as though the man’s silence must be filled with words. “Or maybe I, who am humbler and lower than you, can be of assistance in your selection.” She has two hands on Qingyue’s arm. Qingyue is her favorite. Always first in line. Qingyue steps forward and giggles as though she were timid and bashful, but she isn’t timid at all—or bashful either. Please, Jinhua is praying to the god of wealth on the other side of the room—or to any god who will listen—let him choose her and not me.
The Courtesan Page 10
