My Splendid Concubine

by Lofthouse, Lloyd

  Robert sighed and followed the eunuch upstairs to the back bedroom that had been converted into a piano room. When they entered, Robert stopped. Fooyen stood in the shadows on the far side of the room. Herbert, a year old now, was in his pen next to Fooyen. He was holding onto the side with both hands and was drooling.

  There was a familiar looking foreign man in the room. He was tall and thin with gray hair, and he wore wire-frame glasses. He fingered his goatee nervously and stepped forward to introduce himself. “I am Kurt Brugman, Mr. Hart.” The man’s English was thick with a German accent.

  “He is the German piano teacher Ayaou hired,” Guan-jiah said in Mandarin. “He was the best and was willing to work the hours Ayaou wanted.”

  “I didn’t know.”

  “That’s because it was a secret, Master.”

  “Mr. Brugman, don’t you work at the German consulate? I’ve seen you there.”

  The man nodded.

  “How were you able to find the time?”

  “The ambassador felt it was a good idea because of your position in Peking.”

  “Please thank the German ambassador for his thoughtfulness.” Robert turned to see that Ayaou was dressed in a green-silk gown embroidered with lotus blossoms and bats. Anna, sitting on the piano bench, was wearing a matching gown. Her pixy face was composed, but her eyes looked worried.

  “Anna is going to play for you, Mr. Hart,” Brugman said. “We have been working hard to be ready for this day.” The man started to open his mouth to say something else, but Guan-jiah clapped his hands and guided Robert to a chair against the wall. Brugman went and stood at the corner of the piano where Anna could see him. Ayaou folded her hands on her lap as if she were calm, but Robert detected from her eyes that she was nervous.

  He was well aware that the Chinese often showed off their children’s talents to others. There was nothing new in that. Even though Confucius regarded morality as the most important subject to learn and practice, he also emphasized what he called the “Six Arts”—ritual, music, archery, chariot riding, calligraphy and computation. They were woven into the fabric of Chinese culture and children often started learning young, so Robert was not surprised to see Anna sitting on the piano ready to play. He wondered what simple song she had learned. Maybe they could play a duet together.

  A silence settled over the room. Anna’s little hands moved toward the keys then her fingers touched. As she started to play, Robert felt his eyes widen in surprise. It was Chopin’s First Piano Concerto. Anna missed a note, and her eyes darted toward Ayaou then back to the piano. A stern look came into Ayaou’s eyes. Anna kept playing, but her eyes glistened from tears.

  Guan-jiah said Anna had been practicing eight to twelve hours a day. It must have been torture for the five-year old. Robert leaned back. His mouth dropped open and he had to force it to close. The pride he felt at his daughter’s accomplishment was like a balloon expanding in his stomach and chest. Anna played for more than fifteen minutes. When she stopped and leaned back, the silence was thick.

  Before anyone could speak, Robert leaped to his feet and hurried to sweep Anna from the bench and into his arms. He turned toward Ayaou. “She was perfect,” he said. “Perfect!” His eyes filled with tears. “I’m so pleased.” He kissed Anna on the cheek, and she threw her arms around his neck. “I love you,” he said.

  “The concert isn’t over,” Brugman said in his thick accent. “She learned Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 5 in E Flat Major too—The Emperor Concerto.”

  Robert placed Anna back on the bench and sat beside her. “You have made me very proud today, Anna. Please play Beethoven.”

  “It is my favorite, Ba Ba,” she said in English.

  “English too!” Robert said.

  “A teacher has been coming from the British consulate,” Guan-jiah said. “It seems that everyone wants to please you.”

  Robert decided to save the flute for another day. He watched in pride as Anna’s fingers reached for the ivory keys.

  Nights were sweeter than ever. During intimacy, Robert found Ayaou’s trust had returned.

  “I never thought about being called to live in Peking,” she said. “My Shanghai fortuneteller, Mr. Sua-min, predicted that the moment you became powerful, you would abandon me.”

  “You found another fortune teller!” he said. That upset him. “First there was the one in Ningpo and next the one in Macao. They only fill your head with nonsense.”

  “I have to know what my fate is going to be so I am ready,” she replied. “I paid Mr. Sua-min for his words, but I did not let them eat me.”

  His chest was her pillow. She had become quite talkative recently. Learning to become his eyes and ears in Peking had opened her like a blossoming flower. He didn’t know if he liked that. He was used to her being the quiet sort.

  The silk sheet slid off revealing her breasts. He couldn’t take his eyes off them, so he pulled the sheet back to cover them. He wanted to pay attention to what she was saying. She might test him to make sure he was listening. She had been doing that recently.

  “Living in Canton then Shanghai while you were gone was not a pleasant experience,” she said. “Every time a messenger came to the house, I expected bad news. Not about you but about me. I loved you and would rather be dead if I could not be with you. I dreaded each day.”

  She studied his face. “You were not paying attention,” she said.

  “Yes I was. You thought I might abandon you. You were surprised to come to Peking to live with me. That fortune teller was a liar.”

  She pinched him.

  “Ayaou,” he said. “That hurt.”

  “I did not say Mr. Sua-min was a liar.”

  “He was wrong wasn’t he? Do not pinch me. You know I hate that.”

  Satisfied that he was listening, Ayaou rambled on. His right arm was pinned under her, and it was going numb. Although he wasn’t listening closely to what she was saying, he liked the smooth sound of her voice.

  It was better than the silence he’d lived with after taking this job in Peking. He pulled his arm out and stretched it while his fingers tingled with returning circulation.

  She shifted her position and threw a leg across both of his. She started to play with the hair on his chest. “I can never get used to this,” she said. “Your hair feels so strange. My private grassland.” She laughed.

  He heard the sound of boots in the courtyard outside the window signaling the changing of the guard. Now that bannermen had been assigned to guard Robert night and day, there were new sounds to get used to.

  “I am not sure if we match now that you are truly a powerful man, Robert. I prayed that you would be promoted. When you were, I was happy for your success. On the other hand, it gave me nightmares. I could see matchmakers tempting you with beautiful ladies.”

  Now seemed a good time to tell her what he’d been considering the last few weeks. He might be powerful, he thought, but together they had made reality of a dream.

  Without her, he would be a lonely man and nothing would please him. When she had been in Canton or Shanghai and he’d been elsewhere, Robert had enjoyed the company of friends but when they left, he envied them. They had homes with families waiting. He had only loneliness for a companion.

  There was no home for him without Ayaou. Since leaving Canton, his life had been half-empty. Now, his days were full. He ran his fingers down the supple length of her back counting her ribs. She was lean and thin. It was time to make her an honest woman. She had stopped talking and her breathing had slowed.

  “Ayaou, are you sleeping?”

  “No.” By the slurred sound of her voice, she wasn’t far from it.

  “Before you came to Peking,” he said, “I was having terrible dreams. They were always the same where Shao-mei came to fetch you, and the two of you vanished without a trace. That dream kept me awake nights. You wouldn’t believe how this bothered me.” He was nervous like a schoolboy wanting to talk to the girl he had a crush on.
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  “I asked my assistant every day to check to see if there were any messages from Guan-jiah,” he said. “I couldn’t find peace until a dispatch came telling me you were well. I was sick with worry, and that taught me I mustn’t wait any longer.” His heart started to thud and his hands felt clammy. This was foolish. He’d been with Ayaou for years. They had two children. They were not strangers.

  She rolled onto her stomach, propped her head up on one hand and stared at him. “Wait for what?” she asked.

  “You know what I’m going to say, don’t you?”

  She nodded. “You want me to become more than your eyes and ears? I like that job.”

  Robert gently cupped her face with his hands. “I love looking into your eyes,” he said. “I see secrets hidden there.” He kissed the tip of her nose then found her lips for a long, passionate kiss. When they parted, he ran his fingers across her face and into her long hair. Touching her was arousing him. “Your bone structure was sculpted by an artist.”

  “You know that is not true, Robert. I am—”

  “Hush,” he said, and took a breath to bolster his courage. “I’m proposing a wedding like Tee Lee Ping had but grander. Would you like that? I want to hear you say yes. We can marry in Peking or Shanghai. It doesn’t matter where. What’s important is that you become my wife.”

  If he married her, it might be easier to tell his father, since it would be better if she were his wife instead of a concubine.

  When her face dropped into a look of despair, his heart went with it. He braced himself for the unpredictable, the unthinkable. How could she say no? Isn’t this what she has wanted all along? From the look on her face, he wasn’t sure anymore.

  Chapter 51

  “When we lived in Ningpo, the answer would have been yes,” she said, then fell silent and looked away to focus on Prospect Hill, which was visible from the window. It was the highest point in Peking built from dirt removed to create the moat surrounding the Forbidden City. There was a garden with a pavilion at the top. It was outside the main walls and across the moat but still part of the palace complex.

  “It was my dream to be your wife,” Ayaou said. “Your love made my heart grow tender and kinder, and every time a letter came, I fell deeper in love. I was able to see what I could not see before. I began to understand why you hid our relationship. There are invisible rules and boundaries from both our societies. Crossing means to kill your future with your own hands.”

  “Ayaou, I don’t care.”

  “Do not be unwise. You are not taking my words seriously. Peking is a class and rank-minded city. Even in the teahouses, like the place you took me to this morning, the nobles get seats that are sunny and bright and they face south while the common customers sit in the back where there is little or no view. Robert, I am not blind. I see things and they make sense.”

  “What makes sense?” He dreaded the answer.

  “I see how you will throw away what you have built.”

  “But my reason for everything I’ve done the last few years was for us. Don’t you want to be my wife?”

  Tears glistened in her eyes. “Of course,” she said, “That is why I have to make sure I do not hurt you.”

  “You’re contradicting yourself.” He envisioned a mouth opening beneath him and swallowing him in one gulp.

  She shook her head. “I cannot explain myself good enough for you.”

  “What about the wedding?”

  She bit her lip and made no answer. Herbert started to cry from the other room and Ayaou got up.

  “Let Fooyen take care of him,” he said, but she went anyway.

  Prince Kung’s father-in-law, Kuei-liang, Robert’s neighbor, planned a party to celebrate Robert becoming Inspector General. Prince Kung, several of his brothers and people who worked at the Tsungli Yamen planned to attend.

  Robert saw an opportunity to repent for what he’d done to Ayaou years earlier in Canton when he wouldn’t let her sing and dance for his guests at a dinner party. She had been upset and stayed in her room missing the celebration. This time he wanted her with him and thought she would be pleased.

  However, when he told Ayaou that she was going to a party given by a Manchu royal, she panicked.

  “Robert,” she said, “this is an imperial party?”

  “So?”

  “I am not fit to go. What do I say when people ask what family I am from?”

  “The party is for me, and you’re my wife-to-be.”

  She kept shaking her head. “Please, Robert, do not do what you will regret.”

  “You,” he said, and emphasized this by tapping her on her shoulder with an index finger, “are coming with me. Guan-jiah, bring that dress I bought.” His resolve was set in forged iron.

  Guan-jiah came through the door and held the dress in front of him. It was a full-length black silk gown with a pattern of red azaleas on it.

  “No, Robert, you cannot do this.” Her eyes were darting about as if she were looking for a way to escape. “You are crazy to even—no, I will not go.”

  He grabbed her and forced her to look at him. “Listen, taking you with me to this party is a way to show how proud I am of you. You should feel confident, because you probably know more about the confusing state of Chinese politics than the nobles do. Walls, eunuchs, and corrupt ministers surround them. You would be shocked to discover how much they don’t know. Without your knowledge to guide me, I’d be of no use to them.”

  “But people will make fun of me once they learn where I am from. They might discover that you bought me!”

  “Stop it, Ayaou. You are letting yourself panic and have forgotten I never bought you. Now that Ward is dead, you’re free. You are truly my partner and should be my wife.”

  He took hold of her chin. “I’ll have you carried over there if I have to. I told Prince Kung I was in love with a Chinese boat girl. He didn’t believe me. You must show your face, so he knows the truth.”

  Ayaou covered her mouth with both hands and started crying.

  “Guan-jiah, I’m right aren’t I?” he asked, wanting an ally.

  A look of panic flooded the eunuch’s face. His eyes darted away.

  Robert sighed. Obviously, Guan-jiah agreed with Ayaou. It was annoying that they were both against what he wanted. “Thank you, Guan-jiah. You may leave.” The eunuch took the gown and retreated.

  “Ayaou, you are going,” Robert said. “That’s the last we will talk about this.”

  The party wasn’t what he thought it would be. Soon after they reached the house, Prince Kung’s father-in-law managed to separate Ayaou from him. She was taken away by two concubines to another room. He kept looking around searching for her, and occasionally caught a glimpse of her in a doorway or behind a screen or a large-potted plant.

  Robert discovered that Prince Kung had arranged the party to introduce him to highborn, young Manchu women. One by one, these lovely creatures were introduced to him.

  A banker in Ningpo once told Robert that you could only trust members of your family, and so it was wise to marry your business associates to your daughters. It made perfect sense, but that didn’t mean Robert had to like it.

  Then he saw her—a seductive, classical beauty. She was tall with wide shoulders and a graceful neck. Her bone-white face stood in contrast to her black glossy hair, decorated with fresh flowers and glittering, dangling jewels. When she saw that he was admiring her, she smiled and crossed the room.

  “I am Nee-Nee,” she said. She held her hand out to shake in the Western style. He took hold of her fingertips and his heart started to pound. “My uncle told me about you. He said we must talk.”

  He guessed she was at least seventeen and tried not to stare at a perfect red dot painted on her lower lip. “Your uncle?” he asked. She had large eyes that wove a spell over him, and he felt dizzy.

  “Prince Kung,” she said, and laughed.

  There was music in her laughter that caused breathing problems. Kung had set him up. Nee
-Nee was amazing. Maybe Ayaou was right. Maybe he should have a royal wife and keep her as his concubine.

  “I understand you love to read,” she said.

  He started telling her about the Fall of the House of Usher and how it compared to The Dream of the Red Chamber. As he babbled on, he imagined undressing Nee-Nee, which confused him, and he forgot what he was saying.

  “Chinese novels can be classified into several types,” she said, as if she knew what she was talking about. The conversation went from there. Nee-Nee had an educated woman’s openness and she said many interesting things about literature and operas.

  During the conversation, she reached out and touched his arm. Her fingers lingered before they slid down the back of his hand in an invitation. An electric shock raced through him. Robert had a feeling that Nee-Nee knew she was weaving a spell and succeeding. No woman had affected him like this since that first time with Ayaou.

  “There are the novels of adventure like Outlaws of the March,” she said. “Then there is the historical novel The Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Have you read The Plum in the Golden Vase?” She smiled an invitation as if she were making promises to him. Then her long eyelashes fluttered, and she glanced away as if she was embarrassed, but he didn’t think she was.

  Yes, he had read The Plum in the Golden Vase and most of it had been pornographic. The novel had shocked the Ming Dynasty so much in the early seventeenth century that the book had been banned at the time.

  Her fingers still rested on the back of his hand. When she finished saying the name of the pornographic novel, she ran her fingernails across his skin setting his nerves on fire. This excited him and he couldn’t concentrate, which was embarrassing.

  It took a glass of hard liquor to drench the flames and calm him down.

  As the night wore on and after many had left, Robert managed to break away from Nee-Nee. It wasn’t easy.

  He found Ayaou, and they went home. There was an early morning appointment at the Tsungli Yamen, and he wanted a few hours of sleep so he would have a clear head for the meeting.

  Still dressed in her silk gown, Ayaou sat on the edge of the bed. “The concubines told me what Prince Kung and the ministers are planning for you,” she said.