by Tan, Amy
Perpetual’s anguished face suddenly appeared. He grabbed me and hugged me so strongly I thought he was going to crack my ribs. “You’re safe! I was about to kill myself, certain you had died.” He released me. His face became puzzled. “Weren’t you worried for me?” he asked.
“Of course,” I said. “Scared out of my mind.” I secretly wondered why I had not worried where he was. I fingered his torn sleeve and kept my faced turned down. I could feel his eyes on me. When I looked up, he was staring hard, disappointed, almost angry. We both knew I should have burst into tears of relief when I saw that he was safe.
DURING THE WEEK of riots, Perpetual did not come back. I reasoned it was dangerous to walk in the streets when small riots erupted without warning. The word was out that the police commissioner had left an underling in charge of the Louza Station and went off to enjoy an afternoon at the Shanghai Club and horse races. The underling had panicked when the students entered the doors. He ordered his men to fire, and twelve were killed and many injured. It would take a while for things to quiet down in our neighborhood.
The parties were canceled. Vermillion rang our best patrons, one at a time, and claimed that everything had calmed down and that she was hosting a grand banquet to celebrate the new peace. My flower sisters and I rang our suitors and former patrons. Everyone said it was inconvenient to come. Nothing was going our way. Just this morning the corpse of an old man was placed on our steps. Vermillion did not want his ghost to enjoy his afterlife in our flower house. “Let him do his business in the Hall of Pleasure Gates down the street,” she said. Everyone laughed except Old Pine, who had been told to remove the body.
He had already refused. “I’m not letting this man’s ghost take over my body so he can fuck the girls with my cock.”
I saw a beggar across the lane. “Hey, old grandpa! Ten cents to you if you take this body away.”
“Fuck your mother,” the man said in a thick, drunken voice. “I was mayor of this city. Give me a dollar.” After some haggling, we paid the dollar.
As the days wore on, we heard rumors that some of our patrons had become paupers. Bank loans were taken back. Factories burned down. Warlords seized their unattended businesses in other provinces. There were stories abounding that the Japanese were turning this chaos to their advantage, and soon there would be a Japanese landlord behind every door, as if there were not already too many. What was happening? The world had gone mad.
Vermillion did an account of the house finances, listing the parties that had been booked and canceled, the courtesans whose patrons provided regular income. She calculated what that represented in terms of money to each girl and money to her pocket. I listened with a sick heart as she named my suitors as among the least successful and reliable. Since no one was giving parties, I received no requests to provide banjo-style zither music and songs. Perpetual had stayed away. He was probably angry at me. But I could not worry about him now. He would not be of any help with my finances. He had contributed only one good poem.
When at last the riots ceased and we had visitors again, they were not the same powerful men who had come before. These men had money, but they did not lavish it on us. They wanted less courting and more proof in the boudoir that we were better than the courtesans of other houses. And even without much business, Vermillion expected us to pay our full rent and expenses, but she quickly saw that if she kicked out everyone who lacked enough money each month, she would have no courtesans left. I portioned out my savings to keep my room.
I felt great relief when Vermillion came to me with a new client. Mansion had said he wanted to hold a private party at his house in honor of his guest, a middle-aged business partner named Endeavor Yan. The guest had expressed specific interest in a courtesan skilled at storytelling. Vermillion said no one was as seasoned as I was in the literary arts. I was flattered and thanked her for choosing me.
I wondered, of course, if Perpetual was staying at Mansion’s house. If he attended the party, this would be a good chance to secretly show my affections and have him forgive me for my failure to worry sufficiently during the worst of the riots. That night I dressed in Westernized Chinese clothes, a blend of new and old. I also brought my zither. I was happy to see that Perpetual was indeed present at the dinner party, and I cast fond looks his way while still being attentive to the guest of honor. When it came time for the storytelling, my suggestions were brushed away. Endeavor Yan asked that I read a scene from The Plum in the Golden Vase. I was taken aback. This was a pornographic novel. It was popular in the courtesan houses, but only after a suitor had been invited to the boudoir. I had never been asked to perform this before a group of men during a dinner party. Perpetual looked away. More wine was poured for all. Mansion came around and said softly that he had persuaded Endeavor Yan to agree that I read a selection in his room instead.
“He is here for only three nights,” Mansion said, “and I suggested that he provide the equivalent of a month’s worth of gifts, fifty dollars for the favor. He may ask for another performance the next night. I know this may be much to ask, Violet. Forgive me if you find it insulting.”
Before I could answer, Perpetual came up to Mansion to bid him good night. He said to me that he was pleased to see me, then left. I took his departure to mean he disapproved of what I was doing. For all these months, this pompous man had let me pleasure him and had paid nothing for the privilege. I told Mansion I would be more than pleased to entertain his business partner. Fortunately, Magic Gourd was not here to see what I had agreed to do without even one night of courtship. I had enacted scenes from the book before—but only for patrons. Tonight’s decision signaled the rapid descent of my career.
Endeavor was solicitous of my comfort. Was it too cold? Would you like tea? We talked for a few minutes about nothing in particular and then he brought me the book. He wanted me to read from the passage in which the character Golden Lotus cuckolds her master by lascivious encounters with the young gardener. He said he would play the role of both the young gardener and the master of the house. He brought out a hairbrush with a long tapered handle, which I used to punish the naughty but compliant gardener. After a few smacks, he thanked me, then brought out a whip. He was now the master of the house and I was Golden Lotus. He angrily accused me of infidelity and I pretended to weep as I declared that nothing had happened between the gardener and me except lessons in horticulture. But, as the story went, my pleas were for naught, and Endeavor wielded the whip and I provided the requisite shrieks, begging that he forgive me before he killed me. The whip was constructed so that it was not that painful, but what stung was my humiliation when Endeavor asked me to squirm a bit more and to scream with more realism and volume. At the end of my performance, he was again solicitous and asked if I was cold. He then requested to see me the next evening.
The following evening I performed the purchased shrieking with even more realism. Mansion gave me an extra gift and was voluminous in his gratitude for my being so accommodating. Vermillion was pleased that all went well, and I suspected she knew from the start what had been in store for me. I waited until I had finished both nights before I told Magic Gourd what had happened. She was mad only that I had not told her. She was my attendant and was supposed to watch over me. I had taken away her purpose in life. So that was how I knew that she accepted the need to do whatever was necessary.
Two days later, Perpetual stopped by in the afternoon. He said nothing of that evening at Mansion’s party. We talked animatedly about the usual subjects. I was his equal and I was grateful he had renewed my self-respect. I did not have to shriek and humiliate myself. I welcomed him into my bed, and while lying in his arms, he gave me a new poem and asked me to read it aloud so that he could see the words form and spill from my beautiful lips.
“Untouched paper is the colorless sky.
When washed by brushes, carapaces emerge,
vast mountains rise wet against dry clouds.
With a single hair and meager ink
,
I am a daub of hermit in an ancient crag,
Who asks the gods where immortality hides.
But mountain shadows and streaks of cliff
now block the heavenly sky from view.”
I cried. It was a masterly poem. His talent had come back. I had begun to have doubts, but no longer. I told Magic Gourd the news. I told her to sit while I performed it.
“It’s pretentious,” she said when I finished. “What did you see in it? Is your mind that hazy after sex? It’s all about how important he thinks he is—as great as the mountain and the sky, which he believes he created with his brush. How can he be a real scholar? I’m beginning to think the first poem he gave you was not one he wrote.”
I resented her belittling him. What did she know about a good poem or a bad one? She was uneducated. And her suspicions about his character were ridiculous. I had never met a man more forthcoming. His confessions about his wife were heartrendingly honest.
“Don’t answer right away if he asks you to marry him,” she said. “You know next to nothing about him except for his talk-talk-talk about ideas that are useless and that he has written only one good poem. Why does he stay with Mansion? Where is his family home? He said he is from An-hwei, but where? And where does he get his money from?”
“He has a business,” I said.
“Mansion guessed that he had a business. Now you are saying it’s certain? Where is the proof?”
“He can’t be poor. He’s from a scholar family of ten—”
“Ten, ten, ten. That is what you love, this number of generations. I have had a growing uneasiness about him. I feel in my stomach what you feel in your heart. He claims to be a man of high ideas. Ideas are like air. What does he do with his ideas? He gives opinions and feels important, and you are his audience, who gives him applause in your bed. He criticizes his own poems. Yet he gives you bad ones and thinks they are suitable to be performed. And the grief he had for his wife until he met you—no sex for five years?—that claim alone tells you something is wrong with his head—although more likely that’s another one of his lies. And think about this: He has never given you anything, no money for all the tea and snacks he’s had. Vermillion told me that she was hoping he would make up for the cost with a few good poems. She told me she’s charging us, since nothing came of her temporary generosity. You must think, Violet. Don’t be tempted to marry this man. He is not the easy answer to your future.”
Until Magic Gourd put up her resistance to him, I had had doubts about my feelings for him. But each suspicion she put up, I knocked down, and love grew stronger out of stubbornness. I reasoned that my conversations with Perpetual about high ideas were far better than listening to a man talk about port treaties and taxes. He admired my mind, which I would always possess, whereas most men wanted charming words that told them how virile they were. When my looks withered, those men would have no interest in applying their virility on me. Perpetual would love me, whether I slept beside him in bed or in a grave. Magic Gourd wanted me to wait until a repulsive rich man collected me as one of his concubines. She would rather I perform degrading scenes from pornographic novels than perform a poem.
The next day I received a letter from Perpetual and another poem. The poem was another masterpiece.
Vaporous clouds hide the mountain,
clear pond reflects his majesty.
He said he was the mountain whom no one understood, and I was the pond, whose depth of feeling could show him his best qualities. Those two lines were Perpetual’s declaration of love and his wish that I be his wife. I waited three days before telling Magic Gourd that I had decided to marry him. I did not want her to ruin my newfound happiness with her warnings of doom. They came soon enough.
“Are you telling me his gauzy lies have so thoroughly swaddled your judgment?” Magic Gourd said. “Vapors, majesty? What kind of poem is this? He’s placed you in the pond and thinks he’s majestic for doing so. If you think this poem is a masterpiece, that’s proof that you have poetic clouds in your head and can no longer think.”
The following day a letter arrived:
Dearest Reflection of My Soul,
In Moon Pond Village, you will no longer be bothered by the decay of Shanghai. You won’t have to tolerate the daily boatloads of arrogant foreigners with their coarse habits, slabs of meat, demands, and insults. You won’t have to entertain men with rootless morals. There are no conniving madams, no cutthroat competitors.
In my home village, it is peaceful. You will be with like-minded people. Every evening, you will be able to see the sunset at the moment of its blazing glory against a pink sky that is not obscured by columned buildings built by foreigners.
Imagine it, my darling, together we will have all the riches we need, the beauty of mountains, pond water, and sky that inspired the poems I wrote for you. You will have the respect of being Wife in a scholar household, with five generations of family under one harmonious roof.
Ours will be a simple life, to be sure. You are used to one that is more exciting. But I feel there is more to all that I have said so far. It is what I would give you, far more than the equal of what you have given me when you moved me beyond grief and into joy. I will shower you with poems in praise of you, which I will read just before you fall sleep and upon waking, when we will share each new day as the beginning of love.
Magic Gourd raised one eyebrow. “He certainly has the wooing words. So effortless. And the quiet village life he brags about—oyo!—I never knew there were so many advantages to boredom in the backwaters! Of course, those five generations will keep you on your toes. So many people to please, so many arguments, just like a courtesan house. And you’ll be busy lighting incense and bowing all day long to revere ten generations of continuous scholars. Their altar table must be ten meters long. Don’t give him an answer.”
“I already did. I have agreed.”
“Then you’ll have to go back to him and say you now disagree.”
“Why do you think you can decide my life?”
“Because I talked to Mansion today. I asked about Perpetual’s business. He said he didn’t know if he had a business, since he never talked about one. I asked what he knew about his family. He said he didn’t know them at all, only that Perpetual was his second cousin by way of his mother’s brother whose wife was the sister of one of Perpetual’s aunt. Mansion said his mother might have known more about the family, but she had died long before meeting Perpetual. I asked if he knew anything about Perpetual’s dead wife. He was surprised to hear that Perpetual even had a wife. He had never mentioned her. Mansion then said that men don’t think to ask these kinds of questions of their relatives. It would be like accusing them of hiding something. And that’s exactly what I think Perpetual is doing.”
She could not change my mind. Who would I become if I did not take this chance? What would remain of my self-esteem? Waiting for something better was a luxury of young girls. I had a chance to keep my self-respect and to also have respect from others. I could pass the days without worry over where I would live the next month or the next year or when I was old. I would have the leisure to sit in a garden and reflect on my life, my character, and my memories of Edward and Flora. I could form opinions and share them as a peer with my husband. No man was perfect. I was not perfect. We two would come together with our faults, and together we would learn to forgive ourselves and accept inadequacies. We would come with our pain and console each other. We would bring our individual hopes, some impossible, some sentimental, and we would find those we could share and fulfill, perhaps even with a child. If he did not have great wealth, we would still have like-mindedness, which cannot be purchased. And we would have love, not infatuation, not what I had with Edward, but one that would be our own. That love would endure and enable us to hold each other through whatever troubles might come.
I appreciated all that Magic Gourd had done for me over the years. She had been like a mother to me. But I didn’t need her a
pproval. She had already threatened she would not accompany me to my husband’s home. Her threats over the years had usually proved false. But this time, she might actually make good on it when she learned, as I recently did, that Perpetual’s family home was in a little village called Moon Pond, and it was three hundred miles away.
CHAPTER 10
MOON POND VILLAGE
From Shanghai to Moon Pond Village
1925
Violet
Summer heat poured into my body and rose from my face like a damp fever, turning the dust on my face into tears of mud. Then rain came once again and diluted the tears, softened the roads and deepened the ruts, until, once again, we were stuck.
We had started on our journey to Moon Pond three weeks ago. Perpetual had said he would accompany us to make sure we were safe and comfortable. But just days before we were going to leave, he had been called away from Shanghai. He had business somewhere in the south, important matters, he said. He would take a different route to get to Moon Pond, and with luck he might arrive even before we did. We would be perfectly safe traveling alone, he had assured us. The way there was easy and he had never heard of problems with bandits or anything like that. “The worst that can happen,” he had said, “is that you’ll be bored.”
He was right. I was already weary of travel and wondered how I could endure more. We had been moving ever west and inland along a zigzag route no devil would want to follow—past cities, then county seats, and later, smaller and smaller market towns, until there were no trains or trucks, no steamers or tenders, nor barges or poled fishing boats that could take us from one fork to the next. At the last river town, Magic Gourd found a cartman waiting for fools at the dock. He had an honest face and called himself Old Jump, a name that promised he had much industrious experience. He claimed he had the best carriage in five counties, one that had belonged to a warlord. She bargained for the prized carriage, sight unseen, which came with two donkeys, an extra cart, the man’s services, and the shoulders of two strong men, who happened to be his addle-minded sons. And now we were jiggling and bouncing over ruts and potholes on the spring-coiled banquette of a rich man’s carriage—a broken-down seat that had been yanked out of its high social standing and roped onto a mule cart with a tattered canopy of oilcloth and moth-eaten silk. The cartman still insisted that the contraption was indeed the best, and that Magic Gourd should walk through all five counties if she thought he was lying.