The Incarnations

by Susan Barker

  The stable boy is fifteen and his family name is Hogspit. Though he takes pains to wash and comb his hair before coming to the Hummingbird Inn, he is still a mucky boy who stinks of horse sweat and manure, and in spite of his passion in the bedchamber, my Peony Pavilion never moistens with dew. Madam Plum Blossom likes the stable boy, however, as he has stamina and obeys her command not to spill his yang essence until the lesson’s end. Only once does he get swept away in the act of Clouds and Rain and deviate from the tutorial. A rapturous look in his eyes, Hogspit the stable boy hoists my legs over his shoulders in the Starving Horse Rushes to the Trough position and thrusts his slobbery tongue in my mouth. Madam Plum Blossom calls him to heel, smacking his buttocks with a birch wand and warning him to make Clouds and Rain only in the manner that she dictates or else.

  After the third lesson of the bedchamber the stable boy confesses that he has fallen in love with me. This is very bothersome. Especially when he starts bringing me small tokens of his affection, such as the skull of a rat he found in the stable, and a pig’s trotter pickled in brine. One night I am woken by a hail of stones on my window. The stable boy is outside in the cobbled lane.

  ‘Elope with me, Night Coming!’ he calls. ‘Run away with me and leave your life as a common strumpet behind!’

  Disgruntled to be woken, however, I shout down that a life of harlotry is far preferable to the family name of Hogspit, and go back to bed.

  Meticulous and thorough in my education, Madam Plum Blossom supplements the practical tutorials with theoretical lessons. During the day we peruse the Manual of the Bedchamber, the leather binding creaking as we flip through hundreds of illustrations of the two-headed, eight-limbed beast.

  ‘Endowments come in all shapes and sizes,’ Madam Plum Blossom says, ‘and some are very curious indeed. Endurance also differs from man to man. Some men spend their yang essence in very few strokes, like our customer Ten-strokes Li. And an unfortunate few, such as Hopeless Chen, spill their yang before even penetrating the Vermilion Gates. And then there are men who need tens of thousands of strokes to spend. Men such as these are nuisances, and you’ll be at it until cockcrow unless you clench the lotus shaft and use some tricks to hurry them up!’

  While gleeful on the subject of Clouds and Rain, on the subject of love Madam Plum Blossom gets a cold and steely look in her eye.

  ‘Beware men who swear eternal oaths of love, Night Coming! Men speak all kinds of devilry in the throes of lust. They’ll promise to marry you, or take you as a concubine. But at the end of the day they want a wife from a respectable home, with her Vermilion Gates intact. Two of my girls have fallen ill from lovesickness. Heavenly Snapdragon shaved her head and went to live in a nunnery, and Celestial Moonbeam suicided by swallowing needles. Armour yourself, Night Coming, against men who’ll try to swindle you with blandishments and declarations of undying love. Or else the dalliance won’t end in a wedding song . . . but a funeral dirge.’

  The tutorials end one evening as I am Riding the Unicorn Horn with the stable boy, whose eyes are rolling around in ecstatic bliss. Madam Plum Blossom, standing in her usual spot at the bedside, for the first time has no critique or suggestions to make. She nods swiftly with approval.

  ‘Very good, Night Coming. You are dexterous and skilled. Agile, nimble and spry. This session will conclude your lessons of the bedchamber. You are now ready to begin your life as a whore.’

  VIII

  Afternoons at the Hummingbird Inn are spent in the courtyard, drinking jasmine tea in the shade of the cherry tree. Moonglow and Heavenly Lotus Flower prattle to each other as they pose at easels, daubing brushes over mediocre paintings of butterflies alighting on azaleas, or peacocks with fanned-out tails. Madam Plum Blossom reads erotic poetry and nibbles cakes, and Master Xing the Burmese parrot scuttles to and fro on his perch, until the door knocker sounds, and he squawks, ‘Here are the guests! Pour the ale! Light the candles!’ and our working day begins.

  A jovial and convivial hostess, Madam Plum Blossom makes no distinction between rich and poor as she serves plum wine, thrusts her bosom about and holds forth with charming small talk. All men (except known bandits and vagabonds) are welcome in her parlour, and her lack of pretension warms the hearts of many. Moonglow and Heavenly Lotus Flower are delightful too, with a knack for being silly and fatuous and making the guests roar with laughter. During my debutante nights at the Hummingbird Inn, I am timorous and shy, and some of the gentlemen callers ask Madam Plum Blossom if she has cut out my tongue. Madam hoots with laughter and playfully slaps her accuser.

  ‘Oh, you wicked scoundrel! I’ve done no such thing! Night Coming’s a mere apprentice. But soon she’ll be the most popular courtesan in the Gay Quarters. Just you wait!’

  Before long I have contorted my limbs into every position in the Manual of the Bedchamber, played over a hundred Jade Flutes and had the Jade Liquor spurted into every orifice (and splattered on other parts, such as my bellybutton or hair). Some men are handsome devils, for whom my Peony Pavilion becomes drenched with dew. Others look and smell as though they haven’t bathed in a year, and Raising the Yin to Meet the Yang with them is an odious chore. Out of professionalism, though, I serve every customer alike, and most with no particular sentiment at all.

  During the day I wander around Chang’an, frittering my earnings on frivolities such as puppet theatres, sugar-spun birds on sticks and fortune-tellers (‘This won’t be your only life,’ predicts one physiognomist, stroking the hump of my nose. ‘You will be reincarnated many more times yet.’) Though my new life as Night Coming has begun, I am still determined to find you. Once a week I go to the calligraphy shop on Old Temple Lane and dictate to the old bearded sage there (the one literate person I know) a letter to you.

  ‘To the Honourable Eunuch Wu,’ the letter usually begins. ‘This is your long-lost illegitimate daughter, Night Coming . . .’

  The letter ends with my whereabouts and a request that you come and visit. Then I seal the letter and hire a messenger boy to deliver it to the gates of the Imperial Palace. Week after week, the old bearded sage writes my letters in his best ink-brush calligraphy. And week after week, I dispatch them to you, though you never reply.

  As the nights of carousing and merry making accrue, I come into my own as a hostess. I at last find my voice, which rings out in the parlour like a tinkling bell, mellifluous and gay.

  ‘What a charming young wench you are!’ the patrons say. ‘Where in the Celestial Kingdom do you hail from?’

  I regale them with tales of Kill the Barbarians Village and the wicked Sorceress Wu. I tell them of the sorceress grinding up concoctions of bat’s gonads, centipedes and menstrual blood with pestle and mortar. I tell them of Turnip-seller Chen who came cradling the turnip he thought was his wife, begging the sorceress to reverse the ‘fox fairy curse’ (in truth, his missus had eloped with a goat herder from Magpie County). I tell them of Pigbreeder Liu, who begged the sorceress for an anti-lust charm to cure his habit of engaging his sows in the act of Clouds and Rain. The guests laugh uproariously and thump the wooden table with their fists.

  ‘Bravo! What funny little tales, Night Coming! How ignorant these silly, superstitious country folk can be!’

  I abhor false modesty, so I shall speak plainly: I am a masterful storyteller. A first-rate raconteur. Kingfisher feathers in my chignon, in flowing satin robes, I stand at the head of the candlelit table of guests, open my mouth, and the extraordinary tales of the common folk of Blacktooth County flow forth. Macabre tales of sorcery and blood-spattered revenge. Romantic tales of tragic star-crossed lovers. Erotic tales of lusty bed-hopping and adultery. I do not exaggerate or embellish. The truth, as witnessed by the granddaughter of the Sorceress Wu, is far stranger than any farfetched imaginings. I have been privy to thousands of people begging for magical intervention in their darkest hour. I have witnessed the sorceress’s cruel and pitiless exploitation of their need.

  As I gain in confidence my tales become theatric
al performances. I create an atmosphere of suspense, like a striptease artiste, building up to the finale, the climactic scene. I imitate the Sorceress Wu’s shaman act with a sacrilegious thrill, ululating in tongues, eyes rolled back in sockets. I impersonate the country bumpkin accent of Cabbage-seller Qin, buying a poultice to grow back his amputated foot. I am a wit, a comedienne, my humour slapstick or refined. My performances soon last throughout the evening, until the candles have sputtered down to pools of wax.

  The legend of Night Coming the Tale-spinning Courtesan spreads throughout the Gay Quarters and every night the Hummingbird Inn is packed. The guests crowd in and drink jugfuls of wine, perhaps fondling Heavenly Lotus Flower or Moonglow on their laps as they listen spellbound to my spine-tingling tales. Silver piles up in our coffers and Madam Plum Blossom is well pleased.

  As my star ascends, shining high above Old Temple Lane, I add to my repertoire the Tale of Bitter Root and Brother Coming. I tell of the Neverdie Forest and my conception by sibling incest sixteen years ago. I tell of the Sorceress Wu’s barbaric punishment for your sins against Brother Coming. I tell of how I fled to Chang’an.

  ‘Gentlemen, my quest here in the city of Chang’an is to be reunited with my father, the Eunuch Wu. I beg of any gentlemen here with imperial connections to let it be known that Night Coming of the Hummingbird Inn wishes with all her heart to meet her father. Pass on this message for me, kind sirs, and I’ll be for ever in your debt!’

  Patience is a tree with bitter roots that bears sweet fruit. This is the motto I live by. Patiently I wait for my message to spread from the Gay Quarters to the imperial household, and to the ears of my father. I come to be known as the Eunuch’s Daughter, much to my delight.

  IX

  ‘Night Coming!’ trills Madam Plum Blossom. ‘A gentleman caller is here for you.’ Her voice drops to a whisper. ‘A eunuch from the Imperial Palace.’

  A year has gone by since I came to Chang’an. A year of life at the Hummingbird Inn. A year of changing seasons, and now spring is here again. How remarkably apt! My heart leaps and rejoices at the granting of its deepest wish. My father has come!

  ‘One moment, Madam Plum Blossom!’ I call back. ‘Do serve our guest some tea.’

  I am in my bedchamber, having risen after a night of spinning fables and Playing the Jade Flute of a gold merchant from Samarkand. Madam had interrupted me as I stood at the mirror, idly attending to my coiffure and toilette. I stare into the polished oval of brass. Am I a long-lost daughter to make a father proud? I am no longer the starving waif who arrived in Chang’an a year ago. My cheeks are rosy and plump (thanks to Madam’s epicurean tastes and fondness for plying others with cakes), but many late nights of ale-drinking and sinning have tarnished the bloom of my youth. The purity and innocence I once had has vanished, and a knowing, wise-beyond-her-years look haunts my eyes.

  I change my scarlet gown with plunging décolletage for a peony-embroidered robe, modest and high in the neck, as becoming a young girl. My lofty chignon cascades down as I pull out the combs of rhinoceros horn. I arrange my loose hair into two chaste plaits and rub the rouge paint off my lips, smearing a white linen hanky as red as a menstrual rag. Shaking, I take a deep breath. ‘Father, here I come . . .’ Down the creaking wooden stairs I go.

  The eunuch peering into the deep stone well is not you. Call it intuition of the blood, but I know this at once. He nods his turbaned head and strides towards me in a swish of fine robes cut from imperial cloth, and I hide my disappointment behind a warm and welcoming smile. The eunuch has a blue-tinctured pallor and looks ethereal as a fox fairy or spirit, and out of place in our sunny, cherry-blossom-fragranced courtyard. On his perch Master Xing ruffles his feathers and puffs out his chest: ‘A guest is here! A stinking castrato!’ The eunuch’s face wrinkles as he smiles, showing neat rows of little teeth. Under his turban, his eyebrows are feathery and light.

  ‘Eunuch Talent,’ he says. ‘An honour to meet you, Night Coming, the Tale-spinning Courtesan. I have heard of your magnificent storytelling. You are fast acquiring a mythical status in the Gay Quarters.’

  Eunuch Talent is slight as a boy child of about twelve, and his lack of masculine traits suggests he was neutered before puberty. His high and fluting voice is an octave below falsetto, and in it one can detect years of training to restrain its crow’s screech.

  ‘A pleasure to meet you, Eunuch Talent,’ I say. ‘As you can see, I am but a poor and ignorant country girl. The reputation that you hear of is not one I deserve.’

  Madam Plum Blossom bustles into the courtyard with a tray of jasmine tea and cakes of sticky rice and sweet dates. She narrows her eyes at Eunuch Talent, as she has a low opinion of the castrati (‘Never met a neuter who weren’t a malevolent fiend!’) and won’t waste her charms on him. She sets down the tray and goes away.

  Beneath the pink blossoms of the cherry tree, Eunuch Talent and I sip at tea and nibble little cakes. Isn’t the spring weather fine? Aren’t the cherry blossoms exquisite? Isn’t the brevity of their flowering expressive of the transience of life? What splendid cakes these are! Etiquette demands the point of his visit be delayed with trivial and meaningless chatter. But impatience wears my politeness thin.

  ‘Why have you come to see me, Eunuch Talent?’ I ask. ‘Are you acquainted with my father, Eunuch Wu?’

  ‘Yesssss,’ he hisses, and I half expect to see the flicker of a forked tongue. He gives a smile, thin and calculating.

  ‘He no longer goes by the name of Eunuch Wu, but Eunuch Loyal One. He is the head of the Department of Housekeeping in the Imperial Palace, and a trusted servant and confidant of the Emperor Taizong. A very powerful castrato indeed.’

  ‘Does he know of me, his daughter, Night Coming?’ I ask anxiously.

  ‘Not yet. But I shall tell him. Tomorrow.’

  ‘A thousand blessings to you, Eunuch Talent!’ I gush. ‘Oh what a kind-hearted soul you are!’

  I am not so naïve of course. There is something he wants in exchange. The eunuch smiles, basking in my praise. Then he sighs wistfully and gazes upon me with affected romantic longing.

  ‘How lovely you are, Night Coming,’ he says. ‘It’s obvious how an enchantress such as you has every man in the Gay Quarters under her spell. One night with Night Coming the Tale-spinning Courtesan would be an honour I would cherish for the rest of my life.’

  He strokes his beardless chin and waits for my response. Cast in a role that would challenge even the most skilled of actresses, I smile. ‘Eunuch Talent, the pleasure will be all mine.’

  May you sleep with a eunuch! is a curse spat by courtesans who wish evil upon each other, but what ‘to sleep with a eunuch’ means, and why it is a curse, is a mystery to me. How does a eunuch perform the Clouds and Rain? How does a eunuch compensate for his lack of manhood? What does the courtesan do with the mutilated stump? Eunuch Talent ends my ignorance.

  To sleep with a eunuch is to be stripped and leered at as the eunuch keeps on his robes. To sleep with a eunuch is to become a scratching post for a neutered cat; to be stabbed with your own rhinestone-studded hairpins and strangled with your own beads. To sleep with a eunuch is to be bitten and grinned at with bloodstained teeth. To see the eunuch’s pale whey face light up as he penetrates you with a balled-up fist, punching its way inside. I clamp down hard on my tongue. My shadow writhes on the wall of the bedchamber, but I won’t give him the satisfaction of tears or a cry of pain.

  Eunuch Talent sneers, ‘I saw how you smirked when I asked to spend the night with you. “How can this emasculated fool make love to a woman?” you scoffed. Well, is this not making love? Don’t I penetrate you far deeper than your average man?’

  When Eunuch Talent’s vandalism is over, purplish marks of strangulation circle my neck and bite marks throb on my breasts and buttocks; crescents of teeth, upper and lower sets, are embedded in my flesh. On his way out, Eunuch Talent glances back at the blood-spattered bed where I am protectively hugging my limbs. He smiles, proud o
f the damage he has done. He will request an appointment to see Eunuch Loyal One, head of the Department of Housekeeping, the next day.

  ‘However,’ he adds, ‘I can’t guarantee he will acknowledge paternity of a low-breed slut like you.’

  Then, in a swish of imperial robes, Eunuch Talent is gone.

  ‘Night Coming! Damn you, child, for not calling me! How could you let that horrid teapot without a spout torture you so? How?’

  Sighing and cursing under her breath, Madam Plum Blossom swabs and dabs ointment on my wounds and orders a few days of bed rest. But I won’t hide in my room as though I am ashamed. I surrendered my body to Eunuch Talent in exchange for his services as a messenger. I am not a victim here.

  I stand before the polished oval of brass, open a jar of dove’s droppings and rub the snowy-white powder on my cuts and bruises. I change into a sapphire gown and arrange silk scarves over the purple throttle marks on my neck. I colour my blood-drained cheeks and lips with rouge paint, bind my chignon with bright ribbons and go down to the parlour that very evening. I am a whirl of merrymaking, witty banter and joie de vivre. The gentlemen callers, in high spirits, raise their goblets of ale: ‘To Night Coming,’ they say, clinking in toast. ‘Gay as a canary, she tickles the very soul!’

  I stand at the head of the table and, eloquent and silver-tongued, compliment every gentleman in turn. I am aching, my body hot and shivery as though infected by the Eunuch Talent’s bites. But my joy and jubilation are genuine. My father is coming to see me. You are on your way.

  X

  Three quarters of a year go by and you do not come. Many moons wax and wane in the night sky over Chang’an and, convinced you have rejected me, I sink into hopelessness and despair. Evenings in the parlour of the Hummingbird Inn, I drown my sorrows in plum wine, and drunkenly slur morality tales of fathers abandoning daughters and meeting ruinous ends.