The Courtesan

by Alexandra Curry

  6

  THE HALL OF ROUND MOON AND PASSIONATE LOVE

  Jinhua

  The pussy willow buds are kitten soft and pearl gray, and Jinhua whispers, “What is this place?”

  Gold glints on the sign above the door, and she can read the characters for Hall and Round and Moon; the rest she does not recognize.

  “House with Wide Gate,” the go-between says, and she is picking at the stain on her sleeve—which she has suddenly noticed—in the same way you would scratch an itch, and Jinhua suspects that she cannot read a single character on the sign.

  There is no wide gate at this place, only a red door that isn’t wide, with a brass door pull—a dragon’s face with shiny, slanted eyes and holes for nostrils that are deep and dark and large enough for a person’s thumb to fit inside. The house has two stories, and two rows of hundred-leaf windows that are painted bright blue, and a high veranda with lanterns hung like huge cherries from the eaves all the way around it. The railings are painted red and blue and green, and the blue is the same blue as the windows and the same blue, too, as Meiling’s earrings that she always wears.

  Now the go-between is pulling at the hem of her jacket, lifting it up, patting the sash at her waist in a frantic way. “Where it is? Aiyo, where I put it?” She seizes her sleeves and Timu’s paper flutters to the ground. Jinhua bends to pick it up. Her tiger shoes are wet.

  “You can’t have that,” the go-between says, snatching the paper away.

  Jinhua looks around. The dusty street that lines the canal is filled with people. Two men nearby are having an argument; one of them belches loudly; the other spits and says, “Qi si wo le.” I am angry to death. The second man wraps his queue around his throat, and Jinhua’s heart pounds. From behind the red door a dog barks, and the go-between is blinking faster and faster, eyeing Jinhua’s hand with the two kumquats that are left.

  “Where you get those?” The go-between dabs her forehead with her sleeve and makes a wet, sucking sound through her teeth. “Give them to Auntie. Auntie is hungry.” The dog’s bark becomes a snarl behind the door, and Jinhua imagines long, pointed yellow teeth and a pink tongue that drips spit.

  “No,” she says. She wants to go home. “Timu gave me the kumquats for my journey.” She tightens her grip on the pussy willow spray in her one hand and the kumquats in her other. The go-between shrugs and lifts a fist to knock. They hear the dog’s toenails scratching to get out, and now the go-between’s chest heaves, and she raps her knuckles on the door. Bi bi—and then again louder—bao bao. The dog barks in reply, and a woman’s voice reaches the street, as thin as shiny thread.

  “Old Man, throw that gaiside dog a gaiside pork bone to shut him up. And you—dirt dumpling—go and see who’s at the gaiside door.”

  It is a rude way of talking. The half of the go-between’s face that Jinhua can see goes pale, and the flabby line of her jaw sags. They hear the rattle of a chain, link by link collapsing on a hard floor, and the wet smack of a piece of meat. The go-between takes one step backward. The door opens the width of a man’s pockmarked forehead.

  “What do you want?”

  The man is not a friendly person.

  “I have girl.” The go-between’s voice slides out of her mouth like oil from a spoon, and she bows almost to her knees. “Good girl,” she says. “Very, very beautiful.” Her hand between Jinhua’s shoulder blades pushes Jinhua forward—and Jinhua does not want this—and the go-between’s voice drops to a whisper. “Family very good. Fragrant cunt. You want look-look?”

  The gap in the door widens, and a man’s thin beard juts out. Behind him, the dog makes gobbling noises.

  “I have”—the go-between scratches herself in a private place—“paper that is signed with chop mark. Everything very, very proper for selling.”

  “En,” the man grunts. His eyes move from the go-between to Jinhua and then back. He swivels his head and calls loudly to someone they can’t see. “Lao Mama. There is a fat woman at the door with a girl to sell. You want to see her?”

  “Very good girl, eye like almond, mouth like rose,” the go-between calls into the dark place behind the man, and he frowns, and they can hear the dog growling. Jinhua crouches to scratch her ankle because it has been itching for a while, and she wants to see the dog and doesn’t want to look at the man who might buy her or might not. Jinhua meets the dog’s unblinking gaze behind the drape of the man’s trousers and pops a kumquat into her mouth. The skin is leathery, bitter on her tongue. She bites down and tastes a spurt of sour juice, then sweet flesh. Familiar tastes. She swallows the seeds, and the dog is watching her while gnawing at his bone.

  “Very cheap price,” she hears the go-between call out.

  “Wait,” the man says. He pushes the door shut and the dog disappears. Jinhua pops the last kumquat into her mouth, and the go-between yanks her to her feet. In the next street firecrackers detonate, and the go-between mutters something you should never, ever say, and Jinhua looks down at two wet tiger faces on her special shoes.

  “She’s as thin as a stick. Can she sing?” Something bright flashes in the lady’s mouth—gold on her tooth. It is the shiny voice they heard from the street, but now Jinhua and the go-between are inside, in a room beyond the courtyard that is crammed with dark furniture, and paintings on the walls, and round tables with pipes and cups half filled with tea and bowls with scraps of rice and bone and noodle—and the lady with the voice is standing there, one eyebrow higher than the other on her powdered face. With that sharp, brushstroke eyebrow she looks angry. The old man calls her Lao Mama—Old Mother—and the go-between is hovering like a fat, greedy bee, bowing and glancing sideways at Jinhua, nodding, touching Jinhua’s shoulder. She calls the lady Lao Daniang to show respect.

  Looking straight at the go-between, the eyebrow lady says that out of ten women of her kind nine will lie, “so don’t expect me to believe anything you tell me.”

  It happens quickly this time. “Take off your clothes and shoes.” The lady’s voice forbids refusal. It forbids everything except for doing as she says. Glittering eyes explore every part of Jinhua’s body. Then fingers that are knobby with jewels and pearls—and one large and green and sparkly ring. The lady’s face looks like paper, and the veins on her hands look like worms under her skin, and Jinhua stands straight, her arms at her sides. This time, she doesn’t cover herself even though she feels ashamed. Even though it is cold in the room. Her mind wanders. Are Timu’s eyes still shiny? She hears the voice again, the lady asking, “Duo shao?” The go-between’s breath comes out of her mouth with a cracking sound, and Jinhua’s spine tightens as she waits to hear what she will say. How much? She notices the old man watching from the doorway, his eyes squeezed to slits, and a deep blush heats her face from her throat to her scalp. It moves down to her shoulders and across her chest as though she has caught on fire. She reaches for her neatly folded trousers and puts them on. The man is still watching but doesn’t stop her—and she cannot think about Baba now even though she wants to.

  “Lao Daniang, she worth fifty tael, or maybe sixty,” the go-between lady is saying. She coughs and she bows. “But for you I make cheap price, only twenty silver coin.” The go-between’s dirty shoe shifts on the floor, and Jinhua slips an arm into the sleeve of her jacket. It feels better just to have her clothes on.

  “We do plenty business, you and me. Tomorrow, next day, next day after that. I get many girls. Your customer like very much. You make very much money.”

  The go-between sounds anxious now; she’s talking quickly. Jinhua’s eyes move. She blinks. A scrolled painting on the wall comes into focus, and she remembers the sound of six heavy silver coins on Timu’s table—Timu’s money for the temple. In the painting a woman is lying on a bed, her tunic parted at her waist, her white legs spread in a strange way. Something is wrong. The woman has no skirt, no trousers, nothing to cover her bottom, and a naked man is there, lying close to her. Jinhua fastens the frog buttons on her jacket, starting wit
h the lowest one. Her hands are clumsy, sticky with juice from Timu’s kumquats. The buttons don’t line up.

  “I’ll pay five taels and no more. Look at the girl’s feet. Like a pair of barge boats. She can only be a servant, nothing more. She is too old to have her feet bound now. The bones are hard already.” Jinhua looks away from the painting. She looks down at the neat row of her bare pink toes and then at the man in the doorway. And then, because she cannot stop herself, she looks back at the picture and the lady without any skirt, and she sees what she has never seen before: a man’s parts, his pale legs, his jiji. “Fifteen,” she hears. “Less than that absolutely cannot.” Jinhua is looking at plum blossoms and pine branches in the picture, the curve of the woman’s delicate hands, the dark pit of her belly button, the look on her face that makes Jinhua think that maybe the woman is dreaming.

  And now the dog has started to bark again. The go-between has gone and Jinhua didn’t even notice when she left. She didn’t hear the price; she forgot to listen.

  “Duibuzhu, Lao Daniang,” she says to the eyebrow lady. Excuse me, Madam. She is holding the boatman’s pussy willow, edging backward toward the doorway, where the old man is still standing.

  The man laughs, ha-ha, and after the second ha comes out he sounds like a pig snorting into a bucket. “She is your Lao Mama now,” he says. “So you must call her that name.” Old Mother.

  Jinhua swallows. She is thinking about Baba and how he is a rotting-no-head-dead-body-corpse. And she thinks about Mama, who is just like Nüwa and is her real mother, except that she is dead as well—and Jinhua is to blame for both of these things because Mama died while she was being born and she told Baba—

  “I need to go home now,” she says, and everything hurts, and the lady’s steep eyebrow moves up even higher into her forehead.

  “How will you get there?” the lady asks—and there is no answer for this question—and Jinhua takes another step toward the door. “The affairs of your life have changed, you see. Your days of farting through silk are over.” The lady’s lips are a dark red color and Jinhua stops moving because of the voice and her eyes and because the man is blocking the only way out of the room. The lady, Lao Mama, is looking at Jinhua’s feet, scratching her head just behind her ear with the long nail of her small finger. It makes a loud, dry sound like drawing a picture in dirt with a stick. Jinhua covers her ears, but Lao Mama’s voice slips past her fingers. “If you do not understand what I mean,” she says, “I will have to beat you, and I will beat you hard and for a very long time.”

  Jinhua nods, and she is crying. She is a good girl. She has never, ever been beaten before.

  “Raw rice can still be boiled,” Lao Mama continues with those red lips, “and a little girl’s feet can still be bound. Isn’t that right, Old Man?”

  The man bows, and this means Yes—he thinks that she is right—and Baba said, “Yongbu; her feet will never be bound.” He said it hurts too much; he won’t allow it. With bound feet, a girl can’t run, he said.

  “Old Man, put the girl in Aiwen’s room. And tell the foot binder to come. We must fight minutes and snatch seconds in this matter, so you must do this now and quickly.”

  The old man bows again and his bow is very deep. “Yes, Lao Mama,” he says. “You are right, of course. Aiwen won’t need that room anymore.”

  The Go-between

  The god of wealth is smiling. Good luck is very, very big today—big like a barbarian’s nose, or a demon’s face, or even big like the East Sea.

  The go-between steps out through the red door and into the lane. She is in a hurry; there is much to be decided with all of this good fortune, but first there is the matter of this empty, gurgling belly she has. She sniffs the air. A bowl of steaming pig-meat noodles would be tasty now—much more tasty than those puny kumquats. The go-between looks east and west, smiling to herself at the thought of rich broth and fatty meat and just a little green vegetable. That place by the West Gate is a bit far, but not too expensive. Feeling rather grand, she pats the pouch at her waist, heavy with nine silver coins, and she regrets the one that she owes the night-soil man for telling her about the girl. Every time he gets money he buys opium and gets that stupid smile. Same-same like that worthless father of my child, she thinks. But unlike her husband, the night-soil man knows everything. He is a good friend to have.

  Across the street a beggar man rattles his cup. The go-between glances over at him, and he meets her gaze head on. “Lady,” he says, “I saw the bad thing that you did.” His voice is loud in the busy street. “I know you sold that little girl. I saw you go inside that house.”

  The beggar has a stick in his hand for beating off dogs and a meaty sore in the middle of his forehead. He has a good face for making people feel sorry—good for getting money. Several passersby slow down. An old man drops a coin in his cup. The go-between looks away. I am clever, she tells herself, and don’t feel sorry like that.

  The beggar man rattles the cup again, and the go-between turns west as though she hasn’t heard what he said. Hè, she thinks, quickening her pace.

  “I know you sold her,” he calls out even louder. “How much did you get, lady, for that little, tiny girl?”

  She won’t turn around even though she can hear the beggar man’s stick tap-tap-tapping on the ground. She walks faster, and the tapping sound stays right behind her. She is breathing hard. She slows down. Aiyo, why does he want to make trouble for me? She hawks loudly to clean her throat and stops to spit. She turns, and there he is with that mighty sore right in her eye. She feels sick in her stomach. “One copper only,” she says, turning away from him to fumble in her purse for the smallest coin she has.

  Maybe after she has had her pig-meat noodles she’ll go to the City God Temple to burn incense. Yes—that is what she will do. She will pray for another lucky day tomorrow. She drops the copper piece in the beggar’s cup. He lowers his head. “That one girl was so little, so pretty.” He turns and hobbles away, and she is thinking of her pig-meat noodles and that maybe she won’t pay the night-soil man with such a big coin. She turns once more and calls out in a loud voice, “I am not a bad woman.” The beggar man turns a quarter turn and is shaking his head.

  “Hè,” she says, mostly to herself, and then she spits and feels better.

  Jinhua

  The old man’s breath rattles as he climbs the stairs. He climbs with care, bringing one foot up to meet the other before reaching for the next step. Jinhua does the same a step below him. He has her arm tightly in his grip just above her wrist.

  One step at a time. Tiger shoe alone—tiger shoes together. Jinhua looks down at her feet. Tiger shoe alone—tiger shoes together. Her arm hurts from the squeeze of the man’s fingers. She could climb these stairs so quickly by herself. Her toes feel damp inside her shoes.

  “You’re hurting me,” she says when they are almost at the top.

  The old man stops and leans against the wall breathing hard, gripping even harder than before. “We lost one girl already this week, you stupid little cunt,” he says. “What do you think Lao Mama would do if I were the person who let you get away when she has only just bought you?”

  Jinhua doesn’t know what Lao Mama would do, but the man doesn’t need to grab her like that.

  “Ni jin qu ba.” Go inside. The old man has opened a door on the second floor, and now he lets go of her arm. He pushes her, and she stumbles into the room, rubbing her wrist. Not too much light inside because the shutters are closed, but enough to see that things are scattered si chu langji—in a very big mess. Crumpled clothing. A single shoe without its mate. A sprig of osmanthus on the floor, wilting.

  No one is here.

  “Aiwen’s room,” the old man says, and then he says, “Hè,” and closes the door. A lock clanks and clicks in the hallway. Jinhua blinks and tears arrive—hot, salty, impossible to stop. Meiling says, “Big girls drink their tears like soup.” But this is not the same as other crying. Tears like this cannot be stopped. T
hey cannot be swallowed, and you can’t drink them.

  Layers of light draw Jinhua’s gaze. She sniffs a string of syrupy sniffs and wipes her nose on her sleeve. The blue hundred-leaf windows open easily, surprising her with bright air. She can see the canal and the bridge where the boatman disappeared. She can see that he has not come back. In the street below, a straw hat passes; it is the color of burning sugar, and the man underneath it has a quick pace. A mule stumbles, beaten by its master; the clanging sound is a street seller’s bell, and a beggar man’s cup makes the thin metal sound of not-nearly-enough.

  As she steps away from the window, Jinhua’s fingers reach for the things in this room. A heap on the floor takes shape as she lifts it: a long, pleated skirt. Magnolia green. The sash beside where it lay is a pale, shiny color. These are a grown-up lady’s things, too big for Jinhua to wear; they smell of something nice and something not so nice, both at once. Jinhua drapes them over the bed. She remembers the single shoe and finds its mate toppled on its side in the corner. They are silvery pink, tiny, embroidered with garlands of flowers and leaves. They are smaller than her tiger shoes; Jinhua’s hand barely fits inside.

  Aiwen has tiny feet and pretty, tiny shoes—and other pretty things. An apple—in a bowl on a table with a shrine—catches Jinhua’s eye next. The apple is yellow, an offering to the god of the shrine. Jinhua’s stomach roars with hunger, and the apple fills her hand. She waits, water in her mouth. The god’s shrine twinkles red and gold, and the god is as round as a sweet bean dumpling and pink, not like the shoes but a brighter, screaming pink, and the god is sitting on a stack of shiny silver coins like the ones that Timu got. He is Caishen, the god of wealth. His beard is crinkly and black and looks as though it were made of real hair, and his lips are black too; sticks of incense are burnt to nubs on the table in front of him, and Jinhua takes a bite of the apple. It is loud and crisp in her mouth, and she feels the space left by her missing tooth with her tongue, and she chews and swallows and takes another, larger bite. The sound the apple makes in her ears is like a crash inside her head, and she puts the apple back in the bowl with the bitten parts hidden on the bottom. It is Aiwen’s apple—not hers to eat. She turns away, still hungry, feeling the way a thief would feel, and sees a box on Aiwen’s table.