The madam had been saving Neiping for a courtier, highly placed, close to the emperor, but Kang is a powerful man. She doesn’t dare reject the sale. “The potential value of Neiping is immeasurable,” she says. Kang says Neiping will cost a great deal before she returns a profit. “The price I am willing to pay is exceptionally good.”
The madam says, “In silver?”
Kang says, “Mexican coins.”
She bows to Kang, then tells Neiping to say goodbye to the other girls.
Margaret says, “I’ll never forget how the madam bows to Kang.”
Neiping and Dulu embrace. Dulu cries. Neiping says they will meet again someday. Neiping returns to Kang. He takes her hand. The monster and Neiping walk through the nighttime streets of Shanghai to Kang’s house.
For the next seven years, Neiping plays wei-ch’i with Kang. He has her educated by monks, and she is taught to play musical instruments by the evil eunuch Jujuzi, the one who is telling the story. Kang gives Neiping privileges of a daughter. She learns how he runs his businesses. He discusses problems with her. “If somebody were in my position, how might such a person reflect on the matters I have described?” While they talk, Kang asks Neiping to comb his hair. He never touches her. His manner is formal and gentle. He gives everything. Neiping asks for nothing. Kang is a happy monster, but then Neiping falls in love with Goo, the son of a business associate of Kang. Kang discovers this love and he threatens to undo Neiping, sell her back to the brothel, or send her to work in the cane fields at the end of the world. Neiping flees Kang’s house that night with Goo. Kang wanders the streets of Shanghai in a stupor of misery, looking for Neiping.
Years pass. Unable to find a way to live, Goo and Neiping fall in with a guerrilla triad. Neiping becomes its leader. Inspired by Neiping, who’d become expert in metals while living with Kang, the triad undertakes to study British war technology. Neiping says they can produce cannons, which could be used against opium merchants. The emperor will be pleased. In fact, he will someday have tons of opium seized and destroyed. But there is no way to approach the emperor until Neiping learns that Dulu, her dear friend in the brothel, is now the emperor’s consort. Neiping goes to Dulu.
“The recognition scene,” said Margaret, “is heartbreaking. Dulu has become an icy woman who moves slowly beneath layers of silk. But she remembers herself as the little girl who once cried in the arms of Neiping. She and Neiping are now about twenty-three.”
Through Dulu’s help, Neiping gains the emperor’s support. This enrages Jujuzi, the evil eunuch. Opium trade is in his interest, since he is an addict and a dealer. Everything is threatened by Neiping’s cannons, which are superior to the originals, but the triad’s military strategy is betrayed by Jujuzi. Neiping and Goo are captured by British sailors and jailed.
Margaret said, “Guess what happens next. Kang appears. He has vanished for three hundred pages, but he’s back in the action.”
The British allow Kang to speak to Neiping. He offers to buy her freedom. Neiping says he must also buy Goo’s freedom. Kang says she has no right to ask him to buy her lover’s freedom. Neiping accepts Kang’s offer, and she is freed from jail. She then goes to Dulu and appeals for the emperor’s help in freeing Goo. Jujuzi, frustrated by Neiping’s escape, demands justice for Goo. The British, who are in debt to Jujuzi, look the other way while he tortures Goo to death.
The emperor, who has heard Neiping’s appeal through Dulu, asks to see Neiping. The emperor knows Goo is dead. He was told by Jujuzi. But the emperor is moved by Neiping’s beauty and her poignant concern to save the already dead Goo. The emperor tells her that he will save him, but she must forget Goo. Then he says that Neiping, like Dulu, will be his consort. In the final chapter, Neiping is heavy with the emperor’s child. She and Dulu wander in the palace gardens. Jujuzi watches the lovely consorts passing amid flowers, and he remembers in slow, microscopic detail the execution of Neiping’s lover.
“What a story.”
“I left most of it out.”
“Is that so?”
“You think it’s boring.”
“No.”
“You do.”
“Don’t tell me what I think. That’s annoying.”
“Do you think it’s boring?”
“Yes, but how can I know unless I read the book?”
“Well, I liked it a lot. The last chapter is horribly dazzling and so beautiful. Jujuzi watches Neiping and Dulu stroll in the garden, and he remembers Goo in chains, bleeding from the hundred knives Jujuzi stuck in him. To Jujuzi, everything is aesthetic, knives, consorts, even feelings. He has no balls so he collects feelings. You see? Like jewels in a box.”
Lights went up in the midst of the applause. Margaret said, “Aren’t you glad you came?” Claude Rue bowed. Waves of praise poured onto his head. I applauded, too, a concession to the community. Besides, Margaret loved the lecture. She watched me from the corners of her eyes, suspicious of my enthusiasm. I nodded, as if to say yes, yes. Mainly, I needed to go to the toilet, but I didn’t want to do anything that might look like a negative comment on the lecture. I’d go when we arrived at the reception for Rue. This decision was fateful. At the reception, in the Faculty Club, I carried a glass of white wine from the bar to Margaret, then went to the men’s room. I stood beside a man who had leaned his cane against the urinal. He patted his straight blond hair with one hand, holding his cock with the other, shaking it. The man was, I suddenly realized, himself, Claude Rue. Surprised into speech, I said I loved his lecture. He said, “You work here?”
Things now seemed to be happening quickly, making thought impossible. I was unable to answer. Exactly what was Rue asking — was I a professor? a men’s room attendant? a toilet cruiser? Not waiting for my answer, he said he’d been promised a certain figure for the lecture. A check, made out to him from the regents of the university, had been delivered to his hotel room. The check shocked him. He’d almost canceled the lecture. He was still distressed, unable to contain himself. He’d hurried to the men’s room, after the lecture, to look at his check again. The figure was less than promised. I was the first to hear about it. Me. A stranger. He was hysterical, maybe, but I felt very privileged. Money talk is personal, especially in a toilet. “You follow me?” he said.
“Yes. You were promised a certain figure. They gave you a check. It was delivered to your hotel room.”
“Precisely. But the figure inscribed on the check is less than promised.”
“Somebody made a mistake.”
“No mistake. Taxes have been deducted. But I came from Paris with a certain understanding. I was to be paid a certain figure. I have the letter of agreement, and the contract.” His green stare, fraught with helpless reproach, held me as he zipped up. He felt that he’d been cheated. He dragged to a sink. His cane, lacquered mahogany, with a black iron ferrule, clacked the tile floor. He washed his hands. Water raged in the sink.
“It’s a mistake, and it can be easily corrected,” I said, speaking to his face in the mirror above the sink. “Don’t worry, Mr. Rue. You’ll get every penny they promised.”
“Will you speak to somebody?” he said, taking his cane. “I’m very upset.”
“Count on it, Mr. Rue.”
“But will you speak to somebody about this matter?”
“Before the evening is over, I’ll have their attention.”
“But will you speak to a person?”
“Definitely.”
I could see, standing close to him, that his teeth were heavily stained by cigarette smoke. They looked rotten. I asked if I might introduce him to a friend of mine. Margaret would get a kick out of meeting Claude Rue, I figured, but I mainly wanted her to see his teeth. He seemed thrown off balance, reluctant to meet someone described as a friend. “My time is heavily scheduled,” he muttered; but, since he’d just asked me for a favor, he shrugged, shouldering obligation. I led him to Margaret. Rue’s green eyes gained brightness. Margaret quickened within, but offered a mere
“Hello,” no more, not even the wisp of a smile. She didn’t say she loved his lecture. Was she overwhelmed, having Claude Rue thrust at her like this? The silence was difficult for me, if not for them. Lacking anything else to say, I started to tell Margaret about Rue’s problem with the university check. “It wasn’t the promised amount.” Rue cut me off:
“Money is offal. Not to be discussed.”
His voice was unnaturally high, operatic and crowing at once. He told Margaret, speaking to her eyes — as if I’d ceased to exist — that he would spend the next three days in Berkeley. He was expected at lunches, cocktail parties, and dinner parties. He’d been invited to conduct a seminar, and to address a small gathering at the Asian Art Museum.
“But my lecture is over. I have fulfilled my contract. I owe nothing to anybody.”
Margaret said, “No point, then, cheapening yourself, is there?”
“I will cancel every engagement.”
“How convenient,” she said, hesitated, then gambled, “for us.”
Her voice was flat and black as an ice slick on asphalt, but I could hear, beneath the surface, a faint trembling. I prayed that she would look at Rue’s teeth, which were practically biting her face. She seemed not to notice.
“Do you drive a car?”
She said, “Yes,” holding her hand out to the side, toward me, blindly. I slipped the keys to my Volvo into her palm. Tomorrow, I’d ride to her place on my bike and retrieve the car. Margaret wouldn’t remember that she’d taken it. She and Rue walked away, but I felt it was I who grew smaller in the gathering distance. Margaret glanced back at me to say goodbye. Rue, staring at Margaret, lost peripheral vision, thus annihilating me. I might have felt insulted, but he’d been seized by hormonal ferocity, and was focused on a woman. I’d have treated him similarly.
Months earlier, I’d heard about Rue from Margaret. She’d heard about him from her sister May, who had a Ph.D. in library science from Berkeley and worked at the university library in Beijing. In a letter to Margaret, May said she’d met Professor Claude Rue, the linguistic historian. He was known in academic circles, but not yet an international celebrity. Rue was in Beijing completing his research for The Mists of Shanghai. May said, in her letter, that Rue was a “womanizer.” He had bastard children in France and Tahiti. She didn’t find him attractive, but other women might. “If you said Claude Rue is charming or has pretty green eyes, I wouldn’t disagree, but as I write to you, I have trouble remembering what he looks like.”
Margaret said the word “womanizer” tells more about May than Rue. “She’s jealous. She thinks Rue is fucking every woman except her.”
“She says she doesn’t find him attractive, doesn’t even know what he looks like.”
“She finds him very attractive, and she knows what he looks like, what he sounds like, smells like, feels like. May has no respect for personal space. She touches people when she talks to them. She’s a shark, with taste sensors in her skin. When May takes your hand, or brushes up against you, she’s tasting you. Nobody but sharks and cannibals can do that. She shakes somebody’s hand, then tells me, ‘Needs salt and a little curry.”’
“All right. Maybe ‘womanizer’ says something about May, but the word has a meaning. Regardless of May, ‘womanizer’ means something.”
“What?”
“You kidding?”
“Tell me. What does it mean?”
“What do you think? It means a man who sits on the side of the bed at two in the morning, putting on his shoes.”
“What do you call women who do that? Don’t patronize me, Herman. Don’t you tell me what ‘womanizer’ means.”
“Why did you ask?”
“To see if you’d tell me. So patronizing. I know exactly what the word means. ‘Womanizer’ means my sister May wants Claude Rue to fuck her.”
“Get a dictionary. I want to see where it mentions your sister and Claude Rue.”
“The dictionary is a cemetery of dead words. All words are dead until somebody uses them. ‘Womanizer’ is dead. If you use it, it lives, uses you.”
“Nonsense.”
“People once talked about nymphomaniacs, right? Remember that word? Would you ever use it without feeling it said something embarrassing about you? Get real, Herman. Everyone is constantly on the make — even May. Even you.”
“Not me.”
“Maybe that’s because you’re old-fashioned, which is to say narrow-minded. Self-righteous. Incapable of seeing yourself. You disappoint me, Herman. You really do. What about famous men who had bastards? Rousseau, Byron, Shelley, Wordsworth, the Earl of Gloucester, Edward VII.”
“I don’t care who had bastards. That isn’t pertinent. You’re trying to make a case for bad behavior.”
“Rodin, Hegel, Marx, Castro — they all had bastards. If they are all bad, that’s pertinent. My uncle Chan wasn’t famous, but he had two families. God knows what else he had. Neither family knew of the other until he died. Then it became pertinent, everyone squabbling over property.”
“What’s your point, if you have one, which I seriously doubt?”
“And what about Kafka, Camus, Sartre, Picasso, Charlie Chaplin, Charlie Parker, J.FK., M.L.K.? What about Chinese emperors and warlords, Arab sheiks, movie actors, thousands of Mormons? Everybody collects women. That’s why there are prostitutes, whores, courtesans, consorts, concubines, bimbos, mistresses, wives, flirts, hussies, sluts, etc., etc. How many words are there for man? Not one equivalent for ‘cunt,’ which can mean a woman. ‘Prick’ means some kind of jerk. Look at magazine covers, month after month. They’re selling clothes and cosmetics? They sell women, stupid. You know you’re stupid. Stupid Herman, that’s you.”
“They’re selling happiness, not women.”
“It’s the same thing. Lions, monkeys, horses, goats, people … many, many, many animals collect women animals. When they stop, they become unhappy and they die. Married men live longer than single men. This has long been true. The truth is the truth. What am I talking about? Hug me, please.”
“The truth is, you’re madly in love with Claude Rue.”
“I’ve never met the man. Don’t depress me.”
“Your sister mentions him in a letter, you imagine she wants him. She wants him, you want him. You’re in love, you’re jealous.”
“You’re more jealous.”
“You admit it? You’ve never before conceded anything in an argument. I feel like running in the streets, shrieking the news.”
“I admit nothing. After reading my sister May’s gossipy, puritanical letter, I find that I dislike Claude Rue intensely.”
“You never met the man.”
“How can that have any bearing on the matter?”
As for the people in the large reception room at the Faculty Club — deans, department heads, assistant professors, students, wives, husbands — gathered to honor Claude Rue — he’d flicked us off like a light. I admired Rue for that, and I wished his plane back to Paris would crash. Behind me, a woman whispered in the exact tone Margaret had used, “I dislike him intensely.”
A second woman said, “You know him?”
“Of course not. I’ve heard things, and his novel is very sexist.”
“You read the novel. Good for you.”
“I haven’t read it. I saw a review in a magazine at my hairdresser’s. I have the magazine. I’ll look for it tonight when I get home.”
“Sexist?” said the first woman. “Odd. I heard he’s gay.”
“Gay?” said a man. “How interesting. I suppose one can be gay and sexist, but I’d never have guessed he was gay. He looks straight to me. Who told you he’s gay? Someone who knows him?”
“Well, not with a capital K, if that’s what you mean by ‘knows,’ but he was told by a friend of Rue’s that he agreed to fly here and give this lecture only because of the San Fran bath houses. That’s what he was told. Gossip in this town spreads quick as genital warts.”
“Ho, ho, ho. People
are so dreadfully bored. Can you blame them? They have no lives, just careers and Volvos.”
“That’s good. I intend to use it. Do look for conversational citations in the near future. But who is the Chinese thing? I’ll die if I don’t find out. She’s somebody, isn’t she? Ask him.”
“Who?”
“Him, him. That man. He was standing with her.” Someone plucked my jacket sleeve. I turned. A face desiccated by propriety leaned close, old eyes, shimmering liquid gray, bulging, rims hanging open like thin crimson labia. It spoke:
“Pardon me, sir. Could you please tell us the name of the Chinese woman who, it now seems, is leaving the reception with Professor Rue?”
“Go fuck yourself.”
Margaret said the success of his lecture left Rue giddily deranged, expecting something more palpable from the night. He said, she said, that he couldn’t have returned to his hotel room, watched TV, and gone to sleep. “‘Why is it like this for me, do you think?’”he said, she said. ‘It would have no style. You were loved,”’ she said, she said, sensing his need to be reminded of the blatant sycophancy of his herdlike audience. “‘Then you appeared,’” he said, she said. “‘You were magnificently cold.’”
Voilà! Margaret. She is cold. She is attentive. She is determined to fuck him. He likes her quickness, and her legs. He says that to her. He also likes the way she drives, and her hair — the familiar black Asian kind, but which, because of its dim coppery strain, is rather unusual. He likes her eyes, too. I said, “Margaret, let me: ‘Your gray-tinted glasses give a sensuous glow to your sharply tipped Chinese eyes, which are like precious black glittering pebbles washed by the Yangtze. Also the Yalu.’”
The Collected Stories Page 30