My Splendid Concubine

by Lofthouse, Lloyd

  He watched the man until he was gone. Once the street was empty, he knocked on the door. A moment dragged by before he heard the scratching sound he was waiting for. He knew the spot Ayaou would be scratching. In reply, he scratched back. He heard the locking bar being lifted from its brackets. The door swung open.

  He stepped into gloom, closed the door and locked it by dropping the bar into its four brackets. Ayaou stood in the shadows beside an inked wall hanging that was two feet wide and five feet long.

  There was the same dreadful look in her eyes he’d seen daily since Shao-mei’s death. He could see that the woman he loved was close to death too, and he didn’t know how to save her.

  There were Chinese symbols on the watercolor behind Ayaou that said he sheng and ning jin, harmony and tranquility. The words were printed on colorless rice paper. The calligraphy was in black ink with a thin red border like a sliver of blood running around the perimeter three inches from the edge. There were several red ink stamps in the lower right-hand corner showing the name of the artist, but they looked more like clots of blood.

  Shao-mei and Ayaou bought that wall hanging. The sisters had bought all the art in the house. It hurt to look at it. The words on that wall hanging were all lies.

  He frowned. For an instant, he wanted to tear the calligraphy from the wall and shred it. On the other hand, he knew if he destroyed it, Ayaou would feel as if he were attacking her. She believed Shao-mei’s ghost lived inside that paper and every other object the girls had bought and carried into this rented house.

  On Ayaou’s left, the steep, worn stairs with the narrow steps were swallowed by darkness at the top. Shao-mei’s empty, closet sized bedroom was up there across the hall from where he slept with Ayaou. Every time he looked at that door, he wanted to nail it shut so her ghost could not escape.

  He stood an arm’s length from Ayaou. There were no words of greeting. He reached inside a coat pocket and took out a new Colt revolver. Her eyes shifted to the weapon. He held it in both hands and offered it to her as if it were a dozen roses.

  “Ayaou,” he said in fluent Mandarin. “I bought this weapon to replace the one destroyed in the fire. You must promise you will never leave the house without it.”

  She reached for the pistol and took it. The four and a half-pound weight pulled her hand down to her side until the nine-inch barrel pointed at the floor.

  “Do you remember how many times you can shoot before you have to reload?” he asked.

  “Five,” she said in a dull voice.

  “Hide the pistol in your clothes, or if you have to, get a basket and cover it with a rag. In fact, you cannot go out unless Guan-jiah or I are with you. Do you understand?”

  She nodded. She was still wearing white, the Chinese color worn to mourn the death of a family member or close friend. Her dark hair was pulled back and tied into a tight knot on top of her head. She had a slender neck, small ears and high cheekbones.

  Compared to her, he seemed tall. He was five foot eight to her five foot two. “You know why we must do this?” he said.

  “If Ward discovers he killed the wrong sister, he will return to finish the job.”

  He took her in his arms and held her. She pressed her ear against his chest where his heart was beating. “At least I can hear that you are alive,” she said. “Sometimes I cannot hear my own heart.”

  A knot gathered in his throat. His eyes filled with tears, but he blinked them away. He didn’t want her to see the fear and worry that had built a nest inside his head.

  Robert gasped and woke with a start. It took a moment for the wild beating of his heart to subside as his eyes searched the dark bedroom for intruders. He reached under his pillow and touched the pistol to make sure it was there.

  His fears were like cancerous growths eating him. Was the front door strong enough to withstand an assault? Then he remembered that Guan-jiah had reinforced the front door. The eunuch had screwed iron straps to the inside surface. Once the bar was placed in the four brackets, the door was almost invincible.

  It would be difficult if not impossible for anyone to break in. He wasn’t sure if he had checked the door to see if it was locked before coming upstairs. On the other hand, he knew it was his habit to check before going to bed. However, what if he forgot?

  He thought of the rope ladder next. He slipped from under the thick blankets. When his bare feet touched the frozen floorboards, he sucked in his breath but was careful not to wake Ayaou. He stood naked in the dark and listened to her breathing until he was sure she still slept. Then he checked to see if the rope ladder was where he had left it below the one window in the bedroom.

  Soon after Shao-mei’s funeral, he’d bought this rope ladder from a British ship. If Ward or another assassin set fire to the house as they had done to the cottage, he planned to use that rope ladder to escape from the upstairs bedroom into the alley.

  He knelt and reached under the bed. Once his fingers touched the double-barreled shotgun, he relaxed. With that weapon, he could blast anyone in the alley before climbing to safety.

  He picked up a pocket watch from the side table and moved to the window where moonlight helped him see that it was one in the morning.

  Two or three times a night, he awoke at the same times. He checked the pistol under his pillow first; the rope ladder second and then the shotgun. Sometimes he went downstairs to inspect the front door and the window shutters though he had done that before going to bed.

  That next morning, he and Ayaou sat on the benches at the kitchen table with the uneven top. They ate rice porridge from chipped, white ceramic bowls. The only sound was the crackling fire from the stove.

  “In my prayers,” he said, his voice hollow as if it belonged to a stranger. “I keep asking God to explain why Shao-mei suffered so horribly before she died. God doesn’t answer. I know He has more important things to do than to explain why a sixteen year old died such a horrible death and took her unborn child with her.” He cursed himself. He regretted speaking his thoughts. He should have kept his mouth shut.

  “It was Ward’s revenge,” Ayaou replied. She was nineteen, his age when he arrived in China more than three years earlier, yet she looked old beyond her years. She had been sixteen when he met her in that battle with the Tapings. She had been so beautiful and full of life. That’s why he fell in love with her. Now she was a shadow of her former self with no expression on her face. It was as if she was carved from sandstone, and he feared she might crumble and he’d lose her.

  “You forced him to sell me to you,” she said. “You pointed a pistol at him and offered him no choice. He wanted to keep me, even if it meant throwing me to his men then feeding me to the dogs. That would have been better. At least, Shao-mei would be alive and happy with you.”

  “Don’t think that way, Ayaou.” He wanted to say something cheerful, but he couldn’t. It was impossible to get nice things to come out of his mouth.

  “I’m afraid Ward isn’t finished with us yet,” he said. He and Ayaou had become lifeless puppets without strings to guide them. He didn’t know what to do except get up each morning and let his legs carry him to the consulate.

  “If Ward learns you are alive, he will return and murder you too.” The words leaked out. He couldn’t stop them. He didn’t tell her there was nothing he could do to protect her. After all, Ward commanded an army of mercenaries. In addition, due to the battles Ward’s army had won, the Ch’ing Dynasty had granted Ward Chinese citizenship. Robert, on the other hand, was nobody. “You have to be careful, Ayaou. For your safety, you have to do as I say.”

  When she didn’t respond, he said, “Ayaou?”

  She held her rice bowl in both hands with her mouth hanging open as she stared with empty eyes at nothing.

  Seeking answers, Robert turned to God and attended William Martin’s sermons on the Sabbath. William, an American Presbyterian minister, the only minister living inside the Chinese city of Ningpo, was the one foreigner he trusted not to judge hi
m. He did not want anything to do with the other ministers that lived across the river near the Presbyterian chapel. They were hypocrites. He knew he was being harsh in his judgment, but he didn’t care.

  However, William crossed the river at least once a week to visit the other ministers, who gossiped. They would eventually talk about him as they had talked about Hollister and his concubine, Me-ta-tae. William would hear their opinions. They would call Ayaou a whore as they did to Me-ta-tae.

  Neither Me-ta-tae nor Ayaou were whores. In China, a concubine was not a whore. In China, a concubine was a second-class wife and had no power over her life or future. A concubine, like most women in China, was property to be bought and sold.

  The truth was as complicated as China—something most foreigners didn’t want to learn and probably couldn’t understand if they tried.

  Master Ping, Robert’s Mandarin language teacher, said it best. “The foreigners want to force China to become a Christian nation. That is impossible. China is a nation influenced by Laozi and Confucius, a way of life older than Christianity by a thousand years.

  “Most Chinese will ignore the missionaries as if they were invisible—yet be polite to them when face to face. How can you force someone to believe anything when he dissolves once you let him go?

  “If forced, a Chinese man will agree to almost anything. Then he will go about his business as if he’d said nothing. He will follow Taoism’s path and become the rock in the stream that lets the water flow by without struggling against it. By doing nothing, nothing is left undone. Meanwhile he will live by Confucius’s belief of a well-ordered society by being true to the five great relationships. There is no room for your Christ in China. To the Chinese, evil sprouts where the five great relationships do not exist, and everyone outside of the Middle Kingdom is considered a barbarian.”

  He wanted to share his feelings with someone else besides Guan-jiah, his Chinese servant. He wasn’t sure William was the right choice, but there was no one else he could trust. William was one of the few foreigners that cared about the Chinese and their culture. It worried him that William might think less of him if he discovered the truth about Ayaou and Shao-mei.

  He knew the risk he was taking by attending William’s services. During one conversation while Shao-mei was alive, William asked if he was going to convert the girls to Christianity. Although Robert was a Christian, he didn’t want to change his girls. He wanted them to stay the way they were.

  He felt as if a monster had moved inside his head. It had always been a struggle for Robert to hide his feelings. If William looked, he’d see the truth. William had the ability to look into another person’s eyes and see the pain. There would be questions. To combat this, Robert was learning how to turn his face into a mask but he wasn’t ready yet. Since Shao-mei’s death, he had practiced using a mirror.

  Until he achieved the ability to hide his feelings, he made sure to arrive every Sabbath shortly after William started his sermon. He sat at the rear of the room near the door. When the sermon ended, he left. Sitting on that bench at the back and listening to the sermons worked like a drug to soothe his nerves.

  The American started with a prayer to God asking Him to make sure he didn’t lead his Chinese flock astray. William didn’t tell them what to think or what to do as most foreigners did. He taught them to think and find a compromise between their ancient beliefs and Christianity; to fold one inside the other. When dealing with the Chinese, it was the best choice.

  It wasn’t easy for Robert to avoid a man he considered a friend.

  Chapter 27

  The weather conspired with Ward to make life miserable for Robert and Ayaou. The winter of 1858 was the coldest since he’d arrived in China.

  Guan-jiah, his Chinese servant, insisted on doing the shopping so Ayaou stayed inside the house alone most of the time. Each day Guan-jiah brought in frost bitten cabbages that were withered and looked rotten. The potatoes were loaded with ice crystals and tasted like pork liver.

  Robert was in a surly mood, and others went out of their way to avoid him. He spent hours concocting far-fetched schemes on how he was going to exact revenge for Shao-mei’s death.

  He bought another revolver for Guan-jiah and took the eunuch into the countryside daily for target practice. On those days, for her protection, Ayaou visited boat people she had known all her life.

  They found a place to practice without witnesses. There, away from the city, among the trees and rice paddies, Robert’s servant learned to shoot.

  At first, Guan-jiah’s hands shook. When he squeezed the trigger, he closed his eyes and jumped at the sound of the boom. “I’m going deaf, Master,” he said.

  “Then take cotton and plug your ears,” he replied.

  “What about my eyes, Master? How do I keep them open?”

  “We’ll work on it. If you learn, I’ll add five yuan a month to your pay.” He stood behind his servant and reached around him putting his hands over Guan-jiah’s to steady the shaking.

  “Put your index finger on the trigger and squeeze,” he said. “Do not jerk the trigger, or you will miss the target.”

  Since he was behind Guan-jiah, he couldn’t help but observe the eunuch’s shaved skull. A tail of hair called a queue grew out of the back of the eunuch’s head and hung halfway down his back. He was a bony, short man with a turned-up nose and eyes set far apart.

  After helping Guan-jiah fire his first five shots, he stepped back to observe and was aware of his servant’s graceful, feminine posture and movements. Since Guan-jiah had voluntarily castrated himself at a young age to apply for a job inside the Forbidden City, he was no longer a man. He was a lao-gong, a eunuch. If he grew his hair long and dressed like a woman, he could easily pass for one. He was sure that men would find Guan-jiah attractive as a woman. As it was, he looked homely in his drab colored, baggy peasant clothing.

  It was a tragic blow when Guan-jiah did not get the first job he applied for as a tai-jian, a court or palace eunuch. Robert realized his servant was not alone. He’d heard that as many as fifty-thousand boys castrated themselves each year to be eligible to apply for the few positions available in the Emperor’s palace. Many that were not accepted killed themselves.

  Guan-jiah, on the other hand, decided to live. He respected his servant for the burden he had taken to feed his siblings, his parents, his grandparents, his uncles and aunts, and cousins.

  It took days to get Guan-jiah to keep his eyes open and calm enough to hit the target. The target was only twenty yards away, but it might as well have been a mile. The eunuch learned and hit the target on average four out of every six shots. They went through two hundred rounds before Robert was satisfied.

  He suspected he was being followed. When Robert turned to catch the person, the phantom melted like fog. He questioned his sanity. He suspected he was imagining things—that Shao-mei’s death had made him paranoid. On the other hand, he felt he couldn’t take the chance that he was wrong.

  One evening on his way home, he confronted a man that looked like a Japanese sailor. The man had been walking behind him for three blocks by the time Robert decided to confront him.

  He turned and pointed a finger at the sailor’s face. “Why are you following me? Trying to discover where I live, huh?” Robert’s other hand was in his jacket pocket holding the Colt revolver.

  The man was taller than he was, but Robert’s intensity and anger caused the man to step back. The sailor looked around at the Chinese on the street as if he were seeking help against a lunatic.

  None of the Chinese paid the slightest attention to this dramatic scene in their midst. Robert knew why—what happened between foreigners or strangers was none of their business. Why should they care if two barbarians killed each other?

  “Leave me alone,” the sailor said. He took another step back.

  Robert pursued him. “You have been spying on me. Admit it.”

  The sailor ran. Although Robert felt satisfaction at chasing the man off,
he worried that next time the spy would be sneakier and harder to detect. At least, he had proved he was ready if something unexpected happened.

  When he opened the front door one morning, it resisted as if the hinge pins had swollen. He examined the door and discovered scratches and dents on the outside surface as if someone had been attempting to force the door with a metal pry bar.

  He sucked in a breath—shocked. Without thinking, his right hand slipped into the jacket pocket where he kept the Colt revolver. He stared at every face in the street and looked at the rooftops expecting to see someone watching. A wave of dizziness swept over him. He had to lean against the wall to keep his balance.

  He wanted to yell, I am here, you bastards! Come get me! His house had been violated. The woman he loved had been threatened. He felt helpless, useless.

  “Master, what is wrong?” It was Guan-jiah. Since the attempt to hijack Robert into a British warship months earlier, before Shao-mei had been murdered, the eunuch arrived every morning and accompanied him to the consulate. He came with a sturdy walking stick—a gnarly, knobby thing that doubled as a bludgeon.

  Robert pointed at the door’s hinges. “They came to get her.” He continued to babble as the eunuch guided him inside. Then the servant went back out.

  Robert sat on the nearest stool. He pulled the Colt out of his pocket and stared at it. When Guan-jiah returned, the eunuch slipped the bar into its brackets securing the door.

  “Master,” Guan-jiah said. “Why do you hold that thing? It is dangerous.” He took the revolver out of Robert’s hand and put the weapon on a small table next to the door.

  “I have to be ready.”

  “It was only a thief, Master. Do you think the men that murdered Shao-mei and her child would have given up because they could not force their way into the house if they knew you were inside?”