My Splendid Concubine (42 page)

“
Five, and that is my final offer.”

The cousin looked embarrassed as Robert pulled his hand out of the hole. The deal was made, but Robert had to make all the repairs.

The next day was a Sunday, and he had Uncle Bark row them to the cottage.

“
This is our summer home,” Robert said, presenting the view.

Ayaou n
oisily sucked in her breath then took Shao-mei and Uncle Bark on a silent inspection.

“
What are you paying?” Ayaou asked, once the tour finished.

After Robert proudly told her the amount, she said,
“You have been robbed. I should have been the one to negotiate the price. Even Guan-jiah would have done better. We should pay no more than three yuan a month. No, I am wrong. Two yuan a month. The man that owns this place is a bandit. Although the woods, bushes and wild plants are lovely, if we do not live here, no one is going to live here. If we are to fix it, he should pay us.” She stamped her foot.

Shao-mei said,
“Sister, if you are going to explode, I am leaving. I do not want to be a victim of your storm cloud when it bursts.” She waddled away to check the creek. Robert wanted to go with her and find a place to hide.

Shao-mei was so huge she looked like a ripe melon ready to burst. Robert hoped the child would be later instead of early or on time. He wanted Ayaou to think the baby was his instead of born from a rape.

Ayaou demanded she be in charge of all repairs. “Because you are a foreigner, people will charge you the highest prices and use the poorest materials,” she said.

He
planned to have her to take charge anyway.

Two weeks later Robert moved his family into the cottage. In England, the amount of work done to the house would have taken months and cost a fortune. The Chinese workers Ayaou hired were industrious. They swarmed over the ruin of a house like ants and transformed it.

The first morning after moving in and walking down the weed free path to the waiting sampan, Robert handed a loaded revolver to Ayaou.
“I want to know you’re safe.”

“
You take it,” she said. “There are pirates on the river. I have the shotgun.”

Robert pulled another pistol from his jacket pocket.
“Not to worry,” he said. “I have a weapon.”

He sat in the sampan looking
at the freshly painted cottage where Ayaou and Shao-mei stood waving. Sunlight winked from the newly installed windows. Gray smoke drifted lazily above the house from the stovepipe. Uncle Bark pushed away from the dock. The sampan drifted out of sight of this safe sanctuary that was so much better than the crowded, menacing, stinking streets of Ningpo. The house was hidden. It wasn’t visible from the river. Who could menace them here?

Chapter 23

In the mornings, he spent from nine until noon at the consulate with Master Ping. Knowing that Christianity influenced his culture, he decided to learn about Taoism and Buddhism. They started with the
Dao De Jing
with plans to move onto the
Tao Te Ching
later.

Since Master Ping was not a serious devotee of Taoism or Bu
ddhism but only a shallow dabbler of these ideologies, Robert didn’t worry that his teacher would attempt to seduce him away from Christianity. However, Robert was committed to study this spiritual path even if it wasn’t his choice. To him it meant opening another door to understand China better.

During the first lesson on Taoism, the
Dao De Jing
was open on the table between them. Robert stared at the beginning lines.

The way, which can be uttered, is not the eternal Way.

The name, which can be named, is not the eternal Name.

“
It makes little sense to me, Master,” he said.

“
That is because to grasp the meaning of the
Way
you must understand how to balance yin and yang. To do that you must understand what emptiness means in relation to your life. It cannot be put into words.” Master Ping tapped his chest. “The meaning of the
Way
must be found in here.” Then he tapped his skull. “And in here. That is how I understand it. You must learn how to bend with the wind and to allow the river to flow around you when you are standing in the current. The world and all the people live in the river’s current. To survive, you must allow it to flow around you, because you cannot change it.”

Soon Robert was
to be sorely tested, and the Tao entered his life in unexpected ways to keep him sane. Uncle Bark would also play an important role in that lesson.

In the afternoons and late into the evenings, Robert worked as an interpreter for foreign ship captains that didn’t speak Chinese. He was fluent in Mandarin and was picking up other Chinese dialects like the one from Ningpo and another from Shanghai. He was also learning Cantonese, which he couldn’t speak clearly but understood.

This traveling back and forth on the river was a big bother.
Guan-jiah did the shopping in Ningpo, and Robert carried the products to the cottage in Uncle Bark’s sampan. He hated the time lost with his girls and looked forward to the end of summer and autumn when he planned moving back to the Ningpo house for the winter.

With Ayaou and
Shao-mei, he had discovered unspoiled happiness. Simple things became glorious to treasure like eating a bowl of bland rice porridge with pieces of yam in it or some vegetable he’d never tasted before.

A meal didn
’t have to be a feast of delicacies to be enjoyed when the girls cooked. Life was close to ideal—at least what Robert saw as ideal at the time. He never imagined that the simple things he once took for granted were splendid when colored with love, which he gorged on daily.

“
What is this?” he asked one evening. He leaned over his plate examining the thick stems and dainty leaves of the wok steamed greens Ayaou had cooked with oil, garlic and ginger for one of the dinner dishes.

“
Weeds,” she said. “The peasants eat them. Because they eat them, they are stronger and have more vitality than people who live in the city. We are now eating peasant food. A peasant can work from before sunrise to well after sundown and still have energy for bedroom activities.”

Robert
tasted one of the strands. It was crunchy and delicate at the same time. It rather tasted like broccoli, which he had never liked. This was better.

“
Eat it, Robert,” Shao-mei urged. “It will make your legs like tree trunks, and your sun instrument will grow stronger roots.”

“
Be quiet, Shao-mei. He has too much already.” Ayaou reached for Robert’s plate. “You won’t like it, Robert. It’s better if you don’t eat it.”

He slapped her hand away. He stuffed another stalk of the dark green leafy vegetable into his mouth and chewed.
“I like it,” he said. He sat up straight with his back stiff like a board. He opened his eyes wide and smacked his lips. “I can feel it working already. We won’t get any sleep tonight.”

The girls laughed
—a light, carefree sound, which reminded Robert of the Lancashire Handbell Ringers.

Sometimes Robert sensed the undercurrent of jealousy still lurking behind the girls’ eyes, but there was never a serious argument in the cottage—at least while he was there. Squabbles were expected but not raging arguments.

T
he girls greeted him each day when he returned home. This was why he loved sunsets more than mornings. Like a peacock, the sun spread its colored feathers along the horizon in a blaze of fading brilliance. In the shadowy dusk, the girls stood waiting near the water. The moment they saw the sampan or heard Uncle Bark’s oar in the water, they’d start cheering. Every return was a surprise and every departure heartache. In the mornings, Uncle Bark rowed down river into the rising sun. Robert hated that glaring, hot orb blinding him when it filled the sky in front of the boat and bounced harsh light off the water.

In the evenings from where he sat in the sampan, Robert saw their silky silhouettes ju
mping in excitement like puppies greeting a master when he returned home after a long day. It must have been lonely spending so much time at the cottage with no one near. To fill their time, the girls had planted a flourishing garden filled with vegetables and flowers.

When he stepped out of the boat, t
he girls moved to either side of him. Shao-mei took his left arm and Ayaou his right. Just the touch of their warm skin chased away the flagging energies brought on by the long day at the consulate and the trip upriver.

“
Robert,” Shao-mei said one evening, “we have a surprise for you. We have worked all week on a new dance we saw once in a Peking opera and have combined it with something else. We had to alter one of your robes to be more in character.”

“
Yes,” Ayaou said, “there is a role for you to play, but we must paint your face first.”

“
What colors?” he asked. He knew the colors of his face paint revealed what kind of character he was to play.

“
Today we are going to paint you blue and white,” Shao-mei replied. When Robert studied her expression, he saw there was a mischievous look in her eyes. Ayaou was better at hiding her feelings. Shao-mei was like glass.

Blue and white meant he was to be cruel and wicked. Robert wondered if there would be a twist added, so he could act out of character. Maybe he would get to spank one of them. That would be interesting. They hadn
’t done anything like that before.

“
And what color is your face going to be painted?” he asked.

“
Black,” Ayaou said with enthusiasm. Black meant she was going to be impulsive. Just thinking of the possibilities excited him.

“
My nose is going to be white,” Shao-mei said. “I insisted.” That meant she was going to be full of laughter and be the fun of the little family comedy—for he was sure it would be more comedy than drama. The girls were usually too lighthearted for anything serious or dark.

“
That’s all you are going to paint,” he said, “just your nose?”

“
No, silly,” she replied. “My face will be black like Ayaou’s face, but I will have a touch of white. I want to be wicked too.”

“
And what are we performing tonight?” he asked.

“
Something Ayaou discovered by Tuan Cheng Shih, who lived during the Tang Dynasty,” Shao-mei said.

“
Be quiet, sister,” Ayaou said. “That is supposed to be a surprise.”

Robert had studied Tuan Shih
’s
Miscellaneous Record of You Yang
with Master Ping. He took a wild guess what they were going to enact. “Does this little comic drama of yours have a girl who loses her parents and is deprived of her rightful place in life by evil relatives?” he asked. He thought of the Brothers Grimm and their collection of stories that included Cinderella. He knew the first Cinderella story had originated in China—not Germany. The Chinese version had been published a thousand years before the Grimm brothers had been born.

“
You will have to wait to find out,” Ayaou said. She turned to Shao-mei. “Close your mouth sister. It is about to spill the surprise.”

He
knew what they were doing wouldn’t be the same as the Chinese Cinderella. Ayaou always altered the stories so the result turned into an orgy after they went to bed. She planned these rare comedy dramas when it was her night to sleep with him. Shao-mei didn’t have Ayaou’s wild, inventive imagination.

What they planned turned out to be a riot of laughter. It kept Ro
bert up late. This made going to the consulate the next morning more difficult. He endured the next day’s exhaustion just to spend an hour or two with his girls in a room full of fun.

Every morning was the opposite of his evenings. When he left, they accompanied him to the boat in a gloomy silence. Before he climbed into the sampan, they took t
urns hugging and kissing him as if he were going to float out of sight and never return.

“
Do not fall in the water, Robert,” Shao-mei said. “We do not want you to be swallowed by a giant carp.”

“
Silly, sister,” Ayaou said. “There is no carp large enough to swallow Robert. All he has to do is roll over on his back and float to Ningpo.”

“
Then the eels will bite him in the ass,” Shao-mei replied. “I do not want to see his smooth ass full of puncture wounds. Stay in the sampan, Robert. Do not go swimming. It is more fun to eat fried eels than have them eat you.”

English was never spoken at home, and Robert
did not intend to teach Ayaou or Shao-mei his language. He didn’t want either of them to learn anything about his culture, its religions, its customs, its philosophies, or its beliefs. He wanted to immerse himself in their world, the Chinese world—this Confucius, Taoist place where he’d finally found some peace of mind.