The Incarnations (8 page)

I ask passer-by after passer-by, ‘Excuse me, which way to the Imperial Palace?’

And in this manner, I gradually find my way there.

I arrive at the gates of the Imperial City at sunset. Though I am tired and aching to the marrow of my bones, the magnificence of the palace rejuvenates me. Stone lions roar at the Vermilion Gates and the palace rooftops, curved elegantly from ridge to eaves, are shining gold in the setting sun.

I accost an armoured guard at the gate.

‘Excuse me. Could you pass on a message to Eunuch Wu? Could you tell him his long-lost daughter has come to Chang’an to see him. I don’t mind waiting here while you fetch him.’

The guard beats me so hard with his spear he knocks out a tooth, and this is how I learn that commoners are not meant to approach the gates of the Imperial City without an invitation bearing the imperial seal. I would have to contact you through other means.

I spend a night shivering in a ditch, then in the morning return to the Eastern Market to look for work. I go to Butchers Lane, Ironmongers Lane, Axe-makers Alley, and Cloth-weavers Lane, in and out of every shop. ‘I am hungry and strong,’ I say. ‘I am willing to work for a crust of bread.’ But no one wants me. Not even the human-waste collectors who trundle wheelbarrows from privy to privy. I am starving. I go over to the gangs of beggars rattling begging bowls in the market square. The first gang of beggars tells me to go away. ‘Only those with missing limbs can beg here,’ they say, waving me away with stump-ended arms. The second gang tells me to get lost too: ‘Only the blind or one-eyed allowed here.’ I glance over at the third gang, swatting at the flies buzzing over their pustule-weeping skin, and realize I lack the requisite skin disease.

I am at my wits’ end. How will I survive in this black-hearted city? I may as well crawl back into the ditch and wait to die, as the Heavens must have decreed. Then, out of nowhere, I hear the cackling of the Sorceress Wu – borne by the Daemons of Wind from that mud-walled dwelling over a thousand leagues away. ‘Wretched she-brat,’ she cackles. ‘Character determines destiny. Courage and boldness. Not fate.’ And goaded thus, I holler at the top of my lungs, ‘Has anyone any work for me? I am hungry and strong! I can work as hard as any man. I will toil like a dog! I will toil until I sweat out my blood! I am willing to do anything!’

‘Anything?’

A pedlar of candy apples with scheming eyes and hog bristles spouting out of his chin stalls his pushcart nearby. The pedlar holds out a sugar-coated apple on a stick, and my stomach growls.

‘Anything,’ I repeat.

I stumble to him. I snatch the sugar-coated apple and, lightheaded with hunger, I take a bite. The pedlar shows his stumpy brown teeth in a sly grin.

‘Then come with me.’

‘I see you’ve lost your virtue then,’ says Madam Plum Blossom as she peers between my legs. ‘Pity. Customers pay a fortune to defile a girl with her purity intact.’

She orders me to strip for inspection. She prods and pokes. Tweaks and peeks. She squeezes my breasts and tuts.

‘Sallow complexion . . . Hump-backed nose . . . Sour, down-turned mouth . . . Knocked-out tooth . . . Chest like a boy . . .’

But in spite of her harsh and negative appraisal, Madam Plum Blossom likes me.

‘There’s some fighting spirit in you,’ she says. ‘The gentleman callers like a girl with fire in her belly.
Night Coming
. That will be your name. Night Coming. Yes. Can’t think of a better sobriquet than that!’

When the pedlar said he would take me to a brothel in the Gay Quarters of Chang’an, hopes of fame and fortune rang out in my head. On the long journey to Chang’an the Merchant Fang had waxed lyrical about the Gay Quarters and their legendary brothels, such as the House of Willowy Enchantresses and the Parlour of the Golden Peaches, frequented by aristocracy, imperial scholars and literati.

According to the Merchant Fang, the courtesans of the Gay Quarters are classical beauties with lunar skin, scallion fingers and tresses dark as ravens’ plumage. They flutter about like exotic birds in an aviary, in the finest, most intricately embroidered robes. Such is their beauty, boasted Merchant Fang, that should they happen by your hometown, the common folk of Kill the Barbarians Village would mistake them for immortal goddesses and lay sacrificial offerings of slaughtered pigs at their feet.

Not content with mere pulchritude, the courtesans of the Gay Quarters have many talents and accomplishments. They are gregarious hostesses and poetesses, enlivening banquets with witty repartee and verses composed on the spot. They sing like songbirds and are skilled musicians, strumming the zither and playing the lute and flute. They are intellects educated in the Five Classics and Daoist and Confucian philosophy, and keen to engage in verbal jousting and philosophical debate. The life of a celebrated courtesan, whose patrons and admirers are the most powerful men in Chang’an, was very appealing to me. So my hopes were dashed when the pedlar brought me to the Hummingbird Inn in Old Temple Lane, which makes no pretence of being a high-class establishment.

‘We don’t put on any airs and graces here!’ laughs Madam Plum Blossom. ‘We’re a lowly brothel, for commoners! For scoundrels, rascals and ne’er-do-wells. Hiring our cunts out. That’s our job. We make no pretences to the contrary. We can’t sing or dance and the only verse we compose is doggerel and bawdy rhymes. But our customers come to our parlour and have themselves a rollicking good time! I’ll teach you all the tricks of the trade, Night Coming. I was an excellent whore in my day. A veritable snake-charmer . . .’

Proprietress of the Hummingbird Inn for twenty years, Madam Plum Blossom is a cheerful woman with a loud and raucous laugh. The pastimes she is most fond of include ale drinking, gorging herself with cakes and tutoring Master Xing, her Burmese parrot, to curse and sing vulgar little ditties for the gentlemen callers. Proud of her voluptuous figure, Madam Plum Blossom is often tethered to a brass mirror, admiring her wide hips and the ample cleavage she flaunts with a low-cut décolletage. Though most madams of the Gay Quarters have a reputation for being mean-spirited and quick-tempered, quoting Confucius as they beat their girls for alleged wrongs (‘Those!’
whack
‘who err!’
whack
‘on the side of strictness!’
whack
‘are few indeed!’
whack
), Madam Plum Blossom spares us the rod, being too jolly of temperament for such corporal spite. Though most madams keep their daughters imprisoned under lock and key, Madam Plum Blossom encourages us to venture out into the hustle and bustle of Chang’an on daily constitutionals. The warm-hearted proprietress quickly becomes like a mother to me.

The other two prostitutes at the Hummingbird Inn, Moonglow and Heavenly Lotus Flower, are nowhere near as kind. ‘Stinking southerner,’ they mutter, pinching their noses when I am near. But Madam Plum Blossom tells me to pay them no heed.

‘Don’t mind them, Night Coming. They’ve no right to put on airs. Heavenly Lotus Flower used to be a scullery maid called Appleseed, and Moonglow’s husband is a dissolute wastrel who sold her to pay off his gambling debts.’

As I am a fledging in the bedchamber, Madam Plum Blossom prepares me for brothel life by having me tryst with the young stablehand from down the lane. She stands at the bedside as the boy and I fumble together, clumsy and maladroit, haplessly muddling through the conjoining of our yin and yang parts. Though we go at it until I am quite saddle-sore, Madam Plum Blossom casts a critical eye over the proceedings. Her arms crossed, her lips a thin line of disapproval, she scolds, ‘Don’t be so coy, Night Coming! There are more ways to make Clouds and Rain than by lying on your back, y’know. And why are you flinching? That’s his Jade Stalk he’s stabbing you with, not a dagger!’

Exasperated, she teaches me how to straddle the stablehand and rise up and down in a style known as Riding the Unicorn Horn. ‘This position is very good for the elderly and infirm,’ she advises. ‘As well as veterans who have fought in many battles and are missing their limbs.’

The tutorial underway, Madam Plum Blossom drills the stable boy and me with step-by-step instructions, through the Raising the Yin to Meet the Yang position, the Two Dragons Who Fight until They Drop, and the Silkworm Spinning a Cocoon. The stable boy and I are soon quite knackered, pink in the cheeks and out of breath from flailing and contorting our limbs. The first tutorial reaches its climax when Madam Plum Blossom is teaching me the best technique for Playing the Jade Flute, and the stable boy, no longer able to contain his excitement, spurts the Jade Liquor into my mouth. Madam is very cross when I gag and grimace and spit.

‘Impoliteness!’ she scolds. ‘One mustn’t spit the Jade Liquor as though it scalds the tongue. One must swallow and smile.’ After twenty years of whoredom, Madam Plum Blossom’s knowledge is as boundless as the sea. ‘Men have all sorts of peccadilloes,’ she tells me. ‘Some men like to Penetrate the Red during a woman’s moon cycle, or piddle on a woman out of the Jade Watering Spout. Some men like to poke a woman in the back passage, which is called Pushing the Boat Upstream.’

When she suggests I attempt to Push the Boat Upstream with the stable boy, I protest I cannot imagine a more agonizing suffering. But I then try it, and it’s not so bad once I am used to the clogged-up sensation in my rear end.

‘They come here to do the things their wives won’t do, you see,’ Madam Plum Blossom says, ‘unless they have a delightfully wicked and depraved wife, who may come to watch her husband go at you, and then Mirror Dance with you, which is how two women enact the Clouds and Rain.’

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.’

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.