The Courtesan Read online

  Baba’s stories begin in the same way, always: “Long, long ago in ancient times, when just wishing a thing made it so . . .” Jinhua’s favorite story is the one he tells about the goddess Nüwa, who was just like Mama, and Baba says it is his favorite story, too, because Mama was the one he loved most of all—except for Jinhua—and he loved her that much even though she was only a concubine and not a first wife like Timu.

  “Long, long ago in ancient times, when just wishing a thing made it so, there lived a goddess.” And here Baba always pauses, and he and Jinhua continue telling the story in unison because they have told it so often together that in each of their heads it is as ripe as a melon that rolls from the vine, and the words slip from their tongues in just that way. “And the goddess was curious and wise and virtuous, and her name was Nüwa, and she was—just—like—Mama.” The last part of this—the words just like Mama—they always say slowly because the story is really about Mama, and their words—Baba’s and Jinhua’s—fall precisely together like two bright cherries joined on a stem. Jinhua wriggles with joy, hugging her pajama-covered knees to her chest.

  “And”—Baba continues the story by himself and Jinhua waits every time for every word—“Nüwa explored the beautiful earth when there were no people, and there was East and West and North and South, and she went to all of these places, but she was lonely and sad. And that is why, on one very special day, she made thinking, laughing, dancing creatures out of golden clay to make the world alive. And then,” Baba always adds, and Jinhua loves this part best of all, “she made a little child like you, Jinhua. In just the way that Mama made you. And this is how it really was long, long ago in ancient times.”

  2

  DESTINED TO BREAK

  First Wife (Timu)

  First Wife feels no grief. How could she? Just like something flying past your ear—hua—that quickly a husband is dead and the servants have stolen away.

  She had no warning. She supposes her husband—her honorable husband—did not know himself that the emperor would order his beheading. When he returned from Peking he said nothing. And then she thinks that surely, almost certainly, he knew that this would happen and didn’t say anything for the shame of it. That would be like him, to shrink from the shame when really she needed him to tell her what to do when he was gone, how to live a life that is not the same as it was before, and what to do with the concubine’s child. He knows she isn’t a strong woman. It was his long tongue, she supposes, that brought him this trouble.

  The coffin maker’s boy came quickly. He came to the third gate and said, “Lady, you will be needing a coffin.” He smiled and had an eye that wandered and was rheumy, and she didn’t speak—of course. He dropped his gaze to the ground, where it lingered as though nothing were something. She sent him away with a wave of her hand. She is not prepared to do this thing, to order a coffin for her husband. It is all so sudden, and there is so much to be thought about, so terribly much to be done.

  First Wife loops the bodhi-seed rosary around the loosely fisted fingers of her left hand. She positions it between the knuckle and joint of her forefinger in the place where the violet callus has bloomed from all her praying, and with her right hand she arranges the hem of her gown to kneel. One knee cracks—it is the right knee that gives her trouble in the autumn—and she lowers herself onto the flat, square cushion she uses when she sits in prayer. Her anger is close, and enlightenment feels very far away. Of all the things, it is the child about which she is most angry. About being left with her, just the two of them and no one else. The fat key with which she locked the gate to the courtyard, the child inside, has left flecks of rust on the palm of her hand, and she notices this only now. Her feet ache inside their bindings as she settles her weight on the cushion.

  It is evening, and at last the child has stopped calling for her father. She does not yet know that he will never come again. A bald nut drops from a branch and skitters along the lichen-pitted roof tiles, and this is the only sound First Wife can hear. With her thumb she presses on the first bead of the rosary and feels pain like a bruise. I feel and hear and remember as though from the inside of my own grave, she is thinking. It has been this way for a long time even though she—unlike her husband, and unlike the concubine he loved so much—is alive and of this world. Freshly lit incense unleashes curling, potent veins of spice, and a dove calls out from the silver almond tree in the garden, where it is hiding under a pink sky. Its call is a ruffled, throaty sound that makes her want to weep. Gulu, gulu, gulu.

  First Wife moves her thumb to the next bead, and the rosary shifts across the callus. The dove calls out a second time from the same almond tree that the concubine planted when the child was plump in her belly. First Wife remembers angling her eye to the merest sliver of a crack in the gate and watching her. With her widening hips and the spill of her blue gown as she knelt to take the earth into her hands, the concubine was beautiful and virtuous and surrounded by people who loved her.

  The tree was just a sapling then. Now First Wife’s loathing blooms like a fresh boil, even though the concubine’s joy was as brief, almost, as a drink of tea. She died giving birth to the child, whom she has locked behind the gate, and that was seven years ago. First Wife wished then that it had been the child who had died. She wishes it now. That would have been a just and equitable fate.

  Outside, the pink sky is disappearing quickly to the west. It is getting dark and cold, and there is no servant left to light the lanterns or the brazier. No one to bring mimosa-bark tea to nourish First Wife’s heart, or a simple meal for her supper. She overheard Lao Zhao, the cook, this afternoon warning the other servants. It is his habit to discuss things loudly, especially things that make him important in the eyes of others. He told the servants that a headless body cannot proceed in the proper way to the afterlife. He smacked his lips at the delicious sound of his own voice, and First Wife could not close her ears to what he was saying. At the edge of the kitchen wall she kept herself hidden, and she ground the beads of the rosary painfully into her palm, and she listened. She kept her eyes closed and heard cruelty in Lao Zhao’s voice, and the creaking of the beads, and the ò’s and a’s and ai’s of the servants. Lao Zhao said that the master’s ghost was tormented, that he would be back this very night to disturb the household. “Demand your wages and go,” was his advice to the others. Smack. Smack. He has such a large voice, and people listen to what he says, and he carried on for a long time. He said that he had gone to watch; he saw it happen, this terrible thing, and it took only one stroke of the sword to slice through the bone and tissue that joined the venerable master’s head to his venerable body. Thank Old Heaven and thank Earth for that, First Wife thought when she heard this. The executioner has earned his silver coin, and in this, at least, she has been a worthy wife. She has given her husband the kind of death that happens in an instant. But then she heard Lao Zhao asking, “Who will fetch the pieces of the master’s body? Will the lady do it? Does she have the strength?” And then he asked another question. “What will she do with the child, who is her sworn enemy?”

  It was while Lao Zhao was talking that First Wife decided to lock the gate to the child’s courtyard. Just for a while, she told herself, so that she could turn this all over in her mind. So that she could decide what to do. No one asked her if she needed any last thing. Not a single one of them, even though she paid them twice what they were owed, or more. She would not have answered if they had, of course. She has said nothing, not a word to anyone, since the day the child’s mother was delivered in a red sedan chair, dressed as a real bride in vermilion, and carried to a bridal bed, a new one just for her that was littered with dates and eggs and pomegranate seeds to make her fertile. On that day, First Wife swallowed once, and with that swallow she consumed her own voice. Forever and for always, she told herself. Since then she has uttered only soundless prayers and had nothing at all to say in the worldly realm.

  Now that everyone has gone and the child is locked
away, First Wife moves her thumb to the third bead of the rosary and searches her memory for the words to the heart sutra, the way to a peaceful mind. A fly, orange eyed and glossy winged, alights on her wrist at the edge of her sleeve, and she cannot find the words to the sutra. She has not yet ordered her husband’s coffin or arranged to collect the pieces of him, and her heart feels large and pulpy, like a swollen, aching piece of fruit that fills her chest. The fly meanders on pinprick legs along a vein on her hand, and First Wife is thinking of the child and wondering whether she has fallen asleep and reminding herself that she loathes her almost as much as she loathed the concubine, or maybe more. And she is thinking, too, that she should be weeping blood for her dead husband, but instead she wants to feel his touch in a loving way—just once more after all this time. Kneeling, she shifts her weight and the fly leaves her and she knows now more clearly than ever before that she, unlike the concubine, has not been loved enough in this life.

  The go-between’s vulture hands are what First Wife thinks of when she wakes from a brief sleep, her heart pounding. She did not mean to close her eyes. The sky is black, and it is cold. She lights a lantern, ties a fresh knot in her hair, and tightens the bindings on her feet. She is clumsy with these tasks that are normally done for her by others.

  First Wife didn’t much like the look of the woman who came to the gate almost as swiftly as the coffin boy did when the news got out. She was poor and ugly and unpleasant to look at. “Mama dead. Baba dead,” the woman said. “Lady want sell little girl?” She reached into the folds of her tunic with those awful hands, groping as though she were scratching herself. She pulled out a piece of paper, none too clean and badly folded, and held it up.

  “Contract,” she said. “You look. Tomorrow I come back. We talk.” Her eyes moved, taking in the view of all that lies inside the gate, and First Wife felt uneasy. She allowed the woman to put that paper in her hand.

  There has been no evening meal, and there will be no breakfast this morning—but First Wife has left hunger far behind. The paper is on her writing table. It is just as it would be, of course: white, the color of mourning; grimy, like a contract to sell cabbages or chickens or pigs; awkwardly written, as by a near illiterate. She begins to read aloud, following the characters on the page with the pale tip of her fingernail. After years of silence, her voice is clear and beautiful and surprising, and the words she reads are easily said aloud—and her hands and her heart are steady.

  Contract for Selling Child Who Is Not Wanted

  According to the Contract, First Wife of Child’s Father is the Seller and Go-Between Li is the Buyer. Mother and Father of Child are dead, as of yesterday morning by chopping off head in the case of Father, and a long time ago although no one has said exactly when in the case of Mother, and no one wants to keep the Child. Therefore, First Wife is agreeing to sell her. The buying price is one silver tael per year, which is Seven Years Old. The Buyer, who is Li as is already said, has agreed to the price but before she pays the money she will check the Child for sickness and defects. After this, she will be sold as is. She will be taken away and no one can try to find her. It is hereunto agreed that after this Li will be allowed to sell the Child to any Buyer for any amount of coins and that the Buyer will be allowed to do anything to her that he wants, even punish her in any way or sell her to any other person. If the Child is killed or has any accident, all people will agree that it is the Will of Heaven and not the fault of anyone.

  First Wife’s thumb is on the eighteenth bead. She is unwilling, but memories claw at her, and tonight, before she goes to her bed, she must visit one last time the large space in her mind in which her baby lived. Something in her arms is cold and precious. She cradles it: the damp and almost weightless husk of her newborn son. The fluids of a new life glisten on the baby’s skin. His tiny fists are closed, as tight as walnuts; his eyelids, pink and petal thin, collapse in folds. He is all that matters, for a woman must bear her husband a son, and she has done this thing, and it was painful almost beyond endurance. His future is long, she remembers thinking about the child in her arms, and mine is now assured. And then she felt Si Shen in the room, and the death spirit threatened her quietly, gently, and then he took the baby’s toes, his shoulders, and his earlobes, his tiny elbows and his precious face. He made them still and took away her baby’s life.

  First Wife remembers kneeling on the flat gray pillow, just as she is kneeling now. Her husband’s soft slippers came; he placed his fine hand on her shoulder, and he, too, was weeping. She turned away and knew it was forever; she knew then that she would become what she is now: a demon with an empty mouth for the rest of this miserable life that she has not yet finished living. The eighteen beads of the rosary cannot calm her today. She takes a breath into her demon’s body and then another, and she tells herself, The concubine’s child means less than nothing.

  This is not the truth; the child means everything. First Wife’s gown is damp with sweat from the backs of her thighs, and the sweat is as heavy as blood and as heavy as the fluids of birth, and she wonders in a fleeting way whether the child, alone behind the locked gate, is afraid of the dark. The words to the heart sutra come to her now and suddenly, and she needs them more than ever before.

  Go, go, go beyond. Go thoroughly beyond and establish yourself in enlightenment.

  She speaks the words aloud. She repeats them over and over, long into the night, and understands impermanence. And when it is morning, First Wife goes in search of scissors and a razor, telling herself, The child will be punished, but first I must begin to punish myself.

  3

  TIME THAT HAS PASSED

  Jinhua

  A hacking cough in the distance is the night-soil man with the wobbly voice and opium in his throat. Jinhua lies still for a moment in her bed, busy with remembering. She has been waiting for Baba for one whole day and one whole night, calling his name until her voice hurt, waiting to tell him that she has lost her wiggling, jiggling tooth. She is hungry enough to eat the wind, and her eyes are fat from crying. She remembers now that the red gate was stuck shut yesterday for all the day. No one has come to look after her. No one has come.

  Outside, birds are twittering, jijizhazha, and now their conversation stops and the only noises are the sounds that Jinhua is making. She straightens a leg, shifts a hip tightly wrapped in bedding, and opens her eyes to a blank wall. She is not used to waking up alone. She is not used to putting herself to bed.

  Last night when the sky turned black, she tried to think of a story to tell Baba when he comes. One that he has never heard before about the Monkey King, who is extremely strong and can leap a distance of one hundred and eight thousand li in a single somersault, and who has traveled far, far to the west. She will invent a new and special story in which the Monkey King bravely defeats the barbarians in a great battle fought high up in the trees and then sends them and their ships, guns, and opium away from China, back to where they came from. She held the book about the Monkey King’s journey in her lap but didn’t open it. She lay down and curled herself around it. And then she told herself, Tomorrow everything will be the way it always has been. Meiling, the maid, will come with breakfast rice and her soft, soft voice that is, Jinhua thinks, the way a real mother’s voice would be. And Baba will come too, through the red gate, wearing his blue gown that smells like sweet tobacco and has the word shou for “long life” woven into the fabric in more places than Jinhua can count—and she will run to him and Baba will catch her, and she will take his braided queue in her fingers and wrap it around her wrist as many times and as tightly as she can. And—even if the emperor calls for Baba he will—

  Tomorrow all will be well, Jinhua told herself as her eyes fluttered shut and she drifted off to sleep.

  So—now it is tomorrow, and the morning light is brown through wooden shutters, and the air smells of nothing. Jinhua turns toward the door. The bedding catches her hips like a belt tightening, and she gasps. The door is open. Someone is here
in the room. The person is not Baba. It is not Meiling or any of the other servants. It is someone she does not know. Someone without any hair.

  “In a single day all has become empty, and enlightenment is near.” Dark eyes glitter in a silver face, and the words are a chant, and the face belongs to a woman, as thin as a needle, dressed like a nun in dull gray. Jinhua waits.

  “Your father was my husband before he loved your mother,” the woman says, and Jinhua sees that it is First Wife, Timu, standing there and saying these words. “And now there is only emptiness without body or feeling or will.” Timu’s voice fades in and out, and she is as bald as a mushroom, and Jinhua’s tongue explores the hard-edged gap where her tooth is lost. She doesn’t move. She is a little afraid, but more than this she is astonished because Timu is talking, saying things out loud even though she has made a vow to never speak and to always be sad, and she made this vow a long, long time ago.

  In one hand, Timu is holding something long and white; in the other she has something dark and strange. She begins to move the hand with the strange, dark thing—it is Timu’s left hand—and she moves it very slowly. “Look,” Timu says. “This is emptiness.” Her prayer beads that she never doesn’t wear slip at the edge of her sleeve. “There are no eyes, no ears, no nose, no tongue,” she is saying, and Timu is spreading her fingers carefully like a fan opening, tilting her hand, making the beads tremble at her wrist. “Look, look, look,” she murmurs, and her face is scary, and she and Jinhua both watch as the dark thing falls, separating into clumps that drop to the floor and settle in mounds at Timu’s feet. “And now there is no hair. It was the last thing to hold me in the realm of earthly attachments, the last thing to make me a wife. Now it is gone, and so is your father.”