The Valley of Amazement (28 page)

Loyalty was pleased to see me in the wedding clothes. He wore a tailored English suit. I leaned against him and whispered that I would be his fairy maiden tonight, the one he had wished to court in Hidden Jade Path. After twelve banquet dishes, Loyalty’s wedding gifts were toted out, which would enable me to refurnish my boudoir:
a dining table and chairs in the latest Western style, an armchair, sofa, and chaise longue, three flower stands, a desk, a bookcase, novels in English, a bureau, two wardrobe closets, a Western canopy bed, a Persian carpet, three Tiffany lamps, and a tabletop Victrola. At the very end of the ceremony, he placed on my finger a jade-and-diamond ring. He discreetly left on one of the flower stands a red silk envelope of money, which I saw Madam Li take away.

We thanked the wedding guests and made our way to the boudoir. As I passed Magic Gourd, she gave me a nod of encouragement but her face bunched into worry. Or was it sympathy in knowing what awaited me?

The doorway was hung with dozens of red banners, and pots of flowers crowded the entrance. Inside, two lamps glowed and the room was scented with roses and jasmine. The marriage bed was enclosed within golden curtains of silk batiste.

Magic Gourd entered bearing hot towels and tea. She held the matches we would use for the Lighting of the Big Candles.

“We don’t need to perform those old-fashioned customs,” Loyalty said. I was disappointed. I liked the mock-wedding rituals I had watched as a child. He gave Magic Gourd a tip, an indication that she should leave. The door closed, and we were alone for the first time.

“My little captive,” he said, and stared at me fully, head to toe. He kissed me. Magic Gourd had not allowed the actor to do that. He ran his hands over my back, my sides, and kissed my neck, and my eyes blurred with the sensation. He returned to my mouth. This was the feeling of love. He unbuttoned my dress. Everything was happening so quickly I could not remember what I was supposed to do. I was glad he had not asked me to sing a song. The dress fell to my ankles. He lifted off the slip, and as he removed the rest of my clothes, he kissed each newly revealed part of me. He freely inspected me, touched my breasts. This was love.

He motioned for me to go to the bed. I slipped behind the curtains and lay as gracefully as I could on my side. Through the golden scrim, I watched his shadow as he lazily removed his clothes. I saw he was already aroused when he parted the curtain. I had expected this would not occur until later. Suddenly I became frightened. I knew what would come, the cracking of the watermelon, the burning rocks, Peach Blossom Spring gushing blood. He lay next to me and inspected my face and stroked the slopes of my cheek, chin, nose, and forehead. When he touched my trembling mouth, my lips naturally parted.

“Keep your lips sealed. Do not open them, no matter what I do. Do not make a sound.” He again traced the curves of my face and I closed my eyes. Suddenly I felt his hand cup my pudenda. I gave out a gasp of alarm, then murmured I was sorry.

He laughed. “Ah, good, this was not rehearsed. It is truly you.” He reminded me to close my mouth. He squeezed my pudenda softly, as if determining the ripeness of a peach. I pressed my eyes closed as he parted the lips of my pudenda. “There it is, the pearl, the center of you,” he said. “Such a lovely pale pink. I chose the color of your pearl necklace correctly.” He showed me the necklace and then tucked the beads along my cleft. “There,” he said, “pearls joining the pearl.” He suddenly drew the necklace upward, and I caught my breath with a spasm of surprise.

“Keep your mouth closed,” he ordered firmly. I was disappointing him. I clamped my lips tightly, and over and over, they opened, despite my efforts. He tucked pillows under my hips so that my pudenda was lifted high. My panic was growing. Was this Climbing the Mountain? He bent my legs and pressed them wide open. Double-Winged Bird? Seagull Wings on the Edge of the Cliff? He knelt between my knees. I felt his stem nudge my opening and he slowly pushed in the tip, and I prepared myself for pain. But now we were rocking from side to side. Pair of Swooping Eagles. I smiled at him, thinking he had already entered me. He lifted his hips away from me. I assumed he was one of those men who finished quickly. No matter. The defloration was a success. I would tell Magic Gourd she was wrong. There was no pain.

Then, all at once, his stem thrust hard into me, farther this time, through my center, gutting me inside out. Against everything Magic Gourd had warned me not to do, I screamed and tried to push him off. He pinned my arms down and stared at my mouth. “Now you can keep your mouth open. The other mouth is open, too.”

Nothing had prepared me for this. Magic Gourd’s instructions, her warnings, his nostalgia, my urges, the actor’s lessons, our yearning, unfulfilled and filled—all vanished as I pleaded for him to stop.

But why should he stop? This was not romance or yearning. He had paid for my pain. This was business.

Y
EARNING RETURNED, UNFULFILLED.

All that I wished became an illusion the moment he deflowered me and I saw victory in his face. He had instantly satisfied his own dream as a seventeen-year-old boy—to have any of the flowers he desired at Hidden Jade Path. I thought our romance was love, but it was the commerce of romance that had brought us together and would also lie between us for the duration of his contract as my patron.

As I lay clutched with pain, he murmured, “You were expensive, Violet, nearly twice what I gave to another popular courtesan.” He must have expected I would be pleased to hear this kind of flattery. Instead, I felt I had instantly become a whore. He had wooed me, as any suitor would his favorite courtesan. He wanted the chase
and capture, the self-denial and mock agony in between. My agony was real.

Magic Gourd brought me a soup with special herbs that she said would ease my suffering and allow me to sleep. Only then did Loyalty ask in surprise if I was in pain. He had not considered that his ecstasy might not be mine. He helped me up and carried me to the divan. Each of his steps jostled my wounded body. Magic Gourd removed the bloody sheets and quilt. Loyalty studied it with solemn interest. “I did not realize there would be so much blood.”

The next morning, when I awoke, I thought I was swaying in a boat. Magic Gourd was nearby. “I gave you too much soup.” The scorching pain had been replaced with a dull ache. Loyalty had left for a business meeting, and she arranged for dinner to be brought to my room when he returned in the evening. Persian pajamas and a robe lay on the bed.

“Rest,” she said. “I’m sorry you suffered so much. Some girls have brief pain and then it is over. Others are like you and me. You had your gate locked with two bolts. The harder it is to break in, the more pain. You will feel better by tomorrow.”

I did not believe her. “Will I have to endure this again tonight?”

“I will speak to him. You have a year together. I will suggest he explore your mouth instead. He may be kind and simply let you rest.”

That evening, he was kind. He asked many questions about the pain. Was it stabbing or searing or pounding … He almost seemed proud that he had injured me. He lay on the bed, facing me. There was no longer any need to be flirtatious or mysterious. That had been our intimacy, and I did not yet know what would replace it. I was no longer the virgin and I did not know whom I should mimic. His face looked larger and his features had changed slightly, as if he were the brother of the man who had once ached for me.

“Was it my free spirit that made you think I was more valuable than the other courtesan?” I asked.

He laughed. “Your spirit always invigorates me—suddenly.”

His penis was standing straight up like a soldier. “What part of my spirit did you like best?” I said tersely. “Was it my business advice? If you made money because of my advice, would you have paid more?”

He was quiet, then turned my face toward him. “Violet, I misjudged you. You weren’t ready for this life, and now you find it demeaning to be here. But don’t demean me as if I were an inconsiderate customer.”

“You paid for my bud, not for my spirit.”

“My words have always been true. You are my living dream. I met you when I was the awkward boy who became a successful man and is beside you now. You took me to my past and back again, and when I am with you, I feel you know me—or did, until I became your patron and made you regret this change.”

“Please take me away from here.”

“How can I do that? Where would you go?”

“Your house.”

“Now you’re asking the impossible.”

He was saying I did not belong in his society. He would never take me as his wife, and since he had no wife, he could not take me even as a concubine. I would have refused to be one, in any case.

“We have a year together, Violet. We’ve pledged fidelity. Here we are lovers, together in a world like Peach Blossom Spring. We can freely enjoy romance and pleasures. You have freedom from worry for a year. Let’s be happy.”

“Freedom from worry is happiness? What happens at the end of the year?”

“When a contract is over,” he said carefully, “my affection for you will remain. The expectations will be different. But I will still visit you, if you let me.”

“Will you have affection for another and visit her as well?”

“This talk has become absurd! You lived in a courtesan house nearly all your life. You saw the nature of that world. Yet now you cannot understand how it possibly pertains to you. Yankee privilege. I will not give that back to you. And I don’t want to speak about this again.”

“I cannot speak? Have you bought my mind and words as well?”

He dressed, and when he stood in the doorway, he said with surprising gentleness: “You are overwrought and my presence makes it worse. So I’ll leave you to reflect on what I’ve said over the months since we first met. Ask yourself whether I have ever been dishonest. Did I delude you? Why am I here? I won your heart because you won mine.”

I was afraid he was leaving for good and that he would ask Madam to cancel the contract.

But then he said, “By tomorrow, you’ll be better rested and your mind will be clearer. I have a little gift for you, but I prefer to wait until tomorrow.”

The following night, I pretended to be calm. I apologized. I said it was true that I found it hard to accept my new station in life. He gave me a bracelet of twisted gold braid. There was only a little pain when he entered me this time, and he murmured endearments, which eased my heart and mind: “You are my timeless dream;” “Our spirits are together;” he thanked me tenderly for bearing the pain and his ignorance that I had suffered. He said that I would always be his timeless dream.

Over the next year, we had many arguments. When he paid his generous stipend each month, instead of being grateful, I was reminded that I had been purchased. He did not visit every day. Sometimes I did not see him for a week. “Business in Soochow,” he said. Soochow—the city of the most desired courtesans, who had soft voices. Shanghai courtesans lied and said they were from Soochow. And he went there for business! I wanted him to take me along. Madam Li had allowed me to go on carriage rides with him into the countryside, believing I had no desire to run away from the house. But I did want to run away—to his house, if only he would take me. I held out hope that he would change his mind. I was faithful, of course, but I did not believe he was. At parties, I saw him give his seductive gaze to many women—to even the attendants. He protested to me that he had no such “mesmerizing eyes,” as I had accused him of having. “I have two eyes like everyone else.”

The thought of his future delight with other women tormented me. Another woman would feel this same pleasure with him. She would have his seductive gaze, intimate words, his mouth, tongue, and cock, his understanding of her, his love. She would convince him he could not live without her, a woman who was purely Chinese and did not bear the stigma in elite society of careless breeding. With each wave of joy came another one of fear. Perhaps his love was only temporary as well, a season’s worth.

“This is the jealousy I warned you against,” Magic Gourd said. “It is an illness. It will destroy everything. You’ll see soon, if you cannot stop it.” She repeated her warnings every day, and they stayed in my head like the noise of mosquitoes in my ears.

The noise in my head disappeared in the summer. As if it were a sign of our future together, Carlotta rubbed against him and allowed him to pick her up. We had a season of calm, a lull in worries. He visited me at night nearly daily. At the parties, he gave his gaze to me alone. We laughed and did not argue. I made an effort to show him the endless joy we would have during a lifetime of Peach Blossom Spring. He was more attentive to me and I was inattentive to what I imagined were his faults.

On hot afternoons, we lay naked atop the sheets and took turns fanning each other. We poured cool water over our necks as we lay together in the tub. On some evenings, I teased and seduced him, and on other nights, he seduced me and I succumbed. We talked about the past, about our childhoods. We often retold how we met in Hidden Jade Path. The next day, we would lavish the story with more details. He imagined the delights he would have enjoyed if Carlotta had not wounded him. Whatever he imagined, I fulfilled. I, in turn, told him about my loneliness, my abandonment by both my mother and father. Just in telling it, my loneliness vanished. He laughed as I recounted the naughty things I had done to the courtesans when I was growing up. He asked about the American details of my life—what was the famous Lulu Mimi like? “She was driven by success,” I said. “Like you.”

He lit incense coils to keep the mosquitoes away, and I took those small gestures as love. He often said the words I wanted to hear: “I am consumed by you.” “I ache for you.” “I adore you.” “I love you.” “You are the greatest treasure of my life.” I had never before felt the wideness of love.

And then the fears began when I saw him speak to his former favorite courtesan at a party. She flirted, and he seemed delighted. We argued that night, and I continued to press him on his feelings for me compared with others, questions he refused to answer because, he said, it was like feeding stones into a deep well. He knew how angry I could become, and that was also knowledge of me he would take when he left, along with the secrets I had confessed about my childhood and loneliness and pranks. He possessed an understanding of my needs, and yet he would no doubt roll and twist his body in bed with another woman after I had become a former favorite in his lifetime of conquests and stipends.