The Valley of Amazement (29 page)

“It pains me, Violet,” he said, “that I am the source of your greatest unhappiness when I had once been the opposite.”

Two months before the end of the contract, when we were having the usual late-night tea, snacks, and arguments, he said he did not want to be drawn into any more of my endless misery. “I was enchanted with your free spirit, and jealousy has killed that in you. You live in a prison of fear and suspicion. The truth is, I’ve indulged you in ways no patron ever would have. You say my words were never genuine. A patron is not required to be genuine and yet I have been. I know you will never stop with this harangue unless I ask you to marry me, and that I will never do. Even if society let me, I would not consign myself to a wife who berates me, imagining that I have withheld part of me that does not exist. Since we are both unhappy, I think it’s best that I not visit you anymore. You should use these two months to prepare yourself to be a real courtesan. You will learn the difference, and in time, I hope you look back and appreciate my feelings for you.” He gathered his coat and hat. “Accept love when it’s offered, Violet. Return love and not suspicion. Then you’ll receive more.”

He continued to pay the monthly stipend. I waited for his anger to subside, as it always had, and for him to return to me. I waited for two months. He was considerate enough to wait until the contract had officially ended before he pursued a popular courtesan. When I heard this news, I refused to be brokenhearted. Every day I refused.

T
HREE MONTHS AFTER
the end of the contract, I was invited to attend a party hosted by Loyalty’s friend Eminent
Tang. He said he had been interested in me when he saw me at Loyalty’s party, but he could not say anything once he saw Loyalty was besotted.

Magic Gourd was quick to tell me Eminent Tang was a good prospect. She reminded me that he was the one who had made a fortune in the construction of new buildings along the Bund. He was bound to grow even richer as Shanghai grew. As she had hoped, Eminent became my most ardent suitor. He was also my first customer and not someone I loved or yearned for. When I imagined him touching me, I felt neither dread nor excitement. “Are you losing your eyesight?” Magic Gourd said. “That man is pleasing enough to look at all day without blinking. After you’ve been on your knees as long as I have, you’ll kowtow to the gods to finally have a client who won’t cause you to pretend he is someone else.”

He was thirty-two, and every time I saw him, I noticed he wore shoes of another kind of leather—lamb, calf, young snake, baby alligator, baby ostrich … How many times would I see him before he ran out of a variety of baby animal skins? His shoes made me think he was eccentric. I hoped he was not a member of the Green Gang. If he was, I would not be able to bear touching him. I had accepted my life in the world of flowers, but I would never accept what the gangsters had done to bring me here.

“If you refused every man who has dealings with the Green Gang,” Magic Gourd said, “you would be without half of your customers. They are part of government and business. Even some of the police in top positions are members. They are not all terrible people. In any large society, you have good people and bad.” She pointed out Eminent Tang’s good qualities: He was the favorite customer of many courtesan houses in Shanghai and had had his share of great beauties. If I secured his patronage it would increase my status. This, to my mind, did not sound like a recommendation of fine qualities.

“He’s dull,” I said.

“Oyo!
He is not there to entertain you. Just make sure you are not dull. You are the one who has to provide excitement, and in the ways they want but don’t yet know it. This is not like being with Loyalty Fang. He was different. You were lovers. That does not often happen.”

She allowed Eminent to visit me in my room for tea. The boudoir was behind a twelve-panel screen, and Magic Gourd had positioned the screen so that part of the bed could be seen. It was glowing by lamplight. She found an excuse to leave, letting us know she would return in ten minutes. This would discourage him from starting his patronage without a contract. Eminent rushed to tell me how much I occupied his mind. He never forgot the business advice I had provided at Loyalty’s party last year. In fact, he said, whenever he recalled it, his admiration for me rose. They were the same words Loyalty had used to joke that he had an erection. Eminent Tang, however, said them with such seriousness, I knew he meant it was admiration alone and that I should not laugh.

He requested me at parties hosted by his friends at other houses. He had a businesslike demeanor with everyone, except me. When his eyes found mine, he grinned and became boyish. Magic Gourd had pointed out to me that every suitor who was infatuated with a courtesan transformed into his youthful self-being at that stage of his life when his sexual urgings were new. When suitors became boyish they were reckless and vulnerable to being generous.

Eminent Tang had given me extravagant gifts over the past month, including a ring with rare imperial green jade and diamonds. I allowed him to visit my boudoir twice more—tea and snacks only. He professed that he was besotted to near insanity and wanted nothing more than to please me—and I understood his meaning: He wanted to please me in my bed. Tedious politeness. Magic Gourd advised that I invite him to spend the night when we met at the next party he hosted. “Do so with the same subtlety he uses with you. While admiring the banquet food, say you would enjoy learning about his mother’s Shanghai cooking, what his favorite dishes are. This subject is always very special to a man. They all have a warm feeling with this sort of talk. When he asks when he can see you, simply say, ‘Tonight, if you are not too tired of talking.’” As Magic Gourd had predicted, his mother’s cooking put him in an erotic mood. The party ended early that night.

Magic Gourd had already prepared my room by placing gifts from other men in places where he would see them. Mosquito coils were lit, so that we could be naked without slapping and scratching. “We will allow him intimate favors this first night and then he will need to wait another three. Then he can have a second. If necessary, we may need to let him have a third. But if you do, don’t provide him with everything he wants. Put him off without being obvious. Promise to provide more the next time, but then let him know that you will also be seeing another suitor the next night. In all likelihood, he will offer to be your patron so that no one else can have your attentions.”

“Perhaps he will lose his admiration for me after one night and not care if I withhold anything after that,” I said. I was certain I could not feign the same intimate feeling or excitement I had with Loyalty. He would be merely a customer.

In the early evening, just an hour before the party, Magic Gourd told me that Loyalty would attend as well. “He is, after all, a friend of Eminent Tang’s.”

”He must know I’ll be there. Everyone knows Eminent Tang is wooing me.” She said quietly that he was bringing his favorite courtesan. “What do I care which giggling girl he brings?” I was angry that Magic Gourd told me this and then tried to console me. He was a past client. That was all. I was inexperienced at the time and allowed myself to expect too much.

“Madam Li was wrong to let you take a contract with Loyalty for a year. You had the glimmer-eyed look of a girl who thinks she will marry. Loyalty led you to think this by being too good to you. Of course, you confused that with love. If Eminent Tang becomes your patron, act like a true courtesan and make him feel carefree and so happy that he reports nothing but praise to those who gossip.”

Eminent Tang greeted me with his besotted, boyish face. He invited me to sit next to him rather than have me stand. He encouraged me to eat special dishes he had ordered. I was about to invite him to spend the night when I saw Loyalty enter with his favorite. He came toward me. But it was only to politely greet Eminent Tang, the host. He then greeted me warmly yet with the distance of politeness. He complimented my jacket, one of the three I had made with the money he gave me to replace the one ruined by his brother. I regretted wearing it, but I thanked him for the compliment.

“The color suits you,” he said.

I did not need to think of what I should say. A courtesan with plump cheeks and big eyes came to his side and reported merrily that after Eminent’s party, there would be a drinking game at her house. He could play until exhausted and then spend the night. She made it clear that he was likely to become her patron. He was going to a drinking party. I was going to have a conversation about Eminent’s mother’s cooking. Loyalty said a few more customary polite words, ones that he could have said to anyone, and then his favorite pulled him away. How did other courtesans accept the kind of humiliation of seeing a lover with another courtesan? A few minutes later, I invited Eminent Tang to my room to play an American game of cards. He accepted immediately.

True to his word, he wanted nothing more than to please me. He was polite and asked if he could touch me: my face, my arm, my leg, my breast, my pudenda. It was tedious, but I was also glad I could anticipate what he would do. When I removed my clothes, he was grateful rather than charged with the mutual lust that Loyalty and I had shared. I kept my eyes on Eminent’s face to remove Loyalty from my mind. He was kind, gentle, and polite. He could not possibly be a gangster. I closed my eyes, and each time I opened them, I studied more of his face. He was attractive, yet I felt no desire. I pretended to be the slowly awakening virgin. My eyes enlarged with mock uncertainty as he pressed against me. I closed my eyes and let him move inside me. And with his predictable rhythmic strokes, I was comforted and began to cry.

Before he awoke in the morning, I had already bathed and donned a loose robe. He looked like a sleeping boy. Even his body was slim and youthful. I was about to call for breakfast, but he pulled me toward him, and we began again. I was careful to provide the right balance: no longer the awakening virgin, but one who has been newly awakened. I remembered those courtesans at Hidden Jade Path who knew what suited their clients. I had imitated saying the words they said with every suitor. I did not find it beneath me to say them now. I was proud of my skill, and with Eminent Tang, I already knew he wanted to feel he had conquered my reticence, and I seduced him into thinking he had.

That afternoon, Eminent Tang met with Madam Li and offered a contract for two seasons. I was taken aback that I had been reduced in value to just the summer and fall. Magic Gourd assured me that this was a good offer and a better arrangement than more seasons. If a patron proves unbearable you would not be stuck for too long. “You may think he is easy to please now. Once he has a contract, he will want much more. Do what you can to keep him besotted for as much of those two seasons as you can. That way you won’t have to work so hard. In two seasons, he won’t be besotted with you. Then he will seek another so he can become besotted once again.”

“Have you ever known a man whose love was genuine and lasted more than a few seasons?”

“Every flower wishes she could find a man like that,” she said. “Eventually, we learn not to wish. But hope came true for me twice. Once it was with the Poet Ghost. You know about him. The other was a living man. He was not as rich as most. He owned a small paper factory. And he already had a wife and two concubines. But he declared he loved me. He said this many times and he told me all the reasons. It was not my talents or my skill at flattery or my knowledge of all the different pleasures. He loved my strong character, my genuine heart, my simple good-hearted nature. I spent a lot of my savings to buy him a gold watch. He told me that he drew it out of his pocket every half hour to determine if his workers were keeping pace. One day, two factory workers killed him. Before they were executed, they said they killed him for both the watch and for his mistreatment of them. My lover’s widow kept the watch. I did not want it anyway. I thought it had killed him. However, that was true love. It can happen.”

1915

Over the next few years, I discovered that men are alike in many ways. They enjoy flattery of their character and their expression of that in bed. Their leadership. Their hard work. Their generosity. Their persistence and diligence. Their superiority. Most needed a continual stream of flattery from many women. I understood that. I also knew from the start how long a patron’s interest would last by the length of the contract. This ceased to surprise me, and thus, it did not bother me—although in a few instances I was pleased that the contract had been
extended for another season. And with some I was also less than grateful that it had been.

Each man had his particular erotic fantasies, which on the surface seemed similar. It might be a caress on his back—and it might be with a finger, a toe, a breast, a tongue, a feather duster, a flyswatter, or a whip. The more skilled I was at recognizing these subtle differences of need, the more I could find what else he might like and use that knowledge to good advantage. I could provide it once more, then withhold it, then provide it again without warning, or after he had given me another gift. One man liked to wash my pudenda. Another liked to peer into the back of my mouth. Another wanted me to sing a mountain maiden song as I undressed with my back to him. Another wanted me to titillate myself using the pearl polisher he gave me while he hid behind the screen. I told Magic Gourd what each man liked, thinking there would be one she had never seen. “I’ve encountered the same,” she always said.

I was proud when I could finally tell her about a fetish she had never experienced, nor would she ever. It was to wear prim Western clothes and say in English that I did not understand the man’s repeated sexual demands, which he gave in Chinese. He would then push me down—I preferred the bed and not the floor—and bounce and buck until I said in Chinese that I could now understand him perfectly because his bold knight coming through my gates had united our minds as well.

N
EARLY THREE YEARS
after my defloration, Loyalty Fang sent a note, asking to meet me. I thought about whether to accept.