The Valley of Amazement (56 page)

He rolled me over before I could answer and rutted me like a lunatic monkey, grunting and shouting. He had gone mad.

The next night, he was calm, but I was on guard. We talked about his son, how tall he had grown. Perpetual’s voice was gentle. He praised his son’s diligence in doing his studies. He cited the clever things he had said. He was in a happy mood when he undressed me and pulled me into bed. But within moments, he changed. He wrapped himself around me and stared into my eyes. He said nothing, but I could feel him encircling my thoughts, removing them, replacing them with his.

“What are you thinking, my love?” he said. “Is it about Edward?”

I was prepared. “I am not answering questions about Edward.” I tried to extricate myself, but he tightened his hold. “I don’t understand why you’re asking this. Edward is gone. You are here.”

“Why do you lie? The lie is what keeps us apart. The lie means you are hiding him and he is still here. I know you miss him, and there is no shame in that.”

It was true, I thought to myself, now more than ever. But I knew to say nothing.

“For me to love you completely,” he said in a pleading voice, “you must let go of him, and see him for who he was. He was a foreigner who said he had married you so he could have a free cunt. Why are you trembling? Is it for him? Are you remembering what he did to you, how he fucked you like a whore. He’s still here, isn’t he? A corpse between us in this bed.”

I resisted shouting at him. I spoke in a calm tone. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

“Come on, my love, tell me the truth. What sensation did you have when he first touched you? Shivers? Did you want him in you immediately? You were an experienced woman. There is no holding back desire with women like you. I felt that when we met. You wanted me. But I held back. I made you wait before I took you.” He embraced me roughly. His face was eerily expressionless. “How long did you wait for him? Did he take you from behind like a dog? Is that what foreigners do the best?” He turned me over and slammed himself into me. “Did he do this? Harder? Faster? Did you go to your knees for him? Why are you resisting? Show me what you did for him that you have never done with me. I want to have everything he had. I want what you gave to those men who were just business. I want what you’ve never given to any of those bastards.”

As he pounded me, I had no breath to speak. He was pressing on me with all his weight. He was crushing me. I tried to push him back. He shouted encouragement to me, as if I were aroused. I realized I had to give him what he needed to hear. So I shouted that he was mine and I was his. I shouted for him to take more of me, all of me. He eased up.

When he was finished, he lay back pleased and exhausted. He became tender again.

“My love, you are so dear to me. What’s this? Why do you look so unhappy?”

“I couldn’t breathe. I thought I was going to suffocate.”

“Did I hurt you? I lose control during lovemaking, you know that. I feel released and free, and I thought you were feeling the same. But I see that you weren’t. Were you thinking of that lying American bastard?”

The old and uncontrollable grief opened up. I felt pure hatred for Perpetual. “Of course I think about him. You can’t make my memory of him obscene.”

He stood up and went to the table and stared at me. The lamp illumined his face from below and his eyes appeared to be deep holes. His face was contorted. “I can’t believe you’re saying this after what we’ve just experienced.”

He shook me so hard my words came out in a warble as I yelled, “I’ll always love him! He gave me respect and
love. He gave me my daughter. And she’s more precious to me than anyone else on earth.”

Perpetual let go. He wrapped his arms around himself and his face crumpled in pain. “You love them both more than me?”

I was exhilarated that I had wounded him. I would wound him more until he hated me and would force me to leave. “I’ve never loved you,” I said. “You should let me go.”

He rose from the bed and came toward me. His face was as hard as gray rock. “I don’t recognize who you are anymore,” he said.

And then he punched me.

The side of my face went numb for a few moments before it throbbed, as if I were being punched again and again. I saw him through blurry eyes, a naked man wobbling back and forth, his mouth open in horror that he had hurt me. He reached for me and I told him to leave. I grabbed my robe, and as he apologized I continued to shout for him to leave. He grabbed my arm, and I shook him off, and walked away. I felt a nauseating kick to my back and I fell forward. Before I could catch my breath, he kicked me again, then grabbed my hair and pounded the side of my head with his knuckles. He was crying in a high-pitched voice. “Stop, stop, you must stop,” as if he were the one being beaten. He was crazy and was going to kill me. I felt the dull kicks and punches, the shock shifting from my shoulder, to my thigh, to my stomach. I heard Magic Gourd shouting at him, and he left me for a moment, and I heard her yowl in pain. He returned to beating me with his fists. After each punch, I saw small white circles that grew and faded to reveal his lurid face. I felt an explosion at the back of my head and before me was only blackness. He had blinded me. He pushed me and I had the sensation of falling backward, waiting for my body to hit the ground. I kept falling and waiting, looking at blackness through my blind eyes.

I
AWOKE TO
see a stranger’s hideous face swaying above me. I gasped. It was Magic Gourd. She had a black eye that had swollen shut. Half of her face was purple and red.

“I will slice off that little slug of his,” she said. “Bastard scum! You think I’m joking? I’ll find the sharpest knife in the kitchen when everyone has gone to sleep. If he’s going to kill you, we might as well kill him first.”

Her voice sounded soupy, as the words floated up and down. She had given me medicinal opium, she said. I was bobbing on cushions of air.

“I know his kind. Once he lets his cruelty out, he can’t put it back inside. He saw how scared you were and it excited him. When you scream in agony, he becomes tender, full of love. And then—poom!—he changes and wants you to cower so he can be tender again. Cruel men are addicted to the other person’s fear. Once they taste it, they have to feed it.” She cursed Perpetual, but then I could no longer hear her and wondered if I had gone deaf.

When I opened my eyes, I saw Pomelo’s blurry face moving in ripples. For a moment, I thought I had drowned and was viewing her from beneath water. I might be dead, but at least I wasn’t blind. She looked stern one moment, then forgiving. Why did I need to be forgiven? I tried to ask her but could not hear my words.

The opium faded and I awoke in nauseating pain. My eyes darted about, looking for Perpetual. I could not run from him. My legs and arms were stiff, and when I tried to move, sharp hot pain shot through every part of me. Pomelo was putting herb poultices on the bruises, but the weight of them made me ache even more.

I don’t know how many days had passed before Perpetual came with red-rimmed eyes, a remorseful face, and a gift. Despite my pain, I pushed away from him. If he killed me now, so be it.

“How could I have done this?” he cried. “I’ve made you afraid of me.” He claimed he was drunk, and that love, despair, and wine had caused this to happen. He also feared that his father’s ghost had possessed him. “All along, I did not feel I was myself. I was terrified by what was happening and yet I could not stop myself.”

I recalled his whimpers.
“Stop. Stop. You must stop.”

He examined the welt on my jaw, the bruises on my shoulders, arms, and legs, kissing each, causing waves of nausea to wash over me. He described the bruises as the colors of fruits—plums, kumquats, and mangoes. “How could I have done this to your precious skin, my love?”

He laid a silk pouch on the bed next to me. I would not touch it. He opened it and pulled out a hairpin, a gold-filigreed phoenix of inset turquoise with a fantail of pearls. It had belonged to his great-grandmother, he said. “See how much you mean to me.” He left it on the bed.

Every day he came and sat by the side of the bed for a few minutes. My fear had dulled to disgust. He brought fruit and candies. I did not eat them. He did not demand anything else. Two weeks after the beating, he asked if he could make love to me. He said he would be gentle. He wanted to do nothing ever again to hurt me. What could I do? Where could I go? What would he later do to me if I refused?

“I am you wife,” I said. “It’s your privilege.” My body shuddered when he touched me. I had the urge to get up and run. When I could finally keep my body still, his hands felt like stone weights over my dead flesh. He was not happy with my lack of passion but understood that it would take time before we both loved each other again fully and completely. When he left, I vomited. Soon after, I heard him shouting with excitement in Pomelo’s room. He bellowed to her and she shouted back that she belonged to him, every part of her. If she wanted him so
much, she could have him every night. I would help her. I would insist.

About once a week, Perpetual would become livid and beat me. It was not like the first time when I thought he would kill me. He would roar and I would yell back, knowing what this would unleash. According to Magic Gourd, the neighbors would sit close to their windows, cracking peanuts while enjoying our opera. He was careful to not hit my face. He would slap the back of my head instead, circle me, and kick my rump and legs. He would shove me against the wall and force me to look at him, then yank my hair and shove me to the floor. When I was too nauseated to continue, I curled into a ball. Magic Gourd had been right about Perpetual’s need to be cruel and later contrite. I loathed him and would not show him my fear.

When he was in my bed, I used memory to make him vanish. He could not see or hear my thoughts, and I brought back memory after memory until he left my bed. I went to the places I loved. The big salon where I chased Carlotta. She was batting a knotted ball of my mother’s handkerchief. I went to a street where I took carriage rides. I waved to men. I walked along a lane with shops that sold books, lockets, and watches. I bought candy. I went to Edward. We were in the car and I was driving. I was screaming because I thought I was going to run over a duck and her ducklings. I returned to an afternoon when it was too hot to do anything but lie on the divans opposite each other in the library. He was reading …
The Golden Bowl.
Listen, he said. What was I reading? A passage out of his new journal. His journal. I read the passage aloud. I was driving. I returned to our bedroom and saw Edward standing with Little Flora in his arms. It was nearly dawn, and the room was warm with sepia light, and grew lighter and filled with color. I could see them both so clearly, the look on Edward’s face as he murmured to Little Flora that she was miraculous. I felt the moment when he looked at me and said, “She’s the perfection of love, pure and unharmed.”

Why had he used that word
unharmed?
I had wanted to ask him later when Flora was asleep. There were so many things I meant to ask him, and now the only answers I would ever have were those I needed to believe. I knew what he was saying. I would protect her and all the harm that had been done to me would heal until I was pure again, no hate in my heart, only love.

M
AGIC
G
OURD AND
I went to Pomelo’s courtyard two or three times a week to play mahjong. We had become old flower sisters, who had given up our suspicions and promised not to undermine each other. One day she mentioned a dish she had eaten in Shanghai. I said in a whisper that Azure’s maid might hear and report to Perpetual that she was thinking of her old home.

“Azure’s maid?” she said. “That little spy doesn’t dare report anything about me. I have her by the neck. She and the young manservant are lovers, and I know for a fact he’s been giving her food stolen from the pantry. But she still gets her reward from Azure for spying on you. I suggest you let her earn her reward. When you know she’s spying, talk about your undying love for Perpetual and how much you admire Azure. Let the maid tell your lies.”

Pomelo put a record on the Victrola. “The maid can’t hear us talk with this music playing.” During our latest visit with Pomelo, she began the conversation over mahjong with a complaint. “I’ve been meaning to tell you that you cannot outdo me in my affection for Perpetual.”

I eyed her, wondering what she was up to.

“I can hear your business with Perpetual across the courtyard. You can hear mine. I sound more convincing than you. You’ve really become quite lackluster in your appreciation of his cock. I suggest you improve your actress skills. I was thinking we might compete with each other over who has fooled him the most with our fakery. We can be like the Shanghai flower sisters of our past, and vie for a man we don’t want. Scream with pleasure. Declare you are his forever. Tell him you love him and only him. Do it for the pride we once had in our profession.”

“I’d rather be beaten.”

“That’s what one of the other concubines said. She was strong like you.”

I held my breath. I had been waiting for her to tell me this. Until now, she had refused to say more. “Did she live in my room?”

“She was in my room. I was in yours until I was promoted. Her name was Verdant,” Pomelo said. “She once truly loved Perpetual, even after she came here and saw that he had lied. But when I arrived, she went crazy. She berated him for his dishonesty, mocked him for living in such a poor place. She no longer showed him any fondness or passion. And she would not cower. He beat her nearly brainless. He knocked out two teeth and damaged one eye so that she never could open that eyelid again. One night I heard her screaming even louder than usual. The next morning, she was gone. Naturally, I feared that Perpetual had killed her and already taken her body out of the house so that no one could see what he had done.”

“Ai-ya!”
Magic Gourd said.

I gasped and my stomach knotted.
Perpetual, a murderer.
This same end might await me.