“Cow chillo think you dooa jig-jig with new cow chillo, heya?”
“God’s blood, lassie, we’re alone now! Stop using pidgin! I’ve spent enough time and money teaching you the queen’s English!” Struan lifted her up at arms length. “Great God, May-may, you stink to high heaven.”
“You would too if you wear these smell clotheses.”
“
Had to wear these
smelly clothes,” he said, correcting her automatically. “What are you doing here, and why the smell clotheses?”
“Put me down, Tai-Pan.” He did, and she bowed sadly. “I arrive here in secret and in great sadness for you lost your Supreme Lady and all children by her but one son.” The tears streaked the grime on her face. “Sorry, sorry.”
“Thank you, lass. Aye. But that’s done now, and no grief can bring them back.” He patted her head and fondled her cheek, touched by her compassion.
“I do not know your custom. How long should I dress in mourning?”
“No mourning, May-may. They’re gone. There’s to be no weeping and no mourning.”
“I burned incense for their safe rebirth.”
“Thank you. Now, what are you doing here, and why did you leave Macao? I told you to stay there.”
“First bath, then change, then talk.”
“We’ve no clothes here, May-may.”
“My worthless amah, Ah Gip, is downstair. She carries clothes and my things, never mind. Where is bath?”
Struan pulled the bell cord and immediately the wide-eyed servant appeared.
“Cow chillo my bath, savvy? Amah can dooa. Get chow!” Then to May-may, “You say what chow can.”
May-may chattered at the gaping servant imperiously, and left.
Her peculiar swaying gait never failed to move Struan. May-may had bound feet. They were only three inches long. When Struan had bought her five years ago he had cut off the bandages and been horrified at the deformity that ancient customs had decreed was a girl’s essential sign of beauty—tiny feet. Only a girl with bound feet—
lotus feet—could be a wife or concubine. Those with normal feet were peasants, servants, low-class prostitutes, amahs or workers, and despised.
May-may’s feet were crippled. Without the binding tightness of the bandages her agony had been pitiful. So Struan had allowed the bandages to be replaced, and after a month the pain had lessened and May-may could walk again. Only in old age did bound feet become insensible to pain.
Struan had asked her then, using Gordon Chen as interpreter, how it was done. She had told him proudly that her mother had begun to bind her feet when she was six. “The bindings were bandages two inches wide and twelve feet long and they were damp. My mother wrapped them tightly around my feet—around the heel and over the instep and under the foot, bending the four small toes under the sole of the foot and leaving the big toe free. As the bandages dried they tightened and the pain was terrible. Over the months and years the heel closes near to the toe and the instep arches. Once a week the bandages are taken off for a few minutes and the feet cleaned. After some years the little toes become shriveled and dead and are removed. When I was almost twelve I could walk quite well, but my feet were still not small enough. It was then that my mother consulted a woman wise in the art of foot binding. On my twelfth birthday the wise woman came to our house with a sharp knife and ointments. She made a deep knife cut across the middle of the soles of my feet. This deep split allowed the heel to be squeezed closer to the toes, when the bandages were replaced.”
“What cruelty! Ask her how she stood the pain.”
Struan remembered her quizzical look as Chen translated the question and as she replied in charming singsong.
“She says, ‘For every pair of bound feet there is a lake of tears. But what are tears and pain? Now I am not ashamed to let anyone measure my feet.’ She wants you to measure them, Mr. Struan.”
“I will na do such a thing!”
“Please, sir. It will make her very proud. They are perfect, in Chinese fashion. If you don’t, she will feel that you’re ashamed of her. She will lose face terribly in front of you.”
“Why?”
“She thinks you took the bandages off because you thought she was cheating you.”
“Why should I think that?”
“Because you’re—well, she’s never known a European. Please, sir. It is only your pride in her that repays all the tears.”
So he had measured her feet and expressed the joy that he did not feel, and she kowtowed three times to him. He hated to see men and women kowtowing, kneeling, their foreheads touching the floor. But ancient custom demanded this obeisance from an inferior to a superior and Struan could not forbid it. If he protested, May-may would be frightened again and she would lose face in front of Gordon Chen.
“Ask her if her feet hurt her now.”
“They will always hurt her, sir. But I assure you it would pain her much more if she had big, disgusting feet.”
May-may then had said something to Chen, and Struan recognized the word
fan-quai, which meant “devil barbarian.”
“She wants to know how to please a non-Chinese,” Gordon said.
“Tell her fan-quai are no different from Chinese.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And tell her that you are going to teach her English. Immediately. Tell her no one’s to know you’re teaching her. No one’s to know she can speak English. In front of others she’s to speak Chinese only, or pidgin, which you’ll also teach her. Lastly, you will protect her with your life.”
“May I come in now?” May-may was standing in the doorway, bowing delicately.
“Please.”
Her face was oval, her eyes almond-shaped and her eyebrows perfect crescents. A perfume surrounded her now, and her long, flowing robe was of the finest blue silk brocade. Her hair was dressed in crescents on the top of her head and adorned with jade pins. She was tall for a Chinese and her skin so white as to be almost translucent. She was from the province of Soochow.
Though Struan had bought her from Jin-qua and had haggled many weeks over the price, he knew that actually T’chung May-may was Jin-qua’s gift to him in return for many favors over the years; that Jin-qua could have sold her easily to the richest man in China, to a Manchu prince, even to the emperor, for her weight in jade—let alone the fifteen thousand taels of silver which they finally agreed on. She was unique, and priceless.
Struan lifted her up and kissed her gently. “Now, tell me what’s going on.” He sat in the deep chair and held her in his arms.
“First, I came disguised because of danger. Na only to me but to you. The reward still is on your head. And kidnaping for ransom is ancient custom.”
“Where did you leave the children?”
“With Elder Sister, of course,” she replied. Elder Sister was what May-may called Struan’s ex-mistress Kai-sung, as was the custom, though they were not related. And now Kai-sung was the third wife of Struan’s compradore. Yet between May-may and Kai-sung there was intense affection, and Struan knew that the children would be safe and cherished as if they were her own.
“Good,” he said. “How are they?”
“Duncan has the black eye. He tripped down, so I whipped his turtledung amah till my arm she fell off. Duncan has a bad temper from barbarian blood.”