‘Elope with me, Night Coming!’ he calls. ‘Run away with me and leave your life as a common strumpet behind!’
Disgruntled to be woken, however, I shout down that a life of harlotry is far preferable to the family name of Hogspit, and go back to bed.
Meticulous and thorough in my education, Madam Plum Blossom supplements the practical tutorials with theoretical lessons. During the day we peruse the Manual of the Bedchamber, the leather binding creaking as we flip through hundreds of illustrations of the two-headed, eight-limbed beast.
‘Endowments come in all shapes and sizes,’ Madam Plum Blossom says, ‘and some are very curious indeed. Endurance also differs from man to man. Some men spend their yang essence in very few strokes, like our customer Ten-strokes Li. And an unfortunate few, such as Hopeless Chen, spill their yang before even penetrating the Vermilion Gates. And then there are men who need tens of thousands of strokes to spend. Men such as these are nuisances, and you’ll be at it until cockcrow unless you clench the lotus shaft and use some tricks to hurry them up!’
While gleeful on the subject of Clouds and Rain, on the subject of love Madam Plum Blossom gets a cold and steely look in her eye.
‘Beware men who swear eternal oaths of love, Night Coming! Men speak all kinds of devilry in the throes of lust. They’ll promise to marry you, or take you as a concubine. But at the end of the day they want a wife from a respectable home, with her Vermilion Gates intact. Two of my girls have fallen ill from lovesickness. Heavenly Snapdragon shaved her head and went to live in a nunnery, and Celestial Moonbeam suicided by swallowing needles. Armour yourself, Night Coming, against men who’ll try to swindle you with blandishments and declarations of undying love. Or else the dalliance won’t end in a wedding song. . but a funeral dirge.’
The tutorials end one evening as I am Riding the Unicorn Horn with the stable boy, whose eyes are rolling around in ecstatic bliss. Madam Plum Blossom, standing in her usual spot at the bedside, for the first time has no critique or suggestions to make. She nods swiftly with approval.
‘Very good, Night Coming. You are dexterous and skilled. Agile, nimble and spry. This session will conclude your lessons of the bedchamber. You are now ready to begin your life as a whore.’
VIII
Afternoons at the Hummingbird Inn are spent in the courtyard, drinking jasmine tea in the shade of the cherry tree. Moonglow and Heavenly Lotus Flower prattle to each other as they pose at easels, daubing brushes over mediocre paintings of butterflies alighting on azaleas, or peacocks with fanned-out tails. Madam Plum Blossom reads erotic poetry and nibbles cakes, and Master Xing the Burmese parrot scuttles to and fro on his perch, until the door knocker sounds, and he squawks, ‘Here are the guests! Pour the ale! Light the candles!’ and our working day begins.
A jovial and convivial hostess, Madam Plum Blossom makes no distinction between rich and poor as she serves plum wine, thrusts her bosom about and holds forth with charming small talk. All men (except known bandits and vagabonds) are welcome in her parlour, and her lack of pretension warms the hearts of many. Moonglow and Heavenly Lotus Flower are delightful too, with a knack for being silly and fatuous and making the guests roar with laughter. During my debutante nights at the Hummingbird Inn, I am timorous and shy, and some of the gentlemen callers ask Madam Plum Blossom if she has cut out my tongue. Madam hoots with laughter and playfully slaps her accuser.
‘Oh, you wicked scoundrel! I’ve done no such thing! Night Coming’s a mere apprentice. But soon she’ll be the most popular courtesan in the Gay Quarters. Just you wait!’
Before long I have contorted my limbs into every position in the Manual of the Bedchamber, played over a hundred Jade Flutes and had the Jade Liquor spurted into every orifice (and splattered on other parts, such as my bellybutton or hair). Some men are handsome devils, for whom my Peony Pavilion becomes drenched with dew. Others look and smell as though they haven’t bathed in a year, and Raising the Yin to Meet the Yang with them is an odious chore. Out of professionalism, though, I serve every customer alike, and most with no particular sentiment at all.
During the day I wander around Chang’an, frittering my earnings on frivolities such as puppet theatres, sugar-spun birds on sticks and fortune-tellers (‘This won’t be your only life,’ predicts one physiognomist, stroking the hump of my nose. ‘You will be reincarnated many more times yet.’) Though my new life as Night Coming has begun, I am still determined to find you. Once a week I go to the calligraphy shop on Old Temple Lane and dictate to the old bearded sage there (the one literate person I know) a letter to you.
‘To the Honourable Eunuch Wu,’ the letter usually begins. ‘This is your long-lost illegitimate daughter, Night Coming. .’
The letter ends with my whereabouts and a request that you come and visit. Then I seal the letter and hire a messenger boy to deliver it to the gates of the Imperial Palace. Week after week, the old bearded sage writes my letters in his best ink-brush calligraphy. And week after week, I dispatch them to you, though you never reply.
As the nights of carousing and merry making accrue, I come into my own as a hostess. I at last find my voice, which rings out in the parlour like a tinkling bell, mellifluous and gay.
‘What a charming young wench you are!’ the patrons say. ‘Where in the Celestial Kingdom do you hail from?’
I regale them with tales of Kill the Barbarians Village and the wicked Sorceress Wu. I tell them of the sorceress grinding up concoctions of bat’s gonads, centipedes and menstrual blood with pestle and mortar. I tell them of Turnip-seller Chen who came cradling the turnip he thought was his wife, begging the sorceress to reverse the ‘fox fairy curse’ (in truth, his missus had eloped with a goat herder from Magpie County). I tell them of Pigbreeder Liu, who begged the sorceress for an anti-lust charm to cure his habit of engaging his sows in the act of Clouds and Rain. The guests laugh uproariously and thump the wooden table with their fists.
‘Bravo! What funny little tales, Night Coming! How ignorant these silly, superstitious country folk can be!’
I abhor false modesty, so I shall speak plainly: I am a masterful storyteller. A first-rate raconteur. Kingfisher feathers in my chignon, in flowing satin robes, I stand at the head of the candlelit table of guests, open my mouth, and the extraordinary tales of the common folk of Blacktooth County flow forth. Macabre tales of sorcery and blood-spattered revenge. Romantic tales of tragic star-crossed lovers. Erotic tales of lusty bed-hopping and adultery. I do not exaggerate or embellish. The truth, as witnessed by the granddaughter of the Sorceress Wu, is far stranger than any farfetched imaginings. I have been privy to thousands of people begging for magical intervention in their darkest hour. I have witnessed the sorceress’s cruel and pitiless exploitation of their need.
As I gain in confidence my tales become theatrical performances. I create an atmosphere of suspense, like a striptease artiste, building up to the finale, the climactic scene. I imitate the Sorceress Wu’s shaman act with a sacrilegious thrill, ululating in tongues, eyes rolled back in sockets. I impersonate the country bumpkin accent of Cabbage-seller Qin, buying a poultice to grow back his amputated foot. I am a wit, a comedienne, my humour slapstick or refined. My performances soon last throughout the evening, until the candles have sputtered down to pools of wax.
The legend of Night Coming the Tale-spinning Courtesan spreads throughout the Gay Quarters and every night the Hummingbird Inn is packed. The guests crowd in and drink jugfuls of wine, perhaps fondling Heavenly Lotus Flower or Moonglow on their laps as they listen spellbound to my spine-tingling tales. Silver piles up in our coffers and Madam Plum Blossom is well pleased.