MY GUESTS CONTINUED TO COMPLAIN that I hadn’t found anything for them to do. I felt like telling them that they need not look, that something would happen by itself sooner or later. All they needed was patience. But in the end I said nothing.
Finally my servants located a performing troupe.
I must say that it was a very strange troupe; it wasn’t Tibetan or Han. The performers were girls of many different nationalities. I had a huge stage erected for them, but I never expected them to run out of plays in only three days. They even took a pug dog up onto the stage, where it walked around in circles picking flowers from under the girls’ skirts. That too lasted only three days. The owner of the troupe said that she and the girls had nowhere to go during turbulent times like this, and would like to settle down in this peaceful place. I didn’t say no. I even had a large tent set up for them. Meanwhile, construction began on an adobe house at the far end of the street. The owner supervised the work, and construction progressed quickly. In less than ten days, they had completed the framework of a large house with a waiting room and a wide staircase leading up to a deep, dark hallway lined with small rooms.
The girls idled all day long, sending their tinkling laughter flowing up and down the street. Their clothes didn’t quite cover their bodies, so I told the troupe owner that I’d have some made for them. The woman, already past her prime, burst out laughing. “My God! I love this place. It’s like a dream world. And I like you, an idiot who has yet to see the real world.”
We were chatting inside the big tent when she gave me a kiss, and not just anywhere, but on the lips. I jumped to my feet as if burned by a fire.
The girls laughed, and amid the laughter, the one with the darkest brows and biggest eyes came to sit on my lap.
The owner sent the girl away and told me she wasn’t clean. From what I could see, the skin above her breasts was nice and white, and even her exposed navel was pink; if she wasn’t clean, I couldn’t tell you who was. Instead of leaving right away, the girl wrapped her arms around my neck and planted her thick lips on mine, nearly suffocating me.
The owner then gave me a girl she considered clean. The girl walked up to me as the others started giggling. The owner took some silver dollars out of my pocket, and said, “This is the price. All my girls have a price.”
She took out ten altogether. After counting them, she kept five and put five back. Then she put four into a gilded crimson case and gave the fifth one to the other girls. “My treat,” she said. “You girls go to the market and buy yourselves some sweets.”
The girls roared with laughter and flitted out like a swarm of agitated bees.
The owner tied the key to her money box around her waist, and said, “The carpenter is putting in the floor, so I’m going to go see how he’s doing. If the young master is happy, why not give the girl some loose change for cosmetics.”
The fermented fragrance of pine drifted over from where the house was being built, enhancing the attraction of the girl in my arms.
My manhood was beginning to stir, but in all other respects I was as languid as the weather.
The girl was very good. After undressing me, she told me to just lie there. I didn’t have to move; she’d do everything. She did, and it was terrific. I felt wonderful all over, without lifting a finger. Afterward, we lay there naked and talked. That was when I realized that these girls weren’t a performing troupe at all, but a group of women who made a living with their bodies. And I was their first client. I asked if she could do something for those old chieftains whose bodies could no longer satisfy their latent desires. She said yes. “Good,” I said. “Those old men are rolling in silver. From today on they’ll be your clients.”
That night, the chieftains took pleasure from women who charged them a fee.
The next day, they looked more energetic than usual when they got together. One of them even asked me why their own women didn’t have those kinds of skills.
The female chieftain, on the other hand, slept alone and awoke with dark circles under her eyes. “Just look at the Maichi family,” she said to Father resentfully. “Your older son introduced opium and now your idiot son brings women like that.”
“And what did you bring?” Chieftain Maichi asked. “What did you bring for us?”
“I think women are all about the same,” she said.
The other chieftains told her to shut up. “All women are different.”
Chieftain Wangpo didn’t join the conversation. He could rest his eyes, but not his hands, on the singing woman upstairs, while the girls in the big tent were both real and beautiful.
The chieftains finally got the answer they were seeking. “The young master of the Maichi family invited us here to enjoy these wonderful girls.”
Adviser Huang told us that the girls were prostitutes and that the big tent was a brothel.
“There are two girls reserved for the young master,” the madam said to me. “You mustn’t touch the others.”
“Why not?”
“They aren’t clean. They’re sick.”
“What kind of sickness?”
“A sickness that will rot that thing a man has.”
I couldn’t imagine how that thing of mine could just rot away. So the madam called two girls over and told one of them to lift her skirt. My God, that was no door, it was a cave! Then she showed me the other girl, whose private parts looked like a mushroom and stank like a rotting cow.
That night, when I thought about how someone’s private parts could look like that, I lost all interest in women. I stayed home alone while the male chieftains went to the brothel. But I couldn’t sleep, so I got up to drink tea with Adviser Huang. I asked about the prostitutes’ sickness.
“Syphilis,” he said.
“Syphilis?”
“Young Master, I brought you the opium, but not the syphilis.”
From the nervous expression on his face I could tell that syphilis presented a real danger.
“My God!” he said. “Even that has shown up here. What next?”
“The chieftains aren’t afraid,” I said. “The brothel’s finished, and now none of them wants to leave.”
Each girl had a room upstairs in the brothel. At night, bright lamps lit up the downstairs room. The upstairs was suffused with the girls’ fragrance, while the downstairs was redolent with the smells of liquor and meat and bean stew in a cauldron. In the center of the room, a gilded speaker sat next to a wind-up gramophone that played music all day long.
“Let them be,” the adviser said. “Their time is over, so let them catch syphilis, let them feel happiness. We need to concentrate on our own situation.”
He then told me some stories about syphilis. When he finished, I laughed, and said, “I won’t have any appetite for at least three days.”
“Money has a terrible effect on people,” he said, “but it’s not as bad as opium, which in turn pales in comparison with syphilis. But this isn’t what I wanted to tell you.”
I asked him what he wanted to say.
He raised his voice. “Young Master, they’re here.”
“They’re here?”
“Yes, they’re here.”
I asked him who they were, and he said they were the Han Chinese. I laughed, for it sounded as if he himself weren’t a Han, nor my mother, nor the many Han Chinese in the shops in my town. He made it sound as if I’d never seen a Han person before. I was, after all, the son of a Han woman.
But he said earnestly, “What I mean is, the colored Han are here.”
Now I understood. The uncolored Han came here merely for money, like the businessmen, or for survival, like the adviser himself. But the colored Han were different—they wanted to dye our land with their own colors. That was what the White Han Chinese wanted. And if the Red Han won the civil war, I heard that they wanted even more to stain every piece of land in that color they revered. We knew they were locked in a mighty struggle in their own place, neither side gaining a clear edge over the other, because every trading caravan from the Han area brought newspapers. My wise adviser was addicted to newspapers, like a smoker to opium. He grew agitated without his newspapers, but sighed when he read them. He was always telling me, “The war is getting worse, much worse.”
Adviser Huang, once a provincial representative, had met his downfall by opposing the fight against the Red Han Chinese. But he wasn’t happy about the prospect of them winning either.
During that period, there were rumors among the locals that the Han would come soon. The historian had once said that whatever the people believed would happen sooner or later, even if it didn’t make much sense. So many people talking about the same thing amounted to chanting the same incantation to express a common wish to heaven.
The adviser had always said that the Han were locked in mortal combat and couldn’t break free. Now, all of a sudden, he was saying, “They’re here.”
I asked him, “Have they come to see me?”
He laughed, saying those were truly the thoughts of a master.
“Fine,” I said. “Send them over so we can see which color we like better.”
He laughed some more. “The young master sounds like a woman picking out a piece of silk for a dress.” He added, “These people sneak in and don’t want to see anyone. Nor will they want people to know about their colors.”
I asked how he knew all this.
“I’m your adviser. I’m supposed to know, aren’t I?”
I didn’t like his tone of voice a bit. Seeing the displeasure on my face, he quickly added, “The young master must have forgotten that your adviser used to be a colored Han too, which is why I can spot them right off.”
I asked him what these people planned to do, but he told me to get some rest, since they didn’t plan to do anything yet. They would act within permissible bounds, more cautious in their actions than others in town. They had come to look around and see what was what.
I went up to my room to rest.
Before falling asleep, I kept thinking about syphilis and about “them.” I’d take a stroll on the street as soon as I got up the next morning to see if I could spot the colored Han.
I slept in late the next day and awoke feeling empty, as if I’d lost something. But I had no idea exactly what that was; I just felt that something was wrong. So I asked the servants what was missing. They looked around, at the ornaments I was wearing and at the valuable objects and utensils around the house, before telling me that nothing was missing.
It was Sonam Tserang who finally announced, “The mistress isn’t singing today.”
The others agreed: “She sits upstairs and sings every day, but not today.”
Yes, Tharna always sat behind the carved railing upstairs and sang as soon as the sun was up.
Lately I’d been feeling that time was passing faster than ever. Consider all that had happened during those days: the chieftains had come, then syphilis had come, and now the colored Han Chinese had come. Only when my wife sang to seduce the young Chieftain Wangpo did I feel time slow down, returning to its unbearable pace.
But that morning, when she stopped singing, time went on a dizzying tear.
None of the chieftains had returned from the brothel in town yet. Servants accompanied me out of the house, under the malevolent, yet victorious gaze of the female chieftain, who had no way of demonstrating her prowess in a brothel. It was quiet all around me, but my heart was thumping as if I were galloping on a horse, with the wind howling past my ears.
The chieftains eventually emerged from the brothel and walked toward us on their way to bed. Time was turned upside down in that big new house in town. After abandoning themselves to the sound of the music and the aroma of liquor and meat, the chieftains were returning, lazily, looking forward to some sleep. The sight of their slothful figures told me that something was about to happen. But then, reminded of my conversation with Adviser Huang, I led the servants up the street. I wanted to see if I could spot the colored Han Chinese who had sneaked into town. When I reached the bridge, I was face-to-face with the chieftains. I saw that many of their noses were redder than before. Yes, I thought, they’ve contracted syphilis from the girls.
I laughed.
I laughed at their ignorance of what the girls were carrying.