Footman inspected my father like shit on his boot. ‘Get your upstairs room as ready as you can for His Lordship’
My father made a gurgling noise. ‘Sir... Lord. I — I mean—’
The Warlord’s Son imitated the buzzing of a horsefly. ‘These wormholes! Can you believe it? Give him one of the bowls. They were a wedding present from my ogre-in-law, I never liked them. As a dowry. More than a fair exchange for sluicing out a peasant girl’s cunt. They’re from Siam. She’d better be a virgin for workmanship like that!’
‘She is, Lord. Untouched. I promise it. But I’ve had some genuine marriage proposals, from suitors in high places...’
Footman unsheathed his sword, and looked at his master. The Warlord’s Son thought for a while. ‘Suitors in high places? Carpenters’ cocks. Very well, give him two bowls. But no more haggling, Mr Wormhole. You’ve tried your luck enough for one morning.’
‘My Lord’s reputation for generosity is just! No wonder all who hear of My Lord’s grace weep with love at the very mention—’
‘Oh, shut up.’
My father looked round at me. ‘You heard His Lordship, girl! Ready yourself!’
I could smell their sweat. Something unspeakable was going to happen. I knew where babies came from. My aunts down in the Village had told me about why my bad blood leaked out every month. But...
Lord Buddha was watching me from his shrine beside the Tree. I asked him for it not to hurt as much as I feared.
‘Up.’ Footman jabbed towards the stairs with his sword. ‘Up!’
The silences after his last gasp were sung together by a blackbird. I lay there, my eyes unable to close. His were unable to open. I listed the places where I hurt, and how much. My loins felt ripped. Something inside had torn. There were seven places on my body where he had sunk his fangs into my skin and bitten. He’d dug his nails into my neck, and twisted my head to one side, and clawed my face. I hadn’t made a noise. He had made all the noise for both of us. Had it hurt him?
I could feel him shrinking inside me, at last. He finally stirred to pick his nose. He pulled himself out of me, and a few seconds later something slid out of me and down my thighs. I looked. Gummy blood and something white was staining our only sheet. He wiped himself on my dress, and looked down at me critically. ‘Dear me,’ he said, ‘we’re no Goddess of Beauty, are we?’
He got dressed. He dug his big toe into my navel, and looked down at me from the dimness. A spoonful of saliva splashed onto the bridge of my nose. ‘Skinned little bunny.’
A spider spun the dimness between the rafters.
‘Mr Wormhole,’ I heard him say as he descended the creaking stairs. ‘You should be paying me. For breaking in your foal.’
A flutter of laughter.
If I were a man, I would have flown down the stairs and shoved a dagger into his back. That afternoon, without a word to me, my father went to sell the bowls.
In the misty dusk an old woman came. She laboured slowly up the stairs to where I lay, wondering how I could defend myself if the Warlord’s Son called again on his way down. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘The Tree will protect you. The Tree will tell you when to run, and when to hide.’ I knew she was a spirit because I only heard her words after her lips had finished moving, because the lamplight shone through her, and because she had no feet. I knew she was a good spirit because she sat on the chest at the end of the bed and sang a lullaby about a coracle, a cat, and the river running round.
Ten or twenty days later, my father returned, penniless. I asked him about the money, and he threatened to whip me. When we wintered with my cousins I was told the whole story: he’d gone to Leshan and spent half my dowry on opium and brothels. The other half he had spent on a scabby horse that died before he got back to the Village.
I was airing my bedding from the upstairs room’s window-ledge when I heard their voices. A boy and a girl had arrived without me noticing — my hearing is drawing in. Through a spyhole in the planking I watch them for some moments. Her face is made-up like the daughter of a merchant, or else a whore. Her breasts are budding, and the boy has that look men get when they want something. And not a chaperon in sight! She was leaning against her hands, against the skin of my Tree on the hidden side, where a hollow will cup a young girl’s body perfectly. Above it, a bunch of violets grow every spring, but she cannot see it.
The boy swallows hard. ‘I swear I will love you for ever. Truly.’
He rests his hands on her hips, but she swats them away. ‘Did you bring your radio to give me?’ The girl has a voice used to getting its way.
‘I brought you my life to give you.’
‘Did you bring your radio? The little silver one that can pick up Hong Kong?’
I hobbled downstairs, the stairs and my ankles creaking. So intent are they on getting what they both want, they didn’t notice me until I was at the chicken coop. ‘Tea?’
They spring apart. Big Ears blushes like a tomato. Does she thank me for guarding her honour? No. She looks at me, arms folded, quite unabashed, though her legs are as wide apart as a man’s. ‘Yes. Tea.’
They come around to the entrance to the Tea Shack. She sits down, crosses her legs, and pulls lipstick and a mirror from her shoulder bag. He sits opposite her, and just stares, like a dog at the moon. ‘Radio,’ she orders. He gets a shiny little box out of his bag, and slides out a long wire. She takes it, touches the side, and suddenly a woman’s voice is on the path, singing about love, the southern breeze, and pussy willows.
‘Where’s she coming from?’
The girl deigns to notice me. ‘It’s the latest hit from Macau.’ She looks at the boy. ‘Haven’t you heard it?’
‘’Course I have,’ he says, gruffly.
There are things I will never understand.
My father shrieked at me and the chickens squawked. ‘You little slut! You little fool! After everything I’ve done for you, after the sacrifices I’ve made, this is how you thank me! If it had been a boy, the Warlord’s Son would have showered us with gifts! Showered us! We could have lived in his castle! I would have been appointed a dignitary with servants! Fruits from the islands! But why would anyone want to acknowledge that!’
He jabbed his fingernail into my baby’s loins. My baby howled. Only five minutes old, and already learning. ‘You’ve sold your chances of a decent marriage for a nightpot of watery shit!’
One of my aunts led him out.
The Tree was looking in, and smiling. ‘Isn’t she beautiful?’ I asked.
The shadows and light on my baby’s face were leafy and green.
A few days later, it was agreed that my daughter would be raised with relatives living three days’ ride downstream. A large landowning household, one more daughter could be slipped in without much fuss. An uncle told me that the distance would conceal the shame I’d inflicted on our family’s honour. My chastity was gone for ever, of course. Perhaps in a few years some widower pig farmer might be persuaded to take me in as a mistress and nurse for his old age. If I was lucky.
I resolved then and there not to be lucky.
These same uncles all agreed that the Japanese would never get this far down the Yangtze, nor this far into the mountains. And supposing they did? Everyone knows how Japanese soldiers need more oxygen than humans, so they could never get up the Holy Mountain. The war had nothing to do with us. Many of the village sons were conscripted by the Warlord, and sent to fight on the side of some kind of alliance, but that was beyond the Valley, where the world is less real. Places called Manchuria, Mongolia, and further.
My uncles never knew truth from chickenshit. I dreamed of a clay jar of rice in the cave. When I asked a monk what it meant, he told me it was a suggestion from Lord Buddha.