‘Well, you’ve got such a big belly to feed, it would be worth you becoming a nun,’ said Nani.
‘It would only be any fun if you hooked up with a foreign monk,’ said Hongling with a giggle.
‘They don’t call them nuns in Taoist temples, do they, Yumo?’ someone asked.
‘It doesn’t matter what they’re called, they still have to be vegetarian and celibate,’ said Yumo.
‘Never mind the vegetarian food, you’d never get a good night’s sleep if you had to be celibate, would you, Jade?’
There was a burst of laughter. Jade picked up a tile and aimed it at Hongling. The laughter grew more raucous, and someone shouted, ‘Hongling, that’s the second time you’ve been hit today by a mah-jong tile. The next time it’ll kill you!’ Hongling and Jade chased each other around the cellar knocking things over.
‘Don’t you worry, Hongling,’ said Jade, ‘tomorrow evening I’ll get meat for you to eat. I promise I’ll procure that nice Yangzhou Fabio for you and then your celibacy won’t stop you from going to sleep!’
Hongling made a gesture that the watching girls did not understand, though its lewdness was obvious because the cellar erupted in laughter, and Jade’s ample flesh shook all over.
Yumo, looking distracted, sat on an overturned barrel with a cigarette in one hand and a bowl of wine in the other.
After Shujuan and Xiaoyu had been watching for a while, they changed their minds about who was the prettiest. Yumo was becoming more attractive by the minute in their eyes. She was not instantly dazzling but she grew on them and was not easy to forget. Her hair was so thick and heavy that her face seemed to grow smaller when it was undone. As for the shape of her face, it was not square or round or long, it was simply diminutive and she had a pointed chin which gave her a slight air of arrogance. The sort of arrogance that said, ‘If you look down on me, then I’ll look down on you.’ She had big, dark eyes and such a rapt gaze she always made you wonder if she had seen something you had not. Her mouth was her weak point: it was thin and wide, a garrulous, bitter sort of mouth. It was surprising that someone who measured her words so carefully had a mouth like that. It gave her a harsh, even ruthless look. Zhao Yumo’s greatest asset was that she did not behave as if she were a shameless slut. In fact, you could imagine her as a concubine or a young wife in a rich man’s household. Or as the actress in one of the advertisements they showed in movie houses. She looked different now from when she arrived: she had changed into a violet cheongsam of flowered cotton, on top of which she wore a thick white woollen wrap-around coat decorated with a couple of pompoms. She had correctly judged their new situation, and now that she was on the girls’ territory, she made herself neat and tidy. Whether she had done this to save her skin or in an attempt to be treated as an equal, Shujuan had no way of knowing.
Four
The next morning, the women in the cellar did not stir. George took them some porridge but could not wake them up. Then, after lunch, they appeared outside the refectory complaining that no one had brought them anything to eat and they were weak with hunger.
Fabio could see that his strictures were having no effect on them. He called Yumo, as their ringleader, into the refectory.
‘This is your last warning,’ he said. ‘If you all come out of the cellar again, you won’t be welcome here any more.’
Yumo was apologetic. ‘I understand that we’re not welcome,’ she said. ‘But the women are really hungry.’
The prostitutes gathered around the refectory door to see whether their negotiator was doing a proper job or needed reinforcements.
‘I’ll come to food in a moment. First, I want to go over the rules once again,’ Fabio said.
His efforts to turn his thick Yangzhou dialect into acceptable city speech caused some of the women a good deal of merriment.
‘Talk about the toilet first, will you?’ said Nani.
‘We get nothing to eat and nowhere to crap!’ complained Cardamom.
‘There’s a women’s toilet in there,’ said Hongling, pointing towards the workshop building. ‘But the girls have locked it and they’ve got the key. We’ve only got the church to use –’
‘You’ve been using the church toilets?’ exclaimed Fabio. ‘They’re for the use of ladies and gentlemen of the congregation and their children during Mass! And the water’s been cut off so they can’t be flushed. They must smell terrible.’
Yumo fixed Fabio with enormous dark eyes. There was no avoiding her gaze and Fabio’s heart skipped a beat.
When Fabio opened his mouth again, it was clear he had succumbed to the effects of Yumo’s steady gaze. He pitched his voice lower and enumerated the arrangements: Ah Gu and George would dig a pit for them in the backyard and give them two tin buckets and two covers made from cardboard. When the buckets were full, they were to be emptied into the pit in the backyard. But that was to be done, he ordered them, before five o’clock in the morning so that they could avoid meeting the girls or Father Engelmann.
‘Five o’clock in the morning?’ exclaimed Hongling. ‘But we don’t usually get up until now.’
She raised a plump wrist and displayed a tiny watch on which the hour hand pointed to between one and two o’clock in the afternoon.
‘From now on, you are to respect church hours, and get up and eat at church times. It’s past breakfast time now, I’m sorry. The girls saved you a few scraps from their plates and you didn’t eat them. They couldn’t let noodles go to waste, could they?’ As Fabio talked, he realised in surprise that he and Yumo were conducting a calm, polite conversation.
‘Hah! Now we’re really going to become nuns!’ said Hongling with a laugh.
The allusion was obvious and the women chuckled. There was an edge in their laughter and even Fabio, who knew little of matters between men and women, was aware they were being lewd. ‘Quiet! I haven’t finished speaking,’ he commanded harshly, although part of the harshness was directed at himself for no longer being sufficiently stern with them.
Yumo turned towards the women and quelled them with a glance.
‘How many meals do we get a day?’ asked Cardamom.
‘How many would you like, Miss?’ Fabio asked scornfully.
‘Well, we usually get four meals, with an extra one at night-time,’ Cardamom answered in all seriousness.
‘Something simple at night would be fine,’ Hongling hastily added, ‘a few snack dishes, a soup, a nice glass of wine…’ She knew Fabio was going to lose his temper. In fact, she thought he was very amusing when he was angry. In her experience, a fight between a man and a woman created instant intimacy and made everything more exciting.
‘Can we join the congregation?’ asked Nani.
Hongling clapped her hands in joy. ‘So we’ve got someone here who wants to be baptised and made into a new person, have we? What she’s actually asking is how many glasses of red wine can a person have when they go to Mass. Don’t be taken in! She can drink a barrel of wine dry!’
‘Bitch!’ Nani swore at her but without any real anger.
Yumo hastily attempted to distract Fabio from their bad language. Fixing her gaze on him again, she said, ‘Deacon Adornato, if it were not for your goodness in taking us in, we would all be facing calamity by now. We are deeply grateful that you are prepared to share a bowl of gruel with women like us in times of war. We would also like you to convey our thanks to the schoolgirls.’
Fabio felt drawn into the depths of those great eyes. Just for those few moments, he forgot that this woman was a whore, and imagined that she was someone he had come across in a park, or by the Xuanhu Lake, or in the shade of the French plane trees on Zhongshan Avenue; someone obviously from a good background. Perhaps she overdid the dignity a little, but her refinement and gentleness were genuine, and her words seemed honest, even if her accent was sometimes difficult to understand.