The unexpected bittersweet tune brought tears to my eyes. Could this man be playing this song because he somehow knew what was in my heart?
I thought of how this song was composed. A woman, after her husband had been killed by the black society, escaped with her small child to Hong Kong. Having no friends or money, she had no choice but to work as a prostitute in Kowloon Walled City, a lawless district even the police were afraid to enter. Every morning after work, she would lean on the door and sing to her vanished husband, “I’ll always be waiting for you, why don’t you return?”
With this song ringing in my ears, my question was: “Jinying, when will you come back to me?”
Soon the tram reached Shek Tong Tsui and I quickly got off, leaving behind the heartbreaking melody, but not my broken heart. I walked slowly by the harbor to enjoy the salt-smelling breeze and the twilight on the waves. Along the roadside in front of dilapidated buildings, a few women leaned by doors, chatting, smoking, and throwing hopeful glances. Despite the British having recently banned prostitution in their colony, it was obvious that these gaudily dressed and flirtatiously acting women were not here to appreciate the view, but to practice women’s oldest profession.
Among them, a fortyish one, her face plastered with white powder like a geisha’s, yelled toward me, “Hey, little beauty, if you were a man, I’d give you a big discount!”
I smiled back but didn’t respond.
Her “colleague,” another past-her-prime goddess, laughed hilariously. “Ha! A discount? Are you joking? If Little Miss Beautiful were a man, it’d be free!”
A third grandmother echoed. “Free? How about I pay him for it?”
The whole group burst into thunderous laughter. Of course they were joking to make the best of their lot. Business was bad and they were bored. No man would pay for these pathetic women except the equally old, ugly, and poor. But once they had been young, pretty, and highly sought after.
I felt a chill. If I didn’t start to really plan for my future, near or far, would I end up like these women? I had some money, but what would my future be?
Just then, suddenly there appeared a group of fiftyish men in rags, smoking, stinking of alcohol, and talking loudly, their conversation mainly insults regarding each other’s parents’ sex organs.
Once the run-down goddesses saw the even more run-down coolies, instead of running away like ghosts from daylight, they flocked to them like moths toward light. But the coolies outnumbered the goddesses. So the former clustered around to wait for their turn.
I overheard one of the women say, “Three dollars for five minutes. Five for ten, and one hundred overnight.”
One coolie laughed. “Grandma, you have a mirror at home? If not, I’ll bring you one next time, on the house.”
Now all the coolies burst out laughing like there was no tomorrow.
I wondered about these women who were the age my mother would have been, had she lived. They all must have sad, convoluted tales of how they ended up on this ill-reputed street selling their smiles.
Seeing these near-destitute women, I wondered, had any been the beautiful mistresses of wealthy men? I had read so many tragic stories about courtesans who prospered from the scholar-officials and rich dandies who were infatuated with them, only to be discarded because of pressure from their lover’s powerful families. It seemed that no love, however deep, could survive the threat of disinheritance.
The women, once their looks had begun to fade, were abandoned, while the men, passion cooled, would marry proper women chosen by their parents. After years of tedium with an increasingly demanding wife, the man would be worn down with the pressures of supporting the family. All that was left of his earlier, seemingly unquenchable passion for the beautiful courtesan was mere memories. As more years went by, and his grandchildren were nearly grown, he’d begin to wonder if this love affair really happened, or was but a fragranced figment of his youthful imagination?
Of course, a young scholar might break off with his family and marry his beloved courtesan. And they would live happily ever after—for a few years. But sooner or later the money would run out and the man would have to work, perhaps as a tutor, or even by setting up a stall on a busy street to provide letter-writing services to the poor and illiterate. The wife would be forced to supplement his meager earnings as a maid or perhaps selling home-cooked food on the street. Even combined, their earnings would not pay for an amah to look after their children. So the wife would drag her brood along to her stall and the children would become street kids, taunted by the better-off children on their way home from school.
But no matter how hard the couple worked, their financial situation grew ever more dire. So the lovers who could never live without each other began to quarrel. As time went by and the exchanges of words became nastier, hate began to seep in. And now the man bitterly regretted that he hadn’t listened to his parents in the first place. And his wife began to ask herself, why did I waste my beauty and my life on this man, instead of staying with a rich patron?
I sighed inside. For I feared to think that Jinying’s love for me would be the same as these men’s. And that, if fate brought us back together, as the years passed, we’d forget the love we once cherished and end up hating each other.
I tried to suppress these unpleasant thoughts and continued to walk. Soon I entered the busy part of the street where crowds milled around shops and stalls. I felt some relief becoming one of the crowd—like a drop of water in the sea.
Happy for the distraction, I enjoyed the sights: street vendors selling cigarettes, chestnuts, bowls of steaming red bean soup, towels, blouses, underwear, mahjong sets, and anything else one imagine one needed. For the better off there were restaurants, Cantonese opera theaters, gold stores, and many others.
At the red bean soup stall, a young mother was feeding her child by first sloshing the hot liquid in her own mouth, then spewing it between her toddler’s lips. This way the hot soup cooled more quickly, I assumed.
At one stall a child about ten stood by herself, selling something sticky, gooey, but strangely appealing.
I walked up to her and asked, “Little friend, what is this?”
“Lomaichi with black sesame filling, very sweet and tasty, have one,” she said, already thrusting one patty into my hand.
I paid, took a bite, and immediately felt the sesame oozing into my mouth and warming my palate. It was as sweet and tasty as the little girl had promised.
She looked so vulnerable here by herself that I was tempted to ask, “What if gangsters come here to demand protection money?” but decided to swallow my words.
In between chewing and swallowing, I asked instead, “Where are your parents?”
“They are selling other things over there.” She pointed with her dirty little hand. But there were so many pedestrians and sellers that I couldn’t possibly tell whom she meant.
“Good luck, little friend,” I said, then swallowed the whole lomaichi. But this time the glob of sesame burned my mouth. As if a foretaste of the hell that awaited me because of my bad deeds.