Free The Incarnations by Susan Barker Page A

as hard as any man. I will toil like a dog! I will toil until I sweat out my blood! I am willing to do anything!’
    ‘Anything?’
    A pedlar of candy apples with scheming eyes and hog bristles spouting out of his chin stalls his pushcart nearby. The pedlar holds out a sugar-coated apple on a stick, and my stomach growls.
    ‘Anything,’ I repeat.
    I stumble to him. I snatch the sugar-coated apple and, lightheaded with hunger, I take a bite. The pedlar shows his stumpy brown teeth in a sly grin.
    ‘Then come with me.’
VII
    ‘I see you’ve lost your virtue then,’ says Madam Plum Blossom as she peers between my legs. ‘Pity. Customers pay a fortune to defile a girl with her purity intact.’
    She orders me to strip for inspection. She prods and pokes. Tweaks and peeks. She squeezes my breasts and tuts.
    ‘Sallow complexion . . . Hump-backed nose . . . Sour, down-turned mouth . . . Knocked-out tooth . . . Chest like a boy . . .’
    But in spite of her harsh and negative appraisal, Madam Plum Blossom likes me.
    ‘There’s some fighting spirit in you,’ she says. ‘The gentleman callers like a girl with fire in her belly.
Night Coming
. That will be your name. Night Coming. Yes. Can’t think of a better sobriquet than that!’
    When the pedlar said he would take me to a brothel in the Gay Quarters of Chang’an, hopes of fame and fortune rang out in my head. On the long journey to Chang’an the Merchant Fang had waxed lyrical about the Gay Quarters and their legendary brothels, such as the House of Willowy Enchantresses and the Parlour of the Golden Peaches, frequented by aristocracy, imperial scholars and literati.
    According to the Merchant Fang, the courtesans of the Gay Quarters are classical beauties with lunar skin, scallion fingers and tresses dark as ravens’ plumage. They flutter about like exotic birds in an aviary, in the finest, most intricately embroidered robes. Such is their beauty, boasted Merchant Fang, that should they happen by your hometown, the common folk of Kill the Barbarians Village would mistake them for immortal goddesses and lay sacrificial offerings of slaughtered pigs at their feet.
    Not content with mere pulchritude, the courtesans of the Gay Quarters have many talents and accomplishments. They are gregarious hostesses and poetesses, enlivening banquets with witty repartee and verses composed on the spot. They sing like songbirds and are skilled musicians, strumming the zither and playing the lute and flute. They are intellects educated in the Five Classics and Daoist and Confucian philosophy, and keen to engage in verbal jousting and philosophical debate. The life of a celebrated courtesan, whose patrons and admirers are the most powerful men in Chang’an, was very appealing to me. So my hopes were dashed when the pedlar brought me to the Hummingbird Inn in Old Temple Lane, which makes no pretence of being a high-class establishment.
    ‘We don’t put on any airs and graces here!’ laughs Madam Plum Blossom. ‘We’re a lowly brothel, for commoners! For scoundrels, rascals and ne’er-do-wells. Hiring our cunts out. That’s our job. We make no pretences to the contrary. We can’t sing or dance and the only verse we compose is doggerel and bawdy rhymes. But our customers come to our parlour and have themselves a rollicking good time! I’ll teach you all the tricks of the trade, Night Coming. I was an excellent whore in my day. A veritable snake-charmer . . .’
    Proprietress of the Hummingbird Inn for twenty years, Madam Plum Blossom is a cheerful woman with a loud and raucous laugh. The pastimes she is most fond of include ale drinking, gorging herself with cakes and tutoring Master Xing, her Burmese parrot, to curse and sing vulgar little ditties for the gentlemen callers. Proud of her voluptuous figure, Madam Plum Blossom is often tethered to a brass mirror, admiring her wide hips and the ample cleavage she flaunts with a low-cut décolletage. Though most madams of the Gay