Free The Incarnations by Susan Barker Page B

Quarters have a reputation for being mean-spirited and quick-tempered, quoting Confucius as they beat their girls for alleged wrongs (‘Those!’
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‘who err!’
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‘on the side of strictness!’
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‘are few indeed!’
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), Madam Plum Blossom spares us the rod, being too jolly of temperament for such corporal spite. Though most madams keep their daughters imprisoned under lock and key, Madam Plum Blossom encourages us to venture out into the hustle and bustle of Chang’an on daily constitutionals. The warm-hearted proprietress quickly becomes like a mother to me.
    The other two prostitutes at the Hummingbird Inn, Moonglow and Heavenly Lotus Flower, are nowhere near as kind. ‘Stinking southerner,’ they mutter, pinching their noses when I am near. But Madam Plum Blossom tells me to pay them no heed.
    ‘Don’t mind them, Night Coming. They’ve no right to put on airs. Heavenly Lotus Flower used to be a scullery maid called Appleseed, and Moonglow’s husband is a dissolute wastrel who sold her to pay off his gambling debts.’
    As I am a fledging in the bedchamber, Madam Plum Blossom prepares me for brothel life by having me tryst with the young stablehand from down the lane. She stands at the bedside as the boy and I fumble together, clumsy and maladroit, haplessly muddling through the conjoining of our yin and yang parts. Though we go at it until I am quite saddle-sore, Madam Plum Blossom casts a critical eye over the proceedings. Her arms crossed, her lips a thin line of disapproval, she scolds, ‘Don’t be so coy, Night Coming! There are more ways to make Clouds and Rain than by lying on your back, y’know. And why are you flinching? That’s his Jade Stalk he’s stabbing you with, not a dagger!’
    Exasperated, she teaches me how to straddle the stablehand and rise up and down in a style known as Riding the Unicorn Horn. ‘This position is very good for the elderly and infirm,’ she advises. ‘As well as veterans who have fought in many battles and are missing their limbs.’
    The tutorial underway, Madam Plum Blossom drills the stable boy and me with step-by-step instructions, through the Raising the Yin to Meet the Yang position, the Two Dragons Who Fight until They Drop, and the Silkworm Spinning a Cocoon. The stable boy and I are soon quite knackered, pink in the cheeks and out of breath from flailing and contorting our limbs. The first tutorial reaches its climax when Madam Plum Blossom is teaching me the best technique for Playing the Jade Flute, and the stable boy, no longer able to contain his excitement, spurts the Jade Liquor into my mouth. Madam is very cross when I gag and grimace and spit.
    ‘Impoliteness!’ she scolds. ‘One mustn’t spit the Jade Liquor as though it scalds the tongue. One must swallow and smile.’ After twenty years of whoredom, Madam Plum Blossom’s knowledge is as boundless as the sea. ‘Men have all sorts of peccadilloes,’ she tells me. ‘Some men like to Penetrate the Red during a woman’s moon cycle, or piddle on a woman out of the Jade Watering Spout. Some men like to poke a woman in the back passage, which is called Pushing the Boat Upstream.’
    When she suggests I attempt to Push the Boat Upstream with the stable boy, I protest I cannot imagine a more agonizing suffering. But I then try it, and it’s not so bad once I am used to the clogged-up sensation in my rear end.
    ‘They come here to do the things their wives won’t do, you see,’ Madam Plum Blossom says, ‘unless they have a delightfully wicked and depraved wife, who may come to watch her husband go at you, and then Mirror Dance with you, which is how two women enact the Clouds and Rain.’
    The stable boy is fifteen and his family name is Hogspit. Though he takes pains to wash and comb his hair before coming to the Hummingbird Inn, he is still a mucky boy who stinks of horse sweat and manure, and in spite of his passion in the bedchamber, my Peony Pavilion never moistens with