My Splendid Concubine (29 page)

“
You should split your pay with me,” she said in a joking tone. He answered her with silence while he continued the lesson.

With Ayaou
in charge, Robert’s progress mastering Chinese accelerated. Ayaou and Shao-mei pounced on his Ningpo accent. The penalty was to wash the dishes when they caught him. Keeping strictly to this schedule and routine helped minimize any pitfalls that might open at his feet when Shao-mei had a mood swing. The only times he felt as if he were walking on broken eggshells was at bedtime and in the mornings before he went to the consulate.

After Tee Lee Ping left, Shao-mei, Ayaou and Robert ate the evening meal. Then his lesson with the girls started. They were ardent students. They picked up the written language faster than he was learning it. If this kept up, they would catch up to him before a year had gone by.

While he was teaching, there were giggles and strange hand motions between the girls. During snack time they’d chat, telling each other what had happened in the morning market to rumors about an Imperial theft taking place inside The Forbidden City.

Although they were fascinated with what the neighboring co
ncubines had been wearing in their hair, the girls never spent a penny on their clothing or ornaments. Even after Robert told them they were allowed to do so on special occasions, they didn’t think they deserved it.

Eventually
when the tutoring ended, which meant bedtime, gloom settled inside the house like thick smoke. It made the long nights colder. Ayaou was no longer a willing bed warmer. She’d turned to ice.

Shao-mei
’s beautiful, bright eyes had grown dark circles under them. She looked tortured. She’d be happy one moment and sour the next. She blamed herself for everything—the dinner was too salty, or the tea wasn’t hot enough. She looked nervous and unwilling to go to her room when bedtime came. Ayaou silently held her sister’s hand for a long time before parting for the night. This scene caused Robert’s stomach to twist into knots making for another difficult night getting to sleep.

Ayaou
went to Shao-mei’s room. The sisters whispered into the night. Robert read his Chinese books as he waited for Ayaou. Some mornings he awoke to find her side of the bed empty.

He feared going into Shao-mei
’s room to see if Ayaou were there. The truth was that Robert feared seeing his beauties, the loves of his heart, in the same bed. He knew his weakness. The warning signs were his dreams. They were filled with him having intercourse with Ayaou and Shao-mei at the same time. While he was inside one of the girls, the other massaged his back and played with his testicles. Then they switched positions before he ejaculated. All the while the sisters urged him not to shoot all his seeds so both would know pleasure and fulfillment.

Sometimes Robert stood at the head of the stairs and li
stened to them through the door. Shao-mei’s tone told him she was holding back a tempest of jealousy and despair.

Shao-mei said one night,
“You know what will happen if Robert doesn’t come to me. One day he will be short of money. He’ll find a reason to sell me. Is that what you want, sister?”

“
I’m not going to fall into one of your silly traps,” Ayaou replied. “Go to sleep or I’ll leave.”

As time slipped by, his sense of imbalance turned into depre
ssion. At night, his desire sometimes went wild. It was impossible to shut his mind off. The loss of sleep was wearing him down. He honestly didn’t know how much longer he could go on like this. Something had to change.

Robert was beginning to hate himself. He was tempted to give up both A
yaou and Shao-mei and move into the consulate or possibly quit his job to become a missionary. As he sat on the idea, he realized he couldn’t live without them. Where would they go if he set them free? It was painful for him to consider they might end up as prostitutes, or their father might sell them to the highest bidder again. Besides, Ayaou still belonged to Ward. Letting go of Ayaou meant she might be returned to him. The concept of freedom in China for a woman was almost nonexistent. Women were considered property by almost everyone.

He finished reading
The Dream of the Red Chamber
. Reading the one hundred and twenty chapters spread out over the three volumes had been tedious. Tee Lee Ping spent hours with Robert discussing the meanings between the lines.

“
Are you saying that the novel is an extended metaphor?” Robert asked at one point.

“
Of course,” his teacher replied. “I will have you read the story of
Nu Wa Mending the Sky
. Then you will see how Lin Daiyu is an incarnation and how that creates an alliance between stone and wood.”

The look of confusion on Robert
’s face must have been obvious.

“
Yes, I see,” Tee Lee Ping said. “You will have to read
Nu Wa Mending the Sky
to understand.”

His explanations helped Robert see the Chinese way of thin
king. The culture was built with much complexity and sophistication. An ordinary conversation concealed hidden meanings that could be the key to either break or mend a relationship. The tragedy in the story came from misunderstandings and false assumptions. To Chinese intellectuals talking in circles was the way to exhibit the richness of the mind. Any impatient listener was thought uncultured. To understand you also had to be a scholar of Chinese mythology and folklore. Then you could start making the connections. Robert saw that he had much to read and learn.

“
Mr. Hart,” Master Tee Lee Ping said one day after a challenging discussion. Robert kept getting the characters confused. After all, there were more than four hundred named characters in the book. “Be patient and you will reach your goal. Reading
The Dream of the Red Chamber
and understanding it is the one sure way to know China.”

Reading Chinese literature should have satisfied him, for he was a lover of books, but Robert yearned to read in his language. He stru
ggled with the Chinese characters. He thought in English and had to translate every character. At times, he yawned and found his thoughts straying. To get relief, he took breaks and read books in English. Eventually, he forced himself back to the task he was committed to, which was master Chinese and understand how the people thought.

Robert wanted to read about all the cultures of the world and know what was happening in every part of the British Empire. Whe
never he got a copy of the
London Times
or another English language newspaper, he devoured them. He recalled fondly the bookshops and libraries of Belfast where he’d spent so much time. Books were the doors and windows to the world. One learned so much from reading.

It was expensive on his salary
ordering books from home. When he could afford to purchase one or two without causing a financial burden to his girls, he sent a request and the money to his family.

He
’d never stopped writing home, but he was careful what he allowed his family to know about his life. He never mentioned Ayaou or Shao-mei. Many times he crafted fictions in his letters that made his life look like something it wasn’t. He also did not forget that someone else like Ward might be reading what he was writing. It was frustrating to realize that someone might be spying on him. It was even worse that he could do nothing about it. He could stop writing the letters. He could instruct his family and friends to stop, but that was unthinkable—those letters were his only contact with home.

As he was finishing
The Dream of the Red Chamber
, several novels arrived from Ireland. One was Charlotte Mary Yonge’s
The Heir of Redclyffe
. Robert was a fan of her writing. He read the book in record time and identified with the character of Guy Morville, who had a dark side to his nature that he struggled to control as Robert struggled to control his.

Both
The Dream of the Red Chamber
and Mary Yonge’s book made a deep emotional impact on him, since they focused on decadence and the tragedy born of it. Like Guy, Robert struggled to do what was right. Guy was not a villain, and Robert could see he wasn’t either.

He hated Guy
’s cousin, Philip Edmonstone, when he drove Guy to his death by his sanctimonious righteousness. Robert saw similarities between Philip and the missionaries across the river. After all, they had condemned Hollister for having Me-ta-tae. Had those missionaries damaged Hollister as Phillip damaged Guy? It wasn’t right to treat others as if you were morally superior to them. All humans had flaws. All faced temptations.

There was also the character of Xue Baochai in
The Dream of the Red Chamber,
who appeared to fill a similar role to that of Philip Edmonstone. Where Philip drove Guy to his death, the scheming of Baochai and other family members indirectly drove Taiyu to her death. Robert wondered if there was anyone capable of driving him to his death.

Shao-mei
started to gain weight and wear loose clothing to hide it. Because of her depression, she must have been binge eating when Robert wasn’t home. This explained why her stomach was always upset. Her flat chest also vanished, as her breasts developed.

In early December Robert took the girls to see the opera
The Dream of the Red Chamber,
which only covered a portion of the book.
His teacher, Master Ping, accompanied them. They shared a box with a Chinese banker Robert had done business with at the Consulate. The banker pointed out the actress who was playing Urjia. He said Peach, the actress’s real name, had recently become his fifth concubine. Robert saw by the shine in the banker’s eyes that he was proud of her. Robert asked. “How do you manage your relationship with your concubines?”

The banker
looked at Robert and laughed. “I’ve never discussed this topic before. The number of wives a man has in China is a sign of his status—of how successful he is. The concubines are his property. There’s no relationship to it.” He paused and studied Robert, who was the only foreigner in the audience. Everyone was speaking Chinese. Robert found it amazing that he understood what they were saying.

“
I see that you’re a man seeking answers.” The banker’s eyes darted toward Shao-mei and Ayaou, who were sitting with Tee Lee Ping in the other chairs in the shared box.

“
I’d like to invite you for an evening meal at my home sometime this week,” the banker said. “You’ll see how I run my house.” He smiled slyly.

They agreed on the Saturday coming up.

During the entire play, Shao-mei and Ayaou sat spellbound. They laughed when the characters flirted by singing poems to one another and wept when the female protagonist, Taiyu, died of heartbreak.

The costumes fascinate
d Robert. Master Ping said the design of the costumes came from the Ming Dynasty. The embroidery and headdresses were intricate in design. The way the actors painted their faces helped show what kind of character the person was. The characters with the redder face paint demonstrated courage and loyalty above all else while those with the blacker face paint were more impulsive. Blue face paint said the character was cruel but white indicated wickedness. On the other hand, if only the nose was white, it let the audience know this character would impart humor to the plot.

The screeching falsetto of the singers, the loud clacking of the clappers and the noisy banging of drums and cymbals were all shoc
king. At the same time, the over dramatic nature of the opera kept Robert sitting stiff and erect in his seat lest he miss something. There was never a dull moment.

One brief instant in the opera stood out in his mind. It was the scene where a man named Chah-Lian married three women. The first wife
was jealous of the third wife. Although she was instrumental in luring the poor girl into the house to take credit for being a good wife and a dutiful daughter-in-law, the second wife tried her best to stay out of the trouble by flattering the first wife and playing blind and mute.

There were fights among the women, and the third wife was mu
rdered. Chah-Lian, the master, was left out of the criticism. Everyone was to blame but him. The Chinese audience, including Master Ping, cursed the first wife and cheered when she was found guilty and punished.

Robert didn
’t believe anyone was to blame but the man. He was selfish and irresponsible, but this was too easily said from a foreign point of view. Robert had lived here long enough to
wet his shoes
as the Chinese saying went
when you walked on the beach
. He knew better.

The idea of being with more than one woman didn
’t sound as bad as it had a few months earlier. After all, he was in China—not Ireland or England with its stifling morality. There was an old saying,
When in Rome, do as the Romans do.
Well, Robert was in China.

On Saturday evening Robert hurried to the banker’s house. He went alone, because he did not want his girls to hear the questions he was going to ask. Before dinner, the banker took him on a tour of his home. It was huge. There were courtyards, gardens and many rooms with separate little pavilions inside the walled estate.