Peach Blossom Pavilion. Mingmei Yip
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Название: Peach Blossom Pavilion
Автор: Mingmei Yip
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Историческая литература
isbn: 9780007570133
isbn:
It is now Leo’s turn to peck my cheek, then he says in his smooth Mandarin, ‘How are you today, Popo?’
This American boy calls me Popo, the respectful way of addressing an elderly lady in Chinese, while my Jade Treasure prefers the more Westernised Grandmama (she adds another ‘ma’ for ‘great’ grandmother). Although I am always suspicious of laofan, old barbarians, I kind of like Leo. He’s a nice boy, good-looking with a big body and soft blonde hair, a graduate of journalism at a very good university called Ge-lin-bi-ya? (so I was told by Jade), speaks very good Mandarin, now works as an editor for a very famous publisher called Ah-ba Call-lings? (so I was also told by Jade). And madly in love with my Jade Treasure.
Jade is already clanking bowls and plates in my small kitchen, preparing snacks. Her bare legs play hide and seek behind the half-opened door, while her excessive energy thrusts her to and fro between the refrigerator, the cupboard, the sink, the stove.
A half hour later, after we’ve finished our snacks and the trays are put away and the table cleaned, Leo and Jade sit down beside me on the sofa, carefully taking out their recorder, pads, pens. Faces glowing with excitement, they look like Chinese students eager to please their teacher. It touches me to see their expressions turn serious as if they were burdened by the sacred responsibility of saving a precious heritage from sinking into quicksand.
‘Grandmama,’ Jade says after she’s discussed it in English with her fiancé, ‘Leo and I agreed that it’s best for you to start your story from the beginning. That is, when you were sold to the turquoise pavilion after Great-great-grandpapa was executed.’
I’m glad she is discreet enough not to say jiyuan, prostitution house, or worse, jixiang, whorehouse, but instead uses the much more refined and poetic qinglou – turquoise pavilion.
‘Jade, if you’re so interested in Chinese culture, do you know there are more than forty words for prostitution house … fire pit; tender village; brocade gate; wind and moon domain—’
Jade interrupts. ‘Grandmama, so which were you in?’
‘You know, we had our own hierarchy. The prestigious book chamber ladies,’ I tilt my head, ‘like myself, condescended to the second-rate long gown ladies, and they in turn snubbed those who worked in the second hall. And of course, everyone would spit on the homeless wild chickens as if they were nonhuman.’
‘Wow! Cool stuff!’ Jade exclaims, then exchanges whispers with Leo. She turns back to stare at me, her elongated eyes sparkling with enthusiasm. ‘Grandmama, we think that it’s better if you can use the “talk story” style. Besides, can you add even more juicy stuff?’
‘No.’ I wave them a dismissive hand. ‘Do you think my life is not miserable enough to be saleable? This is my story, and I’ll do it my way!’
‘Yes, of course!’ The two heads nod like basketballs under thumping hands.
‘All right, my big prince and princess, what else?’
‘That’s all, Grandmama. Let’s start!’ The two young faces gleam as if they were about to watch a Hollywood soap opera – forgetting that I have told them a hundred times that my life is even a thousand times soapier.
To be a prostitute was my fate.
After all, no murderer’s daughter would be accepted into a decent household to be a wife whose children would be smeared with crime even before they were born. The only other choice was my mother’s – to take refuge as a nun, for the only other society which would accept a criminal’s relatives lay within the empty gate.
I had just turned thirteen when I exchanged the quiet life of a family for the tumult of a prostitution house. But not like the others, whose parents had been too poor to feed them, or who had been kidnapped and sold by bandits.
It all happened because my father was convicted of a crime – one he’d never committed.
‘That was the mistake your father should never have made,’ my mother told me over and over, ‘trying to be righteous, and,’ she added bitterly, ‘meddling in rich men’s business.’
True. For that ‘business’ cost him his own life, and fatefully changed the life of his wife and daughter.
Baba had been a Peking opera performer and a musician. Trained as a martial arts actor, he played acrobats and warriors. During one performance, while fighting with four pennants strapped to his thirty-pound suit of armour, he jumped down from four stacked chairs in his high-soled boots and broke his leg. Unable to perform on stage anymore, he played the two-stringed fiddle in the troupe’s orchestra. After several years, he became even more famous for his fiddle playing, and an amateur Peking opera group led by the wife of a Shanghai warlord hired him as its accompanist. Every month the wife would hold a big party in the house’s lavish garden. It was an incident in that garden that completely changed our family’s destiny.
One moonlit evening amid the cheerful tunes of the fiddle and the falsetto voices of the silk-clad and heavily jewelled tai tai – society ladies – the drunken warlord raped his own teenage daughter.
The girl grabbed her father’s gun and fled to the garden where the guests were gathered. The warlord ran behind her, puffing and pants falling. Suddenly his daughter stopped and turned to him. Tears streaming down her cheeks, she slowly pointed the gun to her head. ‘Beast! If you dare come an inch closer, I’ll shoot myself!’
Baba threw down his precious fiddle and ran to the source of the tumult. He pushed away the gaping guests, leaped forward, and tried to seize the gun. But it went off. The hapless girl fell dead to the ground in a pool of blood surrounded by the stunned guests and servants.
The warlord turned to grab Baba’s throat till his tongue protruded. Eyes blurred and face as red as his daughter’s splattered blood, he spat on Baba. ‘Animal! You raped my daughter and killed her!’
Although all the members in the household knew it was a false accusation, nobody was willing to right the wrong. The servants were scared and powerless. The rich guests couldn’t have cared less.
One general meditatively stroked his beard, sneering, ‘Big deal, it’s just a fiddle player.’ And that ended the whole event.
Indeed, it was a big deal for us. For Baba was executed. Mother took refuge as a Buddhist nun in a temple in Peking. I was taken away to a prostitution house.
This all happened in 1918.
Thereafter, during the tender years of my youth, while my mother was strenuously cultivating desirelessness in the Pure Lotus Nunnery in Peking, I was busy stirring up desire within the Peach Blossom Pavilion.
That was the mistake your father should never have made – trying to be righteous and meddling in rich men’s СКАЧАТЬ