The Courtesan (24 page)

Bastl seems a nice man, but from up close he is larger and
hairier than Jinhua expected. Hairier than Swoboda. He said,
“Hab' die Ehre,”
to her, and she looked at Resi, who said, “He is happy to meet you.” Bastl's hands and his feet are enormous, and his hands look dirty, but this is because of his profession—which is a very good one—Resi says. A chimney sweep can earn a good living, she says. And this is very important, she says.

Now the three of them, Bastl and Resi and Jinhua, are sitting on a bench in the front row inside Prauscher's Abnormalitäten Show. It is a relief to be sitting down, although Jinhua's feet don't quite touch the ground like Resi's do, and Bastl's, too, and the people filling in around them are bumping and pushing as they find a place to sit. And people are whispering and pointing—and it is Jinhua at whom they are staring.
“Schau,”
she hears them say,
“da sitzt eine Chinesin.”
Look—it's a Chinese person sitting there.

Hearing this, Jinhua's cheeks burn.

“It is so exciting,” Resi is saying, her bosom rising and falling. Bastl kisses her, this time on the cheek, and his voice is loud, and he is sweating, and Resi is beautifully, gloriously happy, Jinhua thinks, with her chimney sweep who loves her. It is a real kind of love that she is seeing here, something Jinhua has never felt, but it is somehow not a perfect love. It is not like the love she has imagined between Black Jade and Baoyu. Nor is it like the love between the empress and her count. It is not what she expected for today.

Resi

“Pfui.”

The man who is sitting beside the mistress has slopped his beer on her skirts. He is drunk and laughs and raises his glass to the mistress.

“Prost,”
he says. Cheers.

“Pass auf, Du Depp,”
Bastl snaps, leaning over Resi, wanting to be manly.
Watch what you're doing, idiot.

Resi pulls out a handkerchief and dabs at the wet spot on the mistress's skirts.

“Es woar ja net obsichtlich,”
the drunk man says.
I didn't do it on purpose.
And then he says, “She should be on the stage too, the little— What is she anyway? She's from somewhere. She's yellow. Yellow is from China,
net woar
?”

The mistress looks alarmed.
“Leave her in peace,”
Resi hisses, dabbing fiercely at the beer.

The touts outside are screaming.
“Komm'ts die Herrschaften.
Come and see him. Nikolai Kobelkoff, the freak, the Russian Monster. The Human Trunk.”

Even inside you can hear them perfectly.

“You won't believe what you see,” the touts holler. “Right this way. Twenty kreuzer for a ticket.”

It's as hot as the hellfires in here. All these people. Resi feels Bastl's hand on her knee. He smells of the
Langosch
he has eaten; a half day's growth of beard on his chin makes him look rugged and handsome. People are pouring into the theatre, scouting around for places to sit. Everyone is sweating—and excited.

Echt blöd,
Resi thinks. Stupid to forget to bring a fan. She uses her hand to fan the mistress.

“Come and see him, Nikolai the freak, the monster, the Human Trunk right here in our very own Wurschtlprater.”

“It's almost time,” Resi tells the mistress. Bastl's hand is moving up her thigh. The crowd is screaming now. “Nikolai. Nikolai.” Clapping their hands, stomping their feet. The floor shakes. The mistress grabs Resi's arm. She looks worried, her eyes on the stage. She isn't clapping.

O je, o je.
Perhaps it is too much for her. Perhaps this was not such a good—

“You'll love the show,” Resi tells her, and of this she is sure. “You'll be amazed by what we'll see,” she says, and adds, “I promise,” but now she isn't so sure anymore. There is a chair and a table on the stage. A man walks on, a good-size wooden trunk in his arms. He is tall and as thin as mist.

The crowd goes crazy. He puts the trunk down on the floor.

“Nikolai. Nikolai.” The crowd is screaming.

Resi glances sideways. The mistress is looking up at the stage, hardly blinking at all, biting her lip. The man clears his throat to signal the audience. He has on a gray suit and a bow tie that is bright yellow. The little mistress grabs Resi's arm.

“Is he the freak?”

“
Nein, gnä' Frau.
Not Kobelkoff yet. But soon.” Resi has to shout to be heard. Bastl gives her a kiss on the cheek and tightens his grip on her knee. He likes this kind of thing. Everyone does.
Abnormalitäten.
The very best kind of amusement.

The crowd is settling, eyes open, necks craning. Stray voices call, “Kobelkoff.” “Nikolai.” A loud cough sounds at the back of the theatre, a whistle, another cough, and then another.

The man lifts the lid off the trunk. Almost everyone gasps and all at the same time.

You can't see what's inside, not even from the front row. The mistress has Resi's hand in a death grip. A red-and-white cloth comes out of the trunk. Red-and-white checks. The man shakes it. It makes a snapping sound. He spreads it over the table, and a cheer goes up for the tablecloth.

Sweat is trickling down Resi's temples, between her breasts; her underskirts are sopping wet. The little mistress is as stiff as a cooking spoon, not making a sound. A bottle of wine comes out of the
trunk. And then a wineglass. A fork and knife, a plate—and the man with the yellow tie is setting the table. He straightens the fork. Positions the wineglass, moves the bottle. He stands back to look, and then he leaves the stage, and the crowd groans. Someone says,
“Ruck umi”
—move over—and a bench-full of people shift to make room.

Resi asks the mistress, “Are you all right?” The mistress nods, but barely. Her eyes don't leave the stage, and now the man is back. Something bulky is in his arms, and heavy too. He holds it up. The crowd gasps. It's Kobelkoff, and he is an outsize head with a fur cap, a huge face with fleshy cheeks and dark, pinpoint eyes—and a tiny body dressed in a purple velvet vest. And there is nothing more to him. No arms, no legs, no trousers. Nikolai Kobelkoff is a head with no real body. He is a freak, a human trunk.

The crowd is shrieking and Resi hears the mistress scream. People clap, and the mistress has covered her face with her hands, but she is peeking out between her fingers. The man with the yellow tie calls out. “Do you want to see Nikolai pour himself a glass of wine?”

“Trink. Trink.”
The crowd is roaring. Drink, drink. Nikolai must drink.

Perched on the chair, Nikolai has the wine bottle pinched between his cheek and what would be his shoulder—if he had arms. He is pouring wine. He is drinking it without any hands. It is astonishing; he is truly a freak, and Resi is screaming; Bastl is screaming. The crowd is beside itself with amazement. The man with the yellow tie calls out. Such a big voice for such a thin man. “Do you want to see the freak eat
Langosch
?”

“Langosch. Langosch,”
the crowd calls out as one.

Jinhua

The
head-with-no-body
freak has left the stage, but the noise is getting louder and louder inside Prauscher's Abnormalitäten Show. The crowd is clapping hands and stomping feet; the bench is wobbling. The crowd wants him back. They want more of Kobelkoff; more wine, more
Langosch;
more of the show, the freak, the monster. Jinhua grips the edge of the bench; she has to hold on; she does not want what the barbarians want. She does not want the freak to come back.

Resi is standing. The man who spilled his drink is standing too. He is unsteady on his feet, whistling and waving his thick arms.

Jinhua cannot breathe.

“She needs some fresh air,” she hears Resi say. “Move over and let us get out. Bastl, you must carry her.” The noise from the crowd is deafening.

Bastl lifts her up. Strong barbarian arms holding her. Jinhua closes her eyes. Scratchy jacket touching her cheek. So rough on her skin. She cannot look, and still she sees Kobelkoff. Her eyes and her mind see the
head-with-no-body
freak. The crowd is screaming, screaming the words
rotting-no-head-dead-body-corpse.
Or is it
rotting-no-body-dead-head—

She needs to get out. Bastl pushes his way through the crowd, and Jinhua is holding on to his shoulders, on to the scratchy jacket, and the crowd moves to let them through. Bastl smells of
Langosch,
and of sweat and smoke and of the same golden liquid that the man spilled on Jinhua's skirt, and Jinhua can't see Resi.

They are outside, and the sun is hot, and Resi isn't here.

“I will go and find her,” Bastl says. “Wait for just a moment.”

Jinhua is alone now outside the theatre, afraid of falling, afraid
of moving, afraid of looking or standing still. The sign reminds her. Big red letters. Prauscher's Abnormalitäten Show. Large pink people all around her, barbarian faces everywhere. She hears the word
Schlitzaugen
—slit eyes. The touts are calling out. “Come and see him, Nikolai the freak. See the next show. See it now. See it twice. See it three times.”

Jinhua takes a step and then another, and it is hard to move her feet, but she can't stay here. She must find her way back to the Hauptallee. Herr Swoboda will be waiting with his carriage to take her to the Palais Kinsky, where it is safe, and she can look out from her foreign-glass window, and read Wenqing's diary—and nothing can touch her. Jinhua's feet are aching. She should never have come to the Wurschtlprater,
and now Suyin is here beside her, shaking her head, whispering into Jinhua's ear—Heaven's net is wide, Jinhua. You have not been careful. You have lost your
way.

THE HEART AND THE SENSES

Jinhua

There is no sign of Swoboda. Overhead the sun is screaming above the Hauptallee, and the sky seems merciless and much too wide, and from all directions people are knocking into Jinhua. Some of them say
“Tschuldigung,”
saying it quickly and under their breaths—or loudly, almost spitting—and some of them look at her in a strange way, saying nothing at all.

Suyin is right—Jinhua has lost her way and she does not belong here in this frightening place where people look and laugh and point at what they call
Abnormalitäten.
Where a
head-with-no-body
is one of those things. Where Jinhua is one of those things too because she is Chinese—and she understands this now where before she didn't really.

Carriages are passing. Dozens and hundreds of them with nothing to distinguish one from the other. Bastl and Resi are nowhere to be seen. Dust is rising from the street, and the dust clings to Jinhua's skirt, her shoes, her hands; it fills her mouth, and she is
thirsty, most terribly thirsty, and so very hot. It is like being in fire—and she can't stop thinking about Baba's head.

A carriage stops right in front of where Jinhua is standing, and the horses, white and perfectly matched, stamp and snort and twitch. They flare their nostrils and their eyes are wild and streaked with red—

These are not Swoboda's black horses, and this is not Herr Swoboda's carriage.

Jinhua takes one step back, and a barbarian man is looking out—at her—and he is no one she knows and he is not laughing or pointing. The man's lips move, and the coachman has leapt from his seat to the ground and is opening the carriage door.

The man climbs out. He is coming toward Jinhua, his eyes on her face, and they are a startling color. He is standing right in front of her, looking down—and now he is taking off his hat and bowing deeply.

She doesn't know what to do.

“Madam appears to be,” he is saying, speaking very slowly, “in a state of some distress. Is she perhaps in need of a
Kavalier
to assist? A gentleman to rescue her?”

Jinhua shrinks away, understanding only some of what the man has said—and then she sees the neat rows of buttons on his jacket, and then those startling eyes, again.
Bi yan.
Blue eyes. Blue like the dome of heaven. Blue like the sky when a storm is coming but hasn't quite arrived. And the buttons are shiny gold in two straight rows on a gray jacket that has ribbons and brooches and pins and medallions and is tapered at the man's waist. Jinhua hesitates. She is unsure, but the man is not. He is smiling in the barbarian way. He takes her hand. Actually it is her fingers that he is holding. He's touching her and she doesn't mind, and really she should pull away and look down at the ground and take another step away from him.

But she doesn't do any of this, and Jinhua is wondering,
What would Wenqing think?

Of her being here—

And Resi's Wurschtlprater—

And what would Suyin whisper about the barbarian man who is touching her?

Bowing again, the man lifts Jinhua's hand. Close to his lips but not quite touching, and she has the faintest feeling of his breath on her skin. His lips linger, and it is as though her feet were nailed to the ground, and she cannot possibly move.

“Küss die Hand, gnädiges Fräulein,”
he says, and she is allowing this, this kiss of her hand, and his voice is rich and smooth and deep, like nothing she has ever heard; richer, smoother, deeper than the sound of the huge gong in the Cold Mountain Temple—that a person can hear from anyplace in Suzhou, no matter how far away. He waits a moment before letting go. His eyes are fixed on hers, and this is uncomfortable—and thrilling.

What would Wenqing say?
Again, a thought so brief it almost never was. Wenqing is—in Saint Petersburg.
And he is not at all like this man is.

“Madam can only be the beautiful wife, the mysterious and exotic bride of the Chinese emissary to Vienna.” The man is speaking slowly, and Jinhua understands—and this, too, is thrilling.

“Count Alfred von Waldersee at Madam's service,” he says. “May I take you somewhere? Perhaps Madam would join me for a ride in my carriage, or would she prefer a seat in the shade and something cool to drink? The day is uncomfortably warm,
nicht wahr
?”

She goes with him. She doesn't know why, but she does. It is his eyes and his voice and the way he is strong and what he says and how he took her hand and kissed it; his hair is silvery pale and
wavy, and—
he is a count
—and she is not at all afraid. It is unforgivable that she would go with a man she does not know at all, a barbarian man who is a stranger, and—yes—she wants to do this anyway and she is sure—quite sure—that he will look after her in a new way.

Riding in the carriage, sitting next to the man, this count with the blue, blue eyes and the golden buttons on his jacket, there is no turning back, and what Wenqing would say or think or do seems unimportant. The count is smiling; he has given Jinhua his white handkerchief so that she can dab her face, and it is somehow cool and smells like Frau Anna's lavender, and she wants to keep it next to her cheek forever and for always. On just one corner, Jinhua notices, are three scrolled letters. Finely embroidered in white—the letters
A v W.
A tiny crown embroidered above them.

The count is sitting with his body half turned toward her, asking questions about Suzhou: “Where is it and what is it like?” About Peking: “Exotic tales are told to us,” he says, “of palaces with golden roofs and high walls, and eunuchs and concubines and porcelains and jades. We hear of room upon room of treasure and indescribable beauty there.” He is leaning forward to give the coachman instructions without his eyes ever leaving Jinhua's eyes. She is answering his questions. She tells him that Suzhou is a city of rivers and canals and water, that she has never been to the capital. He says he would like, one day, to go to Peking, to see the golden roofs and high walls and eunuchs and concubines. She says that she was frightened today. She tells him about Resi and Bastl and the human freak, although she says nothing about his
head-with-no-body.
She tells him, too, about looking for Herr Swoboda, and he listens and then he says, “You are perfectly safe with me. We will do something nice, and then I will take you home to the Palais Kinsky. You need not worry. Your husband need not worry either.”

Sitting next to him, listening to this man who is a count, Jinhua is thinking that a thousand things could happen, that a thousand things are happening now. There is a slight breeze that cools her face, and she feels—
what did he call her?
—beautiful, mysterious, exotic, and there is no doubt, is there, but that the count finds her alluring? And when the count touches her arm, she remembers the goddess Nüwa, who was curious and wise and virtuous, just like Mama, and who explored the beautiful earth—and this is what Jinhua is doing right now. It is a new thing—to explore—and to be alluring.

And to push Suyin's voice away.

The sign above the gate reads
Erstes Kaffeehaus
—the First Café—in large green letters. Placards stand sentry on either side. Two of them, larger than life, each of them painted with a bright-faced, round-bellied man, and each man having a dark mustache that scrolls across his face; each man wearing striped trousers and a bright white apron, holding up a mug from which a long curl of steam rises—holding it as if to say,
I offer you this. Taste it. It is more delicious than anything you have ever had before.

The count cups Jinhua's elbow in his hand. He guides her through the gate, walking slowly, then offers her his arm. From her window she has seen this way of men and ladies walking. The count turns to wave to a
tangguan
—a waiter—and she notices that the count's back is straight and strong and slender, and he is not as old as Wenqing is, but he is not young either. The waiter leads them to a table under a canopy of trees. The chairs gleam with new green paint. The count pulls out a chair and helps Jinhua to sit. Dishes clatter, and glasses clink, and he seats himself opposite her.

“Permit me, please, to choose for you.”

Jinhua nods, and a breeze ruffles the count's wavy silver hair. “Madam will have a
Kracherl,
” he says to the waiter,
“und für mich ein Gläschen Wein.”

The waiter is the man on the placards. He is exactly the same as both of them, with the scrolling mustache and the bright white apron and the large, round belly.

“A
Kracherl
for the young lady,” he says, and he dips his head by way of a bow, and there is the smallest flicker of strangeness in the way he looks at Jinhua. This time—now—it doesn't matter at all to her that he looks this way, because she is with the count, and she sits a little straighter and feels safer than ever before. “And a glass of wine for the gentleman,” the waiter adds before he moves away.

Jinhua has never tasted a
Himbeere
before—she doesn't know what it is—but she chooses the deep and very red syrup from the rainbow of bottles on the trolley because she likes the color and because she has just seen the child at the next table choose it. He is dressed in dark blue knickers and a matching short jacket, and he is slurping his drink through a ryegrass straw, and he is with his mother, who laughs easily with him, and that makes Jinhua smile.

The waiter pours the syrup into a glass, a tall and slender one; he pours with a flourish; he checks the level with a serious eye and places the glass in front of Jinhua. And then he fills it full to the brim with bubble-studded liquid that fizzes and hisses and breaks into layers of pinks and reds that are dark and pale and almost white. A mound of froth forms on the top, and this Viennese thing that the count has chosen for Jinhua—this
Kracherl
—is beautiful to look at.

“I imagine that there is not such a thing as this in your native land,” the count is saying, speaking slowly in a way she understands.
“Only in Vienna, I think, does one find such a gay and spectacular beverage.”

That rich voice. That smile. Those blue, blue eyes that shift to gray and back to a deep lavender.

“No,” Jinhua tells him. “We have nothing quite like this in China.”

“Nothing like this in Prussia either,” he says. “For I am from Berlin and not Vienna.”

The word
Berlin
stops her for a moment, and then Jinhua takes the straw in her mouth and takes a sip, a small one first, aware that he is watching her. Prickles of ice and fire and hot and cold burst in her mouth, and the prickles reach her throat and rise to her nose, and the count is laughing, and she swallows and then laughs too. The drink astonishes her. She takes another sip, and she has never tasted such a thing before, and the count is asking her, “Do you like it?”

Oh yes, she likes it very much. And she has forgotten her fears and all of her worries.

The waiter has returned, bringing the count a second glass of wine. The count lifts the glass to his lips, and the dark-blue-knickered boy at the next table begins to shriek.
“Musik. Musik, Musik,”
he screams, and yes, now there is music, and it is making the air swirl and the leaves and the ground swirl too, and people are getting up from their chairs. They are getting up to dance, and they are dancing in just the way that Wenqing has described in his Diplomatic Diary.

Men's hands touching ladies' waists. Ladies' hands on men's shoulders.

But there is so much more than what Wenqing has written. It is people laughing. It is men and women holding one another close—in a way that Jinhua imagines lovers would—holding each other and pulling away. Both at the same time. It is feet moving
quickly, nimbly; tapping, skipping, leaping over the ground. It is skirts flaring, dipping, swooping; spinning in circles, moving with the music. It is beautiful love, and it is Jinhua's body longing for this. Longing to dance and to love and to move with the music. Wanting more and more and more of this.