Fat Years - Chan Koonchung [55]
Dong Niang started taking her clothes off in front of me. “Take everything off, baby, tonight it’s on the house.”
“Why is it on the house tonight?” I asked.
“Tonight is my last time,” she said.
“What do you mean, last time?”
“I’m leaving. I’m getting out of Beijing.”
“You’re leaving Beijing?” I sat up in dismay.
“No crying, no crying,” Dong Niang teased me. “Baby, Dong Niang has never seen you so unhappy in all these years. You’re still my fun-loving baby, aren’t you?”
“I’m really very unhappy,” I said.
“Let Dong Niang hold you,” she said.
She kissed me, but I held back. “Little Dong, let’s just talk.”
She let go of me and got out of bed. “Let me tell your fortune with the tarot cards.”
I didn’t like to call her Dong Niang. I preferred to call her Little Dong, just like when she was at the Paradise Club. When Little Dong found out that I was a writer, she asked me to recommend novels for her. It wasn’t especially necessary as she loved to read fiction, and even before my suggestions had already read many books by Qiong Yao, Yan Qin, Cen Kailun, Yi Shu, and Zhang Xiaoxian. I told her to read some fiction in translation, starting with Jane Austen. She actually read all six of Austen’s novels and she read them better than I had. After that, she read quite a few popular novels in translation. I remember asking what her favorite novels were, and she said Robert James Waller’s The Bridges of Madison County and Qiong Yao’s How Long Lasts the Sunset? Our tastes were different, but because we both liked to read, I always felt closer to her. After she left the club and started seeing her customers at home, I carried on visiting her for years, but I felt like she was still Little Dong who likes to read novels. For a while there were a number of Taiwanese customers who would play poker and smoke cigars at her place, and I joined them a few times. They talked of Dong Niang this, and Dong Niang that, until I too began to call her Dong Niang instead of Little Dong.
“Where is my lover?” I asked casually.
Little Dong started to place the tarot cards, but I changed my mind. “No, no, no, no, predict something else.” I couldn’t put my fate in her hands.
I gave her another scenario, a typically tarot-card conundrum. “I’m standing at a crossroads. The first road will lead me toward a stable and a comfortable life, but I’ll never feel truly satisfied. The second road will lead me into a lot of trouble, even insurmountable trouble, but it could also lead me to find true love and the greatest happiness. Which road should I choose?”
She shuffled the cards a few times and laid them out in two rows. Then she said, “The first road is very peaceful and prosperous; on the second road, there are obstacles and many uncertainties, but there is love there.” Her answer was a complete repetition of my question.
But then she said, “These cards are about change. You’ve been on the first road for a long time. If you want to change to the second road, then you should follow it. If you don’t, you’ll regret it.” This was probably just what I wanted to hear.
“Little Dong—I still like to call you Little Dong—thank you,” I said.
“Lao Chen, this is the first time I’ve seen you in the last two years … seen your true face.”
“My true face? Wasn’t I real before?”
“Before—before you were the same as everyone else, always, always …”
“Full of happiness?” I asked, my heart racing.
“Exactly. It started about two years ago, you and all my other customers. In fact, everybody around me suddenly became extremely happy!”
“Has everybody around you changed?” I quoted Little Xi’s words.
“You could put it that way,” said Little Dong.
“But you haven’t changed, have you? Why not?” I asked.
Little Dong was quiet for a while. Then she said, “Lao Chen, we’ve been friends for over ten years. Can I tell you the truth?”
I nodded.
“You know I’m what the Hong Kong people call a ‘woman of the Dao’—a junkie?”
I was taken aback. I would never have known.
“I don’t use needles. If the customers