Gold Mountain Blues - Ling Zhang [162]
Still, it had never occurred to him that the silk-gowned man, having paid two hundred fifty dollars for Cat Eyes, would not take her as his own concubine. Instead, he had made her many men’s concubine, allowing her to be pawed over and ground down by them. She was still Cat Eyes, but she was just not the same Cat Eyes as the first day he saw her.
“Does your uncle know you’re here?” he asked her now.
Cat Eyes gave a snort of laughter. “What uncle? My uncle hasn’t been born from my granny’s belly yet.”
“So the man who sold you wasn’t your uncle?” Kam Shan asked in surprise. Cat Eyes shook her head. “I don’t even know his name. I went to Canton with my elder sister to see the lights and we bumped into this man. He said he’d take us to the docks to see the foreign boats, then he tricked us and we ended up at sea.”
“What about the head tax? Did he pay that for you?”
“He got me in on someone’s Returning Resident Permit. The photo looked pretty much the same.”
“What about your sister?”
“Someone bought her on the boat.”
Cat Eyes stretched out a hand from under the quilt, covered her mouth and gave a yawn as long as a tangled thread. Her fingertips came away wet from her runny nose and she gave them a shake, so that the drops landed on the already besmeared wall. She did not sound sorrowful as she spoke, in fact she acted as if she was talking about someone else.
“Can you hurry up, mister, so I can sleep a bit? I didn’t sleep at all last night, with the toothache.”
She took off her top and he saw she had nothing on underneath. Her body had been covered up all winter but the traces of the field work she used to do were still visible. Scabs from sunburn had left ridges like rice weevils all over her shoulders and back. The only pallid bits of skin were those two fleshy protuberances on her chest, as small and dried up as buds withered on the branch. Kam Shan pinched them—they felt like two lumps of dough. By comparison, Sundance’s breasts were so ripe that, at the slightest touch, they melted in his hands.
Cat Eyes’ trousers were knotted loosely at the waist and the tie came undone with a slight tug. She had no underclothes on. Her legs were as loose as her trousers tie and at the slightest nudge they parted. Her pubes were swollen like a rotten peach, and a yellow fluid oozed from them. The stench was so overpowering that when it reached Kam Shan’s nostrils, he retched and his mouth filled with the foul aftertaste from his lunchtime shrimp dumplings. Instantly, he felt himself go soft.
“Are you coming?” asked Cat Eyes.
“The hell I am!” Kam Shan swore violently. “You want to infect me so I die of the pox too?”
Cat Eyes fell silent. Kam Shan stood up and felt around for his own trousers. Something was weighing on his feet. He realized that Cat Eyes was clinging on to his trouser cuffs. “Please, mister, don’t go,” she begged. “You paid for half an hour. She can’t kick you out before then. Stay here so I can sleep a bit, please?”
Kam Shan lifted the girl with his foot and dropped her on the bed. Her body was as light as a leaf. “Well, you better get a doctor to look at you,” he said, but before he had finished speaking he heard the sound of snoring. He looked round to see Cat Eyes fast asleep on the bed, her eyes tight shut. Her lashes were as exuberant as grasses growing on the riverbank. A damp curl of hair clung to her forehead. Any coquettishness she may have had dropped from her like grains of sand. She had turned into a child before his eyes. He picked up the quilt and covered her with it. Then he sat down and took out a cigarette, the third he had smoked in his life.
It was dusk by the time Kam Shan went back out into the street. The wind had risen, rattling the branches in the trees so that they made great black silhouettes against the sky.