City of God Read Free Page B

the stick back by the window, then drew her to her feet, kissing her face all the while, little soft kisses.
    “Because husband is displeased with me.”
    “No, I am not. I understand you.” The silk robe, the long lung pao he’d worn earlier, lay on a nearby chair, splendid green satin with dragons embroidered in silver thread. Samuel passed it by in favor of his western clothes, carefully hung in an elaborately carved wardrobe. He pulled on the tight black trousers and black boots and high-necked white shirt and tied his stock. “I must go.”
    “It is early. Useless old Ah Chee made soup you like, with duck and pumpkin.”
    “Perhaps tomorrow. You rest now.” He picked up her pale yellowsilk robe and draped it over her shoulders, lifting her back into the bed as he did so. “Sleep, Mei-hua. Stay beautiful for me.”
    The room beyond was as exotic and foreign as the bedroom, if not as sensuous. The furnishings—rosewood, ebony, ornaments of luminous porcelain and glowing brass—had all arrived from Canton when Mei-hua did, part of her dowry, along with the servant woman.
    Ah Chee’s skin was creased leather and her hair white, but she seemed to Samuel ageless. She stood by the front door, eyes cast down, hands folded, ready to usher him out. Hard to say if she knew he was leaving by the way he was dressed or if, as he suspected, she listened regularly to everything that happened in the bedroom. “My lord stay a little stay,” she urged. “Maybe take some of this old woman’s poor soup. Stay.”
    Samuel walked straight to her and slapped her hard across the face. She did not move, seemed barely even to flinch. He slapped her a second time. He knew she wouldn’t react, but it calmed some of the rage in his belly. “When did tai-tai bleed last?” And when she didn’t answer, “Tell me. If you lie, I swear I will cut out your tongue.”
    “In Last month, lord. Before start of Water Sheep year.”
    He did the calculation quickly. Last month was January, and this year, 1834, was Water Sheep. “When did she stop taking the special drink?” He bought the powder himself from a Mrs. Langton on Christopher Street. Guaranteed to prevent conception as long as a woman drank it dissolved in ale every morning before sunrise.
    “Never, lord. Never. Never. Every day I wake up tai-tai and she drink.” Ah Chee did not say that the girl hated the taste of ale with a rare passion, and spat it out almost as soon as the mixture touched her mouth. Anyway, the powder was probably useless. What did a yang gwei zih woman know of such things? Ah Chee, whose job it had been to look after this plum blossom since the day she was born, got make-no-baby powder from Hor Jick the apothecary—the closest thing to a proper doctor, a yi, in this place—and sprinkled it on the girl’s food, and twice a day rubbed excellent lizard skin cream on Mei-hua’s beautiful flat belly. Until, that is, she had judged the plum blossom to be ready and stopped sprinkling and rubbing. “Never, lord, never,” she repeated. “ Tai-tai drink every day.”
    “Still? Even after she missed two monthlies?”
    “Yes, lord, yes. Drink. Drink.”
    “You are a lying old witch.” He itched to slap her again but knew it would make no difference.
     
    Mei-hua, her ear pressed to the door, heard the latch click, signaling Samuel’s departure. She ran from the bedroom in a whirl of yellow silk and flung herself at Ah Chee, fists flying, pounding out her rage. “You tell. You tell. Old woman say I do not bleed already two months. You tell.”
    Ah Chee stood calmly under the onslaught. Eventually Mei-hua’s anger turned to misery, and she retreated to huddle, weeping, in the elaborately carved red-lacquered throne chair, usually reserved for her husband, under the scroll depicting Fu Xing, the god of happiness, whose benign smile did not alter whatever happened in this room.
    For once the old woman did not rush to dry the girl’s tears. “You think Lord