Chapter 4

Chapter 4

I refuse to call myself by the name my mother gave me. I’ve always felt as if that name was a sentence passed down on me, like the criminals of old who had words tattooed on their faces-a brand for life, written across my face, weighing on my back.

As long as I carried that name, I would never be able to turn my life around. Wherever I went, it felt as if people would point at me and whisper-look, there goes a cheap whore who sells her flesh for food.

But what use is there in talking about my old name? Those days are from a past so distant it will never come back.

When I was fourteen, both my parents died in the war, so I went to seek shelter with my uncle.

My uncle’s family had a son two years older than me. One night, in the middle of the night, my cousin’s hand reached for my chest. I woke up and screamed in terror. When my uncle and aunt found out, my aunt said that since my cousin wasn’t likely to find a wife anyway, they might as well marry me to him.

Everyone in the neighborhood knew my cousin was a rotten gambler. I refused. Even after they beat me half to death, I still refused. In the end, my uncle made the decision. “If you won’t marry him, then earn money for this family. We’re so poor we can barely keep the pot boiling. You think we can afford another mouth to feed?”

The next day, my uncle sent me to Drunken Fragrance Pavilion.

The madam circled me once, looking me over. “She’s passable, but too skinny. No figure at all. I’ll have to spend money raising her up. A hundred won’t do. Seventy.”

That was my price. Seventy silver dollars.

My uncle went home with the bundle of money, beaming with joy. I heard that afterward, he arranged a marriage for my cousin. What happened after that, I don’t know.

Xiao Wan guessed I was someone capable simply because I found the vegetable cellar. She truly thought too highly of me.

It was only because I, too, had once been locked in that cellar.

I knew what she had gone through. Ah Hai was the madam’s lover. Almost none of the girls who had just been brought in were obedient, so the madam would have Ah Hai take them downstairs and teach them a lesson.

That was how he enjoyed one young girl’s body after another, then beat them until they were covered in wounds and starved them for several days on top of it. When they were so hungry and in so much pain that their minds were nearly gone, the madam would go down to the vegetable cellar.

“Is this worth it? Think about it. You’re already here, so who are you keeping that chastity arch for? The world is in chaos. Isn’t it more practical to make a little silver in this trade and have something to rely on than to cling to some memorial arch? Once your body’s been taken, you won’t be able to leave and become a proper woman anyway! You’re pretty. Men are bound to like you. Maybe some high-ranking official will take a fancy to you and redeem you. Who can say? As long as you’re alive, you clearly have a future ahead of you, so why insist on throwing your life away? You think you’re defying me? You’re only hurting yourself!”

Those who gave in were dragged out, their name plaques hung up in the house, and from then on, they had to call her Madam. Those who refused would keep starving and keep being beaten. Either way, they could forget about leaving Drunken Fragrance Pavilion alive.

There truly were chaste and steadfast women. Some were beaten to death in that vegetable cellar while still breathing, and to their dying breath, their plaques were never hung in the house.

When one woman’s corpse was dragged up, I didn’t even dare look at it.

Because I had accepted my fate. My plaque had been hung. I did not have that kind of chastity or resolve.

I only wanted to survive.

But living like this was so humiliating. There were moments when I felt death would be better than life, that this human world was more hellish than hell itself.

At times like that, I would think I might as well dash my head against a wall and die, and spare myself decades more of suffering.

In the end, though, I never had the courage to seek death. I wiped away my tears, kept smiling at people, and continued to scrape out a miserable existence.

Three days later, the madam went down to see Xiao Wan and said much the same things. After Xiao Wan listened, she threw herself into the madam’s arms. “I’ve figured it out. Better a bad life than a good death. I’ll earn money properly!”

Xiao Wan was released. She was indeed exceptionally beautiful, and the madam gave her two fine qipao made of good fabric.

I asked her, “You’ve really come around?”

She pressed her lips together. There was no rouge or powder on her face, and she looked out of place among the rest of us, as if she had not come around at all. Still, she told me, “I have. But what I figured out was something else.”