Memoirs of a Courtesan

Copyright

Avon

HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

77–85 Fulham Palace Road

Hammersmith, London W6 8JB

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2014

Copyright © Mingmei Yip 2012

Cover images ©Shutterstock 2014

Mingmei Yip asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780007570140

Ebook Edition © October 2014 ISBN: 9780007570157

Version: 2014-09-23

Dedication

To Geoffrey, who makes the whole world beautiful

Never give up working to defeat your enemy. Master his fate. Exploit his unpreparedness and attack him when he is unaware.

—Art of War, Sunzi (ca. 544–496 BC)

Stir the water to catch the fish – benefit by creating chaos

—Thirty-Six Stratagems, collection of popular ancient Chinese proverbs on outwitting your enemies. First mentioned in Southern Qi dynasties (AD 847–537)

So long as my body is still here, so will be my love for you.

—Li Shangyin (ca AD 813–858), Tang dynasty poet

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

Part One

Prologue

1. The Naked Girl Jumping Towards Eternity

2. Bright Moon Nightclub

3. Madame Lewinsky

4. The Red Shoes

5. The Young Master

Part Two

6. Life Between the Two Gangs

7. Temple Celebration

8. The Lion Dancers

9. Hospital Visit

10. Manchurian Han Banquet and a Private Magic Show

11. The Bund and the Amusement Park

12. The Castle

13. An Invitation to a Private Show

14. Shadowy Recipes

Part Three

15. Life as a Spy

16. Peony Pavilion

Part Four

17. A Luxury Cruise

18. False Alarm

19. Plaza Athénée

20. Opera House and a Deadly Thought

21. Shopping the Champs-Élysées

22. Magic and Flying Knives

23. Show of the Century

Part Five

24. A Ghost Baby Boy

25. The Birth

26. Two Ceremonies

27. A Wandering Baby

28. The Pink Skeleton Empire

29. The Great Escape

30. The Secret Villa

31. The Garden

32. The Grandfather Clock

33. The Master’s Return

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Also by Mingmei Yip

About the Publisher

Prologue

It all happened because I was considered perfect material to be a spy – beautiful, smart and, most important, an orphan.

I am well aware of what people call me behind my back: Skeleton Woman!

Actually, this does not bother me a bit. Let others feel spite, jealousy, hatred for me. At times I feel a secretive, ticklish glee.

I am a woman who can turn men into skeletons under my touch, though it is as light as a petal and as tender as silk.

My name is Camilla. At nineteen, I’d already become the lead singer at Shanghai’s most popular and elegant Bright Moon Nightclub. It was through powerful connections that I got this position at my young age, with the bonus of being the object of desire of many men and the jealousy and hatred of countless women. And then there were Shadow and Rainbow Chang.

They were the other skeleton women.

But unlike me, Rainbow and Shadow were not nightclub singers. Rainbow, Shanghai’s most popular gossip columnist, made her fortune by digging up secrets and dirt for the Leisure News. Though she had a woman’s name, she exuded the charm of both sexes as she rode the waves of in-between. Short haircut, silk tie and outrageously expensive and impeccably tailored suits contrasted with white-powdered face, rouged cheeks, pink lips, silvery-pink eye shadow and long, lush, artificial lashes. Rainbow neither dressed like a woman nor looked like a man. Exposing everyone else’s secrets in her column, for herself she chose camouflage, in sex as well as in life. But why? It was yet to be found out.

If Rainbow Chang presented herself as mysterious, then Shadow was absolutely unfathomable. Everything about her was staged like a magician’s stunning feats – jumping into thin air; escaping from locked chains under water; cutting a volunteer into multiple pieces, then restoring her in seconds. Carried out in a skimpy dress, enhanced by snake-slick movements, with an expressionless, stunningly beautiful face. Who was she? I was dying to find out.

We used artists’ names; no one knew our real ones. With our own agendas, we were the three most pungent ingredients in this boiling cauldron called Shanghai. Men went crazy for a taste of us, while women sought our elusive recipe.

People admired or hated me as the ultimate femme fatale. But I myself had no idea who I was. I was a nobody, literally. An orphan, I was adopted by a man and his gang for their own purposes. Later I learned that the man was Big Brother Wang, his gang, the Red Demons. Under their constant watching and fussing over me, and due to their strict discipline, by fourteen I’d grown up to be a watermelon-seed-faced, full-bosomed, slim-waisted, long-legged beauty, possessing everything desired by men and envied by women.

Of course, I had not been raised and disciplined just to be a refined, well-mannered lady to be married off to the son of a rich family. Instead, I was groomed to lure Master Lung, head of the Flying Dragons gang, to his doom. I had quickly figured out that I’d been given a roof over my head, fancy clothes to wear and gourmet food to consume for a reason.

I was raised and trained to be a spy.

I was to be the Red Demons’ secret weapon in a meticulous plan to topple its bitterest rival, the Flying Dragons: for nineteen-thirties Shanghai was the battleground for relentless wars among the triads, wars in which I was to be merely a pawn.

And what a life that was.

Having schemed for most of my nineteen years in this dusty world, I’d already turned a few men and women into skeletons dangling in hell – literally or otherwise. I didn’t feel any guilt. This was the only job – the only life – I knew.

This was how they had trained me – to have no attachment, no feelings, no conscience. I was the woman who would, when needed, reduce any man or woman to a skeleton at the blink of my mascaraed eye.

Until the day I met Master Lung’s son, Jinying, and Lung’s bodyguard, Gao. But that was not part of the Red Demons’ plan forme …

1

The Naked Girl Jumping Towards Eternity

Against the sapphire-blue night sky, a young woman was pacing along a ledge atop the Shanghai Customs House tower like a circus girl treading a tightrope.

Except she was stark naked.

The Shanghainese say that nothing will surprise them, that they’ve seen it all. But now they were surprised. No one watching had ever seen anything like this.

Not even my new lover, Master Lung, head of the most powerful black society in Shanghai, the Flying Dragons, nor his slew of bodyguards scattered among the crowd, alert for danger and shoving anyone who seemed about to get too close to their boss.

Lung’s and my eyes had stopped staring licentiously into each other’s and were directed skywards – to the clock tower of the Customs House with its fake European style, far above the Bund and the Huangpu River.

The crowd held its collective breath. Their probing, lascivious eyes were glued to the muscular, round-bosomed, naked body above, expecting at any moment that she would jump to her death. I imagined the onlookers’ agitated thoughts:

Is she really going to jump?

Why doesn’t she want to live?

Jump! I want splashing blood, crashing flesh, crackling bones!

What a pity: a beautiful girl soon to turn into a puddle of vomit.

Tonight the air was balmy, but the naked girl playing the tug-of-war with death hundreds of feet above chilled us all, both those appalled by someone about to plunge to her death and the perverts who secretly thirsted for the morbid sights of splattered blood and scattered human pieces. I bit my lip, my hand tightly clutching Master Lung’s arm while my heart pounded like a tribal drum trying to scare away demons.

Not that a smashed face and broken limbs would have bothered me much. For I had been trained since my teens to wipe away all human emotions. I had been moulded for one purpose and one purpose only: to be a spy. Though, ironically, I earned my living singing sentimental songs in a nightclub.

As I continued to watch, the two hands of the clock merged into a single one pointing north, setting off the imitation Westminster Chimes to suddenly flood us with an eerily cheerful melody. But then, in the midst of the clear sky, thunder cracked and lightning flashed …

And the naked figure jumped!

The onlookers gasped collectively, their expressions ranging from horror, to sorrow, to unabashed thrill …

All heads dropped down to gape, some of the women through cracks between their many-ringed, red-nailed fingers. A pause, then another shock. There was no body. Only a pair of red high heels in the middle of a pool of blood!

‘What happened?! Where is she?!’ A collective question burst into the night air.

A group of policemen arrived to inspect the scene, accompanied by a few reporters snapping pictures and asking dazed onlookers questions that no one could answer.

Nothing was happening now, except for an excited buzz from the crowd. Master Lung gave my elbow a tug. ‘Let’s go, Camilla.’

‘You don’t want to find out where she’s gone?’

‘She’s probably dead.’

‘Then where’s the body?’

‘Maybe you’ll find out in tomorrow’s Leisure News. Their gossip columnist, Rainbow Chang, knows everything.’ He shrugged. ‘Anyway, I’ve seen it all.’

Of course Master Lung had seen it all. He headed the most powerful black society in Shanghai. Not only had he seen it all, he’d also performed it all: shooting, stabbing, strangling, poisoning, decapitating and other acts I’d rather not imagine. And that was only ways to kill. Before the final moment there were often tortures: beating, electric shocks, finger-crushing, eye-gouging, flesh-slicing, tiger-feeding, stuffing inside a snake-filled cage, nailing inside a coffin in a ghost-infested cemetery …

As the onlookers began to disperse, a young couple ogled us, probably recognising me as the famous singer and Lung as the famous gangster head. Immediately one of Lung’s bodyguards approached them and lifted his jacket to show his gun. The two ran off as if they’d been accosted by the ghost of the naked girl who’d just jumped. Just then, Master Lung’s driver pulled up. We climbed into the huge black car and went back to his mansion on Junfu Lane.

Soon I was sipping wine next to him on the sofa, the question still swirling in my mind: who was this beautiful but mysterious jump-and-disappear girl? My spy’s training to dig out secrets just wouldn’t leave me alone.

Lung cast me a stern look. ‘Camilla, what’s going on inside your head now?’

I stared at the scar that divided his right eyebrow into two lizard-like halves. ‘Master Lung, the girl who jumped – what happened?’

‘You’re still thinking of her?’ He smirked. ‘Why are you so curious?’ Lung stuck his fat cigar inside his thin mouth and puffed, making a heavy, asthmatic sound.

‘Master Lung, you’re not?’

He studied me with his protruding eyes set into his monkey face. ‘I have much more serious matters on my mind, not trivialities like that.’

Those ‘serious matters’ were what I, the spy from his rival gang, the Red Demons, was trying to find out.

But I asked, ‘A girl jumping off a tower is trivial to you?’

‘Yes!’ He took a big gulp of his expensive whiskey, then slammed the glass down with an intimidating thud. ‘Unless that girl is you, my little pretty. So, will you stop your silly thinking and come to bed now?’

Early the next morning, I left Master Lung’s house and snatched up a copy of Leisure News from a street urchin. Standing on the pavement, I impatiently flipped through the pages until I saw the big headline:

Naked Girl Jumps to Her Disappearance

Last night at the Customs House on the Bund, the crowd was startled to see a young, naked woman pace on the ledge of the clock tower and then jump. But, strangely, no body was found, only splattered blood and a pair of red high heels. The police are investigating this mysterious, inexplicable incident.

Some say this was an attempted kidnapping but that the young woman escaped. No one can explain where she went. Others say she killed herself – but no body.

But now, more and more are saying that the girl was, in fact, a ghost. They say that before the Customs House was built, that same spot was a cemetery where the bodies of raped and murdered women were dumped by black-society members.

The police claim they are working hard to solve this case to appease people’s fear of a ghost’s vengeance.

Meanwhile, girls from my Pink Skeleton Empire and I have our own sources.

More to follow …

Rainbow Chang

After I finished the article, I almost burst out laughing. It was certainly strange. But a ghost?

The naked girl was definitely not a spirit, but a spirited human.

That was worse than if she’d been a ghost, because now there was a woman who could outdo me in getting headlines from Rainbow Chang. I was used to being the centre of attention as the most celebrated singer in Shanghai’s most famous Bright Moon Nightclub. Yet none of my patrons or customers knew anything about me besides my singing, my body and my name, Camilla, which was fake, anyway. For, since my early teens, I’d been trained to be in the public eye but to keep my real intentions secret.

Now my place in society was under challenge. Someone had stepped into my well-guarded territory. For I didn’t buy that Naked Girl was dead. She was somewhere, and I had to find out where and how she’d pulled off her stunt. Even though I had no idea who this girl was, I knew she was my enemy.

Thus, thinking in the chilly air, I knew it was time to hurry back to Lung’s house to warm his bed.

2

Bright Moon Nightclub

Four times a week at six in the evening, a limo would take me to the Bright Moon Nightclub. This was Shanghai’s most fashionable – and expensive – entertainment establishment. It was located in the International Concession between Yuyuan Road – the Fool’s Garden – and Fanhuangdu Road – the Emperor’s Crossing. These roads were fittingly named, because, although there were no more emperors, there were still plenty of fools.

The nightclub had a gaudily lit circular facade topped with a torchlike, cylindrical tower. If you were allowed in, you would see a huge hall with many tables surrounding a polished dance floor. Above was a mezzanine from which the VIPs could watch those equally rich but less important. On its all-glass dance floor, powerful men became addicted to pirouetting with their seductive, hired partners in rhythm to waltzes, foxtrots, rumbas, sambas, tangos, even marches played by the impeccable Filipino band. Under the chandeliers, diamonds and pearls glittered as young bodies swayed beside their tuxedoed partners, fuelling the clients’ urge to splurge yet more on an evening’s decadence.

But Bright Moon was not always a paradise; in seconds it could descend into hell. Shots were often heard, and stabbings might spray blood onto an expensive gown. Even the private rooms and bathrooms were not safe havens from scores being settled. Targets of assassination could be almost anyone, from celebrities to politicians, black-society members, even suspected hanjian, traitors who spied for the Japanese.

The most talked-about assassination was of a gangster head a few years back. Late one evening as he was gleefully swirling, lifting and dipping his girl on the dance floor, four men approached. Sensing trouble, he shoved his girl hard against them and tried to run. Their long knives were quickly stained with the freshly minced flesh of the poor girl as they flung her back at him.

But he was a gangster head, after all, not a snivelling coward. So he pulled out his gun, shot down two of his assailants, then collapsed only after both of his arms had been chopped off. Under the astonished scrutiny of the other customers, he bled quickly and heroically to death. His lifeless body had found its final rest on his favourite glass floor, this time flooded not with his rivals’ but with his own precious blood.

People saw only the glamour in my job, but few thought of how the money I made had been recycled in blood. Anyway, only the rich and powerful in Shanghai could afford to come to Bright Moon to be entertained – or murdered.

I was proud to say that, together with seeing and being seen, I was the nightclub’s biggest attraction, but that had not happened overnight. Though only nineteen, I’d already come a long way.

I lost my parents at four and had been sent to the Compassionate Grace Orphanage. Unfortunately, I didn’t have much memory of my parents except for a few blurry images of their faces. Worse, I had no siblings, relatives or friends I could ask about them.

At the orphanage, outside volunteers would come to teach the children to sing and dance so they could perform on holidays like the Mid-Autumn Festival, Dragon Boat Races and Chinese New Year. Even before I became the most popular songstress in Shanghai, I’d already had to learn to charm audiences.

However, these free lessons were not given out of compassion, but to discover beauty and talent so that the gifted children could be sold to work as cheap labour at nightclubs, dance halls and, of course, prostitution houses. While hard work – most of the time forced – was abundant inside the orphanage, talent was unusual and beauty rare. Since visitors seemed to find me attractive, I always wondered why had I not been adopted much earlier. I’d heard from the girls who came back to visit that it was a better life than inside the orphanage. Many times I would watch with bitterness as other girls – less pretty and talented than I – were led away to waiting rickshaws and cars.

Then Mr Ho, owner of the Bright Moon Nightclub, began his visits to the orphanage, bringing the children toys, candies, food and clothes. When I was fourteen, Ho decided to rescue me from this institution notorious for cruelty and neglect. He immediately put me to work with the other singing and dancing girls at the nightclub. Though living and training together, we were not allowed to be friends, or even talk to one another too much. If we did so, we’d be sent to a closet to reflect on our misbehaviour on an empty stomach.

The other girls were either orphans like me or had parents so poor that they were forced to sell their daughters to the nightclub so that they would have a roof over their heads and soup to warm their stomachs.

But sometimes fate was in a good mood, and a girl would become famous and, like a hurricane, lift her whole family out of poverty. The rest of us, who were not famous, lived together in one big room and were not paid.

My sense of freedom from escaping the orphanage hadn’t lasted long. One day Ho took me aside and informed me that my real boss was not he but Big Brother Wang, head of the Red Demons gang. He introduced me to Wang, who told me he was an old friend of my parents. They had been killed in a car accident, and he and his underling Ho had been trying to find me for years. Smiling, he told me that in rescuing me from the orphanage he had fulfilled his duty to his deceased best friend. But next, his smile gone, he told me that finding me had been expensive and how I had to repay him. I was to continue being a singer, but now it was a cover for my real job – to spy on Master Lung of the Flying Dragons.

Before I even had time to think or protest, my training with Big Brother Wang had begun. I realised once again that beggars cannot be choosers, and that to continue to keep a roof over my head, rice soup in my stomach and, most important, my head on my shoulders, I had to do what I was told.

Much of my training was concerned with perfecting my ability to charm men. I was taught ballroom dancing, which was now all the rage in Shanghai. Dancing with a patron, I would put my arms around his neck and exhale my fragranced breath onto his face. And I would press my equally fragranced body against him and feel the heat shooting out from his groin. He might wrap his arms around my much-coveted twenty-one-inch waist, move his hand between my neck and bottom like an elevator or lift me up towards heaven, then dip me back towards hell. I learned early on that I should cling only to the important ones, such as Master Lung, and steer clear of the insignificant losers. Did I enjoy doing this? I can only say that it kept me alive while I watched other people’s lives.

I knew well that I was but a shadow of someone else’s existence.

I took singing lessons from a fifty-something Russian woman, Madame Lewinsky. Mr Ho picked her because she was a famous teacher who’d turned a few nobodies into somebodies. And she was too busy to be nosy. Also, as a foreigner, she was safe because she was too ignorant to perceive the complexities of Chinese society, especially the black ones.

Madame Lewinsky put a lot of effort and time into teaching me. But I heeded Big Brother Wang’s warnings and so told her nothing about myself. She probably assumed that I came from a rich family or had a wealthy patron, since I could afford her exorbitant fees.

Lewinsky had come from Russia with her husband to escape the revolution. But he’d died in a freak construction accident before they’d had a chance to have children. So now she was all by herself in this dusty world. Perhaps because of her loneliness, she often tried to act like she was my mother, which, of course, she was not.