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crabs in ginger and scallion, braised eel in roasted garlic sauce, rabbit's legs, deer's tongues, tortoise soup-and started to drool. Fang Rong waved Little Red away, then signaled me to sit between her and Wu Qiang.
    She smoothed my hair. "See, Xiang Xiang, if you behave, you'll always have goodies like this. Now eat and drink." She and Wu Qiang began to pile food onto my dish and pour wine into my cup.
    "Thank you, Mama and De," I said, now feeling truly grateful.
    Then I gobbled and drank until I passed out again.

     

4c

The Elegant Gathering
    fter that time in the dark room, I realized that at Peach Blos_ lsom Pavilion, life was not as good as it had seemed. I'd also become, however reluctantly, a woman. Nevertheless, as time passed, I was too busy occupying myself in learning the arts-and too scared-to reflect on my future. Every week I had to take lessons in singing, pipa playing, painting, and calligraphy, and every day I had to practice five or six hours with no rest.
    One time I was so exhausted that I asked Mama for a break. A huge grin broke out on her fleshy face. "Aii-ya! Xiang Xiang"-she tapped her chest-"you think I'm the one who'll be benefiting from all this practicing?" Then she put her pudgy finger at my forehead and gave it a push. "It's you, silly girl, YOU!" She paused to catch her breath. "Wait until you get famous, maybe then you'll show some appreciation for your mama who has made you take all these lessons!"
    Among all the arts, I liked playing the pipa-the four-stringed lute-the most. Partly because I liked the pleasant sound of the instrument, partly because I liked Pearl, my teacher. It gave me endless pleasure to watch her tilted chin, pouted lips, and slender fingers hover over the instrument like butterflies dancing from flower to flower. Also, her room was not like mine. Its silk curtains, embroidered sheets, marble-topped dressing table, gilded mirror, ornate Western clock, and paintings of pretty women fascinated me. Whenever I was there, my eyes would be busy exploring the beautiful objects while I inhaled the fragrances mingling from the flowers, the incense, and her perfumed body.

    Moreover, I was intrigued by Pearl's magical power-men would turn hungry and naughty whenever they were within a fiftyyard radius. Upon spotting her, they would, like cats reaching their paws for fish, eagerly reach out for-a cheek, an arm, a leg, a hip, a breast.
    Now in Peach Blossom, due to my busy schedule, I didn't have much time to think about my "great aunt," nor the "fucking" described by Little Red.
    But since that day, Little Red had been so busy carrying out errands that, whenever we ran into each other in the corridor or in the courtyard, we could never finish our conversation. As to Fang Rong, although she'd promised she'd soon enlighten me about fuck, she was in fact either too busy scolding the sisters, kowtowing to the important guests, or gloating over her account book while flicking the fat beads of her abacus with sausage fingers.
    However, I was still able to snatch tidbits of this mystery here and there in Peach Blossom.
    "Good heavens, how can he possibly think he can go in me when my great-aunt is right there between us!"
    "Is it true that his little brother is malnourished?"
    "Do you know how it feels when a toothpick drops into a well?"
    Although now I was not completely ignorant about this fucking business, it still seemed, in many ways, unintelligible to me. But whom to ask? Of course I'd already tried Pearl toward the end of my pipa lessons, but she'd either look tired or in a hurry to entertain a guest.
    "Ah, Xiang Xiang," she'd say apologetically, "Mama has asked me to teach you but I'm just not in the mood right now."
    I had no idea whether she was really that exhausted and busy or simply reluctant to tell me, but since Mama had assigned her to be my teacher, I deemed it her duty to satisfy my fucking curiosity.

    But there was no chance to question Pearl again because now