The Flowers of War Read Online Free PDF Page A

short-changed. Nevertheless she was a beauty and could have bewitched anyone if she had not been a lowly prostitute. Looking down the spyhole, it did not take the two girls long to decide she was the prettiest of the women.
    The cellar was not a cellar any more. It had been transformed into an underground brothel. The women had moved some books from the workshop down to the cellar, and had used them to form platforms on which to sleep. Those who had brought bedrolls had spread them over the cots: silk quilts in impossible pinks and greens, ready for a normal business day by the Qin Huai River. There were mirrors of various shapes standing on book stacks along the walls. Theprostitute called Jade was plucking her eyebrows in front of a little heart-shaped mirror. The women’s furs lay strewn around, and the hooks on which sausages and hams had once hung had been wrapped in the silver paper from cigarette packets and festooned with a garish assortment of scarves, wraps and brassieres.
    Four women were standing round a wine barrel on which they had placed a large kitchen chopping board, and the girls could hear a pattering sound as they played mah-jong. The temporary loss of five tiles did not seem to have diminished their enthusiasm for the game. Each of the women had a bowl in front of her filled with red wine, presumably the wine used for Mass that was supplied by Xiaoyu’s father.
    ‘Nani! Let me play a round!’ Cardamom said.
    Nani pulled down the lower lid of her right eye with one lacquered fingernail. The girls standing above understood the gesture. ‘In your dreams,’ it meant. ‘You can just watch.’
    ‘Ai-ya! I’m so bored!’ said Cardamom. She picked up Nani’s bowl and took a swig of wine.
    ‘Then go and ask the foreign monks for a couple of Bibles and read aloud to us,’ Yumo teased her with a smile.
    ‘I went up to the first floor in the foreign temple andsneaked a look,’ said Hongling. ‘It’s all books! Fabio’s room is next to the library.’
    ‘Us women could become Taoist nuns if we read all those Bibles,’ said Hongling, and declared she had won the round.
    She swept all her winnings into a pile in front of her.
    ‘It wouldn’t be such a bad thing to become a Taoist nun. You’d get fed,’ said Jade.
    ‘Well, you’ve got such a big belly to feed, it would be worth you becoming a nun,’ said Nani.
    ‘It would only be any fun if you hooked up with a foreign monk,’ said Hongling with a giggle.
    ‘They don’t call them nuns in Taoist temples, do they, Yumo?’ someone asked.
    ‘It doesn’t matter what they’re called, they still have to be vegetarian and celibate,’ said Yumo.
    ‘Never mind the vegetarian food, you’d never get a good night’s sleep if you had to be celibate, would you, Jade?’
    There was a burst of laughter. Jade picked up a tile and aimed it at Hongling. The laughter grew more raucous, and someone shouted, ‘Hongling, that’s the second time you’ve been hit today by a mah-jong tile. The next time it’ll kill you!’ Hongling and Jade chased each other around the cellar knocking things over.
    ‘Don’t you worry, Hongling,’ said Jade, ‘tomorrow evening I’ll get meat for you to eat. I promise I’ll procure that nice Yangzhou Fabio for you and then your celibacy won’t stop you from going to sleep!’
    Hongling made a gesture that the watching girls did not understand, though its lewdness was obvious because the cellar erupted in laughter, and Jade’s ample flesh shook all over.
    Yumo, looking distracted, sat on an overturned barrel with a cigarette in one hand and a bowl of wine in the other.
    After Shujuan and Xiaoyu had been watching for a while, they changed their minds about who was the prettiest. Yumo was becoming more attractive by the minute in their eyes. She was not instantly dazzling but she grew on them and was not easy to forget. Her hair was so thick and heavy that her face seemed to grow smaller when it was undone. As for the