Chapter 119 Qieu's Journey
It had been well past midnight when Richard Chan released Qieu from the
Black Pagoda after the dreadful ordeals of the Nanking Kneeler and the Mongolian
Nipple Gag {Chapter 54}. Her every movement wracked with pain, the fair wife of
Luk Yee had draped herself in her new red gown which Dao had slit from neck to
hem shortly after her arrival at the Black Pagoda.
As the gaptoothed Scorpion led her toward the subterranean entrance, the
brutalized young bride managed to stoop and retrieve a pair of red-stained
needles on the floor underneath one of the wall-mounted torches in the dungeon.
Forcing herself not to think of how the needles had come to be red-tinged, Qieu
pinned her dress together in back as best she could.
As Richard Chan had promised, when they reached the farther end of the
entryway Dao turned her over to a low-ranking Scorpion who accompanied her the
short distance to the high street, and then left her to her own devices.
Unfamiliar with that part of the great city, Qieu turned her face upward
toward the starry canopy of the heavens hoping for guidance from a beneficent
celestial spirit. Finding none, she turned down one of the dark, labyrinthian
streets, not even sure of the direction in which she was headed, but knowing
that she wanted to go as far away as possible from the dungeons of Richard Chan.
Although the day - how long ago the prior afternoon seemed! - had been warm, the
night was cool, and her gown was in ruins. Shivering noticeably, Qieu stumbled
along for half an hour or so, dragging her tortured body toward what she hoped
was the center of the city, before she heard footsteps behind her in the
darkness.
She stopped suddenly, pretending to see something on the ground, noticing
that after a last lone footfall, the footsteps following her stopped as well.
When she began walking again, the ominous echoes started up once more. Qieu
felt the cool, clammy sweat of fear on the back of her neck, but the sense of
danger helped clear her head. Clearly, Richard Chan had not released here from
any benign instinct. He had set her free so that she would lead him to her
husband, or to his friends. And he had apparently sent a second Scorpion to
follow her, after the first one had abandoned her, in the hope that she would
lead him to his prey. Despite her fervent wish to find Luk Yee so that he could
comfort her, she prayed that neither he nor any of his friends would find her
before she had rid herself of her silent pursuer, for any attempt to assist her
could only spell their doom.
The recognition of Richard Chan's clever scheme gave Qieu a newfound sense
of purpose. But what was she to do? Where was she to go? She could not go
home, because if she were to do so, Luk Yee would surely come to her, and all
would soon be lost. Nor could she go to her father's house; he had already
suffered enough at the hands of the Black Scorpions. But how was she to thwart
the hounds and throw them off her trail?
As she trudged up and down the streets of Shanghai, every step reminded her
that her knees were raw from the Kneeler, that her thighs and buttocks had been
cruelly ravaged by the denxia cane, and that her breasts were still on fire from
the effects of the bloody corsage and the excruciating bondage of the nipple
gag. Qieu knew that in her condition she could not possibly outdistance her
pursuer, nor could she bring herself to ask anyone to hide her, because doing so
would surely endanger anyone who dared to help her.
A short time later she limped past three skeletal figures sleeping around a
small fire that they had built from discarded debris. When she was some twenty
steps past the beggars, she turned quickly and saw the outline of her shadowy
pursuer illuminated in their firelight. She tried to make eye contact with
him, but he pretended to look away.
But she had gotten a good look at the man's silhouette, and while she could
not tell his age, his round belly suggested that he had dined well at the
Scorpions' troughs, those foul conduits of greed that the Chans had built from
the metal of extortion and the timber of intimidation.
Qieu kept moving, forcing herself to try to think through the pain, until
finally, perhaps an hour or so after she had left the Black Pagoda, her
pursuer's corpulence suggested a possible solution to her dilemma. Rather than
stumbling up and down one street after another, she began circling the same
block, over and over again. Moving slowly, so that her pursuer could remain
within easy sight of her, she made the circuit of the same urban block, passing
the same grocer's stalls, the same shops and warehouses and crowded tenements,
again and again, all the while moving her head from side to side in what she
hoped would give the appearance of dementia. Each time she circled the block,
she stopped at precisely the same points, and stared mindlessly at a doorknob,
or a lamp post or a cobblestone for thirty seconds or more.
Fighting desperately against the crushing fatigue which makes cowards of
the bravest men, Qieu circled the dark and lonely block six, seven, eight
times, until she sensed that her ruse was working; she could no longer see the
heavy-set man behind her, nor could she hear his footfalls. As she lapped the
block again, she found that her foot-sore follower had wearily deposited himself
on a step, convinced that the mindless madwoman he was tailing would circle the
block all night long.
Qieu did indeed circle the block one more time, and as she passed the
Scorpion, she noticed that his head was lolling on his chest. She continued on
to the next corner, and made the normal right hand turn, but at the next
intersection she turned left, instead of right, leaving her drowsy pursuer far
behind.
********
But by now, Qieu, too, was on the brink of exhaustion. She staggered a few
more blocks, passing one dark building after another. Arriving at an
intersection she paused for a moment, trying to decide which direction to take
when she heard a creaking sound coming from the darkness off to her left.
Glancing toward the source of the noise, Qieu saw a figure emerging from a
dilapidated-looking structure on the other side of the street. As the shadowy
shape struggled awkwardly with the stubborn door of the seedy building, Qieu
could see tiny dots of light, dimmer than candles, hovering eerily in the
darkness. Qieu watched, frozen in place on the street corner, as the figure
unsteadily crossed the street, moving in her direction.
As he approached her, the mumbled words, "Red ... favorite color," wafted
their way toward her through an acrid cloud of fumes that seemed to envelop the
tottering figure. It was hardly the first time that Qieu had seen an opium user.
There were a million of slaves of the poppy in China, and tens of thousands in
Shanghai alone. In all but the finest quarters of the city it was not uncommon
to find men lying in the streets, or huddled in doorways, or prostrate in the
parks, sleeping off the effects of the devil's pipe.
The man brushed past her, but as he did so he lost his balance, and fell
awkwardly against her back. He clawed at her tattered crimson gown hoping to
break his fall, and was surprised when he felt bare skin beneath his fingers, as
his hands reached out blindly toward Qieu's nearly backless dress.
The intoxicated man was barely in control of his body, but his weight
dragged Qieu to the ground in a tangle of arms and limbs. Muttering, "Red ...
always liked red," the man groped his way up Qieu's bare legs until he found
her rounded buttocks. "So soft ... like a baby's bottom," he slurred as Qieu
fought to escape his grasp. In short order she pulled free, leaving the addict
scraping dementedly at the debris-strewn street.
More unnerved than harmed, Qieu limped away. She had taken a few steps
before she realized that the man's hands had unknowingly aggravated some of the
wicked cane welts that Dao had administered to her thighs and buttocks. She
stumbled on for another block or two, but then, seeing a somewhat
comfortable-looking nook nestled in the corner between two buildings, she slid
into it, planning only to rest for a few minutes.
.
********
When Qieu awoke it was daylight, and she still felt as if she were in the
middle of a dream. Propping herself against a wall, she huddled groggily in her
secluded corner for a moment or two trying to decide if she were awake or
asleep. Surely, she reasoned, she must still be dreaming, because was that not
her husband, dressed in dusty, wrinkled clothes, who was descending the steps of
the building at the end of the street? Qieu crouched in the shadows squinting
into the sunlight as the man who looked like her husband stopped to glance at a
stocky figure who wore the dark shirt of the Black Scorpions, before turning
away and disappearing into the flow of human traffic in the busy thoroughfare.
Shaking her head drowsily, the exhausted young woman closed her eyes, and tried
to slip back into the dreamy half-sleep that had produced the image of her
handsome husband.
********
Qieu did not know how long she had slept when a noise startled her and she
sat up and pressed herself against the corner of her building as a new and
dreadful vision paraded itself before her. This time she saw the same three men
who had come for Luk Yee on the prior day - had it been only yesterday? it
seemed like an eternity - and a fourth, a young man of about her own age,
dragging the most beautiful woman she had ever seen out of the house at the end
of the street. The four men threw the woman, who was clothed only in a brief
black chemise, unceremoniously into the back of a horse-cart, where she was
soon sandwiched between the skinny youngster and the hulking behemoth. Qieu
recognized them as the same pair who had accompanied the gaptoothed man when the
brutish trio had come to her door.
Qieu shook her head trying to clear it as the horse-cart pulled away from
the gawking, intimidated onlookers. The wagon had no more than turned the
corner in front of her, leaving most of the spectators of the little scene
behind, when the slab-faced giant had reached across and slid a meaty paw into
the top of the striking young woman's flimsy garment. Repulsed by the hand on
her breasts, the woman tried to squirm out of his grasp, but the slender
pock-marked boy on her far side merely chuckled and seized her wrists, leaving
her defenseless against his partner's obscene assault as the cart made its way
down the winding street.
It all seemed so real, Qieu thought. And yet it could not be real, for had
she not seen that disheveled-looking young man with her husband's face leave
that same house not long before? The house from which the Scorpions had dragged
the scantily clad woman? If this scene were real, than the image of Luk Yee
must have been real, too? Or was she losing her mind?
Confused and distraught, waves of guilt and anxiety and doubt swept over
Qieu. Had her foolish fears and maidenly modesty driven her husband into the
arms of another woman? Had her abduction given him time and opportunity to
pursue the pleasures his empty marital bed had failed to bestow? Had he pursued
those manly pleasures with this dark-eyed temptress with whose charms she could
not possibly compete? Had the Scorpions somehow gotten wind of their tryst and
were now demanding from the temptress knowledge of her husband's whereabouts?
Was the beautiful woman truly, as it seemed, en route to the Black Pagoda for
questioning?
Qieu tried to force herself to be angry with the beauty who seemed to have
stolen her husband, to exult over the fact that she might face an interrogation
as vicious and depraved as her own had been.
But she could not. She would not have wished such a fate on a woman who
had murdered her husband, much less one who had taken him to her bed.
********
Qieu tried to rise up from the half-hidden corner in which she had sought
refuge, but waves of dizziness and pain swept over her. Her once-beautiful gown
seemed to stick to her body in places, as if some of the wounds from the
onager-hide lash and the denxia cane had re-opened. She grimaced in pain and
fell back against the building. As her eyelids once again grew heavy, Qieu
noticed a petite young Chinese woman in western attire standing nearby. The
woman, who had also watched the byplay involving the four Scorpions and their
voluptuous prisoner, shook her head sadly and turned in the direction of the
morning sun, toward the European quarter of the city.
