Mingmei Yip - Memoirs of a Courtesan

Avon

HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

77–85 Fulham Palace Road

Hammersmith, London W6 8JB

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers 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

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

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 …

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.