The Apothecary Diaries - Volume 13 - Chapter 11

Chapter 11: A Flower Called Joka

Joka, facing a pile of books, recited the words of the venerated text as if she were singing. It might be called reading aloud, except she never opened a book. She knew the Four Books and Five Classics by heart, every one. If someone named one of the books and a page, she could recite it from memory.

“No matter how many times I hear you, it’s always wonderful,” said tonight’s customer, applauding. He was an older man, a scholar and a regular client of Joka’s. She called him “Laoshi,” Teacher.

Did scholarship pay so well that such a man could spend all his time at a brothel? No, no it did not. In fact, Laoshi spent what money he had on collecting all manner of books. Maybe that was why, despite being old enough that he could easily have had grandchildren or great-grandchildren, he didn’t even have a wife.

So what was this spendthrift academic doing as a regular client of one of the Three Princesses of the Verdigris House? The boy sitting behind him had something to do with that. He was a few years past his coming-of-age ceremony, probably not even twenty yet. He didn’t even have a beard.

“I hope you’re listening. If Joka says you know what you’re doing, you’ll have no trouble passing the civil service examination.”

This customer was a teacher as well as a scholar, and a number of his pupils had passed the civil service exam. Joka, a courtesan who nonetheless knew all nine classics by heart, was much in demand among those seeking to sit the examinations. Come exam season, would-be test takers lined up outside the Verdigris House. It was something of a good-luck charm: Rumor had it that if Joka acknowledged your skills, you were sure to pass.

It was said that passing the civil service examination would see your family living in ease for three generations, so parents spared no expense in educating their children. The stories about Joka might be rumor or superstition, but still people would spend on her.

And thus this old man came to drink wine on the coin of parents investing in their sons’ futures. The Verdigris House was not interested in visitors without an introduction, so the hopeful test takers would ask Laoshi to help them meet Joka.

Joka was a courtesan, yes, but she was a world apart from her cheaper counterparts. She sold not her body but her talents. Courtesans who sold their favors were consumables—through repeated illnesses and abortions their bodies would weaken until they were too frail to take customers, whereupon they would no longer be able to eat and they would die.

The woman who had borne Joka had been such a woman of mean talents. Beautiful looks were all she’d had to offer, and she’d been too sure that her youth would never fade. As a result, she’d been taken in by some playboy who’d gotten her pregnant, and she had died cursing his name.

The pleasure district was full of such foolish ladies. Like Joka’s “older sister,” the woman who had given birth to Maomao.

Joka had no gift for dancing, nor any special talent for board games. But she did read books—the big, hulking ones that drove other people away. She would read them until her eyes were bloodshot, learning every word by heart. It was all she could do. She didn’t have the gift of the gab and hated men, so instead she polished her one distinctive skill.

“That’s really something. I’ve only learned half that text so far,” the youngster said.

Half? With those rosy cheeks of his, how come he hadn’t learned the whole thing yet? If he had time to ooh and ahh over her accomplishments, he should spend it poring over the books lying in front of them. They had proper lamps here; he wouldn’t even have to study by firefly light or the moon reflected off the snow. He could read to his heart’s content.

“I’m taking the test this first time as sort of a practice run. Then I’ll pass it the next time,” he said.

He was planning to pass on the second try? He wasn’t taking this seriously. If you didn’t go in resolved to pass the first time, then the second and the third would be no different.

Joka restricted herself to answering the questions she was asked. The young test taker, still not accustomed to being around women, looked at her hungrily, his cheeks flushing. Joka let him look, contributing calmly and politely to the conversation, and gradually he became more talkative, drunk on the wine and on her.

The drunkenness brought out the bravado; he boasted to her of how he had been called a child prodigy, how even if he couldn’t expect to pass the test on the first try, he would absolutely do so the second time around.

He wanted to show her his best side, and that was all well and good, but Joka had seen any number of self-proclaimed child prodigies.

Laoshi let all this go on, enjoying the drinks. No wine tasted as good as free wine.

“Sir, time is up,” an apprentice advised them. The incense stick that measured their meetings must have burned all the way down.

“Aw, and just when the conversation was really getting going,” the boy said.

“Yes, sir. We have a carriage outside for you. Please watch your step on your way out. Oops! The wine has you swaying.”

Laoshi sent the boy on ahead. His student took a last wistful glance at the room as he went.

“So, what do you think of him?” Laoshi asked Joka.

“Hopeless,” she replied. “Someone so cocky but with so little stomach for this endeavor is never going to survive several days holed up in a cave writing essays.”

“Merciless, as always, I see. Just imagine how I feel—I’m the one trying to whip him into shape!” Laoshi’s distinctive long eyelashes drooped.

“Then I suggest buying him some stomach medication. Otherwise his nerves are likely to drive him to try to use the bathroom during the test, after which he’ll be suspected of cheating and beaten.”

The civil service exams were the gate that led to the bureaucracy, so there were many who would stop at nothing to pass them. As such, penalties for cheating were harsh, up to and including execution in particularly bad cases.

“Mmm. Yes, I think you’re right,” Laoshi said, stroking his beard.

“The way he looks, I think he would need at least twenty years of study to have any hope of passing.”

The average age of those who passed the civil service examination was somewhere in their thirties. The test really wasn’t something that could be accomplished in one or two lackadaisical attempts.

“Well, I suppose I’ll buy that stomach medication and then head on home,” Laoshi said.

The Verdigris House had its own apothecary shop. It used to be run by Luomen and Maomao, but now Maomao’s apprentice, a man named Sazen or something, was looking after the place. He probably had stomach medication available.

“G’bye, then. I’ll be back,” said Laoshi.

“And I’ll be waiting for you,” Joka replied. In reality, she didn’t care if she never saw him again. She simply knew that if she didn’t put on a show of being hospitable and courteous, the old madam who ran the place would make her pay for it.

With her customers gone, Joka tossed herself spread-eagle on her bed. Her clients never slept in this bed. Joka was not a foolish woman.

And yet, whatever airs and graces she might put on, a courtesan was a courtesan. Joka was pushing thirty. She had to decide what to do about her future before her customers started to dwindle.

Joka despised men, and being bought out of her contract was out of the question to her. She would rather wither on the vine like the madam.

“Ugh. So tired.” She flopped back and forth on her bed.

One of the apprentices came in. “Sister Joka?”

“What? I’m supposed to be done for the night, aren’t I?”

“Yes, but, well...there’s one more person to see you.”

“Excuse me?” Joka sat up, thoroughly displeased, and straightened her robes. “Who the hell is it?”

She wanted to simply say that she was done for the night and let that be the end of the matter, but she could see the madam in the hallway, and she was positively beaming. That meant the newcomer was loaded.

“Joka! You’ve got a customer. You’ll be so kind as to see him, won’t you?” The madam sounded like a mewling kitten; it made Joka sick. How much money had he plied her with to get her to purr like that?

“Hullo, Joka!”

Before her appeared a young bureaucrat who showed up once every six months or so. He was slim and wispy; Joka secretly referred to him as “Willow Boy.” Behind him was another man, probably some friend of his. The friend, in distinct counterpoint to Willow Boy, was built like a chopped log.

Willow Boy’s family was very well-to-do, but he himself showed little appetite for rising in the world. He was one of those clients with, let’s say, unusual tastes—he seemed to enjoy Joka’s dismissive treatment of him. Every time he visited he constantly begged her to step on him; it annoyed her no end.

“It’s been too long,” she said—once again, only for form’s sake. Her heart might not be in it, but her act was flawless, so that even the madam couldn’t complain. It was a skill she had learned in order to continue doing work she didn’t want to do, but on Willow Boy it had the opposite effect.

“Ooh, I like that. That look in your eyes!” He turned a smitten look of his own on her, giving her goosebumps. She knew he wouldn’t try to force them to be closer than they were, but nonetheless it was exhausting to deal with him.

“Is something the matter? Normally you send a letter before you visit,” Joka said, her indirect way of telling him to make a damn appointment.

“Ah, my friend here was so insistent we should come today.” He turned to Log Boy. “This is her! This is the famous Joka of the Verdigris House!”

“Hoh! You’re every bit as beautiful as I would expect of one of the most storied residents of such a famous house. Your lustrous black hair is particularly stunning,” said Log Boy. Joka had heard it all before. She tried to remember when she had become “one of the most storied residents” of the Verdigris House. It was years ago now that the “Three Princesses” had been at their height, and Joka was now old enough to think about retirement.

She had not, however, fallen so far as to actually speak to someone she was meeting for the first time.

Instead she simply bowed.

“May I not even hear your voice?” Log Boy asked.

“Ha ha ha! You think it’s that easy to get her to talk to you? She didn’t even pour me a cup of wine until my fifth visit!” Willow Boy crowed. The reason she hadn’t served him was because she hadn’t wanted him to come back. His long, lecherous looks made her sick. It was only on his fifth visit that she had finally given up and accepted that he wasn’t going away, so she might as well squeeze some money out of him.

“May I ask what brings you here today? Shall I recite a poem?”

“Ah, fair question. Actually, this is the guest of honor today.” Willow Boy indicated Log Boy with a glance. “His name’s Fang, and he was absolutely desperate to meet you. Wouldn’t leave me alone until I brought him along.”

“My sincere apologies. He’s a first-time visitor, is he not?” Joka asked. Again, a euphemism, meaning: She wasn’t about to entertain any random newcomer.

“Oh, don’t say that. The drinks are on me today!”

A bold proclamation from this young leech, Joka thought, but it helped her understand how this had happened. The old madam was glowering at her from the hallway. She was obviously telling Joka that the boy had coughed up enough to entitle him to an audience.

Really, how much had he given her?

“So you intend to take the civil service examination?” Joka asked.

“Hell no. Do I look like the test-taking type to you?” Log Boy replied. True, he was built more like a soldier than a bureaucrat. The kind who might be up for the military service exam, but not the civil service.

Log Boy kicked back in a chair and poured himself a drink.

“C’mon, geez,” Willow Boy grumbled, but then he turned to Joka. “Say, uh, Joka. That ka in your name—it wouldn’t mean you’re related to the Imperial family by any chance, would it?”

Ah. So that was what they were here about.

“Who can say?” Joka replied. “Surely a woman descended from such an august lineage wouldn’t have to scrounge her living as a flower of the night?”

Joka had adopted her name as a strike against the foolish woman. Only members of the royal family were permitted to use the character ka, which meant “flower”; for a courtesan to use it was a risky move but it also got people talking. It seemed particularly suited to the cold, brusque Joka.

“I can tell you it’s not completely impossible,” Log Boy said. “As a matter of fact, there’s a girl working at court right now who’s supposedly the offspring of some high official and a prostitute.”

“Oh yeah, yeah. I heard the same thing,” Willow Boy said.

Joka, for her part, didn’t say anything. What was this lummox getting at? Joka had every suspicion that the young woman working in the palace was Maomao. Was he trying to find out about her?

One couldn’t seal the lips of others. The fact that the story had reached even Willow Boy’s ears was evidence that it was useless to try to stop it now. Nonetheless, Joka had no intention of selling out the young woman who was effectively her little sister. Instead of trying to play dumb, she decided to change the subject.

“My mother told me, you see, that my father was a man of high stature,” she said.

Joka thought of neither the woman who bore her nor the man who had planted the seed as her parents. She only referred to them as her mother and father to make things easier for her patrons to follow.

Joka stood and went over to her desk. She opened a locked drawer and took out a wooden box.

“What’s that?” asked Log Boy.

It was a trick box that another customer had given her. It was an interesting little device: It could be opened by sliding aside a part of the box.

Inside was something wrapped in cloth. Joka unwrapped it to reveal a jade tablet, cracked in half. The surface of the tablet had been scraped away long ago, so whatever had once been written on it was no longer legible. Just the same, it was clear that the tablet was made of rokan jade, the highest-quality stone among green jades.

“You see this? A bit of old junk, yet my mother treated it like a treasure,” Joka said.

As far as she was concerned, she could have thrown it away without a second thought. But it was the perfect tool for getting her name out there, a conversation piece that looked very significant and got customers talking.

“Why not use that tablet to declare yourself your father’s daughter?” Log Boy asked her.

“Whatever this tablet once said is long gone now. And worse, it’s cracked in half. My mother could have stolen it, for all I know,” Joka said dismissively.

She had to keep her origins artfully ambiguous. Playing at having noble parentage was all well and good so long as it merely stirred up rumors, but she couldn’t have anyone taking the idea too seriously. If the madam ever caught a whiff of the slightest possible trouble with lèse-majesté, she would cut Joka loose in an instant.

Truth be told, Joka didn’t believe for a moment that she had Imperial blood in her veins. She’d heard about the man who had evidently planted the seed of her from one of the old courtesans. He’d been handsome enough, the woman said, but reeked like an animal and had rough, knobbly hands.

Apparently, after several visits to the Verdigris House, he had stopped coming. Joka would sooner have believed he was a bandit than a nobleman. The Verdigris House was picky about its clientele, but that chiefly manifested as an interest in how much money they could spend.

Joka suspected it had gone something like this: The man had stolen the jade somewhere and was hoping to sell it, but it could too easily be traced. The jade itself was still of excellent quality, however, so he’d scraped off the front and broken it in half. Still people had been leery of it and he wasn’t able to find a buyer—so he gave it to some idiot courtesan he was romancing.

Some customers were disappointed to find out she was simply a thief’s daughter, while others insisted that no, the story about the noble connection might still be true.

Which kind, she wondered, would these men be?

“It doesn’t matter to me who your parents were. You’re still you, Joka,” Willow Boy said, looking at her with passion in his eyes—not that she cared.

Joka put the broken jade back in its box; it had played its part. “I’m only sorry to disappoint you,” she said.

“No disappointment at all,” the man called Fang said. “But would you consider selling that tablet to me?”

Of all things she’d thought he might say, she hadn’t expected that.

“As you can see, it’s only a broken, shaved-down piece of stone. It has no value,” Joka replied.

“That’s perfectly fine. The romance of it is what interests me. The story!”

Joka had no special attachment to the tablet as such—but that didn’t mean she was prepared to part with it at a mere suggestion. Giving it up would mean losing the air of mystery, the suggestion that she might, just might, be related to the Imperial family.

“I’m terribly sorry, but I’m afraid it’s not for sale. It may be simple junk in the eyes of the world, but for me it furnishes my one small connection to my late mother.” Joka looked demurely away—and caught the apprentice’s eye as she did so. The girl took the hint and went to call the madam. “I simply can’t trade the memory of my mother for mere cash.”

If she were to do so, it would be only when she was ready to retire as a courtesan.

“Aw, Fang. Now you’ve made things awkward with Joka,” Willow Boy griped.

“I certainly didn’t mean to,” Fang said, but his eyes never left the wooden box.

The madam appeared and clapped her hands loudly. “All right, gentlemen, the incense has burned down. It’s time to wrap things up.”

“Oh! All right. Fang, let’s head home.” Willow Boy practically dragged Fang out of the room. Joka typically found Willow Boy a rather unpleasant customer, but at least he knew when to make his exit.

“Until next time, sir,” she said as he left, in her usual cold, flat tone.