The door upon which Mr Diprose was knocking was distinctive from the surrounding drabness, in that it was streaked with a vivid blue paint, and a square of cloth depicting a red, scaled dragon entwined with an orange fish was nailed to the centre.
‘If this is an opium den, Mr Diprose, we shall not enter!’ I said as resolutely as I could muster. I had heard of these places.
‘Hush, woman,’ he said, for the door was opening, and a very small Oriental woman, little taller than Lucinda, was smiling at us from behind spectacles. She pressed her palms together and bowed deeply, then led us up a precarious flight of stairs to the upper tenement.
The room was filled with a sweet smoke, but I could see through the haze that it was surprisingly clean and neat, like the woman herself. She gestured to a low bed, piled with cushions. I wondered where the aroma was coming from. It was not unpleasant. Despite myself, I sat down on the bed. That smell. So strange. I tried to pull Lucinda towards me, but Diprose sat hastily in her place next to me, and I watched as the woman held out her arms to Lucinda, and the child went to her.
‘Lucinda, come to me,’ I said wearily. Why was I so tired? She did not seem to hear me. As long as I could see her, I thought, she will be safe. ‘Why are we here?’ I asked Diprose.
‘We are going to see Sir Jocelyn,’ he casually replied.
‘Not, not, to operate!’ If I had had the strength, I would have gasped and clapped my hand over my mouth, but my arm would not move.
‘Why, yes, you are right. To operate.’
‘You – are – evil!’ My speech was slurred. I tried to stand. ‘Let us out! Lucinda!’ Still, the smell. It was taking something from me. My reason wafted on the syrupiness of the aroma. I was losing something to it.
‘Be calm,’ I heard him say. ‘Sir Jocelyn is not going to operate on your daughter.’
‘But you said . . .’ The smell was pungent, like fresh honey, or that confection, that contentment-of-the-throat confection that Sir Jocelyn gave me, only more concentrated. I was finding something about the situation strangely amusing.
‘He is going to operate on you.’
I tried to tell him that I did not understand. I think I started to laugh. It was absurd. How extraordinarily funny it seemed.
‘Sir Jocelyn,’ Diprose continued, ‘has finally conceded that I have been right all along. Exposure to exciting material has rendered you dangerous and troublesome.’ This, of course, only added to my mirth. ‘It is time to calm your uterine fury with the surgical amputation of your clitoris.’
I don’t think I stopped laughing. Like a eunuch in a harem, I thought. Mutilate me, so I can serve without threat. My hilarity grew. Was this what they called hysteria? In which case, Sir Jocelyn’s diagnosis was correct. So, what are you waiting for, Charlie? Operate on me!
That saccharine gas must have been piped from the noxious exhalations above the river of Lethe, for as I drank in the ether, I was transported to the depths of a valley that ran the length of the border between sentience and death. I rose upwards every once in a while, and was able to peer over the valley sides in both directions, either towards death, or towards the world I was leaving behind, but I was quickly dragged down again to the valley floor, where I languished for I knew not how long.
But I saw visions when I rose, on which side of the valley I could not tell.
An ochre-hued man with a conical silk hat and a long robe.
A room, suffused with an almost spiritual concentration, empty except for a bed on which a woman was lying, face down, her legs bare and spread apart.
A long stick of bamboo, with a fan of thin needles stuck into the end like a fantastical bookbinding tool.
A small, bespectacled woman carrying a tray of bowls.
An ivory hammer.
Lucinda, calling for me. ‘Mama, Mama.’
Silence.
Chapter Twenty-three
A long-tailed pig,
Or a short-tailed pig,
Or a pig without any tail;
A sow pig,
Or a boar pig,
Or a pig with a curly tail.
Take hold of the tail
And eat off his head,
And then you’ll be sure
The pig-hog is dead.
I found my cheek pressed against crisp white sheets, in a wet patch where my mouth had been drooling. I was lying on my front with my legs apart, just like the woman in my vision, and staring at a wash-stand. The room was dark, but the moonlight was shining through the window, directly onto the mirror that backed the wash-stand. The mirror was surrounded with tiles, which were patterned intricately with cobalt and white designs. The moonlight brought the faces in them to life: the ovals were eyes, the swirls between them noses. I used to play this game with the old wallpaper in my bedroom as a child, which was enhanced by water stains and peelings.