CHAPTER 1
"Here is the famous tiger-slayer of King Yang mountain, the Captain of the
Guard--your brother-in-law, Wu Sung!"
With folded hands, Gold Lotus looked up admiringly at her brother-in-law.
"Ten-thousandfold happiness!" she murmured, and the kowtowed slightly in mutual
salutation. With shy reserve, Wu Sung noted her perfect beauty. The husband would take no
excuses, but insisted that his guest must stay to dinner, and in order to supplement the
modest provisions in the pantry, Wu Ta himself went out to make some purchases. Thus for a
little while his wife and his brother were left alone.
With secret rapture, Gold Lotus gazed at the pattern of physical manhood who stood before
her. The notion of strength so tremendous that it could strike down a tiger thrilled her.
Ha, what a mighty hero! His body was at least seven feet in height. He had a broad face
with a square jaw; his eyes were like glittering stars, and their steady, penetrating gaze
seemed to rest on the distant horizon. His hand was gripping a heavy iron club. Tigers and
leopards in their mountain fastnesses must indeed catch their breath if this giant, rising
on the balls of his feet, should swing the iron bludgeon above his head. The bears in the
caves and gorges would surely give up the ghost when this fist struck its hurling blows!
"How is it possible," she marveled, "that such two brothers should spring
from one and the same mother! The one deformed as a stunted tree, only three-tenths man
and seven-tenths ugly demon! The other a hero bursting with vigour! Oh, he simply must
come and live with us," she decided.
"Where are you living, brother-in-law?" she asked, her face wreathed in smiles,
"and who attends to your housekeeping?"
"My position does not permit me to live too far from the yamen. I have taken a room
in a tavern near by. And as to housekeeping, tow of my men see to that."
"Dear, brother, would you not rather live with us? Dirty soldiers to cook for you
and wait on you, brr, how unappetizing! Here, your sister-in-law would prepare your food,
and take the utmost care of your personal belongings."
"I am deeply obliged to you," Wu Sung replied, evasively, hesitating to accept
her offer.
"Doubtless you have a companion?" she cautiously inquired. "You could live
with her without misgivings and undisturbed."
"I am not married," he answered.
"How many verdant springs does my brother-in-law count?"
"Eight-and-twenty years have I squandered in vain."
"Then you are five years older than I. Where were you living before you came
here?"
"I spent last year in the prefecture of Tsang chu Fu. I never suspected that in the
meantime my brother had settled here."
"Brother-in-law, I can`t very well explain matters with a word. The truth is that
since my marriage with your brother--he may have his good qualities in other respects--I
have been forced to endure a great deal of mockery from the neighbours. Now if so valiant,
so powerful a man as yourself were to live with us, who would dare to breathe a word
against us?"
"Hm ... my brother is a good-tempered man ... I, on the other hand, am easily
provoked."
"Come now!" she laughed, "only courage and strength can give us peace. I
am a quick-tempered woman myself, and I cannot endure to put up with affronts."
"On the other hand, my brother`s gentle ways have so far been able to protect you
from serious trouble."
Thus they sat talking, in the upper chambers of Wu Ta`s house. One of them at least was
secretly thrilled with desire. At last, Wu Ta reappeared on the scene.
"Dear wife, will you not go down to see to the food?"
"Listen to this simpleton!" she replied, crossly. "Is it mannerly to leave
a visitor upstairs alone? Send for old Mother Wang next door, and let her attend to the
cooking."
Wu Ta obediently trotted off and brought back Mother Wang with him; and finally they sat
down to a table laden with fish, roast meat, vegetables, wind and pastries.
"Pray be so gracious, brother-in-law, as to partake of our meagre fare and our water
wine!" said Gold Lotus, offering the first cup to their guest.
"Accept my thanks, sister-in-law, and spare yourself, I beg you, all needless words
of apology."
While the head of the house poured the wine, Gold Lotus placed the best portions of the
food before their guest, and urged him, with her most winning smile, to help himself.
Wu Sung was a simple creature, who accepted all these attentions as marks of hospitality.
He did not suspect that the woman before him had grown up in a servile condition, ant that
her amiability hid base intentions. Still, it did not escape him that from time to time
her gaze caressed his body from head to foot, and more than once he could not refrain from
bowing his head in embarrassment. And so when the meal was over, he hastened to take his
leave, and firmly declined her pressing invitation to remain.
"Some other time, sister-in-law!"
"But you are definitely coming to live with us, aren`t you? You know what I told you
before--how much we have to suffer from the mockery of our neighbours! You presence would
mean so much to us!" she whispered urgently at the door.
"Very well, sister-in-law, since you wish it so much I will send my things over this
evening."
"Your slave awaits you!"
looking shyly at the soft contentment of his young beautiful wife`s usually shadowed
countenance, Wu Ta pushed his stunted body closer to her willowy relaxed form.
"You`re clumsy as the grandfather of a rhinoceros," Gold Lotus said sharply,
stiffening at the imploring expression on the tartseller`s face. "Small and crooked
as you are," she withdrew behind the low table, "you try to crush my golden lily
feet with your puny weight." She jumped up angrily. "You filthy clod, you
helpless idiot, what crime die I, unhappy creature, commit in a former existence that I
should be punished by such a marriage?"
His head bent in accustomed servility, "Maybe," he timidly hinted, "from
my despised loins could spring a son mighty as my brother, his blood and mine gush forth
from the same fount."
"And I," she snapped, "should shelter it in my jasper body, smooth as a
plump lamb. And what if it should be another scurvy crow such as you?"
"Please," the frightened peddler trembled, "no shouting lest the
neighbours laugh!"
"And don`t they laugh at every sun`s rising," Gold Lotus retorted, "seeing
me like a piece of purest gold embedded in a dung-heap with a lump of common
quartz?"
"It is not fitting," Wu Ta persisted, emboldened by his mighty brother`s
advent, "that a wife should deny herself to a respectable husband."
"Respectable!" the young beauty shrieked. "Fitting! Why did you not think
of what was fitting when Master Chang presented me to you? Is it fitting, is it
conceivable," her voice filled the amused street outside their modest home,
"that I, a glittering phoenix, be coupled with a repulsive dwarf? Why," she
attacked the shrinking figure of her husband, "did you not think of what was suitable
when Master Chang wed me to you so that he might possess me every afternoon, often before
your blinking ugly eyes?"
"I was," the poor peddler mumbled, "mere clay in Master Chang`s hands.
What could I do?"
"Nothing," she laughed, "and still nothing, and always nothing. You never
will possess me, repulsive niggard." With a sullen smirk of disdain she left him at
the table and walked swiftly, two steps in one, to her bedroom.
Wu Ta slid meekly behind her. "Please, may I watch you tonight?"
"For me," she snapped, "you do not exist, so what you do so long as you do
not degrade my body by touching it does not concern me."
"Thank you, radiant wife," the peddler snuggled against her disinterest as if
it were the silken cushion of the love god Pan. It was often that she permitted him to
fasten his eyes on her nightly preparations. His brother`s visit had gained him this
magnificent concession.
Gold Lotus knelt before a low table of carefully arranged paints and lacquer combs. She
removed her peacock-blue chemise with the lonely grace of a dreaming maiden. She knelt now
in scarlet satin trousers and white lawn petticoat.
Wu Ta rushed to the small heap of silk and gathered it up, folding it carefully with his
famished stunted fingers.
"In your former existence," Gold Lotus withdrew the pins that kept her cloudy
hair in heavenly puffs on top of her round head, "you were the maid of a maid`s
maid."
He could not speak his joy at being so acknowledged, but dared to lift his eyes to her
breasts, round and firm, soft glowing miracles that dimmed every lantern in the house.
What he would not give to touch them, to press them between his trembling palms; to
stiffen the delicate pink tits with his dry tongue. Her back and shoulders were
marvelously narrow, yet carved of such smooth flesh he could not see the bones that kept
them erect.
"May I," he implored, and reached into his shabby trousers of a hundred patches
for the rearing neglected monster between his thighs. His fingers pretended that it was
her golden and pink breast, and he caressed it rapturously. If only she were receiving the
thrills that tingled his worthless spine.
"Would your brother enjoy such fruits as mine?" she demanded.
"What man," her husband thickly conjectured, "would not forget all other
nourishment for them." She laughed like a girl who has wasted only fifteen springs.
Her preciously waved hair splashed upon her shoulders, cheating his thirsty glance. His
hands busied themselves with the sparse field that stabled his sweating, dangling colt.
Gold Lotus slipped off the petticoat and stood now like a young beautiful prince in her
clinging scarlet trousers. The length of her adorable legs and the voluptuous curve of her
hips was an agony for Wu Ta. He released his own miserable blindworm to fold her
petticoat, and as he knelt he dared to kiss her perfect foot. In immediate anger she
kicked at his hidden face and so he had the ten-thousandfold bliss of bearing the heedless
pressure of her satin slipper.
"Toad, you were warned not to touch."
He felt weakly for the overspilling elephant-snout that smeared his shrunken thighs.
"Now the trousers," he gasped, bewitched as a handclapping child.
"Not for you, crawling cockroach, ant on my doorstep, for my brother-in-law, for a
killer of tigers."
"The trousers," he repeated. His voice faded as a tingling temple bell.
"Well, here," she relented. The trousers fell loose, billowing over his
upturned face.
He inhaled her marvelous fragrance, choking out his intense pleasure. She revealed two
additional mounds of pleasure, and between their plump golden contours, the thin thread of
her precious orifice. That he might eat away at them and their delicious contents was a
dream he dared not dream, a vision he feared to conjure. Between her thighs was the
supreme haven the final home to which all his restless thoughts and meek desires
wandered.
He folded the discarded trousers, daring to rub with his baker`s fingers where the dew of
this denied pleasure-garden might have brushed the fortunate garment. If he could but be a
golden sheath of satin in which she hid her live thighs! Gold Lotus stepped out of her
tiny perfect slippers and snuggled under heaps of silken quilts. Her husband turned to his
barren pad at the foot of the conjugal bed. As two eagles that wheel in distant skies,
their thoughts turned in untouching circles. Gold Lotus flew round and round the image of
the tiger-slayer. How could she lower that mighty head to her breast? How could she suck
the breath from between his manly lips, the juices from between his magnificent loins.
What power he must have, roaring his ecstasy like the beasts he slew. His mighty hands
could lock her slender form to the bed as he penetrated her rushing orifice--to fill the
tense lonliness between her amber thighs, and at last to end her meaningless punishment.
She must have him. Her husband groaned on his hard mat. She, Gold Lotus, would swallow all
the tigers (at last she slept) and suck all the lions.
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