the Empress Dowager, old wretch, and I am not Li Lianying. For the favor of having those few scraggly strands of washed-out, smelly dog hair combed out one time, you can thank eight generations of your pious ancestors. But like a cat that’s had a taste of fish, an old bachelor who’s had a taste of the good life, you can’t get enough. Did you really think that a five-ounce silver certificate was all you needed to buy my favors? Hah! Ponder for a moment who you are and who I am. I climbed down off the kang, boiling mad and of a mind to say exactly what I thought and teach him a lesson. But before I could open my mouth, the old wretch looked up and, as if talking to himself, said to the wall:
“I wonder who combs the County Magistrate’s hair for him.”
I shuddered. The old wretch was not human, I felt, but an invisible, all-knowing ghost. How else would he know that I combed Magistrate Qian’s hair? Having said what he wanted to say, he turned back around, sat up in his chair, and fixed his gloomy eyes on me. My anger suddenly gone, I meekly walked around and began combing his dog hair. And as I was doing that, I unconsciously thought about my gandieh’s nice black hair—sleek, glossy, fragrant. And when I grabbed hold of a queue that resembled nothing so much as a shedding donkey’s tail, my thoughts drifted to my gandieh’s heavy, fleshy queue, which seemed capable of moving all by itself. He could brush my body with that queue, from the top of my head down to my heels, gentle claws that burrowed into my heart and squeezed waves of seduction out of every pore.
I had no choice but to work the comb. It was time to drink the bitter brew of my own creation. Whenever I combed my gandieh’s hair, he began touching me, and before I had a chance to finish, our bodies were intertwined. I found it hard to believe that this old wretch was unmoved by my ministrations, and I was waiting for him to start climbing the pole. Old wretch, if you even try, I’ll make sure you can’t climb down once you’re up there. Yes, when that happens, you’ll start doing my bidding, and I’ll be damned if I’ll ever comb your hair again! Rumors swirled that the old wretch was in possession of a hundred thousand in silver certificates; sooner or later, he would have to bring it out for me to see. So I looked forward to the day when he would try to make the climb; but that day had yet to come. Still, I was not prepared to believe that there is a cat anywhere that does not like fish. Old wretch, we’ll see how long you can hold out. I loosened his queue and ran my comb through those soft, scraggly hairs. I was especially gentle that day, though it was a struggle not to vomit as my fingers touched the base of his ears and I pressed my breasts against the nape of his neck. “My dieh has been arrested,” I said, “and thrown in jail. With all the time you spent in the capital, and the reputation you enjoyed there, you can get him out.” He made no sound in response. He sat like a deaf mute, so with a gentle squeeze of his shoulder I repeated myself. Still no response. As the sun’s rays drifted by, they made the brass buttons on his brown silk Mandarin jacket shine, and then moved on to his hands, with which he unhurriedly fingered his sandalwood Buddhist beads. Pale and soft, those delicate hands seemed not to belong to someone of his sex and age. You could put a knife to my throat, and I still could not believe that they wielded an executioner’s sword. At least that is what I thought at the time; now I wasn’t so sure. I pressed myself even harder against him and said coyly, “Gongdieh, my dieh did something bad, but you, after all you’ve seen and done in the capital, you can do or say something to help him.” I squeezed his bony shoulder a second time and rested my full breasts on the nape of his neck as my lips formed a series of provocative sounds. When I used tricks like that on Qian Ding, Eminence Ding went limp and was ready to