It was a matter of will more than technique, though there were points of the body that provided stronger gateways. The trick was to seek those currents out with purpose—expect without a shred of doubt that you could sense the map of a human body, and grab on. From there it was only a rapid shove before your grip unraveled, and the heat would flare.
When Hwee Min’s last shove did kill the chicken, she had been so upset about it that they buried it for her instead of cooking it like Mavis suggested. The ceremony was ridiculous. They’d all been laughing by the end of it, united by something new and dangerous only they had.
They didn’t know when to tell Tian yet. In the meantime, Adeline already found herself wondering where else they could go.Do you limit us, she asked the energies in the Yellow Butterfly’s room,or do we limit ourselves?
There was no response except a simmering. Testing, almost. Adeline nodded at it.
Somewhere under her on the ground floor she felt Tian return, once more in the middle of the night. She stepped out of the room as Tian came up the staircase landing. Tian nearly stumbled. Adeline needed to get water from downstairs. She walked up to and then past Tian, but as she did, she brushed Tian’s stomach enough to snag the heat there.
Tian caught her wrist. She had definitely felt it; confusion and shock both flickered in her face. Her turning heat bled into Adeline’ssenses, and she snatched her hand away. Tian started to ask, but Adeline put a finger to her lips and pattered down the steps. Behind her, the goddess seemed to laugh.
On the fourth day, Adeline decided to go watch a film.
She hadn’t been to the cinema since she’d joined the Butterflies. She’d loved the cinema as an escape from absolute drudgery, but life had been so fantastical as of late that she hadn’t had the urge. Now, though, she was seeking inspiration again, and headed to the Odeon on North Bridge Road to buy a ticket to whatever was showing.
She was irritated to find that the morning school sessions had finished and it was busier than expected. The Odeon was the meeting place for cohorts of the De La Salle Brothers, Blessed Father Barré, and the Reverend Becheras of St. Peter and Paul: gangly white-clothed, khaki-legged boys from the nearby St. Joseph’s and Catholic High jostled around blue-pinafored girls from the Convent of the Holy Infant Jesus, testing boundaries and making their approaches, having mustered the nerve after four or five separate occasions of caught glances and slight smiles. The already successful were accompanied by their hard-won partners, beaming and clinging on to one another as they purchased their drinks and kacang puteh in paper cones.
The showing itself was about two-thirds full. There was a trio of girls on Adeline’s right, and a couple at the other end of the row.
She had always liked the hush when the lights clicked off and the trailers came on. For the next ninety minutes or so they would all be collectively rapt. The only comparable atmosphere was that moment when Lady Butterfly had appeared. But Adeline didn’t want to think about that moment, or Tian in the goddess’s light, so she shut that away and tried to watch the musical.
It was fine—it was noCabaret—but not twenty minutes into the film, the couple in her row started bumping shoulders and giggling.Twenty minutes after that they had graduated to necking aggressively, the boy’s hand basically up his girlfriend’s skirt. It spoiled the rest of the movie and Adeline left the theater the second the credits rolled, murderous.
It was a weekday and the showings were sparse; she found the nearest newspaper stand and checked the cinema timings for the day, then took herself down to the Metropole beside Maxwell Market for their showing in thirty minutes, determined to have a proper one.
The Metropole had been the Empire Cinema, once, and then the Chungking. Briefly it had been the Teikoku Kan, and then it was rechristened the New Chungking after a renovation, as though trying to remove the war’s blemish—now it was the Metropole, or the Jinghwa. The concrete building was set with a three-tiered mosaic of sawtooth windows, and inside, winding staircases drew everyone into the central lobby where the box office was.
“Whatever the next screening is,” Adeline said. The attendant’s eyes glanced off the butterfly on her wrist as she handed over another dollar for a second-class seat.
She returned to the theater, determined this time to be present for it. She hadn’t even looked at the title of the film, and it was too late now—the lights were down and she couldn’t read her ticket without getting fire out.
This film was Mandarin, one of the Shaw Brothers’. It was about some kind of murder investigation, opened with a dead body. The movie sang through credits on a montage of courtesans getting dressed, then opened proper with a beautiful madam receiving a delivery of new girls from a group of bandits. The bandit leader tried to come on to the madam, promptly getting backhanded for his efforts.You haven’t changed.He snickered, despite the bleeding mouth.Still don’t like men?The madam only smiled as the man wrapped up his ingots, tutting.Pity.As he left, one of the ladies-in-waiting took her mistress’s hand. The madam looked up, and smiled again.
Adeline sat up. Tilted her head, when the madam took the feisty new girl to a room of silks and spoke of comfort and luxuries, tipped the girl’s chin and asked,What else do you want?Then sat up farther some minutes later, as the madam plunged her fingers through a man’s skull and licked off the blood.
The film turned out to be about a courtesan seeking revenge on men who’d assaulted her. It seemed censors had taken scissors to the reel, judging by some awkward cuts to what were presumably erotic scenes, but they’d left enough to follow the story. Enough, though, for sensual looks and caresses and the instruction of swords; enough for the madam to be whispering,Love is more poisonous than hate;àiàiài, intoxicating.
Then either the censors hadn’t been able to remove the ending, or they had considered it appropriate enough to keep. There was a great fight in the snow, in which prostitute and madam fought guardsmen back-to-back in a gory bloodbath of swords, and then betrayed each another. The madam, missing an arm and bleeding to death, asked the other woman for one last kiss.Last—had there been a first? On the cutting room floor?Oh, Adeline thought, as the other woman obliged, pressing her lips to the other almost tenderly, which was when the madam slipped the poison into her mouth.
Adeline watched them both die with a whole tumult of indescribable feelings. It was all veryRomeo and Juliet, all these great tragic loves. She wasn’t sure what she was thinking.
She ended up back in the White Orchid, funnily enough, since it was nearby, and was at least out of Three Steel’s way. Although the deadline loomed, Three Steel hadn’t made any moves to attack them first. It was as though they had never come down at all. The respect was more unnerving than anything. It was as though they were already maintaining mourning days. The Butterflies were getting cagey. Either Tian would have to give in, or they would be provoked to start a fight themselves, and then there were no rules.
The cabaret girls were performing. Adeline even knew one oftheir names now—Waln Wei, but Winnie to the customers. Hosting was generally safer than being a call girl, but with so many dance halls closing now, some of them had ended up back in the red lights. Winnie had been here for years, though. Eventually it might start showing on her face—and her profits—but for now she commanded the stage with sensual authority.
“Hor tiap. Oi.”
Adeline looked up. The barkeep knew her face now, but had never bothered to learn her name. “What is it, Ronny?”
“There’s a man on the phone, asking for you. Any of you,” he corrected.
Adeline narrowed her eyes. It couldn’t be Ah Lang, who had the direct line to the house. Someone must have called businesses in Butterfly territory randomly, requesting to be connected to whichever girl was around. She followed Ronny into the back, where the phone was hanging off its cradle. Suspiciously, she picked it up. “Hello?”
“Red Butterfly?”
“Who’s asking?”
“I’m a private operator, and I work with Mr. Chew Luen Fah. His daughter is dying from Butterfly fire. Have Madam Butterfly save her, and he’s willing to make an exchange.”
