she recognized Lucky Pearl's writing and stopped smiling. Tucking the notebook up her sleeve, she gave a calculated sigh. "What a genius Cang Jie was, to invent the character script for our use!"

"What makes you say that?" asked Cloud.

"There's not a single stroke in any of the characters he invented that does not have its meaning. For instance, the character jian in jianyin (adultery) is composed of three nü (woman) characters. Since you three are living together and committing adultery, you must surely appreciate the brilliance of the invention!"

"We may be living together," said Lucky Jade, "but we've never done any such thing! How can you say that?"

"If you've never done any such thing, where did this notebook come from?"

"I found it in the street on my way over here," said Cloud.

"A two-year-old child wouldn't believe that!" said Flora. I'll say no more, except to ask you where the man is who wrote this. Confess everything, and you'll hear no more about it. If you don't confess, I shall have to write to your husbands, enclosing this notebook, and summon them home for a little chat with you."

At this ugly tone, her nieces felt they could hardly remain defiant. "We really did find it in the street, and we have no idea of who the writer is or where he lives. What else can we tell you?" they replied meekly.

All the time she interrogated them, Flora was looking around the room. The only place I haven't looked is in that trunk, she thought. It's normally left open, so why is it locked all of a sudden? There must be a reason.

"Since you won't confess," she said to Lucky Pearl and Lucky Jade, "I'll have to suspend my investigation until a later date. But that trunk of yours contains several old paintings I've not seen yet. Would you mind opening it up for me?"

"We've mislaid the key," they replied together. "It hasn't been opened in ages. As soon as we find the key, we'll take out the paintings and send them over."

"That's no problem. I have tons of keys and can open any lock at all. Let me send for them." She gave an order to one of her maids, who returned in a few minutes with several hundred keys. As Flora tried them in the lock, her nieces resembled nothing so much as three corpses. They could not very well protest or prevent her from trying, but they were hoping against hope that the keys would not fit and that the trunk would stay shut.

But fortune favored the enemy. Flora did not need even the second key, for the first one fit perfectly. Opening the lid and glancing inside, she discovered the smooth, snow-white body of a man across whose thighs lay a flesh-and-blood laundry beater that was woefully limp but still big enough to shock. She could only imagine what it might look like when stiff.

Confronted with such rare merchandise, Flora felt a natural impulse to monopolize it. Without disturbing anything in the trunk, she let down the lid, relocked it, and launched into a tirade. "A fine thing you've been up to, with your husbands away! When did you smuggle him in, I'd like to know? How many dozens of nights has he slept with each one of you? Come on, out with it!"

The women's faces turned ashen with fright, but they said nothing, no matter how she cross-examined them.

"Since you won't confess, I have no choice but to go to the authorities." She told the maids to inform the neighbors that she had caught an adulterer in broad daylight and wanted them to come and attest to the fact, after which the man would be taken to court inside the trunk.

Her nieces withdrew for consultation. "She's bluffing," they said, "but if we don't clear matters up at once, her bluff may turn into reality. We'll have to come to terms with her and give him up for general use. Surely she won't sentence us to death!"

They approached Flora and apologized. "We oughtn't to have carried on behind your back. We know we were wrong and won't try to quibble about it. We simply appeal to your generosity, Aunt, to let the man out of the trunk so that he can confess and ask for clemency."

"And just what form is his confession going to take? I should like to have that settled in advance."

"To be quite candid, Aunt," said Cloud, "we've been dividing his time into three equal shares. We'll be glad to cut you in. In fact, on account of your age we'll give you first place in the roster."

Flora burst into laughter. "A fine penance that is! You keep him hidden away in your house and sleep with him for I don't know how many nights and only now, after you're caught, do you offer me a share! By that logic, when the authorities catch a robber, they wouldn't need to beat or torture him, they could just stipulate that anything he steals in the future will be forfeit while all the things he has already stolen are his to keep."

"Aunt," said Lucky Pearl, "what ought we to do, in your opinion?"

"If you want to settle the matter privately," said Flora, "you'll have to let him come back and sleep with me for as long as I like, until I've made up all the arrears due to me, after which I'll hand him back and we'll resume the one-person-a-night rotation. Otherwise we can simply settle it in court, which would mean breaking the family ricepot and letting everybody go hungry. Well, what do you say?"

"If we do that," said Lucky Jade, "you'll have to specify a time limit, three nights or five nights, say, after which you'll release him. You surely don't expect to be given carte blanche to keep him for months or even years!"

"I can't specify a time," said Flora. "Let me take him back with me and question him as to how many nights you three have slept with him, and then I'll keep him the same number. After that I'll hand him back and we'll say no more about it."

Although the nieces said nothing, a possibility had occurred to them: Vesperus loves us dearly and may well under-report the number of nights to her. So they agreed. "Well, he's only been here a night or two. Take him off and question him. You'll see."

Now that an agreement had been reached, the nieces were about to open the trunk and let Vesperus out so that he could go back with Flora. She, however, was afraid he might run away, and hesitated. "If he goes over in broad daylight," she said, "the servants may see, and that would look bad. We shall have to think of some way of getting him over in secret."

"Why don't you go back now," her nieces suggested, "and we'll send him over when it gets dark?"

"Don't bother," she said. "I have a better idea. There's no need to unlock the trunk. We'll just pretend it's full of old paintings that belong to me and call in a few stewards to carry it over with the man inside. No problem."

Acting on her own initiative, she told the maids to summon some stewards. Within minutes four men arrived and, hoisting the trunk onto their shoulders, bore it swiftly away.

Pity the three sisters! Their grief was as keen as that of any widow who ever said farewell to a coffin and yet, unlike the widow, they were unable to express it. They couldn't bear to have this live erotic album stolen from them in its trunk, and they were afraid, too, that the man inside would be worked to death by the old bawd. There was a road that led over there, but no road back. Was it not a bad omen that the picture trunk was carried off on men's shoulders like a coffin?