Karla and Madame Zhou’s Resentment and Unresolved Trauma

Karla and Madame Zhou’s relationship is defined by intimacy without trust: Madame Zhou speaks as though Karla’s visits and affection are still owed to her, while Karla describes hatred and an unresolved grievance. Their encounter takes place through a grille that keeps Madame Zhou unseen, turning a conversation between former intimates into a scene of distance, accusation, and competing claims over Lisa.

Knowledge and distance

Karla has direct familiarity with Madame Zhou’s Palace and its business. She has brought people there, including some who were allowed to meet Madame Zhou through a screen, but says she has never understood what draws them. The visitors leave with the fervour of people who have received an extraordinary audience; Karla, by contrast, says Madame Zhou has always unsettled her. Her access to the Palace and its workings has not produced either admiration or comprehension. She can describe the effect Madame Zhou has on others, but remains outside that effect herself.

Karla also describes the Palace as a place where beautiful foreign women work and are trained in unusual specialties. Yet she insists that the women’s beauty alone does not explain its appeal: people would still come if the women were absent. This distinction matters to her account of Madame Zhou. The attraction of the Palace appears to depend on Madame Zhou’s personal authority as well as what the establishment offers. Karla has witnessed that authority at close range, including visitors’ reverence after an audience, but cannot explain it and does not share it.

A conversation through the grille

When Karla and Lin enter a small room in the Palace, Madame Zhou addresses Karla from behind a metal grille. The room beyond is dark, so Karla and Lin cannot see her. They kneel on cushions facing the barrier, a posture that makes their meeting resemble a formal audience even as the screen prevents ordinary face-to-face contact. Madame Zhou’s first complaint is that Karla has made her unhappy, followed by the insistence that she dislikes being unhappy. Their exchange begins not with an account of what happened between them, but with Madame Zhou asserting the injury she feels in the present.

Madame Zhou then says that she misses Karla and reproaches her for neglecting her. She connects the distance between them to Ahmed and Christina: she believes Karla still blames her for what happened to them, even though Karla has denied holding a grudge. Madame Zhou’s question is therefore not simply whether Karla has visited. She treats Karla’s absence as evidence that an old accusation remains active. Her claim of missing Karla sits alongside a demand that Karla’s conduct prove her loyalty, making affection and grievance inseparable in the exchange.

Resentment and unresolved grief

In a separate conversation with Lin, Karla makes the hostility behind her reserve explicit. Asked whether she dislikes Madame Zhou, she says that the feeling is worse than dislike: she hates her and wishes her dead. This is a stark contrast with Madame Zhou’s language of missing Karla. Madame Zhou presents the relationship as one she wants to recover through renewed contact; Karla describes it as a source of hatred. The scene does not establish that either woman has a full or shared account of the grievance.

The deaths of Ahmed and Christina are the clearest named connection between their estrangement and its past. Madame Zhou believes Karla holds her responsible, while Karla’s earlier conversation with Lin shows that she does not want to discuss her feelings as a simple question of liking or disliking. The evidence does not explain what happened to Ahmed and Christina or settle the truth of Madame Zhou’s suspected blame. Instead, the two conversations reveal how the unresolved past persists differently for each woman: Madame Zhou reads Karla’s absence as continuing accusation, and Karla states a hatred whose underlying history remains only partly disclosed.

Lisa and the competing claims

Madame Zhou’s reference to Lisa reveals another point of tension. She objects that Karla wants to take her favourite away from her. Karla answers that it is Lisa’s father who wants to take her, shifting the decision and its responsibility away from herself. Madame Zhou accepts the reference to the father only to speak of him with contempt. The exchange does not resolve Lisa’s future, but it shows that Madame Zhou’s sense of attachment extends beyond her grievance with Karla: she also regards Lisa as someone whose departure would be a personal loss.

Karla’s reply is notably restrained compared with her private declaration of hatred. In the room behind the grille, she does not repeat that hatred or openly challenge Madame Zhou’s claim to Lisa; she gives a practical explanation for why Lisa may leave. That difference does not prove reconciliation or concealment of a particular motive. It does show that the relationship’s conflict is expressed through more than direct hostility: Madame Zhou invokes neglect, memory, and possession, while Karla answers selectively and keeps the source of her anger largely unspoken. The encounter ends without resolving either their shared past or their opposing claims around Lisa.