Three souls, p.18
Three Souls, page 18
When shall I hear your step at my study door again?
My life has changed.
Childhood friends and our love, years pass and they change not,
Like a cherished secret, when released, they return us to joy.
There were many such new poets, writing in the vernacular, abandoning the high-brow classical language of earlier generations to craft verses whose sentiments felt fresh and unaffected.
I dreamed about Hanchin after reading one such poem. I was standing at the train station in Changchow. It was winter, and my hands were bare, bitterly cold. A train arrived and emptied out its passengers. When the last compartment door opened, Hanchin stepped out and smiled at me. I felt weak from the scent of sandalwood, hungry for the curve of his lips. He kissed my cold hands, and in my dream I cried out with happiness, “Oh, Hanchin, I knew you would come back to me!”
The emotions were so intense I woke up, the memory of sandalwood still lingering at the verge of my consciousness.
***
For a few befuddled moments I thought the dream was a premonition that Hanchin would enter my life again, I tell my souls. We watch my memory-self sob into her pillow. Despite my better judgment, I was crying for all my lost dreams. How could I have wanted him still so badly, after all that time?
They say nothing, but I sense my yang soul’s exasperation in the lift of his grey eyebrows, the taste of raw onion, and I sense my yin soul’s pity in the melancholy fragrance of lilac.
It’s possible, she ventures finally, that, even knowing he was only toying with you, you’ll be in love with Hanchin until the day you die.
At least that day won’t be too long in coming, I say. She bites her lip and blushes, realizing what she has just said.
***
The years went by, but to Jia Po’s dismay I didn’t conceive. Each month my menses reddened the strips of rags between my legs, and each month the herbalist delivered concoctions to prevent stagnation of my qi. The herbalist had declared this was my problem, since qi stagnation exhibits itself in tense muscles, restrained anger, and digestive problems. But Jia Po wasn’t relying on medicine alone.
“Make offerings to the Goddess of Mercy at the Temple of the City God,” she instructed. “That particular Goddess of Mercy is sympathetic to women with no sons.”
So I went to the temple each week, sometimes by myself, sometimes with Baizhen at my side. The Goddess’s altar was covered in layers of heavy silk, altar cloths embroidered with images of a hundred baby boys, offerings made by desperate women. Those visits did nothing except depress me.
I wanted a second child, of course, and so did Baizhen. He came to my bedroom almost every night. I wanted a son too, partly so that my in-laws wouldn’t lose patience with me and force Baizhen to take a concubine. I didn’t want Weilan displaced in the family hierarchy by a younger half-brother. If I couldn’t bear a son, she’d have no champions except for me, a sonless mother. How powerless I’d be then to help my daughter.
For the hundredth time I thought bitterly that my education held no value in this family, where dead ancestors meant more than the needs of the living. If Weilan was to marry into a modern, enlightened family, perhaps one that had sent sons abroad for Western schooling, she needed a good education herself. The local primary school was a one-room building tucked behind the Temple of the City God, staffed by a few sincere but woefully inadequate teachers.
When she was old enough I would send Weilan to a good boarding school. I would beg money from my sisters, even from Father, if necessary. I hoped Baizhen would find the backbone to stand up to his parents when that day came. But I had learned the folly of impatience. For Weilan’s sake, I had to move with care and deliberation.
“She’s so bright,” I said to Baizhen. “We must marry her to someone equally intelligent, a well-educated young man who values a modern, educated wife.”
Baizhen and I were on the second-floor veranda watching Weilan play on the terrace below. She and Little Ming were drawing a hopscotch court on the stones.
“I can tutor her until she is ten or twelve,” I continued casually. “I’m capable of that. If she does well, we can send her to boarding school.”
Baizhen lifted his eyes from Weilan to beam at me. “Leiyin, your education is superior to that of most of the men in this town. How could she do better than to follow your fine example?”
***
Weilan wanted to read all by herself. At three years old, she sat on my lap, insisting that my finger follow the words as I read to her out loud. I taught her simple words, making a game of it. I brought out the word cards I had made before she was born.
“Look, here is the character for big,” I said. “It looks like a man with his arms spread out wide. And see how the character for small is like a man also, but with his arms held close together.”
Baizhen, now more than able to teach her simple words, also joined in.
“What’s this word, Small Bird? Read it for Papa.”
“Fish! Papa, it’s fish!” she shouted in triumph, miming the four waving fins at the bottom of the matching pictogram.
“Cat!” she said for the next one, gently touching with one small finger the character that looked like a pair of eyes above a tabby-striped body.
She copied words in gridded notebooks over and over, her small tongue licking her top lip with the effort of keeping the strokes of each character neatly within its square, her small fingers cramped around the yellow pencil.
I included Little Ming in our lessons. She was growing into a young woman, although her exact birthdate was unknown, for who bothered recording the birth of a poor girl? She had lived at the Lee residence since childhood and was as naive as Weilan, as superstitious as Amah Wu. Little Ming put together sentences using my homemade word cards and read out loud from simple textbooks, laughing good-naturedly when she made mistakes. With Little Ming for a classmate, lessons were more interesting for Weilan, but that wasn’t my only reason for recruiting our maid. If Little Ming could master some simple writing and arithmetic, she would find better employment when she was older. She deserved better.
Weilan loved learning so much she could hardly tell the difference between doing her lessons and playing games. I had told her about my student days in Changchow, rows and rows of girls in uniform giving their full attention to the teacher. She wanted to play school and when we did, she was always the teacher, Baizhen, Little Ming, and I her students.
“And what is this word?” she would say, holding up a vocabulary card with utter seriousness.
“Is it . . . sky?” Little Ming would pretend not to know.
“Really, Miss Ming, you learned this word only yesterday.” Such a stern tone from her child’s voice made it hard for us to keep our faces straight. “Try again.”
“I don’t know. Young Master, you try.” Little Ming was dangerously close to breaking into giggles.
“I think . . . it must be . . . tree!” said Baizhen, biting his lips with the effort of suppressing a smile.
“Very good, Papa! Yes, it’s tree!” She gave him a wide and happy smile.
At such moments, I couldn’t imagine how life could be more fulfilling.
***
Weilan had taken to reading and writing very naturally, and was devouring all the children’s books on our shelves. Whenever my sisters or Stepmother sent us a new book, Weilan could hardly be persuaded to put it down to eat or play outside—even if it was too advanced for her.
I was terribly proud of her, but in secret, I considered Baizhen my greatest success. He had abandoned school texts and worked from newspapers now, asking for my help only with especially difficult or unfamiliar vocabulary.
“It looks very bad, Wife.” His newspaper was spread out on the library table, the dictionary beside him. I listened to him read it out loud, pausing between sentences. When he concentrated, he licked his top lip with the effort, just like Weilan:
Between the warlords, the attempt to restore Manchu rule, President Yuan Shikai trying to crown himself emperor, and now the Nationalists and Communists, there have been civil wars of one sort or another since before the fall of the Qing Dynasty. The Japanese have taken advantage of our domestic conflicts by marching into Manchuria, all the while insisting they are protecting Japanese commercial interests. What does it take for our own armies to unite against this threat to China?
“We can’t do a thing,” I said, a fist clenching in my chest. “The other nations won’t intervene. The newspapers spout outrage, but we’re helpless.”
***
1932 had begun badly for China, with Shanghai’s merchants initiatiating a boycott of Japanese goods. We learned that a mob in Shanghai had attacked a Japanese monk. When the monk died of his injuries, Japan took advantage of the incident and dropped retaliatory bombs on the city. Thus began the January 28 Incident, fought beside the banks of Soochow Creek in Chinese-held Shanghai.
I knew my sisters were safe, for their homes were in the French Concession. Japanese airplanes wouldn’t attack there, nor the International Settlement, for that would amount to declaring war on the British, French, and American governments whose citizens occupied those zones.
So from the safety of luxurious hotel rooms and apartments overlooking Soochow Creek, Europeans and Americans in the foreign concessions watched our armies battle the Japanese. According to one newspaper, the foreigners exhibited no more concern over the slaughter than if they’d been watching dog races at the Canidrome. Finally in March, Western powers stepped in and officially ended the battle, but at a high cost to China.
“This proposed ceasefire agreement between China and Japan is humiliating,” Baizhen said. He sounded sad rather than angry as he took his glasses off to rub his eyes. “It makes Shanghai a demilitarized zone. Our own troops can’t enter the city anymore. And Japanese troops have been allowed to occupy the cities of Soochow and Kunshan.”
But there was worse to come. In April, when the wisteria vines around the pavilion began uncurling in tender green shoots, Gong Gong opened the newspaper and gave a startled cry.
“The Communists have invaded Changchow!”
I jumped from my chair, knocking a cup to the floor, and jerked the paper out of his hands, not caring about my breach of protocol. Gong Gong said nothing and Jia Po quietly pressed a rag over the puddle of tea beside my chair. Baizhen stood behind me anxiously, peering over my shoulder while I scanned the story.
“I must send a telegram to Father,” I said, dropping the paper. “I must know how they are. It says the Communists have taken over the central city.”
Baizhen and I took a rickshaw to the post office.
“Changchow is under attack. Your telegram won’t get through,” said the clerk, a thin, perspiring man. “Who’s there to deliver it? You’ll have to wait till the fighting’s over.”
“Then I must send a telegram to my sister in Shanghai.”
My hands trembled as I wrote it out. Gaoyin and Shen had a telephone. She might have managed to call Father. I wanted to wait for a reply, but Baizhen persuaded me to return home. A reply could take hours.
When we returned, Old Ming took control. He sent for one of his many grandchildren and within a half-hour a skinny twelve-year-old arrived at our gate. He was dispatched to the post office with a steamed bun and strict instructions to stay there until the clerk put the reply telegram in his hands.
I spent the next few hours walking through the gardens, unable to sit still. I even snapped at Weilan when she tugged at my skirts. Jia Po bundled her away with promises of sweets from Old Kwan. Baizhen kept his distance, but I could sense him at the peripheries of my vision while I paced through the courtyard, anxious and inarticulate.
Perhaps this was one of the weeks Sueyin and Tienzhen had stayed in their Shanghai apartment. Perhaps my father and Changyin were away on business. Stepmother, however, never had reason to leave Changchow. What about little Fei-Fei, Changyin’s wife, Geeling, my nieces and nephews? I even hoped Tongyin was in Shanghai, drunk but safe in some seedy nightclub.
“Come in for supper, Wife. You must eat something,” Baizhen pleaded, his hand on my arm.
“But a telegram might arrive.” I pulled away from him irrationally.
“If it does, whether you read it right away or two minutes later, it won’t change what’s already happened. Please.”
I didn’t know what the chopsticks lifted to my mouth, for it all tasted of ashes. Then we sat silently in the parlour. The moon was just a sliver overhead when we heard the cries from the main gate at last.
“The telegram is here, the telegram is here!”
The boy’s voice carried clearly through the night air and brought us all to our feet. I ran for the entrance courtyard, where Old Ming stood beneath the dim light bulb that hung in the gatehouse. His grandson was perched on the tall stool beside him, panting and gulping down cold tea from an enamel mug. The old man held out an envelope, his hands shaking as much as my own. I ripped it open:
Tongyin and Sueyin are in Shanghai. Everyone else in Changchow. Telephones out. Will send news as soon as we know more.
I sagged against Baizhen.
***
I had always imagined the front lines as far away, in distant regions where no one lived. I thought that soldiers died instantly, felled by a single bullet through the heart. When we read about Japanese planes attacking Shanghai, I pictured them flying in disciplined formations over the city, dropping bombs that landed in unfortunate neighbourhoods, nowhere near my sisters’ fashionable apartments.
Now I saw our beautiful villa ransacked, its gardens trampled, the great front gates smashed open. Our family had always believed ourselves safe in our estate, sheltered behind white walls topped with broken glass, guarded by loyal servants. But in fact we had been sheltered by privilege. The men who fought in the streets now knew nothing of privilege, cared nothing for our name or status.
The daily newspapers told us about the battles in lurid detail. The photographs accompanying the reports were suddenly far too real. Dead and maimed soldiers and citizens sprawled obscenely on the streets, in places I recognized. Bodies piled up against the doorway of a café. Others sought the inadequate protection of a crammed arched passageway. A child’s embroidered shoe lay abandoned by the curb.
All I wanted was to see my father again.
Then, abruptly, it was over. The Communists have retreated, the headlines proclaimed. I smoothed a broadsheet out on the table with nervous hands, heedless of the ink smudging my sleeves:
After three weeks of bitter fighting, Nationalist forces have taken back Changchow, driving away the guerrilla army led by Mao Zedong. Our brave soldiers were aided by Western gunboats in Xiamen Bay, which prevented Russian arms shipments from sailing up the Jiulong River to resupply Mao’s forces.
Relieved, I handed the newspaper to Gong Gong. Surely it wouldn’t be long before Changchow’s telegraphs and telephones were working again. There would be news from home.
A day later, news did arrive. It was a telegram from my eldest brother, Changyin.
Father was dead.
***
I return to the roof beams of the temple. Three red sparks join me there, hovering silently before my eyes. Below, the temple doors stand partially open, holding back the muted light of dawn.
My yang soul speaks first, a lament. Too late now, too late. Too late to reconcile with your father. You will regret this until the day you die. Bitter gentian root washes over my tongue.
I’m past the day of my death and I regret it. I’m numb with disbelief. How could I have lost all memory of Father’s death? I forgave him everything when Changchow was invaded. All I wanted was to see him and all my family safe and unharmed. I was going to write him a real letter once the battles were over.
That’s the trouble when you’re young, my hun soul says. You think you have all the time in the world. You think the world will wait until you’re ready.
A new thought comes to me. Father’s dead, but so am I. Will I be able to meet him?
Perhaps. My hun soul sounds doubtful. If you’re able to make amends quickly enough you might catch up with your father in the afterlife before he moves on.
Moves on where?
To his next reincarnation, my yin soul replies.
Of course.
15
Baizhen went with me to Changchow. Gong Gong wanted to come too, but war disrupts everything, even gestures of respect. The estate had been vandalized and many of the servants were missing. Changyin’s telegram explained they couldn’t entertain house guests.
The retreating Communist army had looted its way out of the city. The men who invaded our home might have been soldiers from either army, or local thugs taking advantage of the chaos. It was hard to tell, for the Communists couldn’t afford to supply all their recruits with uniforms.
I learned that Father and Changyin had tried to reason with the horde that pounded at our gates with rifles and threats. The looters kicked Changyin to the ground and when Father tried to intervene, one of the men struck him with a rifle butt.
“Only a single blow, according to Stepmother,” Sueyin said. “But it was to the head, and he collapsed. He was unconscious and by the time Stepmother found a doctor, it was too late.”
The courtyard of our ancestral temple should have been overflowing with mourners, packed tightly as fermented black beans in a stoneware jar. Instead, Father’s funeral was small and hurried, attended only by family, not at all befitting his status. There were so many funeral processions filing through Changchow’s shattered neighbourhoods that week that we nearly tripped over one another on our way to the cemetery.
Members of the family capable of making the walk trudged silently behind the coffin, our white mourning robes like scraps of rice paper against the hillside as we ascended to the clan’s burial grounds, trampling pine needles and fallen plum blossoms as we went.
