A Hundred Flowers (16 page)

*   *   *

Suyin sat up in bed, her heart pounding at the memory. The baby whimpered and began to cry, at first softly, and then louder. Just as quickly Suyin was at the bassinet and picking her up. At first, the baby was so small and soft in her hands, she was afraid to hurt her. But Auntie Song had taught her always to support the baby’s head and neck and everything would be fine. Since then, Suyin had relaxed and held her constantly, even after she’d fallen back to sleep. She stroked her daughter’s dark tufts of hair. “Quiet, quiet,” she whispered, nuzzling her neck. She would never think of her as his. Never.

Suyin returned to bed, missing the warmth of the baby against her body, and wondered what would become of them. She touched the red, itchy pimples on her cheek and tried not to scratch, like Kai Ying told her. She longed to see her mother and brothers, but that was impossible now. Suyin felt her heart racing with each thought. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. She wanted to sleep and sleep and never wake up.

Wei

Wei left the house early each morning and began to walk. He had no particular direction in mind, but the walking brought him solace. He wasn’t sleeping much, his words turning over and over in his mind.
It was me. I wrote the letter.
Almost immediately after saying them, it felt as if a weight had been lifted off his shoulders, only to be replaced by another one, heavier and more nebulous. How could he ever make things right again with Kai Ying and Tao?

Wei would never forget the look in Kai Ying’s eyes, how diminished he suddenly appeared in them. He wasn’t the revered professor everyone held him up to be, she’d said. And she was right. Now he wondered if he ever really was. So many times he’d wanted to tell Kai Ying that he’d written the letter, but there was always something, something that stopped him, the words balanced anxiously on his tongue. And now it turned out exactly as he’d feared; everything he had spent a lifetime building was meaningless.

Kai Ying had gracefully pretended nothing had changed that evening at dinner, even as their food congealed in their bowls and Tao refused to look at him and he willed the baby to cry again to break the silence.

*   *   *

The day was just dawning, the air still fresh from the night before. Wei avoided the crowded main boulevards, instead turning onto the smaller side streets as he walked in and out of the narrow alleyways. He found himself following the same route he had walked for over forty years of teaching at Lingnan University. Old habits were a way of life for him. He knew the maze of intimate streets by heart and couldn’t bear the large crowds and bicyclists that used to push him along in directions he didn’t want to go. Wei was never comfortable being around too many people outside of the classroom, and over the years, he’d found ways to avoid them and move along at his own pace while remaining as inconspicuous as possible.

As he approached the Pearl River, the water was flat and murky, boats tethered to the edge rocking calmly from side to side. He heard faint laughter and took a detour, walking slowly along the crowded bank where scrawny dogs chased each other, old men and women sat on the benches gossiping or dozing, and still other early risers were exercising. A dedicated group was doing
tai chi;
the slow, deliberate, swaying movements of their hands and legs were like poetry. A man waved at him, and asked if he wanted to join the group. “Come, come!” he said, but Wei shook his head, waved back, and walked on.

When Wei came to the darkened walkway under a bridge, he stopped to watch a lone middle-aged woman practicing some sort of dance. Unlike everyone else, who was dressed in the drab gray or green tunics of the Party, she wore a bright red flowing outfit, lifting her leg high into the air and sharply snapping a red fan open in perfect unison. The fan snapped closed again when her leg came down. She could have easily been arrested for such suggestive behavior. Still, Wei was intrigued with her precise movements, her total concentration; the effectiveness of the red fan as it opened and closed in unison. She paused once and glanced in his direction before she began the next set. Wei watched with admiration and wondered what it must feel like to be that agile, to move with such ease and grace through life, unafraid to perform a dance she loved, a remnant of bourgeoisie decadence. Wei walked on, only to look back when heard the slap of the fan echo through the tunnel.

Suyin

Suyin couldn’t sleep again. She slipped soundlessly out of the room without waking the baby. At the bottom of the stairs she turned toward the living room instead of the kitchen, where her baby had been born. She’d been curious as to what the rest of the villa looked like. Kai Ying had mentioned that another family lived downstairs, although they were away visiting their daughter.
Just a quick look,
Suyin thought to herself,
I won’t touch a thing.
She wished she had a candle or an oil lamp. Fortunately, there was enough moonlight to allow her to find her way. Living on the streets, she’d always felt better when the moon was full, the darkness less consuming.

Suyin opened the door to the sitting room and lingered on the threshold before stepping in. All she saw were shadows at first, which slowly began to take on shapes. They had carried her in here and pushed the sofa back, laying her on blankets on the rug before the stone fireplace. Above the fireplace she remembered there was a painting of a man. She couldn’t see his features clearly, not then through the pain, or now, in the darkness, although she had felt him hovering over her throughout the birth. Suyin reached out to touch the fabric of the sofa, stroking the smooth and silky material. She couldn’t imagine ever sitting on something so beautiful.

“What are you doing in here?”

The voice came out of nowhere, abrupt and accusing. What
was
she doing wandering around the house in the dark? It appeared exactly the way she didn’t want it to. She swallowed and turned around slowly, her heart pounding in fear. What if she’d been in the kitchen looking through the cabinets? The old professor was standing behind her, waiting for just this moment to validate all his suspicions about her.

“I wanted to see the house,” she answered, her voice small and hesitant.

“In the dark?”

Suyin didn’t know what to say.

His tall, shadowy figure stood waiting for an explanation. Most of the time the old professor seemed lost in his own world, sitting in the courtyard with his eyes closed when Tao was away at school. Still, she always felt his gaze on her when she was downstairs with them, watching and waiting for her to misstep, watching and waiting for this very moment.

“I wasn’t able to sleep,” she finally said, almost in a whisper.

She braced herself for what would come next, expecting him to call her the thief she was, or order her to leave the house immediately with the baby.

Instead, he watched her for a long moment before he cleared his throat, and said quietly, “Neither could I.”

*   *   *

He walked toward her and turned on an oil lamp. Suddenly the room appeared before her eyes.

“It helps to see with the lights on,” he said.

“I should go back upstairs,” she said.

“Didn’t you say you wanted to see the house?”

Suyin stepped away from the sofa and quickly looked around the sparse room. She imagined it was once very grand, filled with beautiful furniture and paintings, but now, in the yellow glare of the light, she saw there was only the single faded sofa with its worn armrests and sagging cushions, the threadbare rug underneath it where she had given birth. The stone fireplace looked abandoned, darkened with soot. Suyin’s gaze traveled to the painting hanging above it. The man looked distinguished in a long silk gown and gray hair. When she turned to face the old professor she saw the resemblance.

“My father,” he said.

“You look a lot like him.”

“More so as I’ve gotten older,” he said. “We were very different in every other way.”

The old professor’s voice wasn’t angry at all. Instead, he sounded weary and sad, much like what she felt about the room.

“I think all children say that about their parents,” she said.

He almost smiled. “Yes, I suppose you’re right. If we’re fortunate, we reach a point in our lives when we begin to meet halfway. Before then, we spend all our time going in different directions. And sometimes,” he added, “it’s too late to find your way back.”

Suyin didn’t quite know what he was talking about. She suddenly felt exposed in her thin cotton tunic and pants. When the professor paused, she said, “I better go back upstairs, the baby might need me.”

He nodded. “Yes, of course,” he said. “Goodnight.”

“Goodnight.”

“There used to be a library,” he suddenly said, “down the hall and to the left. I spent a great deal of my childhood in there.”

“You’ve always lived here?” she asked.

He nodded.

Her eyes wandered around the room again. “It must have been wonderful to have grown up here.”

“It was,” he said, and then he did smile.

Suyin wanted to see the library, but didn’t dare to ask. “I should go,” she said, not knowing what to say next.

“Yes, of course,” he said, and nothing else.

Suyin edged past him and hurried out of the room. The old professor wasn’t so bad after all. She could almost see him standing in front of his students, tall and engaging, teaching them about the world. Suyin wondered if she’d ever be able to return to school. At one time she wanted to become a teacher, which felt like a child’s dream now. She turned back once to see if the old professor was following, but as soon as she had left the room, the light flickered off and it was dark again.

Wei

Wei hadn’t expected to see the girl, Suyin, roaming around the house in the middle of the night. He’d been waiting to catch her at something, but strangely, instead of being angry at finding her in the living room, he was relieved to find someone in the house who didn’t know about the letter. At first, surprised at finding her there, he’d spoken sharply, but when he saw how young and frightened she appeared, he wondered if he’d misjudged the girl, and tried to put her at ease. Was this the same effect he had on most people? Surely his students must have been afraid of him, too, always distant and self-absorbed. Perhaps this was like all the other mistakes he’d made lately, and her finding Kai Ying had simply been an act of fate. She appeared intelligent enough, simply curious and interested in everything he’d long taken for granted.

Wei left the house early again the next morning. He was reminded of his childhood, when his
amah
Ching walked him to school each morning. It was a time when Guangzhou was still an intimate city, famous for its large harbor that drew ships in from all over the world. Sometimes after school, Ching took him down to the port to watch the ships come in, their colorful flags of origin flying atop each one. He heard languages from all over the world and tried to guess which country they were sailing from. He memorized each flag so he could go home and look them up in his father’s library. America, Spain, the Netherlands. It was a memory of breadth and distances crossed that filled him with an unexpected joy.

Wei again walked toward the Pearl River, choppy and murky in the morning breeze. He followed the river’s path until he flagged down a pedicab to take him down to the harbor. As they approached the streets leading to the port, the pedicab passed the burgeoning crowds of early-morning shoppers and street vendors. Wei smelled the salt fish air, the roasting chestnuts, and the long, greasy donuts frying in their large open woks and eaten with rice porridge. Wei was excited being there again, watching the big ships enter the Guangzhou harbor from the Pearl River, which was once called the “Silk Road on the Sea” during the Ming and Qing dynasties. What courage it must have taken for men to leave their homes and families for months, even years at a time, sailing on the vast open seas with only the dreams of adventure, along with the lingering threat of never making it back home to their loved ones again.

Wei paid the pedicab driver and walked down to the old wooden harbor where Ching used to take him. He stood looking out to the Pearl River, murky and roiling, which connected with the Dong, Bei, and Xi rivers moving throughout China. They would never change, no matter how much Guangzhou had since his childhood. The rivers would always flow at their own will and for that he was grateful. They were once China’s main arteries to and from the rest of the world. He could only imagine how many of the artifacts he’d studied at Lingnan were brought down the rivers from other parts of China on large cargo ships. He wished Tao were there, so he could explain to him just how powerful China once was, and how everything had changed since Mao and his Party came into power. All the vibrancy and color had been drained from the city of his childhood. Times were more difficult and opportunities slim, all restricted under Party control. Was that why he’d written the letter, to reclaim his past? What did it matter now, if he didn’t have his family to share it with?

Wei had spent his entire life hiding behind walls, first at the university and then at the villa. It was time to step forward and do something other than wait defeated, day after day, hoping to hear from Sheng. He needed to know if his son was still alive. The authorities had told them nothing. If he could just see Sheng, it wouldn’t change the situation, but it might at least give Kai Ying some peace of mind. It was the very least he could do after all the hurt he’d caused. Wei suddenly recalled an old proverb from his childhood:
an ant may well destroy a whole dam.
And a father may well find his son, he thought.

As Wei watched the ships move in and out of the harbor, it was the first time in a year he felt an inkling of peace. He closed his eyes against the glare of the sun and felt Liang standing beside him. It had been weeks since he had sensed her presence, and his heart raced, thinking she had finally returned to him. He wasn’t alone anymore.
I’ll make everything right again,
he whispered to her.
What were you thinking?
He could hear her questioning him, though her tone wasn’t angry. Then he saw her smile and felt the warmth of her hand taking his.