A Hundred Flowers (19 page)

By the time they’d finished eating, it was dark outside and a weak yellowish light filled the car, the dark window reflecting a tired old man back at Wei. Ironically, it was the first time he had felt so energetic in the past year. The rumbling sounds of the train deepened with the night. The rest of the passengers had already begun to prepare for the night ahead, extracting pillows and blankets from their bags. Only then did Wei realize how unprepared he was for the long trip. The next handful of stations would be quick stops as the train continued on through the night until they reached Linxiang early in the morning. By Wei’s calculations, they would have traveled over five hundred miles by then.

Kai Ying

Kai Ying couldn’t sleep. In the dark, all of her anger had now turned to concern for Wei. She imagined his equally sleepless nights on the train. His back must be bothering him, as it always did when he sat for too long without moving. She wondered if he’d brought the bottle of ginger and sesame oil liniment she’d made for him, and if he had enough clothes to keep warm. Kai Ying thought about checking Wei’s room to see what he had brought with him, but it somehow felt like an intrusion and so she told herself tomorrow, tomorrow she would check.

Since her father-in-law had retired, his room had become his office and library and sanctuary where she usually found him sitting at his desk, head down, reading some book. As soon as Kai Ying entered, she immediately felt hesitant and unsure of herself, as if she’d somehow become small and insignificant among his things. Even Sheng and Tao always knocked before they entered.

The house creaked and Kai Ying thought she heard footsteps. Before Tao was born, one of the first stories Wei had told her was about the two ghosts roaming the villa. “You needn’t be afraid of them,” he said. “Who are they?” she had asked. Wei explained that when he was a boy, his family had three full-time servants who lived at the villa. His
amah,
Ching, was his nursemaid who slept in the small alcove off of his room. Their cook, Sun, and their housekeeper, Moon, lived in the back rooms which now belonged to Auntie Song.

Kai Ying tried to imagine what it must have been like to have servants doing all the things that now filled her days. It was the bourgeoisie lifestyle Mao and the Communist Party had despised and fought against, declaring victory for the people. And yet, why was there never enough rice or oil or coal for the people?

Wei told her Sun and Moon had worked for his family ever since they were young women. Before then, they’d been silk workers from the village of Shun-de. When Wei was a boy of nine or ten, Sun and Moon were already middle-aged, and had been working for his family for over twenty years. “They were as different as the sun and the moon,” her father-in-law said, and laughed. “There was hardly a time when they didn’t disagree about something. They would have argued about the time of day if they’d had the time!”

When Wei was not yet fifteen, Moon fell ill. Sun devoted herself to taking care of her until she died, six months later. Afterward, Sun stayed on until she became too old, but she was never the same. She passed away just after Wei graduated from Lingnan. Had he seen their ghosts? Kai Ying asked. Her father-in-law shook his head. “They’ve only shown themselves to the women in the household,” he said. A few years after Sun’s death, his mother occasionally saw Moon carrying fresh sheets to one of the bedrooms, or Sun, moving in and out of the kitchen. While he had never seen them, he’d felt them. He remembered feeling a cold wind blowing through the hallway in the middle of a hot August day. “I knew it was them,” he said. The villa had been their only real home and he couldn’t imagine them anywhere else. Kai Ying had thought the same thing about him. She heard another creak. Could it be Sun and Moon returning to the villa wondering where Wei had gone?

*   *   *

Kai Ying yawned and tried to clear her mind. Instead, it was Tao’s innocent question that returned to her thoughts.
Have you been there?
She’d never been farther away from Guangzhou than her hometown of Zhaoqing, never needed to see more of the world than what was in front of her. She turned on her side and closed her eyes, but still the underlying thought lingered, why hadn’t she been brave enough to have boarded the train to Luoyang to find Sheng?

Wei

Wei stared out the train window into blackness. He imagined all the farmers he’d seen in the countryside were indoors now with their families, eating together or telling stories about their day or preparing for bed. He looked past his reflection at the poorly lit train car he sat in. Everything appeared sad and dull in the dingy light as the train rattled on into the night and most of the other passengers slept. Wei suddenly felt homesick. Heartsick. He was no longer tired and wished he hadn’t napped earlier so that he might sleep now to pass the time. Instead, there was nothing but the long night ahead of him. He looked over at Tian to find him still awake with a book in his hands, though he didn’t seem to be turning the pages.

Wei shifted over to the aisle seat and closer to Tian. “You’re not going to sleep yet?” he asked.

Tian turned toward him and said, “I find I don’t need very much sleep.”

“You never finished your story,” Wei said.

“What story is that?” he asked.

“What happened to the woman who lived in Luoyang?”

Tian put his book down. “Ah, yes, that story,” he said. When he reached for the bottle of rice wine, Wei saw a slight tremor in his hand. “That calls for a bit of liquid courage.”

Wei declined when he held the bottle toward him. Tian took a swallow, then lit a cigarette and let it burn between his fingers.

“I’m sorry,” Wei finally said. “You don’t have to tell me if it’s too difficult.”

“Her name was Ai-li,” Tian said, leaning closer to Wei. It was clear by the glint in his eyes that he’d made the decision to tell his story. “We were together for five years. She was from Luoyang, where she’d remained living and working in an office during our courtship. I took the train back to Luoyang every two or three months to see her. When we had saved enough money, we were going to marry and Ai-li was going to move to Guangzhou. Our plan was to buy a small apartment, and later a bigger place. Her dream in the beginning was to have a house and a child.” Tian smiled at the memory. “At that age, dreams feel more tangible than reality. You can see and taste the happiness right in front of you. I was simply happy to be with her.”

“How did you meet?”

“We met in Guangzhou where I was going to school. Ai-li was the friend of a friend, and she was visiting her in Guangzhou when we met at a gathering. It was early 1946, a challenging time for all of us students. The World War had just ended and our civil war was escalating again. We were all filled with concern and hope and the raw energy that comes with youth.”

Wei recalled many of his students over the years at Lingnan. They must have gathered together outside of class in their rooms or restaurants, small dramas occurring daily. He felt strangely close to them at that moment, many of who would be Tian’s age or older, now. There had been so much confusion and upheaval at the university at the time and it was such a vulnerable age, filled with daring. He’d never stopped to ponder just how many of his students lived and died for the Communist or Nationalist causes back then. How could he have been so oblivious? Wei suddenly wondered if Tian had been a student at Lingnan.

“Were you in college then?” he asked.

Tian nodded. “I never went to a university. I was studying at a technical college when I first met Ai-li. You?”

Wei nodded. “I’m retired now. I was a teacher,” he said, and no more.

“I could have guessed.” Tian laughed. “You have the eyes of a teacher.”

“And how’s that?”

“An intellectual curiosity.”

“Ah, a nice excuse for prying,” Wei said, and laughed. “So I might as well ask you how this woman Ai-li came to steal your heart.”

“That’s exactly what I would expect,” Tian said. He took another drink. “She was barely nineteen, with long flowing black hair, full lips, and a shy expression that soon relaxed as the evening wore on. From the first moment I saw her, I wanted to kiss those lips. She had stolen my heart. It sounds terribly unoriginal, but it did happen to me.”

Wei thought of Liang. “I believe it happens more often than we think.”

“Our first year together was perfect,” Tian continued. “The fighting between the Kuomintung and the Communists made it more difficult for us to travel back and forth to see each other, but our courtship from a distance was somehow made more precious by the challenge. Even from afar, we were completely happy together. Strangely, I never worried she might find someone else. I would have married Ai-li within the first month of knowing her if I could have,” he said, his voice softening. “I should have.”

“You were both very young.”

Tian nodded. “There seemed to be all the time in the world, and then suddenly there wasn’t.”

“What happened?” Wei asked. “Did she meet someone?”

“In a way,” Tian said. He took another drink from the bottle and put out his cigarette. “After I finished college, while the Party fervor continued to build, I moved to Luoyang to be with Ai-li. I rented a small room there. I’m embarrassed to say that I didn’t adapt very well to Luoyang. Ai-li was away working all day, while I was having trouble finding any work. Before I moved to Luoyang, Ai-li hadn’t told me she’d begun attending Party meetings in the evenings. She’d become friends with a young woman in her office who had persuaded her to attend a meeting with her. Ironically, it was Ai-li who returned week after week, while her friend lost interest. Her pro-Communist beliefs increased with each of my visits. It was early 1949, and as you well know, all of China was teeming with revolution, but I had no idea Ai-li was becoming so involved with the Party in Luoyang. The more she talked about the Party, the more I began to resent that it was becoming such a big part of her life. Thinking back, I carry some of the blame. I wasn’t very easy to be with at the time,” Tian said, looking over at Wei. “Visiting Luoyang had been fine, but when faced with a hot and arid climate for months on end with no job prospects, and Ai-li spending more and more time at her Party meetings, I missed my family and friends in Guangzhou. We had the usual small arguments, but nothing out of the ordinary for a young couple finding their way.”

Wei nodded. He thought of Liang and how she always kept his life calm and balanced so he could concentrate on his work. How much did she have to put aside in order to appease him? He’d been so blind to the life he had.

“Months later,” Tian continued, “when I returned to Guangzhou to visit my family and friends, I was offered a job working at a family friend’s paper company. I had fully intended to return to Luoyang and make a life there. But I had just turned twenty-three, and the job offered more money than I’d ever made. I was elated to think that Ai-li and I could finally get married and live in Guangzhou, but instead of being happy when I returned to Luoyang with the news, she was clearly upset by it.”

Tian stopped talking and rubbed his eyes.

“I should also mention,” he continued, “that Ai-li’s entire appearance had changed gradually during the last two years we were together. By the time the Party had declared victory in 1949, she had stopped using any kind of makeup and disdained all the false propaganda that represented a bourgeoisie society. When I returned from Guangzhou, I was shocked to see she had cut her beautiful long hair, which she knew I had always loved, to a short and blunt cut like so many of the other female Party members. If a haircut could express anger, it was hers. I was upset but tried not to show it.

“I kept telling her, ‘You’ll get another job and make new friends in Guangzhou. With my salary, we’ll be able to marry and start a life of our own, just like we always hoped.’ She only smiled distantly. Any person who wasn’t half as much in love could have seen that she no longer believed in that life.”

“Did she say anything to you before then?” Wei asked.

“Our disagreements had mainly to do with politics,” he answered.

Tian stopped and looked around the car, as if to make sure no one else was listening before he continued.

“When I first moved to Luoyang, Ai-li implored me to go with her to a Party meeting. ‘You’ll see how right it all is,’ she said. ‘Our life together will only gain strength through our dedication,’ she went on. But I would have none of it. ‘Aren’t I good enough for you? Why do you need the Communist Party to make you happy?’ I asked. ‘Because the world is bigger than us,’ she said. Ai-li spoke of regretting all of our foolish talk, and viewing our hopes and dreams as nothing more than bourgeoisie ideals held by silly children.”

Tian stopped to take a drink.

Wei didn’t know when, but the dim lights in the car had gone off, leaving them in shadows. The car was now illuminated only by Tian’s weak reading light spilling sadly upon him, making it appear as if he were being interrogated.

“You don’t have to go on,” Wei said.

“It’s all right,” he said softly. He cleared his throat and continued. “After a very difficult week, Ai-li suddenly relaxed as if all the fight had seeped out of her. For the first time in a year, I saw traces of the old Ai-li return. She stopped going to Party meetings in the evenings and came to see me instead. For the next week of my stay, it was as if we had found our way back to each other. Slowly, quietly, we discussed our plans again, and it was finally agreed that I would return to Guangzhou first to begin my new job and Ai-li would follow in a month or two, after she’d settled everything in Luoyang, to begin our life together.”

Tian looked over at Wei. “You think me foolish to believe her, but at the time, I needed to believe her. Wouldn’t I have known if she were lying? It was so much easier to see what I wanted. Ai-li seemed herself again, excited about the move, and I was relieved to be able to stay put in Guangzhou and work, eager to show her more of the city and how wonderful it would be for us living there.”