Dreams of Joy: A Novel (41 page)

My watercolor will never leave this house. We decided it had to stay here, along with all my other work, as proof to the authorities that Z.G. and Tao never suspected I was going to escape. When others do see it, I’ll probably be accused of worshipping foreign things, of being bourgeois—referring to the United States—or revisionist—referring to the Soviet Union. But it won’t matter, because I’ll be gone, gone, gone.

Z.G. comes to my side. “In the West, they say beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” he says. “Here, in China, beauty is defined by politics and realism. But what are the most beautiful things I know? They are the emotions of the heart—the love you feel for Samantha, the love you feel for Pearl and May. These things are pure, true, and unchanging.”

His words seep into me. I loved my father Sam, and that will never change, but Z.G. is my father too. The time, patience, technique, and color sense he has given me have changed my life in ways I haven’t even begun to understand.

“I used to believe that
ai kuo
—love for China and our people—was the most important thing in life,” I say. “Then I thought being able to call someone
ai jen
—beloved—was the most important.” I glance at Tao. His back stiffens at my words, but he doesn’t turn my way. “Now I realize love is something much bigger.
Kung ai
—encompassing love—is most important.”

“You’ve shown that in your painting,” Z.G. observes. “Art is the heartbeat of the artist, and you’ve found your heartbeat.”

My father continues to praise me, saying my painting is the best he’s seen in years. After he leaves the studio, Tao and I work silently. At one thirty, I gather up the baby and Ta-ming. Tao begins crating his and Z.G.’s paintings to take to the trade fair. At the door, I take one last look at my painting. Yes, I most definitely feel my heartbeat.

AT TWO THIRTY
, we meet back at my mother’s house. We pull together the various documents, photographs, and other papers we’ve been required to fill out. Then we take a bus to the Foreign Affairs Bureau to pick up our passports. We approach the window and are greeted by Comrade Yikai, a wiry woman with a surprisingly pleasant manner, who’s been meeting with us weekly for nearly six months. We show her our documents, which she’s seen dozens of times, but now she has our last requirement in her hands. She beams when she sees my mother and Dun’s marriage certificate. “Finally!” she exclaims. “All good wishes!” She leafs through the other papers, barely glancing at Ta-ming’s and Samantha’s recently issued birth certificates. How did we get those? I was able to claim, accurately, that I never received papers for Samantha from the Dandelion Number Eight People’s Commune. My mother lied, saying she adopted Ta-ming after she found him abandoned in a pit by the side of the road.

“You are a good comrade to help the child,” Comrade Yikai praises my mother, as she does every time we come here. “And besides, every woman should have a son.” But one issue still vexes her. “China is the best country in the whole world. Why would you want to leave, even if it’s just for a visit?”

“You’re so right, Comrade Yikai,” my mother agrees. “Chairman Mao is our mother and father, but don’t you think it’s important for blood relatives to see each other too? I want my sister—long lost to the capitalist West—to observe our good family.” She motions to Dun, Ta-ming, the baby, and me. “Once she does, surely she’ll want to return to the motherland.”

Comrade Yikai nods her head solemnly. She stamps five passports and slips them to us under the window.

“Everyone on your block will be proud if you bring back your sister,” she says. “Have a good trip.”

As planned, we return to the house to get Cook, because Superintendent Wu has asked that someone vouch for us. Together we walk to the police station, where we bypass the line of people hoping to get travel and exit permits. We go straight in for our appointment with Superintendent Wu, who’s been questioning my mother since she first arrived in Shanghai. He treats Director Cook deferentially, offering him a chair and tea. Then he gets right to business.

“We’ve been considering this travel request for several months. We have just a few more questions, which I’m sure you can answer.” He nods to Cook, who nods back, understanding the seriousness of the situation. “Would you say that Comrade Pearl has joined with the workers, soldiers, and peasants to help build a better society?”

“She has cleaned her own nightstool and washed her own clothes,” Cook answers, his voice quavering with age.

It was a gamble bringing Cook here. No one knew exactly what he would say, but this is perfect. I could kiss the old man, but that would be unseemly.

Superintendent Wu turns to my mother. “For a long time, I was suspicious of you. You answered my questions the same way every time we met. How can that be? I asked myself. You responded to the call to return to the motherland, but you had nothing to offer since you weren’t a scientist or an engineer. I told the higher-ups that we shouldn’t feed, house, or tolerate American imperialists like you, but you’ve proved me wrong. Now my superiors ask me if they think you’ll use this opportunity to return to America.”

“I’d never go back there,” my mother says.

“This is exactly what I told my superiors.” Superintendent Wu grins. “I told them you’re too smart for that. The Americans would never accept you. They’d take you out and shoot you.”

We’ve heard all kinds of things like this these past months. It’s the same sort of propaganda my mother and I were told before we came to China.

“A one-day trip to Hong Kong?” The policeman sneers and then adds staunchly, “In a few more years, Hong Kong will be part of China again. We just need to know that you’ll be welcomed there. We have no wish to place burdens on our little cousin.”

As we have for the last six months, my mother hands him Auntie May’s letter of invitation. Then she shows him her new marriage certificate and the passports.

“What about this marriage?” Superintendent Wu asks, even though he’s known it’s been coming for a while.

“This is to be expected,” Cook volunteers. “They are two people of the same age, living under the same roof. They have known each other for more than twenty years. The girl’s mother was quite fond of the professor. I’d say it’s about time.”

Superintendent Wu stares at the marriage certificate with a bemused look. “A bachelor marrying a widow.” He chuckles and then addresses Cook. “The widow will show him what’s what, no?”

Cook bristles. Worried that he’ll start to say things to protect Little Miss’s reputation, I quickly put Samantha on his lap to distract him.

With no one to join in the traditional wedding banter, Superintendent Wu shakes his head in disappointment. “Everything is in order,” he says. He slides five exit permits across the desk, ruffles Ta-ming’s hair, and makes a few unprompted bawdy comments about the nuptial couple and what Dun might expect tonight. As we leave his office, he calls out to my mother, “See you at our usual time next month!”

The hardest and most dangerous part of our trip is behind us. Standing on the front steps, we’re ecstatic but careful not to show it. Still, the people waiting in line regard us enviously. At least we got in the door.

When we reach home, my mother stops in the garden, as she always does. If all goes well, this will be the last time she’ll ever pinch dead blooms, trim scraggly twigs, or rearrange the pots in her family’s garden.

The cobbler comes through the gate. “Are you picking flowers for us to eat or for one of your vases?” he asks.

“I want to get the last flowers before the first frost,” Mom answers lightly. “I think these might look nice in the salon, don’t you?”

The cobbler doesn’t respond, but I know my mother’s thoughts on this. She’s talked about visiting her friend’s house and seeing the dead flowers in a vase on a table. They made her believe that Madame Hu was coming back. Mom hopes her actions now will make everyone think we’ll be gone just a few days. As with Z.G., we don’t want anyone to get in trouble after we’re gone. When the police come to question the boarders, they’ll be able to answer truthfully that they didn’t suspect a thing. They’ll point to my mother’s flowers as proof.

I make dinner. Everyone sits around the table in the dining room. We listen to the day’s gossip. One of the former dancing girls got a promotion at the textile factory. This has infuriated her roommate. The two bicker as only two women who have shared the same small room for twenty-three years can. Yes, everything is exactly as it should be. Even when Cook announces the marriage between Little Miss and the professor, no one seems particularly surprised.

“There are no secrets in this house,” the cobbler says, as he raises his cup of hot water for a toast.

My mother looks from face to face. She takes in the faded wallpaper and the art deco sconces she bought at a pawnshop. Her fingers glide along the surface of the dining table, memorizing it. I can see she’s fighting back tears. I have a momentary fear she’ll give away everything, but then she blinks, clears her throat, and picks up her chopsticks.

Pearl

A PLACE OF MEMORY

I LEAVE MY
family home almost as I arrived. The boarders crowd around me in the hall, offering words of advice. They part when Cook enters. The knowledge that I’ll never see him again burns in my chest, but I say, “Take care of things until next Tuesday.” Then I address everyone. “Don’t forget the cleanliness campaign. I don’t want to come back and find—” “We know, we know,” the others sing in chorus. Then I pick up the bag I brought into China and walk out the door and down the steps into the garden. Joy carries the baby. Dun holds Ta-ming’s hand. I open the front gate for the others to pass. I don’t look back. Then together we go to the corner and board the first of a series of buses that will take us to the airport.

As a paper collector, I spent a lot of time on the Bund, watching ships go up and down the river, trying to figure out if there was a way to leave Shanghai on the Whangpoo. Even now, I would have guessed we’d take a boat or train to Canton, but Z.G.’s superiors at the Artists’ Association insisted that he, Tao, Joy, the baby, and her amah fly to Canton. Plane tickets are expensive, they told Z.G., but we’d be gone for a shorter time and they wouldn’t have to provide us with as many rice coupons. I used my money to buy additional seats for Dun and Ta-ming.

We wait six hours in the terminal. Some of us exchange worried glances. Z.G. and Tao are to give their demonstration at the fair’s opening festivities first thing tomorrow morning. What if the plane doesn’t take off today? If we can’t be in Canton by tomorrow morning, then there’ll be no reason for Z.G. and Tao—and therefore the rest of us—to go to Canton. We wait and wait. Babies wail, children fuss. People huddle together in layers of padded clothes—taking extra clothes in a way that won’t look suspicious, except it does. The acrid smell of damp humans, dirty diapers, cigarette smoke, and pickled turnips is sticky at the back of my throat. The linoleum floor is a mess of spit, nicotine-flecked phlegm, bags, baskets, and satchels. Soldiers patrol the aisles, stopping occasionally to check papers and photo identifications. The wait, the anxiety, the worry every time the armed soldiers pass is nerve-racking. Even so, pallid faces and hollow looks have been replaced by glimmers of hope. Maybe things will be better in the south.

Finally the aircraft is ready for departure, but flying on a Chinese propeller plane is not at all like my transpacific Pan Am flight. Samantha screams the entire way. Ta-ming holds his father’s violin case in his lap, handing it to me just before he leans over and throws up in the aisle. Tao and Z.G. smoke nonstop, as do most people on the plane. It’s a long and bumpy ride. I stare out the window, watching China’s mainland pass below.

When we step off the plane in Canton, the first thing I notice is how much warmer it is than Shanghai. It feels like Los Angeles, and I love that. Then I hear Cantonese. I look at Joy. This is the sound of Chinatown. We’re still in China, but we’re getting closer to home. We both grin and then just as quickly compose our faces, remembering we must seem as though there’s no particular reason for us to be happy.

We take double-seat pedicabs to the hotel. Refugees are everywhere on the streets, with their bundles, children, and treasured goods. Everyone wants to get out. But the hotel is just as I remember it. I remember as well the things I did with Z.G. here. When he catches my eye, I know he’s recalling those things too. Embarrassed, I look away and edge closer to Dun. We’re given three rooms: one for Z.G., one for Tao and Joy (poor thing), and one for the children, Dun, and me, since I’m here as the amah.

Tao barely reacts to the lobby. He’s come a long way from washing rice in the toilet. However, I can see, for the first time, a trace of nervousness in him. Everyone speaks Cantonese. He’s become relatively proficient in the Shanghai dialect, but Cantonese is nothing like Mandarin, the Wu dialect of Shanghai, or his home dialect from Green Dragon Village. We all have to remind ourselves that Tao cannot suspect a thing, but I just can’t express how exciting it is to be only one hundred miles from Hong Kong.

IN THE MORNING
, Joy comes to our room, and together with Dun we go over our plan one last time. We wear clothes appropriate for the opening festivities. Joy—wife of the model peasant artist—in the simple cotton blouse and pants she wore when I pushed her in a wheelbarrow out of Green Dragon Village; Dun in an ill-fitting Western-style dark suit, which we hope will give the impression that he is a Hong Kong Chinese visiting the fair; the children in matching black outfits to show they’re from the countryside; and I wear what I wore out of China, back into China, and, we hope, back out of China later today—the peasant clothes May bought for me many years ago. “I’ll carry the baby,” Joy recites.

“I’m responsible for Ta-ming, and I have our money in my pants,” I say.

“I have our papers right here.” Dun pats his jacket. Then, “We all have to be present when the painting exhibition opens at nine.”

We agreed we had to do this, but it will be hard when we’re so anxious to flee. However, it would look strange to Tao if we didn’t show up and stranger still to the fair organizers, who invited Tao, his wife, and their baby girl to this special event.

“Once Z.G. and Tao’s demonstration begins, we’ll sneak out of the hall and go to the train station,” Joy picks up. We’re talking about something terribly dangerous, but she sounds calm and determined. My Tiger daughter is leaping yet again.

“And then it’s just two hours to Hong Kong,” I say, gathering courage from Joy.

We head downstairs to the dining room, where we join Z.G. and Tao. Z.G. wears one of his most elegant Mao suits, befitting his status. Tao also wears a Mao suit, but of inferior fabric and cut. Unlike Joy, who still must appear a peasant wife, Tao is showing the world that he is Z.G.’s protégé. He walks proudly erect with a big smile on his face.

The fair is international, and so is the buffet: hard-boiled eggs, yogurt, and savory flatbreads for attendees from India and Pakistan; stewed tomatoes, bangers, limp bacon, and toast with butter and jam for the English; and porridge, pickles, and piles of dumplings for the Chinese. It’s crucial for the government to project that nothing is wrong in the country; the Great Leap Forward is great! Ta-ming loads his plate with more food than he could ever eat, but then so do we all.

Just before nine we walk to the fair entrance, where we’re greeted by the organizer, an officious man with a shiny, round face. He escorts us into the great hall. On the stage at the front of the room are several easels draped with red silk.

“As soon as the doors open, we’ll make the introductions, and then your paintings will be revealed,” the organizer explains in Mandarin, a cigarette dangling from his lips. He pauses and frowns, concerned. “Members of the Canton branch of the Artists’ Association will give you proclamations, and then you’ll do your demonstration. But please make all of this fast. People have come here to buy our products, and they’ll want to go on to the exhibition floor quickly.”

Hundreds of attendees are let in. Tao sticks close to the organizer, probably hoping to make connections, while the rest of us wait for the program to begin. Naturally, there’s a little more to it than we were told. A dragon dance with clanging cymbals, banging drums, and colorful costumes sets a celebratory tone. Then the organizer, with Tao still trailing him—not for the first time do I look at my son-in-law and think what a greedy, foolish man—steps up to the podium.

“Welcome all guests to the People’s Republic of China’s Export Commodities Fair,” the organizer begins in Cantonese. He repeats his welcome in Mandarin and then continues using Mandarin, the official language of China. “This year you will see—and we hope buy—even more of our wonderful tractors, textile machines, alarm clocks, and flashlights. You’ll see we make the best and cheapest merchandise in the world. There is nothing the masses can’t do!”

The audience applauds. The organizer holds up his hands for silence.

“I know you’re all eager to get inside, but first we have a special treat for you. We open today by unveiling a major art exhibition,” he continues. “From here it will travel to Peking for the annual New Year’s poster competition. Then it will go on tour to cities around the country. If you’ve been here before, you’re already familiar with Li Zhi-ge, one of our nation’s best artists. He’s come again, and in a moment I’ll bring him up here, but let me first introduce Feng Tao.”

More applause as Tao waves, smiles, and bows several times as he’s learned to do at other events since he recovered.

“Feng Tao is red through and through,” the organizer goes on. “But he’s more than that! He is what we call both red and expert.” This is the highest compliment that can be given these days, and it refers to peasants like Tao, who are “red” through their millennia of suffering and “expert” through their ignorance. “He’s here to show the world that anyone can be an artist. Surely he’ll win the award in Peking for the best New Year’s poster.”

I glance at Z.G. to see how he’s taking this. How hard it must be to have listened to this kind of nonsense for the past several months, but he keeps his expression bland and indifferent. I feel Joy shifting impatiently at my side. She knows she’s about to be called up there to be displayed as Tao’s model-comrade wife, who came to the motherland from imperialist America.

The organizer asks the delegation from the Canton branch of the Artists’ Association to join him onstage. They begin to pull the red silk from each of the easels, revealing several of Z.G.’s recent works—glorious round-faced women driving tractors, robust women waving red flags and smiling at a column of tanks on Chang’an Boulevard during the People’s Republic of China’s tenth anniversary parade, and Chairman Mao striding through the countryside, appearing taller than the mountains, greater than the sea. Tao’s paintings couldn’t be more different. They show village life in clean but simple strokes, all rendered in bright colors.

People applaud appreciatively. Then one of the men from the Artists’ Association pulls one of the red cloths off an easel and I hear Joy’s sharp intake of breath. I peer around the heads to see what has upset her, and there on the stage is something so beautiful I can’t fully absorb it. It’s a watercolor of my sister, Joy, Samantha, and me rendered in the old-fashioned beautiful-girl style. My first thought is that Z.G. must have painted it.

“That’s mine!” Joy says loud enough for a few people to turn her way and stare. Z.G. puts a restraining hand on her arm. She looks up at him, her face flushed in anger. “He stole my painting. He’s going to take credit for this too.”

Those around us from other countries don’t seem all that impressed by anything that’s happened so far, and they carry resignation in their bodies—this is China and we have to tolerate the greetings, proclamations, and demonstration before we can enter the exhibition hall—but the Chinese listen to this exchange with great interest, edging closer, drawing attention our way.

“He must have crated it with the other paintings when I wasn’t looking,” Z.G. says quietly. “But you can’t worry about that now.”

That’s right, because there’s something much worse to worry about. Onstage the members of the Artists’ Association speak animatedly among themselves and gesture furiously at the organizer and Tao. I understand why—Joy’s painting recalls the beauty of the past and the deep emotions of mother love in a style that’s been deemed bourgeois and ultrarightist—but I’m very proud of her. I’m happy and honored too. She might never be able to express her feelings in words, but through her brushstrokes she’s given me indisputable proof that she has forgiven my sister and me.

The organizer moves again to the microphone. He’s flustered and clearly trying to make the best of a disastrous situation. “We’re sorry that this piece of black art has been put before your eyes. Fortunately, in the New Society, even the worst criminals are given an opportunity to confess.” He motions to Tao with a flick of his hand. “Please step forward and explain yourself to our guests. Let them see our great country at work building socialism and communism.”

As Tao saunters to the podium, I sense what he’s going to do. This won’t be like the mural, where he took credit for Joy’s work. Instead, he’s going to name the artist and accuse Joy—and maybe Z.G. too—for trying to lead him down a black path. By targeting them, he’ll raise his status in the government as a model artist, who is red, expert, pure, and a brave defender against and accuser of hooligans, who should and will be punished.

“We’ve got to go,” I say. “We’ve got to go now!”

As I start pushing the others toward the door, I hear Tao’s voice. “I did not paint this evil atrocity, but I saw it being birthed. My wife was criticized in our commune for being a right opportunist. My father-in-law has a decadent past. They are the ones to blame—”

“Hurry!” I exclaim.

“Where is the real artist?” Tao calls out. “Step forward! Accept criticism!”

I disliked Tao from the first moment I saw him. I’ve despised him since Joy told me about Swap Child, Make Food. He’s a country bumpkin, and I wish with all my heart, Christian though I am, that he would just die.