Jewel of the East (11 page)

“Now I did exactly what you said to do.”

He waited for Maisie’s reply, but a moment of chilling silence passed.

“Maisie,” he pleaded. “Come on.”

But his sister just rolled away from him and kept her back turned the entire night.

Felix woke to the sound of excited shouts and racing footsteps. Maisie was already out of bed. As he dressed quickly, he remembered her harsh words the night before. Great-Aunt Maisie and her twin brother, Thorne, had never spoken again after a fight. Would his sister really do the same to him?

Everyone was standing in the doorway. The heat shimmered in the distance. Already the day was so hot that Felix started to sweat just walking from his room to the front door.

Pearl turned to him when she heard him approach. “Look!” she said. “Father is home safely!”

Sure enough, Mr. Sydenstricker was coming up the path to the house. As he neared, Felix saw blood on his cheek and forehead, but his blue eyes shone with joy.

At the threshold, he stopped and grinned.

“Lin Meng has been martyred!” he said victoriously. “Lin Meng has entered heaven!”

Mrs. Sydenstricker’s hand went to her heart. “No,” she said softly, shaking her head. “Oh no.”

Her husband took her hands in his and smiled. “He is standing with the lord!” he said, his voice again filled with joy. “I saw it with my own eyes.”

“Children,” Mrs. Sydenstricker said, “go to the
kitchen with Amah and have your breakfast.”

But none of them could move. Instead, they stood transfixed as they tried to make sense of the strangely joyful tone and the terrible story they told. Lin Meng, the son of the old woman he’d gone to give communion to, had been murdered? In front of Mr. Sydenstricker? Yet he was jubilant.

“The soldiers raided the house as I was administering communion. They tied me to a post.” Here, he held his arms up in triumph to display the rope burns on his wrists. “And they tortured Lin Meng to death.” Mr. Sydenstricker’s voice filled with wonder. “My own convert,” he said. “A martyr.”

“Isn’t a martyr someone who dies for their beliefs?” Maisie whispered to Pearl.

“He believes being a martyr is even better than being just a convert,” Pearl whispered back.

“He thinks dying is a good thing?” Felix said, unable to keep his voice low.

“Absalom,” Mrs. Sydenstricker said harshly. “You’re frightening the children. I’ve had enough. I’m taking the children to Shanghai. Nothing will happen to these children. Do you hear me? Nothing.”

Mr. Sydenstricker looked at her, surprised.
“I refuse to leave now. How could I? With the possibility of my own martyrdom so near?”

His wife gasped. “Absalom!” she said in disbelief.

“You have always put your own needs before the souls of the heathens here,” he said sadly.

She studied her husband’s face for a long time.

“Stay then,” she said finally. “But you must hire a junk to wait for us on the river so that we can escape. I’ve already mapped out a route through the bamboo.”

This time he studied her face.

“Fine,” he said. “I will go now and make the arrangements. When the time is right, you will be able to leave.”

Over the next few days, the heat worsened. The entire family stayed in the dark in the living room. It was so hot that Mr. Sydenstricker took off his preacher’s white collar, the first time Maisie and Felix had seen him without it. Mrs. Sydenstricker entertained them with stories of the Civil War battles and the bravery of the Americans. Maisie understood these stories were meant to build their own courage and to prepare them for anything that might lie ahead. She noticed how often Mrs. Sydenstricker went to the window to look out at the river where, when the time came to escape, a
red flag would be raised as a signal.

Chushi, the cook, came into the room one morning with tea for all of them set on a bamboo tray. As he poured the tea into each small cup, he spoke softly.

A look of fear spread across Pearl’s face.

“What is he saying?” Mrs. Sydenstricker asked Pearl. No one in the family spoke Chinese as well as Pearl did, not even her mother. “Something about Shanxi?”

“They’ve killed almost fifty Christians there,” Pearl said.

“Oh no!” her mother murmured.

The cook spoke again.

This time Pearl dropped to the floor and hugged him around the knees.

“What is it, darling?”

“He said he must leave us. He fears for our lives. And his own for associating with us,” she cried.

“Of course,” Mr. Sydenstricker said. “He should go.”

After Chushi left, Pearl cried softly for some time in the hot, still room.

Mrs. Sydenstricker paced, walking from her chair to the window and back again, over and over, almost desperately.

Felix watched her go to look out the window once again. But this time her back stiffened, and she turned from the window with her face covered with relief.

“The flag is up!” she said. “It’s time.”

Just as they’d rehearsed, they all scrambled to their feet and ran to get their things. All except Mr. Sydenstricker, who refused to evacuate Zhenjiang.

With Mrs. Sydenstricker in the lead and Wang Amah carrying Grace, they walked out the back door, through the veranda, and down the emerald-green hills. As they passed the small, mud farmhouses that dotted the landscape, Felix begged Maisie to forgive him.

“Please,” he said. “I did it so we could get home. I’ll never do anything without talking to you first again, I promise. Just forgive me.”

Maisie kept walking as if she didn’t hear him. When Pearl had asked Maisie why she was ignoring Felix, Maisie had said, “Because he’s a sneak, that’s why!” But deep down, she knew it was more than the fact that he’d given Pearl that box without Maisie there. More and more it felt to Maisie like Felix didn’t need her. Back in Newport, he had Jim Duncan and Lily Goldberg. It used to be the two of them and everyone else.
Now it felt like it was just her alone and everyone else. Why couldn’t they have given Pearl the jade box together? Why did he have to do everything on his own?

The people working in the rice paddies barely looked up at the group of foreigners passing them. White geese walked beside them, their wings fluttering.

Finally, they reached the river where the boat waited for them. They boarded in silence, each of them staring back at the city they were leaving behind.

When the boat had traveled far enough for the city to disappear completely from view, Mrs. Sydenstricker let out a deep sigh.

“Shanghai,” she said. She smiled. “Shanghai,” she said again, louder.

“Shanghai doesn’t feel like China at all,” Pearl said sadly.

Pearl was right. Shanghai in 1900 was an open city, free to trade with other countries like Britain and France and the United States. As a result, it seemed more European than Chinese. For Maisie and Felix, Shanghai was fancy and exotic. They loved the large international ships docked on the Huangpu River and all of the sailors in their different country’s uniforms. The streets of Shanghai were lined with shops selling imports from England and the United States: perfume, silk stockings, lingerie; cashmere scarves, leather boots and coats; wine in dusty
wooden cases. Walking down the broad boulevard, they both liked to window-shop. If Maisie had forgiven him, Felix knew that they would have even more fun. But she continued to completely ignore him.

For Pearl, who had never even seen running water until they settled into a boardinghouse on Bubbling Well Road, all of the opulence of Shanghai made her homesick for Horse Street and the veranda that looked out over the Yangtze River.

“I hate it here,” she would say repeatedly throughout the day.

Felix tried to hide his excitement at seeing yet another new place. He didn’t want Pearl to feel even worse.

But Maisie kept trying to point out all of the positive things about Shanghai.

“I, for one, like being able to sit in a bathtub with cool water on these awful, hot days,” Maisie said.

Pearl stared at her long and hard.

“You’re used to that, though, aren’t you? Coming from Shanghai in the first place,” Pearl said.

Maisie had forgotten their story of running away from their parents in Shanghai and hopping on a junk to Zhenjiang.

“I am used to it,” Maisie said. “Yes.”

“But you don’t seem to have any idea where anything in the city is,” Pearl said, narrowing her blue eyes. “And neither does Felix.”

Maisie chewed her bottom lip, trying to think up a good answer.

“You didn’t come from Shanghai, did you?” Pearl asked.

When Maisie didn’t answer, Pearl said, “It’s all right. I won’t tell.”

More and more, Mrs. Sydenstricker talked about America and how safe they would be there. Sighing as she filled the bathtub for Pearl and Grace, she told them about how back home in West Virginia they would have running water and electric lights and all of the things they’d lived so long without.

“But what about Amah?” Pearl cried. “What about our little house and—”

“
Shhhh
,” her mother said. “Your father isn’t about to leave China.”

Mr. Sydenstricker stayed in Zhenjiang all of that summer. He continued to wear a suit and his preacher’s collar and to preach in the streets. Every time someone came to the boardinghouse on Bubbling Well Road with news, the family
feared it would be news of his death. Despite being attacked with stones and sticks, he managed to avoid serious injuries.

One hot August evening, Mrs. Sydenstricker took Pearl, Maisie, and Felix to the Astor House Hotel in the Hongkou District. The Astor House Hotel was world famous, the most elegant hotel in Shanghai. In all of the Far East. Every important person in Shanghai met there at eleven in the morning to discuss world affairs and the problems in China. Tonight, a ball was being held at the Astor House Hotel, and Mrs. Sydenstricker wanted to see the women’s gowns and furs as they arrived.

At first, Pearl refused to go.

“Please come, Pearl,” Felix pleaded. “It won’t be as much fun without you.”

“Who knows what we’ll see there,” Maisie said. “Maybe something you can use in one of your stories.”

“I only tell stories about China,” Pearl said. But she softened a bit that Maisie thought of her as a storyteller.

“But this is part of China, too,” Maisie added.

“A terrible part,” Pearl said.

She put on her red hat with the gold Buddhas and tucked her thick, blond hair beneath it. Here
in Shanghai, she didn’t need to hide her blond hair. It was perfectly all right for her to wear it down. Maisie was happy to, but Pearl insisted on that hat.