The Binding Chair (3 page)

He bowed slightly, so slightly that the motion might almost have been mistaken for a shudder, as if he were suddenly aware how cold it was in the corridor of the coach, and said that he must attend now to other business.

It wasn’t until after the third and last warning bell, when they were pulling slowly away from the brick terminal, that they saw the other passenger in their car, a Russian officer in white tunic and blue trousers. He paced twice up and down the corridor, stroking his gray mustache with his right thumb and forefinger in a nervous, sweeping motion, and then stopped outside the compartment in which Alice, Cecily, their mother and governess were still trying to decipher the timetable, and knocked. Miss Waters retracted the lead into her silver mechanical pencil and folded her page of calculations; their mother stood and opened the door.

“Captain Litovsky,” the officer said, and he bowed deeply from the waist, removing his white-and-black hat and then replacing it before he was quite upright. “Engineer with the Imperial Command.”

“Mrs. Benjamin,” their mother said. “And my daughters, Cecily and Alice. Their governess, Miss Waters.”

The adults exchanged politenesses; the girls stared at the officer, ignoring Miss Waters’s grimace of disapproval. He had a fascinating habit of touching first the brim of his hat, then his mustache and his collar, his pockets, and at last what seemed to be the stock of a phantom pistol holstered at his hip—either that or the hilt of an equally invisible sword.

“Why do you speak English?” Alice interrupted.

“Alice!” said her mother.

“That’s all right,” said the captain, staring at Alice and looking almost frightened, as if he’d seen a ghost. “I … I … I have children, myself,” he stammered.

“Tell me,” said their mother. “Is it usual that the train should follow so eccentric a schedule? The, uh,
pov—provodnik
said that meals would follow St. Petersburg time even here, in Eastern Siberia, and …”

“Lunch is served at dinner!” said Miss Waters.

“I’m sorry?” said the captain.

The governess handed him the tables along with the equations she’d made on the Wagon-Lits stationery. “Look for yourself,” she said.

He held them under the reading lamp’s fringed shade, bending over to see them clearly.

“Not that it really matters in relation to meals, as we won’t be using the dining car, but if the beds aren’t turned down until dawn—”

“By why shouldn’t you use the dining—” he said, interrupting first Miss Waters and then himself and looking out the window as if at something that surprised him.

“Captain?” said their mother after a minute. “Sir?” For he was standing very still, rigidly erect even for an officer, and he dropped the timetables and Miss Waters’s calculations and began once again the mysterious series of motions from hat brim to mustache and so forth. His face was immobile, his eyes wide and unmoving. Behind his pupils, though, Alice thought she saw a terrible velocity, as if he were dropping through space. And then, suddenly, he did fall, right onto the floor.

For a minute, no one moved, no one attempted to help him. He lay on his back, his feet projecting out of the compartment door and into the corridor, and he spoke in three languages at once, Russian words mixed up with French and English. “
Nitchevo,
” he muttered. “
Nitchevo.
” The expression was one he would use again later, and translate for them:
It doesn’t matter
.

Tears squeezed from his shut eyes, saliva from the corners of his mouth. He said a name, too, several times.
Olga! Olga!
He said it loudly, as if calling to the woman from far away, as if he were afraid she might not be able to hear him. And then he was still, his body relaxed as though asleep.

“He’s taken a fit,” Miss Waters concluded.

“Go,” their mother said. “No. You stay, and I’ll go with the girls to get the, the porter, whatever he’s called.”

But by the time they had returned with the
provodnik
, the governess was in the corridor and the captain inside their compartment, with the door shut and the curtain drawn.

“What’s happened?” said their mother. The
provodnik
tried the door handle.

“It’s locked,” he said, knocking. “Sir!” he said. “
Zdrastvuyti!
Hello! Captain, I must ask you to open the door. This is not your compartment!”

“Perhaps he’s dead,” Cecily said.

“No, I can hear something,” said their mother. “Why on earth did you leave him!” she asked the governess.

“I don’t know,” said the governess. “What I mean is … Here,” she said. “I took your bag and the passports.”

The amah made a snorting sound.

“Captain!” the
provodnik
said. “
Pazhalsta!
Please! I must insist that you open the door immediately.”

And he did. “Can I help you?” He bowed, an expression of aggrieved suspicion on his face. Perspiration stood out in large drops on his forehead; he removed his hat and wiped his face with a large pink silk handkerchief.

“Sir!” said the
provodnik
. “What do you … Are you all right?”

“Why shouldn’t I be? I was just … I was writing a report.”

“He’s mad,” the governess said. “He’s intoxicated.”

“This is not your compartment,” said the
provodnik
.

“What do you mean by that?”

“I mean,” said the
provodnik
, “that this compartment, number one-sixteen, is the compartment of Mrs. Benjamin, and that yours is three doors to the rear, number one-nineteen.

“One, one, nine,” he added when the man did not respond. Captain Litovsky stared silently at them all. He twisted his beautiful handkerchief into a pink rope and bound it nervously around his knuckles.

“See,” Alice said. “That is my doll on the seat, and Cecily’s cards are there on the writing desk.”

The captain turned and looked at the doll. He touched the brim of his hat, his mustache, collar and pockets and the missing weapon at his hip. “Yes,” he said at last. “You must please forgive me. I haven’t been entirely well since … I’m not myself.

“I’m going to take the waters at Sergievsk. At the springs, the springs near Kuybyshev. It is on the advice of my physician. I have a cottage reserved for the fifteenth of the month.” He slipped his hand inside his tunic, as if searching for some confirmation of what he was saying, and handed the porter a worn leather billfold inside of which were two creased banknotes, an envelope with a broken wax seal and his
propiska
.

“This is your pass. I need your ticket.” The
provodnik
sounded irritable. “If you have your ticket on your person, I’ll show you that one-nineteen is—”

“Yes, yes. I remember now.” Litovsky turned to Mrs. Benjamin and her daughters. “Forgive me,” he said. “I … I … I am … I am honorab—I am discharged. I am returning to my home and taking the waters en route.”

“Of course,” said Alice’s mother. “Please, let’s not talk of it anymore. We were concerned only for your health.”

“Yes. It is … I am …”

“Shall I take you to your compartment?” the
provodnik
said.

The captain followed the porter meekly down the corridor, swaying slightly with the motion of the train.

“What happened to him?” Alice asked.

“An attack of some sort. A kind of—”

“He may be a drunkard,” the governess said.

“He’s an engineer, an officer of the Russian army!” said Alice’s mother.

“Well that certainly wouldn’t prevent him from drinking. It may even be a requirement.” Miss Waters allowed herself a small, malicious smile.

“Who do you suppose Olga is?” Cecily said.

Miss Waters was counting the envelopes in the writing desk. “His wife, probably.”

T
HE
B
INDING
C
HAIR

O
NCE A YEAR, IN
S
EPTEMBER
, M
AY’S FEET BECAME
infected. It was humid at that time of the year, the time when, in 1913, her nieces departed for boarding school. The house smelled of mildew; the edges of the wallpaper curled away from the damp plaster below; the wrappers of Alice’s father’s cigars, if left outside of the humidor, unrolled and disgorged lumps of sticky, fragrant Cuban tobacco. Bedclothes were heavy with moisture, and the bleached linen bandages around May’s feet were saturated with perspiration. She slept deeply, the dark, dream-soaked sleep following a pipe of opium, and as she did, her foot bindings seemed to grow tighter and tighter. Perhaps it was that which made her dreams so claustrophobic. In one, which recurred, May was lost in the Shanghai bird market. As she tried to find her way out of the maze of stalls, she grew smaller and then smaller still, until one merchant, mistaking her for an escaped bird, grabbed her, tied her feet together with twine, and sold her for three silver coins. She’d start awake just as the man who bought her was replacing the twine with hairs taken from his long mustache.

It wasn’t good for her to sleep so late; it encouraged nightmares. But the house was so quiet, so dreary and dispiriting and dull without the sisters—especially Alice. May missed Alice coming in to wake her, the sudden jar as she landed on the bed, the frankness with which she grabbed her aunt’s toes, shook them.

A bound foot is not, as Alice’s uncle Arthur assumed before seeing his wife’s, a foot whose growth has been arrested. A bound foot is a foot broken: a foot folded in the middle, toes forced down toward the heel.

Were an admirer to consult Fang Hsun’s
Classifications of the Qualities of Fragrant Lotuses
, he would find May’s feet plump, soft, and fine in the classic style of the Harmonious Bow. They were perfect with regard to all nine criteria of excellence, and she cared for them with the respect due objects purchased at great price.

May was five when her grandmother devoted herself to May’s feet, and to her future. May’s name, at the time, was Chao-tsing. It is the duty of a girl’s mother to bind her feet, but May’s mother, Chu’en, was too tenderhearted and remembered too well the pain when her own feet were bound. Chu’en consulted an astrologer for the most propitious days on which to begin but allowed one and then another of these to pass without taking May to the family foot-binding chair. This procrastination became foremost among Chu’en’s differences with her mother-in-law, Yu-ying. As soon as their husbands left the house in the morning, Yu-ying would come to Chu’en’s quarters and harangue her.

“Do you love your daughter,” Yu-ying would say, “or do you love her feet?”

Chu’en wept; she covered her face with her hands. “I can’t. Not now. Wait another year. Chao-tsing is so small. Her feet won’t grow much in a year.”

“The choice is this,” Yu-ying said. “Either Chao-tsing will grow up to be the bride of a prosperous merchant, or she will be as large-footed as a barbarian and find no husband at all!”

But Chu’en shook her head. She wept, she begged for more time, she made promises she couldn’t bear to keep.

At last, on the morning of the nineteenth day of the second month, the goddess Kuanyin’s birthday, Yu-ying came to Chu’en’s room, where she and May were playing, building a little village of mah-jongg tiles among the bedclothes. Yu-ying held out her hand. “Grandmother will do it,” she said, and Chu’en nodded and bowed low to her mother-in-law. She thanked her for relieving her of an honor and an obligation she could not fulfill.

As an indulgence, Yu-ying allowed Chu’en to prepare a dish of clay, in which May stood, leaving for her mother a sentimental impression of her feet, and of girlhood. Then Yu-ying took May into her bedchamber, where she sat her on a red chair decorated with characters for obedience, prosperity, and longevity. She took May’s shoes and threw them in the fire, and when they had burned away to ash she brought a bowl of warm water perfumed with jasmine and set it under May’s feet. The water just covered her ankles. “Do you like the smell?” Yu-ying asked her granddaughter.

“Yes.” The water made May sleepy, and she closed her eyes. When she opened them, her grandmother was standing before her with a pair of yellow silk slippers with butterflies embroidered on the toes.

“Do you like them?” Yu-ying asked.

“Oh, yes!” May reached for the shoes. They were the most beautiful she had ever seen, but they were several sizes too small. Already May’s feet were as much as an inch longer than her grandmother’s.

“These slippers are yours,” Yu-ying said. “I will help you to wear them.”

Yu-ying kneeled at May’s feet. Next to her was a black lacquer tray on which was a roll of white binding cloth, a knife, a jar of alum, a needle and thread, a paintbrush, and a water chestnut. Yu-ying said a prayer to Kuanyin and gave May the water chestnut to hold in her left hand and the paintbrush to hold in her right. The chestnut, Yu-ying explained, would help May’s feet to grow tender, the brush would make them narrow.

“See the white cloth,” she said, unrolling one end of it. “This is the fragrant white path you will travel. This is the journey from girl to woman.” She walked backward from the bowl, pulling the linen out into an undulating, hypnotic banner.

May nodded, slowly.

Yu-ying took May’s left foot in her hand and dried it. She cut the toenails and sprinkled the sole with alum, and then she took one end of the white bandage and held it on the inside of the instep and from there pulled the strip of cloth over the arch of May’s foot and on over her four smaller toes, so that they curled under, into the sole. Then Yu-ying pulled the bandage tightly around the heel, and then over the arch and the toes again, making layers of deft figure eights. When she was finished, only May’s big toe was left unfolded. From under its nail she could feel the thrumming of blood.

“Oh!” May said, surprised. She opened her hands and the chestnut and brush fell to the floor. Her father’s mother had never before hurt her. “Please, Grandmother!” May tried to pull her foot away, but Yu-ying held it tightly and looked into her eyes.

“Did I not make the offerings to your patron god on the day of your birth and for every year after that?”

May nodded.

“And when you were a baby and could not sleep, was I not the one who fetched your soul back?”

May nodded again.

“Well, I am telling you that you may not speak now,” Yu-ying said. “You must be quiet while I do this.” And she sewed the end of the bandage in place with a needle and strong thread. When she had finished with the left, she began with the right. It was astonishing that so small a woman had such strength.

May, obedient, said nothing while her grandmother bound her feet, but when Yu-ying put on the first pair of training shoes and told May to stand and to walk back to her mother’s quarters, she refused.

“I can’t,” she said. “I won’t.”

“You will,” said Yu-ying. And she pulled May to her feet; she kicked the red and gold chair out from under her.

May sat down hard on the floor. The pain in her feet was sharp, like teeth. Dizzy, she closed her eyes and saw her grandmother’s hand pulling the long needle right through the flesh of her toes.

“Walk,” Yu-ying said. “It will not work unless you walk.”

“I feel sick. I want my mother.”

“Then get up and go to her.”

“I can’t,” May said.

Yu-ying shrugged. She collected the bowl and the towel, the knife with which she’d pared May’s nails. She picked up the water chestnut and the paintbrush from where May had dropped them.

“Please,” May said.

“What?”

“Help me.”

“I am,” Yu-ying said, and she walked out of the room.

I
T TOOK
M
AY
an hour to reach her mother’s wing of the house. She began by crawling, but her grandmother caught her and made her stand. “No woman in my family, no daughter of my son, goes on four legs like a turtle!” Yu-ying watched as her granddaughter pulled herself up by the edge of a small table. Then, when May still did not walk, Yu-ying got on the other side of the table and began dragging it away, out from May’s hands, so that in order to remain upright she had to follow.

“Don’t you dare let go,” Yu-ying said. “If you let go, I’ll bind them tighter. And don’t make a sound, just walk. Just walk toward me.” She looked at May, looked into her eyes and kept them locked in her gaze as she walked slowly backward on her own tiny feet. The table legs whined and wept against the wood floor, but May made no noise as she cried. Yu-ying’s binding technique was so skillful that with each tread the bandages tightened, crushing May’s toes.

“It hurts you now, Chao-tsing, and it will hurt you tomorrow and the day after that. This month and the following. All this year you will have pain, but the next year will be better, and by the time your feet fit the butterfly shoes, they will feel nothing.” Yu-ying continued to walk backward as she spoke, and on the other side of the table May followed, not daring to drop her gaze from her grandmother’s eyes.

“When you are grown,” Yu-ying said, “you will be very beautiful. Your feet will be the smallest and the most perfectly formed lotuses. Your walk will be the walk of beauty, and we will tell your suitors that you never cried out when your feet were bound.” They reached the door, and Yu-ying pulled the table over the sill and into the courtyard that divided her wing from that of her daughter-in-law.

“Tell me how you never cried out,” Yu-ying said. “Say the words, I never cried out.”

“I never cried out,” May whispered, her face wet.

“Again.”

“I never cried out.”

“Louder!”

“
I never cried out.
”

“Do you hear that?” Yu-ying said to Chu’en, who was standing at the threshold of her room, watching the slow progress of the old woman and the child across the slab-paved courtyard, each holding tight to the sides of the little black table. “Here is your daughter, Chao-tsing, who is telling you that she has had her feet bound and she did not cry out.”

Chu’en, arms folded, stared. She stood on her own bound feet and willed herself not to cry lest she distract May and cause her to falter or to moan.

At last they reached the doorway. Yu-ying took May’s hands from the table’s edge—she had to pull them off—and transferred them to Chu’en’s hips. She called for a servant to take the table back to her room, and as he retreated with it she looked at her daughter-in-law and granddaughter. “So,” she said. “It is begun.”

Chu’en forced herself to bow. “Thank you, Mother,” she said.

Yu-ying nodded. “Perhaps a rest before it is time to eat.”

In Chu’en’s bedroom, May and her mother lay on the bed and held one another and wept, their faces hot and wet and pressed into each other’s necks. The bed shook, but they made no sound. Outside, a dog barked; the cook lowered a bucket into the well and the rope squealed against the pulley.

That night, the evening of the birthday of the Goddess of Mercy, May’s father did not return home from work. Instead he stayed out, playing poker and
ma chiang
at the home of the local police detective. It was another day before May had the opportunity to speak with him and to discover him unmoved by her tears, the look on his face one of ill-concealed exasperation. “Whimpering is for a mother’s ears,” he said, and he turned away.

Who, or what, could have inspired such impertinent hopes in a daughter? Was not suffering the lot of females? After all, he himself enjoyed marriage to a nimble and delicate woman—a woman whose whole foot he could take into his rectum, even as her left hand cupped his testicles, her right squeezed the shaft of his penis, and her mouth wet his glans. There was a price for luxury, for a house with servants. Every daughter must arrive at that time when life as a child, petted, carefree, is over.

E
VERY THREE DAYS
, May’s feet were washed and rebound. Every month she wore a smaller shoe. Yu-ying had a carved ivory ruler with which she measured May’s feet. The ivory was marked not in inches but in the gradations of pleasure May’s feet might one day arouse. Titillation. Solace. Satisfaction. Delight. Bliss. Ecstasy. As May progressed through measures of bewitchment the bones in her toes were slowly, inexorably broken. The skin on her feet rotted away and reformed. The once strong muscles in her calves withered; the flesh of her thighs loosened and spread.

It required a dozen pairs of successively smaller shoes for May to achieve the satin butterfly slippers, and every afternoon, while Yu-ying slept, Chu’en and May held each other and wept, and so the years of childhood passed away.