The Yellow Papers (23 page)

Then one morning they'd woken up and P'i Gao was not there. Xueliang believed he'd gone to the countryside to join the Red Army. He'd become disillusioned with the Kuomintang, Xueliang had explained, and probably found the Communist Party's reforms more appealing.

Ming Li hurried along the footpath, keeping her gaze lowered, ignoring the pleas for water from those lying in the street. One of the horrors of cholera was the intense dehydration and unbearable thirst that accompanied it within hours of becoming sick. The only merciful thing about the disease was that it killed quickly. Ming Li had heard the rumours that blamed the Americans for the cholera, rumours that they'd dropped germ-releasing bombs all over China. Others said it was the Japanese who'd done this, that they were dropping bombs carrying plague-infested fleas, infecting reservoirs with typhoid and releasing pests in the agricultural areas not occupied by their troops.

But of all the rumours that circulated about the Japanese, the one that worried Ming Li most was that they were performing medical experiments on their prisoners. She didn't want to imagine what might be done to Xueliang if taken prisoner. She knew now how active he was in the resistance – since P'i Gao's disappearance Ming Li had refused to be kept in the dark about her husband's activities.

‘It's my country too,' she'd whispered one night when they were sure everyone in the room was asleep. ‘Do you think I don't feel anything when I see Japanese soldiers bring their families to see our dead, strolling amongst the bodies as if at an exhibition? When I see their children searching the bodies for souvenirs? I too am suffering. I too am starving. I could get killed tomorrow, but better to die doing something to fight back, than to die like a pig at the slaughterhouse. Please, Xueliang, let me help!'

In the end he'd agreed, but only under his conditions.

‘You will only do exactly what I tell you – nothing more, nothing less. And you will only do what
I
tell you. Never obey anyone else, no matter who they say they are. Promise me, my Li. No one is to be trusted, do you understand?'

Since then he'd given her small jobs – a message to deliver, a parcel to pick up. She knew he was trying to keep her safe, but she hungered for more important work.

When she reached the New Asia Hotel on the corner of North Szechuen and Tiendong roads, she stood diagonally across the street from it, afraid to get too close. It had been owned by the Chinese before the war, but was now occupied by the Special Service Corp of the Japanese Military Police. It swarmed with Japanese soldiers and was feared by everyone, for the horrors of Japanese interrogations were well known. She stepped back from the road, blending into the crowd, waiting, watching. She knew the likelihood of seeing Xueliang was almost non-existent, but she didn't know what else to do. She waited for an hour. Two. Japanese soldiers entered the building, Chinese prisoners at gunpoint. Others came and went, drones to an art deco hive. Still Ming Li waited.

‘You've someone in there?'

Ming Li turned. A young man stood beside her, ragged and streetwise.

‘I don't know. My husband's missing. I thought …'

‘Maybe. But you won't find out anything now. Wait till seven. That's when they move everyone out.'

‘Where to?'

He shrugged. ‘They say to a water purification unit in Harbin, in Manchukuo.'

‘You don't believe it?'

The young man looked away. ‘Who knows what to believe? I'm just telling you – come back at seven.'

‘But the curfew?'

He laughed and pointed to those curled in the doorways. ‘You think they've got somewhere to go to during curfew? It's up to you, lady. But if you want to know if your husband's in there, come back at seven.'

By six-thirty she was back opposite the hotel. She found a space along the wall and sat down on the footpath between two refugees. More people joined them; apparently the time for moving prisoners was no secret. Soon the whole footpath was crowded.

Ming Li leant back against the wall and closed her eyes. She thought of her house before the Japanese had commandeered it – a pleasant memory to block out the present. She remembered the sumptuous rooms, the meals they used to have, the people who'd visited. In her mind she went through the clothes she used to wear. Had she really been that elegant woman who dressed in silks and satins? That graceful hostess to Xueliang's business associates? She couldn't even remember the last time she'd felt young. She did remember, though, the pride she'd caught in Xueliang's gaze when he'd looked at her then – the same pride she'd seen in Edward's gaze …

No, she mustn't think of Edward. What sort of a woman was she, thinking of her lover when her husband was missing, and probably a prisoner of the Japanese? But Edward represented a different life, a time when she could laugh and flirt and feel passion. Love even. Did she love Edward? She'd known, back then, that she could not have spent a day without seeing him, without being with him. To be apart would have been intolerable. But was that love? Or only passion? How long had it been since she'd felt passion? Would she ever again? Love and passion were so hard to imagine when each day you fought simply to survive. And yet, there were nights when—

Someone stepped on her foot and she cried out and opened her eyes. The traffic had lessened as curfew neared so that now only official vehicles were on the road. A cattle truck came down from Szechuen Road, turned into Tiendong and stopped outside the hotel.

The crowd stood up, suddenly alert.

Japanese soldiers, bayonets fixed, formed two lines from the hotel entrance to the truck, facing out. Then nothing.

Finally more soldiers came out, between them a cluster of prisoners. Ming Li pushed her way towards the edge of the footpath. The group of prisoners was too dense; she couldn't see if Xueliang was amongst them.

A young woman cried out and pushed past her, ran across the street towards the prisoners. One of their group answered, shaking his head and yelling at her to go back. As the woman neared the hotel one of the soldiers aimed his gun and fired. No one moved. She lay in the middle of the road, her blood slowly oozing over the bitumen. A Japanese barked a command, the soldiers jabbed the prisoners onto the open back of the truck. The truck u-turned, then turned again into Szechuen Road. As it passed the corner, Ming Li saw Xueliang, head bowed and bloodied, holding on to the railing.

Ming Li sat on the floor of the toilet, unpicking a seam of her coat. From between the lining and the coat she pulled out the remains of her jewellery collection. There was little left – a pair of gold earrings, a gold pendant and chain, and a gold and jade bracelet. She knew she would get very little for them, even though they had been expensive gifts. She'd kept those until last, hoping not to have to sell them, each a memory of another lifetime.

She picked up the earrings, remembering the furore they'd caused when found as part of her bride price. Xueliang had wanted a traditional wedding, and had followed the Three Letters and Six Etiquettes ritual, which included a bride price. But the ritual was never meant to include a gift to the bride. Her mother had thought them for herself at first, and was attaching them to her ears when her father read the note included in the box – they were meant for Ming Li. Later, Xueliang had told Ming Li that he'd wanted her to have them as a message that, although he was following tradition, he was also a man with modern ideas.

The pendant and chain he'd put around her neck one hot afternoon as she sat breastfeeding their week-old child. She had withdrawn into herself since the birth, tormented by conflicting emotions – shame at not giving Xueliang a son, awe and even pride at the perfect little being she had produced. When Xueliang had looked at the child after her birth, the baby had burped and made a milky bubble.

‘A worthless girl with no manners,' Ming Li had said, but Xueliang had laughed.

‘We'll have many boys yet. An older sister will help look after them.'

A few days later he'd come up behind her as she breastfed the child, and he'd slipped the chain around her neck and whispered
I'm so proud of my wife and daughter
. She'd realised then that she not only respected Xueliang, but loved him as well.

The jade and gold bracelet held bittersweet memories. He'd given it to her two years after MeiMei's birth. She'd overheard him one evening in conversation with his father, regarding the lack of sons to carry the family name. There had been two other pregnancies, but both had ended in miscarriages. Xueliang's father suggested a second wife. Ming Li had listened, expecting Xueliang to disagree, to tell his father sons would come in time, but instead she heard him say he'd been considering it. When he came into their bedroom that night she had vented her anger, throwing hairbrushes, perfume bottles, anything she could find at him.

‘Never,' she'd screamed, ‘
never
bring another woman near this house! I'll kill her if you do!'

Xueliang had laughed at her tantrum, proud of her jealousy, and the next night he'd given her the bracelet. They never spoke of a second wife again, and Ming Li never found out whether, somewhere, such a woman existed, or maybe just a mistress or two. She didn't want to know. But she did know the innocent, naïve love she'd felt for Xueliang earlier in her marriage died that day.

She placed the jewellery back in its hiding place, pulled a thread from a frayed section of the coat and re-sewed the seam. Maybe she wouldn't need to sell them just yet, if she could find some sort of work. Xueliang didn't want her to work, but Xueliang was no longer here, and Cousin Chih-fu was not about to give up the rent he charged them for that miserable little square of floor space. But where would she find work in a city where nearly everything was owned by the Japanese? She had never worked before. MeiMei had found work in a restaurant, but her meagre wages only bought a little food – not nearly enough to cover their rent. Ming Li attached the needle to the underside of her coat collar and stood up. It would soon be dawn and she should go back and lie down before anyone woke. In the morning she'd look for work. Short of prostitution, she was willing to do anything.

18

‘Pregnant! And proud of it. She had the nerve to tell me it was my fault – that I should have spent more time at home. Christ Almighty! There was a bloody war on!'

Chen Mu poured a measure of brandy into a glass and handed it to Edward. ‘Here, Master Edward, drink this. Calm yourself.'

‘I don't want to calm myself
_!
A bloody Yank! And now she wants a divorce. She's moving to America, she tells me. Tomorrow. All packed and ready to go.'

‘And Miss Charlotte, where is she tonight?'

‘What? Charlotte? She wasn't even there. Too cowardly to face me, I imagine. Just like her mother.'

‘You know that's not true; Miss Charlotte is no coward. It's an awkward situation for a child …'