Three Souls (13 page)

We were in the small garden adjacent to the main courtyard of her home. These days I preferred to meet her at her home, for there we could speak more freely, without being overheard.

“Speaking of which, here’s my aunt’s address in Soochow,” she said, passing me a sheet of notepaper. “I can’t believe I’m leaving in two days. I’ll write to you every week as soon as you write to me from Hangchow. Last night I dreamed your father let you stay at university, and I was so happy for you. When you’re a headmistress, will you hire me as a lowly teacher?”

“Oh, Nanmei, I will make you at least an assistant headmistress!”

We burst into giggles, and suddenly I felt twelve years old, not seventeen. A wave of misgiving rippled through me uncomfortably. But the memory of Hanchin’s kisses, his smile, his hands on my body, melted away my doubts.

***

The day before I was supposed to leave for Shanghai, Stepmother came to my room, where Nanny Qiu was bustling about helping me pack. She glanced down at the clothes Nanny Qiu was laying out on my bed: plain blouses and pleated skirts,
qipao
s in solid colours with the barest hint of embroidery, flat-soled shoes and white socks, one blue jacket. They would barely fill my trunk, a monstrous leather-bound crate my father had used during his travels in Europe. The sort of trunk a young person of wealth would be expected to bring on a trip.

“Leiyin, these clothes are so plain. Why not bring that lovely blue gown with the sequined butterflies?”

“I don’t need to bring any nice dresses,” I lied. “Gaoyin is taking me to her dressmaker.”

“She is so good to you. Can you do me a favour while you’re there?”

“Of course.”

She held out a slim package. “Just a few small gifts and a letter for my youngest sister in Shanghai. You don’t need to take it yourself, just have one of Gaoyin’s servants deliver it.”

She had a younger sister. How little I knew of Stepmother. A brief sensation of remorse pulsed through my veins.

Father was pleased with the notion that I would return dressed in the latest fashions, for at dinner he pressed an envelope into my hand.

“For the dressmaker. There is no need for Gaoyin to take on the expense of turning you into a stylish young lady.”

I hoped my smile didn’t betray the twinge of guilt I felt.

***

Only a moment of remorse? Only a twinge of guilt?
My
yang
soul says disparagingly, and my mouth fills with the taste of bitter tea.
What you were about to do was outright disobedient. In the old days, you would’ve been thrown into the street.

She still believed her father would change his mind,
my
yin
soul says. She rests on the stone wall at the edge of the terrace, swinging her legs so that her white socks flash from side to side. I catch only the faintest breath of chives, tinged with doubt, anxiety.

Father simply didn’t realize how badly I wanted to go to university. I was certain once he understood I was willing to risk his disapproval, he’d give in.

My
yang
soul snorts again and stomps to the edge of the terrace to join my other souls.

It was too late anyway,
my
hun
soul says.
By this time, too many balls were in motion.

***

I wouldn’t be travelling alone. Nanny Qiu was to come with me on the train. She had never been out of Changchow, and alternated between excitement and trepidation. Tongyin had left for the
China Millennium
offices as usual that morning, but came by my room to wish me a pleasant journey. He was acting a lot friendlier these days. Father and Stepmother gave me their farewells at the door of the villa. Father was taking a business trip in a few days’ time and was busy with preparations. Sueyin, the only one who knew my true destination, had promised to see me off.

Changyin took Nanny and me to the train station. “I have some business in Shanghai next week, Third Sister, so I’ll stay with Gaoyin and Shen as usual. We can travel home together.”

Since my plan was to spend only two days in Shanghai before continuing south to Hangchow, by the time Changyin arrived, I would be long gone and my deception uncovered.

Sueyin and Tienzhen were already at the station when we arrived. Even on the busy platform, with travellers elbowing past one another and families shoving their way through the crowd, there was a circle of clear space around them, such a glamorous, beautiful pair. Tienzhen went with Changyin to find the conductor, Nanny sat on my trunk to fan herself, and I had a few moments alone with Sueyin.

“Goodbye, Little Sister,” she whispered in my ear, the silk poppies on her hat brushing against my hair. “You can still change your mind.”

“Don’t worry, Second Sister. I’ll write to you when I arrive in Hangchow.”

Changyin waved at us from a passenger car to indicate he had found our compartment. Then I stepped onto the train, wading into the tides that would carry me away to unknown shores. I could hardly wait.

7

I
barely looked out the window at the fields and farmhouses flashing by. I barely noticed the stops the train made. Now that I was on my way, there was no turning back, no avoiding the consequences. Father would be furious when my plans came to light. Would he travel to Hangchow to confront me? Would he send Changyin? Surely my tears and my sincere desire to become a teacher would move him.

My thoughts turned to matters that excited rather than worried me. What would they be like, my new classmates and new teachers? I would meet girls with the same ambitions, girls who, like me and Nanmei, had been inspired by Madame Sun Yat-sen.

Nanny Qiu proved a poor traveller and spent the entire trip lying on the lower bunk of our compartment, too miserable to pay attention to anything except her nausea. At lunchtime I brought her a steamed pork bun from the dining car, but she waved it away. Then her frugal nature asserted itself and she wrapped the bun in a napkin and stuffed it in her carpet bag in case, as she said, there wasn’t anything worth eating in Shanghai.

Nanny dozed, moaning from time to time, and I daydreamed about Hanchin, about college, about my future. Finally we pulled into Shanghai as the late-afternoon sun cast long shadows that chased the train along its tracks. As the train slowed down, I lowered the window to look out as we entered the station. The smell of coal smoke wafted into the compartment, and I saw Gaoyin on the platform, waving madly and calling my name.

I was in Shanghai.

I was really on my way to university.

***

“Lucky for us that Nanny Qiu isn’t feeling well,” Gaoyin said.

Delicately, she licked the cream out of an eclair. We were in the French Concession, in a café on Avenue Joffre, seated on little bentwood chairs facing the street. Lace curtains across the window created an illusion of privacy from passersby. “We’ll tell her to sleep late tomorrow and rest. I’ll have someone bring breakfast to her, and she won’t notice you’re gone until it’s too late.”

My train to Hangchow would leave at noon the next day. By the time Gaoyin and I left for the station, Shen would already be on his way to his family’s tea warehouse. I’d thought of a number of ruses to keep Nanny from seeing my trunk being carried out of the apartment, from sending her on an errand to locking her in the servants’ quarters. But now that she was ill and exhausted, it would be all too easy to persuade her to rest for another day.

Everything, I thought, must have been preordained. The gods were assisting me.

Gaoyin and I were enjoying a day of window-shopping along Nanking Road, where the buildings looked as though they had been lifted from a postcard of a European city, all stonework and porticoes, the sidewalks filled with shoppers dressed in the latest styles. The young women all had bobbed hair, and most were dressed in Western fashions. The few women in traditional
qipao
s
didn’t look traditional at all. If anything, they managed to look even more provocative than their friends in Western garb, for the dresses were tailored to cling tightly to their bodies from neck to hip. I didn’t know how they managed to walk, even with the help of high slits up each side of their skirts.

I tried not to stare too openly at the foreigners, at their pale eyes, strangely coloured hair, and oversized noses. Everywhere I looked, there were sailors with sunburned skin ogling the stylish women, bearded men in linen suits and panama hats, ladies with fluttering skirts, parasols lifted against the sun. They looked odd somehow, riding in rickshaws. At home, a European would have attracted a curious mob. In Shanghai, the locals prided themselves on being blasé about the foreign presence in their city.

“There are so many foreigners here!” I whispered to Gaoyin as we squeezed past a portly gentleman with a red face and red whiskers, perspiration beading his forehead.

“Twenty-five thousand of them,” said Gaoyin. “And cruise ships bring travellers who want to see ‘the Paris of the East,’ so sometimes the promenade along the Bund hardly seems Chinese.”

After Nanking Road, we had taken a rickshaw to Avenue Joffre. Gaoyin had announced she was hungry again and we had settled ourselves at a café table, coffee and a plate of eclairs appearing almost as soon as my sister handed the menu back to the waiter.

“Perhaps I should go with you to Hangchow,” she said thoughtfully. “It would seem more legitimate if you arrived accompanied by an older relative.”

“Perhaps you should think about what you’ll say to Shen. He’ll be angry with you, Gaoyin. He’ll lose face with Father for letting this happen while I’m staying in your home.”

“Don’t worry about Shen. I can take care of him.” Her tone was firm and confident.

***

The skies were dark when we climbed out of the rickshaw, but the streets of Shanghai didn’t concede to the night. Stores and restaurants cast light onto sidewalks, neon signs flashed, and automobile headlamps swung around corners, sudden and blinding. We entered the marble-tiled lobby of Gaoyin’s apartment building, a box of pastries tied with red-and-white string swinging from my hand. We rode the lift to the sixth floor. When the doors opened, Nanny Qiu was in the corridor, her expression one of deep hurt.

“
Wah, wah,
Third Young Mistress. I was worried to find you gone.”

“Oh, Nanny. We didn’t want to disturb you. Come shopping with us tomorrow afternoon when you’re feeling better.” The lie slipped out so easily.

Shen’s voice called, “Is that you, Wife? Is Leiyin with you?”

“Yes, Husband,” Gaoyin said, unpinning her hat as she sauntered through the door. “We won’t take more than five minutes to get ready for dinner. I’m starving.”

We entered the apartment, into total silence.

“Third Sister.” It was Changyin, his face granite, his voice my doom.

My first impulse was to run into the street, but Shen had closed the door and stood in front of it, looking as grim as my brother.

“I’m taking you home with me tomorrow,” Changyin said.

Panic buzzed in my stomach like a nest of wasps.

“Please, Eldest Brother, don’t take me back.” Even as I pleaded, my daydreams were falling to dust.

“What’s happened?” Gaoyin asked, still pretending innocence.

Changyin slammed his fist on the marble tabletop beside her, his determined composure shattered by her insouciance.

“First Sister, you should be ashamed of yourself!”

My eldest brother, normally so calm, so reasonable. I’d never heard him raise his voice before and I shrank away, pressing against Gaoyin.

“There’s no way our little sister could have made these plans without your help, so stop play-acting. You want to know what’s happened? What’s happened is that yesterday a letter arrived for Third Sister from Hangchow Women’s University with a receipt for payment of boarding fees. Father thought the college had made an error.

“Tongyin came home and proved it was no error. He saw a letter from Leiyin on Yen Hanchin’s desk at
China Millennium,
promising to write from Hangchow. Father put two and two together, and I came to Shanghai on the morning train.”

The pastries dangled from my hand, their movement stilled as though in sympathy with my heart.

“You stubborn, deceitful, spoiled little idiot! Do you ever think of anyone besides yourself? I’ve never seen Father in such a rage.”

He looked weary all of a sudden, and the fury vanished from his face. My heart, so still a moment before, began to palpitate like that of a rabbit caught in a trap.

“What has happened, Third Sister, is that Father is furious with both of you. Tomorrow we return to Changchow. I can’t defend your actions this time, Leiyin. I can’t do anything for you.”

Shen and Changyin locked me in my room. This, I thought, wasn’t so bad.

Then I heard shouting. Shen’s words were indistinct, dampened by the thick walls of the apartment, but his voice carried through, angry and accusing. I heard thumps, and a shriek of pain that made me run to the door, but my pounding fists brought no one to my rescue, or Gaoyin’s.

“It was my fault, all mine,” I screamed through the heavy wood. “Don’t punish Gaoyin, it was all my idea!”

I slid to the floor and wept. My sister’s marriage was truly in jeopardy now. She was suffering because she’d helped me. Exhausted, I finally fell asleep by the door, my cheek crushed against the damp pastry box.

***

Even if I had caught the train to Hangchow, she couldn’t have avoided Shen’s anger.
I’m appalled, overwhelmed by guilt.
Did Gaoyin know this would happen when she agreed to help? Shen is such a quiet man.

The two of you were remarkably similar in many ways,
my
yin
soul says.
She was certain she could manage Shen. You were certain you could persuade your father.
There is a scent in the air that makes me long for my sister: Shalimar.

She shouldn’t have helped you,
my
yang
soul says.
Although she no longer answered to your father, she had merely moved from being dependent on him to being dependent on her husband.
A sour flavour of red vinegar rises from my throat, overpowering the echo of Shalimar.