Three Souls (23 page)

My
hun
soul is silent, but it’s a silence that speaks volumes.
But you wouldn’t have been able to choose Hanchin.

I’m quite aware of that,
I say, irritated.
But that’s not the point. The point is, I would only match Weilan to a husband and a family who would treat her well.

As your father did for you.
My
hun
soul liked having the last word.

14

A
s the civil war grew more heated and the Japanese more hostile, Gong Gong began reading the newspapers Gaoyin sent me as carefully as I did. Each time a packet arrived we sat in the parlour to compare the different newspapers’ accounts, sharing a pot of tea and a plate of fruit while we read snatches of news out loud to Jia Po and Baizhen. The tumultuous politics that surrounded the war sparked clashes that were fought in words as well as on battlefields.

The newspapers said that Madame Sun Yat-sen, who had gone to Moscow after falling out with the Nationalist leaders, had come back to Shanghai. At this point in my life, I could hardly remember the essay that had inspired me so much.

Tongyin sent copies of
China Millennium
now and then. It was still in circulation, though many magazines had sprung up and failed, most managed to stay in print only for a few months before their editors and staff ran out of money and idealism. A writer with the pen name Nobody Special gained attention for publishing thought-provoking essays and fine poems that made their way into various magazines
.
An editorial claimed Nobody Special was actually a number of poets and writers who used a single pen name to denote solidarity:

What does it matter who does the oppressing?

To the one-legged beggar, the aging singsong girl, the dull-eyed kitchen drudge,

Four thousand years, and turmoil never changes.

Changed are the colours of soldiers’ uniforms,

Changed are the names of their tormentors,

Their lives have not changed.

How can I compare my sorrows to theirs? But I do.

Colours of uniforms have separated us,

The springtime scent of your laughter is gone,

When shall I hear your step at my study door again?

My life has changed.

Childhood friends and our love, years pass and they change not,

Like a cherished secret, when released, they return us to joy.

There were many such new poets, writing in the vernacular, abandoning the high-brow classical language of earlier generations to craft verses whose sentiments felt fresh and unaffected.

I dreamed about Hanchin after reading one such poem. I was standing at the train station in Changchow. It was winter, and my hands were bare, bitterly cold. A train arrived and emptied out its passengers. When the last compartment door opened, Hanchin stepped out and smiled at me. I felt weak from the scent of sandalwood, hungry for the curve of his lips. He kissed my cold hands, and in my dream I cried out with happiness, “Oh, Hanchin, I knew you would come back to me!”

The emotions were so intense I woke up, the memory of sandalwood still lingering at the verge of my consciousness.

***

For a few befuddled moments I thought the dream was a premonition that Hanchin would enter my life again,
I tell my souls. We watch my memory-self sob into her pillow.
Despite my better judgment, I was crying for all my lost dreams. How could I have wanted him still so badly, after all that time?

They say nothing, but I sense my
yang
soul’s exasperation in the lift of his grey eyebrows, the taste of raw onion, and I sense my yin soul’s pity in the melancholy fragrance of lilac.

It’s possible,
she ventures finally,
that, even knowing he was only toying with you, you’ll be in love with Hanchin until the day you die.

At least that day won’t be too long in coming,
I say. She bites her lip and blushes, realizing what she has just said.

***

The years went by, but to Jia Po’s dismay I didn’t conceive. Each month my menses reddened the strips of rags between my legs, and each month the herbalist delivered concoctions to prevent stagnation of my
qi.
The herbalist had declared this was my problem, since
qi
stagnation exhibits itself in tense muscles, restrained anger, and digestive problems. But Jia Po wasn’t relying on medicine alone.

“Make offerings to the Goddess of Mercy at the Temple of the City God,” she instructed. “That particular Goddess of Mercy is sympathetic to women with no sons.”

So I went to the temple each week, sometimes by myself, sometimes with Baizhen at my side. The Goddess’s altar was covered in layers of heavy silk, altar cloths embroidered with images of a hundred baby boys, offerings made by desperate women. Those visits did nothing except depress me.

I wanted a second child, of course, and so did Baizhen. He came to my bedroom almost every night. I wanted a son too, partly so that my in-laws wouldn’t lose patience with me and force Baizhen to take a concubine. I didn’t want Weilan displaced in the family hierarchy by a younger half-brother. If I couldn’t bear a son, she’d have no champions except for me, a sonless mother. How powerless I’d be then to help my daughter.

For the hundredth time I thought bitterly that my education held no value in this family, where dead ancestors meant more than the needs of the living. If Weilan was to marry into a modern, enlightened family, perhaps one that had sent sons abroad for Western schooling, she needed a good education herself. The local primary school was a one-room building tucked behind the Temple of the City God, staffed by a few sincere but woefully inadequate teachers.

When she was old enough I would send Weilan to a good boarding school. I would beg money from my sisters, even from Father, if necessary. I hoped Baizhen would find the backbone to stand up to his parents when that day came. But I had learned the folly of impatience. For Weilan’s sake, I had to move with care and deliberation.

“She’s so bright,” I said to Baizhen. “We must marry her to someone equally intelligent, a well-educated young man who values a modern, educated wife.”

Baizhen and I were on the second-floor veranda watching Weilan play on the terrace below. She and Little Ming were drawing a hopscotch court on the stones.

“I can tutor her until she is ten or twelve,” I continued casually. “I’m capable of that. If she does well, we can send her to boarding school.”

Baizhen lifted his eyes from Weilan to beam at me. “Leiyin, your education is superior to that of most of the men in this town. How could she do better than to follow your fine example?”

***

Weilan wanted to read all by herself. At three years old, she sat on my lap, insisting that my finger follow the words as I read to her out loud. I taught her simple words, making a game of it. I brought out the word cards I had made before she was born.

“Look, here is the character for
big,
” I said. “It looks like a man with his arms spread out wide. And see how the character for
small
is like a man also, but with his arms held close together.”

Baizhen, now more than able to teach her simple words, also joined in.

“What’s this word, Small Bird? Read it for Papa.”

“
Fish!
Papa, it’s
fish!
” she shouted in triumph, miming the four waving fins at the bottom of the matching pictogram.

“
Cat!
” she said for the next one, gently touching with one small finger the character that looked like a pair of eyes above a tabby-striped body.

She copied words in gridded notebooks over and over, her small tongue licking her top lip with the effort of keeping the strokes of each character neatly within its square, her small fingers cramped around the yellow pencil.

I included Little Ming in our lessons. She was growing into a young woman, although her exact birthdate was unknown, for who bothered recording the birth of a poor girl? She had lived at the Lee residence since childhood and was as naive as Weilan, as superstitious as Amah Wu. Little Ming put together sentences using my homemade word cards and read out loud from simple textbooks, laughing good-naturedly when she made mistakes. With Little Ming for a classmate, lessons were more interesting for Weilan, but that wasn’t my only reason for recruiting our maid. If Little Ming could master some simple writing and arithmetic, she would find better employment when she was older. She deserved better.

Weilan loved learning so much she could hardly tell the difference between doing her lessons and playing games. I had told her about my student days in Changchow, rows and rows of girls in uniform giving their full attention to the teacher. She wanted to play school and when we did, she was always the teacher, Baizhen, Little Ming, and I her students.

“And what is this word?” she would say, holding up a vocabulary card with utter seriousness.

“Is it . . .
sky?
” Little Ming would pretend not to know.

“Really, Miss Ming, you learned this word only yesterday.” Such a stern tone from her child’s voice made it hard for us to keep our faces straight. “Try again.”

“I don’t know. Young Master, you try.” Little Ming was dangerously close to breaking into giggles.

“I think . . . it must be . . .
tree!
” said Baizhen, biting his lips with the effort of suppressing a smile.

“Very good, Papa! Yes, it’s
tree!
” She gave him a wide and happy smile.

At such moments, I couldn’t imagine how life could be more fulfilling.

***

Weilan had taken to reading and writing very naturally, and was devouring all the children’s books on our shelves. Whenever my sisters or Stepmother sent us a new book, Weilan could hardly be persuaded to put it down to eat or play outside—even if it was too advanced for her.

I was terribly proud of her, but in secret, I considered Baizhen my greatest success. He had abandoned school texts and worked from newspapers now, asking for my help only with especially difficult or unfamiliar vocabulary.

“It looks very bad, Wife.” His newspaper was spread out on the library table, the dictionary beside him. I listened to him read it out loud, pausing between sentences. When he concentrated, he licked his top lip with the effort, just like Weilan:

Between the warlords, the attempt to restore Manchu rule, President Yuan Shikai trying to crown himself emperor, and now the Nationalists and Communists, there have been civil wars of one sort or another since before the fall of the Qing Dynasty. The Japanese have taken advantage of our domestic conflicts by marching into Manchuria, all the while insisting they are protecting Japanese commercial interests. What does it take for our own armies to unite against this threat to China?

“We can’t do a thing,” I said, a fist clenching in my chest. “The other nations won’t intervene. The newspapers spout outrage, but we’re helpless.”

***

1932 had begun badly for China, with Shanghai’s merchants initiatiating a boycott of Japanese goods. We learned that a mob in Shanghai had attacked a Japanese monk. When the monk died of his injuries, Japan took advantage of the incident and dropped retaliatory bombs on the city. Thus began the January 28 Incident, fought beside the banks of Soochow Creek in Chinese-held Shanghai.

I knew my sisters were safe, for their homes were in the French Concession. Japanese airplanes wouldn’t attack there, nor the International Settlement, for that would amount to declaring war on the British, French, and American governments whose citizens occupied those zones.

So from the safety of luxurious hotel rooms and apartments overlooking Soochow Creek, Europeans and Americans in the foreign concessions watched our armies battle the Japanese. According to one newspaper, the foreigners exhibited no more concern over the slaughter than if they’d been watching dog races at the Canidrome. Finally in March, Western powers stepped in and officially ended the battle, but at a high cost to China.

“This proposed ceasefire agreement between China and Japan is humiliating,” Baizhen said. He sounded sad rather than angry as he took his glasses off to rub his eyes. “It makes Shanghai a demilitarized zone. Our own troops can’t enter the city anymore. And Japanese troops have been allowed to occupy the cities of Soochow and Kunshan.”

But there was worse to come. In April, when the wisteria vines around the pavilion began uncurling in tender green shoots, Gong Gong opened the newspaper and gave a startled cry.

“The Communists have invaded Changchow!”

I jumped from my chair, knocking a cup to the floor, and jerked the paper out of his hands, not caring about my breach of protocol. Gong Gong said nothing and Jia Po quietly pressed a rag over the puddle of tea beside my chair. Baizhen stood behind me anxiously, peering over my shoulder while I scanned the story.

“I must send a telegram to Father,” I said, dropping the paper. “I must know how they are. It says the Communists have taken over the central city.”

Baizhen and I took a rickshaw to the post office.

“Changchow is under attack. Your telegram won’t get through,” said the clerk, a thin, perspiring man. “Who’s there to deliver it? You’ll have to wait till the fighting’s over.”

“Then I must send a telegram to my sister in Shanghai.”

My hands trembled as I wrote it out. Gaoyin and Shen had a telephone. She might have managed to call Father. I wanted to wait for a reply, but Baizhen persuaded me to return home. A reply could take hours.