Dreams of the Red Phoenix (30 page)

“My stubborn grandmother is going to get us all killed.”

“Please take our horse if it's still there.” He reached for Li
Juan's hand. “And our cart. Yes, take it, too.”

Lian appeared on the threshold, and Charles stepped away
from Li Juan, who didn't seem to mind one way or the other
when he let go of her limp fingers.

“The horse and cart are long gone, Charles-Boy. Weeks ago.”

“How about the mule?” he asked. “I want you to have our
mule.”

“We were going to use it, but somebody stole it last night. But
thank you,” Lian said and smiled very slightly. “You must go.
Mission women and children leave at noon.”

“I know. I'm ready.”

“You are not such bad boy after all,” she said.

With that compliment, Charles found himself throwing his
arms around his old amah. He had to bend far over to do it,
but his large hands held on to her sturdy back. He wanted her
to know something very important. She had kept watch over
him and spent years setting him on the right path. But now she
pushed him away, and he didn't mind. That was just her curt
manner. When he stepped back, he saw that she had tears in
her eyes, too.

“Thank you, Lian,” he said and bowed.

She did not bow in return, which struck Charles as somehow
right. Instead, she appraised him.

“Charles-Boy, you look like monkey in that outfit. Go home
and change right away. You disgrace the family name. I did not
raise you to look a fool. Go!”

“I'm sorry. I'll change right away. I apologize, esteemed
Lian,” he said and started to leave but then stopped again and
asked, “But do you know if my mother got back to the mission
last night?”

“She is not back yet?”

Charles shook his head.

“That's very bad news. We received word about trouble at
camp out on the plains.”

Li Juan took her mother's hand.

“But even if she is not back in time, you must leave.”

“I will. But how do you know what's going on out there?”

Lian waved his question away. “What matters is Captain Hsu
and others will protect your mother. I will radio them to say that
she has not returned here.”

“You know how to do that?” he asked. “Who else used that
radio?”

She wiped her hands on her apron as she always had when
it was time for him to stop pestering her. “Charles-Boy, there is
much you do not know and much you will never know. Off you
go, now.”

He bowed for a final time and dashed up the alley again. He
would change out of his childish clothing, gather his things, and
meet the others at the southwest gate at noon.

Y
ellow dust blew in sideways from the Gobi. Shirley held
an arm up to protect her eyes and kept her mouth shut to
avoid swallowing loess, the sticky topsoil that was inescapable at
this time of year. Scraps of paper, dried leaves, and other detritus
whirled across the desolate streets. For days the Chinese had been
packing their belongings and fanning out into the countryside,
but she couldn't imagine how they had fled so completely. The
Japanese Imperial Army had returned to town, its soldiers stand
ing in shadowed doorways and on street corners.

The two soldiers motioned for her to dismount. The older one
used the butt of his rifle to push her up the steps of the former
municipal building. Yellow light poured down from the open
door, and Japanese soldiers streamed in and out. None of them
seemed to notice the thinly clad foreign woman holding on to
her torn shirt, blood and bruises dotting her limbs. Shirley feared
that they considered her just another body, a nameless victim to
be finished off when the order was given. She wondered if the
British missionary mother had thought the same thing or if she
and her family had been set upon too suddenly.

Once inside, they prodded Shirley down a hallway and into a
storage room, the door abruptly locking behind her. She crum
pled with her back against a damp wall. As in the antique shops
she had browsed in Peking, Chinese furniture was stacked to the
ceiling—teak tables with angular legs, high-backed scalloped
chairs, and even old Tupan Feng's elegant daybed. She had heard
that like hedonistic emperors of ancient times, he used to lie upon
it when meeting his subjects here in the government building.
His sins of excess and greed seemed childlike to her compared
with the Japanese now.

Fear and exhaustion swirled over Shirley, and before she
knew it, she was asleep. After some time, Japanese soldiers re
turned and pushed her back into the hall, where more soldiers
hurried past. Someone had her arm and yanked her to stand
before Major Hattori. His eyes roamed down her body. Shirley
held her tunic closed and tried to control the shaking. Hatto
ri signaled for the soldiers to prod her up the steps and into
the general's office. As the two officers chuckled at her, Shir
ley did not lift her eyes from her bruised and dusty feet. Her
knee had bled down her leg in shocking red rivulets, and her
arms trembled as she squeezed her ribs. The major turned and
left the room, closing the door behind him. Shirley felt certain
that no one would question the general—Princeton-educated
or not—if he chose to finish the job the soldiers had begun by
the stream.

“You have wasted our time,” he began in his perfect English.

Shirley finally dared to look up. General Shiga sat in the
banker's chair with his boots on the desk, his uniform as crisp
as before and his lip curled back. Only his eyes seemed differ
ent. They appeared gray and unflinching and dull. She tried to
remember him as a boy back in college but could not. This man
before her had become as impenetrable as that foreign Asian boy
in America had once seemed vulnerable.

“We are done with you.” He took a sip from a fine white tea
cup and set it on his orderly desk. “I should let my men do as they
wish.”

A shiver started in her shoulders and made its way swiftly
down her back. Her knees began to buckle, but she righted her
self. She wanted to stand tall as she always had in moments of dif
ficulty. She felt a tear roll down her cheek, and when she wiped it
away, blood stained her fingers. Words had fled her mind. Only
one thought raged.

“I need to find my son,” she whispered.

The general tapped the cup with his heavy gold class ring—a
cruel and taunting sound. “They have left the mission,” he said.
“We let them go. We have other concerns.”

“But I must go with him,” she said, trying to regain her voice.
“Please, General, help me.”

He lifted his legs off the desktop and set his boots on the floor
with quiet finality.

“I will be your nurse now. I can tend to your officers.”

“It is too late for that. Your son will travel to Shanghai and
board a ship out of China and away from his mother forever. He
will make a new life in America and will be fine without you,
probably better off. Americans are far too sentimental about such
things.”

As she gripped the edge of his desk to catch her fall, her shirt
came open, and she hunched over quickly to cover herself. The
British mother had no longer cared, so Shirley had reached across
to close the woman's blouse and wiped the blood from her pale
skin. The bodies, Shirley recalled, so many wounded bodies that
she had helped, not once feeling squeamish or frightened. But she
understood now that she had seen too much suffering. She had
held the hands of Chinese boys as they took their final breaths,
their own mothers far away. She could not bear to have it end
like that for her and her son—to be separated and torn from one
another like the women and soldiers she had tried to save.

“Please,” she said again, “I must go to him.”

General Shiga stood but remained behind the desk, and Shir
ley was grateful that he didn't come closer. She feared she might
faint if he did. Although he wasn't threatening her, his presence
filled her with the terrible dread and panic that she had held at
bay for weeks.

“You will tell me the location of the Red Army camp and help
us find Captain Hsu,” he said. “Then you may see your son.”

Shirley's head throbbed, and she blinked several times. “Cap
tain Hsu?” she asked. “I hardly know the man.”

The general slammed a hand on the desk, and Shirley
flinched. “I give you one chance,” he said. “You lie to me again,
and I no longer care what happens to you. Now, tell me, where is
the Eighth Route Army camp?”

Her voice came out high and thin. “Your soldiers found me on
the trail that leads to it.”

“We already know the location of that Red Army camp out on
the plains to the east. We attacked it this afternoon.”

Out the window, the dust-clogged sky grew dimmer. Shir
ley realized that hours must have passed while she had slept in
the storage room. Night was falling rapidly now. “You attacked
there today?” she asked.

“We did away with it. Even the Reds with their unmanly
guerrilla tactics are far inferior to us.” General Shiga strode to
the window, and Shirley studied his unrelenting reflection in
the glass. “But their leaders escaped. They are a wily bunch and
know the countryside better than we do. We simply finished off
the wounded. There is no point in taking prisoners. We have or
ders to destroy all.”

The general's words cascaded over her as one thought
drowned out all others. She needed to see her child and escape
this madness together. She held the wicker chair to steady herself
and brought forth the courage to ask, “What do you want me to
do?”

He turned to her. “Tell us the location of their headquarters in
the mountains. We could bomb the whole range, but that would
be a waste of our resources. You will get me the coordinates of the
Communist camp.”

“But I have no idea where it is, General. I'm not a Red Army
soldier. This foolish uniform I wear is just a costume. You must
know that.” She cleared her constricted throat and made herself
continue. “You know me, General Shiga—Hal,” she added, with
trepidation, but he didn't seem to take offense. “My stepfather
is a successful capitalist. He owns a chain of shoe stores in Ohio.
I couldn't possibly believe in all this Communist nonsense. You
know my alma mater. You graduated with distinction from one
of our brother schools.” She dared to let go of the chair and start
ed toward him, as if finally making her way across the dance
floor of her youth. “You know I am a Vassar girl. We attended
that spring social together, you and I. Now, please, just let me
find my son and go home. I have no business being here. It's been
an awful mistake. I should never have stayed so long.”

Sweat trickled down her sides as Shirley joined him at the
window. “Come, now, help us return home to America, where
we belong.”

“Vassar girl,” he said with a snarl.

The wind whipped great clouds of yellow dust across the
gloaming sky, giving the air a deep ochre tint. The Japanese flag
on the pole snapped frantically, the shutters of the old municipal
building banged, and the windows rattled. Then, in an instant,
the rain began. Shirley thought she heard the general let out a
pleased sigh, as if hearing the opening chords of a concert he was
fond of remembering. She wished that the initial gentleness of
the rainfall would bring him back to his former self. She would
have liked to reminisce about the band that night. The gay lan
terns on the campus lawn. The girls in their springtime dresses.
She would have liked to be her former self—a carefree young
woman who thought the world was safe and hers for the taking.