Inheritance (13 page)

She sewed carefully, creating a shank when she was done and tying the ends of the threads in a series of strong knots. She examined the other buttons, discovered two that hung loose, snipped them off, and sewed them back on as well. She enjoyed the feeling of the needle pushing sharp against her thimble, in and out, in and out. There, the jacket was presentable again. She needed only to have it cleaned. Junan saw what looked like a tea stain on the front. She held the jacket closer. Her pregnancy had sharpened her senses. Had she smelled something? She pressed the jacket to her face. What could it be? It seemed to her that she had caught, for half an instant, a lingering scent—a stranger’s perfume, the sickening fragrance of tea roses. Junan pulled her face away from the jacket and sat still for several minutes, careful not to do herself the violence of a sudden breath.

A MEMORY,
a feather stroke, a few words that might have been an anecdote but for the stubborn images that lingered. It had happened years ago, when her mother was still, on happy days, a lithe and beautiful woman, throwing back her head in laughter to show her teeth and fresh, white throat.

One afternoon, Chanyi had a visit from Kao Taitai, a so-called friend who held tight to her advantages and counted others’ misfortunes. Junan could still remember wishing to shield Chanyi from this visitor with her poisonous tongue. For months Kao Taitai had been watching Chanyi closely, waiting for a fragile moment to swoop down on her.

That afternoon she’d spoken casually, in front of the others.

“I know a girl. She’s just the thing for him. And she is like a child, easy to control. It’s better to find him one yourself than let him choose.”

That evening, Chanyi had shut herself into her room. It had been late autumn, with the sun sinking fast and then a pale broth of moonlight glowing on the wall. Junan had crept to her mother’s door and listened to her crying.

What had become of Kao Taitai? It was quite probable that she had not left Hangzhou. Perhaps someday Junan would run into her. This idea made her curiously afraid. She had not thought of the woman in years—she hated her. But would Kao Taitai remember her? Junan thought with some relief that she had grown very tall and might not be recognized. Everyone remarked on her height and shoulders. “My strong one,” Chanyi had called her. To her horror, now, tears were in her eyes.

Her body heaved with an anxiety so rank it soured her breath. Her vigilance had failed her. Now, without warning, she felt herself being swept into the danger she had always known was there but had so far been able to avoid. It had lain in wait: a cave, a mouth of darkness. It was as if suddenly she had woken up and found herself on a raft, swirling down an inexorable river toward that darkness.

Whom could she trust?

She was on her feet and near the open door. Where to go? The house was filled with people. She couldn’t escape; she couldn’t hide. The pregnancy had made her body slow with rich blood. For all the working of her heart, her hands and feet tingled. Her breath came in gasps. She couldn’t bear to sit or stand. She leaned against the wall and closed her eyes, seeking darkness in midday. This desire was intolerable. It recalled the scent of her mother’s skin, a pale curve of cheek, a gentle hand upon the back of her neck; it was like a longing for death.

She forced open her eyes. She stood facing the window to the back garden. The jacket lay where she had dropped it on the window seat. Just beyond it, through the glass, stood the old pear tree, its long boughs drooping like hands, laden with late fruit. For a long moment its remaining leaves shone in the autumn light, and not a breath of rustling wind disturbed the sight of it. She could not bear to take her eyes away, to hear the sound of a rotten pear splitting against the stone path.

Someone was speaking her name. “Junan.”

Then once again, more quietly. “Junan.”

She pulled her dazzled eyes away from the window. A blue frame danced into her vision.

“Junan, what is it?”

Gradually the blue subsided. Yinan stood inside her room. She had closed the door and stood with folded hands.

She wore the rough black pinafore she put on for practicing her brushstrokes. She had tied her hair away from her face so that it would not fall onto the page, and the cotton scarf exposed her naked ears. Junan squinted. “What do you want?”

“The door was open. You looked so strange. Are you sick?”

“I have a headache,” Junan said. “I strained my eyes.”

“You dropped your thimble.”

The thimble lay in the middle of the room. Yinan picked it up. When Junan didn’t reach for it, she set it on the window seat and stood before Junan uncertainly. “It’s time for supper.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“I will bring you a bowl of broth.”

“I told you, I’m not hungry.”

At the sharp sound of Junan’s voice, Yinan’s gaze flickered, once. Junan knew she was about to turn and go. But no, she mustn’t leave. It was time for Junan to speak. “Meimei,” she said finally. “There is something I want you to do for me.”

“Yes, Jiejie.”

Junan took a deep breath.

“What is it, Jiejie?”

“I have decided to move the family to Chongqing.”

Yinan’s mouth opened but she said nothing.

Junan listened to her own dry words. “Before I can go,” she said, “I’ll have to wait until this child is old enough to travel safely. And there are arrangements to make.” She took another breath. “Meimei, I want you to go to the new capital this spring and keep your brother’s house for him. I’ll find a way to get you out. Help keep him preoccupied until I’m able to come after you.”

“By myself?”

“I promise I’ll come as soon as I can.”

Yinan did not answer.

“You will fly,” Junan said, “to reach Chongqing as comfortably as possible.”

“In an airplane?”

Junan sat down, put on her thimble. She didn’t look up when Yinan left the room. She recalled the summer evening only the year before when they’d discussed Yinan’s idea that some countries were like men and some like women. She had seen Li Ang’s amusement, his silent laugh issuing a puff of smoke. Yinan was growing up. She would preoccupy Li Ang, or occupy him, well enough. For a moment Junan wished to call her back, but she found that she had lost her ability to speak. She reassured herself: Now, at least, I know what will happen. It will be under my control.

She refused to cry. She braced herself and felt her body wracked with every breath. It would be under her control. Her shoulders shook. She held fast to both knees to still the quiver in her hands, but then her arms began to tremble, harder, shaking deep inside her elbows: first her arms and then her knees, until her fingertips were numb. She sat alone in her room, late into the evening, letting the darkness close over her like a promise.

Chongqing 1938–40

CAPTAIN PU HAD WARNED LI ANG: CHONGQING WAS A BLACK
heart of smuggling and corruption. Everyone he met would ask for bribes. Li Ang had another way of looking at it. To him, a bribe was like a little soup sloshing out of a bowl. If some of the soup was lost, it didn’t change the fact that most of it went where it belonged. His new job was to help General Sun supply his eight divisions. If a few items disappeared along the way, Sun wouldn’t notice. It was like a game. Like concealing one’s intentions in poker or mahjong. Perhaps Li Ang’s gift with games was the reason Sun had wanted him for this job.

Captain Pu had especially warned him of General Hsiao Jun, who even in those early days controlled the wartime capital through smuggling and blackmail. Li Ang wasn’t concerned. Hsiao was the head of the military supply headquarters, and Li Ang’s work required that he ingratiate himself with this man. He had no doubt they would get along; he’d never met a man or woman whom he could not persuade to like him. He set about befriending Hsiao. When he played cards with him, he made sure to lose half of the time by a close margin; when he arranged delivery of supplies, he brought Hsiao the odds and ends. He saved painkillers for Hsiao’s bad back and nylon stockings for Hsiao’s wife. When General Hsiao personally asked him if he might join a few other officers in a small dormitory raid upon some student radicals, Li Ang said yes.

THE RAID TOOK
place near dawn on a Saturday morning. Members of the outlawed student union had been overheard at a teahouse and tailed to their rooms, where their lit windows had identified them. The officers would stake out and enter the dormitory, trap the radicals in their rooms, and take them to the Army prison. It was a simple plan, and the operation would be finished before morning classes. The radicals would vanish in the night.

Li Ang was told to wait at the back door. He could tell from the odor of flung dishwater that this door led to the pantry and the kitchen. The students seldom used this back way, and it was through the kitchen, he suspected, that they might try to escape. Li Ang stood at his post. Soon it was close to dawn. The dormitory blocked the eastern sky from view, but all had slipped from black to gray, lightening the world in even tones, so that the leaves and bark of the nearby camphor tree, the slate gray of the tiled eave, and his own brass buttons were defined in shades of dust. A few neglected, stiffened potted plants sat on the stoop. A dozen cracked clay roofing tiles were piled neatly on the stairs. Li Ang heard the somber clang of the missionary bell, and from the street, the creak of a cart and the faint voice of a man talking to his water buffalo. The rumors of attack had dissipated and the farmers were making their way back in despite the heat. Li Ang had been standing for so long that the blood had thickened in his feet, but he didn’t falter. This trick of standing was a game to him. Other soldiers, unsupervised, would begin to clench their muscles; sometimes a man would wobble or even fall. To Li Ang, the standing clarified his mind, so that he saw the sharp edge of a broken tile, or the path and corners of an alley, with unusual clarity and detail. At times like these, he felt within himself a keen physical intelligence. It came into his feet and hands and shoulders. Now, waiting, he felt as if he were a hawk hovering high up in the luminous sky; he saw each shape upon the ground, and he could mark each shadow, each movement of the mouse below.

He heard one muffled creak and then a few quick bangs—the door being swung open—and the quick, heavy steps of men in boots, entering the building. He could hear their steps diverging. Good: they’d encountered nothing unexpected; they were following the plan. Some would fan into the downstairs rooms, seizing any suspect books and materials as they went. Several would head upstairs and trap the radicals in their bedrooms on the second floor. There were several shouts, some surprised questions, and, once, the sound of a falling chair. He listened for a full minute until he heard what he’d been waiting for.

A faster tread, alone, close. A single person on the stairs. The sound of the doorknob turning. Quicker than thought he moved to the door and pulled it open before the young man, emerging, had taken his own hand from the knob. Li Ang seized him as he hurtled down the steps.

“You’re under arrest,” Li Ang barked. He pushed the man into the wall; he twisted both arms behind his back and held him there, still listening. He could hear no more escapees forthcoming.

For a moment they stood. Li Ang could see only the back of his captive’s head, the lobe of his ear. He couldn’t see the face, pushed with the cheek flat against the wall, but he could sense a contemplative cast upon the man, as if he were listening. His glasses had been knocked loose. Li Ang wondered where the other students had gone. Inside, the footsteps clumped back and forth. He heard the light crash of a cot and the sudden thunder of a desk. He turned toward his captive, who had remained with his cheek against the wall, his glasses hanging by one ear. For a moment the thick, round lenses glowed white, reflecting the morning sky and the boughs of the camphor tree.

As Li Ang stood holding the young man against the building, he grew convinced that he had experienced all of this before. The smell of unwashed hair; the shape of the head, the shape of the ear. It seemed to him the moment passed so very slowly, or was this slow wonderment only the way that he recalled it afterward? He only knew there was an absolute silence. Above them, the pale sky glowed like the inside of a shell.

“You’re under arrest,” he said, more evenly this time.

The captive turned his head. Nearsighted eyes squinted into his face. “Gege,” he said.

The voice was quiet, its tones familiar.

“What?” Li Ang exclaimed. “What are you doing here? What do you think you’re doing?”

“What are you doing, Gege?”

“Shh,” Li Ang said, regaining his wits. There was still enough time for his brother to escape. “If you hurry—”

Footsteps came around the corner.

“What’s this?” It was Pu Sijian.

Li Ang began, “There’s been a mis—”

“Good. You’ve got one.” And for some inexplicable reason, Pu removed the spectacles from Li Bing’s startled face and tossed them into the shadow of the camphor tree.

“What did you do that for?” Li Ang exclaimed. He half turned toward the tree, thinking to find the spectacles, but remembered his position. He turned back to his brother. What he saw made him forget what he had been thinking. Li Bing had put both hands against the wall. He stood, exposing his thin back, ear to the wall and eyes shut, whether in an instinctive gesture of protection or in a fear of what would happen next, Li Ang never knew. But he was stunned by the raised hands.

The door pushed open and two other men burst out of it.

“Hey!” Pu shouted. He moved toward the men.

Just as quickly, Li Bing broke free of the wall and darted toward Pu, tackling him at the knees, a move from childhood so familiar to Li Ang that he almost cried out.

Pu, a sturdy man, threw Li Bing like a water buffalo calf and pinned him face down on the ground. “I’ll take this one,” he said. He put his pistol to the back of Li Bing’s head.

For a moment, Li Ang stood frozen in place. The air rang with the unsaid cry, “My didi! This is my didi!” But in the same instant, he understood what his brother had just done. Li Bing had taken advantage of his own surprise. He had turned his head to the wall and listened for his friends. He had allowed the other two men to get away. He was resigned to being captured. Li Ang understood that his brother was a Communist.

AT THE END
of the day, although it was so hot that he desired nothing more than a cold bath, Li Ang hired a rickshaw and asked the man to let him off on the main road, a slight distance from the dormitory. He walked the rest of the way and went around to the back. There stood the familiar wall, pale in the evening light. Despite the turmoil and the seizure of their books, many of the students had returned. There was steam coming from the kitchen, and he could smell rice porridge. An older man, a servant, sweated as he hauled his creaking water buckets through the kitchen door. Li Ang spat on the ground. He felt reluctant to go near the place again. He tried to remember where the captain had been standing when he had tossed away the glasses. He returned to the old camphor tree, with its drooping and indifferent leaves. He searched along its base, then in the dirt, but found nothing.

At the jail, he asked to speak to the warden.

“There’s been an error,” he said. “The man caught in the dormitory raid wasn’t a radical. He wasn’t one of the troublemakers. He was only on kitchen duty. I was about to let him go when I was ordered to give pursuit to the others.” There was an expectant silence. Li Ang knew then how silly this was. The warden needed no excuses, only money. Li Ang pulled out what he had, three silver dollars. The warden took the coins and went back to his newspaper.

Li Bing squinted, his eyes curled like dry shrimp. This time he said nothing.

“I went to search for your glasses, no luck,” Li Ang said. “Is there anything else you need?”

“How about a cigarette?”

Li Ang took a deep breath. “Tell me,” he said. “Were you one of them—the radicals, I mean?”

Li Bing smiled. “I don’t think I’m supposed to tell you.”

Li Ang tried again. “Listen,” he said. “I can probably get you out of here. But what I want to know—”

“Who asked you to get me out of here?”

“When did you change? When did you become like this?”

“I’m not aware of having changed.”

Li Ang couldn’t think of a reply. After a few more minutes, he left the prison.

THE NEWSPAPER HEADLINES
described the latest negotiations with the West; once again, Chiang Kai-shek declared the need for money and supplies. An article claimed the latest Japanese attack on Changsha had been met with stiff resistance. On the bottom of the page, Li Ang found a small story about a successful raid upon a student dormitory the day before. Many pounds of subversive materials had been destroyed, and the head of a gang of dangerous student radicals had been arrested. He was being held on bail of eight hundred silver dollars.

For a moment he thought with hope of his uncle, sitting in his little shop gazing at his favorite poster of a sexy woman smoking a cigarette. But Li Ang knew Charlie no longer had that kind of cash. There was almost no profit in the distribution work. Li Ang could have arranged to sell some goods on the black market. But he lacked the time to do it properly. There was only one alternative. He went to Army headquarters.

DEAR WIFE. MUST HAVE 800. POSSIBLE TO WIRE.

LI ANG.

He hadn’t seen Junan in eleven months. He’d been disappointed at the sex of the child—a second daughter—but now he found himself truly missing his wife, and the nature of his longing was specific and surprising. It was not passion or love he thought about, but the clarity and order that surrounded her like a serene climate. She had a way of being able to see straight into a situation. He wished she were there with him so that he could tell her what had happened and ask casually, “What do you think?” She would’ve had shrewd advice.

Her reply came back immediately.

HUSBAND. FINANCES COMPLICATED. CAN ONLY

SEND 200. JUNAN.

This wouldn’t do. She could easily raise the sum. He wired back.

POSSIBLE TO RAISE CASH? NEED ALL 800. LI ANG.

All afternoon he waited at the headquarters. Finally, the answer came.

WHAT IS THE MONEY FOR? JUNAN.

He straightened, threw his shoulders back. How could she possibly refuse? Who did she think she was? It occurred to him that he might have gotten his way by telling the truth—appealing to her sympathy and belief in family—or by adopting an attitude of submission. But he was not that kind of man. And he didn’t want Junan to see how little he had, with his own brother in prison, and he himself requesting money like a beggar.

He wired back.

FORGET IT. MATTER SOLVED.

He left the headquarters and walked into the city. He didn’t hire a rickshaw. He wasn’t sure where he was going, and he didn’t want to betray his agitation to any human soul. He strode quickly through the heat, the houses on either side of him shimmering as he moved farther into the city: ornate walls giving way to the shabbier bricks of smaller houses, more frequent streets and alleys. In the last few months, the population of Chongqing had doubled. All around him was evidence of overpopulation: crumbled buildings inhabited, beggars moaning, families camped by the road. He heard a cacophony of dialects; singsong local voices taunted belligerent newcomers. The stink of cooking cabbage assailed him, mingled with the darker stink of sewage. Now the street grew more crowded: a group of women flinging their sweaty net of gossip into the well; small gangs of boys, let out of school and holding kites; old men, whose lives were over, sitting and watching from the edges. The call of a traveling tea seller rang out, followed by the wailing flute of a blind fortune-teller, a high, mournful sound that pierced the air. The man sat beneath an eave, exposing plaintively the worn, dusty soles of his shoes.