Inheritance (16 page)

Li Ang picked up a package of the general’s Lucky Strikes. “Cigarette?”

Li Bing shook his head.

Li Ang spoke to Mary, the young maid, whom Hsiao Taitai had recently arranged to keep his house. Mary didn’t live in the house, but came by each day to see if he needed anything. She was an orphan who had been named and raised by the missionaries at Hsiao Taitai’s church. She was a small, plump girl with a mole near her full lips and another in the middle of her forehead that made her seem exotic and yet also perversely religious.

“I’ll get my own tea, thank you.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

Mary returned with two cups of tea. Li Bing frowned, then thanked her and guzzled his gratefully, but Li Ang could only sip at his, waiting. His brother had surprised him once, and since then he had regarded him with wariness. Now there was something in Li Bing’s face—a certain colorlessness about the mouth—that warned him.

Finally, Li Bing spoke. “Your young woman was the center of quite a scandal.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’ve been asking around. They say that this third daughter of Hsiao’s was in trouble with men before she learned to braid her hair. But that’s nothing. The real story, which not everybody knows, is that a few years ago, this girl had a child by a common foot soldier. The affair took place while her own grandmother was on her deathbed. It’s the reason why the family was in mourning for so long, so that they could hide the pregnancy from everyone. The child is being raised in the country.”

“I’ve never heard that story.”

“Why would anyone have the slightest interest in telling you, an outsider? With that mother busy hushing things up. Now, she’s a capable one. If the generals were half as capable as she, they’d have that Burma Road paved and defended day and night.”

Li Ang opened his mouth and shut it. “That’s ridiculous,” he said finally. “Why would she bother?”

“The Tax Police is a fat and underworked division. You’re a protégé of General Sun—everybody knows it. And this war could go on forever before America finally comes in on our side.”

“I’m a married man.” He was aware, even as he spoke, of sounding pompous.

“To these people, a non-Christian wedding does not count. Look at Chiang Kai-shek.”

Li Ang didn’t answer.

Li Bing picked up the package of Lucky Strikes. He caught the lighter from his brother and struck the flame, which glowed orange behind his long fingers. “I have other news,” he said. “I’ve been assigned by Zhou En-lai to a northern village. I’ll be helping to develop the revolutionary potential of the countryside.”

“What do you mean?

“I’m leaving town,” he said. “I’ve been thinking of it for quite some time, and I no longer have a reason not to. There are changes happening in this country. The people are beginning to learn that they need not be bullied.”

“You’re leaving.”

“Yes. At least until next year.”

Later that evening, as Li Ang walked home from dinner at General Hsiao’s house, he reviewed the conversation and wondered if there was anything he might have said to dissuade Li Bing from his plans. He didn’t know.

Around him he could hear the humble, restless noises of a nighttime city overflowing with several hundred thousand extra people. The crack of a hammer striking a wooden stake into the ground. The sounds of thousands of small fires spitting small sparks, heating thousands of kettles or tin cans filled with water for tea. A thousand quiet conversations. Li Bing was leaving town. Li Ang remembered his brother’s words. He had called Hsiao a bully, another Sun Chuan-fang. “You were always stronger . . . you never had to watch . . . Do you remember, back in Hangzhou, right after we had moved there, that neighborhood boy, Chang?”

He remembered again the square, doughy face and pitiless eyes. The fight had happened perhaps a year after their parents’ death. They had just been sent to Hangzhou and moved into their uncle’s house. At that time, it happened Hangzhou was under control of the warlord Sun Chuan-fang, and on the streets, the neighborhood bullies copied him.

On the evening of the fight, Chang arrived with two other boys. Li Ang remembered Li Bing’s frightened voice from high up in his uncle’s loft. “Gege, run!” But Li Ang took them on. Li Bing clattered down to help. Of course, Li Bing was nothing; one of the big boys held his puny arms as he bawled.

“Submit!” Their rough voices summoned Li Ang. “Submit!” But he did not. He knew that holding out would earn him their respect. He remembered the odd and distant sense of his own hand bruising, his own rib cracking in his chest. He watched his good fist colliding into Chang’s big, hard nose. The bright, triumphant spurt of blood. The sound of Chang breathing hard through his mouth. Then finally the honorable release of his brother. Li Bing’s eyes were squinched red; his face was streaked with snot and tears. “You fool! You should have stopped!” he cried. “You could have been killed!” Li Ang hadn’t thought of how it might have felt to watch. Now the memory of Li Bing’s high voice rang in his ears.

Li Ang turned up his own dark, deserted street. The moonlight cast the bleak shadow of his building on the road. For some days now, he had envisioned a future with the Hsiao family. The powerful general, his patron, would have been his father-in-law, and Hsiao Taitai his mother-in-law; it would have been like having an entirely new family. The idea that they were pulling the wool over his eyes—that he would be, essentially, considered a dupe and a fool by all—changed things. But he had grown accustomed to his fantasy. The world seemed less open, less grand, his life less assured, without it.

In the dark entrance, on the table, lay an envelope.

12 February 1938

My Dear Husband,

In the past few months, I have been thinking about the way in which you must seek food and company in the homes of others. I would not want you to do without these things, and yet I want to obey your desire that I remain with the children in Hangzhou, so I am sending my sister to Chongqing to keep your household. I have asked her if she would kindly run the house in my absence. She has always been very obedient to me and is more than willing to oblige; furthermore, I think that the current state of affairs is bad for her health. I think that a quiet, domestic, provincial life is what she has always needed. In order to absolve your difficulties as soon as possible, I have sent her to you via airplane. She should arrive shortly after you receive this.

Your obedient wife,

Junan

TWO DAYS LATER, LI ANG ENTERED THE FLAT AND SENSED
immediately that Yinan had arrived. When Mary opened the door, the new scent inside filled him with dread.

Yinan sat in the front room, waiting beside her trunk as if she were a parcel that had been delivered and left near the entrance to be inspected.

His spirits failed him. “Welcome, Meimei,” he said. “Thank you for coming. I hope your journey wasn’t difficult.”

“Gege.” She wouldn’t meet his eyes. He found himself wondering, as he always did, how it could be that the polished, poised Junan could have such an inarticulate sparrow of a sister.

“She arrived this morning,” Mary said with a trace of weariness. “I showed her the room, but she said that she would wait until you told her what to do.”

Mary was clearly disappointed with their visitor, who had not shown herself to be an impressive woman in style, authority, or conversation.

“Would you like anything to eat?”

Yinan shook her head.

“She hasn’t eaten all day,” said Mary. “She took a bath but she said she would wait to eat until you arrived.”

“It’s all right,” Li Ang told the maid. “You can go now.” She vanished into the kitchen. Li Ang arranged a polite expression onto his face and approached his guest.

When he came closer, he could smell fresh soap and see the grooves from the comb that pulled the hair tightly away from her face.

“Junan wrote to me that you might feel better here,” he said. “I didn’t realize you were coming so soon. I’m sorry I wasn’t here to welcome you when you arrived.”

“I’m all right. Thank you for having me.”

“I thought that you could stay in the extra room. Would you like to see it?” She nodded. He picked up her metal trunk, unfortunately heavy. Silently she followed him; he opened the door and showed her in. He hadn’t remembered how small it was. He was relieved to notice, outside the narrow window, a ragged scrap of camphor tree. He smiled, nodded, and backed out of the door.

A few days later, he returned home to a strong burning smell in the house. He found Yinan in the kitchen, wandering among the dishes, wok, and earthenware steamer.

“Where is Mary?”

“Her friend is sick. I told her I could cook.”

“Don’t bother,” he said. “My business takes me away from home most evenings. When I am due for dinner, I’ll tell Mary. You shouldn’t cook anything.”

“Junan told me to be useful.” Still she kept her eyes down.

“Your sister wouldn’t want you to tax yourself.”

“She told me you would eat at home if I were here.”

“That’s ridiculous,” he said. “I rarely eat at home.” He felt angry with Junan, who had no right, from such a distance, to decide what he would and would not do for dinner. He glanced warily at the table. There was a bowl containing chunks of rice—clearly she had failed to do something to the rice that would make it steam evenly—and some green beans that appeared to be charred and falling apart. Near the stove sat a small bowl of unrecognizable raw meat.

“I forgot I had to make everything be ready to eat at the same time,” she said.

“Don’t worry. You don’t have to do anything,” he told her. “Your sister’s concern was well-meaning, but ill-founded. I’m happy here, and it is pleasant to have your company, but there isn’t any need for you to keep house.”

As he sat at the table and attempted to choke down what she offered, he realized that it had been ludicrous of Junan to assume that he or anyone would want to eat what Yinan cooked. She had done nothing in Hangzhou but sit in her room, making paper birds, reading, or playing with her inks and paints.

The next morning he told Mary to prepare dinner for Yinan but not for him. He continued his socializing most nights at the Hsiaos’, and the three of them settled into a routine. Yinan and Mary were like two women trying to keep house for a bachelor. Whenever he tried to speak to Yinan, out of awkward feelings of guilt and responsibility, their conversations were filled with silences.

In the mornings, Yinan rose very early and made breakfast and he, coming downstairs to the places laid at the table, felt obliged to sit and eat it. The meal was disconcerting always. He had never thought before about the way that good food—solid and well-made home food—didn’t draw attention to itself, while bad food couldn’t be ignored. Her breakfast was somewhat burned and at the same time somewhat raw: she had difficulty even warming some buns from dinner the night before. A good meal companion also provided company and entertainment without calling attention to herself; Yinan did none of this. She spoke little and stared directly at a spot on the table as if it were embedded with a Buddhist prayer for enlightenment. When he set down his chopsticks she glanced up with an alarmed expression, as if she hadn’t expected to see him there.

IT WAS SEVERAL
weeks before he became aware that there was something on her mind. In Hangzhou she had worked busily with her books and calligraphy. Now she sat idle and her silences lingered. He purchased some brushes and fine paper at ridiculous prices and brought them home, but she only left the soft, white rolls of paper on the table in her room; he could see them there untouched when he passed. He questioned Mary, and the maid only shrugged; there was a curl of scorn to her mouth. “How would I know what she does? All day she sits in there with the door closed.”

In early summer, when the bombing raids began, he paid Mary to sleep in the apartment at night. This ensured that someone would be there to take Yinan to the bomb shelter if he was out. Still, he felt guilty for staying out late. The bombs frightened his visitor. She took to drifting about on cloudy nights, when it was safe. He sometimes sensed her footsteps near the door. Once, returning late, he saw the tail of her nightshirt vanish into her room.

Li Ang found himself missing Junan. If she were there, she might have ordered Yinan to do something, or otherwise managed Yinan into contentment. But Junan wasn’t there, and Li Ang felt unwilling to let her know that he had done such a poor job of settling Yinan in.