Inheritance (5 page)

It was the morning of Junan’s wedding day. As Junan bent over Yinan’s ear, she and Hu Mudan went over the final list of things to do. The red qipao must be checked for loosening beads. Junan would wear this dress to bow before the ancestors. Then she would change into a fashionable white gown for the hotel ceremony and banquet. The two separate gowns and ceremonies were a last-minute compromise for the traditional Mma, who, although she had grown almost blind, was able to see the difference between red and white.

“Hold still, Meimei.”

Yinan sighed.

“To be an elegant girl, you must be clean and have clean ears.”

“But I don’t want to be an elegant girl.”

“Just for today,” Junan said. Yinan submitted, and Junan felt some regret that she had insisted on the ear-cleaning. She didn’t want to cause Yinan unnecessary distress. Both sisters felt a dread of separation that roosted like a crow over the wedding plans. Junan had reassured Yinan that nothing would change. She would remain in the Wang house with Yinan. Li Ang, stationed nearby, would visit on his days off, and things would be the same as ever. But she knew better. Any change could lead to trouble. Like her sister, she distrusted any promise of safety. She knew that it could vanish like a stone thrown into a lake.

She tucked a wisp of hair behind her sister’s ear. Yinan’s hair, although not black or glossy enough to be considered beautiful, was thick and soft to the touch. Leaning closer, Junan noticed something on the scalp. She bent and parted the tender waves. There, at the roots, a large, red pimple had been scratched open.

“Meimei, what is this?”

“I don’t know. It itches.”

“You’ve broken the skin.”

Junan noticed another spot. She pulled down the shirt to examine Yinan’s neck. There were pimples on her back and chest.

Junan consulted Hu Mudan. The woman bent over Yinan and nodded briefly.

“Tell me what it is,” Junan demanded. “What illness does she have?”

“She has the shuidou,” Hu Mudan said matter-of-factly. “It is a normal childhood disease.”

“Is there any way to cover her forehead? Everyone will see it.”

Hu Mudan shook her head. “She can come with us to the hotel, but she should not attend the wedding. This pox is easy to catch. And it’s dangerous for any pregnant woman or any adult who hasn’t had it as a child.”

“I’m sorry, Jiejie!” Yinan hung her head.

“She should be kept from scratching. She can be cooled with wet cloths. The pox has to run its course.”

Junan thought quickly. “Tell them to pull one chair away from the banquet table. And Yinan. Stop looking like that. Let’s go to your room.”

“May I bring Guagua?” From the courtyard, they could hear the clucking of Hu Mudan’s pet hen.

Junan shook her head. “Keep that chicken out of here. For all we know, you caught this illness from that filthy bird.”

In Yinan’s bedroom, Junan cut her sister’s fingernails with the tiny scissors that had belonged to their mother. She had Weiwei bring a basin of water and soak cloths to press on Yinan’s skin when she complained of itching. Hu Mudan had said that if the shuidou were scratched, they could leave scars or holes as big as rice grains.

Junan pressed her hand on Yinan’s forehead, searching for fever, but she couldn’t sense it; she felt feverish herself. She wasn’t ill, but merely floating on the river of her plans into this day, her wedding day.

She recalled the moment when she had learned her fate. Sometime in the early morning, she had woken to find her father sitting on her bed. She smelled the alcohol on his breath. He was talking, almost to himself, repeating the name Li Ang. It was the young lieutenant she had let into the door. “We must move toward the future,” her father had said. “In the modern world, a man’s political connections matter more than his money or his family.” Outside her window the low sun had cast a frail light into the room; she had gazed at this light and thought of the lieutenant.

Now Yinan asked, “Jiejie, is Lieutenant Li Ang a good person?”

“Of course he is, Meimei. Baba wouldn’t marry me to a bad person. The lieutenant is working to make China strong.”

Yinan was silent for a moment. Then she asked, “Jiejie, where do you think Mama has gone?”

“What do you mean?”

“I know where her ashes are. But where do you think the Mama part of her has gone?”

“She will be reborn. Do you remember the chant from the memorial services? The Mama part of her has left this world to go to a new life, and her body has been returned back to the physical world.”

“I wish we’d had her longer.”

“We had her for a certain amount of time, and now she is returned to the world.”

“I wish we’d had her longer,” Yinan repeated. She rolled onto her back and stared at the ceiling with bright eyes.

Junan herself had searched for Chanyi’s ghost, eagerly, shamefully. On the second night after her mother’s death, she had thought that she might see her. She’d woken in the middle of the night to the smell of frost-cold air. Was it the sound of her own voice that had woken her? Could there have been a visitor? But there was nothing, not a sound. Now she remembered the Buddhist chant from the memorial service:

Se bu i kong

kong bu i se

Life does not differ from nothingness; nothingness does not differ from life.

Junan closed the shades against the violent sun, which burned against her eyes.

“If I were a boy,” Yinan said suddenly.

“What are you talking about?”

“I know.” Yinan turned her head toward the wall. “But if I were a boy she might not have killed herself.”

Junan closed her eyes. Against the backdrop of her lids the image of the sun made a fierce blue spot. “Mama didn’t kill herself.”

“I heard Gu Taitai tell Weiwei that she did.”

“Stop it!” Her voice, breaking shamefully, rang into the room.

After a long moment, Yinan said, “I’m sorry, Jiejie. Duibuqi.”

“Don’t ever speak of this again.”

“Duibuqi!” Yinan’s voice shook.

Junan pulled her arms into the sleeves of her jacket. She closed her eyes again and held herself stiffly against the back of her chair. Her own name, Junan, meant “like a son.” Yinan’s name meant “will bring forth sons.”

After several moments, Yinan spoke, and she was sobbing. “Jiejie, are you angry at me?”

Junan couldn’t speak.

“Please talk to me. Please don’t leave me. Promise. Now that you’ll be married.”

Junan looked away. “No,” she said into the room. “I won’t ever leave you, Meimei.”

Satisfied, Yinan closed her eyes. “And I won’t ever leave you.”

Some time later, the maid called Junan to Mma’s room. After Junan had kowtowed properly, the old woman held out a drink that Junan didn’t recognize: syrupy, sloe-purple, redolent of dates or prunes. Mma leaned close to watch her raise the glass. Over its rim Junan glimpsed the old woman’s cloudy eyes, inquisitive and vengeful, and she suspected what the liquid was. She knew she might have gotten sympathy by clinging to her grandmother, confessing fear, or begging for advice, but she was no more able to reveal such weakness than she was able to refuse Mma’s implicit challenge. She raised the fertility potion to her lips and drank.

SEVERAL HOURS LATER, LI ANG SAT WITH HIS BRIDE AT THE FRONT
table of their wedding banquet.

Junan had turned modestly away from him, revealing the long line of her neck, her high-bridged nose, the angle of her cheek. Her glittering white cap set off her large eyes and slanted brows. Earlier that day, in the traditional ceremony, she had worn a red dress and a long red veil to kneel to the ancestors. Now she was stunning in white. She was both stylishly modern and pure in her face—she held a virginal quality, perfect as the images of saints he recalled from his one visit to a cathedral. Everyone had stared when she walked into the room. Li Ang took pride in this; it compensated, somewhat, for the fact that almost none of the guests were his. Of the two hundred people at the banquet, Li Ang knew only eight. Aside from Charlie Kong, the bald Colonel Jiang, and the wealthy Mr. Chen, none of the paigao players had been invited. Li Ang’s guests were only three: his mentor Sun Li-jen, his uncle, and his brother. Li Ang suspected that the meager Li connections had been remarked upon by everyone. He heard his mentor explaining that the groom and his brother had been orphaned in the influenza epidemic.

“I’m afraid I don’t have many guests to add,” Li Ang apologized to Wang Daming.

“It is fine with me,” Daming replied. “They say it’s bad luck to have too lavish a wedding.”

At this, Li Bing raised his eyebrows. Li Ang could imagine his brother’s disdain for the stylish celebration that had been deemed appropriate by his new in-laws. The banquet was being held at a remodeled mansion. The festivities were in the modern section, lit up with electric lights. The guests had come from as far away as Nanjing: distant relations, fellow merchants, and a variety of officials representing each of the thirteen separate guilds and offices to which Wang gave yearly bribes. They did not appear to be what Li Bing would call progressive thinkers. Li Bing was seated next to the young Chen Da-Huan, who wore a long mandarin robe. Chen was talking about restoring China’s glorious cultural past.

“Western literature has corrupted us, this movement toward so-called ‘progressive language’ has destroyed the dignity and music of the written word . . .”

Li Bing fidgeted, rolling in his long fingers an imaginary cigarette. Li Ang knew his brother was currently engrossed in a “progressive” translation of H. G. Wells’s
The Time Machine
. He knew Li Bing would rather be reading at that moment. But his brother would restrain his impatience, for his sake.

Li Ang stole glances at Junan as he ate, smiling at her now and then. She handled herself perfectly, always gracious and demure, although the day had been a long one. Li Ang had to admire her; he grew tired of sitting. One course followed another. His favorite was a local specialty, crispy fish from the lake itself. For a moment he assumed it had been chosen for him, but then he realized that no one knew the first thing about him. Other seafood had been brought by motorboat that morning: enormous shrimp with graceful whiskers, scallops, abalone. A course of chicken wrapped in lotus leaves, another local specialty, had been included for the guests from out of town. In honor of Li Ang’s mentor, who was now a colonel, they ate pork intestines prepared by a cook from Anhui. Also there was the bride’s favorite, quail eggs. But the tiny eggs were brought out too late for Junan to enjoy them. By then, she had already left the room to change out of her gown, remove her elaborate headpiece, and prepare for the wedding night. In the spirit of modernism, she said, she had refused the customary games around the bridal bed. Later, Li Ang would go alone to meet her in their room.

Li Ang found the egg course difficult. Since his promotion he had, on some occasions, eaten with ivory chopsticks rather than his usual bamboo, but the small, slender silver banquet chopsticks presented a new challenge. Earlier, he had dropped a slippery piece of abalone in his lap. Since that moment of shame, he had tried to ignore the irritation that arose whenever he brought a sliver of food to his mouth. He found the chopsticks impractical, trying, and pretentious. They were smaller than average, with pointed tips, making them more difficult to use, and, he decided, effeminate. This brought to mind a story he had read years ago, on some drowsy afternoon in his uncle’s store. It was a story of the old days. The emperor’s new wives were tested by being required to eat a meal of quail eggs with silver chopsticks. Perhaps the Wangs tested a son-in-law in the same way? Were they mocking him? Flushed, he stared at the tiny eggs for several minutes before beginning.

He lost his grip on the egg halfway to his mouth and lunged forward, trying in vain to save it as it bounced off the plate and disappeared. Li Ang stared straight ahead. When he dared look around, he met the eyes of Wang Baoding, Junan’s uncle from Nanjing.

Baoding was an elegant man: thin, with long hair combed carefully back from a high forehead. He had eaten and drunk well, and although his face retained a clay-like pallor, his earlobes had turned pink. Now, acknowledging Li Ang for the first time, Baoding leaned back and spoke.

“My dear new nephew, let me apologize to you for this question I am about to ask,” he began. He leaned back in his chair. “It’s so seldom that I actually have the opportunity to speak candidly with men connected to the Army. So I must ask you: What on earth could your General Chiang Kai-shek have been thinking when he agreed to join forces and cooperate with the Communist Party? Does he know who those men are?”