Cloud Mountain

by Aimee E. Liu

  When she returned home the following day she took her tattered Chinese dictionary and looked up Po-yu. Always difficult to tell, given the variations in Chinese tones and translations by the Britishers who put those early, pre—Wade-Giles dictionaries together, but his name seemed to mean Joyful Spirit. A wonderful name. Unfortunately, she could think of no English equivalent. Nor did her other Chinese students provide much inspiration. Ho Han-chang, Yang Kuo-kan, Jin Feng-pao, and Willy Chang were earnest young men, products of missionary zeal or royal privilege. They did their work and paid attention, but she often felt when addressing them that it was all a game of masks. Han-chang was the splay-toothed smiler, Yang the sullen prince, Feng-pao the glowerer, and Willy the gray and sickly one. It made no difference that one was called Willy, nor would it matter if the others were John, Sam, or Charley—blatant Chinaman names. These young men would neither be insulted nor cajoled into revealing their true selves. But Liang Po-yu was an exception.

  On Thursday morning she was hanging out the wash, with just an hour until his lesson and still no name. Adam, she thought. Walter. Nathaniel. Ralph. The weather had cooled. The sun dove in and out of great frothy clouds. She stared at the flapping sheet as if it were a canvas and she the painter working from memory. She could see his features easily enough, the restless measure of his eyes, the fullness of his mouth, that look of cautious pride …

  “Po-yu,” she whispered.

  “Paul,” snapped the wind.

  Paul! She put her hands on her hips, lifted her face to the winking sun. Raised rather lackadaisically as a Presbyterian, she had never consciously demanded much of God and so, rarely attributed the turns in her life to His will. This time she saluted Him.

  Po-yu, in his turn, had spent three restless days and nights trying to decide whether his teacher would prefer jasmine or chrysanthemum tea. There was much to be said for the chrysanthemum, apart from its being his favorite. The sweetness and weight of the tea gave it an invigorating power. Chrysanthemum symbolized long life and duration. And then there was Tu Mu’s great lyric poem:

  Put chrysanthemums in your hair!

  You must be decked in blossoms when you accompany me home.

  The truth was, he could not free himself from the yearning for her touch. As he sat through the drone of his university lectures, he imagined her fingers still threaded through his. In his Chinatown newspaper office he recorded a woman’s pulse in every thud of the printing press. And when he clapped his colleagues on the back, the texture he felt was not the cheap nub of Western-style jackets or the floss of scholars’ robes but the silk of Hope Newfield’s palm.

  This was an unprecedented obsession—and not a welcome one. True, in Japan there had been much discussion of the West’s free love and he had been as enticed by this notion as the next man. He agreed that the abolition of arranged marriage should be a revolutionary mandate. Yet, at the same time, experience taught him that sexual desire was best restricted either to the marital bed or flower house. It did not chase him into the company of men, did not shadow his work or thoughts. And it must not be allowed to influence his dealings with American women.

  On Thursday morning, he considered the two scarlet boxes on his night stand and selected the jasmine, quite simply, because the flower was the more beautiful. Miss Newfield said the tea was heavenly and promised that, from this day forward, she would serve only Chinese teas at their lessons. He said that her pleasure pleased him.

  “What do you think of the name Paul?” she asked.

  He nodded at the smooth roundness of the sound. But it cracked the first time he tried, coming forth in three chunks—Pa-ou-ah. Then two—Pau-eh. Finally he conquered the roll of the 1, and she applauded his achievement.

  He practiced a few more times, assessing. “I like this Paul. Very much. Thank you.”

  “What’s my name, then?”

  “Chinese name?”

  She nodded. “I know in Mandarin, the word for hope is chin-chin. Would you advise simply using that translation?”

  He bit back a smile at her butchered pronunciation. “You know Mandarin.”

  “Hardly! I’ve learned a few words, for my students’ sake, but I’m very much an amateur. Perhaps you could help me.”

  Paul nodded, then cautiously demonstrated how to place the tongue close against the front teeth, a cross between an s and sh sound. “Hsin-hsin,” he said. “This your Chinese name.”

  “Hsin-hsin.” She laughed. “Yes, that sounds much better. Thank you—Mr. Liang?”

  “You give me this name, Paul. No need say Mr. Liang anymore.”

  “Well, that creates a dilemma for me. Will you call me Hope or Hsin-hsin, then?”

  No hesitation. “Hope.”

  Unlike her other students, who preferred the security of primers and textbooks, Paul wanted to read the classics he’d spotted on Hope’s shelves. Poe, Melville, Tocqueville, Rousseau. He read out the names as though they were state secrets. Perhaps in China they were. Hope promised they would get to these, but suggested they spend the first few lessons tackling conversation. She made it sound as if she did this with all her students.

  “Begin with what you know best,” she proposed. “Your life.”

  And so he began, “I am only son of Liang Yu-sheng. My mother, Nai-li, third concubine …”

  He spoke haltingly at first, approaching unfamiliar words like treacherous currents, but each time he was about to go under, she would reach and pull him back up. The faltering Mandarin she’d absorbed from her other students counterbalanced his fledgling English to give the illusion of equal footing, and soon his delivery became more relaxed. Hope found herself translating his story into a world that tantalized even as it appalled her.

  Though born in Canton, where his father served as viceroy, Paul had spent most of his childhood in the Liang ancestral home in Wuchang. From the age of five, at his father’s insistence, he was tutored by Fong Yao-li, an enlightened scholar of the old school who wrote with a red brush in red ink, and received his payment in a special red envelope. Fong began the young Po-yu’s education with a single line from Confucius: “To study is great pleasure.”

  “And did you agree?” Hope asked.

  Paul grinned down at his folded hands. “My great pleasure is gold fish.” His hands came up around an imaginary carp, then opened, palms up. “I do not study, Master Fong will beat me, no can catch fish.”

  Hope imagined the dark child-eyes innocently imploring this cruel tutor. “So study made pleasure possible.”

  Paul tipped his head to one side, almost, but not quite meeting her gaze, then repeated, carefully. “Yes. Study make pleasure possible.”

  To her horror, Hope felt her face flush. She busied herself refilling their teacups, and urged him on with his story.

  Paul’s childhood, as he described it, was a swirl of ceremonial ritual, sharpened criticism, recitation, and repetitive brushstrokes. He slept, ate, studied, and dreamed within the high walls of his compound, rarely even venturing to the courts of his father’s other wives, let alone to the city outside. When he was six, Paul remembered, his mother caught him playing chase with the first wife’s daughter and a friend, around and around the spirit wall with the green-backed dragon and curling clouds that was supposed to deter evil spirits. His mother dragged him to her room and forced him to kneel with his palms up, waiting for a thrashing that never came. On and on he waited, until his knees turned white and then purple, his hips and ankles throbbed. When his arms began to shake, she pulled out a long tapered box, which housed a crescent sword.

  “This belong to my father when he is Imperial examiner.” Paul showed how his mother tipped the sword, that her son might appreciate its cutting edge. “She say he use this hay chopper one time cut Fukien student. This student lie, cheat, but he not die right away, first write with tongue in dust, ‘tragedy.’”

  “How hideous!” Hope cried. “Your father … and your mother showed you this, threatened you, her own child!”
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  But from the way he pursed his lips, she saw she had misunderstood. “My father is official,” he explained, “very busy, much away. I must respect my father, obey my mother.”

  Hope swallowed hard, at once chastened and repelled. Yet when Paul called her attention to the chiming clock, she could not bear for him to leave on this note. “Please,” she said. “I shouldn’t have spoken. My own mother died when I was a baby, and my father, like yours, was away much of the time.”

  He studied her with sudden concern. “Who will take care of you?”

  She smiled, overlooking his mistaken tense. “I was raised by another family, Paul. Friends of my father. It’s all right, I was treated well… But I shouldn’t presume to judge your parents.”

  “I am sad for you, Hope,” he said. “Every baby need mother.” His dark eyes rested on her, for once not pulling away, but when she did not answer, he started to rise.

  “Wait.” She stretched a hand. “My next lesson isn’t until this afternoon. Would you stay? I’d like to hear more.”

  He lifted his chin, and she could see he was flattered, but he protested that he was not worthy of her time. Only when she insisted, did he settle back down and resume his story.

  He was years older when a cousin informed him that the tragic Fukienese was not an errant student at all, but a corrupt official who took a bribe to pass a less-than-able scholar. By then, however, the hay chopper had already accomplished its purpose. Paul worked hard at his studies and strove to be a dutiful son.

  “I do not chase my sister friend,” he said with a comic sigh. “My friend all boy.”

  Hope burst out laughing, relieved at this opening even as she felt compelled to correct him. “My friends were all boys. Tell me about them.”

  Because he had no brothers of his own, Paul said, he adopted his cousins and classmates, and even some of the village merchants’ and farmers’ sons as “spirit brothers.” There was Chen who laughed like a bird, Deng who talked in rhyming couplets, and Shi who kept lizards for pets. Together they climbed trees, explored the abandoned temples and ancient ruins outside the city walls, or made excursions across the river to Hankow or Hanyang. They entertained each other with stories of brigands and Taoist mysteries, wild tales of Western barbarians, the evil power of foreign gunboats, and the magic that caused glass to burn like lightning, metal to move by itself.

  Paul smiled at Hope apologetically. “We do not yet study the Western Learning. We do not have electricity. We never see white person.”

  But in Master Fong’s classroom the boys would recite the poems of the Song and Ming Dynasties, the history of the Warring States, the Five Dynasties, the Ten Kingdoms, all proof (justifiable proof, Hope thought, imagining herself in Paul’s place) that China was indeed the center of the universe, and had been for more than three thousand years. Translucent copy books, carved sticks of ink, the imprint of a bamboo brush left in finger flesh. These testified to the passage of hours and weeks and years as Paul moved through his classical training, memorizing the teachings of Confucius and Mencius, preparing for his Imperial exams.

  His father, an elderly man whose long gray beard Paul described as “a fading stream,” made it a point to advise his son whenever he returned to Wuchang—two, maybe three times each year. They would sit for hours in the Hall of Ancestors reviewing the illustrious history of the Liang clan, many generations of scholars and governors. Liang Yu-sheng expected his only son, too, to bring honor on the family. He recognized that China was changing and Paul must prepare himself for a very different future than any his ancestors had known. But he must still pass his examinations.

  Again the clock began to chime, and again Paul protested that he should leave. For the first time, it occurred to Hope that she might be keeping him from other obligations—his classes, his newspaper…

  “I’m so sorry,” she started, but a rap on the door interrupted.

  Eleanor poked her head in. “You all right, Hope? I just noticed you’ve been in here since nine.” She looked pointedly at Paul. “Your lessons don’t run but an hour, do they?”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Layton.” Hope stood up. “We are perfectly all right.”

  “Well—”

  “Thank you,” Hope repeated. Eleanor withdrew in a huff.

  “Now I truly am sorry,” Hope said. “I didn’t mean to consume your whole day. I’m sure you’ve better things to do.”

  “No,” said Paul. “This my pleasure. Please.”

  She held his gaze. “So you tell me. To study is your pleasure.”

  When he had gone, she fell back against the door, half laughing, half aghast. What on earth was the matter with her?

  “He’s a Chinaman!” But even though she said this out loud, she found it impossible to accept.

  He arrived ten minutes early for his next lesson, but she was already on the verandah waiting. She ushered him quickly to her office lest Eleanor see him, and when she poured out his tea, which she had steeped in advance, its perfume filled the room.

  “Examinations,” she prompted.

  He smiled as if she were the teacher’s pet, not he, and obediently followed her cue.

  Every Liang male for more than three centuries, he said, had passed through the grueling succession of examinations leading to admission into the Imperial college. Every Liang male for generations had worn the furred hat topped with golden canary that signified scholarly success, had ultimately borne the official t’ing tai cap plumed with pheasant feathers, and the robes bearing the golden pheasant insignia of a magistrate or minister.

  “Only most pure oil rise to top,” Paul recalled his father warning him.

  Hope understood that Paul’s purity was never, for one instant, in doubt. And as his father told him it must, the Liang name invariably appeared among the ranks of qualified students. Yet Paul’s fear of failure was so great that for weeks before and after each exam he would wake screaming at the vision of the candidates’ poster with only the outline of a crescent blade where his name should be. Not the three-cannon salute, or the band that accompanied the admission poster as it was paraded through the streets, or even the abundance of congratulatory gifts sent by his bride’s family—

  “Your bride?” Hope interrupted. She searched Paul’s ringless hands, his smooth cheeks, and dropped gaze for evidence, but again it seemed that his appearance belied his true age and experience.

  He hesitated, then lowered his voice. “My parents choose their daughter, arrange wedding after examination. I go then, study Western Learning in Hong Kong, Tokyo. Soon my father, my wife also die.”

  Hope looked away. “Paul, I didn’t mean to …”

  He waved his hands back and forth. “No problem.” And continued talking.

  On the day in late spring, 1901, when he received the news that his father and wife had both died in a cholera epidemic, the staff of the Hupei Students’ Journal, of which Paul was editor, insisted on taking him to the beach to toast the departed spirits with wine and eat in their honor a ham brought all the way from Chekiang. The talk, as usual, circled to their shared hatred of the Manchus, and in an act of spontaneous freedom and foolhardiness, they borrowed fish knives from the local villagers and hacked off their queues. Then they piled the shorn pigtails onto scavenged planks, adorned them with flaming paper candles, and wet their trousers to the knees delivering the little ships into the tide. From that day on, Paul would dream no more of failed examinations or crescent blades, but instead of the future, the free and modern West, scenes from books such as Jules Verne’s Around the World in Eighty Days, which one of his friends had recently translated into Chinese.

  The rules by which they’d been raised were dead, Paul informed his fellow revolutionists. The past was a trap from which China must be freed, and it was their job, their duty to become its liberators.

  He lifted his eyes to Hope. “This day, everything change. Everything new. Everything can be.”

  “Everything is possible,” she corrected, mo
re moved than she dared let him see.

  Now, when their hour ended, she did not detain him, and after he had left, she sat for a long time staring at the thick green scrim of leaves outside her window. Eleanor had gone out. The house was silent, but she could still hear the uneven rhythm of his voice, still smelled his scent, like fragrant wood, mingling with the jasmine tea. And she could still feel the revulsion that had gripped her as the truth of his life finally registered. This idealist! This brilliant innocent who had married and left his bride to die. Of course, the marriage was arranged. Could she reasonably blame him for not resisting? Did any man in China resist? After all, once he married the bride chosen by his parents, he could collect as many other wives—concubines! —as he pleased. As his own father had. Was Paul, then—Po-yu—even capable of love?

  Love or no love, he had experienced his bride, surely. Had worked his strong, lean frame against her thighs. Entered and planted himself inside her. She who had no face or name. Had she pleased him? Had she known the secret rules, the tricks and treacheries of the flesh? How? Had she learned such things from a mother, a sister—or from her husband’s own moans and whispers? This woman who died for him.

  She brought her diary from its secret drawer. She had written her way through dark times before; if she could just get this insanity out on paper, perhaps she would be rid of it.

  What is this terrible storm chasing through me? Is it madness, as my mind insists, or the criminal workings of an errant heart? Paul is a man to me. A dear, tender, dangerous man. An overwhelming stranger. But a man in every sense, and when I speak to him I feel fully a woman.

  Would that I could will him to leave. When I close my eyes even now his sweet face is here. I am drawn to him. I abhor him. I listen to his story of hardship and duty, and I think I would have clawed the eyes out of his father and mother, while he instead mutilates himself (those torn and bitten nails). I will never understand his world, but against my will I know what it is to be misunderstood. We are nothing alike. We are the same. He terrifies me …