Cloud Mountain

by Aimee E. Liu

  She tried again to concentrate on the passing countryside, jotting down impressions now of sunshine and growth, endless orchards and white clapboard farmhouses. Kathe brought out a pack of cards and engaged Sarah in a game of all fours, and Hope once again wondered at their dispassionate manner, as if they were—well, as if they were on a business trip. Hope’s romantic instincts rebelled at this notion, and yet, the more she thought about it, the more she saw that it could offer a kind of protection. She imagined herself lifting her head high, looking at Paul and announcing, “This man and I have business together.” Had she been thus armored this morning she might have been able to deflect those stares at the station, to nod at that insolent conductor and walk on. Pretend they were partners in a Colorado general store returning from a purchasing trip. Or administrative assistants to Donaldina Cameron checking on the whereabouts of a slave girl last seen in Sacramento. Or diplomats traveling to Washington to petition President Roosevelt to support the Chinese bid for independence.

  Hope smiled as she noted these fantasies in her journal. Was it so preposterous, really, that she might have a hand in Paul’s revolutionary business? She had been his teacher, after all, and once they were married she would doubtless help him with his correspondence. She might even learn Chinese and translate some of his writings into English. Her mind leapt with the possibilities.

  They started climbing into the Sierras by late afternoon, crossed the snow line at Cape Horn, and shortly after nightfall the snow sheds began. These protective tunnels, made of sheet metal and steel staves, arced over the tracks for miles.

  “I feel as if we’re in one of Jules Verne’s science fictions.” Hope stared over the remains of their dining car supper at her reflection in the otherwise blank window. “We might as well be traveling to the center of the earth.”

  “Yes, and won’t we pop out in China,” Sarah said. “And our dear mothers-in-law will be waiting with red veils and the wedding sedans.”

  Hope stirred her tea, trying to conceal her surprise that her companion knew the first thing about Chinese weddings and mothers-in-law. On the few occasions all day when Sarah had mentioned Donald, it was only to boast about his prospects with a law firm on the East Coast or to describe the maroon Fredonia runabout he had promised to buy her for their first anniversary.

  “And what would you do, then?” asked Hope.

  “I believe I would catch the next train back.” Sarah took the apple from her plate and polished it on the white damask tablecloth. As with the rest of her meal, she seemed to prefer toying with the fruit to eating it.

  “What if Donald wanted to stay there?”

  “China?” Kathe was struggling to make sense of the vowels and syllables speeding past her. “China is not good. No pigtails.” She drew a confident finger across her plump neck and shook her blond curls emphatically.

  “That’s right,” said Sarah. “Our boys would be dead men, sure. Anyway, Donald’s no thought of going back.”

  “Ever?” said Sarah.

  “Don’t tell me you see yourself as a Chinese wife!”

  “Well—” Hope stared as the electric lights dimmed, then flashed off, plunging them into utter blackness before sputtering back to life. “After the revolution,” she continued, “everything will be different in China. Modern.”

  “You’re a dreamer,” said Sarah. “And a fool if you believe your dreams.”

  That night, after the tussle of unpacking, changing, and restowing luggage, Hope stretched back to stiff back with Sarah behind the heavy drawn curtains of the upper bunk while Kathe, to whom they’d given the lower bed, murmured an evening prayer. But their earlier conversation kept replaying in Hope’s mind. How could anyone marrying an alien be certain that he would not return to his homeland—that he would even be allowed to stay on in this country! Chinese students and merchants had so far been spared from the Exclusion Acts that banned new immigration of Chinese laborers, but who could tell how long their exemption would continue? Perhaps Donald and Ben Joe would be among those thousands who planned to take advantage of the Great Fire and claim they were born in America, but Hope doubted they’d get away with it, and she knew Paul would never stoop to such lies. A man who believed as fervently as Paul in the democratic future of his homeland would surely be among the first to return when the Imperial system was toppled. Much as this prospect daunted her, it also excited—and even reassured—her, in a way. China could hardly present more obstacles than America had thrown up against them, and what could be more fascinating than to witness the transformation of an ancient empire into a modern republic?

  Sarah jerked violently and rolled over, asleep. Hope pulled the muslin sheet to her chin. Whatever happened in the future, what mattered now was that she and Paul find some sanctuary where they could be alone—really alone. Last week they had met in the secret glen where he had proposed and, feeling she could bear it no longer, she had taken his hand beneath her skirts and begun to unbutton his collar, and it had been Paul who stopped her, gathering her into him, crushing her against his chest. “Soon,” he had said. “So soon.” She had loved him all the more for that, for making her trust that he loved her, though he never said so. Could not say the word for love, she thought, yet demonstrated with every fiber of his body that this was what he felt.

  She pressed her nose against the frosty window. The snow sheds had lapsed and Donner Lake appeared, mirroring the moon and clouds and black, leaning silhouettes of trees.

  The next day carried them across the scorching wastes of Nevada and the third morning across the Great Salt Flats to Ogden, Utah, at the base of the Wasatch Mountains. Here, amid clusters of parch-faced, calico-clad Mormons, the wedding party changed trains from the Central to Union Pacific, boarding the end coach to ride, together at last, the final brief leg to Evanston. But Hope’s excitement at rejoining Paul dimmed before they reached their seats. The atmosphere could not have been more different from their genteel Pullman. Here in coach, families spread their breakfast into the aisle. Miners, trappers, and frontier homesteaders hawked morning phlegm into clay spittoons. Babies squealed, and boys shot spitballs. There were no fans, and though all the windows were open, the air was a swill of smoke and dust, the hot breath of burning metal, the stink of unwashed bodies. Hope, Kathe, and Sarah squeezed into one cushionless wooden bench, while their men occupied another. Paul looked exhausted. He refused to meet Hope’s gaze, and did not even glance back when the conductor—a whistling, grandfatherly conductor, this time—came to check their tickets. Yet minutes after they were underway, Paul stood and crooked his finger for her to follow him outside, and Hope rose quite as casually as if they had planned this all along.

  She found him alone on the platform between the coach and the first of the trains many freight cars. The wheels made a frightful racket and the motion was so jarring that they had to hang on to the railing to keep upright. Before them loomed the gray-green and purple span of the Wasatches. Hope felt less casual now that they were actually alone. There was something in Paul’s expression that warned against either talk or touch.

  When he finally spoke, his voice was so low she had to read his lips. “These days,” he said, “I have chance to think. There is much you do not know. I did not think to tell you. My father arrange my first marriage when I am seven years old. After I marry, I go to study in Hong Kong. My wife is dead five years.” He paused. “Cholera.” He passed a hand over his hatless forehead and gave a start, as if the sensation of his own hairline surprised him. Hope realized with some alarm that she had seen those coolies rub their foreheads in just that way when Kathe fell among them. A nervous reaction, a habit. Paul had expected the same smooth sensation and was surprised to find it changed.

  They were climbing, the temperature dropping. Hope shivered. “You told me all that,” she said.

  But before he could answer, they entered a tunnel, and in that sudden, unexpected blackness he pulled her into his arms and held her so hard that she could feel th
e reverberation of stone and iron and steam in his bones as well as her own. The smell of his skin and hair seemed inseparable from the damp mineral smells of the mountain. She closed her eyes, and the darkness deepened, the magnified clattering of the wheels seemed to merge with Paul’s heartbeat. It was a terrifying and wondrous sensation that left her aghast when, just before the darkness lifted, he released her.

  “You must know.” He watched her closely. “I have one son, one daughter.”

  Nothing he had ever said or done, least of all in the preceding moments, prepared her for this announcement. She had known—assumed—he must have made love to his wife, but he had left her so soon and so young. Hope had told herself that he was hers now, that they could discover each other through the light of marriage as if they had been reborn. But here, in one simple statement, Paul had not only wiped away her naive fantasy but cast into doubt her judgment of him and possibly their entire future together.

  She clutched the railing as the train swerved. “Did you plan all along to tell me like this? Here? Now?”

  Before he could answer they plunged into another tunnel, but this time the blackness and noise divided them. Her quip about dropping through the core of the earth echoed in her ears—and Sarah’s bitter reply. She was right, Hope thought, I am a dreamer. What could he possibly say that would soothe me? That his life in China doesn’t matter? That he has no intention of ever returning to the family he left behind? That he was terrified if he told me, he’d lose me?

  When they emerged, Paul stood as before, one shoulder braced against the door into the coach, both hands thrust deep in his jacket pockets.

  “I might never forgive you, you know.”

  “In China—” he began, but his pedagogic tone inflamed her all over again.

  “I don’t care how it is in China!” she shouted. “Don’t you understand, Paul? Your children will be my stepchildren. They will be brother and sister to our children. How could you not tell me this!”

  “I tell you I married. I think you do not wish to know more.”

  Hope shuddered. “How old are they?” she said, looking away. “Where are they?” But her voice sprang up again as she suddenly understood the true source of her distress. “How could you leave them and never even mention their existence!”

  Paul rubbed his lips together. He waited until the thunder of the wheels had drowned out the last echo of Hope’s cry. Then he answered her. “My daughter, Mulan, is eldest, eleven years. My son, Jin, now nine years.” He leveled his eyes to Hope’s. “They live in Hankow, Hsin-hsin. They live with my mother.”

  Over the next three hours, as she resumed her place beside Sarah and Kathe, Hope’s anger over Paul’s revelation subsided, but it left in its place a weight that dulled her senses. She had no access to the excitement that should surround her wedding day. Instead she mourned the fact that she would not wear white, that her father would not give her away—was, by her own choice, not even here. She was about to become daughter-in-law to a Chinese concubine, stepmother to two children who would surely be poisoned against her before she ever laid eyes on them. The worst was that she could not tell whether this last detail was a source of sorrow or relief.

  Kathe interrupted her thoughts with a hushed but urgent question. “Why so much kiss-kiss?”

  Hope followed her gaze across the aisle to a young couple locked in passionate embrace. She shrugged.

  “No,” insisted Kathe with a wave of her arm. “Everyone!”

  “Didn’t you know?” said Sarah too loudly. “Evanston’s a conjugal boomtown. A regular Niagara Falls.”

  For the first time Hope lifted up and saw that, in addition to the hardbitten miners, homesteading families, and Chinese journeymen, a disproportionate number of seats were taken by intensely preoccupied couples. Some were dressed in farmer’s denims, some in dandy suits and frills. Some were old, some young, some giddy, some numb. Some had their arms intertwined while others sat biting their lips. With a shock Hope realized that all these couples were suffering from variations of the same premarital jitters that she herself was feeling. Well, not quite the same. None of these husbands-to-be, she imagined, already had children in China.

  “I know why we had to come here,” said Hope, “but why so many of them?”

  “God is business,” answered Donald, standing behind her and stretching his arms to the rack above his head.

  “Other states demand long wait.” Paul spoke quietly, leaning forward with his elbows on the back of Hope’s seat. “But not Wyoming. Evanston first train stop over border. This why so many lovers.”

  “Lovers.” The word spun her around to face him. “Like us?”

  It was a direct challenge. And a plea. To heal. To promise. To put a name to this business they had together.

  His face tightened.

  “Why can’t you say it?” she demanded.

  The train stopped, pitching them and all the other passengers backward and forward in a wave. Around them, their companions busied themselves with their bags as if none had heard Hope. Paul stooped to pick up his black satchel, then reached for the carpetbag containing her wedding clothes. There was a spacious dignity to his movements, a smoothness as hard and obdurate as granite.

  “Please.” It was no request. He was directing her to step into the aisle, place one foot in front of the other, and join him in the procession of men and women who were leaving this train to be married.

  Hope swallowed hard and followed him. Just as Mary Jane warned she would.

  Why, she berated herself. Why did love and stubbornness have to make a person so blind! But then there was Paul at the foot of the steps, his weary face upturned, hands reaching to help her down, to lift her toward him.

  “Yes,” he whispered when only she could hear. “Yes. Lovers.”

  3

  Spread along the southern bank of the Bear River, Evanston was a bustling town with wide mud streets and wooden sidewalks, electric lights, abundant saloons, an opera house—and, to Hope’s surprise, throngs of Chinese conducting all manner of business. Celestials laced their way through the crowds around the depot, rode horses, and reined in mule teams. They appeared in upstairs windows and on hotel verandahs, in shop doorways and beside corner fruit and vegetable stands. With their crisp white serving jackets or loose blue coats, swinging queues, and penchant for hats—everything from Stetsons and derbies to ribboned straw boaters—they did not so much stand out from the crowd as quietly dominate it. All the laborers driven out of Rock Springs, Hope thought, must have found refuge here in Evanston. Strip away the tourists and it looked as though the Chinese might comprise the majority. Yet these were not their businesses, their hotels, their homes facing Front Street. The Chinamen lived in a collection of shanties submerged in cook smoke, barely visible from the white town and downwind of the tracks.

  Hope looked to Paul, who was walking apart from her with the other men. How different they appeared, these handsome young moderns. The best of both worlds, she told herself. How could anyone confuse Paul with a common laborer? Certainly, these sojourners would not make that mistake. Just see how they looked at him, with awe, dumbstruck. The way they unconsciously reached up to check that their own pigtails were still fastened to their heads. How many of them had ever written poetry? Could they read Latin? Had they memorized the entire Constitution of the United States in Chinese? She looked beyond the journeymen to the grimy blacksmith down the street, or that cat-eyed grocery boy atop his cart. She thought of the conductor’s withering glance in Oakland. None of them, of either race, were fit to black Paul’s boots.

  Hope’s mental pep talk aside, Donald did not lead the group to the grand and comfortable Union Pacific Hotel across from the depot, or to the Hotel Marx, a rather more severe but ample structure one block over. Instead, he led them with their arms full of baggage, hats tilting in the warm breeze, across oozing mud and around behind the Front Street lodgings to a small disheveled house that advertised rooms for fifty cents. There
Mrs. Cassandra Lopez greeted them with the face of a milkmaid and the voice of a goat, but she was courteous and directed them to rooms arranged in advance, where they could prepare themselves. Reverend Hills was expecting them at the Presbyterian Church at four o’clock, just one hour away.

  Hope bit back her frustration and shame, joined Sarah and Kathe to change in one room while the men piled into the other. The place was clean and cheap and available, Sarah announced as they shook out their petticoats and wedding blouses, “And we were lucky to get it. There’s a convention of sheepherders in town, if you can believe such a thing. Besides, one night hardly matters, does it?”

  Hope looked to see if Sarah was just putting on a brave face, and was stunned to catch her tippling from a tin flask. Kathe smiled and wrung her hands, signaling that Sarah must be nervous, but Hope doubted that, at least in the sense that she herself was nervous.

  “’Tis for me throat.” Sarah lowered the bottle. Her excuse was defiant, her brogue exaggerated. “Got to make sure I’ve me voice for me vows.”

  Hope could see that neither Sarah nor Kathe cared about the shabbiness of their honeymoon accommodations. Or minded the fact that, with three couples in two rooms, only one would have privacy tonight.

  Paul had never set foot in a church, but he remembered how Europeans in China would hover outside the great cathedrals after services. Beggars would prey on the Christians’ Sunday conscience. Itinerant candy makers and puppetteers would appeal to the swarming children, and rickshaw drivers would compete to whisk families away before either the enterprising or the maimed could touch them. The atmosphere surrounding China’s churches was a cross between festival and battleground, but as the wedding party approached the plaza outside the Presbyterian Church of Evanston, it became evident that, here, the festival reigned supreme.