by Aimee E. Liu
Dr. Mann came back on foot to Hope’s cart. It seemed all roads had been blockaded around North Station. Immediately, she was down and hurrying alongside him, shushing the baby, who had awakened and was now writhing against her grip. Jed and Mann seemed to know instinctively not to challenge Hope’s persistence, and by flanking her they pushed a wedge through the crowd. But the guards who had been posted at the barricades might have been carved of granite. They held steel bayonets across their chests. Their helmet straps dug into their chins, and their eyes were cold and automatic. Dr. Mann showed his identification, and the hospital attendant barked his orders, at which the soldier he was addressing flicked his eyes for them to pass. But when Jed and Hope tried to go, too, the same guard brandished his weapon.
“It’s all right,” said Mann. “You two stay where you are, and as soon as I know anything I’ll send Tsu-chu here back with the news.” He indicated his attendant, then hesitated. “Or I’ll come myself.”
They disappeared among the green and blue uniforms.
“It’ll t-t-t-turn out all r-r-r-r-right,” Jed said, and Hope looked at him for the first time since they’d left the shop. Somehow, quickly as everything had happened, he had managed to equip himself with two cameras.
“Go ahead,” she said softly. “We’ll be fine.” He leaned toward her and brushed a hand over the baby’s head, then edged off along the barricade, snapping photographs of the soldiers, the gawking crowd, the British captains of industry miffed at missing their train.
Momentarily composed, if the sensation of having molten lead poured through one’s veins qualifies as composure, Hope gripped the wiggling Morris and combed the crowd for evidence that her fears were unfounded. Through the patchwork of dialects she was able to make out snatches of the rapidly fomenting rumors, but every detail seemed to point to the worst.
“—on the afternoon train.”
“Yüan’s men—”
“—victim a Nationalist.”
“Try get to Sun—”
“Ch’ing” she said, approaching the guard once again. “Shei ssu le?” When not a muscle moved in response, she lifted the baby for him to see. “Wo hsiang yeh hsü shi wo hsien sheng” I think the dead man may be my husband.
The soldier’s chinstrap quivered as he shot her a disgusted look, ignoring the child. “Pu k’o neng” he muttered. “Ssu te shih ko Chung-kuo jen” The dead man is Chinese.
“K’o neng” she threw back as Morris let out a wail. “Wo hsien sheng shih Chung-kuo jen.” My husband is Chinese.
The man’s eyes widened and his grip on the bayonet tightened, not so much out of malice, Hope told herself, as disbelief. After a long hesitation his lips moved, and the air streamed between them in a barely audible confession. “Wo pu chih tao” I don’t know.
She drew a shaky breath and begged Morris to stop crying, stay still. He was nearly a year old, and ordinarily she wearied after holding him more than a minute or two, but although she had been standing here nearly half an hour, her arms felt nothing, her legs and feet nothing. Only her heart seemed to be ripping in two, and her head clattered with the constant dodging of the shadow looming ever closer. What would she do?
“Hope!” Jed’s head wagged between a pair of shoulders and he flung an arm to direct her attention back toward the station. Stephen Mann was throwing a thumbs-up from the platform.
For a moment the mixed signal of this victory gesture and Mann’s grim gaze confounded her, but then another voice, closer, cried out her name, and her attention swerved downward, through the drab colors to her husband pushing toward her. At the sight, the tears she had managed all this time to fend off, rose in a cold tide. It was no use trying to blink them back, she was sobbing now uncontrollably as Paul rushed past the disbelieving soldier and swept her and Morris into his arms.
“Silly wife,” he murmured. “I am not important enough to be in danger.”
But Sung Chiao-jen, the Kuomintang’s thirty-one-year-old leader and constitutional hard-liner, was important enough, most notably because he had publicly spoken out against Yüan Shih-k’ai’s autocratic leadership. Sung’s assassin was identified as a soldier who had been hired by a Shanghai gangster, but it was understood that the gangster was serving Yüan’s agents.
That evening, as Paul and Hope lingered alone and silent over the remains of their supper, Paul foresaw the worst. The past year of roundtable meetings, posing for pictures, listening to speeches in chambers designed to imitate those of the great Western congresses, strategizing endlessly in smoke-filled banquet halls—it all added up to a wishful charade. Sung’s assassination proved that Yüan Shih-k’ai had no interest in democracy, even with himself as President. He wanted to be Emperor.
“Paul,” Hope interrupted his thoughts. “I can’t bear this.”
The anguish in her voice forced his eyes up to hers. That blue.
She reached across the table and touched his arm.
He studied her small, slender fingers, the pale oval nails with their pearly moons. She did not rip at her hands as he did when agitated, did not tear her own flesh to obscure her fears. No, his wife contained herself inside her skin with the discipline of a general. Only the timbre of her voice, the changing blue of her eyes, her touch betrayed the true intensity of her emotions. “If I resign right away,” he said slowly, “this will call too much attention. But by summer, I think so.”
5
Three months later, Hope sat with the children on the back terrace reading poetry about cold, wet gloom. She meant to wring some psychological relief from this steaming June afternoon by evoking hurricanes and blizzards, but the children would have none of it. They squirmed and whined, were tired and sticky and wanted a drink. She was midway through Longfellow’s “Rainy Day” when Yen appeared with their reprieve. “Missy and Master have guests.”
“We’re not expecting anyone.”
“Master say Taitai must come,” Yen elaborated. Hope scowled.
If these were Paul’s guests they should have no desire for her presence. “Babies come,” he added significantly.
Oh dear, she thought. We’re being presented. She glanced at her wrinkled blue dimity, at Pearl in her stained pinafore and Morrie’s frayed romper. “Hurry,” she said to Pearl, “go comb your hair and change your dress.” She picked up Morris, who’d gone scrambling on all fours after a lizard, and called for Ah-nie to put him in a clean suit.
Paul met her in the hallway. He had arrived from Peking only that morning. “Why didn’t you tell me company was coming?” she demanded.
He put his finger to his lips and whispered. “I want to surprise you.”
“Surprises again! I look a fright.”
He turned her around appraisingly, and with his fingertips gently pushed the damp strands up from her nape. “You look well, I think. My old friend William Tan has brought his wife Dai-tzi to live in Shanghai.”
“But—”
“No but,” he said firmly, pulling her hands from their smoothing and straightening and crossing them demurely in front of her. “You remember William?”
Hope grimaced. “Yes,” she said. “I remember.”
William had changed little since Hope’s encounter with him in San Francisco. The same broad squareness of shoulder and head, half spectacles balanced on a nose that seemed far too delicate for the sturdy face. His young wife, Dai-tzi, also seemed too delicate for William Tan. Slender and fine-boned as a sparrow, she swayed beside him on bound feet, whatever pain that entailed well concealed behind a bursting smile.
With the ebullience he seemed to reserve for Chinese social occasions, Paul greeted William like long lost kin. The men bowed and laughed and nodded, stretching their necks against their starched collars and complaining of the heat in a mixture of English and Mandarin. Dai-tzi giggled, lifting her hand to cover her mouth. Hope suggested they sit on the terrace, where there was at least a slight breeze.
When they were settled William said to Hope, “My wife has been eag
er to make your acquaintance. She is from the interior and has not met American ladies before.” Dai-tzi leaned over to pat Hope’s knee. Then she pointed to herself and sat up expectantly. “She would be honored if you will choose for her an American name.”
Hope glanced at Paul. He could not have been more pleased with himself. Surprise, indeed.
“Dai-tzi,” she said thoughtfully, considering the girl’s sunny face, the crisp green of her dress, the white flower in her hair. “Why not Daisy?”
“Day-see?” The young woman cleared her throat, elaborately serious. “Daisy.” She lifted her hand and again giggled behind it. William nodded his approval. Daisy, she was.
The amahs appeared holding the children’s hands, and Daisy clucked over them unabashedly, touching their hair, fondling their clothing, and pinching them under the chin in the way Hope knew Pearl loathed. It never failed to amaze her how a people so rigid about physical contact between consenting adults could be so uninhibited—even offensively intrusive—when it came to touching children. She rewarded Pearl and Morris for their forbearance by allowing them to load their plates with cakes and sandwiches before escaping to the nursery.
William turned to Paul with a question about the latest outbreak of fighting against Yüan Shih-k’ai in the southern provinces—which some were optimistically calling a Second Revolution.
“They don’t stand a chance,” answered Paul. “There is no central leadership, little popular support. Yüan has the money and the strength.”
“Then maybe it will end soon, and we can go up to Kuling,” Hope said, only half joking. She’d had her heart set on Kuling this summer, and if the rebels couldn’t possibly win, what was the point of their blockading the river?
William gave her a benign glance and stroked his chin. “I met with Dr. Sun on my way through Japan. He seems to have made his peace with Yüan.”
Paul said, “If he admits the truth, all his work is in vain. So he takes the gold Yüan throws at him and makes speeches in Japan. Sometimes dreamers can bring about miracles, but sometimes those miracles fade like a dream.”
“You sound bitter, old friend. Have you given up your dream so soon?”
Paul stared absently at the plate of cakes. “Sometimes I think it was a mistake to stay away so long.”
William snorted. “Our mistake was not distance but age. Youth believes all things possible.”
“And you?” Paul asked. “Where do you stand?”
“I believe Sun will return to his senses and lead the Kuomintang to victory.”
Hope was straining to interpret all this (the men had reverted to Mandarin), when Daisy abruptly reached over and touched one of the damp ringlets on her cheek. Hope started so violently that she splashed tea all over her feet. Not the least perturbed, Daisy bent down and yanked up the hem of Hope’s dress, not to help wipe the mess as Hope supposed, but to admire her white button-strap shoes.
“Chen mei,” cooed Daisy. She cupped her hands together with a questioning expression and lowered them beside Hope’s feet.
“No.” Hope laughed, looking to Paul for assistance, but he and William were deep in talk now, paying no attention. Unable to think how else to respond, she put her sopping napkin aside and reached to unbutton her shoe. “You see, I just have small feet. No binding.”
Daisy stared, mesmerized. Then she put out one of her own tiny feet. No more than three inches long, it was about half the size of Hope’s, but shaped more like a hoof than a foot. Hope winced, but complimented her guest on the intricate floral embroidery that covered her homemade shoes. It was the ultimate insult, in Hope’s opinion, that after crippling themselves to satisfy this barbaric custom, Chinese women were then required to make by hand the delicate slippers that would conceal the true horror of their maiming.
“Wo hsiang mai i shuangyu ken de hsieh!” Daisy clapped her hands and bounced in her seat.
“I’m sorry to interrupt, Paul,” said Hope. “I know she’s saying she wants something, but I can’t make out what.”
Paul, who had been paying more attention than he let on, arched an eyebrow. “She says she would like a pair of Western-style shoes with heels like yours.”
“But that’s not possible, is it?”
William tugged at his lapels. “Even though Daisy is from a very old landowning clan, she has grown up in Hankow. She is literate, and she is very interested in revolution. She understands China must modernize, and ladies, too, must change the old ways. Only yesterday she asks my permission to remove her binding cloths. I have discussed this with your husband. He says maybe you can help my wife. Take her shopping for Western shoes, teach her to walk like a modern lady.”
Hope was at a loss. “I’m afraid this will be very painful for Daisy, but of course I’ll do what I can—if this is what she genuinely wishes.”
William nodded. “As I recall, you have also worked as an English language teacher. I wonder if you will consider teaching Daisy … We will pay, of course.”
“I wouldn’t think of taking your money!” Hope glanced at Paul for approval and found him beaming. “I’m delighted to teach Daisy English. And she can help me polish my Mandarin.”
William turned, spoke rapidly to his wife, who blushed and nodded. “She says she, too, will be delighted.”
Hope clasped her hands and bowed to Daisy. “I look forward—”
She was interrupted by the unmistakable stutter of gunfire in the distance. By the old Chinese City, from the sound of it.
“So they’re going to try,” said William calmly.
“Try what!” Hope was unable to conceal her alarm.
“The Chiangnan arsenal near the West Gate. And maybe the yamen.”
Paul waved a hand. “No need to worry, Hope. They won’t dare to touch the Concessions.”
“Well, I don’t see how you can be so sure! What if Yüan decides to make a purge of the Kuomintang members hiding here?”
“French law protects us. Anyway, it sounds as if Yüan’s troops have plenty to keep them busy by the river.”
Hope followed Daisy’s panicked gaze to the dark bluff of smoke now filling the southern sky. As her fear for the immediate family receded, she thought of Paul’s mother’s house in Nantao, a mile, maybe less, from the arsenal. Her stepson, Jin, was staying there while attending summer courses at St. John’s. Theoretically, he was “looking after Nainai’s courts,” and this was why he had not been free to visit his father’s house. Hope understood the real reason: Nainai had prohibited him from setting foot in the home of the yang p’otse. However, if his life were endangered by staying in Nantao …
“Paul,” she said over another sputter of gunfire, “don’t you think Jin had better come stay with us?”
He glanced at her mildly. “The house is not in danger—”
“Regardless, he’s only sixteen. He’s bound to be frightened staying there with no one but servants for protection.”
Paul demurred. He was not willing to violate his mother’s orders. He did not speak these words, but they were clear in his eyes—and in his abrupt haste now to bid their guests goodbye. However close a friend William might be, Paul would not air their family business in front of him and Daisy. Hope waited, determined not to cost him face, but with each passing second her will became more inflexible. By the time the door shut and Paul turned back she was absolutely convinced of imminent peril if Jin remained in Nantao.
“You will never forgive yourself if anything happens to him,” she said. “And neither will your mother.”
Paul would not look at her. He withdrew to his study. By nightfall, Jin had been quartered in Hope’s sewing room.
The bombardment continued through the next month, with attacks focused on the arsenal and yamen—the Chinese governor’s compound—and on the Woosung forts at the mouth of the delta. Within certain blocks of the fighting, the flag of victory might be traded back and forth after every five rounds, but as Paul had predicted, neither Yüan nor the rebels dared violate
the international zone. Within days the North China Daily was advising foreigners to resume their routines with only a casually cocked eye for stray shrapnel or shells. Not even the missionary schools and hospitals immediately around the arsenal were evacuated.
Despite all these reassurances and Paul’s own unhappy assessment of the rebellion’s futility, Hope insisted that Jin remain with them. In truth, she was delighted by the excuse to get acquainted with Paul’s son. Removed from Mulan and his nainai’s influence, he proved himself a sweet, gentle-spirited boy who, if anything, was as glad for the contact with his stepmother as she was. Though his scholarly upbringing had given him a basic command of written English, he was eager to practice speaking and so became an enthusiastic third once Hope and Daisy’s lessons got underway. (These tended to center conversationally around Hope’s experiences as a suffragist, her youth among the American pioneers, and her reminiscences of San Francisco during the Gay Nineties—subjects that aroused, in Jin and Daisy, romantic fascination, and, in Hope, a surprisingly cathartic nostalgia.) At the same time, Jin was more than willing to be distracted whenever his half-brother wormed into his lap. Hope would hear laughing and find the two of them tumbling across the floor, or Pearl clambering onto Jin’s back yelling “Giddyap, Jin! Giddyap!” Often he would return from his day’s classes at St. John’s bearing English nougats and butterscotch. He staged a puppet show for Pearl’s fifth birthday, and most afternoons he played ball with the children or organized games of tag with the neighbors. At bedtime, he would cast paper-cut shadows of dragons and ponies across the nursery wall.
After his initial reluctance had passed, even Paul seemed to relish Jin’s presence. The two often sat late into the night talking about Jin’s schoolmates, many of whose fathers were old friends of Paul’s, and about the divisions that were forming between the scholars who believed in traditional gentry class rule and those who were convinced the country needed modern leadership. Occasionally they argued.
