by Aimee E. Liu
The following Sunday Hope was waiting at the pier when Paul returned from Canton.
He gave her a grim smile. “You could not wait for me at home?”
“The children have their friends over. The dogs were barking, and Dahsoo is in a pique because he burned this morning’s biscuits—I wanted to see you alone.”
He glanced at the bustle of coolies and tourists streaming to either side of them. “We are hardly alone.”
“We could go to the Confucian Temple. I just… The children know nothing about all this, and I don’t want to risk their hearing us.”
He nodded.
The Confucian Temple consisted of a pagoda and several low, open halls of the Sages where elderly men and women lit incense or knelt in contemplation. Behind was a small, empty garden where Hope and Paul found a bench beside a lotus pool, and sat for some time without speaking. Hope thought Paul’s eyes seemed unbearably heavy, his face drawn.
She had cabled him only that Mulan had died, that he must return to Shanghai. She had told herself this was for his sake, so she could tell him in person and comfort him. “I received a letter,” he said first. “Same day as your cable.
“She explained her intentions, that she would summon you as her witness.” He lifted his eyes. “I am so sorry, Hope.”
She let his words sink in, the depths of Mulan’s cruelty—and desperation.
“Was it very bad?” he asked.
“For her, it was agony.”
“And this man, this Ivan. He was there?”
“For the good it did. He seemed a rather stupid brute. He grieved. Clearly he adored her in his way, but I think she considered him little more than a device.”
“Device?”
“Or excuse. I think Mulan’s tragedy is that she was unable to love.”
Paul squinted at the reflections on the surface of the pond.
“She wrote you about Ivan, then?” Hope asked.
He coughed and lit a cigarette. “Bolshevik. One of Dalin’s customers. He spoke no Chinese, only Russian and English. Dalin speaks neither, but Mulan spoke English. So she was their translator.”
“Do you think Dalin knows?”
Paul reached inside his jacket and handed her a telegram. The message read, “Kung hsi.” Congratulations.
Hope shuddered. “What a monster.”
“Yes.” He stared at the paper. “Paul?”
“Mm.”
“Was I wrong to go to her?”
“There is no wrong or right in such matters. She would have her way. I regret only the sorrow she has brought to your eyes, Hsin-hsin. For that, I can never forgive her.”
5
Are you out of your bloody mind!” Sarah slammed her cup down in its saucer, splashing tea all over the new teakwood table. “You’re forty-two years old. You’ve a child old enough to marry. You hardly ever see your husband, and half the time you’re scraping bottom just to keep everyone fed and clothed. You can’t be serious, Hope!”
“I didn’t invite you all the way to Kuling so you could scream at me like some underfed fishwife.” Hope shoved her sewing aside and bit into a piece of salted plum, which Ah-nie swore would settle her stomach.
“Surely you don’t want this baby,” pressed Sarah.
“How could I not?”
“Easily. Isn’t Jazz enough of a handful?”
Hope looked down past the verandah railing to the stream, where the younger children were fishing with bamboo poles and bits of duck fat for lures. Eleven-year-old Morris and Sarah’s little Ken were perched on a rock, carefully angling their rods out to the deepest pool, while six-year-old Jasmine pranced along the edge, her dress soaked nearly to the waist. There was a time when Hope would have called her in and upbraided her, sent her to her room. Now she merely sighed.
“She is that. But it’s nothing to do with this baby. If I can pull it off at my grand old age, I’m sure not going to refuse!”
Sarah folded her arms. “The odds aren’t good, you know.”
“Thank you for pointing that out. I’d remind you, Sarah, that in my case, the odds have never been good, yet I’ve beaten a few of them.”
“Indeed.” Sarah squinted at her. “You really still feel… ?”
Pearl and Gerald came out of the house, slamming the screen behind them. “We’re going to pick up Dottie Cheung and meet some chums at the Paradise for a swim.” Pearl leaned down to give her mother a kiss. “Be back by six. Need us to pick up anything in the valley?”
“No thanks.” Hope hesitated. “A swim sounds good, though. Would you die of embarrassment if we brought the younger ones over?”
Pearl laughed, shaking her curls back from her face. “Spying on us, eh? Well, sure, Mama. It’s a free country.”
“Is it, now?” said Sarah. “First I’ve heard.”
Gerald piped up. “It’s what that American bloke Donald Osborne says all the time. Pearl’s soft on him.”
Pearl punched him in the arm. “Am not!”
“You’re too young to be soft on anyone,” said Hope firmly. “Now off with you. If we see you, we see you.”
“And you don’t think you’ve got your hands full?” said Sarah as the two chased each other down the trail.
Hope ignored her. “I really could use a swim.”
“You never did tell me about you and Paul.”
“You never did ask,” Hope retorted.
“Well, there was a time I thought things had pretty well dried up, least on your part.”
“Times change.” Hope stood and stretched her arms above her head, twisting from the waist. “Remember corsets? That awful feeling you couldn’t breathe.”
“You’re changing the subject.”
Hope turned and shouted to Morris to bring the others in.
Behind her, Sarah said, “Do you never even wonder about Stephen Mann?”
The nausea overcame Hope so suddenly that she vomited over the porch railing. Unperturbed, Sarah handed her a damp napkin to wipe her mouth. “You poor sop. You do, don’t you?”
“What a question! No. I don’t.”
Sarah pointed to the boys hauling Jasmine out of the stream. “Looks like she hardly needs more swimming.” Then, “Would you like some help? At forgetting him, that is?”
Hope threw her a suspicious glance.
“A few weeks back, when I took the boys over to Ste. Marie’s for their physicals, I heard one of the nurses mention Dr. Mann’s name. I asked how he was, and she showed me an announcement they’d just received about his appointment as chief of surgery at Chungking Inland Hospital.”
Hope leaned back against the railing. “Good for him.”
“The notice included a short biography.” Sarah paused. “It said he was married, Hope. To Anna Van Zyl.”
Sarah’s face brimmed with concern. In that moment, Hope despised her.
“I only tell you,” she hurried on, “because you are carrying your husband’s child, and you said you want to forget him.”
“And since when did you become so wise and noble?”
“Touchy!” Sarah waved to the fishermen tramping up the path, then reached into her shirtdress pocket. “Here.”
Hope looked at the professional card Sarah had given her. T. C. Wong, M.D., Ladies’ therapies and remedies.
“In case you change your mind about this baby,” said Sarah.
“You snake.” Hope started to rip the card, but Sarah stopped her.
“He’s first-rate.”
“I don’t want to know.”
“You needn’t,” Sarah said. “But for once in your life, Hope, don’t close off your options.”
Hope shoved the card into her sewing box to hide it from the children. When she turned, Jasmine stood dripping on the verandah steps, her face a delirious shimmer of pride, in her hand a wriggling trout.
By the following Christmas Hope was six months pregnant, nearly free of morning sickness, and (against her better judgment) expecting Paul home for dinner with W
illiam Tan and family. She had decorated the house with boughs of holly and monkey pine, had found a splendid miniature gray fir tree on Flower Street, which the children had trimmed with tiny silver bells and blown glass baubles collected over the years. Dahsoo had a suckling pig roasting, a wood fire was blazing, and the big house on Rue de Grouchy felt as homey as any on the Kansas plains. By four o’clock, the table was laid, the children were dressed in new velveteen and serge outfits, and Daisy had arrived with young Kuochang, now a handsome boy of eight and the mirror image of his mother—or aunt, as he was taught to call Suyun. Paul and William had been scheduled to arrive two nights earlier, but both wives were experienced enough to proceed on their own—the men would turn up or not.
Unfortunately, Hope had been unable to rekindle her original warm feelings for Daisy. Quite apart from her treatment of Suyun, Daisy had, since her return to Shanghai, embraced her role as a “modern woman” with a zeal that Hope found offensive. She had become enamored of foreign-style nightclubs, racetracks, and casinos. She had pursued friendships with the wives of the city’s most powerful men, including the concubines of the legendary Tu Yueh-sheng, the rags-to-riches mobster who reputedly controlled the city’s opium and arms trade. “The wives are simple girls,” she told Hope, “but what jewels they wear! What influence they have at their fingertips!” As the daughter of a favored fourth wife to a well-to-do silver merchant in Hupei, Daisy had a cultivated appreciation both for wealth and “influence” and for the ability of certain women to access both, via the bedroom. Since William’s political status was as precarious as Paul’s, Hope was not altogether surprised when rumors floated back through Pearl’s school chums (particularly the boys, who, at sixteen, already frequented the city’s most decadent entertainments) that Daisy had been seen on the arm of men who were decidedly not her husband. There was, however, no intimation that William disapproved. Paul went so far as to speculate that Daisy was serving as William’s, and by extension Sun Yat-sen’s, spy. If Sun needed reports on how many sables Ching-mei wore over her beaded gown or the number of diamonds sparkling on Jade Bell’s fingers, Hope decided the revolution must have fallen into a terminal stage. Certainly, when Daisy spoke to Hope about her adventures, this was the level of intelligence. Hope resisted her visits unless, as tonight, Paul himself had made the invitation.
And so the two women sat as twilight descended. Pearl and Jasmine were pounding out a ragtime tune on the piano. Morris had his nose in a book, and Kuochang sat with his hands between his knees, silent as a deaf-mute. Hope asked, “Where are you in school now, Kuochang?”
“I have him enrolled at the Ecole,” Daisy answered for him. “He is very happy there. Look, Ho-pah, did I show you what my William gives to me?” She pulled up the sleeve of her raw silk jacket and twisted her wrist to the light. The gold watch was encrusted with emeralds.
“Ah,” said Hope. “It’s after five. I suppose we should go ahead without them.”
Daisy’s face crumpled. “You no like?”
“It’s lovely.” Hope sighed. “William must adore you, Daisy. Morris, would you put that book down and take poor Kuochang up to your room. He must be desperately bored sitting here with us.”
“Kuochang no mind,” Daisy protested, but before Hope had a chance to press her case, the telltale flutter of voices sounded out by the front gate, and she heard Paul and William calling loudly for their suppers and their wives.
Half an hour later the two families were assembled around the large circular table in the reception hall that doubled as a formal dining room. The children sat at one side, the adults the other, with Pearl and Morris poised in between and struggling to keep up with two very different conversations.
“I hear the Chinese boys at Ecole get paddled every day,” said Jasmine, “and you’re made to carry the French boys’ towels and shine their shoes.”
“Jazz!” hissed Pearl.
Kuochang shrugged and spooned his soup. “Sometimes.”
“But you get back at them, too,” said Morris. “Don’t you?”
Hope was about to break up this discussion when she was distracted by the men’s laughter at her own side of the table. “Hope,” said William with an injured look, “do you know your husband has replaced me with a Russian as his new best friend?”
“A Russian!” Hope saw that he was joking. Nevertheless, she recoiled at the image he’d prompted, of Ivan standing over Mulan’s dead body.
Paul, seated beside her, poured some claret into her glass and urged her to drink. “William provokes you. It is Sun who is this Borodin’s best friend—to hear the Bolsheviks tell it.”
“What are you talking about?” said Hope.
William pulled himself up in his seat and placed one hand across his breast, drew a finger mustache and intoned, “Mikhail Borodin, come to save Chinese Revolution in name of Comrade Lenin”
“I hear something about this man.” Daisy licked her spoon like a cat. “His wife is American, I think. But very plain and fat.”
“In Daisy’s mind, the only thing of interest about any man is his wife,” laughed William. “I wonder what that says about me.”
“But what’s he to do with you, Paul?” There was an excessive brilliance to this banter that alarmed Hope.
“Nothing more, if I can help it.”
“Humble!” cried William. “I have never met a more humble man. I will venture that you do not know you are married to a national hero, Hope.”
“I believe I am.”
“Ah! But I hear in your voice some uncertainty. You do not know of his secret missions.”
“Which ones?”
The word “secret” had registered at the other end of the table, and now all ears were directed to William. He raised his glass and drank to the health of Paul’s children. “Your father can make a dragon smile. He can make a snake shake hands. He can change the course of rivers and turn the tides of the sea.”
The children rolled their eyes and went back to arguing about which was the best bonbonnière in the Settlement.
William continued, once more addressing Hope. “Your Paul’s silver tongue has held off more than one warlord from Sun’s door. He has traveled to Peking under cover of darkness. He has brought troops to the rescue when our Dr. Sun was in his darkest hours. And for this, young Borodin comes along and puts our hero on trial!”
Hope’s spoon struck her bowl. “On trial!”
“Let William tell the story.” Paul patted her hand. But for Hope, who knew little of the rapidly mounting influence of Russian advisors in Sun’s ranks, and even less of the young sovetnik Borodin, it would take the entire dinner, plus hours more over tea and brandy, before she had a clear understanding of just what her husband had endured these past weeks.
Mikhail Borodin was a veteran of Russia’s recent Bolshevik revolution, a friend of Stalin’s, and a professional revolutionist who had come to China by way of England and America (where he had indeed taken a wife and produced two American-born children). He had arrived in Canton not three months earlier to woo Sun with promises of Russian funding, arms, and all the military expertise required to secure Sun’s power base in the south. Sun called Borodin his “Lafayette,” and looked to him to help the Kuomintang develop its own army while, at the same time, building a secure and self-supporting government. Borodin had promptly proven his usefulness by directing Sun’s victory against a new rebellion by the Cantonese warlord Ch’en Chiung-ming.
Paul, who was on the Kuomintang’s Executive Committee, had his first run-in with Borodin during the negotiations for this campaign. The key to Sun’s success, said Borodin, lay in mobilizing the masses into a volunteer army of millions. But in order to attract these peasants and workers, Sun’s government must promise labor reform. Land must be redistributed to those who actually worked it. Wages must be raised. Workdays must be shortened, taxes controlled.
Recalling the strains between Jin and Paul on these very issues, Hope could imagine her husband’s respon
se to Mikhail Borodin. “Big mouth,” Sun Yat-sen used to call Paul in jest. He still had not learned his lesson.
Paul explained to Borodin that these reforms would constitute treason against Sun’s strongest supporters: the scholars, gentry, and merchant classes responsible for China’s liberation from the Manchus. They had given their blood and millions of dollars for Dr. Sun’s vision of a new China, and they did not expect as repayment to be stripped of everything they owned. Moreover, they would marshal their considerable resources to ensure that this did not happen. Paul informed Borodin that the Executive Committee refused to sign his decree.
Borodin went ahead and organized a patchwork of troops from the Chinese Communist and socialist organizations and local volunteers. Some six hundred recruits were sent to the front. The warlord backed down, and Borodin claimed Sun’s confidence. He needed the “old man,” as he called Sun, to achieve his aims in China. But he did not need opposition like that mounted by Liang Po-yu.
Two days before they were to return to Shanghai for Christmas, Paul and William, who was also a member of the Executive Committee, were called to meet with Borodin at the old cement factory on the outskirts of Canton, which Sun used as his headquarters during periods when the Presidential Palace fell to warlord control. Guards in Kuomintang uniforms stood by the rear door and bowed respectfully as the two entered. More guards stood inside. The two men were ushered into a large square chamber, empty except for a bank of straight-backed chairs and a single table at which Borodin was seated. Borodin was a decade younger than Paul and William, but several inches taller, powerfully built, with a large square forehead, glowering dark eyes, and a thick mustache that seemed to give him a perpetual sneer. He nodded to Paul and William and asked them to be seated while they awaited the other “witnesses.”
The atmosphere was highlighted, William said, by a continuous rain of dust particles and the incessant flapping of a pigeon trapped beneath the exposed roof beams.
At length three more members of the committee entered, all clearly as mystified as William and Paul. “Comrades,” Borodin addressed them in English, which, because Borodin spoke no Chinese, was rapidly becoming the “official” language of the Kuomintang. “Russia’s Supreme Soviet was not fully established until Vladimir Lenin killed a few of its oldest members—those whose true hearts still lay with the bourgeois regime. It has been decided that the Chinese Kuomintang should do the same.”
