by Aimee E. Liu
“I love you,” she cried. “You know, you know, you know I love you!”
A few nights later Hope woke from a dream of the Great Earthquake. The floor had opened and she had fallen into the arms of a man she could not see. He held her, rocked her, stroked her bare skin, but when she tried to look at him, she could not move. When she tried to speak, she could not open her eyes. And when she tried to think, she was convinced that she had died.
For several minutes she sat in the dark, desperate for consciousness. She could hear the rain on the roof, now stopping, and a dull whisking sound marked some small creature scurrying beneath the floorboards. Otherwise, the household was asleep. As you should be, she told herself, pressing her head back into the pillow. But the dream had left her restless, and her eyes, which had refused to open, now would not stay closed. She was thinking of Paul in some village hut, billeted with propagandists and guards. She was thinking of Stephen at Paradise Pool, still reaching …
She lit the lamp beside her bed. It was three-thirty. She had long intended to photograph the sunrise from Lion’s Leap, and this morning, after the rain, it would be a beauty. Hurriedly she put up her hair and dressed, threw on an old wool jacket and Paul’s broad-brimmed hat. She snuffed the lamp and tiptoed out in her stockinged feet, walking boots under one arm and the Graflex slung from the other. A few weeks ago Stephen had been talking about the role of mountains in Taoist philosophy as the birthplace of “the ten thousand things,” the place where yin and yang are forever trading places. Perhaps she could fashion an article out of this for Cadlow.
The path to Lion’s Leap followed the ridge above the Manns’, and though it was too dark to see her watch—she hadn’t brought a lantern—Hope calculated that it was about four when she reached their turnoff. She saw no lights. The only sounds were the soughing treetops and the hiss of the running stream. Yet she stopped as if she had detected something out of the ordinary. She scanned the moonlit walls, the black square windows. The courtyard was empty. There was no sign of a prowler, she thought, and she had no business standing here, watching in the dark.
Still, the quiet held her. She could hear each drop of moisture fall, each rustling leaf. Each breath.
She shuddered and moved on. But she had gone only a few feet when a loud crack sounded from inside the house. Then a more measured creaking, as of furniture being moved, unwilling doors being opened. A bat swept over her head, so close that she could feel its wings. She choked back a cry and crouched down low, covering her face as Stephen’s voice rose through the darkness. “For me,” he was saying, “that’s why.”
But then the creaking began again—“Goddammit, woman!”
Hope fled. The camera beat against her hip. Her hands were coated with sweat. Her hair had come loose and her boots untied, but she kept on without stopping, stumbling over tree roots and slipping in mud. It was two miles to the Leap, straight uphill. Never once did she look back.
When she reached her destination, she could not think why she had come. The sunrise was nothing but colored air. And the valley was underwater.
Hope stepped back from the three-thousand-foot drop, kneeling against a spasm of vertigo. She was about to turn and leave when she noticed, off to her right, a finger of land rising out of a cloud. On its back grew two stunted peach trees, late fruit still clinging to the limbs.
Peaches, Hope recalled, were considered the food of Immortals, a symbol of longevity, and so, even though they were foreign to the mountain terrain, Taoist priests planted these trees in hopes of pleasing the gods. Doubtless there had once been a whole orchard on this spit of land, but the winters here were hard. These two rugged spirits alone had survived, standing side by side, close enough together that their roots must touch, though not their branches.
She lifted the camera to her eye, adjusted for the changing light. But the closer she looked, the less interested she became in the trees themselves, and the more in the space between them. Fluid, open-ended, slightly uneven and so eternally unpredictable, that empty shape had a beauty all its own, which she was only beginning to see.
Hengyang, Hunan
August 10, 1926
Dearest,
I am told dispatch will be sent to Kiukiang this evening and with little cumshaw, this letter may reach you one week’s time. It is first opportunity I have to write. I trust you can understand.
We have many victories with little bloodshed during our march from Kwangtung. Countryside people know little of revolution. Many do not know even the Manchus have fallen. All that is far away. But they know the warlords still seize their homes. They know dams and aqueducts are broken, fields flood in rain, dry up in drought, governors do nothing to fix. Or to stop usurers double their fees after each plague of locusts. All our friend Mr. Borodin and his sovetniki exploit very well.
The students of my unit remind me of myself, my days in Hupei and Japan. They keep me awake late at night to discuss theories of Marx and Abraham Lincoln, ask if I defend the slaves and American Indians in California! They amuse themselves to write manifestos and debate if social justice means all men should have only one wife or all women have many husbands. They call everyone “comrade,” distribute handbooks to villagers who cannot read, and sing Internationale in Russian that no one can understand. I am glad Mr. Borodin does not travel with us. I have heard him sing in Canton. His voice very much like a frog.
My role as elder statesman is not to sing or distribute pamphlets. I meet with local governor in each town. I drink tea and thank this warlord for receiving me. All have heard of the discipline and training of General Chiang’s cadets and of the Soviet weapons they carry. Warlord knows better than I how many of our revolutionary troops follow close behind us, that our National Revolutionary Army has doubled with new volunteers since leaving Canton. Then I invite this warlord to join our most honorable campaign, that our troops may consider him ally rather than enemy. Sometimes we visit two or three times before we reach agreement. But never more than four times.
I describe these things that you will not worry. Our progress is slow but steady. Until last week, Jin was assigned to this same unit. Now he goes ahead to Changsha. There is talk of a push to Wuhan in next weeks, and we are promised full pay with this victory.
Hope, I have no money to send now, but please do not worry. I will be paid soon. I will send to you. Still possible I can bring to you. For now, I am sure Yen takes good care of you and our babies. You are safe in our house. I keep your picture against my breast as I march. I sleep with it near me. There are many young girls in these propaganda units. They are strong and proud of their independence. Today as I watch one of them pasting up her wall poster, I remember you and Mary Jane with your banners for suffrage. My heart weeps at such memories. I do not forget you are my wife.
I am your husband, Paul
3
August 26, 1926
They’re gone. The fighting that Paul wrote about reached Hankow this week, and Anna announced rather shrilly that she and Mann must return to civilization. As the river back to Chungking is closed, they are traveling with Sarah and the boys to Shanghai. Anna is making noises about returning from there to South Africa, and Mann seems indifferent, so I expect they’ll have left by the time we get back to the city. Sarah tried to persuade me to go with them, and for practical reasons that might have made sense—if we had the funds.
But Paul’s letter has taken its toll on me, and the prospect of four or five days on the river in the Manns’ constant company seemed about as inviting as a week in chains.
I’m relieved, frankly. It was never more than infatuation. I understand that now. I look at the transformation in Anna, and I cannot help but think that it takes two. I always imagined Mann was destined for greatness—a free thinker, a champion of the poor and downtrodden, a compassionate human being. Yet now I’m inclined to believe he is not so different from those men who hang about the Shanghai clubs—men imprisoned by that fatal combination of dashing good looks and an
inborn craving for control. Oh, he means to do well. I expect that’s why he spent all those years adventuring—trying to submerge his true nature under the banners of Good Works and Meaning. Only to end up in Chungking—the end of the world—with a barren wife. He warned me clearly enough in Tientsin, but I refused to listen. I heard only that he was in love with me.
How could any two men be more opposite than Paul and Mann? One so indefatigably genuine and the other so full of unconscious guile. I think it quite possible that Paul never should have married, while Mann, I see now, would wither up and die without a wife. Yet I would not exchange my husband. Not for all the comfort and security or companionship he’s denied me. The difference between Paul and Stephen Mann is that Paul, for all his distractions and divided loyalties, genuinely loves me with all his heart, while Mann can love only the reflection I provide him of himself.
But Hope’s relief at the Manns’ departure faded as the weeks trudged on and there was no further word from Paul. While August passed into September and the days grew shorter and colder, the twin valleys rang with the hammering of boards over windows, the clink of silver and china being packed, husbands arguing fares with sedan chair carriers and wives with household servants over their season’s-end tip, or cumshaw. At last the chairs would line up by each gate, belongings piled high, restive children scolded, and the bearers would grunt their signal to hoist the poles. By the middle of the month, the valley was empty. All the local servants—including their own cook—returned to winter homes and jobs down the mountain in Kiukiang. The rafts at Paradise and Three Graces were beached, the dressing rooms padlocked, rowboats tarped. The hotels of the lower valley were shuttered, the main resort’s churches, shops, and clubs all closed. There remained only a minuscule year-round colony, the two-man police force, and, on the far side of the valley, the Kuling American School. This boarding school, with its incongruously solid and austere Tudor campus, was attended primarily by children of foreigners assigned to the interior. Its grim presence and the occasional appearance of a uniformed student in the deserted village were stark reminders, as if the family needed any, of the Leon children’s limbo.
Hope did what she could about this. Over the years, along with Pearl’s nickel romances and Morris’s Sherlock Holmes adventures, copies of Ivanhoe, Bleak House, Sister Carrie, Paradise Lost, and Howard’s End had come to Kuling. Hope now used these as assigned reading and required critical essays of the three older children. She also contrived math and physics problems, drilled them in vocabulary and geography from Paul’s tattered atlas. And while Ah-nie amused Teddy, Hope assigned herself a new series of articles for Cadlow. She wrote about building a mountain home in China, life in a Chinese resort, catching a thief in Kuling—in short, mined as much of their personal life as possible. If she was lucky, it would be three months before she saw a penny from these articles, but the work gave her the illusion of action and renewed a long neglected pact with herself, never to depend on Paul financially.
Concerned that soldiers might either fight their way into the valley or flee here from battles below, Hope gave strict instructions that everyone was to remain within sight of the house. They made group excursions to pick apples and pears in the orchard up the trail, and Yen and Morris went down to the stream to fish for the trout that was becoming their daily diet. But there were no hikes or “explores,” and cabin fever soon descended. The children played backgammon, chess, or cards, scavenged Hope’s sewing scraps to make coats, hats, and mufflers, or helped Ah-nie and Yen. But mostly, they bickered. Pearl lorded over Morris. Morris taunted Teddy. Jasmine picked on everyone, wrestling each adversary to the ground, and often bringing on tears. An imagined slight, a crumb of biscuit, the line of a song, even memories became fodder for dispute.
“I wish I had a yellow blazer like your friend Millie Lim,” Jasmine would say to Pearl.
“It’s Doris Hoagland who has that blazer.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“I should know, she’s my friend.”
“No, she’s not. You hate her.”
“Do not.”
“Yes, you do. You told me, she has a face like a turnip. Anyway, I saw Millie wearing that blazer.”
“You little liar, you don’t even know what Millie looks like.”
And so it would go, hour after hour, until at last, one of Morris’s drawers turned up a whistle, which Hope used at regular intervals in a Pavlovian and only minimally successful attempt to reign them in.
Her only consolation was the mountain itself. By October the overnight snaps of frost had turned the valley into a patchwork of magenta and gold. At the higher elevations there was snow, and in between, the pine-covered slopes smoked with mist. Every morning now a crisp filigree of ice edged the stream, and the smell of burning wood from the stove was so singular and piercing that you could practically hear it against the surrounding silence. Under other circumstances Hope imagined that this same solitude and beauty might have moved her to tears. As it was, she could not afford to cry.
“Fifth season,” Yen said one sunrise when she joined him on the verandah.
“What is fifth season?”
He waved his arm toward the view. “Old times, we have summer, winter, spring, and autumn, but also one more. Five seasons, five elements, five colors, five tones. Harmony. Fifth season comes between summer and autumn. Very short. Very bright.”
Hope clasped her fingers around her teacup. “Yen?”
He squinted, watching the light.
“What do you think we should do?”
There was a pause. Then he answered quietly, “Laoyeh will send for us.”
“I know how much rice is left, but only you know exactly how much money we have.”
His eyes crossed slightly as they did when he was deep in thought. He did not speak.
“I need you to tell me, Yen.”
She knew that for Yen to admit what she suspected would involve a catastrophic loss of face. That’s why she had let the matter go this long. But, while he had stretched their funds as best he could, she also knew that he had originally budgeted only to the end of August. Frugality could take them just so far. The one shop still operating in Kuling was a combination butcher and dry goods store where they could obtain fresh pork or venison, flour, honey, cornmeal, and a few winter vegetables, but the prices were exorbitant, the black-toothed butcher Wu and his wife full of explanations why the same haw candies they had sold for a single copper a month ago now cost a thousand cash. And why the credit they had routinely extended all summer was withdrawn with the change in season.
Yen ruefully pulled from his pocket the little Moroccan-bound ledger in which he kept the household accounts—in a completely indecipherable scrawl.
But she shook her head. “I’m not accusing you, Yen. You mustn’t think that. I know you’ve accomplished miracles, and I wouldn’t blame you if we were penniless right now. But I need to know how much trouble we are in, so we can decide together what to do next.” She tilted her head back to look him in the eye. “How much do we have left?”
He spoke so softly she could hardly hear him.
She felt for a chair and sat down. “That won’t buy us even a week’s worth of rice!”
Yen pulled on his ear, his eyes calling her attention to the swaying curtains inside. The children were up.
“All right,” she said at last, with more courage than she felt. “Don’t worry. I have a plan. Come with me down to the village after breakfast?”
Yen didn’t answer. He had gone with her to the village after breakfast every day for a month.
The hike around the ridge to the lower valley took fifteen minutes in summer, half an hour when the rocks, as now, were skinned with ice. They encountered no one on the trail, and only a mangy dog and a curious goat in the deserted village. When they reached the low bungalow that passed for a police station, Hope stepped over the threshold without knocking, and Yen stooped under the eaves behind her. The police chief and his deput
y, as usual, were playing chess, drinking tea, and smoking the American cigarettes that were part of their retainer for “guarding” the foreigners’ properties. They did not look up.
“Any word?” she asked, as she did every day.
The chief’s reply was, as usual, a slow and exaggerated gap-toothed grin. He wore a grease-stained brown uniform with a leather-banded cap and dangled his cigarette from the corner of his mouth as he must have seen some American actor do in a moving picture. His deputy was a wide-faced peasant boy who seemed to develop an acute interest in his fingernails whenever Hope appeared. Both of them stank richly of garlic. Unfortunately, any word from Paul must come through this station, and Hope didn’t trust these men to bring it to her. When the Leons first came to Kuling, the chief had been solicitous, doffing his hat when he met them on the trail, demanding only minimal squeeze in exchange for signing their building permits and adding their property to his protectorate. Paul would chat with him about local warlords or military campaigns, and the chief seemed to respect him. At least he nodded vigorously and scratched his head rather than glowering as he did around the foreigners. But the bearer who had broken into their house two years earlier must have reported Paul’s tantrum during his interrogation, for the chief’s solicitude vanished thereafter.
“No word,” he said now in his thick mountain dialect, bothering neither to remove the cigarette nor to address her in the English that he spoke perfectly well.
Ordinarily she would have left it at that. She wanted no more to do with this man than was absolutely necessary, but necessity had caught up with her.
“Chief Liu,” she said, squaring her back. “Are you aware that my husband is a close associate of General Chiang Kai-shek?”
