Valley of Amazement (9780062107336)

by Tan, Amy

  He was precisely on time. I took him through the back door into the kitchen and we climbed the narrow stairs that the servants used. Halfway up, he asked if I was sure this was wise. “Wise?” I said. “How could this ever be wise?” We passed the landing to my bedroom and continued up the curling staircase to the turret. I had draped the room with Indian saris and covered the floor with a mishmash of small Persian carpets I had cut up, ones discarded because of cigar burns and spilled wax. A ladder of seven steps led to a sleeping loft adjacent to a bay window. A thick featherbed sat on the loft floor. This was my retreat, where I read and napped, where I sometimes hid when I wanted to kick and scream and did not know why. I had already lit the candles, sprinkled the quilt with rosewater, and set Classical Anatomy of Calisthenics in the bookshelf with its spine jutting out. We climbed up and I plopped on my back with a friendly smile, and we began. He provided kisses on my mouth and neck, these being gentler by my request. He undid the buttons on my blouse, but with more deftness than before, having practiced during the intervening hours, I suspected. I had already removed my undergarments, all of them, so we would not have to waste time with the rest. My Would-Be Vortex seemed hesitant about what we were about to do, because I had just told him I was Professor Minturn’s daughter—and I admit, it was just to see his reaction. He was awestruck as he watched me take off my clothes, and he stared at my pubis, before surveying the rest of my illicit parts from breasts to buttocks with religious solemnity. After enough staring had gone on, I helped him remove his clothes. His penis swung out, and I ran a finger up one vein and down another. What a strange apparatus. He groaned and was about to fall on me when I told him to wait. I then pulled out the pictorial book from the low shelf and showed him the calisthenics exercise I thought we might try. My selection looked simple enough to do and required no standing, which would have been difficult because of the low height of the ceiling. The young Titan nodded, accepting the challenge. I swung my legs up and back, fully exposing all my privates, and he got into the correct position, one knee by my waist, the other by my rump, and his head squeezed halfway under the crook of my leg. But now his penis was out of alignment with my pudenda. So he checked the photograph, made an adjustment of his left knee, and that slight movement was enough for him to expend himself on my thigh. I was hugely disappointed—”You’ve ruined it!”—and was sorry I had not stopped myself from blurting that out. He was crushed. After half an hour, he recovered from embarrassment and we laughed about our overexcitement. But when we tried the same position, he achieved the same result. He begged me not to tell anyone and promised he would practice. The following night, he came fortified with whiskey. He chose an easier calisthenics position, and finally, after bearing down and pushing and making adjustments to see if he was in the right place, he penetrated me. I bore the pain well, I thought, and I was glad to be done with the opening of the portal. But all at once, he sat bolt upright, patted the sheets, and realized he had caused the spillage of virgin blood. He was deeply troubled. I said to him: “If you had known, what would you have done instead—packed up your pulsating penis and gone home?” We had another four encounters, which improved his stamina somewhat. But I did not think I was receiving full advantage, given I had not yet experienced anything I would have equated with geologic disasters.

  Over the next year, I recruited half a dozen willing young men from my post on the university lawn. Most of them acted as if they had seduced me. They became solicitous once we were in bed. “Are you sure?” “Do you mind?” They were older than I by a few years, yet they were immature, exuding confidence one moment and then awkward boyish uncertainty the next. I disliked having to encourage the bashful ones without sounding critical or teacherlike. If my young man was nervous, I took this as a sign he felt that what we were doing was morally wrong. I would have none of that. One Adonis was quite effective. Bad weather appeared—a small whirlwind, high waves—but after two months of jouncing, I was bothered by his dull personality. I continued with him and took on another who was less adept but able to hold his end of a conversation after we were finished.

  Mother and Father, meanwhile, were oblivious to my sexual adventures, just as they had been to nearly everything I did. I don’t know why I expected more from them. If you have never had love, how would you know that you were missing it? Perhaps it had always been part of My Pure Self-Being to be born expecting a mother and a father’s attention—their care, more important than a bug in resin or a fetish manikin. That place of higher importance would have made me believe I was loved.

  I wanted Mother and Father to know about my promiscuity—to punish them and have them look at me with open disgust. I could then tell them in shouts of fury how selfish they were, how great my own disgust was, and I would name incidents I had written down. I would tell my father that I had enjoyed many volcanic eruptions, like those discharged by pen in letters to him.

  ON THE NIGHT my Chinese emperor came to dinner, my parents invited eight other guests who were frequent visitors to our house: Dr. and Mrs. Beekins—an astronomer and his wife—an opera singer, Miss Huffard, and her lover, Charles Hatchett; my piano teacher, Mr. Maubert, and his maiden sister, Miss Maubert; the esteemed suffragette Mrs. Croswell; and a well-regarded landscape artist, Miss Pond, whose reputation included having had an illegitimate child she had had to give away. My father visited her often for well-described sex.

  We gathered in the salon for sherry. Father introduced our Chinese guest as “Mr. Lu Shing. The first name, Lu, is actually his family name, and Shing is the given one.”

  “To Americans, our names are backward,” Lu Shing said with an amused smile. “But in China, it’s the natural order. Family comes first in name and duty. I go by both names, Lu Shing, always together, the son indivisible from the family.”

  Lu, I thought, like Lucia and Lulu. When it was my turn to be introduced, Father called me Lulu, and I corrected him and said: “Lucia.”

  “Ah, she is Lucia tonight,” Father said, and winked. My face grew heated.

  “Mr. Lu Shing,” the astronomer said, “your English is better than mine. How can that be?”

  “British tutors from the age of five. My father is in the Ministry of Foreign Relations and saw an advantage in speaking English.”

  He is privileged, I said to myself. He has social standing. He has a beautiful voice.

  “Lu Shing is a student of Western art,” Father said. “He has been under the tutelage of landscape painters of the Hudson River School for the last three years. And now he has the rare opportunity to apprentice with Albert Bierstadt, who is returning to California to capture the Farallon Islands and Yosemite once again.”

  Murmurs of congratulations followed.

  ”I am more of a butler and porter,” Lu Shing said. “I arrange for accommodations and travel needs. But I am indeed privileged to help. I’ll be able to watch Mr. Bierstadt at the earliest stages of his work.”

  Father started a lively conversation over the differences between American art and Chinese art, oil paints and black ink. Lu Shing talked easily, as if these people, many of them years older, had been friends through the ages. He was politely deferential at the right times, but anyone could see that he had outshone them in whatever he said. He showed appreciation when they expressed ideas he had not heard of before. He seemed secretly amused much of the time.

  Father threw out more conversational topics, as if he were teaching a class: Chinese traditions and Western influence. The changing society of Shanghai. Changing art forms. The influence of art on society and vice versa. Every time Father started another boring subject, I wanted to shout, “Enough!”

  “How do we capture a moment of emotion in art?” Miss Pond said, and looked at Father.

  Opinions made the rounds, and when it was Lu Shing’s turn, he said, “The moment is altered as soon as I try to capture it, so for me, it’s impossible.”

  How true, I thought. Moments are gone as soon as you think about them.
r />   Father was unstoppable, Mother was quiet, and Miss Pond admired too often what Father said. And then Miss Maubert also chimed in with much praise for Father, and with shining eyes, and so did Mrs. Croswell, who had a coquettish tilt to her head. Even Dr. Beekins, the astronomer, had a twinkle in his eye for Father. They were enamored of him. Were they his coven of sex acolytes? Did Lu Shing notice? Was I the only one who saw it? All around us, the conversation grew louder. They spoke as a chorus on Redemption. The symbolism of gods. Christian salvation. Vice and virtue. Purgatorio. Sins. Karma. Fate.

  “Lu Shing,” Father said, “what’s your opinion on fate?”

  “I am Chinese, Dr. Minturn,” he said. “I cannot recommend it highly enough.”

  I went to stand by him and tried to look calm and sophisticated. “Mr. Lu Shing, I could not tell if you were joking. Do you truly believe in Oriental fate?”

  “I do indeed. We are all here by fate, Oriental or otherwise.”

  I was about to ask him more, but Father tapped his wineglass and announced that we would now see what Lu Shing had achieved while studying in the United States. He held up a small, framed painting. Even from a distance, I could tell it was a masterpiece. It had lovely colors. And I saw by the faces on others that they had the same opinion. The painting was passed around, and praise upon praise were heaped on both the painting and the artist: “I did not expect to see such skill in a student.” “The colors are rich yet subtle.” “It captures a perfect moment.”

  Finally, the painting reached me. My first feeling was eeriness. I recognized the place in the painting. I had lived there. Yet I knew that was impossible. The light of the room behind me disappeared, the voices of the others faded away, and I was transported into the painting, to the long green valley. I felt its atmosphere as real and present, the touch of its cool air, and I had a complete understanding that this was my home, and the solitude was not loneliness but the clarity of who I was. I was that long green valley, unchanged from the beginning of time. The five mountains were part of me as well, my strength and courage to face whatever entered the valley. The sky held dark gray clouds, which cast shadows over part of the valley, and I understood that storms had once buffeted me and I had had to cling to the trees on the mountain. I had once feared that the dark clouds would evaporate and so would I. But look—the undersides of the clouds were pink, pendulous, and erotic. And most wondrous of all: a golden vale lay beyond the opening of the mountains. In that golden place was the painter of this Utopia. I caught Lu Shing watching me with his pleased expression. It was as if he knew exactly what I was thinking.

  “What do you say, Lucia?” my father said. “You are clearly taken with it.”

  I gave a more intellectual appraisal: “It captures many moments, many emotions,” I began, looking at Lu Shing, “hope, love, and purity. I see in it immortality, neither beginning nor end. It seems to be saying all moments are immortal and will never disappear, nor will peace in the valley, or the strength of mountains, or the openness of the sky—”

  I would have gone on but Father interrupted. “Lucia is given to peaks of emotion, and Lu Shing, your painting is the lucky recipient of that tonight.” Everyone laughed warmly. I felt my neck flush.

  Father and Mother always ridiculed me when they thought I was too emotional. I had peaks and peaks of emotion, a mountain range of them. They believed I had to control them. Mother did hers into a stupor. But did Father control his orgiastic peaks?

  “I am lucky, indeed,” Lu Shing said. “The truth is, I had the grandiose intention of capturing one moment of immortality and I believed I had failed. But Miss Minturn has lifted me with her compliment that I have captured all the moments of immortality. Truly, no artist can be more appreciative to hear that.”

  The room became shinier. The crystal drops of the chandelier sparkled and flashed, the halos of candles grew long. The faces of others had changed into strangers, and only Lu Shing was familiar. That was the moment I was knocked nearly senseless. I had never known this feeling before, yet I recognized it as being felled by love. I fought to remain calm in front of the others as I held on to my secret. I now noticed a small brass plaque on the bottom of the frame. I read it aloud. “The Valley of Amazement.” Murmurs went around about the suitability of the name.

  “I thought so, too,” Lu Shing said, “when I came across its mention in a Chinese translation of a Sufi poem, “The Colloquy of the Birds.” I took the title without knowing what it actually referred to and discovered later that the Valley of Amazement is not a pleasant way station. It’s a place of doubt, and doubt is dangerous to a painter. So now I lack a title.”

  Everyone protested the Sufi’s meaning. The Valley of Amazement aptly described the painting, someone said, and it bore no relation to the gloomier reference. “We are not Sufis,” Miss Maubert said.

  They were wrong to discount his feelings of doubt so casually. If he had doubts, he had to confront them, knock them down, and wrestle them to see that they were not real. Otherwise, they would remain in his mind. I could help him do this, simply by being with him, showing him how his own confidence could conquer doubt. I had done so myself countless times, I would tell him.

  The conversation moved on to other topics, and then the maid arrived to announce our dinner was ready. Lu Shing was seated on my side of the table but at the far end, closest to where Father sat at the head of the table. Between us were the ample opera singer and Mr. Beekins. My view of him was eclipsed by the mezzo-soprano’s breasts and voluminous hair. I was frustrated that I had been kept so far from him. Mr. Maubert was on my left side, and Miss Huffard was next to him. I looked around the table. The faces of the suffragette, Miss Maubert, and the astronomer were no longer engorged with adoration for Father. How strange this night was. The candles with their dense odor flickered as the cook set down a large leg of some animal swimming in larded gravy. When the opera singer sat back, I stole glances at Lu Shing’s smooth face and the shaved bareness of his scalp, his naked splendor. He did not glance down the table at me.

  Doubt came. Perhaps he felt none of what had taken over my mind and body. I had drunk an elixir, and he had not tasted a drop. He might find white women unappealing. He might have been intimate with a hundred beautiful women of his own kind. I had fooled myself in my craving for affection.

  Through this gray cloud, I heard chatter and Lu Shing’s voice rising above. The light in the room now had a greasy gleam. The conversation had moved to Mr. Bierstadt’s stay at the Cliff House, where he would have a superior view of the distant Farallon Islands on clear days. Lu Shing had already portaged Mr. Bierstadt’s trunks to the hotel and would prepare his traveling painter’s studio.

  “I’ve stayed at the Cliff House,” Miss Pond said, “and each morning, when I looked out my window, I never ceased to be in wonder that the islands were twenty-seven miles away—except, of course, when I saw nothing but fog. Will you be staying there as well, Mr. Lu Shing?”

  “An apprentice doesn’t have the luxury,” he said. “I found a small boardinghouse close to the Cliff House.”

  “You should stay with us,” I said quickly. “We have plenty of room.”

  Mother looked surprised, and Father instantly agreed. “You must.”

  “We often have guests,” I added. “Isn’t that so, Mother?”

  She nodded, and others agreed that he would be more comfortable. Lu Shing politely declined until Father said he would enjoy showing Lu Shing his entire collection of paintings while he was our guest.

  Mother called the maid over and told her to freshen the blue room. That was the guest room on the south side of the second floor. Mine was on the north, and, of course, the turret was just above.

  “Mother,” I said, “I think Lu Shing would enjoy staying in the turret. It’s small, but it has the best view of the Bay.” Father hailed that as an excellent suggestion. Miss Pond volunteered to take Lu Shing in her carriage so he could fetch his things from the boardinghouse. I searched for si
gns that she wanted to seduce him. But then my father offered to accompany them.

  Early the next morning, Lu Shing and my parents were already seated in the breakfast room when I arrived. How had they all known to rise early and why was I not told? I was excited to see his Chinese face. But then I noticed something was missing. He was wearing ordinary clothes: dark trousers, a white shirt and gray waistcoat. I wished he would change back into the Chinese garments. On the other hand, I enjoyed looking at his godlike physique. He was taller than father, who was of average height.

  “Everyone who sails to the Farallons wants to see the sea lions, whales, and dolphins along the way,” I heard Mother say. “That’s the spectators’ experience.” She had her precious book of illustrated birds on the table. “I think that the variety of birds on the islands is far more interesting. Mr. Bierstadt evidently thinks so, too, since he painted many during his last visit. Among my favorites is the Cassin’s Auklet, which look quite ordinary from a distance, fat and molelike, until you know what to notice as you draw closer. The bluish feet, the white spot over the eye, and the rounded head and thin beak. That’s the challenge with birds—to notice the details and their differences—those of murres, puffins, cormorants—” I had not seen my mother this animated in a long time.

  Father broke in. “Harriet, you should accompany Mr. Bierstadt and our young friend on their voyage to the Farallons. They could use your sharp eye.”