by Tan, Amy
“We know more about making money than most,” Golden Dove said. “We just need to decide which business to start, so we can use it.” It did not take long to find it.
In Shanghai, the same goods might be bought by both Chinese and Westerners, but not in the same shops. A well-known barbershop for Westerners soon had a counterpart for well-to-do Chinese men. A salon de coiffure for Western women was matched by a salon de coiffure for well-to-do Chinese women. In other words, whatever was popular and fashionable with Westerners could find a ready clientele among the wealthy Chinese. When we opened The Gold Club for Chinese clientele, we discovered that Golden Dove no longer held the same secret advantage: The Chinese guests knew she spoke Chinese and avoided talking about their secrets in front of her. And I did not know enough Chinese to gather the secrets—until I learned the art of momo—to be silent and write from memory. Golden Dove would greet the guests and I had to listen and later recite to her what I could recall. The first day I repeated the oft-used phrases: “When did you get back?” “When do you leave?” “That’s bullshit.” Within the year, I could understand the entirety of almost any conversation that concerned business, and I had a special vocabulary for animals, flowers, and toys, gleaned from Violet, who at age four spoke English and the Chinese learned from her amah, as if they were one language.
If a guest sought a foreign trade alliance with an American company, Golden Dove would mention to our Chinese clients a possible “new friend relationship.” I would do the same for our Western clients. The twin clubs became purveyors of the jigsaw puzzle pieces needed in foreign trade. With small successes, we received a small gift. With larger ones, we drew handsome rewards. Eventually we charged fees and took a percentage of the profits. Golden Dove continued to be restless, and she passed her restlessness on to me. The richer the client, the more exciting the business, the more money we would make. “If we want to attract richer men,” she said, “we should open a first-class courtesan house. And I know one with a very good reputation and whose madam is willing to sell.”
Two years later, we opened a place that combined the two sides of our business: a social club for Westerners, a courtesan house for men. We named it The House of Lulu Mimi in Chinese and Hidden Jade Path in English. The path was where both sides met in the middle.
“In ten more years,” I teased Golden Dove, “you will have bought ten countries, and in twenty years, it will be forty. You are insatiable. It’s the sickness of success.” She was pleased to hear it. “I have enough now,” she said. “I needed to go back to my past and change it. Ten years ago, I had to leave a courtesan house with a smashed-up face. Now I own one of the finest in Shanghai, and to be truly successful, I must become a lady of leisure, never in a hurry, always calm, maybe even a little lazy.”
I was neither calm nor leisurely. I had to take over her share of the work. After a week, when she saw my eyes were sunken hollows from lack of sleep, she said she would be a little less lazy. I think she wanted me to appreciate how hard she had been working, and I remarked on this often from then on.
Between the afternoons and parties at night, I played games with Violet, read stories, bathed her while singing songs in English and Chinese, and told her how much I loved her as I tucked her into bed and waited for her to fall asleep. Those were our habits of love. She could depend on me. Her amah took care of her in the morning while I was still sleeping. On occasion, I took a lover, and I was careful to choose one who was my inferior in money, or power, or intellect. I auditioned them, as I had my young men when I was sixteen, keeping those who were experienced, discarding those without wit. I used those men selfishly, greedily, without regard to their feelings. I allowed myself the exciting preambles of lust, the satisfaction of urges, but not the heady infatuation, nor any prelude that could be mistaken for love. My love belonged to Violet. By the time she was four, she had become a willful child. I was glad. She would not be confined in her thoughts.
Around this time, I discovered that the heart can also be like a willful child. It does behave according to expectation. If my heart quickened, I knew it was time to take out the hated paintings Lu Shing had left me. I would stare at the portrait he painted of me when I had already felt uncertainty but had still hung on to trust. Or had that merely been foolish hope? I would look closely and enter those large dark pupils, the portal to a mindless girl who loved the painter. Within those shiny black pupils, he had seen a mirror of his desires, my willingness to satisfy them, to be whoever he believed I was. I would then study the second painting, The Valley of Amazement, always with a sick feeling that I had once believed in the illusion of a Pure Self-Being, which required me to preserve my original qualities. I had not known what they were, but I had been determined that they not be altered or influenced. I let Lu Shing alter them. How easily I had discarded myself. I had let infatuation guide me and choose my direction in life—toward a golden vale that did not exist, toward a city at the other end of the sea. I went to that imaginary place and suffered the near demise of my mind, heart, and soul. I returned with the knowledge that I would be smarter than love. I was still determined to find Teddy. He was rightfully mine, but whenever I thought of him, I felt murderous rage, and not the heartache of having once cradled a baby who had recognized me and smiled. I tried to recall what he looked like. Instead I saw Lu Shing’s face as he stared at his son, and I pushed his memory out of my mind.
The only being I would give myself freely to was Violet. I was her constant, the one who set the hours of dawn and dusk, who made the clouds by pointing to the sky, who warmed the day by removing her sweater, who turned it cold by donning her coat, who thawed her chilled fingers with the magic of my breath, who made violets sweet by twirling them under her nose, who clapped her hands as I declared her loved, at every hour, in every place, so that she would feel as I did: She was the reason I lived.
ONE OF OUR earliest guests at Hidden Jade Path was a charmer named Fairweather, a name, I told him, that was fair warning that I should avoid him. It was an affectionate nickname given to him by his many friends, he said. They invited him to dinners and parties and knew that had it not been for his finances he would have reciprocated their generosity and would yet one day do so twofold when his Shanghai ship came in. He confessed early on to me that he had been a brash young man who was disinherited from his wealthy family. He hoped to either make a fortune or win back the good graces of his father. Both would be ideal.
At first, I saw Fairweather as reminiscent of my first young man—the blue-eyed, dark-haired Greek god. But he was clearly more charming than men in my recent past. For one thing, he admitted from the start that he wanted to make me moan in the dark of night and laugh during the light of day. And from the start I did laugh—at his braggadocio.
“You avoid me, Miss Minturn,” he said in a humorous fawning tone, “but I shall wait as Rousseau did for Madame Dupin.” He often tossed off stuffy historical references like that, as well as obscure allusions and lengthy quotes to advertise that his background was refined. I devoured his wit as my opium. Within a week after meeting him, I let him into my bed, and unlucky for me, he proved to be a lover whose knowledge of a woman excelled the rest. It was his neverceasing willingness to listen to a woman’s complaints and the woes of her lonely heart, which he then followed by unlimited sympathy and consolation beneath the quilt.
And thus he listened to all my unexpected losses, the betrayals that killed my spirit, my guilt over damage done to others, those moments of self-imposed loneliness. He heard my weakness for intimacy, for the emperor of a fairy tale. He consoled me over the loss of Danner and Teddy and the death of my trust in all people. I told him more and more, because in trade, he gave me the words I needed to hear: You have been wronged. You deserve to be loved. For those counterfeit words, I was a spendthrift with my secrets, and he later stole all that was most precious to me.
San Francisco
March 1912
Lulu Minturn
Bef
ore Shanghai receded from view, I had already searched the boat from stern to bow, port to starboard. I burst through the door to our cabin ten times, expecting Violet to manifest like a magician’s trick. I called her name wherever I went, and my voice cracked in the wind, and I was sick with the possibility that she was still in Shanghai. I had promised I would not leave without her. I could still see her face, her worried expression as I rushed about, packing the trunks, thinking about the needs for our new home. I had acted lighthearted, in part to allay her fear and doubt. But she could not be soothed—she was not as Fairweather led her away.
And now I tried to believe she and Fairweather had simply missed the boat. They did not get the required birth certificate and visa. Or they had not made it to the dock in time. But then I recalled the coolie who had come with a note from Fairweather saying they were already on board and that I should meet them at the back of the boat. He sent that note, I now realized, to make sure that I left. What could that possibly mean? I went over the details of his trickery. He told us we needed Violet’s birth certificate with her. And it was not in my drawer. He might have stolen it the last time he was in my bed. There had been plenty of opportunities to watch me opening that drawer. Once I was gone, he must have taken Violet back to Hidden Jade Path. What else would he have done with her otherwise? Damn that bastard. I imagined Violet’s angry face and Golden Dove calming her down. Golden Dove would explain how I had been tricked. She would let her know it would take a month to reach San Francisco and a month to return. And when I returned, I knew she would still be furious, because I had ignored her fears and put her in the hands of a man she had always disliked—despised. It would not matter to her whether I had left her by trickery or insanity. I had abandoned her.
The more I pictured her face, the more my fear grew. Something was terribly wrong. He must not have returned Violet to Hidden Jade Path. He would not have wanted Golden Dove to know what he had done. She would have contacted the authorities and had him jailed. Instead, Golden Dove would have believed Violet was on the ship with me. But why would he keep her? He thought she was a brat. And then it came to me: He might have sold her. How much would a pretty fourteen-year-old fetch in a courtesan house? Once this possibility entered my mind, I could not remove the terror that it might be true. I went up to a man in a white uniform. “I need to speak to the ship’s captain immediately,” I said. He told me he was a waiter. I ran into the dining room and asked the maître d’ to tell me how to reach the captain. “I need to send an urgent message. My daughter is not on the boat.”
By the minute, panic rose and I made demands of everyone I saw wearing a white jacket. The purser arrived. “This situation unfortunately is not uncommon. One person is on board, the other does not arrive in time. But eventually everything is sorted out.”
“You don’t understand,” I said, “she is only a child and in the hands of a crook. I promised to wait. She trusted me. Please I need to send a message.” He told me that messages were sent out only for purposes of navigation and emergencies.
“Damn your navigation! This is an emergency. How can you be so stupid? If I can’t send a message, turn the boat around!” The ship’s doctor was now by my side. He told me that as soon as we arrived in San Francisco, I would be able to return to Shanghai.
“Do you think my brain is porridge? It takes a month to get to San Francisco and a month to return to Shanghai. Where will she be in two months? I have to return now. Is there a lifeboat? Tell me now. Where are the life preservers? I’ll swim back, if I have to.” The ship’s doctor said they would make arrangements for a lifeboat and a sailor to help me paddle. In the meantime, he said, I should calm down and have some tea and nourishment before the arduous journey back. “Drink,” he said, “it will settle your nerves.” And it did, because I did not awake for two days.
I AWOKE WITH violent seasickness and the realization that I had not dreamed this nightmare. For the rest of the month, I went over the details of what had happened, as if I were purling yarn, knitting it tightly, then ripping it apart to start purling again. I saw her in Hidden Jade Path, in my office, crying to Golden Dove, cursing me. I saw her in a courtesan house, in terror, about to be defiled. I saw her face as Fairweather led her away, full of fear and doubt. What had I done to her? What harm?
When we arrived in San Francisco, a man was waiting for me at the dock. He handed me a letter and left. I opened it and felt my legs grow empty and sank to the ground. The letter was from the American Consulate giving me the sad news that Violet Minturn Danner had been killed running across Nanking Road. Witnesses said she had pulled away from two men and shouted that she was being kidnapped. Unfortunately, the men ran off before they could be apprehended.
It was not true. It was another trick. Where was the messenger who handed me the note? I choked out a plea to everyone nearby to take me to the police station. Twenty minutes went by before I found a free carriage to take me. Once I was there, it took another thirty minutes before someone would speak to me. They spent another hour trying to quiet me. A woman finally directed me to a post office where I could have a telegram sent to Golden Dove. Because it was the middle of the night in Shanghai, I had to wait for her answer, and so I sat outside the post office until the telegram finally arrived.
My dearest Lulu,
Deepest sorrow to tell you it is true. Violet died in an accident. Fairweather disappeared. Burial three weeks ago. Letter to follow.
Yours,
Golden Dove
If I had lost only Violet, I would have grieved a lifetime. But I knew also that before she died I had shattered her belief that she had ever been loved by me. I knew those terrible truths because I had felt the same when love abandoned me. Those should not have been the wounds she bore as she left this life. I felt skinned raw as I imagined her suffering in her last hours. It did not matter how it happened—by accident or carelessness or deceit—she would have believed I had abandoned her. I could not stop seeing the fear in her eyes. It had grown to terror in my mind and the horror that I had traded her for a flimsy piece of paper—a false birth certificate that would have let me reach a baby I had held in my arms for less than two days.
She had always been such an observant girl, too much so, as I once had been. She knew what was false and what was evident. She could see with a clairvoyant’s eye what selfishness could destroy. She saw that in me: selfish pride, selfish love, selfish grief. I had the strength to get whatever I wanted. I had ceased to see that she had been right in front of me.
She believed I loved a son more than I did her, so much that I would have traded her away. He was the baby I held briefly. She was the daughter who had tugged my skirts for fourteen years. I had wrongly believed she would always be there and that I could give her all that she needed the next day or the day after that. I knew her so well, loved her so dearly, and had shown her so little as she had grown older, and more independent, I thought, just as I was at her age. That was how I had justified devoting my time to my business. I had forgotten that at her age, I was not independent. I was lonely and I hurt every day thinking I was not as important as a dead bug or a pair of Manchu shoes from a burnt palace.
If she were here before me, I would tell her that I did not love that baby more. I was obsessed with a delusion that began when I was sixteen, which I could not let go. I was driven by anger to claim the life of all my foolish dreams. The baby was part of the delusion. And now, finally, I could also let him go.
I WENT HOME. The house had not been sold and occupied by strangers, as I thought it might be. It had survived the earthquake, just as Miss Huffard had said in one of her letters. My mother and father still lived there, and they were not shattered, as I believed they would be. Mother took my hand gently and wept. Father went to me and kissed my cheek. Mr. and Mrs. Minturn had died, Mother said, and in a tone of respect, I thought. We said nothing about what had happened.
For months, we lived a routine life, eating meals together but living apart.
We were not falsely cheerful. We were polite and considerate, and in those little gestures, we acknowledged the damage we had done to each other. I saw Mother glance at me on occasion with tragic eyes. She still gardened, but I did not see her retreat to her study to look at her insects. The amber had been put away. My father’s office had been swept clean of his collections. I locked away memories of Hidden Jade Path. Its importance to me was as meaningful as a pile of sand.
Our nights were quiet. There were no parties, where father presided. Mr. Maubert still came to dinner three times a week. His back was bent and he was shorter than I was. I played the piano for him and he said he was the happiest he had been in many years. How little he required.
Six months after I returned, I said to my mother and father: “I was married to a kind man named Danner and I had a daughter, and I lost them both.” As I cried, they came to me and put their arms around me in a circle, and they cried, and we knew we were crying for all the sorrow we had caused and would always suffer.
March 1914
For two years Lu Shing sent letters postmarked from both San Francisco and Shanghai. In all his letters, he told me that he had waited for me at the hotel where we had agreed to meet. He repeated each time that he had been ready to take me to see my son. He added that his wife had agreed to my seeing him, and he would still take me, while adding that his son was emotionally tied to the Lu family. His son was the heir and he did not know that he was half-white. “We should spare him the shock,” Lu Shing said, “of his complicated parentage.” I went into a rage whenever I read that part of his letters. Did he believe I would deliberately hurt any child of mine?
