by Shira Nayman
“Then you do know where she is?”
“Barnaby, I do not believe you’ve heard a single word I’ve said. It’s not for us to interfere. I’m afraid I can’t be budged on that point. I am a man of principle, and that happens to be one of the principles I prize most.”
Ma Ling settled in immediately. I had a small calendar, printed on handmade paper, that Han Shu gave me; I marked with a star the day I found Ma Ling. One month to that day, I placed another star. And upon rising one morning, I realized with surprise that it was already time to mark a third. How quickly two months had passed. I descended for our usual late breakfast; looking from girl to girl, I saw it again, the stamp of a kind of knowledge not entirely at home with such youth, and for the first time, I told myself explicitly what it was they knew.
That night, after my customary long evening of solitude, I felt restless. With no more secrets to keep from myself, I left my small room, taking care to remain unnoticed, which was not difficult given the layout of the house, the two sections, front and back, being almost completely self-contained. I avoided the main passageway connecting the halves and roamed the halls at the back section, making several passes up and down the long, rickety staircase.
The next night, I did the same. And the next. It became a habit and, as the days passed, I found myself drawn to the place I had previously avoided, the main passageway connecting the two halves of the house, one of the few sections of flooring that Han Shu had at some point replaced, so that, unlike the creaky boards elsewhere, these lengths were solid and quiet. There was something reassuring about the small enclosed place. Slow pacing eased my mind.
When I first heard the odd three-part rhythm on the stairs, I didn’t know what to make of it: a heavy tread with a syncopated thud, and now and then a pause, silent and laden. A man with a wooden leg? I wondered. A war veteran? After a week, I realized he was a regular visitor; on my nightly sorties to the enclosed passageway, I found myself listening for him expectantly.
Sometimes, after a long bout with the pipe, snippets of my time with Robert came back to me with unalloyed sweetness. I would emerge from such moments refreshed, then settle in for the evening with my books, floating, still, in the magical freedom bestowed by the smoke: to live and relive and unlive as one pleased.
And while I did not feel I had turned back the clock as I had hoped, I did, on occasion, have the feeling that I had at least stopped the movement of time, as though I’d found a way to keep the present from sliding forward, from leaving its trail of slime in the shadowy, airless plane of memory.
I thought, too, of my mother. For years, I had shuttered her from my mind; now, she wafted back as if from the beyond, a strangely comforting, ghostlike presence. As a young child, I had thought my mother a princess. I’d had no trouble seeing our cramped quarters as a Renaissance Court, at least in the evenings. There had been gentlemen callers, mostly well-dressed, often jovial, always with beautiful manners and the kind of grateful, heightened, even worshipful attentiveness that I imagined was reserved for royalty.
One evening, a beau had tried to draw me in. I had been excited, and was hurt when my mother snapped, “Leave the girl be. Leave her out of it.” She steered me back to my room, placing one of my beloved books in my hands, and whispered sweetly: “Read, love, read your book,” the perfume lifting from her soft, full form. The sounds coming from our small parlor—and later, across the length of our apartment, from my mother’s room—were baffling and enticing both.
The gentlemen were always gone by the time I awoke, and my mother would be transformed—hair in pins and rags, bustling about the small kitchen, tending to eggs sizzling in lard, the loose housedress only emphasizing her lovely shape.
I understood that there were two realities in my world. The colorless humdrum of the days metamorphosed late each evening to a climate of expanding spirits, of paste jewels and shimmering silk, of jangling color and sound. Laughter and texture and warm bared skin and fondness and stroking and mouthfuls of sweets—chocolates, caramels, boiled peppermints—slipped to me by my mother’s callers.
By day, I applied myself to school work at the grim schoolhouse a mile’s walk away. Back at home in the afternoons, I sat at the streaked window of my tiny room—no larger than a closet but mine, all mine—reading by the dull northern light. It provided a sure escape from the dreary streets below, this wandering through fanciful written worlds, as I waited for what I thought of as our true life: the Royal Night Court that my mother had created. I came to think of my life as neatly spliced down the middle: Day Words, Night Music.
And when the men started coming into my tiny, private space—occasions when the gentlemen lavished on my mother too many glasses of the amber stuff, so that she would end up draped across the green brocade couch, which in the candlelight showed only its deep sheen, not the worn patches visible in the flat light of day—when they came to me on those nights, I felt drawn into the magic: Cinderella flung into the whirl of the ball.
My mother could not have known that this beau or that might have brought a particularly fine bottle or two for the sole purpose of silencing her own stern injunction, Leave the girl be, or that the men passed this information among themselves.
They were kind to me for the most part. Not one of them ever hurt me, not really. They smiled tenderly, the way I imagined a father might smile at a daughter. They held me, stroked my hands and hair. Sometimes they even read aloud to me. I loved this most of all. They fondled and cooed. And when they turned earnest, I watched with interest the change that would come upon their features. I felt a strange power in the way my own small self could bring about the extraordinary concentration I witnessed: the way the entire world, for them, seemed to fall away. I’m bringing about the end of the world, I would think, staring at the disappeared gaze before my own, at the contortion of the brow, the tight grimace of the mouth. (Had this been before or after my fourteenth birthday? It hardly mattered; it simply was as it was.)
Not one ever retreated without bestowing a treasure: a porcelain doll with blue glass for eyes and eyelashes made of human hair; a hand-painted tea set covered in roses; and, when I started asking for them, books. Soon, the books were stacked high along the wall of my little room, all the way to the ceiling.
The men loved me; this, I could feel. Sometimes, the word was even uttered—or my name whispered, breathed into my ear. Tears, on occasion: tears from manly eyes—of gratitude and affection. And as my own body swelled, and I developed the full, high breasts, which brought pleasures of my own, my mother’s men became more ardent, more appreciative, more grateful. They brought more expensive bottles of spirits for my mother and seemed hardly able to contain their excitement as they waited for the drink to take effect. And then, in my closet room, it was Darling or Precious or Chérie. And soon I learned to sip the warm fire myself and learned, from the men, to give myself to the exotic waves that came from my own fiery center, and the days no longer wore their drab colors, as all of it, all of my own life, my own being, became focused on the musical flames of the night.
Throughout, the world of my books continued to exert their pull. Eventually, they drew me to teacher’s college, out and away from my mother and the electric goings-on.
But I never let go of the night.
Ma Ling picked up English so quickly and effortlessly it was as if she imbibed it from air. I secretly imagined that this was because she wanted to be able to communicate better with me. Another star in my calendar marked the third month, and then the fourth. I was soon assigning Ma Ling more advanced exercises, which she worked on in the back of the classroom while I instructed the other girls. It was hard to believe that, only a few short months earlier, Ma Ling had been a liceridden alley child who spoke street slang and had never set eyes on a book. The early missionaries, I thought, would have admired my success in civilizing this grubby young savage.
The first crate arrived with a certain amount of ceremony. Parcels seldom made their way to thes
e backstreets, and certainly never parcels of such grand dimensions. The wooden box created interest, with its smooth-planed boards, light coat of varnish, and gray-blue lettering, 84 Charing Cross Road, stenciled on the side: the famous bookstore in London popular here among expatriates, who placed their orders by wire and could count on delivery within a month. The package was for Ma Ling, who took calm delivery of it in the breakfast room to the oohs and ahs of the other girls. Ma Ling pried it open with a tool I unearthed in the kitchen. Inside, sealed in an inner lining of oilskin, were stacks of leather-bound books with gold embossed covers and spines. I fingered the volumes as respectfully as the girls did, enjoying the smell of new paper and fresh leather. Whoever put together the package—it had to be Ma Ling’s special gentleman friend—had thoughtfully assembled the classic English literary works of the nineteenth century. The girls examined the books one by one then passed them back to Ma Ling. Of course, it would be some time before she would be able to read them herself. Perhaps it was an awareness of this, I mused, that touched the girl’s face with awe as I packed the books back into the crate, as if I were handling the reassuringly sturdy blocks of the future itself.
The following week Han Shu made another of his rare morning appearances at the house.
“Ma Ling will be moving to the third floor where she will have her own room,” he announced, once we were all seated. Ma Ling sat demurely, her breakfast untouched, her face glowing gently with pride.
Two other packages arrived for Ma Ling in quick succession: another crate from Charing Cross Road, and a few days later, a shiny black trunk with brass fittings, which Ma Ling and her friends immediately ferried up to her new room. The trunk was a mystery, until Ma Ling descended after the afternoon rest period in a beautifully cut jade suit, the long pointed collar of a cream blouse showing stylishly at the throat, and on her feet, black patent pumps with the look of Italy about them. Most impressive of all were the sheer silk stockings. The seam at the back was expertly placed, as if Ma Ling had been wearing silk stockings all her life. The following day, she appeared in another equally stylish outfit, and the day after that, a third.
With the arrival of these worldly goods, I felt a distance spring up between Ma Ling and me. Of course, the gifts had to have an origin—there was clearly, somewhere, a sender—but I found myself focusing on the things themselves, on the books and the beautiful clothing, secretly blaming these items for the change. It was the politeness in Ma Ling’s eyes that most mortified me, where before there had been the eagerness of discovery, gratitude, and an occasional flicker of admiration. Now, Ma Ling spent long hours alone with her books, taking what I had to offer with what seemed like a dismissive air.
Two light raps roused me from my stupor. I opened the door. It was Ma Ling, dressed in a crisp sky-blue dress.
“I was wondering if you’d like to go for a walk,” she said. I gazed distractedly around the room. My eyes fell on the pink scarf draped across the foot of the cot and trailing along the floor. I shook the dust from it and retrieved the small white purse from the cardboard box by my bed, which served as a nightstand.
It was only when we were outside and exposed to the eyes on the street that I became aware of how shabby I must look beside my ward. Countless washings had failed to dislodge the faint rust-colored splotches on my own dress, which I realized had never looked as fine as the cotton of Ma Ling’s skirt, even on the day it was bought.
It was a dank evening. We found a noodle shop and chose a table by the sweat-coated window. I noticed with some alarm how out of place Ma Ling seemed here, with her balletic posture and smooth, carefully brushed hair; delicately, she raised the tea bowl to her lips. The din of voices ricocheting around the room muted to a dull background buzz.
“How many years were you a teacher?” Ma Ling asked. “I mean, in England?”
“A long time. Too long,” I replied, a little surprised by the question.
“Is it so different there, teaching pupils?”
“From here? Well, yes, of course. To begin with, the climate is very different, and that changes everything—even the kinds of lessons we teach and the way we go about teaching them.”
I pictured myself holding my satchel as I approached Shropshire Hall, saw again the redbrick path leading from the iron gates, with their grillwork scrolls and veined black leaves and feathers at the top pointing deadly as arrows. I recalled assembly in the great hall, prayers, then history and literature all day long, beginning with the third form on the ground floor and working my way up the eighteenth-century staircase to the top floor, from where the upper sixth classroom commanded a view of gently sloping hills and lofty-headed trees.
Ma Ling was watching me expectantly. I scrambled for words that had long since rolled away into some forgotten cobwebbed corner.
“There’s something you start understanding when you teach,” I said. I swallowed a mouthful of tea, aware of the taste of rust on my tongue. “When you teach, you remember how it was to sit at a pupil’s desk and think that there is an order to it all: truth, packed away in some huge trunk, alphabetized and complete, and all you have to do is turn the pages in the right order. I remember, when I first began to teach, walking into the classroom full of hope. How could one not? There they were, my students, sitting in their little halos of light, ready to learn.”
Ma Ling was looking at me with a curiously uncomprehending eye; what I was saying could hardly hold meaning for her, but I found I couldn’t stop.
“I used to have them recite important phrases. They loved that, heaven knows why. Toward the end of the war, one of my former students, a girl named Jennifer, came back to visit me. She had married soon after leaving school and her husband had been shipped off to fight. She had come to tell me her news: that her husband was being sent home—wounded, but only lightly.”
Ma Ling was sitting stone still in the bamboo chair.
“She told me that the day after she got the news, she awoke with words going around in her head. Sentences I had given her, years earlier, to memorize. And then she began to recite: The Renaissance was a period of time in history when there was a new spirit of enquiry, of interest in learning, of desire to develop new ideas and take part in new activities. When she’d memorized those words in my classroom, she’d had only an inkling of what they meant. But when it came flashing back in her mind only a few days earlier, she said she finally understood what they meant.”
I had no idea why I was telling all this to Ma Ling. Looking at the girl, I felt muddled and sad. A glance at the watch around my neck informed me that it was almost time for the daily supply to be delivered by one of the girls to my room.
“The funny thing was,” I continued, “I never truly understood the implications of those words myself until Jennifer relayed to me that experience of hers. Knowledge is mysterious; that’s one of the things I learned as a teacher. You can think you know something and even pass it along, without really knowing it at all.”
Now, Ma Ling looked entirely baffled.
“Oh dear, I’m afraid I’m not answering your question,” I said, trying to remember what the question had been.
“Why did you stop teaching there? At the school in England?”
I tried to untangle my thoughts. “I was supposed to say certain things to my students. It became harder and harder, until finally I could no longer say them.”
A lost experience loomed up from the past: Awards Day, the last formal day of the school year. I was standing at the lectern, preparing to deliver my speech.
“About two years into the war, the headmistress asked me to address the student body. The remarks I prepared were what was expected—praising the contributions women had made to the war effort. Like everybody else, the girls had seen the newsreels: former housewives in head scarves, assembling guns and shells in munitions factories; nurses wearing the starched uniforms of the Red Cross; and everywhere—on buses, in parlors, at the movies—women and girls knitting socks. Our own girls w
ere no exception. You could hear the click click of needles at assembly every morning.
“But that morning at the podium, looking at the first page of my address, I just couldn’t read what I’d written. Instead, I talked to the girls about what kind of new world they could help to make. I spoke about being independent, about developing ideas and ways of living that were new—no longer under the thumb of men: it was men, after all, who had waged this war, and every other war I knew of.”
I was no longer talking to Ma Ling, though the girl sat attentively, attempting, it seemed, to take it all in.
“After a few minutes of this, the headmistress approached the podium and whispered that she thought I should step down. I knew then that my teaching career in England was over.”
I stared hard at Ma Ling. For an instant, I felt as if she had become a creature from another world: an ancient queen, or some other reincarnated spirit. But the moment passed and there, again, was Ma Ling, restored to her earthly self. What I had just told her was a lie: the same lie I’d been telling myself for years. Yes, those events had happened, but they had not been the real reason for my departure from the school.
A fresh furrow appeared between Ma Ling’s brows. “It must be different there, now that the war is over,” she said.
I was taken aback. “You want to be a schoolteacher, Ma Ling? Is that it?”
She blushed and bent her head. “We all have plans. For when we leave Manor House,” she said quietly, into her empty tea bowl. Was there a trace of sarcasm, I wondered, in the slightly exaggerated way she’d said Manor House? When she looked up, her eyes had turned to flint.
I became newly aware of the healthy fullness of the girl’s arms and cheeks. I glanced down at my own arms on the table and was so startled I almost upset the bowl I held in my hands. How had my limbs become these sticks, covered in downy dry skin the color of parchment? Ma Ling’s gaze passed from my face to my torso; I followed it, noting my own sunken chest and the billowy look of my once close-fitting dress.
