Sleep finally did visit me out of sheer exhaustion, but in the early morning the songs of the coolies, pushing wheelbarrows and busy at other such jobs, brought me out of it in no good mood. The sons of Han are a noisy race.
But my hotel life was not a long one. Huan Kai owned a house in the reaches of the native city where we went as soon as it was properly opened to receive us. And there began my ostracism from the foreign colony.
For it was an indiscretion even to mention the native city, much less to go there. It is a peculiar sort of snobbery that only Anglo-Saxons abroad could conceive.
So my indiscretions began.
I remember very well my first entry into the mysteries of Shanghai. We had formed a longish train of ’rikishas, and our own rubber-tired carriage in the lead and five others following with baggage and necessaries, in charge of Huan Kai’s body servant. The more or less modern buildings of the foreign city became older and more Chinese as the edges neared. Then we passed through a wall and everything changed.
We entered the “Street of Ivory Carvers.”
On both sides of this gap among age-old buildings were the stalls and booths where the members of one of the most glorious trade-guilds in China were creating their white marvels. An elephant’s tusk became a work of delicate lace, a knife handle, a complicated box that only you could open, a set of Mah-Jong … you know the sort of things. But how different from seeing them in the rue de la Paix.
There were walls, and walls within walls. Beggars as filthy as you can imagine crowded your ’rikishas, screamed and bleated, withered and maimed and leprous and pitted with disease. Horrible. There were all kinds of shops and booths, leaning and huddling together, hanging with a million signs glittering with Chinese characters. We passed a courtyard where they made Sedan-chairs and through a street so narrow that two of these could never pass each other. And all around us, slipping along in dragging shoes, gleaming as to their polished hair or pointed hats, were men and women and naked boys and little girls, that spelled for me all the romance I had ever imagined.
But that was nothing. It was only the emotion of an impressionable young girl spinning tapestries out of her imagination.
In the heart of a courtyard, the core of tangled, jumbled little streets, was the house of Huan Kai. It was immense. It was of brick, with its glazed tile roof, the corners curled and pointing upwards like any Chinese house, to be sure that the evil spirits of the air, who can only follow a straight line, would not alight in the courtyard.
Shanghai street scene, 1910.
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A door opened for us, magically and mysteriously.
We went in.
I was in prison.
Huan Kai’s house was a palace. I doubt if the wealthiest and most powerful mandarin in Shanghai had anything to equal it. But in spite of the magnificent lacquer paneling, in spite of the jade and the incense and the ivory, it was a prison. I felt it upon entering, and it was as if I had been somehow betrayed.
Can you imagine a young American suddenly finding herself the mistress of a household containing over one hundred servants, as many rooms, furnished with a luxury that baffles words, and all of it centering round a strange, huge, silent man, who never smiled, never laughed, and whose sternness was apparent from the way his battery of servants jumped at the slightest lift of his eyes?
Life began on the second night. A dinner party. And what a dinner party! The preparation was for fifteen people, and it was then that I learned just how far Oriental magnificence can go.
Huan Kai was like a feudal lord. He was a legend in Shanghai. At these dinner parties he even dictated the costumes that should be worn by his guests … he prepared gorgeous silk robes for them to wear, and every one had his own color, his own design, in rich, glorious material, ready for him when he arrived.
On this night, everybody was to dress in brilliant green, and Huan Kai had favors of jade, curiously and beautifully carved flasks of solid jade. It was stunning. It was entirely beyond me.
And on this night I had a warning of the future.
One of the guests was a charming young Russian nobleman who was in Shanghai on some diplomatic mission. He spoke Chinese fluently, but no English. I suppose that since I was the only woman present, it was perfectly natural that all the guests should be attentive to me, and the Russian discovered that I could speak a little French, so he started one of these polite conversations. It was a relief, for however brilliant the talk may have been in Chinese, I understood not one little word of it.
After dinner, I went away from the group just for a moment. I had had barely time to mount the stairs and enter my own room before the other door opened sharply, and there stood Huan Kai. He had evidently left the diners a second after I did, and had come up by the stairs in the left wing.
“Li-ti,” he said in his soft, even vibrating voice … (he had given me that sweet little Chinese name … “Li-ti”), “there is one thing that is to be remembered. I am the master of all that is beautiful in this house, and I, Huan Kai Chan, may keep those things, or give them away, or break them, if it pleases me. Do not forget that, Li-ti.”
Then he calmly walked out.
I was astounded. What did he mean? Little by little I began to have a glimmer of understanding. Huan Kai was, in some ridiculous way, jealous of the Russian who had been making polite conversation in French with me. I will admit that at first it rather dazed me, and then that it really amused me.
If I had had any common sense, I would have seen the writing on the wall. But I was too vain, too young and self-confident to realize exactly what might come out of such unreasonable jealousy. I learned.
In fact, I went downstairs and flirted a little with the Russian as a sort of lark … just to see if I could make the somber Manchu change the expression on his masklike face.
I couldn’t. He didn’t. But towards the end of the evening he came over to me as I was chatting in my bad French, and said:
“Li-ti, I have imagined a most interesting plan for you tomorrow. The notorious bandit Ling Wing-pu is to be questioned at the prison. I will take you to the ceremony. It is a curiosity.”
And again he walked straight away, leaving the young Russian looking at him in complete amazement.
“Mon Dieu!” he exclaimed. “But he can’t mean …”
He did not finish, and although I pressed him he would say nothing more.
I was getting more and more bewildered. I had no idea of why Huan Kai should want me to hear a trial in Chinese, or whatever it was, and yet I felt somehow that it had something to do with this silly and meaningless flirtation I was carrying on. And later I saw my Russian talking earnestly to Huan Kai, pleading, making gestures, while that big Manchu body stood towering over him, arms folded, expressionless, saying not one word.
No, it was all too mysterious.
The next day the mystery grew still further, and a little horror was added to make it more complete.
I had almost forgotten about Huan Kai’s promise to take me to the prison, but one of the hundred servants came to my quarters and with much ceremony and much difficulty made me understand that the “All Powerful One” was awaiting me. The old woman Meh-ki, my personal servant, then appeared, and with her ten younger servants, all carrying silks and Chinese robes of every kind. I learned that I was expected to costume myself as becomes a woman of high station in China. I did not mind, naturally, and if ever I achieved beauty in my life … and occasionally men, in a romantic mood, have mentioned something about it … I did it at that moment. There is nothing Chinese or Oriental in my features, but when I looked into the broad mirror that three of the girls held for me, I failed to recognize myself. It may have been unreal and theatrical, but it was certainly beautiful.
I was a proud little girl when I presented myself before Huan Kai and saw his long, full eyes sparkle.
Like feudal lord and lady, we were ushered into our gold-encrusted, lacquered Sedan-chair, and were immediately surrounded b
y servants in gorgeous livery. We moved out of the courtyard into the twisted, narrow streets of Shanghai like a little army. I was very much impressed.
But there was something about Huan Kai that had changed. His silence was nothing new nor his austerity. But some sort of change had come over him, and it worried me.
If I were a skillful writer, I might hope to create a shudder and make it tremble through these pages as I recall that day. My memory of it is still tinged with terror … not a fear of anything defined, but a formless fear for the human race, a realization of the savage in man which persists in spite of his speech, his race, his so-called culture, his customs or his law.
The knot of bearers in their splendid livery were conducting us to the prison. I remember the grimness of it, the rusty brick of its walls, the soldiers in the same style of costume which they had worn for the past five centuries, with their huge swords, and their armor, and metal hats. The prison was a symbol of suppression, of oppression and death.
I remember a courtyard with men crowding around a scaffold. I remember that Huan Kai was greeted on all sides. I was a curiosity, and an uncomfortable one, at that. I recall that I was frightened without knowing why. Perhaps it was that silence, that ominous grimness of Huan Kai.
I will not dwell upon the scene. I cannot.
Briefly: a tall yellow man, so bound with chains that he seemed wrapped into a human cylinder, was carried to the scaffold; was secured to a post, or prop; looked calmly at the gathering below without the least expression on his face. Then a voice from somewhere on the other side of the scaffold began speaking slowly and rhythmically in Chinese. The prisoner, a bandit, or warlord named Ling Wing-pu, turned his head, but otherwise gave no sign of interest. His head was about all he was able to turn.
A little fat Chinaman, with a costume that seemed much too big for him and a sword that certainly was, mounted the platform. Wing Ling-pu never even looked at him. A word of command was given. The Little Chinaman lifted the sword easily … and flicked it across the back of the bound man. Red blood followed its path. The unconcerned expression remained on the bandit’s face, as though it were somebody else’s body that had been cut.
It would drive me mad to record the incidents one by one. But every time a sing-song voice cried out, and then there was a pause, and then a sharp command, and then the fat torturer made another cut. The bandit became a bloody mess and I was fainting. But I was fascinated: I cannot explain the effect of the scene upon me. Eventually, after countless slices with the huge sword … still productive of no expression at all on the face of the tall bound man … a vein or artery in the neck was severed and a red fountain played into the air.
That is all I remember. I had to be carried out and taken home.
The most curious thing of all was the expression of satisfaction on the unsmiling face of Huan Kai when I came to.
“We have an amusing way in China, have we not?” he asked me. “It is not given to every American woman to witness the Death of a Thousand Cuts.”
I had a vague notion that there was a warning in his remark. You will see later whether I was right.
My life in Shanghai was an odd one, to say the least.
Huan Kai could be very kind, very amusing in his sober way, and very generous in his attitude towards me. Then suddenly he could be cold, despotic and cruel.
For instance, I offended him terribly by a silly and harmless prank to which nobody in the world would have paid any attention except that it was rather undignified.
During one of the great feast periods I managed to escape the eye of the servants and to slip out by myself without Meh-ki, the old woman duenna who was always with me when her master was not. I went down to the river in a hired chair and watched the glorious flower-boats and their pageantry. I thought it would be fun to go on board one of them, but I realized that I could not do so as a foreigner nor as a grande dame of China which I appeared to be when dressed in the native costume. So I returned to the foreign settlement, bought a boy’s costume in one of the bazaars, and returned to see the flowers at close range. It was amusing, and perhaps it was not only my imagination that made me feel the coy, solicitous eyes of the girls upon me more than once.
However, when I returned to Huan Kai’s palace and slipped in I was caught. He came to my rooms just as I was trying to make a quick change, and I had to tell the truth.
Well, I have never seen such cold fury.
I was afraid he would kill me. He was almost insane. And yet, true to his habits, he scarcely spoke. But I could see from the burning of his eyes and the pressure of his lips that he was on the point of doing me violence.
And on that evening he spent hours trying to make me marry him. From fear, and not from love, I am afraid he was very nearly successful.
But my greatest experience in Shanghai and in all China comes right here. It is not an easy thing to relate. At the risk of shocking Mrs. Grundy I am going to do it, because as far as I know it is unique, although there may possibly be others who have experienced the same thing.
This all sounds mysterious, but it will be explained.
I mentioned that I was ostracized by local European society, less because of my friendship with Huan Kai than because I actually lived in the Chinese city and wore Chinese clothes. I was not entirely shut out, however, and I did have tea with a few friends now and then when I could slip out and take a public chair or ’rikisha over to one of the clubs in the foreign settlement.
It happened on one of those occasions. I had assured myself that Huan Kai was away on business and bribed my duenna, and obeyed that peculiar but rather natural call that one’s own race makes.
There is, or was, a famous tea-house in Shanghai which is perhaps better known than any other in the world because it is the model of the Willow Pattern China that every one knows so well. I met two Englishwomen there whom I knew slightly. Now Englishwomen often give the impression that they are very proper and very reserved. But my experience with these two, and a great many after them, has led me to believe that the calm exterior of the British woman conceals something really more adventurous than one ever suspects.
The story begins when I got into conversation with Miss B. and Lady D. Miss B. was telling the story of the Willow Tearoom plate, and it was very sweet and just what I would have expected from the trim, boyish-looking young woman. It is even worth while to repeat it here before going into my adventures, because it contrasts with them so much.
In that very house where the tearoom was, there lived a man with a beautiful daughter whom he wanted to marry to a rich mandarin. But the girl, whose name was Koong Shee, loved Chang, a retainer of her father’s. She refused to marry the mandarin, and had to see her lover banished and herself a prisoner on the little lake in the tiny house where the weeping willow can still be seen.
Chang hid in a house the other side of the lake, and sent half a cocoa-nut shell with a little sail in it to carry her a message of his constant love and to invite her to elope with him. She sent the message back that she would, and they did.
Father was angry but the mandarin was more so, and he came and burned the boy’s little house where the two had hidden, and their two souls, like doves, floated over the pond for many a day.
Very pretty and very Chinese, but very much unlike what I have got to say now.
Our conversation covered many things, and it came out somehow that I was interested in adventures. Suddenly Lady D. looked steadily through her lorgnette at her friend and said:
“You know, we have just time to take her to the most wonderful of all adventures. Do you think she would care to come?”
Miss B. thought I would, and I protested that I would try anything once. The upshot was that we all hired a chair and away we went to an address that I did not hear. I speak of the fact that we hired a chair, because it was evident that the two English ladies did not want their own bearers to know where they were going.
However, I was not nervous.
After threading through the amazing streets of the old city, we came to a courtyard which was hidden away as if to keep the world from knowing about it, but where there was a very decent-looking house, clean, and seemingly newer than the century-old buildings about it.
My guides got out and went to the door and after pressing on a panel, engaged themselves in conversation with an old woman.
We went in.
I was amazed to see the luxury inside, for the outside of this house, though clean and decent, would never lead one to suspect the richness that it concealed.
The walls were paneled. The paneling was composed of strips of carved ivory, worked into lace-like ornamentation, and bound, every panel, in polished teakwood, likewise carved to frame the beauties of the ivory.
This room was an anteroom, and we sat on two long comfortable benches indicated by the old woman. She in turn left through heavy curtains at the room’s further end and left us alone.
I had courage enough to ask my friends what kind of experience was in store for us. I learned little.
“Even if we could tell you,” said Lady D., “it would be useless. But you may believe that it is an experience which you will never forget and which, in your turn, you will never be able to describe.”
She was right.
She was so right that I hesitate to go further with this feeble attempt at making you understand it. But it has left such an impression on me, and it is so utterly unheard of, in so far as I know, that, after all these years, I am going to try.
The aged attendant returned after a few anxious minutes, and she made my companions understand that all was ready. Lady D. looked at her watch, and insisted that there would not be time for us all to “have the experience” (she constantly used that expression) but that she would withdraw this time so that her friend and I could do so. There was nothing very tense about the place. There was apparently nobody in the house but ourselves, for it was not large and their presence would have been felt or heard. To say that I was bewildered and excitedly curious is putting the case mildly. I was fairly twitching with nervousness.
And I'd Do It Again Page 11
