Dreams of the Red Phoenix

by Virginia Pye

  Charles ignored his amah, anyway, and knelt down before the sofa. Shirley tousled his thick red hair, so like his father’s, she thought with a sigh. Then she leaned back again and shut her eyes.

  “Brilliant tactic, sweeping that old goat off the porch. I almost let out a cheer when he left.”

  “That wasn’t a tactic, son. That was complete idiocy on my part. I’m far too impulsive, and you are, too. You get it from me. Tell me you didn’t actually spit on a Japanese soldier.”

  Charles sat higher on his haunches. “In one of his sermons, Reverend Wells said we should do all that we can. So I did.”

  Shirley swung her legs around, placed her oxfords on the carpet, and patted the spot beside her. Charles hopped up to join her. His long legs stretched out past hers, reaching the coral-colored cherry blossoms in a sea of blue on the Chinese rug. She noticed for the first time that not only his socks showed above his too-short trouser legs but his bare and surprisingly hairy calves as well. She turned to get a better look at him. What used to be pale peach fuzz above his upper lip had sprouted into actual coarse dark-red hairs. They had appeared below his bottom lip as well. Her son seemed to be growing a rudimentary goatee. His bony wrists protruded from his rumpled linen jacket, and his shirttails were out. Shirley thought that the young man seated beside her wasn’t unattractive. He just appeared un-cared-for, like someone who had no parents and must survive by his wits alone.

  “This is serious, my boy. You could have been arrested. Or worse, gotten Han arrested.”

  He patted her knee. “I know, Mother, but I think Father would have been proud of us.”

  Shirley slumped back against the pillows.

  “Father was no coward,” Charles continued. “Remember how he used to put on that fake British accent and say, ‘Don’t fire till you see the whites of their eyes’? He was kidding, of course, but he wanted me to be brave and stand up for what I believed in. It’s a manly thing, but you did swell just now, too.”

  “Charles, you’re as wrong-headed as you could possibly be. Your father did not believe in fighting. He wanted everyone to cooperate and trust one another and work as one. And he absolutely understood that women can be as brave as men and, in fact, must be. Such foolishness, my darling.”

  Shirley smoothed his wild hair again and realized that with his irrepressible grin, her son was trying to buck her up, not the other way around. Charles had always had a buoyant personality. A chuckling baby, a toddler who raced forward on stocky legs, then an angular little boy covered in freckles and grins from ear to ear. But a sensitive soul, too, whose sunny disposition could quickly cloud over when criticized or corrected. So she simply hadn’t. It was too painful to see him crumple into self-doubt. He had run wild and carefree throughout the compound, without oversight or direction. All had been grand for him for so long. He must have been completely floored when word had come of his father’s accident, Shirley thought. Nothing remotely like it had ever happened to him before.

  “How are you, Charles?” she asked. “Without Father, I mean.”

  The smile on his face evaporated, and he appeared baffled by the question.

  “I’m so sorry that I’ve neglected you,” she said softly.

  Her son’s large, angular Adam’s apple rose and fell. She sensed he had no idea how to respond.

  “I suppose, though,” she said, attempting a smile, “it’s good that you’re feeling strong enough to take on the Japanese Imperial Army.” Then she added more firmly, “But I believe you need to be put to some purpose this summer instead of strutting about like a useless rooster. We’ll begin a new regimen tomorrow morning.”

  Charles’s shoulders sagged, but Shirley thought she had finally hit the right note: he needed rules to butt up against in order to regain his fiery gumption.

  “I intend to keep a closer watch over you. There will be duties for you to perform around the house.”

  “Chores, Mother? When the country is practically at war, you want me to clean my room?”

  “Discipline begins at home,” she said and couldn’t help remembering the Japanese officer’s words.

  Charles scrambled to his feet and stood far above her. When had he gotten so tall? she wondered.

  “Han lives on his own now,” he said. “No one tells him what to do anymore.”

  “That’s not something to envy. Your friend’s father has gone missing. I’m sure his uncle and grandmother and other relatives are keeping a close eye on him. Chinese families are terribly close-knit.”

  “I know, but it’s pretty keen that he gets to come and go as he pleases.”

  “That’s enough, now. Get ready for bed.”

  Charles bent low and kissed the air near her cheek. It wasn’t until he had turned and walked from the room that she realized she had meant to offer him a good-night hug. His footfalls struck firmly on the stairs, and Shirley realized that the moment for comforting her boy had passed. He was practically a young man now.

  Lian appeared at the door to the parlor with the black lacquered tray, bamboo-handled teapot, and lidded cup. As Caleb had instructed their maid, she did not bow but nonetheless entered quietly. That seemed to be how all the Chinese women walked in their thin slippers, although Shirley’s husband had enjoined Lian to speak up and rattle the dishes however she liked. He was forever encouraging the Chinese to be themselves in his presence, though Shirley had often wondered how a foreigner would know the difference.

  Lian set the tray on the teak side table, poured tea, and, after allowing it to steep, handed a cup to Shirley. Although Lian was a bulky woman, she settled delicately into the wicker rocking chair opposite the sofa and tucked her long tunic under her. Out of respect for the formality of the setting, she had removed her apron before entering. It wasn’t customary for servants to sit with their masters in the living quarters, and Shirley knew it made Lian uncomfortable, but Caleb had insisted on it. We are all congregants, he had said, each the same in God’s eyes.

  Since her husband’s passing, Shirley had been grateful for his eccentric demands on their servants—essentially, that they all behave as equals under this roof. Lian and even the young and silent girl, Dao-Ming, had offered Shirley kindness and comfort. Lian had become a true friend, Shirley thought, or as true a friend as their dissimilar circumstances would allow.

  “Does my son seem all right to you, Lian?” she asked now. “You have brothers. Were they this difficult when they were his age?”

  “He is American boy, nothing like Chinese. Our boys behave, or else.”

  “Or else what?”

  “My father beat them every week whether they deserve it or not.”

  “That’s terrible.”

  They are responsible men now.”

  “And you would do the same if you had a son?”

  “I have no son.”

  Lian touched a finger to the simple cross she wore around her neck. Shirley couldn’t envision her maid raising a belt to a child, but Lian had no children of her own, so it was a moot point—or, more accurately, a sore point. A barren woman here seemed to be of a lower status, marking a stain upon her for her loss. Shirley undid the laces of her oxfords and slipped them off. Lian pulled her seat closer, lifted one of Shirley’s feet into her lap, and began to rub.

  “As young man, Charles needs father more than ever,” Lian said, “but now he has none!” She let out a forceful laugh.

  Shirley tried not to be affronted. Her maid meant well. She was blunt, that was all, not unlike Shirley’s mother, another older woman with a decidedly ungracious manner. Though in Shirley’s mother’s case, the sourness went all the way through. As Lian continued to rub, Shirley recalled how her mother was accustomed to being waited on hand and foot. The irony that she thought of this while her maid was waiting on her was not lost on Shirley, and yet she felt certain that she and her mother were utterly unalike. Her mother complained about her servants constantly. Shirley was uneasy with her servants at best and had accompanied her hu
sband to China in part to help ensure that she didn’t inherit her mother’s selfishness. Performing good works, as Caleb called the efforts here, was the best antidote to such upper-class self-preoccupation and snobbery.

  “You must find new uncle here in mission,” Lian suggested. “Other ministers do good job with boy.”

  Shirley leaned forward and whispered, “Not a single one of the other reverends is half the man Caleb was. They’re fine people, but they lack character. Charles would hoodwink them. They’d wind up doing his bidding. My son is a thoroughbred—good-natured, high in spirits, perhaps too cocky, but with awfully thin skin.”

  Lian looked up from her rubbing. “What is trouble with boy’s skin?”

  “An expression. He bruises easily.”

  “Ah, yes, Charles-Boy is baby! I know this. You should consider the belt.”

  Shirley put down her cup. “Can you imagine? A boy who’s never heard a raised voice in his life. He’d be shocked out of his wits.” She placed her stocking feet on the carpet. “Honestly, going forward, I mean to do better by him.”

  A phlegmy cough sounded from the hallway, followed by the tap of a cane. Old Tupan Feng stood teetering in the doorway, waiting to be announced.

  Lian rolled her eyes and said in a teasing tone, “Ancient Warlord Feng enters!”

  He cleared his throat again and spoke in fine, British-accented English. “No need to bow,” he said as he hobbled in. “In the modern fashion, I no longer require that of my subjects.”

  Lian stood, slapped her skirt, and began to clear the tea set. Back when Tupan Feng had been an active warlord, he had punished any servants who weren’t silent at their tasks, so Lian made as much racket as possible now. She stood before him, and he blinked at the tray in her hands.

  “Is it tea time already?” he asked.

  “We finish now.”

  “I’m sure Lian would be happy to make you tea, Tupan Feng,” Shirley offered.

  He turned his head slowly, as if only now recalling her. He often seemed to forget that this was the Carsons’ home and not his own. “Very kind of you, Mrs. Carson, but I could not possibly. It is bad for the humors to drink at this hour.”

  “And what hour is that, Old Feng?” Lian asked, her nose practically touching his.

  He waved a hand to shoo her away and relied on the cane. “In my day, I instituted the regulation of the hours. All subjects rose at 6 a.m. My Early Rising Society saw to it! Excellent for productivity.”

  “Perhaps it is morning then, hmmm? Do you hear birds outside? Time to rise?” Lian pressed.

  “That’s enough, Lian,” Shirley said.

  Tupan Feng paused as if considering the time of day but then determining the topic beneath him. He set off again in mincing steps toward the rocking chair that Lian had just vacated. Shirley hopped to her feet to catch him before he sat; otherwise she’d be forced to stay up with him until he dozed off again. The old tupan, or warlord, slept at all hours of both day and night, roaming the house when the spirit struck him. In her own nocturnal ramblings since Caleb’s death, Shirley had slipped into darkened rooms to discover his spindly frame curled on chairs or atop makeshift beds, even stretched out beside the cold hearth. He seemed as partial to the sunny window seats in the dining room as were the cats. As she studied his tiny frame now, Shirley tried to recall if she’d ever seen him eating and wondered if he wasn’t perhaps starving.

  But, to his credit, old Tupan Feng never complained. He was stoical and upright, though half bent now. Over his years as warlord of this province, he had professed an amalgam of philosophies—most committedly to Confucianism because of its effectiveness at inculcating respect for authority. He also adhered to Buddhist sensibilities on occasion, and even some Taoist beliefs to appease the old spirits. But because he had ambled into church somewhat regularly, and during his reign had proclaimed his province a welcome bastion for Christians, Reverend Carson had offered him a small room at the back of the house in his less-substantial older age. Being a man of curiosity about the broader world, and also temporarily homeless, Feng had taken the Reverend up on the offer. He wished to observe the American Christians firsthand. He had come to suspect that the self-sacrificing aspects of their religion explained the physical and moral strength of Westerners overall, something he had wished to propagate in his own people.

  Shirley took his arm, and he froze in midstep and swayed, his ceremonial sword in its black sheath grazing her long skirt. His uniform was badly stained, many of the brass buttons missing and the collar frayed. But the braid on the epaulettes somehow miraculously had remained in place, giving his shoulders a perversely broad appearance. He was so profoundly hunched that the top of his balding head didn’t quite reach Shirley’s chest.

  “Off to bed we go,” she said. “And wouldn’t you like to take off your jacket when you recline? It could use some freshening up. I’m sure Lian would be willing to launder it, wouldn’t you, Lian?”

  Lian let out a chuckle. “Good luck peeling it off him. He will be buried in that ratty thing.”

  “Must keep it on,” Tupan Feng said. “You never know when the moment will arise.”

  “And what moment is that, Old Feng?” Lian asked with a slight smile.

  He turned to look at her, and his face went blank. A long moment later, a bolt of light came back into his eyes, and he licked his lips. “Battle!” was all he said.

  Lian hooked his arm into hers. “Come now, Old Tupan, I walk you back to your room.”

  “Kind of you, Lian,” Shirley said.

  “Very bad nephew of Old Tupan should buy him new coat, not to mention his own house, after all the taxes his family took from the people.”

  Hearing that word, the old man summoned a surprisingly stentorian voice. “It is necessary and prudent, though not pleasurable, to impose levies on all transactions.”

  “Enough!” Lian said, and he went quiet again. When they reached the door, she turned back and asked, “Mrs. Carson, did you see flag raised high today?”

  “Flag? What flag?”

  “American flag at entrance to compound above gatehouse.”

  Shirley shook her head.

  “The servants think it means something, but no one knows what. We hear Reds infiltrate Japanese Imperial Army supply lines. We worry they will retaliate here.”

  “The Japanese Imperial Army will squash all enemies!” Tupan Feng perked up. “They have very fine leaders. Excellently trained at top-notch military academies.”

  Lian pulled him tighter to her side to keep him from listing. “We know all about you and the Japanese.”

  “I am Number One Student from Tokyo Military Academy. Prize ceremonial sword proves it!” His palsied hand flailed around to find the sheath on his hip.

  Lian ignored him and explained, “Many relatives from countryside come to town with everything they own.”

  “But I thought people were moving south, escaping in that direction. Why would they arrive here when the Japanese occupy our town?” Shirley asked. “Wouldn’t they rather go where there aren’t any Japanese?”

  “Yes, where to go is big question!” Lian exclaimed. “They come to American mission. It is safe haven, remember?” she asked and added the exasperated tsking sound that Shirley had dreaded ever since she and her family had first arrived. She must have missed something painfully obvious. “We think,” Lian continued, “American flag flies higher today to make Imperial Army remember America is neutral. Also, Japanese not attack same town where they live. No, it is safer here than countryside.” She shook her head. “Out there very, very bad. Missus understand now?”

  Lian stared at Shirley and seemed to be waiting for her to say something. The tray in the solid woman’s hand wobbled.

  “Yes,” Shirley said, “I see,” when really she didn’t see, hardly at all. “Is there something else you’d like from me tonight, Lian?”

  Her maid let out a long stream of air and finally said, “No, I leave now. Good night.”
<
br />   Lian turned and shuffled out of the room, dragging the old man along beside her, his saber clinking at his side and her long, narrow dress rustling as she went. Just to fluster Shirley even more, Lian’s little helper, Dao-Ming, suddenly ducked her head out from behind one of the muslin curtains and dashed after Lian across the hallway on her thick, ungraceful legs. Apparently, the girl had been spying again.

  The little scamp, Shirley thought. The young girl was forever popping up and surprising Shirley. It couldn’t be helped because she was Lian’s charge and a pathetic young thing: a true Mongoloid with the enlarged head, deeply recessed eyes, and rotund body. Back home, she’d have been put in an institution, but they didn’t have such options here. She could no doubt in the end be shuffled off to the poorhouse, but Lian, out of the goodness of her Christian heart, had taken the orphan in. Caleb, whose heart had also been warm and malleable, had agreed to permit Dao-Ming to hang about. The sight of her never bothered him, and, to the girl’s credit, she rarely made a peep, but those spooky hooded eyes, overly pink cheeks, and odd little grin all gave Shirley a chill.

  She took a final sip of tea and tried to understand what had just transpired with Lian. Communication between foreigners and Chinese was always fraught, Shirley thought: sometimes barbed, other times overly serene, as if nothing had transpired at all, when clearly it had. Tomorrow she would try to make sense of it all. She might even venture out and see what was going on outside the mission, returning in time for her reward of tea with Kathryn. They would discuss every maddening incident and together parse the unintelligible. But for now, Shirley’s head spun. She needed rest.

  She started toward the stairs, but her fingers instinctively reached to graze the chipped keys of her beloved upright piano that stood in the front hall. She wished she could play the rousing chords of a choir hymn, but such noise at this hour would alarm her already concerned neighbors. On the entrance table, she pulled the brass chain on the cloisonné lamp, and the hallway went dark. The timbers of her home settled and creaked after another humid day.