Dreams of the Red Phoenix

by Virginia Pye

  The Reverend Wells’s owl eyes in his thick glasses blinked several times as he noticed the bloodstains on her apron. “Are you injured, Mrs. Carson?”

  “Heavens, no, I’m fine. This is from that wounded fellow over there. I’ve just finished extracting a bullet from his leg.”

  Reverend Wells looked across to the young man on the sofa. “I see,” he said and smiled politely.

  Wells was a nervous man, easily overwhelmed, though an unnatural calm came over him when he rose to the pulpit. Shirley admired his sermons, which were quite erudite. She had often wished that she and Reverend Wells could sit down and parse the Bible, or Chinese culture, or any topic together, but she was relegated to the women’s conversations instead. The lady missionaries were a dear bunch, but none of them, except perhaps Kathryn, was a serious thinker.

  Wells glanced out at the crowded compound through the screened window. “We’ve estimated close to five thousand have arrived. Can you imagine? The most we’ve ever had at Christmas service was five hundred. We finally had to shut the gates. I hated to do it, but we had no choice.”

  “My, I would never have guessed such an enormous number. Whatever will we do with them?”

  Wells’s lips trembled slightly. Shirley realized the terrible irony for him: for years, he had avoided the missionary trail, preferring to stay in his library rather than go out, as Caleb had, to meet the actual Chinese in town and countryside. But now they had come en masse to him anyway.

  “I gather,” she offered, “that the Eighth Route Army of the Reds is somewhere about and intends to help as best they can.”

  “We’re not supposed to get involved with the Communists, although they do seem to have a good touch with the local people and better success against the Japanese. But the American board in Boston has sent strict orders for us not to become entangled in Chinese internal politics. That is the policy.”

  Shirley straightened her spine. “Policy or no, our American board is in America, Reverend. They can’t possibly understand the situation here when we can hardly understand it ourselves.”

  As she spoke, Reverend Wells seemed to duck into his collar, and his face turned a soft and lovely pink. Shirley could imagine her husband whispering frantically in her ear that not everyone was accustomed to what he politely called her straightforwardness when what he really meant was her bossiness. Ladies, and most especially ministers’ wives—in Shirley’s opinion an all-too-often simpering and milquetoast bunch—were not meant to speak that way.

  She pressed on in a more measured tone. “I just don’t think we can follow directives from afar, given the changing circumstances. Don’t you agree, Reverend?”

  “Yes, of course, you’re right. Absolutely right,” he said, head bobbing.

  Shirley waited for him to continue, but when he did not, she asked, “And so, what do you plan to do?”

  His eyes darted out the window again. “The Eighth Route Army, you say?”

  “I must introduce you to Captain Hsu.”

  “Why, yes, Captain Hsu,” Reverend Wells said, his voice rising in confidence again. “There’s an excellent fellow. He used to stop by our Bible study group from time to time.”

  “Is that so?” she asked. “I was sure the Communists are against religion. Isn’t that one of their central tenets?”

  “He’s not a believer. He came to the study group out of respect for your husband, whom he greatly admired. They developed a friendship of sorts. Caleb was always keen to know the Chinese on their own terms, and he took that experiment to its furthest extent with Hsu. But the captain has a fine mind.” Reverend Wells tapped a finger to his thinning hair. “A top-notch intellect. I think Caleb genuinely enjoyed his company. But I’m sure you know all about that.”

  Shirley nodded pleasantly and did her best to hide her disbelief. How had Caleb developed such a full-blown friendship with someone whom she had never even met? Since his death, she had spent hours and days recollecting the man she had loved. So many moments with him drowning her mind in a ceaseless torrent until she felt there was nothing more to remember, nothing more to know. But now the awkward, though reliable, man before her seemed to suggest a whole chapter of her husband’s life about which she knew nothing.

  She was about to ask more when Reverend Wells patted her sleeve and gestured for her to follow him into a quieter corner of the front hall. He lowered his voice even further, and she leaned in to listen.

  “The other reason I came by, Mrs. Carson, was to tell you that your Lian’s family from the country has arrived here at the mission. It appears they want to join my household. I thought you should know.”

  Shirley stood upright. “How absurd. They should be here with us, of course. If they arrive on your doorstep, send them over to me right away.”

  “I’m sorry, this is awkward, Mrs. Carson, but Lian visited my wife late last evening and asked our permission.” He ducked and hedged again, “Apparently you had not invited them to join your household? I’m sure it was a simple misunderstanding.”

  Shirley was suddenly aware of Dao-Ming at her side. She shooed the girl away and glanced over at Lian, who chatted with the injured boy and his friends.

  “Thank you for coming to tell me, Reverend. I’ll take care of it right away,” Shirley said. “I seem to have missed the cues Lian offered me last night. I’m not accustomed to the politeness of the Chinese. I was raised to speak up if I wanted something. Simply ask! The business of dropping hints, or even saying the exact opposite of what you want, is entirely lost on me. Caleb was a far more sympathetic soul and better at grasping the subtleties of communication between native and foreigner. I’m abysmal at it.”

  She started to turn, intending to go immediately to Lian to straighten this out.

  “Mrs. Carson,” the Reverend said as he took her elbow in a firm grip, “may I suggest that you let it rest for the moment? After I’ve gone, offer her family a gracious invitation. You don’t want it to seem that you have offered it under duress, do you?”

  Shirley looked down at him, and, as Caleb would have advised, she inhaled a long, careful breath. “Quite right. Good of you to remind me, Reverend. I have a hot head and can make terrible messes when I don’t control my impulses.”

  He shuffled from side to side and offered little reassuring noises. “Simple mistake,” he said. “We all do it. They are so very different from us.”

  Shirley made herself smile but understood that the problem was not with the Chinese—though they could be difficult to grasp—but with her own obtuseness. She had never been skilled at picking up social signals of any sort. She withered in the company of well-bred ladies who had been raised to chatter with one another on a different plain, hemming and hawing and never getting to any particular point. Shirley found taking tea with them most aggravating. The topic was always the weather, or their husbands’ sartorial habits, and nothing of any interest was ever said outright but only implied. Days later would she learn that factions had formed over the course of dull conversation and cucumber sandwiches.

  “Mrs. Carson,” Reverend Wells interrupted her thoughts, “do you mind me asking, what you meant earlier by saying that you removed a bullet from that Chinese boy, per se?”

  “I meant precisely that. I say what I mean, Reverend, and I mean what I say. I’m simple that way.” She let out a sigh. “Perhaps at some point, my husband mentioned to you that I am a trained nurse?”

  “Ah,” he said as a bewildered look overcame his face and he shook his head. “So sorry, I don’t recall. He very well may have. I am terrible at remembering details about, well, people.”

  A headache had bloomed over Shirley’s right eye. Normally, at this time of day, she would be curled up in her bed, either crying about her lost husband or, before his death, reading. Endlessly engaging with people, which she had done since first thing this morning, struck her as unrelenting torture. Clearly Reverend Wells knew the feeling.

  “I realize I have been holed up for weeks,�
�� she said, “ever since word came of my husband’s death, and before that I kept to myself perhaps more than I should have. I’m sure you’ve noticed that I have never been an active community member. I’m simply not a joiner, Reverend. I don’t enjoy—communication. I know that’s criminal, especially for a minister’s wife, but you, of all people, can understand that I prefer the company of books and ideas.”

  The Reverend let out a long sigh, as if he, too, was aching for his library at that very moment.

  Shirley gazed out the window again at the shuffling masses in the courtyard. “But I have always found the Chinese fascinating. The variations in their language alone warrant our attention. I would love to study it at university. And such intriguing customs that I barely fathom even after living here for five years. Sadly, though, I never pursued my intellectual interests beyond college. Instead I developed the skills that were expected of me. Like so many girls, I became a nurse, not that it suited me then, or now.”

  Reverend Wells let out an understanding grunt. He leaned in closer as if they now shared a secret understanding. “Life flows along, doesn’t it, dragging us with it? It carries us down unexpected and often less rewarding streams until we are spit out into the ocean and have no way back. The tide pulls us, and there we are—out in the vast blue.” He rocked forward onto his toes, a hopeful glow appearing on his face, his voice barely hiding a rising sense of mirth. “Everyone must know,” he continued, “that I, of all people, am not meant to be a leader of men, and yet here I am—in charge! That is simply how it is. We must rise to our calling, Mrs. Carson, however ill suited we may feel.”

  His eyes glistened, and an impish smile appeared. “But how fortunate for us that you are a nurse,” he exclaimed. “I will tell the others. Already today, Doc Sturgis has set up the mission infirmary for typhoid inoculations. With the unsanitary conditions and refuse problems, we need that right away.”

  The Reverend paused and looked at her, waiting, it seemed for her to say something rousing as well. When she didn’t, he carried on, his eyes still sparkling behind the thick lenses. “I suggest we relieve Doc Sturgis by setting up another, smaller clinic here in your home. What do you say, Mrs. Carson? It would not be for the worst cases but for more routine problems that suit your nursing skills. We really must take advantage of your training.”

  Shirley felt distracted by the sight of Lian crossing the hall, a cast-iron pot of bloodied water sloshing in her hands. Dao-Ming followed close behind, her arms laden with used towels.

  “I’m sorry, Reverend,” she said. “I must go help the others now.”

  “So here, then? A clinic?” he asked again. “I would offer the Parish Hall, but it is packed to the gills with people already, and I think we’d do better to start small. If word gets out that we’re opening an actual hospital here, there will be no end to the Chinese.”

  Shirley glanced around again at her crowded home, then out at the overrun courtyard, then back to the Reverend, who seemed to be trembling again, but perhaps now with nervous excitement. “There is no end to the Chinese, Reverend,” she said. “That is the truth of it.”

  “Yes, and they need our help now more than ever. Your caring and talents can make all the difference.”

  He was such a sincere little man, Shirley thought, his expression straining with optimism and conviction. She had lacked both of those qualities for so long, she marveled that he could exhibit them so easily. He was a leader of people after all, she thought. Short and with poor eyesight and more dedicated to learning than to life, Reverend Wells appeared to have taken the plunge required of him. In the little boat of his life, he was heading out into the wide and turbulent ocean he had described. There would be no turning back. Shirley supposed that the dizzying feeling that surrounded her now was the tide pulling her out to join him.

  “I will need medical supplies,” she said. “Have your people bring in as many cots as we can wedge into the parlor and the dining room. Move the table out here in the hall, but leave the piano. Music can soothe a wounded soul.”

  “Absolutely, Mrs. Carson,” he said. “Thank you.”

  “Let’s carry on, then, shall we? Stiff upper lip and all that, as my husband used to say.” She finally offered a smile.

  Where, she thought, was Caleb? It remained unfathomable to her that he was not at her side any longer. She hoped somehow that he was looking down on her and approving, because she couldn’t manage without the thought of him doing so. From now on, she would behave as he would have wished. She would finally rise to the occasion here in China and do some actual good.

  Seven

  Charles cut across the compound and dodged down the back alley between the Parish Hall and the Chinese Boys’ School. He came out in a second courtyard and continued to wind past more clusters of displaced Chinese, some still restless and shuffling about, others sunk listlessly in the sun. He hopped over their bundles of clothing, blackened woks, cast-iron pots, straw baskets of all sizes, bags of grain, and even cooking fires where they had set up camp. Mothers sat on their haunches and chopped vegetables or prepared rice and tea, calling for their children to stay near and not climb too high in the trees. Already patched and tattered clothing and gray undergarments hung from the cherry and ginkgo branches. Shriveled grandmothers in many-layered traditional dresses shouted across the yard to one another as Charles quickly surmised that whole villages, not just individual families, had escaped here together. They had made it out of their ancient pasts and into an uncertain future as one.

  The Chinese men congregated and smoked, leaning against the serpentine brick wall dotted with lattice windows. The men didn’t look out at the distant plains but instead leaned toward one another and spoke in serious, urgent tones. Grandfathers slept without pillows under their heads in the shadow of the wall as their sons and grandsons whispered over them about what to do next.

  These people were not soldiers, Charles realized, and yet they were already irreparably harmed by war. He recalled that some of the Chinese men he had seen executed that morning hadn’t worn military uniforms. Chinese citizens, he was starting to grasp, as often as soldiers, were prey to the Japanese Imperial Army.

  If only his father were here to explain it all. Caleb Carson knew China better than most foreigners, from his many trips into the countryside and friendships with the people. Charles pulled out his father’s marble chop. On one end was carved Fenghuang, the mythical phoenix, with wings partially upraised. His father had taught him that for the Chinese, this bird was a hopeful symbol, suggesting the warmth of the summer sun and the fruitful unification of Yin and Yang. The mysterious creature brought good fortune. For Westerners, the phoenix rising from the ashes had always represented renewal and rebirth. If only his father had carried this good-luck charm with him out on the trail, Charles thought, maybe he wouldn’t have perished under the shifting ground.

  He pressed the other end of the chop against the back of his hand and was surprised to notice that the bright-red ink made not the Chinese characters for his father’s name but the image of a winged phoenix. His father’s chop bore that magical symbol, not a written name. Charles lifted his hand into the sunlight and felt a flicker of something—if not hope, then perhaps comfort—as the bird rose. He then let his hand drop again to his side and kept on to the servants’ quarters.

  In front of Han’s shack, he caught his breath. The simple woven bamboo screen that blocked the door remained in place, which struck Charles as odd, given that it was midday. He stepped around it, and when he knocked on the door, it swung open. The single room remained dim even in daylight, but Charles’s eyes adjusted, and he could see that no one was inside. No candles flickered in front of the modest altar to the family’s ancestors. The sepia-toned, faded photo of Han’s grandmother and grandfather in their formal attire wasn’t there. The straw sleeping mats that Han and his father usually kept rolled in the corner were missing, too.

  Over in the small kitchen area, the storage shelf stood bare
, the larder empty. The straw at the back of the cooking stove had been swept clean, and no logs remained stacked ready to be placed inside the oven. The hole where the wok usually sat above the flame was also empty, and the many straw baskets, tin bucket, and wooden water ladle that usually hung beside the stove were all gone, too. The only things left behind were the two ladder-back chairs Charles’s mother had given Cook. They remained against the wall, as unused as ever.

  Charles turned and left, shutting the door behind him. He strode down the alley, offering a tentative bow to several servants’ families, though he didn’t recognize most of the faces and they returned his greeting with blank stares. Charles wondered if the ones from deep in the countryside had ever seen a white boy before.

  As he approached Lian’s quarters, he noticed that the screen had been pulled back and clouds of smoke from the cook fire billowed out the door. Something was wrong with the chimney, he thought. If his father had been alive, he would have attended to it right away. Charles squeezed the cool marble chop in his pocket and remembered his father insisting on the importance of treating others as you wished them to treat you, no matter their station in life. Charles could recall him pressing the point in the pulpit but more often on the streets of the provincial Chinese town, where Charles had stayed close to his side and held on tightly to his hand.

  Once, when Charles was seven, his father had bent down and given a coin to a legless beggar and instructed Charles to share one of his dried oatcakes with the man. Charles liked to carry an extra snack tucked in his pocket when they went on outings, but he did as he was told. He tossed the cake onto the ground before the beggar, then turned away from the gruesome sight of the man’s stumps. But his father yanked Charles back and insisted that he pick up the oatcake and place it directly into the beggar’s filthy hand. In English, he said, We are not offering food to a dangerous mongrel, my boy, but to a fellow human being. Then his father stayed and had a conversation with the beggar as he stuffed the food into his toothless mouth.