Little Reunions

by Eileen Chang

“Then what?”

  “I don’t remember,” replied Julie apologetically.

  Miss Purity lost her composure. “Oh come on, think hard,” she whined. “How could you forget?”

  Julie thought hard for a long time. “I really can’t remember.”

  Julie was young and couldn’t possibly understand the story, otherwise Miss Purity would have suspected Julie was too embarrassed to continue and made up the excuse she had forgotten the rest of it.

  Julie felt terrible. She pulled out copies of the previous two years of The Short Story Magazine. Squatting between two piles of the periodical, flipping the pages, she still could not find the story. Miss Purity grew agitated with anticipation.

  Years later after Julie had read this Hungarian short story again, once more for some reason she couldn’t remember how it ended, save that it was the third sister, who was named something like Yelina. Yelina was ill and he came to visit, or was it that he was sick and she came to look after him? She probably did not tell him, but Julie could not remember how he found out. Soon after that he had to leave the city and they lost contact.

  She forgot the ending twice, probably because her anticipation of the mysteries of romance were intense and the ending of the story was simply too dull for her to remember. Of course, it should have been the third sister. Julie feared she would not live long enough to fall in love and marry.

  Now it was too late to finish telling the story to Miss Purity. When Julie first told her the story, she was unaware that Miss Purity was gravely ill. After she died, Julie heard she had suffered from bone tuberculosis. Julie never saw Miss Purity again. At her funeral, Julie kowtowed to the body set out on an austere bed board in the funeral parlor. White cloth covered the body and draped down to the floor. A small square of red cloth was placed on her head, over the white fabric. It all felt unconnected to the Miss Purity Julie remembered. Apart from a slight eeriness, Julie felt nothing.

  “She used to be so fond of Miss Purity,” Julie overheard Rachel saying to Judy on the way home from the funeral, “but she showed no emotion at all.” Rachel was obviously disappointed by Julie’s lack of compassion.

  Rachel forced Ned into a sanatorium to cure his addiction to morphine. She waited until he was cured, then demanded a divorce.

  “The doctor said he injects enough to kill a horse,” said Rachel.

  “We Shengs,” declared Ned initially, “have never divorced.” As the appointment to sign the papers at the lawyer’s office approached, he went back on his word many times. Rachel said the English lawyer was so angry he was ready to punch Ned. The English lawyers in the foreign concessions of Shanghai had the upper hand, otherwise Ned would have behaved worse and ignored the lawyer’s letters altogether.

  Rachel and Judy moved into an apartment. One day Julie visited. “I have divorced your second uncle,” Rachel announced to the mirror as she did her makeup in the bathroom. “You can’t blame your second uncle for this. If he had married someone else, he would have got on just fine. I hope he meets the right person.”

  “I’m truly happy,” said a smiling Julie. She was feeling relieved for her mother, even though she knew her parent’s divorce would not be good for her. But she couldn’t just think of herself. She also felt smug, knowing that her family had achieved something as thoroughly modern as producing a scientist.

  “I’m only telling you to let you know, so you don’t misjudge your second uncle,” said Rachel, a little annoyed at what she took to be Julie’s expression of approval. After all, she was not so much of a Westernized parent that she would seek permission from her children for a divorce.

  Ned looked for another place to live but eventually moved onto the same lane where the Pien family lived, hoping against hope to bump into Rachel and that her younger brother could mediate a reconciliation. But as soon as the papers were finalized, Rachel left for Europe. This time Judy did not accompany her, so on the day of her departure Julie and Julian went to see her off, as did all of Yün-chih’s family, who surrounded Rachel. With a human shield of relatives, everyone felt more at ease. Julie thought: Did they think we’d cry or something?

  Julie and Julian were bored as they nonchalantly wandered about on the fringes of the flock of relatives from their uncle’s family. The deck of the ship was festooned with large red-and-white-striped umbrellas. Everyone inspected the cabins and at last sat underneath the umbrellas, ordering orange juice, though there were not enough seats for the children.

  At home with Ned life more or less returned to the way it was during those mundane childhood years in the north. Ned was good-tempered and spent his days in his room, pacing around in circles like a caged animal, memorizing and reciting books. The flood of words flowed rapidly, and as he neared an ending he began to chant loudly before concluding with a robust, “Oh!” Anyone who has read a few volumes of string-bound classics will know how much time and effort it involved. Julie felt sorry for her father.

  Judy once spoke to Julie about her and Ned’s elder brother. “He bawled when he heard the imperial examination system had been abolished,” she said, laughing derisively.

  Julie, however, felt sorry for him—at least he had passed the examination. Of course, Judy despised him. Judy and Ned were born to his second wife. He was twenty years older than Judy and Ned, and he had been the one who raised the two orphans.

  “When your uncle saw kissing in the movies he’d cover his eyes,” said Judy of her elder brother. “Around that time the famous female impersonator Mei Lan-fang was performing a new production of the opera Celestial Beauty Scattering Flowers. Your eldest uncle heard there was nothing wrong with that opera and granted permission for me to see it. I was so happy that I memorized the entire libretto so I could concentrate on the acting and not have to hold it up during the performance, which would ruin my enjoyment of the opera. Then—who knows why—he withdrew his permission.

  “Your uncle constantly lamented that I refused to get married. He cried, demanding to know how he would be able to face our parents in the afterlife. He accused me of being uncooperative, but he barely arranged any meetings with potential candidates through matchmakers.

  “Your eldest uncle’s wife used to say to me, ‘Your second brother just can’t be trusted; your elder brother never strays.’ She’d then sneer. But she underestimated her husband. Every night, squinting in anticipation, your eldest uncle called out, ‘Joy, bring my foot bath.’ Who could have thought that over time the foot-bathing ritual would lead to a secret arrangement. Joy was a wily one. At first she demurred, so he agreed to set her up with her own house, knowing his principal wife would not tolerate any such arrangement. He told her that he had married Joy off. The cover story was that Joy now lived as the principal wife of a man with a millinery and shoe store in the Hsiakwan district of Nanking. The subterfuge was well scripted, and they even gave the husband a name. Joy had been serving your aunt since she was a little girl so your aunt gave Joy a dowry. When Joy had a child, your eldest uncle told his wife, ‘Joy gave birth to a son!’ That was really wicked.”

  Following the fracas over their traveling abroad, Rachel and Judy broke off contact with the family of Judy’s elder brother. Julie rarely visited and her adoption was no longer mentioned. That year, after the divorce, Ned dispatched Julie and Julian to make New Year salutations to his elder brother, while he arranged to visit separately. The elderly uncle sat alone in the study on the ground floor. He wore a skullcap and spectacles. His short face was adorned with a wispy, white pencil mustache. The two children kowtowed and he politely got up and extended his hand to curtail their obeisances, all the while convivially clucking repeatedly, “Have you eaten? Have you eaten? Have you visited your aunt yet? Have you been upstairs yet? Have you greeted your aunt?” He then gave orders in a low voice to the servants: “Go and fetch the young master. Fetch the young master, right?” Their eldest uncle’s first son was in his teens. “Have you been upstairs? Fetch the young master, all right?”

  Ne
d also instructed Auntie Han to take the children to pay their obeisance at their uncle’s secret household. Joy was fair-skinned and modest, and indeed resembled the proprietress of a small-town millinery and shoe store. She treated Auntie Han the same as always and did not put on airs, and Auntie Han, for her part, praised the concubine behind the back of the principal wife.

  One time Ned neglected to make any preparations for the Lunar New Year, thinking of it just before New Year’s Eve. He pulled a ten-dollar note out of his pocket and instructed Julie to take the household automobile to purchase some winter cherry blossoms. Luckily the flower shop was still open. Julie carefully selected two large branches with many blossoms, costing just over a dollar, and returned the change to Ned, who said he liked the flowers. Ordinarily Ned did not hand over money with such alacrity, often leaving Julie standing outside the opium den waiting for an age. Judy commented that he always delayed paying bills. “It gives him pleasure to keep money in his pocket for an extra day or two.” Julie knew only too well her father’s fears.

  “Second Master is most frugal nowadays,” said Auntie Lee, the clothes washer, referring to Ned.

  Auntie Han laughed. “Oh yes, Second Master now understands what being frugal means. As the saying goes, ‘The prodigal son who mends his ways will shine again.’”

  Ned was now trading in gold at the metal exchange and was said to be making a lot of money. He suddenly became a rare candidate among the relatives for matrimonial introductions. And there were plenty of unmarried women to choose from.

  “Come with me to visit your fourth great aunt,” said Ned to Julie one day. “It’s time for you to learn something.”

  They saw a younger female cousin of Ned’s, the second in the household of Julie’s fourth great aunt. Her younger sister married long ago but for some reason she was not betrothed. She wore no makeup, dressed modestly, and was slightly plump. She was under thirty. Her docile eyes were set on a long broad face, and her hair, with a hint of curls, sat in piles on her shoulders.

  Nodding his head with a slightly embarrassed look, Ned greeted her as Second Younger Cousin. He then chatted with her parents while she took Julie by the hand and led her to sit down in an adjoining room.

  There were many canopies on the bed in the large shabby room. The two sat on the edge of the bed as she asked Julie all sorts of questions about what she did besides study. “And you also learn to play the piano?” She sounded surprised, obviously impressed.

  She held Julie’s hand tightly and would not let go.

  “Would I want her to be my stepmother?” Julie asked herself. “I don’t know.”

  Julie wanted to tell her that Ned’s women were all proverbial beauties and wily characters.

  The woman obviously thought Julie’s father liked her a lot and would be obedient to her.

  Ned enjoyed proffering food to Julie, and always scraped out the duck brains just for her. When Ned paced around the room in circles, he would sometimes gently ruffle Julie’s hair and call her “baldy”—tutzu in Chinese. Julie didn’t like that because she had a lot of hair, unlike her cousin who had boils on her head every summer and had to have her head shaved clean. Years passed before Julie realized Ned was actually calling her toots.

  It was hard to keep in mind that her parents were products of a transitional era. Although her mother was a modernist, Julie could never understand why it was taboo to say “bump into”; it always had to be I “encountered” so-and-so in the street. The word “delight” was also proscribed. The literary supplement in the Daily News called Forest of Delight caused her no end of anguish. Why couldn’t it have been called Happiness Forest? She refused to say “happiness” because that sounded unnatural, so she just used the word “happy.” After Julie read the folk novel The Water Margin, she realized that “delight” was a sexual term. “Do it” was without question taboo. So, too, on occasion, was the word “broken.” And it wasn’t just her mother; Judy also felt “broken” to be taboo and forbade any words or phrases that contained it, like “heartbroken” or “nervous breakdown.” Looking back as an adult, Julie surmised it had something to do with despoiled maidenhood.

  Ned subscribed to Fortune magazine. It often had illustrated advertising inserts for automobiles, and he was always acquiring new models. He purchased two items of office furniture made of steel: a desk and a file cabinet. He kept a paper punch on the desk, which he never touched. Julie used it to punch out holes in a piece of paper and then played with her filigree creation. When Ned saw this, he was momentarily startled. “Stop it!” he shouted angrily, snatching the paper punch from Julie, as if her tomfoolery were a personal affront.

  A plaster statuette of Napoleon sat on Ned’s desk. He spoke English with a stutter and knew a bit of German. He liked Schopenhauer. He purchased a translation of Hitler’s Mein Kampf, as well as every book available about the situation in Europe. Although he didn’t wear a Western-style suit, he did have a vest with a light gray satin back that he wore over his singlet.

  Ned also subscribed to Travel Magazine. He never traveled—it would interfere with his opium smoking—but he did have a travel clock in a folding leather pocketbook sitting on the teapoy beside his bed.

  Julie felt her father’s adherence to old-fashioned customs was purely a matter of convenience for himself. For instance, he knew full well that hiring a tutor to teach Julian the classics at home was a professional dead end, but it was cheaper than sending him to a modern school. He said he wanted to wait a few years, with the excuse that a “solid foundation in the classics is essential.” Rachel did not put up much of a fight for Julian in this regard, believing that Ned, at the very least, would not deprive his only son of an education.

  The last time Rachel returned to China, the family relocated to Shanghai to wait for her, which was one of her conditions for returning. She felt it would be impossible to get divorced in the north, surrounded by the sphere of influence of Ned’s cousins. Upon arriving in Shanghai, Ned took Julie to visit Rachel’s younger brother. The brothers-in-law were on good terms. Yün-chih, with whom Ned had frequently gone out whoring back in the day, had just woken up and was reclining on the opium bed, satisfying his cravings. Opposite were two single iron-frame beds, upon one of which his wife sat wrapped in a quilt. Ned paced around the room. A cousin of Julie’s took her downstairs to play, having dispatched her younger sister to rent some books and buy sweets on the street.

  “Bring back thirty cents worth of cured duck gizzards and duck liver,” her second elder sister called out from the living room.

  “Where’s the money?”

  “Borrow some from Auntie Liu.”

  Standing askew in the middle of the living room was an altar table with a red embroidered skirt, dedicated to who knows what deity. The altar table was coated in dust and even the molten wax tears from the candles were dust-laden. The third sister passed by the altar, and hurriedly put her palms together and made a perfunctory nod of obeisance. A bronze chime lay beside the candle stand. Julie wanted to strike the chime for fun and her young cousin hesitantly passed her the clapper. Julie knew that striking the chime was not allowed so she only did it once. An old maidservant heard the chime and appeared immediately. She was blind and extremely short. Her small long face betrayed squinting eyes as she stood unsteadily on her bound feet. It was already the Republican era, but the woman still dressed in the late Ch’ing style—a faded light blue knee-length cotton blouse covered with patches over a pair of tight black trousers. Her bound feet were encased in hand-sewn cotton socks instead of machine-made “foreign” socks.

  “I have come to pay obeisance, too,” she said as she edged her way along the wall.

  “This old maidservant is really wicked,” said Julie’s second cousin spitefully. “She’s always stealing cigarettes!” she continued, as she opened a cigarette tin atop a teapoy to provide proof. “Do you think she really can’t see?”

  The old maidservant said nothing and continued to feel her way
along the wall.

  “Oh, all right. I’ll guide you.”

  “Third Mistress is so kind!”

  Julie’s third cousin led the maidservant to kneel in front of the Alsatian curled up at the foot of the sofa. “She’s kowtowing to the dog!” she squealed, jumping up and down, clapping her hands. “She’s kowtowing to the dog! She’s kowtowing to the dog!”

  Yün-chih lived in fear of being kidnapped. He hired a retired detective inspector and kept an Alsatian.

  The maidservant stood up and departed grumbling and muttering to herself.

  The fourth cousin returned with a complete comic-book edition of the kung fu movie The Burning of the Red Lotus Temple, along with the cured duck entrails and cigarette-shaped candies. “The book rental stall said no credit next time.”

  They stretched out on the beds in the sisters’ ground-floor bedroom to snack on their delicacies while they read. Cigarette-shaped candies made almost entirely of white sugar provided an aura of forbidden fruit as they sucked on the sticks they held between their little fingers. The room was freezing cold and they wrapped themselves up in a thick red floral-print cotton quilt. The sweat-laden bedding smelled a little fishy, and mixed with the aroma of cured poultry offal, created a peculiar sensation.

  “Play with us a little longer. Stay here, don’t go home. Fourth Sister, go upstairs to keep watch. When Uncle is ready to leave, come down and tell us so we have time to hide.”

  Julie did not want to leave but she couldn’t imagine that she would be permitted to stay. When the fourth sister came back down with the news, the third sister grabbed Julie and they bounded upstairs two steps at a time, right up to the third floor where their father’s concubine lived in a huge undivided room sparsely furnished with a large pink lacquered bed, a dresser, and a few other items.

  “Ma’am, please let our cousin hide here. Uncle is about to leave,” she said, dragging Julie behind a white fabric screen before bounding back downstairs.

  Julie stood behind the screen for a long time, which in her nervous excitement felt even longer than it was. The concubine was very quiet and Julie could barely hear her clothes rustling. Modestly dressed in a simple lined jacket and trousers, she was scrawny and, apart from her wavy permed hair, looked like an old hag.