Little Reunions

by Eileen Chang

  After Rachel and Judy traveled overseas, Auntie Han would take Julie and Julian by rickshaw to Honest Nephew’s house for New Year visitations. It was a long journey through a district of low whitewashed houses, all with flat roofs since the dry northern climate made roof tiles moot. The desolate row of oblong white buildings was similar to the Middle East. A small, ancient, spruce wood gate, blackened with age, opened in a wall to many gloomy courtyards housing family members and some distant relatives.

  The children were led down a winding corridor to a tiny dark room where a tall old man wearing a gray gown sat on a rattan recliner. He was a nephew of Julie’s paternal grandfather, whom she greeted as Second Uncle.

  “And how many Chinese characters do you know?” he asked Julie, as was his custom when he encountered children. “Do we have any snacks for them?”

  His fourth daughter-in-law, a petite old woman with bound feet, appeared in the doorway. After a brief discussion with the old man, she went to prepare the snacks. None of Julie’s cousins were anywhere to be seen—they were busy eating.

  “Recite a poem for me,” the old man said to Julie.

  Standing on the tiled floor a young Julie swayed from side to side, transferring her weight from one foot to the other as she chanted a T’ang dynasty poem from memory, without knowing the meaning: “The Shang songstress knew not the torment of a vanquished state.” She watched him wipe tears from his eyes.

  Julie learned from the male servants at home that when the Taiping rebels breached the defenses of Nanking, this same Second Uncle had been the provincial governor. From high atop the city wall, he was lowered down in a basket and escaped.

  The only close relatives who lived in the vicinity were two paternal uncles and their families. The other branch of the paternal family was wealthier, and the servants referred to them as belonging to the “New House.” This residence was their newly built Western-style mansion painted inside and out in a cream color with all the furniture lacquered white. In each room tassels adorned with emerald-green glass beads hung from the lampshades. This branch of the Sheng clan closely observed the clan traditions. Not only were the two brothers in the family addressed by their seniority rankings as Eleventh Master and Thirteenth Master but even their concubines were ranked by seniority. Madam One belonged to Eleventh Master, Madam Two and Madam Three belonged to Thirteenth Master. The numbering went up to Madam Nine and Madam Perfect—the perfect number ten. It made one’s head spin.

  Eleventh Master was a cabinet minister in the Peiyang government. Whenever Auntie Han took Julie and her brother to visit, they were made to wait by themselves in a large reception room on the second floor. Auntie Han stood behind their chairs as they waited, usually for at least a full two hours. Every once in a while, Auntie Han would twist a piece off of an oblong strip of a cherry-blossom jelly confection for the siblings to snack on, from a tall-footed glass tray on the table.

  A seventeen-year-old concubine from Chefoo that an acquaintance had recently bestowed to the head of the family stood languidly by the fireplace, arms folded. She appeared even daintier in her tight, full-length, deep purple gown when standing in front of the green tiles of the mantel. Her hair was braided into two buns that sat on each side of her head, with sparse bangs in the front; her small round cheeks were rouged a rustic red.

  “How many years have you been in service, eh?” she asked Auntie Han icily. “Where are you from, eh?” She had been left out in the cold, too, and wanted to strike up a conversation to fill the awkward silence. Auntie Han deferentially greeted her with a respectful “miss,” but avoided engagement.

  After a long time, even the new concubine had left, but the three of them were still kept waiting. Finally, Seventh Mistress summoned them—even the old women of the family were ranked by seniority. Seventh Mistress sat on the edge of her bed while she made detailed inquiries into the family’s well-being. “What do you eat? Your mother prohibits so many different foods I’m afraid to give you anything. Surely you can eat crucian carp with steamed eggs? What else?” After ascertaining each acceptable dish, she sent orders to the kitchen. It was only then that she lowered her voice and asked, “Is Sixteenth Master well? Are there any letters from Sixteenth Mistress and Nineteenth Sister?” It was natural for her to use the seniority ranking to refer to Ned, Rachel, and Judy. “Goodness, how could anyone abandon these two children? It makes one feel so sorry for them. Thank goodness for you senior retainers.”

  “You mean besides the letter mentioned last time? We underlings do not know of such things, madam.”

  “These two are so civil. Not like our lot.”

  “They do get on well with each other, no fighting.”

  “How has Sixteenth Master been of late?” she asked again in a lowered voice, indicating that this time she was questioning in earnest. She then whispered something else.

  Auntie Han blinked momentarily before replying in a quiet voice. “We do not know, madam, because we are all upstairs. These days it’s just two opium-pipe preparers downstairs.”

  When the interview concluded, Seventh Mistress said to the children, “Go outside and play. If you want anything just ask. If we don’t have what you want, you can tell them to go and buy it for you. Make yourselves at home, no need to behave like guests.”

  There was no one to play with them so Auntie Han took them up to a huge open room on the fourth floor that served as a workshop. Madam One cut fabric and pieced together quilts on a long table. She was making a curtain, working the treadle of a sewing machine that whirred away. Large bolts of woven silk velvet stood in the corner of the room. She no longer applied makeup to her sallow face. Jet-black hair, forever-frowning eyebrows, small black eyes like tadpoles—she never smiled.

  “Oh, Auntie Han, sit. Have you seen Old Matriarch yet?”

  “Yes, we paid our respects to the elder mistress, we did. Madam One is busy.”

  Madam One emitted a breathless laugh. “Indeed, I am—well, I never have any spare time. Old Wang, serve tea!”

  “Madam One is so capable!”

  Old Matriarch made good use of the discarded: out-of-favor concubines were assigned tasks. Madam Two, big-eyed and as thin as a matchstick, looked even more aged than Madam One. Skilled at social niceties, she was put in charge of entertaining female guests and remained Old Matriarch’s favorite.

  Madam One had a six-or seven-year-old son who closely resembled her. He was about the same age as Julie and Julian but refused to play with them. He ran upstairs and tugged on his mother’s clothes, pestering her and mumbling to himself.

  Madam One was embarrassed by her son’s performance in front of the guests. “What is it?” she scolded, then fished some money out of her pocket. “Very well, then,” she said dismissively. “Now go.” He stomped loudly down the stairs.

  “Lunch is served.” A maidservant appeared and led them downstairs to eat.

  Old Matriarch guided several grandsons and granddaughters along with Julie and Julian to sit around a large, round, white-lacquered table. A few of the same dishes they ate at home every day were placed in front of Julie and Julian. Auntie Han stood behind them, picking out bits from various dishes to place in their bowls.

  After lunch Old Matriarch asked Second Brother to take them to the Commercial Press Bookshop and buy something for them. Second Brother was in middle school. He looked plump beneath his blue gown and more layers of clothes. He was so cold his long oval face had broken out in red-and-white blotches. He paced back and forth for a long time in front of a row of glass display cabinets filled with all kinds of fountain pens, mechanical pencils, elaborate pencil cases, glass paperweights, and instruments with mysterious functions. Julie was too shy to look closely, afraid she might be mistaken for a customer wanting to buy something.

  A shop clerk rushed over with excessive attentiveness, perhaps because he recognized the car outside the door and knew the boy as the scion of the cabinet minister’s family. All of a sudden Second Brother raised his
eyebrows angrily, and in the end bought nothing.

  That evening Julie and Julian were driven home in the car. They took great delight in competing with each other to call out the characters they could read on street signs.

  A former male servant in the New House had been recommended to employment as a steward on an ocean liner. Julie remembered how his bulky build filled out his dark serge jacket and trousers; his face glistened like a large waxed red apple.

  “They can ‘carry merchandise’ and make a lot of money,” Julie overheard the servants say. The others were all envious.

  He gave them a basket full of cherry apples from Chefoo. The basket was almost as tall as a man. The maidservants sneered as they chomped the fruit, almost embarrassed. They became sick of cherry apples well before completely devouring the hoard.

  On moonlit nights, the maidservants brought benches outside to sit and enjoy the cool breeze in the rear courtyard.

  “Auntie Yü, how big is the moon tonight?”

  “Well, what do you say?”

  Auntie Han turned to Julie. “How big do your little eyes make out the moon to be? Is it as big as a silver coin? A tencent coin, or a twenty?”

  The tiny moon, high in the sky, glowed faintly through the haze. Where should I hold the silver coin? If I hold it close it will be big; if I hold it farther away, it will be smaller. If I hang it high up in the sky, how small would it become? Julie was in a state of confusion.

  “A tencent coin,” said Jade Peach. “Auntie Han, what do you think?”

  “I’m too old,” an embarrassed Auntie Han said with a chuckle. “My eyes are no good. It looks like a wicker basket to me.”

  “I’d say it’s no bigger than a twenty-cent coin,” said Auntie Lee.

  “You’re young.”

  “Young? I’m old.” Auntie Lee sighed. “None of us has any choice but to work for others,” she continued. “Auntie Yü’s family has farmland and a house, yet she still stays in the city to work for a family despite her advanced years.”

  Auntie Yü said nothing and Auntie Han didn’t respond, either. Jade Peach and Auntie Yü both came from the Pien family as part of Rachel’s dowry.

  People whispered behind her back that Auntie Yü had quarreled with her son and daughter-in-law and left home for this position in a fit of pique. Her son still wrote to her quite often.

  “Hairy Boy, don’t squat on the ground,” said Auntie Yü, calling Julian by his infant name. “The mole crickets will bite you. Why don’t you sit on the stool?”

  In the north, mole crickets look like little lumps of earth three or four inches long, or like caricatures of fat little dogs without ears, a neck, or a tail. They have smooth, light-brown bodies and two black dots for eyes. When they crawl on the ground you can barely see them, and they disappear in a flash. That you can only catch sight of them for an instant makes them truly scary.

  “Hairy Girl, burn my name into my fan for me,” said Auntie Lee. Everyone owned a big banana-leaf fan that looked the same. To avoid confusion, a lit mosquito coil was used to scorch dots on the fan into a surname, but care had to be taken to avoid burning holes.

  Teng Sheng extinguished the lamp in the gatehouse and moved a chair into the doorway.

  “Uncle Teng, why don’t you come out here to cool off?” said Auntie Han. “It’s hot inside there.”

  Teng Sheng put a white top over his singlet before moving the chair out.

  “Uncle Teng is so prim and proper, that he feels obliged to wear a top before coming into our presence,” Jade Peach said with a sneer.

  Teng Sheng was thin, with a shaven head. He first entered the Sheng household as a page boy. The Shengs eventually found him a wife, but she died.

  “This is how Uncle Teng presents his master’s visiting card.” The houseboy and Teng Sheng were from the same town. Sometimes for fun, the boy would imitate the way in which formal visits were announced in the manner of the previous dynasty’s custom: several rapid steps in front of his master’s carriage followed by a large exaggerated stride and a Manchu salute on one bent knee while holding the card high with the other hand.

  Teng Sheng’s face didn’t betray the slightest hint of a smile.

  Julie wanted to say, “Uncle Teng, show me how you present a visiting card,” but she didn’t, knowing she’d be ignored.

  A few years earlier he had taken her out into the street on his shoulders to watch a puppet show, then treated her to hawthorn-fruit rock candy and a visit to Talutian amusement park in Tientsin.

  Once, Julie overheard the maidservants disparaging Teng Sheng for going to a brothel with two of the male servants from the New House.

  “What’s a brothel?”

  “Shush!” hissed Auntie Han in a low voice, though she was smiling.

  Julie was very fond of playing in the gatehouse. Inside, there was a crudely made old-style desk scarred with cigarette burns, a yellow rattan teapot cozy, and light-orange warm tea that poured out of the teapot. She had permission to use the inkstone and to fill the account book and sheets of writing paper with her doodles. They even let her keep an unused account book. Once, when she had a bloody nose, she was carried inside the gatehouse and someone used a calligraphy brush to apply some black ink inside her nostril. The cold, moist brush licked her once; the stench of ink exploded in her nose for a moment. It seemed to work—the bleeding stopped.

  “When I grow up I’ll buy Uncle Teng a fur-lined gown,” Julie announced.

  “Miss is a good girl,” he said. Julian was silent as he scrambled over Teng Sheng’s wood board bed, prying the pillow up to look at all the copper coins beneath it.

  “What about me?” teased Auntie Han, standing in the doorway. “Nothing for me?”

  “I’ll buy Auntie Han a fox-lined jacket,” replied Julie.

  Auntie Han winked at Teng Sheng. “Such a good girl,” she said softly.

  Mah-jongg was always being played in the gatehouse.

  “Who will win today?” the servants asked Julie.

  The maids upstairs primed Julie to answer: “Everyone. The table and chairs lose.”

  One of the two male opium servants was tall and skinny. He had a triangular face with pale cheeks. He was so thin his shoulders seemed frozen in a permanent shrug like anitya, the ghost who whisks the soul away after death. He was introduced to the household as one who knew how to inject morphine. Originally, only the midget who resembled a monkey prepared the opium. He had cut off his own ring finger to overcome a gambling addiction—a cause of great mirth at the mah-jongg table. Julie grabbed hold of his hand and saw the finger still retained one segment, the end as white and smooth as a dice. A bitter smile erupted on his orange-peel face.

  “Tall and Skinny bad-mouthed the midget behind his back. The midget was furious, really furious. Said he’d skewer him.” Auntie Lee also washed clothes for members of the household who lived downstairs and had reliable sources for information.

  Whenever they heard thunderclaps, the maidservants would say, “The good ol’ god of thunder is dragging his mah-jongg table across the sky.”

  When the sky cleared after it rained, they said, “It won’t rain again. The sky is blue enough to make a pair of trousers.”

  The servants from farming families always watched the weather. Upon rising from bed one autumn or winter morning, they would cry out “Frost!” and hold Julie up to the window to see the frost on the red roof tiles across the lane. The frost began to melt in the morning sun. The ridges of the tiles glistened with moisture, while the troughs stayed white. The vast expanse of red tiles and the dazzling white of the frost looked magnificent to Julie.

  “Wind!”

  When gales blew in and the sky turned yellow, a layer of yellow dust settled on the tables despite all the windows being closed tightly, the dust reappearing soon after being wiped away. The maidservants laughed as they wiped the dust.

  Auntie Han slept in the same bed as Julie and licked her eyelids as soon as she woke, like a cow tendin
g to her calf. Julie didn’t like it but she knew Auntie Han believed that, first thing in the morning, her tongue possessed pure chi, which was good for the eyes. Of course she never said as much, and never licked her when Rachel was in the house.

  Auntie Han diligently followed Rachel’s instructions to take the children to the park every day with Auntie Yü. Even in winter a part of Julie’s legs remained exposed, her wool socks not long enough to cover her knees. As soon as she entered the park gate, Julie would squeal with delight at the sight of the undulating expanse of yellowing grass and run madly straight ahead, cutting the vista neatly in half. She vaguely heard Julian shrieking as he ran behind her.

  “Hairy Boy! Stop running this instant! You’ll fall flat on your face!” Auntie Yü squawked like a parrot as she struggled precariously on her bound feet. Nearly two years earlier, Julian had suffered from a calcium deficiency and would often fall over when he walked. A wide, red strap tied around his chest restrained him in the park. Auntie Yü held both ends of the strap as if she were walking a dog, which was quite a spectacle. Her bound feet were too slow for Julian, and he leaned forward and struggled with all his might, looking as if he’d burst into tears.

  As Auntie Yü belonged to Rachel’s dowry, she was put in charge of raising the boy. All the military officers who had fought with the Taiping rebels settled in Nanking, so the Pien clan servants were, without exception, Nanking natives.

  “Your surname is Bump,” Auntie Yü teased Julie. “Whichever household you bump into will be your family.”

  “My surname is Sheng! Sheng! Sheng! Sheng!”

  “Hairy Boy is surnamed Sheng. In the future, he’ll wed a young lady, not a sharp-tongued nun like you.”

  Before Rachel left China, she frequently admonished: “Those customs don’t apply now. Boys and girls are equal—they’re all the same.”

  Auntie Yü responded with a hostile, “Oh?” The bags under her eyes on her delicate, chubby face suddenly darkened. Her hair, though thinning, was still jet-black. Womenfolk south of the Yang-tze did not sow the fields, and following tradition, their feet were bound. Auntie Han and the others had natural feet.