by Alexa Kang
“Certainly,” he said. “What do you want to know?”
She took out a pad and a pen. Not once did she look him directly in the eye. “Generalissimo Chiang was released on December 25th?”
“Correct.”
“Can you tell me the circumstances of his release? What concessions did he make to convince Zhang Xue-Liang to return him to Nanking?”
Clark frowned. He didn’t expect Eden to be so businesslike. He thought she would be excited to tell him about her return to her job. She didn’t ask him how he was either. “The only concession Chiang made was a verbal agreement to cooperate with the Communist Party to resist further aggression from Imperial Japan. This was a conflict of policy as to which direction the country would go. Our Nationalist government will cease its military campaign against Mao and the Communists and redirect our resources to defending against Japanese expansion.”
“I see. And do you agree with the outcome?” She kept her head down and her eyes on her notes.
“All things considered, it’s the best possible outcome. The credit goes to Chiang Kai-shek’s wife, Soong Mei Ling, and her brother. They resisted the pressure to send in the military to rescue Generalissimo Chiang. If they hadn’t, the forces supporting an armed rescue could’ve exacerbated the situation. They could’ve started a battle between the KMT troops in Nanking and the troops under Zhang Xue-Liang’s command. That could’ve destroyed the government. I’m wary of the Communists, but at General Secretary Stalin’s urging, they’ve agreed to support us and submit to our direction. We’ll all find a way to work together going forward.”
“Mm.” She scribbled a series of notes on her pad. “Do you think Chiang Kai-shek’s stature has been diminished? Hasn’t irreparable damage been done to his reputation since he can’t even control his own command?”
“No.” Clark guarded his voice. Why was Eden questioning him like a reporter looking for controversy and not a friendly mouthpiece for the party? “This entire incident was nothing more than an internal family dispute. A family may bicker, but the members still care about each other. Their interests are always aligned. Generalissimo Chiang was never harmed. His life was never in danger. General Zhang Xue-Liang personally guaranteed that. Throughout the incident, he affirmed his steadfast loyalty to Chiang Kai-shek. He never gave in to the Communists’ demand to remove Chiang from power. When Chiang was released, Zhang personally escorted him back to Nanking. The way the events played out is a testimony to how essential Chiang’s leadership is.”
Eden nodded. She continued with her line of questions. He answered, but nothing felt right. Why was she talking to him like he was just another government official?
When she finished, she pushed her bangs to the side. “Looks like we’ve covered everything.” She looked up with a cordial smile. “Thank you, Clark. You’ve always been so helpful to me. I appreciate it very much.” Again, she averted her eyes. She put her pen and notepad into her bag, picked up her coat, and got up to leave.
“Eden.” He called her back. Why was she acting this way? She’d come only to ask him questions about Chiang Kai-shek? He left his chair and came up to her. “What’s happened to you? Are you okay? We haven’t talked since Lillian’s case was resolved.”
“What do you mean?” she asked. “Of course I’m okay. Johann Hauser’s back in Germany. And haven’t you heard? Roland Vaughn shot himself. He left a suicide note confessing to the murder. I’ve been too much trouble to you already. Now that the case is over, I didn’t want to bother you anymore.” She tried to smile, but it was a forced smile that concealed heartache.
“You weren’t bothering me. I was happy to help.”
“Thank you for saying that. But I know there are other people who need your attention.” She looked away, her fingers playing with the strap of her purse. “I met your fiancée.”
“You what?”
“Betty. She and Estella invited me to tea. She’s a very nice girl. You should’ve introduced us earlier.”
Clark’s heart sank. When did this happen? Why didn’t he know about this?
“Betty asked me to help her pick out a Western wedding gown. I’ll do my best. I’m sure she’ll make a beautiful bride.”
He hardly heard a word. Wen-Ying. Wen-Ying did this. What was she doing? He wanted to run home and demand an answer.
“I’ve never been to a Chinese wedding before. I’ve seen the procession of the bride on the streets. All the men carrying the bride in her red carriage. And the firecrackers and noisemakers. It looks like so festive and fun. Estella said your families will pick a wedding date very soon. You have to remember to send me an invitation.”
Clark stood. He didn’t know at all what to say. He never meant to lie about Shen Yi. He hadn’t lied about it. How could he explain this?
“I should go.” She finally looked up. Was that a hurt look in her eyes? Had he hurt her? “Take care.”
He watched her leave. The high he’d felt before she came vanished. His whole world had fallen. The thing he wanted most had just walked out of his life.
Arriving home, Clark stormed into the living room to look for Wen-Ying. Sitting on the sofa reading a book, she didn’t notice the fury on his face.
“Ge, you’re home,” she said without looking up.
“What did you do?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Eden,” he said. “You invited her to meet Shen Yi.”
She closed the book. “I did it for your own good. I can see you’re attracted to her. The way you danced with her at the Paramount. The way you looked at her. The way you talked to her at the Air Show. It’s getting out of hand. It has to stop.”
“What gave you the right? What were you thinking?”
“What were you thinking?” She stood up. “You’re our family’s only son. We depend on you to carry on the family name. You can’t invest real emotions in a foreigner. It’s one thing if you want to play around. But to be serious about someone? That’s a whole different story.”
“Wen-Ying,” he said. He was so enraged, he could hardly speak. “You’re an educated woman. Why do you subscribe to all these terrible ideas?”
“What terrible ideas? That continuing our family is important?” She softened her voice and said, “I understand. You’re a man. I know it’s hard for you to resist temptations. I did this for you because I feared you couldn’t do it yourself. What you want could never be anyway. What would happen if you brought home a foreign wife? Do you want to frighten Ma to death? She’d be so upset.”
“Don’t say any more.” Clark clenched his fist. “I don’t want to hear it. From now on, don’t meddle in my business,” he shouted and stomped out of the living room.
In his room, he tried to calm down. He sat on his bed, trying to figure his way out. Was this his life? His destiny? To grant the wishes of his mother and father for grandchildren with a woman he didn’t want? To let his sister control who he could or could not see based on outdated ideas of what a man should or should not do?
The chain of Shen Yi weighed him down like an anvil.
He was only twenty-three. How could he bear spending the rest of his years tied down, never to be free?
Betrothal from the womb. What kind of ridiculous tradition was that? Did two people have no choice and no say in what paths they could take when they grew up?
Eden was so much stronger than him. She dared to defy her family, her entire community, for what she believed to be right. How could he think of her, if he didn’t have the courage to do the same?
The tradition was wrong. He’d always known it. The old ways had to go. Two people should not be bound together for life against their own free will. He came back to China with hopes and dreams of advancing its people. How could he be an agent of progress, modernization, and change if he couldn’t bring his own life out of senseless ancient practices?
He had to be strong like Eden. If he had to defy his family and the world to do what was right, then so be it. Only then would
he be worthy of her in his own eyes. Even if he couldn’t have her, the reason could not be because he wasn’t worthy of her.
He’d made his decision. His engagement with Shen Yi had to end.
At five o’clock, Clark checked his watch. He cleared the top of his desk, bracing himself for what would surely be an unpleasant evening. He’d asked Shen Yi to meet him for dinner. Tonight, he would tell her in person. He wanted their engagement to end.
“Guo-Hui.” Shen Yi sauntered into his office. A nervous staff member followed behind.
Clark stood up. “Shen Yi. What are you doing here? How did you get in?”
“I told him I’m your fiancée.” She gave the staff member a haughty smile.
“I thought we were meeting at the restaurant,” Clark said.
“Dinner can wait. I want to take you to someone I want us to meet. This person is very hard to get an appointment with. I’ve been waiting for months for a chance to see her.”
“Who?”
“Wait till you see. You’ll be so impressed.”
Not wanting to make a scene, Clark picked up his coat and followed her out.
The person she wanted them to see turned out to be a fortuneteller who worked out of an apartment in a low-rise building on Route Magy. As soon as he realized where they were, he wanted to leave. “Shen Yi, I don’t want to see her.”
“You’ll change your mind once you go in.” She pulled his arm. “She’s very famous. I had to wait four months to get an appointment.”
“Shen Yi, please—”
The door to the fortune teller unit opened. “Han Daozhang,” Shen Yi greeted the woman in a Daoist robe.
“Miss Shen?”
“Yes.” Shen Yi pulled Clark closer. “This is my fiancé, Yuan Guo-Hui.”
Han Daozhang stepped aside. “You may come in.”
Clark hesitated. A woman in a neighboring unit poked out her head to see what was causing all the noise. To avoid a commotion, Clark went inside.
The fortuneteller made a big show of waving her arms in front of a shrine below a large Daoist yin-yang symbol while muttering a chant. When she turned around, she invited them to sit at a wooden table on which she’d laid out scrolls and books, presumably filled with secrets of her art.
She sat down across from them. Clark shifted uncomfortably in his seat. The drawing of a human face, divided by lines marking which part of the face would foretell what subject of life’s concern, stared down from the wall.
The fortuneteller eyed them once over. She half lowered her eyelids and said, “You both have the look of a husband and wife.”
“Really!” Shen Yi squeezed her hands against her chest.
“There have been hardships.” She gazed above Clark’s head. “A dark shadow is hovering above you. The dark shadow must be combated with a pure source. The root of the shadow will be strongest on the twenty-eighth before the turn of the lunar new year.” The woman turned to Shen Yi. Shen Yi listened with intensity as she raised her hand nervously to her mouth. “You are the pure source. You have to be with him on the day of the twenty-eighth. Do not wear red. Red on that day for you will invite evil.” She opened her hand toward Clark. “Pour three cups of rice wine outside your front door. A toast to the spirits will appease them when they pass by.”
Clark looked at the woman, then at Shen Yi. This was absurd. How could he spend another moment with this girl? Let alone the rest of his life?
“Enough.” He pushed away from the table. “Shen Yi. I don’t want to do this.”
“Guo-Hui, she’s very accurate. We have to listen to her.”
“No. You listen to me.” He stood up. “I invited you out tonight to tell you I want to end our engagement.”
“What?” Shen Yi got out of her seat. “What did you say? You want to end our engagement?”
“Yes. We basically don’t understand each other. Our feelings are not deep enough.”
“We can learn to understand each other,” she pleaded. “Feelings can be conditioned.”
“I don’t want that. We’re not right for each other.”
She wasn’t listening. Her eyes teared up. “You’re not you.” She pointed to him with trembling fingers. “It’s her. I know. It’s her. That fox sorceress.”
The fox sorceress?
“You’re bewitched. That German white fox sorceress has got you under a spell.”
“A fox sorceress?” The fortuneteller jumped out of her seat. She went to her yin-yang shrine, knelt down, extended her arm, and began to pray.
“I’m not under any spell.”
Talk was useless. Shen Yi began to cry. The fortuneteller returned with a flask in her hand and sprinkled magic water over his face.
“Stop!” he shouted at the woman. “Shen Yi. I’m sorry. I will not marry you.” Without waiting for her response, he took off and left.
By the time Clark arrived home, everyone in his family had already heard about what he’d done. Shen Yi had telephoned them, begging for help.
His mother glared at him the moment he returned. “What are you doing?” she demanded to know. “Shen Yi called us, bawling. How can you upset her like this? She’s your fiancée.”
“She’s not my fiancée. I don’t want to marry her.”
“Shut your mouth!”
The room silenced. Clark glanced at his father, then his sisters. His father’s scowl hung on his red, angry face. Wen-Ying warned Clark with her eyes. Only Mei Mei gave him a sympathetic smile.
“Marriage is a big matter,” his mother said. “Your parents will decide. Tomorrow, you will personally go to the Shen residence and apologize. You will ask Shen Yi to forgive you.”
“I will not. I won’t marry her.”
“Then who will you marry? That white girl? Eden?”
“No, Ma. Don’t drag Eden into this. She has nothing to do with this. This is my decision.”
“If you think I will let her through our door, you can think again.”
“Ma.” Exasperated, he turned to his father. “Ba!”
“Old Shen and I have business since way back.” His father waved his hand and turned his face away. “What will I say to him now?”
It was hopeless. His parents would not understand. Even his father, who always seemed ahead of his time, was in the end bound by old ways and traditions.
Clark hardened his heart and squared his shoulders. “I don’t know. Say to him whatever you want. I will not marry Shen Yi.” He turned and left for his room.
38
Chinese New Year
Laughter filled every part of every street on the eve before the arrival of the Year of the Ox. Scrolls and banners bearing good wishes for the spring festival adorned the entrance of every house. Red signs with the word “fortune” hung upside-down on front doors all around the city. Impatient pops of firecrackers resounded from east to west, set off by those who couldn’t wait for the clock to strike midnight.
Yesterday, Peng Amah’s family had arrived to take her home to Nanking. Her son, Ah-Hai, her daughter-in-law, Ah-Feng, and her grandson, Ji-Rong, and granddaughter, Shanshan.
Clark had met them all before he’d gone away to America. Ah-Hai was a restaurant cook. He now owned his own hot pot restaurant in Nanking. Ji-Rong and Shanshan were only small children back then. “Guo-Hui Ge Ge,” they’d called him. Ji-Rong was now fourteen, and Shanshan sixteen. Clark took Ji-Rong to the yard for a game of badminton while everyone hustled about to bring Peng Amah’s luggage and bags outside.
While Clark and his family stood waiting to see them off, Huang Shifu and Uncle Six helped them load bag after bag into the trunk. “Will you be okay taking so much on the train?” Madam Yuan asked. “You all will be exhausted. Actually, if you need anything, we can always send them to you.”
“Madam, that’s thoughtful of you.” Peng Amah said. “How could I bother you?”
“Nonsense. We’re like a family. You take good care on the road.”
“We will, we will.” Her fam
ily climbed into the car. Peng Amah said to Wen-Ying and Mei Mei, “You both take care of yourselves. Come see me if you have time.” Wen-Ying squeezed the woman’s arm. Mei Mei wiped a tear from her eye.
“Young Master.” Peng Amah came over to Clark. “I won’t be around to take care of you anymore. You’re grown up now. Don’t keep upsetting your Ba and your Ma. They only want what’s best for you.”
Except they didn’t know what was best for him. Nonetheless, he said, “I understand. Take care.”
Peng Amah bid his parents goodbye and departed for the train station with her family. With her gone, the mood in the house became even more tense. Clark’s mother had not given him a single warm look since the night he broke off his engagement with Shen Yi. His father was still waiting for him to formally apologize to them and to the Shens.
Today, on Chinese New Year’s Eve, his mother invited a shaman to their home. Before their family shrine, his mother and the shaman prayed. Afterward, the shaman performed a ritual, ostensibly to get rid of any fox sorceress haunting the men in the house.
The unbearable tension lasted all day. The festive family reunion dinner—the most important dinner of the year and one that Clark had looked forward to for six years when he lived abroad—felt like a punishment as his mother complained the entire time that by next year, there would be no more family reunion dinner when her son would leave for a foreign woman.
When dinner ended, Clark escaped to the garden, seeking refuge. How much longer could everyone live like this? Was it so wrong of him to refuse to marry someone he didn’t choose for himself?
The pops of firecrackers bursting nearby and the smoke blown in by the night wind further clouded his mind.
“Ge,” Mei Mei called out to him.
“You didn’t go out?”
She shook her head. “You and Ma are so upset. I want to stay here and be with you both.”
“Silly squash. What good would you staying home do? It’s New Year’s Eve. You should go watch fireworks with your friends.”
