The Nine Fold Heaven

by Mingmei Yip

  The abbess nodded. “I accept your apology. To forgive is the great lesson taught by Christ. If someone slaps you on the right cheek, you should turn your left one to receive the same.”

  I wondered, if I slapped her sunken cheek right now, would she turn the other one?

  But I ignored the itch on my hand and instead politely asked. “Where is Madame Lewinsky buried?”

  “Why would you want to know that?”

  “So I can pay respect to her for my friend, and hope she’d have a closure. I can also burn my friend’s letter as an offering to her former teacher so she can read it in heaven.”

  “If I tell you, you must promise not to do any such superstitious thing. She is in God’s hands.”

  There wasn’t any letter to burn anyway, so I nodded. The abbess scribbled on a piece of paper, then handed it to me.

  “Here’s the address of the cemetery. I will offer a prayer for her, you should too.”

  “How did it happen, I mean, Madame Lewinsky’s passing?”

  “How? She came to us in her final days by the grace of God. According to the file, she came here a few months ago with a baby. She expressed her wish to live with our order as a lay sister to repent for the terrible sin she had committed. What her sin was, only Father Ricci and God know. But since she brought this little fellow along, I knew instantly the sin had to do with the baby. But the infant was Chinese, not Eurasian, and didn’t look like her a bit, so it couldn’t possibly be adultery. What she did is for God to judge, not us mortals, we are but His humble servants.”

  Now I could barely restrain myself as I listened to her pious chattering. So Jinjin was really alive! And this not very friendly nun might know where he was. I knew if I seemed overly eager, she would become suspicious and probably clam up.

  So I made use of all my training to appear emotionless. “What happened to the baby?”

  For the first time I saw something resembling a smile on the face of this childless woman who was married to God. “A very cute, healthy, and handsome boy, I should say. So he was soon adopted.”

  I felt my heart almost jump out of my chest. “What, adopted? By whom?”

  “An American couple.”

  “You know their name and where are they?”

  “But why on earth do you want to know, young miss?”

  “Hmm… nothing, just curious. Just thought I might know them—I know a lot of Americans.”

  “This was a private adoption, so we can’t release any information. Young miss, you must learn to curb your overzealous curiosity. Omniscience only rests with God, not us mortals.” She scrutinized me with her elongated eyes. “Miss Chen, just who are you and why are you so curious about Julie Lewinsky and her Chinese baby?”

  I blurted out, “Because HE IS MY BABY AND I WANT HIM BACK!”

  Her jaw dropped as she stared back at me. “If that is true, you must notify the police immediately.”

  Confused and agitated, I jumped up and ran from the room.

  No one interfered with me when I rushed out of the convent. I then paced for more than an hour to try to calm myself before flagging a rickshaw.

  That night I flip-flopped in the hotel bed, thinking of the strange workings of fate. Then, as if on cue, my little Jinjin came into my dream.

  “Mama, I’ve been doing very well, so don’t you worry about me.”

  “Son, what have you been doing?”

  “Eating, sleeping, playing, and learning.”

  “What have you learnt?’

  “Some words.”

  “Can you tell me what they are?”

  “Love and karma. Mama, I am not sure you know what love means, but probably you know what karma is. I know what love means, because when I think of you and Baba, I feel warmth in my heart. So, can you tell me about karma?”

  I didn’t want to answer his question, but I also didn’t want him to be unhappy.

  “Jinjin, karma is because we all do good and bad things.”

  “But, Mama, I hear you only do bad things.”

  “Where do you hear this?”

  “You know, what you read in the newspapers.”

  “It’s not all true. Maybe before, but not anymore. I miss you and your father terribly. Recently, I also saved your Uncle Gao’s life… Jinjin, I hear you’re still alive, so stop teasing your mother! I can’t take this anymore!”

  My baby retorted, “Sometimes I can’t take you anymore!”

  “Jinjin, stop it!”

  “Mama, you stop it! Or I won’t come back to see you in your dreams anymore. And I’ll stay with Mama Lewinsky!” Then his voice softened. “Remember, Mama, I’m your son, whether in hell, heaven, or the Red Dust.”

  And with this, he vanished.

  I sat up in bed, more troubled than ever. Despite what she had done, I felt sad about Madame Lewinsky’s death. I decided I should visit her grave to pay my respects and bid her a final farewell. She’d stolen my baby to raise as her own, but she had cared for him, after all. She had delivered him and, most important, through her singing lessons, she had taught me how to feel.

  PART FOUR

  13

  The Cemetery

  So the next day I bought a bouquet of white orchids, my teacher’s favorite flower, and took a car to the graveyard a few miles north of Shanghai. The cemetery had a sentimental name: Returning Home. The phrase, though trite, stirred up deep feelings in me. The Chinese say, “Falling leaves return to their roots,” meaning that regardless of our situation, eventually we wish to find our way home. But I didn’t really have an earthly home to go back to and, of course, I was not ready to return to my heavenly home!

  Unfortunately, having to live as a spy among gangsters meant that I was always aware that the door to the eternal home might open for me at any moment. And I had almost gone through that door when I impulsively jumped into the Seine. The suicidal thought had been triggered by Puccini’s opera Madame Butterfly, when Cio-Cio San’s husband, Captain Pinkerton, came back from America, but with a new American wife. Heartbroken, Cio-Cio San sent her young son to another room, then plunged a knife into her own heart. Imagine how great her pain that she would step onto the path from which no one returns, despite her son playing innocently next door, oblivious that he was now an orphan….

  Bracing myself, I pushed open the iron gate and walked in. Graves laid peacefully, yet portentously, in rows, marked by the inevitable stone tablet. The dead wait patiently and uncomplainingly for us who are still living to pay our respects and burn paper offerings. But as I looked around, I was the only one of the living here to honor these invisible beings of the other realm.

  I walked up to a tiny booth by the entrance and saw a puny man slumping on the desk.

  I lowered my voice like a ghost’s. “Sir?”

  No response. Was he imitating his neighbor’s silence?

  So I projected my heavenly songbird’s high soprano voice. “Good day, sir!”

  Still no response. I put a finger underneath his nose to feel his breath. Yes, this corpse looked like he was still breathing. I used the same finger to dig hard into his shoulder. Suddenly, like a vampire awoke from the other world, he jumped up from his chair.

  “Help heaven! I never did anything wrong. Leave me alone!”

  I could not help but laugh. He must have thought I was one of the neighbors, angry at having died a terrible death, now coming back for revenge.

  “Relax, sir, I’m here to pay respect to a friend. Could you give me a little help?”

  He stared at me intensely before the color finally crept back to his cheeks.

  “Miss, you scared me halfway to hell! What do you want?”

  “I need to find a friend’s grave.”

  He sat up straight, adjusted his jacket’s collar, and smoothed his hair. Then he poured tea from his thermos, took a sip, cleared his throat, and gave me a once-over.

  “All right, what’s the name of the deceased?”

  “Madame Julie Lewinsky.”
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  He chuckled. “So a foreign ghost? Ha, so she was a ghost, then died to become a real ghost?”

  Chinese refer to foreigner as gweilo, “ghost people,” because of their strangely colored eyes, and their pale, colorless, or ghostlike complexion.

  He took out a book, flipped the pages till his skeletal, mud-rimmed finger landed on a page. “Here! Julie Lewinsky! The third to the fifth row. Go out here, turn right, walk about five minutes and you’ll see. Good luck.”

  “Thank you.” But I didn’t ask what the “good luck” was for. Was it to find a ghost, or not find one?

  Outside his little “office,” I heard him shout to my back. “Miss, take your time. I’ll be off duty soon. So when you leave, just close the gate. It’s never locked anyway. Nobody comes here and no one comes out, ha, ha, ha!”

  I did not share his amusement, so I nodded to him and continued walking.

  I passed gravestones to which were attached pictures of the deceased and descriptions of their life. I finally reached the one I’d been looking for, Lewinsky’s marked only with a small tablet with the inscription:

  Now I am mute, but once sang with such a powerful voice that I could lure birds down from the trees, and the fish up from the sea.

  Though I was sad when my dear husband, Sergi, left me without a good-bye, now I am glad, for we sing together in our heavenly life.

  Someday we will all join in heaven when our baby, Anton Lewinsky’s, life is done.

  Until then we await our happy reunion on the other side.

  My first thought, upon reading this, was how come my former teacher had never mentioned that she had a son here in Shanghai? She’d always told me how sad she was being childless. Then I suddenly realized, Anton Lewinsky was my own son, Jinjin, whom she’s taken from me to raise as her own! She must have written this epitaph herself and then asked the nuns to have it inscribed on her grave after her passing.

  I sighed, but then I thought, at least now I have a name to look for, even if it wasn’t Jinjin’s right one. Just then I realized I hadn’t even set down the flowers that I’d brought for my teacher. So I laid down the bouquet and, according to traditional Chinese customs, swept the grave—wiping dust from the tablet, pulling out weeds, and arranging the flowers I’d bought.

  After that, I said to my teacher’s grave as if she were alive in front of me, “Madame Lewinsky, of course I am bitterly angry that you stole from me what a mother values more than her own life. But now you can’t hear me because you’re dead. I won’t forgive you. But instead of spitting on your grave, I’ll say a prayer to help send your soul to the Western Paradise so you can live in peace. But there will be no reunion with him for you. I will find Jinjin—who is not your Anton Lewinsky—and he’ll know his real mother.”

  I was about to recite a prayer for my former teacher, when I suddenly realized I didn’t know any. Growing up in an orphanage, I was never a religious person and, never bothered to learn any prayers or sutras. So finally I just recited the ubiquitous Namo Ami-tuofo, Hail to the Buddha, as the best I could do to aid her soul.

  Soon the sky was the color of pale ink and the weather was turning chilly. I pulled my thin jacket across my chest and hurried back to the gate. Damn, now I might not be able to get any vehicle in this deserted area to take me back to my hotel.

  It began to drizzle as I walked outside the cemetery. On the dirt road, there was no sign of any car or pedestrian. Maybe there were a few ghosts out for an evening stroll, but fortunately or unfortunately, I didn’t possess the yin eyes to see them.

  Imagining the yin creatures might be arising from their residences as night approached, I felt a deep chill and quickened my pace. If I couldn’t get a car, it would be at least a forty-five-minute walk to reach the main road.

  Just as I braced myself for the long walk, I heard honking and turned to see a black car, dust spraying from under its wheels. Should I wave for them to stop and ask for a ride back to the city? What about if it was not a real car but one from the other realm?

  The car screeched to a wailing stop. A young woman’s head stuck out. “Miss, please come in, we can give you a ride.”

  Figuring it would be safer to get inside a car with humans than to remain behind with ghosts, I crawled in just as the drizzle turned into pouring rain. Inside were the driver and two other women, all in trench coats, probably anticipating the rain.

  “Thank you so much for stopping. I just need to go back to the city so I can take the tram home.”

  The driver cast me a look from the rearview mirror. “No problem, miss, wherever you want.”

  After that, no one talked and the air became eerily silent.

  To my surprise, when the car entered the city, the driver didn’t stop at the tram station but continued south.

  I asked, “Ma’am, please stop and let me off here, thank you.”

  To my surprise, she pressed her foot on the gas pedal instead. The car sped off pass the tram station.

  I placed my hand on the driver’s shoulder. “We’re at the tram station, so please let me off. “

  She didn’t respond, so I turned to the other two girls next to me. “Can you tell…”

  They all smiled darkly. It was then that I realized these three women were abducting me. “Let me off, or I’ll—”

  The driver turned to me. “What, call the police? Ha! Don’t make me laugh! I’m sure you know you are the number one fugitive they want!”

  “Who are you people?” I asked, my voice shaking.

  “You mean you don’t know?” The driver scoffed.

  The two girls at the back seat next to me took off their trench coats, revealing pink dresses. I realized they were the girls from the gossip columnist Rainbow Chang’s Pink Skeleton Empire!

  “What do you people want from me?”

  “We have plans for you. It took us a long time to track you down, and we are not going to let you slip through our fingers again,” one of the Pink Skeleton girls said, casting me a condescending look.

  14

  Pink Skeleton Women and a Mission

  Soon the car arrived at Rainbow Chang’s residence in the French Concession. The girl to my right got out and held the door open for me. I recognized Rainbow’s mansion from the time I’d visited it once as Shanghai’s celebrity Heavenly Songbird.

  Inside, as before, the gossip columnist sat like royalty, leaning against the golden arm of her ivory-colored sofa. Several of her pink-clad skeleton girls—her bodyguards, informants, seductresses—were scattered around the living room. Some were sipping champagne from flutes, others chatted, yet others simply sat in elegantly seductive postures. Once Rainbow spotted me, she went up to kiss me on the lips.

  “Welcome back to Shanghai, Camilla!”

  I was well aware that this was, in fact, a threat disguised as a welcome. The unspoken message was, “You think anyone could escape the girls from my Pink Skeleton Empire, even you? You’re back when you should have stayed away!”

  She went on. “But I am glad you’ve come to see me. Come sit with me so we can chat over a glass of champagne.”

  She took my hand, invited me to sit beside her on the gold-framed white sofa, and signaled one of the girls to pour two flutes of the golden, bubbly wine.

  Rainbow Chang gave me an appreciative once-over with her long-lashed, heavily mascaraed, purple-lidded eyes. “What wind blows you back to Shanghai, Camilla?”

  “How do you know that I’m back? Maybe I was here all along.”

  “But you weren’t,” she said, flicking her long cigarette’s ashes onto a silver ashtray.

  “If you and your girls already know everything, why waste your time to ask?”

  She smiled triumphantly. “Just to start a difficult conversation with a pleasantry, what else?”

  “All right.” I took a sip of my champagne only to savor the bubbles ambushing my mouth. “Then let’s open the window and look at the mountain. What do you want?”

  She tilted her face an
d sneered. “Ha! A beautiful woman who is also blunt and full of surprises, I love that.” She took another long inhalation of her murderous, pink cigarette, then said, “All right, Camilla, I want to protect you.”

  “But I don’t need any protection. Anyway, why would you want to?”

  “Everyone in Shanghai needs protection, Camilla, even if you think you don’t. You see the crowds inside the temples? What are they doing there, making friends with the gods and goddesses? Yes, so they’ll protect them.”

  “Why would you think I need protection, from you or anyone else? I’m just fine.”

  “Because you’re on the run and your life is at risk.”

  I didn’t respond, because she was right. To make me feel even worse, now all the Pink Skeleton girls stopped what they’d been doing—drinking, chatting, smoking—to stare at me with pitiful expressions.

  The gossip columnist went on. “Camilla, you’re an extremely cunning woman. So if you were already safe somewhere outside Shanghai, why come back? Only because you had to, even at the risk of your life. Am I not right?”

  Scared, I remained adamantly silent.

  She paused to sip her drink, then spoke again. “You must have done something wrong, something unspeakable, and that’s what I’m going to find out.”

  I almost blurted out, “It’s none of your business!” but realized this was exactly what it was. As a gossip columnist, digging up dirt was her business.

  Before I decided what to say, Rainbow was speaking again. “You were behind the war between Flying Dragons and Red Demons, am I not right?”

  This time I inadvertently blurted out, “How do you know about Big Brother Wang?”

  She tilted her head and laughed. “Ha-ha! Just guessing and I’m right!”

  Damn! That’s why the Chinese say, “Through the mouth sickness comes in and misfortune comes out.” That’s why the great Daoist sage Zhuangzi said over two thousand years ago, “To know the truth is easy, not to talk about it is hard.” I’d momentarily forgotten that to protect myself, I must keep my mouth shut. Rainbow had only been guessing and I’d let the truth slip out!