Robert shrugged. “What am I going to do? I feel helpless. I couldn’t protect Shao-mei. She is dead because of me. How can I protect Ayaou?”
“Master, I will hire a craftsman to repair the door. The man will make it stronger. I will see to that.” Guan-jiah knelt and looked into Robert’s eyes. “What happened is something to feel pleased about. The door held. You and Ayaou are safe. Your efforts to protect your concubine worked.”
“That’s true,” he replied, and sat straighter. “Make sure the new hinge pins are twice as strong as the ruined ones. The thieves will come better prepared next time. We must be ready. This house must be strong enough to withstand an army.”
“Do not worry, Master. When the workers are finished, the hinge pins in this door will be the sturdiest in Ningpo.”
At the consulate, Robert often slipped into a trance and stared at the wall. He thought about the three men he had angered since coming to China. There was General Frederick Townsend Ward, the American mercenary. If he hadn’t forced the general at gunpoint to sell Ayaou to him, Shao-mei would still be alive.
“Master,” Guan-jiah said.
Caught-off guard, Robert jerked.
The eunuch put a tray on the desk. There was a steaming teapot and a cup with a lid. “This tea will help calm your nerves.” Guan-jiah took a step back, folded his hands together and nodded.
Robert lifted the lid on the cup. Steam escaped. “How do you know that I need something to calm down? What’s in this?” he asked. “It smells familiar.”
“That would be the chrysanthemums. I have added orchids, jasmine, black tea, green tea and some peppermint. It is a blend I developed. I suggest you allow me to bring you some each morning.”
“Good idea.”
Guan-jiah left. Robert took a sip then put the cup down and placed the lid on. He returned to his paperwork. It didn’t take long before his mind drifted to the other two men.
The second was Unwyn Fiske, someone Robert angered during a battle with the Taipings. He wished there was some way he could erase the hate Unwyn felt for him. He still didn’t understand why the man blamed him for wanting to save those boat people from the rebels.
He had no idea what Captain Patridge had done to Unwyn. He dreaded finding out. Had Unwyn lost his job because of Robert’s complaints? If so, where was Unwyn? Did he want revenge?
He picked up the tea and lifted the lid. He buried his nose in the aromatic scent. The heat and fragrance of the ingredients acted as a balm. Guan-jiah had been right.
If Captain Patridge hadn’t invited him to spend his holiday at the captain’s summerhouse on Zhoushan Island during the summer of 1855, Robert would have never met Ayaou. It hadn’t helped that Captain Patridge was the principal agent for the largest British opium merchant in China.
It didn’t take long to fall in love with Ayaou. However, love came with a price. He had to help the captain smuggle opium into parts of China where it was outlawed. For doing this, Patridge had promised to protect him and Ayaou from Ward.
That hadn’t worked.
He shook his head to snap out of the trance. He checked to see if anyone had noticed. Dr. Winchester, the consul in Ningpo, was in another room busy with a British merchant making sure the man didn’t avoid paying the legal duty for his goods. The other two assistants were out, probably on ships checking manifests.
Good, he didn’t want anyone to discover there were moments when he stopped working. How would he explain that he was struggling to figure out a way to keep the woman he loved alive? They didn’t know he had a concubine. Ayaou was his greatest secret. If his parents and friends in Ireland discovered he’d bought a woman, they’d never forgive him.
The third man he angered was Payne Hollister, the British consul in Ningpo when Robert arrived at his first duty station in 1854. They worked together for a few months before Hollister quit.
Robert considered it his fault that Hollister held a grudge against him. After all, he had seduced Me-ta-tae, Hollister’s concubine. Months later, to get even, Hollister raped Shao-mei making her pregnant.
He slipped a hand inside his vest and rubbed an ache growing in his gut. It was a constant burning born with Shao-mei’s death. It was growing as if it had a life of its own.
After the attempted break in, his ability to sleep deteriorated. He awoke several times a night and saw Ward’s face. The mercenary’s eyes glowed in the dark. His teeth flashed and his tongue, like a fat mangled blood sausage, snaked in and out of that open wound in the side of his face.
“She was always mine, Hart,” Ward said.
When he heard Ward’s demonic laugh, Robert broke out in a cold sweat. “No!” He yelled, waking Ayaou.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Nothing. Go back to sleep.”
“You have soaked the sheets.” She touched him. “You are covered in sweat. You will get sick if you do not dry off.”
“Leave me alone.” He left the bedroom to search the house for intruders. He carried the revolver with the hammer cocked. He looked like a pale wraith floating naked from room to room through the darkness—one phantom chasing another.
“I think we should move,” he said a week later. They were in the parlor, the room where the three of them had once read and discussed poems together. The laughter that once filled this room had died with Shao-mei. Now the house was a tomb for two dead people. He remembered Guan-jiah saying that a poet had killed himself in this house leaving evil spirits behind.
Scrolls with Chinese calligraphy hung from the walls. There was a bench with a table and some chairs. Against one wall was the altar for Shao-mei’s spirit. He stared at one vase sitting on the altar. It held the ashes from his Chinese robes, the robes Shao-mei bought for him. They had been a perfect fit. One had been linen and the other silk. After Shao-mei’s death, he burned the robes and swore he would never wear Chinese clothing again.
While staring at Shao-mei’s shrine, he finished dressing. He put on his silk waistcoat and over that a long frock coat. He buttoned only the top button of the coat. He picked up the brown Derby felt hat from the table in front of the bench. Ayaou ran a brush through his unruly hair. His hairline was starting to recede. He imagined that if this kept up, he’d be bald soon.
She brushed the hair back. It was thick and curly along the neckline. “It is a pity you have to cover this lovely hair with a hat,” she said. “Shao-mei loved your hair. I think you want to move because this house is haunted by her.”
“Yes.” He lied. Robert didn’t want to scare her with his paranoid speculations that someone was hunting them. Captain Patridge had been right when he said Ward wouldn’t hire someone else to do his dirty work. Ward did it himself, like the day he murdered Shao-mei thinking she was Ayaou.
“When I brush your hair, I think it helps you relax,” Ayaou said. “I am going to brush it before we go to bed tonight and see.”
Maybe the person who tried to break into the house was a common thief. Even if that were true, he couldn’t risk it. The man could also be an assassin. What if it wasn’t Ward, but it was Unwyn Fiske or Payne Hollister or Henry Burgevine, Ward’s second-in-command? Robert had not forgotten the argument he had with Burgevine on that ship bound for California with a load of coolies.
He stopped Ayaou from brushing his hair. “That’s enough,” he said. “I heard Shao-mei coming up the stairs last night. That’s why I left the room.” He compounded the fiction. “Last week, I heard her crying and went to see. When I opened the door to her room, I saw her on the bed. She was expecting me. She looked at me with those large eyes and smiled. I saw her dimples. She was crying and tears ran down her cheeks. She had her favorite blanket tucked under her chin, and she reached out a hand for me.”
Ayaou seemed to shrink, so he pulled her against him. Her body felt frail. He wanted to protect her. He sent prayers to God every night asking for help.
“One morning I found you in her bed,” Ayaou said. “You were cold and curled on the blan
ket. When you awoke, your eyes were empty like an abandoned well. I was afraid she had taken your spirit.”
Ayaou had her face pressed against his chest. He rested his chin on top of her head. “I remember,” he said. “You held me for a long time, and I came back.”
“Once when I was cooking the evening meal—” Ayaou’s voice cracked. “I heard her scolding me—like she did from behind the stove. She said I was demanding too much to keep the fire at a perfect heat.” He felt Ayaou tremble. His insides burned and ached. Then in a muffled voice, Ayaou continued. “She is lonely without us, Robert. If we leave, she will follow us. She might get lost in the city. We cannot escape the love she has for us that keeps her ghost here.”
Tears filled his eyes. He hated when that happened. Tears were not for men. He blinked them away without touching his face and buried his misery.
He realized it didn’t matter if they moved. Whoever was out there was waiting for the right moment. Moving was not a guarantee of safety. After all, Ward had found the cottage in the countryside where Robert had taken the girls to hide them.
No, they wouldn’t move. They would stay in the Ningpo house. There would be no running and hiding. Not anymore. If fate were to come for them, he would face it and die beside Ayaou. They’d fight together as they had the day they met.
When he arrived home later than usual that evening, he stood outside the door afraid to knock. He hadn’t been this late since Shao-mei’s death. What if something had happened?
He kept a hand in his pocket on the grip of the loaded pistol and examined every shadow. He leaned against the door and it creaked.
A scratching came from the other side. That was a relief—a sign she was okay. She must have been sitting by the door for hours. He scratched back and heard her remove the locking bar.
As the door opened, Ayaou stepped from the darkness and threw herself at him. He saw the feral hunger in her eyes and took the bar out of her hands and dropped it into its brackets. No one would damage this door. He had done everything possible to turn the small house into a fortress.
Their eyes locked together in lust. His coat came off, and the revolver in the pocket hit the floor with a solid thump. He fumbled at his canvas suspenders. Removing his shirt, a button popped. It rolled across the floor making little tinkling noises. He clawed at his pants to remove them. Ayaou became his mirror image as she stripped. He pulled her naked body against his and pushed into her—not tenderly like before Shao-mei’s death, but like a beast devouring its prey. That was the first time they’d made love since Shao-mei’s death.
Finished, they lay exhausted and sweaty on the floor. He gathered the scattered clothing and covered their bodies against the cold.
“My breathing is the only sound I hear during the day,” Ayaou said. “This house is like a tomb when you are not here.”
“Don’t you have enough books to read? Do you want me to buy more?”
“Although I love the books since you taught me to read, they cannot replace Shao-mei.”
His heart ached. He pulled her close and smelled the warm ocean scent in her hair.
After that cold January day and for the next several weeks, this was the pattern of their lives. They made love with fierceness and desperation. They did it on the floor, on the stairs and on the kitchen table. Sometimes, Ayaou pressed her trembling body against him. She put her face into the space between his chin and collarbone. Without warning, she convulsed with sobs as she relived the nightmare of her sister’s death.
Robert didn’t have that luxury. He had to stay strong. He had to keep the tears locked away. It wasn’t easy.
Chapter 28
Ayaou and Robert started to live again in March. His Chinese language teacher triggered the change. He started working the schedule he had used with Master Tee Lee Ping over the summer. To keep the guilt brought on by Shao-mei’s death from eating him, he worked harder to understand the Chinese.
He learned how to talk in circles and never hit the center of any message he was trying to give. Communication in China was an indirect art form that flew in circles and never landed. In the West, it was more like shooting a bullet into the center of a target. The better he became at getting his meaning across indirectly, the easier it was for the Chinese to accept him.
“I am marrying,” Tee Lee Ping said at the end of one session late in the evening. They were at Robert’s house in the first-floor sitting room. Ping handed him a bag of candy. “You are invited to my wedding in two weeks. If you want to bring Ayaou, that is fine with me.”
At first, he found it strange that the Chinese didn’t invite people as a couple but only through the man of the house. Then he learned that since most affluent Chinese men had more than one concubine or wife, and no one knew which concubine or wife the man might bring, trouble was avoided by leaving the decision to the man.
He’d seen men come by themselves. Bringing one concubine or wife could cause jealousy from the others, which Robert now understood thanks to the battle for his love that had once raged between Shao-mei and Ayaou.
“How long have you been engaged?” he asked. “You’ve never mentioned it before.” Though he knew Master Ping’s private life was none of his business, he was curious. The man had been his teacher for more than a year.
“I just turned twenty-six. I have been engaged for thirteen years.”
“That was a long engagement, Master Ping,” he said, and poured red wine into his teacher’s glass to congratulate him. “Why so long?”
“Well, I did not have sufficient money to fix a good home for the woman that will be my wife,” Ping replied. “My friends and family have given me gifts. They were worried that the engagement might fall apart.”
“Did you worry?”
“Terribly. My parents-in-law wanted specific things for their daughter. I finally gained their permission with heaven’s help. In China, the girl listens to her parents more than her lover or husband. She suffers but does not rebel.”
After his teacher left, he asked Ayaou to purchase gifts before the wedding. Two days later, she bought a pair of hens.
He frowned. “What kind of gift is this?”
“It is the Chinese style. These are egg-bearing hens—the best gift one can give.”
On the day of the wedding, it rained. The narrow streets were awash with streams of water cleansing the city of its filth and its sins. The wedding and the rain also washed away some of the mental anguish Robert and Ayaou had suffered with since Shao-mei’s death.
Ayaou rented a sedan chair. They arrived with the hens in baskets decorated with red ribbons. Tee Lee Ping met them at the entrance to his parents’ house wearing a knee-length blue silk gown with a giant red silk flower tied with a ribbon across his chest. He led them to a hall inside the house. Ping was pleased with the gifts and thanked Robert repeatedly. The other guests had brought ducks, fish, marinated pig heads and thighs. He was happy with Ayaou’s choice.
The walls of the hall were gaily decorated with pictures and scrolls. The ceiling supported an army of red lanterns. Every chair and table was covered with red paper painted with the symbols of love and harmony. The people crowding the room were dressed in their best.
On one side of the hall, a band played a song of greeting every time a new guest arrived. Robert approached Tee Lee Ping’s parents and older relatives and did what Ayaou had instructed. He clasped his hands, brought them to his chin and bowed deeply. A little startled, they returned the bow.
One old man, probably in his nineties, half-blind, who Robert assumed had never seen a foreigner in his life, pointed at him, and said, “What is wrong with his hair? So yellow! Tell him to eat more black sesame seeds, so he can get his color back.”
Robert found humor in the old man’s statement that eating black sesame seeds changed hair color. Ayaou was dressed in a peach-colored, satin Chinese robe. The other women wore similar robes but in different colors with different patterns. He had on a black, English suit with a cra
vat. Two pocket watches with fobs were displayed hanging from his front waistcoat pockets.
Ayaou was a bit concerned about the locals response to him since he was considered a barbarian. Her worries were soon put to rest. Everyone was polite. Some greeted him with questions about his health. Ayaou had told him that the state of his health was no one’s concern. It was only a formality—a way to say hello. That’s why his answers were not specific. He also discovered that his weekly visits and conversations at the bath and teahouse helped.
A shout caught everyone’s attention. “The flower chair has arrived.”
The chair was brought into the reception room where water from the rain dripped onto the floor. The four men carrying the chair set it down and removed the poles. Next, they removed the patchwork quilt of ornamental wood that made up the door. Two bridesmaids stood on either side of the opening.
A slight figure dressed in a beautiful bright-red dress stepped out of the chair. The bride’s head was covered with a piece of red cloth and her face was hidden beneath it. Taking small steps, she was guided into the hall. She had the smallest feet Robert had seen on a woman. Since most of his time was spent with men, he had never seen a woman with bound feet before. None of the women among the boat people had bound feet, and Ayaou and Shao-mei had regular sized feet.
“It is customary to wait five hours.” Ayaou whispered. “You should thank Master Ping for telling you to come right before the bride arrived.”
The servants replaced the candles on the tables with larger candles. On the sides of each candle, good wishes were carved into the wax. Each candle had a different scent symbolizing separate elements and aspects of life. One scent was particularly strong. Robert started to wheeze and his eyes itched. He discovered that candle had opium mixed in the wax. He moved to the far side of the room. It took a few minutes before he recovered.
The elaborate ceremony went on. Nobody seemed to care about time. Finally, the Bye Tiendee, begging for heaven’s blessing, began. Ayaou watched with interest when the couple started what Robert called the endless ‘pecking’. They bowed to the altars, the spirits of their ancestors five generations back, to great-uncles and aunts, to grandparents, and to both sets of parents. He felt sorry for their poor necks going up and down.
My Splendid Concubine Page 36
