Flower Net

by Lisa See

  “Oh, yes,” she said, then shifted to a strident tone: “‘Liu keeps his background a secret, but some of us remember the decadent ways of his family!’” She changed her voice again: “‘They were landowners—the worst class,’ said another. ‘We can all thank the Great Helmsman that they’re dead now.’ Then Madame Zhang stepped forward and asked, ‘But what about this Liu?’”

  “That’s the woman whose husband had been killed?”

  Since losing her husband two years before, Hulan explained, Madame Zhang had become the moral conscience of the hutong. “She put her hands on her hips and strode to the middle of the circle to stand next to my father,” Hulan said through her tears. “‘Are we going to let him get away with his selfish ways?’ she asked. One by one she recited my father’s alleged crimes. He had ordered some shirts from Hong Kong during a cultural exchange trip for the ministry. He had a car and driver, but he had never once helped the neighbors by taking anyone anywhere, not even when Old Man Bai had a toothache and needed to go to the dentist! He hosted too many parties and the noise—the horrible Western singing and the sounds of Western instruments—coming from the Liu compound insulted all of the ears in the hutong. She said my mother was even worse! ‘Everyone in the neighborhood has had to endure this feudal woman’s vanity,’ Madame Zhang screeched. ‘She mocks us with her makeup, her flamboyant colors, and her silk costumes.’”

  “Where was your mother during all of this?”

  “That’s exactly what I was wondering. I searched through the crowd, but I didn’t see her. I looked to Mr. Zai, but he was concentrating on the proceedings. Then our neighbors were calling for me to speak, just as Uncle Zai said they would. He had told me what to do and I did it. I walked to the middle of the circle, thanked Madame Zhang for her good words, turned, and spat on my father.”

  Hulan’s tears turned to heavy sobs. “‘Everything Madame Zhang says is true,’ I told our neighbors. ‘From the day my father was born, he was spoiled, selfish, and thought only of himself.’ I could see my father trying to look up at me, but I put my work boot on the back of his neck to keep him down. This was something I had learned at the Red Soil Farm along with slogans like ‘Place righteousness above family loyalty’ and ‘Love Chairman Mao more than your own parents.’”

  Hulan told the people of the hutong that her father had named her after Liu Hulan only to curry favor from the government and to hide his own weak family background. “I said such terrible things, and I said them until my throat was hoarse and the people were frenzied. Soon the neighbors were shouting. Bomb the cow demon with cannon balls! Fry his hands in boiling oil! Then someone called out, ‘What of Jiang Jinli, this brave and honest girl’s mother?’ Soon everyone took up the chant.”

  At that, Hulan said, Mr. Zai had held up his hands for silence. He told the Lius’ neighbors that earlier that day he had taken Hulan to the jail where her mother was being held.

  “Only I knew this was a falsehood,” Hulan explained. “But Uncle Zai was not finished. He said—and I remember these words very clearly—‘With great pride I can tell you that Hulan did her duty there. Jiang Jinli, her mother, will no longer trouble the people!’ This news released my neighbors. People grabbed hammers and broke the old stone carving above our front gate. They went into the compound with sickles and chopped down my mother’s flowers. They raided the house, bringing out many of our belongings and throwing them to the ground. When the pile was ready, Madame Zhang stepped forward and set fire to our things. No, not things, our lives. Our books, photographs of family trips, wall hangings passed down ten generations in my mother’s family. Clothes, furniture, rugs. The fire roared, sending red and orange sparks into the sky.”

  “What was happening to your father?”

  “In the lust for destruction,” she answered, “he was forgotten by the mob. But in the light of the fire, so beautiful really, I saw him still on his hands and knees, his head lifted, staring at me. The guards came back, twisted his arms behind him, and dragged him away. The whole time my father’s eyes were boring into me like hot coals.”

  Once Hulan’s father was gone, Zai put her in the backseat of his car. She asked him questions. Where was her mother? What had happened to her? What would happen to her father? But Zai would only say that Hulan had saved her father’s life. Instead of being beaten or shot to death, Liu would be sent to a labor camp. He would be safe there.

  “Then Uncle Zai took me to the Beijing Hundred Products Big Store on Wangfujing,” she continued, slowly regaining her composure. “He bought me clothes and toiletries. He bought me a suitcase. He took me to his house, made me take a shower and change into one of my new outfits. Then we drove to the airport. He pressed a passport in my hand. Inside was an old picture of me and a visa. He kissed me good-bye and put me on the airplane. I had never been on an airplane before. I remember looking out the window and seeing miles and miles of great green patchwork. In Hong Kong, I changed planes, then flew to New York. When I got off the plane, I followed the other passengers through Immigration and Customs. Outside, a white woman met me and drove me to a boarding school in Connecticut.”

  “How old were you then?”

  “Fourteen.”

  “I vaguely remember you talking about that school,” David said suddenly. “But I didn’t know the circumstances of how you’d gotten there. It must have been a real culture shock after the farm and the rest of it.”

  “I don’t know if I can convey to you how strange it was to be with so many girls, all wearing uniforms, all good friends, all privileged,” she said. “Most of the students were the daughters of diplomats, so I can say they were more sophisticated than the usual American girls. But I’m sure I don’t have to tell you how cruel teenage girls can be. Oh, the teasing I got for my farm ways and my pathetic Communist clothes.”

  “And your English,” David added. “I remember you talking about that, too.”

  “Especially my English. Even my teachers made fun of me for what they called my ‘Chinglish.’ They said I spoke English like I was translating in my brain from the Chinese. ‘You must learn to think in English,’ they lectured me. I suppose they were trying to be kind, but they only made the other girls laugh.”

  “During that time did you hear from your father?”

  “No. He was in the labor camp, just as Uncle Zai had predicted. I didn’t hear from my mother either. For many months I assumed she was dead. Finally, after several letters, Uncle Zai wrote that she had been injured and was recuperating in a Russian hospital. He didn’t say that exactly, since all of the mail leaving China was monitored at that time. But I could read between the lines, between the words that spoke of my mother’s betrayal of the Revolution, of her decadent ways, of her selfish attitude.”

  In 1976, Hulan graduated and Chairman Mao died. Without his protection, Madame Mao and her cohorts—the Gang of Four—were arrested, tried, and convicted for masterminding the Cultural Revolution. While all that was happening, Hulan went to Los Angeles and enrolled at USC.

  “Still, I didn’t hear from my father. Two years later I finally received word from him. He had been ‘rehabilitated’ at the Pitao Reform Camp for six years and had returned to Beijing.”

  “After all that, how did he end up at the Ministry of Public Security?” David asked.

  Hulan shrugged. “He found his old friends, traded on his guanxi, and was assigned to a very low-level job at the MPS.”

  Again she seemed reluctant to go on. David had to coax her. “And your mother?”

  “He didn’t mention her. He did, however, tell me to stay where I was.” Her eyes misted again. “All I had to do was think of his face that last night in the hutong to know he despised me, that he didn’t want to see me.”

  “And Zai?”

  “In America you say, What goes around comes around,” she responded. “In China we have something similar: Things always change to the opposite. New accusations floated around the city. Uncle Zai was accused of participating
with too much vigor in the Cultural Revolution and was also sent to the Pitao Reform Camp. I don’t know who made those accusations, but I have always thought it was my father. He had six years to think about what Zai had done to his family, and he wanted retribution. When Mr. Zai came out of the camp, he was a different man. No one came to his aid except for my father.”

  “But why would your father do that if he wanted retribution?”

  “Because by that time, my father was ‘climbing the ladder’ at the ministry. The old boss became the lackey, my father became the new boss.”

  “Your father wanted to keep tabs on Zai.”

  “Yes, of course, but this was also a punishment. After all, Mr. Zai had to see my father every day. The gulf between them grew.”

  “But why didn’t Zai explain everything to your father?”

  “Because Baba would not listen and because Uncle Zai felt guilty himself.”

  “But the only thing Zai was guilty of was trying to rescue your father.”

  “You can say that now, David. But you weren’t in the hutong that night. Yes, Uncle Zai had planned everything so that my parents might live rather than die. But he had stood in the middle of that circle and denounced my mother. He had made me shout out the words about my father to satiate our neighbors’ desire for violence.”

  David was about to speak when Hulan held up her hand to stop him. “I’m not trying to justify my own actions,” she said. “I am guilty of many things—guilty of persecuting Teacher Zho, who spent the next five years in the cow shed; guilty of cruelty to our group leader at the farm, who tried to commit suicide rather than face another struggle meeting; guilty of betraying my parents, who both had to pay such an exorbitant price for my adolescent rantings.”

  “Hulan, you saved your parents,” he corrected. “Surely you’ve told your father what happened that night.”

  “I’ve tried, but it’s not the Chinese way. In America, you talk things to death, but we don’t. The past? Emotions?” She shook her head.

  “You should still do it.”

  She shook her head again. “My father has no desire to relive those days.”

  “He seems…” David didn’t know how to phrase it.

  “Cold? Let me tell you something. My father has never accused me. He loves me. He always wants to see more of me.”

  “And that’s how you ended up at the ministry.”

  “I’m getting ahead of my story, but yes. My father arranged for me to get a job. Not as an inspector! My father hired me to be a tea girl. Can you imagine me wearing some little dress, smiling stupidly, and pouring tea for men all day long?”

  “No.”

  “I had no choice but to go behind my father’s back to Uncle Zai. He’s watched over me since I was a child. He sent me out of the country to protect me. He paid for my education out of his own pocket. He knew that I was a lawyer. He believed that I could think. When Baba found out, it was too late.”

  “It’s still not too late to tell your father the truth,” David reasoned. “He should know that what you did took real courage.”

  “No, I was the true criminal in all this. And do you know what my punishment was? I went to a fine private university. I got a job at a good law firm. I met you.”

  She ran her fingers through her hair, pulling the tendrils away from her face. “I was an empty shell back then. For so many years I had covered my emotions. I had promised myself I would never feel anything ever again, but you made me fall in love. You opened my heart again to joy, happiness, and honor. I thought, Maybe I can make up for my past. I believed one way I could do that was to bury my deeds. Now I know I was right not to tell you.”

  But she was wrong. He was thinking instead of the personal toll her mistakes and sacrifices had taken on her, on both of them. As she told her story, he had thought of their missed chances and the years they’d lost.

  He reached for her, but she jerked away.

  “Can’t you see I never deserved you? I was never worthy of your love. It was all some horrible mistake.”

  “I wasn’t worthy of you.”

  Weariness crept into her voice as she said, “Okay, so you want to know why I left you? There are no more secrets. You already know my worst sins.”

  “Hulan, please don’t say that—”

  But she spoke right over him. “We were living in the apartment by the beach, remember that?”

  When he nodded, she said, “Of course you do. We used to walk along the beach on the weekends. We used to sit at the water’s edge and plan our future. We would get married, we’d buy a house, we’d have children, we’d do some good in the world. I have to tell you that this last was a dream for me, a way to make amends for my past wrongs. But not one day went by that I didn’t worry about how the universe would pay me back for what I’d done. Then one Saturday I learned how.”

  “Your father asked you to come home.”

  “He wrote that my mother was finally back from the hospital. She’d been in Russia for thirteen years! He said she needed me and that it was time to make restitution to her.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Again he was thinking of all the time they had lost.

  “A million times I have asked myself that question. I suppose I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to bear your contempt. I, Liu Hulan, named for the brave revolutionary, was terrified. So like a thief I made my plans. I bought a ticket. I packed a single suitcase. I kissed you good-bye and said I would see you in a couple of weeks. I have to tell you that when I closed the door to our apartment, I closed the door to the only happiness I had experienced since I was a very young girl.”

  “When you came back here, did you know it was permanent?” David asked. When she didn’t answer, he said, “I need to know, Hulan. Please.”

  “When I arrived, I didn’t know what to expect. But when I saw my mother…” She put her hands over her eyes.

  “What had happened to her?”

  “No one has ever told me. I don’t think my father knows, and if Uncle Zai does, he’s not telling. And my mother? My mother was a beautiful dancer. Did I ever tell you that? She had such grace, such agility. And her voice! When she sang, the masses would cry. They said she sounded like an angel. But when I saw her again, she was in a wheelchair and her voice was all but gone. I had to stay, David. You see that, don’t you?”

  “My letters?”

  “I still have them.”

  “And all the times I applied for visas?”

  “I went to Uncle Zai for help. He pulled strings and your applications were rejected.”

  “You should have let me come. You should have told me the truth. Even if you couldn’t tell me all of it, you could have said something instead of just disappearing like that.”

  “But how? What part of the story could I have told you? Think about it. Where could I have started? What part could I have left out? You would have asked me a hundred questions.”

  “I wouldn’t have.”

  “You know how you are, David. The truth means everything to you. And your sense of justice…”

  “Oh, God,” David groaned in final realization. “My rigid sense of right and wrong kept you from telling me.”

  “No, not sanctimonious.” She took his hand and held it to her breast. “Admirable. Fearless. Unwavering. Don’t you know that these are the things I have loved most about you?”

  “But they drove you away.”

  “Yes,” she admitted. She slumped against the wall. This time when he reached out to her, she didn’t pull away. Slowly he drew her into his arms.

  “So in answer to your questions,” she said, “I am not in cahoots with Guang Mingyun or the Rising Phoenix. That money comes from our family’s past and from my father’s connections. I haven’t lied to you since I saw you again. I have translated everything. I have tried to explain what we have seen. Of those accusations at least I am innocent.”

  She felt limp in his arms, almost as though she weren’t in her body at al
l.

  “I love you, Hulan. Nothing you could do or say would ever change that.”

  “But what I did…”

  “You saved your parents the best way you knew how. As for the other things—your teacher, the person on the farm…Jesus, you were just a little kid.”

  “That doesn’t absolve me.”

  “No, but ever since then you’ve tried to set things right. You’ve devoted your life to public service. Do you see Nixon, Madame Yee, or any of the millions and millions of people who participated in the Cultural Revolution doing the same?”

  He felt her body try to shift away from him, but he kept her within his embrace.

  “The real question is,” he continued, “can you forgive me?”

  She looked up at him. Her eyes glistened with tears, which brimmed, then ran down her face. He held her as she cried.

  20

  FEBRUARY 12

  The Official Residence

  They spent the night at Hulan’s house—secure in the knowledge that MPS agents were watching over them in the sedan parked outside her gate. In the morning, she was still shaky and David was wrung out, but they had never been as close. All the walls between them were finally gone. Gradually they began to concentrate their attention once again on their present predicament. Hulan made tea and they sat together at the little round table in her kitchen. They started with the premise that they had exhausted their leads.

  “Someone wanted us dead,” David said. “Who knew we were going to the jail?”

  “Guang Mingyun.”

  “Besides him.”

  “Peter.”

  David considered this. “You said he was reporting our movements to someone. Who?”

  Hulan hesitated. “I was his immediate superior. After that…Section Chief Zai.”

  “Zai? Your Zai?”

  “But it can’t be him,” Hulan said. “He’d never do anything to harm me.”

  “But I think it would be a good idea to talk to him,” David said. “It may be someone else in the ministry. Zai may know who.”

  But David’s clothes were still streaked with soot and grime. Clearly the first thing they needed to do was get David back to his hotel so he could change. The obvious mode of transportation was the MPS sedan parked out front, but now that car’s presence seemed ominous.