by Aimee E. Liu
She never did tell Collis about Frank Pearson, never enticed his courtship, but it was enough that she accepted the work. In the second year of this arrangement, he invited her to the theater, lectures, concerts in the park. In the third, he began to hint of “intentions.” When she casually remarked that she’d “give anything” to tour Europe, Collis promised to take her to Vienna—if she would give him her hand.
The Leslie’s slipped from her lap, falling open to the advertisements at the back: combination washers and Acme cook stoves, silver-plated tea services, croquet sets. Embroidered bed linens and antimacassars. Security. Comfort. Children. A home. All of which Collis would happily provide.
She shut her eyes and listened past her own breathing. A magpie was singing. A squirrel chattered. Cartwheels rolled up the hill accompanied by the heavy clip-clop of hooves. But now she sensed a change. A split second, something so small it would go unnoticed a thousand times out of a thousand and one, except that she was listening. A current of cooler air shifting the breeze? A lark ascending from the Procters’ field? Or something even more subtle, like time’s rearrangement of light. Whatever the prompting, she looked up and discovered she was being watched.
Ordinarily such a discovery would alarm her—would alarm anyone, surely, the way her watcher had silently approached. Yet she felt no such disturbance. Neither fear nor surprise, nor even the casual whirl of embarrassment. He stood at the foot of the steps—tall and slight with lank black hair scissored close to the head, ears as precise as shells, skin the color of sand. His face, dominated by high, smooth cheekbones, was broad and square at the forehead but tapered to a gentle chin. Nose a bit too delicate for the breadth of the face. Curving lips—a question hovered—and tender eyes beneath smudgy brows. He wore not a suit but a navy cutaway mismatched with gray trousers and a celadon tie. His white shirt collar lifted in wings, and he held his derby between fingers that stretched so long and smooth she thought of feathers.
“Miss Newfeel.” The voice did not break the quiet between them but moved on it, low and luxuriant, his alteration of her name giving it a drape that was both innocent and seductive.
“Yes?” She came to the top of the steps.
“I am Liang Po-yu.”
But the watcher bore no resemblance to the student she’d been expecting. “I’m sorry, Mr. Liang, I didn’t realize … Please, do come up. Yes. I am Hope Newfield.”
It was the cropped hair, combed and parted to one side, that had misled her. She was accustomed to shaved-back foreheads and long submissive pigtails. Her students had told her their Manchu rulers would execute them if they returned to China without their queues. Of course, they were not revolutionists.
She started to bow … hesitated. He extended his hand. She accepted, but he seemed new to the art of the handshake, for their fingers were soon entwined, snagged between American and European-style contact. She laughed, tilted her head to look up at him.
At that moment Eleanor’s voice hummed off-key from the other side of the house. Eleanor, who insisted that even the most educated Chinese were, deep down, shiftless gamblers and layabouts. Hope let go of Mr. Liang and brought him inside, down a musty corridor lined with portraits of the widow’s relatives, and into the office Hope had made her own.
Here a soft breeze ballooned white lace curtains. A small leather-topped desk, high-backed chairs with embroidered seats, and a pale blue divan filled one side of the room, while a round walnut table large enough to accommodate books, writing paper, and full tea service dominated the other. Perhaps because it was less intimidating to deal with a woman only from the elbows up, most of Hope’s students seemed more at ease working across the table from her than sitting in parlor positions, but Mr. Liang seated himself on the divan. She took the chair opposite.
“Please.” He held out an envelope and she saw that his fingers were misleading. Though smooth and slender in their length, the tips were blunt, nails bitten to the quick.
Mr. Liang’s letter of introduction was written in meticulous block lettering on translucent rice paper, in English except for the scarlet seal at the bottom of the page. She read the first line four times before the words began to register.
18 June, 1903
Honorable Sir,
This letter will introduce Mr. Liang Po-yu, son of Liang Yu-sheng, venerable Viceroy of Canton. The Liang family ancestors reside in Wuchang, Hupei Province, China.
Mr. Liang Po-yu, styled Yu-fen, was born to a most learned family. He trained in the classical studies from an early age. After reaching his adolescence he was admitted into two colleges in Hunan and Hupei where he excelled particularly in history of ethnic groups such as Liao, King, and Yüan, and in geography of northwest China. Mr. Liang studied English and Russian languages and composed three volumes poetry before traveling to Hong Kong and Japan to continue his studies.
After composing sixteen volumes history of the wars of Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, Mr. Liang returned to China to distinguish himself in the study of Latin at Chen-tan College. By then he was no older than twenty-six. At this writing Mr. Liang is to embark on a voyage to the United States to study at the University of California. He surely will bring honor to his family and his nation during his studies in America.
Please to welcome this esteemed scholar to your great country.
Signed most humbly,
Ma Hsiang-po, Instructor of Latin, Chen-tan College
When Hope looked up, he was watching her again. She dropped her eyes. By then he was no older than twenty-six. Was this even possible? That beardless skin, the slender length of him … Yet he must be at least thirty to have accomplished all the letter told. If even half were true, he would be the intellectual superior of every man in Berkeley!
“This isn’t right.” She thrust back the paper. “I don’t know enough to teach you, Mr. Liang.”
“Ah, no! I am nothing.” He leaned forward, and she was afraid he might touch her again. Instead he slapped the letter against his palm. “These words not true!”
“Of course they’re true.”
“I am no good, no show—” He stopped, started again too quickly. “Too much I know—should not Mr. Ma write—pu chih i t’i!”
She would have thought it an act except that his face reddened and he was breathing hard. He pulled a pair of rimless spectacles from his pocket, fumbled the stems around his ears, and spread the letter with trembling hands, as if to prove the lie.
“Please. It’s all right. I’ll fetch our tea.”
She escaped to the kitchen, where the kettle proceeded to burn her thumb, the sugar spoon clattered across the linoleum, and wafting in from the garden came Eleanor’s spirited rendition of “Castles in the Air.”
Liang Po-yu had lived in America for over a year, but never had his poor command of the English language shamed him more than in these few minutes. When Chesterton told him that his tutor was to be a woman, Po-yu had envisioned an elderly missionary with pasted hair and brittle eyes and enormous camel feet. He could have borne the shame of error before such a yang kueitsu, he thought, but Hope Newfield was young and delicate, small as a child yet so graceful… He was not only ashamed of himself, but furious.
In fact, from the moment he first caught sight of her as he entered the garden gate he had strained against a pressure in his chest, like the lid of a box from which something dangerous is trying to escape. It had nearly succeeded when his words ran away with him. Now, while she was preparing their tea, he reminded himself of the story his shipmates had told of a visiting scholar from Kwangsi who developed feelings for the daughter of a San Francisco fireman. The father became suspicious and enlisted his squad to kidnap the scholar, tie him by the wrists and queue to the back of their fire wagon. They drove that wagon up and down the city’s hills in the hours before dawn, did not stop until the scholar’s hair had pulled from his head and the steel cords with which they’d tied his wrists had severed the hands from his arms. Then they left him in the middle of Chinato
wn to bleed to death.
But there were different stories, as well, which Po-yu had heard from men he respected far more than those cowards on the boat. In Hong Kong several years earlier he had become the disciple of an elderly man named Jung Ch’un-fu who had graduated from Yale University, the first Chinese to earn an American degree. Jung had married the daughter of a Connecticut senator, who bore him two American sons before her early death. Yet Jung still considered himself a patriot, and traveled often to China to negotiate with the foreign powers for his homeland’s modernization. Jung was a man of the world, thought Po-yu, and although it could not have been simple for him to love and marry a white woman of such high class, he had survived and perhaps even benefited from this marriage. Two decades after her death the eighty-year-old Jung had confided that he still mourned his wife every day.
Po-yu shook his head, berating himself. He had displayed such ineptitude that Miss Newfield had all but run from the room to escape him, and here he was fantasizing about marriage!
“I speak like child,” he apologized after she returned. They sat across that round, dark table from each other, and the tea she had brought tasted like decayed grass. This helped to ease his shame.
“Mr. Liang, it is customary in this country to look at the person with whom one is conversing.”
He lifted his eyes as far as the white ruffle at her throat.
“Did you bring any of your books with you to America?”
He did not understand.
“The poetry and histories that Mr. Ma mentioned.”
“Ah. Yes. A few.”
“I would like to see them.”
He glanced up just long enough to discover her blue eyes, smiling.
“Collis says you are a republican,” she continued.
“Collis.”
“Mr. Chesterton.”
“Ah.”
“He says you believe the imperial system is wrong. But isn’t it true that system is all China has ever known?”
He nodded slowly. Collis, she called him.
“Do you think, then, there will be a revolution over there? In your country?”
Your country. My country. He could just see the two of them, laughing, hooping hands through the air. This American beauty and that red-whiskered barbarian, Chesterton.
She raced on, “I know embarrassingly little about China, but it seems to me our countries are so different. And this would be such a radical change. Do you really think democracy could work in China? Collis—”
“Yes! I think!”
She looked straight into his eyes. “I didn’t mean to insult you.”
“Mr. Chesterton mean this,” he mumbled.
Her left thumb rubbed the table. After a pause she answered, “You’re right. It isn’t really malicious, though … Collis is incapable of violence. It’s more his—limitation …”
But he could see she was making excuses. She was embarrassed. “Che shih wo te pu tui,” he said, leaning forward. “I speak too bold. My friend say I borrow trouble.”
“Mr. Liang, however troublesome the truth may be, that does not make it less true.”
The pot shook as she poured out more tea, which they did not drink. She offered him a wafer from a silver plate, which he accepted but did not taste. Finally she broke the tension with a hard laugh. “Oh, I don’t care what Collis thinks! Tell me about China.”
So he took a deep breath and told her, or tried, in his haphazard English. The imperial system must be toppled, he explained, because each time the Westerners pointed their guns, the Empress Dowager would give whatever they asked—even if it meant starving entire provinces. Foreigners controlled China’s railroads, mining rights, customs and treaty ports, and every time the ruling Ch’ing dynasty ran out of money, the Western powers would write new loans at higher interest rates, increasing their hold over the Ch’ing government. Chinese people had no rights.
When she asked why, if he felt this way, he would come to the land of the enemy to study, he praised the question. Chinese asked this often of foreign-bound students, but he had never heard it from a Westerner. He explained that although he loved his country, he felt it could not defend itself against the outside world until its leaders mastered modern technology, politics, and warfare. And China’s Han majority, who had been ruled by Manchu emperors for more than two centuries, could reclaim their government only if they applied the same principles of self-rule and self-determination that had made America a free nation.
She challenged him. “America’s revolution was terribly bloody. And it was followed by the Civil War, which cost even more lives.”
“Ah.” He sighed. “You wish peace revolution.”
“I wish for peaceful revolution,” she corrected. “Here—” She nodded toward a large and ugly brown moth that had settled on the plate of wafers. “Let’s say he’s the enemy and I want to get rid of him.” She cupped her hand over the insect, took the plate to the window. When she turned back, the moth was gone. “Revolution accomplished!”
He grinned. “Lucky bug have no gun.”
“Aye, there’s the rub.” She laughed, and for a strange, rounded moment they sat, mischievous as children. Then, like a child, he grew careless.
He reached into his jacket.
“What’s this?”
“My newspaper. Ta T’ung Jih Pao. Chinese Free Press. You can read Chinese, please to give opinion.”
“Your newspaper?”
He nodded, urging it into her hands. “I am editor.”
But the longer she stared at the paper, the more he grew disheartened.
Gently, he reversed the pages. “Chinese read this way. Back front. Right left.”
“Oh! I’m so sorry.” She brought the back of her wrist to her mouth, and when she looked up he saw that her cheeks were flaming. She had only inquired about his books out of politeness, to ease his humiliation. She could not begin to read them.
“Mei yu kuan hsi, how you can know?” He retrieved the paper and folded it into his pocket.
“Mr. Liang,” she said, “I really don’t think I am qualified to teach you … but I would be honored if you will allow me to try.”
He bowed his head. “Thank you, Miss Newfield.” He bit hard to produce the proper d, then added, “I do not enjoy to speak like child.”
The corners of her mouth twitched. “I can tell.”
And so they arranged to meet Monday and Thursday mornings. He asked if she would do the honor of giving him an American name. She promised to do her best.
2
Pass the green,” said Mary Jane Lockyear.
Hope pushed the tin of spools across the banner. EQUAL PAY FOR EQUAL WORK the satin letters would read when they finished. But it was after nine already. The last trolley from Oakland left at ten, and they were not half done.
“You’ll stay the night,” said Mary Jane, reading Hope’s mind. “You have an early lesson tomorrow?”
Hope nodded and shook her head in reply.
“You’re not getting much done. And if you’ve spoken more than ten words all evening, I haven’t heard them.”
“Sorry. It was sweet of you to bake that cake.”
“You hardly touched it.”
Hope sighed. “Birthdays are for children.”
“And you’re an old maid.” Mary Jane gave the table an impatient tap with her thimble. “I’ll be forty next month. Remind me not to invite you to my party!”
Hope forced a smile. Mary Jane was her closest friend, and she didn’t mean to cut her off. “Collis is back.”
The violet eyes narrowed. “And you’ve given him your answer.”
“Briefly.”
“I hardly think three years is brief!”
“He’s a good man.” Hope stared at the flashing steel point of her needle.
“You’re too soft, Hope. There are some men who won’t take no for an answer unless you’re downright brutal.”
“I suppose you’re so experienced!” The words leap
t from her mouth before she could stop them. “Oh, Mary Jane. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it like that.”
Mary Jane stood and turned up the lamp. In her checked gingham wrapper, fading hair in wisps, she seemed more matronly than usual this evening, but she was no spinster. If Hope could bring herself to speak the truth, she knew her friend would repay her in kind.
But Mary Jane spoke first. “So you’re actually considering accepting.”
“I don’t know. Sometimes I think I’d be better off.”
“Married to Collis Chesterton?”
“I still think about Frank.”
“I don’t blame you.” Mary Jane had run into them together once on their way into Demetrak’s to buy a picnic for the beach. She told Hope that Frank Pearson was the handsomest man she’d ever laid eyes on. “But all the more reason to end this nonsense with Collis.”
“I’m not so sure. If I leave myself free, I may just make another terrible mistake.”
“Nothing terrible about Frank Pearson. I’ve never seen a girl so in love—you had nothing to do with his death!”
“It’s not that. But his kind of man … the effect he had on me. What if I had married him? If we’d had children? Would that have stopped him getting himself killed? Even worse, sometimes I wonder if the only reason I still love Frank is that he did die—before he had the chance to disappoint me.”
“Hope Newfield. If you bind your life in what-ifs you’ll never live at all.”
“That’s exactly what I’m afraid of.”
Mary Jane’s needle stopped in midair. “Have you met someone else?”
Hope tried to laugh, but the sound was more of a gasp. “I do have a new Chinese student.”
Mary Jane resumed her sewing. “Just as well. If you took up with another man now it would only make matters worse.”
Hope looked away. For the first time in their friendship she didn’t trust Mary Jane any more than she trusted herself.