by Aimee E. Liu
3
What happened, she asked the next time, after the burning rafts? She spoke in a low, measured voice, addressing the pages of the notebook that lay before her on the table. She made notes, she explained, because it was difficult to remember all the names and places that were so familiar to him.
Paul wished she would speak more about herself, but what American woman would confide in a Chinaman? He could only hope she might feed him an occasional morsel in return for his offering a feast, so he resumed his story as if delivering the next of many courses.
He told of the New Year’s gathering of the Chinese Students’ Union in Tokyo, 1903, when he rose before an audience of one hundred fellow students and the Chinese Imperial Minister to Japan and called for the overthrow of the Ch’ing Dynasty. “Dr. Sun Yat-sen give me courage. I know many students believe with me, but when I shout, no one will answer. No one drink. No one eat. All eyes turn to Minister Ts’ai. He will not look, too, only point. Then police come.
“This most bad,” he tried to make her understand. “No one do such thing ever.”
“This was very bad,” she spoke to her bobbing pencil. “No one had ever done such a thing.” She stopped writing and looked up. “What exactly was it you said?”
“I say, Han people no more can give destiny of China to invaders! We rely only ourselves. We must drive Manchu from power!”
“I said, Paul. We can rely only upon ourselves. What happened then?”
“I was arrested. Minister have me deported. Shanghai is only place in China where I am safe. I stay there one year until Dr. Sun Yat-sen arrange me come to San Francisco, run his newspaper.”
She frowned and did not correct the mistakes he was certain he had made. “I thought you came here as a student.”
“Yes.” He paused, considering her fair hand as it skimmed across the page. If he were not a student he would have been denied an entry visa, but of course she would not think of this. “Yes,” he repeated.
“What would have happened if you had gone outside Shanghai?”
He said simply, “I will be executed.”
“For giving a speech!”
“And my queue. Treason.”
She shook her head. “The Manchus must be terrible cowards.”
He smiled grimly, coiled his hands and placed them one atop the other. “In China, power squeeze from top. Foreigner squeeze Manchu. Manchu squeeze Chinese. Wealthy man squeeze poor man.” One hand surrounded the other. “Is like box pushing small, small. Must explode.”
“In revolution,” she said quietly. When he did not reply, she asked, “Were you imprisoned … in Japan?”
He shrugged, at once pleased by her breathless tone and uncertain how much he dared to tell her. “One night only. Japanese police good friend with Dr. Sun Yat-sen.”
She toyed with her pencil. “And so, by coming here and running his paper, you were repaying Dr. Sun for rescuing you?”
“I am honored to work with Dr. Sun,” he said firmly.
“Oh, of course. I’m not… It’s just that your story, Paul—your courage is remarkable.”
“And you story, Hope. Also remarkable. Young woman, educated, so independent.”
But she did not smile, as he’d expected. Instead, she acted as though she had not heard. She stood and pulled a volume from her bookshelf, walked to the window, thumbing pages. She wore a dress the color of apricots that lifted just above the toe of her boot, and for the first time, he noticed her feet. They were smaller than his hands.
“What you were describing,” she said when she had found her place, “the way you described it… Listen to this.”
He felt a surge of relief. She was simply preoccupied by what he had said before, by her desire to answer him. But as she began reading, her tone darkened, and he was flung unexpectedly back six years. She spoke of a dungeon with creeping walls. Rats. Dripping water. An invisible well and a blade that swung ever nearer as the walls closed in until the prisoner “struggled no more, but the agony of my soul found vent in one loud, long, and final scream of despair.” He could almost smell again the stink of fear in his own drawn blood. Was it possible that Hope Newfield knew of his imprisonment by Chang Chih-tung?
“Who write these things?” he demanded.
She glanced up. “Edgar Allan Poe.” She laid the book aside and returned to the table, watching him curiously. “One of this country’s greatest writers. But the feeling … it’s just like what you were describing.”
No, he thought. She knew nothing, this American girl—imagined torture a literary device! But her blue-eyed innocence was too powerful for him to fault her. He grasped at the only word of her speech he could now recall. “Despair?”
“It means suffering so much that you lose all thought of escape. Hopelessness.”
“Ah. Chinese say chüeh-wang. Only no Chinese will write such story.”
“Why not?”
He considered, then said, “I am angry, compose verse about black mountain, snow lion, hunter. Maybe this man and lion die in fight. Still that mountain is beautiful. You know?”
She hesitated. “I think so.”
“You Mr. Poe will say no. Black cloud swallow that mountain. All is dark. Or all light. That is his way.”
“Not my Mr. Poe.” An awkward smile. She tilted her head. “You are a true believer!”
“Believer?”
“You believe life is essentially good, that black is white.”
He let his hands fall outward to the table. “Not all white, all black. White and black. Day, night. Good, bad. Chinese say yin and yang.” He paused. “Like man and woman. Always two opposite together make one.”
These last words dropped like pebbles. Suddenly she was rubbing the table again, circling her thumb until the wood paled with her warmth, and he realized this was a nervous habit. That he had made her nervous. The thought released a deep shudder of confusion.
The clock struck. He stood, hesitating. “Two officials from Manchu government give speech at university tomorrow. Perhaps you will be interested to see?”
She looked up. “Your Minister Ts’ai?”
“Different ministers. Manchu think maybe constitution give power. But ministers do not know constitution, so must travel to West, learn what we students study many years!”
“And you? Are you planning to stand up and give another of your speeches?”
He jingled the change in his pocket. “I have not decided.”
“But you’ll be there?”
He nodded.
“Well. Perhaps I’ll see you then.”
April 13, 1906
I didn’t mean to go. I still don’t know what prompted me, unless it was Collis’s telephone call this morning—and my need to manufacture an excuse to avoid meeting him. Throwing myself in front of the Key trolley might have been a better strategy.
I thought I was safe when I entered the hall and saw those two Manchu ministers. Straight out of Hans Christian Andersen they were, in their brilliant brocade robes and tasseled button hats. Another world. Another century. Nothing to do with me. Then Paul spotted me at the back of the auditorium, came to stand beside me, and though he was polite, perfectly reserved, my heart started pounding so I was sure he must hear it. And when he mentioned that the visiting minister Tuan had presided over his examinations in Hupei and therefore considered him his student, the strangest chill—like an ache—ran through me. I looked from Paul, in his smart, manly suit, to those two old men in their fairytale robes, and the true enormity of his violation struck me—the distance he has traveled, not only from his homeland but from all the traditions and expectations that once ruled his every move! It was as though his ancestry had sprung to life in these two fawning ministers, and I had no choice but to believe it.
Yet I admired his rebellion all the more as the “lecture” dissolved into buffoonery. The ministers turned out to be the Chinese twins of Tweedledum and Tweedledee. First they argued over who should have the honor of speaki
ng. The one who was senior deferred to Tuan because he was more familiar with Westerners. But after every sentence, Tuan would turn and ask, “Is that right?” “Yes, yes,” the other would say, and so it went, back and forth, as they boasted of the Ch’ing government’s grand plans for modernizing China. Every single line punctuated by, “Is that right?” and “Yes, yes.” Paul stood through it all with his arms folded, grinning like the Cheshire cat.
Afterward, a young reporter for the student newspaper came over and asked why it takes two Chinese to give the speech of one. Paul gave an elaborate answer about China’s ancient code of respect, implying that the ministers had performed in this manner as a way of showing reverence to the host university! The young man dutifully scribbled this down, and I fully expect Paul’s “wisdom” to become Chinese gospel in tomorrow’s Berkeley Banner.
“Is that true?” I asked when the reporter had gone.
“Oh, no.” Paul smiled. “Ministers are Manchu. Always go in circle, no one dare to lead.”
But now the audience was dispersing. I was one of only a handful of women, and people had noticed me standing with Paul. I was about to say goodbye, when who should come hurrying toward us but Minister Tuan! He took Paul aside and began waving his big sleeves, talking fast and hard, his frustration clearly mounting as Paul remained deadpan as a vaudevillian. I was transfixed. Then suddenly Tuan left in a huff. Paul returned with an amused expression, and I requested a translation. He seemed only too pleased to oblige …
Tuan: Before I came to San Francisco, I read your articles in the Ta T’ung Daily. Let me say to you, after today do not say those things anymore.
Paul: I do not know what things you mean.
Tuan: Those things you say.
Paul: I did not say anything.
Tuan: I mean the things you say every day.
Paul: I do not say anything every day.
Tuan: You do not know yourself? Those things that come out of your mouth. You know. I know. After today do not say them. We Chinese must deal with the foreigners as one. When we return from this trip you will benefit from our friendship. Give me some face. Brother, do not say those things anymore.
When he finished, Paul looked at me with such a devilish twinkle in his eye that we both burst into laughter. I said he should quit spouting revolution and become America’s first Chinese comedian. Then it occurred to me that Minister Tuan was serious. I asked if it was wise to tease him so. Paul sobered immediately, and I felt that chill again. But his reply took me aback.
“You are right, Hope,” he said. “These things you and I think funny may bring hardship to Minister Tuan.”
I shall never forget the combination of regret in Paul’s voice with the kindness in his eyes, his genuine concern for Tuan … and his confiding in me. In that brief glow of laughter I’d allowed myself to imagine I might sidestep my obsessive longings by befriending Paul as a sister. Now I am, again, submerged.
4
That weekend Hope was to help Mary Jane Lockyear host a garden party to raise funds for Donaldina Cameron’s Chinese Presbyterian Mission Home. Donaldina, a longtime friend of Mary Jane’s, was known throughout the Bay Area as the savior of Chinese slave girls. For over a decade she had waged a largely single-handed war against the merchants and highbinders who controlled the filthy back-alley “cribs” and hidden chambers in which Chinatown’s prostitution trade was conducted. She identified newly arrived slave girls, arranged police raids to rescue them, then housed and educated these girls in her Home on Sacramento Street. Many in San Francisco hailed Donaldina as a saint, but there were also those, both within and outside Chinatown, who benefited from the prostitution trade and would have been pleased to see the Scottish do-gooder dead. All of this Hope knew from Mary Jane and the papers. She herself had not met the woman, until now had never felt more than passing curiosity about her. Even though she tutored Chinese men, Hope had always preferred to think them immune and apart from the evils of Chinatown. But Paul forced her to recognize that her Chinese students were as capable of taking the ferry across the Bay as any foul-minded white man. Every day, in fact, he made this trip, to go to his newspaper office on Grant Street, and he must be at least as familiar as Donaldina with Chinatown’s inner workings. But what, Hope wondered, was the nature of his familiarity? And could she bear to find out?
Sunday morning she arrived at Mary Jane’s with armloads of flowers, cookies, and cakes for the reception. The two women hauled chairs and tables, assembled trays of dainties, and decanted sherry and port. As they worked, Mary Jane peppered her with questions about Collis, but Hope would say only that he had requested a visit and she had agreed to receive him the following Tuesday.
“My, how formal,” Mary Jane remarked. “An audience with the queen. Promises a warm and cozy bridal chamber.”
“Mary Jane!”
“Just an observation, my sweet.”
“Collis is trying to respect my wishes.”
“Some of the same men who call themselves gents for holding a door for a lady think nothing of barring and locking that door once the lady’s inside. If you’re not careful people will think your deviled eggs are filled with blood.”
“Oh, shoo!” Hope slammed down the jar of paprika and took a spoon to the red dust mountain rising from the bowl of yolks. “Now look what you’ve made me do!”
Mary Jane’s strong fingers closed on her shoulder. “No one can make you do anything, Hope, that you don’t choose for yourself.”
“No one can make you do anything,” Hope snapped, “if your father makes a bloody fortune and leaves it in your lap!”
Mary Jane’s father and grandfather had possessed every bit as much practical acumen as Hope’s own father lacked. They had built a small manufacturing empire in Missouri, first supplying Conestoga wagons for the Oregon Trail and, later, steam engines for Mississippi River boats. Mary Jane was the only heir when her father and mother drowned in a holiday boating accident the year Mary Jane completed college. Hope had never before allowed her envy of Mary Jane’s fortune to overshadow her sympathy for her friend’s tragic losses, but it was hard to accept criticism from someone who really could do whatever she pleased!
Mary Jane’s voice was terse and brutally blunt. “This has nothing to do with money.”
Maybe not, thought Hope, but I’ve been made to do plenty that I never chose. In school she was made to wear feathers in her hair. When her class studied fractions, she was brought up in front of the class to prove that one fourth could be a quarter-blood Indian. Then there was the day Lester and Duncan Beasley, sons of the local judge, toppled and rolled her in the mud, smeared their hands across her chest and belly and told her that was how filthy she was inside.
“If you marry that man,” Mary Jane pressed, “you are saying to him, and to the entire world, that you have chosen to lie with him, to strip yourself naked before him, to let him enter you, body and soul. To bear his children, to give up your life—to belong to him, Hope! I know you well enough to know that you will never surrender your will to any man you don’t love. And I know you don’t love Collis Chesterton.”
“Well, you’re wrong!” Hope cried, whirling so Mary Jane couldn’t read her eyes.
“About which part?”
“About everything!”
They continued working for the next hour without uttering one word.
By three o’clock a looping breeze had risen, offering slight relief from the oppressive heat. Donaldina Cameron arrived towing two scrubbed Chinese girls, one as small as a porcelain doll and the other tall and sturdy. Sample products, thought Hope bitterly, to prove the nobility of woman, the savagery of the native.
But Donaldina was a compact burst of efficiency with prematurely silver hair and an oversized nose and a voice so gently positive that Hope could not dislike her. She clasped Hope’s hands and thanked her for all her generous work, making Hope feel woefully inadequate. The girls curtsied, enchanting in their broadly sashed frills, eyes on the t
able of sweets. Hope made sure they each had a petit four before the other guests arrived, but their delight did little to salve her conscience. Not only had she failed to commit her life to saving other people’s lost souls, but she was likely casting her own to the winds at this very moment. Fortunately, this line of self-flagellation was cut short by the arrival of Donaldina’s “donors.”
In no time the terrace was crowded with white organza, flowered hats, monocles, and morning coats. Here were the cream of East Bay philanthropy, keepers of the flame of social conscience. As they bent to Donaldina’s “Chinese daughters,” their remarks made Hope cringe.
“How well you speak English!”
“Why, you’re a little doll!”
“Such an excellent job you’ve done, Miss Cameron. They’re perfect Celestial princesses.”
“What a lucky, lucky girl you are to be saved by the likes of Miss Cameron.”
While in a lower tone, cupped behind men’s palms and rippling beneath women’s parasols: She knows the bowels of Chinatown like the back of her hand, stomps right into their brothels she does. If there’s a trapdoor she’ll find it, drag them little girls out of stalls that smell like pig chutes. Some never seen daylight since they come off the boat. Whip ’em and burn ’em, use ’em ten, twenty times a night. Down in the cribs it’s twenty-five cents a pop, and special rate, fifteen cents for boys. Y’ever seen ’em? Like caged animals behind those barred windows, down the end those gummy black alleys. Gotta lure their own customers to buy ’emselves free, they’ll call y’over and tell you they just had your father. Chinese think it’s some kinda honor, like father like son. Aye, this Donaldina’s a saint to take on those miserable monkeys. Stark, staring depravity, that’s what they are.
Donaldina stood beneath the big leafy alder, flanked by her honorary daughters, and gave a rousing speech about dignity, faith, and the resilience of the human soul. Then, as illustration, she cupped a hand around the older girl’s shoulder and asked her to tell her story.