Cloud Mountain

by Aimee E. Liu

  I must close. Paul is due home soon and Li-li is calling me to taste her sweet-and-spicy soup. Pearl and Paul join me in sending our love.

  Hope.

  Over the next two years, Hope juggled the demands of her growing daughter, her students, and Mary Jane’s perennial reeducation campaign for suffrage. Paul, meanwhile, was increasingly preoccupied by events six thousand miles away. Reforms promised by Prince Ts’ai Feng, the father of P’u-i and now Regent of China, were repeatedly postponed, while taxes escalated convulsively as the Manchus scrambled to repay foreign loans taken out by the late Empress Dowager. Peasant and merchant classes alike were rioting, and although the Manchus still had the power to quell Sun Yat-sen’s New Army revolts, for the first time the majority of revolutionary troops were Imperial turncoats.

  In the fall of 1909 Paul traveled to New York to meet Sun Yat-sen and escort him across the country. Over the next four months they traveled with a company of musicians and actors, staging revolutionary operas in t’ang halls and mining camps. They made stump speeches in Chinatowns, took collections from laundrymen, fruit pickers, explosives experts, greengrocers, and houseboys. They distributed pamphlets written in English to American politicians, businessmen, and churchmen propagandizing democratic revolution as “The True Solution of the Chinese Question.” Ultimately, they landed back on the West Coast with a platter of lies tailor-made for American mercenaries. They met in Los Angeles with “General” Homer Lea, the eighty-eight-pound, Stanford-graduated hunchback who, for the past decade, had been the Royalists’ military advisor. Now Lea and a retired New York banker named Charles Boothe had decided they might better make their fortune by investing in the soon-to-be Republic of China. Paul sat mute and amused as Dr. Sun tendered to the two men and their proposed Syndicate full or leased control of China’s railroads, central bank, coinage, and mineral deposits. Dr. Sun, whose woolly eyebrows and wiry mustache concealed any trace of dissemblance, was fully aware of the racist prejudices both Americans harbored, and he was prepared to do unto them as they would do unto him. If they could come up with four million dollars for New China, then Sun had no compunctions about numbering his forces at thirty thousand intellectuals and ten million secret society “volunteers.”

  “It will be commercial suicide for the American capitalists,” Sun said on the March evening he spent with Paul and Hope before sailing for Honolulu. “But better to make a net than to pine for fish at the edge of the pond.”

  Paul and their other guests, newspaperman and Presbyterian minister Ng Poon Chew and his wife Chun Fa, with whom Dr. Sun was staying, nodded sedately behind identical pairs of wire-rimmed glasses.

  “But nets are full of holes,” Hope said, “and some fish always manage to wriggle through.” She saw Paul wince, and added pointedly, “Forgive my impertinence, Dr. Sun. I only wish to understand your strategy.”

  Reverend Chew smiled broadly. A sturdy, compact man in his forties with a square head and straight mouth hooded by a neatly clipped boxcar mustache, Chew edited the Chinese Western Daily in Oakland but had also served as pastor of Donaldina’s Mission. He had cut off his queue nearly thirty years earlier. So when he said, “Your American wife is not afraid to display her intelligence,” Hope wondered whether he was poking fun at her or at Paul.

  Dr. Sun pursed his lips. “I, too, am sometimes accused of impertinence, but I consider this a compliment. I would say that the fish I wish to net will be too large to slip through the holes. However, they may prove too wily to enter the net, which will lead to the same result. So I lure them with promises I know I cannot keep, and hope that they cannot detect this.”

  “They understand nothing but their own greed,” said Paul. “You read them perfectly.”

  “The ends justify the means, in other words,” said Hope.

  Ng Poon Chew and his wife exchanged glances and blew on their tea.

  “We are trying to overthrow a government, Hope.” Paul uncrossed his legs and spread his hands over his knees. “Profit motive is a useful tool.”

  “I see it as prospecting,” said Sun Yat-sen. “How different from a wealthy man paying for an expedition to open a mine in search of gold. Maybe it pays off. Maybe not.”

  “Yes.” Paul nodded emphatically. “Yes.”

  But Hope wondered at her husband’s willing participation in this deceit. Sun Yat-sen struck her as a good man, earnest and intense, but there was also a palpable ineffectuality about him that undercut his daring words. With those brushlike eyebrows and sleepy eyes, the slicked-back hair like a little boy’s and those querulous lips, he could easily be mistaken for a poet or an absentminded banker. She could understand why, on his early trips through America, this slight, almost effeminate man had been more of an irritant than an inspiration to the hua ch’iao—overseas Chinese—who had blown tunnels through mountains and built the railroads with their bare hands. What was astounding about him was that he kept coming back, had circled the globe multiple times, and, though there was a price on his head and he had several times barely escaped arrest, he continued, like Paul, to pursue his vision of a free China.

  Hope relieved Li-li of the chattering cup and saucer she was attempting to hand her. The girl had been tongue-tied all day at the prospect of Dr. Sun’s visit, had burned the first batch of biscuits and put too much salt in the stew and forgotten to put Pearl down for her nap until the poor baby was screaming with exhaustion. Hope finally offered to serve supper herself so that Li-li could remain in the nursery. With that, the young amah had pulled herself together and served the meal—a simple American repast, by Dr. Sun’s request. But her awe was starting to show through again.

  Hope directed the girl to check on the sleeping Pearl. By the time she turned back to her guests the men had lapsed into Cantonese. Chun Fa, seated to Hope’s left, wagged her black-slippered foot like a baton. As Westernized as her husband, Mrs. Chew wore a trim visiting gown of aquamarine taffeta with satin trim and a matching feathered hat over her pompadour.

  “Your children,” said Hope. “Do you think you’ll take them back to China someday?” She nodded toward the men. “Assuming they get their way?”

  Mrs. Chew dropped her foot to the floor. “You say this word ‘back’ as some say all Chinese should go ‘back where they came from.’ But I am born in America. All my four children are born in America, and my husband has not seen China in almost thirty years, since he was fifteen years old. I would like my family someday to visit China, yes, but we will not be going back.”

  The words were delivered in a gentle voice, but the undercurrent of resentment was unmistakable. Hope felt she had been chastised and was now expected to apologize, but as after any scolding, apology came hard. Instead, she gave a tough, small laugh. “Between Paul and my students and my amah, I sometimes imagine that I, too, am from China, and when I think of our going someday, I always think in terms of going back.”

  “Then you are fooling yourself. Your husband will be going back, as mine would be. But you will be going away. The two are not at all the same.” With that, the older woman leaned across and patted Hope’s hand. Seeing the pale skin against her own, the narrow, delicately knuckled fingers, Hope was startled to realize that she and Chun Fa were almost exactly the same size and height and, except for their eyes, had the same coloring. Moreover, the broad neatly lined face staring back at her was filled not with resentment at all, but with something dangerously resembling pity.

  She pulled away, turning toward the men. Paul was tossing a handful of sugared pumpkin seeds into his mouth. Dr. Sun was examining his pocket watch and yawning. Ng Poon Chew was straightening the pleat in his pin-striped trousers.

  “Do you have children, Dr. Sun?” Hope asked.

  “Why, yes.” He snapped the gold watch cover shut and looked up with a benign smile. “One son and two daughters.”

  “It must be very difficult for them, with you traveling so much.”

  Paul threw Hope a warning glance. “Forgive my wife, Dr. Sun. I
try to explain to her that Chinese families are different from American families, but she cannot understand.”

  Sun Yat-sen drew a finger along the left wing of his mustache.

  “I ask,” said Hope, “because these past months, when my husband was traveling with you, our daughter asked for him every night. I was able to reassure her that her papa would be home in just a few days, but I thought how sad we would both be if, instead of days, it was to be years before we were reunited.”

  “One of the differences between Chinese and American families,” said Dr. Sun, “is the marriages that produce them.”

  Reverend Chew pressed his hands together, forefingers touching his lower lip. “Jung Ch’un-fu once said that American-style marriage is a precious gem that one carefully selects, polishes, and treasures, while Chinese-style marriage is a stone that one is obligated to carry. You know Jung, don’t you, Po-yu?”

  Paul nodded, his gaze falling to Hope. “He was my teacher in Hong Kong. Dr. Sun and I stopped in to pay our respects last autumn when we were east.”

  “He was devoted to his American wife,” said Sun Yat-sen.

  “Then you must understand my concern, Dr. Sun.” Hope clasped the seat of her chair, leaning forward. “Because ours is, as you say, an American-style marriage, I am not eager to see my husband leave, whether for weeks or months or years. And as your ambitions point to his destiny, I feel I must ask how you see China’s future unfolding.”

  “And what role I see there for your husband?” Dr. Sun made a show of lifting his cup and studying the swirl of tea leaves. “I am afraid I never learned the art of tea leaves, and I have too much respect for you to make the kinds of promises I hold out to certain other American friends. However, I do believe our revolution will succeed and your husband will hold a prominent position in our new republic within the next ten years. Is this satisfactory?”

  She curled her arms around her waist, suddenly chilled.

  “My wife is of two minds about our success,” said Paul.

  “I can see that,” said Sun Yat-sen. “But so, too, are many of our own countrymen, even those who can only benefit by it.”

  “It’s the blood that’s spilled on the way that scares them,” said Hope.

  “No,” said Dr. Sun. “There I must disagree. In China, few are frightened to die, and many look forward to the end. But change—that is a source of terror. And that terror is our greatest enemy.”

  “To Americans,” said Paul, “change is like opium. It fascinates them and beckons them. They read in it the illusion of happiness, and so pursue it at the cost of their spirits and even their lives. I think this is why white men are such a restless breed, never truly content or at peace, why they must forever go forth and conquer new lands and people.”

  Hope opened her mouth to disagree, but Reverend Chew raised a hand. “It is late,” he said. “We thank you for a most enjoyable evening, but Dr. Sun’s ship sails at an early hour.”

  Hope and Paul escorted their guests past Li-li’s energetic bowing and out to the street. It was cold and damp with a full moon gleaming behind shredded clouds. Up on Shattuck the ten o’clock trolley clanged, but Ng Poon Chew was chauffeuring his esteemed guest in a forest green Packard coupe, borrowed for the evening from Oakland’s wealthiest curio dealer.

  The large globe headlamps burst to life, and the Packard growled up the street, leaving Hope and Paul waving in the gaslight. They stood so close that when she shivered he noticed and wrapped an arm around her—American-style.

  “I think you have shocked Dr. Sun,” he said as they started back.

  “I think you were more perturbed than he.”

  “He is my teacher and my hero. In history, he will be known as the father of the Chinese revolution. Think how you would feel if George Washington or Abraham Lincoln came to dinner.”

  “I would be no less direct with them,” retorted Hope. “Even heroes are human. What is his wife like?”

  “She is the bride his parents arranged for him. He is duty-bound to her, but he does not love her.”

  Hope reached up and found Paul’s hand at her shoulder. They walked in step, his longer legs shortening stride to match hers. “Three children,” Hope said, “and no love?”

  “You heard, Chinese marriage is founded on obligation, not love.”

  “His poor wife.”

  The moon slid behind a cloud and the yard seemed to recede beyond the lights of the cottage. “I am sorry that Thomas could not join us tonight.” Paul motioned toward the darkened main house. For the past month their landlord had been working late almost every night on the new Northbrae subdivision. “Dr. Sun would enjoy asking him about city development.”

  “You’re changing the subject. Is that the real reason Sun spends all his time charging around the world? To avoid the home front?”

  “I think Sun Yat-sen’s true love is revolution.”

  “Then he should divorce his wife and let her find someone who will be true to her.”

  “That would dishonor her. This way she is cared for and treated with respect.”

  Paul started to turn toward the cottage, but Hope tugged him in the other direction. There was a wooden bench across the yard, near the swing that Thomas had hung from the big elm for Li-li and Pearl. “Let’s sit and talk awhile.”

  “You are cold.”

  “No, it’s all right. Just keep close. You’re warm enough for two.”

  “What if Li-li sees us?”

  “What if she does?” Hope stretched up and kissed him on the ear. “Do you think she doesn’t notice that we share the same bed?”

  “She is a child.”

  “A child well acquainted with the facts of life. I think we do her a favor by showing what love looks like.”

  He let her pull him down beside her, let her curl against his chest. The clouds parted and the moon sallied forth, majestic and brilliant through the leafless branches.

  “Tell me about your first wife,” said Hope.

  “I have told you.”

  “You told me only that she existed. What was she like? How did she act? Was she pretty? Young?”

  Paul did not change his position, did not move away from her, and yet she felt something in him tighten. “She has no importance,” he said.

  “She was the mother of your children. She is important to them.”

  He took a deep breath and dropped his hand to her waist. “I have told you she died in the cholera epidemic. This is true, but she did not die of cholera.” He hesitated.

  “Tell me,” Hope urged.

  “Always she was a nervous girl. Temper—?”

  “Temperamental?”

  “Yes. Always looking in the mirror.”

  “She was beautiful.”

  “Yes, at first, but she was her father’s favorite and so considered herself like the Empress. Very demanding.”

  “Your mother must have loved that.”

  “She and my mother fought from the start. More she complained, more punishment my mother thought for her. They hate each other, and they are just alike.”

  “And with the children?”

  “She had no interest in our children. She would spend all day coloring her nails or making her face. When I come home, she begs to stay with me. When I leave, she begs to come away.”

  Hope drew back a little, searching for his eyes through the darkness. “You don’t think it’s just possible that she loved you?”

  He shook his head. “When I refuse to take her away, she screams and threatens me, says she will hurt our children. I think it is only her—temperamental—nature. I do not have time for her tricks anymore. I have to worry about Chang Chih-tung. It is the time I am plotting the Hankow revolt.”

  “When you were arrested.” She slipped a hand around to his back. “When your mother saved your life.”

  “Yes, but this only angers my wife more.”

  Hope nodded. “Because the two of them were locked in battle, and this gave your mother mor
e power over you.”

  He studied Hope with an expression that hovered between admiration and suspicion. “How do you know so well how my wife thinks?”

  She sighed, shaking her head. “So what happened then?”

  “After I escape to Shanghai my mother discovered my wife has taken a lover.”

  “Paul! How did she find out?”

  “In China a woman has no secrets from her mother-in-law. For three months my wife had no bloody rags to wash, and I had been away six months. When I had been away eight months I learned that my daughter had taken ill with cholera but had been cured, while my father and wife had died. Much later, I learned that my wife had not died of the fever but had eaten gold.”

  Hope shut her eyes. She could see them all in their lavish gowns, paste white faces and ruby lips, sidestepping the children and hating each other. Characters in a nightmare. Except Paul. When she tried to set her husband into this mental tableau he would have no part of it. Yet even in absentia, he remained its very center.

  She shivered. He took her hands between his and, shaking his head, breathed on them to warm them. “Why do you force me to tell these things?”