Cloud Mountain

by Aimee E. Liu

  Speaking of animals, the servants’ faith in our judgment has also been tested by our most recently acquired pets. You see, gentry class Chinese rarely keep any pet more demanding than a canary or carp—and many consider dogmeat a delicacy! But one cool gray afternoon a few days after our return to Shanghai, Paul appeared in his inimitable way with not one but two canines under his arms. Small, yapping, wiggling madly, the furred creatures immediately captured the children’s affection. Pearl wanted to know their names and breeds, neither of which Paul could provide. I am proud to tell you I was the one who identified the stumpy tan bitch as a Welsh corgi and the little male as a fox terrier. The Wayland boys taught me something, after all! Paul was immensely impressed. He has such respect for this sort of categorical knowledge and so far outstrips me in most areas that it takes us both aback when I best him.

  I suppose you are wondering what Paul is doing now that the political winds are shifting again. So am I, but as usual I am not privy to the details. At the moment he is off to Canton, where a number of the southern generals are establishing a counter-government to Yüan’s in the north. I’m afraid this will lead to massive civil war here soon, which not even Paul’s sainted Dr. Sun Yat-sen will be strong enough to stop.

  But I’ve come to realize that the quest for democratic government is a kind of sickness with Paul. He genuinely believes not only that it can be accomplished but that, through it, the Chinese people will recover their ancestral greatness. This sickness is fueled by Paul’s elite status as a returned student. So many of the foreign-educated are frauds, rich bureaucrats, or sycophants, and they are the ones whom Yüan has hired to pad out his palaces. The genuinely bright, dedicated revolutionary returned students like Paul are few in number and greatly admired, and they can virtually write their tickets as to position and access within the Nationalist movement. That’s a lot to ask him to give up, and I no longer even try.

  Here in Shanghai I am reunited with my old friends Jed Israel and Sarah Chou, whom I’ve mentioned in past letters. Jed has helped me to set up my own darkroom, and Sarah recently gave birth to a second boy, little Ken, which gives Pearl and me a great excuse to go over for visits. We also see a bit of Paul’s older son, Jin, who is at university here. And, of course, this baby of mine is due in no time …

  One more bit of good news. My first article and photographs from China will be published in the June edition of Harper’s. You must obtain a copy or two, as I’ve wired my friend Mr. Cadlow to include a dedication to Mary Jane. One of so many things I have to thank her for, and one of the few ways I have to honor her.

  But I must go. I am taking Pearl to visit a school this morning. She’ll be eight this summer and Morris has just turned four, can you believe it! So many changes, Dad, but know that you have my love always,

  Hope

  She told no one the truth, least of all those closest to her. And so the children chattered happily on about their time in Tientsin, reprimanded the new dogs to “be good like Mister Bacon,” and debated whether Papa could ever have a motorcar as nice as Dr. Mann’s. They asked Dahsoo if he could make sweet rice in lotus leaves like they made it in Tientsin. The louder and more gleefully they bantered, the more the baby in Hope’s womb seemed to squirm.

  2

  Wuchang

  June 7, 1916

  Dearest Hope,

  Do you hear the news? Yüan Shih-k’ai has died, and Vice President Li Yüan-hung has assumed the presidency. After all his many intrigues and with so many enemies, you may think Yüan was poisoned, but I am told he died of apoplexy. Here in Wuhan there is much celebration. Today I have met with representatives of several opposing generals and all say they will unite under President Li to restore the Republic. Dr. Sun, too, has decided to support Li as the constitutional leader.

  Li has cabled request my return to Peking. William already is there advising him. I believe I am to be given post as Minister of Information. This is good news, yes? I leave here tomorrow. Perhaps I can arrange bigger house for you and babies to come early July, that still two months before new baby if you are well to travel. What are your wishes, dearest? Please advise me.

  Other news, my mother is well. Her second daughter takes good care of her. It is good I make this visit, however, as the journey is much greater from Peking, and I do not know when I shall be able to return home again.

  You may write to me in William’s care at Ta Hsing Hsien Hutung. I stay with them until my own arrangements secured.

  With love and my kisses to you and babies,

  Your husband Paul

  50 Range Road

  Shanghai

  June 15, 1916

  Dear Paul,

  I have your letter from Wuchang. The news of Yüan, of course, I had heard, but surely you cannot have imagined that I would receive your plan for removing to Peking with anything but disbelief. Pearl is at long last enrolled in school. You have us in a grand house here. The baby’s arrival is but weeks off (and, to judge from its size and energy, possibly much sooner). Yes, I loved Peking, but I barely survived our escape from it. How can you believe this government will be any more stable than the last?

  I am not happy about proposing this, but I really think if you take this post, then we must, for now, be parted. You will doubtless have business in Shanghai, and you will come to us then. If the new government takes root, then of course I will reconsider, but right now, I must put the interests of the children ahead of our happiness. I know this is exactly what I’ve always said I wanted to avoid. I know and I hate it. But I cannot see any other way.

  I am sorry, Paul. More than you can know.

  Hope

  Ta Hsing Hsien Hutung

  Peking

  July 3, 1916

  Dearest,

  Of course you are right. It is best you and children remain in Shanghai until our baby come. Everything is changing very fast here. President Li is taking things in hand, and National Assembly will reconvene in August, so there is great optimism. I am very busy to keep the legations informed and also the student groups, who are concerned that Li will not be strong against the Japanese.

  Daisy Tan sends you her most sincere wishes and hopes you and children are well. Suyun has returned to Hankow, but Daisy proved herself a doting mother. Kuochang will be well tended and well educated under William and Daisy’s care. However, your feelings unchanged, perhaps best you no longer must greet Daisy each day.

  Also I saw Miss Van Zyl yesterday, and she sends the enclosed marigold seeds for you and Pearl. I apologized that you could not say goodbye to her in person, but she was most understanding. She has taken position as governess for an Australian family in Tientsin to start next month, so all is well.

  Yen will take good care of you always. You know I trust him with my life.

  Please give babies kiss for me.

  Your husband Paul

  August 13, 1916

  Sarah has taken the children off for a beach expedition to Pootoo. Bless her! It is so stifling, the air like wringing gauze, and the children’s boundless energy defeats me. I’ve managed to finish off four articles about Peking for William Cadlow, but in this weather the mere prospect of starting any new work exhausts me. If not for this somersaulting watermelon I must lug about with me day in and out we might have gone up to Kuling this summer. To think that first summer I assumed we would return year after year, and now four years have passed without our once getting back. I loved that place. But more, I loved being with Paul there, and that would certainly not be possible now.

  Ludicrous, even fantastic, the turns my thoughts take in this withering weather, in my condition, and especially in my solitude. Stephen’s face comes back to me now only in pieces—the flecks of strange, drifting color in his eyes, the rugged cleft in his chin. The way he smiled at me, so slow and seriously gentle, but with the force of a riptide. And his size, all lank and strength, his voice low, rich and intent. I remember hearing that voice through the fever, and it was like a sounding for
someone lost underwater—far away, barely audible, but booming with the promise of reprieve.

  I’ve not had a word from him, yet I’ve no doubt that if he drove up this afternoon with four steamship tickets and a plan, I would take the children and leave Paul. I dream of nothing more, even as I can imagine nothing worse.

  Fortunately, I am in no danger. Sarah stopped by for tea yesterday with the news that Eugene had met Stephen at a banquet in Tientsin last week, and he said he was moving to the Philippines. My face gave me away, but for once Sarah did not seize the opportunity to humiliate me. I suppose she was shocked because she’d always made such a show of her own flirtation with Stephen, but she put that quickly aside, as she did her disappointment when I insisted there had been no physical infidelity. She showed genuine sympathy and offered advice far more sensible than I would have expected.

  “Be careful, Hope,” she told me. “The heart is a powerful instrument, but it can do as much harm as good.”

  50 Range Road

  Shanghai

  September 17, 1916

  Dear Dad,

  I enclose a photograph of our newest little Jasmine in her proud father’s arms. She was born on the morning of the tenth and we had quite a party for her arrival, with Pearl and Morris and her half-brother, Jin, and my friend Jed Israel snapping pictures mere hours after she was born. Surprised me, after all the fuss she made when she was inside what a little body she turned out to be, but she has spirit to make up for what she lacks in size. My friend Sarah took one look at the snapping black eyes and mischievous mouth and decided her nickname ought to be Jazz. And Jazz, I fear, she will be, at least to Sarah and the children.

  Paul has left this afternoon to return to Peking, but the house is such abuzz with the new baby, and all I seem to want to do is sleep, so there wasn’t much to keep him. He’s promised to return for Christmas, if not before, so it’s not so bad. (You see how reconciled I’m becoming to life as a Chinese politician’s wife!)

  Anyway, I really am too sleepy to keep my eyes open any longer, so I’ll close for now. All of us send our love and kisses,

  Your Hope

  3

  Jasmine screamed. She clenched her small body and turned magenta. She cried and kicked and panted so hard that Hope thought her heart must give out, and if not, that she or Ah-nie must smother her until it did. The colic stretched from hours into months. Ah-nie fed the child elixirs of ginseng and motherwort through a tube. Hope tried swaddling, rocking, singing, walks. She nursed her, starved her, fed her on and against demand, but nothing consoled the maddened infant. The piercing screams drove Pearl to the homes of her school friends, Morris outside with the dogs. Poor Ah-nie and Joy bore the brunt of the agony. Hope could not stand it. Each wail, each new contortion of the baby’s impossible power dealt a fresh accusation. Her fears had been realized. The child had absorbed all her mother’s anguish in utero, and was now bearing eloquent testimony.

  Paul did return home once that fall, but within minutes of Jasmine’s afternoon fit, he removed himself to the Nantao house and stayed there, entertaining colleagues and friends. Hope thought bitterly of those first years in Berkeley, when she forgave him his distance from Mulan and Jin, accepted as excuses geography and exile, flight from his mother and first wife, the demands of revolution.

  Her reprieve was her work. Cadlow had responded promptly and effusively to her last Peking articles—one about Ambassador Jordan’s theft of Japanese documents from the Hsin Hwa Palace and the subsequent market beheading, another about Yüan Shih-k’ai’s ball, and two dealing with the rigidity of Chinese family hierarchy, in which she gratifyingly skewered (without identifying them) Daisy Tan and Paul’s mother. After Jasmine’s birth she had started a new series, about the state of medicine in China. She wrote about her experience giving birth at the Shanghai Native Hospital, about Western doctors who were open-minded toward Chinese medicine. She wrote an article about the self-mutilation of Shanghai’s street children, and the reluctance of doctors to treat them. In other words, against her better judgment, she indulged her continuing thoughts of Mann.

  Fortunately, other story ideas came by way of Jed Israel and Jin. Hope’s hunch had paid off, and a solid friendship had developed between the two young men. Now that Hope was back and working, the three regularly went out “scouting,” as Jed called it, into the industrial zones or countryside, orphanages and riverfront squatters’ camps that Hope would never dare enter alone. Jin would sketch while Jed and Hope took photographs or conducted informal interviews with children and peasants and laborers.

  Still more, and considerably different, suggestions for articles came from Sarah Chou. New dance and fashion trends were among Sarah’s favorites, or brawls that erupted in the red-light district involving prominent Shanghailanders. But in late November she learned that the Mother of Birth Control, Margaret Sanger, was to lecture about the role for contraception in modern China. Sarah suggested that, after three months of shattered sleep and infant colic, Hope might have a special interest in Mrs. Sanger’s arguments. Jin said he’d come along, too, and that most of his college friends were going. Perhaps Mrs. Sanger would grant Hope an interview.

  So she left Jasmine pummeling the sainted, beleaguered Ah-nie and took her camera, notepad, and perpetually leaking breasts, and met Sarah and Jin at the International Institute—the one forum in Shanghai willing to grant Mrs. Sanger’s request to speak before a mixed audience. As they took their seats in the full house, Hope noted a small complement of bombastic white men and tittering ladies, but the bulk of the audience, as Jin had predicted, were Chinese students—both male and female, and most in Western dress.

  “She hardly looks a renegade!” Sarah whispered when Mrs. Sanger stepped to the podium. Hope was equally surprised. According to the biographical handout, Margaret Sanger was only two years older than Hope, yet she had borne three children, been divorced, worked as a nurse, and published and traveled all over the world. Earlier that year she’d been forced to flee America after publishing “obscene” materials containing contraceptive instructions. But the woman who stood before them could pass for a minister’s wife. She had kind, searching eyes, fair curls, and an almost timid set to her mouth.

  Mrs. Sanger smiled and opened with an overview of women as slaves of Chinese society. She described the pattern of Chinese men spending whole days and evenings in the company of male friends, while reserving their wives solely for sex and childbearing. “Since sex is honored rather than despised, they contend, the wife should not feel any more humiliated or unhappy than a prized animal achieving the purpose for which she is bred. But let us suppose that this instinctive animal has larger thoughts, emotions, desires that transcend her husband’s walls. What then?” She peered out over her glasses.

  Hope looked uncomfortably at Jin, who had folded his arms across his chest. Sarah twirled a strand of hair around one finger.

  “If woman truly desires an individual life,” Mrs. Sanger went on, “she must be honest and frank about her instinctive nature. Maternity has historically forced this issue. While her husband may divorce himself from his children as he pursues his independent friendships and ambitions, no loving mother can so separate herself. Nor can she divorce sexual love from the eternal prospect of pregnancy.”

  An embarrassed hiccup ran through the white audience, while the Chinese students were rapt. Hope pressed her pencil into her pad, trying to ignore the icy sensation that had rooted itself in her stomach.

  “However much she may love the child born of a free and passionate union, she is captive to it in ways that are too often detrimental to her own and to her family’s well-being. What if the new baby is born hard or sick, so demanding that she has no reserves left for her other children? What if she herself becomes ill, or her husband is taken ill or dies and she is left without support? What if she has no family or friends? What if the child is illegitimate?”

  Again she stopped and peered out over the audience. Hope’s pad had dropp
ed into her lap. She flinched as the speaker’s gaze ran over her, and suddenly she wanted nothing more than to leave before another word was uttered. But if she got up now every eye in the room would follow her.

  “Chastity,” said Mrs. Sanger. “In China as in the West, this has been the good woman’s only safeguard against the confinement and shame of unwanted pregnancy. But what, then, of her own instinctive passions? What of her partner’s sexual demands? Chastity is as unnatural a condition for women as for men, and yet it is imposed exclusively on the female sex.”

  The whole audience erupted now, with outraged boos and applause and mutterings. Sarah’s elbow dug into Hope’s ribs. In the waver of afternoon light the crimson bunting above the stage appeared to pulsate. Hope squeezed her eyes shut.

  Mrs. Sanger plunged on, describing her vision of a sexually emancipated woman moving at will through a world of opportunity, experience, discovery, and love. Hope heard Jin crack his knuckles, Sarah sigh.

  In China, said the speaker, contraception was key to reducing poverty, famine, illiteracy, because it alone would enable women to take their rightful place beside men in the march toward modernization. “Indeed,” she concluded, “without this one, most basic of human freedoms, there can be no lasting economic, political, or spiritual freedom for society as a whole, and women in China will remain prisoners of tradition and of fate.”