by Aimee E. Liu
“Help me,” she said to Yen, sliding an arm behind her husband’s sopping back. “Help me get him into the dark.”
For four weeks she packed his alternately unconscious and delusional head in ice. She laid chilled compresses over his eyes, wrapped his body in wet sheets, placed shavings of ice and frozen broth on his thickened tongue. She blackened the windows, for even a sliver of light could be excruciating to a patient with meningitis. She instructed Ah-nie to keep the children quiet, and only Yen and the doctors were allowed in the sickroom. Hope had finally called for the American woman Dr. Harris, who had delivered Jasmine. She was a bony, ether-scented individual who spoke enough Shanghainese to converse respectfully with Yu Sutan, though she and Hope were certain the bearded old man was a quack. Once, when Pearl was stricken with worms, Paul had insisted she take the black waxy pill that Yu prescribed, and Hope was up all night with the screaming child, whose eyes had turned bright green. The only reason she gave the Chinese doctor any leeway at all was that the pill had killed off the worms. But Dr. Harris assured Hope that she was already giving Paul the most effective treatment.
And so she kept her vigil. He muttered about Chang Chih-tung and the crescent blade, shouted unintelligible pleas to his dead father and warnings that the police were about to raid the SK Nagasaki. He spoke a patchwork of Mandarin, Russian, Japanese, English, Shanghainese, and his home dialect, of which Hope could decipher only a fraction, but it was enough to rekindle her wonder at her husband’s intellect at the same time that it reminded her what a relatively minor role she and the children played in his life. When the shaking so wracked him that he lifted and wailed, she would hold him and counter his mental meanderings with whispered memories of the secret glen where he had proposed to her, the twined trees they’d discovered by that Evanston stream, their first nights together, under the stars in that roofless miner’s hut. “We’ll have times like those again,” she promised. “When you’re better, we’ll go back to Kuling. We’ll swim in the Three Graces Pool. We’ll sit and talk and watch the stars.”
Paul gave no sign of hearing. His labored breathing seemed to take all his effort, and when his eyes opened, they rolled like a blind man’s across her face. Hope slept in a chair beside his bed, in unwilling catnaps only. She hardly ate, ordered Dahsoo to brew pots of strong black tea, and dragged herself from the room but once each day, when Ah-nie tentatively knocked to announce the children’s bedtime. Then she would stumble out to kiss them good night and instruct them in the bewildered prayers that she insisted they say for their father.
“He needs your help,” she told them. “He will get well, but he needs you to believe. To know that you love him. He needs your prayers.”
In the dismal fuddle of her sleep-deprived mind she did not think how bizarre this request must seem. Fortunately, Pearl took matters in hand and by the second night had both her siblings kneeling, hands clasped, heads bowed like dutiful cherubs. Sighing, Hope staggered back to the sickroom.
If she had to call out all the saints in heaven, every Taoist deity and the Bodhisattva himself, she would, but in the hours of Paul’s deepest sleep, she forced herself to imagine the worst. The income from her articles and photos averaged no more than twenty to thirty dollars a month, and though she had some three hundred saved out of her father’s “estate,” that would not begin to cover passage for a family of four—and after they got to the States, what then? She had no citizenship, no family, no friends. But if they remained here, Paul’s mother would give them nothing and might well claim Morris for her own. Sarah could take them in briefly, but only at her husband’s mercy—and since he had recently taken a White Russian girl as yet another concubine … Jed Israel and Jin would certainly offer comfort and sympathy, but Jin was living at Nainai’s pleasure in the Nantao house, while Jed camped in a cubicle above Denniston’s and never had more than a few coppers to spare.
No, her situation offered only one recourse. And the irony, after these three persistent years of yearning, was that it filled her with dread. Whatever she and Stephen might have had together if they had met when both were free, if they had tested themselves with a proper courtship, if they had come to each other under normal circumstances, they could never have that now. Even if she could locate him, even if he had the wherewithal to help her, how could they possibly find joy in each other—or solace, or relief?
Falling forward, Hope pressed her husband’s hand to her cheek.
“Forgive me,” she breathed. “Oh, Paul, please forgive me.”
The sun was high and bright in her face when the blister of gunshot woke her. Voices rang out. The whole house seemed to throb. With effort Hope lifted her wooden head and got her body upright. She was in Paul’s study. The children were calling to each other in the hallway, Ah-nie shushing them in vain. Hope pressed her knuckles against her forehead, trying to get her bearings. The fever had broken. She recalled a faint smile jerking across Paul’s face. His eyes had opened, his lips parted, then he groaned and went back to sleep. She had swabbed his face, toweled the sweat off his hair, removed the cold plasters from his chest and back, thrown the damp sheets into a pile and draped him with clean ones and an eiderdown. Finally she’d called Yen to stand watch, and dragged herself to Paul’s study, where she instantly fell asleep, fully clothed, on the chaise.
Another gunshot shook the walls. It registered as a disconnected thud, like a newspaper thrown against the door, something unasked for and beside the point that nevertheless demanded attention. Too exhausted to be afraid, she dragged herself to the window. Below, young men and women were streaming down Range Road waving banners and slogans, the Kuomintang flag, chanting at the top of their lungs. They were calling for a strike, decrying injustice, and condemning the foreign imperialists. At first the gunshots seemed to be coming from a zealous protester firing into the air, but as Hope watched, a phalanx of helmeted Settlement police blocked the procession’s path. The chief officer waved an arm and shouted something inaudible above the noise of the mob. The hundreds at the back pressed against those who’d stopped, compressing the bodies into a solid mass between the street’s bordering walls. Suddenly the narrow channel erupted with gunfire, smoke, and screams, the raw animal thundering of panic as the protesters turned and fought for escape. Bodies were tossed against the compound walls, hands clawed at each locked gate, the human tide rose in sequential waves as the strong climbed over the top and the weak were sucked under.
A few seconds, and it was over. The tide forced itself out and did not return. The police moved forward kicking at bodies. White-jacketed medics came from behind, tending to those who moved. Those who did not included a woman in a bloodstained white gown with arms flung above her head and, behind her, three small children.
“Mama,” said a small, cautious voice behind her. “Is it going to be all right?”
Hope blinked, coming haltingly out of her paralysis. Morris stood in the doorway.
She took the room in two wobbly steps and gathered him into her arms. Burying her face in his hair, she managed to choke down her sobs, then took his hand, and they found his sisters, Pearl huddled in the hallway with Ah-nie, and Jasmine obliviously dismembering a stuffed bear in the nursery. “It will be all right,” Hope said firmly. She frowned, again disoriented, and glanced at her watch. “Why aren’t you at school, Pearl?”
“Today’s Sunday. Besides, the Volunteers came by telling everyone to stay in.”
There was a stir at the end of the hall, and Jin came bounding up the stairs. His face had a fresh-slapped look of excitement, and he was so breathless he could hardly speak.
“Pa—” he said, stopping and bending from the waist to get his wind. “How—is—he?” Jin had visited several times since Paul’s fever struck, and though the two had not actually spoken since their argument back in March, in Hope’s mind a truce had already been declared.
“I was just going to see,” she said. “His temperature broke last night.”
Jin nodded
. His shirt was torn and wrinkled, his hair falling into his eyes, and his leather oxfords looked as though they’d been run over by a truck. “He does not know, then.”
Hope eyed the children and Ah-nie, who were listening with unusual attentiveness, but was saved from sending them away by Yen’s appearance in the bedroom doorway.
“Taitai,” he said. “Laoyeh is awake.”
Hope touched Jin’s shoulder. “Come. We’ll talk later.”
Dispatching Yen to reassure the children, Hope replaced him at bedside while Jin parted the black drapes. Even this sliver of light made Paul grimace; however the very energy of his protest was encouraging.
“T’ai liang le,” he muttered, putting up a fist.
Hope caught his arm and guided it down. “Can you see, then, Paul?”
He started at the sound of her voice, then quieted. “It’s all right,” she said. “Jin’s here. Can you see him?”
But Paul was looking only at Hope. His eyes had filled with tears.
Jin said nothing to his father that day about the student protests, or the shootings, or the Versailles treaty that had spawned them, and when Hope learned the news, she asked that he refrain until Paul was significantly stronger. While she had been sitting in the dark, it seemed, the Western Powers had dashed China’s future against the rocks.
For months, Woodrow Wilson had been raising the expectations of China’s West-leaning students and intellectuals with all sorts of puffed-up talk about self-determination for nations and bringing an end to the colonial era. In 1917 both the northern and southern Chinese governments had declared against Germany—marking the first time that China had entered a modern war on the winning side. The two-hundred-thousand-man Chinese Labor Corps had subsequently dug trenches, exhumed and buried bodies, cooked, hauled, mined, and fought alongside the British and French for the duration of the Great War in Europe. Certainly, the young moderns thought, their country deserved some compensation. But at the Paris Peace Conference, Wilson joined the European Allies in siding with Japan against China’s national interests. They made no effort to reverse the extortions Yüan Shih-k’ai had ceded to Japan under the Twenty-one Demands, nor would they restore to China the former German Concessions in Shantung. These were to remain under Japanese control, and so Japanese troops would remain on Chinese soil. The final twist that had sent the marchers into the streets was the disclosure that the band of warlords who currently controlled the northern government in Peking had taken millions of dollars worth of Japanese loans for their own enrichment—which the Chinese people would be obligated to repay.
On May 4, three thousand students had marched in Peking, burning the home of one northern official, beating another, and colliding with police. In the weeks that followed, the demonstrations spread to more than two hundred cities. The students were joined by workers. The boycott against Japanese goods was renewed. Protesters marched and rallied and were gunned down in foreign concessions throughout the country, but in Shanghai the killings Hope had witnessed were soon overshadowed by the general strike that was to paralyze the city for the next two months.
Jin was one of the organizers. He rallied students to parade around the concessions; brought food to striking workers’ homes; printed and distributed anti-imperialist pamphlets; arranged public bonfires of Japanese and Western books, toys, machinery, and clothing; orchestrated the midnight hangings of Japanese ministers in effigy along the Bund; excoriated the Western Powers in cartoons, which he somehow managed to paint, without being arrested, on the whitewashed walls along Avenue Joffre. Hope and Paul knew nothing of these activities at the time, of course. Paul was still convalescing, and Jin, when he asked if he might move in with them for safety, merely said that the Chinese police were conducting sweeps for all students living in Nantao, and several of his friends had been tortured. But while he stopped short of divulging the full extent of his activities, he made little attempt to contain his excitement over the changes he saw coming.
“Power of opinion and allegiance are everything,” he said over supper one night. “Always before, only elders have this power. Young can do nothing, know nothing. Now all this will change. The young are China’s future. We must decide for ourselves. Self-determination. Independence. No more kowtowing to the West, and if this means war with Japan, then we fight!”
Hope made a patting motion with her hand. “Keep your voice down, Jin. Your father hasn’t the strength to lift his head, but if he hears you talking like this there’ll be no containing him.”
“Why not?” asked Pearl. The Hanbury Schools were closed because of the strike, so Pearl and Morris were allowed to stay up and take supper with Hope and Jin while Ah-nie wrestled Jasmine to bed. Eleven-year-old Pearl made a point of asking questions to prove her maturity.
“Because,” Hope answered her, “our Jin is a perfect replica of his father.”
Jin’s face reddened and he coughed into his napkin.
“No, really.” She handed him a glass of water. “If I closed my eyes I could hardly believe it wasn’t Paul making the speech you just gave. And now that you’ve taken up those wire-rimmed glasses, you even look like him.”
The two children studied their half-brother with renewed interest.
“I’m curious, though,” Hope continued. “Won’t this revolutionary fervor interfere with your painting?”
Jin held one of his chopsticks like a brush and “painted” across his plate. “Political movements require artists as well as writers or soldiers or politicians. Art and music and poetry can move the people’s soul, make them hungry for freedom as for food. This my father never understand!”
Hearing Ah-nie’s slow, ponderous tread on the stairs, Hope motioned Morris to finish his supper. “How can you say that?” she answered Jin. “Your father is both a revolutionary and a poet.”
“Classical poetry!” he snorted. “And Sun Yat-sen’s failed Republic. These are dead man’s games.”
“Jin!” Years ago, when her stepson had first confessed his admiration for Western art, she had encouraged him, but there was a belligerence in his attitude now that went beyond aesthetic preference.
“You have read his poetry?” he demanded.
“Well, no. I’m afraid the classical language is beyond me.”
“Yes. And all but this many Chinese, as well.” He pinched his thumb and forefinger. “This so-called art is device to keep people out. Say, we literati so educated, so special, only we possess true learning. All you others, nothing! What use is art if no one can see? What use words no one can read?”
“But surely you respect the years of study that went into this poetry.”
“Games for rich men who do nothing else. You know, for centuries only scholars can be officials. Of course this is why my father has taken his palace examinations, why he is so esteemed. But it is no better than the British with their exclusive all-powerful clubs! Or Catholic missionaries delivering sermons in Latin, then wonder why Chinese peasants do not take Christ as their savior. What has classical language to do with governing?”
“Nothing. It was precisely this system that your father worked so hard to overturn.”
Jin slapped the table. “But he is one of them!”
“Am I?”
Paul stood white-faced, leaning in the doorway. Hope rushed to him and drew his arm around her neck, summoned Morris to support his other side. He had lost so much weight that his black silk gown might have been draped over broomsticks, but he squeezed her hand with a warmth that surprised her.
“You belong in bed,” she scolded, sitting him down.
“I come from bed. I return to bed. Anyway, I have nothing to do but write poetry no one will read.” Jin grimaced, but said nothing.
“Can you eat?” Hope inanely cleared and replaced dishes, calling for Dahsoo to bring Paul some supper.
“You know why you think these things?” Paul tapped his thumb on the edge of the table. “You do not study. You do not know history. Yes I compose poe
try. But what I do in America is not poetry. What I do in Peking and Canton is not poetry. It is revolution.”
“Yes, revolution,” said Jin with a subtle but unmistakable toss of his head. “Your idea of revolution is to write a literati’s ode to Yüan Shih-k’ai. And you teach—not principles of revolution, but the language of elitism.”
Paul’s hand clenched. “How do you know what I teach? Never once do you set foot in my classes!”
“I hear what you say, Father. I see those who admire you.”
Dahsoo shuffled in with Paul’s supper, and Hope motioned with her eyes for Pearl to take her brother upstairs, but the children sat riveted by Jin’s defiance.
“A man can be many things,” said Paul. “And a man whose life shades two centuries must be many things.”
“In mathematics,” replied Jin, his voice quavering, “when a negative number is combined with its positive, the result is zero.”
Paul stared as if he did not recognize his son. No one made a sound.
Finally Jin stood. His eyes met Hope’s. Then he turned and strode out through the kitchen. The next day he returned for his clothes and left word with Yen that Jed Israel would know where to find him.
By July the strike was ended. China had refused to sign the Versailles treaty, several Peking ministers had been dismissed for colluding with the Japanese, and, for the time being, the protesters were mollified. While Jin kept his distance, Paul seemed determined not to let this breach affect him. His health was improving steadily, and with the consent of both his doctors, he arranged for the family to vacation in the nearby mountain resort of Mokanshan.
Hope found this resort less beautiful than Kuling (more bamboo forests than breathtaking vistas), but the reprieve from Shanghai’s soggy heat and rotting garbage, as well as from the ongoing political and personal tensions, made such comparisons seem piddling. Paul had rented them a small Taoist temple, and although the paper windows were cracked and the ancient beams gaped with woodpecker and termite holes, there was a pleasant brook and a prolific vegetable garden on the grounds, and a nearby hot spring for Paul’s aching bones. The family rested and read, hiked and swam, played badminton in the temple courtyard and cards by lantern light. Evenings, after the children were in bed, Hope and Paul sat and talked and watched the stars. More than Paul’s health was restored.