Cloud Mountain

by Aimee E. Liu

  Though he wasn’t wearing his glasses, she could see the circular impressions of his spectacles in the puffy skin around his eyes. His jaw thrust forward as he swallowed. He made no move to open the door.

  “Paul.” She leaned, touched the fall of his sleeve, and met his eyes. “Just tell me whose cause you are serving here. Jin is your son. He saved your life.”

  His eyes skated past her, and she felt a compression in her chest as she thought again of their talk during those long days on the steamer back from Wuhan, the half-truths she had told about the circumstances of his rescue and her own part in its execution. She had given Jin the credit, reconstructed the story so that he had returned to Wuhan of his own accord, that the idea of contacting the Japanese had come from Jin, and she had come only as a last resort, to plead for Paul’s life with the Japanese and, foreigner to foreigner, with Borodin in the event Jin’s rescue plan failed. She did not mention that she had, in fact, met with Borodin, and later, when she typed up the article for Cadlow, she sent it under a pseudonym that could not be linked to either her or Paul. Meanwhile, she instructed Jin and Jed Israel to say nothing of her true role in Wuhan. Her reasons for drawing this veil were more intuitive than specific. She told herself it was right that a son should save his father’s life, and Jin had taken the greater physical risk. Maybe now the rift between the two men could be closed for good, and Jin could once more assume an active role in all their lives. But underneath the justifications she made to herself lay another, more ominous awareness. As she’d written up her interview with Borodin, later as she developed the pictures she had taken and recalled the horror and exhilaration of those two nerve-racking hours, she found she could not disagree with all—or even many—of the points the Russian had made. He spoke her language. He seemed a reasonable man. He made sense to her. Yet he had ordered the execution of her husband. How could she possibly explain that to Paul?

  “Yes,” Paul interrupted her thoughts. “I owe Jin my life. That is why, Hope. That is why.”

  Two nights later the party raised glasses and drank to the Northern Expedition’s success. Although Jin was clearly uneasy in his role as partisan observer, he did not shrink from the retelling of the skirmishes, the eagerness of certain police battalions to retreat, the joy with which students and workers reclaimed the streets. “When the Nationalist flag rose above the post office,” he said with a sidelong look to Hope, “I thought of the years Father spent in exile, his long association with Dr. Sun, all that we endured last summer, and I felt such pride. Tears came to my eyes—”

  “Yes.” William, who sat beside Daisy in the place of honor, waved his spoon impatiently. “Good filial son. But what about the fighting?”

  “The warlord’s troops were happy to throw away their weapons, and the rebels were happy to let them run. In Nantao, the Chinese City, there was no real fighting.”

  “No fighting.” Pearl had insisted that, at eighteen, she was too old to be excluded from the party. “But lots of flags!”

  “I never saw so many flags,” Sarah concurred. “My tailor said his wife stood outside his shop selling every one as fast as he could turn it out.”

  “Very patriotic.” Eugene turned and spat thickly into the brass spittoon Yen had knowingly placed behind him. His presence had lost none of its power over the years, but the elegance that once impressed Hope had long since been replaced by a coarseness of both features and manner. His bullet-shaped head and neck had grown fat, and his eyes had taken on the same yellow tinge as his skin. He reminded Hope of an enormous pit bull.

  Jin went on, “By afternoon the only gunfire I hear was coming from Chapei. There the White Russian mercenaries were surrounded. I saw flames rising taller than the Commercial Press. And so many people pushing to get through the barricades into the Settlement.”

  Paul cleared his throat, and Jin stopped talking.

  “Yesterday,” said Daisy in her usual oblivious fashion, “before I even unpack my things, William insists we go to see Chapei. Nothing is left there! I think this bad, sure, many factories burned, but also good. Now Chapei rebuild, all new and clean.”

  Hope met Jin’s disgusted gaze. The others continued eating.

  “You might consider,” said Hope, “that thousands of people lost their lives, between the fires and shelling. And fifteen hundred homes were destroyed.”

  “Hope—” Paul’s voice was sharp, but William stopped him with a casual wave of his hand.

  “Hope is right. Daisy’s words were thoughtless. Her tongue is made stupid by her admiration of America where everything seems so new and clean.”

  “Did you see Berkeley,” asked Pearl. “Did you see where we used to live?”

  Daisy’s small fine head swiveled complacently toward Pearl, as if she had forgotten that this young woman was the same child she used to favor with treats and trinkets. “I am sorry, we visit New York and Washington only. I very like the tall, tall buildings. Everyone so elegant. My Kuo, he say, ‘I come to university here, maybe marry American bride, same as Uncle Liang.’”

  Hope turned away. The thought of this grasping, heartless woman flitting over American soil made her sick with envy and resentment. But Paul and William erupted in a bluster of laughter. “No need go to America,” corrected Eugene, jerking his goatee at Sarah.

  “How is New York?” said Sarah, with a steadying glance at Hope. “I lived there once.”

  Hope signaled Yen to bring the next course, and Jin continued with details about the White Russians who had been trapped inside an armored train, the thousands of red-ribboned execution swords the workers had confiscated, the sight of northern soldiers stripping off their gray uniforms as they ran, pleading to be let into the concessions.

  Suddenly Eugene, who had been shaking his big head sullenly throughout this last recitation, looked up with interest and interrupted. “I hear talk of you,” he said, narrowing his yellow eyes at Jin. “I think you are too modest, my nephew.”

  Paul’s hand, half lifted to his lips, descended.

  “I hear that your father owes you his life,” continued Eugene. “You are a true filial son!”

  “What is this?” William’s voice lifted, raucous and laughing, as it had when he regaled them with the story of Paul’s first confrontation with Borodin.

  Jin rubbed his lips together, glancing at Hope. Paul busied himself apportioning the sea bass Yen had brought in, leaving it to Eugene to describe the rescue in Wuhan. His version matched the account Hope had fed to Paul, so she assumed it had come from him, but the thought of his exchanging this confidence with Eugene made her acutely uncomfortable. Sarah’s arched brow as she listened to the account only intensified this discomfort. If Hope had not felt free enough to tell Sarah, her most trusted friend, then how could Paul have told—why would he have chosen to tell Eugene?

  “Gan bei!” the men thundered, raising their glasses in Jin’s honor.

  “Now, Liang,” said William, “it’s your turn. Three times you must drink to your son’s health, for if his health had failed, you would not be here to drink at all!”

  Eugene gave a hearty laugh and pounded the table. Paul made a show of sighing and shaking his head, but dutifully lifted and emptied his glass three times. When he finished he went around the table to Jin. Father and son embraced. Paul scuffed a hand through Jin’s hair as if he were a child, and Hope was struck by the unnaturalness of this gesture. Of all his children, only Teddy received such treatment. Never Jin. The laughter continued with artificial volume. The women clapped their hands. The men fell on the successive courses of food, but both Jin and Paul were fidgety. Paul smoked throughout the meal. Jin tapped his chopsticks against his glass, turned to Pearl and showed her how to make the napkin swans which used to delight her as a child. Daisy and Sarah talked of shopping in New York. The men’s conversation returned inexorably to politics. The recent movements of Communists under this young man Mao Tse-tung in Hunan. The territories yet to be taken by the Expeditionary Army. Willi
am’s impression of a warming among the foreign powers toward Chiang Kai-shek. Hope’s attention drifted. Their fixation was so incessant, like the roll of waves against the shore, each new development bringing minute shifts of light and sand but never any definitive answer or conclusion—never anything to hold on to.

  She was drawn back to the conversation by a subtle but unmistakable shift in Eugene’s tone. “But you,” he was saying to Jin. “You have a head for politics, I think. How is it that you learned Mr. Borodin had condemned your father?” He opened his eyes wide and looked around at the other guests. “Could it be you are a spy?”

  Daisy covered her mouth with her hand and tittered appreciatively, while Pearl, who had been listening to Daisy’s and Sarah’s descriptions of Fifth Avenue, looked up with a bemused expression. Sarah determinedly sipped her wine, as if to react to her husband would only encourage him.

  “It could be that any of us are spies,” Jin answered evenly. “Or all of us.”

  Hope was aware of Paul beside her lighting yet another cigarette. The smoke already encased him.

  “All of us?” Eugene pursed his fleshy lips and cast a glance around the table. “I hope we are on the same side, then.”

  “And what side is that?” Jin countered.

  Eugene stroked his beard. “The side that is fighting for a free and united China, of course.”

  “And what side is that?” pressed Jin.

  Paul’s cigarette dropped in his plate. He fumbled for his glass and lifted it toward Eugene. “To the Kuomintang!”

  It was a dreadful misstep. Everyone but Jin lifted a glass.

  “You do not drink to the party of your father,” Eugene observed.

  “I do not drink to the party that employs thugs to murder patriots. I do not drink to the party that is ruled by traitors.”

  “Traitors!”

  “My son knows nothing of politics.” Paul was rising to his feet, leaning behind Hope as if to grab Jin by the collar, but Jin was already standing.

  “Traitors such as Mr. Chou’s own good friend Gangster Tu.”

  There was a shrill, suffocating moment of silence. Then Paul’s hand flashed through the air, his knuckles slamming into his son’s jaw so hard that the reverberation shook the tableware. Jin’s head spun back over his right shoulder, then snapped forward again with a shudder. Paul barked at him in their home dialect, a voice wrung from his throat. But Jin’s eyes, though glittering with tears, held fast on Eugene’s smile. Then he stepped away from the table, pivoted, and left.

  To Hope’s horror, Paul began to laugh. He tugged on his ear. “T’a tsui le!” he said. He’s drunk!

  “T’a chen te tsui le!” Eugene and William echoed Paul’s hoots. He’s drunk, all right.

  Hope sat rooted to her chair, unable to answer Pearl’s bewildered stare, to hear Daisy’s banter, to receive Sarah’s telepathic sympathy. She was aware only of the hysterical darkness that underscored her husband’s laughter. He had brought his son into the tiger’s cage to win the tiger’s protection. Instead, Jin had jabbed the beast in the eye—and fled with the cage door open.

  2

  Paul refused to speak of Jin in the days that followed. He ignored Hope’s questioning glances, turned away from her touch. He instructed Yen to stockpile provisions for a month. He forbade the family to leave the Concession—and Hope, in particular, to go anywhere near Jed Israel. He spent his days and evenings in meetings, most nights hunched over his desk. Hope begged him to tell her what he knew, what had him so preoccupied—and frightened. But he would only stare back at her from behind those round lenses like a fish inside a tank, and she knew that some irreparable line between them had broken.

  One night in mid-April Hope woke with a vague sense of alarm. The bed beside her was empty. She got up and checked Paul’s study, the kitchen, the drawing room. It was overcast, the shadows deeper, more sinister than usual, yet she felt certain that he had not left the house. From room to room she padded, on bare feet so as not to alert the servants. Yen heard anyway, and met her at the stairs. She reassured him that, no, she hadn’t heard anything. She’d been hungry was all. He gave her an incredulous look; in the fifteen years of his employment he had never known her to night-walk. But he returned to bed, and she continued her search through the nursery, Jasmine’s and Pearl’s rooms. Morris’s door was ajar.

  Paul sat at the end of the bed. It was too dark to read his expression, but his posture was slumped, elbows resting on his knees and chin in his hands. He was not watching Morris the way she sometimes watched her children sleep. His was not an attitude of love … it was more like that of a lapsed Christian who, in a moment of weakness, finds himself in church.

  He gave no sign that he noticed her, though she could see well enough that his eyes were open. The iridescent hands of Morris’s alarm clock read almost four A.M. A few brave nightingales were chirping, and from the direction of Nanking Road came the low continuous reverberations of movement and music. A cold damp breeze stirred the heavy drapes, and she thought she heard a dog bark.

  She hesitated, then came forward, lightly touching Paul’s shoulder. The touch did not startle him and, to her surprise, he did not reject it.

  “He’s nearly grown,” she whispered. In fact, Morris would turn fifteen in just a few days. He had already gotten someone to give him a helmet like the ones the Eurasian Volunteer Corps wore, though Hope had forbidden him to join.

  Paul sat up and placed his hand over Hope’s. “He must not stay here.”

  “What?”

  “When he finishes school, I will arrange it. He will go to Berkeley or Yale. America.”

  “Yale! Paul, what has possessed you?”

  But his eyes were fastened on the sleeping boy. He merely squeezed her hand.

  At fifty-one, Paul was a powerful man, but the events of the past years had left their mark in subtle ways that surprised her at moments such as this, when something he said or did made her experience him like a stranger. Suddenly she would notice the crepey softness of his neck, the concentric wrinkles that had formed beneath his earlobes, the deepening crow’s-feet, the brittleness of his collarbone under his thin silk robe. He smoked and chewed on his nails constantly, so the tips of his fingers had become callused and yellow, the pads spatulated—she could feel the scrape of his ragged nails even now against her wrist, smelled the nicotine in his skin. His hair had receded back behind his crown, and the loss of four teeth had brought a downward cast to his once firm mouth. But none of these changes explained this uncharacteristic concern for his son’s future.

  “Of course, I want this—” She was silenced by a bugle blast, immediately echoed by a watery siren. Paul stood up so violently that Hope was thrown off balance. “What is it?”

  But he had gone to close the window, and when he turned back he threw a quick glance at Morris, who had not stirred, and motioned her out of the room. By the hall light she saw a muscle throbbing in his cheek. He pushed her ahead of him.

  They entered their bedroom, and with a single movement, he peeled off her nightgown and jerked her toward him. Not a word. Not a sound. He lowered himself to the edge of the bed and buried his face between her breasts. Hard and tight, his knuckles drove into the flesh beneath her shoulder blades. A hot, wet stream slid down her belly, and the breath she’d been holding unfurled as she felt him howling into her skin.

  Within minutes of that siren, the guns began. Small arms, at first, spraying the pickets stationed near the Tramways Company and Commercial Press. Then squads of soldiers moved against the railway and docks, positioned machine guns outside guild houses and union offices. By dawn a hard rain was falling, the stammering of machine gunfire seemed to issue from every direction, and the gutters were running red.

  Gangster Tu’s White Armbands killed Jed Israel as he attempted to defend a picket station across the river in Pootung. His body was found in a drainage ditch two days later, his long red hair turned green with sewage, his head all but severed from his
neck by an automatic weapon that fired more precisely than any camera he’d ever owned.

  Jin’s body was dumped on Hope and Paul’s doorstep that same evening, though it was weeks before they pieced together the details of his murder. He had survived the first night of the massacre to march under that relentless morning’s rain with some hundred thousand men, women, and children through the ruins of Chapei. They were appealing to Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang and the forces of peaceful justice to stop the slaughter. They were unarmed. Chiang’s soldiers stood in two military lines on either side of Paoshan Road and watched as the demonstrators marched into the gauntlet, women and children first. Then the troops raised their bayonets, Mausers, and tommy guns. The back of Jin’s skull split like a pomegranate, spilling its gleaming fruit.

  3

  One could hardly say that was the beginning of the end. The beginning of the end had been the beginning, but that was so long ago that when Hope thought back to the first warning cannonade in Berkeley, she could not remember the smell of exploded flesh and bone for the stronger memory of roses. The smell of death now was fresh and the faces of the executed still pulsed in her eyes. The even greater difference, though, was Paul.

  After the White Terror had ended, if it could be said that it ever ended, he became another man. Not just older or harder or more withdrawn. He became the man that he had been struggling for twenty years to change. He had Yen give away his American suits and ordered a tailor in the Chinese City to make four new black and brown shantung robes, two velvet waistcoats, and three sets of white silk underwear, one wide-sleeved mandarin jacket, and three round black silk scholar’s caps. He adopted an ivory cigarette holder and a tight, tripping style of walking, the habit of rolling two silver exercise balls as he stood for endless hours pondering his lecture notes or compositions. Scholarly pursuits seemed to absorb virtually all his time, energy, and affection. He no longer dined with the family, avoided Western foods, and resumed his old habit of playing mah-jongg or singing poetry criticism with his friends late into the night.