I had been transformed into the chairman of Chao Yinhang, in which capacity I could now direct the actions of Pearl River Bank. My bank, which I had won in single combat with Mercury, owned 95 percent of the shares of Pearl River, which still had to be regarded as Henry’s bank. There is an established legal process for squeezing out minorities. That process would begin soon, as would the delicate task of combining operations and sorting out the staff. When the two banks had become one, whose bank would it be? And what identity would Song adopt?
These speculations had to be suspended when I got home and found Henry sitting in his library. But it took nearly a year for reality to regain its composure.
Song had kept Henry in her basement bedroom for the past three days. She’d slept on a blanket outside the door, he told me. “She wanted you to win,” he said. “She didn’t want me interfering at the last moment. And I agreed.” He paused. “I suppose you’ve figured out who she is.”
“Yes,” I said.
He was silent for a bit and let me study him. He’d lost weight and looked tired. He didn’t seem to be curious about the outcome of the proxy fight. I had to assume Song had told him what the outcome was, but he didn’t raise the matter.
“She showed up at the door one day,” he said. “Amanda’s mother Agnes had died and Amanda was still a girl. ‘I believe you need a housekeeper,’ she said in Hakka. Her accent was familiar. Her nose and forehead and way of standing up straight were familiar. I was at a loss for words. ‘Excellent,’ she said. ‘Where are the servants’ quarters?’ ‘Can I help you with your suitcase?’ I said, looking for it on the porch behind her. ‘I have no baggage,’ she said. She stepped into the hall. And that was that.”
“You didn’t ask her any questions?”
“No.”
“You didn’t feel guilty, keeping her in a bedroom in the cellar?”
“Every day, but it would have been awkward to acknowledge her.”
I waited for him to go on. I could see he was determined to tell the story, even though talking seemed to be an effort.
“It took her about a month to get me to fire the cook and the maid. I thought it would leave her with too much to do. ‘They are not good enough,’ she said. And she was tireless in doing their jobs. Then one day she said to me, in her brisk way, that she had a cousin who needed work while he waited for a visa that would let him into Canada. Of course I agreed. But when the ‘cousin’ showed up, he was not Hakka.”
“Did her mother send him?” I thought now he might open up.
“I liked believing so,” he said, looking out the window. “I pretended I was holding one end of a cord that stretched over the border and out of sight, and Su Ling – the love of my life, I suppose you Americans might call her – was holding the other end. We could not speak to each other, but we could feel each others’ vibrations.”
“Did you see her? I assume that is where you’ve been.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Are you allowed to tell me what happened?”
“I set the Julia adrift in between two islands up the coast and swam toward the mainland, holding on to a buoyant seat cushion. The tide that was taking the Julia out to sea was running against me, so all I accomplished – and all I needed to accomplish – was to maintain my position. I wasn’t in the water for more than half an hour. Two men in a fishing boat picked me up at dawn, just as Song had said.”
“You took a big risk, though, Henry.”
“I swam through the sharks in sixty-seven,” he said.
“You were younger then,” I said.
He didn’t respond to that, just continued his account. “They gave me dry clothes, took me ashore and fed me, let me sleep. When I woke, different men drove me north, left me in some woods beside the road. Twenty minutes later a truck stopped, the driver walked into the woods to relieve himself, nodded to me to get into the truck. That sort of thing.
“Eventually I was left in an abandoned barn with three days’ supply of food and told to wait. No one came. They told me it was too dangerous. Not for her. She has no fear. Never did. But for ‘the railway.’”
“Is that what you call it?”
“I think of it that way – in honor of your abolitionists, with their ‘underground railway.’” Henry glanced up at his shelves of history books. “Of course, it has no name in China. Just anonymous fishermen and nods in the woods. Some things work better without names.”
“Why did Song send you, then, if you were also a security risk?”
“The point was for Su Ling to have the satisfaction of knowing I had tried. I don’t have much time left, you know.” He let that hang in the air for a moment. “My story was to be that I was hit in the head by the boom of the sailboat and as I fell overboard I clutched at something that would float. Fishermen found me. I had amnesia. They could see by my clothes that I was rich, so they took care of me, hoping for an eventual reward. When I came to my senses after three months, I would turn myself in to the police. That was the plan.”
“Why did you have to wait so long?”
“Song said it would be better. A week of ‘amnesia’ would be too convenient to be believed. There was also likely to be negotiation with the police, she said. I would be told when it was time to recover my senses, and where to go. In the event, they avoided the police and I came out packaged up with a shipment of lawn furniture in the back of a truck. Very good quality lawn furniture, Hai Ming tells me.”
“What happened to the Julia?” That was a risk in the plan, I realized. An empty boat would be seen as proof that Henry was dead.
“Salvaged, repainted and sold, I would think,” said Henry. “I assume the fishermen who collected me have friends who could do that.”
“Amanda thought you were dead.” I paused. “I suppose that is part of what sent her over the edge. Not that you should blame yourself.”
Henry made no response to that, and once again I confronted the fact that he hadn’t invested much emotion in Amanda – just money in the form of clothes and jewelry. But then, it certainly wasn’t her father’s absence that affected her. I just said it because I thought I should.
“And you, Wendy?” Henry asked. “Did you think I was dead?”
“Somehow no.”
“Nice to be believed in.”
Until that trip, Henry had not been back to the People’s Republic, even after Deng invented “capitalism with Chinese characteristics.” I think at some level he believed they would arrest him. What for didn’t matter. He had gotten out and Su Ling hadn’t, and there had to be a punishment for that. But when a drab little man – or so Song had reported – came down the “railway” and said that “someone named Su Ling” wanted to see him, he had to go. If he was going to die soon, getting arrested wasn’t something to fear.
Henry said chemo wasn’t worth it. And he never went into the bank again. He said death was best done without a lot of people bothering you – and that I would do fine without him. All he wanted to do, really, was sit quietly in his library, and later lie in his bed – and look occasionally at the calligraphy in the drawer beside him. He lasted three months.
After he died in February of 2001, Song told me that her mother had actually been dead for sixteen years. I was sitting at the kitchen table, where I had taken to having my supper. The twins were asleep. The green jungle outside the window was giving way to darkness. Song was standing at the sink, her back to me, cleaning up.
“Why did you send him, then?” I asked.
“I knew he would feel better having made the effort.” She had taken to speaking proper English to me most of the time when we were alone.
“He felt bad about abandoning her thirty years ago?”
“He did but he shouldn’t have. She’d sent him away after all – saying she would follow in a few months, knowing that the only way she and her unborn child could survive would be to marry the Red Guard cadre who was jealous of Henry and was scheming to have him convicted of something
. If Henry had stayed in our village, he would have been sent to prison in a matter of weeks. Mother could see that.”
“She told you all this?”
“Only after the cadre she had to marry died.”
I waited for her to go on.
“Poison in his tea. He had many enemies.” Song busied herself with the dishes while I thought about this.
“How old were you then?”
“Fourteen.”
“That’s a long time to be married to a man you despise.”
“Many people have unhappy marriages. My mother was very strong.”
If you could open up Song’s brain and look inside, I think you would find she believes all men are weaklings – and that the other reason she sent Henry away was to address “succession issues,” as Sam calls them. She knew Henry was sick. That was why he had gotten himself a pistol, though in the end we were able to give him plenty of painkillers. She knew about Mercury and Amanda. She took his letters out of the mailbox and put them in Amanda’s room. She had to assume that when Henry died, Amanda would want to sell the family’s shares to Mercury. She had to find out what I was made of before Henry died. That was why he had to stay away for three months. If I couldn’t deal with Mercury, she could bring Henry back ahead of schedule, and be no worse off than before.
This is not as fanciful as it sounds. Song knows nothing of investment banking, of course. But family politics are part of every Chinese person’s cultural heritage. And Song’s intuition is excellent. And maybe Zhang talked to her. She did not, I realized, regard Hai Ming as a weakling.
In March, a month after Henry died, and almost without thinking about it, I asked Song if she knew where I could find Zhang.
“Go newspaper club,” she said with a twinkle, imitating him. “I tell him buy you lunch.”
I had to laugh. Not many people knew that Zhang owned Mosquito. Part of its power is that most people don’t know where it comes from – who its sources are, who writes the articles, takes the photographs, draws the cartoons – or who the proprietor is. So for Zhang, belonging to the Foreign Correspondents’ Club is a permanent private joke.
Zhang was there already when I got to the FCC. He’s remarkably punctual. “Su Ling die in eighty-five,” he said, when I asked the first of the questions I had been turning over in my mind. “Industrial accident. After abomination husband die in eighty-one she had to work. People who hate abomination husband make sure Su Ling only get brutal jobs. Chemicals eat her skin, damage lungs. I don’t tell Henry. Break his heart she not come to him. But how she live in Castle? Su Ling too proud to let Henry see what hardship do to her.
“About same time I get idea I could make money bringing people out. Border just about easy enough then. So I think Henry might feel better about Su Ling dying if he help others get out.”
“But he didn’t know she had died.”
“Not matter. He help get people out, he feel better.”
“So you launched ‘the railway.’”
“Shhh. Not say name.”
“Henry said it had no name.”
“Better that way. You just listen. Time you hear story, now you helping.” A waiter came to take our lunch order. I hadn’t been asked to funnel any money anywhere yet, but of course I would be eventually. It was obvious once I thought about it.
“First step,” Zhang continued, “get Song to Castle. Tell her rich man friend of mine, cannot manage servants, need housekeeper.”
“Why didn’t you tell her who he was?”
“Big Wendy not thinking. If she say who she is, Henry ask about Su Ling, be sad. If she not know who Henry is, she say nothing.”
“Does Song look like Su Ling?”
He smiled as he thought about that. “Little bit.”
“What if Henry asked her who she was, asked her what village she came from, that sort of thing?
“Song not let him ask. I tell her once she get to Castle, act like she come from nowhere, always been there.”
“Did it work?”
“Work just like I plan. Henry never ask, but think about Su Ling.”
“How could you know that?”
“See in eyes. Remember, Henry very old friend. Second step, get ‘cousin’ to Castle.”
“Henry told me about that.”
“Third step, let Henry help pay.”
Our lunch arrived and I thought about Zhang’s last words. “Henry paid the bribes but you got paid by the people you smuggled out?”
“Only paid later. I invest in them. If they succeed in Canada, investment pay dividends.”
“And I suppose you are going to tell me that defrauding the bank made Henry feel better about not acknowledging his daughter?”
“Why else own bank?”
“And the rest of the shareholders?”
“Zhang not mind. Why other shareholders care? Henry give them good dividends.”
“When did Song realize who Henry was?”
“She not realize. I tell her. When she old enough to understand and not spoil set-up.”
“What did she say?”
Again he smiled. “Say nothing. Bite my ear. Later forgive.”
31
There was an alternative narrative – the same movie but with different music. Harsher. Henry asked me to sit beside his bed. He was ready to die, he said, and wanted to tell me the truth.
He had not, he insisted, spent his whole life pining for this Su Ling person. She had indeed been his girlfriend when they were adolescents in the path of Mao’s Cultural Revolution. He had seen, in a blinding flash, how foolish and destructive it was. Unfortunately, she was already pregnant with Song when the flash vouchsafed itself. “She told me to go, and promised to follow when she could. I obeyed. She never came.
“Hai Ming got me out,” said Henry. “He has known from birth which officials to flatter, which to bribe and how to go about it. He’s so good at it, he himself never needed to escape. He only decided to operate from Hong Kong when the commercial possibilities presented themselves.
“Being an American, you probably think I should be eternally grateful to Hai Ming. As a Chinese, I know better. You must pay your debts, but there are limits. Eternal gratitude is something you offer fate – or God if you are that sort of Englishman – but not to a person, and especially not one like Zhang Hai Ming. Hai Ming will take advantage if he senses that you feel an obligation.”
Having clarified that, Henry moved on from topic to topic. He told me that Julia’s mother had been his best consort. Their liaison was unpremeditated. “I wandered into her bookshop and we started talking. Whole four years, all she asked for was physical pleasure.” He said he hoped Julia was like her mother.
“Would you like to see her?” I asked. “I know she would come. You named your sailboat after her.”
“No time,” said Henry. “Tell her I named the boat after her because sailing is pure pleasure.” He paused. “Do you like that answer?”
“Julia will,” I assured him.
“Her mother rode a motorcycle. Did you know that?”
“I did.”
Henry said his pursuit of Amanda’s mother, which eventually brought his liaison with Julia’s mother to a conclusion, was strictly a means to an end: buying a bank. “Agnes was pretty enough,” he said, “but the whole family was stupid. Fortunately they were also lazy, so they had never managed to damage the bank.”
Henry rested for a few minutes. “I had to get her married,” he said finally. I realized he was talking about Amanda. “I didn’t think Jefferson Chao would let his foolish son marry my daughter, but they seemed to like each other and I couldn’t take the risk. You appeared. You were willing. It seemed like fate.”
“I can see how you thought that,” I said.
“I’m sorry about Amanda killing herself. I tried to warn her about Mercury when I discovered they had lunch from time to time. ‘What do you know about love?’ she asked me. She’d read a lot of romantic novels. She knew I’d married
her mother for the money and disrespected me for it, even if she was happy to have what the money bought. She gave you sons, though. At least there’s that.”
The “railway” had been an English idea, Henry said. One day a persuasive young Englishman had shown up at the bank with an unbankable proposition, and they’d talked in circles until it was clear to Henry why he’d come.
The idea was pretty much what Serena had said it was: help the ones you’d prefer to see in charge, and rescue the odd dissident if you had time. Henry was glad to help. What he hadn’t counted on was the link being his daughter. He knew she was his daughter, but Song had clearly had instructions, probably from someone important, and being Chinese, Henry knew better than to interrupt the rhythm. “Life is a jazz improvisation,” he said. “You have to know when it’s your turn to jam.” I have no idea where he got that metaphor. To my knowledge, he had no interest in jazz. But he read a lot.
So he stuck his eldest daughter in the basement, which seemed to be what she wanted.
“Everyone’s atoning for something,” Henry said. “Maybe she’d poisoned her stepfather and felt unsettled about it, even though it had been a net gain to humanity when he died.”
“Could a fourteen-year-old do that?” I asked.
“Easy,” said Henry. “The best plant to use is found all over Guangdong Province. We have one at our door.”
The pathology lab had said Amanda was killed by “a vegetable substance,” but that told you nothing.
“The bush with the odd-shaped shiny leaves?” I asked.
“You boil the leaves all day until they are syrup,” said Henry. “The tradition is that you paint the inside of your enemy’s teapot, but he may not get enough poison that way. And if he dies, he will die slowly. If you are a conscientious and merciful poisoner, you must get him to swallow a lot, by mixing the syrup into spicy food. Or you can prepare the tea yourself.”
Henry let me take that in as he continued his account of his life. “I didn’t go to China to see Su Ling,” he said, “because I knew she was dead. She never got mentioned any more. She was a subject no one wanted to bring up. I went into China to disappear and see if you could handle the situation. That’s also why they wanted me to go. And I couldn’t refuse without admitting I knew Su Ling was dead.”
The Daughters of Henry Wong Page 24