The Daughters of Henry Wong

by Harrison Young

  “Why couldn’t you do that?”

  “Out of respect for Song,” said Henry. “She worked hard. She has done well.”

  Henry said he’d told the current version of the persuasive young Englishman that he was going into China. “He knows the truth but he lets me pretend,” said Henry. “He is Canadian, actually. I suppose you will meet him now.”

  Henry talked and rested and talked again for about three hours. “We are all of us our parents’ children,” he said at one point. “My father was a person of no distinction and neither was I. I meant to be, but I ran away – saved by a girl with a talent for heroism – and the shame of it wore out my ideals. There was nothing left but making a living.”

  “Until the persuasive Englishman came to call,” I suggested.

  Henry ignored my comment. He seemed determined to give himself no credit. “Your father was a hero, Wendy, but no one told you…”

  “Who told you?” I interjected.

  “My English friends. When I brought you into the Castle they were quite concerned. What if you discovered the railway? What if you were indiscreet? They looked into your background, probably talked to their American friends, probably had someone happen to strike up a conversation with your grandmother in Boston, your grandfather in Charleston.”

  “And the answer was?”

  Henry paused. “You are good at what is in front of your nose, they said. You would have made a good communist, though they concluded you were not one. You embrace official reality easily.”

  “Doesn’t everyone?” I said.

  “We all shape reality,” said Henry. “Hai Ming, for example, believes he thought up the railway. He got Song to the Castle. His trucks brought out a lot of passengers. He made money from the operation. But it wasn’t his idea. The British thought it up. That’s why they value it.”

  That’s why you value it, Henry, I almost said.

  “The British sometimes believe it is their railway,” he went on, “though the polite Canadian always pointedly refers to it as mine. But if you think about it, it is clearly China’s railway.” After that he rested for a while.

  “You ought to visit your family in America,” he resumed. “You need to decide where you belong. You need to show your Charleston grandfather some respect before he dies.”

  “I’ve never gotten along with him, you know.”

  “Don’t you think that hurts him?”

  “He never shows it.”

  “Is a man supposed to show emotions?”

  I thought again about my “mask” nightmare. Was Charleston grandfather the torturer or the victim?

  “I thought I could invent myself,” Henry went on, “when I got to Hong Kong, if I worked hard, if I learned good enough English. That was my official reality and I embraced it. I saw through the communists but not myself. We do to ourselves what governments do to us. Official reality strangles understanding.

  “And it didn’t work out the way I planned. I have lived a disciplined life of great emptiness. I am neither English nor Chinese. My only “friends” are Cedric Fung and Zhang Hai Ming. But our temperaments are different.”

  “And what did you want?” I said.

  Henry took a breath, as if he was about to answer my question, but then didn’t. “You have done well while I was away. Do the same when I leave you permanently. But visit your grandfather.”

  With that he died.

  Song and I buried Henry privately, as he’d asked. “No one would come to my funeral,” he had insisted.

  Then, to my surprise, she cleaned out his bedroom, removing all traces of him. I assume she got Zhang to take care of the pistol. What happened to the calligraphy in the same drawer, I do not know. I believe Henry put the paper there for Song’s benefit years ago, knowing she would find it as she cleaned his room, that it was Henry’s oblique way of acknowledging her as his daughter.

  I have never been able to convince myself that Henry wasn’t in love with Su Ling all his life – not after having seen that calligraphy. There was no “official reality” to those brushstrokes. He may have been a traditional Chinese male, for whom women are in theory a lower order, a utilitarian caste. But Su Ling had gotten under his skin, and then sent him away. Whether she did it because she loved him or because she didn’t was a question he could never answer.

  Serena got under my skin, but I doubt there was ever any love involved. I was infatuated. She was professional. And gorgeous.

  32

  For a while, after Henry died, nothing changed. No tears. Henry and I had gotten what we wanted from each other.

  Time seemed to pick up speed, much as the action in a film reverts to a normal pace after an episode of slow-motion violence. Having been a soap opera, my life became a documentary again. Which is not to say there were no surprises.

  Song managed the household, and its ghosts. She wore the same navy blue silk uniform, but she also wore Amanda’s jade and diamond necklace underneath it, next to her skin. I didn’t mind. I asked her whether she wanted to move upstairs. She said it would confuse the little boys. Good answer.

  I fantasized about making her my concubine. We were the only adults left in the Castle. I imagined going down the dark steps from the kitchen to her bedroom when I chose to, letting her wonder, each evening, whether I would come. She would have accepted such a situation. I flatter myself she could have enjoyed it. But it would have been wrong. I tell myself that it was only the testosterone of victory burning itself off that made me think of it at all.

  Cedric Fung died in May, three months after Henry, and I miss him. Cedric was a rare species, a church-going Anglican, so the service was at St. John’s Cathedral. As sometimes happens in China, his funeral was a political event. Everyone important in Hong Kong came, including those with “real power,” to borrow his phrase. People were startled by who came from Beijing. You could almost hear wheels turning in billionaire brains, as they silently asked themselves what message they were being given.

  Looking up at the cathedral’s ceiling fans, my own thoughts turned to a question I continue to contemplate. Cedric was Henry’s protector and my mentor. His friends had friends, he often said. Are they now my friends, and will they ever introduce themselves? I continue Henry’s work, but it’s a quiet business. I accept that you may laugh to hear that I daydream about a Mandarin-speaking Jedi knight stepping out of the mist some evening, as I trudge up the path from May Road, and summoning me to further adventures.

  Cedric would disapprove of such an aspiration, I know, but he arranged a visit that was nearly as surprising. When I got back to the bank after his funeral, Simon Graves was sitting in my office, high heels and all.

  “I didn’t see you at the cathedral,” I said.

  “I didn’t go,” said Simon. “I don’t believe in God.”

  “What difference does that make?” I asked.

  He considered possible responses for a moment. (Simon did, that is. God in my experience doesn’t answer questions.) “Let’s just say there were likely to be people I shouldn’t encounter,” said Simon. “Also, I came to see you. Cedric asked me to.”

  “I take it you were not to come until he died?”

  “That is the case.”

  “You sent Philip Cooper. Cedric sent you.”

  “And Henry sent Cedric,” said Simon. “By which I mean that he became your friend and advisor because Henry asked him to. Cedric acceded to requests when it suited him to do so, but he took orders from no one.”

  “So I observed,” I said, unsure how to interpret Simon’s statement. “Sam told me you had family in Shanghai.”

  “All sorts of brave, disreputable people wound up in Shanghai in the years before the war,” said Simon. “My forebears were escaping from the Russian Revolution. They had fascinating lives, but they aren’t today’s business. I am here to tell you about a man who called himself Benjamin Chao.”

  “Mercury’s grandfather?”

  “Indeed,” said Simon.

/>   At this point the inestimable Catherine brought tea in. She and Simon exchanged glances that made it clear they had met before – meaning that he wasn’t inventing a relationship with Cedric. Clearly, he was proud of having been given this commission to visit me.

  “One of the first things I assume you learned, Wendy, when you began your study of Chinese language and culture, was the importance of family. No other allegiance is as strong.”

  “Correct,” I said, settling in for a lecture. Simon should have been a professor, I decided.

  “At various points in the 1920s and 30s but before the Pacific War began, a number of very wealthy Chinese families based in Shanghai and Guangzhou and other cities on the southeast coast made quite natural decisions to split themselves in two. Some family members gave visible support to the Nationalists, some, more discreetly, to the Communists. They transferred assets abroad and drew upon their trading connections to establish covert channels of communication they believed would be necessary if the Communists won and built a wall around the country.

  “Both branches of each such family sent sons and nephews to look after their interests in Taiwan and Hong Kong. They were the lucky ones. Those whose job it was to remain in China and support the government of Chiang Kai-shek until the end were killed immediately by the victorious Communists. Those who had supported the forces of Mao Tse-tung were distrusted because they were members of the merchant class. In many cases, they too were eliminated. But a few, who had personal connections high up in the Party, were allowed to melt into the background and live quiet lives.

  Mercury Chao’s grandfather – Benjamin Chao, as the foreigners called him – remained in Shanghai. Both his connections and his foresight were very good. Seeing the growing power of the United States, he had arranged to have a son born in Hawaii, in 1927, with the result that when America entered the Pacific War and its citizens were exchanged for Japanese diplomats, fourteen-year-old Jefferson Chao was able to get on the ship for Portuguese Africa. When the war ended, he moved to Hong Kong and restarted Chao Yinhang.”

  “I’ve heard some of that story,” I said, “but I’ve always wondered how he could have gotten the family’s bank relaunched at the age of twenty-one. That’s what he would have been in 1948”

  “He actually got here in 1946. Cedric’s family gave him a home for a few years. One must assume they also gave him advice. It seems to be a talent that runs in that family.”

  “Indeed,” I said.

  “The ‘Railway,’ as Henry called it, is based on the covert lines of communication established before the war. Benjamin Chao used it as early as 1946 to save some communist officials who had displeased Mao. Senior officials who knew what Benjamin had done decided to leave the Railway alone in case they needed it themselves.”

  “So I’ve been told,” I said, thinking of Serena. “But how did Zhang get involved?”

  “Zhang did what he has always done,” said Simon. “He recognized the commercial potential, and pretended to have no higher motive.” Simon paused to be sure I was following him. “Zhang knew Henry. They’d been thrown together during the Cultural Revolution. Zhang needed a staging point in Hong Kong. The Castle was ideal. The fact that Henry was a loner, with little family to look after, made the arrangement safer. Having a bank would allow Henry to get money to people who needed to be paid. Cedric suggested the idea to Zhang and Zhang took the idea to my employers. He said Henry was an Anglophile, so it made sense to have an Englishman approach Henry.”

  “Did it make sense to have eighteen-year-old Song running Hong Kong Station?” I asked.

  “Zhang arranged to get Song out because that would attach Henry to the project emotionally – and also because he was fond of the brave little girl she then was. Henry had had an affair with Song’s mother, Su Ling.” Simon paused. “But you know all that.”

  “So Zhang is the hero of the story.”

  “There are no heroes, Wendy. In China or in the world.”

  “So why are you here?”

  “To tell you that Benjamin Chao was the ‘Chinese gentleman’ with whom you grandmother had an affair in the chaos of Shanghai in 1940. If it matters to you, he was a man of immense intelligence and charm.”

  “And you know that because?” I said. It seemed too neat.

  “My forebears who washed up in Shanghai were in a relevant line of work.”

  “Your line of work.”

  “Correct. They quite naturally took an interest in Chao Shensheng. And like Philip Cooper, I’ve been allowed to read some files.”

  I thought about the world-weary former Special Forces officer who had known my father. He and Simon might have different styles, and probably didn’t like each other, but they would understand each other.

  “Why didn’t Cedric tell me this sooner?’ I asked. “And having decided to tell me, why didn’t he tell me himself?”

  “We didn’t tell you during the takeover battle because you were eating enough reality already,” said Simon briskly. “That’s the way Cedric put it. He didn’t want you to get soft about your cousin. It was quite important that Mercury lose. Cedric didn’t want you to regard the little idiot as family. Family trumps everything else in Chinese culture – as we agreed.”

  “And Cedric thought I was Chinese?”

  “Part Chinese,” said Simon. “Cedric said you and Mercury were both eccentrics and both snobs, which could have made up for the difference in your intelligence levels. He said if you hadn’t stolen Mercury’s girlfriend, you might have been friends.”

  “Cedric was usually right,” I said, feeling stung by his description of me. “Why am I being told this now?”

  “Cedric thought you ought to know about your ancestors, once it was safe to tell you.”

  “But why did Cedric send you? He could have told me himself.”

  Simon smiled. “Cedric was human. He was fond of you. He liked having you see him as a nice old man.”

  I worked pretty hard. I persuaded the best of Mercury’s employees to stay – and helped Xiao Ng find new employment. One does not humiliate a man with his sort of friends. Phyllis resigned right away. When I never returned to my gentleman-scholar’s office, she took the hint. I let both of them assume I’d never learned about the tape Phyllis had made of my conversation with Calvin. That way they would always worry what I might do if I found out. It took several years to sort out Xiao Ng’s portfolio in Shenzhen, but it was clear immediately that the problem would be manageable. And once we’d gone through the pain of consolidation, the two organizations started to work as one.

  In a surprise to everyone, I decided to retain the Chao Yinhang name. It was the better brand, I explained. And fate loves a gracious winner. I also had a vague sense that the railway needed to go quiet for a year or two, and making the Pearl River logo disappear would help it disappear. The main reason I did it was to honor my grandfather, of course, but I kept that to myself.

  Henry changed his will before he died, so now I am not merely a manager but an owner. Zhang asked me if I wanted a new proxy. I said “yes.” As things have worked out, I probably don’t need it, but as Zhang himself taught me, any scrap of advantage is worth having.

  Mercury and Lillian left Hong Kong. After he had given Ping the information she wanted, I suppose he began to feel unsafe. They moved to Hawaii. It turned out they both had green cards. Their departure also made Ping feel safer, I expect. Her ownership of the video of my last encounter with Mercury made it unlikely he would ever reveal the contents of the “Calvin” tape, but the farther away he was the better.

  One day Ping showed up on our doorstep. It was early morning. She wouldn’t come farther than the hall. Calvin was free, she said. What she’d learned from Mercury had led to important arrests. She’d turned down a promotion in exchange for time off his sentence. She’d resigned from the ministry, in fact. They were “going west,” taking jobs as teachers in one of the poor provinces far from the coast. Maybe they would have children after al
l. She gave me a hug and ran away.

  “I hope she doesn’t come back,” said Song.

  I do not honestly know whether Amanda committed suicide or Song murdered her. Some day I may ask. She would tell me the truth. Popular opinion is that I was responsible. It is more lurid that way. And useful. Because I am feared, I can do more good. Like Zhang.

  Correction – honesty is hard – Song effectively murdered Amanda. She helped her commit suicide, but more crucially, she pushed her to the necessary level of despair by not giving her the letters Mercury was sending her. I had made it impossible for Mercury to see Amanda by embarrassing him at the Hong Kong Club that day I found him having lunch with the Chairman of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority. But he continued to write her. Song collected Mercury’s letters and kept them in her room. When Amanda wrote a letter back, Song simply failed to post it. Song gave me a stack of this unopened correspondence after Henry died.

  “No contact with the enemy,” she said. It was a confession of sorts, though from her perspective, defending Henry’s railroad wasn’t optional. And compared to rat poison, which was all Amanda could find, syrup made from the odd-shaped shiny leaves of a bush beside the Castle door was mercy.

  The astonishing notion that Zhang would be a suitable husband for Song came to me in Henry’s library, as many of my best ideas do. I called Zhang. He came to my office. I treated it as a business transaction.

  “I will give her a dowry,” I said, “as Henry would have.”

  “No need,” said Zhang.

  Nevertheless, I set up a trust to give her the income from 7 percent of Pearl River’s shares – the same percentage Julia had received – with the shares reverting to the little boys on Song’s death.