The Distant Land of My Father

by Bo Caldwell

  “Of course it is,” he said. He looked at me as though I’d been worried for nothing. He held the door for me, and I entered slowly, trying to savor the treat.

  The smell was the first thing you noticed, the clean smell of paper and the promising scent of new pencils. Shelves lined every wall, from the counters, which were just about eye-level for me, to the ceiling, and every one was crammed with supplies. Stacks and stacks of exercise books, their pages filled with double lines or single lines, or with small neat squares for arithmetic. Pads in all sizes, with sheets of pale yellow, light blue, soft white. The counter along the back wall was filled with pencils, more pencils and more kinds of pencils than I had ever imagined. Pencils of all colors, in boxes, sharpened if you wanted. Pencils with lead so fine you could barely see the mark they made, and fat pencils with thick lead, the kind I used at school to practice the alphabet. Next to the pencils were pens, some with slots for metal nibs, pointed ones for fine, scratchy writing like my teacher’s, stubby ones for thick and bold printing like my father’s. The shelf above the pens held bottles of ink, blue and red and green, and thick black India ink for drawing.

  My father told me I could choose three things, and I was immediately apprehensive, overwhelmed with the task—there was so much! But soon I saw him standing at the window, gazing out at the street and jingling the change in his pocket. He was growing restless. I took a packet of pale blue letter writing paper with matching envelopes, a dark blue-colored pencil, and an Art Gum eraser, and I felt that the possibilities of what I could do with those things were endless.

  Outside the air felt even colder. I told myself that we didn’t have far to walk to meet Mei Wah. I held my hands inside my coat sleeves and crossed my arms in front, holding my bag to my chest. My father glanced at his watch, stuffed his hands in his pockets, and began to walk more quickly. The thought that even he was feeling the cold alarmed me; I wondered if people ever just froze on city streets, ending up the way we looked when we played statues in the school yard.

  When we turned the corner and the bridge was in sight, he glanced at his watch again and said, “Right on time, you see? Mei Wah will be waiting for us and we’ll be home in no time.”

  As we neared the bridge, there seemed to be some commotion. When we got closer, we found a small crowd had gathered, and we heard sharp Japanese from the sentry. When we reached the edge of the crowd, my father pushed me past English and European men in overcoats and Chinese in long blue gowns lined with red fox. We had no reason to cross the bridge; I guessed he just wanted to see what was going on.

  The whole place smelled of Soochow Creek, close and cold and stale, and I started to ask if we couldn’t just please find Mei Wah and go home. But then I heard something familiar, and when I heard it again, I realized it was Chu Shih’s voice, and I thought how good it would be to see him and show him what I’d bought. I heard his voice again—it was low and very guttural and easy to identify—and I started to call out to him. Then the man in front of me moved away slightly, and what I saw took my words away.

  Chu Shih was standing on the bridge. He wore his thick black cotton trousers and a padded blue Chinese jacket with his white apron underneath, as though he’d left home in a hurry. Next to him was a Chinese man I’d never seen before, a refugee. His clothes were rags whose original shape and color you couldn’t even guess at, and everything about him seemed lost.

  The Japanese sentry faced Chu Shih and the refugee, his legs slightly apart. He was shouting angrily, and gesturing at them to do something. Then he moved toward Chu Shih and slapped him, hard, though he had to reach up to do so. I caught my breath and felt so stunned that it was as though it was my cheek he’d slapped.

  The sentry pointed at the refugee and yelled again. His gestures made it clear that he was ordering Chu Shih to slap the refugee. Chu Shih wiped blood from his lip and shook his head firmly. The sentry communicated his order again, but Chu Shih still refused. The sentry began to slap the refugee hard, over and over again, until finally the man cried out in pain, put his hand to his ear, and fell to the ground. The sentry turned back to Chu Shih. He barked something at him and raised his arm as though to strike him. I saw Chu Shih brace himself.

  Someone pushed past me, and I saw my father striding toward the sentry. He walked up to Chu Shih and stood next to him. His expression was pained as he looked up at Chu Shih and spoke softly to him. Then he began to speak to the sentry. I heard the word cook, ch’uishihyüen. The sentry glared at my father as he spoke, but my father just kept talking, although the sentry didn’t seem to understand. He only sputtered back, furious. My father ignored him and bowed, a movement so slight it would have been easy to miss. From his pocket, he took the pass he’d shown the guards earlier and handed it to the sentry. The sentry looked at it for a long moment before finally nodding to my father.

  My father turned and looked for me in the crowd, and when he saw me, he said, “Come on, Anna,” his voice so calm you would have thought he was calling me to lunch. I walked to him and took his hand, and he said only, “Lai,” come, and led Chu Shih off the bridge.

  The Packard was waiting for us at the street. My father opened the back door and motioned for Chu Shih to get inside. Chu Shih rarely rode in the car, and he hesitated. My father said gently, “Go on, get in, we’re all right now,” and Chu Shih lowered himself into the car’s backseat. My father told me to sit next to Chu Shih, and he got in the front with Mei Wah.

  Chu Shih was still breathing hard, the sound like something forced. I did not let myself look at him, not because of the blood and the swelling I knew I would see, but because of his shame, which seemed to emanate from him like heat.

  In the car, Mei Wah explained that he had gone home while we were at Liu’s, and my mother had sent Chu Shih along with him to watch for us, a request that didn’t make sense. My father shook his head and rubbed his chin, a nervous gesture of his. He said to me in a low voice, “She didn’t know you were going with me this morning. She must have worried,” and Mei Wah shot him that cross look again.

  Chu Shih said that the sentry had thought him insolent, that he was mocking the sentry, and that he needed to learn respect. He said he had done nothing to make the sentry think that. The refugee standing next to him had bowed, but apparently not to the sentry’s satisfaction. So the sentry had called the two of them over and had ordered Chu Shih to beat the refugee. His refusal had sent the sentry into a rage.

  When Chu Shih finished speaking, the car was silent, except for the sound of his labored breathing. I stared hard at my hands. His story didn’t make any sense to me, but I said nothing. I wanted only for the ride and the horrible day to be over. I did the only thing that I could think of that would help. I took Chu Shih’s huge hand and held it between my small hands. He closed his fingers around my hand and nodded, and our conversation was over.

  I ran a fever that night. I woke often, and each time I did, I felt my father’s presence in my darkened room. In the evening, I had heard my parents argue, but the fever stretched out a few minutes of cross words into hours, making it seem as if they argued all night.

  When I woke the next morning, my father was sitting on a chair he’d pulled up next to my bed. He still wore his clothes from the day before, and I knew he’d been sitting with me most of the night. He was dozing, but he woke when I sat up, and he put his hands on my shoulders.

  “Not so fast there. You’re to stay put, Anna.”

  I lay back down and asked, “Why?”

  “Dr. McLain’s orders. Said you needed rest after”—my father paused—”yesterday.” I nodded and my father just watched me for a moment. Then he sighed and ran his palm over his hair. “I really messed up,” he said. “A case of bad judgment. I had no business taking you to Hongkew with me.” He paused. “I’m sorry.”

  “That’s all right,” I said, a reflex. And then I asked what worried me most: “Is Chu Shih all right?”

  My father nodded. “He’s fine,” he said. �
��Good as new. But that doesn’t make what I did right, and I won’t do it again.” He turned and looked out the window for a long moment. “I just didn’t want you to go around afraid,” he said softly. “I wanted you to see that you’re still safe here, that things are different, but they’re not so bad as everybody says.” He looked at me and shrugged. “But apparently I’m in a category of one.”

  “Category?”

  He laughed softly. “I’m the only one like me. Nobody else seems to think like I do.”

  “But you’re always like that,” I said. “Aren’t you?”

  My father laughed again, and his face relaxed. “True enough,” he said. “You’re wise beyond your years, Anna Schoene.” He mussed my hair and laughed again. I laughed, too, hoping it would make me feel better, that it would dissolve the hard knot in my stomach and help me trust my father again.

  In mid-December, the Japanese took the city of Nanking, which they saw as the very heart of China, despite the fact that Chiang Kai-shek had moved the seat of his government from there several weeks earlier. In the days after the fall of Nanking, there were rumors of atrocities that were beyond belief. Some said there were photographs that proved the rumors true. My parents talked about it in urgent hushed tones and changed the subject when they realized I was near, their voices becoming instantly cheery. I made a lot of noise when I was nearby; I didn’t want to hear what they were saying, not any of it. Early on, I had heard my father use the phrase “burning them alive,” and I knew I didn’t want to hear any more. It was also the first time I heard the word rape, and though I had no idea what the word meant, the fear and pain in my mother’s voice told me I didn’t want to know more.

  On a Sunday evening in January, 1938, Dr. McLain and his wife and Will Marsh came for dinner. Casual Sunday-night gatherings in the Outside Roads were a sort of tradition. Everyone knew everyone out there, and often as not, much of the neighborhood would end up at someone’s house for an early dinner. But the neighborhood was dwindling as families moved closer to the safety of town. Some took suites at the Palace Hotel, others rented apartments at the Medhurst on Bubbling Well Road in the Settlement, or the Picardie Mansions in the French Concession. My father viewed these moves as compromise, and not an option. The McLains and Will Marsh didn’t seem to be moving either, though Will’s family had gone. The McLains were staying only because Mrs. McLain was pregnant, due in three months, and a difficult pregnancy had forced them to stay put until the baby was born, rather than risk the trip home.

  That night when I had been excused from the dinner table, I stood at my mother’s side and asked if I could go to my room, and when she nodded, I went eagerly upstairs, trying not to run. My birthday was soon, only eight days away, and I had asked for a pair of stilts that I had seen in the Sears Roebuck catalog. I wanted them desperately, so much so that I was worried that if I didn’t get them, my disappointment would be too great to hide, and I would ruin my own birthday. My plan was to hunt around and see if I could find the stilts—or another present—and then at least I would know, and things would be better either way. But I had high hopes. Christmas had been a muted time, and though we’d decorated the tree and hung paper loop chains and carved angels from soap and opened each window of the Advent calendar, the season had been more of a somber observance than a celebration. I hoped my birthday would be different.

  I stood at the top of the stairs and heard my mother ask Chu Shih to clear the table and serve coffee and dessert, and I smiled. They would be at the table for another hour almost. After coffee and dessert, my father would offer Dr. McLain and Will Marsh cigars, another half hour at least. I’d learned that toward the end, grown-up dinners stretched out longer than you had thought possible. I heard a chair being pushed back, and my father walked to the living room and put on a record. I went to my room and put on my nightgown, then walked barefoot down the hall.

  My parents’ bedroom had a secrecy and formality to it that gave me a small chill when I opened the door. I was entering forbidden ground, for I wasn’t supposed to be in there without them. But I was determined, and I went inside and closed the door after me.

  The room’s scent told you it was a private place. It was intimate, the sweet musky smell of sandalwood and cassia bark—Chinese cinnamon—that lined the drawers of my mother’s dresser. The room felt private, with its long velvet drapes of a deep rose the color of flushed cheeks, and the four-poster Ningpo bed made of dark mahogany, its huge headboard carved with roses that looked so real I always expected to find delicate mahogany petals on the pillows. The bedspread was made of a thick brocade of more roses than I could count, and under it was an eiderdown so thick and soft it was like someone holding you. But I never climbed up on the bed without permission. It was the most private part of the room, like a separate place all its own.

  There was no sign of my father’s presence, and I stood in the center of the room for a moment, confused. The teak valet where he hung his suit coat every night was missing. So was the black lacquer box that he dropped his change and watch into at the end of the day. I went to his closet and found empty spaces among his suits and shirts and trousers, as though things had been taken. And though I found nothing when I checked for the stilts, I was suddenly less concerned about them.

  Next to my parents’ bedroom was a small sitting room that could be reached through their room, or through a door that opened onto the hallway. Its only furnishings were a daybed and a huge teak wardrobe, where my parents stored their out-of-season clothes. The wardrobe was one of my father’s prized possessions, a gift from a wealthy client. It had been carved by hand in the interior of China, and it was immense. It could be moved only after it was dismantled, and even then its three sections were massive. The heavy doors to the main section of the wardrobe held beveled mirrors, and underneath was a drawer that was two feet deep.

  I entered the sitting room from my parents’ room and found the daybed had been slept in. My father’s black silk robe lay across the foot of it, and next to it, pushed against the wall, was his teak valet. I walked to the wardrobe and stood in front of it as though I owned it. I pulled open one of the doors and found what I’d expected to find: my father’s clothes, not the summer clothes he didn’t need for now, but his overcoat, the black cashmere sweater he’d worn yesterday, the striped tie he’d worn earlier that morning, three pressed shirts. His brown felt hat was set carelessly on the top shelf, as though he’d taken it off in a hurry, and the black lacquer box was next to it.

  I heard grown-up laughter from downstairs then, and my eyes burned with hot tears. It was as though they were laughing at me for being a child, for not understanding, and I wondered what else they hadn’t told me. I slapped my father’s overcoat, just for the momentary pleasure it gave me. But when the coat moved from my slap, I saw something brown toward the back of the wardrobe. I pushed the coat aside and found the package I’d hoped for from Sears Roebuck.

  For a moment, everything seemed better. Here was an example of order, of things being as they should, I thought. I told myself that him sleeping in this small room meant nothing; it was because of the odd hours he was keeping, so that he didn’t wake my mother. I fluffed up my father’s coat so that you couldn’t tell it had been moved to the side.

  I was about to close the wardrobe door when I saw a large manila envelope on the floor of the wardrobe. I was sure it went with the stilts—maybe it was the directions, maybe there was a picture—and I picked it up and opened it.

  But there weren’t any directions. Instead I pulled out several eight-by-ten black-and-white photographs, and when I looked at them, I forgot about the stilts and the sitting room and the grownups downstairs.

  The first one showed a Chinese girl lying in a field. She was naked, and her legs had been spread apart. I knew the girl was dead. Standing on either side of her were two Japanese soldiers, grinning as though they were in the midst of something wonderful. The girl was older than I was, but she was still a girl.

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nbsp; I stared at the photograph angrily, then looked at the next one. A Chinese man knelt in the middle of the street, and at first I thought it was a magic act. But I stared harder and saw that the man really was being decapitated by the Japanese soldier standing over him. A circle of Japanese soldiers surrounded him, clapping and cheering.

  There were more, but I stopped. I was afraid. My hands shook as I slipped the photographs carefully back into the envelope and refastened the clasp. Then I placed the envelope on the floor of the wardrobe, where I had found it.

  I turned out the light in the sitting room and went back the way I’d come, through my mother’s room. At the door, I stood listening and heard only my own heart. I opened the door, closed it, and tiptoed to my room, the parquet floor cold and hard against my bare feet. My room seemed a foreign place, but the only place I wanted to be. I closed my door softly behind me. I turned out the light and got into bed. And then I lay in the dark, holding my stomach, trying to make it stop hurting, trying to understand why I felt so homesick and alone in the only home I’d ever known.

  stilts

  MY MOTHER WAS NOT CONVINCED by good appearances, neither my father’s nor Shanghai’s, and although he bragged and cajoled and tried to charm her, she was not won over by his high spirits. Shanghai was suspect, as were his purchases and conspicuous wealth, and she made no secret of her doubt. She began to speak of Los Angeles almost daily, as though the fact that we were going had been decided. The only question was when.

  My birthday was on January seventeenth, the feast day of St. Anthony of the Desert, and the day started the way it had every year I could remember. My mother woke me early and dressed me in the still darkness of morning, just a grayer version of night, and then we went together to early Mass at the Cathedral. This was our time; later in the day I would celebrate with my father, in his way.