by Max Howell
Throughout all this Helene and Wei-min had corresponded, though his letters were infrequent. She began to realise, through his guarded correspondence, that the ideals of communism, and the practice of communism, were two entirely different things. Various newspaper and magazine articles that she read described the real picture: a massive brain-washing and regimentation of the population, purges of intellectuals and so-called enemies of the state, a lack of freedom of expression and a restriction of movement within and outside of China.
One of his letters was very sad.
Dear Helene,
A very tragic event occurred here yesterday. My wonderful grandmother, Lin-Shi-an, passed away. She was 80 years of age, and was ever an inspiration to those around her. She influenced the lives of so many, including myself.
We are all devastated here. I had a long talk to her a few days before she died. One of her hopes was to meet you and your parents before she left this earth. Unfortunately, that was not to occur.
She also told me her own love story. I did not know she was unmarried. I was always told that her husband was an Australian lieutenant who was killed during the Boxer Uprising. She hoped that one day I might meet his family in Australia. That now sounds like an impossible dream.
Will you please pass on this terrible news to your father? She loved him like she did her own son.
Your friend,
Wei-min.
She was desperate to see Wei-min once more, but it was now 1960, she was 30 years of age and Wei-min 36. She knew she had to do something dramatic, as it had become increasingly obvious that Wei-min could not come to her. In the four years since her Ph.D. she had become a world figure in archaeology, working at various digs in Crete, Italy, the British Isles, Greece and Turkey. Both her parents were still alive, and they would more often than not accompany her on her excursions. At the same time, they increasingly passed over to her the responsibility of the Henry Luce Trust commitments, which now embraced Lima, Peru, and Delhi, India. Whenever she travelled with them to these places she was always taken aback by the abject poverty they were confronted with, and was always particularly happy to travel to Arizona, to see the fine Indian students that their program had developed. As they had hoped, there were now doctors, dentists, lawyers and the like who had made it to these professions through Luce monies.
While on site and at home she diligently learned Chinese, often employing tutors to assist her, and she became, in the process, very fluent in the language.
Occasionally Chinese archaeologists would be at conferences she attended, and she would immediately corner them and enquire about research possibilities there. They were mainly presenting papers on the Xian excavations and those of the so-called ‘Peking Man’, and in particular she got to know those in the latter group. After a great deal of thought she formally wrote to them applying to work in Beijing as a Research Associate, pointing out clearly that she would be self-funded, and that any publications or presentations that might accrue would have to be approved by their Management Board.
About three months later a fateful letter came.
Dear Dr. Luce,
Our Board of Management has considered your request, as has the Archaeological Committee of the Communist Party. We are in agreement that you be invited as a Research Fellow – not Associate as you requested – attached to our Institute.
You will be issued a three-year visa to work with our team here. This will be done on the condition that you will be entirely self-funded, and any publications will be approved by the Institute and will carry the imprint of the Institute.
We might add that you are the first foreigner to be so invited. We have been very impressed by your contribution over the years, and the fact that you have learned Chinese has demonstrated your sincerity.
Our facilities are very limited, as you know, but we will be able to supply you with a room on site. It is not lavish, but it should be sufficient for your purposes. If you wish to stay at a nearby hotel, we can recommend some to you.
If you formally apply to me, I will make arrangements for your visa. I have enclosed a document for you to fill out. That will be all that you require. We understand you may need your passport, so a photocopy of it will be sufficient.
We hope all this meets with your approval.
Yours
Dr. H. Wang.
P.S. It should take four or five months for us to finalise all these arrangements. Things do not move rapidly here.
She immediately wrote Wei-min, who ever since returning to China had been assigned the role of a school teacher at Tengehow. In his letters to Helene he never said much about it, but it was certainly not a position which would assist in the regeneration of his country, particularly as he was one of the few Oxford graduates in the land. However she wrote:
Dear Wei-min,
I have done it! I will be seeing you in approximately six months. I can hardly wait, our separation has been so long. It seems ages since I last bade farewell to you at Oxford Station.
I have been granted a three-year visa to work as a Research Fellow at the Institute of Archaeology where ‘Peking Man’, as it is called, was discovered. My sole purpose is to see you once more. This at least will bring us together again, and then all we can do is hope that things will work out after that. As you said once to me, all this was fated. I never believed in fate before, but I do now.
I am so terribly excited. I will see you again, Wei-min, I will see you again.
Your Oxford companion and friend,
Helene.
At the time all this happened she was at Eynsham. Her parents, who were back in the USA, had held on to the house in the small town, and she had been staying there while doing research in the Bodleian Library for a presentation she had been asked to give.
She immediately rang her parents to tell them the good news. She was totally unprepared for what she was to hear. Her mother answered the telephone
“Joanne, my darling, is it really you?” Her mother could not go on, she broke down completely.
“Mother”, Helene implored, “what is wrong?”
“It’s… it’s your father… he has had a heart attack… Oh, Helene, I can’t believe it… I can’t believe it… I love him so… what will I do, Helene?… What will I do?”
“Mother”, pleaded Helene, “when did this happen?”
“About… about an hour ago… the doctor just left… your father, my only love, is dead… dead, I can’t believe it… what can I do, Helene, what can I do?”
“Mother, just get hold of yourself. I will leave Oxford immediately and get to you as soon as I can. Just get hold of yourself.”
“It’s impossible”, said her distraught mother, “I just cannot live without him. He is my one and only love.”
Helene made it home before the funeral, and was astonished when she saw her mother. She had aged immeasurably, almost overnight. She refused to eat, and would simply lie on her bed, clutching a photograph of her husband, Henry, and crying inconsolably.
Helene tried everything to snap her out of it, but it was impossible. After approximately a month, she called Helene to her, and gave her the love ring. “My hope, Helene”, she said in a weak and faltering voice, “is that this ring will give you a love like your father and I had.”
The following day, her mother died. It all seemed so unreal, as if the world had suddenly gone crazy. Her world had turned upside down. Her father was dead, and her mother had died of grief. It was unbelievable.
She fingered the ring. Could it really bring a love equal to that of her parents?
CHAPTER 10.
TO BEIJING AND TENGEHOW
The transient nature of life had been forcibly rammed home to Helene, who had loved her parents deeply. She now clearly appreciated her own mortality for the first time, and became even more determined than ever to secure her own true love, and that true love was Wei-min in China.
Helene had never concerned herself with money, and had never really d
iscussed things with her parents, and was quite taken aback when the will was read. Everything was left to her: the house in the Berkeley Hills, the house at Eynsham and $60 million in unencumbered money. Her father, the lawyer explained later, had a genius when it came to stocks and bonds, and his wealth had appreciated markedly with each ensuing year. As well, she was to be the sole Director of the Henry Luce Trust Fund, which was an additional $50 million, the interest going to the various divisions of the fund. What was patently obvious was that she was a very wealthy woman. But, she thought to herself, I am a very wealthy woman without the one thing I cherish more than anything else. My true love. She fingered her ring, and hoped upon hope that it would lead her to fulfillment.
It was difficult to travel throughout China in these days, so it was not possible for Wei-min to meet her when she finally arrived in Beijing. Her plan was to wait until she was better known and had the confidence of the Chinese archaeologists at the ‘Peking Man’ site before she would be able to apply for permission to travel to Tengehow.
In her spare time in these early days she set about studying the old maps where the British Legation had been during the Boxer Uprising, and would walk the streets, endeavouring to imagine what everything looked like in those days, where Lin’s parents’ house might have been that was burned down, where ‘Chinese’ Morrison lived, and so on. One day in her wanderings she came across a small jeweller’s shop in the general vicinity of the past British Legation and walked in.
The jeweller came out, quite astonished that a foreigner was in his shop. Each individual Chinese in those days was still nervous about being seen alone with a foreigner. In actual fact, few of the young in China had ever seen a white person, and would act occasionally startled if one appeared, a reaction which she often personally experienced.
Anyhow, speaking in Chinese, Helene took off her ring and showed it to the jeweller. He turned it around, got out his magnifying glass and said: “I do not believe it. My grandfather made that ring!”
“How do you know?” she asked.
“It is easy”, he said. “See that mark there?” He gave the magnifying glass to Helene to look at it. “That is my grandfather’s mark, and the ring is his unique style. You see, it is a rarity to have diamonds in a jade ring, and as far as I know it was my grandfather’s original idea. Would you mind remaining here a few more minutes?”
She nodded, and he scurried to his back room. After about ten minutes, he emerged with a book covered in dust, the pages somewhat yellowed. He turned the pages, and then with a cry of delight said: “Here! Here it is!” He pointed to an entry in a particular page. “I do not believe it”, he exclaimed, “but it shows the ring was bought by a Robert Pride, who was in the Navy. I think it was the Australian Navy, and I can vaguely remember my grandfather talking about it. He said this couple were to be married, and he always wondered about them, and what happened to them.”
Helene then told the jeweller the complete story of the ring, and how she in turn still wore it. Many times, during her story, she noticed tears coming into the eyes of the jeweller.
When she had been at the Peking dig a number of months, and felt completely accepted by the archaeologists there, she explained that she wanted to visit the town of Tengehow, and why. They obtained permission for her, she purchased rail tickets, and was on her way. She did not tell Wei-min about her impending arrival, wanting to keep it as a complete surprise.
When she got off at the station at this small country town she was taken aback at the reaction of people when they saw her. Most had never seen a white person in their entire lives. Many simply ran away from her, but speaking fluent Chinese she ultimately was pointed in the direction of the school, which in the distant past had been the Mission for the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel.
There were children of all age levels in the playground as she walked in the school gates. They all wore the red band of the Pioneer movement around their arms, and many had a Chairman Mao badge on their breast. They separated when they saw her, and were surprised when she spoke to them in Chinese, asking where the office was. Though nervous and somewhat anxious, they pointed out the way.
She saw the sign, Office, in Chinese, and knocked. She heard, in Chinese, “Come in!”
Sitting at the desk was Wei-min. Her heart skipped a beat. She immediately thought how good looking he was.
He turned, a look of utter astonishment on his face, as she said laughingly, in Chinese: “I am looking for Wei-min!”
He jumped up and embraced her. “Helene, is it really you?”
“Yes, Wei-min, it is me at last.”
They looked at each other, taking in every moment. It had, indeed, been a long time since they had seen one another. They were together at last.
Wei-min soon thereafter took her to meet his father, who was likewise taken aback by the sudden appearance of Henry Luce’s daughter. They talked on and on, and Helene loved every moment of it, as her father’s and grandparent’s lives in China became even more real to her. Pieces of the jig-saw puzzle of those far-flung years came together for her. She conversed easily with them both in Chinese.
During their talk, Wei-min’s father asked her to stay with them as long as she wished. “You see”, said the father, “this was the Mission house, and there are a number of rooms. It is not as sophisticated as you doubtless are used to, but it is comfortable and homely.”
“I would be very happy”, she replied. “I was going to find a place for the night in town somewhere.”
“We would never allow that.”
“As I said, I would be very happy.”
During their discussions, she asked Wei-min’s father if he knew about the ring she was wearing.
“Do we know about it?” the father answered. “That ring is considered sacred in our family, and I am overwhelmed to view it at last. Wei-min told me you had it. In all honesty I feel that what I really know about it was what my mother told me.”
She intervened. “My father always called it the love ring. His mother told him it was only to be given to the woman he fell in love with. That happened to be my own mother, and she gave it to me before she passed on, because she loved me so.” Helene then related the chain of events that occurred after the ring had left China.
“That is an amazing story”, the father said when she had finished. “It is everything my mother would have hoped for, and more. She would love to have been here to meet you and to know that story of her ring.”
Helene only stayed two nights, but during that time, without saying anything, she felt even more drawn to Wei-min, and knew he felt the same way. Her mind was racing as she weighed up the impossibility of any lasting relationship between them. China had not as yet opened up a window to the world, old prejudices remained, and personal relationships with foreigners were not only not conceived of, but were frowned upon.
During the following months, Helene would come and spend every weekend with the family, and with each ensuing visit the feelings she had for Wei-min deepened even more.
It all came to a climax one evening when they walked together in the old Mission grounds. Wei-min stopped suddenly and turned towards her. “Helene”, he said, “I would like to talk to you about something very special.”
“Yes, that would be all right”, she answered. She felt her heart flutter and could feel a flush spreading over her face. She wondered, she hoped, that he would at last express his feelings openly.
He hesitated, for he knew realistically that what he wanted to say could never be achieved in his lifetime. “Helene, Helene, I am at a loss for words. How can I say what I feel? How can I say it?”
“It’s all right, Wei-min, just say what you are thinking.”
“It is just so very, very difficult. From the very moment I met you many years ago I have known that you are the woman I have always waited for. We Chinese believe in fate, as we discussed at Oxford, and I always believed that I was fated to meet the woman I would love to eternity,
and I know that you are that one. Please pardon me, Helene, but I love you.”
She swept into his arms. “You don’t have to say any more, Wei-min. I too have waited all these years for the right man. I too know it is you.”
He kissed her passionately, their bodies merging, and trembling. “You know”, Wei-min said, “you are the only woman I have ever kissed.”
Helene smiled and said: “I cannot go that far, but you are certainly the first person I have kissed who I have loved. So there!”
They kissed again, and then he cried out plaintively: “But it is impossible, Helene, it is all so hopeless. I want to marry you, but the authorities here would never permit it. What can we do? What can we possibly do?”
“And I want to marry you, Wei-min. There must be a way, there must be”, she said, tears in her eyes. “We say in my country that where there’s a will there’s a way.”
“I would like to think so, but quite honestly I cannot see how. In any case, I think we should tell my father. I have always been very open with him, and I greatly respect his feelings and advice.”
They walked over to the old Mission house, holding hands, and sought out his father. He sat quietly, without interruption, until his son had finished what he had to say.
“My son, and Helene”, he stated, “I am not so much of an old fool that I have not noticed how attracted you were and have been to one another, and I appreciate you telling me as soon as you realised it yourself. I knew that this night would inevitably come. First, let me say that you two falling in love exceeds my wildest hopes and dreams. Our families have been intertwined for so many years. My mother would approve without hesitation, as I do and I know my wife does.”
He stopped and paused before he went on. “As I said, I have known for some time that this night would come, and I have thought about it constantly. For the life of me, I cannot see how the problem can be resolved. From what I know about China and the present Chinese bureaucracy I cannot see a solution.”