All the Flowers in Shanghai

by Duncan Jepson

  “Perhaps we should try again tomorrow night.” He breathed out and the air smelled sharply of wine. “Good night.”

  He got up, bent over, and kissed me on the forehead. I could only see him for a second. Because I was so rigid with fear, I could not move my head to watch him leave the room. My tears continued. I felt for the sheet and once I had it between my fingers slowly pulled it over me. I lay there in safety for a few seconds then vomited over the bed.

  I was woken in the middle of the night by Yan, who looked concerned. I told her I was well enough, but very tired. I saw that the vomit had been cleaned up and my nightclothes laid out. I closed my eyes again and tried to pretend she was not there. The light from the candle kept me awake. I seemed to stay awake for hours, trying to sleep, and though I kept my eyes firmly shut, the faint yellow light danced over my eyelids, making me restive and agitated. When I opened them again, she was still sitting in the chair across the room, watching me. A light breeze broke through the slats in the shutters from the open window and entered the room. It made the flame of the candle move violently and wild shadows lurched around, casting strange shapes and patterns on the wall. I asked her to tell my new family, when morning came, that I was ill and could not leave my room. Then I closed my eyes again, and slept.

  Chapter 7

  I awoke to semidarkness as the slats in the shutters could not prevent all the daylight from entering. I could see my wedding dress hanging on the wardrobe door: it would be packed away today. I saw the fine stitching that had brought life to the phoenixes, flowers, and characters adorning the silk. Each golden stitch created by beautiful kind hands. Yet now it looked like a skin that had been shed. I wished the seamstress was here to return us both to life. I missed watching those hands that would never harm me. I closed my eyes and opened them again but nothing had changed; apart from my dress the rest of the room was solid dark wood and lacquer. Two large guan of blue-and-white porcelain had been placed on a high table near the wardrobe and there was a beautiful meiping in copper red between them. But they were cold, and like the rest of the room made me feel nothing but alone. Yan was gone. I curled up under the sheet and cried again.

  Later, Yan told me that on that morning I was traditionally required to make my new family a late breakfast, and that because I’d stayed in my room I had offended them. They had all gathered and waited for me to serve the meal, or at least tea. After Yan told them I was not coming, Father-in-law said nothing but First and Second Wives gossiped openly. They all shot accusing glances at Xiong Fa and eventually the two wives left indignantly. Father-in-law remained seated there for several hours, refusing to move. He sat with his arms folded, staring across the table at my empty seat. He could not understand how his daughter-in-law, now a Sang, could fail to keep the traditions and customs he valued so highly. Xiong Fa would be repeatedly reminded of this over the next few months and I would not be forgiven quickly.

  Yan had lied to them as I had asked her to and told them that the last few days had given me a fever. I was very tired and needed time to rest and recover. She brought bowls of medicinal soup to my room every three hours, showing how ill I must be, which she lined up in a row in front of the guan. Eventually she poured them into the chamber pot. I had also asked her to tell them I needed a long foot massage to aid my recovery so that she had a reason to spend the day with me.

  In the afternoon Yan brought me some congee, the delicious rice porridge, which I loved so much. She sat back in the chair and watched me start on it. I looked up at her and felt I should say something to bring us closer.

  “Do you know if this house has any gardens? I used to walk in the gardens next to my parents’ house with my grandfather. He loved flowers and trees and would tell me their names.”

  Yan leant forward to speak to me, resting her elbows on her knees and her chin on her fists.

  “I have heard the other servants talk of gardens but they say that old Master Sang built the house over most of them. There are some on the left side of the house but they are not visited much as the family likes to be inside. The outside is for peasants and servants,” she said with a smile.

  “I once met a boy in the gardens next to our home. He taught me how to fish and weave crayfish baskets. He made me laugh,” I said almost immediately in reply.

  “Ah, my husband was a good fisherman, he used to try to teach me how to fish but I was not very good.”

  “The boy I knew, his name was Bi, he was very good. We used to sit on the muddy riverbank and I would watch him . . .” Suddenly I was embarrassed that our lives had been so similar. I returned to blowing on my bowl of congee to cool it. Yan leaned back in her chair again.

  During the rest of the day, I slept a bit and we talked a little more about gardens and flowers and about the Sang house. Eventually it was night and she said she must brush my hair again, but first she went to light a new candle near the door. She picked up the brush and makeup from the sideboard by the door and, as she returned, beckoned me to sit in front of the mirror. She started to brush my hair slowly and gently. I looked up but suddenly I felt that I could not bear to look at myself. I just wanted to hide from the image reflected back at me, so I looked down again. As Yan brushed, I watched stray hairs drift to the floor.

  Already my days and nights here felt strangely dislocated, as if they had been ripped apart. Each night the same, and each day spent scared of the night to come. I crossed from one to the other like reading across a torn page: the story continued but somehow, for that brief moment, the telling would be interrupted and the tale left hanging awkwardly. I felt I was only fully myself when daylight came again.

  One night I lay naked on the bed once more, completely still, my legs pressed tightly together and my hands folded across my breasts. Before placing the sheet over me, Yan took my wrists and tried to pull my hands to my sides. At first she was just trying to guide them, then when I resisted she grew more forceful.

  Still I resisted, twisting my body away in one direction while straining my neck the other way to keep looking up at her: just seeing her comforted me. She stopped trying to move me and sat on the edge of the bed, her hands folded in her lap. I returned to lying on my back with my arms tightly wrapped over my breasts. Yan looked at me as Grandfather used to do. Then, for a second, she pursed her lips in such a forlorn and plaintive expression that it made me want to cry. She knew that it was to happen night after night.

  Slowly she replaced her hands on mine and I let her guide them to my sides. All the time her eyes never left mine. She pulled the sheet over me and then folded it down so that it came to just above my breasts. This was the same position as the previous nights; the one to which she would return me for several more weeks to come.

  This time she pulled the sheet taut so that it pressed my breasts tighter against my chest. Its closeness made me feel trapped and anxious. I began to sweat a little. Yan saw the small beads collecting on my forehead and brought over a fan, waving it for a few minutes to cool me. Again her eyes held mine, soothing and reassuring me as if I were her child, and for a moment I forgot everything. Once I was cool, she arranged my hair across the pillow as before.

  “This is a woman’s role. Your husband must satisfy himself. He is not a cruel man but he has not yet learned how to be gentle and kind to another person. There is still too much of this house in him.” She spoke the words slowly and softly.

  How would my husband satisfy himself? I did not know what that meant. My heart began to beat hard and fast. Barely moving beneath the tight-stretched sheet, I clenched the fingernails of my right hand into my palm. Pain overwhelmed me and distracted me from my fear.

  Shortly after Yan left me, Xiong Fa came into the room. He was wearing a dark-colored robe and his hair was neatly combed. He sat at the top of the bed beside me and must have seen that I was scared, because he did nothing, simply looked at me and smiled. For a moment we were both still, looking at each other, just as Yan and I had done moments before. My husband�
�s face was round and still retained the chubby youthfulness I had seen in it when he used to visit our home to collect Sister. He had told me then that he thought Sister might be too beautiful for him. In the end it had not mattered. But now, even in the few short months since I had met him, his eyes had grown old and tired; the whites had curdled to yellow and his pupils moved slowly and cautiously, as if the world was moving too quickly for him to keep up.

  Slowly he brought his hand up to my chest and, with his first finger, traced a line from between my breasts over the sheet and down between my legs. I flinched at his touch and he removed his finger, replacing his hand in his lap.

  Again we remained still, neither of us making a sound. He looked around the room and I followed his gaze. Then he returned to me and folded down the sheet so that my breasts were exposed. I was sweating again and could feel him looking at the tiny droplets pooling on my chest.

  I did not know what he would do next. I had no experience of such a situation or knowledge of how we were to behave. I did not understand his movements and gestures; they were all strange to me. At times he was tender, responding to my movements and changes of expression, but then he would quickly become absorbed in his own desires and almost forget I was there. At those moments, I felt that my body was like a meal that had been served to him. Ma should have explained these things.

  Xiong Fa leaned down and kissed one of my nipples. Then he kissed it again and licked around it with the tip of his tongue. It felt strange. No one had done this to me before and I had not thought any man would want to do it. I had known that my breasts would one day feed a baby, but not my husband. Every new movement he made scared me, because I did not know its meaning or purpose. But he was slow and cautious, which calmed me, and I tried to lift my head up so that I could watch what he was doing. I could only see the top of his head but I could feel his fat lips and tongue. He kissed the skin between my breasts down toward my waist, and then slid his head upward again to place each nipple in turn between his teeth and suck on them.

  Then I felt his left hand move under the sheet at my waist. I knew what he was going to do next and felt scared. I wanted to stop myself from feeling scared, but I knew my obligations and felt guilty that I would not be allowing my husband to satisfy himself if I tried to turn away from him. Yan had said this was the woman’s role and I was the First Wife. Without knowing exactly why, I wanted to remain so.

  Still, even with these thoughts, I instinctively closed my legs tight, but he rested his hand in between them and worked his fingers inside me. As they entered me, I gasped. His nails scraped and cut me, and at the sharp pain tears formed in my eyes. I tried to turn over and away from him but with his fingers inside me it was impossible. I seemed to have no control over myself or my body.

  He pushed three fingers into me, not stabbing but slowly and firmly. I clenched my fists from the pain of it. I felt that I would burst. To be filled this way seemed unnatural. He pushed again, only slightly higher, and this time I started to cry, partly from the pain but more from fear and helplessness because there was nothing I could do to resist. He heard me and looked up and saw that I was crying. He withdrew his fingers, leaving me sore and exposed. I desperately wanted to put my hand to myself for protection but dared not move.

  He sat upright and pulled the sheet back above my breasts. He brushed my forehead with the fingers of his right hand and kissed me on the forehead as before. Then he quietly left the room.

  I curled myself into a ball and continued to cry. I clenched my fists so hard that the nail of my middle finger cut into my palm, though I only noticed this when I awoke later. The pain from my nail distracted me from the other pain deep inside me. While I cried in my fear and loneliness, I could think only of my family: of Ma and Ba eating at the table and Grandfather sitting in his chair watching the rain. I did not understand why they would want me to come here when it would be like this.

  I passed into sleep without sensing I had left consciousness and found myself sitting with Sister at the small kitchen table at home. We each had a bowl of dumplings before us but the vinegar I had in mine was very sour and smelled bad. When I asked Cook if there was anything slightly sweeter, Sister came behind me and grabbed me around the neck with her arm, and with her other hand gripped my chin and cheeks as she had done that day outside my bedroom. She was crying and holding me tight against her. I could not free myself but still I struggled and twisted, trying to turn away. Her face was bony and fierce and she was shouting that I must eat the food as it had been served, she would not allow me to change anything. She held me and tried to force me to eat but I clenched my mouth shut.

  I woke suddenly. My chest felt very tight and I was gasping as if I had been crying hard. I understood now why Sister had told me to think of her. She had known how ignorant and vulnerable I was. Even faced with her own death, she had relished the thought that although I would receive everything from a marriage into this family, in my innocence and foolishness, I would be frightened and damaged by it. I lay watching the candle stub flicker and burn away and realized that I hated everyone I had left behind for not protecting me.

  Chapter 8

  On the morning of the fifth day, Yan woke me early. She washed the cut in my palm that I had made by clenching my fist tight in fear and wrapped a clean linen bandage around my hand to protect it.

  “We must get you ready quickly this morning as your father-in-law demands that all family members eat breakfast together. This morning you must be there,” she told me.

  She hurried about, frowning.

  “You are required to serve him tea.”

  Then she stopped bustling and held my hand.

  “Remember, because you did not appear yesterday to serve the Master the traditional breakfast, if you are late or do not attend this morning, he will be extremely offended and you will be punished. Whatever he asks you to do, you should do it carefully and properly.”

  After seeing for myself how Father-in-law and First Wife had rigidly enforced the rules of the wedding ceremony, I understood the risks of failure. I sat in front of the mirror but could not bring myself to look at my face, just at my hand, which had started to sting. Yan finished getting me ready and then I was taken downstairs to a dining room.

  I had not seen this room before. The walls were simply whitewashed and covered with portraits of the male members of the family. Stretching around the entire room, where the walls met the ceiling, was a beautiful gold-and-jade cornice. The tables were round, according to tradition. The head table where Father-in-law would sit so imperiously was much larger than the rest, and the others were arranged around it in order of importance. At the other tables sat members of the extended family, a few of whom I recognized from the wedding. On this particular morning, Father-in-law had been sitting waiting for us all to enter so he could see who was late and who was not dressed properly.

  Everyone watched me enter with Yan leading the way. I was shown to a chair next to Xiong Fa, who smiled at me as I sat down. He whispered to me that a servant would now bring me a cup of tea that I would take to Father-in-law, and every time he drained his cup, I would be required to take him a freshly filled one.

  The room fell silent as the servant approached me with a tray holding a lidded cup and a beautiful teapot. I stood up and took the cup and saucer over to Father-in-law.

  Holding the saucer was awkward as my hand was still very painful and sore from the angry cut in my palm. I managed to place the cup in front of him and took a step back. I waited for a moment, one pace behind his chair, expecting him to signal that I could return to my seat, but instead he lifted the lid, blew on the tea, and swallowed it in one gulp. Then he looked up at me with the hardest, most demanding eyes I had ever seen. Remembering that moment, I am glad I never saw such coldness in Xiong Fa.

  I took the cup from its place in front of him and returned it to the servant, who quickly took it away to a corner of the room where the teapot was stationed, and refilled it. He re
turned to me and again I took the cup to my Father-in-law. I placed it in front of him, assuming that he would drink again. He looked up at me and asked me where I thought he would put his bowl with a cup in front of him. I hesitated. Still staring at me, he demanded I move it. I picked up the cup and placed it to one side. Father-in-law nodded and I returned to my seat.

  I already felt tired again and sat at the table wishing I could go back to my room. I could not hold chopsticks properly because of the cut in my hand, so I chose to eat congee. That did not please Father-in-law or First Wife, as I was quietly told by Xiong Fa.

  As we ate, the servant would continually appear at my side with Father-in-law’s empty tea cup, which would then be refilled for me to take to him. My hand ached from holding the little saucer. Eventually, after eight or nine cups, I dropped everything. Tea cup, saucer, and lid smashed on the floor and the whole room fell silent.

  Father-in-law got to his feet and looked at the broken porcelain. I saw First Wife laughing with Second Wife. Xiong Fa also stood up and ordered the servants to clear the mess up, but his father immediately countermanded this and told them not to move. After standing there glaring at the spilled tea and shattered porcelain, he frowned at his son then left the room in silence.

  Later that morning I stood by the window in my room and looked out at the courtyard and the guards by the door to the street. Winter was fast approaching. Soon it would become cold and the wind would start to stir up the dust, but in this courtyard there was no dust and the wind would not be allowed to enter. I suspected the guards would stand there no matter how cold it became, because they had been ordered to do so.

  Every evening would begin with dinner. The meal was always served at half past six exactly and everyone in the household was expected to gather and be in their place before Father-in-law entered. We all stood quietly behind our chairs while we waited, with the servants standing off to one side of the room, each man with his head shaved at the front Manchurian-style and a long braided queue hanging down his back. All the servants wore plain black cotton collarless jackets with knotted buttons down the front and black trousers, regardless of whether they were women or men. Father-in-law demanded that their dress was always clean and pressed. Like Yan, all the servants were small and nimble, moving softly and quickly; none of them were ugly or clumsy, as Father-in-law could not bear to look upon anything that disgusted him.