by Eileen Chang
Julie had hidden a five-dollar note inside her shoe when she escaped from Ned’s. One day she broke a teapot while washing the dishes. Luckily it was a pure white English teapot that she was able to replace—it cost her three dollars. Rachel said nothing. On Mother’s Day, Julie walked past a flower shop and saw an array of common garden peonies in the window. One was flowering beautifully, a long round flower with deep pink double petals and golden yellow stamens—it reminded her of Rachel. Julie walked into the store and pointed at the flower. “I just want to buy one,” she said, and then asked timidly, “How much will it cost?”
“Seventy cents,” said the old shop boy, as shop assistants were called in Shanghai. His face was yellow, and he wore a white cotton gown. As if he did not mind the small transaction, he was eagerly attentive and cheerfully pulled out the stalk and carefully wrapped it, first in green wax paper and then with white paper, like an infant in swaddling with a single peony as its face.
“My gift to Second Aunt,” said Julie as she proffered the flower to Rachel, who removed the white paper and the green wax paper, revealing the whole stem. The peony must have been too heavy, as the stem had broken. A piece of wire braced it.
“Oh no!” cried Julie, an explosion reverberating in her ears, as if the world had just collapsed. She waited for the customary truckloads of abuse to cascade down on her yet again: “I really don’t know where this stupidity of yours comes from—even your second uncle is not like this” and “How can you think of venturing out into the world if you keep doing such stupid things?” When Julie recalled the fawning demeanor of the old shop attendant, she felt utterly ashamed.
“No matter,” said Rachel in an uncharacteristically gentle voice. “We’ll put the flower in water and I’m sure it will last for quite a few days.” She filled a large glass mug with water, inserted the flower, and placed the mug on her bedside table. Surprisingly, the peony bloomed for almost two weeks before wilting.
“Young girls don’t need to dress up,” Rachel often expounded, “and they don’t need to perm their hair; just brush it so the hair curls inward and doesn’t look so straight.” But Julie’s hair was not compliant. And when she put on Judy’s old blue gown, it was too big for her—she looked like a mouse wearing a lotus leaf. Julie was painfully aware that she did not meet her mother’s standards of elegance and beauty.
“You are born with your looks,” Rachel lectured, “and there’s nothing that can be done about it. Posture and bearing, however, are your own. Your second uncle’s actually not bad-looking and was very handsome as a teenager. Next time when you see someone you admire, be sure to observe their posture,” she said, articulating the last word in English.
Julie was so embarrassed she could not even look at Rachel. The topic was never mentioned again.
Rachel habitually blurted out “Oh là là!” in French whenever she was pleasantly surprised. She also acquired a taste for artichokes, which she cooked by the plateful, piled up like gray-green hedgehogs, and consumed them bract by bract, sucking each one for a brief moment with a melancholy demeanor as if lost in thought.
“Oh, my Philippe is so handsome,” Rachel often said to Judy, giggling. He was a law faculty student. Julie saw in Rachel’s sketchbook a likeness of his statuesque profile wearing spectacles.
“They’re all doing military training now and are scared to death. They hate and fear the Germans. Afraid of fighting a war. He says he’ll die for sure.”
“Is he waiting for you to go back?” Judy asked casually.
Rachel turned her head and laughed. “In such matters, it’s all over when one parts ways.”
Nonetheless, Rachel was forever writing on blue airmail letters, with two sheets of paper to hide the upper and lower panels and only revealing the middle, as she asked Julie for help with vocabulary. Julie found all this comical.
“I have two living dictionaries,” Rachel often exclaimed, referring to Judy and Julie.
Rachel rarely hosted dinner parties but one day she lamented to Judy, “No choice, owe too many favors and they all want me to cook.”
The layout of the small apartment was designed for “tea for two” entertaining, and there wasn’t even a formal dining table. A set of glass tables was hobbled together to make do. In the dim yellow lamplight Rachel wore a plain Western-style black velvet blouse with a turndown collar adorned with a carved, oblong turquoise belt buckle.
All the dishes were arranged on the table, the rice placed in a large oval serving bowl with a lid, according to Western etiquette.
“We’re still short one chair,” said Rachel.
Julie looked for a chair in another room but they had all been moved out. The only prospect was a small armchair. She hesitated at first, then decided there was no other alternative. The chair sat on a small rug and moving it wasn’t an easy task. At first it wouldn’t budge, and then she almost knocked over a standing lamp. Ever since moving in, Julie had been quick to attend to household tasks to prove her ability to adjust to a new environment. There was a time when she didn’t even know how to strike a match. Once, in a chemistry class, she was unable to light a Bunsen burner. The American teacher came over to see what was wrong and, with a look of contempt on her face, struck the match for Julie.
At home, the maidservants had always promptly jumped in to prevent Julie from striking matches, saying, “I’ll do it, I’ll do it,” afraid she’d have an accident and start a fire.
“The ladies of the Pien family go out in the streets alone to buy things!” Auntie Lee used to say in days gone by, as if it were a matter of shame.
Rachel had a set of custom-made rugs with Picasso-painting designs, and these had to be negotiated in order to move the armchair to the living room. Julie could roll up a corner here and there to get by, but sometimes she had to lift the armchair. When the rugs were wrinkled, it was easy to bump into things and break them. After struggling her way past one rug, she encountered another. With great difficulty, Julie managed to push the sofa into the corridor, and by the time she had made it to the doorway of the living room, she was utterly exhausted. Suddenly her eyes met with Rachel’s scowl of disbelief.
“What on earth are you doing? Pig!”
Miss Hsiang, Nancy, and her husband, as well as Mr. Pi were all there. Everyone including Julie pretended not to have heard Rachel’s scathing remark, and with a forced smile, Julie pushed the sofa back to its original position. By the time she returned to the dining table, a chair had appeared; Judy must have borrowed it from the next-door neighbors.
Whenever Rachel criticized her, Julie’s attempts at an explanation would only elicit angry responses from Rachel: “Well, you always have a reason.”
“If I didn’t have a reason, why would I do it?” thought Julie, but henceforth she offered no more explanations.
One afternoon while Rachel was brushing her hair in the bathroom she said, out of the blue, “I was thinking: What if you meet a man in England?”
“I won’t,” said Julie, smiling.
“People have always told me that all girls, whether they go to school or not, end up the same,” said Rachel. Then she added that it was best to have a skill to fall back on when married, even if you end up never using it.
Julie knew she had already caused Rachel embarrassment by giving up on piano lessons after so many years.
“It was her decision!” said Judy, imitating Jade Flower’s tone of voice.
Students had to take piano lessons in school to be permitted to play on the school’s pianos, but the teacher’s demands conflicted with those of Julie’s previous instructor. One wanted her wrists low, the other wanted her wrists to protrude upward. The White Russian instructor shed tears because she was so angry at Julie. With a disdainful smile, the old spinster at the boarding school smacked the back of Julie’s hands hard. In the end, Julie decided to learn to draw caricatures instead of continuing with the piano.
“You’re already sixteen,” said Judy. “Don’t change your m
ind again.”
Rachel was constantly bemoaning the lack of opportunities to learn different things during her own childhood. “We missed out because we started too late.”
If Julie indulged in a dalliance in England, that would be considered a hard slap in her mother’s face. She understood her mother’s concerns but also knew that even a written pledge would make no difference to her.
“One always thinks the first love affair is simply marvelous!” said Rachel, seething.
Julie smiled. “I won’t get involved with anyone. I want to earn as much money as has been spent on me so I can reimburse Second Aunt.” Packed in a long box and buried beneath a dozen ruby-red roses.
Rachel appeared not to have heard. “It’s so unfair. I’ve been stuck here since my return—I can’t go anywhere. Actually, I could marry you off. There’ll always be someone who wants a young woman. Anyway, we Chinese only care about ‘virtuous maidens.’ The men all want virgins—as long as you’re a virgin, even a maid like Jade Peach is worth chasing. Back in the day, Yün-chih used to pester me about letting him have her.”
Julie was flabbergasted. I’ve had independence drummed into me since childhood and now she thinks she can just marry me off? Julie found all this talk of maidens and virgins sordid.
“I’m reluctant to introduce boyfriends to you, because as soon as I mention it, you become flustered, and then if I actually found someone, you’d …you’d act completely like… .” Rachel lowered her voice, and with an intimate yet frightening motion, she flapped her hands in front of her chest to demonstrate the seething restlessness of a girl in emotional turmoil. To Julie this seemed a bit filthy. Despite Rachel’s metaphorical allusions, Julie found the constant references to “you” irritating. Julie could not understand why Rachel was saying all this to her. Although Rachel had said “marry you off,” which Julie understood to be an old-fashioned forced marriage, she had never imagined that her mother, an accomplished matchmaker, would seriously contemplate making a match for her. Rachel probably assumed Julie was jealous of her cousins. Of course, her cousins were perfect candidates for matchmaking. Unlike traditional girls who grew up in conservative households and would run away at the merest mention of matchmaking, they sat straight up and smiled, listening attentively, and occasionally expressed an opinion. One of her cousins had said, “Marry, and marry rich,” which Julie approved of in this case because it felt appropriate for her cousin. But Julie yearned for a romance like those she saw in the movies. She wasn’t only hypothetically opposed to matchmaking; if she were put in that position she would become paralyzed with embarrassment. That would never do. Of course, Julie never shared these inner thoughts with anyone. The time for making high-minded statements had passed long ago.
Rachel paused for a moment, and then, dropping in some English, said, “I know that Second Uncle broke your heart.”
Julie abruptly turned around and glared at her mother, as if Rachel were a stranger who had intruded upon a private family affair. She’s so sure Second Uncle broke my heart! “How could he break my heart?” she screamed inside her head. “I never loved him!”
Rachel immediately stopped talking. Julie was unaware that Fifth Uncle’s good offices had been recruited to patch things up so Julie could go back home. Rachel naturally assumed that Julie’s fury was caused by her discovery of the behind-the-scenes negotiations and did not try her hand at persuasion.
“We Shengs are very cognizant of money matters,” Ned said to Fifth Uncle. Then he added, “Ladies living together are bound to quarrel.”
“Julie’s mother is dropping a brick on her own foot,” Jade Flower chimed in.
Julie was convinced Rachel’s sour attitude toward her was because of Philippe—she would lose him if she did not return to Europe. Am I guilty of tearing two lovers apart? One day Rachel went out and left the key in the lock of the desk drawer. All those blue airmail letters were kept in the top drawer.
“This is unbearable,” Julie thought. “I have a right to know exactly what I’ve done.” She steeled her heart, turned the key, opened the drawer, and carefully retrieved the first letter. It was one Rachel had written and hadn’t sent yet. Apart from the intimate salutations, it was like any of her other letters, replete with complaints, in this instance of being so busy there was no time to study French, and mentioned she had joined a local art society to learn sculpture. A dozen or so crosses ended the letter which Julie knew represented kisses and were often found in letters written by children in the West.
Even after reading the letter, Julie could not find any clues. She had seen so many endlessly sentimental movies where the central relationship was never consummated. She didn’t know these films were edited to evade the censors; film buffs certainly understood the situation. Like many advocates of the ill-fated reforms of 1898, from early childhood on Julie had believed that paranoia was simply a sign of stubbornness and narrow-mindedness.
As usual, Aunt Chu frequently came over to play mah-jongg. But now Rachel said, “The senior consort is no fun anymore.”
“She changed after Uncle Chu got into trouble,” said Judy. “I can’t stand her swaying when she loses.” Rachel chuckled. “The more she sways, the more she loses.”
When Aunt Chu became anxious at the mah-jongg table, her upper body swayed from left to right.
Actually, Uncle Chu had already repaid all the money he owed by then and discharged himself from the hospital.
That evening Rachel and Judy took Julie to Aunt Chu’s residence for dinner. The young master wasn’t at home but the apartment was so small that two extra mouths for dinner necessitated putting the round dining table in the stairwell landing.
“Auntie Vermillion,” Aunt Chu called out to the maid from her seat at the dining table, “today the corn dish is delicious. The corn is succulent and the shredded pork is tender. It could use a touch more salt, though—it’s a little bland.” Aunt Chu was afraid of the maid.
Auntie Vermillion was leaning against the balustrade. “Well, add a little more salt, then,” she responded, raising her chin and not hiding her impatience.
After dinner it was announced that His Excellency had arrived. Aunt Chu, his principal consort, dragged Rachel and Judy downstairs. Julie trailed behind. Uncle Chu paced around the room. There was hardly any furniture in the narrow living room, just a long altar table and a square table for his ritual observances to the ancestors. The lamplight was dim and he had not taken off his coat. He didn’t look as filthy as the last time Julie had seen him, perhaps because the hospital had insisted that he bathe. Julie made her salutation: “Uncle Chu.”
He nodded acknowledgment and, while sizing Julie up, mumbled to Rachel, “Going to England, eh? She’ll be just like you two, with an unlimited future, sure to be outstanding.” Rachel muttered something modest in response. “The two of you really are like knight-errant female warriors of yore, genuine heroines. Your lives put all of us to shame.”
No one was seated. Aunt Chu stood to one side and emitted an occasional ahem to clear her throat.
“Have you been feeling better?” Judy inquired of His Excellency.
“I’m in good spirits but have no hobbies, so I just indulge myself with the planchette in search of revelations from the spirits.”
“Is it efficacious?”
“That I do not know. It requires a measure of luck; sometimes its prognostications seem compelling. Would you care to come and watch? It’s just upstairs at the Forest of Zen Vegetarian Restaurant. There are two diviners who recite poetry with their acolytes, one of whom is a female celestial being.”
“I hear,” Judy teased, “that you’ve been very active there lately.”
“No, no,” he chuckled, “not at all.”
“People say you’re coming out of retirement.”
“No, no. Definitely not true. That’s just people making up rumors because they can’t abide the thought of me surviving my ordeal.”
“Ahem.” Aunt Chu cleared her throat a
gain.
Rachel and Judy had a good laugh about that when they got home. “I can’t stand seeing Aunt Chu so tense and stiff in front of His Excellency.”
“Some say that the Japanese are negotiating with him to come out of retirement, but I don’t know if there’s a grain of truth in it.”
“He did swear by the heavens and the sun that it wasn’t true.”
“Of course he’d say that.”
Their chats in the bathroom at night and Rachel’s genial laughter had become uncommon occurrences. Ever since Julie moved in, she was aware that there was something amiss. Rachel would explode hysterically on occasion, and Judy would meekly yield to her. At first, Julie couldn’t fathom why Judy didn’t move out. Later she heard Judy say that in order to save money she’d rather live in the small back room facing the landing, which she could still decorate herself. Julie eventually learned that Westerners placed a great deal of emphasis on one’s home address, and that it was important for someone working in a foreign company to live at a respectable one. Judy certainly rose quickly in her company.
Rachel entrusted Mr. Pi to apply for Julie’s passport, and he turned the responsibility over to someone else. Within a fortnight it arrived by post from Chungking. Rachel reacted with pride. “You’ll be in deep trouble if you lose this! You can’t stay in a foreign country without a passport, and you can’t leave—it would be better to die than to lose a passport.”
“Be patient,” said Judy cheerily into the bathroom one day. “When the time comes, she’ll be ready.” Julie saw Judy standing by the bathroom door and overheard her side of the conversation. Julie knew that Rachel had been talking about her. In fact, Judy had reservations about sending Julie overseas, and later said quietly to Julie, “I tried to talk her out of it but she wouldn’t budge.”