Little Reunions

by Eileen Chang

  However, Julie had never seen the jade vases. When she examined the inventory from the auction house, the edge of her lips curled into a bitter smile. “Never afforded me an opportunity to broaden my horizons,” thought Julie. “As the saying goes, ‘One must not reveal valuables to strangers.’ The older generation really treated us as if they needed to guard against thieves.”

  When Rachel returned after the war, she didn’t punish Julie to exact revenge for Rachel’s brother, Uncle Yün-chih. That disappointed the Pien family, who were now no longer as warm toward Rachel as before.

  The cousins used to worship Rachel as some kind of fairy godmother, but when they saw how much she had changed, they lost interest in her, only performing their welcoming duties perfunctorily.

  “My Rick was really good to me,” said Rachel to Judy out of the blue. They were sitting at the dining table. “He stuffed two hundred dollars into my suitcase. He always said I needed someone to look after me.”

  Julie felt numb, save for a slight twinge of desolation. Being pressed hard from all sides, Rachel needed some warm memories. She treasured them as dearly as her own life.

  Dollars. Rachel must have met up with him that time when she made a side trip to Java on her way home from Paris. Rick had gone to Southeast Asia for a vacation. He was the “awful” pathology teaching assistant the female students complained about—a squat, pasty young man.

  Julie did her best to numb herself. Perhaps she was too thorough because she didn’t just behave this way toward her mother. She went into hibernation. She didn’t notice that the copper bed warmer had burnt her leg until she woke up the next morning and found a blister the size of a chicken egg above her ankle. Winter was so cold she couldn’t manage without socks, so she simply cut a hole in her sock. But the blister refused to recede. It became infected, its color changing to a yellow-green.

  “Let me take a look,” said Rachel.

  Nancy was also there. She tsk-tsked upon seeing Julie’s wound. Nancy and her husband had been back in Shanghai for a while.

  “Ought to be lanced.” Rachel always had an extensive first-aid kit on hand. She sterilized a small pair of scissors and stabbed the pustule. Julie felt a momentary coldness, then pus spurted out, emptying completely. Rachel gently cut back the broken skin.

  Julie was quite accomplished at anesthetizing herself. She sensed her mother’s pleasantly cool fingers, but she suppressed her emotions and remained unmoved.

  “Goodness,” chuckled Nancy from the sidelines, “Rachel’s hands are trembling.”

  Rachel continued on, holding back a smile, as she cut away Julie’s dead skin without saying a word.

  Julie felt extremely embarrassed. In the old days, she would have died of shame.

  After antiseptic was applied the wound stubbornly refused to heal. Finally, Nancy said, “Get Charlie to come and take a look.” Dr. Yang was a renowned surgeon who lectured at a university medical school outside the city. Asking him to treat a blister was like wielding a slaughterhouse poleax to kill a chicken, but the ointment he applied didn’t work, either. Every day he brought a freshly picked leaf of Chinese honey locust from the university botanical garden to place over the wound, which he then wrapped with gauze. The dressing was changed daily and after several months the wound finally healed. By that time Rachel was about to leave for Malaya.

  “She’s really like a wandering Jew,” joked Judy in a low voice behind Rachel’s back. Condemned to wander forever, just like in the myth.

  Julie stayed silent. There was no way of knowing if Rachel planned to settle down this time, but she knew without a doubt that she was the cause of her mother leaving in a fit of pique. Rachel couldn’t really stay in Shanghai anyway—it wouldn’t be appropriate for her to set up another household in the city.

  There was a brief time when Rachel spoke of moving to West Lake to join Second Master in her religious practice. This Second Master, an old spinster of the Pien clan, had entered a nunnery on the banks of the lake.

  When the departure date was set, Rachel couldn’t wait and moved out early, taking up residence in the luxurious Park Hotel, apparently to make a statement.

  Rachel had always harped on and on in the same vein: “When I return I must have a place to call home.” But this time Judy returned half of the key money to Rachel; she probably didn’t plan to go back to China again.

  While Rachel was packing, she became attracted to a turquoise biscuit tin that belonged to Judy.

  “Take it,” said Judy. “You can keep bits and bobs inside it.”

  “You keep it. I can buy a tin of biscuits for myself.”

  “Take it. I really have no use for it.”

  “Second Aunt and Third Aunt, friends until death, indulging in such courtesies over a tin can,” thought Julie. She felt disconcerted.

  Before leaving Rachel took out a pair of jade earrings and placed them beside a small pile of jewels, loose red and blue sapphires, and asked Julie to choose. She picked the earrings.

  “Give the rest to your brother. When he gets married have them set so his bride can wear them.”

  Jade Peach stopped by. She had visited when Rachel returned, but when she came again this time, Rachel had already left Shanghai.

  Judy and Jade Peach chatted, and inevitably the conversation turned to the change in Rachel’s temperament. “She’s a terror when it comes to settling accounts.” Judy chuckled. They always believed the adage “Even siblings keep careful accounts,” because otherwise people always feel they’ve been taken advantage of. It was human nature. However, whenever Judy settled accounts with Julie, her niece, she’d habitually say, “Repay me six dollars and fifty cents and there’ll be no hint of discontent.” That day when she talked about Rachel, Judy laughed it off. “She always shortchanges me and then becomes offended if I say anything.”

  “Acts like an idiot when receiving money but becomes very smart when asked to give money,” snorted Jade Peach, in the Nanking dialect.

  Julie was surprised to hear that. “Why are people so snobbish?” she thought. “As soon as she grows old, kith and kin betray her.”

  Yen Shan visited.

  At dusk, they sat snuggled up to each other. She told him about her mother and their mother-daughter relationship. Because she had not introduced him, she needed to explain everything to him.

  No romantic talk ensued.

  “If anyone overheard me, they would think I was completely heartless and ungrateful,” she said at last.

  “Of course I believe you’ve done nothing wrong,” he said.

  Not that she didn’t believe him—she just felt a wave of gloom fill her heart.

  Julian visited.

  Like Jade Peach, he had also come earlier. That was right when his cousin, the wife of his superior, summoned him from Hangchow. Julie wasn’t present for the meeting between mother and son.

  No doubt he had heard from his cousin that Rachel had left, but he nonetheless asked, “Second Aunt is gone?” Suddenly, a strange sarcastic smile appeared on his face.

  His smile implied Rachel had changed.

  Julie served tea. “Will you be staying at the family home while in Shanghai?” she asked politely.

  “I’m staying in the bank dormitory with a friend.” He sipped his tea. “I went home once and brought two sacks of rice with me. Stayed one night. A friend gave me some money to look after for him but at some point Second Uncle found it and took it all. He said to me, ‘What’s this money for? Why are you carrying all this money? Leave it here with me and when you need to use it come to me.’ I said, ‘This is not my money, it’s a friend’s, and I have to hand it over to him immediately.’”

  Julie was shocked. Her first reaction was to blame her brother for being careless. How could he bring money with him when he went there? Of course it was his own savings. A friend gave him a pile of money for safekeeping? What nonsense—as if he’s reliable. He didn’t mention Jade Flower. Maybe she was the instigator.

  �
�Second Uncle wrote a letter to Brother Hsü asking for a loan,” Julian continued. “He asked me to post it for him. I may have a chance to go up north to reconnect with Brother Hsü. It’s not a good time to borrow money from him, so I didn’t post the letter.”

  This shocked Julie even more.

  “How can Second Uncle be so hard up? Didn’t both of them stop smoking opium?”

  “Second Uncle’s just like that now,” Julian said, frowning. “He’s nearly insane. When the mortgage is due he just tosses the bill in a drawer. Mother told me. She’s furious.”

  “Mother is probably angry he doesn’t put everything in her name.”

  “No,” Julian retorted. “You don’t know, Mother is good. It’s Second Uncle who doesn’t care and has let everything fall apart. Mother, however, is cool-headed.”

  “He loves Jade Flower,” thought Julie.

  Julie, of course, understood that in all human relationships, there’s room for distortion, making it easy to deceive oneself. Not at all like Rachel doggedly locking him out of her life.

  Julie once asked Julian which female film stars he liked. He said Bette Davis—an older woman also with large empty eyes, though Jade Flower’s face was a little longer. She often played a villainous woman, sometimes a teacher who protected young students, or an older woman who sacrificed herself for her illegitimate child.

  “Why do you like her?” Julie asked at the time.

  “Because her English pronunciation is very clear.” Then he began to stutter. “Some actors you can’t hear very clearly,” he added, fearing she would think his English was no good at all.

  Julie could imagine that after finding an excuse to send Ned away, Jade Flower would exchange some private words with her stepson, complaining how insane his father had become and giving Ned the opportunity to rummage through his son’s luggage.

  Julie stood up, opened a cabinet drawer, and retrieved the pouch of jewels. She opened the small paper packet. The cluster of small precious stones was hardly impressive, especially after he had just lost all that money.

  “This is from Second Aunt. She said to wait until you married and have them set for your bride.”

  Julian suddenly beamed ecstatically, probably because no one had ever mentioned the subject of his marriage to him before. Julie couldn’t stop the waves of sadness from sweeping over her heart.

  “It’s not that I don’t take an interest in your younger brother’s affairs,” Rachel had always maintained. “He’s the only son and I expected they would let him have an education no matter what.”

  Even if they didn’t provide him a proper education, they would find him a wife. After all, the greatest offense against filial piety is to have no heirs.

  When Ned remarried, he wanted more children. So why is he now so unconcerned about becoming heirless? Of course, having his own child and his son having a child was a distinction of self and other. Julie always knew that her father’s adherence to tradition was simply self-serving.

  Or was it that Jade Flower now depended on Julian, so she didn’t want him to marry?

  Because Julie felt sad and also embarrassed for him, she couldn’t bear the silence. She anxiously searched for something to say. “Second Aunt asked me to choose between two groups of jewelry,” said Julie, smiling awkwardly. “I chose a pair of jade earrings.”

  “Oh.” He smiled, grunting an acknowledgment, obviously expecting her to show him the earrings. They were in the same drawer in the cabinet but she remained seated. He couldn’t hide his astonishment, staring with his large round eyes. He sat for a while longer then left, scooping up the pouch of jewels with a smile and slipping it into his pocket.

  Julie related to Judy what her brother had told her. “From the sound of it,” Judy fumed, “he’s saying your second uncle is old and mad and unable to think straight, and he himself should be in charge of everything.”

  “Now she’s defending the brother who betrayed her?” pondered Julie. “For some people only blood relatives can criticize and the criticism of outsiders only provokes resentment.”

  No. Judy is merely being loyal to her own generation, resenting the new always taking the place of the old like “ future waves on the Yang-tze River pushing up against the previous waves.”

  The flat hoop-shaped, deep green jade earrings were less than an inch in diameter and each hung from a short gold chain. Julie’s ears weren’t pierced so she could only wear them if she asked a jeweler to add screw buttons. She held them up to her ears. Her hair was long, and the dark green hoops were barely visible through her bouffant curls.

  A year later Julie still hadn’t worn the earrings. She finally decided to sell them. She didn’t actually need the money at the time but the earrings reminded her of her mother and brother, causing her too much pain.

  Judy accompanied Julie to an old-fashioned jewelry store to help negotiate the sale.

  “You got a good price,” said Judy.

  “Because they knew,” thought Julie, “that I didn’t really want to sell.”

  Of course they always know.

  12

  “HEY,” Yen Shan said, smiling. “Tell me, are you a good person or a bad person?”

  Julie laughed. “That’s like when we watched movies as children. As soon as a new character appeared we’d immediately ask, ‘Is that one a goodie or a baddie?’”

  Of course she knew he was really asking about her relationship with Chih-yung. He had heard rumors, though after getting to know her, she didn’t fit the picture in his mind.

  He embraced Julie and mumbled softly, “You’re like a cat. A very big cat.” And continued, “You have an attractive face.

  “But tell me,” he said, still smiling, “are you a good person or a bad person?”

  “Of course I think I’m a good person,” Julie replied genially. When she saw his eyes suddenly sparkle with hope, she frowned.

  “I don’t go to the movies anymore,” she had said when she first became acquainted with Yen Shan. “Just a matter of habit. For a few years during the war there were no American movies to see and my craving evaporated.”

  Yen Shan appeared to be awed by Julie’s attitude, probably thinking that it was also a form of patriotism. Actually, Julie was simply trying to be frugal. But she did feel a sense of detachment when she saw the advertisements for postwar American movies. They didn’t appeal to her, perhaps because of the slight resentment she harbored against the victor.

  After a while he said, “I think not watching movies is your own loss.”

  Julie went with him twice to the cinema. As soon as the lights dimmed, gazing at his profile deep in concentration, she too felt awed by him, observing his expert eyes staring at the screen. Julie felt deep admiration, as she did for the tradesmen who install light fixtures, because that was something she could not do. Since ancient times, men of letters tend to despise each other.

  Likewise, Yen Shan initially found Julie unfathomable. Once, after listening to her speak for a long time, he smiled and said, “Hey! What are you rattling on about?”

  Yen Shan rarely wore dark glasses. Most of the time he wore somber black-framed or tortoiseshell spectacles that completely altered his appearance, giving him a low-key profile that didn’t attract attention the way dark glasses would. They never patronized fashionable restaurants—sometimes they dashed all the way to the city center to eat local dishes or to frequent a dreary, frigid, traditional northerner restaurant where they would be the only patrons present on an entire floor.

  On one occasion the two of them stood on a small pier. A large wooden ship was moored nearby. The vessel was unpainted and glowed with the natural yellow brightness of new lumber. It looked more than two stories high, probably a cargo transport. The bulky ship with creaking masts was unlike any of the traditional Chinese ships depicted in illustrations.

  “It’s headed for Poo-tung,” he said.

  Just a suburb across the Hwang-poo River, so near yet so far away. In the misty sunset,
she wondered from what dynasty the ship had set sail. She couldn’t imagine any circumstances in which she’d be able to board such a vessel.

  “Your hair is red.”

  That was because golden sunlight slanted across her hair.

  Yen Shan’s Mandarin wasn’t particularly fluent. He was a rarity in Shanghai: locally born. One day he got into an animated conversation with Judy about the fate of various edifices in Shanghai—such-and-such building originally belonged to this company or that foreign firm—the two of them constantly cutting each other off. While Julie liked Shanghai, she lacked their appreciation of the city’s history. Julie was delighted that Yen Shan and Judy had much in common. She felt like she was on that same tiny dark balcony when she had listened to Judy discussing fund-raising with Brother Hsü—high finance was a topic she knew nothing about. This time, however, she felt a tinge of jealousy. Dusk arrived and the room began to darken, but she restrained herself from standing up and turning on a lamp because she didn’t want them to think she was bored sitting on the sidelines and only turned on a light to interrupt their conversation. And yet they sensed something in the air and self-consciously ended their discussion.

  Julie felt she was compensating for the first love she never had, with the young man she never met. Yen Shan was a few years older than her but looked younger.

  Soon after her mother left, Chih-yung passed through Shanghai.

  Hsiunan telephoned; Julie waited by the elevator with the door unlatched so the visitor wouldn’t be forced to stand momentarily outside the door after ringing the bell and then possibly be observed by someone in the corridor. It was cold. Julie pushed her hands deep into the pockets of her heavy overcoat. She had initially kept the wool fringe along the hem of the long coat because it otherwise looked too short, but when Yen Shan said, “Those frayed edges look a bit strange,” she cut them off.

  Chih-yung stepped out of the elevator. Hsiunan nodded and smiled before the doors closed and the elevator descended.

  “You look beautiful,” Chih-yung said hesitantly.