The Samurai's Garden: A Novel

by Tsukiyama, Gail

  Lately, he noticed his grandfather was repeating the same old boyhood stories, many of which took place in the courtyard, where the tall, spiny-armed kapok tree stood guard. He knew his grandfather was an only son, though he had five much older half sisters. Tao imagined the kapok tree had provided his grandfather with company, just as it did for him. “The tree has been here for a very long time,” his ye ye repeated, just yesterday. “Think of all it has seen over the years, all that it has heard,” he added. His grandfather gazed up at the tree as if he could see the past in each of its limbs.

  “A tree can’t see or hear,” Tao said.

  His grandfather looked down at him and smiled. “How do you know? It’s a living thing. Just because it doesn’t have eyes and ears the way we do, how can we know it doesn’t feel things in other ways?”

  Tao thought about it for a moment. “Just like we can’t see how water and sunlight make it grow?” he asked. His grandfather, Wei, and his father, Sheng, were both teachers. Ever since Tao was a very little boy, he felt their joy every time he asked questions and was eager to learn something new.

  “Yes,” his grandfather said, and clapped his hands once. “Exactly like that! So many things happen around us without our seeing or knowing.”

  “How old is the tree?”

  His ye ye stroked the gray hairs on his chin. “Let’s see,” he said, “I would say it was planted during the Ch’ing Dynasty, the last great Chinese dynasty, so well over a hundred years ago.”

  Tao nodded and counted in his head. His grandfather was seventy-one and he was going to be seven. The tree was older than both of their ages combined.

  His ye ye and his parents constantly reminded him of how thankful he should be to be surrounded by nature, and how lucky they were to share it with their neighbors. Just four months earlier in the heart of March, his grandfather had marveled at the kapok’s red blossoms that were in full bloom, bold and unafraid. Known as Guangzhou’s city flower, it was a splendid sight. Now, its branches looked like a completely different tree, the nut-size pods replaced by lance-shaped green leaves that wavered and blurred in the heat of summer.

  Tao climbed upward now, quick and agile, careful not to look down at the stone pavement below. He grabbed hold of another branch and pulled himself up and onto it, then paused for a moment to look over the concrete wall of their courtyard, which was topped with the same weather-beaten red tiles as many of the other old villas in their neighborhood. His grandfather had told him that each villa’s design was based on the courtyard and garden it contained. Theirs was a remnant of the old Ming Garden architecture, with tiles lining the top of their stone wall. Other gardens in the neighborhood, those without tiles, followed different designs called the Chun or Kui or Jian. Mostly, Tao thought they looked all the same once you were through the gates.

  Looking down, the tiles reminded him of his grandfather’s worn mah-jongg tiles all lined up in a row. He heard the rooster crow again and smiled, thinking of Auntie Song, who constantly threatened to quiet the bird once and for all by wringing its neck. “Too tough to eat,” she told his mother. “But boil it long enough and you might have a decent soup!”

  Tao climbed higher. His mother and grandfather would be up soon and he knew the scolding he’d get if he were caught. He could hear his ma ma’s raised voice, and see her no-nonsense glare, which stole away all her beauty and made her forehead wrinkle and her dark eyes narrow. He always looked away from her eyes when she was angry at him, and focused on her hands instead, her fingers dancing in front of him. And he could already feel the warmth of his grandfather standing quietly behind him. Then finally, after his tears and apologies, would come the comfort and forgiveness he’d feel when his ye ye’s large, wrinkled hands rested lightly on his shoulders.

  Tao looked up through the branches to see an immense hazy sky. The morning air was already growing heavier, the warm humidity filtering through the leaves. His shirt clung to his back and he knew the clouds and rain would return by afternoon. He heard the creaks and yawns of the awakening street rise up to where he was perched. His arms and legs were getting tired. He had almost reached the top of the tree and he couldn’t wait to see all thirty peaks of White Cloud Mountain, regardless of his punishment. Tao grabbed hold of another branch, but quickly let go when the sharp sting of a thorn caught the fleshy part of his palm. He cried out once just as his foot slipped into air. He felt the strange sensation of floating just above his falling body, watching the branches snap and scrape against his skin, followed by the dull thud of hitting the hard surface thirty feet below. Only then did he reenter his body, consumed by an excruciating pain that traveled from his leg all the way up to his head before everything went dark.

  Kai Ying

  KAI YING WOULD NEVER FORGET THE SIGHT OF HER pale little boy lying on the courtyard pavement, his leg twisted beneath him. A broken branch, she thought, a crushed leaf. He wasn’t moving. At that moment, she realized he might never move again and a feeling of terror overwhelmed her, stopping her abruptly and rooting her in place. Wei, her father-in-law, rushed past her and knelt over Tao. She stood there while her heart raced so fast her whole body shook. He can’t be, she thought, he can’t. And try as she might, Kai Ying couldn’t think of one tea or soup that could bring the dead back to life. Her father-in-law, who was usually calm and in control, turned back to her, his eyes wide and frantic, his hands waving wildly in the air as he yelled for her to get help from Neighbor Lau, who had the only flatbed pedicab in the neighborhood.

  For two hours, Kai Ying sat with her father-in-law in the crowded waiting room of the noisy hospital. She couldn’t imagine how anyone could get well in such a frantic place. The air reeked of disinfectant mixed with camphor and menthol, the sharp medicinal odor of tiger balm ointment. With all the hurried comings and goings, it felt more like a train station. Some people crouched or huddled silently, forming a long line down the hallway, their faces pale from distress and illness. Others found ways to pass the time as they waited for their loved ones. She was amazed by how so many people had simply made themselves at home; the woman next to her was peeling an orange, a man who sat across the aisle from them smoked one cigarette after another and talked nonstop to a woman who continued to pick her teeth with a sliver of wood as she listened. Another woman, sitting against the wall, sang softly to herself as she darned a hole in an old black sock. A child’s cry floated above the hum of voices. It was a chorus of sounds and movements, and in the middle of it all Kai Ying felt completely paralyzed. She avoided direct eye contact with anyone for fear she’d have to make conversation. As it was, her throat felt so dry she could barely swallow.

  She gazed quickly around the room, the air as warm as breath. They had been waiting for so long and there was still no doctor in sight. Across the crowded room hung a large portrait of Chairman Mao glaring down at her, his thin lips pressed tightly together accusingly. Where were you? How could you have let your only son fall from a tree?

  Asleep, she thought. I was asleep.

  It was no wonder most of the neighborhood came to her for herbal remedies. Kai Ying wasn’t a doctor, but she prided herself on being an observant and efficient herbalist who provided daily maintenance. She took nothing for granted and spent time with each patient; she looked for any signs of illness in the sound of the voice, the pallor of the face or eyes or tongue. She even noted whether particular odors arose from them. Then she reached for their wrists and placed her fingers on their pulse, a small shared intimacy before she discussed the history of their ailments with them. She knew that illnesses could stem from both emotional and physical pain, which then affected different areas of the body and caused an imbalance. Afterward, she would smile reassuringly and select herbs from the rows of jars that lined her kitchen shelves to find the right combination to restore balance, curing everything from insomnia and headaches to constipation and indigestion.

  For Kai Ying, the herbal work was both rewarding and life-saving. It was what had b
rought her in 1947, at nineteen, to Guangzhou from Zhaoqing, a small city a few hours to the northeast, to study herbs with an old family friend, Herbalist Chu. She had planned to stay for only two years, but it was in his cluttered, dusty, sweetly medicinal shop that she first met Sheng, a twenty-three-year-old doctoral student in history who had come in to buy herbs for his mother. Two years later, instead of returning home, they were married, and a year later Tao was born; afterward, her work was limited to dispensing herbs to family and close neighbors who asked for her advice. But last year, when her husband had been arrested for writing that letter to the Premier’s Office critical of Mao and the Party, he lost his teaching job, money became tight, and their food coupons were reduced. With what little was left, Kai Ying returned full time to her work as an herbalist. She’d forgotten how much she enjoyed it, the different smells and textures of the dried chrysanthemums, snow fungus, black moss, and Angelica root that bloomed to life again in her teas and soups, and how fortunate she was to have enough neighborhood business to help them get by.

  Sitting in the hospital, she suddenly remembered that Auntie Song was coming over that morning for more dangshen roots to lower her blood pressure. Song had been a good friend of Sheng’s mother and was a great help to Kai Ying after her mother-in-law, Liang, had died. She was certain that all the commotion must have awakened her and that when their old neighbor saw the kitchen door closed and everyone gone, she would know something was wrong. She wondered if Song would think something had happened to her father-in-law, for since Sheng’s arrest, Wei had rarely strayed far from the house and courtyard. He seemed to grow more lethargic each day, despite all the ginseng soups she fed him. Surely, Song would never imagine Tao had fallen from the kapok tree. Her only consolation came in knowing Song would keep a close watch on the house and tell anyone coming to see her for herbs to return tomorrow. She couldn’t afford to lose a patient.

  The light in the waiting room shifted as the sky darkened by noon, bathing the room in shadows. Kai Ying wondered if it had begun to rain outside. It had now been over three hours since they’d brought Tao to the hospital and he was rushed to an examining room. Where was he now? Was he going to be all right? The abrupt nurse at the desk wouldn’t tell her anything and simply said, “Go sit, the doctor will find you when he’s ready,” and waved her away.

  Kai Ying felt helpless when she returned to the crowded room. She shook her head at Wei and said softly, “Nothing yet.” While her father-in-law sat calmly, waiting for the doctor to come to them, she knew if her husband Sheng had been there he would have been pacing the halls, checking with doctors every few minutes, pushing to see where his son was and how well he was being taken care of. Kai Ying found the differences between them all the more glaring at that moment and she longed for Sheng and his impatience. There had only been two letters from him in the past year, the first arriving almost a month after they were told he was being reeducated in Luoyang.

  For a while, she worried that Tao would wake up to find he was all alone in a foreign place surrounded by strangers. Then she swallowed her panic and froze at the thought that he might never wake up. She took a deep breath and shifted in the hard chair. First there was her difficult miscarriage three years ago, then Sheng had been taken from her, and now…she wouldn’t allow herself to think about that. Just then, Kai Ying felt her father-in-law’s warm hand cover hers. Wei leaned close and whispered, “Tao will be all right,” his calm words warming her cheek.

  Her father-in-law was a retired professor of Chinese art history at Lingnan University, a tall and graceful man with a trimmed goatee and gray hair shaved close to his head. A well-known authority in his field, he had retired at sixty-two after Mao’s Chinese Communist Party came into power, almost ten years ago, a time when outspoken scholars and intellectuals like many of his colleagues had fled from China rather than be persecuted and imprisoned by the new government. Wei, who had never been overtly political, and who had never voiced his opinions aloud, had slipped by untouched. Devoted to art and research, he kept to himself, stubbornly refusing to leave Guangzhou, the home of his ancestors. “Here in the South,” he once told Kai Ying, “we do things differently from the rest of China.” She knew he meant that they spoke Cantonese instead of Mandarin, preferred their food less spicy, and reveled in Guangzhou’s long history of open trade with foreigners, which left them less isolated than the Northerners. China’s sheer size and lack of communications created vast differences. “Beijing has no idea what we’re doing here half the time,” he added confidently.

  Wei always remained scholarly and soft-spoken, which Kai Ying had realized, early on, was his deliberate way of being heard. His students would have to stop and listen in order not to miss something important. She glanced over to see Wei’s long legs were crossed and he sat with his eyes closed so he appeared asleep. But Kai Ying knew he wasn’t asleep; he had simply retreated into his own quiet world away from the flurry around him. She’d often found him in this meditative state. It was his way of dealing with the difficulties of life, by going inward. At times, she was envious, wishing she could disappear so easily for a little while. Instead, she was destined to keep her eyes wide open. Her husband Sheng was much the same way, but whereas she had always been more a spectator who stood by and watched the world from a safe distance, her husband was more likely to act.

  Sheng was also a teacher; he taught history at the Guangzhou High School. After the Communist Party took over and his father retired, Sheng wasn’t able to finish his doctorate, but was fortunate to get a teaching position at the nearby high school. Both father and son believed that lessons could be learned from China’s history. It didn’t take long for Kai Ying to realize that they were both prisoners of the past, though each pursued his desires and preoccupations differently. While Wei’s sole interest was in preserving China’s past through its art, Sheng believed that if the Chinese were going to forge a stronger nation with a vibrant future, they would have to move past their history and learn from their mistakes.

  Sheng never shied away from school politics and student problems and it was this same concern and impulsiveness that had gotten him into trouble last year. Kai Ying had often heard Wei counsel her headstrong husband, “You should always look for the quiet within the storm, and then you’ll find the answers to your questions.” Afterward, she watched Sheng turn away from his father with an almost imperceptible shake of his head. She knew what he was really thinking. No, no, you’ll only find the answers to your questions by walking straight into the storm.

  Sheng frightened Kai Ying sometimes. She could feel his discontent, like that very same storm brewing just beneath the surface. She worried their quiet life within the courtyard couldn’t contain all his hopes and desires for China to grow and prosper, to be a better place for Tao and future generations. China was at a crossroads, he had said, and it was important that they choose the right path. Growing up back in Zhaoqing, she’d seen her own father’s disappointment with the Nationalist government. The Kuomintang government had grown increasingly corrupt under the leadership of Chiang Kai Shek, and while officials and military leaders grew rich, the Chinese people suffered inflation and unemployment. Her father’s anger was a disease that spread through his body until all that was left was bitterness. She didn’t want to see the same thing happen to Sheng.

  “Think of Tao,” she had pleaded with Sheng, reminding him there were always consequences to the kind of change he hoped for.

  “I am thinking of Tao,” he said. She could still hear his voice rise as he continued, “China has to accept change if we expect to move forward! All the Party has done is taken us a step backwards!”

  She had wanted to reach out and put her fingers on his lips to quiet him. Please, please, don’t say another word; keep your thoughts to yourself. No one was safe, she thought. She knew if anyone, even their neighbors, heard what Sheng was saying and reported him to the authorities, he would be in serious trouble. But no matter how he felt, Kai
Ying never thought he would go so far as to jeopardize both himself and his family, even if he believed there would be no repercussions. While the Party had ignored Wei as a harmless academic of the old regime, they didn’t hesitate to arrest Sheng for writing that letter. The Party had found a way to get to her father-in-law after all, for Sheng’s arrest had knocked the wind out of him. Wei had aged in the past year and kept increasingly to himself, spending most of his days reading in the courtyard and looking after Tao.

  Kai Ying squirmed in the hard chair and looked down at herself. For the first time she realized she was still dressed in the pale yellow cotton tunic and pants she slept in, having hastily thrown on only an old cotton sweater. Thankfully, she’d had the presence of mind to change into street shoes. Kai Ying couldn’t help but think how chaotic she must look. Even in the sticky heat, she felt a chill and pulled her sweater tight across her body. Wei was still wearing the same threadbare brown mein po, the silk padded jacket he refused to throw away, even with a new one in his closet. She leaned over and touched the edge of his frayed sleeve, careful not to disturb him. His eyes were still closed, his breathing even. For a moment, she thought he might really have fallen asleep, but she detected the slightest movement of his hand resting on his knee and knew that he was awake. She studied her father-in-law closely, looking for the subtle characteristics that were carried over from father to son. There was a definite resemblance between them around the eyes and in his strong chin. She could already see that Sheng would have the same thick, gray brows when he was older. They were both good-looking men. Sheng wasn’t quite as tall but was lean and solidly built, with thick, unusually wavy hair. His real power and grace came through in his passion for his family and his beliefs. It’s what had attracted her to him from the very beginning. She sometimes saw the same fearlessness in their son, and when she did, she felt the ache of not knowing when she’d see her husband again.