Dragon Springs Road

by Janie Chang

  Beside her, I looked younger than my eighteen years although I recalled feeling very grown up that day. I studied my face in the photograph as though it were that of a stranger. Despite my proud smile, there was a guarded look about my eyes that hinted at a suspicious nature, of a reluctance to trust, of knowing that my destiny would always be uncertain. Would it be possible for Anjuin to forgive me after I had been so heedless with my words? I was prepared to say anything to regain her friendship. I would kneel to beg her forgiveness if that’s what it took.

  It’s easier not to love, Fox had said.

  Yet Fox had loved her human friends, of this I was certain. She loved my mother, loved me. How long could anyone live, even an immortal, without giving in to love?

  WHEN I GOT to their door, I knocked cautiously. It was Yun Na who answered. Before I could say anything, she enfolded me in a hug. As if we were the best of friends. Taken aback, I handed her the gifts I had brought, a canister of fine tea and a box of pastries from an expensive French bakery.

  “Come see my new little boy, dear Jialing,” she said. “And Grandmother is here from Ningpo to spend some time with her latest grandson.”

  The new apartment had high ceilings and large bright windows. Grandmother Yang sat by one of those windows, cradling the infant and looking out at the street. Yun Na’s two other children played quietly with a set of wooden blocks, a maidservant sitting beside them on the floor. Anjuin was nowhere to be seen.

  “I hear we have you to thank for putting Dajuin in this apartment,” Grandmother Yang said. I bowed to her.

  “You have Mr. Liu to thank, Grandmother,” I said.

  “Look at you,” she said, peering at me. “Now you’re living in a fine, foreign house. And dressing like a foreigner.”

  Despite her peevish words, I couldn’t help but feel sorry for the old woman. She looked older and more tired than I remembered.

  “Where is Anjuin?” I asked.

  “She’s gone to Changchow,” Grandmother Yang said. “She left early this morning. Her father has opened a dry goods store there. She will help him run the store. I just hope he listens to her.”

  It was as though ice water drenched my clothing. Anjuin had left Shanghai without telling me. Did this mean she no longer cared for our friendship? From her wide smile, I could tell Yun Na was eager to take Anjuin’s place in my affections. I was the mistress of a wealthy man, a man who had been very helpful to Dajuin.

  Yun Na exclaimed over the pastries and ordered the maidservant to bring tea. She chattered away, mistaking my silence for interest. She told me that Dajuin had been promoted and now she could afford a servant to keep the apartment clean and help in the kitchen. Grandmother Yang would stay only for another week.

  “Oh, and Jialing, I must tell you something. A foreigner came by yesterday to speak with Dajuin and Anjuin. A detective!”

  “Oh?” My fingers felt clumsy, the small teacup too slippery. Taiyong had said Shea would be speaking to the Yangs.

  “He was looking into the death of Wan Baoyuan,” she said. “The man who wanted to buy the property on Dragon Springs Road before your Mr. Liu bought it. Mr. Shea said Anjuin’s information was very helpful.”

  “How’s that?” My hands were trembling as I put down my teacup.

  “Anjuin told him Wan Baoyuan had been driving Mr. Liu’s car. The detective didn’t know that. He said that little tidbit could change everything.”

  Downstream toward the rapids, a piece of wood thrown into the current.

  WHEN I ARRIVED at Yuyang Lane, Sanmu’s car was there. When I greeted him inside, there was no kiss, no smile.

  “I’ve been here an hour,” he said, after a pause.

  “I’m sorry you had to wait. I wasn’t expecting you, Sanmu,” I said. “I went to see the Yangs. Listen, I must tell you what they told me.”

  “Let’s have lunch first,” he said, rather abruptly. “You can tell me after we eat.”

  A simple lunch was all Little Ko and I managed to pull together, some vegetables and tofu, a fish soup, steamed rice. After she put all the dishes on the table, I sent Little Ko home for the day. I didn’t want her overhearing what I had to tell Sanmu.

  Sanmu was taciturn, preoccupied, and I didn’t interrupt his silence. Finally, after I made tea and brought it in, he spoke up.

  “Jialing, I’ve been waiting all day to tell you something.” He looked deeply unhappy.

  His wife had attempted suicide.

  Their marriage had been arranged when they were just children, but his wife had been sent to the McTyeire School for Girls. Her family wanted to be sure she had an education suitable for the wife of a man with modern, Western ideas. Through all their years of marriage, Sanmu had never been interested in concubines or mistresses. He considered himself happily married and there was much affection between them.

  “I would even say there is love,” he said, pacing alongside the table. “Yes, in fact, I do love my wife. And this, this arrangement with you, has hurt her deeply. She felt humiliated and pushed aside. It’s as though my feelings for you were exorcised when I realized how desperately unhappy I had made her. You’ve been like a kind of madness, Jialing, a fever. And now you’re a fever that has burned itself out.”

  So Fox’s influence, already waning, was now depleted.

  His remorse was not just over his wife. He had taken advantage of my youth and vulnerability. After giving me a comfortable life for these past several months, he wouldn’t put me out on the street right away. But he had to end it.

  I had been expecting an end to this arrangement, and now I felt only the relief of certainty. “Sanmu, I understand. Really, I do. But please, please, listen to me. Mr. Shea has been to visit Dajuin.”

  Perhaps if he hadn’t just come from his wife’s bedside, the news about the car would’ve been easier to take. His face sagged as he slumped back into his chair.

  “The car. I forgot about the car.” He put his head in his hands.

  “If Shea asks, you could say Wan Baoyuan didn’t take it that day,” I said. “You were out in Chapei all day, covering the protests. If anyone saw a car, it wasn’t yours.”

  “It’s where the car went afterwards, Jialing. Whether anyone noticed me driving the car out of Dragon Springs Road.” He ran a hand through his hair. “But you don’t realize—the car isn’t the worst part. Wan Taiyong sent a note to say he had to return to Harbin very suddenly. He said he’s accepted that his cousin’s death was a random murder, and he’s told Shea to give up the investigation. It was dated three days ago.”

  I didn’t understand. “Then why was Shea still talking to the Yangs yesterday, after Wan Taiyong had already gone?”

  “Because even when a client has given up, Shea will carry on if the case catches his interest. That’s how he’s earned such a formidable reputation for tenacity.”

  My breath caught, tangled in fear. Then I realized that part of my distress was seeing Sanmu so unhappy. Despite everything, I still felt warmly toward him. I owed him a great deal, for myself, for the Yangs.

  I reached over to take his hand.

  “The first time I saw you, it was at Xinwen Bao the day the Royalist warlord Zhang Xun invaded the Forbidden City,” I said. “Everyone else was shouting and milling about and you just kept writing your article. The second time, you gave back the money that clerk cheated from me.”

  His smile said he was fond of me, even if he was no longer in love. “You were just a schoolgirl. I was so angry that one of my employees had defrauded you.”

  “Sanmu, you’ve been nothing but generous since then,” I said. “I’ll leave this house tomorrow if you want. But there’s one thing I must beg of you.”

  He looked hesitant and unconsciously pulled his hand away.

  “It’s not for me, Sanmu,” I said. “Remember I asked whether you could help find a husband for Anjuin? She’s living in Changchow now. Her father has opened a shop there. Please, have you any connections in Changchow?”


  He relaxed.

  “I haven’t forgotten, Jialing,” he said. “Our kinsman Judge Liu is head of the clan in Changchow. I will write and ask whether he can recommend a matchmaker. He may even know a good family. I know how much you care about Anjuin. I promise.”

  His hand reached for mine. Trust and forgiveness trembled on the table between us, delicate as butterfly wings.

  Then the front gate buzzer sounded. It was Old Tan signaling to the house he had just let someone in the front gate. I turned my head to see Mr. Shea walking up the path to the house. Sanmu’s hand slid off mine.

  CHAPTER 22

  I won’t take up too much of your time,” Shea said. The wicker chair in the greenhouse seemed too fragile for his large frame. “It’s about the day of the student protest, when we had the general strike back in June of last year. I’m investigating the death of Wan Baoyuan.”

  “How can I help?” Sanmu said.

  “I’ve learned that Mr. Wan sometimes borrowed your car. Do you know whether he used it on the day of the strike?”

  Sanmu shook his head. “It was a very chaotic day. I went to Chapei with Yang Dajuin to interview some of the workers and student leaders. Mr. Wan had a key for the car, so if he borrowed it that day, I wouldn’t have known.”

  “Has a car come up in your investigations, Mr. Shea?” I asked.

  “Not yet. I was hoping you could save me some time. Well, can you give me the make and description of the car?”

  “It was a 1917 Pierce-Arrow.”

  “Color?”

  “Dark green, very dark green.” I hoped that Shea, jotting this down in his notebook, couldn’t see how reluctantly Sanmu gave up this information.

  As promised, Shea didn’t take up much time. He refused tea and left.

  “Now I wish we’d reported Wan’s death to the police,” I said, watching Old Tan open the gate for Shea. “Then it would’ve been a simple case, you defending me against rape and me defending you against Wan.”

  “Now I wish I’d listened to you,” he said, his smile wry.

  “Sanmu, don’t tell your Fourth Uncle about this visit from Shea. Not yet,” I begged.

  “Jialing, I must. What else can we do?”

  “Let me talk to Shea,” I said. “He has a soft spot for me because his daughter and I were friends. I’ll ask him not to look any further. I’ll tell him what we should’ve told the police. I’ll ask him to keep it confidential.”

  “You’ll do nothing of the sort.” He held me tightly by the shoulders and shook me. “Do you hear me? Nothing. Now I must get back to my wife, but you will not go near Shea.”

  I WAS NO longer Sanmu’s mistress, but he would still support me. For now.

  The house had been leased for a year and I could live in it for the remaining few months of the lease. After that, who knew what Sanmu would be willing to do for me? He had promised his wife he would never come to Yuyang Lane again. Instead Fourth Uncle would come to give me money each week.

  Sanmu could just as well have had his driver drop off the money so I was certain Fourth Uncle was doing this to keep an eye on me. He came the very next day to make his conditions clear. He expected a reckoning of what I spent each week. His eyes, cold as a fish’s, made it clear he resented every copper Sanmu gave me and was determined I wouldn’t take advantage of his nephew’s generosity.

  “You’ve been a servant yourself,” he said. “You don’t need one to keep the house clean.”

  That was the end of Little Ko. As soon as Fourth Uncle left, I gave her two sets of dishes. I had never entertained, never used them. We both wept and she rode away on a handbarrow, taking with her a fortune in English porcelain.

  I wondered how long it would take before Fourth Uncle made me leave Yuyang Lane. I gathered more of my expensive Western clothing and went to the pawnshop.

  IT WAS EASIER to keep the kitchen warm, so Fox had moved the pallet bed there from the erfang. My mother dozed, unaware of my presence. I sat on a low stool beside her, my back against the stove’s warm bricks. Spring was slow in coming and the days, though clear, were still cold. Arid winds from the north gusted through the city, scouring skin and stealing warmth. I cupped my hands around a bowl of hot water, taking the occasional sip.

  She loves the jade bracelet you gave her, Fox said. Even when her mind is muddled, she always remembers it was your gift to her.

  Fox padded around the kitchen, dressed in a long blue tunic and black trousers. Had anyone happened to see her, she would’ve appeared like any servant in a middle-class family. Except for the glittering beaded scarf wrapped around her head like a turban.

  The Central Residence was rubble now, workmen carrying away the broken bricks and tiles. In a few days they would begin demolishing the Western Residence and Fox would be powerless to stop so many. By then, perhaps my mother would be dead and it wouldn’t matter. I watched her sleep and tried not to think of Taiyong, now four days gone, more than halfway to Harbin.

  Use that train ticket, Fox said. Run away to Harbin before Fourth Uncle decides to take matters into his own hands. I’m sure he means you harm. Accidents happen.

  I shook my head. “If I vanish, it won’t be to Harbin. If Fourth Uncle hunts me down, I won’t lead him to Taiyong’s door. I’ll think of something, some other way to survive. But while my mother lives, I’m staying.”

  All I wanted to do was curl up beside my mother, have her comfort me, somehow take away the agony as easily as she had once soothed the pain of a cut finger, a skinned elbow. Her sleeping form brought a fresh wave of sorrow. It was too late. I had taken too long to warm to her, to understand what she had sacrificed for me. She had been content to accept the miserly dregs of affection I offered her. And now she was dying.

  Fox knelt beside the pallet bed and put a heated brick wrapped in cloth beside my mother’s feet.

  “I was thinking that after my mother has died, you could use your powers to help me find work, Fox,” I said. “Something domestic. We could do it the way you managed Sanmu, just a visit every week or so to maintain your influence.”

  Ah. I was planning to go traveling again once your mother and the Western Residence were gone. Try again to search for another Door.

  I slumped back against the brick sides of the stove. Because of me, she had given up a chance to go through the Door. I couldn’t ask her to stay in Shanghai just to look after me. Could I go with her somehow?

  She cleared her throat. I’ve been thinking. There is something else. You could become a Fox.

  If I’d been standing, my knees would have given way. Instead, I dropped the bowl of hot water, which shattered on the brick floor. My mother muttered and turned over in her sleep. Fox retrieved the broken pieces of porcelain and poured another bowl of hot water for me. She tucked the quilt more securely around my mother. I continued to gape at her, uncomprehending.

  Ever since the day Anna vanished through the Door, Fox said, I’ve known you possessed the potential to move into the spirit world. Not all humans can see the Door.

  “I thought Foxes were born into Fox families,” I said. “I’ve never heard any stories of humans turning into Foxes.”

  Just because there aren’t any stories doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened. She paused. Do you remember all those journeys we took together in your dreams? When you saw landscapes through the eyes of a Fox and felt the ground beneath your paws? I was teaching you what it could be like to live as a Fox.

  “But, Fox, that began when I was only a girl. Why did you wait until now to tell me I could become a Fox?”

  She sighed. Why did the mission school want its students to wait until you were older before converting to their foreign religion? You had to understand what such a choice meant.

  The transformation itself wouldn’t be difficult, she assured me. Only a small nip on the wrist, just enough to draw blood, followed by a moment of complete surrender to her powers. One night of sleep and in the morning I would wake up a Fox.

  Fourth
Uncle would never find you. And if you choose, you can make certain that Taiyong will always be in love with you.

  I imagined changing my appearance, vanishing from Shanghai and from Fourth Uncle’s suspicious eyes, free as the wind to drift through faraway landscapes. I remembered the swell of confidence that had surged through my limbs when Liu Sanmu first turned startled eyes on me and imagined what it would be like for Taiyong to feel such passion for me until the end of his days. The end of his days.

  It’s not a trivial decision, Jialing. Her words broke into my thoughts. Promise you’ll take the time to think it through.

  “Could I do the same to Taiyong?” I asked. “Make him a Fox?”

  She shook her head. Only a natural-born Fox can turn humans into Foxes. And even then, if Taiyong doesn’t have the potential, it would kill him.

  “Tell me about other humans who became Foxes,” I said. “Why no stories?”

  She hesitated. For some reason, humans who become Foxes don’t seem to enjoy their lives much after a hundred years or so. They stir up trouble and let themselves be captured and killed. Humans don’t seem to understand how to be a Fox.

  But it would be different for me. She had prepared me. I wasn’t worried. I understood what it meant to be a Fox. So really, what was there to consider? When the time came, when Liu Sanmu no longer paid my keep, I would become a Fox.

  “I’ll think it through, Fox,” I said, though I had already decided. “I promise.”

  WHEN I RETURNED that evening to Yuyang Lane, Gu was there.

  I didn’t have a house servant anymore, but Fourth Uncle had given me his car and driver. Gu would now park in front of the gate every day and insist on taking me wherever I needed to go.

  I soon found he wasn’t the helpful sort. When I went to the market, he didn’t walk behind to carry my shopping while I browsed the stalls, but whenever I glanced toward the car, he would be watching. When I returned to the car carrying bags heavy with vegetables and fruit, Gu just grinned and opened the trunk of the car for me.