by Sandi Tan
Except for the panda-filled forests of Sichuan Province, I felt absolutely no connection with any of China’s supposed cultural treasures. Beyond family, my concept of “our people” didn’t stretch very far. I’d felt beggar children—brown, with beaky Uighur features—hurling rocks at my rickshaw. I’d experienced the rank betrayal of a Cantonese servant girl like Sister Kwan. These weren’t “my people.” In most cases, we didn’t even speak the same language. The all-purpose lumping together of everyone who happened to be born on the same enormous landmass was willful madness.
The first night on board the SS Prosperity, after a dinner of smoked ham sandwiches that Ah Ying had packed for us in waxed paper, Father sent us to bed. He said the waves were making him dizzy and he had no energy to watch us. We had no choice in the matter, as we all shared the same little cabin. Li took the side of the bunk nearest the wall while I got the outside, the result of much haggling—we were both afraid of falling off the edge—and as at home, we slept back-to-back. Li had his nose pressed against the wallpaper, so tight was our space.
My fortune was free, I consoled myself, my path uncluttered. The stars blinked their affirmation through the murky porthole, instigating the wild patter of my innocent heart. Before long, exhausted with anticipation and lulled by the waves, we all fell asleep.
To my surprise, Father had brought with him English language instruction books. The very next morning, he began giving Li lessons in the third-class cafeteria; I was not included—apparently I wasn’t important or clever enough. Father was no expert himself. Embarrassed to be seen struggling through the language alone, Li was clearly his alibi. Unsurprisingly, father and son became, through their shared new lingo, a colony of their own. Li gave me the cold shoulder, knowing that in the power dynamic of our new family unit, he’d better choose wisely.
“We have no choice,” I overheard Father say as they stumbled along, learning the alien alphabet. “Where we’re going, we’ll need to know English.”
“Where’s that?” Li asked.
“The Black Isle.”
The Black Isle! Until he uttered those words, I hadn’t even known where we were headed and somehow never found the inclination to ask. The Black Isle, where they spoke English! I pictured hairy Englishmen wearing sarongs and living in grass huts. Horrified, I covered my ears. I didn’t want to know any more.
I walked off my rage. But the farther I wandered from Li, Father, and the rest of the passengers, the more closed doors and deserted hallways I encountered. Unlit hallways in the windowless depths of an ocean liner are unfriendly indeed. Father had not exaggerated—most of the ship was empty. Paying customers were relegated to the drabbest portion of the ship while pretty stairways and exquisite promenades gathered oceanic dust. I ran down promising corridors lined with doors numbered in gold only to find each and every one of them locked. I kept expecting to run into someone who’d scold me for being where I shouldn’t be and spin me toward whence I came, but no such person ever materialized, not even a crew member on an unauthorized smoke break. All I heard was the low hum of the ship’s tireless engines chugging along and the wooden floorboards creaking beneath my feet. These sounds became my constant companions.
I hoped to find the peacock dining room Father had walked us through, but every door I tried refused to budge. Was that area now closed, too? Were all the nice parts of the ship locked away? The third-class cafeteria was a teeming lunchroom, the air dense with tobacco smoke and recycled grease, the windows frosted with the dew of communal sighing. Diners stood in line for food served in trays, just like at school, except most of the passengers were grownups, many with children in tow who were older than me. What a humiliating arrangement. What a far cry from the peacock room.
Finally, deep inside the belly of the ship, a couple of floors below the observation deck, a pair of heavy steel doors gave way. There were words in English above the door frame, in what I would come to know and love as Art Deco script. I couldn’t read them, but I detected a smell I recalled from a class excursion to a swimming club. Chlorine. A funny place for this smell. Curiosity got the better of me and I pushed through the steel double doors. Sure enough, a pool.
It was cold in the room, probably because every surface in it was tiled. The walls were ivory, pierced with horizontal striations of turquoise, and the pool itself was done in mosaics on the aquatic theme of blue. Ribbed chrome sconces flickered, and the stripes they cast on the water gave it an atmosphere of high drama, like a stage set anticipating the entrance of gloomy players. Lounge chairs lined the pool, all empty, their long, gray silhouettes peopling the room with silent spectators.
“Hello?” I called. My voice echoed loudly through the cavernous chamber. I heard water splashing. Someone was swimming laps, freestyle. A young girl in a red swimsuit with a matching red cap, about my age. Odd that I hadn’t noticed her first thing. She barely lifted her head. I had to think twice about disturbing her—she seemed so intense. I watched her swim a couple of more laps and when she didn’t pause to breathe, I called out again, louder. “Hello?”
“Hello,” a voice answered behind me. I jumped. It was a man in a Western-style suit. His face was in the shadows but his Shanghai accent was unmistakable. I wondered how long he’d been standing behind me.
“So this part of the boat is open?” In my nervousness, I’d slipped and called the ship a boat again. Thankfully, the man didn’t mock me.
He stepped into the light, revealing thick brows and dark European features. “It’s open,” he said in perfect Shanghainese. “To you and me, everything’s open.”
His words confused me, so I changed the subject. “Are you that girl’s father?”
He smiled. “Do I look that old to you? No, that’s Rachel,” he said, as if it explained everything. “Come, let’s not disturb her. She’s very…serious.”
He guided me to the other end of the hall, where there was another set of doors, identical to the ones I’d entered. I watched the swimming girl while we walked toward these doors, hoping she’d finally lift her head and let me see her face.
“Oh, don’t stare,” the man said in a friendly voice. “Rachel can be awfully shy.”
In his gentlemanly fashion, he allowed me to enter first, unlike Father, who always rudely pushed ahead. I found the smell of his cologne delightful. His hair was so long that its curly ends brushed his collar. Had Mother seen him, she’d have sent him straight to the barber. To me he was the very picture of masculine grace. Here was a complete stranger who was kind, gracious, well spoken, who took enough of an interest in me to show me around, while my own father cowered like a scared sheep in his third-class ghetto, incurious, unquestioning, passively believing the lie that the rest of the ship was closed. I decided then that I would never share my findings with Father or Li.
The doors led directly to the peacock salon. It was as if the man had read my mind.
I gasped and raced in, the flimsy soles of my shoes immediately buffered by luscious, endless carpeting. Nobody was here, not a soul. A hundred tables were set—starched white napkins atop expensive china, no fewer than three wineglasses per diner. Strains of watery music emerged from the next room. My flesh tingled. Somebody was practicing the harp. The gas-lit chandeliers flared on together at this moment—puff!—and the mahogany pillars glistened with fresh polish. A huge banquet was certainly in the cards for some lucky passengers tonight.
“How do you know where everything is?” I asked. “We’ve only been at sea one day.”
“I’ve made this passage many times and know how dull it is if you confine yourself to one area. My wife lives on the Black Isle.”
“And you live in Shanghai?”
“Mostly.”
“Don’t you miss your wife?”
He smiled ruefully. “I never stop missing her. Even when she’s standing right before me.” He walked to one of the large windows on the sides of the hall.
It was nearly evening. Stars were rehearsing their twinkle
s, and a blushing band of peach light lingered at the end of the horizon, fading slowly down the waterline.
“Look at the water,” said the man.
As the sky dimmed, the black ocean came alive. Fairy lights, maybe thousands of them, bobbed up and down with the waves, each flashing pink, blue, and silver at different intervals. They formed a dense garland around the ship, their colors unsynchronized, yet harmonious, even hypnotic—pink, blue, silver, blue, pink, pink—like a soft electric glove easing the ship through the dark water.
“Jellyfish. They light the paths of ships at night so the ships don’t collide with whales or the sunken galleons on the ocean floor. These jellyfish are the seeing-eye dogs of the marine world. They’re possibly the cleverest creatures on earth. People underestimate them because they don’t make any noise, but they have their own way of speaking. Whenever they flash like this, you know things are going to be all right. I wanted you to see them so you’d know that things are going to be all right.”
I nodded vaguely.
“It’s late now. You better run along back to your family.”
Needles of panic. “But I don’t know how to get back.”
The man pointed to an elegant mahogany door with an inlaid anchor done in red cherry. I ran to it and placed my hand on the brass handle; then I looked back, sorry to have to abandon my handsome newfound friend.
“See you tomorrow?” the man asked. My mood lifted. “Shall we meet again at the swimming pool?”
I beamed. “What time?”
“The same time, after lunch. I could give you English lessons.”
My heart leapt. “You know English?”
“And Hebrew and French and Russian. Not by choice. History forces some of us to learn a little of everything.” He waved good-bye. “Au revoir, mademoiselle. ’Til we meet again.” He turned back to view the water.
I bit my lip, then asked, “What’s your name?”
“Odell.” He smiled, charmed that I would ask.
“See you tomorrow, Mr. Odell.”
As I ran toward our inelegant cafeteria, guided by the cloying scent of pork trotters being drowned in fat, I thought it odd that the man never asked me my name.
After the peacock room, everything felt even more inferior. The cafeteria floor was covered in cheap third-class linoleum to catch the spills from clumsy third-class hands. The silverware was third class, lightweight and malleable; when our aluminum forks scraped the bottoms of our aluminum trays, they made the harsh squawks of dying parrots. Everybody huddled over their food like ragamuffins guarding their rations. There were teachers, clerks, and shopkeepers among us, yet they were all behaving so disgracefully, as if third class was a state of mind and not simply a ticket price.
Li nibbled at his undercooked yam, prodded the congealed fat around the overboiled pork, and told Father he felt sick. His complexion was green, as if his blood vessels had been eclipsed by those foul wallpaper vines.
The following morning, I skipped lunch and smuggled my unsupervised self back to the swimming pool. The girl, Rachel, was already doing her laps. Odell sat in a lounge chair, as if he’d been expecting me for some time. As promised, he walked me through the ship—the ballroom, the hairdressing studio, the squash court and gymnasium, and the wood-paneled galley where first-class dinners were prepared, with its army of gas rings and railcars of humming iceboxes. He told me the names of everything in English. Parquet, pommel horse, aperitif—how grand those words felt on my tongue!
In the depopulated shopping arcade, elaborate cut glass panels unfolded across two facing walls like parallel comic strips. The tableaux were vivid with monsters and men whose near nakedness made me blush.
“They’re Greek,” explained my guide. “The weather’s very warm there.”
He went on to narrate the two tales inscribed in those panels. In one, a young hero named Perseus went on a quest to slay Medusa, a deadly Gorgon with snakes for hair who turned men to stone at a glance. Aided by special gifts—sword, shield, and flying sandals—Perseus emerged triumphant, Medusa’s head wriggling in his hand. In the other panel, another hero, Theseus, faced off against the Minotaur in its labyrinth. Also aided by a gift—a ball of string—Theseus survived and laid rest his beast.
The pictures were luridly exotic—Medusa’s head dripped blood—but I was struck by a glaring imperfection. “Isn’t it cheating,” I asked, “if the heroes had outside help?”
Odell laughed. “Have you tried slaying a Gorgon? You need all the assistance you can get.” He pursed his lips. “Actually, you remind me of another Greek character, a stubborn young girl who never wanted any help. Pandora.”
“Was she a hero, too?”
“To some.” Odell twitched his brows dramatically. “To others she’s a villain.”
He followed this with the story of Pandora and the infernal box she opened, a parable whose old-fashioned moralizing provoked my deepest yawns.
“Tired, are you, Pandora?”
He flicked a switch and a series of sconces fired up along the walls, hissing and flickering uncertainly. I realized that until then, we’d been standing in near darkness. We were in the first-class lobby, surrounded by clusters of empty settees and ashtrays set on kingly pedestals. Nobody was manning the welcome desk and we passed right through. At the mouth of a corridor lined with numbered rooms, Odell paused.
“Feel free to use any room here you like. You’ll find they’re much more comfortable than the ones in steerage.”
I ambled down the hallway and chose a room at random. Room 88. It felt like a lucky number. As Odell promised, it was unlocked. The room was easily four times the size of our pathetic cabin. A double bed, big windows, frilly drapes—everything done in genteel pink and cream. I looked back to thank Odell but he was gone.
I hadn’t thought I was tired but no sooner had I collapsed into bed than I submitted to slumber. When I woke, the sky was dark. My stomach rumbled. Dinnertime.
The peacock salon was not empty. I stopped at the doorway, wondering if I’d be caught in this forbidden zone. A long-legged blonde in a shimmering gown danced a somber tango by herself in the silence, by the stage where no musician had yet been installed. But she was fully absorbed and seemed not to mind my presence.
I sauntered in, trying to decide which of the hundred tables I should sit at.
“Pandora.” Odell was sitting by a trompe l’oeil window at a table for two. The Mediterranean countryside, bursting with butterflies and olive trees, spread out along his arm. “You look lovely tonight.” I blushed and walked nimbly over to join him. He tilted his head at the dancer. “Don’t worry about her.”
He pushed his steaming bowl of meat and rice, apparently untouched, toward me and handed me his fork with a flourish. I promptly forgot all my manners and started into the food. The rice was fluffy, the sauce tangy, the cubes of beef so pinkly tender they practically melted on my tongue. Even with my childish palate, trained on Ah Ying’s salt-lashed casseroles, I knew what I was tasting would be hard to surpass.
“Beef Stroganoff,” he said. “The chef’s specialty. He cooked for the Russian imperial family during the old days. I can tell you like it.”
He watched my unladylike gorging with his sad eyes, and I grew self-conscious.
“I shouldn’t be stealing your food.” I pushed the plate back toward him, but the meal was already half gone.
“Nonsense. There’s plenty more where this came from. It’s a pleasure to watch you eat. One of these days you should join my wife and me at the Metropole for tea. We’re there the last Sunday of every month, without fail. The Metropole’s famous for its high tea. You remind me a great deal of my wife, actually. Pei-Pei. That’s her name.”
My cheeks prickled again. “Your wife’s Chinese?”
“Very much so.”
“Do you have children?”
He shook his head, regretfully.
“Why not?”
“It’s difficult when I live in one place and my wi
fe lives in another.”
“Why don’t you stay with her on the Black Isle?”
“There’s no place on the Black Isle for someone like me. You’ll see what I mean. It’s not like Shanghai over there. It’s a jungle. People are less open-minded.”
“Then why doesn’t your wife live with you in Shanghai?”
“Do you always ask this many questions, Pandora?”
“Stop calling me Pandora.” I put down my fork.
“Have you noticed something unusual, Pandora?” He smiled, pointing to his lips.
I covered my mouth: we’d conducted our entire conversation in English.
In the company of my good teacher, I had absorbed this new knowledge like a thirsty sponge. But here’s the truth. This was due less to talent than to empathy, and it would be much later before I’d come to understand—or rather, accept—the difference.
Both Li and Father were seasick again, taking turns at the bucket out in the corridor. Between the two of them, the door creaked open and clanked shut all through the night. I was tempted to tell them about the rooms in first class, but I held my mouth shut.
When I woke in the morning, Father and Li were gone. I instantly regretted my secrecy.
“They’re in the Isolation Ward,” said an old widow who shared a cabin with her middle-aged daughter. “It’s at the tail end of the ship, down several very dark, very steep flights of stairs. My girl’s there, too. Best you wait here and keep me company. Come, come.” She handed me one of her knitting needles, which I was to hold still while she tied endless loops around the other. I flung it down and fled.
The Isolation Ward? I had to find Odell.