“The burden of proof, however, rests upon the accused. Knowing his mother’s disturbed state of mind, he took insufficient action to placate her. Rather than soothing her, his behavior exacerbated her malady—if malady it was. Moreover, her fears were not groundless, as Ha-lee-vee’s testimony has shown. Bankruptcy was an actual danger, not a figment of her imagination. Since financial ruin could have occurred, the fact that it did not is not significant. The fear that drove the mother of the accused to suicide was based upon reality.
“The son of the accused has argued that the suicide would have occurred regardless of the actions of the accused. That contention is interesting, but it is speculative. I must deal with reality, not with something that might or might not have happened had the accused behaved differently.”
Aaron’s hopes for acquittal were shattered. The question was now which punishment the judge would inflict, exile or execution as prescribed by the circular the Ministry of Justice had issued four reigns earlier.
“The confiscation of the accused’s property stands.” Having prolonged the tension, the Prefect spoke briskly. “It is ironic that his mother’s deed has created the reality she feared. Committing suicide because of imagined impoverishment, she has impoverished the family. I regret the effect upon the sons of the accused, who are guiltless. I particularly regret the effect upon the brilliant elder son, who would make an exemplary Mandarin. Yet I cannot rule otherwise, whatever my personal compassion.
“It is, further, indisputable that the accused persisted in his actions though he could have known their consequences. He persisted for several years despite his mother’s repeated expostulations. I am therefore compelled to rule that the latter provision of the circular of the Ministry of Justice applies. Having willfully persisted in immoral acts, you, Li Ai-shih, are sentenced to be decapitated.”
Numbed by guilt, Aisek accepted that just retribution without emotion. Concerned chiefly for his destitute sons, he did not hear the judge’s final words.
“The sentence will, in any event, be carried out after the normal appellate process. However, your behavior encompassed mitigating elements. You, Li Ai-shih, are therefore provisionally sentenced to execution after the Autumn Assizes.”
Shaking with incredulous indignation as David translated the verdict, Saul half-heard Aaron whisper: “It goes to Peking, then. It’s bad, very bad, though all hope is not lost.”
CHAPTER 11
April 15, 1855
SHANGHAI
Twilight lingered, loath to cede the city to the night, and a violet glow lit the plane trees lining Szechwan Road as Sarah Haleevie strolled homeward. She perspired freely under her cotton kaftan in the lifeless air, and her split-leather slippers chafed her narrow feet. Broad leaves drooped from the tree’s moss-stippled boughs, and looped-up curtains hung half-sodden in the damp heat. Glimpsed through the alleys between the river-front compounds, the Hwangpoo gleamed glassy and flat. It was typhoon weather, the unearthly stillness that normally heralded torrential rains driven by vicious winds. Though mid-April was too early for a typhoon to sweep out of the East China Sea, a storm undoubtedly threatened Shanghai.
Sarah was edgy and her skin prickled, though she had no reason for anxiety. She had spent the afternoon chatting with her friend Rebecca, the spirited wife of the pompous currency dealer Judah Benjamin. Their meetings usually left her bubbling with remembered laughter. But her normally sprightly walk was leaden; her slender body drooped; and her oval face was pale. She nodded listlessly to the bearers lying beside the firm’s sedan chair and turned through the gateposts with their brass plates: S. KHARTOON & SONS and HALEEVIE & LEE. Glancing unhappily at that reminder of her husband’s ill-starred Chinese associate, she stirred the air before her glowing face with a fan of old-rose silk and fingered the damp tendrils of hair that trailed down her neck.
The door swung open before she touched the brass knocker, and the lean houseboy offered her his customary greeting. His precisely measured bow was halfway between the profound obeisance that saluted the master of the house and his slight inclination to the children. Amused by that tacit distinction between the master and his lady, Sarah was glad to be home. This once, however, the vestibule was not a cool grotto amid the stifling Shanghai heat, but a dank cave.
Sarah’s uneasiness lightened when she heard Fronah’s heels tapping the floorboards above. When the heels tripped down the oiled-teak staircase, she was happy at her wayward daughter’s eagerness to welcome her. Mother and daughter had enjoyed several weeks of unwonted harmony, their mutual irritation submerged in mutual love. Sarah smiled fondly, anticipating Fronah’s breathless account of her experiences in the home of her teacher, Margaret MacGregor. Fronah could always make her laugh, and the Europeans’ ways were comical.
Patent-leather pumps adorned with pink silk roses peeped from beneath a swaying skirt of green grosgrain. Sarah smiled again at her daughter’s wearing that heavy stuff for a family supper on the hottest day of the year. Though reconciled to Fronah’s studying with the Christian woman and resigned to her wearing European clothing, Sarah was exasperated by her daughter’s consistently bad taste.
Fronah’s oval face was imperfectly veiled by a film of powder, an embellishment her parents disliked but did not forbid. Her lips were vivid, and Sarah knew she had been rubbing them with moist red paper. Pendent garnets dangled on her forehead from the gilt band around her hair, and her chignon flaunted an aigrette feather. Sarah’s mouth compressed in annoyance. Even her hoyden daughter should realize that elaborate hairdo was ridiculous for a family supper.
When Fronah pirouetted, her dinner dress billowed and her petticoats frothed around her ankles. Her green bodice tapered to a seventeen-inch waist clasped by a gold-and-brown silk sash secured by a gold rosette. The décolletage, set off by cap sleeves of Valenciennes lace, displayed three strands of coral beads. The long under sleeves, cuffed with guipure lace, were slashed to show their white silk lining. Her looped-back overdress of grosgrain lined with white was caught at her hips with gold rosettes.
“That’s quite a ball dress, my dear,” Sarah remarked tartly. “But a bit warm for tonight, isn’t it?”
“It’s not a ball dress, Mama.” Fronah surveyed her mother’s démodé kaftan. “It’s only a dinner dress.”
“You’re going out to dinner—again?”
“Just to Jardines for a quiet dinner. Only a few guests. I’m invited because of Margaret MacGregor. The Jardine people are mostly Scotch, like her, and she’ll be my chaperone. So it’s all fine, you see.”
“I should be grateful, I suppose. But what would you wear for a formal dinner? Anyway, I’ve told you I don’t like your being so much with the Gentiles. What can you eat? Sometimes I suspect you don’t keep kosher.”
“Mama, I don’t. You know I couldn’t, simply couldn’t.” Fronah shuddered histrionically at the thought of pork or shellfish. “I just tell them I don’t like meat. I tell them I have a light appetite and a delicate digestion.”
“Delicate digestion! Why, you could eat stones. Light appetite! You should look at the housekeeping bills.”
“They believe me, Mama. Young ladies are supposed to eat like birds. So I have only eggs and vegetables, perhaps a little fish. They understand.”
“I don’t care whether they understand. The pots and pans are used for swine-flesh and shrimp—milk and meat mixed together. How can you keep kosher?”
“Oh, Mama, not again, please. Papa says it’s all right as long as I’m careful. No meat, only vegetables and eggs or fish.”
“Fronah, you’re breaking the laws. And being with Gentiles all the time. How can you?”
“Who else can I be with? Mama, please don’t be so provincial. This is Shanghai, not Baghdad. The nineteenth century, not the fifteenth. How can I have any kind of life if …”
“What kind of life is it engaged to Aaron?” Sarah attacked on another front. “When will that nonsense end?”
“Don’t worry, Mama. I hav
e no intention of marrying Aaron. He’s too solemn and stiff.”
“Marry? Marry a Chinaman, even if your father says he’s Jewish! Why, Fronah, I never thought …”
“Nor I, Mama, nor anyone. It’s just for show, and it’ll just blow over.” Fronah could not resist another barb. “Besides, I’d rather marry David than Aaron. Perhaps I’ll marry David. He’s much jollier.”
“Fronah, don’t joke! Don’t even joke about it. God could make you sorry. How you can even think—a Chinaman!”
“I’m sorry, Mama. I was only teasing. David’s like a brother … a funny Chinese brother. I do love him, but not that way, Mama.”
“I should hope not!” Sarah sniffed. “But you mustn’t go so often to visit these Americans and English. You know you can’t marry one. Anyway, they’re not interested in you that way, unless they want your father’s money. You’re only a plaything to them.”
“Oh, Mama, don’t be silly. Of course I know. And I’m very careful …”
“I can’t understand why you bother,” Sarah broke in. “I know there aren’t many Jewish boys in Shanghai, but young Joseph Benjamin, he’s very fond of you. You should be thinking of him, not these louts you meet at …”
“Mama, I won’t think of Joey. He’s a ninny. Anyway, I’m not thinking of marrying anyone for years. I’m only sixteen and a half. In the modern world there’s no reason for a girl to marry at seventeen.”
“Why do you want to be with those people?”
“To learn, Mama—and to enjoy myself a little. It’s a big world, and times are changing. We’re not in a ghetto in Seville or Baghdad or Bombay. If I’m in Shanghai, I’ve got to learn how other people live. Someday I’ll see Europe, too.”
“Just be careful, Fronah. No nonsense, mind you. Be very careful.”
Taking that warning as assent, Fronah whirled out of the hall into the dusk, which had deepened from violet to indigo. Despite the threat of the storm, Szechwan Road was alive with hawkers, carts, and horse traps as she stepped into the waiting sedan chair.
While Sarah lay submerged, her bath was twice refreshed with hot water poured from wooden buckets. Since the amah feared she would catch a chill, Sarah subdued her modesty to the necessities of life in China. Frequent baths were essential in the muggy climate, and the pipes for running water were not yet installed.
She contemplated her slim body with slightly wicked approval and ignored the amah’s chatter. Although she was almost thirty-six, her hips were firm and her slender legs were unmarred by broken veins, the nearly universal wound stripes of motherhood in the mid-nineteenth century. She touched the scar, now white and flat, left by Fronah’s Caesarean and reflected that a slim figure and smooth legs were meager compensation for her inability to bear more children.
Saul was stoically resigned to having no son, though he had formerly railed against the Ruler of the Universe for that affront as if God were a capricious elder brother. Her husband’s intensely personal relationship with the Almighty was prototypically Jewish. Yet Saul swore that he preferred her slender contours to the “fat cows” who were the ideal—and the wives—of his friends.
Quite extraordinarily, their physical relationship was still fiery after nineteen years. Sarah fervently thanked the Almighty—and implored Him not to withdraw that blessing. At forty, her husband was almost as ardent as he had been as a twenty-one-year-old bridegroom. The young scholar had insisted, not wholly in jest, that he must lie with her at least once every night to purge his body and clear his mind for his studies. He had since then demonstrated most convincingly that his passion was not rooted in his brain but in his heart—and their joined bodies.
Her thoughts turned inevitably to Fronah, the sole fruit of that passion and the chief source of her present worries. How could she possibly believe Fronah’s assurances that her teacher Margaret MacGregor was a strict chaperone? Dr. MacGregor she knew and liked—as much as she could like any Gentile. She neither knew Mrs. MacGregor nor comprehended her moral standards. What kind of married woman would drink, joke, and dance with strange men?
Sarah feared Fronah was yielding to the lure of alien ways. She must marry soon, the sooner the better. But how could she be a good Jewish wife if her head were turned by the Gentiles’ free ways? Decent seclusion became a respectable Jewish matron, just as a decent distance from all infidels became all Jews—preserving their faith, their morality, and their customs.
Saul was too indulgent and too modern, tolerantly allowing Fronah to mingle with the Gentiles. She was also worried about Saul. Flexibility was, of course, necessary, since Jews had always survived in alien lands by adapting themselves. Flexibility was one thing, corruption by alien values quite another.
At least one Haleevie, Sarah decided, must defend the traditional values and practices that made the Jews unique. Admonishing herself against false pride, she nonetheless concluded that she must accept that responsibility. The family, which was the kernel of Judaism, was preserved by humble women, not by rabbis splitting doctrinal hairs. The law recognized the female’s predominant role: a child of a Jewish mother was a Jew, while the child of a Jewish father and a Gentile woman was not. As a wife and mother, it was her duty to speak out, regardless of Saul’s certain anger.
She could wait for the best time, but she could not wait too long.
CHAPTER 12
April 21, 1855
PEKING
Aaron Lee braced his arms protectively when the crush thrust him against the burly hawker with the evil squint. He imprudently reached under his overcoat to touch the bulge beneath his padded long gown. Rough in its manners and villainous in its appearance, the throng jostled him pitilessly. Remembering the warnings of Shanghailanders to beware the rascals of the Imperial Capital, he stroked the bulge to reassure himself that his money pouch was still there.
The cold rasped in his throat at high noon in mid-April 1855, though the natives rejoiced in their pallid spring. When he left Shanghai three weeks earlier, the azaleas had already been glorious. In this forbidding city on the edge of Central Asia forsythia bloomed sparsely, while the air was gray with soot and gritty with ochre dust borne from the steppes.
The young scholar was forlorn amid the alien crowd within the compound of the Temple of Heaven on the southern edge of the Chinese City. To the north lay the Tartar City, where the Manchu overlords of the Great Ching Dynasty kept their ministries and their dwellings apart from their Chinese subjects. The sandal-shaped gold and silver taels in his money pouch, each an ounce and a third in weight, were his only emotional or material security. Saul Haleevie had entrusted him with that small hoard when he said goodby on the coaster laden with rice, silk, tea, and porcelain, the tribute the abundant and industrious South paid the meager and indolent North. Aaron was happy to sail on a ship flying the red ensign of Great Britain, for the Shanghai seamen were reassuringly familiar.
Although the Imperial Court despised foreigners, it was forced to ship much cargo in foreign vessels. The Grand Canal, through which the wealth of the South had flowed northward for half a millennium, was virtually closed by rebellions—and by floods that inundated tens of thousands of square miles as the Yellow River shifted its course.
When he landed at Taku, the port of Tientsin, Aaron had felt himself thrust naked into the unknown. The ninety-mile journey from Tientsin to Peking made the nineteen-year-old aspirant Mandarin feel himself an alien within his own country. Traveling in an open litter jouncing on poles slung between two cantankerous mules, he had seen an arid landscape utterly different from his green homeland watered by life-giving streams. His traveling companions, whom he had joined for protection against bandits, were as dour as the haughty camels laden with furs and medicinal herbs from Manchuria that minced through the Great Wall.
Fearful of venturing into the strange city, he stood irresolute among the milling northerners, whom he could not quite acknowledge as his countrymen. He belonged to modern, cosmopolitan Shanghai. Though he had often railed at th
e barbarians’ arrogant—and irresistible—intrusion for polluting Chinese civilization, he now acknowledged their enlivening influence. He certainly did not belong to the bleak North, whose dull people took their pleasures so glumly. The holiday throng was celebrating the Dragon Boat Festival, but even the youngsters clustering around the vendors of paper-and-feather toys or watching puppet shows on portable stages showed little of the vitality of their southern contemporaries.
Moving aimlessly with the crowd, Aaron turned away from the three concentric white marble terraces of the South Altar. On the round marble slab at the center of the highest terrace, China’s most sacred site, the Emperor knelt to worship Heaven and his Imperial Ancestors at the winter solstice. That central slab was surrounded by nine concentric circles of marble slabs in multiples of nine, the outermost auspiciously numbering nine times nine. Aaron smiled scornfully at that numerological flummery and lifted his eyes to the shrine that crowned the Northern Altar: the Hall of Eternity, popularly called the Temple of Heaven.
Awe dispelled his sour self-absorption, and exhilaration overcame his homesickness. At the summit of the terraces fenced by marble balustrades stood the most beautiful structure he had ever seen. Surmounted by a golden globe, the three-tiered tile roof of the circular temple glowed sapphire against the haze, while screens of blue-glass rods shimmered on golden chains before the carved-stone windows. Since China was Chung-kuo, the hub of all under Heaven, the Hall of Eternity was the center of the world. Aaron knew he would never forget this exalted moment.
“Ni chia-huor …” A bony elbow prodded him, and a harsh voice demanded: “Move, fellow! You don’t own the place.”
His rapture dissipated, he again touched the bulge of his money pouch. He recalled bitterly that the Emperor who now prostrated himself in mock humility before Heaven was not Chinese, but a crude barbarian. When the Yung Lo Emperor of the Ming Dynasty built the Hall of Eternity, perfect harmony had prevailed throughout the Great Empire. But not even proximate harmony existed anywhere today. The ideal to which he had just rededicated himself, the great family of the Chinese people, did not really exist. A congeries of divergent peoples was oppressed by Manchurian savages in silk robes.
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