by Gus Lee
“I’m sorry, Uncle,” I said. The squirrels returned, sniffing, standing up on hind legs, hopeful. As a child and as a crotheaded Plebe, I had known how they felt: hungry. I broke a fortune cookie and offered the fragments. The squirrels boldly snatched them and stepped away, eating with those little hypersonic movements.
If this fortune says “Love is in your future,” then Christine will kiss me before I go back to the Academy, I thought. It said “You are cordial and perceptive.” I wondered if she would ever kiss me. Uncle was talking and I was daydreaming again.
“Hausheng, do not be sorry. It is not your fault! You did not cause the Ch’ing to lose the T’ien Ming, the Mandate of Heaven, to lose the power to govern people. You did not choose to be born here. But you often choose to forget who you are.
“So. Second, I owe you an apology.” He looked down while I wondered what was happening. Chinese men do not apologize.
“When you called the bank and tried to say goodbye to me last spring, I was very hurt that you were choosing to follow in your father’s footsteps, eager to be a soldier. All this teaching of you, to come to that. I felt very sad, and most alone.”
“I’m sorry, Uncle,” I said, pained.
“Yes. This, to apologize to me for this, is acceptable, although I am confessing my wrongs, not yours, and you of course did the correct thing. You honored your father.”
It was summer in San Francisco and the bench was cold. I was warmed by the food, hoping that he did not notice how ferociously the light ginger sauce in the kuotieh squirted when I bit into it.
“Against the wishes of your father, nothing can compete but the judgment of Heaven. So the wishes of an old, outside uncle, are nothing against the authority of the fu-ch’in.
“But,” he said slowly, “your father has abandoned the way of the Master. It truly is a terrible problem. It is what the English call Hobson’s choice. What I have always called the ch’a lu t’ung k’u. Do you remember this expression?”
I shook my head, chewing. “Notrly,” I said with my mouth full, which was acceptable when eating Chinese food.
He put down his chopsticks. “It is the Fork of Pain, the Choice with No Choices. You see, for me to support and aid your father’s wishes to make you a soldier offends all that I have learned. But to not support your father’s wishes also offends all that I have taught you, and either outcome produced dishonor. I could not solve the puzzle. Where does the duty lie? This is, of course, a terrible reflection on me, and on my scholarship.”
His face was torn with intellectual pains. I shut my eyes, not wanting to see my uncle humbled.
“So I closed my door. I did not give you my elderly words. I did not give you a gift to remember the honor you paid me as a sometime, lackluster student. I asked Secretary Hannah to tell you I was out, when I was in. I did not act with skill, or wisdom. It was as if I were the youth, and you the elder.” He chewed, his mustache flaring, put down his kwaidz, and adjusted his cane.
“So, Haushusheng, I am very sorry. Please be more courteous to me than I was to you, and accept this.”
He reached into a pocket. He opened my palm and placed his gold Piaget Swiss watch in it, his cool, thin fingers bending around mine to enclose it. He had never touched me before.
“Here. Do not argue, for I will not bend. No polite refusals, three times, until I forbear upon you. I forbear now. I employ the same aphorism: ‘The weight of the gift is as a feather, but its meaning in my heart is like a huge rock.’ There. All said.
“I only wore a watch because Madame Cheng expected her staff to wear them, to be so American, even me. This was frankly silly of her; there were clocks on all the walls, and ancient Chinese timepieces in the hallways—then she gave us little gold clocks for our desks. Ai-yaa!—so many reminders of death! It is such a modern thing, and I am now almost retired. It ticks too loudly; I hear it at night, calling to me, like the small voices of all the dead in my family. It now ticks with a rhythm of a bad heart. Very, very—uh—eccentric. If I silence it by not winding it, I feel a deep guilt to Madame Cheng. I do not wear a watch at all now. I am late for any number of things, and I enjoy the privileges of being old. No one at the bank can criticize me, for they all call me ‘Father.’ ”
It was true. I could not imagine anyone in the bank, or anyone in the world, criticizing a Chinese elder like Uncle Shim.
“You always gazed at it,” he said. “I taught you how to read time with it. Do you remember? I used to say to you: ‘Hausheng, the numbers on the face of this watch are only for the small hand. The big hand does not care about numbers. The big hand is literary, and sees no numbers, but imagines the numbers one through sixty in its literary mind. The little hand, it is a small accountant or banker, fond of counting, of abacus, and it reads the numbers on the dial.’
“No? Oh, Hausheng, talking with you is like speaking to half of you. Your memory is such a weak, unhealthy thing, so filled with huge holes. But ah, I really did not come here to criticize you.
“It would warm the heart to think that young Ting enjoys its noises. And it now falls from my wrist, as if I were already a ghost in my underground residence, not of this earth. I truly do not want it anymore.”
“Uncle—”
“No! No! Do not kill me with politeness! Please. No American stupidities. Indulge me and accept it gently.”
I put on the watch. It was too small at its widest, pinching my wrist. It was a fine watch, made magnificent by its former owner, and the honorable tasks he had completed in total disregard for Western time. The watch was a symbol of change, and he had never wanted it.
“Now, third,” he said softly, “for my wise words of advice.” He smiled to himself. “I do not believe in advice. I believe in a life of learning, of steady scholarship. Of constant inquiry in the presence of elders. Advice is what is given when the daily routines of life call for the thoughts of elders.
“I have given you my thoughts about your going to a school for soldiers. Now, it is too late. You already have the look, the short hair of a monk with the jaw of a warlord, full of iron will. This is a particularly nasty combination of appearances. You look like your father when he finished at Paoting Military Academy, like Chiang Kai-shek when he returned from the Japanese military school. It changes young men. It hardens their hearts.”
“I look hard ’cause I didn’t have Chinese food for a year.”
He sighed, looking at the lake. The ducks were also having lunch, the older ones no doubt frustrated with the limited insight of the young. “What is the purpose of life? Young Man Ting, I will tell you, now.
“It is that you subdue yourself and honor the rituals. The rituals and proprieties require you to respect the relationships which are older than time.
“First, to your father. Second, to the emperor. The emperor is alive, but not on the throne. Do not worry about him. ‘Heaven is high, and the emperor is truly far away.’ Third, in the time of your marriage, your wife to you. Hausheng, marry a good Chinese girl. Your father did so, as did I, to our infinite happiness,” he said, his face stricken with grief.
He looked away from me. “I do not say this to your face. I say this to the Eight Breezes. ‘Look at the trouble when your father married a foreign woman!’ Of course, I could not say this to any human being.” He cleared his throat, and did not look at me.
I gulped, feeling ji hui everywhere.
“Fourth, does not matter, for you do not have an older brother to respect and answer to, which is grand luck, please believe me.
“Of course, in life, you will find such a person. The older brother. It is what your own father did, finding two of them: one, a brother of the Cheng clan, who gave your father his name; second, that American son of Christian missionaries with the German name. The soldier,” he said, sadly.
“Na-men Schwarzhedd,” I said.
“Fifth,” he said quickly, “is the respecting of friends, which is the least of the Wu-lun, the Five Personal Relationships. You ha
ve always had these friends, these pung-yoh, but none of them have been Chinese scholars.”
Santino Rappa and Michael Benjamin, I thought.
“In times of life change—birth, marriage, death—and in times of trouble—floods, disease, war, famine, drought, locusts, earthquake, typhoon, or crime—the rituals, the San-gahng and the Wu-lun, are your truths. This will be true after I am dead.
“You have gone to a school that this foreign society regards as the Hanlin.” He shook his head so violently on his thin neck that all the squirrels ran away again, their little claws shooting acorns and eucalyptus leaves in their wakes. Ducks honked.
“I did not realize what an honor it was, in this country, for you to be in that school. Your father swells with pride because of it. He is very active with Chinatown society, bragging about you. It has given him great life, and great t’i-mien, force, as is fitting for a father regarding the accomplishments of his only son.
“He owns you, Hausheng. He is you. You are the arrow shot from his bow. He has given you life; therefore, your successes are his and your failures are yours alone. You are his son—only to obey and please and serve him!” he said shrilly, causing the ducks to flap away from shore.
“Ai-yaa! You do not pay attention. You stare at the trees.”
“I’m sorry, Uncle. I heard you.”
“No,” he said. “You do not hear me. You do not look at me. Mian dui mian. Face to face.”
I stood, my face red and hot. The squirrels were caught between cookie hopes and fear of Uncle Shim’s powerful emotions.
“You might think your father has not served his role as well as he should. Bah!” he cried. “How would you do in China, raising children in a land that is not yours, without a wife to tend to home and the little ones. And in China, you would have a face that would make you welcome everywhere. Here, he looks like he is the foreigner. What if you lost your family and your wealth and your status, and had to get by using your skills as a Chinese man? You would be quickly dead in a fantastic and most miserable hurry!
“He has done miracles by finding work in this land. And by marrying a foreign woman to make you equally foreign.
“This, of course, I would not have done. But he is your father, and it is his duty to do what he knows is best.
“Do not ever be so carefree with the mention of your father again. If I speak of your father, you should be supremely attentive. In China, you would kneel, your head below the feet of grasshoppers. Sit.”
“Yes, Dababa,” I said, pained.
“Chung, loyalty, gahng, bonds, lun, links, dzeren, duty, Hausheng,” he gasped, his breathing labored, his forehead bright.
“Look at what you have done. You consort with brutish professional fistfighters, the big black and Italian men who urge you to punch your fellow classmates! You have forgotten Chinese. You do not perform ch’ingming rituals for ancestors. You do not know the third day, third month. You forget shiao, filial piety! You do not know any of the rites or understand memory tablets!
“You do not speak to the grave of your mother! You have no hair on your head, and you are a young man! I am too excited,” he said, breathlessly.
“Please rest,” I said, watching his chest, remembering my resuscitation training.
His mustache flared at me. “Try to remember what I say.”
“Yes, Uncle.”
“Can you do that, young Ting? Do that for me, and for all the before-borns I represent? I feel so lonely, the only human who remembers the Master K’ung in this foreign world.… Can you be dutiful to his memory, and mine? Can part of your foreign brain remember to use reason in the face of force, to honor gahng and lun above self-gain, to always seek the righteous path?”
I nodded. K’e ji fu li, subdue the self and honor the rituals and proprieties. Gahng and lun, bonds and human relationships above gain. Rule by elders, the before-borns, walking the righteous path.
“Please, say yes.”
“Yes, Dababa,” I said.
“Make your promise to the Heavens,” he said fiercely, his eyes burning past this moment in the grove. It was a Chinese sky, composed of the celestial blues of the Far East, accented by long, thin, diaphanous clouds that came from a measureless past—a Chinese sky that had overseen the Tings before me. The sky seemed weighted, bearing down upon me. I was young and small, and a host of Chinese male elders pointed their gossamer fingers at me through the body of my uncle, urging me to my duty. I thought of the cathedral of the Cadet Chapel and its mournful organ prelude before worship, when I felt the undefined deficiencies of my life. I thought of Mr. Alsop’s words: “But Honor, you must be perfect at it.”
I hardened my face, knowing how serious this was for him and for me. “Yes, Uncle,” I said, looking at him. Mian dui mian. “On my honor.”
19
CHRISTINE
San Francisco, June 15, 1965
We were at Zim’s on Taraval and I looked at her with all my hope compressed into the forward curve of my myopic corneas. We had ambled through conversational foreplay: my trying to seduce her with West Point, to little effect, and her avid descriptions of the Cal student-power and antiwar movements, which had left me cold. Christine had become a full participant in “the movement.”
Her blue eyes looked carefully at me. “I would rather die than kill someone else. Your life is in front of you, and you’re so bright—you could do so much. It’s not fair.” She shook her head.
I tightened my jaw. I knew I was frowning. “There are lots of places where that kind of thinking works. There are more where it doesn’t. You walk into the Panhandle or Bed-Sty and offer your life up and someone’ll take it. If you know how to fight, no one fights. If you signal weakness, the taking starts.
“What are you going to do when all that’s between your daughter and a guy with a knife is the fact that you can tell him that she has her life in front of her, and that she’s bright?”
“That’s not fair,” she said.
“Life’s not,” I said with blinding wisdom. “It happens. When it does, protesting won’t help. You need skills, right then.”
“That’s not the same,” she said. “Kierkegaard says—”
“It’s the same. Can I have some of your fries?”
She frowned, nodded, and almost smiled.
My feelings were like a huge, festering boil pressing against an unkind combat boot on a twenty-five-mile march, a thing developed not by volition but by circumstance, magnified by isolation, made true by its own force. I didn’t think she’d enjoy the analogy. “Christine, I like being with you. I love you.”
“Kai, don’t love me. That’s not smart. I want you to be different. Boys are wonderful and fun and exciting, but I need a friend—someone who’s not pawing at me and trying—all of that.”
“Great.”
“Don’t be disappointed. We have something far better. Kai, why do you think we’re here, and given life?”
“For me to gaze at you, endlessly,” I said.
She laughed. The dark cloud in my heart began to dissipate, and I returned to cleaning her plate.
“Not very existential. No, please, why are we here?”
“To serve our country. To do what Jack Kennedy talked about.”
“That’s so—chivalrous,” she said. “And antiquated.”
“Service isn’t obsolete. Why do you think we’re here?”
“For love and learning,” she said. “And feeling. Being. Experiencing.”
I snorted over a fry. “That’s for rich folk.”
“That’s not fair! The world should be a kind and soft place for everyone, not just struggle and stupid competition and heartache and war and conflict. There has to be a better way—and it’s up to us to find it! I would die for a better world!”
I nodded at her. “That’s what I’m committed to.” I wondered what Tony would think if he heard this conversation. He’d probably say, “Never heard so much drizzly crap since a medic with a needle told me ta drop
my drawers an’ bend over, an’ that I’d like it.”
She took my hand in hers, caressing it, exploring it, her affection so direct, so simple. Self-consciously, I looked around the restaurant. A few people studied us, the bright blond in the beige sweater and white pants massaging the hand of the Chinese guy without hair who was eating all her food.
She leaned forward. “No more of this. You and I are special. I loved your letters. Cal is full of life, and exploration, and learning, and being—it’s the most alive thing in the whole world! The rest of the planet is insane—only Berkeley makes sense.”
She looked at me. “Everything you’ve described at West Point is inhuman. You’re learning how to lead men to kill other human beings. At Cal I met a boy who had left West Point, and he talked to me, a lot. He told me about such torture and pain. He said that Beast Barracks was absolute hell. Such sadism. These horrible male rituals of—of extorting effort to test loyalty to stupid values. Everything I fear and dislike.” She licked her lips. “I love your letters. I read them and pretend you’re in Paris.”
“Paris?” I asked.
“I pretend you’re on the Rive Gauche, an eccentric poet. It makes me hope that I can change how you think—I want you to agree with me. I want you to quit West Point and be with me.”
Christine ran her tongue around her spectacular upper lip, making me forget everything. “What do you mean, ‘be with me’?”
Her hands stopped massaging mine. “Oh, Kai, I don’t know. I’d probably do anything to get you out of there. I really care for you! I love you—not romantically, but—like a special human being loves another special human being. Part of me’s very attracted to you, physically. You have a sweet face.” She gazed into my eyes. Then she looked down.
“But love of that sort is a—there’s an instant knowledge of physical attraction. Anything else, any disturbing of the internal psyche for something that isn’t instant knowledge—that would be disastrous, a huge, incredible, painful, mistake.”
“Loving me would be a mistake,” I said.