Little Reunions Page 25

  “Hairy Girl has found a suitor?” asked Jade Peach, using Julie’s infant sobriquet.

  She must have heard it from the Pien family.

  Julie smiled awkwardly. “No. He was married and is now divorced. But he had to leave because of his previous ties to the Nanking government,” she explained.

  Jade Peach listened with a blank expression at first. “Oh dear!” she suddenly blurted out. “I hope you weren’t taken advantage of!”

  “No, no, not at all,” said Julie defensively.

  Jade Peach didn’t press the issue.

  Julie then found an excuse and retreated. After Jade Peach left, Judy told Julie about her latest news. “She said she’s taking care of someone’s household, even the finances, and her employer trusts her,” said Judy. “It sounds like she’s now with him.”

  Miss Su had recently moved to Shanghai. Miss Su and Brother Hsü were consanguineous siblings. The daughter of Uncle Chu’s first wife, she was about the same age as Judy. They had been close friends since childhood. Judy kept little contact with most relatives except the few she got along well with. Another female cousin, also from the Chu family, was fond of Miss Su, too.

  Once, when Herr Schütte, the principal of the German-language school, came up in conversation, Judy remarked, “Luckily, no one outside knows anything about what your second aunt and I got up to.” She sounded relieved but also a little disappointed—people usually thought of her as a classic wallflower. But then she added, “Is it true that people with secrets are likely to suspect others, and people without secrets won’t suspect others?”

  “Don’t know,” Julie responded. “Maybe.”

  But Julie rarely suspected others, not even after she had discovered her mother’s secrets. She didn’t see anything outrageous when Judy suspected Jade Peach had become her employer’s mistress. She thought Jade Peach had never been happy working in her family, though she hadn’t been mistreated, either. Visitors from Nanking liked to bring their local delicacy, preserved duck, with them. Julie remembered other maids in the household used to laugh at Jade Peach for taking pleasure in devouring the “pope’s nose” of a duck. Jade Peach had always remained silent. From her stony face, Julie could sense that she simply wanted to eat what others didn’t want to eat.

  Jade Peach had been the youngest maid in the household and was married off, but her husband deserted her. Having gone through so many ups and downs in life, Jade Peach felt content once she found a good employer. Although he had taken an interest in her, nothing likely happened. This was China after all.

  When she lived in northern China, Jade Peach was a part of Julie’s childhood. That was a particularly tranquil time when they were shielded, as if by a supernatural force, from the traumas of life, from illnesses or deaths. This surely influenced their mind-set. Julie once mocked Jade Peach for being naive without realizing that she herself was hopelessly naive. She had always assumed Chih-yung wasn’t romantically involved with Miss K’ang and Opportune Jade while on the run.

  In the first letter Chih-yung sent to Julie after fleeing to central China, he already mentioned Miss K’ang. He said he stayed in a hospital compound while working on his newspaper because the hospital was clean. He said everyone spoke well of a very nice nurse named Miss K’ang, who was only sixteen years old. He said he liked to joke with her.

  In her reply to Chih-yung’s letter, Julie asked him to pass on her regards to Miss K’ang, followed by a casual remark: “I’m a very jealous woman, but of course I’m pleased to learn that you’re not living in solitude over there.”

  Perhaps Chih-yung wouldn’t believe her: Julie had never been jealous of Crimson Cloud, his wife, nor Wendy, the editor. Julie thought Chih-yung’s relationship with Wendy was merely an aberrant reaction after being released from prison, when he certainly must have felt he had narrowly escaped death. Wendy followed the style of foreign female writers who didn’t seem to pay much attention to their appearance. She had a rather sharply featured long face and a stout figure. Over her traditional gown she wore a bulky brown cardigan knitted with a bunch-of-grapes pattern. For the carefree Wendy, the one-off intimacy with Chih-yung wouldn’t have meant much.

  “Do you have any venereal diseases?” Wendy asks bluntly.

  “No.” He smiles. “What about you? Do you have any?”

  A classic exchange under these circumstances.

  Chih-yung shared many romantic anecdotes from his past that Julie always chalked up to him not having found the right person yet.

  “I like women,” he once admitted, with a slightly embarrassed smile. “But I don’t like older women,” he added as a redundant aside.

  Julie chuckled.

  She had thought “like” meant nothing more than “have an appreciation for.” She knew that was true for shy men—because of the distance from the object of their admiration, they often idolized the other party though they rarely acknowledged such behavior. An occasional slip of the tongue usually came across as rather angry.

  Chih-yung brought his Japanese friend Araki to meet Julie. Araki was a tall man with a long angular face. The only Japanese features about him were his clean-shaven head and a pair of dainty, black-framed round spectacles.

  Araki had been to Mongolia, which Julie found fascinating. On their next visit, Chih-yung brought his gramophone and a record of Mongolian singing. Instead of following a melody, the singing sounded more like chanting from a great distance, though different from, say, Alpine yodeling, which involved repeated changes in pitch. Julie thought Japan’s Noh chanting also was limited in melodic phrasing, but its muffled ghostly vocalizations reminded her of a murder victim’s spirit trapped in an urn. These types of singing possessed strong local characteristics, so strong that they verged on the comical. But to Julie, the Mongolian chanting sounded different—a youth’s bland voice; a distant, primitive voice. Julie played the record several times before she insisted on returning both to their owner.

  Araki had lived in Peking for a long time and could speak better Mandarin than Julie. Chih-yung told Julie that Araki’s neighbor in Peking had a mischievous daughter. Araki used to joke with her over the wall in the courtyard and eventually the two fell in love. Of course the relationship didn’t receive the blessing of the girl’s family, and she subsequently was married off to someone else. Araki then became engaged to a student in Japan of his own volition. During the war, his fiancée lived with him for a time, but on her way back to her family the train was bombed and she died. Araki later married a maid who worked for his family, the ceremony held in a Shinto shrine.

  The Peking girl’s husband was a typical loser. The couple had many children. For years Araki not only helped her financially but also referred jobs to her. One time she couldn’t bear the marriage any longer and decided to leave. Her husband knelt down and begged her to stay. Her children also dropped to their knees. She slowly combed her hair while holding a mirror. Then she sighed and let the mirror drop, telling them to get up.

  Julie had seen her only once. A lean, bony woman whose shockingly weakened appearance must have been caused by the vicissitudes of destitution and emotional despair, though she wasn’t ill, per se, and not old. Her hair was permed. Her delicate pale face, with a round forehead like a toddler’s, still revealed a faint trace of innocence. Her tall, thin figure was loosely wrapped in a long-sleeve northern-style brocade gown with embroidered borders, the collar much too big for her. She sounded relaxed when she chatted with Araki, their conversation exchanged in an intimate tone of voice.

  “She treats Araki like a younger brother. Sometimes she scolds him,” Chih-yung later told Julie.

  Julie believed Chih-yung could achieve this ancient Eastern state of mind. However, he was too generous with his love for women, and too ready to fantasize and idealize. He felt compelled to scatter his love. A life of solitude while on the run must have been pure misery, and this kind of romantic excitement even more necessary to him.

  “I actually quite enj
oyed life as a high-school teacher,” Chih-yung once commented.

  Julie imagined life in a dormitory for newspaper staff most likely similar to that in a dormitory for teachers. He must have liked to teach because of all the students who worshipped him and the pretty female colleagues he could share jokes with. But teachers are often restrained by many factors. His interaction with Miss K’ang must have been limited to sharing jokes. What could possibly happen with a respectable sixteen-year-old girl?

  Chih-yung’s exhaustion was genuine. In addition to running a newspaper, he also started a literary monthly. But apart from reprinting a few articles here and there, he was the only contributor, writing under different pseudonyms.

  In her letters to Chih-yung, Julie often asked him to pass on her regards to Miss K’ang; in his letters to Julie, he frequently mentioned Miss K’ang. He quoted her like a proud parent sharing his child’s ingenious remarks.

  Gradually, Julie sensed the importance of such romantic excitement to Chih-yung. That’s him. What can you do? If you truly love someone, how can you sever a part of him like chopping off a branch of a tree?

  She dreamed of resting her hand against a leaning palm tree, the light gray striped tree trunk firm and long. Then her gaze moved from the tree trunk to the horizon, where the sea and the sky merged into one. She could barely keep her eyes open under the blazing sun.

  It was clearly a Freudian type of dream, which Julie didn’t realize also revealed a glimmer of hope: palm trees only have one trunk and no stray branches.

  That autumn Chih-yung returned to Shanghai and telephoned Julie. “Hello, I’m back,” he said. His voice triggered a wave of dizziness. After recovering, she felt a sudden sense of relief, as if falling backward and being caught by a wall to lean against, but in fact she didn’t move.

  It was two days after the Mid-Autumn Festival, traditionally an occasion for family reunions.

  “Shao Chih-yung is back,” Julie informed Judy.

  “After celebrating the festival with his wife,” Judy commented sarcastically.

  Julie just smiled but didn’t respond. She didn’t know if Chih-yung had first gone to Nanking before returning to Shanghai, though it didn’t matter as she never bothered to celebrate the festival anyway. Besides, her birthday was the next day. As a child, she had always confused her birthday with the Mid-Autumn Festival.

  Chih-yung brought a lot of money for her again, but this time Julie felt a little awkward accepting it. Obviously he didn’t believe what Julie had said about repaying her mother.

  He must have thought it was just an excuse to ask for money. With the previous bundle I bought gold to preserve its value. Who knows whether or not it will be enough to make the repayment one day. The currency system is bound to change again when the government changes hands, and today’s money will be worth nothing after a few rounds of conversion—a trick any government can use. It’s wiser to save a bit more.

  Julie had always wanted to ask Third Aunt to help her calculate exactly how much money Rachel had spent on her so she could have a clear sense of what she owed. But what’s the point of calculating in advance when the currency value fluctuates so much? I can’t ask Third Aunt to calculate again and again. Constantly blabbing about compensation is distasteful.

  Julie didn’t bother to mention repaying Rachel to Chih-yung again—he wouldn’t believe her anyway.

  “Let me look after you financially, all right?” he asked.

  Julie smiled but didn’t say anything. The money she earned from writing wasn’t enough. She wasn’t writing enough. Only the first editions of her books sold well. She had been more productive at the beginning of her career but couldn’t sustain the momentum; she had always been afraid of being forced to churn out rubbish. A little extra money would be helpful. Isn’t he also supporting the painter Hsü Heng, as well as a poet? At least I’m more promising than them.

  “I started the newspaper for money, of course, but I also believe it will benefit the country and the people. I wouldn’t have done it otherwise,” proclaimed Chih-yung.

  As they snuggled up to each other, Chih-yung said apologetically, “I feel like I’m driving with one hand while embracing a lover with the other. My mind is wandering.”

  Julie could feel a chill in the air.

  He started to talk about Miss K’ang: nothing but trivial matters. Their interaction sounded like constant bickering. There were also playful fights—one snatched things from the other then ran. The other gave chase while calling out, “You’re terrible!”

  So that’s what it’s all about, Julie thought. This kind of folksy flirting wasn’t acceptable to aristocratic families and therefore only existed among ordinary people in the form of affectionate bickering. It wasn’t that Julie would flirt in a more respectable manner—she just couldn’t help feeling contempt.

  “What does Miss K’ang look like?” Julie politely asked.

  His voice lowered, almost completely muted. He sounded cautious, talking in circles, and didn’t reveal anything significant except, “Even an ordinary blue cotton gown looks refreshing on her.”

  “Is her hair permed?”

  “No. It just curls inward a bit.” He struggled to draw a likeness in the air.

  That sounded exactly like what Rachel had said a young girl should look like.

  Their relationship was changing. Perhaps because of the emotional distance between them, or perhaps because of the hidden worry she harbored. To compensate, Julie intuitively retreated in her mind to the time when they had just met, when she wholeheartedly worshipped Chih-yung. At least she was the only one truly capable of that.

  Julie became infatuated with the new essays he churned out with astonishing speed and quantity. He had been going to her place to write. To Julie, the man sitting at her desk looked like an exquisitely detailed statue made of dark silver.

  “You look like the small silver god on my desk.”

  After dinner, Julie washed the dishes and returned to the living room. Chih-yung walked up to Julie and kissed her. She slithered down and knelt in front of him, embracing his leg, her face nestled against his thigh. With an embarrassed smile, he pulled her up with both hands and raised her up in the air. “I worship my wife!”

  Chih-yung brought Yü K’o-ch’ien from northern China to help at the newspaper. Yü was the principal disciple of the most famous writer in China at the time. Chih-yung took him to meet Julie. Yü K’o-ch’ien had the demeanor of a scholar, but Julie noticed him spying on her from behind his spectacles. “He’s a devious one,” she immediately concluded. After he left, Julie said nothing about the visitor to Chih-yung. From her experience with Hsiang Ching, she knew Chih-yung would not be willing to listen to anything negative about his friends.

  “Araki complained about Crimson Cloud, saying, ‘I’ve been to your house many times but I’ve never once seen you eat a dish you like,’” said Chih-yung.

  Julie said nothing when she heard this. Actually, she was the same. Whenever Chih-yung came, all she did was simply go to the Old Big House nearby to buy cold cuts of beef stewed in soy sauce and some minced meat wrapped in bean-curd skin, known locally as “quilt rolls”—all things he didn’t particularly like to eat. She knew Chih-yung favored more refined fare, but Third Aunt would mock her mercilessly if she started to learn how to cook. As for ordering food from restaurants, Julie was mindful that she had to avoid appearing to be a presumptuous houseguest. The names on the apartment deed were Judy’s and Rachel’s. Although she was allowed to live there and paid her half of the living expenses, she knew she should adapt to the modest house protocol. After all, Judy was a very tolerant host.

  Judy had a hobby: apartment hunting. Sometimes, for no specific reason, she studied classified advertisements in the papers and inspected rental apartments. For her, it was like window-shopping. Once she found an elegant studio apartment. The space wasn’t big. To maximize the living area, a foldable ironing board had been cleverly installed on the back of the wardro
be door. Judy fancied she could live in a place like that. Julie constantly reminded herself that she must be considerate because she knew how much Judy yearned to have a place of her own.

  There are similarities between the desire for food and for sex. Just as she couldn’t prepare refined dishes, Julie wasn’t prepared for intimacy. Each time it happened like an unexpected event, and she felt too embarrassed to make any preparations. Apart from the underwear she wore that was eventually removed during their encounters, she never prepared in any other way. When she washed her underwear the next morning, she could smell an odor that reminded her of the warm congee she was given as a child whenever she became sick.

  “We’ll live with your third aunt in the future,” Chih-yung once said to Julie. She later mentioned it to Judy. “Just you is already more than I can cope with. How am I going to bear it if there’s also a Shao Chih-yung here?” Judy teased.

  One day while they were eating, Julie mentioned an incident that occurred a few days earlier. That day she went to the home of Hsün Hwa, the magazine editor. The office was a long way from where she lived, but Mr. Hsün resided in a nearby alley so she always delivered her manuscripts to his home.

  The Hsüns lived in a small room at the back of the house on the second floor. Just as she started to walk up the stairs, several Japanese gendarmes came in from the back gate and followed her. Julie had nowhere else to go so she kept walking up the stairs. The editor’s door was wide open. She peeked inside but no one was home. A Japanese gendarme followed her as she walked down the stairs and stopped her to jot down in pencil her name and address in a notebook. On her way back out to the alley, a woman approached from behind. It was Miss Chu, Mr. Hsün’s mistress. Julie had bumped into her there previously.

  “Hsün Hwa was arrested and taken away by the Japanese gendarmes,” said Miss Chu. “Mrs. Hsün just left to inquire about him so I came to look after their home. When I saw Japanese gendarmes had come to investigate, I hid next door and then slipped away.”