Little Reunions Read online

  In the back streets of Central district, steep granite alleys stretched up the hills. After the battle for Hong Kong had run its course, fabric stalls multiplied and people thronged. Hot pink and bright green fabric looked even more dazzling under the bright blue sky. The atmosphere felt like a market day in a remote country town. Bebe helped Julie bargain and the stall owner cried out “Dai gu! Big sister!” in protest. Bebe, skeptical about the quality of the dye, moistened the fabric with her saliva and rubbed it to see if the color bled. Julie felt as if a needle pricked her when she saw that, but the stall owner said nothing.

  Suddenly they spotted Jenny and Mr. Wei in the crowd. They greeted one another. Mr. Wei stood to one side and didn’t say a word. Jenny was very pregnant. It was a warm day and she wasn’t wearing an overcoat. Her blue tunic protruded so far it looked like an insect’s belly. Julie tried to fix her gaze on Jenny’s face and not look down, but the surface area of the tunic was so vast, and no matter how hard she tried to look away the bright blue inundated her eyes and she lost track of the conversation.

  “I was sure you two had left,” said Julie.

  Jenny smiled. A shadow of mystery passed across her face. Julie didn’t understand why. She didn’t know the word “leave” had taken on the meaning of “go to Chungking,” which now wasn’t safe to utter in public. Besides, the couple would have to go to Chungking if they ever did leave. They couldn’t go to Mr. Wei’s hometown because his wife was there. Though even if they wanted to leave, they couldn’t secure train or boat tickets anyway.

  “Of course, we’d like to leave,” Jenny replied ponderously, “but there are complications. His parents are quite advanced in years and need to be taken care of… .” At that point, Jenny switched to English and asked Bebe about their accommodations. They chatted a little longer, then nodded and parted ways.

  As soon as the couple disappeared, Bebe puffed up her cheeks as if they were full of water. Suppressing their laughter, Bebe and Julie just stared at each other without exchanging a word.

  3

  JUDY WAS put on leave without pay from the foreign firm soon after the Japanese occupied the foreign concessions in Shanghai, and she had to live frugally. On the day Julie returned to Shanghai, Judy welcomed her with a food-laden table, but the next day she said, “Nowadays, I just eat scallion pancakes.” Then explained, slightly embarrassed, “Less trouble.”

  “I love scallion pancakes,” said Julie.

  Julie indeed did not tire of scallion pancakes three meals a day because it felt as exciting as playing truant. Since childhood, Rachel had constantly lectured her about nutrition and made Julie feel guilty if for a single day she didn’t eat fruits and vegetables, as well as meat and fish.

  Every day, Mrs. Ch’in came to wash the clothes and clean the house. Apart from that, all she did was stand over the gas stove and fry scallion pancakes, one by one. Mrs. Ch’in had bound feet and constantly complained that the insufficiency of the beneficial earth element up in the eighth-floor apartment caused her legs to swell.

  Rooms were sublet to two German men after Rachel left Shanghai. It was easier to deal with bachelors like them, whereas women tended to be much more troublesome. Judy had only kept one room for herself. Now that Julie had moved in, she contributed half the expenses. Judy asked relatives to find Julie some work tutoring two female middle-school students. Aware her third aunt had only enjoyed a short period of tranquil seclusion, Julie felt deeply guilty for intruding.

  Standing by the window one day, Judy caught a pigeon and told Julie to hold on to the bird while she looked for a length of string to tie one of the pigeon’s feet to the windowsill. The neck of the large pigeon was covered with iridescent purple and green feathers. The bird twisted and turned, making it difficult to subdue without using excessive force. The women giggled as they grappled with the bird.

  “We’ll have to wait for Mrs. Ch’in to come tomorrow and kill it,” said Judy.

  Julie repeatedly went to check on the pigeon; it quietly scampered around in circles outside the window.

  “We used to raise a lot of pigeons when we were small,” said Judy. “Your grandma said raising pigeons is good for the eyes.”

  Perhaps the theory is that watching pigeons fly about in the distance prevents nearsightedness. But Judy and her brother are both nearsighted.

  Who would have thought that a night of worrying would cause the pigeon to lose half its body weight. It did not, however, turn into a white dove the way the legendary Wu Tzu-hsü’s hair turned white overnight when running for his life. The next day it appeared to be an entirely different bird. Mrs. Ch’in slaughtered the pigeon in the rear corridor and stewed the bird over a low flame to make a soup. Julie grieved silently as she ate, as did Judy. Without aniseed and other spices, the pigeon tasted a little gamy, but it was hardly worth spending money to buy spices for a one-off event.

  Miss Hsiang and Mr. Pi had returned to Shanghai by train from Shao-kwan, north of Hong Kong, ahead of Julie. Ambassador Pi was advanced in years and didn’t go to Chungking. They married. Miss Hsiang would occasionally visit Judy to chat. She had not told Mr. Pi about her son.

  “Your second aunt actually helped to bring about this state of affairs with Miss Hsiang,” Judy confided to Julie with a chuckle. “Mr. Pi had gone to Hong Kong because of your second aunt, but in his disappointment at unrequited love, he made a deliberate effort to woo Miss Hsiang. Later, he admitted to your second aunt that his little deception turned into reality.”

  “Second Aunt was furious that Mr. Pi did nothing to help her during the time she was suspected of espionage.”

  “That was because she broke his heart.”

  “Why on earth was Second Aunt suspected of being a spy?” “

  I’m not sure,” Judy replied hesitantly. “Miss Hsiang said Rachel’s socializing with the English officer led to suspicions she was collecting intelligence, and he reported her.”

  It must have been the young man that day at the beach. So he got the credit for being an informant. No wonder Second Aunt was so furious when she left.

  And no wonder Mr. Pi was so angry that he did nothing to help.

  “Is Lloyd in Singapore?”

  All Julie knew was that around the time Singapore fell to the Japanese, Rachel traveled on a refugee boat to India.

  “Lloyd is dead. He was killed on the beach in Singapore. We always said his laughing so hard he couldn’t finish a sentence or be understood was a bad omen.”

  In Julie’s mind, Lloyd was like William Dobbin and his unrequited love for Amelia Sedley in Vanity Fair. He waited many years for one woman, determined to marry her. Julie could never ascertain if he was in Singapore, and after the incident with the eight hundred dollars, she became utterly indifferent toward her mother. She never even thought about her, or gave any thought to why she had gone to Singapore for a year or two without ever marrying and yet did not leave.

  It sounded like Rachel had moved in with Lloyd. But now he was dead and Rachel had not remarried, so Julie didn’t mention anything about Rachel intimating her intentions to find a husband for herself.

  Judy misread the hesitation on Julie’s face and mistakenly thought Julie disapproved of her mother’s romances. After a short pause Judy said in a low voice, “Your second aunt actually got divorced for Chien-wei, but then he had second thoughts about marrying a divorced woman as it would jeopardize his career—he worked at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Back in Nanking, he eventually married a university graduate. Later he came to visit us, and as soon as he and Rachel met again they gazed into each other’s eyes for a long time without saying a word.”

  Of all of Rachel and Judy’s friends from the time they had studied in Europe, Ambassador Pi Chien-wei was the only one Julie had not met before moving to Hong Kong for school. I didn’t know she had such a tragic romance. I wonder when that visit was? She divorced for him and then moved out of the family home so the visit must have been to the apartment Rachel and Judy shared. Bu
t Rachel only divorced four years after she returned from overseas. If she had planned to get divorced in order to marry him, she wouldn’t have waited so long. Anyway, it appears that he had married someone else soon after returning to China, and after he married he visited the Sheng residence to see Rachel. Rachel procrastinated for a very long time then decided to get divorced nonetheless.

  Julie didn’t ask Judy about the accuracy of this imagined sequence of events. Curiosity was strictly taboo in this household, which is why Judy only related the faintest outline to her. Judy called Julie’s brother, Julian, “sneaky,” but the English word “sneaky” doesn’t convey the connotation of intelligence in the Chinese word. Actually, Julie knew her brother was entirely ignorant about Rachel and Judy’s lives, but his bright feline eyes seemed to be most observant.

  Once, during an after-lunch conversation, Rachel casually said to Julie, “Your second uncle opens other people’s mail.” Judy raised her eyebrows and smiled. Julie would never forget the implication, that only people with a dull life take pleasure in prying into the private affairs of others.

  Still, Julie could not help feeling curious about Chien-wei’s final appearance at the Sheng household because that was a time when Julie had felt closest to her mother. They were living under the same roof, yet Julie had no idea about Mr. Pi. When visitors came, Rachel would often joke with Judy, “Our little Julie is all right. She calls me Second Aunt, but heaven forbid if little Julian bursts in and blurts out, ‘Mommy, Mommy!’ That would be something… .” Actually, Julian never once referred to Rachel as his mother. He had always envied Julie being asked to call their mother Second Aunt.

  Julie, however, devoted little time to revisiting the past and so such thoughts about her family were fleeting. Memories, happy or not, always embodied a doleful note, which, no matter how faint, Julie felt a strong aversion to. She never sought out melancholy, but life unavoidably overflowed with it. Just thinking along these lines made her feel like she was standing in the portal of an ancient edifice, peering through the moonlight and dark shadows that permeated the ruins of a once noble and illustrious household, which was now nothing more than scattered shards of roof tiles and piles of rubble from collapsed walls. That instant of knowing what once existed there.

  “Some things you will only understand after you grow up,” Rachel said to Julie at the time of the divorce.

  “I had an agreement with your second uncle. This time I have come back only to manage his household.”

  The day Rachel returned to China, Yü-heng, a young male servant who had come to the Sheng household as part of Rachel’s dowry, went to the docks to greet her. He was the son of the Pien clan’s former steward who accompanied their young children to their classes at the library. For some reason, Yü-heng did not accomplish his mission to meet Rachel, and the maidservants began whispering conspiratorially to each other. Yü-heng again went to the wharf and finally returned in the afternoon, saying that Maternal Uncle’s family had picked her up and she would arrive home in the evening.

  That night Julie and Julian were already asleep but were woken up to get dressed again. It felt like fleeing from bandits under cover of darkness, something the maidservants often talked about.

  The household was an amalgamation of three-bay shakkumen, stone-gate town houses. The main hall was square but not spacious. Many large suitcases were stacked up on the floor. Rachel and Judy sat on two wooden chairs separated by a teapoy. The maidservants and Jade Peach, the servant girl who was part of Rachel’s dowry, crowded around the doorway, all smiles, though in the dismal light their darkened faces exuded gloom.

  Julie didn’t recognize them. Both women wore fashionable clay-colored silk one-piece dresses, one darker than the other, with pieces of fabric hanging down from the front and back. It was the only time Rachel ever wore glasses.

  “Really!” sneered Rachel. “Those socks are far too tight. Why would you make her wear them?” The thick white socks made in England had become as stiff as stovepipes after many washings.

  “Didn’t you say they are terribly expensive?” replied Auntie Han obsequiously.

  “They can’t be worn if they’re too small,” rebuked Rachel as she pushed back Julie’s bangs. “And really, Auntie Han, where are her eyebrows? Her bangs are much too long. They’re interfering with the proper growth of her eyebrows. Cut them back a bit right now.”

  Julie was most unenthusiastic—newly cut bangs, neither long nor short, would make her look stupid.

  “I like this handsome young man,” said Judy as she pulled Julian toward her.

  “Julian, you haven’t made your salutations,” Rachel prompted.

  “He did,” said Auntie Han, and then bent down to tell him discreetly to say it again.

  “Goodness,” said Rachel, “Julian’s become aphasic! And why did his maid Auntie Yü leave?”

  “Not sure. Said she was old and wanted to go home.” Auntie Han, worried that she herself would be suspected of having edged Auntie Yü out, felt a twinge of anxiety.

  “Well, Auntie Han certainly shows no signs of aging.”

  “Madam, but I am old!” replied Auntie Han. “Did you like the food overseas?”

  “If we couldn’t eat it, we cooked for ourselves,” said Judy, tossing her head and sniffing haughtily, as was her habit.

  “Third Mistress cooked for herself?”

  “If not,” replied Judy, mimicking Auntie Han’s rustic Anhwei patois, “ jeang gao ah? How’d she eat, eh?”

  “Third Mistress is very capable now.”

  “Just a minute, Auntie Han,” said Judy abruptly. “Jeang shui ah? How are we going to sleep tonight?” Her tone was jolly but carried a hint of confrontation.

  “Jeang shui? How are you going to sleep? You can sleep however you want to sleep. Everything is ready.”

  Hearing that everything was ready seemed to put Judy in a panic again. She was about to say something when she changed her mind. “We have sheets?” she asked.

  “Of course.”

  “Are they clean?”

  “Ahhhh!” said Auntie Han. The dialect of Hofei, the capital of Anhwei, has a peculiar way of articulating the word “ah.” The sound first rises to the palate, then joins force with the coarse roaring from the throat, before bursting out from a half-open gap of the mouth to imply, with annoyance, “How could you ask such a thing?” Auntie Han continued, “Freshly washed, Third Mistress. How could they not be clean?”

  Julie found this all rather strange, the tension in the air. Rachel said nothing, but continued to listen intently.

  Julie’s father came upstairs and cursorily nodded toward Rachel and Judy as he circumnavigated the room in the dim light of the lamp, his gown fluttering, a cigar in his hand. He perfunctorily asked about their journey, then chatted about her uncle and her father’s cousins in Tientsin.

  Up to this point, Judy was answering all his questions, but suddenly Rachel spoke. “How can we possibly live here?” She was so angry that her voice had completely changed.

  “I knew you wouldn’t be amenable unless you could choose your own residence,” he replied amiably. “This is just a temporary arrangement.”

  He spoke some more with Judy before announcing, “Perhaps you should retire now. Early tomorrow morning you’ll inspect some houses. I subscribed to a newspaper and have left instructions for it to be brought upstairs as soon as it arrives.” He then headed downstairs.

  The room fell silent for a moment. The women, who had been crowded at the entrance, had already left. Jade Peach returned and stood leaning in the doorway with her hands tucked into her sleeves.

  “Very well, then,” said Rachel to Auntie Han, “you may put them to bed now.”

  Auntie Han quickly assented and led the two children away.

  In the new house, Julie’s father occupied a room on the second floor, separated from Judy’s bedroom by another room. Rachel’s room was on the other side of Judy’s. The children and their elderly white-bearded tutor
who taught them Chinese lived on the fourth floor. The maidservants lived on the third floor to segregate the generations and insulate nocturnal noise.

  “You choose for yourselves,” said Rachel, “the colors for your bedrooms and the study.”

  Julie and Julian sat together flipping through the book of color swatches. Julie was ever fearful her brother would slip out of character to weigh in. But as usual, he said nothing.

  Julie chose a dark pink for her bedroom and a sea green for the study in the next room. She felt so deliriously happy living for the first time in a world of her own creation that she thought her heart would explode. Even after living there for some time she would go into raptures just from an occasional glance at the painted walls. She also loved the sloping ceiling of the garret on the fourth floor, the narrow windows, the dim light; it was like a fairy-tale cottage in the Black Forest.

  At noon, they would go downstairs for lunch. Cigar in hand, her father would pace around the leather-covered square table with copper edges while he waited for Rachel and Judy to descend.

  At the dining table, Judy would habitually ask him for news about distant relatives. “How’s Yang Chao-lin? How’s Ch’ien, the second eldest?”

  His answers always seemed sarcastic.

  “You people!” she would snigger. “And you had to cozy up to him!”

  Rachel rarely spoke at the dinner table, at most offering some advice about nutrition when she served food to the children. Sitting in silence, she would peer downward with the same tender look that Julie later saw reflected in the Repulse Bay Hotel shopwindow when Miss Hsiang straightened Mr. Pi’s tie.

  Julie’s father was always the first to finish eating and the first to leave the table. Then Rachel would embark on postprandial sermons on how important education is, that one should not lie, that one should not cry because only the weak cry. “I always try to reason with you,” Rachel would say. “Do you think we had it as easy as you do? Why, when my mother scolded me I’d be red in the face and burst into tears.”