Inheritance Read online

  In Yinan’s bedroom, Junan cut her sister’s fingernails with the tiny scissors that had belonged to their mother. She had Weiwei bring a basin of water and soak cloths to press on Yinan’s skin when she complained of itching. Hu Mudan had said that if the shuidou were scratched, they could leave scars or holes as big as rice grains.

  Junan pressed her hand on Yinan’s forehead, searching for fever, but she couldn’t sense it; she felt feverish herself. She wasn’t ill, but merely floating on the river of her plans into this day, her wedding day.

  She recalled the moment when she had learned her fate. Sometime in the early morning, she had woken to find her father sitting on her bed. She smelled the alcohol on his breath. He was talking, almost to himself, repeating the name Li Ang. It was the young lieutenant she had let into the door. “We must move toward the future,” her father had said. “In the modern world, a man’s political connections matter more than his money or his family.” Outside her window the low sun had cast a frail light into the room; she had gazed at this light and thought of the lieutenant.

  Now Yinan asked, “Jiejie, is Lieutenant Li Ang a good person?”

  “Of course he is, Meimei. Baba wouldn’t marry me to a bad person. The lieutenant is working to make China strong.”

  Yinan was silent for a moment. Then she asked, “Jiejie, where do you think Mama has gone?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I know where her ashes are. But where do you think the Mama part of her has gone?”

  “She will be reborn. Do you remember the chant from the memorial services? The Mama part of her has left this world to go to a new life, and her body has been returned back to the physical world.”

  “I wish we’d had her longer.”

  “We had her for a certain amount of time, and now she is returned to the world.”

  “I wish we’d had her longer,” Yinan repeated. She rolled onto her back and stared at the ceiling with bright eyes.

  Junan herself had searched for Chanyi’s ghost, eagerly, shamefully. On the second night after her mother’s death, she had thought that she might see her. She’d woken in the middle of the night to the smell of frost-cold air. Was it the sound of her own voice that had woken her? Could there have been a visitor? But there was nothing, not a sound. Now she remembered the Buddhist chant from the memorial service:

  Se bu i kong

  kong bu i se

  Life does not differ from nothingness; nothingness does not differ from life.

  Junan closed the shades against the violent sun, which burned against her eyes.

  “If I were a boy,” Yinan said suddenly.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I know.” Yinan turned her head toward the wall. “But if I were a boy she might not have killed herself.”

  Junan closed her eyes. Against the backdrop of her lids the image of the sun made a fierce blue spot. “Mama didn’t kill herself.”

  “I heard Gu Taitai tell Weiwei that she did.”

  “Stop it!” Her voice, breaking shamefully, rang into the room.

  After a long moment, Yinan said, “I’m sorry, Jiejie. Duibuqi.”

  “Don’t ever speak of this again.”

  “Duibuqi!” Yinan’s voice shook.

  Junan pulled her arms into the sleeves of her jacket. She closed her eyes again and held herself stiffly against the back of her chair. Her own name, Junan, meant “like a son.” Yinan’s name meant “will bring forth sons.”

  After several moments, Yinan spoke, and she was sobbing. “Jiejie, are you angry at me?”

  Junan couldn’t speak.

  “Please talk to me. Please don’t leave me. Promise. Now that you’ll be married.”

  Junan looked away. “No,” she said into the room. “I won’t ever leave you, Meimei.”

  Satisfied, Yinan closed her eyes. “And I won’t ever leave you.”

  Some time later, the maid called Junan to Mma’s room. After Junan had kowtowed properly, the old woman held out a drink that Junan didn’t recognize: syrupy, sloe-purple, redolent of dates or prunes. Mma leaned close to watch her raise the glass. Over its rim Junan glimpsed the old woman’s cloudy eyes, inquisitive and vengeful, and she suspected what the liquid was. She knew she might have gotten sympathy by clinging to her grandmother, confessing fear, or begging for advice, but she was no more able to reveal such weakness than she was able to refuse Mma’s implicit challenge. She raised the fertility potion to her lips and drank.

  SEVERAL HOURS LATER, LI ANG SAT WITH HIS BRIDE AT THE FRONT table of their wedding banquet.

  Junan had turned modestly away from him, revealing the long line of her neck, her high-bridged nose, the angle of her cheek. Her glittering white cap set off her large eyes and slanted brows. Earlier that day, in the traditional ceremony, she had worn a red dress and a long red veil to kneel to the ancestors. Now she was stunning in white. She was both stylishly modern and pure in her face—she held a virginal quality, perfect as the images of saints he recalled from his one visit to a cathedral. Everyone had stared when she walked into the room. Li Ang took pride in this; it compensated, somewhat, for the fact that almost none of the guests were his. Of the two hundred people at the banquet, Li Ang knew only eight. Aside from Charlie Kong, the bald Colonel Jiang, and the wealthy Mr. Chen, none of the paigao players had been invited. Li Ang’s guests were only three: his mentor Sun Li-jen, his uncle, and his brother. Li Ang suspected that the meager Li connections had been remarked upon by everyone. He heard his mentor explaining that the groom and his brother had been orphaned in the influenza epidemic.

  “I’m afraid I don’t have many guests to add,” Li Ang apologized to Wang Daming.

  “It is fine with me,” Daming replied. “They say it’s bad luck to have too lavish a wedding.”

  At this, Li Bing raised his eyebrows. Li Ang could imagine his brother’s disdain for the stylish celebration that had been deemed appropriate by his new in-laws. The banquet was being held at a remodeled mansion. The festivities were in the modern section, lit up with electric lights. The guests had come from as far away as Nanjing: distant relations, fellow merchants, and a variety of officials representing each of the thirteen separate guilds and offices to which Wang gave yearly bribes. They did not appear to be what Li Bing would call progressive thinkers. Li Bing was seated next to the young Chen Da-Huan, who wore a long mandarin robe. Chen was talking about restoring China’s glorious cultural past.

  “Western literature has corrupted us, this movement toward so-called ‘progressive language’ has destroyed the dignity and music of the written word . . .”

  Li Bing fidgeted, rolling in his long fingers an imaginary cigarette. Li Ang knew his brother was currently engrossed in a “progressive” translation of H. G. Wells’s The Time Machine. He knew Li Bing would rather be reading at that moment. But his brother would restrain his impatience, for his sake.

  Li Ang stole glances at Junan as he ate, smiling at her now and then. She handled herself perfectly, always gracious and demure, although the day had been a long one. Li Ang had to admire her; he grew tired of sitting. One course followed another. His favorite was a local specialty, crispy fish from the lake itself. For a moment he assumed it had been chosen for him, but then he realized that no one knew the first thing about him. Other seafood had been brought by motorboat that morning: enormous shrimp with graceful whiskers, scallops, abalone. A course of chicken wrapped in lotus leaves, another local specialty, had been included for the guests from out of town. In honor of Li Ang’s mentor, who was now a colonel, they ate pork intestines prepared by a cook from Anhui. Also there was the bride’s favorite, quail eggs. But the tiny eggs were brought out too late for Junan to enjoy them. By then, she had already left the room to change out of her gown, remove her elaborate headpiece, and prepare for the wedding night. In the
spirit of modernism, she said, she had refused the customary games around the bridal bed. Later, Li Ang would go alone to meet her in their room.

  Li Ang found the egg course difficult. Since his promotion he had, on some occasions, eaten with ivory chopsticks rather than his usual bamboo, but the small, slender silver banquet chopsticks presented a new challenge. Earlier, he had dropped a slippery piece of abalone in his lap. Since that moment of shame, he had tried to ignore the irritation that arose whenever he brought a sliver of food to his mouth. He found the chopsticks impractical, trying, and pretentious. They were smaller than average, with pointed tips, making them more difficult to use, and, he decided, effeminate. This brought to mind a story he had read years ago, on some drowsy afternoon in his uncle’s store. It was a story of the old days. The emperor’s new wives were tested by being required to eat a meal of quail eggs with silver chopsticks. Perhaps the Wangs tested a son-in-law in the same way? Were they mocking him? Flushed, he stared at the tiny eggs for several minutes before beginning.

  He lost his grip on the egg halfway to his mouth and lunged forward, trying in vain to save it as it bounced off the plate and disappeared. Li Ang stared straight ahead. When he dared look around, he met the eyes of Wang Baoding, Junan’s uncle from Nanjing.

  Baoding was an elegant man: thin, with long hair combed carefully back from a high forehead. He had eaten and drunk well, and although his face retained a clay-like pallor, his earlobes had turned pink. Now, acknowledging Li Ang for the first time, Baoding leaned back and spoke.

  “My dear new nephew, let me apologize to you for this question I am about to ask,” he began. He leaned back in his chair. “It’s so seldom that I actually have the opportunity to speak candidly with men connected to the Army. So I must ask you: What on earth could your General Chiang Kai-shek have been thinking when he agreed to join forces and cooperate with the Communist Party? Does he know who those men are?”

  Beneath the man’s conspiratorial tone, Li Ang sensed the acid flavor of antagonism. “You presume too much of me, Uncle,” he said. “I’m on the military side of things. I try to stay out of politics.”

  Charlie Kong shook his head. “He’s not a thinker,” he said cheerfully.

  “Indeed.”

  Li Ang saw his brother’s lips twitch into a smile. Baoding did not appear to notice. “Let me ask you a question,” Baoding said, turning to Li Ang. “Have you ever actually met a Communist?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “It’s a simple question. Have you ever actually spoken with a Communist?”

  “Come on, now,” broke in Old Chen. “This isn’t the time for a politi-cal discussion. We all know the country must unite against the aggression of the Japanese.” Chen had served as the official elder witnessing the wedding. He clearly enjoyed his food; he’d worked his way through every course with splendid appetite, keeping his imported British suit jacket spotless. Now he raised a tiny egg in the air to emphasize his point.

  Baoding leaned forward. His long, pale face was marbled with the faintest pink of wine. “Well. As a matter of fact, I have. I met him very early on in life.”

  “Really,” said Charlie. “Was he a Russian?”

  “No. A Han. His name was Wu Shao and he stole my lunch when we were in the fourth grade.”

  His long, shrewd eyes flickered over the others. He brought his cup to his lips.

  “His grandfather had been a blacksmith and his father hauled ice. This was a boy with no decent family, no education, no property, and no money. He was rough and ignorant, with a thick accent. He had nothing for lunch that day and he was hungry.”

  Without even glancing down, Baoding reached to his plate with his chopsticks and deftly popped a quail egg into his mouth. Then he examined his listeners. Li Ang made himself look back.

  “He left school after sixth grade and went to work at a factory. For years I didn’t know what had happened to him. Now I read in the paper that he’s a member of the Party! Not just any member, but a local leader, an organizer.” He made a wheezing sound something like a laugh. “So, boy, perhaps in order to increase your professional acumen you might want to know who the Communists are and what they want. It’s simple. The Communists are hungry men. They’re poor men who want our money. They’re men without business and property who resent those of us who have them. That’s all they are, and no doctrine or claim they make will ever change that fact.

  “You say you’ve never met a Communist? You have been to Shanghai. You’ve seen the beggars in the streets. More and more poor farmers and peasants swarming the city, where there is nothing for them. Those are the Communists. Yes, those are the Communists. They are all around this hotel. They cleaned this room. They carried our water, collected these eggs, planted and harvested these vegetables. They beg from us. They steal from us. And they hate us. Why do they hate us? It’s not personal. It’s not complicated. They are hungry and we have what they do not. They watch us. They are waiting for us. They are waiting at the door. At night while we sleep, they don’t sleep; they are plotting to overthrow us.” He leaned so close that Li Ang could smell the sulfurous egg on his breath. “Young man. Do you know what makes me so curious about your Army’s arrangements with the Communist Party? It’s that you don’t seem to know that as soon as the Japanese threat diminishes, the Communists will not hesitate to turn and stab you in the back.”

  Around them the talk had trailed to silence; half of the room had turned to listen. Old Chen straightened his silk cravat. Li Ang sat without speaking, smiling slightly, trying to downplay this spasm of words. He resented the way Baoding implied this all had something to do with him. He glanced at his brother, hoping for support. Li Bing was listening carefully, but his face held no expression.

  LATER, LI ANG walked through the courtyard toward the bridal chamber. The night air cooled his cheeks, and he walked lightly, without caring where his feet landed. The rich dinner and sly, provocative talk had addled and disturbed him. Moreover he wanted to see, to claim and touch, his bride. All had stared as she had passed, with her coiled, glistening hair, and her slender body covered in white, luminescent with pearl beads. But as he passed out of earshot to the banquet room, as the drunken sounds faded away, his steps slowed. When they had stood together for the brief ceremony, the bride—his bride—had seemed so elegant and remote, like the fine woman riding in a palanquin he had once glimpsed as a child. And on her face, set off by braids and silk and flowers, he had seen nothing he could reach—no happiness or joy—but rather an expression of impenetrable privacy.

  Today he and this woman had made a bond, a promise of a certain kind. What was she like? Would she be like the other women he had known? His thoughts wandered to a back room in Nanjing, a flapping bamboo shade on a rainy night, where he and several friends had taken turns visiting a round-limbed young woman with lips the color of pomegranate seeds who had moistened herself with the dregs from a glass of wine. Some time later, there had been another woman, no longer young, whose beautiful, supple white back shielded a belly crisscrossed with stretch marks—lines that had, for some reason, moved him.

  He had often gone to chaweis with his friends but he had not chosen a single woman into whose eyes he would look for approval and worth. He had given himself selectively, not scattering himself, never falling to the power of the other sex. He had been involved, to some degree, but never enraptured. He supposed that his new wife was equally practical. She would not grow foolish over love; she was composed and contained, intelligent and proud. And she had accepted him; she must feel at least some partiality to him.

  Li Ang spat on the ground. Partiality didn’t matter; he was her husband. So what if he was the orphan of a father one step removed from a peasant? He may have been a nobody, but he was also a blank slate with the promise to reach far above these people.

  The bridal suite was in the old courtyard, built around
a garden with a footbridge and a rushing brook and precious stones arranged after the landscape paintings of the high Soong. There were two doors on the left, and as he walked down the long porch he couldn’t remember if he was supposed to enter the first or second one. He stopped automatically at the first door. A faint light showed from underneath. How would he know if he had come to the right place? With a quick eye he examined the curtain window and noticed that the curtain didn’t cover the corner. Perhaps Junan’s young cousins from Nanjing, true to tradition, had prepared that spy hole for practical joking later on. Although he had in the past participated in such games, he frowned. Like Junan, he didn’t appreciate the thought that his own wedding should include them. He noted his own seriousness and was mildly surprised by it. Why so involved? Why so excited at this moment? For despite the new law prohibiting multiple marriages, it was not as if his marriage would limit him to the company of this one woman. There were the chaweis; and the new laws didn’t define concubines as wives. Indeed, they were considered appropriate among military men, or any men whose work required travel. He was surprised at his own damp palms and quick breathing, as he peered through the window for a first glimpse of his bride.

  He saw a plain wall and an unadorned bed. The marriage room, he knew, would be decorated with wedding draperies of red and gold, embroidered in dragons and phoenixes. He had chosen the wrong window. But he found himself unwilling to move. His earlier glimpse of Junan’s long, black eyes, the image of her glossy hair and dazzling dress, the heavy food, the red- and gold-draped banquet with its hidden, ominous quarrels, brought his mind to rest with some relief on this quiet space.

  The bed curtains were open. Someone had positioned the lamp close to the bed, perhaps to read, and had left open the bed curtains to let in light. It was a girl, wearing pale and shapeless cotton pajamas, with wavy hair spilled loose. She lay face down on the draped bed with her head in her hands. A medicine bottle and spoon were on the bedside table. Her extreme youth was apparent in the shape of her slender, ivory hands, pressed into the dark hair. She was unhappy, terribly unhappy. He could see it in the way she held her head, the occasional shudder of her body. She cried without a sound.