Inheritance Read online

  “Would you explain to us what you mean?” Li Bing pressed gently. “We want to understand.”

  Yinan moved her gaze to a spot on the floor. “It’s something like this,” she said. “The other day you were talking to Hu Mudan, Jiejie, and Weiwei asked me if she could go to town. Her friend Jing who works at Old Chen’s house was going into town, and Weiwei wanted to go along.”

  “It was right of her to ask,” said my mother.

  “Well, I knew how much she wanted to go. Old Chen is planning to evacuate, you know, and Weiwei and Jing have been friends for years. They wanted to talk. But I knew that you wanted everyone to stay home and work on the garden. And I knew that they could talk that evening. So I said no. And Weiwei left the room. But at the last minute I looked up and she was going out the doorway, frowning over her shoulder at me like she really hated me.”

  My mother shook her head. “That girl.”

  “Go on,” Li Bing urged Yinan.

  “Well, so I’ve been thinking. Mma used to oversee this house and all of the servants. But after she got old it was really you, Jiejie, who ran the house.”

  “Yes, yes.”

  “But over the years, for the whole time, who has been living here and doing the work? Gu Taitai, Weiwei, Gongdi, and the others. So I wonder if it really matters to them who is the master. They are always the servants. They work for us, but how much do they care for us? I love Weiwei, but does Weiwei love me? Does it really matter to the servants who the master is?”

  Li Bing raised his eyebrows. My mother offered him another cigarette.

  “Thank you. You two are spoiling me. I couldn’t afford to smoke this much in school.”

  “Of course you should share in the bounty of the general’s cigarettes.” She smiled at my father, but he’d retreated from the conversation, lost in thought.

  Li Bing blew a tentative smoke ring at the rising moon. “Jiejie, you and your sister are both extraordinary women.”

  “I must admit that sometimes Meimei surprises me.”

  Li Bing nodded. “You and your sister are two completely different blossoms on the same branch.” He spoke through a stream of smoke. In the dusk, it was difficult to see his face; there were only the two glass circles of his spectacles and the smoke rising into the path of light before them, picking up tiny flecks of light.

  “Tell me, Jiejie,” he said to my mother, “if Japan were a man knocking at your door, would you open the door?”

  “Never.”

  “And if he still managed to get inside?”

  My mother looked over the garden wall at the branches of the mulberry tree. “If he came inside,” she said, “I would poison him to death.”

  THE EVACUATION OF THE wealthy Chen, along with his son Da-Huan, was overshadowed by the scandal of Chen Da-Huan’s declaration of love. The object of his affections was an acquaintance of my mother’s, Yang Qingwei. She was a quiet girl of about twenty-five with a sweet, pale face, who had never married because she had been ill with tuberculosis as a teenager. Chen Da-Huan declared he wished to marry Qingwei, but the elder Chen forbade his son to marry a woman with bad health. Chen Da-Huan, always an obedient son, said goodbye to his beloved and left with the Chen family for the west.

  Hu Mudan wondered if my family, too, would evacuate. But my grandfather had no such plan. He wished to remain in Hangzhou and watch over his remaining cotton business. My mother didn’t protest, for my father was stationed nearby. So after the Chens had left town, things went on much as before. Li Bing continued to tutor Yinan, and Yinan, at his encouragement, took up the hobby of writing poems. Scraps of paper fluttered from her pockets. My mother joked that if any more people around her started up a literary habit, she would put her foot down.

  Now that the house had grown so lively, my father visited whenever he could. He always brought me a gift: a cookie, a little coin purse, or a box of sesame chews. When it was time for my dinner in the kitchen, he and my mother would go out to Lou Wai Lou, a restaurant famous for its fish and lotus chicken. They would stroll out of the front doors, my father in his pressed uniform, my mother a perfect match for him with her willowy height and graceful stride. Unlike many Chinese women, she knew how to wear the Western styles. The hats looked right on her small head; the slim, loose lines of the skirts and blouses revealed her grace and confidence. When Gongdi, the errand boy, stared at her, she pretended she didn’t notice. But I knew she was aware of his admiration, and also of my father’s; she watched him from the corners of her long eyes.

  That spring my father joined the KMT Party, and in the summer he was promoted to captain. His promotion came along with a change of assignment: he would be put in charge of training an actual battalion under Sun Li-jen. It was the assignment he had been waiting for.

  He arrived home that weekend wearing his new uniform. I remember him standing before us, very proud. The sight of him was dizzying. I ran to hug his legs, and my mother put her arms around him. “Congratulations!” she said. “Gongxi, gongxi.” Then she bent down to me, her face a radiant, pale mask, and said, “Xiao Hong, you should leave now.”

  “I don’t mind,” he said. “The child can stay.”

  “Of course not. Hong, why don’t you go see what your ayi is doing?”

  Years later, Hu Mudan tried to explain. “Things were not the same between them after your father rose through the ranks.” It is a part of the story I can only imagine. As a child, I ran blithely out of the room without regret, while behind closed doors, the story continued.

  SHE STOOD WITH her arms around him. Under the smell of new cloth and leather, she found the rich, familiar scent of his flesh. She stood still, wanting him to lead her to the bedroom.

  He whispered into her ear, “Let’s go out and walk by the lake.”

  She bit back her disappointment. He wanted to parade his uniform before the world. She put on her best new coat and dress, and together they left the house.

  They took a cab to the lake and strolled along the promenade. The spring air was chilly; the long afternoon rays glittered on the tranquil water. She watched the pale light on the faces of the passersby, and it seemed to her that they turned to her husband as if he’d been transformed. They looked at him and saw a powerful man. She understood that he had truly been transformed, that he was to all intents and purposes a different man. At this recognition, Junan felt foreboding. His promotion had brought along with it the threat of change.

  At the restaurant, over the fish and vegetables, she held herself as carefully as porcelain. Although she was aware of her own strengths—her beautiful face, her throat, her iridescent nails and slender fingertips—she felt that any moment she might shatter. She poured him a second cup of wine, letting the lamp shine pale against the translucent china cup, the precise turn of her wrist, the elegant line of her white arm as it vanished into the wide sleeve of her dress. The dress, of cream silk satin embroidered with pale pink and scarlet peony blossoms, revealed the shape of her body. As they were eating, he glanced often in her direction, and she willed him to desire her.

  Finally they went home. She had aired the room and made it ready for them, with the silk coverlet folded back and tucked away from the bed. He motioned for her not to turn on the lamp. The moon, bright and full, lit up the room so that they could see each other outlined in pale light and shadow. He went over to her side of the bed. He put his arms around her, fingers working at the satin frogs to unfasten her dress, and they lay down together.

  After they had made love, Li Ang lit a cigarette. Junan didn’t like him to smoke in the house but she permitted it in this case. As he smoked, he lounged against the pillows, his face bright and optimistic.

  He explained to Junan every particular of the promotion. His salary would rise; he would have more privileges and greater responsibility. He spoke about the threat of Japanese aggression. He wa
s so excited he sat up straight in the bed. She lay and listened, nodding.

  Finally Li Ang lay back and blew smoke rings toward the lamp.

  “Maybe this time,” he said.

  “Yes?”

  “Well, maybe this time it will work.” There was a new tone of purpose and forthrightness in his voice.

  Junan’s hands grew cold. What did he want? What had she not prepared for? The new authority in his words put her on her guard. She heard her own voice, calm. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, now, after this, everything would be perfect if I had a son.”

  Junan knew that she should touch him, place a hand upon his arm or chest, but her palms and fingers, wet and trembling, would betray the virulence of her feelings. She stayed on her side of the bed, eyes almost closed, looking out from under her lashes at the long tunnel of her body under the comforter. Very faint, like an echo, she heard her sister’s voice rough with fever, and her plaintive words, “if I had been a boy.” She felt a presence hover in the room; the black wings of night beat over them.

  Finally, she knew that she could speak without giving herself away. “My father wanted a son,” she said.

  “And your mother?”

  “She—wanted one as well.”

  “I was just wondering: I don’t mean this in any way. But—do you think it’s possible that there might be some kind of infertility that runs through the women in your family?”

  “What do you mean?” She was grateful for the concealment of the dark.

  “Well, your parents were married for many years. But your mother bore only two children, and both girls. Not that there’s anything wrong about you, and as far as your sister is concerned, she’s only a little fey, but I wonder—”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Junan said. “There is no way to prove that the sex of the children is a trait that is passed from mother to daughter.”

  “Probably not. But it is something I have heard.”

  “What you’ve heard is a story told by old widows and unhappy women. Since when have you taken them as your guidance?” And now, shocked into action, she forced herself to smile, so that the shape of her smile came through in her voice. She took an icy handful of her own thick hair and tickled his arm until he laughed and reached for her. But an enormous lake stone had lodged in her chest, making it difficult to speak. Soon afterward she turned over with her back to him and pulled the blankets up around her neck.

  LATER, WHEN THEY spoke to me about that time, my mother and Hu Mudan always prefaced their stories with the words “Before the occupation.” That spring before the occupation, the spring your father was promoted. That was before the occupation, before they tore down the south section of the city wall: you don’t remember the afternoon when your father took you to walk along the top of the wall. They thought I’d been too young to recall those peaceful years. My mother didn’t want to think I could remember them; she didn’t even like me to tell my stories of the war. She’d wanted to protect me from ever knowing of it. I think my recollections also frightened her. If my memory reached as far back as the Japanese occupation, then I could also recollect, no doubt, some other things she’d rather I’d forgotten.

  It is true I don’t remember everything about my early childhood. I don’t remember the way I used to sit on my grandfather’s lap and pull myself to stand by yanking on his beard. I don’t remember bawling when Hu Ran had a toothache, although Hu Mudan assures me this was true. And I am left with only stories of my father’s frequent departures; for I can recall only the joy surrounding his arrivals, and one time in particular when my mother told the seamstress to sew me into a new sailor blouse because the buttonholes could not be finished prior to his visit. They say that after his departures I would scream and cry until I grew feverish, but thankfully these times are lost to me.

  I don’t remember how my mother worried for him in the days following July 7, 1937, when the Japanese crossed the bridge in Mukden and invaded China. I learned in history books about the Japanese bombing Nanjing and the failed attack of the Chinese Air Force upon the Japanese warships anchored off Shanghai, an attack that failed with the misery of amateurs, their bombs falling in the Shanghai streets. Hu Mudan told me my mother burned every book or newspaper in English, including Yinan’s book of fairy tales. Yinan refused to come downstairs for days, while my mother sent a barrage of telegrams imploring my father to reply that he was safe. Finally he answered with the news that his mentor, General Sun Li-jen, had absorbed thirteen pieces of shrapnel and had to have an emergency blood transfusion. Later that year, the Japanese troops launched a siege upon the capital, Nanjing. They say the cries of the women who were raped and the men who were killed filled the air and that their blood ran through the streets. But the blood didn’t run as far south as Hangzhou. It was several days before we heard reports, and even they were rumors, terrified and hushed. It would be some time before the newspapers detailed the devastation of all those who had been unfortunate enough to remain in the city. As Nanjing fell, my mother sat at her writing table, filling out sheet after sheet of onionskin telegrams, trying to reach my father’s cousin Baoding and ascertain the fate of Yinan’s fiancé, Mao Gao. There was no reply.

  For years, I didn’t learn about the surprising final moments of my grandfather, Wang Daming. Hangzhou was taken on Christmas Eve, and one night shortly afterward he didn’t come home. This wasn’t unusual; he often gambled until morning. But when Charlie Kong came by and asked for him, my mother grew worried. She and Charlie went to search. It was a brilliantly sunny dawn, shortly after the New Year, when they arrived at his warehouse and discovered his remains. Japanese soldiers had requested he surrender his one remaining cotton warehouse to a forced “buyout” for Japanese fabi. The “buyers” had come armed with pistols, bayonets, and swords. My grandfather, a failed man, had stood at the warehouse door. He knew their sum was less than half the amount the cotton was worth. He asked for a higher price. They refused. My grandfather declined to sell. I like to imagine that in his final moments, he understood at last what it was that he believed, and he found solid ground to stand on. After his heart had pumped its last, the soldiers chopped off his head and hung it over the warehouse gate with a written explanation.

  INSTEAD OF THESE EVENTS I remember things no one will talk about. One day that autumn, I saw Hu Ran unclothed. I must have been four years old and Hu Ran almost seven. He had spent the morning playing in the dusty street and went behind the house to rinse off in the pond. My aunt was reading in her room; our mothers were nowhere to be found. I saw him walk behind the house. I followed, wanting to call his name, but when I peered between the scant leaves of the cascading willow tree, my curiosity silenced me.

  I knew his strange bright eyes, his ears, his dusky spider legs. But now I wanted to know more. I knew he wouldn’t have wanted me to see him naked, and this made the opportunity more tantalizing. Hu Ran shrugged out of his shirt and his brown skin glinted in a bit of sun that filtered through the moving leaves. I was close enough see the layer of dust over his hands. I saw his neat shoulders emerge, and then, as he turned sideways, the dusky hollows under his left arm, and a small nipple set in a coin-sized circle. I watched his taut belly breathing as he pulled down his pants. Somewhere in the courtyard a door opened and closed, but I paid no attention, focusing instead upon his high hipbone and smooth brown thigh and, coming from somewhere between his legs, a sturdy brown thumb.

  “Get away from her!”

  Bright sunlight pierced my eyes. My mother had swept back the willow with one hand. Her raging shape towered over us. I screamed. With long arms she seized me and carried me off.

  That night she and Hu Mudan went into her room and shut the door. From my own room I heard at first my mother shouting furiously and Hu Mudan laughing. But as my mother pelted Hu Mudan with words, a frightening silence grew. Then my mother said, “It was bad en
ough you chose to keep that bastard in the house. But I won’t allow him to corrupt my daughter.”

  “All right,” said Hu Mudan. “All right.”

  My mother’s voice choked and dwindled.

  The next day, Hu Ran and Hu Mudan said goodbye. They would travel west. They would leave town on a poultry wagon and ride a steamboat up the Yangtze to Hu Mudan’s village in Sichuan.

  Neither Hu Ran nor I understood why we were being separated. The loss was sudden and devastating. He stood before me, serious, holding out his favorite cricket in its bamboo cage. “Goodbye, young miss,” he said. “You may have my cricket.”

  I sobbed, “I don’t want your cricket! I’ll feed it to Guagua!”

  “You may have my necklace,” Hu Ran said. He reached into his rough cotton shirt and pulled out the brilliant jade pendant that he always wore.

  But then Hu Mudan stepped between us. “No,” she said. “Hu Ran, you mustn’t give that to a girl unless you mean to marry her.”

  “Why can’t I marry her?” he demanded.

  She ran her hand over his short hair. “Because you are too poor for her.”

  Hu Ran put the necklace back inside his shirt

  Hu Mudan bent down to me and squeezed my shoulder. Her small, almond eyes were kind. “Don’t worry, Hong,” Hu Mudan said. “It’s my fate to be connected to your family. We’ll see you again.”

  AFTER THAT I didn’t sleep well for many nights. Once I overheard my parents arguing. They were discussing my father’s new job for Sun Li-jen. I couldn’t make out all of their words, but I knew that they were quarreling. In a low-pitched voice, my mother kept repeating the word “war.” “Don’t go to Hankow,” she said. “You should stop fighting and avoid the war. You should stay in Hangzhou, you could join the resistance. Don’t go to Hankow! Who cares about another promotion!” I heard her choke on the words, “What if you’re wounded again and killed!”

  My father laughed. “I won’t be killed.”