Yue Tao

Shanghai Blue

World Editions

breda 2015

Published in Great Britain in 2015 by World Editions Ltd., London

www.worldeditions.org

Copyright © Yue Tao, 2012

Cover design Multitude

Image credit © Wenjie Yang/MoST

The moral rights of the author have been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

First published as Hong xishuai by Huacheng Chubanshe

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library

isbn 978-94-6238-002-8

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher.
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Prologue

Dazzled by the white sunlight of European summer, I sit on a playground bench and watch Adam shoveling in a sandbox. The sound of sand falling into his bucket resonates the rustle of tree leaves in the breeze. He knits his little brow, totally absorbed as if building a monument. His features are exquisite. I stare enraptured, unable to believe he is mine.

I am grateful almost to tears: contemplation of absolute tranquility piques the will to believe in Providence. But that night three years ago obtrudes—surreptitious attraction on an evening out, hot adultery in the dark, warm skin on cold sheets, ghostly reflections in the wardrobe mirror …

People often ask what brought me back to Amsterdam. I say a letter—a letter that made me leave Shanghai. They think I must be a political refugee; I neither confirm nor deny their presumption. Is my situation any better? A refugee who escapes is free but no matter how far away I get, what happened that night holds me spellbound.

Only I know the facts—the letter is ashes, the cousin who wrote it is dead; as long as I say nothing, the events never happened.

I thought burning the letter would free me but as it shriveled away page by page, my horror, shame, and guilt clung—and still cling a continent away in this deceptively simple, quiet country. They irrupt without warning when I am happiest.

I fled my partner in crime but cannot escape the memory. I am locked in a mental prison where I am both inmate and guard. Possessed by that unspeakable sin, I must be my own exorcist and free my soul by recounting my experience as it happened—in the present tense. I see no other way to consign it to oblivion.

Homecoming

Homecoming

1

Shanghai smells of mildew. Muggy air assaults as I step off the plane. I remember only the monsoon season having this smell. Now it is August, a month after the monsoon, but the smell is everywhere—passport control, luggage hall, people’s clothes, taxi seats … The city reeks of decay. Everything in it rots—even modern, glittery, chic young men and women.

This familiar smell upsets and soothes me. My mind says my hometown should be clean, bright, fashionable, modern, proud. But my senses tell me it is not: I smell the walls of my childhood home in the monsoon season—walls that sweated gray-green mildew spots and stank of wet plaster.

I arrive at midnight on 7 August. Wishing not to disturb my elderly aunt and uncle, I told them I would arrive the next morning. Tonight I stay downtown at the South Ocean Hotel. After checking in, settling into the room, and taking a bath, I feel no urge to sleep and go downstairs to the bar.

This bar called Mask is more popular than the hotel itself. Most customers are not hotel guests. In summer the garden is open. I choose a table beside a tree and order a glass of white wine. The night air is summer sticky and smells of dark green plants. A breeze now and then lightens the air, making the humidity bearable.

Crickets chirp shrilly in the bushes. I cannot remember how long ago I last heard them—ten years at least. I came home several times to visit meanwhile but somehow missed this season. I cannot even remember hearing crickets since I grew up. Too busy? Too distracted? Crickets chirping recall the long uneventful autumn nights of my childhood. I thought these little creatures might go extinct, but they endure as if to remind me I am home for good.

Candlelight reflects in the sunglasses of a man at the table opposite. I have been studying him. His lion nose and peach-flower mouth, which make his face at once harsh and gentle, are familiar. He seems to be observing me as well though I cannot tell for sure—I cannot see his eyes. Why wear sunglasses at night? He is sitting under a lamp; insects dance above his head, but he seems not to mind or even notice. He wears a silk shirt; the light gives it a distorted purple color. The collar is open; around his neck is a red string, probably suspending a jade talisman. He looks about forty, a businessman—maybe a restaurant owner or seafood dealer. Did I meet him somewhere?

As I rack my brain guessing who he might be he stands up, swills the rest of his drink, and walks away. I stop guessing. If I really know him the name will come back when I am not thinking about it. Most likely I do not know him at all—he could be just a passerby from years ago.

A loud motor howls, a scarlet Lamborghini pulls away, the man in sunglasses at the wheel. The rear license plate reads: Shanghai A-88888. Above the number it says: fuk u.

Damn jet lag! I oversleep. I promised my aunt I would arrive in the morning but get there at one in the afternoon. My aunt and uncle are waiting for me. An untouched banquet covers the dining table—pork marinated in salt and rice wine, fried river fish stewed in soy sauce, fried tomatoes and zucchini, cucumber salad in vinegar, plus a pork chop and winter melon soup.

They always treat me like their own child—they are one reason I decided to come home to Shanghai from Amsterdam. They are healthy but well into their seventies with nobody to take care of them. Two years ago on a visit I hired a countrywoman to clean house, shop, and cook for them, but they soon let her go. ‘We are not used to food cooked by other people,’ they said, but in fact did not want me to waste money. When I worked at the bank in Amsterdam my salary was generous by Chinese standards. Frugal their whole life they find my expenditures painfully exorbitant.

My aunt is tender and solicitous. She loves and cares for me, and sometimes I feel she loves me even more than her daughter, my cousin. My uncle is kind and quiet. Wearing thick glasses, he bent for years over a desk stacked with papers. His back is now hunched. As a child I was proud of them because they were trilingual in Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese. They were translators for the factory they worked at and met in Vietnam when sent there to learn the language. Retired twenty years now they stay home with nothing to do—every day is aimless but comfortable and relaxing.

After lunch my uncle slices a watermelon.

‘I can’t eat another bite,’ I say.

‘Today autumn begins,’ he replies. ‘Eating watermelon is our custom.’

I have no idea how the custom originated. Perhaps when autumn begins watermelons get scarce so one must eat them quickly. It was only while abroad that I discovered how ignorant I am of tradition, as if my first twenty-two years of life were wasted.

I went abroad ten years ago, first to study for two years, then to work at a multinational bank. My job from a Chinese point of view was a golden rice bowl whereas to me it was golden handcuffs—nice to see but not to wear. In the eight years I worked at the bank I was promoted only once: the new task differed little from the old and the pay raise was negligible. I tried to change jobs several times but the new offers were worse and I soon got too lazy to keep looking. Sitting on a permanent contract, I did the same thing day after day. Often, watching my youth slip away, I was seized with panic—I saw death pressing closer and closer. One day I decided to go home and start a new life. I had nothing to lose but a boring job—no property, no family, no steady boyfriend. To me it meant no burden though most Chinese would consider it proof of failure.

‘Are your classmates all married now?’ my aunt asks.

‘Some are, some aren’t.’

‘Do the married ones have children?’

‘Some do, some don’t.’

My one hesitation about coming home is my aunt’s penchant for matchmaking. Her discipline was always strict: I was forbidden boyfriends and had to be home by nine at night. The day I graduated from university, however, she started matchmaking. Then I went abroad. Too far away for micro-management, she switched to telephone consultancy. International phone calls were expensive but not enough to stop her: ‘I met an old colleague today who asked if you’re married and have a child …’ I got annoyed once and said, ‘If anyone asks again you give her eight words—no girl marry out, no child come out!’ She spoke no more about it after that. I felt guilty but did not want to say so, fearing she might start up again. Now she knows I am home to settle down. Her matchmaking passion rekindles.

‘The other day I ran into an old colleague who asked after you.’

‘Any news of my cousin?’ I redirect evasively.

‘How could we have any news?’ my uncle replies. ‘The police said last week they hadn’t found her in ten years and therefore closed the case.’

‘You mean that’s it?’

‘What else could we do? The police said it’s 99 percent certain she’s dead.’

This no-news news makes me forget about matchmaking. We all guessed she was dead, but the announcement shocks me.

She was their only child, fifteen years older than I. Paralyzed with polio at three, she was confined to a wheelchair. Her lower body was no bigger than a child’s, making her head and upper body look outsize. I remember her sequestered in her tiny room with an almost lightless view to the north, emerging only to heat water in the kitchen to wash her hair. I do not know why she liked washing her hair so much; maybe it was because she thought her shiny black hair was the one part of her body she could be proud of. My aunt and uncle always told me not to disturb her, saying she was preparing for the university entrance exams. She was always preparing for the exams but never passed. The year I went to junior high she gave up and worked at the local community council as a telephone operator. Once every household got a private phone she took small fees from illiterate Party members to ghostwrite reports they had to submit on what they thought about policy decrees. Shortly after I went abroad she went missing.

She and I were not close, but she taught me the good habit of reading. At age seven I read film magazines with her; at age nine, supermarket romances; at age eleven, travel adventures. In junior high I finished her World Classics collection. In senior high I lost interest in her books and bought my own.

Maybe because I liked reading I was good at school, which I hated. School made me anxious; I still feel the chill. I looked forward to vacation and growing up. But looking forward slows time—vacation always seemed to recede and growing up never to happen. Now, in no time, I am over thirty. This transformation was so quiet and seamless that I failed to notice it—like my cousin’s disappearance and death.

2

I was born the day of Chairman Mao’s funeral—18 September 1976. The wailing of millions, my aunt said, drowned out my feline cries. Everyone was weeping. The sobs betrayed grief, fear, relief, and worry. A new life came into the world as funeral music blared from loudspeakers throughout the city. That year people’s eardrums went numb from funeral music. It was a year of mourning—for three founding fathers of the People’s Republic and for hundreds of thousands killed by the great earthquake. They called me Lan—Blue—hoping I would have a tranquil mind, placid like the blue sky.

I spent my first twelve years in a southwest Shanghai suburb called ‘countryside’ in dialect. It had twenty-four apartment buildings, three abreast in eight rows. Due north was the main road beyond which stood the factory where my aunt and uncle worked. West was another paved road beyond which farm fields stretched off into the distance. East was a river beyond which endless farm fields also stretched. South was a small muddy road. Every morning and evening watchful farmers squatted beside it with plastic basins, sieves, and shoes piled up at their feet, asking passersby if they had ration coupons for cigarettes. The farmers bartered their goods for coupons to resell at a profit to cigarette addicts. When they saw policemen coming they packed up and dispersed in no time.

My aunt and uncle worked for that factory from the day they were assigned there upon leaving school till the day they retired. The factory had a name, but everyone called it 416. My uncle said it was a code number—the government gave all military factories a code number. When my aunt and uncle talked about former schoolmates they also used code names: Old K worked at 409, Young K worked at 578, and so on.

Every morning at eight sharp military music blared from the factory loudspeaker. Still chewing their last mouthful of breakfast, workers emerged from the twenty-four buildings and bustled toward the factory gate. At twelve sharp the same music blared and workers from all factory departments streamed toward the dining hall. Those with schoolchildren or old parents living in went home to cook. Employees returned to their workstations at one and, exchanging rumors and gossip, waited for military music to blare at five. And so it went day in day out year after year. Over time the twenty-four buildings were repainted from gray to brown, brown to yellow, and back to gray again.

There were two schools for workers’ children—Guangyuan Elementary School and Guangyuan Middle School. Children from the twenty-four buildings felt superior to children from the surrounding farm communities: they spoke accentless Shanghai dialect and knew they did not have peasants for parents. They wore key chains around their necks and when school let out at three they played outdoors like feral cats, but never with farm children from the villages. In summer they walked twenty minutes in scorching heat to the nearby university pool rather than swim in the river with them.

In those years of scarcity children were happy. Any piece of junk, any captive vermin, any abnormal person brought joy. They enjoyed harassing Loony Lulu, a lunatic in the building next to the one where my aunt and uncle lived. I never knew when Lulu went insane; I just remember her standing at the front window repeating the same sentence: ‘I’ll wait for you by the river tonight.’ In the spring they threw moth eggs at her; in the summer, caterpillars; in the fall, toads; in the winter, firecrackers. She always closed the window quietly, pressing her pretty, imbecilic face against the pane. Laughing, the children swarmed away toward the pillbox in front of my aunt and uncle’s building. Built during the Resist-Japan War or the Liberation War—I forget which—the pillbox could accommodate only two or three at a time so the children often fought over who would occupy it and who would scout for the enemy. I took it over easily when I heard the other children leave. I spent a lot of time there daydreaming and thought of it as my home—a miniature universe all my own.

By 1982 when I went to elementary school everything had changed. The river to the east was filled in; the farm fields across the river were bulldozed and turned into a vast construction site. The pillbox was demolished and replaced by a row of smelly prefab barracks for construction workers in filthy clothes. The construction site became the new playground. The children piled sand on each other, collected shiny stones, played hide-and-seek in concrete sewer pipe sections. They ignored several idiots and lunatics in the twenty-four buildings and harassed construction workers’ children instead, shouting ‘Pig! Pig!’—an English word just learned at school. When their victims stared back in bewilderment they burst out laughing.

Over the next few years, as new buildings sprang up, strangers from the city moved in. ‘What an awful place, you can’t get anything you want here,’ they complained while furnishing new apartments to taste. In the distance more farm fields disappeared and more buildings sprang up. Interesting people arrived. Children from the twenty-four buildings no longer dominated the school. Our new schoolmates’ parents came from all walks of life—expropriated farmers turned petty entrepreneurs shared the neighborhood with scholars, scientists, and artists. We children of the twenty-four buildings glimpsed a new world; the sky above looked pale and narrow.

When I was twelve my aunt and uncle swapped their old apartment for a new larger one farther out from the city. By then housing was privatized, the main road in front of the twenty-four buildings was a thoroughfare, and the road behind once lined with peddlers was a busy shopping street. I do not know why I always remember the twenty-four buildings with a gray sky overhead. Pile drivers hammered in the distance. Now and then children’s joyful cries burst through the bleakness. The wind dispersed them; the hammering echoed on and on. Under the leaden sky lived a multitude of glib, optimistic, resilient people. Maybe because their life was monotonous they never shut up—on the way to work, on the way home, at work, in public baths, in the farmers’ market, in the kitchen, at the dining table, in bed. They gossiped about so-and-so’s wife caught having an affair, so-and-so’s husband imprisoned for rape, so-and-so’s child born retarded because of incest … Irrepressible joy beamed from their faces as they gossiped. It was as if all cruelty and helplessness vanished then and there. Gossiping year in year out about other people’s misfortunes, they seemed forever cheerful.

I too was a topic of gossip. From age four or five I overheard talk about how I came into the world. People told different stories. Some said I was abandoned by peasants in the farm fields across the river; others said I was abandoned on the street by an unwed mother; others said my parents abandoned me because I was neither male nor female. When I was out on the street I got inquisitive looks from adults. Children pointed at me behind my back and said, ‘Girl-boy! Girl-boy!’ One day a stranger waylaid me coming home from school. He jumped off his bicycle—too fast to put up the kickstand—and grabbed me. I heard the bike hit the ground and felt him try to pull my pants down: ‘Let’s see if you’re a boy or a girl!’ I screamed, pulled loose, and ran away as fast as I could. Passersby looked on curiously; the creep did not follow me.

I never told my aunt and uncle about it; they never discussed gossip about me. It seemed we were all evading something. I had lived with them from birth. They said my parents were relatives in the countryside far away who had no means to raise a child so my mother came to Shanghai to give birth and left me with them. I asked many times to meet my parents but my aunt always said they were too far away. I asked her why they never came to see me; she said they were too poor to pay travel costs.

Many evenings I sat listening as the wind shook the wooden window frame. That sound calmed me down; I started missing my mother.

The summer I was six my aunt Mira died at twentysomething of encephalitis contracted on a business trip north of Shanghai—they said a mosquito got into her ear. Mira was my aunt’s youngest sister. I was curious why she had such a strange name. Later I learned it was a nickname she got because she looked like the heroine of an Albanian movie popular in the 1970s. Everyone agreed Mira was a beauty: fair skin, athletic body, flashing eyes, gentle nose, and hair with a slight natural curl. Maybe my aunt had some Western ancestors: she and her siblings all looked faintly Western—especially Mira.

Aunt Mira always treated me well. Before she took the much better job that got her killed, she made pancakes at a fast-food stand in front of the alley where she lived with my grandmother. Whenever I went to my grandmother’s apartment Mira slipped me a pancake and a bowl of wonton soup saying, ‘Be careful, it’s hot.’ Occasionally she came to visit my aunt and uncle, always wearing new clothes with no cooking smell, only light fragrance. When we took a walk between the twenty-four buildings I held her hand proudly so everyone could see us together.

‘Call me Mom,’ she joked now and then.

So I called her that without hesitation and soon felt she was my real mother though I was not as pretty and lacked her Western look.

After the funeral, when our family held the customary banquet with tofu in a restaurant, my grandmother kept saying, ‘I wish I never let her change jobs.’ Once the banquet was over and we returned to her home, she ordered her sons, my uncles, to build a fire in the alley out of paper flowers and funeral wreaths to dispel misfortune. It was an early August evening, the sun had just set, it was not yet dark, the breeze was refreshing. My grandmother, aunts, uncles, and cousins all jumped over the fire one by one to purify themselves. She told me to jump over the fire too. I was frightened—how could I jump over such a big fire: Would it burn my feet? Would my skirt catch fire?

‘Jump! Jump quickly!’ The more she urged the more scared I got.

At last an uncle picked me up and jumped over the fire. I felt my body lifted up and the heat between my legs. My grandmother received me on the other side. Firelight shone on her face, swollen from weeping. Her gaze told me Mira was indeed my mother.

‘Mira was my mom, wasn’t she?’ I asked my aunt when we got home.

‘Don’t be silly!’

‘You’re lying, she was my mom!’

She said nothing and cried.

Death, just a word to me before, became a fact. Terror stalked me like a shadow. No matter how hard I tried to get away the pretty woman in the black frame on the wall always caught me in her gaze. Closing my eyes, I saw her waxen face before me. Though my aunt seemed heartbroken she showed no horror. I asked why she wasn’t afraid. She said, ‘Why fear a loved one?’ I began hating my mother for rejecting me at birth and revealing who she was only after she died. If like other children I grew up with my mother, would I feel only sadness instead of horror at her death? If not, I wish I never knew her at all. I felt the seed of death in my body start to sprout and grow. At night, whenever I heard mosquitoes buzzing near my ears, I swatted wildly to keep them from getting at my brain to steal my life. I still have this habit though I know mosquitoes cannot transmit encephalitis through the ear.

‘Why did my mother give me to you?’ I asked my aunt and uncle many times.

‘Because you don’t have a father.’

‘Where is my father?’

‘We don’t know.’

‘Will he come back some day?’

‘We don’t know, we really don’t know.’

For many years I sought my father among the men around me. I thought one day he would appear as suddenly as I learned my dead Aunt Mira was my mother. I awaited the day the mystery would be solved.

Encounter

Encounter

3

In the first week at my aunt and uncle’s I vegetate all day watching television. Programs that should strike me as vulgar trash now seem interesting. My mind is not attuned to television but I watch anyway. I relish immersion in Chinese. Poetry and obscenity are equally pleasant. At mealtime I move to the table. My aunt cooks two meals a day, never repeating the menu. At night when my aunt and uncle retire I chat online with friends far away. After only a week Holland seems so distant as to be another world. My friends tell me the temperature there is fourteen degrees with rain as if winter came early. Their weather report proves I was right to go home. I prefer hot to cold.

When I get home after visiting an old classmate my aunt shouts from the kitchen, ‘Guess who I met today.’

‘Who?’ I guess it was another housewife with nothing better to do than play matchmaker.

‘Jianhua.’

‘Jianhua? Where did you meet her?’

‘Carrefour. She went to visit her father and stopped in to buy food.’

Jianhua is my nanny’s daughter, ten years my senior. As a child I wore her hand-me-down clothes. In the 1980s I still looked like a child from the Cultural Revolution—white shirt, dark-blue pants; people said I could have been Jianhua’s sister.

‘It’s hard for Wizard to live alone,’ my aunt says, putting a pan of soup on the stove. ‘He changed housekeepers who knows how many times but never found anyone suitable. He complained they were lazy or unreliable and kept looking for one who was honest and diligent, but always failed.’

Wizard is Jianhua’s father. Because he was a cricket-fighting expert everyone called him Old Cricket Wizard and, in time, Wizard.

‘Old people who live alone are a social problem now,’ my uncle says. I did not notice him enter the kitchen. ‘Shanghai has a lot of them. In our neighborhood over the last two years the city built three old folks’ homes—all expensive with long waiting lists, almost impossible to get into. They said an old folks’ daycare center would also be built for working couples’ parents who can’t take care of themselves.’

Something seems odd so I ask, ‘Where’s my nanny?’

‘Died years ago,’ my aunt says.

‘Nobody told me.’

My eyes tear—whether at belated bad news or being left out all this time I do not know.

‘You’d just gone abroad then and didn’t call home much. How could we tell you?’

‘What did she die of?’

‘Chronic heart disease. Nobody told us either; we only heard it later. It’s strange if you think about it. In the past when life was hard she could bear it but once she could enjoy life, she died.’

‘Work, work, work—that was her fate,’ my uncle says.

‘But she lived past sixty, not bad,’ my aunt says. ‘Back then nobody knew how long she would live. What pressure Wizard felt! He drank every day to drown his pain—old parent, young children, sick wife.’

‘Bitter Fate,’ she sighs. ‘How poor they were. At the end of every month they had to borrow money left and right. We were short too but still lent them money. She was always ill; Wizard is a cripple good for nothing but crickets; and Wizard’s mother, living in, was sick as well. Your nanny struggled to raise the children, but her son Jianjun went to reform school. Soon after his release he lost an eye in a street fight and went to jail again and again. Then he got rich from business and bought his parents a villa. Who knows? Wizard didn’t move in—cricket fighting and mahjong were easier at the old apartment. Your nanny moved in but died a week later.’

‘How does Jianhua look?’ I ask.

‘Very different. If she hadn’t called my name I’d never have recognized her.’

‘Different how?’

‘Chubbier but looking good—very fashionable, even wearing makeup just to visit her father.’

‘Better looking than before?’

‘I thought she was prettier back then despite being sickly. Oh yes, I told her you came home.’

‘Did she ask after me?’

‘Yes, she asked how you’re doing.’

‘What did you say?’

‘I told her you were back, nothing more. You don’t want me to gossip, do you?’ My aunt flashes an accusatory glance.

‘Did she leave a phone number?’

‘Yes, she did and said you can drop in anytime but was just being polite.’

My aunt rinses her hands, dries them, walks to the living room, and returns to the kitchen with a business card that she hands me. It feels good—thick and firm with raised characters: jin zhilong, jinsheng investment consulting company, asia pacific director, the card says. I turn it over—it says the same in English—and see a handwritten phone number.

‘Whose card is it?’

‘Her husband’s, of course.’

My uncle takes the card from my hand, puts on his reading glasses, and studies it.

‘I never knew Jianhua was so vain,’ he says. ‘She could write her number on a piece of paper but used her husband’s business card, afraid no one knows she married a rich man. Wizard’s family never shook the trauma of poverty. Now life is good they can’t resist showing off.’

‘It’s good they got rich,’ I say.

‘Not just rich—super-rich,’ my uncle says. ‘I’m not sure about Jianhua but I heard her brother Jianjun’s business is big.’

The next day I dial Jianhua’s number. Being out of touch so long makes me nervous. No matter how close we were, when I want to reconnect twenty years on with someone time reduced to an image, I need courage.

The phone rings; someone picks up. A shy adolescent female voice says, ‘Hello. Who is it you want?’

‘I’m trying to reach Yu Jianhua.’

‘Who’s calling please?’

‘Just tell her it’s Lan.’

‘Mama, telephone!’

After a brief silence comes a laid-back, ‘Hello, who is it?’

My heart beats fast. Her voice is the same as her mother’s.

‘Lan. You ran into my aunt yesterday at Carrefour.’

Another brief silence, then a loud warm, ‘Oh, Lan! Your aunt says you came home!’

‘Over a week ago.’

‘Home is better, right? Much more comfortable.’

‘Yes.’

‘Drop in anytime you like. I often tell my daughter you were good at school and English.’

‘You’re too kind. Your daughter must’ve answered. What’s her name? How old is she now?’

‘Ting. Seventeen. Next year she takes the university entrance exams. Now all she thinks about is fooling around—she doesn’t want to study. You can help me straighten her out.’

I am startled Jianhua’s daughter is already a senior in high school. Jianhua as a mother is hard to imagine. To me in memory she is still a teenager.

She compliments me again several times; I feel uncomfortable and steer the conversation back.

‘I’ve been out of touch a long time and just heard my nanny died.’

‘You were far away …’

‘I want to visit her grave. Can you take me there?’

‘Thanks for remembering her,’ she says. ‘Mom had a hard life.’ She chokes up.

When she calms down she says, ‘No problem, I’ll drive you there.’

‘Will Jianjun join us?’

‘He may not have time. Every year this season he’s so busy we hardly ever see him. There’s no telling how long you’ll have to wait.’

‘He’s running a business—of course he’s busy.’

‘Business? Just those crickets. In a few days when it cools off a bit I’ll take you to the grave.’

‘OK. What should I bring?’

‘Nothing. She will be pleased that you visit her.’

4

Perhaps because I was born on a day of mourning, my aunt told me I cried a lot as if to lament. The factory had free day care for workers’ children but I was not kept there. Day care was spartan and if I cried from neglect I cried all day long, refusing food and drink. When I cried really hard I suffered umbilical hernia—frightening to see, my aunt said. My aunt and uncle asked my disabled cousin to babysit but she refused. So they spent part of their meager salary to hire an illiterate old woman to mind me. One day they got home from work and found her cracking and munching sunflower seeds while I gnawed a crumpled old newspaper. They fired her on the spot. Then their next-door neighbor said she could help. Pale and frail but efficient and sociable, she was not yet forty. I do not know when she developed chronic heart disease and had to stay home on indefinite sick leave. Because of austere social insurance and a family of five her household was the poorest in the building. At the end of the month she often had to borrow money from neighbors. Unable to pay back all the money she helped neighbors wash, sew, cook, and babysit. That woman was my nanny.

My earliest memories are of her—three images to be exact—though I do not know which came first. In one I sit with her in the sun in the backyard: she asks me to close my eyes and say what color I see. I say red. She says it is the color of the sun and blood. In another there are two portraits on the wall—Mao Zedong and Hua Guofeng: she puts me in bed facing the wall, saying if I don’t go to sleep Chairman Mao and Chairman Hua will come to scold me. In the third many people kneel on the ground to watch insects, probably crickets fighting: she holds me and hands me to a young woman with grapes patterned on her blouse. One day years later when I told my aunt this she did not believe me. ‘In 1978 when portraits of Mao Zedong and Hua Guofeng hung side by side you were two. How could you remember that?’

I never knew my nanny’s name. Everyone called her Wizard’s wife. Wizard was a wiry, swarthy, taciturn man in his forties. His penetrating accusatory look always made you feel you did something wrong. He seemed not to like children. He never played with me; his own children were meek before him. Adults were not afraid of him at all, however, and often laughed behind his back. As I think back now he looked pitiful—slightly hunched back, game leg, slinking with his head recessed like a turtle. But he also had rare moments of gaiety—usually after winning a cricket fight and doing some drinking. Then he would tell children of his glory days in the Resist-America Aid-Korea War. He said that when sent to the front he was not much older than his son Jianjun. Too weak to carry a machine gun he was assigned to demolition. An explosive packet discharged by accident and injured his leg. Fortunately the leg was not severed.

Jianjun listened to these stories with great fascination. Hearing dramatic moments described he would exclaim, ‘Why wasn’t I born in time for that? When will World War III hurry up and happen?’ Like many of his age-mates he wished the world was even more violent than it is. They hoped World War III would start tomorrow and steel them.

Jianjun was six or seven years my senior. I cannot remember exactly what he looked like. His image is vague in my mind—neither fat nor thin, neither tall nor short, neither dark nor pale, neither good-looking nor bad-looking. But I clearly remember him getting me to do many bad things—deflate bicycle tires on the street, knock on neighbors’ doors and hide, and startle construction workers’ kids with paper ‘bombs.’ We also jumped to the ground from ten steps up and slid down the banister from the fourth floor. More often we went swimming or caught bugs—on sunny days we caught cicadas and butterflies; when rain approached we caught dragonflies and at night fireflies and crickets. We put live cicadas and butterflies on the living room window screen to hear the cicadas sing and see the butterflies dance. We would tie a dragonfly by the tail with a thread and let it buzz through the air around the room. I put fireflies in a washed glass milk bottle, set it next to my bed at night, and fell asleep in the beautiful twinkling of green lights. Sometimes the milk bottle got knocked over and when I opened my eyes in the middle of the night I saw dreamy light spots. Jianjun took charge of all crickets we captured, keeping those he wanted and giving me the rest. I often stared at the crickets in my jar and thought they might have some hidden ability to vanquish other crickets.

When I was out with Jianjun no one dared bully me. Before I went to elementary school I looked like a tomboy—on hot summer days I wore no shirt, only shorts. My aunt and uncle taught me to look plain. To them girlish dress symbolized capitalist decadence. They also raised my crippled cousin this way but when she grew up she made a turnabout. She liked to lock herself in her room, sit in front of the mirror, and put on makeup.

My going topless invited malicious teasing from girls my age. Several would circle around me singing, ‘Winter-melon skin, watermelon skin, topless girl—thick skin.’ When Jianjun heard the girls say that he would insult them: ‘No tits yet only big mouth.’ They fled at once. Their shrewish mothers often came by to protest: ‘Jianjun must be punished! What he said to my child I’m ashamed to repeat.’ Who knows how many beatings Jianjun got from Wizard after all those complaints. Through the fence I often saw Wizard chasing Jianjun with a bamboo broom: ‘Don’t run! How can this little bastard be my son? You shame us, damn you!’ My nanny always rescued her son from his father, who then scolded his wife: ‘You’re the one who spoiled him! Fuck your mother’s …’

Jianjun was restless and talkative, unlike Jianhua. She, two or three years older than he, was quiet and shy. Her features then are also vague to me now. I remember she was pale, thin, and sickly but refined—she liked to tie her hair with a flower-print white handkerchief. To look at her you would never guess she had a low thick voice like her mother from whom she inherited much. The only difference between them was that her mother was outgoing—wherever she was you could hear her magnetic laugh.

In summer Jianhua was healthy as a rule and took me around the neighborhood. I remember us eating frequently—sucking nectar out of flowers, buying dried plums from the corner tobacconist, helping ourselves to snacks at her classmates’ homes, and after a swim sharing a bowl of cold noodles with chopped cucumber, peanut sauce, and vinegar she bought from a street vendor. She ate a lot but never got fat. Probably because I ate along with her I was chubby. Growing up in a poor family, Jianhua was vain yet dressed plainly. She had a better-off girlfriend who loved to dress up. Every time we went to that girl’s home Jianhua helped herself to lipstick as well as snacks and insisted on making me up too. Afraid of getting caught and punished by her parents, she never forgot to wipe our lipstick off thoroughly before going home. Jianhua was in junior high when I was in kindergarten but never complained I was a burden.

Besides middle-aged parents and adolescent children the Yu household included a shadowy figure—sometimes under the backyard elm tree, sometimes in her bed, but mostly on the toilet. It was the children’s grandmother who Jianjun told me suffered constipation, which made her grumpy. One of her eyes was higher than the other and dripped mucous tears. She had a goiter the size of a fist—hence her nickname, Granny Lump. Neighborhood children feared Granny Lump even more than Wizard. I seldom saw her close up but always knew where she was from her shadow and pigeon-like mumble. I did not see the shadow or hear the sound one Chinese New Year’s Day when I got back from my grandmother’s. They told me Granny Lump died late New Year’s Eve.

Remembrance is mysterious. I wonder why those close to me every day for years like Jianjun, Jianhua, and my nanny now have vague faces while those I had little to do with and seldom looked straight in the face like Wizard and Granny Lump are still vivid. I try to make those vague faces clear again but the more I try the more they fade.

5

It is now late August and cooling off. With sunshine every day and little rain some complain it is too dry. I think they have lived with humidity so long their sensibility is distorted. I take a taxi downtown to Jianhua’s home, which the driver finds easily.

It is a regular working day. At nine in the morning few people can be seen in this gated community. Several company Buicks roll by. Around me are brand-new thirty-story high-rise apartment buildings. In the spaces between them are imitation traditional Chinese gardens with creeks and arch bridges. A signboard directs residents and visitors to the parking lot, café, gym, yoga center, swimming pool, and tennis court. I glance up and see almost all windows are closed, making the buildings look more like offices than homes. In the distance, between two buildings, the World Financial Center looks like a colossal bottle opener. A wind gust between the buildings shakes the trees lining the street and musses my hair.

I press Jianhua’s doorbell outside the building. Nobody answers but the front door opens. Stepping in, I see I am watched through surveillance cameras in the hallway and lift. I have no idea who sits behind the monitor watching all who enter or leave.

The door to room 2506 is ajar; I knock. A perfume scent strikes me as a woman in a white skirt and matching blouse appears. Her wavy hair is shoulder-length. Light makeup fails to hide the crow’s-feet but her eyes project a womanly charm I never noticed in her before. She is more buxom than I remember. The tight low V-neck white blouse barely covers her breasts and the white skirt is snug around her bottom.

‘Come in, Lan.’ She leads me by the hand into the living room. ‘I hardly recognize you. Why bother with a present?’ She takes the box of chocolates from my hand.

‘It’s nothing. If you don’t eat them you can give them away.’

She asks me to sit on the couch; I sink into it.

‘You’ve changed a lot and look completely different now,’ she says. ‘You were a chubby kid. When you ran your flesh jiggled and bounced. So cute! How did you get so tall and slender?’

‘My aunt says I’m too skinny.’

‘You’ve got a good figure. I want to slim down but can’t. I get fat just drinking water.’

She leaves the room and returns two minutes later with a cup of tea.

‘But the fact is men don’t like women too skinny.’ She stands in front of the couch and looks me over. ‘Now I see you’re really not skinny at all. Everywhere a girl needs flesh you’ve got it. I envy you!’

Scrutiny makes me uneasy. I reach up and take the cup of tea from her hand.

She smiles and says, ‘Chrysanthemum and wolfberry tea is good for eyes and skin. You intellectuals who sit behind a computer all day should drink more of it.’

I sip the tea and say, ‘You flatter me. Right now I’m unemployed.’

The tea tastes good—light, refreshing, sweet from a dash of honey.

The apartment is high up in the building so the living room is bright. Sunlight beams through the window reflecting countless dust particles. I recall waking up after sleeping in and seeing my aunt hang up washed bedsheets outside the window in dusty sunlight.

‘Women over twenty-five have to pamper their body,’ Jianhua says languidly from the other end of the couch. ‘The main thing is drink plenty of water, get plenty of sleep, and avoid stress. Now I sleep ten hours every night and feel I still don’t get enough.’ She laughs. Her laughter has the same magnetic charm her mother’s had.

‘Of course you need a regular facial, manicure, hair-conditioning, and body massage—and can’t let up. I’ve got an excellent masseur who comes here every week. He’s booked up but I’m sure I can get him to take you on.’

‘Let’s discuss it later.’

‘You can give him a try and then decide.’

‘Wait till I find a job and an apartment and then put him in touch, or else my aunt and uncle will call me spendthrift again.’

‘When I ran into your aunt I thought it rude to ask but I guess you’re still single.’ She assumes the tone of a woman much older: ‘Shall I introduce you to someone?’

‘I’m in no hurry.’

‘You’re in no hurry but your aunt and uncle are. I know several rich good-looking men. Do you mind a divorcé?’

‘I don’t mind anyone in particular but I’m in no hurry. I just want to find a good job and settle down—then think about it.’

‘How can a woman live a good life working for others? Work isn’t important. What’s important is to get a good husband. Once you’ve got a good husband to support you, you can work as a hobby.’

Noticing I do not react, she continues: ‘Actually, the most important thing about a husband is that he treats you well and can support you. Everything else is secondary. Look at me—no stress, pampered body, pampered appearance. It’s the best deal, isn’t it?’

‘It’s your good fortune. Not everyone is so lucky.’

She smiles, the corners of her mouth rising high, her eyes squinting.

‘What business is your husband doing so well in?’

‘Consulting.’

‘On what?’

‘I’m not really sure. Probably attracting foreign business and channeling foreign investment. He has offices in Shanghai, Tokyo, and New York. He travels a lot.’

Wily hare—three burrows: I suspect infidelity.

‘I told him about you: “Sister Lan was very bright and good at school.” Shall I ask him to give you a good job?’

‘I just got home and am in no hurry to find one.’

‘Look at you.’ She feigns irritation. ‘I try to fix you up with a boyfriend, you say you want to be a career woman. I try to get you a job, you say you’re in no hurry.’

I do not know how to answer but say, ‘As you like. If it’s not too much trouble …’

‘Agreed.’ Jianhua swings from irritation to cheer. ‘These days he’s home. I’ll tell him tonight and have him give you a good job.’

‘Leaving when?’

‘In a week for New York.’

‘I mean when do we leave for the Suzhou cemetery?’

‘Right now,’ she smiles. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t prepare anything to serve you.’

‘No matter. I’m already most grateful.’

‘I forgot to tell you: Dad wants to come along too.’