Son of Fortune (36 page)

Daisy nodded very solemnly. “I understand.”

Ming painted a few lines, and a tiger sprang. Aiden saw that Peter was watching quite intently. His body was still with concentration. Aiden walked over and squatted beside him.

“Do you want to see the pictures?” Aiden asked.

“Anndeee!” he said. “Anndeee!”

“He likes them,” Daisy said to Ming. “He says they are very beautiful.”

“Shall I paint a picture for Peter?” Ming said playfully.

“Yes! Please!” The ducklings all clapped. Aiden pushed Peter closer to the table, where he could watch.

“What would you like me to paint, Peter?” she asked softly.

Peter made only a soft grunt. The big orange cat roused himself from his nap by the stove, stretched and leaped onto the back of the couch.

“Shall I paint your pretty cat?” Ming asked. She dipped her brush, then swept it across the paper, and the cat appeared, sitting just as he was, licking one plump paw. The girls squealed with excitement.

“Look, Peter, it's the cat—the one you like,” Charlotte said.

“Now the cat jumps!” Ming painted a second picture, capturing the muscular grace of a leaping cat in a few washes of gray and black. “And now he catches a little mouse.” She made a second image on the same page. The little mouse took only six brushstrokes but was so lifelike the ducklings giggled with delight. Ming painted a Chinese character on the page.

“This is how we write
cat
in Chinese,” she said. “Take up your brushes. I will show you how.”

The girls clutched their brushes and began to copy the character.

“Very good, Miss Elizabeth!” Ming said. She picked up Elizabeth's page to show the others. Peter began to grow agitated. He jerked his head back and forth and slapped his hands against his table. Aiden snatched the cat picture out of his way, afraid he would tear it. This seemed to make the boy even more frantic.

“Peter, calm down. Come on, I'll take you out.” He knew Peter's outbursts could be disturbing to someone not used to them, and did not want Ming to be upset. But as Aiden started to turn the chair away, Peter suddenly quieted down. He struggled to calm his body and turn his head back toward the table.

“He wants to stay,” Charlotte said. “Look, he wants to see the painting.”

“Do you like the paintings?” Annalise went over to her brother's side. “Do you want to see them some more?”

Peter stared at the big orange cat, then back at the paper.

“Att,” he said, touching the picture. Then he patted the calligraphy and repeated, “Ka-at.”

“He knows what it means!” Daisy picked up Ming's calligraphy and held it in front of Peter's face. “Do you see it, Peter?” She tapped her tiny finger on the Chinese character. “Do you know what this means?”

Peter smiled, and it was like light came pouring out of him. Slowly he straightened his arm, uncurled the clenched fingers and pointed at the big orange cat.

“Kh-aaat!” he repeated, the voice still strained, but the meaning clear. “Aaat!” His eyes looked at the Chinese character, then back to the cat.

“He knows,” Elizabeth whispered in amazement.

Ming was looking lost and a bit frightened.

“He's never understood letters or words or even symbols before,” explained Aiden, as surprised as anyone.

Charlotte ran to the toy shelf and took down a wooden horse. “Here,” she said to Ming. “Draw this, and the symbol for it—the cali-gee…”

“Calligraphy,” Annalise said. “Yes, please draw it!”

Ming painted a horse and the character for
horse.
Annabelle snatched the papers up and showed them to Peter.

“This means
horse,
Peter!” she said eagerly. “Do you understand?”

“Hold it still,” Elizabeth said, steadying the girl's hand. “You're shaking it like laundry on the line.”

“But he knows what it means!” Annabelle chimed in excitedly. “You do, don't you, Peter?” She touched the toy horse, then the picture, then the character. “This means this! It's a horse. Can you say
horse
?”

“Ooorse.” Peter forced out the tangled word.

“Yes!” Charlotte exclaimed. “It is a horse!”

“Do a dog!” Annabelle said.

“Elephant!” Daisy shouted.

“Wait, wait,” Elizabeth admonished the little girls. “Don't overwhelm him. And Peter's never seen an elephant.” She looked at Aiden for help. “Do you think he really understands?”

“I don't know,” Aiden said. “He's never responded like this before. Could you paint the symbols on separate papers?” he asked Ming. He took the pictures Ming had already painted and folded up the bottoms so the Chinese characters were not visible. Ming saw what he meant to do. She tore a sheet of paper into small pieces and painted characters on each one. Aiden laid these out on the table below the paintings, mixing them up.

“Which is the horse, Peter?” Aiden said. “Will you show us?”

They all watched silently as Peter struggled to aim his hand. He touched the drawing of the horse, then the character for
horse,
then the bird and the character for
bird.

“He knows Chinese!” Annalise said.

“Is Peter Chinese?” Daisy asked.

“No,” Aiden said. “It just—I don't know.” He looked at Ming, who seemed a bit unnerved.

The ducklings scampered around the room, gathering up other toys and objects and thrusting them at Ming to paint as fast as she could. “Do a shoe or a cup.…” The poor girl grew flustered. “Not all Chinese characters mean exactly the thing itself,” she explained. But gamely she painted pictures and calligraphy for
house
and
cup,
tree
and
shoe.
Peter really did seem to be comprehending. He still struggled with the words, giving only “ooo” for
shoe
and “ha-ha” for
house,
but it was still more than he had ever done before. They were all surprised when the butler rapped on the nursery door. Two hours had flown by.

“The visitor's buggy is ready,” Mr. Butter said. If he was puzzled by the gaiety of the little girls and the litter of Chinese characters all over the table, he very professionally did not show it.

“You must come again, Miss Ming,” Elizabeth said. “Please!”

“Yes,” Aiden agreed. “I don't know why, but he understands.”

He suddenly remembered his real mission—the whole reason he had thought up this painting-lesson ruse in the first place. Aiden reached into his pocket and fingered the letter he had written to Lijia. He couldn't just hand the letter to Ming without some explanation. He had counted on having a few minutes alone with her to explain. Even if he did manage to slip it to her now, did she have a pocket in her skirt to put it in? She had already closed her painting box, so he couldn't sneak it in there. But most of all, he thought, if he didn't give her the letter now, he would have to find a way to see her again. And he desperately wanted to see her again.

re you telling me my son speaks Chinese?” Mr. Worthington frowned.

“No. Of course not, sir,” Aiden replied nervously, looking to Elizabeth for support. “Only that, for whatever reason, the Chinese characters just made sense to him. Suddenly it registered in his mind that a symbol could mean the thing itself. And look”—Aiden pulled the calligraphy for
horse
out of the pile—“the symbol really does look like a horse. It has legs and a head. However abstract.”

“You are the sixth tutor I've hired.” Mr. Worthington glared at Aiden. “And, as you yourself have acknowledged, the least accomplished. Others have tried symbols and pictures.” He looked down at the pile of Ming's paintings and calligraphy. “Why would Peter suddenly understand that these—these foreign squiggles—mean
cat
or
horse
?”

“I think
because
they are so foreign,” Aiden said. He had a flash of Ming's small hand holding the brush—so delicately and powerfully at the same time. He shivered. “We've always thought Peter doesn't notice things, but I wonder now if he notices too much. What if sights and sounds are hitting his mind like a thunderstorm all the time? I think the ducklings have understood this, in a way, but didn't know how to explain it to the rest of us.”
It's that bread has a thousand ways to taste.…

“What if I sent you down to the china pantry right now,” asked Elizabeth, perched on the edge of her father's desk, “and told you to fetch six Davenport Lattice cream soup bowls, four Coalport Adelaide consommé bowls, a dozen Spode London shape butter plates and two luncheon settings of Wedgwood—could you do that?”

Mr. Worthington looked blank.

“No, you could not,” Elizabeth went on, not expecting an answer. “But you could probably tell a teacup from a soup tureen.”

“Yes?”

“Well, maybe we've been confusing Peter with china patterns, and now Ming is simply showing him teacups from soup tureens.”

“Even so, we're not all going to learn Chinese just to communicate with him,” Mr. Worthington said.

“Of course not,” Aiden said. “But now he at least has the idea that symbols can mean actual things.”

“So what do you propose we do now?”

“I would like to have Ming come back,” Aiden said. “We'll have her paint words—in English—along with the calligraphy and the pictures.”

“Why can't you do that?” Mr. Worthington frowned. “You don't have to do actual Chinese writing. After all, he isn't going to know the difference.”

“Peter liked her,” Aiden said. “She has a very gentle way about her.” There was no explanation to offer. Perhaps the boy had also been smacked senseless—or sensible, as it were—just as Aiden had been.

“She does,” Elizabeth added. “Please, Father, we all liked her.”

They knew there was little Mr. Worthington would refuse his daughter.

“Very well, I have no objections. If your mother approves.”

“Thank you, Father.” Elizabeth leaned over and kissed him on the cheek.

Aiden sent a note to Silamu Xie that afternoon. The next morning, though it was a typical dreary, damp February day, Aiden was exhilarated and cheerful. He could not manage a bite of breakfast nor concentrate on his book as he waited for the morning post. He was not worried when there was no note from Silamu Xie. He hadn't really expected a reply so soon. But by two o'clock, the earliest the afternoon post ever came, he felt restless and vaguely sick. Twice he walked down the pebbled driveway to check the road—perhaps it was too muddy for the mail carriage. By three o'clock, when there was still no mail, he felt a blunt squeeze in his head. Elizabeth came home from school at three-thirty and wasn't the least bit concerned, which made Aiden, quite absurdly, want to strangle her.

“What in the world is wrong with you?” Christopher asked when he saw Aiden idly wandering through the library. “You've been fidgeting about all day.”

“Nothing,” Aiden said. “It's the weather, I suppose. I miss the sunshine.” He was surprised his friend had noticed. Christopher had been holed away in his own room lately, working on some new business idea, he said.

At four Aiden decided that the pressure in his chest was caused by his ribs somehow turning themselves inside out and he was bound to die before supper. But then the post came and he was miraculously cured of everything. Ming would come tomorrow at eleven. He tucked the letter into his pocket. She had written it herself. She had blown the ink dry with her own breath, folded and creased the stationery with her delicate fingers. And tomorrow she would be here, breathing in this house. What in the world was he going to do?

The ducklings were disappointed that they were not to have Ming for themselves this time, but understood this lesson was for Peter. They did insist on bringing her first to the nursery to see the Chinese paintings they had done. Ming admired their flowers and praised their tigers. They had invented their own “Chinese” characters as well—though most of these consisted of stick figures and dots.

“I think they missed the part about the ancient traditions,” Aiden apologized.

“Every language was once invented for the first time,” Ming said.

Peter's nurse had set up a table and chairs in his room for Aiden and Ming. The door of the room was left open to her own adjacent bedroom, where she sat knitting, observant and suspicious. She was a sturdy, kind, illiterate woman who was good with the boy's physical care but distrustful of all efforts to educate him. She was proud to have raised her own five children with no schooling and thought it mean, if not actually cruel, to torture a feeble mind with the confusion of the alphabet.

Peter was clearly happy to see Ming. He did not recoil when she touched his hand, and even reached out to her, brushing his fingers lightly across her offered palm.

“Would you like to paint today?” Ming asked the boy. Peter nodded. Ming sat down, opened her paint box and set each item out on his table. Inkstone, ink stick, brush, paper—the four treasures. Aiden had only been to Catholic Mass a few times in his life, but her soft, sacred motions reminded him of the Consecration. Ming poured water on the inkstone and began to rub the ink stick around. She took Peter's hand and wrapped it over the stick. She guided his hand and together they mixed the ink until it was glossy and ripe. This was holier than any Communion.

Her blouse seemed fancier today than last time—more threads of color in the silk. And it was tied a little tighter beneath her breasts, so there was more outline of her shape. She picked up the brush, but hesitated.

“Can you hold the brush?” She spoke directly to Peter but glanced at Aiden for guidance. Before Aiden could say anything, Peter thrust his hand toward Aiden. Aiden laughed.

“I made him this.” Aiden picked up the splint. “But he's never liked it before.” Aiden tied the splint around Peter's hand, and Ming slipped the brush into it.

“Don't feel bad if he won't do it,” Aiden said. But Peter eagerly dipped the brush himself, then brought it to the paper. He pressed the brush down, then lifted and pulled it across the page, exactly as Ming had done in her first lesson.

“It's amazing,” Aiden said. “I've tried with everything— charcoal, chalk, pencil, even pen and ink—and he acts like I've given him a hot poker.”

“Hmmm,” Ming said. “I wonder…” She picked up the slate and handed Aiden a piece of chalk. “What do you feel when you draw with that?”

“Nothing,” Aiden said.

“Close your eyes,” Ming said. “How does the chalk feel?”

Aiden closed his eyes. The chalk felt like chalk.

“It is rough and it scratches. I don't like chalk either. Now feel the brush.” Ming slipped the brush between his fingers. Aiden jumped at her touch and his eyes popped open.

“Go on.”

Aiden painted an inky line across the rice paper.

“The brush is smooth like silk,” Ming said. Aiden thought that was what she said—he couldn't really hear anything except the waterfall rushing through the middle of his brain.

“Painting,” she went on, “is like…touching softly? I don't know the word—softly touching, like petting a cat?” She moved her hand in a sensuous wave.

“Stroking?” Aiden's voice caught in his throat. A cat would die instantly of happiness with her stroke.

“Peter feels the roughness—the scratchy feelings—more, I think.”

She guided Peter's hand and he slowly copied Ming's bird. She painted the character and he copied that too. It took all of his concentration, but he did not grow frustrated. Finally she painted the letters
b-i-r-d.
Peter, growing more adept with the brush, quickly copied the letters. Instead of stopping, he dipped the brush in the ink again and—shockingly—began to write more letters:
c-a-n-d-e.
He looked at Aiden and smiled, as if happy that Aiden had finally figured it out.

“
Candy
is his word for anything good,” Aiden explained, laughing.

“Then we will make some more candy pictures,” Ming said brightly.

As the afternoon passed, it felt like they were in a separate little world. The nurse's rocking chair squeaked and her knitting needles clacked from the next room, but she did not interfere. Aiden and Ming began to talk more easily. It was only small, careful subjects, the sort of polite parlor talk that would offend no one and reveal nothing, for the squeaking rocker was a constant reminder of their chaperone. But sometimes their eyes met as they bent over the table, and Ming did not look away so quickly. Sometimes their hands brushed together over the sheets of paper. Ming had a light scent—spicy, sweet and something else, like Christmas cake and the pine forest. The sun peeked through the clouds once and streamed briefly through the window, making her silk blouse sparkle and her black hair glow with a blue sheen. Aiden felt sick and dizzy.

Ming told Peter a story about a fox and a fish and the moon falling into a pond. She illustrated each scene as she told it. “Now you will keep these pictures and you may write the words, yes? I think this is enough lesson for today.” She dipped her brush in the water to clean it. Peter gave a weak squawk of protest, but Aiden could see he was clearly exhausted.