Three Souls (18 page)

All the rooms on the second floor opened onto the veranda, which served as both balcony and corridor. She led us to a room at one end, small but bright, with a window that overlooked the courtyard and another that looked down into a small orchard. Empty bookcases lined one wall and two armchairs were positioned invitingly by the orchard window. Three wooden crates sat in the middle of the room. My books. Seeing them brought a pang of longing for home.

“A small library for your own use,” said Jia Po. “This was Baizhen’s idea.”

It was a gesture of understanding, perhaps even compassion, that I had not unexpected. Baizhen smiled at me, shy and hopeful. I turned away, pretending to inspect the crates.

My husband was so ordinary I wouldn’t have been able to pick him out from a crowd the next day. We were the same height, but his shoulders slumped, making him appear shorter. He squinted out at the world through wire-rimmed glasses with lenses as round as moons, which made his thin face look even thinner. His small mouth was habitually slightly pursed, as though he were chronically anxious.

“So thoughtful,” said Stepmother, her smile genuine when she looked at Baizhen. “Leiyin enjoys reading more than anything.”

We descended to the courtyard, and entered the orchard that stood behind the brick walls. Its broken wooden door was propped open with a paving stone. Inside, apple, plum, and peach trees had dropped the last of their fruit and wasps drunk on the juice staggered in confused circles on the ground. A small cottage sagged against the far orchard wall. The air smelled just the way it did under the fruit trees at home.

***

All day long I compared Baizhen to Hanchin,
I say to my souls.
All I could think of was how poor a bargain my father had made for me.

It’s a good thing Baizhen was so enamoured of you,
my
yin
soul says. She wags a reproving finger at me.
Yes, just look at him. He mistook your silence for shyness.

Oh, he knew,
my
yang
soul says.
Your husband knew you were disappointed in him, in this house, in this town. Believe me, he knew.

So he knew I was disappointed. Did it matter?

It wasn’t his fault your father forced this marriage,
my
hun
soul points out,
and it’s a good thing Baizhen didn’t take offence at your cool behaviour. You had a lifetime ahead of you with this man.

Well, it ended up being rather a short lifetime,
I say, a little testy.

***

In the forecourt, a convoy of bicycle rickshaws and a donkey cart had assembled to take my family and their luggage to the train station. Changyin gave me an awkward farewell pat on the shoulder. Tongyin shook hands with Baizhen, nodded at me, and followed Changyin into a rickshaw. Stepmother hugged me, something she hadn’t done since I was a girl.

“I’ll write every month,” she spoke softly into my ear. “Be agreeable, Leiyin. Be an obedient daughter and wife.”

My father’s hands held mine in a tight grip. “They’ll be kind to you, Third Daughter, I know that,” he whispered. “Write if you need anything.”

I hadn’t spoken to Father for a week; that much I could remember. I had no other form of protest and I wasn’t going to say anything now. Baizhen and I bowed to him in farewell. The convoy departed and I turned toward the inner courtyard to begin my new life.

***

In the dining hall of the main house, Jia Po introduced me to the servants. I met the cook, Old Kwan, and his wife, Mrs. Kwan, the head housekeeper. Little Ming, a girl of perhaps thirteen and granddaughter to Old Ming, the gatekeeper, was our housemaid. Then there was Dali, a thin and rather plain young woman who looked after the main house. There were more servants than family.

Although they were old-fashioned and a little dilapidated, the houses on the Lee property were well-built. Everywhere I looked, subtle details attested to the gracious lives of their past inhabitants. The slats of the wooden shutters interlocked with finely crafted joints that held tight even though they were badly in need of a coat of varnish. The plantings in the courtyard gardens were overgrown but showed evidence of thoughtful design. When I swept my hand over a cascade of winter creeper, I found beneath the leafy vines an exquisite marble plaque set into the wall, its polished surface carved with lines of poetry written by some long-dead Lee ancestor.

I was accustomed to a home where it was impossible to walk the length of a courtyard without stopping to exchange greetings with an aunt or tripping over a gaggle of small children. The Lee household felt hushed and dismal to me, as though it were awaiting news of a death.

Each morning, Baizhen and I offered greetings to my in-laws, kneeling before them in their matching mahogany chairs that sat side by side in the reception room. After a typically silent breakfast, I followed Jia Po while she discussed the day’s meals with Old Kwan and inspected the house with Mrs. Kwan. I found it ridiculous that she clung to these formal routines with the servants when we were so few in number and entertained so little.

There was usually more conversation at lunchtime, when Baizhen returned with gossip from the town. Jia Po listened with interest, and Gong Gong listened while feigning indifference. After lunch, we took tea in the small parlour, perched on straight-backed ebony armchairs that had been part of Jia Po’s dowry. That was when Gong Gong read all the household mail and the newspaper.

“This Northern Expedition against the warlords is in its third year.” He gestured disdainfully and the newspaper crackled in his hands. “There’s been nothing but war of one sort or another since they toppled the Qing Dynasty.” My father-in-law made no secret of his longing for the days when the emperors ruled China.

After Gong Gong and Jia Po left to take their naps, Baizhen would offer me the newspapers. I never saw him pick them up after I finished, even though he appeared interested in whatever news Gong Gong read out loud to us. I would read quietly, one eye on the clock, hoping he’d leave the parlour to meet his friends at a tea house and allow me some time on my own. Sometimes after I put down the paper, he’d shuffle nervously toward the door and look back at me over his shoulder, the way a cat does when it wants you to follow. Then we would return to our house.

Then an hour might go by before I could leave my bedroom, Baizhen still snoring in the bed, to wash myself in the narrow, tiled chamber next door. I’d get dressed and go upstairs to my little library.

Conversation at dinner was either non-existent or gossipy, depending on whether we had hosted visitors in the afternoon. At half-past seven, Baizhen and I would bow to his parents and return across the courtyard and through the moon gate to our own house.

That was how my days passed.

***

In the first few weeks after the wedding, guests arrived almost every day, curious to meet the newest member of the family. Second and third cousins, family friends, even merchants—anyone with the slightest connection to my in-laws—came to call. Evidently there had been much anticipation that I would provide fodder for gossip. I was from Changchow, a city even farther away than Shanghai, from a family tainted by foreign influences. To their disappointment, I didn’t parade around in cocktail frocks or hold an ivory cigarette holder to my crimson-painted lips. I dressed each day in plain, modest gowns, my hair pulled back in a simple braid. I had very little to say to guests.

Actually, I never had to do much talking if Madame Pao was there. Her visit to our home, brief though it had been, made her an authority on my family. She came often during those first weeks and regaled our other guests with her descriptions of our villa, its rose gardens, the French furniture, the terraces of polished marble.

Other women peered at me critically, as though viewing an insufficiently exotic animal.

“Well then, do you speak any foreign languages?” one matron asked, eyeing me with bovine complacency.

“A little English,” I said. “A few polite phrases.”

The ladies squealed with excitement.

“Say something then,” the bovine one cried. “Teach us English.”

They sniggered as I pronounced for them the English words
thank you, good morning, goodbye.

“
Gu bai, gu bai,
” they repeated after me, shrieking with laughter.

“There’s one more phrase that’s very important to learn,” I said. “A greeting for honoured guests.”

They settled down. Then they carefully repeated after me, in English, “
You are stupid people.”

The ladies departed, trilling their farewells. “
Gu bai, gu bai.
”

My mother-in-law was pleased.

***

Only when I was alone in my bedroom did I indulge in tears and longing for Hanchin. The sandalwood sachets Stepmother had tucked into my linens trunk scented my pillowcase and I dreamed of being enfolded in his caresses. I couldn’t help but compare: Baizhen’s moist mouth on my skin repulsed me as much as his odour, an intermingling of perspiration and mothballs.

My days were as repetitive as the devotions of monks over their prayer beads. Days went by when the courtyards and gardens seemed to shrink, when the whitewashed walls closed in on me, when even the sky pressed down, an airless blue ceiling. The future stretched ahead, day after tedious day into the distance, a dull and muddy slow-moving river.

Some days I survived by pretending to be inside a dream, an interminable nightmare that would end at daybreak. I willed myself to pass through it like a puppet playing the role of a young wife, obedient and unthinking.

“Of course, Mother,” I would say when Jia Po asked me to help her with the household bookkeeping.

“Yes, Husband,” when Baizhen suggested returning to the house for a nap.

“Right away, Father,” when Gong Gong asked me to fetch him a book from his library.

I knew everything that was expected of a wife and daughter-in-law. I knew it in my bones the way I knew the brushstrokes that composed my name, the poetry I memorized to please my father, the lush scents of our rose garden in July. It was just that until now I had never believed this would actually define my life.

***

I threw away the sandalwood sachets, you know. I realized there was no possibility I’d ever see Hanchin again.

A wise decision.
My
hun
soul glows gently, sympathetic.

Yes, scent brings back memories more vividly than any other sense.
My
yin
soul releases a hint of sandalwood before snatching it back with an embarrassed smile.

This house, Baizhen, this backwater town. They were all I had to look forward to for the rest of this life. I had to survive and I’d never manage that unless I forgot Hanchin.

It was time to discard all your thoughts of Hanchin, to quiet and not strengthen them,
agrees my
yang
soul.
What could they do now except push shards of longing like broken glass into your heart?
For a moment his features look sympathetic, grandfatherly. He comforts me with the taste of sweet bean soup.

***

One day Baizhen hired a bicycle rickshaw to give me a tour of Pinghu. He grew animated as he showed off the town’s attractions. First we rode around the lake that gave Pinghu its name. At its shores, the families of fishermen lived in flat-bottomed boats, their nets spread out on the banks, their children spread out on the decks. Women worked beside wooden frames, rubbing salt on silvery fish drying in the sun.

The slow-running waters of the lake flowed into Big Canal, which divided the town into north and south. Pinghu’s two main streets, Major Street and Minor Street, ran parallel on the two banks of Big Canal. Pedestrians idled beneath a canopy of elm, sycamore, and ginkgo trees, strolling along wide stone paths. Every few hundred metres or so, a smaller canal bisected Big Canal, with boatmen calling warnings whenever they neared the junctions.

“The tea houses beside Big Canal are very popular,” Baizhen said. “Despite all the warning calls, boats still manage to collide. It’s never anything serious, but the arguments can get very entertaining and the customers like to hang out the windows to listen.” He shook his head and chuckled.

“You mentioned a film theatre?” Listening to boatmen curse each other was not high on my list of entertainments.

“Yes, yes. Close to the temple and market square.” He tapped the rickshaw puller’s shoulder to get his attention.

The rickshaw carried us over arched stone bridges that spanned the canals. With their memorial plaques from the Ming Dynasty and intricately carved balustrades, the bridges were more interesting than the marketplace or the main temple, which was only a hundred years old. As for the tiny theatre, it was showing a film that had played in Changchow at least four months ago.

“I’ve never been to Changchow,” Baizhen said. “I suppose our town must seem very quiet to you.”

“Small towns have their own charm.” I said this to be polite, repeating what I had heard Gaoyin say to one of Father’s guests a lifetime ago.

He beamed at me, his pride evident. “Oh, I agree. Pinghu is so beautifully positioned between hills and water. There can’t be many towns as pretty as this one.”

I stifled my impatience, but at the same time found myself strangely moved by his obvious love for this unremarkable little place.

Our ride around the market square had attracted attention, for this was my first appearance outside the family estate. I was the object of curious, guarded looks from the more polite passersby, of loud comments and even pointing from the lower classes. These yokels actually grinned when they saw me stare back defiantly, pleased that I had noticed them. Embarrassed, Baizhen cut short the tour and we hastened home.

***

The little sightseeing trip seemed to put him more at ease with me.

“Wife, I’d enjoy it very much if you could read to me the article Father mentioned earlier, the one about the latest boycott of Japanese products.”