Three Souls (44 page)

“He didn’t tend to reveal much in writing, as you know. I thought you were just an old friend until you told me you were one of his agents.” Nanmei stands up and goes to the window. “I’ll be leaving soon. I doubt the manifesto’s here. There’s no reason to stay. I must join my comrades behind the lines in Jiangxi.”

With her back turned, she doesn’t see the worried expression on Tongyin’s face.

“Let me make arrangements to smuggle you to Jiangxi. Wait to hear from me. In the meantime, keep trying to find the manifesto. If you do, send a telegram to me in Shanghai. I’ll come immediately and make sure it gets to the right people.”

Everything I know about Tongyin is telling me this is not the truth. All my instincts scream a warning. If Yen Hanchin’s wife is a card he can play to regain Cha Zhiming’s favour, he won’t hesitate.

***

Nanmei’s been duped,
first by Hanchin and now by my brother.

My souls and I have congregated in Nanmei’s small room, watching her sleep, waiting for a dream to materialize.

Perhaps Hanchin did love her,
my
yin
soul suggests.
Surely he didn’t marry her solely for some nefarious secret purpose.
She sits at the foot of the bed, cross-legged.

Do you think Nanmei suspects Hanchin had an affair with me? What would she think?

You’re a ghost now,
my
hun
soul reminds me. As if I needed reminding.
What does it matter what she thinks of you? But no, I don’t think so. She believes in Hanchin absolutely. As much as you did.

He did have that persuasive quality, didn’t he? Of making people believe in him.
My
yang
soul speaks like he’s thinking out loud.

My
yin
soul speaks up suddenly.
Maybe Nanmei will dream of Hanchin!
What if you meet him in one of her dreams?

Let’s worry about that when it happens. Right now, I just wish she would dream at all.

***

After Tongyin’s visit, Nanmei seems to relax a little. She no longer searches the house furiously at night. I don’t know if Nanmei really trusts my brother, but if Hanchin ever told her about Young Wang the bookseller, she hasn’t revealed this to Tongyin, so perhaps she knows enough about him to be cautious. There’s so much I want to tell her. I want to warn her, to tell her to get away from Pinghu before Tongyin turns her in. But how can I talk to her when she never dreams? And how can I persuade her to help prevent Tongyin from offering my daughter to Cha Zhiming?

Over the next few nights I go to everyone’s bedroom in turn: Baizhen, Jia Po, Gong Gong, Nanmei. Everyone dreams except Nanmei, but they never dream about me, or at least I never manage to enter their dreams at the right time. If only my souls could also walk into dreams. Then we could share the task of circling through the sleeping household, waiting for my image to appear.

No matter how often I enter his sleep world, Baizhen doesn’t dream about me anymore. All his dreams are of Meichiu, his son, and Weilan. I enter pleasant, uncomplicated scenes of picnics and birthday celebrations, of playing in the gardens, strolling beneath the trees that line Big Canal. I’m fading from his life as reality replaces memories, as contentment with his new family diminishes his sadness about my death. How can I even begin to warn him about Tongyin and the Cha household?

The horrible anxious sensation presses on me, growing stronger each day. Sometimes I can’t tell whether this is the relentless pull of the afterlife or my own fear for Weilan’s safety. Soon the photographs will arrive and Baizhen will mail them to Tongyin.

***

Finally Nanmei’s sleep becomes restful, and one night I detect at last a cold light gleaming around the outlines of her dream. It wavers at first, but slowly becomes substantial enough for my fingers to touch. I pull back and the shape balloons out, but the portal is dark. I can’t see any shapes moving on the other side. I step through anyway, and find nothing but blackness, the dreamless sleep of utter exhaustion.

Why should I be surprised? She’s been carrying a great burden of grief for her husband, and then she took on a nerve-racking mission to find the document that would be his legacy. Who knows what she endured getting to Changchow just to pick up Hanchin’s trail. I step back out of her dream. Her face has softened and I can see again the sweetness of her features.

The next night, when there is movement behind the gauzy boundaries of the entryway to her dream, I prepare to step inside, then pause.

Does she dream of Hanchin?

My souls circle behind me, anxious, anticipating. I don’t feel ready to see the two of them together. I don’t know how I’ll feel seeing Hanchin as remembered by his wife, to see them together and intimate, perhaps making love.

But for Weilan’s sake, I must enter her dream.

Nanmei is in a dim, shack-like schoolroom. Its windows are no more than square holes cut from walls made of mud and straw. Twenty students—men, women, and adolescents in the tattered clothing of peasants—sit on the floor as she writes on the chalkboard the words for
China
and
revolution.
Hanchin stands by the door of the shack. Although I had prepared myself, his presence still jolts me. He holds a box of pencils and scraps of paper. I’m ready to face my fears, so I walk up to the dream image of Hanchin and touch his shoulder, but he doesn’t respond. He’s only there in Nanmei’s imagination.

Now Nanmei stands in a barn ripe with the odour of pigs and chickens. She holds up cards inscribed with large characters. The peasants sitting on dirty piles of straw repeat after her as she flashes the cards:
Field. Rice. Oil.
Hanchin stands by the door, again holding pencils and paper.

Nanmei is in our little library. Weilan is writing in a notebook. Three other children I don’t recognize share the table, doing the same. Weilan wears the plaid dress and her hair is in pigtails. Hanchin stands by the door, holding a box of pencils and sheets of paper.

“How are your little students?” he asks.

“They’re working on your manifesto,” she replies. “I can’t find it, so we must write another one.”

“Ask Leiyin,” says the dream Hanchin, indicating the wall where my photograph hangs.

I will her to think of me. I beg her, silently.

Her hand on Weilan’s shoulder, Nanmei pauses to look up at the wall. A woman appears at the door of the library, her face indistinct but wearing the dress and jacket from the photograph. Her face is blurry but surely the apparition is meant to be me. Before it can grow hazy or vanish, I hurry over, rush into the figure. There’s a prickling sensation, the now-familiar all-over tingling, and as it recedes, I can tell from the changed appearance of my clothing, now clear and visible, that I fully inhabit my dream image.

Hanchin’s image merely continues to lean against the door frame.

I don’t want to frighten Nanmei into waking up. This could very well be my only chance to speak to her. I smile as reassuringly as I can and approach the table very slowly. I stroke Weilan’s hair. Nanmei smiles back at me and she is seventeen again, her face plump and pretty, her smile as wide as the horizon.

“I’m so happy to see you, Leiyin. I have so much to tell you.”

I want to pour my heart out and talk for hours. But we’re not teenagers anymore and we don’t have hours.

“Oh, Nanmei, me too. But what I have to say is so, so important. Please try to remember this dream when you wake up. Promise that when you wake up, you’ll write down everything I say in this dream right away, before it fades.”

She cocks her head. “So we’re dreaming?”

“Yes. Please remember just three things. First, don’t trust Tongyin. He’s the one who betrayed Hanchin. It was my fault too. I’m so sorry. I told Tongyin the route Hanchin was taking to Jiangxi.”

“You? And Tongyin? You betrayed my husband?”

“If I had known what would happen, I never would have told Tongyin.” She must believe me and I want her to forgive me. I’m dead but it still matters to me.

“Tongyin.” She frowns, puzzled. I press on.

“Second, you must find a way to stop Tongyin from arranging Weilan’s betrothal to General Cha’s son. And third, the manifesto.”

“The manifesto.” Her face grows alert. “You’re the only one who knows where it is. Please, tell me.”

“Promise me, promise me first, that you’ll prevent Tongyin from matching my daughter to the Cha boy. Nanmei, the Cha men like little girls. Weilan would have a terrible life.”

“I promise. Tell me!” She stands up and takes my hand, gives it a squeeze.

“Look inside the trunk in my bedroom. The lid is lined with hard cardboard. Lift that out. Hanchin’s document is underneath, in an envelope.”

She claps her hands. “I should have just asked you in the first place.”

“Please Nanmei, repeat back to me what you must write down as soon as you’re awake.”

“Don’t trust Tongyin, he betrayed my husband. Stop him from arranging a marriage for Weilan. Look in the clothing trunk, inside the lid.” She recites the words with a big smile, not taking it seriously.

I want to tell her again, emphasize the importance of remembering, but the edges of the dream are softening. The walls of the room are blurring, running like watercolours in the rain.

“Nanmei,” I say, reaching out to her, “please, remember this dream when you wake up.”

But Nanmei is falling out of her dream and into a fitful doze, and I’m left standing in the middle of her room, my hand still outstretched. How much will she remember? I can only wait to see what happens when she wakes up.

Finally, the black rooster in the orchard greets the dawn with his call and Nanmei turns over, shivering a little. Her eyes open and she reaches for the coat she has spread over her blankets for added warmth. Her movements seem agonizingly slow as she settles it over her shoulders, then draws thick woollen socks onto her feet. She shuffles over to the chest of drawers and pulls out her diary and a pencil, then scribbles briefly. She sits on the cot again, staring at the page.
Leiyin. Tongyin. Trunk lid.
Nothing about Weilan.

In the schoolroom, Nanmei opens the shutters to let in the first pale rays of morning light. They fall on the framed photograph on the wall. She stands in silence for a moment to look at it, lost in thought.

Please, please,
I beg.
Remember. Believe what I told you.

But she writes nothing further.

As the morning progresses, my despair grows. Nanmei appears to have forgotten her dream. She takes Weilan into the orchard to let the chickens out of their coop before joining the rest of the family for breakfast.

Weilan finishes a page of math problems and Nanmei follows with a history lesson, stories about the lives of ancient emperors and heroes. They unroll a length of rice paper on the schoolroom table and draw a timeline of all the Chinese dynasties, from Xia to Qing, then the Republic of China.

Lunchtime, followed by nap time. Nanmei mends her clothes and sews a button back onto one of Weilan’s pairs of trousers. More lessons, and then an afternoon excursion with Weilan to buy thread at the dry-goods store. Nanmei shows no sign of remembering what I’ve told her.

My chest is tight, my skin crawls as though I’m covered with invisible insects. The afterlife pulls at me. I’m a boat caught in a strong tide, my anchor line straining. I could snap and break at any moment.

The photographs arrive later that day, delivered to the house by the photographer’s assistant. There are multiple copies of a family portrait, Jia Po and Gong Gong seated solemnly at the centre, Weilan standing beside Jia Po. Baizhen and Meichiu stand behind them, Meichiu holding little Weihong in her arms so that he faces the camera. The photos are hand coloured, Meichiu’s cheeks a little too pink, a bit of shading added along her jawline to slim her face.

There’s a portrait of baby Weihong propped up on cushions, looking up at just the right moment.

There are two portraits of Weilan. In one she poses beside a large vase filled with artificial plum blossoms. She’s almost as tall as the vase. In the other, she looks out from a window frame decorated with elaborate latticework, the sort of prop every studio owns. Weilan looks exquisitely pretty, her smile happy and genuine. But she has been posed like a young woman instead of a little girl. Her body is angled and she looks over her shoulder at the camera. I hate the pictures.

But Weilan is delighted and asks for copies of her photographs to be framed and hung on the wall. Baizhen digs through drawers and trunks, turning up items that have been put away and forgotten over the decades. He finds a frame large enough to hold two pictures side by side. A middle-aged couple looks out from the wooden frame, their sepia-toned features solemn and joyless, as stiff and formal as their heavy brocade gowns.

“I don’t even know who these people are,” he says. He removes the photograph and gives the frame to Nanmei. “Maybe a distant great-aunt and great-uncle, or some twelve-times-removed cousins.”

Nanmei helps Weilan mount the photographs, measuring and cutting out a cardboard mat. Then comes the important decision of where to hang the pictures.

“In your bedroom,” suggests Nanmei.

“No,” Weilan says. “I want to be beside my mother. Here on the library wall.”

Baizhen returns to find Weilan’s likeness hanging on the wall beside mine.

“Look, Papa. Look where we put my photographs.”

“Yes, they look very nice, just the right place.”

“Will Second Uncle like them?”

“I’m sure he will. I’ll mail him a set tomorrow.”

Weilan skips out, pleased with her efforts. Nanmei clears away the strips of leftover cardboard.

“Her uncle must be very fond of her. How nice of you to send him these.”

“He’s trying to arrange a marriage for Weilan, so he needs her photographs.”

“Really? She’s still very young.” Nanmei’s voice is matter-of-fact.

“Yes, she is. But the Cha family arranges their sons’ marriages early. Perhaps you’ve heard of them? General Cha’s family.”