Three Souls (45 page)

At this, Nanmei sinks into a chair, suddenly trembling. Baizhen, still studying the photographs on the wall, doesn’t notice her distress.

“Did you say the family of General Cha?”

“Yes, do you know of them? Of course it’s too much to hope that Weilan could marry into such a family, but my brother-in-law promises to try.”

He leaves the room and Nanmei stares up at my picture on the wall, her hands clutching at the seat of the schoolroom chair. My face gazes down at her.

***

That night, Nanmei dreams again.

She is a little girl, visiting her grandparents in Soochow. I follow her out of a narrow house that backs onto a canal. Ancient willow trees grow along the banks, sweeping the water with the tips of their branches. She holds her grandfather’s hand and follows him down broad stone steps to the water’s edge. A waiting boatman lifts her into a long barge and her grandfather pats down the cushions before they sit. The boatman leans his weight against the massive oar at the stern and the boat glides through the water. The old gentleman hums to himself, a comforting familiar tune. The dream is so vivid and Nanmei so happy to be a child again.

“Grandfather,” asks the child Nanmei. “Do you believe in ghosts?”

“Yes, of course. There are many kinds of ghosts. Most are just harmless spirits trying to make their way to the next life.”

“Have you ever seen one?”

Her grandfather turns into Hanchin, who lifts up her small chin.

“You shouldn’t be afraid if you do see one, Nanmei. They’re just trying to talk to you.”

With a heart-rending cry, Nanmei throws her arms around him.

“Oh, Hanchin, I knew you’d come back to me!”

The edges of her dream crack and Nanmei wakes up, tears soaking her pillow. I curse out loud. I didn’t even have a chance to speak to her. It’s just past two in the morning, so perhaps she will fall asleep again.

She whispers out loud in the still night air, “Come back to me, my life’s companion. Oh, come back!”

Words without hope, only longing.
Nanmei, go back to sleep and dream again,
I implore.

But she lies awake, eyes open in the dark. Then she sits up and pulls on her coat and heavy socks. She takes out a stub of candle and some matches from the chest of drawers and drops them in her pocket.

With growing excitement I follow her downstairs to my bedroom. She lights the candle and kneels beside the trunk. Lifting the wooden lid, she rests it against the wall. Holding the candle closer, she inspects the inside of the lid, then runs her fingers across the leaf-patterned paper that lines the interior. The paper is glued to cardboard, just as I told her. Putting the candle on the floor, she gently pries one corner away from the inside of the wooden lid. It curls up slightly. Amber-yellow flakes of dried glue fall away as she runs her finger along the edges of the cardboard and then gently pulls it away.

She sits back on her heels and shakes her head with a rueful look. There’s nothing on the underside of the wooden lid.

Keep trying,
I urge.
Please, please, keep trying.

With a sigh, she picks up the sheet of cardboard and fits it back into the lid of the trunk.

Please, please, Nanmei.

Then she pauses, pulls the hard sheet away again, and turns it over. A page torn from an exercise book is glued to the centre of the board, like a pocket. There is a slight bulge in the paper. Nanmei tears it off and an envelope falls out. An envelope I never opened, because of my promise to Hanchin.

I expect her to weep or hold it to her chest.

But Nanmei does none of this. She tucks the envelope up her sleeve, pulls off the rest of the paper, and crumples the sheet into her pocket. Then she presses the cardboard liner back into the lid. She closes the trunk and blows out the candle. Silent as smoke, she makes her way upstairs to her room.

Only then does she collapse on the cot, shaking. She draws the envelope out of her sleeve and presses it to her cold lips. She holds it there for a long time, as though reluctant to face its contents.

Finally, she lights a candle and slides down to the floor to read. There’s nothing written on the envelope, but there is sealing wax dribbled along the edges of its flap. Nanmei rummages in the chest of drawers. She fishes out a slim, bone-handled knife and slits open the short end of the envelope. She extracts three thin sheets of carefully folded paper.

The pages are covered in tiny, neat handwriting, miniature words of enormous import. She blinks away tears as she reads. I lean over her shoulder, casting no shadow, displacing no air with my ghost breath. I read along with her.

She reaches the third and final onion-skin sheet. This page isn’t part of the manifesto. It lists names and details for contacts in Hanchin’s network. Hanchin has set down on paper what his successor in the movement would need to know. The only name I recognize is that of Young Wang the bookseller. Nanmei turns over the paper and on the back is another list, the names of traitors and spies known to Hanchin, enemies of the Communist movement. I scan the list and near the bottom is Tongyin’s name. Nanmei reads slowly now, running her fingers down the paper, muttering to herself. When she reaches Tongyin’s name I hear a sharp intake of breath.

She collapses to the floor.

“Are you here, Leiyin?” she whispers into the darkness. “Are you here?”

I can’t even make the candle flame waver in reply, but that doesn’t matter. Nanmei reaches into her dresser drawer and takes out a sheet of paper:

Dear Leiyin,

When Hanchin and I were married, my parents weren’t pleased, as you can imagine, so they gave me a dowry but not a wedding. Then they disowned me. The only evidence of my wedding was a studio photograph but I didn’t care. We left Soochow, and with my dowry we were able to carry out our dream. We set up schools in Jiangxi, schools for peasants.

She is writing to me, telling me her story.

She was far more than a schoolteacher. She gave herself heart and soul to the Communist Party and became a trained agent. The schools were a cover for recruiting. These were the happiest years of her life, even though she and Hanchin were apart a good deal of the time:

They trained us both to run a spy network. Can you imagine me a spy? But I did whatever was needed for the Party. Then came the Encirclement Campaigns and our armies began losing badly. Hanchin was ordered to Changchow to organize better intelligence-gathering while I continued to work in the villages. It was dangerous to communicate in writing, so I had to be content with the clues he put into the poems and articles he wrote.

Then
China Millennium
shut down and Hanchin vanished. Everything happened so quickly. She went to Shanghai and Changchow to find him. Then she read about his capture and execution. All she had to track down his last hiding place, to find the manifesto if she could, was a few clues from the head of their network. She tried to find more clues in Hanchin’s published articles. Then she read the last poem he had written for the journal, its final two lines:

Childhood friends and our love, years pass and they change not,

Like a cherished secret, when released, they return us to joy.

She guessed he might have tried to find me. I was unknown to the movement, with no connection to his circle of contacts. I had also been her friend:

I was grasping at straws when I suspected he was hiding here, but I didn’t have anything else to go on. Then I learned about your death and I was in despair. But my last duty as his comrade and his wife was to recover the manifesto he’d been writing. So I went to find your brother, whom Hanchin mentioned once in a letter.

Arriving at my family’s villa thin and poorly dressed, Nanmei looked nothing like the schoolgirl who used to visit me there. When she introduced herself as Yen Hanchin’s wife, Tongyin claimed he himself had been not only Hanchin’s friend but a fellow agent. She had to risk telling him about the manifesto but divulged only enough information to win his help. She needed to get to Pinghu and into our home without attracting attention. Baizhen’s letter, asking for help finding a tutor for Weilan, had arrived only the day before. Tongyin was quick to make a plan:

I feel like a superstitious peasant, Leiyin, writing a letter to a dead person. Perhaps I’m only dreaming all this. But you helped me find the manifesto. I’ll find a way to stop Tongyin. I won’t let him put Weilan in danger. She’s all I have of you now.

She puts down her pencil and reads over what she’s written. Then she touches the candle’s flame to the paper and watches the pages burn to ashes in the old bucket. She hasn’t written down everything I want to know but it’s enough.

***

Had I been in Nanmei’s place, I would have run out the door as soon as morning dawned and the streets outside were busy with peasants on their way to market. Instead, she follows the usual routine, helping Weilan feed the chickens and overseeing my daughter’s lessons for the day. But when Weilan settles down for a nap, Nanmei shuts herself in her room and makes a copy of Hanchin’s document. She writes a short note to go along with it and folds it all into an envelope that she tucks inside the lining of her winter vest.

Then she puts on her coat and outdoor shoes.

“Going for a walk, Teacher Wang?” Old Ming asks as she enters the forecourt.

“Just a quick errand.”

“That wind is bitter today.”

“Don’t worry.” She smiles. “This scarf is very warm.”

I follow her along Minor Street and across Three Lanterns Bridge. She stops once to ask the way, and then I know where she is going. At 24 Southern Harmony Road she steps across the threshold of the Thousand Wisdoms Bookstore and closes the door to a jangle of bells.

The interior of the shop is only slightly warmer than the street outside. The shelves are only half filled with books, as though the store hasn’t been restocked in some time. There are no customers. Young Wang emerges from the storeroom as soon as the bells announce Nanmei’s presence.

“You’re the owner?” she inquires.

“Yes, Madame. I’m Wang Duchen. How may I assist you?”

“‘The hermit in his solitary dwelling clears his mind of worldly cares.’”

He stares at her in astonishment, and then blurts out,
“‘A solitary swan wings its way from the sea.’”

They look at each other again, almost shyly. Wang is the first to speak.

“How may I assist you, Comrade?”

She reaches inside her coat and pulls out the envelope. “Can you get this safely to your contacts in Shanghai?”

He turns it over. “Yes. You can expect this to reach Shanghai within two days. Do you need to know when it reaches its destination?”

She shakes her head. “No, but I do need your help with something else.”

Afterward, she goes to the post office to send a telegram.

***

Did you know? Did you guess what she would do?
My
yang
soul waves his cane as he circles the pavilion. A searing peppery taste flares in my throat.
You should have waited. Cha Zhiming might have rejected a match between his youngest brother and Weilan.

My
yin
soul perches in silent dejection on the pavilion bench. In summer this gazebo is wreathed in pink wisteria, but now, with its frame devoid of blooms and foliage, it’s clear that the heavy vines twisting around the pillars are all that is holding up the roof. Half-heartedly she conjures a weak wisteria scent.

I knew there’d be a risk. But I’m willing to take that risk for my daughter.
Once Tongyin shows Weilan’s photographs to Cha Zhiming, the situation will be out of my hands. I had to take whatever opportunity came my way and Nanmei was it. How Nanmei chooses to stop Tongyin is up to her. I will accept the consequences.

Don’t you understand what could happen?
My
yin
soul whimpers, a child in distress. This time, the odour of urine.

Hush now,
says my
hun
soul.
Leiyin understands very well. Weilan’s life is at stake. Her daughter. Our daughter.

They fall silent. My
yin
soul rests her head against my
yang
soul’s shoulder. He pats her hand and clears his throat.
Will you enter Nanmei’s dreams again?

No. I can’t change anything now. She’s set things in motion. There’s no turning back.

26

T
hings are different when you’re a ghost. Alive, I might have hated Nanmei, considered her a rival. I might have told her about Hanchin’s infidelities. But now my pride and hurt feelings pale next to my yearning to escape this twilight existence. It’s stronger than any desire I felt while alive, more potent than my longing to escape to college, more frantic than my feverish agitation during the early months of my marriage, when I felt trapped in this house, this small town. It’s stronger even than my infatuation with Hanchin. I have only the faintest notion of what might be in the afterlife, beyond the portal. I know I cherish hopes of seeing my father one more time. And I know I must transcend this existence before I become an insane and hungry ghost, tormented and senseless. Without my souls.

There’s only one thing that matters more than rising to the afterlife: Weilan.

Whatever the cost to me and to my souls.

***

The day after her visit to the Thousand Wisdoms Bookstore, before the morning light colours the sky, before the black rooster even stirs in its coop, Nanmei slips out the side door of the orchard. The wind blows colder than usual today and carries a promise of rain. She takes with her only a few clothes and her diary, all stuffed into a cloth satchel. A covered donkey cart waits at the top of the lane, silhouetted against the grey light. A hand flicks open its canvas flap and Nanmei climbs in. The driver’s bamboo stick whistles in the air and the donkey sets off at a trot. Nanmei exchanges greetings with the two men inside.