Dreams of the Red Phoenix (5 page)

“Is it tea time already?” he asked.

“We finish now.”

“I'm sure Lian would be happy to make you tea, Tupan Feng,”
Shirley offered.

He turned his head slowly, as if only now recalling her. He
often seemed to forget that this was the Carsons' home and not
his own. “Very kind of you, Mrs. Carson, but I could not possibly.
It is bad for the humors to drink at this hour.”

“And what hour is that, Old Feng?” Lian asked, her nose
practically touching his.

He waved a hand to shoo her away and relied on the cane.
“In my day, I instituted the regulation of the hours. All subjects
rose at 6 a.m. My Early Rising Society saw to it! Excellent for
productivity.”

“Perhaps it is morning then, hmmm? Do you hear birds out
side? Time to rise?” Lian pressed.

“That's enough, Lian,” Shirley said.

Tupan Feng paused as if considering the time of day but then
determining the topic beneath him. He set off again in mincing
steps toward the rocking chair that Lian had just vacated. Shirley
hopped to her feet to catch him before he sat; otherwise she'd
be forced to stay up with him until he dozed off again. The old
tupan
, or warlord, slept at all hours of both day and night, roam
ing the house when the spirit struck him. In her own nocturnal
ramblings since Caleb's death, Shirley had slipped into darkened
rooms to discover his spindly frame curled on chairs or atop
makeshift beds, even stretched out beside the cold hearth. He
seemed as partial to the sunny window seats in the dining room
as were the cats. As she studied his tiny frame now, Shirley tried
to recall if she'd ever seen him eating and wondered if he wasn't
perhaps starving.

But, to his credit, old Tupan Feng never complained. He
was stoical and upright, though half bent now. Over his years
as warlord of this province, he had professed an amalgam of
philosophies—most committedly to Confucianism because of
its effectiveness at inculcating respect for authority. He also ad
hered to Buddhist sensibilities on occasion, and even some Tao
ist beliefs to appease the old spirits. But because he had ambled
into church somewhat regularly, and during his reign had pro
claimed his province a welcome bastion for Christians, Reverend
Carson had offered him a small room at the back of the house in
his less-substantial older age. Being a man of curiosity about the
broader world, and also temporarily homeless, Feng had taken
the Reverend up on the offer. He wished to observe the American
Christians firsthand. He had come to suspect that the self-sacri
ficing aspects of their religion explained the physical and mor
al strength of Westerners overall, something he had wished to
propagate in his own people.

Shirley took his arm, and he froze in midstep and swayed,
his ceremonial sword in its black sheath grazing her long
skirt. His uniform was badly stained, many of the brass but
tons missing and the collar frayed. But the braid on the epau
lettes somehow miraculously had remained in place, giving
his shoulders a perversely broad appearance. He was so pro
foundly hunched that the top of his balding head didn't quite
reach Shirley's chest.

“Off to bed we go,” she said. “And wouldn't you like to take
off your jacket when you recline? It could use some freshening
up. I'm sure Lian would be willing to launder it, wouldn't you,
Lian?”

Lian let out a chuckle. “Good luck peeling it off him. He will
be buried in that ratty thing.”

“Must keep it on,” Tupan Feng said. “You never know when
the moment will arise.”

“And what moment is that, Old Feng?” Lian asked with a
slight smile.

He turned to look at her, and his face went blank. A long mo
ment later, a bolt of light came back into his eyes, and he licked
his lips. “Battle!” was all he said.

Lian hooked his arm into hers. “Come now, Old Tupan, I
walk you back to your room.”

“Kind of you, Lian,” Shirley said.

“Very bad nephew of Old Tupan should buy him new coat,
not to mention his own house, after all the
taxes
his family took
from the people.”

Hearing that word, the old man summoned a surprisingly
stentorian voice. “It is necessary and prudent, though not plea
surable, to impose levies on all transactions.”

“Enough!” Lian said, and he went quiet again. When they
reached the door, she turned back and asked, “Mrs. Carson, did
you see flag raised high today?”

“Flag? What flag?”

“American flag at entrance to compound above gatehouse.”

Shirley shook her head.

“The servants think it means something, but no one knows
what. We hear Reds infiltrate Japanese Imperial Army supply
lines. We worry they will retaliate here.”

“The Japanese Imperial Army will squash all enemies!”
Tupan Feng perked up. “They have very fine leaders. Excellently
trained at top-notch military academies.”

Lian pulled him tighter to her side to keep him from listing.
“We know all about you and the Japanese.”

“I am Number One Student from Tokyo Military Acade
my. Prize ceremonial sword proves it!” His palsied hand flailed
around to find the sheath on his hip.

Lian ignored him and explained, “Many relatives from coun
tryside come to town with everything they own.”

“But I thought people were moving south, escaping in that
direction. Why would they arrive here when the Japanese occupy
our town?” Shirley asked. “Wouldn't they rather go where there
aren't any Japanese?”

“Yes, where to go is big question!” Lian exclaimed. “They
come to American mission. It is safe haven, remember?” she
asked and added the exasperated tsking sound that Shirley had
dreaded ever since she and her family had first arrived. She must
have missed something painfully obvious. “We think,” Lian
continued, “American flag flies higher today to make Imperial
Army remember America is neutral. Also, Japanese not attack
same town where they live. No, it is safer here than countryside.”
She shook her head. “Out there very, very bad. Missus under
stand now?”

Lian stared at Shirley and seemed to be waiting for her to say
something. The tray in the solid woman's hand wobbled.

“Yes,” Shirley said, “I see,” when really she didn't see, hardly
at all. “Is there something else you'd like from me tonight, Lian?”

Her maid let out a long stream of air and finally said, “No, I
leave now. Good night.”

Lian turned and shuffled out of the room, dragging the old
man along beside her, his saber clinking at his side and her long,
narrow dress rustling as she went. Just to fluster Shirley even
more, Lian's little helper, Dao-Ming, suddenly ducked her head
out from behind one of the muslin curtains and dashed after Lian
across the hallway on her thick, ungraceful legs. Apparently, the
girl had been spying again.

The little scamp, Shirley thought. The young girl was forever
popping up and surprising Shirley. It couldn't be helped because
she was Lian's charge and a pathetic young thing: a true Mon
goloid with the enlarged head, deeply recessed eyes, and rotund
body. Back home, she'd have been put in an institution, but they
didn't have such options here. She could no doubt in the end be
shuffled off to the poorhouse, but Lian, out of the goodness of her
Christian heart, had taken the orphan in. Caleb, whose heart had
also been warm and malleable, had agreed to permit Dao-Ming
to hang about. The sight of her never bothered him, and, to the
girl's credit, she rarely made a peep, but those spooky hooded
eyes, overly pink cheeks, and odd little grin all gave Shirley a
chill.

She took a final sip of tea and tried to understand what had
just transpired with Lian. Communication between foreigners
and Chinese was always fraught, Shirley thought: sometimes
barbed, other times overly serene, as if nothing had transpired at
all, when clearly it had. Tomorrow she would try to make sense
of it all. She might even venture out and see what was going on
outside the mission, returning in time for her reward of tea with
Kathryn. They would discuss every maddening incident and to
gether parse the unintelligible. But for now, Shirley's head spun.
She needed rest.

She started toward the stairs, but her fingers instinctively
reached to graze the chipped keys of her beloved upright piano
that stood in the front hall. She wished she could play the rous
ing chords of a choir hymn, but such noise at this hour would
alarm her already concerned neighbors. On the entrance table,
she pulled the brass chain on the cloisonné lamp, and the hallway
went dark. The timbers of her home settled and creaked after
another humid day.

Cuneiform shadows spread over the hardwood floor where
moonlight filtered through the lattice screen. The same silvery
hues caught on the beveled glass of the two sets of French doors
that opened onto the dining room on one side and the parlor on
the other. The handsome scholar's desk and traditional yoke-
back folding chairs sat huddled in grayness, waiting for Caleb to
return. Stretched across the corner by the bay window, a painted
screen showed an impressive golden phoenix spreading its wings
and flying toward the distant mountains far beyond the mission
walls.

Shirley wondered if it would pain her to have that elegant re
minder of China, in addition to some of the other, finer antiques
she had collected over the past five years, shipped back to her
future home in America or if it would be wiser to simply leave it
all behind. She would return to America with nothing to show
for her time here. No embroidered silk or delicately painted por
celain. No carnelian-colored carved boxes or lacquered picture
frames. No objects to touch and call to mind this place and time,
as if these years in Cathay had been but a dream with no evidence
of their passing. A strange, inexplicable chapter would close for
ever, leaving only the memory of loss in another land.

T
he windowpanes rattled, and the brass box on Charles's
bedside table fell to the floor. His pocketknife tumbled out
and scooted under the bed. He threw off the covers and hurried
to the window. Smoke wafted his way from fire in a field not far
off, the soil churned up from some sort of grenade or maybe even
a bomb. The Japanese had recently paved the road outside the
town so that it snaked steadily to the west in a ribbon of dark as
phalt. Charles thought it looked normal enough until he squint
ed and noticed that at a distant bend, a crater of smoldering earth
had replaced the smooth surface. The fighting seemed to have
come closer to the mission than ever before.

Below his window, the massive doors at the southwest en
trance to the mission stood open, and Charles could make out
Japanese soldiers marching past. Their boots stirred the yel
low dust on the rutted road. Into the mission courtyard below
streamed hundreds of Chinese, some limping or injured, many
with possessions piled on wooden wheelbarrows or bundled on
their backs. But just as many Chinese appeared to be fleeing up
the paths that led away from the town. They fanned out in all
directions like the ants Charles and Han had set on fire with the
help of a magnifying glass and the sun when they were younger
boys.

Charles didn't see any damage to the town buildings within
his sight except that the American guardhouse appeared to have
been attacked, its glass windows shattered, the red, white, and
blue wood splintered on the ground. Charles worried about old,
blind Mr. Sung, who sat all day on his three-legged stool at the
gate. He hoped he had been off tending to his cats when the dam
age was done. But who, Charles wondered, would want to bom
bard the entrance to the American compound?