Inheritance (27 page)

WHEN SHE
WAS AN OLD WOMAN AND THE PAST BEGAN TO HOLD
her interest more than ordinary time, Hu Mudan spent afternoons revisiting her memories. She said she felt the recollections moving in her bones. She spoke of her childhood in Sichuan, of working in the fields under a fiery yolk that soaked the world in sweat and heat. She described the years after she left our house and returned with Hu Ran to the village of her childhood. And she told me stories about Chanyi, her best friend. She spoke of Chanyi’s gentleness, her generosity and frail heart. She described Chanyi’s love for Junan and the way old Mma had finally forbidden Chanyi to spend so much time playing with her daughter.

When Junan had first learned to stand, Chanyi had even worried that the child might feel cramping in her toes—as if she might have passed the misery on somehow, as if there were a memory of the body, handed down from mother to daughter along with the texture of her hair or the shape of her face. Junan had showed no sign of trouble. But as she learned to walk and run, her blithe energy had filled Chanyi with a secret apprehension. Without the crushing pain, the shame of immobility, what would teach her daughter the inevitable grief of womanhood? Chanyi would not, could not bear to do it. That was how my mother came to move with such casual grace. Her confidence sprang from her feet and her ambition followed. It was her mother who grew weary. When Junan was only twelve, Chanyi sought the peace of West Lake, leaving Junan alone to learn her grief.

IF I COULD
transmit my own memories, transfuse them through the blood, I would have my daughters know what happened between me and Hu Ran.

But my daughters would find my memories hard to understand. They were raised with the modern certainty that love must overcome all boundaries. Their faith in love and in the power of their own lives is so strong that both of them have put off happy romances to pursue their ambitions in education, travel, or work. On occasion they have also happily put off these interests for the sake of romance. They wouldn’t truly understand how difficult it was for me to accept my feelings for Hu Ran. They would be puzzled. And of course I can’t expect them to know what I went through. We can never understand our children or our parents. Perhaps it is this ignorance that gives each young generation the confidence to live.

Hu Ran and I had nothing to guide us. In the space of an hour, I pushed us recklessly beyond the borders of friendship, decency, and class. Years before, I’d spied him naked behind the willow tree, and my curiosity had led to our separation. Now these impulses, blocked by our parents, had rediscovered us, and although this time they led to our reunion, we had both grown old enough to know that what we were doing was unthinkable. And so we loved each other with the cruelty of frightened people. Our love was not tranquil and not always kind. I hurt him with information and he wounded me with secrecy. He thought I took my wealth for granted, and I thought that he was oversensitive about his poverty. I didn’t know it at the time, but we were mirroring the struggle all around us. It was the country’s struggle living through our actions and our words.

I had fulfilled my wish: I had burst forth into the world of Yinan and my father. But my terror didn’t leave. It could be temporarily dispelled by the presence of Hu Ran, but with every parting it returned, as fierce as ever. I might be sitting in school, staring at a page of English, or out walking with Pu Li with our mothers’ full permission, when the shadow of my anxiety would fall over my eyes.

And so I told my mother I played basketball, and when that time was not enough, I told her I was seeing Pu Li. I told her Pu Li and I went out walking in the city gardens. This was not a lie. Pu Li and I did go out walking. I made sure of it, and I made sure to tell Hu Ran about it. I told Hu Ran it was necessary to go to the movies now and then with Pu Li and his mother. I told him it was necessary for me to be seen holding Pu Li’s hand. But I didn’t tell Pu Li I was seeing Hu Ran. I clung to a few placid visits with Pu Li against the swirling current of the more passionate relationship. It was a way to remind myself that my old life, my proper self, was still within my reach.

ON THE NARROW
bed in his small room, we talked more than I’d ever talked to anyone except my sister. Hu Ran was old enough to remember things that Hwa could not. He remembered Hangzhou, while Hwa had left the city when she was barely three. He could recall the days when my parents had dressed up to eat at Lou Wai Lou. He remembered Charlie Kong; he told me Charlie Kong had died of apoplexy after a celebration on the evening of the Japanese surrender. Hu Ran had other news. Hu Mudan was working for a rich Methodist convert. Yinan was growing fluent in English and helped the church as a translator. The old family residence was occupied by soldiers.

I told Hu Ran what it was like to live inside my mother’s cold house. I described the money she had harvested from keeping supplies my father had gotten and selling them on the black market. She was now hoarding the old furniture and other odds and ends of her mahjong winnings. And she kept her money in gold bars, hidden in a place so secret that even Hwa, with her observant eye, couldn’t discern it.

“She once told Hwa and me,” I told him, “that in the modern world, three things give power to a woman. Houses, money, and jewelry.”

Hu Ran stretched his mouth into a wry grimace. “What do you think?”

I looked away. “I think what matters is love.”

After a moment he answered, “Yes. But say you have the love. Let’s say that love is something you deserve as a fundamental right. Is there something else you’d want? Something you’d like to do?”

The words came quickly. “I always thought . . .” What had I begun to say? “I always wanted to be some kind of writer, a poet, or even a journalist.”

“That sounds like a good idea.”

Such reckless talk. “Here’s what I want,” I said, and traced my hand along his collarbone. He turned to me, and I lost myself in the new, inchoate powers of freedom and passion.

For all our sharing, there were certain subjects that Hu Ran and I did not discuss. We didn’t talk about the civil war, the struggle for the fate and heart of China. And we didn’t dare bring up the subject of our future.

Whenever I mentioned the civil war, Hu Ran tried to change the subject. He said he didn’t want to worry me. Slowly I began to see that the Nationalists, my father’s kind, were a part of Hu Ran’s geography in the way of a close friend, or, I thought once, idly watching a chess game at the coffeehouse, in the same way a black pawn might be aware of every white piece on the board. I grew more careful, matching his canniness with my own, reaching for as many tricks as I could find in order to get him to reveal bits of information. Hu Ran was a part of the Communist underground, the underground so influential and so large that it had become an open secret.

Since childhood, I had assumed that he and I would find each other. Even when we were apart, I had assumed we had a life together, perhaps imaginary, but always existing, always constant. But now that our meetings were dependent on desire, I saw more clearly everything we didn’t share. I went to my expensive school; I lived in a beautiful house. One of my mother’s necklaces was worth more than Hu Ran had ever earned. Sometimes I hated her for owning them, hated her wealth. But even as his body came together with mine, even as I tried to hurt my mother with each act I did, I heard an echo of her voice, telling me that what Hu Ran and I shared was nothing.

ONE SATURDAY DURING
the New Year holidays I received a note that read: “Hong, please see me at the regular place as soon as possible. IMPORTANT.”

I went to find Hwa. “I need to leave the house,” I said. “Will you tell Ma that you think I’m out with Pu Li?”

“Jiejie,” she said, “don’t you think you’re being disloyal to Pu Li?”

“What about it?”

“He really likes you.”

“Look, Hwa,” I said, “I think Pu Li is a nice person, but I can’t imagine what kind of girl would be romantically interested in him.”

Hwa would understand; she was smitten with the charismatic Willy Chang. But to my surprise, Hwa didn’t answer. She stood quite still for a moment. I turned around, picked up my jacket, and walked out of the door.

The sky had just descended; soon there would be rain. As I hurried toward the coffeehouse, I spied Hu Ran in the window. I waved at him. He saw me but did not wave back. Instead he rose immediately from his chair.

“Ran,” I said. I slid into the seat opposite and tapped the table. “Ran? What’s going on?”

“You have to come with me,” he said.

“I just got here. I’d like a cup of tea.”

“Your father has been captured, here in Shanghai.”

I stood up. My mind had slowed to a crawl. I tried to find a question, the right question, but there were too many. Was he all right? How had he been captured? Why was he in Shanghai and not Taiwan? But before I could speak, Hu Ran broke in.

“Come on.”

We hurried along the street, searching for an empty bicycle cab. Hu Ran told me that the rumor of my father’s capture had reached Hangzhou the night before.

“What should we do now?”

“I asked my mother what to do. She told me to come up here to Shanghai and find your father’s brother, Li Bing. He’s a colonel now, and she said that only he would have the power to free your father. If you come with me, your uncle will know that I’m not lying.”

Hu Ran paused, gazing at the street; his arm shot up and an empty cab came toward us. The seats were flecked with raindrops. Hu Ran gave an address and the driver grunted as if they shared an understanding. We rode for some time without a word. The rain grew heavier. Along the street, the men in shirts and vests began to roll up their display clothes, bundling up their nylon stockings, medicines, and gadgets. A man adjusted the currency exchange on a sign outside a booth: the yuan had been devalued a dozen times that day. One house had boarded windows and padlocks on the doors. A classmate had lived there; his father worked for the government and the family had left for Taiwan in late January.

I thought about my mother’s frequent words,
when we return
. It seemed to me that the refrain had been put into use without any one person being responsible for deciding we would leave.
When we return, I’ll plant a peach tree. When we return, I’ll have an iron fence put up around the house
. When had she begun to bend her plans toward our escape? No wonder she had missed my sneaking around. Every day, more of our things were packed away. Recently I’d come upon Weiwei standing still with a broom in her hand and I had sensed she didn’t see me. She had told my mother that she wished to stay on the mainland. Certain books and papers had vanished from the shelves and I suspected, from the smell of burning, where they’d gone. I could see the disappearing words from books and magazines that were no longer wise to keep, rising from our chimney in a thin stream of smoke.

I HADN’T SEEN
my uncle since the night when I had glimpsed him fleeing Japanese soldiers. I had stood behind the door and he had told me to go back inside. Since that time, I had grown taller than my mother. As Hu Ran and I rode through the crowded street, I wondered, how would Li Bing know me? How did I know myself? In the last few weeks, my mind and body had gone through so many changes that those years in Hangzhou had taken place in another life.
My name is Li Hong
, I recited to myself.
I am your brother’s daughter, and we once all lived together in the house on Haizi Street, in Hangzhou. I was your favorite and only niece, who sat and played upon your lap. Have you forgotten?

Yet when we arrived at the teahouse, he took one look and hurried toward me. Had he not done so, I might not have recognized him.

My uncle had become a soldier. He stood before me, a slight, sun-stained man in uniform. He wore a cap with the red star recently adopted by the New Fourth Army; his stark cheekbones under his spectacles threw a triangle of shadow beneath.

“Xiao Hong,” he said. “You’re a grown woman now.” His teeth were stained with cigarettes. He looked from me to Hu Ran and back again. “What are you doing here?”

“This is Hu Ran,” I said. “We need your help.”

My uncle bent toward us, his face lined and grave. Hu Ran relayed the information he had heard from Cheng, a man in Hangzhou, whom Li Bing had heard about but never met.

Li Bing also knew about the place where my father had been captured. The name of the teahouse had barely left Hu Ran’s mouth when Li Bing seized me by the arm and hurried us out the door.

He was silent in the cab, seeming not to notice the crowded street or the raindrops on his face. I imagined he was thinking of his memories of my father, of their boyhood together in Hangzhou. Perhaps he felt regret that they had come to this end. It was impossible to tell.

At last, he collected himself. He turned to me and, in the light, ironic voice I remembered, he asked, “You were startled at the sight of me, Hong. Surely I’m not a stranger now?”

“No,” I said. “But I haven’t seen you in more than ten years. It seems—” I frowned. “It seems that you’ve changed.” I found it difficult to put my observation into words: an economy and purpose to my uncle’s very movements. I finally blurted, “You seem to be living with some idea in mind.”

He relaxed in a faint smile.

“You share with the women of your family a rare perceptiveness. But I’m not living for an idea. It is more that the idea is living through me. There is the great purpose: there are plans and expectations. It is as if I’m not a person but a piece of an immense design. Sometimes, when I’m with my comrades, even in the middle of an important discussion, I get a sense that I’m not even in the room. I watch myself: I’m speaking, but I don’t know who is putting words into me. It seems to me that we are like a boat in an enormous wind. Our sails are stretched high and taut; we have only the most arrogant illusion of our own control. And the wind could change—I keep expecting it to change. Sometimes I can feel it, tricky, ready to smash us up.”