Three Souls (32 page)

He blinked rapidly. The liar.

I pulled away and sat down on a stone bench, mulling over Tongyin’s words. I shook my head.

“If Cha Zhiming knew you were in Pinghu looking for Hanchin, his secret police would be here already. He has no idea what you’re doing. You’re up to something because you’re the one who’s in trouble, not me or our family.”

He put his head in his hands. His shoulders drooped. It was several moments before he spoke again.

“You’re the cleverest of us, Third Sister,” he said wearily. “You’re right. I’m the one who is in trouble. If I don’t find Hanchin or at least help find him, Cha Zhiming might throw me to the secret police.”

“I thought you were great friends with Cha?”

“I’m more than that. I spy for him.” He lifted his head, defiant. A little proud.

I almost laughed. “Why you?”

“When Hanchin came back to Changchow, Zhiming asked me to . . . well, Hanchin and I renewed our friendship. Cha gave me money to invest in
China Millennium
to keep him working in Changchow. They kept the magazine in business, as bait to attract left-wing journalists and writers.”

Hanchin had said nothing of this, had denied any recent connection with my brother. But he was just trying to protect me. The less I knew, the safer it was for me.

“Hanchin used my Shanghai apartment whenever he was there. That made it easier for us to keep an eye on him. Cha gave me false intelligence to pass on to Hanchin and I tried to pass information back.”

“What went wrong?”

“Hanchin knew all along that I was working for Cha. The bits of information I found out were true, but always too late to be useful. Then Hanchin gave me false information that landed Cha Zhiming in a lot of trouble. Zhiming is furious. If he withdraws his protection . . .” He shuddered. I almost felt sorry for him.

“So to prove you’re innocent, you have to find Hanchin and turn him in?”

“I thought I could keep him safe, Leiyin.” His cigarette trembled, and he stabbed it out on the bench, lit another. “I persuaded Cha Zhiming he was more useful out of jail. But Hanchin used me.”

He sat down beside me, an unhappy gleam in his eyes.

“He never would have married you, Third Sister. No, never. He didn’t love you.”

I shrugged, angered by my brother’s attempt to shake my faith in Hanchin. He was just trying to goad me.

***

I turn to my souls.
Hanchin didn’t tell me very much about his life, did he?

My
yang
soul scowls.
He seduced you, a married woman. That should have warned you he couldn’t be trusted to tell you the whole truth.

My
yin
soul says, a little doubtfully,
It was to protect you. The less you knew, the safer you were, remember?

But look at Tongyin.
We study my brother’s face. He was truly afraid of being thrown into jail. My poor Second Brother.

There’s something else too,
my
hun
soul says.

I look again at Tongyin. His handsome face is strained, his eyes bleak. Even in moonlight, I can see worry lines around his mouth.

He’s heartbroken, isn’t he? He’s been in love with Hanchin all this time.

My
hun
soul’s voice is gentle and it slips its shining arm through mine.
And now, to save himself from arrest, your brother must betray his lover.

No! They couldn’t have been!

Oh, Leiyin,
my
yin
soul says, equally gentle.
The hun soul is right. How could your brother have stayed in love with Hanchin for all these years without encouragement?

***

“Did Hanchin tell you about his wife?”

“You’re lying!” The words leaped out of my throat, even as I realized that Tongyin would say anything to unsettle me.

“He’s married, yes, he is. To a fellow Communist. They met while they were teaching together at a village school. She was his assistant.”

“That’s impossible!”

“They’ve been married five years. Not everyone knows because she travels so much. She sets up schools for the Party in its rural outposts. The love poems he wrote under the name Nobody Special were for her.”

I could hardly breathe. Each heartbeat was a hammer blow of pain. My face burned with humiliation and I hoped the moonlight had washed all the colour from my cheeks. I told myself Tongyin was desperate. He would say anything, tell any lie to confuse me, damage my trust in Hanchin.

“Little Sister, try to let go of your infatuation with a man who only ever saw you as a harmless flirtation. Why protect him? I’m your brother, your own family. Help me.”

He sounded so gentle, so concerned. If I didn’t know him so well, I might have been convinced. Now that I knew what was going on, I wasn’t worried about Tongyin. If Cha Zhiming were truly suspicious, my brother would be in jail already. Tongyin always did have an inflated sense of drama.

“I don’t know anything, Second Brother. I can’t help you.”

I left him sitting in the pavilion.

***

Against my will, Tongyin’s words pounded in my head all night, cluttering my memories of Hanchin. The pavilion poem, his regret about all the wasted years, his insistence that he couldn’t stop thinking about me from the moment we met. Those kisses, the ardent lovemaking, the confidences about his childhood. He simply couldn’t have shared intimacies like that with another woman. He was only reluctant to have me follow him because he feared for my safety, I told myself.

By the time dim morning light seeped through the blinds, I had regained a measure of calm. I pretended to be asleep when Baizhen tiptoed into my room. He left without disturbing me and I heard him outside the door.

“Play by yourself and don’t disturb your mother, Weilan. Grandfather and I are taking Second Uncle out for breakfast.”

An hour later, I rose and got dressed. I had been caught off guard last night and Tongyin knew I had seen Hanchin. But as long as I claimed to be ignorant of his whereabouts, my brother couldn’t push me into any further indiscretion.

Despite Baizhen’s orders, Weilan came to find me. She’d made herself ill gorging on dessert the night before. I’d just finished feeding her a concoction of ginger and mint when Dali came to the nursery. She was puffing slightly, as though she’d been running, and her thin braid had come loose from its bun.

“The Mistress wants to see you in her room, Young Mistress. And she says to leave the little one behind.”

“Don’t worry, Weilan is on the chamber pot and isn’t going anywhere. Where on earth is Little Ming?”

“She’s with the Mistress.” Dali looked apprehensive. “I’ll look after the Little Miss.”

When I arrived at Jia Po’s chambers, she greeted me with a face like thunder. Despite the coolness of the autumn day, she was waving a sandalwood fan vigorously. Little Ming crouched in front of her, forehead touching the polished floorboards, shoulders heaving with sobs.

“Mother, what’s the matter?”

Jia Po just pointed at the young woman. “This, this . . . all those nights she was away, she wasn’t caring for a sick mother. She was with a man!”

Little Ming’s words were choked with her tears. “Have mercy, Mistress, have mercy!”

From the look on my mother-in-law’s face, she wasn’t inclined to mercy just now.

“She’s lived in this house since she was a girl. We’ve fed her and clothed her. And now she has a big belly, no husband, and no dowry!”

I sat down on one of Jia Po’s beautiful rosewood chairs.

“Little Ming, how far along are you?”

She sniffed. “Nearly three months. Same as you.”

Jia Po brought her folded fan down on the poor girl’s head.

“How dare you compare yourself to my virtuous daughter-in-law! To the mother of my grandchildren!”

“Mother, please,” I said, trying to bring calm to the room. “Little Ming, who’s the father? Will he marry you?”

This brought more wailing and incoherent sobs from Little Ming. She shook her head.

“Is he a married man?” I asked, as gently as I could.

She wiped her eyes and nose with her sleeve.

“No, Young Mistress. He’s not married.”

“Then we need to find him and make him marry you.”

“He’s gone. Left town. He was the clerk at the Thousand Wisdoms Bookstore and he left town two months ago.”

My heart stopped. I pushed away visions of Hanchin, naked, Little Ming arching her back beneath him. The giggling and fondling afterward.

“How did you get mixed up with a store clerk?” It took everything I had not to scream at her.

She fell forward into a crouch and began sobbing again.

“He was standing outside the bookshop talking to my brother, the one with the donkey cart. So I stopped to chat. He asked me if I wanted to hear him give a lecture that night. I went. It was so exciting the way he talked about politics.”

Jia Po was even more furious now. “What! Politics too?”

She struck Little Ming again with her fan. If it had been in my hands I would have beaten Little Ming until it broke.

“I don’t understand anything about politics, Mistress. I went because he was so handsome. I went to all his lectures. I’d meet him afterward. But only a few times.”

“Did you think he’d marry you?” Jia Po was calming down now, even as I burned.

She burst into a fresh flood of tears. “No, Mistress. Never. I knew he was leaving because he asked me to buy his train tickets. I knew I couldn’t matter to someone like him, not really.”

I couldn’t listen anymore. I could imagine all too well what had happened. Little Ming had been sport for Hanchin, a pretty distraction. And Hanchin had never actually said he loved me. He’d only said, in his bantering way, that I was irresistible. I was the one who had said we loved each other; he simply hadn’t bothered contradicting me.

We were both fools, Little Ming and I. But she was a simple servant girl. I should have known better. A courier would come for the manifesto, but no one would come for me. Hanchin was on his way to the front lines, perhaps to his wife. He wrote his poetry for her, out of true love. Seducing me had been his duty, necessary to keep his document safe. A duty, and entertainment to while away his days in hiding.

“Well,” said Jia Po, finally sitting down. “You’re a stupid, stupid girl.”

Little Ming nodded her head, her face wretched. The front of her green tunic was damp with tears. I could see Jia Po’s anger fading, her affection for Little Ming reasserting itself. Jia Po put down her fan. “This isn’t the first time a maid has given in to temptation, and unfortunately it won’t be the last. Have your baby. But give it to your mother to raise. Or take it to an orphanage. In the meantime, keep working here. Go to your parents when you’re too big to be useful. Come back after the baby’s born.”

“Oh, thank you, Mistress, thank you.” Little Ming pressed her forehead to the ground.

“No.” My voice was harsh. “She goes now.”

They both looked at me.

“She’s a slut and a liar. I won’t have her around my daughter or in this house.”

It was going to be difficult enough trying to forget Hanchin, but with Little Ming’s growing belly to remind me of my humiliation, it would be intolerable. Both of us, carrying his child.

“Daughter—” Jia Po began in a soothing voice.

“No! I want this creature out!” I screamed, and Little Ming’s sobs turned into terrified hiccups. My mother-in-law looked alarmed, and then frowned. I was the Young Mistress, pregnant with a son. My desires were paramount. Little Ming was only a maid.

***

Little Ming left an hour later, back to live with parents she hardly knew. Old Kwan, Mrs. Kwan, and Dali peered at me, their judgment silent. Old Ming looked woeful and Jia Po regretful. But I didn’t care.

I was waiting for Baizhen and Tongyin by the moon gate when they returned.

“Weilan’s in bed with an upset stomach, Husband. Can you sit with her and let me spend a little time with my brother?”

Suspecting nothing, Baizhen went to the nursery to comfort Weilan.

The look on my face told Tongyin all he needed to know.

“He had train tickets, Second Brother. He was on his way to the front near Jiangxi. First Ningbo, then to Wenzhou. Wenzhou would have been his last destination before he tried to slip across the front lines. That’s all I know.”

I watched him leave through the moon gate, back to the main house. He didn’t press me for more. He could tell I’d given him everything.

I refused dinner and stayed in bed for most of the next morning, consumed by anger and jealousy. What sort of woman had Hanchin married? My imagination conjured a paragon of intelligence and beauty. Someone sophisticated, with a university degree, perhaps an accomplished poet. A revolutionary. A woman who was everything I wasn’t.

I’d become dull and domesticated, so starved for excitement I’d been heedless to common sense and willing to throw away my future for a man who was loyal only to his politics. At least I was the only witness to my sorry, sordid tale. So long as I kept it to myself, my humiliation would remain a secret. It was small comfort.

By the time I rose to get ready for lunch, Tongyin had left for the train station. In the afternoon, Baizhen took Weilan to the herbalist to buy some ginger candies to soothe her upset stomach. I pulled out the canvas bags I’d hidden in the wardrobe and returned our travel clothes to their drawers. I removed the plaid handkerchief from my pillowcase and folded it in the bottom of a trunk. It would remain there, a hidden reminder of a reckless, foolhardy time, silent admonishment of my poor judgment.

***

Was there anything in Hanchin’s behaviour that should have warned me?
I ask my souls.
Why didn’t I see the signs?

You didn’t see because you wanted so badly to believe he loved you, as deeply as you loved him.
My
yang
soul is being uncharacteristically kind. He turns away to look out at the garden, trying to conceal the expression on his face, but on my tongue there is dried kumquat.