Читать книгу The Valley of Amazement - Amy Tan - Страница 9

At half past noon on my fourteenth birthday, cheers broke out at the front of the house, and firecrackers exploded in the courtyard. Carlotta flattened her ears and flew under my bed.

It was not our custom to lavishly celebrate birthdays, but perhaps I had reached a special age. I ran to find Mother. She was standing in Boulevard, looking out the window at Nanking Road. Every few seconds, I heard rounds of firecrackers popping off in the distance. Then came the whistles of rockets, ripping the air, followed by booms in my chest. Hurrahs rose in crescendo and pitch, then fell, over and over again. So the hullabaloo was not for my birthday after all. I went to Mother’s side, and instead of greeting me, she said, “Look at those fools!”

Cracked Egg dashed in without knocking. “It’s happened,” he announced in a hoarse voice. “The news is all over the streets. The Ching dynasty is over. Yuan Shi-kai will soon step up as president of the new Republic of China.” He had a wild look on his face.

It was February 12, 1912, and the Empress Dowager Longyu had just signed the abdication on behalf of her six-year-old nephew, Emperor Puyi, on the condition that they could remain in the palace and retain their possessions. Manchu rule was over. We had been expecting this day since October, when the New Army staged a mutiny in Wuchang.

“Why would you trust Yuan Shi-kai any more than the emperor’s cronies?” Mother said to Cracked Egg. “Why didn’t they keep Dr. Sun as president instead?”

“Yuan Shi-kai got the Ching government to step down, so he won the right to step up to the presidency.”

“He was commander in chief of the Ching military,” she said, “and his imperial roots might still be in him. I’ve heard some of our customers say that given time, he’ll act just like an emperor.”

“If Yuan Shi-kai turns out to be corrupt, we won’t have to wait two thousand years for the Republicans to let go of our balls.”

MONTHS BEFORE THE abdication, the house had been abuzz over the coming overthrow of the Ching dynasty. The guests at Mother’s parties did not meet in the middle for several days. The Western men remained on their side of the social club, and the Chinese men remained in the courtesan house. They had talked separately and incessantly about the coming change and whether it would be to their advantage or result in the opposite. Their influential friends might no longer be influential. New associations would be necessary. Plans should be made now, in case new taxes were levied, or if the treaties affecting foreign trade were better for them or no longer in their favor. Mother had had to lure them back to the middle with promises that lucrative opportunities sprout out of the chaos of change.

The servants had also caught the fever of change. They recited a litany of tragedies under imperial rule: Their family land had been seized, and no land had been left to bury their dead. The ancestors’ obedience had been punished and the corruption of the Ching had been rewarded. Foreigners had become wealthy on the opium trade. Opium had turned their men into the living dead. “They’d sell their mothers for a gummy wad!” I heard Cracked Egg say.

Some of the maids were afraid of revolution. They wanted peace and no other changes, no new worries. They did not believe their lives would improve under a new military government. From all they had experienced, when there was change, there was suffering. When they married, their lives became worse. When their husbands died, their lives became worse yet again. Change was what happened inside the house, and only they had been there to suffer it.

Last month, on the first of January, we had learned that the Republic had been officially declared and Dr. Sun Yat-sen had been made the provisional president. Mother’s smarmy lover Fairweather had come by, unannounced, as usual. Of all the men she had taken to her bed, he was the one who remained in her life, as persistent as a wart. I hated him even more than I had when Mother used me as her pawn to meet him. Fairweather had sat in an armchair in the salon, a glass of whiskey in one hand, a cigar in the other. Between sips and puffs, he had made pronouncements: “The servants in your house have the fervor of heathens newly converted by the missionaries. Saved! Dr. Sun may be a Christian, but do your servants really believe he can perform God’s miracle and change the color of their yellow hides?” He had spotted me and grinned. “What do you say, Violet?”

Mother must have told him that my father was Chinese. I couldn’t stomach the sight of that worm and had left the room, nearly blind with anger. I had marched down Nanking Road. The sides of British tramcars had been plastered with newspapers that flapped like scales. Civil disobedience had come into fashion over the last year, a daredevil kind of patriotism that delivered symbolic slaps to the imperialists. My Chinese blood had surged, and I’d wanted to punch Fairweather’s face. The street had been flowing with students who ran from corner to corner to put up fresh sheets of news on the public walls. The crowds had rushed forward, and the literate ones had read aloud the article about the new president Sun Yat-sen. His words of vision and promise had sent the crowd swooning with optimism. “He’s the father of the new Republic,” I had heard one man say. I had scanned the wall for a picture of this revolutionary father. Golden Dove had once told me that you could recognize a person’s character by examining his face. I had stared at Dr. Sun’s photograph and seen he was honest and kind, calm and intelligent. I had heard that he also spoke perfect English from having grown up in Hawaii. If Dr. Sun had been my father, I would have been proud to tell everyone I was half-Chinese. That last thought had caught me by surprise, and I’d quickly tamped it down.

I was never able to talk to Mother about my feelings over having a Chinese father. We could not admit to each other what I knew. And these days, she held back her true feelings on just about everything. China was going through a revolution, and she acted like a spectator at the races—at the ready to bet on the probable winner. She claimed confidence that the new Republic would have no bearing on matters in the International Settlement, where we lived. “The Settlement is its own oasis,” she would point out to her clients, “under its own laws and government.”

But I could tell that her seeming lack of concern was to mask worry. She, in fact, had given me the skill to discern true feelings by noticing the great efforts used to conceal them. I had often overheard what she and Golden Dove had observed among their customers: bluster that had compensated for fear, a flourish of courtesy that had masked a cheat, indignation that had confirmed wrongdoing.

I, too, had been making great efforts to hide the half-Chinese part of me, and I was always on guard that I had failed to do so. Look how easily I had succumbed to my inborn mind. I had just wished that Dr. Sun had been my father. I had found the students’ passion to be admirable. It was increasingly difficult to contort my heart and mind to appear to be a foreigner through and through. I often studied myself in a mirror to learn how to smile without crinkling my eyes into an Oriental angle. I copied my mother’s erect posture, the way she walked with a foreigner’s assurance of her place in the world. Like her, I greeted new people by looking them straight in the eye, saying, “I am Violet Minturn and I’m most pleased to know you.” I used pidgin to compliment the servants on their obedience and quickness. I was more courteous with the beauties than I had been when I was younger, but I did not speak to them in Chinese, unless I forgot, which I did more often than I would have liked. I was not uppity, however, with Golden Dove or Cracked Egg. Nor was I cool-hearted with Snowy Cloud’s attendant, Piety, who had a daughter, Little Ocean, whom Carlotta liked.

Ever since my scuffle with Misty Cloud six years ago, no one in the house had mentioned anything that suggested I was of mixed race. Then again, they would not dare to do so after what had happened to Misty Cloud. Yet I was constantly aware of the danger of someone wounding me with the awful truth. Whenever I met strangers, I was shaken by any remarks about my looks.

It had happened not long ago when I met Mother’s new friend, a British suffragette, who was fascinated to be in a “Pleasure Palace,” as she called Hidden Jade Path. When I was introduced to her, she complimented me on the unusual color of my eyes. “I’ve never seen that shade of green,” she said. “It reminds me of serpentine. The color changes according to the light.” Had she also noticed the shape of my eyes? I avoided smiling. My nervousness grew worse a moment later when she told my mother she had volunteered to raise money for an orphanage for mixed-race girls.

“They will never be adopted,” she said. “If it weren’t for the orphanage and generous women like you, it would have been the streets for them.”

Mother opened her purse and handed the woman a donation.

ON THE DAY of the abdication, I welcomed being part of the hated lot of foreigners. Let the Chinese despise me! I ran to the balcony on the east wing of our house. I saw the sparks of firecrackers and shreds of wrappers floating in the air. The paper was imperial yellow and not the usual celebratory red, as if to signal that the Ching dynasty had been blown to pieces.

Throngs were growing by the second, a sea of people with victory banners, their fists punching upward, showing black armbands painted with antiforeign slogans. “End the port treaties!” A chorus of cheers broke out and echoed the words. “No more tra-la-la boom-dee-ay! “The crowd roared with laughter. “Kick out those who love the foreign!” Jeers followed.

Who still loved us? Golden Dove? Did she love us enough to risk being kicked out of China?

The streets were so clogged the rickshaw pullers could no longer move forward. From my perch, I spotted one with a Western man and woman who waved madly to their puller to run over the people blocking their way. The rickshaw puller let go of the handles, and the cab suddenly fell backward and nearly bounced the couple out. He threw his fists up, and the people leapt off. I could not see their faces, but I knew they must have been terrified as they were bumped and pushed about in the mob.

I turned to my mother. “Are we in danger?”

“Of course not,” she snapped. She had a knot between her eyebrows. She was lying.

“The greedy ones didn’t wait a minute to change colors,” Cracked Egg said. “You can hear them everywhere in the market square. Two bottles of New Republic wine for the price of one! And then they joke: Two bottles of Ching wine for the price of three.” He looked at me. “It’s not safe right now for you to go outside. Listen to me, ah?” He handed my mother a packet of letters and the North China Herald. “I was able to get them from the post office before the streets closed. But if the riots go on, it may be days before we receive anything else.”

“Do what you can to get the newspapers, English and Chinese ones. They’ll probably be littering the streets later in the day. I want to see what cartoons and stories appear in the mosquito press. That will give us some idea what we’re facing before things settle.”

I searched through the house to see if anyone else was worried. Three of the menservants and the cook were smoking in the front courtyard. Confetti from yellow paper littered the ground. They were the ones who had set off the firecrackers, and they were now gloating over the powerlessness of the little Manchu emperor and his haughty eunuchs. No longer would the empress and her Pekingese dogs be more important than starving people!

“My uncle became a Boxer after half our family starved to death,” said one servant. “It was the worst flood in a hundred years—maybe even two hundred. It came over us quick as swamp fog. Then came the dry year. Not a drop of rain. One disaster after another.” They took turns with a match to light their pipes.

The cook chimed in: “If a man has lost everything, he fights back without fear.”

“We’ve kicked out the Ching,” another man said, “and the foreigners are next.”

The cook and servants gave me smug looks. This was shocking. The cook had always been friendly, had always asked if I wanted him to make me American lunch or dinner. And the servants had always been polite, or, at least, patient with me when I was making a nuisance of myself. They once scolded me gently when I was a child and had knocked over the platters of food they carried. All children are naughty like that, they had said to my mother. They never openly complained. But I heard them do so in the hallway near my window late at night.

Today they acted as if I were a stranger. The expressions on their faces were ugly, and there was also something odd about their appearance. One of them turned to reach for a flask of wine. They had cut off their queues! Only one man had not, Little Duck, the manservant who opened the door to the house and announced visitors who came in the afternoons. His queue was still wrapped around the back of his head. I once asked him to show me how long it was. As he unwound it, he had said that it was his mother’s greatest pride. She said the length of it was a measure of respect to the emperor. “It was just below my waist when she told me that,” he said. “She died before it grew this long.” It was now nearly to his knees.

The cook snorted at Little Duck. “Are you an imperial loyalist?” The others laughed, baiting him to cut it off. One handed him the knife that they had used to cut off their own queues.

Little Duck stared at the knife and then at the grinning men. His eyes bugged out, as if scared. And then he walked swiftly toward the part of the wall next to an abandoned well. He loosened the coil and stared at his beloved pigtail, then hacked it off. The other men shouted. “Damn!” “Good for him!” “Wah! He looks like he just cut off his balls and became a eunuch!”

Little Duck wore such a painful grimace you would have thought he had killed his mother. He lifted the lid from the well and dangled his former glory over it. He was shaking so hard the pigtail wiggled like a live snake. Finally he let go and then immediately looked down the well and watched it drown. For a moment, I thought he would jump into the well after it.

Cracked Egg ran into the courtyard. “What’s going on? What’s happening with the food? Why is the water not boiled? Lulu Mimi needs her tea.”

The men sat there, smoking.

“Eh! When you cut off your queues, did you slice out part of your brains as well? Who do you work for? Where will you go if this house shuts its doors? You’ll be no better off than that beggar by the wall with one leg.” They grumbled and stood up.

What was happening? What would happen next? I walked throughout the house and saw the abandoned kitchen with water sitting cold in vats, the vegetables half chopped, the washing tubs with clothes half in, half out, as if people had fallen forward and drowned.

I found Golden Dove and the Cloud Beauties seated in the common room. Summer Cloud was shedding rivers of tears for the end of the Ching dynasty, as if her own family had died.

“I heard that the laws of the new Republic will soon shut us down,” she said.

“The politicians want to show they have higher morals than the Ching and foreigners.”

“New morality. Pah!” Golden Dove said. “They’re the same ones who visited us and were happy the Westerners let us be.”

“What will we do instead?” Summer Cloud said in a tragic voice. She held up her soft white hands and stared at them sadly. “I’ll have to wash my own clothes, like a common washerwoman.”

“Stop this nonsense,” Golden Dove said. “The Republicans have no control over the International Settlement. The Ching did not, and that won’t change.”

“How do you know?” Summer Cloud shot back. “Were you alive when the Ming dynasty was overturned?”

I heard my mother calling for me. “Violet! Where are you?” She came up to me. “There you are. Come to my office. I want you to stay close to me.”

“Are we in trouble?”

“Not at all. I just don’t want you to go wandering into the streets. There are too many people running around and you could be hurt.” Her office floor was strewn with newspapers.

“Now that the emperor is gone,” I said, “will we suffer? Will our house close down?”

“Come here.” She took me into her arms. “It’s the end of the dynasty. That has little to do with us. But the Chinese are overwrought. They’ll settle down soon.”

By the third day, the streets were passable, and Mother wanted to pay a visit to some of her clients to encourage them to return. Cracked Egg said it was dangerous for a foreign woman to be seen out of doors. Drunken patriots roamed the streets with scissors in hand and lopped the queues off any man who still possessed one. They had also bobbed the hair of a few white women just for fun. My mother had never been one to give in to fear. She put on a heavy fur coat, called for a carriage, and equipped Golden Dove and herself with croquet mallets so they could bash the heads of anyone who approached them with shears and a grin.

All of her clients stayed away during the first week after the abdication. She sent the servants out with messages that she had taken down the sign in English that said HIDDEN JADE PATH. But they were still reluctant. The name Hidden Jade Path was too well known, as was the House of Lulu Mimi. The Western clients did not want to show their faces. The Chinese ones did not want anyone to know they had been doing foreign trade with Westerners.

On Sunday the eighteenth, Chinese New Year arrived, reigniting the prior week’s furor, and doubling the noise with a cacophony of firecrackers, gongs, drums, and chants. When the rockets shrilled in flight, my mother would stop speaking, clench her jaw, and twitch when the inevitable bang and ka-boom came. She snapped at anyone who spoke to her, even Golden Dove. She was angry over the stupid fear her clients harbored. The clients were slowly returning, five one night, then a dozen, and they were mostly the Chinese suitors whose favorite courtesans had written pining letters to them. No one, however, was in a mood for frivolity. In the salons, the men stood in separate clusters of Westerners and Chinese. They spoke somberly about the antiforeign protests being a bellwether for the future of foreign businesses. One groused, “I heard that many of the student ringleaders were educated in the United States. The Ching government gave them those damn indemnity scholarships, and they returned with knowledge on how to make a revolution.”

My mother sailed through the room exuding confidence, though she had none just an hour before, when she was reading the newspapers. She smiled and dispensed assurances.

“I know for a fact, and from a reliable, highly placed source, that the new Republic is using the antiforeign fuss as a temporary ploy to unify the country. Consider this—the officials who worked under the Ching will still hold their positions under the Republic. That’s already been announced. So we’ll still have our friends. And besides, why would the new Republic oust foreign businesses? Why would they cut off their own hands and be unable to take from the money pot they’re so fond of? This will all blow over soon. It’s happened before. Look at the history of past brouhahas of this sort. Western foreign trade came back in even greater numbers and with more profits than ever before. All will settle into place soon enough. But it will require an adjustment at first, fearlessness coupled with foresight.”

A few of the men murmured in agreement. But most looked skeptical.

“Calculate how much money foreign businesses bring into China,” she continued. “How could the new government be hostile toward us? I predict that after holding back our ships of fortune, they’ll welcome us back and make the treaties and tariffs even more favorable. If they’re going to stamp out the warlords, they need money to do that. Ours.”

More grumbling followed. My mother persisted with her cheerful attitude. “Those who stay will be able to pick up the gold in the streets that the doubting Thomases left behind. And it will be everywhere, yours for the taking. This is a time of opportunity, not of fears or useless scruples. Gentlemen, plan for a richer future. The new path is laid. Long live the new Republic!”

Business, however, remained slow. The gold in the streets lay where no one dared to pick it up.

The next day, my mother ceased all efforts to reinvigorate her business. A letter had arrived just before we were supposed to have a belated birthday lunch at a restaurant. When I reached her door, I heard her talking in an angry way. I looked around and saw no one. She was talking to herself. When I was younger, I had been frightened to hear her babble. But nothing terrible ever came of her moods. Her spells were like someone beating a rug. She purged herself, and then everything quieted inside her again.

“Damn your cursed heart!” she said. “Coward!”

I thought her anger had to do with what had happened to the emperor.

“Mother,” I said softly.

She startled and turned to me, clutching a letter to her chest. It was in cursive writing, not Chinese characters.

“Violet, darling, we cannot have lunch right now. Something has come up.” She did not mention the letter, but I knew that was the reason. She had done the same thing to me on my eighth birthday. This time, however, I was not angry, only anxious. It was again a letter from my father, I was sure of it. The last one, six years ago, told of his recent death, which was the reason I then knew he had been alive all those years when she had said he did not exist. Whenever I had brought up the subject of my father, she cut me off with the same answer: “I’ve told you before—he’s dead and your asking again won’t change that fact.” The question had always set her off, but I could not help but ask it, because the answer had changed before.

“Will we have lunch later?” I knew the answer but wanted to see how carefully she answered.

“I have to leave to meet someone,” she said.

I would not let her get away that easily. “We were going to have my birthday lunch today,” I complained. “You’re always too busy to keep your promises to me.”

She showed only a small amount of guilt. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I have to do something, and it is urgent and very important. Tomorrow I will take you to an extra special lunch. We’ll have champagne.”

“I’m important, too,” I said. I went to my room and went over what had just happened. A letter. Another birthday lunch put aside. Who was more important?

When I heard her leave, I stole into Boulevard and entered her room through the glass French doors. The letter was not in the drawer, not under her mattress, not in her pillowcase, not in the canisters that held hard candies. Just when I was about to give up, I saw the top of it sticking out of a volume of poetry on the round table in the middle of her room, where she and Golden Dove sat as they went over the business of the day. The envelope was made of stiff white paper and was addressed in Chinese to Madame Lulu Mimi. Below, in English, it said in neat, flowing script: “Lucretia Minturn.” Lucretia. I had never seen that name used as hers. Was it really her name? The letter was addressed with yet another name I had not heard used for her:

My Dear Lucia,

I am released from obligation and am at last able to provide what is rightfully yours.

I return to Shanghai soon. May I visit you on the 23rd at noon ?

Yours,

Lu Shing

Who was this Chinese man who wrote in English? He had called her by two different names: Lucretia and Lucia. What was he returning?

Before I could study the letter further, Golden Dove walked in.

“What’s going on?” she said.

“I’m looking for a book,” I said quickly.

“Give it to me,” she said. She took one glance at it and said, “Don’t tell your mother you saw this. Don’t tell anyone, or you will regret this the rest of your life.”

My suspicions were right. This had something to do with my father. On the twenty-third, I feared, my life would change for the worse.

ON THE TWENTY-THIRD, the house was abuzz with news that a certain visitor was expected at noon. I was hiding in the middle balcony, watching the hubbub below. I was supposed to study in my own room, and not in Boulevard, and was under strict orders from my mother not to come out until she said I could. She also told me to put on my green dress, which was one of my best day dresses. I guessed that meant I would meet this man.

Noon came and went, and the minutes ate slowly into the day. I listened for announcements. None came. I crept into Boulevard. If anyone found me here, I would say I was searching for a schoolbook. I placed one under the desk, just in case. As I had hoped, my mother was in her office, just on the other side of the French doors. Golden Dove was with her. Mother was bristling, sounding as ominous as the rumbles that precede lightning. I could hear the threat in her voice. Golden Dove spoke back to her in a soft consoling tone. The exact words were clumps of sound. I had taken a risk in coming into the room. It took an hour before I had the courage to press my ear to the glass.

They were speaking in English. More often than not, their voices were too low for me to make out their words. Soon the pitch of my mother’s anger rose sharply. “Bastard!” she cried. “Family duty!”

“He’s a coward and a thief, and I don’t think you should believe anything he has to say,” Golden Dove said. “If you meet him, he’ll tear your heart in two again.”

“Do we have a pistol in the house? I’ll shoot him in the balls. Don’t laugh. I mean it.”

These snatches of words added to my confusion.

Dusk came, and I heard the voices of servants calling out for hot water. A manservant knocked on my mother’s door and announced that a visitor had arrived and was waiting in the vestibule. Mother did not leave her room for ten minutes. As soon as she did, I pushed the French doors open an inch, and moved the bottom of the curtain slightly apart. Then I hurried to my hiding place in the middle balcony overlooking the Grand Salon.

Mother walked down a few more steps, then stopped and nodded to Little Duck, who stood by the velvet curtains.

Little Duck drew back the curtain and called out, “Master Lu Shing has arrived to see Madame Lulu Mimi.” It was the same name as the man who had written the letter. I held my breath as he stepped through. In a short while, I would know if this man was who I thought he was.

He gave the immediate appearance of a thoroughly modern gentleman, possessing the carriage of the highborn, erect yet at ease. He wore a well-tailored dark suit and shoes so well polished I could see the gleam from the balcony. His hair was full and neatly cut, smoothed down with pomade. I could not see his face in detail, but I judged him to be older than Mother, not young but not too old. Over one arm, he held a long winter coat and, on top of that, a hat, both of which one of the servants quickly took away.

Mr. Lu glanced casually about the room, but not with the wonderment of most first-time visitors in coming to my mother’s house. Western style had become the norm in most first-class houses and even in the respectable homes of the wealthy. But our house had had decorations found nowhere else: shocking paintings, voluptuous sofas with tiger skin upholstery, a lifelike sculpture of a phoenix standing by a giant palm tree the height of the ceiling. The man made a slight smile, as if none of this was a surprise.

Puffy Cloud came over and crouched near me. “Who’s that?” she whispered. I told her to go somewhere else. She didn’t move. I was about to learn who this man was, and I did not want Puffy Cloud beside me when I did.

My mother resumed walking down the stairs. She had chosen an odd dress for the occasion. I had never seen it before. She must have bought it yesterday. The dress was no doubt the latest fashion—Mother wore nothing less—but the shape was not suited to my mother’s habit of flying around the house. It was tightly fitted peacock-blue wool, which accentuated her full bust and hips. The skirt was cinched at the waist, as well as at the knees, preventing her from walking in more than slow, regal steps. The man was patient and looked at her the entire time. When she reached him, she gave no effusive welcome, as she did with other men. I could not hear her exact words, but her tone was flat yet quivering. He made a slight bow that was neither Chinese nor Western, and when he raised himself slowly, he looked at her solemnly, and she abruptly turned away and began walking back toward the staircase at her hobbled pace. He followed. Even from this distance, I could tell her expression was precisely what she despised seeing in the face of any of the beauties. Chin tipped slightly up. Arrogant. Eyes half lidded and looking down over her nose. Disdain. The man acted as if he had no awareness that she was less than amiable. Or perhaps he expected it, was prepared for it.

“Wah!” Puffy Cloud said. “Cultivated. And lots of money, too.” I flashed an angry look to make her be quiet, and she, being seven years older, showed her usual resentment of my reprimands and returned a sour pout.

I was not able to see his features well, but I felt there was something familiar in his face and was nearly faint with nervousness. Was this man my father?

When they were about to ascend the staircase, I crept away. I hurried to Boulevard and hid under the bed. I would have to remain there another fifteen minutes when dusk turned to dark, and I would not be noticed behind the break in the curtains. The floor tiles were cold, and I regretted that I had not pulled a quilt around me first. I heard the office door open, followed by my mother’s and Golden Dove’s voices. Golden Dove asked my mother what refreshments she should bring. Usually, depending on the guest, there would be either a selection of fruit or English butter cookies, and tea. Mother said none was needed. I was shocked by her rudeness.

“I apologize for the lateness,” the man said. He sounded like an Englishman. “The mobs are tearing down the walls of the Old City and the roads are impassable. I left my carriage and went by foot, knowing you were waiting. It took me nearly three hours just to reach Avenue Paul Brunat.”

Mother did not reply with any appreciation that he had made this great effort to come. They moved toward the other end of the room. Even with the French doors ajar, their words were now too faint to understand. His low voice flowed smoothly. Mother’s was terse and choppy. Every now and then, she would eject a loud comment: “I doubt that very much.” “I did not receive them.” “He did not return.” All at once, she shouted: “Why do you want to see her now? How long has it been since you cared? You sent not a single word or dollar. You wouldn’t have cared if she and I had starved.”

I knew she was talking about me. He had never asked about me, had never loved me. Bastard. I immediately hated him.

He murmured fast words I could not understand. They sounded frantic. Then I heard his voice loudly and more clearly. “I was devastated, tormented. But they made it impossible.”

“Coward! Despicable coward!” Mother shouted.

“He was with the Office of Foreign Relations—”

“Ah, yes, family duty. Tradition. Obligation. Ancestors and burnt offerings. Admirable.” Her voice had come closer to the door.

“After all these years in China,” he said, “do you still not understand how powerful a Chinese family is? It’s the weight of ten thousand tombstones, and my father wielded it against me.”

“I understand it well. I’ve met many men, and their nature is like yours, predictably so. Desire and duty. Betrayal to both. Those predictable men have made me a very successful woman.”

“Lucia,” he said in a sad voice.

“Don’t call me that!”

“You must listen, please.”

I heard the office door open and Golden Dove’s voice broke in. “Excuse me,” she said in Chinese. “There is an urgent situation.”

Lu Shing started to introduce himself in Chinese, and Golden Dove cut him off. “We’ve met before,” she snapped. “I know quite well who you are and what you did.” She returned to speaking to my mother in a more even voice. “I need to speak to you. It concerns Violet.”

“She’s here, then,” the man said in an excited voice. “Please let me see her.”

“I will let you see her when you’re dead,” Mother replied.

I was still furious but buoyed that he wanted to see me. If he came to me, I would reject him. It was now dark enough in the room for me to go to the French doors. I wanted to see his expression. I was halfway out from under the bed when I heard Mother and Golden Dove close the office door and walk into the hallway. Suddenly the door to Boulevard opened, and I tucked myself back under the bed close to the wall and held my breath.

“This is too hard for you to bear alone,” Golden Dove said quietly in English. “I should be there.”

“I prefer to do this on my own.”

“If you need me, ring the bell for tea. I’ll wait here in Boulevard.”

My heart turned over with dread. I would soon turn into a frozen corpse.

“No need,” Mother said. “Go have dinner with the others.”

“At least let me have the maid bring you tea.”

“Yes, that would be good. My throat has gone dry.”

They left. I took a big breath.

I heard the maid arrive, followed by the sound of clinking teacups and polite words. I eased my way out from under the bed and was shivering with cold and nervousness. I rubbed my arms and pulled a quilt from the bed and wrapped it around me. When my teeth stopped chattering I went to the glass doors, and peered through the curtain opening.

I knew instantly that this man was my father by my own features: the eyes, the mouth, the shape of my face. I felt a nauseating wave of resignation. I was half-Chinese. I had known it all along, yet I had also clung to the better side of ambiguity. Outside of this house, I would never belong. Another feeling crept over me: a strange victory that I had been right in believing Mother had been lying to me. My father existed. I had exchanged the tormenting question with the awful answer. But why did Mother hate him so much that she had refused to see him all these years? Why had she preferred to tell me he had died? After all, I had asked her once if he loved me, and she had said yes. Now she claimed he had not.

Mr. Lu put his hand on Mother’s arm, and she flung it away and shouted, “Where is he? Just tell me and get out!”

Who was he?

The man attempted to touch her arm again, and she slapped his face, then beat her fists on his shoulders as she wept. He did not move away but stood oddly still, like a wooden soldier, letting her do this.

She seemed more desperate than angry, and it frightened me, because I had never seen her this way. Whose whereabouts were so important to her?

She finally stopped and said in a cracked voice: “Where is he? What did they do with my baby boy? Is he dead?”

I clamped my hand over my mouth so they could not hear my cries. She had a son and she loved him so much she had cried for him.

“He’s alive and healthy.” He paused. “And he knows none of this.”

“Nothing of me,” Mother said flatly. She went to the other end of the room and wept with heaving shoulders. He came toward her, and she motioned him to stay where he was. I had never seen Mother cry so much. She sounded as if she had just suffered a great loss, when, in fact, she had just learned she had not.

“They took him away from me,” he said. “My father ordered it. They would not tell me where. They hid him and said they would never allow me to see him if I did anything to harm my father’s reputation. How could I go to you? You would have fought. You did before, and they knew you would continue to do so. In their eyes, you respected nothing about our traditions. You would not understand their position, their reputation. I could not say anything to you, because that act alone would have been the end of my ever seeing our son. You are right. I was a coward. I did not fight, as you would have. And what is worse, I betrayed you and justified why I had to do so. I told myself that if I submitted to their will, you would have a chance of soon having him back. Yet I knew that was not true. Instead I was killing what was pure and trusting in your heart. I was tormented by it. Every day, I have woken with that thought of what I did to you. I can show you my journals. Every day, for these last twelve years, I wrote one sentence before all others. ‘To save myself, I destroyed another, and in doing so, I destroyed myself.’”

“One sentence,” Mother said in a flat voice. “I wrote many more.” She returned to the sofa and sat vacant-eyed, spent. “Why did you finally tell me? Why now and not sooner?”

“My father’s dead.”

She flinched. “I can’t say I’m sorry.”

“He collapsed the day of the abdication and lingered another six days. I wrote to you the day after he died. I felt a burden removed. But I warn you, my mother has a strong will equal to my father’s. He used his to possess what he wanted. Hers is to protect the family. Our son is not just her grandson, but also the next generation and all it carries forward from the earliest of our family history. You may not respect our family traditions. But you should understand them enough to fear them.”

Lu Shing handed Mother an envelope. “I’ve written down what I’m sure you want to know.”

She put her letter opener along the seam, but her hands were shaking so badly she dropped the letter. Lu Shing retrieved it and opened it for her. She pulled out a photograph, and I strained to find an angle that would enable me to see it. “Where am I in his face?” Mother said. “Is it truly Teddy? Are you pulling another trick on me? I’ll shoot you with my pistol …”

He murmured and pointed to the photograph. Her anguished face turned to smiles. “Such a serious expression … Is that really what I look like? He resembles you more. He looks like a Chinese boy.”

“He’s twelve now,” Lu Shing said. “A happy boy and also more than a bit spoiled. His grandmother treats him like an emperor.”

Their voices fell to gentle murmurs. He put his hand on her arm, and this time, she did not push him away. She looked at him with a wounded expression. He stroked her face and she collapsed against him and he embraced her as she wept.

I turned away, slumped to the floor, and stared into the pitch-dark of nothingness, of all possibilities for fear. Everything had changed so quickly. This was their son and she loved him more than she ever had loved me. I went over all that she said. New questions jumped out, each more troubling than the last, sickening me. Her son was of mixed blood as well, yet he looked Chinese. And this man, my father, whose eyes and cheeks I wore, did not bother to take me to his family. He had never loved me.

I heard rustling in Mother’s office and turned back to peer through the curtain opening. Mother had already put out the lamps. I could not see anything. The office door closed, and a moment later, I heard her bedroom door open and close. Did Lu Shing and the photo of Teddy go into the room with her? I felt abandoned, alone with my agonizing questions. I wanted to be in my room to mourn for myself. I had lost my place in the world. I was second best in Mother’s eyes, a castoff to Lu Shing. But I could not leave the room, now that the servants were rushing through the hallway. If Golden Dove saw me sneak out of the room, she would demand to know why I was there, and I did not want to speak to anyone else about what I was feeling. I lay on the bed and wrapped myself in the quilt. I had to wait until the party began, when everyone would go downstairs to the Grand Salon. And so then and there, I began my bout of self-pity.

Hours later, I was awakened by the sound of a distant door opening. I rushed to the window and looked through the lattice. The sky was a wash of dark gray. The sun would be up soon. I heard the office door open and close and I went to the glass doors. His back was to me and her face was visible just over his shoulder. He was murmuring in a tender tone. She responded in a high girlish voice. I felt heartsick. She held so much feeling for others, such gentleness and happiness. Lu leaned forward and she bowed her head to receive his kiss on her forehead. He tipped her face back up, and said more of those soft words that made her smile. She looked almost shy. I had never known her in so many new ways, so wounded, so desperate, and now bashful.

He embraced her, held her tightly, and when he released her, her eyes were shiny with tears, and she turned away. He quietly left the room. I darted back to the lattice window just in time to see him walking past with a pleased expression, which angered me. Everything had turned out well for him.

I stepped out of the room to return to mine, and immediately Carlotta strode toward me and rubbed my legs. Over the last seven years, she had grown fat and slow. I picked her up and hugged her. She alone had claimed me.

I WAS UNABLE to sleep, or so I thought, until I heard Mother’s voice talking to a manservant, instructing him to bring up a trunk. It was not quite ten in the morning. I found her in her bedroom laying out dresses.

“Oh, Violet, I’m glad you’re up.” She said this in a light and excited voice. “I need you to select four frocks, two for dinner, two for daytime, shoes and coats to match. Bring also the garnet necklace and gold locket, your fountain pens, schoolbooks, and notebooks. And take anything else that is valuable. I can’t list everything for you, so you’ll have to think for yourself. I’ve already called for a trunk to be sent to your room.”

“Are we running away?”

She cocked her head, which she did when a guest presented her with a novel idea that she actually considered unsound. She smiled.

“We’re going to America, to San Francisco,” she said. “We’re going to visit your grandparents. Your grandfather is ill … I had a cable … and it is quite serious.”

What a stupid lie! If he were truly ill, why was she so happy just a moment ago? She was not going to tell me the true reason, that we were going to see her darling son, and I was determined to force the truth out of her.

“What is my grandfather’s name?”

“John Minturn,” she said easily. She continued to place dresses on the bed.

“Is my grandmother alive as well?”

“Yes … of course. She sent the cable. Harriet Minturn.”

“Do we leave soon?”

“Perhaps tomorrow, the next day. Or it could be a week from now. Everything has become topsy-turvy and no one is reliable these days, even when paid top dollar. So we may not be able to arrange immediately for passage on the next steamer. Many Westerners are trying to leave as well. We may wind up settling for a trawler that goes around the North Pole!”

“Who was that man who visited you yesterday?”

“Someone I once had dealings with in business.”

I said in a thin voice: “I know he’s my father. I saw his face when you were coming up the stairs. I look like him. And I know that we are going to San Francisco because you have a son who’s living there. I heard the servants talking about it.”

She listened silently, stricken.

“You can’t deny it,” I said.

“Violet, darling, I’m sorry you are wounded. I kept it a secret only because I didn’t want you to know we had been abandoned. He took Teddy right after he was born, and I have not seen him since. I have a chance to claim him back and I must because he is my child. If you had been stolen from me, I would have fought just as hard to find you.”

Fought for me? I doubted that.

But then she came to me and wrapped her arms around me. “You have been more precious to me than you know.” A tear formed at the corner of her eye, and that small glistening of her heart was enough for me to believe her. I was soothed.

In my bedroom, however, I realized she had said nothing about Lu Shing’s feelings toward me. I hated him. I would never call him “Father.”

For the rest of the morning and into the afternoon, as we filled our trunks, she told me about my new home in San Francisco. Before that day, I had not thought much at all about her past. She had lived in San Francisco. That was all. To hear about it now—I felt I was listening to a fairy tale, and gradually my anger turned into excitement. I pictured the Pacific Ocean: its clear blue waters with silvery fish darting through the waves, whales blowing their spouts like fountains. She told me my grandfather was a professor of art history, and I imagined a distinguished gentleman with white hair, standing before an easel. She said her mother was a scientist, who studied insects, like the ones in the amber pieces I tried to smash. I imagined a room with amber drops dangling from the ceiling and a woman with a magnifying glass looking at them. As she talked, now quite easily, I could see San Francisco in my mind: its small hills next to water. I could picture myself climbing and looking out over the Bay and its islands. I was climbing up steep sidewalks flanked by Western houses, like those in the French Concession, busy with all sorts of people of all classes and nations.

“Mother, are there Chinese people in San Francisco?”

“Quite a number of them. Most are servants and common laborers, though, laundrymen, and the like.” She went to her wardrobe and considered which of her evening gowns to take. She selected two, then put those back, and selected two others. She chose shoes of white kid leather, then noticed a small scuff on the heel and put them back.

“Are there foreign courtesans or just Chinese ones?”

She laughed. “People there are not called foreigners unless they are the Chinese or the black Italians.”

I felt humiliated. Here we were foreigners by our appearance. A cold thought ran through my veins. Would I look like a Chinese foreigner in San Francisco? If people knew Teddy was my brother, they would know I was as Chinese as he was.

“Mother, will people treat me well when they see I am half-Chinese?”

“No one will be thinking you’re half-Chinese.”

“But if the people there find out, will they shun me?”

“No one will find out.”

It bothered me that she could be so confident over what was not certain. I would have to act as confident as she was to maintain the secret that she had a half-Chinese daughter. Only I would feel the constant worry that I would be discovered. She would remain unconcerned.

“We’ll live in a handsome house,” she went on. She was the happiest I had ever seen her, the most affectionate. She looked younger, almost like a different person. Golden Dove had said that when a werefox possessed a woman, you could tell by her eyes. They sparkled too much. Mother’s eyes sparkled. She was not herself, not since seeing Mr. Lu.

“My grandfather built the house just before I was born,” she said. “It’s not as large as our house here,” she continued, “but it’s also not as cold or noisy. It’s made of wood and so sturdy that even after a very big earthquake shook the city to its knees, the house remained standing without a single brick out of place. The architectural style is quite different from the foreign houses in the French and British Concessions. For one thing, it’s more welcoming, without those tall fortress walls and gatekeepers. In San Francisco, we don’t need to defend our privacy. We simply have it. A hedge in front and a low iron gate is all we need, although we do have fences on the sides of the house and in back. But that is so we can keep out stray dogs and put up trellises for flowering vines. We have a small lawn, just enough to serve as a grassy carpet on the sides of the walkway. Along one fence, there are rhododendron bushes. And on the other side there are phalanxes of agapanthus, scented roses, daylilies, and, of course, violets. I planted them myself, and not just the ordinary kind, but also the sweet violets, which have a lovely fragrance, the scent of a perfume I once wore that came from France. I had many clothes of that color, and I used to eat candies made of sweet violets and sprinkled with sugar. They are my favorite flower and color, your namesake, Sweet Violet. My mother called them Johnny-jump-up.”

“They were her favorite, too?”

“She despised them and complained that I was growing weeds.” She laughed and seemed not to notice my dismay. “Once you step inside the house, you’re in the vestibule. On one side is a staircase, like the one we have here, but a bit smaller. And on the other side is a thick toffee-colored curtain on a brass rod, not as wide as what we have here. Step through the curtain and you are in the parlor. The furniture is likely old-fashioned, what my grandmother placed there. Through a large doorway, you enter the dining room—”

“Where will I sleep?”

“You’ll have a large lovely bedroom on the second floor, with sunny yellow walls. It was my room.”

Her room. I was so happy I wanted to shout. Outwardly, I showed little.

“There is a tall bed next to large windows. One window is next to an old oak tree and you can open the window and pretend you’re a scrub jay in the branches—those are the noisy birds I remember—they hopped right up to me for a peanut. There are plenty of other birds, herons, hawks, and singing robins. You can look them up in the ornithology books my mother collected. Your grandmother’s father was a botanist and a naturalist illustrator. I also have a nice collection of dolls, not the babyish kind you push in a pram. They’re prettily painted. And throughout the house are walls of books, top to bottom. You’ll have enough to read for the rest of your life, even if you consumed two books a day. You can take your books up to the round turret to read. As a girl, I decorated it with shawls and hassocks and Persian carpets to look like a seraglio. I called it Pasha Palace. Or you can look out the windows through a telescope and see clear to the waterfront and the Bay, to the islands—there are several—and you can count the schooners and fishing boats …”

She chattered on, her recollections blossoming. I could see the house in the stereopticon of my mind, a place that took on color and the movement of life. I was dazzled by the thought of room after room with walls of books, of a bedroom with a window next to an oak tree.

My mother was now busy removing her jewelry cases from a locked cupboard. She had at least a dozen each of necklaces, bracelets, brooches, and pins—gifts she had received over the years. She had sold most of the jewelry, and the ones she kept were her favorites, the most valuable. She placed all the cases in her valise. Were we not coming back?

“Once you find Teddy, will he return to Shanghai with us?”

Again, there was an awkward pause. “I don’t know. I cannot predict what will happen. Shanghai has changed.”

A terrible thought sprang to mind. “Mother, will Carlotta come with us?”

She immediately busied herself with hatboxes, so I knew already the answer. “I won’t leave without her.”

“You would stay behind for a cat?”

“I refuse to go if I cannot bring her.”

“Come now, Violet. Would you cast away your future for a cat?”

“I would. I am nearly grown up and can choose for myself,” I said rashly.

All affection left her face. “All right. Stay if you like.”

I had been foiled. “How can you ask me to choose?” I said in a cracked voice. “Carlotta is my baby. She is to me what Teddy is to you. I cannot leave her behind. I cannot betray her. She trusts me.”

“I am not asking you to choose, Violet. There is no choice. We must leave, and Carlotta cannot come. We cannot change the rules of the ship. What you must think instead is that we may indeed return. Once we are in San Francisco, I will then know better what to do. But not until then …”

She continued her explanation, but grief had already set in. My throat knotted up. I could not explain to Carlotta why I was leaving.

“While we’re gone,” I heard my mother say through my haze of misery, “Golden Dove can take care of her.”

“Golden Dove is scared of her. No one loves Carlotta.”

“The daughter of Snowy Cloud’s attendant—Little Ocean—she loves her dearly. She will be happy to care for her, especially if we give her a little money to do so while we are gone.”

This was true. But my worries remained. What if Carlotta loved the little girl more than she did me? She might forget me and would not care if I ever returned. I fell into a tragic mood.

Although my mother had limited me to four dresses, she was quickly becoming more generous with her own allotment. She decided the two steamer trunks she had were not large enough, and because of their rounded tops they could not be stacked, which would limit what she could bring. Also, they were old, what she had brought from San Francisco. She called for Golden Dove to buy four new steamer trunks, larger ones. “Mr. Malakar told me last month that he had smuggled in a large shipment of Louis Vuitton trunks from France to Bombay. They’re the flat-topped ones I want. I also need two steamer bags, the small ones. And tell him he better not think I won’t know if he slips me the counterfeit …”

She threw her choice of gowns onto the bed. She was bringing so many, I figured she would attend balls as soon as she stepped off the boat. But then she called in Golden Dove and told her to be honest in saying which dresses were more flattering, which brought out the color of her eyes, her complexion, and her mahogany brown hair, and which of these would American women envy, and which would cause them to think she was an immoral woman.

Golden Dove disapproved of all her choices. “You designed those dresses to be shocking and to lure men to your side. And all the American women I’ve seen staring at you in the park were hardly clapping with admiration.”

Instead of having to choose, Mother took most of her evening gowns, as well as her newer dresses, coats, and hats. My four dresses dwindled to the two I would wear during our journey. She promised that many beautiful frocks awaited me, better than those I now owned. My favorite books were not necessary to bring either, nor were my schoolbooks, since those could be easily replaced with better ones in San Francisco, where I would also have better tutors than the ones here in Shanghai. I should simply enjoy a little holiday from study on our voyage.

Into my valise, she placed a maroon box with my jewelry, two other boxes she retrieved from a drawer, two scrolls wrapped in silk, and a few other valuables. On top of this, she placed her fox fur wrap, believing, I suppose, she might need a bit of glamour as we stood on deck and watched Shanghai recede from view.

At last we were done. Mother now needed only to find from among her coterie of influential foreigners someone to buy us passage to America. She gave Cracked Egg a dozen letters to deliver.

A day went by, then a week. The werefox eyes left and her old self returned, the one that was agitated and snappish. She gave Cracked Egg another packet of letters. Two berths, that was all we needed. What was so difficult about that? Every message came back the same: Her American compatriots were also anxious to leave Shanghai, and they, too, had found that others before them had grabbed every berth on ships for the next month.

During our wait I showed Little Ocean how to make a nest of my silk quilts for Carlotta. Ocean was eight, and as she petted Carlotta, she whispered to her, “I will be your obedient attendant.” Carlotta purred and rolled onto her back. My chest ached to see how happy Carlotta already was.

After eleven days of waiting, Fairweather sauntered through Mother’s bedroom door, without announcement. He had good news.

I KNOW WHY my mother had once loved Fairweather. He was adept at teasing her out of her bad moods. He was funny, a cure for worry. He made her laugh and feel beautiful. He said he adored her for all her unusual features and manners. He gave her exaggerated looks of befuddled love. He spoke of heartfelt emotions, all of them ones he claimed he had never known with any other woman. And he gave her sympathy for all her indulgent woes. He put her head on his shoulder and told her to cry until her heart was empty of poisonous grief. He shared her indignation when her clients had unfairly used knowledge she had given them in trust.

They had become friends more than nine years ago, and whatever she had needed then, he had given her. They alluded to times in her life when she had suffered a betrayal, a loss of confidence, when she had worried over money. He knew about her early success, about the death of a man who had taken her in when she first came to Shanghai. Remember, remember, remember, he said, to draw out the painful emotions of the past, so he could console her.

I hated that he treated my mother with easy familiarity. He called her “Lu,” “Lovely Lulu,” “Lullaby,” and “Luscious.” When she was peeved, he restored her humor by acting like a whipped schoolboy or an errant knight. He recited asinine jokes, and she returned laughter. He purposely embarrassed her in front of others—and in flattering and disgusting ways. At dinner, I watched him obscenely rotate his lips and tongue, claiming there was something stuck on the roof of his mouth. “Wipe that chimpanzee grin off your face,” she would say. And he would laugh long and hard, before standing up and bidding her adieu with a comic wink. He would then wait for her in her bedroom. With him, she was weak, no longer herself. She was often silly, drank too much, and laughed too hard. How could she be so stupid?

All the servants at Hidden Jade Path liked Fairweather because he greeted them in Shanghainese and he thanked them for every little thing. They were accustomed to being treated by others as if they were appendages to trays of tea. Everyone made guesses as to where Fairweather might have learned to speak their native tongue. From an amah? A courtesan? A mistress? Clearly a Chinese woman gave him his good Chinese heart. Among Chinese men, he had earned the fond title “Chinese-style foreign dignitary.” Although everyone knew his charm, there was little else known about him. Where in the United States did he hail from? Or was he indeed an American? Perhaps an American fugitive? They did not know his true name. He joked he had not used his name for so long, he had forgotten what it was. He simply went by the nickname Fairweather, which his fraternity brothers had given him years ago when he attended a nameless university he had described as “one of those hallowed halls.”

“Fair weather followed me wherever I went,” he said, “and so my dear friends welcomed me everywhere.” In Shanghai, he was invited to parties all over town, and he was the last to leave, unless he spent the night. Yet, oddly enough, no one faulted him for hosting no parties in return.

His popularity, one of the courtesans said, had to do with a skilled man who made counterfeit certificates of every kind. This clever man made visas, birth certificates, wedding certificates, and a valuable supply of documents stamped with the official consular seal, on which he had written in Chinese and English the various “herewith” and “henceforth” proclamations that the person whose name was inscribed had impressed the American consul as having “good character.” Fairweather sold them to his “special Chinese friends,” as he called them, so special he charged them five times what he paid the translator. They were happy to hand over the money. Any Chinese person, whether a businessman, courtesan, or madam, could wave his or her magic certificate of good character in any court in the International Settlement and have the Stars and Stripes defend his or her honor. No Chinese bureaucrat would have wasted his time challenging an American’s opinion, because in those courts, the Chinese would always lose. Since the certificate was good for only one year, Fairweather could assess how special his friends truly were on a regular and profitable basis.

I was the only person who did not fall for his greasy charms. I had suffered much pain seeing how my mother preferred his company to mine. And that pain enabled me to see how false he was. He used rehearsed words of concern, the same ones, the same gestures and gentlemanly offers of help. To him, people were prey easily brought down. I knew this because he tried his tricks and charm on me, even though he knew that I saw through his deceit. He sprinkled me with mocking flattery, extolling my messy hair, my bad elocution, the childish book I had chosen to read. I did not smile at him. I was curt if required to speak. My mother scolded me often for being rude to him. He simply laughed. I made it clear through my expression and stiff posture that I found him tiresome. I sighed or rolled my eyes. I did not show him my rage, because that would mean he had won. I left the gifts he brought me on the table in my mother’s office. Later, I would return to the table, and sure enough, the gifts would be gone.

Shortly after New Year’s Day, Fairweather and my mother had a falling-out. She had learned from Golden Dove that he had been sharing Puffy Cloud’s bed before and after he had been with her. My mother had made no claim to monogamy. After all, she took other lovers from time to time. But Fairweather was her favorite, and she had assumed that her lovers would not go poking a subordinate in her own house. I listened as Golden Dove told my mother the truth, preceded by this scolding remark: “I told you nine years ago that this man would use you as a fool. Lust leaves you blind long after you’ve lost your mind in bed.” Golden Dove had extracted from her maid the facts and said she would not spare Mother from hearing any of the details so that she would finally banish Fairweather from her bed. “Over the last year, he’s been filling her to the brim with so much ecstasy all the maids thought her cries were caused by a sadistic customer. They all heard. They all know—the other courtesans, maids, and menservants. They saw him slithering along the hallways. And guess how Puffy Cloud was able to earn money from him? It was money you had given him for what he had called trifling expenses and a tardy influx of money.”

Mother listened to every bit of that sickening truth. I think she felt what had wounded me so often: Someone she loved preferred another. I was glad she felt that pain. I wanted her to know what misery she had given me. I wanted her to give me the supply of love she had given to that cheat.

I had already positioned myself in Boulevard, when Fairweather arrived for his execution. I was ticklish with excitement. Mother had put on a stiff black dress, as if she were in mourning. When he arrived at noon—no doubt from Puffy Cloud’s bed—he was surprised to find she was not still asleep, but sitting in her office wearing what he deemed “an unbecoming dress.” He offered to help remove it immediately.

“Keep your little trouser friend buttoned up,” I heard her say.

I was elated that she finally expressed the same disgust I had always felt for him. She attacked his business acumen. She belittled him for being no more than a paid sycophant. She said he was a parasite who lived on unpaid loans. She could finally see him for who he was, she said, a man whose “cheap charms flowed in spurts from his little fire hose into Puffy Cloud’s eager mouth.”

He, in turn, blamed his transgressions with Puffy Cloud on an opium addiction. She had seduced him with her pipe, and nothing more than that. His time with her was as memorable as a cup of lukewarm tea. I wished Puffy Cloud could hear what he was saying. Now that he knew how wounded she was, he said, he would take the cure and be rid of both his opium habit and Puffy Cloud. My mother remained silent. I cheered. He shuffled his words, and reminded her that he loved her, and that she knew he had never professed love to any other woman. “We are made of a single heart and thus can never be separated.” He beckoned her to look into her heart and find him there. She grumbled strong doubt, but I could hear her weakening.

He kept murmuring, “Darling, darling, my dearest Lu.” Was he touching her? I wanted to shout that he was tricking her again. He had given her the poison of his charms. Her tone was wrenching as she told him how pained she was. She had never admitted pain to anyone. He mumbled more endearments. All at once, the pitch of her voice rose.

“Take your hands off my breasts. You embezzled my heart, you bastard, and gave the goods to a courtesan in my own house. You made me a fool, and I won’t ever let that happen again.”

He confessed more love and said she was wiser than he was. But his sins were not as devious as she made them out to be. It was stupidity, not larceny. He had never wanted to compromise their love with financial favors. But she was the one who offered him so much, and he was overwhelmed with gratitude and also pain of pride that he could neither turn down a gift of love nor repay it. For that reason, he was not going to hold her to the new loan she had promised him a few days ago.

My mother sputtered and cursed. She had never agreed to a loan of even ten cents. He said she had, and recalled his version of a conversation in which he had told her that the glue factory he had invested in needed new machinery. “Don’t you remember?” he said. “You asked me how much, and I said two thousand dollars, to which you said, ‘Is it really only that much?’”

“How can you imply that conversation to be a promise?” she said. “I would never have agreed to loan money to another of your sticky-fingered schemes—a rubber plantation and now a glue factory.”

“The plantation was profitable,” he insisted, “until the typhoon destroyed our trees. This glue factory has no such risks. Had I known you never intended to loan me the money, I would not have taken on investors, and some are your clients, I’m afraid to say. We all stand to lose our shirts and I hope they won’t mistake you as being part of the reason.”

I would have burst through those glass doors if she had agreed to give him the money. Instead I heard her say in a clear voice: “Well, I won’t be seeing those clients once I leave Shanghai. And I won’t be seeing you, except in my memory of you as a charlatan.”

He uttered a string of oaths, among the worst combinations of words I have ever heard. I was overjoyed.

“You weren’t even a good fuck,” he said at the end. The door banged and he continued swearing as he walked down the hallway.

Golden Dove went to my mother right away. My mother’s voice was shaky as she recounted a brief version of what had just happened.

“Do you still love this man?”

“If love is stupid, then yes. How many times did you warn me? Why could I not see who he really was? He must be a hypnotist to have put me under such a spell. The whole house is sniggering at me, and yet, if he came through that door again … I don’t know. Around him, I’m so weak.”

Whispers of gossip drifted through the hallways. I listened from my window at night. The servants were sorry to see Fairweather go. No one blamed Puffy Cloud. Why was Lulu Mimi more deserving of a man? Besides, Fairweather loved Puffy Cloud and had pledged himself to her. She showed everyone the signet ring that bore the seal of his family, one related to the king of Scotland. The menservants gave their verdict: No woman could command a man’s fidelity or the natural urges of his manhood. Puffy Cloud left the house before my mother could evict her. She took with her a few farewell gifts—furniture and lamps from her room that did not belong to her.

I thought we were done with the swindler of hearts. But shortly after Mother made her decision to leave Shanghai, Fairweather stood before her in her office. Mother asked me to go to my room to study. I went into Boulevard and pressed my ear against the glass. In a breaking voice, he expressed sadness she was about to leave Shanghai. He would grieve the loss of her, she who was a rare being no woman could ever replace, a woman he would have adored through poverty and old age. He wanted nothing, except to give true words she could take with her and remember during troubled times in the future. He wept to good effect, and then left, no doubt overcome by his own bad acting.

My mother told Golden Dove what had happened. Her voice was shaky.

“Did he tempt you?” Golden Dove asked.

“He never touched me, if that’s what you mean?”

“But were you tempted?”

Silence followed.

“The next time he comes,” Golden Dove said, “I am going to be right here in the room.”

They did not have to wait long. He came soon with dark circles under his eyes and disheveled hair and clothes. “I haven’t been able to sleep since I last saw you. I’m in agony, Lu. Your words inflicted pain on me, and deservedly so, because what I feel is the pain of truth. You have never been cruel, not intentionally, at least. But your hatred toward me is unbearable. I feel it here, and here, and here. I feel it day and night, and it’s like coals and knives. I, of all people, knew you had been betrayed by Lu Shing and deserved better. You deserved the better part of me, and that’s what I gave you. I was unfaithful with my body, yes, but my heart and spirit remained yours, completely, constantly. Lu darling, I ask nothing of you except for you to understand and acknowledge that I do genuinely love you. Please tell me you believe me. I won’t think life is worth living if you don’t.”

Mother actually laughed at what he said. He ran out of her room. She later told Golden Dove what had happened and was pleased to say she had rebuffed him without her help.

He showed up the next day, freshly groomed and wearing smart clothes. “I’m leaving Shanghai and going to South America. There’s nothing here for me now that you’re leaving.” His voice was sad but calm. “I simply came by to tell you I won’t bother you anymore. Can I kiss your hand good-bye?”

He went to his knees. She sighed and held out her hand. He kissed it quickly, then pressed her palm to his cheek. “This will have to last me a lifetime. You know I could not possibly have meant what I said about your lack of skills as a lover. You alone were able to take me to spasmodic heights of pleasure I did not know existed. We had such good times, didn’t we? I hope that one day you can forget all this ugliness and recall those times when we were too exhausted from pleasure to utter a single word more. Are you remembering? Oh, dear God, Lu, how can you remove such sweetness from me? Can you leave me with just one more memory? It won’t hurt, will it? I would like nothing more than to give you one more bout of pleasure.”

He looked at her from bended knee, and she said nothing. He touched her knee, and she still said nothing. He lifted her skirt and kissed her knee. I knew what would happen next. I saw it in her eyes. She had grown stupid. I left the room.

Golden Dove scolded her the next morning: “I can tell he leeched onto your body and heart again. It’s in those bright eyes and the tiny turned-up corners of your mouth. You’re still remembering what he did last night, aren’t you? That man must possess the magic of a thousand men to put enough lust between your legs to remove your brain at the same time.”

“Last night meant nothing to me,” my mother said. “I gave in to an old itch. We had our lewd fun between the sheets and now I’m finished with him.”

Three weeks later, Fairweather sauntered into the common room with his chimpanzee smile and went to Mother with arms wide open. “You better give me a kiss, Missy Minturn, because I’ve just reserved two cabins on a ship that leaves two days from now. Is that not proof of love?”

Her eyes went wide, but she did not move. He told her in a rush that he had heard the call for help through the Shanghai business grapevine, and although she was angry with him, and he with her, he felt he could redeem her trust in him and win her back by providing what she so desperately needed.

They left the common room and went to her study. I finished my breakfast quickly and then went to Boulevard, arranged my books and writing sheets sloppily on the table into a picture of studiousness, and then put my ear to the cold glass. I heard his sickening love talk of heartaches and a life without purpose, how purpose was renewed when he found a way to help her. He provided a copious number of endearments, along with the usual declarations of pain everlasting. And then he switched tack. “Lu darling, we had such fun the other night, didn’t we? My God! I’ve never seen you with that much sexual fire. I feel the flames in my loins just thinking about it, don’t you?” There was a long silence, which I hoped was not a kiss—or more.

“Get off me,” she said roughly. “I want to hear more about this latest peace offering first.”

He laughed. “All right. But don’t forget about my reward. And when you hear what I found you, perhaps you’ll consider doubling the award. Are you ready? Two cabin reservations on a steamer—only three stops—Hong Kong, Haiphong, and Honolulu. Twenty-four days to San Francisco. The cabins are not first class. I’m not God enough to pull that miracle. But the cabins are decent, portside. All I need are your passports. Don’t worry. I have the reservations, but I am required to show the passports by tomorrow to secure the booking.”

“I’ll give you mine. But a child traveling with her mother does not require one.”

“The steamship’s purchasing agent told me the passport is required of all passengers, man, woman, and child. If Violet does not have one, it’s a simple matter of presenting her birth certificate at the American Consulate to have one issued. She does have a birth certificate, doesn’t she?”

“Of course. I have it right here.”

I heard the scrape of chair legs, the click of a key, the squeak of a drawer pulled out. “Where is it?” she exclaimed.

“When did you last look?”

“There was never a reason to look. All my important documents are here, under lock and key.” She cursed, opened more drawers and slammed them.

“Calm yourself,” he said. “Another one can be issued by the consulate easily enough.”

It was hard to hear what my mother was saying. She was mumbling to herself … something about an orderly office … never misplacing anything.

“You’re losing your mind, Lulu,” Fairweather said. “Come here. We can fix this easily enough.”

She mumbled again and all I could hear was the word stolen.

“Come now, Lu darling, be rational. Why would anyone want to steal Violet’s birth certificate? It doesn’t make sense. Put it out of your mind. I can get both her birth certificate and passport from the consulate tomorrow. What name did you put on the birth certificate? That’s all I need to know.”

I heard her say the name “Tanner,” and “husband” and “American.”

“Married?” Fairweather said. “I knew you loved him and the two of you lived together. But you certainly went to extremes for Violet’s sake. Well, that’s all good to hear. It means she is an American and of legitimate birth, a citizen. Just think how difficult it would have been if you had used the name of her real father, the Chinese one.”

I felt punched by his words. Why did this despicable man know so much about me?

In the evening, Fairweather returned with a downcast face. He and my mother went to her office. I took my usual position in Boulevard. I had already taken care earlier in the day to put the doors ajar and part the curtains. “They have no record of birth for Violet,” he said.

“That’s impossible. Are you sure you used the right name?” She wrote furiously on a sheet of paper and showed it to him.

“I used the very name and spelled it correctly, as you’ve written it. There is no record for Violet, no child at all for Lulu Minturn. I was thorough and checked that as well.”

“How stupid of me,” Mother said. “We used my given name, Lucretia, on both the marriage certificate and her birth certificate. Here, I’ll write it down.”

“Lucretia! I must confess, the name doesn’t suit you. What else have you kept from me? Another husband? Any more names I can use to investigate further?”

“This is absurd. I’ll go down immediately and get the damn certificate myself.”

“Lulu darling, there is no point in doing so. They likely lost a box of records, and no amount of strong-arming is going to unearth it in time for your departure from Shanghai.”

“If we cannot get her a passport,” Mother said, “we are not leaving. We’ll simply have to wait.”

She would wait for me. She loved me. This was proof I had never had before.

“I figured you would say that, so I’ve come up with my own timely solution. I’ve found someone highly placed, a genuine pooh-bah who has agreed to help. I cannot reveal his identity—that’s how important he is. But I did him a favor once, which I have kept secret for many years—an indiscretion involving the son of a man whose name you would recognize, a Chinese celestial to many. So the pooh-bah and I are excellent friends. He assures me we can obtain the necessary paperwork that will allow Violet to enter the United States. I simply have to declare that I am her father.”

I nearly shouted in disgust. My mother laughed. “How fortunate that is not the truth.”

“Why do you insult your daughter’s savior? I’ve been going to a great deal of trouble to help.”

“And I am waiting for you to tell me how you would accomplish that and what you want in exchange for your trumped-up fatherhood. I won’t deceive myself into thinking our catapulting passion the other night is compensation enough.”

“Another round of that will be. I take nothing as profit. The money needed is for necessary expenses only.”

“By the way, since honesty is at issue here, what is your real name, the one you propose to give Violet?”

“Believe it or not, it really is Fairweather, Arthur Fairweather. I turned it into a joke before others could make it one.”

The fake father laid out his plans. Mother would have to give him the money now to purchase the two cabins on the ship and to compensate the pooh-bah. He would deliver the tickets in the morning and whisk me to the consulate. At noon, she should send the trunks on to the ship and board early to safeguard the cabins from squatters. Fairweather sounded too lighthearted, too practiced to be telling the truth. He wanted her money.

“Do you doubt that I can accomplish this?”

“Why would I not go to the consulate as her mother?”

“Forgive me for being frank, Lulu dear, but the American government is not inclined to show the new Chinese government that it provides special favors to those whose establishments cater to happiness of the flesh. Everyone has suddenly developed shining morals. You are too famous, too notorious. I do not think my pooh-bah friend would push the limits of his position. Violet will be registered under my name and I can say that her mother is my late wife, Camille—and yes, I had a wife, but I will not talk about her now. Once we have both her birth certificate and passport, Violet and I shall board the ship as father and sweet child and then happily rejoin you. Why are you frowning? Of course I am coming with you, darling. Why am I going to all this trouble? Do you still not believe that I truly love you and want to be by your side forever?”

There was a long silence, and I imagined they were kissing. Why did she believe him without question? Did a few kisses once again empty her brain that quickly? Was she going to introduce this crook to her son as “your sister’s dear devoted father”?

“Violet and I will share a cabin,” my mother said at last, “and you will have the other to yourself—in consideration of the late Mrs. Fairweather and my notoriety, as you put it.”

“You want me to woo you all the way to San Francisco, is that it?”

Silence followed. They were kissing again, I was sure of it.

“Let’s get to the business end of this,” she said. “What do I owe you for this show of affection?”

“It’s fairly straightforward. The cost of the cabins, the monetary gratitude to the pooh-bah, and his inflated price of whatever bribe he had to pay someone else. Influence of this sort does not come cheaply or honestly. When you see the sum, you may think the berths are dipped in gold. It’s a painful amount, and it has to be paid in the old standard of Mexican silver dollars. No one knows how long the new currency will hold.”

More silence followed. My mother cursed. Fairweather went over the details again. She pointedly asked how much of that amount was profit to him, to which he rumbled with anger at her ingratitude for all he was doing. Not only was he calling in all his favors, he stated, but he was also leaving Shanghai a pauper. He was due to be paid a large sum in two weeks. But for her, he was leaving that behind, as well as unpaid bills, which meant he had little chance of ever showing his face in Shanghai again. That was proof of how much he loved her.

Silence followed. I was nervous she would give in to his lies. “Once we’re on the boat,” she said at last, “I’ll show my gratitude. And if you have duped me, you will know that my revenge has no limits.”

The next morning, I argued with her over the wretched plan. Mother was already dressed in her chosen travel costume: a cornflower-blue skirt and long jacket. Her hat, shoes, and gloves were cream-colored kid leather. She looked as if she were going to the races. I was supposed to wear a ridiculous sailor blouse and skirt, which Fairweather had sent over. He said it would make me look like a patriotic American girl, a guise that was necessary to douse all doubt that I was anything less than snowy white. I was certain he wanted me to wear the cheap dress to humiliate me.

“I don’t trust him,” I said, as Golden Dove helped me into the dress. I laid out my argument. Did anyone go to the consulate to verify that what he had said was true? Maybe there was a birth certificate. And who was this influential man he claims to know? The only reason he was doing this was for money. How could she be sure he would not abscond with the money?

“Do you really think I haven’t asked all those questions and five times again more?” She acted annoyed. But I saw her eyes dart about, looking for danger in dark corners. She was frightened. She had doubts. “I’ve gone over it,” she continued, speaking quickly, “looking for every possible rat hole he can jump into.” She rambled about her suspicions. Cracked Egg had sent people out to learn if the tickets were genuine. They were indeed reserved, paid by someone expecting to get reimbursed at twice the cost, not thrice, as Fairweather had said. That was his usual greed, and she could overlook that as long as she received the tickets. She confirmed that the passports were indeed required. And Golden Dove had already gone to the consulate to see if it was true that my birth certificate could not be found. Unfortunately, they would not give such information to anyone but the child’s American parents.

“Why would Fairweather go to the trouble of doing all this?” my mother said, and a moment later, she answered herself: “Pulling strings is his favorite game, as is looping them, one through the other. What do you think, Golden Dove? Should I trust him?”

“Never with love,” she said. “But if he comes here with the tickets, that’s a sign he’s capable of performing what he says. If he does not bring the tickets, Cracked Egg will bring back the money and a slice of his nose.”

“Why do we have to leave right away?” I cried. “If we wait, we won’t need his help. All this is for Teddy. For Teddy, I have to pretend Fairweather is my father. For Teddy, I have to give up Carlotta and suffer heartbreak.”

“Violet, don’t become hysterical. This is for all of us.” She was fiddling with her gloves. She was nervous, too. “If we cannot get your documents, the answer is absolute: We will not go until we obtain them.” A button popped off one of her gloves. She removed the gloves and tossed them onto her desk.

“But why do we have to hurry now? Teddy will still be in San Francisco.”

She had her back to me. “Shanghai is changing. There may not be a place for us here anymore. In San Francisco, we will start afresh.”

I prayed Fairweather would not come. Let him abscond with the money and prove his stripes. But he showed up promptly at nine, when Golden Dove and I were in Mother’s office. He sat down and handed my mother an envelope.

She frowned. “This is a ticket for only one cabin and one berth.”

“Lulu darling, how can you still not trust me? If you had both tickets, how would my daughter, Violet, and I board later?” He pulled the other tickets from his breast pocket and held them up. “You need only knock on my cabin door to verify your daughter and humble servant are there.” He stood and put on his hat. “Violet and I better make haste to the consulate or this whole effort will be for naught.”

Everything was happening too quickly. I stared hard at my mother. No, don’t let him take me, I wanted to beg. She gave me a look of resignation. My heart beat so fast I was dizzy. I scooped up Carlotta, who had been sleeping under the writing table, and I began to sob, rubbing tears into her coat. A manservant whisked away my valise.

“No tears for me?” Golden Dove said. I had never even considered she was not coming with us. Of course she was not. She and my mother were like sisters. She was like an aunt to me. I went to her and threw my arms around her, thanking her for her care. I could not comprehend I would not see her after today, not for a while, and maybe forever.

“Will you come to San Francisco soon?” I asked tearfully.

“I have no desire to go there. So you’ll have to return to Shanghai to see me.”

Golden Dove and my mother walked down the stairs with me. I clutched Carlotta so hard she squirmed. At the gate, I saw that the courtesans and their attendants had already gathered for my farewell. I thanked Cracked Egg for keeping me safe. He smiled, but his eyes were sad. Little Ocean, who loved Carlotta, stood by. I pressed my face into Carlotta’s fur: “I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” I promised I would always love her and that I would return for her. But I knew I would probably never see her again. Little Ocean held out her arms, and Carlotta rolled into them. She showed no distress in my leaving and this hurt my heart. But as my mother and I walked through the gate, I heard Carlotta cry out. I turned around and she was twisting her body, trying to reach me. My mother put her arm around my waist and firmly led me forward. The gate opened and a chorus of beauties shouted, “Come back!” “Don’t forget us!” “Don’t get too fat!” “Bring me back a lucky star!”

“It won’t take long,” my mother assured me. I saw a small knot of worry in her forehead. She stroked my face. “I’ve asked Cracked Egg to wait at the consulate and to send a message to me once you have your passport. I won’t board until I have that message. You and Fairweather will go directly to the boat, and we’ll look for each other at the back of the boat and stand together as the ship gets under way.”

“Mother …,” I protested.

“I won’t leave until you are beside me,” she said firmly. “I promise.” She kissed my forehead. “Don’t worry.”

Fairweather led me to the carriage. I turned back and saw my mother waving. I saw the knot on her brow.

“Five o’clock, at the back of the boat!” she called out. Above her fading words, I heard Carlotta howl.