Читать книгу A Time of Ghosts - Hok-Pang Tang - Страница 4

My aunt, the oldest of three sisters, was an elegant and lively woman in her youth, but she had a heart of acid. She possessed the three desirable graces of a marriageable daughter of the Manchus: She was adept at serving opium, she had tiny bound feet, and her silk embroidery was both intricately detailed and beautiful.

Her body was adorned with jasmine-scented garments of the finest silk, and the correctness of her coiffure was always set off with a single fresh blossom from the garden. It is remarkable what a paradox she was – so enticing and fragrant on the outside, so completely icy, calculating and selfish inside.

Guests saw only her delicate smile and immaculate behavior, but the house servants, who in those days were actually slaves, saw the real woman – the tyrant who flew into a rage if something was accidentally dropped or spilled; who, if any aspect of a maid’s behavior did not please, would in private lift soft, manicured fingers to withdraw a needle-sharp hairpin, and then jab it into an unfortunate servant’s cheek or hand.

One of her favorite punishments for those who displeased her was to take the red-hot implement for serving opium, and with it sear a small spot on the skin of the offender – always behind the ear or on the neck, where the evidence would be hidden by hair.

Men were irresistibly drawn to her. She was unendingly flirtatious, and easily won the love and desire of a handsome young man who was my grandfather’s bodyguard. And just as easily she broke his heart by complying with my grandmother’s wishes and marrying the man to whom she had been engaged as a child, for this was still the era of arranged marriages. And why should she be interested in a poor servant for anything but flirtatious pleasure? Her groom-to-be was the son of a wealthy antique dealer, and could keep her in the manner her family background warranted.

Actually my grandmother, a truly tough old bird, did not look past the obvious wealth of the groom-to-be’s family. Had she looked a little closer she would have found that his wealthy connoisseur father had started out as a street peddler with two baskets of old junk hanging on a stick across his shoulders. He had walked the roads crying his trade as a buyer of antiques (which was something of an exaggeration) and of old metal (which was true). And it was this low-class occupation that made his fortune.

One day that he purchased nine unusually heavy, blackened old figures of water buffalo. When he got them home he tested one to see of what metal it was made – perhaps brass or pewter? Scratching through the dark coating, he nearly fell over when he saw the glint of pure gold! And that is how a junk dealer from the streets became wealthy enough to marry his son to an aristocratic beauty of Manchu lineage.

My aunt’s extravagant wedding was an explosion of opulence, a public show of wealth that lasted three days and nights. The banquet tables were covered with expensive gourmet delicacies – among them fish lips, bear’s paws, and camel’s hump. It took fifty people to carry the bride’s dowry of household objects, and my grandfather presented her with five male and twelve female servants.

Eight years later my aunt was back living in my grandfather’s house. The rich husband my grandmother had so cunningly chosen for her proved to be an alcoholic and an opium addict who wasted the days and nights lounging with prostitutes or gambling his fortune away at the cricket fights. Betting on cricket fights may sound like a child’s game, but in only one wager my aunt’s weak-willed husband lost a house. While the money flowed away, my aunt looked about in dismay as her hopes for a high life were drowned in streams of liquor and clouds of opium smoke through which she could almost hear the high, shrill giggling of expensive prostitutes.

She managed to pull together what little was left, and with her children, now numbering three small boys and two daughters, she walked out on the son of the lucky junk seller and never went back.

Within two years her husband was destitute and dying of starvation. When at last word of his death came to my grandfather’s house in Canton, my aunt prepared the children to attend his funeral, which was far out in the countryside. The children were in a great hurry to get there, not because of any respect or love for their father, but because a new movie was opening that day in Canton, and they wanted to return in time to catch the beginning.

That my mother ever met my father is in itself surprising. She was the third of the three sisters. My aunt, of course, had already been married off. I tend to speak of “my aunt” as though there was only one. That is because the second sister was a weak and colorless individual who failed to make a strong impression on me. She was pliant and always willing to please, seemingly with no mind of her own. Some might have seen that as an advantage, had her physical appearance not betrayed even those dubious virtues. She was uncompromisingly plain, an insignificant shadow in the bright light of my older aunt’s strong personality.

No marriage was arranged for this second sister for the blunt reason that no one found her at all interesting, neither mothers nor sons. It appeared that she would quietly wend her obedient and obscure way into spinsterhood, and indeed I am sure that would have happened had my mother not inherited some of my grandfather’s liberal notions.

Mother had a marriage already arranged for her in childhood. It was my grandmother again who had chosen a suitable young man of status and money. But Granny did not reckon with her third daughter’s sense of independence.

When the time for her marriage drew near, the girl made it abundantly clear that she had no desire to marry a man she had not chosen herself and for whom she felt nothing at all. When that declaration had no effect on my grandmother’s wedding preparations, Mother chose a direct solution – she ran away from home.

Grandmother, faced with terrible social embarrassment and loss of face as a consequence of her daughter’s throwing over the groom, took the only available course: She substituted the homely second daughter, and threw in a sizable quantity of money and goods to lend some beauty to those all-too-wholesome cheeks.

Meanwhile, my mother hid out in a school for teachers a good distance to the north of Canton. Her feet were not bound, nor her mind. Like my grandfather, she believed in the equality of women and wanted to make her own destiny. Through studying teaching she hoped to earn her own living. She persisted in that course and eventually obtained a job in a small school in the countryside.

Those were the days when local lords, robber barons as they might better be called, ruled the districts. The entire school staff was invited to a party given by such a local governor. When they arrived, they discovered that it was the pleasure of the host that they play mahjong. Not for fun, but for money. Within a few minutes my mother lost two month’s salary.

After the party she could not hold back the tears. She badly needed the funds she had been compelled to wager. Her tears were noticed and gently dabbed away by the young principal of the school, who also kindly restored her lost money (that he did so by dipping into the school funds may now seem unethical, but in those days such a practice was simply self-defense). The gallant principal was my father-to-be.

Of course they fell in love. For a short time their lives were filled with happiness, though their pockets were nearly empty. The quiet romance of teacher and principal could not go on forever, though. A formal declaration of intent to marry had to be made to the parents. No one in those days could live together without benefit of marriage and remain respectable.

Grandmother was firmly opposed. She was still put out by the jilting of her chosen bridegroom. And now her unpredictable daughter was asking to marry, of all things, a poor school principal who was, moreover, a Han Chinese and not a Manchu! It was all most distressing and frustrating. So Granny decided to put a stop to it.

She called in an astrologer to judge the horoscope of her daughter’s chosen. The verdict was couched in suitably poetic terms: The groom was found to be an “iron broom.” That meant he would be as harmful to my mother as an iron broom would be to a soft wooden floor, and the astrologer further added that if the marriage took place, the bride would die soon after.

But my father, though poor, was clever and not to be outdone. He brought in another astrologer who checked the daughter’s horoscope and discovered that she was a “brass floor” to my father’s “iron broom.” That meant quite simply that she was of strong enough material to be a match for my father.

Granny, for some inexplicable reason, gave in. Perhaps she was tired of fighting, or perhaps she developed a grudging liking for my father when she found he was very skilled at serving her opium (she first thought it meant he was an addict, until she found that he acquired his ability by waiting on his uncle while never taking opium himself).

She initially asked a very high bride price from my father, but finally abandoned that requirement and told the couple they could marry if the wedding were elaborate and expensive enough to permit her to “save face.” My parents beggared themselves selling all their possessions to get money for a spectacular event. And spectacular it appeared, too, when the wedding finally took place amid the bursting of two-story-high strings of firecrackers. Only a few of the spectators realized that the rows of servants bearing wedding gifts were actually friends of my father who were simply playing the part, or that the piles of expensive gifts were borrowed from shops and had to be returned the next day! Even so, the wedding was phenomenally costly.

It had hardly ended when some relatives and friends – unaware of the wedded couple’s reduced circumstances – showed up expecting gifts, now that the groom had become part of so wealthy a family. To avoid them, my parents left the area and went to the city of Tientsin in the North. There they lived in genuine poverty in a fleabag hotel while they looked unsuccessfully for work. One night the hotel caught fire, either accidentally, or more likely because the owner had torched it for the insurance money. Though the young couple escaped with their lives, they lost all but the clothes they were wearing.

In Tientsin lived my father’s brother. He was an exciting man, full of life and the desire to taste its multitude of pleasures. Nature had given him a handsome face, and he used it to attract all the enjoyment life could offer. He was quite wealthy, having been tutor to the son of Sun Yat-Sen, first president of the Chinese Republic. By his own design he never married, but collected women as some men collect fine works of art. He seemed never to miss the simple joys of a family, and one or another beautiful prostitute was always at his side – though prostitute seems far too crude a word for the ravishing courtesans who satisfied his sophisticated tastes.

He should, of course, have helped my father and mother in their need. But he thought they were foolish to have wasted so much money on their marriage. He told my father quite flatly, “You are a man now. You must succeed or fail on your own!” That did not prevent him from providing the young couple with the ordinary hospitality due relatives, and from time to time he eased their aching stomachs with a dinner invitation.

Then there were the casinos. My father was actually a rather accomplished gambler, and no matter how little money the newlyweds had, he seemed always able to come up with a small amount to bet in hope of quickly improving their situation. In doing so, he frequently ran into his brother, who was intently engaged in the same practice, though for entertainment rather than from need.

Through these encounters my father came to know something of the fascinating world in which my uncle lived – a world disconcerting to the conservative mind, a world in which the hidden desires of the heart were made real. One of the most interesting inhabitants was an actor, a quite famous one. His name was Yen Gai Mei. Even today those familiar with Peking Opera will nod in recognition when the name is mentioned.

Peking Opera in those days was a riot of life and color, and its greatest performers were held in an awe like that now accorded movie stars. It was a fairy-tale land of rich costumes and ancient stories interwoven with symbolic movements and the clack of wood, the crash of cymbals, and high falsetto voices that filled the theater with song. In that surreal and strangely beautiful landscape Yen Gai Mei moved with the grace and assurance of a true artist. The audience recognized this, and showered him with acclaim.

My uncle was then involved with a particularly lovely and attentive mistress. Together they frequented the theater where Mei performed. Mei was a man who played women's roles. He did it all perfectly – the enticing movements of the body, the subtle fire in the eyes that tempts and charms at the same time. He had studied the qualities of women so carefully and had distilled their essence so finely that he seemed able to become more of a woman than any example one might encounter in the real world. And so my uncle fell in love with him – and so did my uncle’s mistress. His acting was, after all, a great talent, and she admired talent. And though on the stage Mei was more woman than any woman can be, off the stage he was a handsome and virile man with a masculine personality that played a perfect yang to the yin of his theater presence – and rumor had it that his physical endowment was proportionate to his talent.

I will not try to account for any of this, but will just state what happened. My uncle and his mistress were frequently in the first seats of the theater, and came to know Yen Gai Mei quite well. That is how my father came to know him too, and how he developed a respect for his talent and his personality that brought interesting consequences later in life.

The event that kindled this esteem occurred in dark and troubled times. In 1937 the Japanese, who had been nourished so much in art and culture by my country through the centuries, turned on China like a psychotic son attacking his mother with a knife. The advance was brutal and murderous, and city after city fell into the hands of the invaders.

When Tientsin came under Japanese control, superficially life continued as before. But the Chinese residents knew all too well how many of their countrymen had been slaughtered, and though the frivolous night life continued in the streets of the city, it was tinged with an air of frenzy brought on by a sense of impending doom.

One evening habitués of the Opera were startled to see a group of Japanese officers and soldiers enter the theater. No one argued when they took seats usually occupied by regulars, and the performance began as though nothing had changed.

Yen Gai Mei was unusually superb that evening, perhaps to show the Japanese what a great culture they were disturbing. It would have been better had his performance been at least slightly flawed. As it was, his consummate skill only served to draw the dangerous attention of the head officer to him.

After the opera, word came backstage that Mei was invited to a private party given by the Japanese. He refused. How could he associate with those who had a knife to China’s throat and were watching the great country slowly bleed to death? Not only did his own ethics rebel, but his audience would inevitably see him as a collaborator.

His refusal was taken as a stinging insult by the Japanese. They threatened to close down the theater. This meant the entire company would be out of work in hard and perilous times. They appealed to Mei, pointing out to him that it would cost them their livelihood and would be the death of the theater. It put him in a terrible dilemma, but seeing the pleading faces all around changed his mind. He would go to the entertainment given by the invaders.

The party proved a chance for a Japanese officer moved by Mei’s remarkable personality to meet him privately. Like my uncle and his mistress, this very disciplined man from the Land of the Rising Sun had also become helplessly attracted to the stunning actor. Sitting close to Mei and talking with him intimately, he found the attraction growing even deeper. And Mei, listening to the gentle-voiced young Japanese, found it strangely difficult to maintain his own reserve. Though he tried to keep a firm wall of inner hatred between himself and the officer, it slowly crumbled as the handsome foreigner explained in a quiet, serious voice that he had deep misgivings about how the war was being waged. He was, it turned out, quite opposed to much that the Japanese army was doing in China – opposed certainly to the cruelty and slaughter inflicted on the Chinese people. Mei found that as his own hatred diminished, its place was taken by a certain wistful attraction. And as their eyes met, there was no mistaking the look that bound them suddenly together.

It was a most awkward situation. How could a famous star of the Peking Opera, a symbol of traditional China, be in love with a Japanese invader? He could not resist the leading of his heart, but felt desperately the need for some control. He was keenly aware of his responsibility to his own people.

As it happened, a sort of compromise was reached. Mei was jailed, and the theater company was given permission to continue. Thus Mei was publicly seen as a victim of the Japanese and a faithful son of China who had refused collaboration. On the other hand, his jailing permitted the officer to meet him privately, and so they carried on their affair away from the probing eyes of the world.

It may seem to some a great and peculiar weakness for the young Japanese officer to have fallen in love with what we now vulgarly term a female impersonator, but one never knows where a fork in the road of life will lead.

My father, to avoid any dealings with the puppet government, escaped to a region not occupied by the Japanese, and waited there until the war ended. My mother returned to my grandfather’s house, and there I was born in 1941. Soon after, Mother took up business and began buying and selling, though refusing to buy, deal in, or even use any Japanese products.

After the Japanese were defeated, Father returned to Tientsin and got a government job seizing and reselling country estates forfeited by collaborators, opportunists who had grown rich on China’s misfortune. Joined by his clever wife and her keen business sense, he soon made a great deal of money. My parents were now wealthy. Seeing that many around them were jealous of their success, they returned south to Canton, joining my grandparents in the old mansion on the Pearl River. Grandfather was still a very rich and powerful man with many contacts, even long after the collapse of the Ch’ing Dynasty.

My mother and father firmly believed the Chinese proverb, “Do not let people see your money.” Because of their secretiveness, they made property deals in the names of their children, so no one would see how much money they had. Their wealth had come quickly, but they knew it could go quickly too.

Mother immersed herself in business. She dealt freely in property, jewelry, foreign currency, gold and antiques, but steadfastly refused to make money from rice, oil, fabric, or medications, essentials for the poor. That was her way – never to profit from the necessities of life and to be ever willing to give to those in need.

We always had plenty of food in our house. Mother often ordered the servants to cook up huge pots of rice porridge to serve the poor, for whom she had a genuine compassion. But if she happened to see a young, strong beggar on the street, he was in trouble. She would go straight up to him and give him a severe tongue lashing and a long lecture on how he should be working. She could not tolerate parasites.

Father had become involved in law. At this time, the case of the Japanese officer who had fallen in love with Yen Gai Mei came before the court. My father – knowing the subtext of the matter – defended him fervently, pointing out his client’s opposition to the invasion and his release of Chinese prisoners. He won the case, and the officer was freed to return to Japan.

Because of his repeated success in such cases, Father was appointed by the court to defend collaborators. He rose quickly in the profession, became a partner in a legal firm, and hired another young lawyer to work for him.

I was curious why he defended not only Japanese, but even Chinese collaborators, considered beneath excrement. I asked him, “In order to survive, would you betray your country?”

He paused thoughtfully, then replied, “I am not in that position. Unless one is in that position, he should not answer. Humans will do what they must to survive, especially if wife and family are involved. Maybe it is just a lucky chance that I was not put in a position where I was tempted to betray my country.”

My father always had that disturbing way of answering my questions without really answering them. I did not understand him, and secretly wondered if he was a coward.

As he rose even higher and became a judge, he always emphasized educating prisoners, not just punishing them. It was an unpopular concept at the time.

My mother’s business dealings grew as well. Her way was not to adjust spending to income, but to adjust her income to what she wished to spend. She was the family financier, my father’s consultant and the decision maker. He trusted her judgment implicitly. She was a tough businesswoman, which made her lots of enemies, but because of my father’s high position they could do little more than hide their anger.

My parents worked together in disharmonious harmony. He was a connoisseur of old paintings, antiques and jade, but only for pleasure. He had no business sense. Mother, however, put his knowledge to practical use.

She had many connections among the last remnants of the old Ch’ing Dynasty, with whom she still conversed in Manchu. Under the old regime they were given lands and a pension, but were not allowed to do business. Now that the government had changed, the pension was gone and they had to sell their antiques to survive. These were not just old things, but genuine, rare and costly works of art, most originally from the palace collections. Many had been specially made for imperial use and came with detailed histories.

Among these were many fakes, and one had to be learned and experienced to recognize them. Father was accomplished in that skill, but being an important judge, he could not go to see the objects himself.

Mother knew nothing of art works, but she knew every family that owned them. She paid them not according to the value of the item, but according to their need. If the family was poor, she paid a great price; if it was rich, she paid little. So sometimes she overpaid, sometimes underpaid. My father chided her for this, but it all seemed to even out in the end, and he was, in any case, hopeless as an antique dealer. He felt that taking money showed disrespect for the art. He preferred to sell fine things at a low price to those who really understood and appreciated them rather than to make an immense profit from mere “collectors.” He seemed to regard each object as an orphan in need of a suitable family, or as a pretty bride for whom a worthy groom must be found. I could never understand why he preferred selling art objects to keeping them, given that money was not a concern to him. His interest seemed merely that they find a good home.

It can easily be seen that separately, each of my parents was incomplete, but together they made a formidable team. People flocked to hire them, knowing that they could handle wills and property matters as well as deal with art objects.

Father also arranged legal guardians for orphans and legal affairs for widows. Because of the latter, he was so constantly surrounded by trusting and admiring women that he received the nickname “Sweet Dumpling,” a food favored by women. It was a good name, reflecting his soft personality and how much people liked him. But in spite of all the feminine company, he never took advantage of the situation, and consequently was teased mercilessly by his cronies, who joked that he was afraid of his wife.

My mother, by contrast, was nicknamed “The Lady Tiger” for her authoritative business attitude and protectiveness of her family. She was closely involved with my father’s legal profession, and clients soon found that when they came to negotiate with my father, they ended up negotiating with my mother. Without her approval there was no agreement. She made his appointments, and soon earned another nickname – “The Lawyer’s Grandmother” – meaning she was the real power in the office. People said that she could “save you or kill you.” She had her own special interest in real estate dealings, and because of her close involvement in legal matters, she knew right away when property was coming on the market. Then she was like a tiger smelling a deer, very excited and enthusiastic.

She was a clever businesswoman and never lost a single penny. That earned her a reputation as an extremely tough opponent. It was rumored that “she will eat you alive and chew up the bones.”

She was certainly nothing like the image of “Mother” that most people have from childhood. She abhorred time-wasting. I remember watching her feed my little brother with one hand as she nursed a baby on her lap while working on legal documents with the other hand.

There was no need for her to work so hard. We had servants. It was her choice. She was intolerant of weakness in others and seemed to fear any trace of it in herself. So firm was her struggle against it that when she became ill, which was seldom, rather than going to bed she would chop wood, mop the floor, or do a heavy laundry, not bothering to call a doctor.

No servant dared be lazy when she was about. She had them out of bed at five in the morning and did not permit anyone to take a break during the day. Those who met her high standards were given little rewards.

If we, the members of her own family, were ill, she wanted us to get up and walk around instead of lying in bed. It was not that she did not care about us. It was just that because she was so immensely strong, she could not comprehend weakness in others. While I never heard her fight with my father about anything, I could find no kindness nor gentleness in her in those days.

I well remember one instance when she was screaming and fighting with the military police. My father had not been part of the government collaboration during the Japanese invasion, so when it ended he was assigned to assist in recovering property taken over by the puppet government. He had the power to release boycotted goods, and that got him into trouble. People would come to him in distress, claiming that if goods were not released, their families would starve. He could not openly help them, but carelessly and intentionally left his official seal in an unlocked drawer. His secretary then covertly used it to stamp release documents, perhaps getting some under-the-table cash in return.

Inevitably word of this came to the federal government, and there was an investigation. The secret police came to our home to arrest my father. My mother, tipped off ahead of time, concealed him in the house.

Before the police arrived, my mother found the investigation had been instigated by a supposed friend of my father. She telephoned him and managed to convince him to come, though unwillingly, to our house. Once she had him inside, she began raving at him, shrieking, “Do you want me to become a widow? Do you want these children to be orphans? Where have you taken my husband?”

The police, who came in just at that moment to arrest my father, heard her screaming and assumed, of course, that my father had already been arrested. Why else would my mother be so obviously beside herself, screaming that her husband had been taken?

On top of that, Mother had telephoned all of my father’s good and powerful friends, and they began arriving at our house in the middle of the uproar, adding even more to the general chaos. My mother, still pretending that Father was gone, was pushing to have the arrest warrant canceled.

The uncertain official backed off, but did not cancel the warrant. He placed a guard in front of our home for three days, but Mother managed to buy off the man assigned to search, and used the influence of friends to have the guard removed. Then she slipped my father out of the house and off to Hong Kong. Once he was gone, she applied her money and power to political games. Within two months she had the case cleared up, and my father returned from Hong Kong a free man. Years later when I was a young man, he confessed to me that without my mother he simply could not have survived.

Her influence caused my father to take the case that made him famous. The distraught client in that matter was a mailman accused of stealing a letter containing an American-born Chinese man’s cashier’s check in the amount of five thousand dollars, which in those days was worth much more. The mailman received the blame because the check was addressed to a stop on his route.

The poor man, faced with disaster, could not afford a lawyer. His terrified relations came to my mother in tears. They had sold their belongings to scrape together a small sum of money that they offered Mother, begging my father, through her, to accept the case.

Because of my mother he took it. He lost the first round, but did not give up. By careful investigation he discovered that between the time the letter containing the check arrived at the post office and the time the mailman picked it up for delivery, there was a gap of five minutes. That could only mean that the postmaster had used that brief interim to open the letter and remove the check. Father appealed. His suspicions concerning the postmaster proved correct, and he won the case.

He became an instant celebrity to members of the Mailman’s Association. They gave him a huge and elaborate banquet, and from that day on, any letter sent to my father from anywhere in China needed no address beyond just his name to be correctly delivered.

When I heard my parents conversing in Beijing dialect or in Manchu so that I could not understand, I always knew some new business venture or other important matter was afoot.

Those years after the Japanese invasion ended were an amazing time of wealth and luxury for us. A fortuneteller once told my father that, like a phoenix, his luck was always in fire and war – that he would be illumined by the same conflagration that destroyed others. My father wondered at those words, which seemed so paradoxical to one whose nature was gentle, peaceful and scholarly.