The Concubine's Daughter (38 page)

Ben encouraged her interest, amazed at how well she understood the conflict and its effect on international trade, without losing sight of the simple principles of haggling—the giving and taking of face, and the age-old principle of “squeeze,” the basic belief that while one hand washes the other, all will be well with the world.

She was, Ben insisted, a force to be reckoned with. At this compliment, she scrunched up her nose and frowned quite ferociously, as she did whenever she was solving a new problem—an unconscious habit that he found enchanting. She finally replied, “It is what I think you call ‘common sense,’ and of course being allowed to read and understand the abacus.” Her frown persisted. “It a great pity that Chinese females are not taught these basic necessities as soon as they can talk. We seem to deal with life’s conundrums much better than Chinese men.”

Ben had given her still another gift—simpler and yet more important than all the others: a diary, neither too large nor too small, its pages stiff and white and waiting to be filled with a lifetime of thoughts and memories. It had a clasp of solid gold and a scarlet leather cover with her name richly embossed in more gold.

Some of her notes were written in Chinese and others in English. She had developed her skills with the calligrapher’s brush, and carefully decorated each entry with watercolors as exquisitely detailed as she could make them. In the peace and quiet of the pavilion, with Yin and Yang asleep on the cushions beside her, she chose each thought with the intensity of the confidences she had shared with Pai-Ling beneath the peppercorns and beside the river. Without knowing why, she was certain that these pages would be read by a daughter of her own some day.

On his routine visits, Dr. McCallum found her in excellent health and apparently fine spirits. “It appears to me that if she were any happier and healthier, my dear old chap, you would be hard-pressed to keep up with her.” Mac was speaking to Ben on the balcony, where he shared a customary dram before departing. It was agreed that the child would be delivered in the mother’s own bed—a great relief to Li.

The more she learned about the world outside the walls of the Villa
Formosa, the more it worried her. She was concerned not for herself, but for the pride and the dignity of the man she had learned to love more than she could find the words to say. She did not need to be told that since their marriage, those he had thought of as friends no longer sought him out. The men among them treated her politely with due respect to Ben, but could scarcely hide the awkwardness in their eyes. Some clearly admired her but for all the wrong reasons. The grand opening of the Villa Formosa, and the dinner parties he had thrown so lavishly to introduce her, had been uncomfortable failures. The Western wives or escorts among the guests could think of nothing to say to her, and the
tai-tais
of his Chinese associates conveyed all they had to say with coldly glittering eyes and either silent distaste or cunning hostility.

The doctor’s wife, an overweight lady known for her generous charity work, clearly spoke for them all when she said, “Ben’s such a fool. He could have taken her as a concubine, even his mistress, and got away with it. Why on earth did he have to marry the poor little creature? He will regret it, mark my words.”

Li overheard these comments and many like them, either because tongues were loosened and voices raised by too many cocktails, or because they did not know or care that the “poor little creature” spoke English remarkably well, and understood all too clearly the meaning of words such as “hypocrisy,” “intolerance,” “snobbery,” and “bigotry.” Since her pregnancy, there had been no more dinners and they had not been invited to any social gatherings. Li was thankful for the respite, and Ben did not seem to miss the company. He kept his working days short, returning in time to watch the sun dip beneath the horizon over a drink in the pavilion and dinner in the grand dining room.

If he was aware of her position in the eyes of his friends and important acquaintances, he said nothing of it. Content as he appeared to be, Li recognized that this social isolation could become increasingly difficult for him. Determined to make herself a
tai-tai
to be proud of, she doubled her studies, learning to think and speak as others did. If she could not make them like her, she would make them respect her … but they would no longer ignore her.

The Pavilion of Joyful Moments had become Li’s private sanctuary. Each morning at daybreak she awakened and bathed, a habit from her life beneath the willows that she had no wish to change. She walked with Yin and Yang through the Ti-Yuan gardens to help Ah-Kin feed the fish, where dragonflies were already busy among opening lotus. She passed through moon gates and over scarlet bridges, to the five-bar gate and into the spinney of silver birch, where she waded among patches of bluebells before the dew had fallen from the leaves.

She took her breakfast with Ben on his balcony, or with the Fish if he had left early. Then she rested and read, exchanging letters with Winifred Bramble, who always sent snapshots of her garden and the cottage in the village of Sparrows Green. Seeing Li’s pleasure in receiving the photographs, Ben bought her the latest-model Kodak, and soon she was sending pictures of her own to England.

In the little Temple of Pai-Ling, she spoke with her mother and her ancestors, returning each evening to fill the cup with special wine and burn incense with her prayers. She was overjoyed when a package arrived, containing the ivory tablet bearing her mother’s family name and a framed photograph in which she could see Pai-Ling’s proud but lonely smile. With it were the tablets of her forefathers, faded and dimmed by generations of joss-stick smoke, that now graced the altar at the golden feet of Kuan-Yin, beside the box of shells and its precious contents.

Number-Three Wife had sent the package, along with a letter saying the Ling family had not been hard to find and were not sorry to part with these memories of one who had caused them so much trouble. The letter also bore welcome news from the House of the Kindly Moon. The little house by the river and its gardens continued to be blessed, and the
mung-cha-cha
prospered. Even Little Pebble, who had been fitted with spectacles that gave her back her sight, had grown strong again, singing her songs, filling her basket, and supervising the family’s business ventures as briskly and fairly as ever before.

Turtle had needles of steel and spools of silk in every color, and taught local girls to stitch until they had mastered the art of embroidery and supplied several happiness silks every week. Mugwort and Monkey Nut oversaw a small team of older peasants producing several pairs of sandals a day. Garlic made many kinds of bamboo flutes, from small pocket-size ones for playing merry tunes to those as long as her arm that played mellow folk songs. Giant Yun tended his thriving market garden, and had also strung a row of dip nets along the banks, and set up racks for drying fish. He taught a group of eager children how to gather fruit and dig vegetables.

When the donkey cart was full, Ah-Su wrote, he loaded the sampan, and the
mung-cha-cha
puttered upriver to deliver their cocoons to Ten Willows and on to the markets where they had opened a stall to display their wares. Everyone was paid a fair wage and their rice bowls overflowed.
I have taught Little Pebble to use the abacus; no one thinks her a fool anymore and no one cheats her. And every evening when work is done and bellies are full, I teach them all to read and write and understand figures. No one speaks in whispers, and laughter is as constant as the turning of the waterwheel
.

Because of you
, the letter concluded,
the House of the Kindly Moon is filled with happiness and harmony, and each day I have shared their joy
.

The package also included a precious bundle of papers tied with a plaited reed. The letters of the
mung-cha-cha
were addressed to Crabapple, difficult but joyful to read, the words scratched as though by hungry hens. Each was signed with the name of the sender and said that Li-Xia was in every prayer.

They also sent a gift that they promised would watch over her forever. It was a fat-bellied, gaudily painted effigy—a laughing Buddha, to be found for sale in every country market, said to keep away all forms of trouble, inviting only merriment and everlasting health.

Li focused her energy on the child that grew stronger every day, allowing only thoughts of perfection and grand plans for the future to occupy
her mind. She looked forward to taking her baby aboard
Golden Sky
, to visit her cherished family on the banks of the river. She thought that Number Three might make a splendid amah for her baby now that the
mung-cha-cha
were becoming self-sufficient. And Miss Bramble, of course, would return in time to be the child’s governess. Her life seemed perfect, except for a problem as yet unsolved: Ah-Ho. Li chose to take her meals on her own balcony or with Ben on his. With much of her day spent in her sunlit study, in the pavilion, or in strolling the gardens with the chow puppies that grew more delightful with each day, there was little need to encounter the amah. But knowing that this total separation could not continue indefinitely cast a shadow not easily ignored. The closer Li came to her confinement, the more this preyed upon her mind. In avoiding any contact with her, the amah’s malice seemed even more pronounced.

Life beneath the willows and the cane of Ah-Jeh had not completely left her. Even the thought of Ah-Ho, or the sound of her voice, recalled the threat of the
sau-hai
. It always began as a small thought, remote until the strident voice of Ah-Ho came clearly from the high-walled courtyard and through the French windows. When Li opened them, the Fish would scold her and close them again, insisting that no breeze must be allowed to chill her.

The Fish sensed Li’s fear and did everything she could to drive it from her. She believed that evil spirits were responsible for all misfortune and had carefully hidden protective charms throughout the rooms. When the master found one in Li’s pillowcase, a simple slip of peach wood, he was amused at first, and replaced it respectfully.

But a few days later, when he found a similar slip in his shoe and the bedsheets scattered with dried petals of peach blossom, he became impatient and threw the slip into the garden. He had no use for such superstitions, Ben said firmly. He tore down the paper image of Chang-Tien-Shih, the master of heaven, riding a tiger and brandishing his demon-vanquishing sword, and ripped it into pieces.

When he also threw out the scrap of raw ginger that hung beside it and smashed the protective mirror placed above the door to drive off the
evil ones with their own hideous image, the Fish dropped to her knees to pray. In a loud voice the master threatened that unless this nonsense was stopped she would be sent back to the scullery. It was he and the Western doctor who would see to it that no harm came to Li and her unborn child, not joss sticks and paper gods.

After he had left, the Fish picked up the pieces of the Chang-Tien-Shih image and burned them with her prayers, begging the eight immortals to spare her mistress from the dangers to come. To both Li-Xia and the Fish, Ben’s actions invited the punishment of angry gods. The women purified the room with incense and prayed for forgiveness. They must be doubly cautious now.

Ben soon felt guilty for his intolerance, and showed his regret by bringing home a red-painted shrine to replace the paper one he had destroyed. “Forgive me for the fool that I am. There must be no place for anger between us.”

The Fish had never before seen the image of a god destroyed and flung to the ground to be stepped upon. In her mind it spelled disaster, and all her prayers and offerings could not appease Lei-Kung, the god of thunder.

C
hinese New Year was
little more than a week away. As the household staff prepared for their annual holiday, Li decided that the time had come to approach Ah-Ho. She did not want to begin another year with such an impossible situation, which was not only causing the Fish to sometimes take to her bed, but fraying her own nerves. As there seemed no hope that the head amah would come bearing a peace offering, Li would go to her.