The Dragon's Village: An Autobiographical Novel of Revolutionary China (2 page)

“Young Bob Lu and you are suited to each other. Isn't that so? If we combine forces with the Lu family we'll have more bargaining power with both sides. A Communist intermediary has talked to your uncle and tried to persuade him to stay on in Shanghai and carry on the milling business here. But for the moment we don't say yes and we don't say no. We are friendly to everyone. Who knows? They may still form a coalition government. However, I would like you to pay special attention tonight to Madame Lu and her son.”

“Auntie, may I wear my new earrings?”

“At your age you have no need of artificial embellishments,” she replied with sudden sharpness, standing up and beginning to take off her dressing gown. I knew I was dismissed.

But just as I was leaving, she called me back. Sitting down again in front of the vanity's mirrors, she cupped her chin in her hands and looked at me thoughtfully.

“Auntie, there's something more you wish to tell me?” I coaxed.

“You don't think much of your uncle's poems, do you? I don't either.”

She knew her question puzzled me, as we had always avoided discussing Uncle's talents. “But it's his way of relaxing. You know, we've gone through hell to establish ourselves in our present position.”

“Auntie, I'll do whatever I can to help,” I said, putting my arms around her neck.

“Sit down.”

I took a seat on a low hassock.

Resting her hands on the arms of her chair and looking down at me, she continued: “When you were about six or seven, we nearly lost our business and were on the verge of bankruptcy. I still remember that awful day. Our creditors
had set a deadline for us to repay our debts. Your uncle went out to try to raise another loan on a mortgage to save us. I waited and waited, but he didn't come home. I grew more and more anxious. I wanted desperately to get away from everything. I took you and got on a train for Jiading, half an hour from Shanghai. There was a beautiful old park there, not far from the station. I sat on the grass and you took your shoes off and waded in the shallow water of the pond. You knew nothing of our trouble. You were so happy. You were ‘adventuring.' You splashed through the water and then climbed up the bank and followed a crooked little path. I got up to follow you to tell you to be careful. But I let you go on adventuring. At the top of the slope was a ruin, the corner of an old fort, overgrown with gnarled old trees, just stumps, their roots exposed among the rocks and rubble. You called me and showed me new shoots of green leaves sprouting from those stumps. I thought it was a happy omen, and I was right.

“We were lucky. Your uncle got the loan we needed. That was the turning point. But your uncle and I still worked day and night to pay off our debts.”

“Auntie, you have a good memory.”

“Not about everything.”

“But that's all in the past.”

“The past? If the Communists take over, they may take everything away from us. They promise not to, but you know what government promises are. They are for the poor, and we are rich. They are polite to us, but behind our backs they still call us ‘bourgeois parasites.' Parasites!” Auntie smiled disparagingly at the epithet. But soon her dimples disappeared, and heavy lines that I had not seen before on her face appeared. “We must show no fear and we must take necessary precautions. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, Auntie.” But in truth I didn't quite.

Say what you will, my aunt knew how to arrange a party. The best cooks from the Xin-Ya Restaurant were hired
and our drawing room was redecorated. Aunt's special chairs, Ming dynasty copies in red-brown teakwood, were brought out; two genuine Song dynasty paintings were hung on the wall. Large lanterns decorated with paintings of classical beauties were hung in the hallway. Uncle's jade carvings were displayed in cabinets, and brocade covers from Suzhou were put on the cushions.

The guests were also dressed to honor their hosts. Madame Lu, my prospective mother-in-law, whose husband had made his money as senior Chinese comprador for the British Kailuan Mining Corporation, came in all her glory. Her thin, once beautiful face was meticulously made up, and, as on all gala occasions, she had covered her neck, arms, and fingers with emeralds, pearls, and diamonds. Standing tall and statuesque in the center of the room beneath the chandelier, clad in some dark green patterned brocade that befitted her age, she looked like a Christmas tree decorated with small, glittering lights. The party swirled around her.

After dinner, we returned to the drawing room. Young Bob Lu, lanky and pale-faced, tagged along at my side with his customary air of world-weariness. Even the wine he had drunk had not made him any merrier.

“Won't you have some liqueur?” my aunt asked him as she raised her glass to some guest on the other side of the room and silently formed her lips to convey the word “Cheers!” in English.

“Why yes, thank you,” Bob Lu replied and turned to ask me, “How about you, Ling-ling?” As I nodded yes he moved to the bar cart with the liqueurs.

“Ling-ling”—my aunt seized this opportunity to prompt me—“you've chatted with him too long. Don't make yourself an easy conquest.”

Bob Lu returned with two glasses.

As my aunt sipped her drink she signaled me almost imperceptibly with a glance towards Madame Lu and two other guests who were with her, a lady and a gentleman, all in animated conversation. The lady was short, plump, and vivacious. She alternately whispered some confidence to Madame Lu and then chuckled at her own witticism.
Her husband, lean and withdrawn, stood by her side and now and then added a word which, judging from Madame Lu's demeanor, evidently carried considerable weight. Gossip was that he had just returned from Peking where he had represented a powerful anti-Chiang Kai-shek faction of the Guomindang in peace talks with the Communists. His wife gaily denied this and insisted that he had just taken a rest cure at a northern resort.

My aunt had left us, so I asked young Bob to excuse me. “Where and when can we meet alone?” he asked me timidly, tracing circles on the carpet with the toe of his patent leather shoe.

I hesitated, then replied, “In the small study, in an hour.”

I crossed the room to reach Madame Lu, squeezing through groups of guests and apologizing as I went. Mr. Chang, a banker, was about to take a glass of vermouth from a servant's tray when a petite beauty put her folded fan over the top of the glass. We went to the same school; she was two years older and was called by the English name Lily. “Enough,” she said imperiously. “You have more important things to do.”

“Like entertaining you or doing what all the others are doing: deciding their futures? But I have already decided mine,” he said, looking at her intently. He bowed his head obediently and withdrew his outstretched hand. “I would stay on the mainland if I could be certain that the new government will allow people to dress properly. Did you see that latest picture in the newspapers? All their officials are dressed like tramps, and women are dressed up exactly like men.”

“Are you serious?”

“I am,” he said as he ran his hand over his mane of jet black hair. “I simply cannot imagine myself in those baggy trousers. To dress properly is a way of life.”

The latest political gossip was on everyone's lips, and I moved through a parliament of opinions as I passed each cluster of people. I caught the words of a longtime friend of my uncle's, a portly textile manufacturer, the smart Mr. Li. He nodded with quick movements of his head to emphasize
his points. “Sure, sure enough. You're right. The Communists are wooing me now, but they'll kick me around as soon as they've consolidated their power. Sure. No doubt about it. But no matter what I do, I'll be kicked around by someone. Here at least I'll be kicked around by Chinese who are my fellow countrymen, even though they are Communists.”

The gentle old man he spoke to agreed: “For my part I intend to live and die here and be buried on my native soil.”

“I am old, too,” said Mr. Li. “I tell my sons and daughters that if they want to leave China they can take their share of our property and go ahead. They don't need to worry about me. I'll keep my share here. If the Communists nationalize my factories, that's all right. I have plenty of know-how. I went into industry because I thought China could find salvation through industrialization. I'll help run things for them.” Mr. Li crossed his arms over his stomach, which curved gently beneath his long grey silk Chinese gown. He was a modern textile manufacturer but he still liked to wear a Chinese-style gown over his Western trousers and leather shoes. This symbolic stand against complete westernization expressed his patriotism.

“That's all very well,” his companion concurred, then looked a little skeptical as he continued in a slightly lowered voice, “Are you keeping all your share of the property here?”

Mr. Li smiled an ambiguous smile but made no answer.

Among his listeners, one man seemed completely out of place. Humming and grinning at the sense and nonsense he heard around him, the genuine concern and wry regrets, he shifted his feet rhythmically back and forth. His eccentricities were well known and tolerated. He was the best highway engineer in the country.

“I am either above politics or beyond … or perhaps they are beyond me,” he complained, buttonholing the stout man before him, a lethargic Guomindang minister. “My job is to build roads, and every country needs roads. I don't see any reason why I can't go on building roads here.”

The minister had mastered the art of speaking in nothing but platitudes.

“The people need your talents. Communism will reduce the country to chaos.”

“But the Japanese have already done a pretty good job of roadbuilding in Taiwan.”

“There is always room for improvement.”

Finally, I stood beside Madame Lu. The lady with her had noticed me first. She looked me over as if I were some commodity at a sale, and, concluding that I was indeed marketable, she gave her appraisal: “You are a pretty girl.”

Madame Lu thereupon gave me a rapturous embrace and having displayed her affection, turned back to Madame Gui who completed the sentence I had interrupted.

“… and everybody says that if the Communists win, we will have to give away our wealth. Well, I don't know how that will work. Would a peasant appreciate all this?” and she gestured all around the room at the fine rugs, the chandelier, the paintings, the bejeweled guests. “After all, it takes quite a while to cultivate taste.”

Having done my duty, I wandered off to where our highway engineer was now engaged in earnest conversation with a dapper, youthful-looking officer, General Xu, and the banker Mr. Chang. I didn't interrupt them, but listened intently.

After greeting me with an amiable squeeze of my shoulder, Mr. Chang went on rolling a Cuban cigar gently between his palms. This was a habit he had learned on his foreign travels. It made the cigars draw better, he explained.

“General, will the Communist army attack Shanghai soon?” the engineer asked.

“Not much of a chance. They haven't got the modern landing craft to cross the Yangzi River.”

The general was handsome and he liked the ladies. He was also rich. Back in the thirties when Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek still admired Hitler, he had invited Nazi
military advisers to help him in his campaign against the Communist Red Army, and he had sent a number of young officers, General Xu among them, to study military science in Germany. General Xu had returned every inch the Prussian officer. After the German debacle in the Second World War, however, Hitler and his military theories were no longer fashionable, and—so I was told—our general's style underwent a subtle change. He still clicked his heels together when he bowed, but the click was not as resonant as before. In fact, it was almost inaudible. And now the bow had just a hint of a Viennese gallantry, especially when he wanted to flatter the fair sex, which he accomplished with considerable success.

During the war against the Japanese invaders, our hero was one of those “running generals” who always managed to keep two steps ahead of the advancing enemy. He had never fired a shot in anger at the invaders, but he was never idle. When the battle lines became stabilized, he shifted his attention to the quartermaster's office. He ran a black market route through the area of his command and also made a name for himself as a commander of dead souls: He drew rations and wages for thousands of nonexistent men in his army, dead or missing peasant lads who still remained on the army's payroll.

Mr. Chang was not impressed. I think he had better sources of information than the general, and, irritated by the general's response, which he thought too crudely deceptive, he answered him with some acerbity.

“Don't be so optimistic. The Yangzi River won't save us. Your soldiers are all peasants. In one way or another they have learned that their families in the Communist areas have been given land after the land reform there. If they fight hard and the Guomindang wins, they know the landlords will take back that land and cut off their relatives' heads to boot. On the other hand, the Communist soldiers will fight to the death to defend the land their families have just gotten. You've lost more than half your armies to the Communists already.”

“Don't believe Communist propaganda!” retorted the general. “The peasants don't want to steal land from the
propertied classes. They want property themselves. Twenty years ago the Communists in South China instigated the peasants to take over the land, and the result was chaos and anarchy. They miscalculated and they failed, just as they will fail now. The peasants know their place and they respect the traditions which have held China together for over two thousand years. If you give them the freedom to choose, they will choose to support the system of private property. They don't want Communism.”

“If you are so certain of that, General, then why don't you give them the vote?” Mr. Chang chuckled. The smoke from his cigar went down the wrong way and he coughed. Pretending not to hear Mr. Chang's last remark, General Xu turned to smile at my aunt, who now approached us.