Inheritance (18 page)

He went to the officers’ club, and returned several hours later. He lay unable to sleep, afraid to close his eyes. He fixed his gaze upon the blowing curtain at the window, until he grew tired. But the moment he closed his eyes, he was overtaken by the vision of the girl standing below him in the courtyard, the white bow in her heavy hair. It was an unusually quiet night. There were no sirens, nothing to distract him from this image that silently returned to him.

The next night, he went to the officers’ club for dinner. He sought eagerly the noise and companionship of his colleagues. But even as he joked with General Hsiao and sparred with the others, he could not help keeping one ear open, listening.

“What is it?” they asked, and he told them that he thought he had heard an airplane—a common enough answer, but everyone knew the skies were clear; the enemy was at that moment bombing Changsha. They joked with him that he was becoming a nervous wreck and should go to the front. He could not stop listening. Over the sound of the men, over the clink of dishes and the laughter and banter with the maids, he could hear it: the silence, swelling from her room, stretching out into the air and drifting toward him. He would go home eventually. It was where he lived. But he stayed until the last minute possible, until after all of his friends had gone and only the most drunken and incapacitated men remained. Then he took one look around him, shivered, and followed the call of that grave silence.

It was almost dawn when he came to the house. He circled the building, once, twice, staking it out, and he remembered for an instant the morning before dawn when he had lain in wait on the dormitory where Li Bing was inside. Thinking about his brother, he felt suddenly overpowered by a new and frightening belief that his own life had been a mistake, that all of the opportunities he had taken and considered to be his own good luck were nothing but a series of foolish errors, terrible choices made in moments of weakness.

Inside the flat he felt again the expectant silence pressing him into the hallway. Her closed door drew him as if he were a metal filing. He felt like an intruder. And yet nobody had asked him to keep away. The flat lay open to him; it was his. There wasn’t the slightest reason for him to stay apart from it. He walked back and forth, trying to be quiet at first and finally wishing she would wake. He stopped abruptly in front of her door. He flushed; again he felt he had forgotten something. Suddenly he seized the doorknob. It turned easily in his hand.

All day he had felt swollen between the legs. It was not the fierce, strong lust he felt toward strangers, or the proprietary lust he had felt toward his wife, but a desire filled with pain, like the pain of an old injury.

He entered the room. She stood in front of her desk, and he came in and faced her.

“How are you?” he asked, and he could hear his voice was strange, out of breath, as if he had been running.

She held still for a moment, then abruptly turned away. Her hair was tucked behind her ears, and he wanted to trace a finger along that delicate line where it pulled away from the nape of her neck. As if she could sense his thoughts, her hand rose slowly.

“Do you miss home?” he asked. “Do you want to go home?” His words came forward in a rush. “I stopped by to see—You don’t seem happy here. You seem—lonely.” He took her hand. “Hush. It’s all right. Really, I can send you home, if that would make you happier. It doesn’t matter what your sister says.” Now he was unable to let go of her hand.

Then, at last, she tilted up her face and raised her eyes to his. They were the eyes of a stranger, dark and altered by desire. He jerked toward her. The smooth cloth of her dress was warm against his palm. He braced himself against her shoulder, shaking a little, and began to undo the three fastenings at her shoulder. She had turned her head away from him, and he could see the tips of her lashes against the cheek; her breath came fast. The last fastener came open in his hand, and he stopped. Then the scent of her flesh rose—a little salty, a little sweet—and he slid the tips of his fingers through the opening, beneath her undershirt, around the curve of her small breast. The skin there was almost liquid, but he could not be certain. For some reason he had lost the feeling in his hands; they were huge and numb. Cautiously, he slid his palm against her chest; he could trace the shape of her bones beneath it, the ribs coming together in a sort of wishbone, and her heart fluttering so violently that he felt a little frightened. With his other hand, very slowly, he let go of her shoulder and grasped her chin, bringing her face to his. Her face was flushed, her ears pink. Her eyes were pressed closed, her lips drawn tight, set against some feeling—was it fear? No; she was simply concentrating on the movement of his hand.

Years later, when he remembered that night, pondering it as if it were the story of another man’s life, it seemed to him that there had been a brief moment when he was present, separate from her. But then, when he tried to recall what happened next, he felt that he had been drawn into the silent world of a dream, as deep and smooth and all-encompassing as water.

No sound, no comprehension, only water.

THE NEXT MORNING, LI ANG WASHED HIMSELF METICULOUSLY
and left the flat with high hopes that in the evening, when he returned, everything would be put back into its place and he and Yinan would once again be like brother and sister. Surely she would tell no one. Soon she would be married off and it would be as if nothing had happened.

But as the hours passed, he felt his concentration thinning. At noon meal with Pu Sijian, he sat and laughed and nodded, but all the while he could feel himself leaving the scene, his mind little by little stealing away. In the afternoon he went through a stack of letters. He was unable to focus on more than two or three words in a sentence without his mind’s eye flashing back to that vision of her door. A few minutes later it would happen again. It was as if the sun were burning the haze off of his mind and revealing its true subject. Over and over again, he saw himself walking toward her door. He knew she would be there, reading, chewing the end of her braid. When he put his hand upon the doorknob, the metal would be smooth beneath his fingers. Inside, there would be cool and dark. There would be solace. By the end of the day he was unable to keep still. He left the instant it was excusable and hurried back, impatient to run up the stairs and open the door and soothe himself against her skin.

A FEW WEEKS LATER,
he received another telegram.

HUSBAND. PLEASE CONFIRM SAFETY AFTER

THE LAST ATTACKS. JUNAN.

He did not answer.

Soon he sent Mary back to Hsiao Taitai. “She’s no longer needed,” he said. “My sister-in-law will find someone she knows.” Hsiao Taitai raised her eyebrows, thin as inked lines, and said that this was no doubt a better thing for his sister. That night, he was assigned to the same dinner table as Baoyu. She greeted him; for a moment he couldn’t remember who she was. Then he recognized her. He nodded and showed his teeth. She smiled also, but all of the expression left her eyes. She wasn’t seated next to him again. A few weeks later he heard she was engaged to a new colonel from out of town.

HUSBAND. HAVE NOT HEARD FROM YOU.

PLEASE REPLY. JUNAN

He felt as if he’d fallen into a well. Above him, all around, he could hear the voices of other people. He had lived among them for many years, but now they were unreachable. Later he would recall the events of their nights together as a series of jumbled images. Her thick braid across the pillow. Her face shining in the faint light from the window, grave and unguarded. In the evenings, when he walked into the room, she would sometimes turn to him and hold out her arms. When had he felt this way before? What was it she recalled in him that felt so precious? Sometimes, when he lay with her, there came over him a sudden and terrible need to get away from her, to leave the rumpled bed, their unkempt rooms, and walk out in the world. But when he thought of the street outside their house he remembered the steps clustered over with debris, the sound of planes, the cries of merchants, and the moans of beggars. Only inside, with Yinan, did he feel safe.

He shared with her the dreary details of his job. They spoke about Hangzhou, about the occupation and before. He had never thought about what Yinan had experienced during those years. Now she told him about her match, about her fear of marriage to Mao Gao, and the way his death had made her even more afraid. She hadn’t wanted to be married, but without that end point, without that destination, the future now stretched before her like an empty road.

“Of course that’s not true,” he said. “It might be a peaceful life, not to be married.”

She understood him instantly. “But what else can I do? I’m too old for the university. I’m no intellectual.”

“You read. You’re always reading.”

“It’s sheer laziness.”

“Would you like to be a poet?” he asked.

“Of course. But poetry has never solved anybody’s problems. And sometimes I feel that all of the greatest poems have been written. Although I think about these times we’re living through—and I know that someday, someone must attempt to capture them. They must be transformed into beauty—and ugliness, and terror. It would require a brave person, and I’m not that strong.”

“What are you writing now?”

“Stories, poems, fairy tales. I’m a specialist at taking on useless projects.”

At this he had to laugh. In a moment, Yinan joined him in a light peal that rang against the walls.

ONE NIGHT, SHE
wouldn’t let him into her room. “You mustn’t,” she said, holding on to the door with both hands.

“What’s the matter?”

She looked away. “My period has come again.”

“But I only want to chat. Women are allowed to talk every month, you know.”

“You’re not supposed to want me now.”

“I do want you.”

Finally he was allowed to lie in bed with her, but no more. He lit a cigarette. Together they watched the moon sail up the sky like a fiery lantern. Yinan began to speak, slow and wondering at first. There was a pause before each phrase, as if her thoughts were traveling up from some deep cave.

“Once, I dreamed about you,” she said. “It was when we were living in Hangzhou, before Junan was married. I dreamed there was a soldier trying to get into our garden.” A dim memory seized him—of walking through a dark courtyard on his wedding night, with a bit of light escaping from a solitary window. Now he lay and stared at the round moon like an enormous eye trained down at them.

“Did you want me to come in?” he asked.

“No.”

He turned to look at her. She lay on her back, with the summer coverlet folded down against the heat to cool her small breasts, casual, as if they were two young brothers sharing a room on a summer evening. He hadn’t expected her to be so matter-of-fact about nakedness; certainly, her sister was much more careful. He smiled. “Now, why didn’t you want me to come in?”

Yinan’s gaze strained at some imperceptible presence in the dark spaces near the ceiling. “In my dream,” she said, “the moon was shining on you as if you were a hero, but your shadow on the ground looked bent, as if you were a broken man.”

Li Ang reached for a cigarette. He had seen her through the window, her face in her hands. It had been the posture of a person filled with dread.

“But you still wanted the poor, broken man?” He kept his voice light.

“Yes.”

There could be no reply. With his free hand, he gently yanked the tangled braid that lay on the pillow. She smiled, and then she gave a little sob. “It is gone now—gone beyond repair.”

“Your sister loves you very much.”

“She won’t love me now.”

July 18, 1940

Dear Husband,

Please pardon me for having made this decision without having consulted you, but our communication channels seem to be disrupted. I have not received replies to several telegrams.

I have decided to close the house and bring the children to you. It is less and less safe here for us living alone, and your second daughter longs to be with the father she has never met. She has learned to say “Baba” and it is time that she met you.

I will be arriving in a few weeks. Please do not make any special arrangements for me. I am certain that your current rooms will satisfy me. As for the Hangzhou house, your uncle is looking after it. I am selling some of my father’s possessions, and you may trust that I have put most of our other important things into safe hands.