Inheritance (7 page)

She assured herself that Li Ang was inferior to her. He was clever enough, but unrefined. Oh, she saw his handsome face, his height and strength, his ability to please people; she knew he would become somebody. But now he was a soldier and his family was nothing. They had just the uncle’s broken-down shop. She assumed that Li Ang knew he was inferior and would therefore be more open to her guidance. She clung to this advantage: that marrying Li Ang had made her safe, that his family was of such low stature it would be impossible for her to truly fall in love with him. This would save her from the fate that had overcome her mother. No, she would be careful. She knew how dangerous it was to get overly attached, how treacherous it might be if she grew to want devotion from the man she married.

THE IDEA OF LETTING
Yinan find someone herself was out of the question. Yinan had no experience with men; she was unusually shy. Moreover, Junan didn’t trust her judgment. She might be inclined to marry a man because she had taken pity on him, or for some other foolish reason. Junan didn’t want to see Yinan sentenced to poverty as the result of a sentimental inclination.

As a married woman, she was entitled to bring up the subject with her father. The following night, after dinner, she went to his room. When she explained the situation, she saw an expression of unmistakable weariness cross his face, and she began to wonder if she might be asking too much of him.

“His older brother owes me money,” he said, of Deng Xiansheng. “That is why he tutors Yinan without pay.”

“If she is engaged, she won’t need a tutor anymore.”

Her father nodded.

“What about the Chens?” she asked.

“That boy is worse than she is. Let me think this over.” But in the following days, he said nothing about Yinan, and Junan began to wonder if she would have to take the matter into her own hands.

She was surprised a few weeks later when he handed her a letter he had received from Nanjing.

21st Year of the Republic

13 December

Cousin and brother,

My belated greetings to you in this season of falling frost.

I am writing to you in response to your recent letter regarding your younger daughter Yinan. Since then I have made inquiries, but nothing promising emerged until today. Lo Dun of Ningpo recently decided to marry, and I have taken the liberty of mentioning Yinan.

As you know, Lo Dun is from a good family and over the years he has made a decent and steady income. He lives with his mother, and I thought that perhaps an older woman might provide a kind of maternal figure for your daughter. Moreover, Lo Dun is a steady, well-settled man. His intentions are most responsible. Please write to me and let me know what you would like to do.

Your brother-cousin,

Baoding

Her father told Junan that Lo Dun was a decent man, and so he had gone to town and telegrammed his cousin to proceed. But his cousin had wired back that the match was not entirely certain. Lo Dun’s mother wanted a face-to-face meeting. Eventually it was agreed that Lo Dun and his aged mother would come to the house for tea the following week. It would be Junan’s job to coach Yinan.

At the evening meal, Junan peered thoughtfully at her sister. Yinan was eating spareribs, two slim fingertips placed at each end of the bone, her long neck bent gracefully as she leaned forward. She had never been beautiful, but that slender neck, vanishing into her limp collar, brought to mind a kind of innocence that went beyond mere youthfulness. Her shuidou scar, a shallow blemish high on her forehead, could be fixed, perhaps with powder, when she and Lo Dun met formally.

On the afternoon when Lo Dun and his mother were scheduled to visit, Junan made Yinan struggle into her new pink qipao an hour early. She spent the hour instructing her sister. “Don’t let him know what you are feeling. He will like you better if he can’t tell. Don’t hold your collar away from your neck; you shouldn’t fidget with your clothes.”

“This collar is so stiff.”

“I’m not sure what kind of family they are—they’re merchants, but probably not bookworms like you, so they can’t have too many modern ideas. Bow a little, be respectful. Try to look old-fashioned. And if you smile, don’t show your teeth. It’s vulgar.”

Precisely on the hour, Lo Dun arrived along with his mother.

He was a slender man about fifteen years older than Yinan, with a long, serious face and a patch of gray in the left corner of his high forehead. Lo Taitai appeared to be a fierce crone, but Junan was pleased to see that she found it hard to walk. Soon she would be dead. Yinan wouldn’t long suffer under her torment.

When introduced, Yinan bowed carefully and fixed her gaze upon the floor. Watching her, Junan felt a mixture of emotions. She wished that Yinan wouldn’t feel so miserable and timid, but she thought perhaps her sister’s shyness might be pleasing to the old woman. Lo Taitai had withered until the tendons stood out on her neck, but she behaved in the manner of a person used to getting her way.

Lo Taitai looked Yinan up and down, letting her eyes rest on the face, the clothing, feet, and hands. Junan waited, confident, for she had personally seen to every detail of her sister’s appearance. She had fixed a bit of powder into the shuidou scar and it was almost invisible.

Lo Taitai cleared her throat and spoke. “She was born in the Year of the Sheep,” she announced to no one in particular.

“The Snake,” Yinan corrected her.

The stiff lips closed in a line.

Junan gave Yinan a warning glance, but her sister was studying the grain of the wood floor. She offered the guests tea, and was relieved when Yinan excused herself to fetch it.

LO DUN PARTED
on courteous terms. Her father was optimistic. But a week after the visit, Baoding wrote even more courteously that Lo Dun had withdrawn his interest. He had nothing against the family, but his old mother had objected to the match. She didn’t want her son to marry a woman born in the Year of the Snake; she believed a Snake woman would be too tricky for him. She would never have agreed to the meeting if she had known that Yinan was a Snake.

When Junan read the letter, she knew that Yinan had displeased Lo Taitai by speaking.

She told her father to shrug off this failure and continue the search, but he felt they had lost face. All of his friends had known of this attempt.

He sent for Yinan. “Lo Taitai has decided she would like a bride born in the Sheep year,” he said.

“Yes, Baba.” Yinan looked unmistakably relieved.

Watching her, Junan was secretly pleased the marriage hadn’t worked out. Perhaps someone more to Yinan’s liking, a less intimidating person, might be considered. But Lo Dun had been a solid, well-connected man, in many ways a suitable match for both the family and Yinan.

Junan felt obliged to speak. “You must become more pliant, Meimei,” she told Yinan. “Remember the pliant reed that bends in the wind.”

“Yes.”

For several seconds the two sisters stood looking at one another. Junan felt suddenly afraid. The still, pale image of her sister’s face rippled and blurred before her eyes, and it seemed that an unbearable sorrow hovered over them. She hurried out of the room.

A few weeks later, her father showed Junan another letter.

22nd Year of the Republic

17 March

Cousin and brother,

You have been once acquainted with Mao Gao, in the silk business in Nanjing. It has been many years since his young first wife died of meningitis. He has recently decided to remarry, and I have taken the liberty of mentioning Yinan.

I will offer my opinion that I do not consider it a bad thing for your daughter to marry a man in his late fifties, such as Mao Gao. An older man cherishes a girl and provides a steadying influence.

Moreover, it is your situation that I am also thinking about. I am not unaware that there have been some recent instabilities in the cotton market. I believe Mao Gao is protected and can provide not only loans for your business aspirations to the north, but a crucial connection into the industry at a time when you will surely need it. Please reply immediately, as they are in some hurry.

My best wishes to you for luck and prosperity in the coming Rooster year.

Your brother-cousin,

Baoding

“He is too old,” Junan told her father.

“You’re only a child. You don’t understand these things.”

He explained that Mao Gao was a merchant of high caliber. He could hardly turn down a connection to this man. He had already telegramed his cousin and instructed him to proceed.

Junan knew she shouldn’t openly disagree with him. She went to Mma’s room and mentioned the match. Surely Mma would cancel the plan.

But Mma only shrugged. She had grown so old that when she shrug-ged, her puny shoulders seemed to part from her body. “All men are dogs,” she muttered. “An older dog will jump at the chance for something fresh.”

This reply, not being a dissent, amounted to approval. If Mma approved, Junan could not gracefully object. She bowed her head and went to talk to Hu Mudan. She suspected that Yinan had somehow convinced the laundry woman not to starch or iron her clothes. This problem must be remedied, if Yinan was to marry.

She fought against another bout of sorrow so fierce it squeezed her breath. Could it be that her father and grandmother knew best? Certainly, this marriage would be, in many ways, better than her own. Mao Gao would provide a generous living, and if she bore a son, Yinan would be cherished. Would Yinan become a youthful sacrifice to save the family finances? She tried to put the thought out of her mind.

HER FATHER WROTE
to his cousin, who wrote back that Mao Gao leaned in favor of the marriage, but wanted to see a photograph. This brought on a troublesome sequence of events. Yinan’s pink qipao had mysteriously vanished. Junan questioned her sister, the laundry woman, and the maid. None of them had seen it. She fumed at the new problem: Mao Gao was an older man who would want his future bride to wear traditional clothing. Yinan, who wandered around the house in a rumpled blouse and trousers, had only this one good traditional dress. Junan made Yinan try on a qipao of her own, but it didn’t fit properly.

After a discussion with Hu Mudan, Junan decided that Yinan could have her picture taken in the dress she had planned to wear to Junan’s wedding. It was a Western dress, but feminine and expensive. Junan fussed over the shuidou scar on Yinan’s forehead, and in the end, her skin was smooth, although Junan knew all along what the photograph would reveal: an ordinary girl, awkward in a fancy dress, her features made plain by misery and embarrassment.

The photographer asked Yinan to hold a long-stemmed paper rose. Halfway through the sitting, Yinan began to shiver. When the photographer was finished, she tugged Junan’s sleeve, and together they went to Yinan’s room, where she shed her dress and pulled on the same things she’d worn two hours before. Junan looked away from Yinan’s thin, childish body as it emerged from the shimmering yellow silk, then disappeared again under the shabby pants, undershirt, blouse, and vest.

“You need to stop wearing these rags,” she said. “How will you get your husband to want you?”

Yinan said something she couldn’t hear.

“What is it?”

Yinan lowered her gaze. For a moment Junan thought the conversation was over, but then Yinan persisted. “What is that like?”

“I don’t understand.”

“To be wanted in that way.”

Fitting two fingers under Yinan’s chin, she raised her sister’s face and frowned, stalling for time. “Why on earth do you want to know a thing like that?”

Yinan shook her head.

Junan felt she’d caught a bird in her hands. Yinan’s long lashes beat against her cheeks. “It is all right,” she said. “It’s fine. You’ll see, when it happens to you, I suppose.”

“Maybe I won’t.”

Junan smiled kindly. “That’s not true.” She thought about Yinan’s question. “It’s good,” she said. She paused again. “It makes him belong to you.”

“Do you belong to Li Ang, then?” Yinan sounded frightened.

“No,” Junan answered. “Don’t be ridiculous.” But she wondered if her sister might have guessed her secret. Inside her chest of drawers, under a pile clothes, she’d hidden the fancy box of candies confiscated from Yinan. She was saving them for Li Ang’s New Year’s visit. She reminded herself there was no way Yinan could know.

The first few times that she and Li Ang had made love, she had felt a moment of fear when he left behind his initial caution and began to work himself into her, forgetting who she was. Her own slender arms and legs were only a pittance against his strength. He had launched himself into her, like a boat into the waves, while in her mind she stood and watched from shore. But after a moment, she’d begun to feel pleased with the way that he thrashed and flailed, gasping against her, as if she were the answer for some desperate need. This physical need had given her a sense of power.

She looked forward to his New Year’s visit. She wouldn’t admit it to Yinan, but she wanted him to come to her. Their last time together, she had begun to relish the weight of his body on her own, the warm, smooth skin over his muscles and bones, the movement of his body when he breathed. That time, when he made love to her, she had begun to have the physical sensation of going deep inside herself. Afterward, she lay awake and considered this feeling. It could not be love. But it was unlike anything she’d known. And she knew that this urge would be impossible to explore further without involving Li Ang: that she must ask something from him, however silently. She steeled herself against this request, this possible indebtedness. She took on her desire with clenched teeth. She could not imagine how it might end, or what it might be like to give in to this hunger, to yield.