Mulberry and Peach (10 page)

In April the last of the survivors were rescued. Only half the people in the Donner party had survived.

Mr Smith finished telling the story. He asked me where I wanted to go.

‘Donner Lake!'

He laughed. ‘I've got a new recruit.'

The Beatles sang on. More people got up to dance.

‘Nowhere Man, can you see me at all?' Mr Smith was singing along with the Beatles. He stood up, bowed to his bride, and stretching out his hand, swept her close to him and they began to dance. His hand was stainless steel.

 

Peach
2 February 1970

 

P.S. I am enclosing Mulberry's Peking diary.

 

(December 1948
–
March 1949)

 

 

CHARACTERS

MULBERRY, she flies north to Peking, surrounded by the Communists. She is the only passenger on a one-way plane. She left her home at Nanking, because she was afraid of being arrested by the Nationalist government, which was still in power in the South of China, for her connection with some young people suspected of being Communist. In addition, she could not bear living at home: her brother had run away to the Communist-occupied area, her father had committed suicide, her mother is still having an affair with the family butler. In besieged Peking, she stays with the Shens, an old, traditional family in decay. The Communists have taken most of the country.

AUNT SHEN, (in her sixties), she has been bedridden several years, covered with a red satin quilt embroidered with gold love birds. Joy, the slave maid, massages her paralysed legs. For many years after her marriage, she had no child. It was one of the most important Confucian values for any family to have a son who would carry on the family name. She ‘promoted' one of the young slave maids to be concubine for her husband, and thought that she would take over the boy if the concubine bore one. The concubine bore a son, Chia-ch'ing. But Mrs Shen found that she could not control her when she was more favoured by the husband and became more and more powerful in the family. When the concubine became pregnant again, Mrs Shen murdered her with poison (more sons meant more favour and power). Mrs Shen represents the traditional order in its dying throes.

CHIA-KANG, (in his twenties), Mrs Shen's son. He represents the bourgeois class in traditional China. He has leisure, fine tastes and delicate fingers with long nails. He sings Peking Opera, flirts with girls. He is fondled, indulged and possessed by his mother. He wants to marry Mulberry to assert himself as a
man.

HSING-HSING, (in her twenties), a lively, seductive girl. She lives with her mother, and grandfather on her father's side. Her father is an official working for the Nationalist government in Nanking and lives with his concubine. Hsing-hsing was in love with Chia-ch'ing before he left home and became a Communist. She expects the Communists to come and the world to change.

JOY, (in her twenties), Mrs Shen's slave maid. She is always smiling. She has waited on Mrs Shen many years, sitting on the edge of her bed and massaging her legs. When the Communists approach Peking, Mrs Shen sends her to Hsing-hsing's grandfather as concubine.

MR WAN, Hsing-hsing's grandfather.

AMAH CHIEN, Aunt Shen's maid.

 

I'm the only passenger on the plane.

At the airport in Nanking as I was boarding, an airline official repeated to me, ‘The Communists have already surrounded Peking. Everyone is fleeing south.'

And I repeated to him: I understand the situation completely, but I have decided to go on to Peking.

We are flying above the clouds.

Beneath the clouds Nanking slips by: strikes, hoarded rice, suspended classes, marches, demonstrations, bloody riots.

My past disappears under the clouds.

The only thing I've brought with me is the broken jade griffin. Peking is a square inside a square, shaped like the Chinese character:

The Forbidden City.

The Inner City.

The Outer City

The Communists are outside the city.

In the alleys and lanes the hawkers are crying out:

The Shens live in the western part of the city, in a house with two courtyards.

The Main Gate.

The Gate of the Dangling Flowers.

The Gate at the Entrance of the courtyard.

The central part of the house is divided into three rooms.

The centre room is the parlour. Aunt Shen and her son Chia-kang live in the two rooms off the parlour. It was just a year ago, when the situation in the North deteriorated that Chia-kang moved from the west wing to the central part of the house and dismissed the cook and the chauffeur.

The tenants in the east and west wings come and go in an endless stream. They arrive here, having fled from the area beyond the Great Wall: from Shantung, and Shansi, from Honan, Hopei and other parts of the country. They usually stay less than two months, then flee south. Since September, the Communists have occupied the whole of the North-east and war has erupted again in Hsü-chou and around Peking and Tientsin. The east and west wings are hard to rent out. If they are left empty, army units or refugees will probably take them over. The east wing is now rented by the Chengs, who, born and bred in Peking, swear they will never leave. They sold their own house. Their monthly rent is ten dollars. In November ten dollars could still buy twenty packs of cigarettes. In December it only bought ten packs. Amah Ch'ien and the maid, Joy (mentally retarded), live in the west wing. The two rooms in the south section of the house, beyond the Gate of the Dangling Flowers, are occupied by a group of more than twenty students who fled from T'ai-yuan in Shansi. T'ai-yuan has been surrounded by Communist forces for half a year now. I live in a small room off the corner courtyard. It was Chia-kang's father's study when he was alive. It is isolated from the rest of the house and has a cobblestone patio.

 

The sky is black and silent. In the central courtyard the old acacia tree, bent and blacker than the sky, its blossoms shed, stretches its branches upwards.

Two low explosions sound in the south horizon. The south sky reddens suddenly. Red sparks sprinkle down. Above the acacia branches the dark sky begins to glow.

Chia-kang and I race to the central part of the house to see his sick mother, Aunt Shen. She is lying on the brick
k'ang
facing the wall. A thin knot of ash-coloured hair sticks out from the thick red silk quilt. Amah Ch'ien has just finished styling Aunt Shen's hair. She goes to get the spittoon. Joy is sitting on the edge of the
k'ang
massaging Aunt Shen's legs.

‘Chia-kang,' she says, still turned to the wall. ‘Was that the Eighth Army?'

‘Mother, the Eighth Army is still a long way away. They wouldn't just fire two shots. It's probably some local explosion.'

‘Do you think the Eighth Army is responsible?'

‘Mother, the Eighth Army is still a long way away.'

‘The Eighth Army took over the airport the day after I arrived,' I say.

‘Mulberry, that's only a rumour. It's not certain. There are rumours everywhere these days; that the Eighth Army has occupied the Summer Palace, that the Tower of Treasures has collapsed, that the glass arch in front of the Confucian temple was smashed. That the ancient cypress grove by the temple of Heaven was chopped down, that the Golden Buddha of Yung-ho Palace was stolen! That the temple of the Reclining Buddha . . .'

‘All right, all right, Chia-kang. That's enough. Don't say any more. What you don't know won't hurt you.'

‘Mother, don't worry. Peking has always been an imperial city. It has a way of turning disaster into good fortune. The Mongols, Manchus, the Allied Army, the Japanese, none of them could swallow her; it's Peking that swallowed them up.'

‘Well, that cheers me up a little, Chia-kang.'

‘Mother, if you stop worrying, you'll get better.'

‘And when will that happen? I've been to see doctors, I've gone on, I've drawn lots, made vows, it's all useless.'

I look at Joy. ‘Since I've been in Peking, Joy is the only person I've seen who is still smiling.'

Aunt Shen glances at her. ‘I wish I were an idiot girl, with no responsibility except massaging someone's legs. If the sky fell, I'd still be massaging and grinning from ear to ear.'

‘And I'd like to be a nightsoil collector,' says Chia-kang. ‘I'd carry a large barrel on my back and take a long iron shovel in my hand and scoop it up from the ground and toss it into the barrel on my back, all the while humming lines from the opera.'

‘Joy,' Aunt Shen cires out, still facing the wall.

‘Hai,' she answers.

‘Your day has arrived. You're going to have a better life from now on. But what about me? There will be no one to massage my legs. You better be good to old Mr Wan.'

‘Hai.' Joy nods vigorously.

‘Joy, do you really like that old guy?' asks Chia-kang with a smirk.

‘L-l-luv bim.' She stutters.

‘What about “bim” do you “luv”?'

‘I l-l-uv bim.' Joy is still grinning.

“‘Luv” to sleep with “bim”?'

‘L-l-uv bim.'

‘Chia-kang,' laughs Aunt Shen, ‘I won't let you intimidate her.'

‘What's wrong with a little joke? Nothing else to do in Peiping. There are soldiers and refugees all over, you can't go anywhere.'

‘Go make fun of someone else then. It wasn't easy to find a master for her. If it doesn't work out this time I'll marry her off to you. Mulberry!' Aunt Shen suddenly turns to face me, ‘Do you still have that little gold chain I gave you when you were little?'

I unbutton my collar and take out the necklace. ‘I wear it all the time. After the war was over and I left Chungking and went back to Nanking, Mother gave it to me.'

‘I gave it to you before the war. Was it '36? I took Chia-kang with me to Nanking and we stayed at your house. You were only six or seven then. Chia-kang was ten. You two played so happily together. I gave you that little gold chain for your birthday. Your mother laughed and pointed at you, “Twenty gold ingots. I'll sell her to you for that!” she said. In the wink of an eye twelve years have passed. Your father, Chia-kang's father, those two sworn brothers have both passed away...'

‘Mother, all those years Mulberry's family has been in the South. We've been in the North. Just think, it was only after the end of the war with Japan that we got in touch again. Mulberry said that it was the strength of that little gold chain that brought her to Peking.'

‘Now that you are here, there's no way to leave, Mulberry. The railroad from Peking to Tientsin has been cut. Thousands of people have made plane reservations, but you have to pay gold. We aren't able to do that.' Aunt Shen pauses, then suddenly cries out. ‘Chia-kang! Chia-kang, I've got a cramp in my foot!'

Chia-kang runs over and shoves Joy aside. He pulls back the red silk quilt embroidered with mandarin ducks. He uncovers her small foot, no longer bound, pointed and wrinkled, the toes twisted.

‘Ai-ya! Ai-ya! It hurts!'

‘Mother, I'll massage it for you. Every time I do it, you get better,' says Chia-kang, cradling the small foot in his hands, massaging the muscles along the top of the foot with his thumbs.

‘Good, that's good. Chia-kang, don't stop!'

Chia-kang cradles the calf of her leg as he massages. He presses his thumbs along the top of her foot. ‘Mother, is it better? Is it better now, Mother?' he says over and over.

She doesn't answer. She stares at the foot in her son's hand. Then she says, ‘Chia-kang, dig into it with your fingernails.'

Chia-kang presses his long nails into the top and arch of her foot.

‘Chia-kang, harder. That's good, there . . .'

‘Mother, I've pinched so hard that you're bleeding. Does it hurt?'

‘If only I could feel pain. When I saw that foot in your hand, I was shocked. It wasn't my foot anymore.'

‘If it's not yours, then whose is it?' Chia-kang laughs.

‘I've been sick too long, Chia-kang. I'm in a daze all the time. Sometimes when your face suddenly flashes before my eyes, I even think it's your father.' She withdraws her foot from his hands and wiggles her toes at him, laughing. ‘Look, it's alive again.'