Three Souls (38 page)

***

Around the servants’ table in the kitchen, Fong brags openly of abandoning his family’s farm. Our servants, who have no intention of leaving the Lee household while they can still get three square meals here, listen skeptically.

“I’m going to join the Communist army in Shaanxi. Once they take over, every farmer will plough his own fields. No more landlords.” He nods knowingly.

“What about your father?” This from Old Kwan. “Won’t he need your help on the farm? The Lees aren’t bad landlords compared to many.”

Fong waves a brawny hand.

“My father has two other sons. They can farm your master’s land. After I’ve finished with the gardens and been paid, I’ll be leaving on the first train out of here.”

He won’t be caught once he’s boarded the train, he is unconcerned about being punished for the crime he’ll commit. I visit the servants in turn that night and the next. But they only dream of their own, circumscribed lives. How can I warn Dali? How can I warn any of them? It took nearly a month for Baizhen to dream about me so that I could speak to him. I don’t have that much time to help Dali.

When I try my luck with Baizhen, he’s dreaming of his favourite tea house, gently waving a cup beneath his nose to inhale the first-harvest
huang shan.
Outside, the elm trees that line the canal are clothed in the pale tender green of new leaves. The proprietor’s wife brings him a bowl of rice and lifts the lid from a bamboo steamer. Inside, a small carp, covered in thinly sliced green onion and ginger, swims in a fragrant mixture of hot oil and soy.

“Wonderful, wonderful!” says Baizhen, sniffing the fish.

“Your wife enjoys this dish,” says the woman, although there is no way she could know this. “Lightly steamed, with bubbling hot oil and soy poured over.”

At the mention of my name, my dream image appears and the restaurant walls blur. Now Baizhen and I are seated in our dining room with Gong Gong and Jia Po, who seem oblivious of our presence.

“Will you take some fish?” Baizhen offers the steamer basket to my likeness.

“Thank you,” says my dream image, just as I enter it. There’s a tingling sensation as I settle in and then my hand raises chopsticks to my lips. I swallow. The wonderful flavour of tender fish fills my mouth. But I must make the most of this opportunity.

“Baizhen, please listen to me.” I tug at his arm urgently. “There’s something very important I need to tell you.”

He lifts his chopsticks and smiles at me.

“That gardener, Baizhen—that Fong. He’s planning to do something horrible to Dali.”

“Who? What’s going on with Dali?”

“The gardener, Old Fong’s son.” I shake his arm again. “He’s leaving in two days and I think he’s going to rape Dali before he runs away from Pinghu.”

“Come, have some more fish. It’s your favourite.”

“You must stop him,” I say in despair. “Husband, send him on his way now.”

“Yes, yes. Of course.”

I have to be content with that.

***

The next day, the only evidence that Baizhen has remembered the dream is his breakfast-time request for fish for supper. Steamed with ginger and green onion, with hot oil and soy. In the afternoon, Baizhen stops by the kitchen to see whether Old Kwan has managed to buy a good fish.

“Here, Young Master. Come have a look.” Old Kwan shows Baizhen a basin where a small carp twitches, half submerged in water. “I’ll add a little bit of sugar to the hot-oil-and-soy mixture, Shanghai-style, the way our first Young Mistress liked it, you know. This was her favourite way to cook fish, elegantly simple.”

“I dreamed about this dish all night, Kwan. When I woke up, all I could think about was fish for supper.”

Baizhen hasn’t remembered anything but the fish.

***

That night I try again, this time visiting Old Kwan. He’s in the kitchen preparing a huge carp, scaling it skilfully with a huge knife. Beside him on the chopping block is a chipped bowl full of sliced ginger and green onions. Dali is at the sink washing pots and pans.

“I need that skillet cleaner than clean, Dali. No hint of the pork skins we fried up earlier, you know, that taints the flavour of the fish.”

“I prefer fish to pork,” says Dali.

Her image wavers, fades, and when it grows solid again, it’s my dream image at the sink, rinsing a pan. Wasting no time, I step inside it, accustomed now to the brief stinging sensation. I drop the pan into the sink and approach Old Kwan.

“I need to warn you about something, Old Kwan.”

“Yes, Young Mistress.” He continues to work on the fish.

“That gardener, Fong. He’s up to no good.”

“Ah, I knew it!” He puts down the knife and turns to me with a satisfied shake of the head. “That sly smile, that boastful talk. He’s always trying to flirt with Dali, you know.”

“Old Kwan, please listen. It’s about Dali. Tomorrow night Fong’s going to try to assault her. You must do something to get rid of him before nightfall tomorrow.”

“Young Mistress.” He falls silent, troubled. “Is this a message from the grave?”

I don’t want to frighten him, or start any tales of haunting, but I must make him pay attention to my words. I put my hand on his shoulder.

“You feel it in your belly, Kwan. You know that man is no good. That’s why you dream about me, so that I can tell you what you already know.” I have to give warning, but still sound reassuring. “Please, just get rid of Fong before nightfall. Please remember my words.”

I leave the kitchen and Old Kwan’s dream.

I continue to circle through the sleeping household, but no one else dreams of me. Old Kwan is the only one I’ve managed to warn. Will he remember in the morning?

***

“You, gardener!” Mrs. Kwan’s voice rings across the kitchen garden. “I hear you’ve finished.”

It’s after supper. Fong is shirtless, washing from a bucket of cold water. He turns to her, puzzled.

“Here’s your pay from the Mistress.” She hands over a small bag of coins. “You wanted to stay one more night, didn’t you?”

He nods, tossing the burlap pouch from hand to hand.

“Well, since you’re leaving first thing in the morning, you can share Old Ming’s room in the gatehouse. We can’t have you stumbling through the estate waking up the family on your way out.”

Fong looks nonchalant as he puts his shirt back on. Later, he leaves the servants’ quarters with his belongings rolled up in his cloth bundle, a thin blanket thrown over his shoulders. He whistles on his way to the gatehouse. He seems calm, not angry as I thought he might be. Perhaps he wasn’t planning to attack Dali. Perhaps it was only a dream after all. But I’m on edge until the first streaks of sunrise mark the horizon and the roosters start their crowing. Old Ming shuffles out and opens the wicket gate, stretching and yawning. Fong, cloth bundle tied to his back, steps onto Jade Belt Road and saunters away, whistling “Purple Bamboo Melody
.
”

His whistling fades as he crosses the bridge over the canal, and in that moment my souls rise. It’s as though a tether has been lengthened, a sensation of relief, as though I had been a ball held under water and then suddenly set free to shoot up to the surface. Somehow I know I’ve moved closer to that shining portal to the afterlife.

Then in the next moment, I see Dali in my mind’s eye. She’s bound to her bed, naked and brutalized, gagging on a kerchief, blood running down her face. Outside, Mrs. Kwan calls her name and when she enters the room, horror fills her eyes. Dali weeps in shame and pain. Then I see Dali again, now middle-aged, a cowering and fearful woman with a long purple scar across her cheekbone, afraid to sleep in the dark.

I’m seeing the fate that would have been hers. The fate I’ve averted.

Now I understand how to atone for Hanchin’s death. Now I know what I must do for release from this world.

***

My souls swirl around the altar, incandescent.

At last, at last.
My
yin
soul dances, her red spark so frenzied it flashes with excitement.

My
yang
soul slows his spinning and once again he is an elderly gentleman. His face is thoughtful and he voices what I have realized.

They will all die someday, all those who knew you,
he says.
So you must succeed in making amends before there’s no one left to dream about you.
Something pungent and herbal sits on my tongue.

Weilan’s still a little girl,
I say.
Baizhen’s barely thirty. There’s lots of time to right the balance.
But something else nibbles at the edge of my thoughts.

As time goes by, they may dream about you less and less,
says my
hun
soul. Its voice is distant and regretful.
After a while, perhaps not at all. Once your family forgets about you, stops dreaming about you . . .

I hadn’t considered this.

My
yin
soul comes down to earth, blouse untucked and face flushed. Her exuberance has wilted. She says nothing, but her brown eyes are wide with anxiety and there is a smell of mothballs in the air.

If I don’t ascend to the afterlife before everyone I knew dies, I’ll be trapped forever in this in-between world. As I fade from living memory, as people dream about me less and less, I’ll have fewer chances to enter my dream image and communicate with the living. My time for making amends is even shorter than I first thought.

22

A
mah Wu has returned, with hopes of being engaged as nanny to the child Meichiu is carrying. Uninvited and of her own accord, she made the two-hour walk to the estate to stake a claim for her former position. She arrives just in time to join the servants for lunch in the kitchen. Then, with a contented sigh, she wipes her mouth on her sleeve and follows Mrs. Kwan to the small parlour, where Meichiu and Jia Po are sewing baby clothes.

Jia Po is agreeable to hiring Amah Wu again, but Meichiu, normally so deferential to her mother-in-law, puts her foot down. After only a few minutes she has taken a strong dislike to our former nanny.

Amah Wu wails all the way from the mansion to the kitchen, where Old Kwan puts some sesame cakes and steamed buns into her cloth bag to quiet her down.

“The first Young Mistress promised me the job.” She sniffles. “The next baby should be my charge.”

“Well, the new Young Mistress isn’t obliged to keep that promise,” says Mrs. Kwan with a glare. “She hasn’t even started looking for a wet nurse. Don’t come again unless you’re sent for.”

Still whining, Amah Wu shrugs her bag over her shoulder and leaves our home. Mrs. Kwan watches by the gate with Old Ming as the peasant woman’s sturdy figure plods down the street. Old Ming shakes his head.

“What was she thinking, coming here to demand a job when the Young Mistress is only three months pregnant?”

“This was the best life she ever had,” says Mrs. Kwan. “She got too eager. Her smile was too greedy.”

“She’s sharp, our new Young Mistress. She’ll sort out this family. The money will last longer.”

“How’s Little Ming? And your new great-grandson?” Mrs. Kwan’s interest is genuine.

“Both in good health. But who knows what she’ll do next. Her parents don’t want her and they don’t want her bastard either.”

***

So Little Ming has had her baby. Hanchin’s son.
My
yang
soul sighs as he sits on a rickety stool by the door of the family shrine.

How do you feel?
my
hun
soul gently asks. Its radiant shape lights up the shrine and reveals cobwebs and dust that Dali doesn’t bother to clean.

I was just as foolish as Little Ming. Worse, in fact. She never expected anything of Hanchin while I fantasized about a future with him.

I feel sorry for her,
my
yin
soul says.
And for her poor baby. What will they do now? Can we do something for Little Ming?

***

Usually I avoid Jia Po’s dreams. They’re uncomfortable, suffused with bitterness, overcast with a tint of sulphuric yellow. Anger, loneliness, and despair fill her nights. I don’t know how she wakes up rested. All her anger is directed at Gong Gong.

She dreams of going to the cottage at Infant Mountain, raging at him, harsh words she should have spoken sooner. She regrets her decades of submissiveness, feels complicit in Gong Gong’s extravagant spending. She dreams of occasions when she should have stopped him from buying certain high-priced antiques and rare books. She worries endlessly in her sleep about making ends meet, selling more property to buy rice, dipping into the meagre funds she had set aside for a grandson’s education.

She dreams of her childhood. I wander behind her through an enormous estate, awed by its grandeur. There is a private theatre and the park is bigger than Judge Liu’s in Changchow. But even here she is lonely, for the figures that pass through the houses and gardens never stop to talk to her, never materialize into anyone she recognizes. She’s a little girl again, her plain face lit up with eagerness as she runs to find her playmates, following the sound of laughter and games always just one more courtyard away, one more threshold to cross.

Suddenly she stops before a moon gate. A young Gong Gong, tall and clean-shaven, slouches against the wall. He wears the same clothes Baizhen had dressed in for his wedding to Meichiu.

“Here you are, Wife.” It’s the smooth, clear voice of a young man. “When are you coming home?”

She bursts into tears and I see that she loved that young man, loves him still, in spite of all. Unsettled by seeing her so vulnerable, I want to slip out of her dream. But I steel myself and go to her room every night.

A week after Amah Wu’s visit, Jia Po finally dreams about me. She is sitting at her desk, sorting through ledgers.

“Here you are, Daughter,” she says, turning in her chair. “What do you know about these expenses?”

She appears no older than thirty but looks weary. We used to sit in this room together, in despair, staring at all the bills. I want to hug her thin shoulders, but I hold back.