Kinfolk

9

DR. LIANG RECEIVED HIS SON’S LETTER on a cool night in autumn. He had just come home with Mrs. Liang from a very enjoyable occasion. Mr. and Mrs. Li had announced the formal engagement of their daughter Lili to Charles Ting, the son of Timothy Ting who, it was expected, would be China’s next ambassador to the Court of St. James. It was said that the most important ambassadorship was in Washington but the most pleasant was in London, for English life, next to Chinese, was the most civilized in the world. The wedding was to be soon, for the young couple were to go with Mr. and Mrs. Ting to England.

It had been a distinguished party. The great wealth of the Li family was joined to the high position of the Ting family, and the Waldorf-Astoria had done its best. The ballroom had been decorated with Chinese works of art belonging to both families, and two close friends of the families, both great art dealers, had lent their best pieces. Invitations were at a premium, and special guards had been hired and stationed at the doors to keep out gate crashers. The food was superb, the best of Chinese and American, and champagne and the finest teas were served. Mr. and Mrs. Li and Mr. and Mrs. Ting had stood in a row of four and with them the young couple. All the men wore formal Western garments and the Chinese women were in beautiful and sumptuous Chinese satins. The Western women were striking in décolleté but the Chinese women were equally so in their shortsleeved high-necked robes. Lili was the most beautiful girl in the room. She was ivory pale, and her black hair was cut to her shoulders and curled loosely under. Across her forehead it was cut in a straight bang, and she wore jade earrings and bracelets on her pale cream-colored arms. She was as slender as a willow, and the apricot shade of her robe melted into the warm pallor of her flesh. Her lips were flame red, and her long black eyes were dreaming. Charlie Ting stood only a little taller than she, and he kept looking at her until people began to notice it and tease him.

Dr. Liang had reached the party with carefully timed lateness and immediately he was surrounded by people. Mrs. Liang drifted away with her usual quiet and found herself a comfortable chair and sat down. She disliked evening parties, and this one was hateful to her because Lili had refused to marry James who, as everybody knew, was worth fifty of Charlie Ting who was only a playboy. She sighed and ruminated mournfully on the importance of money. Liang made enough money but they spent it as fast as he made it. She had often suggested that they should move into a smaller apartment, but he always refused, saying that the house must be worthy of its master. She was sure he had not sent any money to the children and tonight — no, perhaps tomorrow morning after he had got up — she would surely ask him.

She gazed at the crowd of people around him and wondered jealously which of the women was the one he imagined when he talked about concubines. He had said no more since that day when she had written to the children and she began to regret the desperate letter. He would be angry if he knew about it. Still—

Her eyes were now caught by the figure of a beautiful Chinese woman who had something foreign about her. Perhaps it was only that she looked too Chinese, more Chinese than a real one could look. She wore a tight perfectly fitting robe of pale violet, and pearls at her throat and in her ears. Her high-heeled slippers and handbag were gold. She sauntered near Dr. Liang and stood somewhat aloof and alone. But he saw her. How well Mrs. Liang knew him! She saw him move almost imperceptibly toward the beautiful lonely figure, and in a moment or two they had clasped hands. It was nothing but an ordinary handclasp, but Mrs. Liang instantly felt that this was the woman who had made him think of concubines. She leaned toward another stout middle-aged Chinese lady who sat silent a few feet away.

“Who is the woman in the velvet robe?” she asked.

The Chinese lady looked toward Dr. Liang. “That is Miss Violet Sung,” she replied.

“I never saw her before,” Mrs. Liang said.

“She is from Paris,” the lady said. “But nobody knows who her family is. She seems to be here without parents.”

“She is probably older than she looks,” Mrs. Liang said.

“She is said to be very clever,” the lady replied. “She writes verse. It is also said that she is the mistress of that English man.”

With her little finger the lady pointed toward a tall grave looking foreigner who was smoking his pipe and smiling at a small earnest-looking American woman whose gown was slipping from her shoulders.

Mrs. Liang looked at them vaguely. “How do these Western women keep their dresses from falling off their breasts?” she inquired.

“I do not know,” the lady replied. “I have often wondered but I do not know one of them well enough to ask such a question.”

“Standing above her like that,” Mrs. Liang went on, “that Englishman must be able to observe her bosom.”

“Doubtless,” the lady agreed.

They fell into silence and Mrs. Liang’s eyes returned to he husband and Miss Violet Sung. She felt better now that she knew Miss Sung was already attached to a man, but still she disliked her. Also she knew her own old man. He would play about a woman with renewed zeal when he knew she was attached to another man, and that she was a man’s mistress lent her added sweetness.

“Exactly like a moth and a candle,” Mrs. Liang thought.

She decided that the time had come for her to be active and so she rose and walked rather stiffly to where Dr. Liang stood talking to Miss Violet Sung. They were a handsome pair, and others had fallen back to let them talk alone.

“Eh, Liang!” Mrs. Liang said loudly in Chinese. “I begin to grow hungry.”

She came near and he looked at her. His face, so lighted with happiness a moment before, grew cold. “Ah, yes, yes,’ he said.

Mrs. Liang stared at Violet Sung, then she put out he plump hand. “How do you do, Miss Violet Sung,” she said in English. “I have heard your name. I am Mrs. Liang, and this is my husband.”

Violet Sung’s slim hand touched hers. “Oh, how do you do Mrs. Liang — we were just going to get something to eat.”

“Come with us,” Mrs. Liang said, “there is food enough for everybody.”

“Thank you,” Violet Sung said. She had a sweet deep voice. “But please excuse me—”

She smiled and slipped away, and they saw her join the Englishman and go toward the dining room. Mrs. Liang stood solidly beside Dr. Liang. “She is mistress to that Englishman,” she said.

“Please don’t speak so loudly,” Dr. Liang replied, with too much politeness. He led her to the dining room, however, and they ate in silence, each determined to show independence and displeasure.

As the evening proceeded, Mrs. Liang found two old friends whom she had known in China and the three ladies sat in a quiet corner and told each other of their difficulties with white servants and the thieveries of American grocery clerks with shortweight scales. In China everyone took his own scales to market. There was also the problem of squeeze.

“At home,” Mrs. Liang said plaintively, “I expected a ten-percent squeeze by my head cook. Here, although I must do my own cooking if I want food fit for my husband to eat, I am squeezed at all places. If I ask the elevator man to buy something for me, I find he has charged me half again what it costs. Even my female servant Neh-lee takes something from the laundry and the tailor.”

“White people are all dishonest,” Mrs. Meng said in a loud voice. She was the wife of an attaché at the Embassy and with her husband had come from Washington for the occasion.

“If the government at home would only kill all the Communists and bring peace, how quickly we would all go home!” Mrs. Chang sighed. She was a small sweet-looking woman who had been one of the famous Wu sisters of Soochow, about whom Hsiang Lin, the poet, had written three of his most popular pieces. Now, as the wife of a rich retired banker, she had almost forgotten her girlhood and Hsiang Lin was dead.

All of the ladies had children and the rest of the evening was happily spent talking about them. Mrs. Liang confided that her eldest son James was the most brilliant student ever to have graduated from his medical college here in New York, that now he was in Peking where he was to be the head of the hospital next year, and that once he had thought himself in love with Lili Li. This had been only a momentary feeling, however, for he soon saw that while Lili was very pretty, she was also spoiled and selfish, and not at all the wife for a man who would one day be famous.

“It is difficult, indeed, to be the wife of a famous man.” Mrs. Liang sighed. “For example, my husband — what he will eat and what he won’t eat, the sort of undershirts he will wear and he won’t wear, the color of his ties, the texture of his socks, the hours when he cannot be disturbed and the hours when he must be amused, what is too hot, what is too cold; one day the bed is too soft, another day it is too hard — all these tortures cannot be imagined. And I assure you everything is the wife’s fault. Look at him!”

The two listening ladies looked at Dr. Liang who was now talking with the Englishman. Violet Sung was not near either of them. She was dancing with a young Frenchman and so beautifully that people were standing about to watch.

“He looks all spirit and good nature,” Mrs. Liang continued, seeing only her husband. “But tomorrow — eh! I tell you, I dread tomorrow.”

“I don’t think you can expect the return of Hong Kong,” the Englishman was saying to Dr. Liang. “In fact, Britain needs Hong Kong rather more than before. Now that India is to be free, we must contain her, you know. And besides there’s Burma free, too, also to be contained. And one doesn’t know just what will happen in the East Indies — or, for that matter, in Indo-China. We’re rather more responsible than before the war for the peace of the East, especially with Russia kicking Burma free, too, also to be contained. And one doesn’t know about in Manchuria. And there are your own Communists, my dear sir — what are you going to do about them?”

Dr. Liang smiled gracefully. “I’m a mere man of letters,” he said softly. “I don’t occupy my mind with such things.”

“Ah, yes, well,” Ranald Grahame said, “somebody has to, you know.” His eyes wandered about the room and fell on Violet dancing with that chap Pierre du Bois. He watched them in silence so suddenly grave that Dr. Liang with his delicate intuition felt alarmed. He would not like that English look directed against him! Thus thinking, he said that he must be going home, and then he drifted across the room and found Mrs. Liang.

“I’m feeling a little tired,” he said. “Shall we go home?”

She rose at once, bade her two friends a warm good-by with many promises of early meetings and invitations to meals, and Dr. Liang bowed twice and they went home, stopping only to thank Mr. and Mrs. Li who were sitting side by side on a settee near the door. Lili was now dancing with the Englishman, and Mrs. Li, disapproving, could only nod her head to her guests.

“Does it not cast some reflection on Lili to dance with this Englishman who owns Violet Sung?” she asked Mr. Li after the Liangs had gone.

“Well, well,” Mr. Li said, “I see Charlie is about to take her away. He will take care of her now — we can rest.” Even as he spoke Charlie Ting cut in on his lovely fiancée and Ranald Grahame was left alone on the floor. He looked half angry for a moment and then he went to the bar. Violet was still dancing with the Frenchman.

Dr. and Mrs. Liang rode home in total silence and Mrs. Liang leaned her head in a corner of the taxi and dozed. When they got home they found two bills and a letter on the hall table and the letter was from James.

“It is from the children,” Mrs. Liang cried with pleasure. “Come, let us read it at once.”

“I would like a cup of hot tea,” Dr. Liang said. “While you make it I will just cast my eyes over the letter.”

She looked wistful, but being anxious to keep him in good humor, she went obediently to the kitchen, lit a match, and shut her eyes while she applied it to the gas range, jumped when there was a loud report, and then set the kettle on to boil. She longed to go back and hear at least part of the letter but she waited until the kettle had boiled and she had infused the tea. Then with teapot and two bowls she went to the study.

What she saw caused her to set the teapot down hastily on the table. “Liang, what is wrong?” she cried.

He was tearing the letter into small pieces. “So,” he said, between set teeth, “you think I am about to take a concubine!”

She turned pale and sat down. “I did think so,” she faltered, “and I told the children I could not stay here if you did.”

“And whom would I take as a concubine?” he demanded.

“I don’t know,” she said. She was terrified at the look on his face and the children were not here to protect her. She faltered on. “One day you came and asked me what I thought about concubines—”

“Fool!” he said bitterly. “I was only writing an essay about women.”

She looked at him confounded. “Was that all?”

“That was all.”

She turned and tried to pour a bowl of tea, but her hand shook and she gave it up. “You will have to pour your own tea,” she said, beginning to sob.

She made for the door blindly, her handkerchief at her eyes, but he stopped her. “Why did you think I would take a concubine?” he asked. “Have I ever been unfaithful to you?”

She shook her head, her eyes still hidden behind her handkerchief. “Not altogether,” she murmured.

“What do you mean not altogether?” he demanded. “Either I am or am not unfaithful!”

She was very tired. She disliked large parties and she still felt that the Li family had slighted James and through him the Liang family. She was tired of Dr. Liang’s rather windy fame, and she longed for the solid substance of money and American bank accounts. It seemed to her that the Li family had everything. She was so tired that she felt reckless and inclined to tell the truth, even though the children were not here to protect her. So she opened the gates of her being and the truth flowed out. She took away the handkerchief and faced Dr. Liang.

“What is this faithful and unfaithful? It is all in the eyes and the mind. Yes, I am your wife, and that is how I know when you are being unfaithful. Do you think I do not know the look in your eyes and on your mouth when you are being faithful with me? And when I see the same look, when you look at Violet Sung and — and any other such woman — do I not know what you are being? And perhaps when you are being faithful with me, you are in your heart thinking about Violet Sung, so that even when you are being faithful with me you are also being unfaithful with her. You are not a man with a single kind of mind in you. You are like this—” Mrs. Liang’s fingers described in the air contradictory and secret convolutions; unfathomable in their contortions—“winding this way and that way and this way. I know you!”

Upon this she burst into loud sobs, put her handkerchief to her eyes again, and rushed out the door. Tomorrow morning, she told herself, she would empty the wastebasket herself in the kitchen and collect the scraps and piece together the children’s letter.

Dr. Liang heard her stump upstairs and go into the bedroom and lock the door fast. He sat quite still for a moment. Then he got up and poured himself tea and drank it slowly. When this was done he took out his Confucian classics and began to read them. The book fell open of itself at the pages upon which Confucius, more than two thousand years ago, had recited his hatreds. Smug people Confucius hated, rumor mongers he hated, spies he hated, and wily persons who pretended to be honest gentlemen. He hated cockleburs that mix themselves with corn, and dishonest men who mingle with the honest, and he hated glib talkers. He hated also the music of Cheng, because like modern jazz it confused classical music. He hated the color purple because it put to confusion the good color of red, and he hated prigs because they confused themselves with virtuous people. Then Confucius ended the list of his hatreds with these words: “Women and uneducated people are the most difficult to deal with. When I am familiar with them they become impudent, and when I ignore them, they resent it.”

Dr. Liang read these words thoughtfully, smiled, drank a little more tea, and prepared himself to sleep all night upon the couch here in his study.

He took off his coat and shirt and trousers and wrapped himself in a warm old quilted robe which he kept in the closet. He took off his socks and shoes and drew on a pair of knitted bedsocks. A steamer rug lay folded on the couch and this he put over him. A velvet-covered cushion made a good pillow. But when he had laid himself down and had put out the light he found he could not sleep. He felt lonely. That was the worst of going to an evening party. One was deceived by the noise, the glitter, the appearance of friends. The home seemed cold and empty.

Perhaps he had been hasty about sending the children away. Or perhaps, indeed, he and their mother should now think about returning to China. A pleasant home in Peking with a garden, his children there, James a distinguished surgeon, the home a center for scholars and beautiful women, his grandchildren running about the rooms, he and the mother growing old, honored and respected as only in China are the old honored and respected. Perhaps he might even be the president of a university, since he did not want to go into politics. All this flitted through his wakeful mind. He was on the brink of going upstairs to find his wife to tell her impulsively that at last he was about to yield to her wishes and go to China. He hesitated, however. He did not like to seem afraid of her and it was his habit never to allow himself to appear reconciled in less than twenty-four hours. Before that time had passed she was sure to make some small sign of repentance and then he could forgive her generously. He put out his hand therefore to turn on the radio, since he could not sleep, and at the same moment the last news commentator was finishing his summary of the world’s news for the day.

“In Peiping the day was marked by stormy protest from the students. Five thousand university students went on strike against the arrest of twenty-five of their fellows who had been in jail here since yesterday for—”

He winced and turned off the radio. He could live only it safety — that is, in peace. He had better stay where he was. A scholar must have peace. Resolutely he closed his eyes and in a slow murmuring voice began to recite the Book of Songs, written hundreds of centuries ago. It was better than a bromide and in less than a quarter of an hour he was fast asleep.

In the big parlor of the Li apartment Lili was listening to Charlie Ting talk. He had a fluent tongue which spoke an idiomatic American dialect much better than he spoke his own native Shanghai. He sat on the divan beside Lili, his arm thrown behind her. Her mother sat silent and dozing in a distant corner. At the exact moment when her head fell upon her breast he would kiss Lili. He talked on, his eyes upon the dozing figure.

“I wish we were going to Washington instead of London. But everybody says London is fun. I wish the food weren’t so scarce there, but Violet says the black market in Paris is wonderful and of course we can have things sent over. As for that, you and I aren’t diplomats and we can slip over to Paris. What say we get a little apartment there and spend a lot of time in it? Officially of course, we’ll be with the old people, like nice dutiful children, but actually we’ll be on our own. That’ll give them face and give us what we want.”

Mrs. Li’s head fell upon her breast and Charlie pressed his lips to Lili’s soft red mouth. She yielded with entire abandon, throwing back her head and closing her eyes exactly as she had seen movie stars do. She always watched the screen kiss closely in order to learn the American way. Charlie’s head swam a little. He also learned from the movies. It was really the only place to learn modern ways of making love, or perhaps it had better be said, ways of making modern love. There was nothing in China to teach him. He had seen a few motion pictures made in Shanghai and they seldom showed even a kiss. Chinese lovers still only talked, or at most touched hands. He had once read an English translation of an old Chinese book which had been recommended to him as spicy, and it had seemed dull indeed, full of references to flowers and dew, clouds and valleys and wooded mountain-tops, which he had not understood, and where the little feet of women were supposed to be something wonderful.

“Sure you’ve never loved anybody but me?” he inquired jealously of Lili.

She looked at him with large thoughtful eyes and kept silent. She spoke very little, and he was not always sure she understood his English. She did not speak very well herself — cute, of course, the way she talked, but certainly not good American.

“Tell me, darling,” he urged.

“Only once I thought I maybe love a little,” she confessed.

He felt a punch in his chest, where his heart beat against his ribs. “You never told me that,” he said solemnly. “Who was he?”

“Never mind now,” she said softly and laid her head against his shoulder.

“But I do mind,” he insisted. “I can’t be happy till you’ve spilled the whole thing.”

“S-pilled?” she inquired in two syllables.

“Told me,” he translated.

She smiled. “Is nothing at all, truly. When I first came here, I didn’t have experience.” She spoke the long word syllable by syllable. “At that time James Liang fell into love of me — I didn’t understand. I only saw how it is in the movies and I was excited. I let him love only a little.”

“Where is he now?” Charlie demanded.

“Oh, very far away in Peking!”

“What is he doing there?”

“He is doctor in a big hospital.”

“Does he write to you?” Charlie asked.

“Oh, no!” Lili replied in a soft scream, “only once he wrote a long letter asking me to come there. But I don’t answer.”

“That’s all?”

“All,” she sighed.

There was silence for a moment. “Did he kiss you?” Charlie asked in a tight voice.

“Sometimes he did.”

Charlie drew his arm away and sat apart from her. She stole a long look at him. Enough jealousy was good but too much was dangerous.

“I didn’t like it,” she said sweetly. “When he kiss me, I feel it is not nice. And I do not want to live in China any more now when it is so nice here and I think it will be nice in Paris and maybe London, too.”

She leaned toward him and pressed the fragrant palm of her hand against his cheek. “Now I am sorry I s-pill,” she whispered, “but I think I must because I must s-pill everything for you.”

He resisted her for a brief moment and then he turned to her and kissed her again, long and hard. In the corner Mrs. Li began to snore slightly.

Still later did Ranald Grahame sit up talking to Violet. They did not so much share one apartment as live in connecting ones. He had, of course, to seem to live alone, and so for that matter did she. He was not the sort of man who wanted domesticity, and certainly she was not the woman to provide it. He had never married and he never intended to marry. He had explained to Violet so there would be no misunderstanding. He believed in being as honest with women as he was with men.

This honesty compelled him now to demand an explanation of her behavior. He had left the party early because he would not allow himself to make a spectacle before others. After his dance with Lili had been interrupted he had taken a whisky and soda at the bar and then he had gone to pay his respects to Mr. and Mrs. Li. They had looked at him rather vacantly as though they did not remember who he was and this had not made him feel better. He knew Chinese well enough to believe they were only pretending when they seemed hot to know one. They knew everything, actually. They were much more difficult to deal with than the mercurial people of India, who were always bursting with talk and feelings, so that you knew what they were about and could circumvent them easily. Chinese contained their feelings so thoroughly that any more containment was self-immolation.

For this reason he did not believe for one moment that Violet did not know what she had done. He had waited two hours for her in a state of cold rage mounting to absolute frigidity by the time she came in, beautiful in her pallor.

He was waiting in her sitting room, and she lifted her eyes in surprise at him. “You still here, Ranald!” she said in her lovely modulated voice. She threw off the short sable coat. “Shall I make you a drink?”

He had risen meticulously when she came in and now he sat down again. “No thanks — I shan’t stay but a moment. You must be tired.”

She sat down gracefully weary and pushed back her hair. “I am, rather. Pierre wanted to show me a new nightclub — a French one. A lot of his friends were there. It was fun — or would have been if I had not been already tired. That was a stupid big party, wasn’t it? But curiously distinguished, too — frightfully Chinese, I thought. It looked as though everybody were there, but when one examined the crowd, there was really not one person who was wrong, you know.” She had the trick of speaking English in various ways, to an American as an American, to an Englishman as an English woman. She spoke five other languages as easily, one of them Russian.

But she was not a spy, nor anything indeed except what she seemed to be, a rootless beautiful woman, floating on any surface, and without depths of her own into which to retire. Frequently she did not like her life, but she did not know how to make another. Her father had been an old-fashioned Chinese, whose origins even she did not know, and she had never known her French mother. She might have become a famous model for artists, but to her they seemed dingy men, and she had continued to live strictly as a nun in her father’s great dark Paris house, which was filled with Chinese furniture and rugs and paintings. What he did not want he sold and what he liked he kept. Such goods reached him in secret ways from China, and imperial treasures passed through his hands or stayed in his house.

Among ivory statues of Kwanyin Violet had grown up to look like one herself, consciously modeling herself upon the goddess. When her father died, leaving no will and no other family, she had continued in the house, except when she traveled with her servants, a married French couple who made her home wherever she was, hiring transient help in whatever country they were. Until she met the Englishman, she had had only one lover, an impetuous, jealous White Russian who had made her wretched and yet who had made it impossible for her to live alone. She had fled from him, and then she had really fallen in love with Ranald in her quiet peculiar way. She liked his subdued heat and his tenacious strength, and she liked his complete self-control. He was restful and he gave her a sense of security. She hoped that she need never have another lover, and that they could keep their relationship steadfast until they grew beyond the need of such things. By that time she hoped she could find something she really enjoyed doing.

This steadfastness she wanted above all else, and she had felt it threatened tonight by the passionate and handsome young Pierre du Bois, whom she had met for the first time. He had immediately told her that he was nobody, only a third secretary to somebody, but he thought she was the most beautiful human being he had ever seen. She had missed something of the Russian in the quiet Englishman and his quiet rather selfish way of making love.

“I quite realize that you and I have no claim on one another,” Ranald was saying, “and I make no claim now.” He was very straight and tall and his pale firm face was distinguished looking. “Nevertheless, I cannot have it said that you allow yourself to be exhibited by a Frenchman or any other man. I demand of my mistress the same good taste I might demand of my wife.”

She leaned forward when he said this and she looked at him earnestly. Her face was molded in soft curves and flat bones, and her body was slender at the waist and more full-breasted than it would have been had her blood been purely Chinese. She smiled somewhat wistfully.

“You needn’t say that to me, Ranald. All my Chinese common sense tells me I shall never find as good a man as you. There are times when you seem a little dull to me, you know, and then Pierre or somebody like him is fun — just for an hour or so. But if you don’t like it, I can easily do without fun. I’d much rather be able to count on you and have you count on me.”

He acknowledged to himself at once that her honesty was equal to his. “Thank you, my dear,” he said with some heartiness and entire sincerity. “So long as we understand one another! All the same, I’d advise not dancing too long with one man — or too often. Or sitting too long, for that matter. You went to the extreme with Dr. Liang the last time. I didn’t say anything, for I felt you couldn’t be interested in him — a wishy-washy sort of man, I thought.”

“Distinguished,” she murmured in her Chinese way. “With us a man does not have to be brutal or strong. Delicacy is also appreciated. Subtlety is admired.”

He was not without his own subtleties. “You are more French than Chinese under that smooth golden skin of yours,” he reminded her.

She laughed. “That is exactly what is the matter with me,” she agreed.

He allowed himself a smile. He was really very fond of her. She knew how to be comfortable as well as passionate. The combination was irresistible.