All the Flowers in Shanghai (34 page)

“Thank you very much, I never expected such generosity. Actually, I’m not sure what I expected. Can’t we use money here?” I asked, rather hesitantly.

“There is no money in this production commune anymore, at least not for this. If you meet your production targets everything is good and you have what you need,” Ah Sui replied. “Soon the whole country will be like this. That is what they want anyway. I expect Madam Zhang can explain to you.” She looked at the forewoman. “See you tomorrow.”

They all turned and left, and Madam Zhang and I stood watching them go.

“They’re very nice,” I remarked in a small voice.

“Yes, they are, and many of them very skilled in traditional arts but these talents will soon be lost.” She turned back to her chair, leaving me standing alone looking at the open doorway leading out into the dimly lit street. I could hear dogs barking and people shouting. Once seated, Madam Zhang resumed her work and I went to her table and sat down on the end of it to watch her.

My feet hung down. I swung them like a child; like I had with Bi, from the riverbank. I breathed a little deeper.

“You can live with me for now, but if you’re going to remain here then you’ll need to get the correct papers as without them you aren’t entitled to any food coupons. More important, though, you need to practice your sewing techniques,” she said, without looking up from her work.

“Thank you, I’d like to stay. I came here to see you,” I admitted shyly, still watching my feet as I swung them.

“Well, I don’t know why you did. This life’s lonely, and after my husband I lost my son so I’m glad of the company, whether you stay a year or a day.”

So he was gone.

“Did Bi marry?” I asked, almost embarrassed, staring hard at my feet.

She looked up at me and raised one eyebrow.

“I remember how close you two were,” she said, without answering me.

She was an old woman now, but she remained as calm and self-assured as she had been many years ago, and I as upset and anxious as before, though I was now at the end of my journey and not the beginning.

“I’m sorry, but I have not seen Bi in many years and long ago became used to the idea that he was gone.” She looked at me more sympathetically as she continued to speak. I felt very sad to hear this and it must have been obvious. “My child,” she stated candidly, “this country has always been a violent and angry land. Sooner or later, we will suffer.”

She smiled at me but it was plain that it cost her some effort.

“I loved Bi very much. He was a good boy.” She seemed to look inside herself then as if remembering the brightness in him she had loved so much, that same quality that she believed must have drawn me here. “Did you hope to meet him again?”

“I thought of it, but I . . .” I could not say any more and returned to studying my feet.

“Well, he went to war against the Japanese, then against those greedy Nationalists. Someone once brought news that he was fighting them in Fujian after the war and the Japanese had been defeated . . . then nothing. It has been nearly six years and I’m afraid he’s gone.” Her face was hard and set; she was well practiced at preventing herself from crying. “But isn’t it the same for all of us?” She laughed and shook her head in self-reproach. “Such misery we Chinese can put ourselves through. How many families have lost someone, or caused someone to be lost? How many do you think?” Her voice drifted into silence.

The mask had slipped for a second. She was all things angry, sorrowful, broken then . . . and, like all the rest of the poor, hardworking and exhausted.

“I don’t know,” I answered her, thinking only of my own guilt.

“Everyone. All of us. All of us collectively. You can ask anyone and they will tell you a terrible story.” She paused and her expression softened a little; she blinked and rubbed her eyebrows as if to wipe away the tiredness and bad memories. “We are going to stay behind an hour or so tonight, as you are going to practice those buttons again, and I will teach you some basic straight-line stitching on the sewing machine. Go sit by Ah Sui’s machine.”

I went over to the machine and sat down.

“Uncover it,” she instructed rather impatiently.

As I did this and folded the cover away to a small shelf under the table, which was where the spare needles were kept, Madam Zhang continued her writing for another few minutes during which I had time to think of Bi. I had shared my first and only loving kiss with him, and there would be no continuation of it in my lifetime. It was one small beautiful moment that I would never allow to be swallowed into China’s bloody future; it would remain as a glimpse of brightness in my life, a wonderful chance moment, forever unspoiled. We had touched and held each other once, and although I had known it was impossible all along, a small part of me had hoped to find him here, alone and waiting for me. He would have remained young and lovely, I knew. And as I watched his mother, writing calmly and carefully in her book, I looked around me and wished I had run away with him to live here and become a fisherman’s wife, the daughter-in-law of a seamstress.

Madam Zhang finished her work and came over to sit next to me.

“Now look at me—” I turned toward her—“and show me your hands?”

I held them out and turned them so she could see their palms and backs. She grabbed them and felt the muscles and bones.

“You have very weak hands but nice long fingers.”

“They are like my grandfather’s fingers. My son has them, too,” I said proudly, which surprised me.

“We’ll talk about your son some other day.”

She put my hands down and for the next half an hour showed me how to use the pedal to maintain the speed of the needle, and how to change and thread the needle. Then, as before, she made me practice by repeating the procedures. After fifteen or so attempts I got it correct and felt so proud. I sat looking at the machine, smiling to myself.

“Well done, but what are you smiling for? You haven’t actually made anything yet,” Madam Zhang said, rather amused.

“I know, but at least I learned something. I can
do
something. I thought I wouldn’t survive.” I felt my heart beat wildly, my breath shorten. It felt as though I would cry again.

Madam Zhang took hold of my shoulders and gave them a shake. She came around the other side of the table and, leaning on her elbows, spoke gently but firmly to me.

“Now stop. If you are going to survive here, you must be stronger. I don’t know what you did . . . you can tell me when you’re ready and not until then. I’ve often traveled the country, working for families like yours, and like all those who move around, I have seen death, killings, disease. Have watched others lose their children and lost my own. We must swallow down such bitterness and keep living, hoping that fortune will help us.” She paused then said assertively, “Everything is for the Party now. We’re too old to follow the youth who will lead us to the world of devils, so we must remain practical if we want to survive.”

I looked down. I thought of all that had happened to bring me here. I had run away to this place, with no idea of how I was going to live. I had been lucky already, finding her and these old women. I could have been lost like so many others . . . like Bi. I bit my lip. I knew I did not deserve this luck. I closed my eyes, but could still feel the stirring of Madam Zhang’s breath as she continued to watch me closely. A few tears rolled slowly down my cheeks and dropped on the table below. Madam Zhang remained still. I saw Lu Meng limping when he was a small boy, practicing his martial arts so bravely and, later, rescuing his sister from the violence of my belt. I imagined Xiong Fa sitting alone, slumped against the back of a chair in his apartment, trying to understand what had happened, his eyes bloodshot from tiredness. I thought of you and the scar I gave you.

Chapter 24

I
opened my eyes and Madam Zhang was still there.

“Are we doing something good?” I asked her. “I need to do something good.”

“Feng Feng, I don’t know if what we’re doing is good. Like when I made your wedding dress, there is no choice but to do it with every good intention and then hope. I think we Chinese don’t think so far ahead. We leave that to the Emperor . . . that is why we have such a long history.” She laughed.

I laughed a little, too.

“Go get some buttons and cloth and practice for a while. I have some things to do myself,” she said finally.

I sewed for forty minutes and became competent enough to be trusted with the task while Madam Zhang finished her books. When she eventually locked up, we went out into the street. We walked for half a mile and turned into a narrow road. The whole town was very quiet. There were houses to either side, built of the same gray brick, and through the windows we could see the same weak candlelight. From each roof protruded a metal pipe from which soot drifted into the air and filled our nostrils with the smell of coal dust. There were no streetlights so we walked carefully and slowly. After fifteen minutes we turned right into a small lane, just wide enough for two people to walk together. Looking up, I could see thousands of stars and a great moon. This was the peaceful beauty that Bi had described. Although I had not found him, he was still not lost to me.

We reached a house, like all the others.

“Here we are,” Madam Zhang whispered, opening the door and disappearing inside.

I followed her and for a moment we stood in complete darkness before candlelight revealed the interior. The house had only three rooms. The bedroom lay immediately to the left of the front door, with two single wooden beds covered in thin cotton summer sheets. Madam Zhang must have slept here with her husband once. The living room was rectangular with a low ceiling, its longest side facing the street. It had a small bed in the far corner, where Bi had slept. Seeing the lonely little thing, I understood he had never married, never had a family of his own. I wondered if I had been his only chance?

Above the bed was a drawing of him, perhaps done by someone in the town. It was drawn when he was older than I remembered him. His hairline was more adult and his features more pronounced; he had a sharper jawline and the artist had made his eyes more intense than the expression of wild innocence to which I had been drawn. He looked kind but strong. It seemed like a long time ago since I had known him; unreal and blurred, like a half-remembered dream, yet intense in the images that still remained in my mind. As my years in Daochu passed, further memories and sensations from our time together in the gardens would be awoken for a while and then return to the deep sleep of oblivion, fading in and out of my mind, untainted. I would quietly enjoy them, like a child carefully picking its first flowers. I began to understand that everything we had been together, in that short summer, was more than Ma could ever have felt or imagined. Bi’s bed only took up a small part of the room; the clay
kang
oven, which was nearly eight feet long by four feet wide and stood immediately outside the bedroom door, took up a quarter of it. I would later find it more than adequate for keeping the room warm in the harsh winters. There was a thick red, yellow, black, and dark blue mosaic carpet across much of the floor, in the center of which stood a wooden table to seat four and two heavy armchairs. On the wall above the
kang
was a picture of Chairman Mao, which had become gray from soot and smoke. The door in the back wall adjacent to the
kang
led to a large bare room used for keeping foodstuffs and occasionally chickens. It had a hard-baked mud floor with a tub in one corner, where I was told we could wash after we had fetched the water.

Madam Zhang boiled some water for tea and we sat together at the table.

“We didn’t always live here,” she explained. “We used to live on a farm but then my husband suffered a terrible injury to his chest and died a few months afterward. Bi and I tried to keep it going but we were not experienced farmers. I was a seamstress and he was on his own. Then the local leaders suggested we give it up for the People and allow others to farm it.”

She sat looking down at the table, running her right hand over it as if reassuring an old friend. She stared into the dark grain of the wood and sighed.

It was quiet here. There were no Sangs demanding my attention. There was no need to speak. I was at peace. My pain would be dulled for a while.

The pot of water started to boil and I filled our cups. I watched the leaves rise to the surface and the steam drift from the water. I placed the lids on top and handed one to Madam Zhang. We sat saying nothing.

The bedroom had no windows, which was how Madam Zhang liked it but it was also very warm with the
kang
on the other side of the wall. A mannequin stood proudly at the end of the little room, filling up the space between the beds. It was draped with the most brilliant colors, some large pieces of cloth and some merely scraps; she was in the process of creating a wonderful dress pieced together from each of these scraps and slivers. It reminded me of standing with Grandfather looking across the gardens in the summer and being struck by the myriad of colors we could see from the flowers in bloom against the lush greens of the grass and trees. And how, after a shower, the sun would emerge and the petals and grass, fresh with raindrops, would reflect rainbows of light.

Madam Zhang pointed to a bed, removing some swatches of cloth and a few bobbins of thread. “You can sleep here until you decide whether you are going to stay.”

I lay down and was immediately asleep.

Finally, nothing.

I
learned slowly and carefully. I started with buttons on trousers and taking the inventory. Then, when the others agreed I was competent with the sewing machine, I stitched straight lines on trouser seams and hems. After a time, weeks or months, it did not matter, I learned to cut, and so eventually I was skilled enough to produce things on my own.

Our days were filled with work. In the morning at home we cleaned, cooked, and washed; there were no servants to cook for me here or to help me bathe and I did not miss them, though I often thought of Yan’s plaintive expression, her half-smile and maternal concern. Perhaps she would even have approved of the way I lived now. In the evening, after locking up, we would go to the People’s Store or canteen and join the rest of the town for dinner or else take food home to prepare ourselves. The townspeople had become used to the Party and its demands, and all change becomes acceptable whatever the consequences once you are accustomed to change itself.