Gift of the Golden Mountain (2 page)

     "That's been pretty well documented," the older man said, "It looks as if Reade is in the process of being historically vindicated."
I was disarmed by this sudden breach in intelligence practice. He threw me off guard. Defending Porter had become almost second nature, it felt strange not to have to. I turned back to the silent television and for a few moments stared at a tap dancing peanut. When the young man started to prod me, the older one stopped him. He was going to give me time.

     I cleared my throat, and resumed in what I thought of as my archivist's voice: "May was born in San Francisco on Valentine's Day, 1943. Her father was a correspondent in the China-Burma-India theater, attached to General Stilwell's staff. Her mother was Chinese, a medical doctor and a member of a distinguished Shanghai family. Liao Ch'ing-Ling." I paused a moment and thought about Ch'ing-Ling. Many of the faces from my past are lost to memory now, but not hers. Never hers. I can close my eyes and see her as she looked the day May was born, her jet black hair fanned out against the white of the pillow, that beautiful, porcelain mask of a face, perfectly still, those great black eyes, anguished and determined. I knew then that she would not stay. I believe the others saw it in her face as well, and were helpless against it. I shook myself to continue. "She was working in a hospital in Honolulu when war broke out; it was a rushed, wartime marriage. Porter sent his wife to this country to await the birth of their child. The baby was named Mei-jin. We called her 'Mei.'

     "One month after the birth, Ch'ing-Ling chose to leave the country, giving the child to the care of Katherine Reade McCord and Lena Kerr. We know that May's mother returned to Mainland China, but there has been no trace of her since. May was cared for by Mrs. McCord, Lena Kerr, and a devoted friend, Sara Hunt, in Mrs. Hunt's San Francisco home, until Porter Reade returned from the war, at which time he took complete and loving charge of his daughter.

     "Lena Kerr died not long after Porter's return from the war. Sara Hunt—to whom May was especially attached—died when May was eleven. May and her father were inseparable, though he was embroiled in controversy and was spending most of his time
and energy appearing before government committees. May was his constant companion. The two were in a Los Angeles hotel room, waiting to make a court appearance when Porter Reade suffered a fatal heart attack. He died in her arms. She was thirteen years old."

     "Tough break," the younger man blurted, and the phrase hung in the air, awkwardly, until the other banished it with a let's-get-on-with-it question: "What can you tell us about her early schooling?"

     "She went east to boarding school—the Colworth School in Colworth, Maine, where my daughter teaches. May lived with my daughter and her family in town. Then she went on to Mount Holyoke, and graduate school . . ."

     "Yes," he interrupted, as if he knew all that, "I wonder if you could tell us something about her professional career?"

     "Tell you?" I repeated, not quite understanding what it was he wanted to know. "Oh well, she is a geologist, surely you know that. A geologist needs to understand those events which can seldom be directly observed, which are buried in the vast depths of the earth: Her task is to search out secrets which predate human history." I looked into the eyes of the young agent and saw a flicker of confusion. I thought, he does not know if I am rambling or if there is a point to what I say, if I am shrewd or if I am slightly senile. "Geology," I went on, as if warming to my subject, "is the study of indirect evidence—of fault lines and alluvial plains, of glacial scour and eolian deposits . . . the geologist must work out all of the possible combinations of events that occurred ages ago. In short," I said, as pedantically as I dared, "geology probes far beneath the surface, looks to times beyond memory. To do this, a geologist must go into the field, must know where to look for the clues. May's particular field of study is volcanoes."

     I did not tell him that it was not surprising that May should have become a geologist. I did not say that the whole of her life has been a probing for answers buried deep in the bedrock of her past, that all this while she has been searching to discover something about the pressures which caused the slip-fault that occurred
before her birth, an event which profoundly shaped the contours of her life.

     The older agent shifted gears. "Can you tell me if her politics are similar to her father's?"

     I wanted to sigh, instead I did the expected and bristled noticeably, making no attempt to hide my annoyance. "May is a geologist, as I told you. She is not political. She is interested in rocks and volcanoes, and that is all I have to say."

     "Is there . . ." he began.

     "No," I answered, "there is nothing more I can tell you."

It was not true. I could have told him a great deal more. I could have said I was there that Valentine's Day, with Lena and Sara and Kit. My Emilie was in her junior year at Mills College that spring, and she joined us at the hospital. It was wartime, and we were a company of women, closing ranks. It seems to me now that in those dark early years of the war, Ch'ing-Ling's baby became for each of us all the hope that was left in the world. We were determined to make a warm, safe place for this exquisite child, nestled that day in the arms of a mother who had, even then, decided to abandon her.

     I could have told them that it was Porter who decided she should be called "Mei-jin," which means "Beautiful Pearl." He wanted his child to be proud of her Chinese heritage. I could have told them so much more, but I would not. I wanted to concentrate on the new film clips coming out of Saigon, so I could try to catch a glimpse of May in the frantic crowds that were clamoring to escape that lost country.

Most days are lost in the mists of memory, but the day of Sara Hunt's last visit is not. It was a Thursday in May of 1954, and it
stands clear in my mind, all details perfectly intact. I had positioned myself that morning on the daybed on the sunporch so I could look out to the garden and see down the hall as well, to the frosted glass of the front door of the cottage. If I had to stay in bed, as the doctor seemed determined I should, I wanted to be where I could at least see something. Repose is not a natural attitude for me; I think of myself as being in motion. Folded hands please me in others—I once had a show of photographs called "Hands"—but my own require occupation. I shifted the heavy cast that encompassed one leg and attempted a more comfortable position.

     I thought about taking a photograph of a tall ladder in an empty room, captioning it "On the Humpty-Dumpty front, this is the ladder from which Faith had a great fall . . ." and sending it to friends and clients, to let them know I was going to be out of commission for a time with a shattered leg.

     Looking out the window gave me no pleasure, untended as my garden was these past weeks. It turned out not to be a bright day, as promised, and I was glad. The sun had been erased by a fine white fog that washed in about midmorning, first in quiet reconnoitering puffs, then in strong invading gusts. In the sunlight, the bougainvillea glowed a garish purple against the white glare of the DeLuccis' garage, but in the fog it became a soft, pastel pink. Sara would appreciate the fog. Her eyes had become sensitive to light these past few years.

     Sara. How long had it been since she was here? Almost a year, nine months at least, since she had been well enough to venture out of her house on California Street. Which meant that this trip, even if it was a relatively short distance, would have a purpose. That was what troubled me. I shifted again, determined not to let myself get lost in the vagaries of what Sara might be thinking, or why Sara was coming that morning.

     I had lived in the cottage long enough to know all of its sounds, and I knew how to filter certain of them: the mad whir as the refrigerator switched on, the methodical ticking of the gas
heater as it gained momentum, children's laughter lifting from the schoolyard down the hill. If I couldn't move about, I could at least listen to the world outside. I switched on the radio. Static crackled, then an apocalyptic voice from some far place intoned:
On this day in a little known corner of the world once called French Indochina, the French army has been defeated by the Vietminh forces of Ho Chi Minh at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu.
Silence then, until suddenly calypso music blasted out and I switched the radio off.

     I heard the Cadillac as it turned the corner and began the laborious climb up the hill, its great engine grinding and complaining. The auto, like the small woman who would be perched on its rear seat, her gloved hand grasping the chromium handle, was of good, prewar stuff; both had been well tended over the years; each was, quite simply, old.

     The car and the woman and the driver had been coming to my cottage for more than thirty years, long enough to have developed a ritual. I considered trying to get up to go to the door, to be there when Sara arrived as I always was. I actually went so far as to move one leg—the good one—before giving up. Sara was ill and I was only mending, but it didn't matter. I couldn't move. Annoyed with the intransigence of my body, I leaned back on the pillows and tried to be content with imagining a scene I knew by heart.

     I listened as the car pulled up to the cottage, noted the full roar of the engine as Henry shifted into reverse to curb the wheels on the steep hill. Henry had been hired when Sara purchased her first "machine," as she called them, a Pierce-Arrow. A slow three-count and there was the solid thud of the driver's door closing; another six-count and he would have gone round to help Sara out of the back, holding her firmly with one hand while he closed the door behind her. Once, not all that long ago, Sara would have been out and up the steps before Henry could come around to open the door. I could not remember when Sara had started to wait for his help. Now I could hear them on the stair, and the soft, fussing sounds they made to each other. "Watch it here, Miss," Henry
scolded, and Sara muttered something about him watching out for himself.

     And so they came: slowly, Sara's age and the heart condition she would not admit to, impeding their progress.

     "Faith?" Sara called out.

     "Back here, on the sunporch," I answered, shaken by a new weariness in her voice.

     Sara appeared in the doorway to the little sunporch, flushed from the exertion of climbing the cottage steps, looking so fragile it seemed a small puff might blow her away.

     "What's going on here?" she asked, her eyes scanning the leg cast.

     "My tap dancing debut has had to be canceled," I answered, determined to make light of it, then ruining the effect by blurting, "You shouldn't have come, Sara darling—but I'm so glad that you did."

     She grasped her cane with both hands and lowered herself into the chair beside the daybed. Then she held hard to my hand and said nothing. Catching her breath, she looked out to the garden.

     "Weeds are taking over," she offered with what sounded like a sigh of acceptance. "It used to be such a pretty place."

     Alarmed, and feeling a need to reassure her I said, "It will be again, Sara. It's not as tangled as it looks. You know my theory on gardens—planned disorganization. I'll have it set right in a few days, just as soon as I get back on my feet."

     "Yes," Sara said briskly, as if she had turned away from the business at hand and was now turning back, "and how soon will that be?"

     "The doctor says six weeks, maybe a bit more—it seems to have been a rather complicated fracture—before I can get around."

     "What does he mean by 'get around'?"

     I knew Sara in this mood; it was no good to put her off. "I think he means get around enough to do for myself. As far as my going back to the studio, that will be awhile."

     "How much of awhile?" Sara could be relentless.

     "Six months, probably." I coughed nervously, but made myself add what the doctor had said was more likely: "Maybe longer."

     "Then we have to find you a gardener, don't we?"