Journey Across the Four Seas (25 page)

"At this point, all Baba wants is a quiet life of reading, writing, and publishing. He’s through with government, any government."

"I thought government was his life. He wanted so much for his name to be recorded in the annals of history." I wasn’t being sarcastic, but merely repeating what Hok-Ching had once told me.

Hok-Ching gave a bitter chuckle. "That depends on who’s writing the history. If it were up to certain people in the Kuomintang, Baba’s name would stink for ten thousand years. They’re blaming him for the gold
y
uan fiasco. They’re even blaming him for losing the country to the communists. How ridiculous!"

"What went wrong with the gold
y
uan?" I asked. The "gold
y
uan reform" was implemented after I’d left
Nanking
. The papers had reported on it, but nobody seemed to have a clear idea about how it was supposed to bring down inflation.

"The principle was flawed to begin with. The reform was Chiang Ching-Kuo’s brainchild, and you know what Baba thinks of his intelligence." Hok-Ching smirked. Baba had been open about his opinion of the president’s son, Ching-Kuo. He loved to boast about how once, when Little Chiang came visiting, he’d walked out in his underwear to receive his guest.

Hok-Ching went on about the reform: "The idea was to make the public sell their gold and foreign currency to the government. In exchange, they received the new gold
y
uan. Somehow, Little Chiang thought the new currency would stop inflation. But prices kept going up, and people who bought the gold
y
uan lost their life’s savings. Little Chiang pushed Baba to the front to take the heat. Baba wasn’t even home at the time. He was in
Washington
,
D.C.
, chairing the annual meeting of the IMF."

There might be truth in what my husband just said, but from what I’d heard, Baba wasn’t completely innocent either.

"Wasn’t there a leak from the ministry? Somebody who knew about the reform before it was announced made a huge killing in the stock market. Did Baba ever get to the bottom of it?"

Hok-Ching let out an angry huff. "Let’s not talk about it," he said, yet went on: "Baba immediately launched an investigation. The speculator was arrested. Under interrogation, he gave away the source of his information. It was Baba’s secretary!"

"That man by the name of Cho! I knew he was a bad egg! He was always pretending to go to the office when he was really going to the mahjong parlor. And Baba believed him. Your father can be so blind!"

Hok-Ching was silent, his face turned toward the window. I looked out the other way, stunned to hear myself criticize my venerated father-in-law. Yet in my head I couldn’t stop saying everything I’d always wanted to say. Baba was a megalomaniac. People who flattered him could do no wrong, while those who challenged him could do no right. This had been his attitude in both public and private life. His favoritism had created bitter rivalry among his children, setting brother against brother even when they were born of the same mother. I used to think that the women were responsible for the squabbles. After living with him, I’d discovered that Baba was the real culprit.

A long time passed. Hok-Ching was clearly offended at my remark about his father. I, too, felt guilty. Baba could be as faulty as I thought he was, but this was no time to criticize him. Only a heartless person could flog a drowning dog.
   

"How’s Yung-Jen?" I said, changing the subject.

"She’s…all right."

His hesitation made me press on: "She’s still living in our apartment, isn’t she?"

"Not really. She decided to move in with her relatives."

My heart sank. "What about Sam-Koo? She left
Bangkok
a few days after you. I hope she arrived at the apartment safely."

Hok-Ching nodded. "She helped me pack up your things
.
..."

I waited.

"She, too, decided to move in with relatives."

My heart sank further. Sam-Koo, my godmother, and Yung-Jen, my lifelong friend, had been evicted from my apartment. If I had been there, I would have looked out for their interest.

"Number Five is still there, working for Baba," Hok-Ching added, as if this were a largesse for which I should be grateful.

I realized I couldn’t trust him in anything that belonged to me. "Did you take my jewelry with you?"

"Of course not. You don’t expect me to carry your jewelry in my pocket. It’s where it should be, in the safe deposit box."

"Where did you put the keys to the box?" it occurred to me to ask.

"I signed over the box to Baba and handed him the keys."

"That’s my dowry! How could you give it away?" As soon as I said it, I saw the chauffeur glancing at me in the rearview mirror. Although he couldn’t understand Chinese, the tone of my voice stirred his curiosity.

"My father is in trouble," Hok-Ching said. "We owe it to him to help him in every way we can."

"What about the diamonds I left in his safe in
Nanking
? Did he take them with him?"

"My country is falling apart and my family is in peril, and all you can think of is your baubles!"

What noble words to use to put me down as mean and petty. All right, if that’s how you want to play. I won’t take you head-on, but I have my own way of getting back at you. After enough time had elapsed, I said casually, "By the way, did you get a chance to look up Yolanda?" It was a pleasure to see my husband squirm.

*

Eventually, Hok-Ching did bring me back my diamond necklace, but the rest of my treasure was gone. The gold chains, rubies, sapphires, pearls, and jade had disappeared. After the communist takeover, the
Shanghai
branch of the Wang family escaped to
Hong Kong
. The flat became a way station for the refugees, and everyone grabbed a handful of my jewelry. Hok-Ching was most generous to his family, but I wished they knew that it was my dowry they were spending.

Now, let me digress from my story to tell you about Baba’s political fate. While he was living as a private citizen in
Hong Kong
, the political parties on both sides played tug of war over him. The Nationalists wanted him to rejoin Chiang Kai-Shek’s government, which had been reestablished in
Taiwan
, and the communists wanted him to defect. But Baba stood his ground. He was determined to stay out of politics and get back into publishing. With a $30,000 contribution from Brother Kin, Baba raised enough funds to establish a new publishing company, called Hua Guo. Its retail outlet was called Hong Kong Bookstore. It was always losing money, and Brother Kin had to send $10,000 every year to bail it out.

The enterprise went on for three years, until an incident jolted Baba to the reality of Chinese politics. It was like getting involved with the mafia—once you got your hands dirty, even a bath couldn’t get you clean.

As Baba was entering his flat one afternoon, he heard a loud pop. He looked around, couldn’t see where the noise had come from, and shrugged it off. He later went into the balcony, which had been enclosed and converted into a room. Staring at him was a small clean hole in the window. He was puzzled, but still didn’t think much of it until Number Five swept the floor. A small round piece of metal rolled out from under the desk. It was a bullet. The significance of the bang Baba had heard struck him. Somebody had taken a shot at him. Immediately he suspected the communists. After all, they’d labeled him a "national thief" for his part in emptying the
Imperial
Museum
in Peking and transporting its treasures to
Taipei
. However, the more he pondered, the more he was inclined to rule out the communists. If they’d wanted to kill him, he would be dead already. The bullet would have hit him, not the window. A trained assassin couldn’t have missed him by such a wide margin. No, the bullet wasn’t meant to kill. It was a warning, a reminder that he could be easily knocked off the fence if he didn’t climb down one side or the other. Baba quickly wound up his business in Hong Kong and flew to
Taipei
, into the embrace of the Nationalists. It was said that Chiang Kai-Shek was very happy that Baba had "returned to the fold."

2

Hok-Ching became manager of Brother Kin’s company in
Bangkok
. It was a brand new export-import firm called Kin Yip, after Patrick’s Chinese name. Up till then, Hok-Ching had been a weightlifter and an editor. He’d done bookkeeping for a few months for Uncle Ben’s office in
Hong Kong
, but that experience could hardly qualify him to oversee a start-up enterprise. Brother Kin could have given him a job as cashier or some such, but my brother’s generosity knew no bounds. He never parceled anything out in dribs and drabs, but in waterfalls and rapids.

Hok-Ching was having the time of his life. Through a business associate he got in touch with a group of Shanghainese. Unlike the crusty Swatow merchants who made up the early wave of immigration to
Thailand
, these Shanghainese were polished, western-educated, and privileged. Had the communists not taken over
China
, they would be back home enjoying their riches. Hok-Ching was delighted to be speaking in his native dialect and playing the drinking games that livened every party in
Shanghai
. I was happy for him, and myself too, for it meant that my nomadic days were over. My husband had found a place he liked.

We moved out of Brother Kin’s home and rented another spacious house close by. We invited our new Shanghainese friends to our home, and they invited us back. I made friends with the wives, and we betrothed our children to each other. Sometimes, however, the men liked to go out on their own. As the other wives had given their permission, I would be petty to withhold mine. Seeing my husband off on the first bachelors’ night, I encouraged him to enjoy himself. He rubbed me fondly on the back as if he were sad to leave me. He also told me not to stay up for him. I was pregnant again, and the heat in
Thailand
made me tire easily.

At around nine, my eyelids were drooping. I checked on the children once more, found that they were fast asleep, and tucked myself into bed. There was no sign of Hok-Ching yet, but I wasn’t expecting him much before eleven. Late that night, I was awakened by an unpleasant sensation of something cold and damp on my hand. I looked at my side and saw Hok-Ching breathing heavily beside me, still dressed in the white shirt and gray pants he’d gone out in. What’s this wet stuff on my hand? I thought to myself. Then a sour smell reached me, and my stomach flipped upside down—my husband had thrown up on me!

From once a week, Hok-Ching’s nighttime outings multiplied to four, five times a week. Nobody at home knew where he went. If one of the children got seriously ill, I would have no way of contacting him. Even the chauffeur couldn’t offer me information on his whereabouts. Ever since Hok-Ching obtained a driver’s license, he’d been transporting himself to the scene of the crime without witnesses.

"Where do you go at night?" I confronted him the rare evening he was home. We were getting ready to climb into bed at the same time, another event that had become as infrequent as a lunar eclipse.

"Entertaining clients," he said, drawing deeply on his bedtime cigarette.

"Every night?"

"I have many clients, or potential clients. If I don’t treat them to shark fin soup and Remy Martin, they’ll take their business elsewhere."

"How can dinner take so long? If you start at around eight, you should be home before
midnight
, not two or three in the morning. You have to know that I’m not always asleep when you sneak in at the crack of dawn."

"You have no idea! Business dinners are served in many rounds. First, I have to entertain the bosses. They eat and drink until they’re full, and then they leave. Next come the mid-level supervisors. Again they eat and drink until they’re full. And lastly, there are the underlings. They have to be fed, too. Otherwise, they might slip a banana peel under your feet. You have no idea what I have to put up with."

I didn’t know whether or not to believe him. "Which restaurant do you take them to?" I asked.

He looked at me suspiciously. To the innocent, it was a harmless question. To the corrupt, it was loaded with danger. Hok-Ching slowly ground out his cigarette, making sure to extinguish every single spark.

"It’s called Hoi Tin Restaurant," he said. "The banquet courses there are quite presentable. The price is also good. The owner is from
Hong Kong
, and all the waiters speak Cantonese."

Hoi Tin means Sea and Sky. Most likely, it was a place that boasted of serving everything that swam in the sea and everything that flew in the sky.

"Will you take me there one day?" I said, getting into bed.

There was just a hint of hesitation. "Oh, sure. The dim sum there is very good. I’ll take you for lunch one Sunday."

I rolled onto one side of my big belly to reduce the strain on my back. Hok-Ching left me alone these days, fearful that he might hurt the baby. Soon he was breathing deeply, which was rather unusual. As a rule, I was the one in deep sleep and he the one in deep anxiety. The reverse was true that night.