The Valley of Amazement (71 page)

“You avoid me, Miss Minturn,” he said in a humorous fawning tone, “but I shall wait as Rousseau did for Madame Dupin.” He often tossed off stuffy historical references like that, as well as obscure allusions and lengthy quotes to advertise that his background was refined. I devoured his wit as my opium. Within a week after meeting him, I let him into my bed, and unlucky for me, he proved to be a lover whose knowledge of a woman excelled the rest. It was his neverceasing willingness to listen to a woman’s complaints and the woes of her lonely heart, which he then followed by unlimited sympathy and consolation beneath the quilt.

And thus he listened to all my unexpected losses, the betrayals that killed my spirit, my guilt over damage done to others, those moments of self-imposed loneliness. He heard my weakness for intimacy, for the emperor of a fairy tale. He consoled me over the loss of Danner and Teddy and the death of my trust in all people. I told him more and more, because in trade, he gave me the words I needed to hear:
You have been wronged. You deserve to be loved.
For those counterfeit words, I was a spendthrift with my secrets, and he later stole all that was most precious to me.

San Francisco
March 1912
Lulu Minturn

Before Shanghai receded from view, I had already searched the boat from stern to bow, port to starboard. I burst through the door to our cabin ten times, expecting Violet to manifest like a magician’s trick. I called her name wherever I went, and my voice cracked in the wind, and I was sick with the possibility that she was still in Shanghai. I had promised I would not leave without her. I could still see her face, her worried expression as I rushed about, packing the trunks, thinking about the needs for our new home. I had acted lighthearted, in part to allay her fear and doubt. But she could not be soothed—she was not as Fairweather led her away.

And now I tried to believe she and Fairweather had simply missed the boat. They did not get the required birth certificate and visa. Or they had not made it to the dock in time. But then I recalled the coolie who had come with a note from Fairweather saying they were already on board and that I should meet them at the back of the boat. He sent that note, I now realized, to make sure that I left. What could that possibly mean? I went over the details of his trickery. He told us we needed Violet’s birth certificate with her. And it was not in my drawer. He might have stolen it the last time he was in my bed. There had been plenty of opportunities to watch me opening that drawer. Once I was gone, he must have taken Violet back to Hidden Jade Path. What else would he have done with her otherwise? Damn that bastard. I imagined Violet’s angry face and Golden Dove calming her down. Golden Dove would explain how I had been tricked. She would let her know it would take a month to reach San Francisco and a month to return. And when I returned, I knew she would still be furious, because I had ignored her fears and put her in the hands of a man she had always disliked—despised. It would not matter to her whether I had left her by trickery or insanity. I had abandoned her.

The more I pictured her face, the more my fear grew. Something was terribly wrong. He must not have returned Violet to Hidden Jade Path. He would not have wanted Golden Dove to know what he had done. She would have contacted the authorities and had him jailed. Instead, Golden Dove would have believed Violet was on the ship with me. But why would he keep her? He thought she was a brat. And then it came to me: He might have sold her. How much would a pretty fourteen-year-old fetch in a courtesan house? Once this possibility entered my mind, I could not remove the terror that it might be true. I went up to a man in a white uniform. “I need to speak to the ship’s captain immediately,” I said. He told me he was a waiter. I ran into the dining room and asked the maître d’ to tell me how to reach the captain. “I need to send an urgent message. My daughter is not on the boat.”

By the minute, panic rose and I made demands of everyone I saw wearing a white jacket. The purser arrived. “This situation unfortunately is not uncommon. One person is on board, the other does not arrive in time. But eventually everything is sorted out.”

“You don’t understand,” I said, “she is only a child and in the hands of a crook. I promised to wait. She trusted me. Please I need to send a message.” He told me that messages were sent out only for purposes of navigation and emergencies.

“Damn your navigation! This is an emergency. How can you be so stupid? If I can’t send a message, turn the boat around!” The ship’s doctor was now by my side. He told me that as soon as we arrived in San Francisco, I would be able to return to Shanghai.

“Do you think my brain is porridge? It takes a month to get to San Francisco and a month to return to Shanghai. Where will she be in two months? I have to return now. Is there a lifeboat? Tell me now. Where are the life preservers? I’ll swim back, if I have to.” The ship’s doctor said they would make arrangements for a lifeboat and a sailor to help me paddle. In the meantime, he said, I should calm down and have some tea and nourishment before the arduous journey back. “Drink,” he said, “it will settle your nerves.” And it did, because I did not awake for two days.

I
AWOKE WITH
violent seasickness and the realization that I had not dreamed this nightmare. For the rest of the month, I went over the details of what had happened, as if I were purling yarn, knitting it tightly, then ripping it apart to start purling again. I saw her in Hidden Jade Path, in my office, crying to Golden Dove, cursing me. I saw her in a courtesan house, in terror, about to be defiled. I saw her face as Fairweather led her away, full of fear and doubt. What had I done to her? What harm?

When we arrived in San Francisco, a man was waiting for me at the dock. He handed me a letter and left. I opened it and felt my legs grow empty and sank to the ground. The letter was from the American Consulate giving me the sad news that Violet Minturn Danner had been killed running across Nanking Road. Witnesses said she had pulled away from two men and shouted that she was being kidnapped. Unfortunately, the men ran off before they could be apprehended.

It was not true. It was another trick. Where was the messenger who handed me the note? I choked out a plea to everyone nearby to take me to the police station. Twenty minutes went by before I found a free carriage to take me. Once I was there, it took another thirty minutes before someone would speak to me. They spent another hour trying to quiet me. A woman finally directed me to a post office where I could have a telegram sent to Golden Dove. Because it was the middle of the night in Shanghai, I had to wait for her answer, and so I sat outside the post office until the telegram finally arrived.

My dearest Lulu,

Deepest sorrow to tell you it is true. Violet died in an accident. Fairweather disappeared. Burial three weeks ago. Letter to follow.

Yours,

Golden Dove

If I had lost only Violet, I would have grieved a lifetime. But I knew also that before she died I had shattered her belief that she had ever been loved by me. I knew those terrible truths because I had felt the same when love abandoned me. Those should not have been the wounds she bore as she left this life. I felt skinned raw as I imagined her suffering in her last hours. It did not matter how it happened—by accident or carelessness or deceit—she would have believed I had abandoned her. I could not stop seeing the fear in her eyes. It had grown to terror in my mind and the horror that I had traded her for a flimsy piece of paper—a false birth certificate that would have let me reach a baby I had held in my arms for less than two days.

She had always been such an observant girl, too much so, as I once had been. She knew what was false and what was evident. She could see with a clairvoyant’s eye what selfishness could destroy. She saw that in me: selfish pride, selfish love, selfish grief. I had the strength to get whatever I wanted. I had ceased to see that she had been right in front of me.

She believed I loved a son more than I did her, so much that I would have traded her away. He was the baby I held briefly. She was the daughter who had tugged my skirts for fourteen years. I had wrongly believed she would always be there and that I could give her all that she needed the next day or the day after that. I knew her so well, loved her so dearly, and had shown her so little as she had grown older, and more independent, I thought, just as I was at her age. That was how I had justified devoting my time to my business. I had forgotten that at her age, I was not independent. I was lonely and I hurt every day thinking I was not as important as a dead bug or a pair of Manchu shoes from a burnt palace.

If she were here before me, I would tell her that I did not love that baby more. I was obsessed with a delusion that began when I was sixteen, which I could not let go. I was driven by anger to claim the life of all my foolish dreams. The baby was part of the delusion. And now, finally, I could also let him go.

I
WENT HOME.
The house had not been sold and occupied by strangers, as I thought it might be. It had survived the earthquake, just as Miss Huffard had said in one of her letters. My mother and father still lived there, and they were not shattered, as I believed they would be. Mother took my hand gently and wept. Father went to me and kissed my cheek. Mr. and Mrs. Minturn had died, Mother said, and in a tone of respect, I thought. We said nothing about what had happened.

For months, we lived a routine life, eating meals together but living apart. We were not falsely cheerful. We were polite and considerate, and in those little gestures, we acknowledged the damage we had done to each other. I saw Mother glance at me on occasion with tragic eyes. She still gardened, but I did not see her retreat to her study to look at her insects. The amber had been put away. My father’s office had been swept clean of his collections. I locked away memories of Hidden Jade Path. Its importance to me was as meaningful as a pile of sand.

Our nights were quiet. There were no parties, where father presided. Mr. Maubert still came to dinner three times a week. His back was bent and he was shorter than I was. I played the piano for him and he said he was the happiest he had been in many years. How little he required.

Six months after I returned, I said to my mother and father: “I was married to a kind man named Danner and I had a daughter, and I lost them both.” As I cried, they came to me and put their arms around me in a circle, and they cried, and we knew we were crying for all the sorrow we had caused and would always suffer.

March 1914

For two years Lu Shing sent letters postmarked from both San Francisco and Shanghai. In all his letters, he told me that he had waited for me at the hotel where we had agreed to meet. He repeated each time that he had been ready to take me to see my son. He added that his wife had agreed to my seeing him, and he would still take me, while adding that his son was emotionally tied to the Lu family. His son was the heir and he did not know that he was half-white. “We should spare him the shock,” Lu Shing said, “of his complicated parentage.” I went into a rage whenever I read that part of his letters. Did he believe I would deliberately hurt any child of mine?

His twentieth letter, which came two weeks ago, repeated much of what he had told me in Shanghai. But this time, he confessed something else:

I once said that our names were connected by fate: Lucia, Lu Shing. Our names were the sign we would recognize each other and a painting made us feel we belonged together. I still believe you are part of me. But, by the many ways I failed you, you showed me who I truly am. You did not remove my doubts. You forced me to see how I waver. You wanted a profundity of spirit; you did not realize there was nothing more of me to give. You live in deep ponds. I float in the shallows. I fear that this will always be as true of my art as it is of my character. Finally, at this point in my life, I can be rid of doubts by accepting that I am less than what I had hoped to be, far less than who you believed I was. I am mediocre, Lucia. I was not stinting with you. I was born with an impoverished heart. I regret that you were so wounded by my shortfalls.

I wrote back:

The baby I lost was two days old and his name was Teddy. I did not know him beyond those hours that I held him. After so many fruitless years searching for him, I finally recognize that the baby I was desperate to find does not exist. Lu Shen is not that baby. He is your son, completely yours, just as Violet is mine, completely mine. She is the only child I lost. She is the only one I grieve and will spend fruitless years searching for, even though she is dead.

CHAPTER
15

T
HE
C
ITY AT THE
E
ND OF THE
S
EA

Between Buddha’s Hand and Shanghai
June 1926
Violet

Charm had said that when we reached the top of Buddha’s Hand, we would see the town below. We did not. I looked at Magic Gourd and Pomelo. They were biting their lips. We wound our way down, and continued along the small valley, and held tight on to stubborn hope, and saw nothing until we were at the very end of the green grass and stood on the ridge. Above, I saw through my tears the stars, ten thousand sparkles against black sky, and then I looked down and saw through those same tears ten thousand more sparkles. I pushed past doubt and told myself that it was not a bowl of stars in a pond, nor a cloud of fireflies, nor leaves flashing in silvery moonlight. I wiped away the tears and I saw what I wanted to believe. A town, and ten thousand lights glowing through windows.

We shouted to each other: “I knew it would be there!” “I could feel it!” “I saw it in my mind’s eye and made it true.”