"Shanghai Girls" - читать интересную книгу автора (See Lisa)

A Cicada in a Tree

NOW THAT THIS whole upsetting and exhausting episode is over, May and I retreat to our room, which faces east. This usually leaves the room a little cooler in summer, but it’s so hot and sticky that we wear practically nothing-just thin pink silk slips. We don’t cry. We don’t clean up the clothes Old Man Louie threw on the floor or the mess he left of our closet. We eat the food Cook leaves on a tray outside our door, but other than that we do nothing. We’re both too shaken to voice what happened. If the words come out of our mouths, won’t that mean that we’ll have to face how our lives have changed and figure out what to do next when at least for me my mind is in such a turmoil of confusion, despair, and anger that I feel like gray fog has invaded my skull? We lie on our beds and try to… I don’t even know the word. Recover?

As sisters, May and I share a particular kind of intimacy. May is the one person who’ll stand by me no matter what. I never wonder if we’re good friends or not. We just are. During this time of adversity-as it is for all sisters-our petty jealousies and the question of which one of us is loved more dissolve. We have to rely on each other.

Once I ask May what happened with Vernon, and she says, “I couldn’t do it.” Then she begins to weep. After that, I don’t ask about her wedding night and she doesn’t ask about mine. I tell myself that it doesn’t matter, that we’ve just done something to save our family. But no matter how many times I tell myself it wasn’t important, there’s no getting around the fact that I lost a precious moment. In truth, my heart is more broken by what happened with Z.G. than by my family losing its standing or by having had to do the husband-wife thing with a stranger. I want to bring back my innocence, my girlishness, my happiness, my laughter.

“Remember when we saw The Ode to Constancy?” I ask, hoping the memory will remind May of when we were still young enough to believe we were invincible.

“We thought we could put on a better opera,” she answers from her bed.

“Since you were younger and smaller, you got to play the beautiful girl. You always played the princess. I always had to be the scholar, prince, emperor, and bandit.”

“Yes, but look at it this way: You got to play four roles. I only got one.”

I smile. How many times have we had this same disagreement about the productions we used to stage for Mama and Baba in the main salon when we were young? Our parents clapped and laughed. They ate watermelon seeds and drank tea. They praised us but never offered to send us to opera school or to the acrobatic academy, because we were pretty terrible, with our squeaky voices, our heavy tumbling, and our improvised sets and costumes. What mattered was that May and I had spent hours plotting and staging in our room or running to Mama to borrow a scarf to use as a veil or begging Cook to make a sword from paper and starch for me to fight whatever ghost demons were causing trouble.

I remember winter nights when it was so cold that May crawled into my bed and we snuggled together to keep warm. I remember how she slept: her thumb resting on her jaw, the tips of her forefinger and middle finger balanced on the edges of her eyebrows just above her nose, her ring finger lightly placed on an eyelid, and her pinkie delicately floating in the air. I remember that in the morning she’d be cuddled against my back with her arm wrapped around me to hold me close. I remember exactly how her hand looked-so small, so pale, so soft, and her fingers as slender as scallions.

I remember the first summer I went to camp in Kuling. Mama and Baba had to bring May to see me, because she was so lonely. I was maybe ten and May only seven. No one had told me they were coming, but when they arrived and May saw me, she ran to me, stopping just in front of me to stare at me. The other girls teased me. Why did I need to bother with this little baby? I knew enough not to tell them the truth: I longed for my sister too and felt like a part of me was missing when we were separated. After that, Baba always sent the two of us to camp together.

May and I laugh about these things, and they make us feel better. They remind us of the strength we find in each other, of the ways we help each other, of the times that it was just us against everyone else, of the fun we’ve had together. If we can laugh, won’t everything be all right?

“Remember when we were little and we tried on Mama’s shoes?” May asks.

I’ll never forget that day. Mama had gone visiting. We’d sneaked into her room and pulled out several pairs of her bound-foot shoes. My feet were too big for the shoes, and I’d carelessly discarded them as I tried to squeeze my toes into pair after pair. May could get her toes in the slippers, and she’d tiptoed to the window and back, imitating Mama’s lily walk. We’d tittered and frolicked, and then Mama came home. She was furious. May and I knew we’d been bad, but we had a hard time suppressing our giggles as Mama tottered around the room, trying to catch us to pull our ears. With our natural feet and our unity, we escaped, running down the hall and out into the garden, where we collapsed in laughter. Our wickedness had turned into triumph.

We could always trick Mama and outrun her, but Cook and the other servants had little patience for our mischief, and they didn’t hesitate to punish us.

“Pearl, remember when Cook taught us to make chiao-tzu?” May sits cross-legged on her bed across from me, her chin resting on her bunched fists, her elbows balanced on her knees. “He thought we should know how to make something. He said, ‘How are you girls going to get married if you don’t know how to make dumplings for your husbands?’ He didn’t know how hopeless we’d be.”

“He gave us aprons to wear, but they didn’t help.”

“They did when you started throwing flour at me!” May says.

What began as a lesson turned into a game and then finally into an all-out flour battle, with both of us getting really mad. Cook, who has lived with us since we moved to Shanghai, knew the difference between two sisters working together, two sisters playing, and two sisters fighting, and he didn’t like what he saw.

“Cook was so angry that he didn’t let us back in the kitchen for months,” May continues.

“I kept telling him I was just trying to powder your face.”

“No treats. No snacks. No special dishes.” May laughs at the memory. “Cook could be so stern. He said sisters who fight are not worth knowing.”

Mama and Baba knock on our door and ask us to come out, but we decline, saying we prefer to stay in our room awhile longer. Maybe it’s rude and childish, but May and I always deal with conflicts in the family this way-by holing up, and building a barricade between us and whatever has harmed us or we don’t like. We’re stronger together, united, a force that can’t be argued with or reasoned with, until others give in to our desires. But this calamity isn’t like wanting to visit your sister at camp or protecting each other from an angry parent, servant, or teacher.

May gets off her bed and brings back magazines, so we can look at the clothes and read the gossip. We comb each other’s hair. We look through our closet and drawers and try to assess how many new outfits we can make from what we have left. Old Man Louie seems to have taken almost all our Chinese clothes, leaving behind an assortment of Western-style dresses, blouses, skirts, and trousers. In Shanghai, where appearances are nearly everything, it will be important for us to look smart and not dowdy, fashionable and not last year. If our clothes seem old, not only will artists no longer hire us but streetcars won’t stop for us, doormen at hotels and clubs might not let us in, and attendants at movie theaters will double-check our tickets. This affects not only women but men too; they, even if they’re in the middle class, will sleep in lodgings plagued by bedbugs so they can afford to buy a nicer pair of trousers, which they put under their pillows each night to create sharp creases for the new day.

Does it sound like we lock ourselves away for weeks? Hardly. Just two days. Because we’re young, we’re easily cured. We’re also curious. We’ve heard noises outside the door, which we’ve ignored for hours at a time. We tried not to pay attention to the hammering and thumping that shook the house. We heard strange voices but pretended they belonged to the servants. When we finally open the door, our home has changed. Baba has sold most of our furniture to the local pawnshop. The gardener is gone, but Cook has stayed because he has nowhere else to go and he needs a place to sleep and food to eat. Our house has been chopped apart and walls added to make rooms for boarders: a policeman, his wife, and two daughters have moved into the back of the house; a student lives in the second-floor pavilion; a cobbler has taken the space under the stairs; and two dancing girls have moved into the attic. The rents will help, but they won’t be enough to care for us all.

WE THOUGHT OUR lives would go back to normal, and in many ways they do. Mama still orders around everyone, including our boarders, so we aren’t suddenly burdened with carrying out the nightstool, making beds, or sweeping. Still, we’re very aware of how far and how quickly we’ve fallen. Instead of soy milk, sesame cakes, and fried dough sticks for breakfast, Cook makes p’ao fan-leftover rice swimming in boiled water with some pickled vegetables on top for flavor. Cook’s austerity campaign shows in our lunch and dinner dishes too. We’ve always been one of those families who have wu hun pu ch’ih fan-no meal without meat. We now eat a coolie’s diet of bean sprouts, salt fish, cabbage, and preserved vegetables accompanied by lots and lots of rice.

Baba leaves the house every morning to look for work, but we don’t encourage him or ask him questions when he returns at night. In failing us, he’s become insignificant. If we ignore him-demeaning him by our inattention and lack of concern-then his downfall and ruin can’t harm us anymore. It’s our way of dealing with our anger and hurt.

May and I try to find jobs too, but it’s hard to get hired. You need to have kuang hsi, connections. You have to know the right people-a relative or someone you’ve courted for years-to get a recommendation. More important, you need to give a substantial gift-a leg of pork, a bedroom set, or the equivalent of two months’ salary-to the person who will make the introduction and another to the person who will hire you, even if it’s only to make matchboxes or hairnets in a factory. We don’t have money for that now, and people know it. In Shanghai, life flows like an endlessly serene river for the wealthy, the lucky, the fortunate. For those with bad fates, the smell of desperation is as strong as a rotting corpse.

Our writer friends take us to Russian restaurants and treat us to bowls of borscht and cheap vodka. Playboys-our countrymen who come from wealthy families, study in America, and go to Paris on vacation-take us to the Paramount, the city’s biggest nightclub, for joy, gin, and jazz. We hang out in dark cafés with Betsy and her American friends. The boys are handsome and adamant, and we soak them up. May disappears for hours at a time. I don’t ask where she goes or with whom. It’s better that way.

We can’t escape the sense that we’re slipping, dropping, falling.

May never stops sitting for Z.G., but I’m uncomfortable going back to his studio after having made such a scene. They finish the advertisement for My Dear cigarettes, with May doing double duty, modeling for Z.G. in her original spot and then taking my position on the back of the chair. She tells me this and encourages me to help with another calendar Z.G.’s been commissioned to do. I sit for other artists instead, but most of them just want to shoot a quick photo and work from that. I make money, but not much. Now, instead of getting new students, I lose my only student. When I tell Captain Yamasaki that May won’t accept his marriage proposal, he fires me. But that’s only an excuse. Across the city, the Japanese are acting strangely. Those who live in Little Tokyo pack up and leave their apartments. Wives, children, and other civilians return to Japan. When many of our neighbors desert Hongkew, cross Soochow Creek, and take temporary quarters in the main part of the International Settlement, I attribute it to the usual superstitious nature of my countrymen, especially the poor, who fear the known and the unknown, the worldly and the unworldly, the living and the dead.

To me, it feels as if everything has changed. The city I always loved pays no attention to death, despair, disaster, or poverty. Where once I saw neon and glamour, I now see gray: gray slate, gray stone, the gray river. Where once the Whangpoo appeared almost festive with its warships from many nations, each flying colorful flags, now the river seems choked by the arrival of over a dozen imposing Japanese naval vessels. Where once I saw wide avenues and shimmering moonlight, I now see piles of garbage, rodents boldly scurrying and scavenging, and Pockmarked Huang and his Green Gang thugs roughing up debtors and prostitutes. Shanghai, as grand as it is, is built on shifting silt. Nothing stays where it’s supposed to. Coffins buried without lead weights drift. Banks hire men to check their foundations daily to make sure that the tonnage of silver and gold hasn’t caused the building to tilt. May and I have slid from safe, cosmopolitan Shanghai to a place that’s as sure as quicksand.

May’s and my earnings are our own now, but it’s hard to save. After giving Cook money to buy food, we’re left with practically nothing. I can’t sleep for all the worry I feel. If things continue this way, soon we’ll be subsisting on bone soup. If I’m to save anything, I’ll have to go back to Z.G.’s.

“I’m over him,” I tell May. “I don’t know what I ever saw in him. He’s too thin, and I don’t like his glasses. I don’t think I’ll ever marry for real. That’s so bourgeois. Everyone says so.”

I don’t mean a word I say, but May, who I think knows me so well, responds, “I’m glad you’re feeling better. I really am. True love will find you. I know it will.”

But true love has found me. Inside I continue to suffer with thoughts of Z.G., but I hide my feelings. May and I get dressed, then pay a few coppers to ride in a passenger wheelbarrow to Z.G.’s apartment. On the way, as the wheelbarrow pusher picks up and drops off others, I agonize that seeing Z.G. in his rooms, where I held such girlish dreams, will leave me shredded with embarrassment. But once we arrive, he acts as if nothing’s happened.

“Pearl, I’m almost finished with a new kite. It’s a flock of orioles. Come take a look.”

I go to his side, feeling awkward to be standing so close to him. He chats on about the kite, which is exquisite. The eyes of each oriole have been fashioned so that they’ll spin in the wind. On each segment of the body Z.G. has attached articulated wings that will flap in the breeze. On the tips are little feathers that will quiver in the air.

“It’s beautiful,” I say.

“The three of us are going to fly it once it’s done,” Z.G. announces.

It isn’t an invitation, just a statement of fact. I think, if it doesn’t bother him that I made a fool of myself, then I can’t let it bother me either. I have to be tough to bear my deeper feelings, which threaten to overwhelm me.

“I’d love to do that,” I say. “May and I both would.”

They smile at each other, clearly relieved. “Great,” Z.G. says, rubbing his hands together. “Now let’s get to work.”

May steps behind a screen and changes into red shorts and a cropped yellow top that ties behind her neck. Z.G. puts a scarf over her hair and ties it beneath her chin. I slip into a red bathing suit decorated with butterflies. It has a little skirt and a belt cinched at the waist. Z.G. pins a red and white bow in my hair. May gets onto a bicycle, one foot on a pedal, the other balancing on the floor. I place one hand over hers on the handlebar. My other hand steadies the bike on the back of May’s seat. She glances over her shoulder at me, and I stare at her. When Z.G. says, “That’s perfect. Hold it,” not once am I tempted to look at him. I stay focused on May, smile, and pretend that I couldn’t be happier than to push my sister’s bike along a grassy hill overlooking the ocean to promote Earth fly and mosquito spray.

Z.G. recognizes that holding this particular pose is difficult, so after a while he lets us have a break. He works on the background for a time, painting a sailboat on the waves, and then he asks, “May, shall we show Pearl what we’ve been working on?”

While May goes behind the screen to change, Z.G. puts away the bike, rolls up the backdrop, and then pulls a low chaise to the middle of the room. May returns, wearing a light robe, which she drops when she gets to the chaise. I don’t know what’s more startling-that she’s naked or that she seems utterly at ease. She lies on her side, her elbow bent and her head resting on her hand. Z.G. drapes a piece of diaphanous silk over her hips and so lightly across her breasts that I can see her nipples. He disappears for a minute and returns with some pink peonies. He snips the stems and carefully places the blossoms around May. He then unveils the painting, which has been hidden under a cloth on an easel.

It’s almost finished, and it’s exquisite. The soft texture of the peony petals echoes that of May’s flesh. He’s used the rub-and-paint technique, working carbon powder over May’s image and then applying watercolors to create a rosy complexion on her cheeks, arms, and thighs. In the painting, she looks as though she’s just stepped from a warm bath. Our new diet of more rice and less meat and her paleness from the events of the past days give her an air of languorous lassitude. Z.G. has already dotted the eyes with dark lacquer so they seem to follow the viewer, beckoning, luring, and responding. What’s May selling? Watson’s lotion for prickly heat, Jazz hair pomade, Two Baby cigarettes? I don’t know, but looking from my sister to the painting, I see that Z.G. has achieved the effect of hua chin i tsai-a finished painting with lingering emotions-that only the great masters of the past realized in their work.

But I’m shocked, deeply shocked. I may have done the husband-wife thing with Sam, but this seems far more intimate. Yet again, it shows just how far May and I have fallen. I suppose this is just an inevitable part of our journey. When we first sat for artists, we were encouraged to cross our legs and hold sprays of flowers in our laps. This pose was a wordless reminder of courtesans from feudal times whose bouquets had been between their legs. Later we were asked to clasp our hands behind our heads and expose our armpits, a pose used since the beginning of photography to capture the allure and sensuous availability of Shanghai ’s Famous Flowers. One artist painted us chasing butterflies in the shade of willow trees. Everyone knows that butterflies are symbols for lovers, while “willow shade” is a euphemism for that hairy place on women down low. But this new poster is a long way from any of that and further still from the one of the two of us doing the tango that so upset Mama. This is a beautiful painting; May has to have lain naked for hours before Z.G.’s eyes.

But I’m not just shocked. I’m also disappointed in May for allowing Z.G. to talk her into this. I’m angry at him for preying on her vulnerability. And I’m heartsick that May and I have to take it. This is how women end up on the street selling their bodies. But then this is how it is for women everywhere. You experience one lapse in conscience, in how low you think you’ll go, in what you’ll accept, and pretty soon you’re at the bottom. You’ve become a girl with three holes, the lowest form of prostitute, living on one of the floating brothels in Soochow Creek, catering to Chinese so poor they don’t mind catching a loathsome disease in exchange for a few humping moments of the husband-wife thing.

As disheartened and disgusted as I am, I go back to Z.G.’s the next day and the day after that. We need the money. And soon enough, there I am practically naked. People say you need to be strong, smart, and lucky to survive hard times, war, a natural disaster, or physical torture. But I say emotional abuse-anxiety, fear, guilt, and degradation-is far worse and much harder to survive. This is the first time that May and I have ever experienced anything like this, and it saps our energy. While I find it almost impossible to sleep, May retreats to those numbing depths. She dozes in bed until noon. She takes naps. Some days at Z.G.’s she even starts to nod off as he paints. He lets her out of her pose so she can sleep on the couch. While he paints me, I look at May, her fingers placed just so but still not entirely covering her face, which is pensive even in sleep.

We’re like lobsters slowly boiling to death in a pot of water. We sit for Z.G., attend parties, and drink absinthe frappés. We go to clubs with Betsy, and let others pay for us. We go to movies. We window-shop. We simply don’t understand what’s happening to us.

THE DATE NEARS when we’re supposed to leave for Hong Kong to meet our husbands. May and I have no intention of getting on that boat. We couldn’t even if we wanted to because I threw away the tickets, but our parents don’t know that. May and I go through the motions of packing so they won’t be suspicious. We listen to Mama’s and Baba’s travel advice. The night before our scheduled departure, they take us out for dinner and tell us how much they’ll miss us. May and I wake up early the next morning, get dressed, and leave the house before anyone else rises. When we return home that evening-long after the ship has sailed-Mama weeps with pleasure that we are still here and Baba yells at us for not doing our duty.

“You don’t understand what you’ve done,” he shouts. “There’s going to be trouble.”

“You worry too much,” May says in her lightest voice. “Old Man Louie and his sons have left Shanghai, and in a few days they’ll leave China for good. They can’t do anything to us now.”

Baba’s face roils with anger. For a moment I think he’s going to hit May, but then he squeezes his hands into fists, marches off to the salon, and slams the door. May looks at me and shrugs. Then we turn ourselves over to our mother, who takes us into the kitchen and orders Cook to make tea and give us a couple of precious English butter cookies he has saved in a tin.

Eleven days later, it rains in the morning, so the heat and humidity are not as bad as usual. Z.G. splurges and hires a taxi to take us to the Lunghua Pagoda on the outskirts of the city to fly his kite. It isn’t the most beautiful place. There’s an airstrip, an execution ground, and a camp for Chinese troops. We tromp across the field until Z.G. finds a spot to stage the flight. Some soldiers-wearing ripped tennis shoes and faded, ill-fitting uniforms with insignia pinned to their shoulders-abandon a puppy they’re playing with to help us.

Each oriole is attached by a hook and separate string to the main line. May picks up the lead oriole and lifts it into the air. With the soldiers’ assistance, I add a new oriole and its string to the main line. One oriole after the other takes off, until pretty soon a flock of twelve orioles swoosh, swoop, and dip in the sky. They look so free up there. May’s hair flies in the breeze. Her hand shields her eyes as she gazes into the sky. Light glints off Z.G.’s glasses, and he grins. He motions me to him and hands me the control of the kites. The orioles are made from paper and balsa, but the pull of the wind and the sky is strong. Z.G. moves behind me and puts his hands over mine to steady the control. His thighs lie against mine and my back against his torso. I breathe in the sensation of being so close to him. Surely he has to be aware of what I feel for him. Even with him there to hold me, the pull from the kite is so powerful that I think I might be lifted up to fly away with the orioles into the clouds and beyond.

Mama used to tell us a story about a cicada sitting high in a tree. It chirps and drinks in dew, oblivious to the praying mantis behind it. The mantis arches up its front leg to stab the cicada, but it doesn’t know an oriole perches behind it. The bird stretches out its neck to snap up the mantis for a midday meal, but it’s unaware of the boy who’s come into the garden with a net. Three creatures-the cicada, the mantis, and the oriole-all coveted gains without being aware of the greater and inescapable danger that was coming.

Later that afternoon, the first shots are exchanged between Chinese and Japanese soldiers.