TWENTY-NINE

 

The photograph taken on my twenty-second birthday, which I lost after moving away, was like a reversal of the one taken on my third. I am there at the table and Leuk is beside me again, and the cake is much plainer, as it should be for a young man. This time it’s my brother who’s excited. He’s just finished his first year of teacher’s college — specializing in physics already — and he’s looking enthusiastically at the piled-up cream and strawberries fresh from the reopened bakery. I am next to him, dressed more casually, my hair neatly parted, and the expression on my face, overexposed by either the flash or the light from the windows, is at odds with how I think now any young man should feel on his birthday. Which is to say I should look happier.

The photo also shows Ah-Ming, still standing behind us and much older, though still graceful. Her hands rest on the back of my chair as though to encourage me. Her hair is cut shorter and is brushed back in the manner of old women, which may explain the small freedom in the smile on her face. Among all the photos my older brother took, it is one of the few I kept from the years after the war, while I was still living in Hong Kong.

In some ways I was lucky to have been a child during the war. Time moves so differently at that age that a year seems like forever. By the time of that birthday, it was the summer of 1951 and it seemed to me that the war had ended a lifetime ago. Maybe I felt some distance from it, too, because no one ever talked about it. Once the house was repaired and the family firm had been brought up off its knees by Tang and Sheung, and all of us were accounted for and living under one roof, it seemed again that life could flow uninterrupted.

But outside the house, if we were at church or the Jockey Club or visiting other families, I felt as though a darkness hung over us that only others saw and felt. We were all alive. The last death in our family had been my father’s, and for all our sorrow, we had reunited intact. I had friends whose mothers or fathers were alone or whose brothers and sisters had disappeared, and when they came to visit, or if we saw them in public and started a conversation, it was never long before their losses clouded over us. Once, in the summer of 1948, after he finished high school, I went to visit Shun-Yau and his mother and Shun-Po in their new flat. I brought Mrs. Yee a gift from my mother, and we talked a little. But after I responded to her polite questions about my family, about the summer or Tang’s wedding, she collapsed in tears. The gift, a porcelain cup still wrapped in pale green paper, fell from her hands and shattered, and as it broke, I wished that I too could turn to dust and disappear completely. So many times I walked away from people we knew, feeling as though I were the ambassador of fortune’s cruelty. I felt it everywhere, and it was around that time that I began to see I couldn’t stay in Hong Kong much longer.

The day after my birthday, in late July, I was sitting with my mother in the rooftop garden, and she was doting on her grandson, Tat-Choy, in his pram. Yee-Lin sat on the other side, one finger extended to let her son grasp it while she looked out over the valley.

From across the road, the sound of a crowd cheering at the horse races rang over the houses and apartments, and the announcer’s voice echoed from the speakers like a distant bell. All faded and yet familiar. It was Saturday. I was slouched back in my chair with my right hand shoved in my pocket, worrying the corner of a piece of paper that had been there for two straight days and which I’d been reluctant to take out.

Ah-Tseng came up and set down a tray with tea and fruit and a bowl of rice porridge for my nephew. She took a folding stool out from behind one of the planters and set it beside the pram and then took the bowl of porridge and handed it to Yee-Lin. She dipped the tip of her finger in to check its temperature, even though Ah-Tseng had already let it cool off in the kitchen. Ah-Tseng took it back from her and began to feed the baby. Little threads of egg white wrapped around the porcelain rim and then stuck to his lower lip, and Ah-Tseng brushed them into his mouth with her finger. My mother leaned over and cooed at him every time he took a mouthful of the bland pearl-grey mixture. I fingered the paper again and stopped when my nail tore through one of the folds.

 

A week later, I was cleaning out my room. The letter, now with a few more worried rips in it, lay folded on my dresser, and I avoided looking at it. I went through my room and found books and clothes I would no longer need. Most of what I had still descended from that time before the war, and I told myself my nephew might want some of it one day. I filled a box with things to discard. The old corner of the yard where we had once thrown our trash, and where the British had once dumped all their guns, had been cleared out and turned into a vegetable garden. I put the box in the hall, knowing Chow would take it out later.

At the back of my closet, I found a small cloth bag. I picked it up and it felt very light, so I flipped it over and dumped the contents onto my bed. A polished rock fell out, and with a little extra shaking my old belt landed on the quilt.

My body went numb, and I stared at the belt for several minutes. My right hand drifted ghostlike over my stomach and plucked at my shirt. I hadn’t seen it for years. Against the taut, crisp floral print of the quilt, it was pitifully dirty and old. I picked it up and examined the strap. The leather was cracked and frayed, and when I ran my thumb along its edge, a small shower of dirt sprayed onto my hand and sleeve. I stared at the dirt and tried to imagine where it had come from.

The tarnish on the buckle was unchanged, still no darker after many years. I pressed my thumbnail against it, wanting to scrape it and see the gold shine through, but I hesitated and instead rubbed my thumb over the brownish metal, feeling it warm in my hand. It was strange to see again this lifeless thing that had accompanied me in silence all that time. Though I had never used it, during that time it brought me both comfort and worry, and it was my guardian, my monument, and my wound. I toyed with the pin for a moment and rolled the belt back up. I weighed it in my hand a final time before putting it back in the bag.

I brought it to Sheung and showed him. He stretched it out and looked at the strap with faint disgust, then looked closely at the buckle.

“My God, I remember this thing,” he said. “I guess you won’t need this where you’re going.” He put it down and looked at me gravely. “You should talk to her soon.”

I shook my head in response to his first comment. “Yes, I’ll talk to her.” I took the belt from him and said, “Let me deal with this.”

I was surprised how easily the strap and buckle came apart. I only had to pull slightly against the old seam that wrapped around the buckle, and the strap split open and separated from the gold. Even the metal there was tarnished.

Sheung took the buckle and placed it casually on his desk. He said he would take it to the foundry our family owned and have it melted back and purified. That was the only way to remove the tarnish. I looked at the strap for a moment, and then I tossed it into the empty wastebasket by his desk. It lay half coiled and dead against the wicker, and I tapped the basket lightly with my shoe as though to confirm I was done with it. It went out with the same garbage I had put outside my room. Most likely it was all burned.

The next morning after breakfast, I took the envelope off my dresser and went downstairs to find my mother in the library. I found her drinking tea and looking out at the garden, and I sat down on a stool across from her.

I opened up the letter and handed it to her, though she could not read English. I told her I’d been accepted at a university in America and would be moving to California to study. I would be the first in our family to leave. I already had the ship’s ticket and would be going in a few weeks, I said.

She couldn’t have been surprised, but she wrung her hands in her lap and blinked many times and looked away towards the garden. After a long silence my mother, that artist of serenity, said she was very happy for me. She said she hoped one day to visit.

 

My coat was the last object left in my room, and the ticket was sticking out of the right pocket. It lay folded on my bed while I was in the hallway with Chow, carrying my steamer trunk downstairs. It was a green metal box with brass rivets all around and my romanized initials, CML, in plain white letters on the top. I had locked it and the key was in my pocket on a small chain. We carried it down the three flights of stairs to the entrance, and Ah-Tseng followed with my coat. Then we took the trunk outside and put it in the boot of the Daimler.

All my brothers, including Leuk, were working and I had said goodbye to them earlier. My mother, Wei-Ming, and Ah-Tseng were coming with me to the port. I rubbed my eyes in the sun.

I was tired. I usually slept badly and during the day would often nod off while sitting or reading. Sleep didn’t come easily to me. Mostly I persisted at its edge late into the night, touching its dark outer foliage but never entering. And when I did sleep, it might be the deep rest I needed, but too often it was a time of visitation. Then I was relieved to waken from dreams alone in the quiet emptiness of my room, though drenched in sweat and shaking.

It was time to go. Yee-Lin walked through the doors down to the car and put her arms around me. She was pregnant again, and when I felt the small bump beneath her housedress, it unnerved me.

“Good luck,” she said. She held my hands in hers for a moment. She asked me to make good use of my new camera and send photos of California, and I said of course I would. Then I got into the car with my mother, Wei-Ming, and Ah-Tseng, and Chow drove out through the gates.

No one spoke on the drive to the port, but Wei-Ming held my hand. She had told me earlier she had a list of things she wanted from America for her eighteenth birthday next year, but she never produced one and said nothing in the car. The port appeared too soon, and Chow inched the car like a tram through the crowds and jumbled carts until we got to the landing where a huge American liner was docked. A porter rolled his trolley towards us, but I insisted on helping Chow get the steamer trunk out myself, feeling my mother’s eyes on me.

Sheung had made all the arrangements — my ticket there, my tuition, my lodgings and an allowance, and a list of some other Chinese students at the university. The coming months were all planned out without impediment, yet I moved slowly as though wading through mud. The ship’s horn sounded, and a man on a megaphone announced that boarding would end in fifteen minutes.

I said my last goodbyes. Chow and Ah-Tseng bowed quickly and I thanked them for everything and promised I would write. I hugged Wei-Ming and she kissed me on the cheek, holding on to my hand even as I said goodbye to my mother. I had been hoping that my farewell with her would be quick, but when the moment came I embraced her tightly and my whole chest seemed to cave in, and I sensed her hand trembling on the back of my neck until she released me. I was relieved when the horn sounded a second time even as we exchanged our last few words. Then I turned and went up the gangway onto the ship. On deck, a steward offered to show me to my room, but I said I would wait until we were farther out. I crammed the ticket back into my pocket with a sweating hand and quickly found a spot where I could see my family standing outside the car.

The last horn sounded as the engines roared and spewed, and we parted from the dock. I stood at the stern and watched the quay. My mother was still there in a posture of enclosed silence, and Wei-Ming was crying. Ah-Tseng stood behind them, leaning against the car out of my mother’s sight. Wei-Ming ran to her and took her hand. I placed mine stiffly on the wooden railing and waved goodbye to them.

As the ship left the harbour, I held the railing and walked carefully around the edge because I didn’t want anyone to see my eyes or hear the short sounds I tried to lock inside my throat. Gulls hovered near the prow, and I stood there and let the mist conceal my face. A young couple were holding hands a few feet away from me, and when I saw how they looked at one another, how the woman touched the man’s neck, I knew they wouldn’t notice me. I didn’t want to be seen. I watched the sea farther out where it lay undisturbed. The deep salt water, nourishing and numbing, stretched out indifferently. It offered nothing and took nothing, it was only cold and brutally alive. Gulls hung patiently over the water, knowing it would give up its bounty. A knot formed in my chest like the weight of an anchor, and suddenly I wanted to throw myself into the sea, to be freed by its destructive force. I saw the waves break my body apart, and all the pain drift from it in a momentary foam. A part of me now belonged out in the water’s violence. It was a broken thing, a second self I wanted to be rid of and see sink beneath the waves. But I could not cut it out. It would not escape through my tears or wash out in my dreams, all the joys of my future life could not displace it. It was there and would never leave; it was me. The ruined and forgotten bodies, the plumes of burning villages, the pungency and weeping of the lost, were sealed inside me.

Near the prow the gulls turned slowly through the mist. The sea chased them off as it whispered and rumbled against the hull. Now, I thought, now — and I braced myself to jump. I put my foot against the ledge, gripped the railing and looked down into the foam, and the water seemed to calm as though to greet me. But I stayed standing on the open deck, and my body, heart, and memory fought each other once again, as I knew now they always would.