PEARL

The world changed for Pearl the day she learned she had become a woman. To disguise the shapely bulge of her chest, Ah Gum discarded the childishly tight shirts and replaced them with a new wardrobe of loose-fitting silk tops (edged with embroidery) and ankle-length skirts. The roominess of this style of clothing was designed to keep her new curves hidden as befitted a modest young lady of means. Her hair was dressed in a bun at the back or coquettishly bobbed to one side. From the stalls in Central District Ah Gum brought up shopkeepers who displayed their wares on the grass in front of the veranda. Her mistress could shop in private away from the indecorum of the downtown markets. Pearl selected a series of decorative ivory and jade combs to keep her chignon in place as well as matching earrings and bracelets from an array of shiny things. (She considered having her mother’s jade piece refashioned into a pendant. But after due consideration she jibbed on the idea. It remained in her pocket, where it was always within reach.)

At thirteen, Pearl was petite with an oval face, small nose, and black, almond-shaped eyes. But it was her skin that one noticed first. It was smooth and white like the inside of an almond, almost like coconut milk. And Ah Gum was determined to keep it that way. Wherever they went she held a parasol over her young mistress’s head. She also produced a pair of white cotton gloves, a wide-brimmed hat, and a silk scarf that covered her face except for a slit through which those beguiling eyes peered. Li approved of such precautions because they were designed to prevent Pearl’s skin from darkening in the sunlight. Men, he thought, valued white, unblemished skin on a prospective bride. It meant that she was a lady and did not have to toil in the fields like a peasant. Gone too were those carefree adventures that she took with her father, Uncle, and the gweilo. Li didn’t want a repeat of the geomancer’s leer; for weeks he had replayed the image of the old man ogling his daughter and wetting his lips while his tongue darted in and out of his mouth like a hungry snake staring at a mouse. No, she was to stay at their house now, out of sight of men. He had hired Ah Gum to see to his wishes (and, as he had explained to the maid, to provide the requisite instructions regarding women’s matters).

Pearl acquiesced to her father’s demands, but when he was away in China selling opium, she was able to commit small acts of rebellion. His trips had become more and more frequent, which gave her more opportunities to foray out of doors. Ah Gum huffed and puffed her indignation. She tried but was unable to resist her young mistress’s determination. She had no choice but to remain at the girl’s side and keep their wanderings a secret from Li. At first, the outdoor expeditions were commonplace—a walk down the hill where there was nothing much to see. But as time progressed Pearl got more adventurous: a chair ride down the hill then a rickshaw to Central District; a visit to the St. John’s Cathedral on Garden Road; a ride by the old apartment above the herbalist shop in Wanchai; a stroll through the Botanic Gardens; a shopping spree at Watson’s where she charged her first purchase—a bottle of 4711 eau de cologne; a long mule ride along the mountain path and down the south side of Victoria Island, where they sat on a deserted beach and watched fishermen cast their nets out to sea. She loved to run barefooted in the frothy wavelets that broke on shore, ignoring her handmaid’s warnings of infections from exposure to the sun and salt water. Back at home, Ah Gum insisted that her mistress soak her feet in a basin of hot water mixed with baking soda. She also prepared an infusion of sun gook cha—chrysanthemum tea—as a preventative against the mung she was convinced had already started its insidious invasion through the soles of Pearl’s feet. Pearl giggled at her handmaid’s exasperation but allowed her feet to be scrubbed. She also drank the tea, breathing in its sweet curative aromas as she pondered what other adventures she could go on.

To assuage Ah Gum’s continued agitation—What would the master say if he found out?—and to demonstrate her gratitude, Pearl decided that Ah Gum be named the mansion’s housekeeper—the majordomo with authority to hire and fire all the other servants—and keeper of the household accounts. Furthermore, Pearl gave her the honorific of Gum-ghee, which roughly translated as “sister.” When she told her father about these ideas, Li approved. He was proud that his daughter was taking such an interest in household matters and saw that her handmaid was having a positive influence on Pearl’s passage into womanhood. Yes, he clapped his hands triumphantly, this is exactly what he had hoped would happen. Thus Gum-ghee indulged—with pursed lips and the required amount of mock indignation—all of Pearl’s whims. All except one. Gum-ghee wanted to dismiss Ah-Fook, the gardener, but Pearl intervened.

“May I ask good mistress why?” Gum-ghee asked in Cantonese, her native tongue. They were on the veranda off the dining room, where Pearl liked to have her afternoon tea and sweet cakes.

“He has been with our family ever since we moved into this house.”

“He is lazy. He sleeps all day and does nothing. Look at the garden. Look at the grass on the lawn. Lazy. And he still expects to be paid.”

“We are responsible for him. What will he do if he loses his job?”

Gum-ghee was silent for a moment, then:

“Mistress, the man is an opium smoker.”

Pearl knew that her father, Uncle, and the gweilo sold opium, but it had not occurred to her until that moment that people smoked the substance.

“So what?” she said.

“It has made him incapable of work.”

Pearl thought about this. True, the garden once bloomed with magnolias, camellias, hibiscus, roses, and carnations, all framed by palms and green shrubs. But recently things had gone to seed. Not knowing much about gardening, she had put the decay down to the dry weather. But really it was lack of husbandry.

“Where is he now?” Pearl asked.

“Probably in the shed, snoring and dreaming.”

“I want to see him,” Pearl said. She put down her teacup, left the table quickly, and strode toward the opposite end of the garden. Gum-ghee rushed after her mistress, stopped, and returned to the table to grab her parasol. She opened it and ran. When she caught up, she held it over her young mistress’s head.

Pearl looked through the window of the shed.

Ah-Fook was inside, asleep on the floor. Gunnysacks of fertilizer and seed were tucked under his head and arms like rough brown pillows. An earthy aroma cloaked the hut. She gagged, not from the smell but from the sight: the man was skin and bones. This was not the gardener she once knew, the robust, muscular man who worked naked to the waist, his thick neck, rounded shoulders, and sinewy biceps shiny with sweat. Pearl had watched him from her window as he ladled fresh water from a bucket and poured it over his head on a hot day. He didn’t towel off but let it drip in rivulets down his wide chest and over his stomach.

Surely this was not the same man. It looked as if the life had been sucked out of him. Here was a breathing skeleton. Undulating triceps and biceps had completely deflated to leave a veneer of skin as thin as rice paper covering his stick-insect limbs. She turned away, ran back to the house, and then up the stairs to her bedroom. Gum-ghee followed as closely as she could.

Pearl flung open the doors and headed for the washstand basin, where she vomited up the tea and sweet cakes. She never returned to the shed, nor would she allow Gum-ghee to get rid of the man. And when her Ba-bah returned, she confronted him.

Li and Aleandro were just finishing dinner; the gweilo was not with them that evening. She had decided to wait until they were well fed before she told them what she had witnessed. If what she saw was the effect of opium smoking, then surely they should cease selling the commodity.

“Aiyah, daughter. Don’t meddle. These matters are for men to decide.”

“But Ba-bah, do all opium smokers look like Ah-Fook?”

“No, most are quite healthy. If you can afford to buy opium and buy food, then you are in good health. But if you do not buy food, then, of course, you die.”

“Little one,” Aleandro said in English, “everyone is selling opium these days. If we don’t sell it then someone else will. Why shouldn’t we make some moolah?” Then he repeated what he’d said in Cantonese for Li’s sake. His partner nodded in agreement.

“We only sell to people who want to buy,” Li added. “What they do after is not my business.”

An icy silence fell over the room. Pearl knitted her brow and looked down at her plate. She had not touched her food. Dead eyes of the deep-fried minnows on her plate stared back at her. Aleandro lit a cheroot. Li tapped his fingertips on the tabletop.

“You should stop selling opium,” she said softly.

“What?”

“You should stop selling—” Before she could finish, Li tore the napkin off his chest and threw it on his plate.

“Look around you. Look at all the things you have. Look at all the fine things I have given you. Aiyah, all of this is from trading opium. Without it we would still be hauling luggage from ship to shore.”

Aleandro patted the air with his palms, trying to calm his friend down. Li folded his arms and sat back in his chair. Aleandro spoke:

“It’s too late,” he said. “We couldn’t stop if we wanted to. There are buyers who would do bad things if we did stop. We have to live with it.”

For how long, Pearl wondered, but didn’t dare say it aloud.

Her Ba-bah had decided, after that evening’s exchange, that too much education had given his daughter an insolent mind and a disrespectful tongue. He was not concerned about what she said to him so much as what she might say to a future husband. To correct her behaviour and to demonstrate his displeasure, he made several decisions.

First, she was no longer permitted to sit at table with them. This meant that she would no longer be able to converse with the gweilo when he visited. Li knew that she enjoyed these visits, and had removed the privilege deliberately as a punishment.

Second, he cancelled her account at Kelly and Walsh booksellers. She could read and write well enough to keep house; what more does a girl need anyway?

But these edicts didn’t prevent Pearl from getting her way. She missed talking to Emanuel, but she did see him, albeit from a distance. As time went by, she began to regard him with more and more curiosity. Here was a white man from far away who had a strange name and who had made her father and Uncle rich. She deduced that, if so, then he too must be rich—and yet he did not seem happy. Quite the contrary; she noticed that every time Emanuel was in Hong Kong, he appeared to be more and more sad. He was stoop-shouldered, as if he were carrying a great weight. He never smiled as he used to and his eyes were always looking out at the middle distance, as though he were trying to decide what to do about some important question.

As for the second edict, she was determined to continue learning new things. With Gum-ghee’s help and abetted by Aleandro (he had a soft spot for this surrogate daughter), books were smuggled into the house and up the servants’ stairs into her room, where she secreted them under her bed. Every afternoon when Li took his nap, she read widely in English as well as in Chinese. And of course when he was away, she would read all day.

As for Ah-Fook, Gum-ghee didn’t have to dismiss him. A few weeks after Li’s argument with Pearl he was found dead in an opium den in the Wanchai District. Gum-ghee informed her mistress and watched Pearl’s face turn even whiter than it already was.

From that year on, Li received many supplications for his daughter’s hand. A veritable procession of young men and their cohorts made the steep climb up the hill to the house in Happy Valley, swaggered into his office, and laid out gifts as an enticement: whole pigs, sedan chairs, silks, jade, and assorted cakes. But he refused them all. His reasons varied: too old (the oldest was seventy-two), too young (the youngest was eight), too ugly, too stupid, too poor (that is to say, poorer than he), too rich (richer than he), wrong family name, and so on. In short, the bar he set for his precious daughter’s hand was too high for anyone to leap over.

Pearl and Gum-ghee watched the proceedings from the veranda off her rooms as the aspirants huffed and puffed up the hill. Then they sneaked looks through the crack of an open door that led to her father’s office while he interviewed them. They regarded each overture seriously at first, but as time rolled by, the search for her perfect mate became a source of great hilarity for the two young women.

Then, when she was approaching her sixteenth birthday, Pearl experienced a growth spurt. She grew to her full height of five feet three inches. She was almost as tall as her Ba-bah, certainly taller than Aleandro, and the same height as Gum-ghee. The tight, budding body of a young woman had completely replaced the child’s figure. Her face changed, too. Gone was the cute little girl. She now had an expectant look, as though she were eagerly waiting for something wonderful to happen. She didn’t mind these changes, except for one aspect. She hated her feet. She thought they were too big.

To mark her birthday, Aleandro persuaded Li to set aside Pearl’s banishment from joining them at meals. He agreed, as long as she promised to mind her tongue.

Gum-ghee ran a bath, prepared her clothes, and laid them neatly on the bed. She combed her mistress’s hair into a tight bun secured with a wide jade comb and dressed her in a red and yellow brocaded tunic.

The men were on the veranda, sitting in wicker chairs. Cicadas sounded their nightly chorus of rattling and clicking. The air had cooled, so the men did not need fans. The gweilo was talking. Her father and Aleandro were listening intently.

Gum-ghee cleared her throat to get their attention. The gweilo paused and looked up. He stood while the other men remained seated. He was dressed in a white linen suit that looked as if he had slept in it. His full beard needed a trim and his usually bright blue eyes looked sad. She noticed that his mouth was open with surprise. He turned to Li.

“Have you taken a wife?” he asked.

Li and Aleandro laughed so hard they almost choked.

Pearl felt annoyed. It was the first time anyone had laughed at her expense.

“No,” Li replied. He had learned some English over the years. “My daughter. You remember?” he said, miming the skipping of a pebble.

The gweilo’s eyes brightened. “Can it be?”

Pearl gave a small bow. “Welcome back to Hong Kong.”

“How long has it been?”

“Three years at least.”

“I am happy to make your reacquaintance.”

“The pleasure is mine, sir.”

“Please, you must call me Emanuel. May I call you Pearl?”

“As you wish.” She was impressed. The man was clearly a gentleman.

Throughout dinner, she felt his eyes on her every move. It was so impolite. To watch a person eat forced them to show their teeth. And as Pearl knew, exposing teeth in public was rude. Eating was difficult. Seeing her struggle, Gum-ghee used her fan to cover her mistress’s face each time she put food in her mouth. This made it easier to eat and had the added benefit of being able to steal a look at Emanuel over the top edge of the fan or through the slats.

Whenever their eyes met, he pretended that he was not staring and turned away quickly. Though distracted, he was able to keep up his part of the conversation about the new British Governor and about the Hongs—companies that had erected buildings along the Praya and on Queen’s Street and to the east and west of Emanuel’s offices on Lyndhurst Terrace. Central District was becoming more crowded. But mainly their chat was about business and the people who conducted it. Who was up, who was down.

Men had very limited concerns, Pearl thought. They want to make money and they want to make it quickly. So they talk about those who could help improve their opportunities or how they had succeeded and others had not. The conversation went on well after they had stopped eating and the dishes had been taken away. Pearl listened without comment.

Then it happened.

She yawned. It was a big one that bared her teeth in front of her father and his gweilo business partner when the tea and sweet cakes were served. Li’s eyes widened in shock.

To cover up the indiscretion, Pearl said to Emanuel,

“Is it not time you moved out of your rooms above your office and into a house?”

The room was silent for a long time.

“Is it?” Emanuel asked, breaking the silence.

“Is it what?” she said.

“You were suggesting I move into a new house.”

“Yes, Lyndhurst Terrace is so busy and noisy. How do you sleep?”

“Not well of late, I must confess.”

“Must be the noise and the heat, with all those buildings so close together.”

“Where do you suggest I go?” Emanuel continued.

“Do not bother our guest with your silly talk,” Li said in Cantonese.

“Pardon me?” Emanuel asked.

“My father objects to my questions,” Pearl translated.

“I assure you I do not,” Emanuel said. “Where would you have me live?”

“You could build a new house, in the Hill District. Where all the gweilo—I mean foreigners—live. Perhaps near the new Peak Tramway Station. It will be cooler on the hillside and much quieter. When it is completed, you could travel on the cable car up to the Peak any time you wished.”

“You think that, do you?” Emanuel spoke as if he were addressing a pet.

“Yes, you could send for your wife and start a family.”

Suddenly, his eyes narrowed. Then he began to shake and dropped his head, touching his chin to his chest. He lifted his napkin and covered his face.

“Leave us,” Li said.

His voice was harsh and scary. She stood up. Without looking or saying anything further, she left the table. Gum-ghee closed the double doors behind them.

Immediately they put their ears to the wood and listened. Pearl could hear sobbing. She looked through the keyhole. Her father had one hand on Emanuel’s shoulder and appeared to be consoling his guest.

Before that moment, she had never seen a gweilo cry. They were always in such control. What could have caused him to weep? She started to tremble. Gum-ghee held her by the shoulders and led her to the garden, to the stone bench under the banyan tree.

“Sit down, mistress,” she said, and then rubbed her back and fanned her face. “I will get you some jasmine tea.”

Pearl sat alone, watching thousands of stars fill the sky. Gum-ghee returned and poured tea. The scent of jasmine and her handmaid’s presence reassured her. She allowed herself to wonder at the gweilo’s sorrow. Was he covering his face because he saw her yawn? Was he so insulted?

She was so lost in thought that she did not notice Emanuel walk up beside her.

Gum-ghee whispered in her ear. She turned and looked at him.

He bowed slightly.

She stood to leave, but he said,

“Please stay.”

She obeyed.

“I must apologize for my display of weakness.”

Pearl did not know how to respond, and so she remained silent.

He stood beside the stone bench, one hand behind his back. The other was pressed against the banyan. There was a long silence. Pearl shuddered from the chill of the night.

“Young mistress must go inside,” Gum-ghee said and rubbed Pearl’s upper arms.

Emanuel took off his coat and draped it over Pearl’s shoulders. It smelled of tobacco mixed with sea salt. Gum-ghee looked displeased by the foreigner’s brazen gesture. It was her duty to take care of the mistress.

“May I sit?” he asked.

“Please do,” Pearl replied. Then in Cantonese: “Gum-ghee, lay out your handkerchief for our guest to sit on.”

Gum-ghee did as she was told, muttering under her breath that sitting so close to a foreigner was an invitation to some undefined peril. As a precaution, she stood beside her mistress and watched the man like a bird of prey eyeing its quarry.

“Young mistress. You must go indoors. The night air is not good.”

“Pour some hot water into the pot,” Pearl ordered.

“Aiyah,” Gum-ghee muttered as she walked away. “This is so inconvenient. I really don’t know what they are doing there sitting like statues in the dark, cold night.” Then she said a little louder over her shoulder, “Shout if the gweilo attacks you!”

Cicadas clicked. Somewhere an owl hooted. Yellow light from kerosene lamps illuminated the house behind them.

“Do you know what day of the week this is?” Emanuel asked. What a silly question, she thought. Of course she knew. It was Friday. “It is the Sabbath,” he added. “At sunset my people gather to give thanks to G-d. The woman of the house will light two candles and say this prayer:

Barukh atah Adonai, Eloheinu, melekh ha’olam

asher kidishanu b’mitz’votav v’tzivanu

l’had’lik neir shel Shabbat. Omein.”

They were strange sounds and she did not understand any of them.

“Those are beautiful-sounding words,” she said.

“Yes, they are.”

Above their heads millions of stars twinkled. An occasional rustle of leaves on treetops provided the perfect underscore for the beauty of the night. Emanuel stretched his arms behind him and looked up at the sky.

“Did you know that astronomers are naming every star?” he asked.

She had never thought of such a thing and looked up. The sky looked like a vast canopy dotted with silver specks twinkling just for her.

“See, there? That’s Orion,” he said. Pointing overhead and tracing lines with his finger, he continued: “That is his belt and that is the hilt of his sword.” Then he shifted his focus: “Now look down and to the left. That bright one. Do you see it?”

“That one?” She pointed, touching his fingertip.

“Yes, that’s the one,” he said. “That is Sirius, the brightest star in the sky.”

“How do you know it is the brightest?”

“Hipparchus said so, a hundred and fifty years before Christ.”

“Who was Hipparchus?”

“A Greek astronomer. He was the first to name and measure their brightness.”

Was he mocking her? How can a man measure something that he cannot touch? And how is it possible to say that one star is brighter than another?

“Pick a star. Any one and I will give it to you.”

Now she was convinced that he was mad. She laughed and covered her mouth. “You don’t believe me?” he asked.

“No.”

“Why don’t you try it and see what happens. It can’t hurt. Go on,” he insisted.

Pearl looked up to the heavens and pointed to a star that glimmered. Emanuel reached up and covered his hand over the one she had selected.

“Hereafter it shall be named Pearl,” he said as he took her hand, opened it, and placed his small star-shaped pendant on her palm.

“This is called a Magen David,” he said. “It is a symbol of my people. Whenever you look at it I hope it will remind you of this beautiful evening. And each time I look at that star, it will remind me of you.”

Pearl examined the gift. It had no clip so it wasn’t a brooch, and not a necklace either…then she remembered. She had seen it around Emanuel’s neck years ago when she was a little girl. She looked up, unsure what to do, what to say. It was the first present anyone had ever given her outside of Ba-bah and Uncle.

“It needs a chain,” Emanuel said. “Perhaps I can take it to Lane Crawford’s—” He reached to take it back.

“No! I shall do it myself,” she said.

Closing her fingers around the object, she felt its spiky triangles dig into her palm.

He smiled.

She remembered that expression. She had seen it many years ago when they were returning to Hong Kong from that first voyage to China. She had fallen asleep in his lap, her head against his chest. She had opened one eye and looked up but he had not noticed. The look of contentment he had then was the same expression he had now.

Pearl felt protected—as she had that night on the boat when she was a little girl. This time, though, she felt more than just safe. She felt warm all over.

But this new sensation did not last long once she realized that she could not return the honour he had just bestowed. His gesture was a surprise. Had she known he had a gift, she would have prepared something appropriate in return. The ledger was unbalanced. He had given her face. Now she felt obliged to return face or be forever in his debt. What could she possibly do?

He interrupted her thoughts. “My behaviour at table this evening. It was unmanly. I wish to explain myself.”

Emanuel told her about how he and his wife had met, how he used her dowry to start his business, and how she had given him no sons. Try as they might, his wife was barren. He wanted to put her aside, but that would mean he could never return to Calcutta. The shame would be unbearable. His community and his family would judge him too harshly for such a decision.

She listened intently. When he finished, he took in a deep breath and let it out. Then he closed his eyes for a moment, letting silence fall comfortably around them. Seeing his chest rise and fall gently, she realized something. She could give him her ears. She could give him friendship. And as though he had heard her thoughts, he opened his eyes, looked at her, and said, “Thank you.”

Then he rose. “Good night, my Pearl of the Orient. May I call on you?”

“Yes, if you wish,” she said, thinking that perhaps he wanted to tell her more of his concerns. Agreeing to be a friend would be one way of giving him face, of repaying his surprising generosity. Hearing her reply, he bowed and left her in the garden.

When he was gone she opened her hand and picked up the Magen David. It had left an imprint in the shape of a six-point star on her palm.