The Hundred Secret Senses Read online

  When the drink trolley finally arrives, I ask for relief in the form of a gin and tonic. The flight attendant doesn’t understand.

  “Gin and tonic,” I repeat, and then say in Chinese: “A slice of lemon, if you have it.”

  She consults her comrade, who likewise shrugs in puzzlement.

  “Ni you scotch meiyou?” I try. “Do you have scotch?”

  They laugh at this joke.

  Surely you have scotch, I want to shout. Look at the ridiculous costumes you have on!

  But “scotch” is not a word I’ve learned to say in Chinese, and Kwan isn’t about to assist me. In fact, she looks rather pleased with my frustration and the flight attendants’ confusion. I settle for a Diet Coke.

  Meanwhile, Simon sits on my other side, playing Flight Simulator on his laptop. “Whoa-whoa- whoa! Shit.” This is followed by the sounds of a crash-and-burn. He turns to me. “Captain Bishop here says drinks are on the house.”

  Throughout the trip, Kwan acts tipsy with happiness. She repeatedly squeezes my arm and grins. For the first time in more than thirty years, she’ll be on Chinese soil, in Changmian, the village where she lived until she was eighteen. She’ll see her aunt, the woman she calls Big Ma, who brought her up and, according to Kwan, horribly abused her, pinching her cheeks so hard she left her with crescent-shaped scars.

  She’ll also be reunited with old schoolmates, at least those who survived the Cultural Revolution, which started after she left. She’s looking forward to impressing her friends with her English, her driver’s license, the snapshots of her pet cat sitting on the floral-patterned sofa she bought recently at a warehouse sale—“fifty percent off for small hole, maybe no one even see it.”

  She talks of visiting her mother’s grave, how she’ll make sure it’s swept clean. She’ll take me to a small valley where she once buried a box filled with treasures. And because I am her darling sister, she wants to show me her childhood hiding place, a limestone cave that contains a magic spring.

  The trip presents a number of firsts for me as well. The first time I’ve gone to China. The first time since I was a child that Kwan will be my constant companion for two weeks. The first time that Simon and I will travel together and sleep in separate rooms.

  Now squished into my seat between Simon and Kwan, I realize how crazy it is that I am going—the physical torture of being in planes and airports for almost twenty-four hours, the emotional havoc of going with the very two people who are the source of my greatest heartaches and fears. And yet for the sake of my heart, that’s what I have to do. Of course, I have pragmatic reasons for going—the magazine article, finding my father’s name. But my main motivation is fear of regret. I worry that if I didn’t go, one day I’d look back and wonder, What if I had?

  Perhaps Kwan is right. Fate is the reason I’m going. Fate has no logic, you can’t argue with it any more than you can argue with a tornado, an earthquake, a terrorist. Fate is another name for Kwan.

  WE’RE TEN HOURS from China. My body is already confused as to whether it’s day or night. Simon is snoozing, I haven’t slept a wink, and Kwan is waking up.

  She yawns. In an instant, she’s alert and restless. She fidgets with her pillows. “Libby-ah, what you thinking?”

  “Oh, you know, business.” Before the trip, I made an itinerary and a checklist. I’ve taken into account jet lag, orientation, location scouting, the possibility that the only lighting available will be fluorescent blue. I’ve penciled in reminders to get shots of small grocery stores and big supermarkets, fruit stands and vegetable gardens, stoves and cooking utensils, spices and oils. I’ve also fretted many nights over logistics and budget. The distance to Changmian is a major problem, a three- or four-hour ride from Guilin, according to Kwan. The travel agent wasn’t even able to find Changmian on a map. He has us booked into a hotel in Guilin, two rooms at sixty dollars each a night. There might be places that are cheaper and closer, but we’ll have to find them after we arrive.

  “Libby-ah,” Kwan says. “In Changmian, things maybe not too fancy.”

  “That’s fine.” Kwan has already told me that the dishes are simple, similar to what she cooks, not like those in an expensive Chinese restaurant. “Actually,” I reassure her, “I don’t want to take pictures of fancy stuff. Believe me, I’m not expecting champagne and caviar.”

  “Cavi-ah, what that?”

  “You know, fish eggs.”

  “Oh! Have, have.” She looks relieved. “Cavi-egg, crab egg, shrimp egg, chicken egg—all have! Also, thousand-year duck egg. Course, not really thousand year, only one, two, three year most . . . Wah! What I thinking! I know where find you duck egg older than that. Long time ago, I hide some.”

  “Really?” This sounds promising, a nice detail for the article. “You hid them when you were a girl?”

  “Until I twenty.”

  “Twenty? . . . You were already in the States then.”

  Kwan smiles secretively. “Not this time twenty. Last time.” She leans her head against the seat. “Duck egg—ahh, so good . . . Miss Banner, she don’t like too much. Later, starving time come, eat anything, rat, grasshopper, cicada. She think thousand-year yadan taste better than eat those. . . . When we in Changmian, Libby-ah, I show you where hide them. Maybe some still there. You and me go find, ah?”

  I nod. She looks so damn happy. For once, her imaginary past does not bother me. In fact, the idea of searching for make-believe eggs in China sounds charming. I check my watch. Another twelve hours and we’ll be in Guilin.

  “Mmm,” Kwan murmurs. “Yadan . . .”

  I can tell that Kwan is already there, in her illusory world of days gone by.

  Duck eggs, I loved them so much I became a thief. Before breakfast, every day except Sunday, that’s when I stole them. I wasn’t a terrible thief, not like General Cape. I took only what people wouldn’t miss, one or two eggs, that sort of thing. Anyway, the Jesus Worshippers didn’t want them. They liked the eggs of chickens better. They didn’t know duck eggs were a great luxury—very expensive if you bought them in Jintian. If they knew how much duck eggs cost, they’d want to eat them all the time. And then what? Too bad for me!

  To make thousand-year duck eggs, you have to start with eggs that are very, very fresh, otherwise, well, let me think . . . otherwise . . . I don’t know, since I used only fresh ones. Maybe the old ones have bones and beaks already growing inside. Anyway, I put these very fresh eggs into a jar of lime and salt. The lime powder I saved from washing clothes. The salt was another matter, not cheap like today. Lucky for me, the foreigners had lots. They wanted their food to taste as if it were dipped in the sea. I liked salty things too, but not everything salty. When they sat down to eat, they took turns saying “Please pass the salt,” and added even more.

  I stole the salt from the cook. Her name was Ermei, Second Sister, one daughter too many of a family with no sons. Her family gave her to the missionaries so they wouldn’t have to marry her off and pay a dowry. Ermei and I had a little back-door business. The first week, I gave her one egg. She then poured salt into my empty palms. The next week, she wanted two eggs for the same amount of salt! That girl knew how to bargain.

  One day, Dr. Too Late saw our exchange. I walked to the alleyway where I did the wash. When I turned around, there he was, pointing to the little white mound lying in the nest of my palms. I had to think fast. “Ah, this,” I said. “For stains.” I was not lying. I needed to stain the eggshells. Dr. Too Late frowned, not understanding my Chinese. What could I do? I dumped all that precious salt into a bucket of cold water. He was still watching. So I pulled something from the basket of ladies’ private things, threw that in the bucket, and began to scrub. “See?” I said, and held up a salty piece of clothing. Wah! I was holding Miss Mouse’s panties, stained at the bottom with her monthly blood! Dr. Too Late—ha, you should have seen his face! Redder than those stains. After he left, I wanted to cry for having spoiled my salt. But when I fished out Miss Mouse’s panties
—ah?—I saw I’d been telling the truth! That bloodstain, it was gone! It was a Jesus miracle! Because from that day on, I could help myself to as much salt as I needed, one handful for stains, one handful for eggs. I didn’t have to go to Ermei through the back door. But every now and then, I still gave her an egg.

  I put the lime, salt, and eggs into earthen jars. The jars I got from a one-eared peddler named Zeng in the public lane just outside the alleyway. One egg traded for a jar that was too leaky for oil. He always had plenty of cracked jars. This made me think that man was either very clumsy, or crazy about duck eggs. Later, I learned he was crazy for me! It’s true! His one ear, my one eye, his leaky jars, my tasty eggs—maybe that’s why he thought we were a good match. He didn’t say he wanted me to become his wife, not in so many words. But I knew he was thinking this, because one time he gave me a jar that was not even cracked. And when I pointed this out to him, he picked up a stone, knocked a little chip off the mouth of the jar, and gave it back to me. Anyway, that’s how I got jars and a little courtship.

  After many weeks, the lime and the salt soaked through the eggshells. The whites of the eggs became firm green, the yellow yolks hard black. I knew this because I sometimes ate one to be certain the others were ready to go into their mud coats. Mud, I didn’t have to steal that. In the Ghost Merchant’s garden I could mix plenty. While the mud-coated eggs were still wet, I wrapped them in paper, pages torn from those pamphlets called “The Good News.” I stuck the eggs into a small drying oven I had made out of bricks. I didn’t steal the bricks. They had fallen out of the wall and were cracked. Along every crack, I smeared glue squeezed from a sticky poisonous plant. That way the sun could flow through the cracks, the bugs got stuck and couldn’t eat my eggs. The next week, when the clay coats were hard, I put my eggs once more in the curing jar. I buried them in the northwest corner of the Ghost Merchant’s garden. Before the end of my life, I had ten rows of jars, ten paces long. That’s where they still might be. I’m sure we didn’t eat them all. I saved so many.

  To me, a duck egg was too good to eat. That egg could have become a duckling. That duckling could have become a duck. That duck could have fed twenty people in Thistle Mountain. And in Thistle Mountain, we rarely ate a duck. If I ate an egg—and sometimes I did—I could see twenty hungry people. So how could I feel full? If I hungered to eat one, but saved it instead, this satisfied me, a girl who once had nothing. I was thrifty, not greedy. As I said, every now and then I gave an egg to Ermei, to Lao Lu as well.

  Lao Lu saved his eggs too. He buried them under the bed in the gatehouse, where he slept. That way, he said, he could dream about tasting them one day. He was like me, waiting for the best time to eat those eggs. We didn’t know the best time would later be the worst.

  ON SUNDAYS, the Jesus Worshippers always ate a big morning meal. This was the custom: long prayer, then chicken eggs, thick slices of salty pork, corn cakes, watermelon, cold water from the well, then another long prayer. The foreigners liked to eat cold and hot things together, very unhealthy. The day that I’m now talking about, General Cape ate plenty. Then he stood up from the table, made an ugly face, and announced he had a sour stomach, too bad he couldn’t visit God’s House that morning. That’s what Yiban told us.

  So we went to the Jesus meeting, and while I was sitting on the bench, I noticed Miss Banner could not stop tapping her foot. She seemed anxious and happy. As soon as the service was over, she picked up her music box and went to her room.

  During the noonday meal of cold leftovers, General Cape didn’t come to the dining room. Neither did Miss Banner. The foreigners looked at his empty chair, then hers. They said nothing, but I knew what they were thinking, mm-hmm. Then the foreigners went to their rooms for the midday nap. Lying on my straw mat, I heard the music box playing that song I had grown to hate so much. I heard Miss Banner’s door open, then close. I put my hands over my ears. But in my mind I could see her rubbing Cape’s sour stomach. Finally, the song stopped.

  I awoke hearing the stableman shout as he ran along the passageway: “The mule, the buffalo, the cart! They’re gone.” We all came out of our rooms. Then Ermei ran from the kitchen and cried: “A smoked pork leg and a sack of rice.” The Jesus Worshippers were confused, shouting for Miss Banner to come and change the Chinese words into English. But her door stayed closed. So Yiban told the foreigners what the stableman and the cook had said. Then all the Jesus Worshippers flew to their rooms. Miss Mouse came out, crying and pulling at her neck; she had lost her locket with the hair of her dead sweetheart. Dr. Too Late couldn’t find his medicine bag. For Pastor and Mrs. Amen, it was a silver comb, a golden cross, and all the mission money for the next six months. Who had done such a thing? The foreigners stood like statues, unable to speak or move. Maybe they were wondering why God let this happen on the day they worshipped him.

  By this time, Lao Lu was banging on General Cape’s door. No answer. He opened the door, looked in, then said one word: Gone! He knocked on Miss Banner’s door. Same thing, gone.

  Everyone began to talk all at once. I think the foreigners were trying to decide what to do, where to look for those two thieves. But now they had no mule, no buffalo cow, no cart. Even if they did have them, how would they know where to look? Which way did Cape and Miss Banner go? To the south into Annam? To the east along the river to Canton? To Guizhou Province, where wild people lived? The nearest yamen for reporting big crimes was in Jintian, many hours’ walking distance from Changmian. And what would the yamen official do when he heard that the foreigners had been robbed by their own kind? Laugh ha-ha-ha.

  That evening, during the hour of insects, I sat in the courtyard, watching the bats as they chased after mosquitoes. I refused to let Miss Banner float into my mind. I was saying to myself, “Nunumu, why should you waste one thought on Miss Banner, a woman who favors a traitor over a loyal friend? Nunumu, you remember from now on, foreigners cannot be trusted.” Later I lay in my room, still not thinking about Miss Banner, refusing to give her one piece of my worry or anger or sadness. Yet something leaked out anyway, I don’t know how. I felt a twist in my stomach, a burning in my chest, an ache in my bones, feelings that ran up and down my body, trying to escape.

  The next morning was the first day of the week, time to wash clothes. While the Jesus Worshippers were having a special meeting in God’s House, I went into their rooms to gather their dirty clothes. Of course, I didn’t bother with Miss Banner’s room. I walked right past it. But then my feet started walking backward and I opened her door. The first thing I saw was the music box. I was surprised. Must be she thought it was too heavy for her to carry. Lazy girl. I saw her dirty clothes lying in the basket. I looked in her wardrobe closet. Her Sunday dress and shoes were gone, also her prettiest hat, two pairs of gloves, the necklace with a woman’s face carved on orange stone. Her stockings with the hole in one heel, they were still there.

  And then I had a bad thought and a good plan. I wrapped a dirty blouse around the music box and put it in the basket of clothes. I carried this down the passageway, through the kitchen, then along the hall to the open alleyway. I walked through the gate into the Ghost Merchant’s garden. Along the northwest wall, where I kept my duck eggs, that’s where I dug another hole and buried the box and all memories of Miss Banner.

  As I was patting dirt over this musical grave, I heard a low sound, like a frog: “Wa-ren! Wa-ren!” I walked along the path, and above the crunch-crunch of leaves I heard the sound again, only now I knew it was Miss Banner’s voice. I hid behind a bush and looked up at the pavilion. Wah! There was Miss Banner’s ghost! Her hair, that’s what made me think this, it was wild-looking, flowing to her waist. I was so scared I fell against the bush, and she heard my noise.

  “Wa-ren? Wa-ren?” she called, as she ran down the pathway with a wild, lost look on her face. I was crawling away as fast as I could. But then I saw her Sunday shoes in front of me. I looked up. I knew right away she wasn’t a ghost. She had many mosquito bites on
her face, her neck, her hands. If there had also been ghost mosquitoes out there, they might have done that. But I didn’t think of that until just now. Anyway, she was carrying her leather bag for running away. She scratched at her itchy face, asked me in a hopeful voice: “The general—has he come back for me?”

  So then I knew what had happened. She had been waiting in the pavilion since the day before, listening for every small sound. I shook my head. And I felt both glad and guilty to see misery crawl over her face. She collapsed to the ground, then laughed and cried. I stared at the back of her neck, the bumpy leftovers where mosquitoes had feasted, the proof that her hope had lasted all night long. I felt sorry for her, but also I was angry.

  “Where did he go?” I asked. “Did he tell you?”

  “He said Canton. . . . I don’t know. Maybe he lied about that as well.” Her voice was dull, like a bell that is struck but doesn’t ring.

  “You know he stole food, money, lots of treasures?”

  She nodded.

  “And still you wanted to go with him?”

  She moaned to herself in English. I didn’t know what she was saying, but it sounded as if she was pitying herself, sorry she was not with that terrible man. She looked up at me. “Miss Moo, whatever should I do?”

  “You didn’t respect my opinion before. Why ask me now?”

  “The others, they must think I’m a fool.”

  I nodded. “Also a thief.”

  She was quiet for a long time. Then she said, “Perhaps I should hang myself—Miss Moo, what do you think?” She began laughing like a crazy person. Then she picked up a rock and placed this in my lap. “Miss Moo, please do me the favor of smashing my head in. Tell the Jesus Worshippers that the devil Cape killed me. Let me be pitied instead of despised.” She threw herself on the dirt, crying, “Kill me, please kill me. They’ll wish me dead anyway.”