Barbarians

Death brought her back to the wrought-iron fence.

That morning she fussed over her straight black hair as she had seen her handmaid do on many occasions. She tried to replicate the servant’s motions in her tarnished silver vanity mirror. All she saw was her clumsy hands clawing at the swirl of darkness crowning her head, her chipping red nail polish a startling contrast. She gave up, brushed it straight down, abandoning her usual elaborate hairstyle. She applied her remaining clump of red lipstick sparingly, dotted charcoal over her eyebrows, and used the pad of her thumb to apply a purple glimmer to her eyelid.

Fumbling into her last clean dress, she watched her child sleeping soundly on the straw sleeping mats. Two weeks ago, the barbarians came in a motor car to burn their Western mattress, her husband’s clothing, pillows, toothbrush, and his shoes. The front door shook as they pounded on it furiously, rattling the hinges until the gardener lifted the latches and let them in. They marched passed him, shouting in clipped tones, demanding to see “missy.” She appeared before them in the foyer in her white flax mourning robe, incensed at their flagrant violation of mourning rules. The leader, a tall man with orange hair, ripped the white muslin cap from her head and pushed down on her shoulders until she fell on her knees. Her son wailed in the background; his amah brought him to a safer place in the house. He shouted at her as if she were deaf, barking “We British, know you husbiee. We takeee husbiee things. Cholera makee very bad, must makee burnee. Sav-vay?” She understo od, but remained motionless as they put on black gloves and tied handkerchiefs around their noses and mouths.

They disappeared upstairs and soon sent the sounds of breaking glass and dragged furniture down the harlequin staircase. The men soon reappeared, passing her, hauling her husband’s things into the rear courtyard, knocking vases and tables over as they went. They piled it all in the center of the courtyard, kicking over small potted trees and orchids. They doused the pile with gasoline, lit it, and watched as the flames leapt high, scarring the vines that covered the brown brick walls. They left the white alabaster fountain blackened in their zeal.

A week ago, a different group of them, her husband’s employees, came to collect his papers, leather books, furniture, paintings, photographs, his electric fans, and the last of the laudanum. As she nursed her child, they burst into her bedroom, and flung the list of items on the mahogany occasional table. They pointed to it, told her, “These things he buy you, not yours, must givee back.” They checked it line-by-line as they searched her jewelry boxes, removing the pieces he bought her. One man sat at her vanity and pulled his eyes into little slits as his friend placed her hairpins in a jumbled pile on his head. They shouted, “hong hee haw hee hee” at each other before crushing each hair pin in their hands, bending gold cloisonne phoenixes and breaking jeweled flowers. One man swept his arm across her vanity, sending candle sticks, ivory containers of face powder, fox hair brushes, and purple bottles of lavender water cascading onto the floor. He took out his penis an d arced a dark yellow stream across her mirror and the pile on the floor.

They opened the mirrored doors of the armoire and pulled out her Western-style dresses and threw them onto the floor, stomping on them with enormous black boots. Their chest hair peeked out through ill-fitting navy blue shirts as their shoulders shook with laughter. They grabbed her hats and took turns punching holes through them and extinguished their cigarettes. When the pile items was fully assembled, three of them dropped their pants, squatted, and added to the pile their foulness

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When they were finished, they threw a piece of paper at her imprinted with words too long for her to understand, and said, “You sign. No Chinkee scribble, English only.” She mustered enough control to scribble an X. When the barbarians left, her servants ran to her room, and while her cook comforted her and her maids brought the putrid pile down the stairs, she sputtered the events and sobbed. The gardener brought up a tumbler filled with the foul-smelling amber-colored water Sir sometimes drank and offered it to her. She gradually fell asleep.

She awoke to the sounds of her maid sweeping face powder off of the floor. Her cook, WeiTian, came to sit with her, recalled the white paper, and with seriousness told her about the mistress of her friend in the French Concession, who also had to sign one. Madame LaFayette was given a choice; to move to France or to return north to her family and home in Beijing. She reflected on WeiTian’s words; the French Concession was much more liberal the British Concession. She knew Madame LaFayette before she married, before she became a French citizen. But she did not have this protection from the British. She could not count on being allowed to move to England.

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She began to pack the things that remained in the house. She chose a blue silk dress, a qi pao, her favorite calligraphy, her unfinished embroidery, some jewelry, and her son. Four days later she discharged her servants, giving her most trusted a small portion of her meager savings. When the fading silhouette of her cook could no longer hear her tearfully calling good-bye, she returned to her room to be with her son, to cry, to sleep, to despair.

In her room the next day, she stood on a small wooden stool and reached for the top of her armoire. She pushed up on the carved corner of the top molding. It gave way and revealed a small lock inside. She pressed it, and the side panel of the armoire opened. Pulling the panel open, she took out an ebony box inlaid with mother-of-pearl, wrapped in red silk. She sat in the middle of the room, held her son sleeping on her arm, opened the box, and removed the photo album inside.

A cluster of four girls stands before the counter of a store that sells Chinese antiques. One of them, the eldest daughter of the owner, smiles, showing her teeth, her eyes raised and staring confidently into the camera, mimicking the poses of blonde tourist girls. Her three friends are unfamiliar with the Western invention; one stares blankly into the lens, one covers her giggles, and the last looks as though her underwear suddenly grew hands. These were once her best friends, the ones who cautioned her, the ones who told her endless tales about the foreign devil barbarians and what they do to proper women. How they stink of milk and meat, how their sweat is unnaturally strong and how it can ruin the soft, lustrous skin of a Chinese woman. How their hairy bodies are unmistakable proof that they are a mere step above the animals, much closer to a gorilla than a civilized and hairless Chinese. The foreign devils should never be allowed close contact with any Chinese, esp ecially not with Ho YuLi, daughter of one of the wealthiest businessmen in Shanghai.

A banquet table still-life; a red tablecloth, whole suckling pigs, cauldrons of shark’s fin soup, stacks of bird-nests cradling longevity eggs, a broiled sea turtle, and a giant squid seared in its own ink. Behind this display is a middle aged couple, man dressed in a tuxedo with a large mole on his left cheek, woman dressed in her red silk qi pao, a boulder of verdant jade suspended by a thick Chinese-gold chain resting thickly on her neck. Both of them are in anxious anticipation of the arrival of their daughter’s new boyfriend. They allowed her to marry for love; they were modern, they understood the world was changing, and China had to change as well. Ancient arranged marriages were failing as society changed, and they wanted their daughter to be happy. They wondered what the boy was like; perhaps of the Li family, or the Huang, or possibly the Zhangs. Any of those would be a fortuitous alliance, expanding business and enriching everyone. The matchmakers picked thi s auspicious date for the engagement banquet; the year, 1920, was exceptionally lucky. Incense was lit, the ancestors alerted. The Ho family would lead the rest of the traditional Chinese families in this new style of marriage; they would be the models for the modern Chinese in the new Republican Era. Their first daughter, educated, who even knew English, would have many Chinese sons, who would one day lead the country in the new post-dynastic era.

A photograph of a doorway, framed by a red curtain and two red lanterns, with a startled Sir Jonathan Simmons and his new fiancée, Ho YuLi, standing in the center, gawking at the camera. Seconds after this photo was taken, the patriarch and wife of the Ho family gracefully stood and stoically exited the banquet, their close friends in toe, whispering behind black lacquered fans. Sedan chairs and rickshaws carried disgusted guests away from the Peace Hotel down Ping-an Avenue.

A smiling Sir Jonathan Simmons holds the slender arm of his wife, Julia YuLi Simmons, at the base of their harlequin staircase. They are holding their own engagement party at their mansion on Bubbling Well Road, on the coastal edge of the British Concession. He is wearing a white tuxedo; she, a fluid white satin gown cut in the new straight-style. A white satin hat molds closely to her head. Several dark curls of hair cling to her forehead. The circle of close friends who ring the base of the staircase applaud. This circle of friends remained, laughing and dancing in swirls of pearls and satin, until the garden lanterns on the lanai were no longer needed. Jonathan and Julia sat with each other on the veranda, watching the sun rise over the flat China Sea as the salt air washed over the granite balustrade and onto them.

One Chinese woman sits at a table with three British women, playing Mah-jongg. Julia YuLi Simmons has never played it in they way they do, but she is honored to be the first Chinese woman invited by the leading ladies of British society in Shanghai to tea. She practiced her English every day for hours before the tea, recalling old English poems and committing to memory the names of the most popular London élite. The women surprise her by having small mian-bao brought out instead of cucumber sandwiches. She mentions she prefers cucumber sandwiches and they all laugh, beginning the awkward but pleasant friendship between them.

Julia is frozen in time, dancing the foxtrot in a yellow flapper dress, her chin down but eyes looking up, mouth open in the middle of an ecstatic shout. Jonathan’s head rolls back, mouth open, Adam’s apple blurred, caught in mid-laugh. They stand frozen, holding hands with their arms outstretched on the patio of Shanghai’s Club Chinoise. The moon reflects on the river. An outdoor band plays music, the bulging cheeks of a trombone player shine in the heat as a waiter carrying a tray of shrimp hors d’oeuvres passes by. They celebrated each of their five anniversaries here in remembrance of their first date and swore to each other to do this forever.

Her son moved. She put him on the straw mat, closed the photo album, and stood up, feeling the tingles in her legs that had been sat upon too long. She walked to the brown suitcase by the bedroom doorway and began to pack her things. In the suitcase went the photo album, her own jewels, some snacks for the baby, a diaper, and her blue silk qi pao. She picked him up again and headed toward the staircase. She descended the first step, closed her eyes, and remembered how glorious she felt walking with Jonathan into her engagement party, feeling the glow of the chandelier on her face, the pulse of the crowd below, hearing the sea of English words. Her foot made contact with the next step and her eyes opened, revealing the chandelier covered with an old white sheet marred by a black handprint, the dark hallway, the light that escaped through the boarded-up living room windows and struck the holes and dirty footprints on the white tiles. She closed her eyes again and saw Jon athan standing in the front doorway in his white uniform, arms outstretched and waiting for her to leap into his arms and smother her face with kisses, prickling her skin with his stubble, filling her nose with the smell of pipe tobacco. Her eyes opened as her foot wavered on a piece of broken glass on the stair. She hurried down to the bottom and made her way toward the back of the house. She walked into the dining room and stood by the fireplace inlaid with blue and white Dutch tiles. They sat before it, the fire ablaze, about to eat dinner, when she told him she was pregnant. The next night he placed red boxes tied with gold ribbons on each of the twelve dinning room chairs, each containing a gift for the new mother.

She walked out the kitchen door and paused before the rear gate. She looked again at her house, lifted the latch, and left. She walked down Bubbling Well Road and slowly made her way out of the British Concession. When she left the outer wall of the compound, she pulled the brim of her white hat down to shield her face from the busy stares of on-lookers. She made her way through the narrow alley of the Hutong, passing the open doors of the families who lived there. They stared at her, watching what must have been a Western woman in a white dress and red nails carry a baby on her side. Some whispered foreign devil; others stared silently. As she made her way to the avenue, a man selling vegetables at the corner recognized her and bowed, then whispered a greeting to her. She paused in front of his cart, and not raising her head said, “I thank you for your concern, Mr. Zhang.” She stood near the edge of the road to hail a rickshaw, feeling the sun press into her hat. She arranged her son to be in her shadow. Mr. Zhang stood, slowly made his way to her, and helped her hail a rickshaw. She got in, told the man, “88 Amethyst Road,” and knew without looking that Zhang disapproved. After the fare had been agreed, they pulled away, and she could hear the raspy voice of Old Zhang telling her to stop. The clatter of carts and shouts of bicyclists soon surrounded her entirely, covering her in a flaxen silence.

The wrought-iron fence stood unmoving.

The empty rickshaw clattered down the quiet road into the noise of crickets leaping on the lawn. Amethyst Road was the most prestigious road where Chinese people could live in Shanghai, and 88, “fatt fatt,” double fortune, was the best address. She paused at the gate, savoring the last moments of her own life before she called out, “Bai Xian Sheng!” Mr. Bai came hobbling over on bowlegs to see the new arrival. Mr. Bai peered closely at her with milky white eyes before recognizing her. When he did, he stood to attention and replaced his curious look with one of severity. His forehead became taut, his lower lip dropped. He pulled the gate open, and she walked up the flagstone path to the one-story vermilion façade crowned with a deep green glazed roof, characters announcing Health and Prosperity greeting her from above the front doorway. She remembered being carried to the door in a sedan chair before her marriage, never having to ride a lowly rickshaw, never having to call Mr. Bai to open the gate. Never having a child.

The front door slid open and Hong, her old wet-nurse appeared, a small rumpled figure outlined by darkness. She stood to one side, bowed slightly, her eyes harsh with criticism. She glanced at the boy and her face broke its sternness. She opened her arms, pulling him from his mother. He made no sound and continued sleeping. Hong mouthed “Jin qu! Jin qu!,” and pointed into the house. She followed Hong’s command and walked into the front hall. Her eyes adjusted to the dark slowly, and the objects from her youth returned slowly, each materializing individually. To her left and right, scrolls by Mang Lu depicted heavenly blessings. They framed the entrances to the East and West wings of the outer house. She walked in further, passed ancient porcelains and embroideries, statues and rock sculptures until she reached the two Ming vases resting on tall rosewood stands that flanked the dragon screen at the end of the room. When the emperor fell from power, her father commis sioned the dragon to be carved with five claws instead of the four accorded to commoners. It was the symbol of their family’s illustriousness, a screen where she played hide-and-seek with her siblings, but it now glowered at her, treating her as a hostile intruder. She walked behind the screen into the courtyard and walked into the hall.

She ascended the red lacquered steps and knelt onto the bare wooden floor. She lowered her forehead to the ground nine times. When she finished, she looked up into the room. On the wall facing her hung the large Suzhou tapestry depicting the gorges and lakes of Guilin in subtle greens and blues. On either side of it were two golden teak scholar chairs. In the chairs sat her mother and father.

We got your letter. We told you when you disgraced us all by running off with that barbarian that we no longer knew you. You delighted in being his filthy wife; even had a half-devil child with him. We saw you in the newspapers, delighting in being his whore, showing your body to the barbarians, vain little slut. We heard about them turning on you. You thought his position could protect you. And when he died they took everything away. You gave us up, you forgot your ancestors. All of this for a few moments of life as a barbarian. In your letter you plead for us to take you back. You have produced us a grandson. We must see him, you say. We must let you back into the family, be compassionate; express remorse. You say you have no money, no friends. You say you need help. You say if we turn you away you will die homeless, or as a prostitute.

Her parents looked at her as she trembled and bowed at them, sobbing silently, muttering, “please.” The mother walked over to her and prevented her from bowing anymore. She touched her daughter’s face, held her chin softly, smiled and whispered, “don’t cry, don’t cry. The daughter bowed again, and remained with her forehead on the ground. Her mother glanced at her father.

Her father signaled for a manservant to come. Her mother held her and slowly unbuttoned the back of her dress. Her back tensed. She heard footsteps of a heavy man walking toward her. Her mother got up and walked away. Her breathing stopped as she heard the invisible sound of a whip slicing through the air, and the sharp slap it made when it made contact with her skin. She felt her warm blood trickling down her sides and into her undergarments. The whip sliced the air again. And again. Again.

When she regained consciousness, she saw her mother’s grey silk skirt and felt her mother’s hand sponging and cleaning her back, slowly, with care and concern. Her forehead was pressed on the wooden floor, and she could see the legs of a chair to her right, her mother’s knees on the left. There was dried blood on her mouth, and she struggled to not taste it. She heard her mother murmuring “don’t cry” as she reached into the large tub of water balanced on the chair to clean the sponge. She felt relieved; she was punished, but now she had a place to live again, a place to raise her son. She struggled to raise her head, and her mother supported her carefully.

She heard her father’s footsteps and sat up further. He walked toward her, a stern look on his face. He reached for the wooden back of the chair, pulled on it, and sent the tub of water onto the ground. She saw the small body of her son tumble out of the tub and land with a thud on the floor, pink water washing over him. Before she could scream her father slapped her with the back of his hand and ordered, “get out.”

She lunged forward, crawling on her hands, and grabbed the body of her son. Through her tears she saw the blur of her father glaring at her. “Go. Die homeless. You have no family.” He stormed away through the courtyard, turquoise robe flowing delicately behind him. Her mother kneeled on the ground, silently, her head bowed.