Mandarin Read online

  Leaving his sons to work the junk, Low Dah stooped into the low cabin to burn incense sticks before the wooden image of Tien Mu Hou, the patron goddess of sailors. He had been foolish to undertake the voyage when the land was torn by battle. Shot-shattered timbers testified both to his foolhardiness and to the intercession of the goddess, which had preserved his vessel, his sons, and his life. He chuckled contentedly as he spilled silver Maria Theresa dollars from a cotton bag.

  Squalls blinded the two travelers as they struggled north toward the foreign enclave, but the murk shielded them from the sentinels in both the Imperial outposts and the rebel-held South City. All men were their enemies that night, above all Saul’s foreign competitors, who believed he had been confined to bed with a virulent fever for the past two weeks. They must come unseen to his house behind the Bund lined by the compounds of the great trading houses. Otherwise their secret journey to Soochow would be vain.

  A purpose greater than profit drove them homeward. Compelled by that higher imperative, the pair loped along the moat of the Chinese South City, which was held by the rebels of the Small Sword Society. The clouds were opening, and the thunder was diminishing like the footfalls of a retreating giant. Fearing the moonlight, they moved faster. But they shrank under the illusory shelter of the wall of the South City when a cannon boomed again from the Imperial camp.

  The roar of the shot rumbled above the thunder and rain, reverberating like the crash of a stricken oak. Saul and Aisek threw themselves face down in the mud.

  The shot struck, rebounded into the air, and fell to earth again. It plowed through the ground with an immense sucking sound like the oak’s groaning when its roots tear free of the soil.

  “The Lord is one!” Saul breathed his guttural invocation.

  “You said,” Aisek whispered, “we must above all fear the foreigners tonight.”

  “They’re not as fierce as your countrymen,” Saul acknowledged. “At least tonight. But the foreigners must not find us and wonder where we come from.”

  The lights on the battlements above them flickered as the wind tossed the globular paper lanterns. Shadows enveloped them, and in the next instant the lanterns lit them mercilessly. Saul dug his fingers into the mud and prayed silently to his distant God.

  On the wall, men shouted in a harsh dialect Saul could not identify. Aisek grasped the altercation in Cantonese, burrowed deeper, and promised five lengths of brocade to Kwan Yin, the Goddess of Mercy, to bring them safely home.

  “I tell you I saw it,” a voice rasped. “I saw someone move.”

  “There’s nothing there,” a second voice rejoined. “Your eyes are rotted by too much wine.”

  The lantern drifted away, and darkness enfolded them again. Aisek lifted his face from the mud and looked at the wall. Disembodied in the glare, heads covered with scarlet turbans floated above the battlements among a thicket of spears. He frugally revised his promise, resolving to give just two lengths of brocade to Kwan Yin. The goddess had not been tried hard, since it was no miracle to hide them from this desultory search. Besides, Saul’s Almighty God, in whom he too believed, was assuredly also taking a hand.

  Attracted by the light, the cannon boomed again—and a second iron ball rumbled across the Hwangpoo. Trailing a spray of solid mud, the ball buried itself fifty yards short of the wall.

  “The Imps aim as well as the Small Swords search.” Scornful in his relief, Saul used the rebels’ contemptuous name for the Imperial troops.

  “After all, they’re your weapons—barbarian weapons.” Aisek instinctively championed his enemies because they too were Chinese. “Your people invented them.”

  “Elder Brother, they are not my people, the cannon makers. No more than they’re yours. Neither is our people.”

  Though the net of clouds opened to free the pale moon from its meshes, Saul loped northward, contemptuous of both the Small Swords and the Imperials, ignoring the clustered hovels of refugees. After a quarter of an hour they came to the edge of the Foreign Settlement. Only narrow Yangjingbang Creek separated them from the haven where foursquare houses arrogantly streamed light.

  Saul froze in horror. Silhouetted by the glow, sentries armed with rifles were patrolling the northern bank of the Yangjingbang. The boundary had not been guarded when they left Shanghai two weeks earlier. The long European rifles were a greater peril than any they had faced. Unlike the rebels and the Imperial troops, the foreigners would shoot straight—and they would count the lives of two unknown natives hardly worth a challenge before they fired.

  A red smear glistened below the ivory cylinder fixed to the doorpost where the blood of the sacrificial lamb had stained the teak. No larger than a man’s thumb, the cylinder glowed in the candlelight spilling from the open doorway. Cloaked by the watery moonlight that had succeeded the storm, the two travelers trudged from Szechwan Road into the compound. Their jackets dripped water, and their cloth shoes were sodden. Saul’s ruddy beard was saturated, while Aisek’s black goatee was a wet wisp like the tail of a drenched kitten.

  A girl of fifteen burst from the doorway, careless of the puddles on the gravel path. Water spurted beneath her high-buttoned kidskin shoes to splatter the hem of her white silk kaftan. Tawny hair streaming loose beneath a green scarf, the slender form darted toward the travelers.

  “Papa, Papa,” she cried in lilting English. “I knew you’d come. I told Mama. I told her you’d never miss this night.”

  Still prattling, the girl hurled herself at Saul and kissed his cheeks.

  “Fronah, my dove, let me breathe.” When Saul laughed, his austere features brightened. “I said I would. And I have.”

  “I knew it!” the girl called to the woman in the orange kaftan, whose oval face was still shadowed by anxiety. “I told you he would, Mama.”

  “Sarah, you are well?” The tall man embraced his wife and kissed her forehead. “I’m very sorry I’m late.”

  “Saul, you’re back.” The wife was uncomfortable at displaying her affection. “I prayed—and you’ve come back.”

  “And the house, it’s all prepared?” Saul kissed the ivory cylinder before entering the doorway. “Everything is ready?”

  “Of course it is, Saul.” Asperity tinged her voice, though she had known he would ask. “How could I not?”

  “Uncle Aisek!” The squat Chinese man squirmed uneasily in the girl’s embrace, though his eyes beamed. “You promised you’d bring Papa home safe—and you have.”

  “Enough, Fronah. You’re disturbing Mr. Lee,” Sarah commanded before following her husband into the house. “Let him be.”

  Two Chinese youths in blue long gowns stepped from the lighted doorway and knelt on the wet gravel before Aisek.

  “Welcome, my father, welcome.” The elder, who was taller and thinner than his brother, spoke in formal Mandarin, the Officials’ Language, rather than Shanghainese. “We were consumed by concern for your safety.”

  “Well, I’m back, lads,” Aisek said, laughing. “And none the worse, you see—or not much the worse. It all went magnificently. Your grandmother will be pleased. Or will she?”

  “Of course Grandma will be delighted,” the younger said. “She’s been worried—really grumbling all the time. Disaster, she keeps saying, only disaster can come of trafficking with barbarians—total bankruptcy.”

  “Dawei, that’s no way to speak about your grandmother.” The sting of the reprimand was assuaged when the father clasped his sons’ shoulders. “If only your mother were still alive to see this triumph.”

  The youths bowed their heads in sympathy with their father’s memory of sorrow. They were actually moved more by his fleeting embrace than by grief for their mother, who had died years earlier. However deeply they felt, father and sons rarely displayed affection, even in private.

  “The last minutes were the worst.” Saul uncharacteristically began his tale at the end. “I almost despaired when I saw those sentries along the Yangjingbang. Just across the silver creek was sa
fety—and a fortune. But how to cross it undiscovered?”

  “Pien-jen …” Aisek spoke in the Mandarin his sons preferred, rather than Shanghainese, and the girl Fronah translated for her parents. “Deception was the handmaiden of triumph.”

  After bathing, Saul and Aisek had changed from the coarse workmen’s garments that had made them inconspicuous during their journey through the revolt-harried Yangtze Delta. By disrupting trade the rebellion offered the two merchants an unparalleled opportunity. The first bulk silk for the eager markets of Europe and America would command extravagant prices. Their new clothing was appropriate to the prosperity they already enjoyed—and to their confident expectations of great wealth.

  Saul wore a white linen robe clasped with a brocade sash. His feet were thrust into black leather sandals with upturned toes, and his gray silk turban was tied in the manner of Baghdad. Aisek was dressed with subdued opulence in a shimmering blue silk long gown embossed with fu, prosperity, ideograms. His shoes were dark satin, and his skullcap was the same glossy black as his hair, whose gray stippling he dyed. Though his countrymen venerated age, Aisek Lee did not wish to look older than his thirty-nine years. Aside from the laugh wrinkles around his deep-set eyes and his full mouth, his round face was unmarked by time.

  Although a year younger, Saul appeared older because of the deep lines that ran from his mouth to his nose. His narrow face and broad, seamed forehead were dominated by a high-arched nose with narrow nostrils.

  Their elbows propped on green satin cushions, the partners lounged in ebony chairs. Their shoulders were draped with purple-striped, white-fringed shawls, as were the youths’. His shoulders sloping powerfully and his head a ponderous globe, the Chinese merchant was drawn with curved horizontal brush strokes. The Jewish merchant had been sketched with straight pen lines, which extended vertically from his long head to his slender fingers and his narrow feet.

  “By deception we triumphed,” Aisek repeated complacently.

  “It was a justifiable deception, a worthy deception.” Saul defended the honor he valued above profit. “If I hadn’t played sick, we couldn’t have gone in secret. And where would the ladies of London and New York look for their new silk frocks?”

  “Must come to you and me … all tai-tai must buy silk belong you and me.”

  Aisek spoke in their accustomed mixture of pidgin English and Shanghainese, the lingua franca of the two families. With the snobbery of youth, Aisek’s sons preferred Mandarin, the Officials’ Language. They spoke English almost as well as Saul, who had learned that language as a mature man in Bombay, a way station on his long road to China. Normally he spoke Hebrew to his wife. If the Lees and her parents had difficulty understanding each other, Fronah would translate, since she spoke the various languages best.

  “My mother fears we go bust, but she very wrong,” Aisek exulted. “We very soon become very rich.”

  “Tell us how you got across the creek, Papa,” Fronah asked, her light-brown eyes sparkling above her delicate cheekbones.

  “It was really simple after the first shock,” Saul replied. “I saw Dr. William MacGregor wandering alone with a lantern like a man on a midnight stroll. He was dragging his shotgun by the barrel—seemed he had almost forgotten why he was there. So I called to him. Of course he knew about our little … ah … white lie, and, you know, he’d helped …”

  “For squeeze for himself,” Aisek interjected. “A share of profits … a little squeeze … for his hospital.”

  “Any rate, he got us across the Yangjingbang. And here we are, no one the wiser. No one knows where we went or that the silk’s coming down by steamer next week.”

  “Saul, it’s late,” Sarah interrupted his self-congratulation. “It’s past time for the first cup of wine—to celebrate all our blessings.”

  “Tonight is truly a joyous occasion—for our people and for ourselves,” Saul exulted. “God’s mercy and bounty are endless.”

  He was solemn when he rose and glanced around the company self-consciously reclining on cushions. The white damask tablecloth was set with plates of parsley and lettuce, bowls of salt water, and saucers of minced nuts and raisins spiced with cinnamon. A lamb shank and several hard-boiled eggs lay on a platter beside three rounds of flat bread. Some twelve inches across, the disks were dark-barred by the brazier.

  “Blessed art Thou, Lord our God, Ruler of the universe, Creator of the fruit of the vine, Who has chosen us amidst all peoples and singled us out among all other nations,” Saul chanted in Hebrew, raising his silver winecup. “Thou hast lovingly granted us, Lord our God … this feast of unleavened bread, a joyous festival of holy assembly. The season of our liberation recalls our going forth from Egypt.… Blessed art Thou, Lord, who hast set apart and sanctified Thy people Israel …”

  Guided by Fronah’s whispered translation, the three Chinese joined the Sephardic Jews in the Seder’s first cup of wine. They too washed their hands in the silver basin presented by a houseboy wearing a white jacket and black trousers tied at the ankles. They too took small portions of lettuce and parsley dipped in salt water, commemorating the “bitter herbs” of the cruel days of the Hebrews’ captivity in Egypt. They too knew that the blood of the sacrificial lamb daubed on the doorpost symbolized the Almighty’s instructions to His people when He afflicted the Egyptians with plagues to compel them to release their Hebrew slaves: Take of the blood of the Paschal lamb and mark your doors so that the Angel of Death shall know you to be My people and spare your firstborn.

  Aisek and his sons joined Saul in the ritual invocation: “Blessed art Thou, Lord our God, Ruler of the universe, Creator of the fruit of the earth.”

  The company watched Saul take up one of the three matzah, which recalled the unleavened bread the Israelites had eaten during their protracted journey to the Promised Land. The Chinese were puzzled when Saul snapped it in two and replaced a portion between the unbroken disks. He wrapped the larger portion in a napkin and set it down on the stool behind him.

  Saul smiled broadly, and his eyes danced as Fronah whispered to the boys, “That’s the afikoman. You must steal it so Papa doesn’t see. Then you know what to do, don’t you?”

  The flames in the black marble fireplace tinged the air crimson as Saul sat again on his broad chair, violating the strict order of the Passover rites. This year it was all-important to bring his guests into communion with his family—and with the Jewish faith. Having drunk brandy to warm themselves, the celebrants were lively, though restrained by the reserve of both cultures. Fronah had taken two thimble cups, and her light-brown eyes glowed. The fire and the lamplight created a haven from the alien Shanghai night outside, where the storm was again rising.

  “Tonight I have changed the order of the Seder,” Saul said. “A Seder not only recalls our ancestors’ flight from Egypt. It’s also an occasion for discussion, like an old Greek symposium. We even recline on our left elbows to show our liberty, as Hellenistic freemen did. Tonight we’ll first talk a little.”

  “You can always talk, my dear.” Sarah was proud of her husband’s scholarship but felt it her wifely duty to curb his pretentiousness. “This night is no different.”

  “Thank you, my dear.” Saul casually acknowledged—and dismissed—her tartness. “This night, above all other nights, we are enjoined to remember the trials and triumphs of our people—before the Exodus and during the many centuries since. We are instructed: Tell your children. Tell your sons and daughters so that they may know—and through knowledge become one with Israel.”

  “You say that every Seder, Papa,” Fronah objected. “What’s different tonight that makes it different from other Passovers? Tell me, Papa.”

  “I shall, Fronah,” Saul agreed indulgently. “Tonight we are honored by the presence of the Lee family, Aisek, the father, Aaron and David, the sons. For the first time, they too are participating in the joyous festival of their ancestors.”

  Sixteen-year-old David Lee, called Dawei in Chinese, glanced at his elder
brother. Eighteen-year-old Aaron, otherwise Ailun, was intent on Fronah’s translation. His narrow face, the features sharply cut like his mother’s, frowned in concentration. David was less absorbed, and his wide-set eyes flickered as his thoughts wandered. His face, round like his father’s, mirrored his mood, which oscillated between reverence and mischievousness.

  “I am convinced that we are not only of the same people but the same tribe,” Saul continued. “You know, Jews came to China centuries before the Christian Era. More than three hundred years ago, when their descendants were ‘discovered’ in Kaifeng by the Jesuits, the priests of the false Messiah, they bore surnames that seemed wholly Chinese—Chao, Chin, and Shih, among a few others. Lee, too, but Lee is, of course, Levi.”

  “The same tribe?” Aaron murmured.

  “Yes, Aaron, the same tribe. As you know, we are called Haleevie. What does Haleevie mean? It’s the Hebrew ha-Levi, meaning the tribe of Levi, the custodians of the temples. The spelling we use was adopted when we were in Spain. Since you are also Levis, we are of the same tribe of Israel.”

  “How can you be so certain after so many centuries, sir?” David asked.

  “Certainty is the Lord God’s alone. But as far as human learning takes us, I am certain. Your father agrees that you should partake of the rites of your ancestors. Though there are, I fear, certain matters … certain ways in which …”

  “Saul, tonight’s meant to be joyous,” Sarah interjected. “Forget your reservations. Let’s celebrate the liberation of Israel—and your return—without reservations.”

  Saul assented readily, as he almost invariably assented when Sarah pressed her point. Apparently docile, his petite wife was usually quiet in company. But her firmly arched nose and her delicately pointed chin showed great determination. When her brown eyes flashed and she spoke emphatically, he listened.