The Valley of Amazement. Amy Tan

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СКАЧАТЬ Gourd stared at me openmouthed. “You don’t care if I’m tortured and killed? What kind of girl did you grow up to be? So selfish!” She left the room.

      I was ashamed. She had once been my only friend. I could not explain to her that I was scared. I had never shown fear or weakness to anyone. I was used to having any predicament solved immediately by my mother. I wanted to pour out to Magic Gourd all that I felt—that my mother had not worried enough for me, and instead she became stupid and believed that liar. She always did, because she loved him more than she loved me. Was she with him on that ship? Would she return? She had promised.

      I looked around at my prison. The room was small. All the furniture was of poor quality and worn beyond repair. What kind of men were the customers of this house? I tallied all the faults of the room so I could tell my mother how much I had suffered. The mat was thin and lumpy. The curtains that enclosed the frame were faded and stained. The tea table had a crooked leg and its top had water stains and burn marks, making it suitable only for firewood. The crackle-glazed vase had a real crack. The ceiling had missing plaster and the lamps on the walls were crooked. The rug was orange and dark blue wool woven with the usual symbols of the scholar, and half of them were worn bare or eaten by moths. The Western armchairs were rickety and the cloth was frayed at the edge of the seats. A lump grew in my throat. Was she really on the boat? Was she worried sick?

      I was still wearing the hated blue-and-white sailor blouse and skirt, “evidence of my American patriotism,” Fairweather had said. That evil man was making me suffer because I hated him.

      At the back of the wardrobe, I spied a tiny pair of embroidered shoes, so worn there was more grimy lining than pink and blue silk. The backs of the shoes were crushed flat. They had been made for small feet. The girl who wore them must have wedged her toes in and walked on tiptoe to give the effect of bound feet. Did she rest her heels on the backs of the shoes when no one was looking? Why had the girl left the shoes behind instead of throwing them away? They were beyond repair. I pictured her, a sad-faced girl with large feet, thin hair, and a gray complexion, worn down like those shoes, a girl who was about to be thrown away because she was no longer of any use. I felt sick to my stomach. The shoes had been placed there as an omen. I would become that girl. The madam would never let me leave. I opened the window and threw them out into the alley. I heard a shriek and looked down. A ragamuffin rubbed her head, then grabbed and clutched them to her chest. She stared at me, as if guilty, then ran off like a thief.

      I tried to recall if Mother had worn a guilty expression as I was leaving her side. If so, that would be proof she had agreed to Fairweather’s plan. When I had threatened to stay in Shanghai with Carlotta, she might have used that as an excuse to leave. She might have said to herself that I preferred to stay. I tried to remember other fragments of conversations, other threats I had made, promises she had given, and protests I shouted when she disappointed me. In those pieces was the reason I was here.

      I spied my valise next to the wardrobe. The contents would reveal her intentions. If they were clothes for my new life, I would know she had abandoned me. If the clothes were hers, I would know she had been tricked. I slipped over my neck the silvery chain with the key to the valise. I held my breath. I expelled it with gratitude when I saw a bottle of Mother’s precious Himalayan rose oil perfume. I petted her fox stole. Underneath that was her favorite dress, a lilac-colored one she had worn on a visit to the Shanghai Club, where she had boldly strolled in and seated herself at the table of a man who was too rich and important to be told that women were not allowed. I hung this impertinent dress on the wardrobe door and placed a pair of her high-heeled shoes below. It gave the eerie appearance that she was a headless ghost. Below that was a mother-of-pearl box with my jewelry: two charm bracelets, a gold locket, and an amethyst necklace and ring. I opened another small box, which contained lumps of amber, the gift I had rejected on my eighth birthday. I lifted out two scrolls, one short, the other long. I unwound the cloth wrapper. They were not scrolls after all, but oil paintings on canvas. I put the larger one on the floor.

      It was the portrait of Mother when she was young, the painting I had found just after my eighth birthday, when I rifled her room for a letter she had just received that had upset her so. I had had only enough time for a glimpse before putting it back. Now, while examining it closely, I felt a peculiar discomfort, as if I were staring at a terrible secret about her that was dangerous for me to know—or perhaps it was a secret about me. Mother’s head was tilted back, revealing her nostrils. Her mouth was closed, unsmiling. It was as if someone had given her a dare and she had taken it without hesitation. Although, perhaps she was also frightened that she had done so and was trying to hide it. Her eyes were wide open and her pupils were so large they turned her green eyes black. It was the stare of a fearful cat. This was who she was before she had learned to disguise her feelings with a show of confidence. Who was the painter enjoying her state of fright?

      The painting was similar in style to that of European portraits commissioned as novelties by rich Shanghainese, who had to have the latest luxury that the foreigners enjoyed, even if they were renderings of other people’s ancestors in powdered wigs and their beribboned children with spaniels and hares. They were popular decorations in the salons of hotels and first-class flower houses. Mother had mocked those paintings as poorly executed pretensions. “A portrait,” she had said, “should be that of a person who was breathing at the time it was painted. It should capture one of those breaths.”

      She had held her breath when this portrait was done. The longer I looked at her face, the more I saw, and the more I saw, the more contradictory she became. I saw bravery, then fear. I recognized in it something vague about her nature, and I could see she had already possessed it when she was a girl. And then I knew what that was: her haughtiness in thinking she was better than others and smarter than them as well. She believed she was never wrong. The more others disapproved of her, the more she showed her disapproval of them. We ran into all sorts of disapproving people while walking in the park. They recognized her, “The White Madam.” Mother would give them a slow appraisal head to toe, then a sniff in disgust, which always sent me into near fits of giggles as the recipient of her stares and rebukes came undone and retreated speechless.

      Usually she gave no further thought to people who had insulted her. But the day she received the latest letter from Lu Shing, she had a festering anger. “Do you know what morals are, Violet? They’re other people’s rules. Do you know what a conscience is? Freedom to use your own intelligence to determine what is right or wrong. You possess that freedom and no one can remove it from you. Whenever others disapprove of you, you must disregard them and be the only one to judge your own decisions and actions …” On and on she went, as if an old wound still festered and she had to cleanse it with venom.

      I looked hard at the painting. What conscience did she have? Her right and wrong were guided by selfishness, doing what was best for her. “Poor Violet,” I imagined her saying. “She would be taunted in San Francisco as a child of questionable race. Much better that she stay in Shanghai where she can live happily with Carlotta.” I became incensed. She had always found a way to defend her decisions, no matter how wrong. When a courtesan was forced to leave Hidden Jade Path, she said it was a matter of necessity. When she could not have supper with me, she would tell me it was a matter of necessity. Her time with Fairweather had always been a matter of necessity.

      A matter of necessity. That was what she said to suit her own purposes. It was an excuse to be selfish. I recalled a time when I had felt sickened by her lack of conscience. It happened three years ago, on a day that was memorable because it was strange in so many ways. We were with Fairweather at the Shanghai Race Club to watch a Frenchman fly his plane over the track. The seats were filled. No one had ever seen an airplane in flight, let alone right above their heads, and when it soared up, the crowd murmured in unison. I believed it was magic. How else could you explain it? I watched the plane glide and dip, then tilt from side to side. One wing fell off, then another. I thought this was meant to happen, until the plane flew into the center of the racetrack and cracked into pieces. Dark smoke rose, people screamed, СКАЧАТЬ