The Nine Fold Heaven. Mingmei Yip
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Название: The Nine Fold Heaven
Автор: Mingmei Yip
Издательство: Ingram
Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература
isbn: 9780758286239
isbn:
On the next page was a cutout newspaper photo of me, but the rest of the page was missing, like some of the others. I set the diary down on the coffee table, feeling anxious but also touched by Jinying’s drawings of a pregnant me with all the nutritious herbs for our baby, and his loving note to little Jinjin.
Then I rubbed my temples and thought. I had just risked my life coming back to Shanghai to find Jinying—and now he was in Hong Kong looking for me? Heaven really enjoys playing games with us mortals!
Would we ever meet again? I thought of the Chinese saying, “Five hundred incarnations of looking at each other just to rub shoulders in this Dusty World.” But we didn’t just rub our shoulders, we had a son together! So we must have turned to look at each other much more than five hundred times in our past lives to be awarded a son in this one. I hoped Jinying and I would be reunited and have a chance for happiness. But I also knew this would be determined not by what I wished, but by the mysterious working of karma.
And I was all too aware that my karma was bad, very bad.
I remembered the pessimistic Chinese saying, “Husband and wife are like birds in a forest, when disaster strikes, they will fly their separate ways.”
But Jinying, instead of ignoring me and going his own way, traveled to Hong Kong to look for me. But how could he possibly expect to be able to find me there? Of course anyone could post a flyer or buy a newspaper ad for Xunren, “Finding a Missing Person.” But I didn’t think he’d be so naive as to give away my name so my enemies could find out where I was.
Worse, I’d already changed my name from Camilla to Jasmine Chen and Shen Wei when disguised as a man. Therefore, Young Master, your effort would prove to be futile one more time! So maybe we were not destined to be together after all, and I should accept that our brief encounter was like a failed magic show. Just like my former rival and partner Shadow, who was about to disappear from a water tank, but instead nearly drowned in it!
Feeling an unbearable sadness, I went to his piano and sat down, but afraid of alerting the neighbors, I did not touch the keys but began to hum very softly.
It’s only those love truly who suffer from separation.
Worse, when it takes place in the cold and lonely season.
Where am I when I wake up from my drinking?
Willows sway by the shore where the half-moon shines and the dawn breeze chills.
Gone for so many years, the happy times now only illusions.
A thousand kinds of amorous sentiments,
But to whom could I express them?
After that, I went to put a disc on his gramophone and turned the volume to the softest. My singing of “A Wandering Songstress” flooded the room with bittersweet emotion. All I could hope was that “wandering” would lead to something sweet, not bitter.
That evening, after I returned to the hotel, I decided not to go back to Hong Kong to look for Jinying. For if I did, how could I find him, or him, me? It would be what the Chinese call “looking for a needle on the sea bottom.” Anyway, sooner or later, he would have to come back to Shanghai.
Instead, I would look for Jinjin. The first step was to pay my singing teacher, Madame Lewinsky, a visit.
4
Running into an Ambassador
The next morning, I dressed up like a student: white shirt, black skirt, my hair in two short pigtails, and no makeup. I didn’t disguise as a man because I didn’t want to shock Lewinsky or arouse her suspicion by cross-dressing.
I took a rickshaw to her apartment building in Avenue Petain, a short distance from my hotel in the French Concession. The puller trotted through the busy boulevard bustling with hawkers, rushing pedestrians, bicycles, and buses. “Hurrying to reincarnate” is how we describe people hurrying about these crowded cities.
Amidst blowing horns and screeching brakes, we passed shops, restaurants, two colleges, a library, a conservatory, and a cathedral before we reached a residential district with neat and clean apartment blocks.
I told the puller to stop in front of Lewinsky’s building, paid him, and hopped off. I climbed the stairs to her apartment, remembering her patient teaching, polished piano playing—followed by homemade cookies with warm milk.
Before knocking, I hesitated. What would I say to her? And what if my baby was really dead as she’d told me? Would she report me to the police? And if Jinjin was really alive and living here with her, what should I do? Grab him, dash down the stairs, hail a car to the harbor, and find a way to leave Shanghai? Although Jinjin called me mama in my dreams, in real life, he’d think his mother was Lewinsky. So when I took him into my arms, he’d probably cry and struggle to get free so he could go back to his “real” mother.
With these thoughts, my heart sank, but I raised my fist to knock on my teacher’s door. Just like my visit to Jinying, the only response was a ghostly silence. Disheartened, I was about to leave when a neighbor’s door opened and out peeked a middle-aged woman, with a puffy face, disheveled hair, and faded pajamas.
She gave me a suspicious once-over. “Are you looking for the Russian ghost?”
I nodded. “Yes, do you know her whereabouts?”
“Oh, you don’t know?”
“No, what happened?”
“She moved away. I heard that she was sick. She’s probably dead now.”
My heart fell inside a dark well. “Then what about the little boy?”
I was surprised that I asked the question naturally, as if I was sure that my little Jinjin was alive.
I felt faint as she went on, “Oh, yes, that’s the cutest baby I’ve ever seen. But”—she leaned toward me—“I always wondered how that woman could have a baby at her age? She didn’t look a day under fifty, if you ask me. And the baby looked Chinese to me—”
I cut her off. “You know where this baby is?”
“No,” she shook her head. “I don’t want to pry into other’s business, especially not a ghost’s. And especially not if the baby was stolen, which happens so often nowadays. Anyway, I didn’t see them much. She seems to be very secretive about herself and the baby, so I’m sure he’s stolen goods.” She paused, then said, “You know what? That’s why she moved out.”
My heart was now almost at the bottom of the well. “When was that?”
“About three months, I can’t really remember.”
Suddenly she cast me a wary look as her tone turned belligerent. “Who are you anyway?”
“Oh, one of her music students.”
“How come I never saw you?”
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