A Paper Son Read online

  We didn’t have to search long. The musician sat squarely in the middle of the plaza on his upturned bucket, a dripping gray cloak draped over his rounded shoulders. He looked like an ancient boulder amid a river of collegians. He was facing us, as if he’d been waiting for us.

  His instrument stood on his knee. Its body was a small round drum, and from its top rose a long neck, to which two strings were held taut. With his right hand he worked the bow; with his trembling shaking left he fingered the wet strings, whose vibrations emanated wavering notes and tiny cloudlets of mist. The song—my song, the song I’d been hearing—descended into its final measures as we approached, and came to an end just as we paused before him as though it had been composed and timed for our entrance. We clapped; he smiled and bowed his head.

  “That was beautiful,” Lucy said. “What’s it called?”

  The man shook his head but continued to smile. He laid the instrument and the bow across his knees, reached into a plastic bag that sat on the ground next to him, and pulled out a little notepad and a red marker. He scratched on the pad and showed it to us. A pair of Chinese characters stood in the middle of the sheet, already beginning to disintegrate in the rain.

  “Cantonese, mute,” Annabel said. “Nothing we can’t handle.”

  “Ask him where he learned how to play,” I said.

  Annabel translated, and he jotted another character on his pad.

  “From his father,” she read.

  “Where?” I said.

  Again she translated, and again he scratched on the pad.

  “Oakland,” she said.

  “Not China?”

  She verified it, and told me again.

  “Where was he born?”

  Again the answer came back: Oakland.

  “He was born here but he doesn’t speak English?” I said. “How is that?”

  “That’s what he says,” Annabel said. “What else?”

  “What’s your instrument called?” Lucy asked.

  He wrote down a pair of characters, and Annabel had to try out a few different pronunciations before he smiled and nodded.

  “It’s called an erhu,” she said.

  I pulled the issue of the Quarterly from my jacket. “Ask him if he remembers who took this picture.”

  Annabel took the journal from me, showed it to the old man, and asked the question. The sight of the photograph brought a deep laugh out of him. He took it from her hands and studied it carefully, his smile broad, and then he jotted another character on the pad and tapped it.

  “He doesn’t remember,” Annabel said.

  He jotted down another string of characters and showed the pad to Annabel. “He wants it,” she said.

  “He can have it,” I said.

  Annabel gave him the news, and he clasped his hands together and gave me a deep bow. He slipped the journal into the bag.

  “What was the song called?” Lucy asked.

  Annabel translated the question, but his sheet was full, and it was the last page. He dropped the spent notebook into his bag and fished around and found an old postcard. On the blank side he jotted down the name and handed it to Annabel.

  “River of Sorrow,” she read.

  “A real pick-me-upper,” Lucy said.

  She handed me the postcard. I took it and stared at the characters. There was nothing familiar about the name. I thought of the network of tributaries that had carried Li-Yu and her family from Canton to Xinhui, but I knew I was stretching for connections, stamping meaning onto phenomena whose echoes were probably just coincidences.

  “River of Sorrow,” I repeated. “Are you sure?” I handed the postcard back to Annabel.

  She gave it another glance and nodded. “Yes,” she said. She tapped the characters and translated them, one after the other. “Anything else you want me to ask him?” she said. She looked at Lucy. “Is this getting us anywhere?”

  It didn’t seem right that this path should end here, with a California native sitting by himself in the rain, playing a song that meant nothing to me, his only audience disinterested students. There had to be more, somewhere. “Yes,” I said. “Ask him who he is and why he matters. Ask him why he was on that cover. Ask him who brought it to me, and ask him about that song. Ask him why I keep hearing it. Ask him why it comes out of my showerhead, and ask him why I heard it washing up on shore that night we went down to the beach. Ask him why I came here to find him, and ask him to tell us what we need to know next.”

  Annabel gave me a sad little smile. “Oh, Perry,” she said.

  “I don’t know if you should ask him all that,” Lucy said.

  “Please. Just ask him.”

  “Really?”

  “Please.”

  Annabel took a minute to compose the words in her head, and then she spoke to him for a long time. The old violinist nodded as he listened, that same little smile playing on his lips. When Annabel finished he looked at me. He nodded a few more times, as if in agreement. As if to say, Yes, those are the right questions. And then he shrugged, and his smile grew wider. He picked the instrument up from his lap, set it on his knee, and fingered the strings. He dragged the bow across them and the opening strains of another mournful song rose and filled the rainy plaza.

  ***

  “We found the violinist,” I said to Eva when we got back home. “It was entirely anticlimactic.”

  “What violinist?” she said.

  “What does ‘River of Sorrow’ mean to you?” I sat down at my desk and sent the most recent installments of the story to my printer.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “It’s a song,” I said.

  “Never heard of it,” Eva said.

  When the last page slid out I punched a staple through the pages and tossed the stack over to her. The sheaf landed on the couch and splashed up against her leg. As she read the only sounds were those of the rain falling and Lucy in the kitchen, making instant ramen. Eva finished and tossed the papers back on to my desk.

  “It is decided that what?” she asked.

  It is decided that the masters will voyage into the world of yin, the realm of ancestral spirits and hidden causes and sources. On the day the ceremony is to be performed the men of the household are still and somber. Mae sits on her couch, lost in thoughts, making only occasional demands of the maids.

  “The masters,” Li-Yu asks her. “How do they get to the world of yin?”

  “On the backs of spirit horses,” Mae says. “Hui will summon them and then remain here to light their way.”

  “How long will it take?”

  Mae shrugs. “There are many levels. It depends how deeply the causes are hidden.”

  “And what will they find?”

  “The ancestors will show them how to restore the proper circulation of xi through the village,” she says. “They will learn how to restore order.”

  “And then what?”

  “You can see for yourself. We will all be there. Henry must be there especially—he may have to participate in guo-yin someday himself.” She explains that it has been two generations since the ceremony’s last performance, and only the oldest of the townspeople can remember their grandfathers taking the trip, searching for the causes of floods that plagued the valley one long-ago springtime. “No more questions now,” she says, rubbing her temples. “Leave me to my thoughts.”

  That night after sunset the villagers crowd into the public meeting hall in the center of town. They push and jostle for positions along the walls, nervous and silent. Li-Yu and her children are among the last to arrive, and they are barely able to squeeze in through the doorway. Li-Yu can just barely see over the shoulders of those standing before her. Her children lean into her waist, seeing nothing but the back of a wall of bodies.

  Seven of the eight masters sit on a low bench of painted wood, shoulder to shoulder, wearing heavy blindfolds; the lower halves of their faces glow orange from the light of the lanterns that hang from the hall’s suppor
t posts. Hui, the eighth, stands in front of them. He opens a small red book and begins to recite incantations. Incense smoke curls from the wooden bowls on the ground and thickens the air. The men on the bench pass a bottle back and forth a few times and then return it to Hui. Each of them picks up a cord of woven rice stalks and clutches it in his hands, like reins. Hui’s incantations grow in volume and pace; his voice becomes rhythmic and driving, and the beats of it push out through the smoke and thud into the first row of the crowd. The masters’ knees begin to bounce. Hui chants for several minutes and their legs bounce faster, until the floor is shaking. Rose and Henry had pushed up through the crowd to get a better view, but now they return to Li-Yu’s side and draw in close. From all around them now comes a sound like the pounding of hooves against the earth. With spasmodic quickness, Hui tips up the big bottle, takes in a huge draught, and then sprays it from his mouth into the air before the men on the bench. In the smoky light the mist bursts into a great bright cloud before sinking to the ground.

  The ghost horses arrive in a herd; their hooves shake the walls and rattle the roof. Their restless pacing forms appear outlined in the incense smoke, which puffs and billows under the force of their movements and exhalations. Rose and Henry press back into their mother. Even Li-Yu has to fight the urge to back toward the door. And then one of the blindfolded men half-rises from the bench, shakes, and falls back down. The men lined along the wall behind him rush forward to help. He continues to twitch and buck, but they guide him back into his seat and remain there, close by. One by one, each of the men finds his spirit mount. The hoofbeats recede and the smoke grows still again as they ride forth into the hidden world, searching. Hui continues to guide them with his incantations, pausing every few minutes to emit another great spray of water over the men. The droplets catch the light of the lanterns and glitter as they fall through the smoke. On the bench each of the horsemen rocks and leans with the motion of his mount. Behind them their helpers await, poised to catch them should they fall. Occasionally there are shouts, but because many of the blindfolds have begun to come unraveled, and fabric hangs down over some of the masters’ mouths, it is hard to know who is shouting. In voices that do not sound like their own, the men holler out strings of words, only some of which Li-Yu understands. The crowd murmurs and whispers, discussing interpretations, asking for clarifications and translations. Li-Yu strains to hear what people are saying, but nothing is clear until one of the men in front of her leans over to his neighbor, and says, distinctly, “It’s a woman.” The listener nods. “A thief,” he responds. And then he glances backward over his shoulder and catches Li-Yu’s eye.

  Heat bursts through Li-Yu. Instantly she finds herself sweating. Across the room are scores of faces, bathed in the lantern light. All of their eyes seem to be trained on her. She places a hand on each of her children and backs them through the doorway.

  Outside the cool clean air hits them and awakens them as if from a trance. “Mom, what were those guys doing?” Rose asks, peering back over her shoulder through the doorway. “What was happening? Why did we hear horses?”

  “We have to go. Right now,” Li-Yu says, hurrying down the pathway, a hand on each of them.

  “Why?” Rose asks again, pulling back toward the door.

  “Listen to me carefully,” Li-Yu says. She turns her children around and squats down. It used to be that this brought her down to the level of their heads, but now she is looking up at them. “We’re going back home, to California,” she says, in English. “Tonight. Right now.” Rose and Henry haven’t heard English from her in five years, and the sounds of her words break over them like a thunderclap. They look at one another, their breaths held, and then back at her. “Rose,” Li-Yu says, continuing in English. “Henry. Listen to me. You must do everything I say, exactly as I say, right now, or there will be great trouble.”

  Henry’s face screws up with confusion and she can see the opposing forces already working upon him. But in Rose the announcement causes an instantaneous and complete transformation. Her jaw hardens and her eyes glint. And when Henry asks about the house, and about Mae, and about his friends, she steps in front of her brother, and when she speaks her words emerge quickly and clearly. It is as if she has been secretly rehearsing, practicing for this, as if all of her being has been waiting these long years for this chance to emerge, to burst forth and explode. It is as if she has known everything all along. And Li-Yu sees immediately that nothing will keep them from getting home, not with this daughter as an ally.

  “Henry, listen to me,” Rose begins, her English as clear and fluent as the day they left California. “This is not the place for us. I know there are things you like about it. But there is nothing here for me, and nothing here for Mom, and though you might not remember how things were in America, I know you’re old enough to see it now. I know you wouldn’t want to live in a place where your mother and sister can never be anything.”

  Henry’s wide eyes glisten in the light of the rising moon. He shakes his head. Inside the meeting hall voices rise—now many of them are shouting, and the thundering of horses’ hooves grows loud again.

  “You’re a good man,” Rose says. “We’ll make new friends. And you can write letters to your friends here, and send them pictures. That will be okay, right?”

  Li-Yu remains silent, speechless at Rose’s command. Henry nods.

  “I know it’s sudden,” Rose tells Henry. She bends forward and wraps her arms around him for the briefest of moments. “You’re a good man,” she says into his ear. And then they are flying up the path.

  Right behind them, Li-Yu recovers herself. “Two minutes,” she says. “Dress as warmly as you can. Bring whatever you can carry in one small bag, and in your pockets. Nothing else.”

  They plunge into the dark house and run to their room. Henry begins to cry, quietly, as he gathers his things together. Among his tears Li-Yu can hear him saying his friend’s names, and her heart shatters. And then he begins to falter. He squats down and buries his face in his hands. Li-Yu moves toward him, but Rose gets there first. She drops to her knees, plants a hand on his back, and begins to talk into his ear.

  Li-Yu catches her daughter’s eye, gives her a quick, grateful nod, turns, and runs back into the main part of the house. She darts through the empty kitchen and into the back of the house, where there is almost no light. In Mae’s room her hand grazes the back of a wooden chair. She seizes it, runs across the room, and swings it into the doors of Mae’s cabinet, following it with all her weight. The collision is deafening in the empty stone house. She slams the chair twice more into the woodwork, concentrating her blows on the lock, and then the chair falls away, one of its legs broken, and she yanks away the remains of the doors. Her hand closes around the red bag, pulls it free, and she runs back, returning for the last time to the room where she has been imprisoned for the last five years. Rose and Henry are standing together in the darkness, ready, waiting for her.

  “What were those sounds, Mom?” Rose asks.

  “Not now,” Li-Yu says. “You and your brother pull this mattress off of here,” she says, dumping Mae’s coins into her bag.

  “I already got them,” Rose says.

  “What?”

  “The money under the mattress. We already got it all. It’s in your bag.”

  As Li-Yu shoulders her pack she wonders how she could have underestimated her daughter so completely. She vows to spend the rest of her life trying to make up for it.

  Outside the roads are still empty, and they plunge back down the path. They have gone maybe fifty feet when Rose stops. “I forgot something,” she says, turning.

  “There’s no time,” Li-Yu calls after her, but Rose is gone. She heads not into the house, but around it, toward the storage sheds that huddle together near the back of the compound. “Where’s she going?” Li-Yu asks Henry, but he doesn’t answer. He peers into the darkness where she disappeared, his face compressed with anxiety.

  Rose returns
a minute later, carrying a foot-long length of bamboo as big around as her arm. “What’s that?” Li-Yu asks.

  “My papers,” Rose says. “I’ll show you later.”

  They stay clear of the path, sneaking through the spaces between houses, keeping low and out of sight. The sounds from the hall are louder now—even from this distance they can hear Hui’s incantations over the shouts. They circle the center of the village at a distance, picking their way along the side of the hill, and just when they have retaken the main pathway they hear voices spill out of the hall’s doorway and fill the night behind them. They run as fast as they can, flying past the fields of bleeding plants and up the hillside. They only stop when their hearts threaten to burst from their chests.

  “Why are we going to Jianghai?” Henry says, between gasps, as he unbuttons his coat. “Isn’t California the other way?”

  “I have to get some things first,” Li-Yu says, “and then we have to get back to Canton.” Her plans end there. There is still the matter of an ocean. There will be a way, she tells herself.

  “But how?” Rose says. “The ferry boats don’t run at night.”

  “Tomorrow,” Li-Yu says.

  “Where will we sleep tonight?” Henry asks.

  “We’re going to camp,” Li-Yu says.

  “But we don’t have a tent,” Henry says.

  “That’s enough questions,” Li-Yu says.

  They make it to the outskirts of Jianghai without running into anyone along the roads. “No talking now,” Li-Yu whispers. “If anybody sees us and recognizes us they will think it is strange we are here.” The houses are open to the summer evening, and they spill forth the smells of cooking dinners and the sounds of easy conversation. Occasional pedestrians happen by, but nobody pays them much attention. They sneak into the heart of town and into the market’s alleyways. Li-Yu lets herself into Zhang’s shop with her key and the children slip in behind her, their questions silent. She leaves a note—“Goodbye, friend”—and thirty seconds later they are back on the main road. Somewhere east of Jianghai, she knows, is another river. She doesn’t know exactly where it will take them, but she knows it will carry them farther away from Xinhui, and for now, that is all that matters.