The Distant Land of My Father Read online

  My father gestured toward her and laughed softly. “You see, Anna? She likes it here already. That’s just what happened to me.”

  The businessmen my father knew in Shanghai were men who were doing exactly what they’d set out to do. Bankers and stockbrokers and cotton merchants, journalists and insurance agents, they’d been sent to Shanghai by their firms at home, large companies like Standard Oil, Dutch Royal Shell, Texaco, Eastman Kodak, British American Tobacco. Shanghai was simply a post for them, where they had a job to do. Eventually they’d go back home.

  There was none of that purposefulness in my father’s choice of business. He was an importer-exporter because that was just what he’d wound up doing. He approached his business as though it were a competitive sport rather than a career, and he was always looking for ways to pull ahead. He worked for himself from an office at 133 Yuen Ming Yuen Road, a small street that ran parallel to the Bund one block behind it, near Shanghai’s financial section on Szechuan Road. That Saturday, as every Saturday, his office was our next stop so that he could look at his mail and, as he said, put the week right.

  The office was a small, sparsely furnished room with not much more than the necessities: a huge carved blackwood desk, a chair, a file cabinet. A watercolor of the Public Gardens, a gift from my mother, hung on the wall next to the window. On his desk were things I was not allowed to touch—the green fountain pen that his father had given him and the small wooden box that held his chop, or seal, which he used with his signature on important documents. Though the chop was forbidden to me, I knew it well from watching my father use it. Inside its box were two compartments. The larger one held the chop itself, a block of pale marble that was three inches tall, a half inch square. On one end was a small carved elephant; at the other end, carved on the bottom, was my father’s seal, the Chinese character for the name Schoene. The smaller compartment held a neat square of bright red ink, its consistency that of thick paste.

  While my father worked, I sat on the floor and ran my fingers over the intricate carvings on the desk, scenes of willow trees and pagodas, coolies pulling rickshaws or carrying sedan chairs that held beautiful women and wise men. The office smelled of the Philippine cigars my father smoked, a smell that I loved, and I was happy to be in a place that was only his. I played by myself for what felt like a long time, perhaps half an hour or so, and then I grew restless. I went and stood next to him, wanting him to be finished. He glanced at me, then kept writing. “What is it?” he asked.

  I shrugged.

  He glanced around the room as though wondering where I’d come from. Then he said, “I know.” He stood and took a globe from a high shelf in the corner and set it down on the floor next to the desk. He yanked open the stubborn bottom drawer of his desk and rummaged through stale papers and dog-eared folders and curled magazines, and under his breath he said, “Thought I’d stuck it down here. Ha! I did,” and he took a pad of newsprint and dropped it next to the globe, where it made a loud smack on the wooden floor. Then he opened another drawer and took out a bottle of India ink. As I watched, he filled his green fountain pen with the blue-black ink.

  “You can draw maps,” he said when he’d finished, “and learn about the world.”

  I looked at the globe, then back at him, and I saw the beginning of impatience in his expression.

  He tapped the newsprint pad. “Look at China. See if you can get to know the coastline a little bit. You start up here, with Port Arthur, then around and down to Wei Hai Wei, where Dr. McLain and his wife go every summer. You go along the Yellow Sea, past Tsingtao, and further south to Shanghai, then down to Fuzhou, you see? The coastline gets a little more uneven, with smaller turns and bends, and then you go all the way to Ghangzhou.” He looked at me. “It’s your home, Anna. You should know where you live, don’t you see?”

  I nodded, not really convinced, but interested in the thick ink and the possibilities in the newsprint and fountain pen, off-limits until now. My father handed me the pen, then turned his attention back to his work.

  I sat down on the floor and looked closely at the dark blue vastness of China on the globe. I stared at the coastline for a moment, not convinced that I could draw anything that resembled it. But that was what my father had asked, and so I would try.

  I put the pen down and stared at the globe for a moment. I found Shanghai, the only word on the globe I knew, and I stared hard at the words near it, trying to will them to make sense. That summer I had started to learn to read. Not officially—I wouldn’t start school until September—but just picking up whatever words my father thought important. I knew “Shanghai.” I knew “Hungjao,” where we lived. I knew my name, and my parents’ names, and “Mei Wah” and “Chu Shih.” And I knew “China.”

  But I wanted more. I wanted to read everything, everywhere we went, so that I wouldn’t have to ask questions all the time. I wanted to read the names of the buildings along the Bund so I wouldn’t have to memorize them. I wanted to read the names of the streets, the names of the stores, what they sold, how much it cost. If I could only learn to read, I thought, I would be almost an adult, only smaller and without money.

  But none of the words on the globe presented themselves to me. All I saw were combinations of letters that looked jumbled up. Finally I stood and carried the globe to my father and set it on his desk.

  “What are all these names?” I asked.

  My father was reading about yesterday’s polo matches in the North China Daily News. He puffed evenly on his cigar while his finger moved down the column of newsprint as he searched for the names of friends. He glanced at me. “What’s that?”

  I pointed to China on the globe and said, “These names. Are they other cities? What are they?”

  My father glanced at his newspaper, and I saw his reluctance to turn from it. But I knew he would. Asking about China always got his attention.

  “Some are cities,” he said finally, “and some are provinces. I’ll show you, Anna, it’s a good question.” He pulled his chair closer to his desk and examined the globe. “Now these”—he pointed to the names spelled in large capital letters—”these are the names of the provinces, you see?” He touched each one lightly. “Szechuan, Kiangse, Hunan, Shantung, Fokien, Kwangse, Yunan, Tibet.”

  I found myself nodding in surprised recognition. I knew those names. I couldn’t read them, but I knew them, and had since I was four, when my father had taught them to me. They were the names of Shanghai’s streets, the ones that ran the same way as the Bund. “Those are our streets,” I said suddenly.

  My father nodded. “Yep. And these”—he touched the globe again, pointing to names in smaller letters—”are China’s major cities. Nanking, Hong Kong, Peking, Ningpo, Tientsin, Kukiang, Hankow, Foochow, Canton.”

  I was rewarded again. They, too, were familiar—they were the streets that ran crossways to the Bund. I looked at my father. “Every-thing’s named after us,” I said. “The whole country’s named after Shanghai, because we’re so important.” I had a moment of doubt. “Isn’t that right?”

  My father started to smile. “No, Anna,” he said, and he laughed softly. “We’re named after them, but that’s all right.” He traced the fat black line that was China’s border with his finger. “It’s only natural, you thinking that, because you know Shanghai.”

  I felt my face grow hot. I hated being wrong, and I tried to hide my embarrassment by staring harder at the globe. I saw a small island off the coast of China and thought it must be a province my father hadn’t named. I put two fingers on it and covered it completely.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “Japan,” he said.

  I was confused. “Where’s the rest of it? All that’s here is this little part.” I tapped the globe lightly. “See?”

  He laughed grimly. “There isn’t any more. That’s the whole thing, right there under your nose.” He frowned. “What made you think there was more?”

  “There has to be, or else how could
they think of taking us over? We’re so big, and they’re so small.”

  He smiled, pleased at my choice of words: taking us over. “Well, you’ve got something there. But nobody’s taking anybody over, not us or them. It’s just a lot of talk. And some fighting here and there. But look at us”—and as he gestured around him, I tried to understand whether he meant his office, Shanghai, China, Americans, or simply him and me, which was what I hoped—”nobody can touch us here.”

  “Here?” I looked around me, trying to judge the safety of my father’s small office.

  “In the Settlement,” he laughed. “We’re safe as can be. Japan can do what it wants, and we’ll still be right here, where we belong. We’re on top of the world.”

  I nodded. My father’s confidence in extraterritoriality—extrality was the shorter, affectionate term—was familiar, and even though I didn’t understand exactly what extrality was, I understood that my father believed in it no matter what and that it somehow kept us safe.

  My father turned from the globe and folded his newspaper, then opened a manila folder on his desk and turned his attention to it in a way that told me our conversation was over, at least for the moment. I picked up the globe and set it carefully on the floor, then went back to my map, trying to fill in more of China.

  When I’d tired of drawing, I looked around the office for something else to do. There was a small closet in the corner, a place I’d never explored. I glanced at my father and saw that he was engrossed in his accounting ledger, and I walked quietly to the closet and opened the door. Inside I found a winter coat I didn’t recognize and an old sweater and an umbrella propped against the wall. But toward the back of the closet, on the floor, I saw something else. I guessed it was a coat or sweater that had fallen off its hanger, and I crawled inside to retrieve it. When I did, I found a sort of wide belt made of thick black canvas, far too heavy for a piece of clothing. I dragged it to the front of the closet, sure I’d found forgotten treasure. I struggled to lift it, then struggled to stand with it, and I carried it to my father’s desk.

  “Look what I found,” I said softly, pleased and curious, sure that my father would be grateful.

  When I had set the treasure down, I thought I’d put it squarely on the desk. But I hadn’t. As soon as I let go, it fell to the floor with a solid thud that made me jump and caused my father to swear and push his chair back from his desk.

  At our feet were unfamiliar foreign bills, more money than I’d ever seen, all of it spread around us like someone had thrown it at us. For a horrible moment, my father said nothing, but I could feel his anger. Then he said, “These are yen. Japanese money. What do you say we tidy it up?”

  I nodded. I didn’t know exactly what I’d done, but I knew it was wrong, and I knelt next to my father and together we began to pick everything up and neaten the bills into fat stacks. Except for the hushed sound of our movements, the room was silent.

  Finally I asked what I knew he didn’t want to answer. “Why do you have these?”

  He didn’t speak at first, and I knew he was trying to be patient. Then suddenly he smiled. “I’m an arbitrageur, Anna. Part of my business.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s someone who buys and sells money.” He motioned to the pile of money at his feet, like something from a fairy tale. “You see? I’m my own bank.” He continued fitting the bills back into the money belt, and when he’d finished, he laid it carefully on his desk. Then he looked at me and saw that I held one more bill. I was staring at it with longing. I recognized the number 100 on it. I thought it must be a huge amount of money, and suddenly I wanted it intensely in that way that children yearn for things that don’t always make sense.

  My father reached into his pocket and held out three Chinese yuan, worth about a dollar. “Here’s how it works. I give you a few yuan, and you give me the yen. You see?”

  I stared at the yuan in his palm. On the face of the coins, Dr. Sun Yat Sen stared back at me as though he, too, were trying to win me over.

  “A trade, all right? Just a simple business deal between the two of us, the yen for the yuan. And then we can walk home along Nanking Road and you can do some shopping. Like your mother.” He smiled again.

  I nodded, picturing trinkets I’d admired on Nanking Road that were suddenly and unexpectedly within reach: a carved ivory elephant, a set of eight tiny pottery horses, a hand-painted fan. And then I made the swap, yen for yuan.

  My father picked up his money belt and carried it to his safe in the back of the office. “This is where it should have been in the first place,” he said. I thought this was his fault, not mine, but the reprimand sounded as though it were meant for me. His back was to me, and as he knelt and began to turn the knob on the lock, I saw one last yen note that we hadn’t picked up. It was under his desk, right at the corner. I stared at it for a moment and started to tell him to wait, there was another one, but no words came. Instead, I stooped down and picked it up, then unbuckled my shoe.

  My father glanced back at me. “What’s the matter?”

  “A pebble in my shoe,” I said. It was the first time I had ever lied to him, and I felt a wink of surprise inside. It had been so easy.

  He turned away again while I took off my shoe, shook it to get rid of the pebble I’d made up, and put the shoe back on. Then I folded the yen and hurriedly slipped it under my foot. I considered it “squeeze,” the Shanghai word for bribe. I’d decided that everyone else got squeeze, I might as well, too.

  When my father had shut the safe, he turned to me. “Well,” he said, too cheerfully. “That was something, wasn’t it?”

  I nodded, expecting a scolding.

  But he surprised me. “What would you say to lunch at Jimmy’s?” he asked.

  I stared hard, knowing that we were making some kind of deal. “Jimmy’s?” I asked cautiously.

  He nodded, watching me closely. “Yep. Just say the word.” “I’d like that,” I said, working hard at restraint. “Very much,” I added, to be on the safe side.

  He smiled but still looked shaken. “Then Jimmy’s it is.”

  Lunch with my father on Saturday could be anything. It might be food from street vendors that my mother never allowed—fried noodles with shrimp or bits of ham or chicken, grilled shrimp and sausage, sweet almond broth, or chiaotzû, steamed dumplings filled with minced pork and cabbage and ginger. It could be a stop at a sukiyaki shop, or coolie food, a plain dish of steamed vegetables and rice. But I’d never been to Jimmy’s, where my father ate most days.

  When we got there, my father took my hand and led me to a wooden table in the center of the room, his table, I guessed, since he usually had a favorite place, wherever we went. We sat down and he glanced around for the waiter while I stared hard at everything around me.

  The place was crowded with English and American and European businessmen, some with their Chinese compradores. Saturday wasn’t a day off in Shanghai; most men worked at least in the morning, and the loudness of the lunchtime conversation was startling. But I noticed it for only a moment, because I was amazed by what I saw. I’d never been anyplace like it, a place that was completely foreign to me for the simple reason that it was so American. Our wooden table was covered with a blue-and-white checked tablecloth and paper napkins, and in the middle of the table were French’s mustard, A.1. sauce, Worcestershire sauce, Heinz 57 ketchup, and a sugar pourer. I smelled hamburgers cooking and corned beef hash and chili and barbecued chicken all at once, the smells so different from noodles and vendor food on the street that it alone was worth the trip. I thought it was the most wonderful place I’d ever been.

  A waiter handed my father a menu and he read what he thought I might like. When he finished and I said nothing, he laughed softly, for he realized I was overwhelmed. He ordered barbecued chicken for both of us, a lemonade for me, a Clover beer for him, and he told me I was in for a treat.

  We’d just been served our food when we were joined by Will Marsh, a friend of
my father’s who worked for the American Consulate in Shanghai. He was at our house often, and was my favorite of my parents’ friends because he always acted more like he was my friend, too. That day at Jimmy’s, he smiled at me and held out his hand, and I gripped his hand the way my father had taught me—“no cold fish, now, all right, Anna? A good strong grip is how you do it”—and I looked Will Marsh in the eye and smiled at him, and I saw the pleasure and approval that my apparent confidence brought to my father.

  Will sat down across from us. I didn’t know if my father was hand-some—he mostly just looked like my father—but I knew Will Marsh was. He looked like a movie star, confident and friendly and tall and strong, with thick dark hair and brown eyes, and I was always a little in awe of him.

  “Tell me what’s new in the land of Hungjao, those great western suburbs, home of the wealthy taipans,” he said, and he smiled.

  I licked barbecue sauce from my finger and blinked tears from my eyes. I had a paper cut, and the sauce stung sharply. But I thought about home, and I tried to come up with something interesting, something adult. The yen came to mind, and I looked at my father, who seemed to read my thoughts and frown. “We planted a new Chinese elm,” I offered.

  Will feigned amazement. “No kidding. Another addition to that Public Garden you call a backyard?”

  I smiled, pleased for my father. “It’s beautiful,” I said, “but noisy.”

  Will leaned forward. “How so?”

  “The cicadas,” I said.

  My father nodded. “They seem to consider us home. A whole city of them.”

  Will shrugged. “That’s easy enough. You need a batch of cicada killers.”

  I smiled at his teasing, picturing soldiers armed with nets, but he was serious. “No, they’re digger wasps, and they kill those noise-making cicadas, then use them for building up their nests. That’s what you need, all right.”