expectations.
“I'm sorry,” she mutters finally, but I know the next time she visits, she'll find fault with something else. On her way out the door, Olga turns. “Did they ever find out who killed that young man, Daniel?”
“Not that I know of,” I replied.
“Wasn't that brother of Lily's involved with the Green Gang? He was some kind of gangster, wasn't he?”
“You mean Number Two Brother,” I said. “He wasn't really a gangster, but he had a lot of power. He had some kind of government position. And the Green Gang had a lot of political connections. They wanted to get the foreign business interests out of China.”
“That's right,” said Olga. “Now I remember. You don't think he had anything to do with it, do you?”
“I can't imagine why he would,” I lied, “but I've always wondered.” I don't tell her of my suspicion that Lily's brother and Lily's husband arranged to have Daniel murdered. And I also don't tell her there were things I knew about Daniel that I should have told the police and didn't.
“Hmph,” Olga grunted as she made her way down the stairs in her heavy coat and fur-lined snow boots. “Ask Lily when she gets here.”
After Olga and Anastasia leave, I settle into my shabby but comfortable armchair and read Lily's letter again. It's clumsily written, as if she's translated it badly from Chinese. I think back to all those English classes with Mrs. Wilkinson and realize Lily probably stopped speaking English after the Communists took over.
“Dear Tatiana,” she writes,
I am sure you never would think to hear from me again, but I have found you. I have stayed living in China all these years and looking after children in an orphanage that Chairman Mao himself has built. It is a fine place for children who have no parents. They learn to read and write so they can be the best Chinese people for our Fearless Leader.
Now I find out my Number Three Brother has a restaurant in Toronto Canada. He has ask me to come and look after his grandchildren. Such an honour. The government has finally give me a passport so I can come. Now I will be able to see my old friend Tatiana if she will let me stay with her for a visit. The ship will come to Vancouver in February and then I will take the train to Toronto. There are many years to talk about. Many memories. So sorry not to write before but I am very busy with the children. I hope you look forward to seeing me.
Your old friend, Lily Tang.”
So many memories, I thought. Did I really want to relive those times?
Chapter Five
By the time Tatiana was fifteen, she was a regular visitor to Lily's home. Lily's three older brothers regarded her as a younger sister and treated her the same way they treated Lily. That meant they lectured the two girls, chided and teased them, and played tricks on them. Once, when the girls had dressed themselves in Lily's mother's cast-offs, including her French high heels, and had painted their lips red with a lipstick stolen from her dressing room, the brothers had charged into the room and tossed a bucketful of water from the fish pond at them, drenching them and leaving them covered in the tangled roots of the lily pads. Several large gold fish lay squirming on the carpet, gasping for air. Lily's brothers roared with laughter, their half-boy, half-man voices cracking with glee. Lily and Tatiana were furious and embarrassed at having been caught playing childish games. They screamed at the boys, and Tatiana picked up one of the fish and threw it at Number Two Brother.
“You're stupid, and I hate you!” she yelled, as Number Two Brother picked up the fish and threw it back at her.
“And you're a baby and ugly, just like my sister, only uglier because you have big feet!” he yelled back, still cackling as his brothers laughed like maniacs at the girls' fury. Lily started to cry, and that made the whole thing worse. Tatiana wanted her to behave like the women warriors she'd heard about in Chinese mythology, avenging angels who punished the evildoers who had wronged them. But Lily, perhaps because she was the youngest in the family and dominated by both tradition and three older brothers, could no more be a warrior than Tatiana could be a fairy princess. Lily needed protecting, but Tatiana had vowed she would never ask for protection from anyone. She would rather die.
The brothers were never punished, no matter how much of a mess they made. There was always someone to clean it up, usually one of the amahs, who would cackle and complain, but who was clearly amused by their antics. China belonged to men and boys, especially to privileged men and boys.
Lily's Number One Brother eventually went to France for a university education in business and philosophy. It was where the most privileged Chinese sent their eldest sons. He would be his father's successor in business and financial affairs. Number Two Brother would go to Japan to be educated. After 1906, China had abolished the Confucian system of education and moved toward Western-style learning. This meant students no longer had to memorize the Chinese classics and pass a series of examinations called wen-chang to obtain a position in the civil service. In Japan, university students learned history, geography, foreign languages, political economy and law. Number Two Brother would also be exposed to the secret societies that were forming among Chinese students in Japan, who wanted in time to take control of their country. When he eventually returned, he would be given a key position in government, reflecting the family's status. Number Three Brother's destiny was to attend a military academy and become an officer. Thus, Lily's family would be represented in all levels of Chinese society: financial, civil and military.
Luckily, because her parents were more modern, Lily had escaped the tradition of female foot binding that had been the fate of her grandmothers. It was a tradition that had persisted in China for nearly a thousand years, since an emperor had fallen in love with a concubine who had especially small feet. A man seeking a bride would examine her feet before he looked at her face. A married man would never see his wife's naked foot, but he might occasionally be given a glimpse of his concubine's.
Young, wealthy Chinese women spent their time learning to embroider the delicate silk slippers that covered their grotesquely misshapen feet, the toes of which were folded under and tightly bound from the age of four. As the young girl's foot grew, the front portion would be pushed toward the heel and securely wrapped in cotton binding, increasing the instep to an extreme and agonizing degree. Walking was painful and nearly impossible, so women were transported in covered sedan chairs carried by four bearers. What little walking they did was thought to strengthen the muscles around a woman's private parts, enhancing sexual excitement in her partner. Even some country girls had their feet bound in an effort to attract a better class of husband. Unfortunately, these women were still required to work in the fields, so they developed a waddling walk by balancing on the outsides of their mangled feet. Tatiana saw many of these women hobbling on the streets of Shanghai, elderly and stooped, but wearing slippers that would fit a small child. It made her angry at what she saw as the unfairness of Chinese society.
Through her exposure to Lily and her family, especially her brothers, Tatiana became more familiar with Chinese ways and Chinese ways of thinking. Her interest did not, however, extend to language, the strange, singsong cacophony of sounds that encompassed many languages and even more dialects spoken by the Chinese. Both she and Olga resisted their father's attempts to persuade them to study one of the Mandarin dialects.
“Oh, Papa,” they would say to their father, “we're never going to have to speak it properly. Everyone we know speaks either English or French. It's enough.” But truth be told, the girls were not eager to study something they were sure they would never be able to master. The best they did was to pick up the vulgar Pidgin English used by Europeans and Chinese alike to bridge the wide gap between them.
Rather than being repelled by the strangeness of what she learned, Tatiana in time became more interested in the complexity of ancient Confucian tradition mixed with the emerging modernity of China as it entered the twentieth century. In a way, her father had been right. China was looking to the future in its own complicated way, while Russia was still mired in the nineteenth century of landowners and indentured peasants.
“‘Governments