Bury What We Cannot Take: A novel Read online

  “Rightist behavior” was a catchall phrase that encompassed everything from donning a blouse of too bright a hue all the way to writing an essay in criticism of the Party, but still Bee Kim’s mouth went dry. Beads of sweat dotted her grandson’s forehead, and she felt sorry for him. He was so sensitive, so anxious. Perhaps she shouldn’t have made him stay. For his sake, she adopted a lighthearted tone. “You’ve troubled yourself to come all this way, so please, feel free to look around.”

  The women went straight to the bookcase. All of Seok Koon’s English books and classical music scores had long been stashed in the attic in preparation for precisely this scenario. Even so, they found plenty of questionable titles: a mystery series her daughter-in-law enjoyed, the illustrated fables she and Seok Koon had read to both children, even a few translations of Russian authors, whom Bee Kim could have sworn were Party-sanctioned.

  As the books piled up on the ground, Bee Kim feared the cadres’ silence on the wrecked portrait meant she’d missed the chance to defend herself, that the Party had already accepted her alleged crime as fact and had turned their attention to collecting additional evidence. Days earlier, she and Seok Koon had concocted the best excuse they could: Enraged by her old friend’s lack of Party loyalty and cowardly suicide, Bee Kim had taken a hammer to a photograph of Hua. In her heightened emotional state, the hammer flew from Bee Kim’s grasp and shattered the glass on the Chairman’s portrait.

  Now Bee Kim blurted, “Comrades, I fear there’s been a misunderstanding—”

  The women turned to her, as did Ah Liam, who looked up for the first time. Bee Kim sensed she could be blundering down the wrong path. What if they knew nothing of the portrait? What if this were just another routine inspection, albeit conducted by particularly overzealous cadres?

  “Go on,” said the plump one.

  Bee Kim wrung her hands. “I was wondering . . . what kind of rightist behavior?”

  The cadres exchanged a look, and the horsey one said, “I’m afraid we’re not at liberty to say.”

  This, Bee Kim knew, was the worst possible response. Her grandson must have known it, too, for his lower lip began to tremble.

  “Whatever it is we’ve done,” Bee Kim said, “we humbly ask for the chance to repent. We would, for instance, be grateful for the opportunity to show our gratitude to the Party by investing all foreign remittances from my sons in government bonds.”

  This time the women chuckled.

  Bee Kim looked straight at the plump cadre. “My oldest son, Hong Zhai, you of course know well, because he was your husband’s childhood playmate.”

  The women stopped laughing.

  “We’re just low-level cadres,” the horsey one said.

  The plump one added, “Those matters are too sophisticated for the likes of us.”

  Bee Kim felt the back of her neck tense. The family couldn’t live like this, with members of their own household turning on them. If she hadn’t taken in Mui Ah when she’d just hit puberty, the girl would have starved to death, or been sold to a brothel, and this was how she repaid her? Thank heavens Seok Koon had sent another letter to Hong Kong. Ah Zhai would find a way to get them out.

  Less than an hour after they’d arrived, the cadres were standing by the front door with two large boxes.

  “This is all we can take today,” the horsey one said somewhat apologetically.

  With their arms full, the pair struggled to open the door. Ah Liam lifted a hand to help, but a sharp glance from Bee Kim made him reconsider.

  Once she and the boy were alone, he scrunched his face like he was about to cry. She shook her head and motioned him close. “Grandson, let this be a lesson. Trust no one except your own family.”

  4

  As soon as San San heard the front door slam, she pulled her fingers from the keyboard. The music room shared a wall with the study, and she’d spent the last hour playing through her Bach Inventions as quietly as she could while attempting to eavesdrop. As far as she could tell, there’d been little talking, and the inspectors had spent most of the time pulling books off shelves.

  She longed to go to Ah Liam, but out of guilt, her eyes lingered on the music score. Auntie Rose always knew when San San hadn’t practiced enough, and she hated to disappoint her teacher, who often reported to her mother that she had plenty of talent and not enough discipline. It was true. What San San adored most was drawing glorious melodies from the piano without regard for tempo, dynamics, articulation. She had no use for scales and arpeggios, chords and cadences.

  She flipped back to the beginning of the score, but the sounds of Grandma and Ah Liam muttering to each other were too enticing to bear. She waited for her brother to go to his room, and then she knocked and nudged open the door.

  To her surprise, he was lying in bed with the covers pulled up to his chin. He took one look at her and yanked the blanket over his head. “Go away.”

  San San tugged on the blanket. “What did those aunties want?”

  “Go away.”

  “What books did they take?”

  “I said, ‘go away.’”

  She stared at the lump that was his body, at the tufts of hair sticking straight up like joss sticks. “I didn’t tell,” she said.

  Ah Liam lowered the blanket to reveal his eyes. “I know.”

  “Then who did?”

  Ah Liam sat up. “It might not have been about that. We’ve had inspections before.”

  San San held her brother’s gaze. “Not like this one.”

  He picked at the blanket’s fraying edge. “They didn’t even mention the portrait.”

  San San thought about that. Could the timing of the inspection have been entirely coincidental?

  “All they took were Ma’s Russian books,” Ah Liam said. “It’s probably a new crackdown on foreign literature, or something.”

  The front door opened. Ma was back.

  “We’d better tell her,” San San said.

  “Leave it to Grandma.”

  “No,” San San said, and then lowered her voice. “We need to tell her what Grandma did.”

  Ah Liam kicked off the covers. “She already knows,” he said. “Didn’t you see the new portrait? Grandma wouldn’t have been able to take care of that on her own.”

  San San supposed he was right. She was glad they no longer had to keep secrets from Ma.

  Ah Liam went to his desk. “I need to do homework now.”

  San San had more questions, but she didn’t want to give him a reason to make her leave. “I won’t disturb you.” She sat on his bed and reached for the comic book on his nightstand. Its title was The White-Haired Girl.

  “Wipe your nose. I don’t want your snot all over the pages.”

  As usual, her handkerchief had vanished from her pocket, so she rubbed her nose on her sleeve. She examined the book’s flimsy cover, the black ink already smudging beneath her fingertips. The heroine had the beautiful face of a young maiden but the tresses of a crone.

  Meanwhile, her brother expressed his irritation by noisily opening and closing various workbooks, rattling desk drawers, acting as if this whole thing were her fault.

  Finally she said, “Ah Liam, you didn’t, did you?”

  He raised himself to his full height and spun around. San San shrank back, bracing for an explosion.

  Mui Ah knocked and called through the door, “Dinnertime.”

  Neither of them acknowledged her.

  Ah Liam spoke slowly and loudly, as though San San were dumb. “I just said the inspection wasn’t about that. I swear, if you ask one more time . . .” His voice trailed off.

  She clamped her lips together. If he’d simply answer the question, she wouldn’t have to keep asking.

  Ah Liam stormed off to the dining room, and she plodded behind, knowing better than to expect the grown-ups to be more forthcoming.

  At first, the sight of Ma and Grandma at the table set San San at ease. But then she noticed their furrowed brows and downturned mout
hs. Even though Cook had made her favorite popiah, she made no move to fill her plate.

  “What’s wrong?” her brother asked.

  The shadows beneath Ma’s eyes were the shade of a bruise. In a weary voice she said, “Children, we have some bad news. A letter from your pa arrived. He is very, very ill.”

  San San’s stomach churned. She tasted acid at the back of her throat. She hadn’t seen her father in ages, but red envelopes of money arrived to mark each passing year, accompanied by sepia-toned portraits to remember him by. The latest portrait showed Pa’s square-jawed face beneath glossy, slicked-back hair, his thin lips stretched into a knowing half smile. How could tragedy befall such a handsome, serene man?

  “We must go to Hong Kong at once,” said Ma. “The doctor fears there isn’t much time.” A single tear trickled down her cheek, causing San San’s eyes to brim.

  Ah Liam slumped forward on his elbows, nearly toppling his empty plate. San San’s anger toward him faded. She felt sorry for her brother, who remembered much more about Pa than she. From time to time, she climbed in Ah Liam’s bed and begged him to recount the tale of Pa’s last visit to the villa, six years earlier, and the magical gifts he’d brought from the colony: freshwater pearls the size of marbles for Ma, fine embroidered silk shawls for Grandma, an electric train set with shiny forest-green cars for Ah Liam. “Each time we thought Pa was done, he’d call for the servants to bring the next trunk,” her brother said, his voice filled with awe. For San San, Pa had brought an exquisite baby-girl doll with rosy cheeks and golden ringlets and eyes the pure blue of Ma’s porcelain rice bowls. The doll had been handmade in Germany, so Ah Liam suggested the name “Hansel.” Hansel had lost much of her luster and a good chunk of her hair, but continued to accompany San San to bed each night.

  Now Ah Liam’s voice emerged scratchy and reed thin. “What kind of sickness?”

  Ma said, “The doctor doesn’t know. No one knows.”

  Grandma added, “He’s lost all strength in his legs. He hasn’t left his bed in days.”

  Ma said that first thing in the morning, she would go to the safety bureau to request four exit permits.

  In her head, San San transformed her father’s flat, colorless portrait into a real man, someone who could tower over her and sweep her into his embrace and rub his stubbly chin against her cheek. Try as she might, she couldn’t imagine him lying helplessly in bed. She didn’t like to think about Pa in his home in Hong Kong, for if there were a concubine by his side, she knew there could be other children, too. Now, however, for the first time, she was grateful her father wasn’t all alone in the colony, though she knew better than to voice this thought aloud.

  5

  Stoked by sleeplessness and stress, Seok Koon’s frustration boiled over. She pounded her fist into her pillow, again and again, savoring the ache that spread down her arm. The escape plan had been in the works for months, and now her mother-in-law’s single, reckless act had ruined all their hard work. Earlier, when Bee Kim had told her about the cadres’ visit, Seok Koon had drawn on every drop of self-control to hold her tongue.

  She reached again for her husband’s letter—as though she hadn’t memorized every word—the cream-colored envelope and matching paper, luxuriously thick and pliable.

  My beloved wife, the letter read. The greeting, a mere formality, was enough to make the muscles deep within her belly tighten. Make haste and bring my mother and the children. My only desire is to see the faces of my family one final time. Enclosed with the letter was a note from a Dr. Kwok, and she reread that, too. This Dr. Kwok had visited the patient, her husband, on May 8, 1957. The patient was extremely weak and was paralyzed from the waist down. The patient was unable to keep down food and had to be fed by IV. The cause of these symptoms was, for now, unknown, and the prognosis did not look good.

  Even though Seok Koon knew it was all a ruse, the words surged through her with a power of their own, whipping her thoughts into a frenzy. Given this latest investigation, the prognosis of their escape did not look good either. How could her mother-in-law be so thoughtless? If not for dear Rose, Seok Koon would never have been able to find a replacement portrait so quickly and discretely. Rose had been the most talented pianist in their conservatory class. Upon graduation, while Seok Koon and the rest of her classmates had squelched any lingering professional ambitions and embraced new roles as wives and mothers, Rose had opened a piano school. Only when the school had established itself as one of the islet’s most prestigious had she married Lee Chin Kong, a respected doctor who now treated the highest-ranking Party officials. Somehow Chin Kong had arranged for the new portrait to be delivered to the villa in secret, but even he could not procure the necessary exit permits. For those, Seok Koon would have to take her chances with the desperate, clamoring horde at the safety bureau.

  Nowadays a special pass was needed even to board the ferry that crossed the five-hundred-meter channel to Xiamen. No matter the weather or the hour, a queue snaked around the side of the safety bureau, as on this gray, humid morning, thick with the smell of mildew and impending rain.

  Around here, no one was a stranger. The bank manager and his wife stood at the head of the line, and Seok Koon wondered how early they’d arrived to claim that prized spot. Behind them was the assistant principal of the high school, whose youngest son had drowned in Flourishing Beauty Cove last year, and behind him, the widow who lived in opulent Sea and Sky Mansion, the first home on the islet to install a flush toilet—sent from Manila by her doting children. Seok Koon pretended not to notice any of them. Now was not the time to make small talk, for what could they possibly say to each other? “Fancy seeing you here! You’re planning to flee, too? I’m trying for Hong Kong. You?”

  Over a decade earlier, when this old but graceful ivy-covered Edwardian mansion had been not the safety bureau but the British consulate, her husband had been invited to take tea with the ambassador himself, and Seok Koon, the new bride, was brought along. The ivory ankle-length dress she had made still hung in the back of her armoire, waiting to be passed down to San San. The dress was light and airy, the antithesis of how she’d felt that day, prodded by Ah Zhai to speak the English she’d learned from American missionaries, displayed like a songbird in a cage. Ordinarily, Seok Koon loved the shapes and sounds of those foreign words. She’d dreamed her own children would learn English, and the three of them would have a secret language to themselves. But these days, the top students learned Russian, and anyone who spoke English knew better than to flaunt it.

  The assistant principal complained to no one in particular that the line had barely budged. Several heads nodded, but none continued the conversation. To pass the time, Seok Koon studied the trickle of people emerging from the mansion’s heavy doors, drawn men and women, dressed like her, in dark, conservative clothing, their faces as overcast as the sky. She worried the director was in a miserly mood, even as she reasoned that the fewer permits he’d given out thus far, the stronger her own chances.

  Now the door swung back to reveal a tall man in a tailored Western suit. Unlike those who’d come before him, his complexion was bright, his manner upbeat. It was Chin Kong.

  The sight of a friend lifted Seok Koon’s spirits. She raised her hand and cried out, startling the doctor. Everyone in line stared.

  Chin Kong bowed slightly, his manner surprisingly formal. “Mrs. Ong, how do you do?”

  Seok Koon matched his tone. “I’m quite well, Dr. Lee. What brings you here this morning?”

  “Just examining a few of my patients,” he said.

  Seok Koon realized he’d probably met with the director himself.

  Chin Kong edged away from her. “I really must be going. I’ll be sure to tell my wife I saw you.”

  “Yes,” she said quickly. “Please send my regards to Rose.” She wished there were a way to thank him for the new portrait, but he was already walking briskly down the lane.

  His curtness unsettled her. Was her family in such deep tr
ouble that the doctor could not be seen conversing with her? She scanned the now-averted faces of her fellow permit seekers. She’d believed the particular etiquette of the queue dictated one keep to oneself, but perhaps the rest of them were simply evading her. Had news of her family’s troubles already spread across town?

  Someone nudged her forward. It was her turn.

  She tripped up the worn marble steps, greeted the bored youth manning the door, and followed his directions. The safety bureau’s interior possessed none of the crumbling charm of its façade. The soot-darkened walls were the same dull shade of gray as the dirty concrete floors and the cadres’ uniforms. Even the air, filled with the smoke of a hundred cigarettes all exhaled at once, was gray.

  In this dingy, miserable world, the sole splash of color came from the brilliant, beaming portrait that greeted Seok Koon upon entering the director’s office, as though she were here to see the Chairman himself.

  Up close, the safety bureau director was shorter than she’d expected, with a round, almost jolly face that filled her with hope. This Comrade Koh, she’d heard, had recently relocated from Quanzhou. Apparently he refrained from socializing with the locals, preferring to spend his spare time entertaining important visitors who stepped off the ferry from Xiamen.

  Seok Koon bid the director good morning and sat down on the hard wooden chair. When he responded with a short nod, she asked whether he was growing accustomed to the slow pace of life on the islet.

  Comrade Koh located her file and flipped through the pages. “I go where the Party needs me. My personal desires and habits are insignificant.”

  Seok Koon dropped her head in dismay.

  “Tell me why you’re here.”

  Seok Koon slid Ah Zhai’s letter across the desk. “It’s my husband. He’s dying, in Hong Kong, and we must go to his side.”

  Comrade Koh’s fingers were fat as sausages, the knuckles covered with coarse black hairs. He opened the envelope roughly, ripping the flap. He gave the letter and the doctor’s note a cursory glance before returning to her file. “It says here your family is currently under investigation.”