He lets her get in a few sentences when they go out, like a talking dog, while he beams. Then he tells her to shut up. She wonders whether being ignored the way her father did might not have been better.”
“The grass is greener.”
“Well, maybe. Though the general does seem to be getting more and more short-tempered. He wants her to do everything right, but she can’t figure out what everything is or how to know if she’s doing it right. The only bright spot is the general’s son. He makes her laugh.”
“She’s not that much older than he is, is she?”
“By now he’s ten. She’s just turned seventeen. She helps him with his schoolwork, especially his calligraphy, showing him the different styles. The boy’s tutor compliments her. She writes how she can’t wait to have children of her own. But they won’t have tutors, she says. She’ll send them to school, so they can be out in the world. Then she gets pregnant.”
“When are we up to?”
“Spring 1940.”
“What does the general think?”
“He’s pleased and very proud—of himself. And he tells her now she’ll stay home until the baby’s born.”
“Oh, no.”
“ ‘Oh, no’ is right. Her whole reason for marrying him flies out the window. To be stuck at home was bad enough, but to be stuck at his home! But he absolutely won’t have her seen in public in her condition. They fight about it more than once. Finally he doesn’t want to fight anymore, so he smacks her.”
“Shit.”
“It’s the first time, but not the last. She gets more and more desperate. She’s alternately belligerent and weepy. He doesn’t think either is charming. In fact, he doesn’t think she’s charming at all, with her big belly and swollen feet. He leaves her locked up at the villa and starts tomcatting around with some White Russian torch singer from the Cathay’s nightclub.”
“From the Cathay? That’s particularly low.”
“When the baby’s born he gives Mei-lin an emerald bracelet. Within two weeks he’s demanding sex again. She writes how beautiful the bracelet is, all sparkling and glamorous, but she can’t bear to wear it unless he orders her to. She’d give it, and everything else, to have her old life back. The only thing she wouldn’t give is the baby. They name him Li. It’s a word with a lot of meanings, but the character she writes it with means ‘power.’ She’s allowed to go out again, and mostly she goes to her father’s house. Rosalie comes over and they play with the baby in the garden. Sometimes Paul comes, sometimes she brings the general’s son along—he adores his little brother, too—and sometimes Kai-rong’s there. Kai-rong never says ‘I told you so,’ but one day he goes to the general’s villa and, I gather, threatens bad things if he ever sees another mark on his sister.”
“How does the general react?”
“Like any coward. From then on when he’s mad he storms around and curses Kai-rong, but he doesn’t hit Mei-lin again. She can’t stop being scared, though. That’s pretty much it for a long time, I mean years. The entries get shorter and fewer, more time between them. There are a couple of high points, especially Rosalie and Kai-rong’s wedding in ’forty-two, but Mei-lin just gets lonelier and sadder and the whole thing is pretty depressing.”
“Is that why you stopped?”
“No, I stopped because you were early.”
“By ten minutes. You’d have had the rest done in the next ten minutes?”
“Of course I would have. First of all, I’m a genius. Second, I only had half a dozen left, and most of them are short.”
“Well, genius, you have just about those ten minutes now, if my navigation’s right.”
“Then shush.”
I scanned the last diary pages. The first four were more of the same: Mei-lin unhappy, trapped, and frightened. Then came the next to last. I could see the sharp change even before I read the words: Elegant calligraphy suddenly melted into shaky trails of characters. “This is February 23, 1943. She writes Kai-rong’s been arrested as a Communist spy. Even her father can’t get him out. They’ve taken him to Number 76, and she knows what that means. She’s begged the general to do something, but he won’t.”
“Won’t, or can’t?”
“Won’t. He has the juice, but he says traitors like Kairong are scum and deserve to rot. She can’t believe it—a collaborator like him calling Kai-rong a traitor. Then she says she’s hated the general for a long time, but never more than now.
“That entry ends there. The