of us knew. He felt Aunt Rosalie would have wanted it that way. As crops were plowed under or new furrows dug, of course we searched, but we were never successful.
“Then, as my cousin and I entered our twenties, the winds of the Cultural Revolution began to blow. Everyone was scrutinized, anyone could be denounced. Uncle Kairong was a powerful man, but his class background was incorrect. And powerful men have enemies. Being cowards, his did not take aim at him directly but whispered and hissed, inflaming others. We started to hear rumors, threats. One day, returning from his work, Lao-li was set upon by a mob in the street. Perhaps you can imagine the attitude of the Red Guards toward a young Eurasian jeweler from a landowning family?”
I could. “What happened?”
“These were the Cultural Revolution’s earliest days. Some people were not yet terrified and cowed. He was rescued by neighbors and returned to us, not badly hurt. But over the months the direction of things became clear. Uncle Kai-rong, forseeing dunce caps and years of reeducation in the countryside for Lao-li, sent him to America, and me with him. He did this at great risk and no doubt would have paid a high price. But he cheated the Red Guards: He fell ill, and died not six months after I and my cousin arrived here.”
“How did he die?”
Mr. Zhang smiled sadly. “We were told his heart failed him. I have no doubt that is true. Many years before, he’d lost his Rosalie. Now he lost his son, and myself. And finally, to the Red Guards, he lost his greatest love: China. I think he saw no reason to go on.”
“Mr. Zhang, your family’s story is extraordinary.”
“No, Ms. Chin. There are many like it. Every family has its own tangles of love and consequences.”
“But not all families’ stories run through times like those.”
“That may be, though from what I’ve seen that makes their stories no easier. In any case, do you now understand why it’s implausible that this ministry official who stole Aunt Rosalie’s buried jewelry—”
“Wong Pan.”
“Why Wong Pan is unlikely to have the Shanghai Moon?”
“Because it wasn’t buried with the other pieces. But yesterday you asked me about it.”
“For Lao-li’s sake. The search for the Shanghai Moon has given shape to my cousin’s life. It’s a delusion and has been from the beginning. But it’s kept him from despair in the darkest times.”
“So you’ve indulged his fantasy and, as I understand it, financed the hunt.”
“The path he’s followed hasn’t led to the treasure he seeks. But as he wouldn’t abandon this path, I have not wanted him to walk it alone.”
“He’s lucky to have you, Mr. Zhang.”
“And I to have him. Through my young years, all I had of my own family were memories, growing faint. My mother, my father, my brother had left me behind and were gone. Yet unlike the thousands of war orphans starving alone in the streets, I grew up wrapped in the warmth of family. I was a mouth to feed, a cry to hush, but never for a moment was I allowed to think I was a burden. No, the opposite. I was part of the family’s joy. This is a debt I can never repay. If I’ve spent money over the years helping my cousin keep hope alive, and so enabling him to live a life, with a wife and children of his own, it is no price at all. In our children and our grandchildren, the Chen, Zhang, and Gilder families still live.”
I glanced at Bill, then back to Zhang Li. “I do have more questions, Mr. Zhang. But first, there’s something else. You say your mother, your family, had left you behind.”
“I’ve never blamed them. Perhaps my mother hoped to be able to come back for me, but . . . it was wartime.”
“She did hope that. Still, what you think is not exactly what happened.”
“What are you saying? How can you know anything about those times?”
“We’ve found . . . documents. Your mother’s diary, for one thing. And . . .” I hesitated. I didn’t want to come out and say, And your father murdered your mother, your brother told us so. “And some other things. I’ll give them to you. They tell most of the story, and I can fill in some of the rest.”
“My mother’s diary! But Ms. Chin! How could you possibly have found—”
Another thing he might not need to know: Uncle Paul had it all