“Anything I can help with?”
“No,” I replied sadly, “not unless you can change the world and make sure Biao isn't ostracized in Paris because he's Chinese.”
“Oh, that's going to be difficult!” he exclaimed, remaining pensive.
“I don't know what I'll do, but Biao has to study. He's incredibly intelligent. Any sort of specialty in the sciences would be perfect for him.”
“Do you know what just came to mind?” Paddy murmured. “The Lyon Incident.”
“Lyon Incident?”
“Yes, don't you remember? It happened a few years ago, toward the end of 1921. After the war in Europe, France called on its colonies in China to cover the labor shortage in its factories. A hundred and forty thousand coolies were sent. At the same time, the best students from Chinese universities were invited to continue their studies in France as a means of propaganda. The intention, they said, was to promote good relations between the two cultures. You don't want to know how the story ended.” He grunted, leaning back in his chair. “A few months after the first students arrived, the Sino-French Educational Association went bankrupt; there wasn't a single franc to pay their school or boarding fees. These young students, almost all of whom were from good families or particularly intelligent, like Biao, had to go to work in factories alongside the coolies just to survive. Others who were luckier found work as dishwashers, and the rest became beggars on the streets of Paris, Montargis, Fontainebleu, and Le Cresot. The Chinese ambassador in France, Tcheng Lou, washed his hands like Pontius Pilate and announced that he didn't intend to take responsibility for such wretches. You see, the French Communist Party had begun circulating Communist ideals among them when it found such a fertile field ready to be sown.”
I listened in horror, imagining Biao in such a situation. How would the boy be regarded in France? Like a Chinese coolie, a dishwasher, a factory worker, a Communist revolutionary?
“At the end of September 1921,” Paddy continued, “the students organized a demonstration in front of the Sino-French Institute of Lyon, located in Fort Saint-Irénée. Ambassador Tcheng made that statement about the Middle Kingdom washing its hands of such agitators, and so, after a harsh police attack in which dozens were hurt, some of the students were deported. Others were able to get their families to send money and buy a ticket home.”
“Are you trying to say it would be better to leave Biao in Shanghai?” I asked in distress.
“No, Elvira. I'm simply telling you what the boy will encounter in Europe, not only France. The European colonial mentality is a very high wall that Biao will have to climb. It doesn't matter how smart, good, or honest he is, or how rich. It doesn't matter. He's Chinese, a yellow with slanted eyes. He's different, inferior. People will stop and stare, point at him when he walks down the street anywhere in Europe.”
“You're too pessimistic, Paddy,” I retorted. “Yes, he'll be different, but they'll get used to him. There will come a time when the people closest to him—his classmates, his teachers, his friends—won't even notice he is Asian. He'll just be Biao.”
“He'll need a last name, too,” Paddy pointed out. “Will you adopt him? Are you prepared to become the legal mother of a Chinese boy?”
I knew that this time would come.
“If necessary, yes,” I replied.
He looked at me for a long while, whether with pity or admiration I'm not sure. Then, with a great deal of effort, he stood and picked up his crutches. I stood as well.
“You can count on my help,” he declared. “Now I'm going to shower, as you suggested, and go to the bank. I'll buy new clothes and a ticket to England. Then I'll come by your hotel, though you haven't yet told me where you're staying….”
“Astor House.”
“Then I'll go by Astor House and … No, better yet, I'll stay at Astor House as well, and we'll talk about this again. Thank you, Elvira,” he said, holding out his hand. I shook it warmly and walked to the door, followed by the rhythmic clicking of his crutches.
“We'll see you at the hotel,” I said by way of good-bye.
He smiled. “See you then.”
But we never did see him again. That afternoon, once I'd arranged Biao's documentation with Father Castrillo at the orphanage and returned to the hotel, the concierge handed me an envelope containing the first-class tickets that M. Julliard had bought for us on the Dumont d'Urville, a packet boat leaving for Marseille at seven the next morning, Wednesday, December 19. There was another envelope with a note signed by Patrick Tichborne, apologizing for his absence: He'd been lucky enough to find passage on a steamer leaving that very night for Yokohama. After a great deal of thought, he'd decided to go to the United States, to New York, where he could arrange for the best prosthetic leg in the world. He promised to look me up in Paris as soon as he got back to Europe.
He never did. We never heard news of Paddy again, never knew what had happened to him. I suppose he got his prosthetic leg and lived like a king, drinking to excess somewhere in the world with the fortune from the First Emperor's mausoleum.
The children and I returned to my house in Paris. After everything she'd learned in China, and no doubt due to a certain family propensity, Fernanda developed a sharp sense of independence over the years that made her a woman to be reckoned with. When young, brilliant Biao was accepted to the famous Lycée Condorcet, my niece decided she wanted to study as well. While our splendid house was being built on the outskirts of Paris, I was forced to hire private tutors for her in the same courses Biao was taking at the lycée. She continued her studies after we moved, and when Biao was accepted to the Sorbonne at the University of Paris to study physics, she became the first foreign woman ever to enroll—with some help from influential friends and acquaintances—at the L’École Libre de Sciences Politiques. There she met and became engaged to a young, forward-thinking diplomat who knew how to handle her as no one else did.
Biao courageously handled the difficulties he faced in Paris as an Oriental. Never discouraged by the bad jokes or obstacles some stupid fools placed in his way, he charged ahead, unstoppable, graduating with a doctorate, at the top of his class, winning every award in existence. Unable to find work in France, he accepted a contract with an American company in California that made him an offer fit for an emperor. Shortly after he arrived in the United States, he met and married a woman named Gladys (that was my first trip across the Atlantic). A year later Fernanda married André, the diplomat, and they left for some unpronounceable country on the African continent.
What did I do? Well, while the children were still at home, I painted and invested in art, spending a considerable amount on works by my favorite painters, becoming a renowned collector. I also opened several art galleries and a splendid painting school on rue Saint-Guillaume. When Fernanda and Biao left home, I traveled through Europe visiting museums and art exhibits. A short while later, in 1936, a group of fascist soldiers staged a coup d'état in Spain, and the Civil War began. I moved to southern France, near the border, where I collaborated personally and financially with the Republican refugees fleeing the country. It was an interminable, exhausting task. Thousands crossed the Pyrenees every day, escaping the enemy army, arriving lost, without money, without food, and without knowing the language. They were dirty, sick, wounded, and demoralized. It was grueling work, and then, just when it seemed about to end, came the Second World War. By that time I was sixty, and Biao, who had two young children, categorically ordered me to leave Europe and come to California to live with him and his family. Fernanda, still in that unpronounceable African country, encouraged me to go, saying it was the safest course of action, that France would soon fall into the hands of the Nazis, and assuring me that she and her two small children would follow shortly.
Thus, in 1941, my collection of paintings and I boarded an ocean liner to New York and then crossed that enormous country from coast to coast by special train, finally arriving in the city of Los Angeles. Three months later my niece arriv
ed with her little ones. Since there wasn't room for us all in Biao's house, I bought a car and a lovely villa in Santa Monica, where the majority of L.A. art galleries are located.
After the war André left the diplomatic corps and came to California as an executive with a citrus export company, where he did very well for himself. But the one who really prospered was Fernanda. By sheer coincidence she found work in the Business and Legal Affairs office of Paramount Picture Studios and today strikes terror into the hearts of agents representing Hollywood's most important actors. The studios love her, and it's no wonder why.
Nowadays I like to sit in the sun and paint. I never became a famous artist, but I did become a renowned collector and an important patron to great painters. I'm old now, so old. But that doesn't prevent me from going to the beach with my grandchildren, swimming in my pool, or driving my car. My doctor tells me I have an iron constitution and that I'll surely live to be a hundred.
I always reply, “Doctor, you've got to live life learning to see the good in the bad and the bad in the good.”
He laughs and says I have some strange ideas, like doing tai chi every morning. I laugh, too, but then I remember old Ming T'ien looking up at the lovely mountains she could no longer see.
“Haste shortens your life,” she repeats over and over again, smiling all the while.
“Yes, Ming T'ien,” I reply.
“Remember me when you're my age!” she shouts before disappearing.
And so I keep moving my chi energy out in the garden with the sun shining on me, slowly, with my hair down as the Yellow Emperor recommended.
Notes
1 The official name of the last emperor of China was Hsuan Tung of the Great Qing. However, he is better known in the West by his nickname, Puyi, thanks to Bernardo Bertolucci's movie T he Last Emperor.
2 Title used by Chinese servants to address their mistresses.
3 As Spain's ambassador to Bulgaria, Julio Palencia (1884–1952) bravely faced Nazi authorities during the Second World War in order to prevent the country's Jews from being exterminated. Thanks to his efforts, over six hundred people were saved.
4 Given the extent of her work, it would be impossible to give a biography of Isabel de Oyarzábal (Málaga 1878–Mexico 1974), a journalist, writer, and the second female and first Spanish diplomat in the world as ambassador to Sweden.
5 Chinese greeting equivalent to “Hello,” “Good morning,” “How are you?”
6 Pronounced Ching. The Q is equivalent to our Ch sound.
7 Important dynasties in Chinese history: Tang (a.d. 618–907), Song (a.d. 960– 1279), Ming (a.d. 1368–1644).
8 Over 450 miles per hour.
9 Chin. It is believed the name China derives from this kingdom.
10 In 1645 the Manchus ordered that all adult Chinese males shave their foreheads and braid their hair (the famous Chinese queue) in the Manchu style.
11 “Beautiful country.”
12 “The country of law.”
13 The current way to write Nanking is Nanjing.
14 Zhejiang.
15 Sun Tzu is the author of the famous treatise The Art of War from the fourth century b.c.
16 Bu means “No.”
17 Now the city of Liaoyang, in the province of Liaoning, north of Beijing.
18 Sima Qian (145–90 b.c.) authored the great work Records of the Grand Historian (Shi ji) and greatly influenced subsequent Chinese historians.
19 Said to put an end to a matter. “Case closed.”
20 A Chinese measure of length. One li is equal to about a third of a mile.
21 It is also written as Weichi, Weiqi, Wei Qi, or Weiki, but Wei-ch'i is the most correct.
22 First recorded in Shu Yi Zhi, written by Ren Fong (Southern and Northern dynasties, a.d. 420–589).
23 This diagram is better known by Go players as Ranka, its Japanese name.
24 This is the Japanese expression used by Go players in the West.
25 The Kuomintang flag.
26 Along with Hanyang and Wuchang, Hankow forms part of what is now a single city called Wuhan, capital of Hubei province.
27 Contrary to the way it is done in the West, the Chinese mention east or west before north or south. Thus, we would say “northwest” while they say “westnorth,” or “eastsouth” for southeast.
28 Shan means “mountain.”
29 Zhang Zuolin, 1873–1928.
30 Now the city of Danjiangkou.
31 Reign name Yonle (1403–24).
32 Gong means “temple” or “palace.”
33 Famous martial-arts master and abbot of Wudang (1860–1932).
34 Tao Te Ching / TaoTe King / Dao De Jing, fourth century b.c., a fundamental philosophical treatise on Taoism attributed to Lao-tzu (Lao Tsé / Lao Zi).
35 Seventh Qing Emperor of China, from 1796 to 1820.
36 1766–1121 b.c.
37 Chinese hours are double. The hour of the Monkey is from 3:00 to 4:59 p.m.
38 Ming t'ien means “bright heavens.”
39 The famous Cornucopia Tea House, located at the lower end of the Bund in Shanghai.
40 Between 9:00 and 10:59 a.m.
41 Now the province of Shaanxi Sheng.
42 Department in the First Emperor's employ responsible for the mausoleum projects.
43 Now called Shangxian or Shangzhou.
44 a.d. 386–534
45 a.d. 220–65
46 To the east, buried in an enormous tomb, is the well-known and impressive Terra-Cotta Army, not discovered until 1974.
47 Historian (a.d. 291–361), author of Records of the States South of Mount Hua, better known as the Chronicles of Huayang.
48 It is believed that the Chinese used asbestos to make wicks several centuries b.c. These wicks never had to be replaced, because they were never consumed.
49 Mythological dynasty, approximately 2100–1600 b.c.
50 The highly toxic nature of mercury was discovered only a few years ago.
Matilde Asensi, Everything Under the Sky
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