A Cold Season In Shanghai. S.P. Hozy
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being shot at round the clock. Every day she thanked God that she had been born a woman. She had been studying the battles of the great commanders from Caesar to Napoleon, and was fascinated by their strategic and tactical abilities, but it was all in the realm of the imagination for her. She wasn't hearing about the horrors of those battles first hand. Many of the young men Tatiana had known didn't come back from the war, but she refused to believe they'd all been killed. They must have chosen to stay in Paris, she decided. Given the choice between Paris and Shanghai, why would they come back? Much as she loved Shanghai, Tatiana imagined Paris to be a city of stylish and elegant people, as far removed from the chattering masses of China as a swan was from a chicken.
Things became glum in the Relnikov household when Jean Paul left for France. Olga worried herself sick that he wouldn't return. Tatiana prayed daily that he would, mostly because she liked him and really wanted Olga to marry him and be happy, but also because she missed going out in the evenings to the cabarets. Her studies kept her occupied during the day, but at night she wanted to go dancing.
Soon it was June and Tatiana's eighteenth birthday. She had not changed her mind about marriage and children, as her parents had hoped she might. She was growing tired of reading and studying but decided it was the lesser of two evils and far more preferable than marriage.
Lily returned in September. It was apparent as soon as she was home that the plans for her wedding were about to be launched. She and Tatiana had a brief few weeks to themselves, during which Lily told her all about her experiences in Switzerland. Her letters had said a lot, but not everything. It wasn't until Tatiana watched Lily's face as she talked that she realized how much her friend had enjoyed her taste of freedom. Lily's eyes sparkled, and she chattered on and on about all the girls in her class, the friendships she had formed, the school, the teachers, the mountains, and the food, which she had hated. “So bad,” she said. “Dairy, dairy, dairy. Too much cheese. Too much milk. Not healthy.”
Tatiana laughed as Lily showed her how she had been taught to walk with a book on her head, sit with her ankles crossed and serve tea while making polite conversation. Lily's French had improved greatly, but she still couldn't make the throaty “r” sound that only the French seem able to do. And she had never mastered the rolling “r” that Mrs. Wilkinson had prized so highly. Neither, for that matter, had Tatiana.
Lily seemed to have developed a confidence and a charm that she had not possessed when she left. She had been transformed from a shy and awkward girl into a graceful young woman. Tatiana towered over her by about seven inches, and her feet and hands seemed huge compared to Lily's delicate, manicured fingers and toes. Tatiana envied the fragile Oriental beauty Lily had acquired, the gentle voice she spoke with and the still serenity she possessed. Tatiana felt like a giraffe next to her friend.
A wedding date had been set for Lily's marriage to Tang Wu-ling. It had been chosen as a lucky day, declared so by an astrologer because of an auspicious formation of the planets. It was to be a traditional Chinese wedding, and gifts had already begun to arrive. Lily was putting together a trousseau of beautiful clothes, all handmade by seamstresses who appeared to be working around the clock. She and Tatiana spent many hours poring over catalogues and drawings, choosing fabrics and selecting accessories. Her wedding dress and shoes would be the traditional red, in elaborately embroidered silk brocade. She would also wear a bride's headdress, which would cover her face completely with a curtain of beads so that she would see nothing bad on her wedding day. On the day of the wedding, the bridegroom's friends would come to the house and transport Lily to the groom's home in a sedan chair covered in ornately carved decorations and hung with tassels and baubles.
As Tatiana sat in Lily's room surrounded by the trappings of her friend's upcoming marriage, she asked Lily if she was nervous.
“Of course. I will be leaving my father's home to live with a strange family. And I will be expected to respect and obey my mother-in-law. I have not met my husband, and yet I will have to live with him for the rest of my life. Wouldn't you be nervous?”
“I'd be scared to death,” Tatiana said. “I think I'd run away before my wedding day.”
“But wouldn't you want to wait and see if maybe you liked your husband? Don't assume that all arranged marriages are unhappy. Many are successful and last a lifetime. The parents will not allow a marriage to take place if the horoscopes are not compatible.”
“Then if I didn't like my husband, I'd run away the day after the wedding.”
Lily laughed. “You can't tell in one day if you like someone or not. You have to give it some time. Get to know one another.”
Tatiana thought of the Tolstoy quote Sergei seemed to repeat constantly until she wanted to scream: “The strongest of all warriors are these two—Time and Patience.” Tatiana had neither time nor patience. She wanted something to happen now, not a year from now or even a month from now. Lily's acceptance of a fate that Tatiana considered worse than death was incomprehensible to her.
“But by then you'll be trapped,” she protested, “and you'll probably ‘catchee baby’ as Amah would say.”
“But that would be good,” Lily said. “A baby would bring me status and would give me something to do. My husband and his mother will have to treat me with respect.”
“Ah, but only if you have a son,” Tatiana reminded her.
“Yes. I must have a son. But then I can have a daughter who will be my companion.”
Lily seemed to have it all figured out.
Before the wedding, Lily and Tatiana were allowed to go shopping together on the Chinese Bund, the part of the city that was a maze of narrow crowded streets lined with every imaginable kind of shop and kiosk. There you could buy everything from fresh produce, ivory chopsticks, brass bowls and sandalwood-scented soap to fabrics made of cotton, or raw and rough or finely woven and embroidered silk. There were hundreds of handmade items for sale in each little specialty shop—clothing made to measure in a day, gold jewellery, jade carvings, straw baskets in every size and shape, figurines carved from porcelain, stone and wood, hand-painted fans, handbags, hats, and silk and leather shoes. From every shop and stall came the cries of vendors begging, cajoling and shouting at people to buy their wares. The din was thick with their high-pitched, nasal voices. Lily and Tatiana were virtually on their own, even though they were followed everywhere by an ancient servant who carried their purchases and made sure they weren't robbed or kidnapped. Every couple of hours they would stop at a teahouse for cha and sweets, just to give the poor man a rest.
Even though Lily had given Tatiana many presents over the years, that day she bought her an exquisite hand-embroidered, yellow silk shawl Tatiana would keep and treasure for the rest of her life. As a wedding gift, Tatiana bought Lily a platter from the Willow Pattern Tea House. They had been admiring the platter, marvelling at the beautiful hand-painted design, when the shopkeeper told them the story behind the highly prized blue and white willow pattern. The large pagoda-style dwelling painted on the right side of the pattern was the home of a wealthy mandarin who had a beautiful daughter, Koong-see. Koong-see had fallen in love with her father's secretary, Chang, who was also in love with her. Infuriated, her father arranged a marriage between Koong-see and Ta-jin, a wealthy viceroy, and forbade her to see Chang ever again. But the lovers would not be separated. They escaped during the wedding feast and ran across the bridge to elope. Koong-see's father saw them and chased after them, which was why there were three figures on the bridge. They hid in the small home of Koong-see's servants, depicted on the left side of the pattern, but were soon caught. Chang managed to escape and returned with a boat to rescue Koong-see. They went to live on an island but eventually were discovered by Ta-jin, who killed Chang. The distraught Koong-see set fire to the house and also perished. The gods turned the lovers into the two doves that were pictured at the top of the pattern.
After Wu-ling's death, when Lily was sent away, I went to her house to see if I could find the platter. I wanted it to remind me of happier times, and also I didn't want it to end up in the hands of a stranger, either, where it would lose all meaning.