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The whisper network said He might still be in Shanghai. He arranged to have Jin Bong shot—that was the body by the abandoned car—he’s planning a comeback. The Tse family made the French Concession. They’re not allowed to just leave.
Seung-cho left with a single suitcase, paying his way by selling Bong’s last gifts to him. No longer dignified enough to use a glass, he stumbled around the deck, cradling a bottle to his chest and drowning in an ocean of liquor. When concerned fellow passengers asked after his health he claimed to be very important without specifying why. Lost in dreams of the past, sometimes his cigarette burned down to the filter before he remembered to smoke.
“Take this for incense, Lou Dung.”
The statue sat on the nightstand. A ceramic ashtray sat at its feet. They had developed a relationship during Seung-cho’s wine-dark reminisces. Lou Dung—memorial to the Tse family! Instead of a second pair of shoes or photographs he carried the statue. Impractical, but after the death it’d taken to secure—
He wanted to throw it in the ocean. Use it for firewood. Take a fireman’s axe and hack it to pieces, accept his fate, and die. Heaven or hell, they’d all be reunited. It often occurred to him often that suicide was a sensible option. The fact that he remained living was a function of inertia, not desire. Maybe that night he’d write a last testament and slip off the railing into the sea with hardly a splash. Lou Dung would come with him. If he was never to be rid of the statue, then the statue was to never be rid of him.
The statue sent him a ghost. Several ghosts, who sat pensively at the writing table in his cabin. They came in shifts. Seung-cho would wake from his stupor and see Uncle Haa pouring brown liquor, Sou-sam boredly flipping through the pages of a small book. He slept again. All that was real was the sound of the ship’s horn and the scent of his rumpled clothes.
“You shouldn’t ignore your brother,” Seung-wai said.
Seung-cho remained silent. The reprisals of the dead did not scare him; why would they, when he had so many loved ones among their ranks? He’d closed Seung-wai’s eyes himself. Paid for the funeral. All that was left was the madness—the wild brain of an alcoholic.
“Cho-o-o,” Seung-wai whined. “Stop pretending to be asleep.”
“You’re not real.”
A draft passed across Seung-cho’s ear. He cracked one eye open and saw Seung-wai shaking his shoulder. “I came back to talk to you! Of course I’m real!”
He decided to humor his own insanity; where was the harm? It was Seung-wai, to who he owed nothing, and who had never had cause for resentment. And there was the weakness of his heart, moved by a sight so real it created familiar warm feelings. Seung-wai anxiously pushed up his glasses, fidgeting in the same way he had in life. His face was one of brotherly concern. Seung-cho decided to have a little fun with him.
“If you’re a ghost, then why did you come back with glasses?”
“Ghosts can have bad eyesight…”
He sounded so put upon that Seung-cho laughed despite himself. Yes, that is how Seung-wai would have answered the question, taking his glasses off to clean them once reminded of their existence.
“You’re the first ghost who’s talked to me.”
“We talked to ghosts together before…that one summer…”
“I have a secret.” Seung-cho crawled across the bed to whisper it in his ear. “I moved my hand on purpose doing Oujia.”
“Liar!”
“Cross my heart it’s true.”
“I can’t trust you with anything ever again.”
“What is there? You’re dead.” That dampened the mood of joviality. Sitting up to find a cigarette, Seung-cho flicked his lighter on. “Wai, if you’re really here—tell me if Dad is disappointed in me.”
“I don’t know where anyone is. Dad and Ging and Ching-wah…I think they did too much bad. And Ma probably went straight up with little Jeun to Guanyin.“
“So what are you waiting on?”
Seung-wai sighed. “I never did much of anything and the gods can’t decide. You have to live a long life, alright? I’ll try my best to not live too long my next lifetime, and then we can be brothers again.”
“I’ll be the older and you’ll be the younger.”
“You always went ahead of me…”
Not to death, although Seung-cho didn’t wish to say it. He feared making Seung-wai disappear again; through Seung-wai he could keep up the fantasy of finding the others in dreams.
“Sometimes I see Uncle Haa and Sou-sam, although they never speak.”
“Maybe they went to a different place. The ways of the gods are mysterious.” An unfamiliar look of anger crossed Seung-wai’s face. “I don’t believe they listen to our prayers.”
Lou Dung listened, which was the issue. Anyone who found a god who bent an ear to hopeless mortals would want to serve it no matter how severe its demands; it was an unfortunate weakness that had cost the lives of many. Even the mention of Lou Dung could turn brothers to enemies.
“It’s best they don’t,” Seung-cho said.
“Do you think Ma would have--?”
“I don’t know.” He grimaced at an evil thought. “I don’t know if she’d have wanted to, after you died. That’s a lot to ask of an old woman.”
“All I ever did was make things worse…”
Seung-cho, quite exhausted at that point, said nothing. Perhaps Seung-wai had cursed them all losing the statue; perhaps instead Seung-cho was the one who had ruined their lives insisting on visiting Sou-sam that day at the photography studio. What had been done rested in the realm of the unchangeable fact. Outside his cabin a couple walked past, drunkenly giggling. It awoke him from his stupor—he turned to the door, then turned back to the table.
The room was empty.
It was a weakness. He prayed anyways. Threatened, too. If I kill myself I’ll take you with me. I’ll offer my life to the gods to destroy you. You’ll be turned to ashes and splinters, sent to the fiery hells, obliterated, all unless you show me another vision. Is that beyond your power, you rotting hunk of wood? Lou Dung! I have accepted my fate!
The statue did not reply. Since leaving Hong Kong it had lost a bit of its luster, as if separation from its homeland had cost it some power. He was taking it and himself to Vienna to die, or perhaps find a reason not to. The night before departure he had called Shanghai. Third Uncle had, as instructed, sold the house and used the proceeds to refurbish the memorials for the Tse family. A ritual specialist would come and burn offerings and incense weekly until Seung-cho died or the money ran out.
“We should be allowed to live in obscurity,” he told Third Uncle. “Being well-known brought us nothing but hard times.”
“You don’t intend on carrying the family name?”
“That chance has died. Thank you for everything.”
Whisper networks claimed that Seung-cho eloped with his fiancée to avoid the tragedy that followed the Tse family at every happy occasion. Other rumors said that Sou-sam’s mother, driven to insanity by grief, had hung herself in the same bathroom her husband had died. Dully Seung-cho felt a sense of responsibility at having cost the entire Yan family their lives.
The other call he made before departure was a call that should have happened in person, but Seung-cho had lost his will to fight. The French Consul’s secretary picked up. He recognized Seung-cho by voice, seemingly glad to have an excuse to hand off the message.
“I’m liquidating. Your charity tax no longer applies.”
“That’s not what I heard,” remarked the Consul. “It seems some of your lieutenants have divided up the gambling halls.”
“Go ask them, then.”
There was a pause on the other end of the line. “So you’ve left for good.”
“Consul, look at my family—is there anyone who would choose to stay?”
The second boat followed a sober schedule that closed all facilities at eight, leaving Seung-cho and his thoughts alone in the dark. It had never before scared him so much to think. Alcohol couldn’t extinguish his sorrows, not when they were so many.
When he awoke from a dream of Sou-sam’s burning corpse it was to the sound of someone’s fan hitting their palm. He sat up. Sitting across from Lou Dung was Ying-ying, wearing the white dress that had brought them to grief. On her head was a bridal veil and yellow chrysanthemums.
“Since you loved her more than me, I thought I might try and gain your attention by becoming her.”
“Ying-ying…”
“I was so ashamed! If only Seung-cho had taken her back, and freed you--!” She turned and caught sight of him. Her mouth opened. “I thought you were someone else.”
“Jin Bong?”
“Always Jin Bong! Yes! I swore I’d haunt him for the rest of his life, but now he’s gone missing.”
“He died.”
Ying-ying unfolded her fan and read the characters painted on it. “Forlorn and lonely, my time will never come… how did he die?”
“Sou-sam died the next day.”
“I wish he’d joined me in a lover’s suicide.”
Driven by an unknown and terrifying force, he stood and walked over to the table. Ying-ying focused her gaze on the wall. When he wrapped his arms around her they passed through cold air. In life he had rarely been close to her, the natural separation of brothers and sisters—but what did separation matter now!
“Someone dying for your sake is an impossible burden.”
“Not for them.”
“They died for me. You all did!”
“Selfish!” She slapped him across the jaw; it went through his face like a shot of alcohol. “I did nothing for you, my shameful brother! If I had been the youngest son I would have never let the Tse family go! Mother should have prayed to turn me male in the womb.”
“I didn’t ever want the Tse family on my back!”
“You were always his favorite—of course you’d get everything. First Brother always said you would.”
“He told you that?”
“We used to be close.” Her large dark eyes filled with tears. “We used to be close—then everything changed! I went from a favorite sibling to an abandoned sister. Without love, I was already a ghost…too cold for Bong to touch.”
“You thought we didn’t love you?”
Crying the sob of a child, she pressed a lace edged handkerchief to her mouth. “Never—I never! Cho, why can’t we go back to being children?”
If they could return to bucolic days—Ying-ying hadn’t been born in the lean years. Her birth was the beginning of Cho’s fine memories. The family portrait done for their father’s birthday—him with his pipe, mother in her jewels, four children between wearing traditional clothes. Seung-cho remembered Ying-ying being so young that she fell asleep while they were arranging the furniture. If one had looked carefully they could have seen the pillows propping her soft body up while she dreamed uncolored dreams.
“I wish we could as well…come here. I miss you.”
He placed her ghostly head on his shoulder and shut his eyes tight against the bitter smell of chrysanthemums.
Rounding the Cape of Good Hope, he felt he was delaying his death. The air was crushed from his lungs when he imagined stepping off the boat. Poison would choke him. The sky would fall. It was an utterly irrational belief, but one that seized his heart. Like the slow progression of his family towards ruin, or the way wood rots from the inside out—yes, Europe would kill him, and it was only fortune that had put him on the longest possible route.
The air on the deck was mild, even at night. Seung-cho took a cigarette from the pack and then swore when he realized he’d forgotten his lighter.
“Allow me, brother.” A hand descended with a lit cigarette and touched the tip of his own. The flame was shared; a quick orange glow.
“I’m afraid I’m out of those,” Seung-cho said. He looked up.
Bong sat, hat tilted to cover one eye, white rosebud in his buttonhole. “Your feelings towards me have survived far worse things.”
“Ah. Usually you’re silent.”
“That wasn’t me.”
The smell of smoke was like something alive; the slow and self-assured way it leaked from a man’s mouth as he spoke was more compelling than the words themselves. In the low light of a waning crescent the scar on Bong’s face looked darkly fresh. Seung-cho had once, upon waking from a hangover, snuck a hand out to touch it. It reminded him that before his own acquaintance Bong had lived a life Seung-cho would never come to know.
“You should have married my sister.”
“I didn’t love her.”
“All she wanted was to be considered. I trust that you could have done that.”
Waves lapped against the hull. At sea the motion was constant, the wind against the surf, the surf against itself, white foam in peaks until it and the horizon collapsed into one solid line of deep blue. All of the world receded to that blue line and the moon above, both thinning into nonexistence. Bong as a brother-in-law. With enough warmth Seung-cho could have cracked him into confessing. Not from suspicion, but from the sort of tender curiosity that comes when two people are new to one another and wish to accelerate their friendship.
That same curiosity was in his heart—and now, untouchable in death, he saw no reason Bong should leave his curiosity unsatisfied. “Would you have taken the statue back to Miao country?”
“That was my goal.”
“Even if it would have kept Sou-sam alive?”
“You didn’t hand it over for her father’s sake.”
With the intensity of the archer’s first draw Seung-cho leaned towards Bong and pounded his fist on the arm of the chair. “That was different!”
“From the outside it appears the same. We both did the wrong thing to her. The difference between us is you won.”
“You let me win. Again.”
“I said there’d be no conflict between us. As you did, before.”
“Clearly when we speak we hear different things.”
Bong looked at him with a stone face. “Have a drink.”
On the small table between loungers was wine that had not been there before, the mouth of the jug slightly steaming. Clearly a favor was being returned. It smelled like iron, more warmth than flavor. Seung-cho drank without pouring, a seemingly bottomless amount flowing from the spout. He drank as if trying to drown from the inside, to fall asleep and never leave those death-dark dreams. Bong watched him without asking for his own share.
“Lou Dong is better stolen than kept. You see the price—twenty years of fortune for the deaths of the Sheng Miao. It asks, it feeds, it keeps you in its grip until its satiation ends and it seeks more blood. My people would have been the last taken, if only…”
His sentence disappeared when Seung-cho began choking. Thumping him on the back, Bong took the jug, and drank deep. They stared at one another in a haze and began laughing; how little the times changed! Perhaps soon Seung-cho would wake up with a hangover and discover it was all a dream: downstairs would be children’s laughter and little Jeun’s birthday party. They could begin all over again—meeting in the garden beneath the camphor trees—
“Give me your hand,” Seung-cho said. Bong offered it without question. They sat in silence past the point of needing to talk; to bring words would have made the moment insincere. Without making eye contact Seung-cho raised the hand to the side of his face. Ghost’s knuckles, ghost of lips, ghostly fog over the prow. Upon dawn Bong would be gone, Seung-cho realized. Victory was the absence of rivals.
Cry for the victor! He did not, but only because he was unable. The tears were lodged in his throat, the wine soured in his stomach. He touched his own mouth as if he could make the moment of contact real. Bong, the outline of his body growing indistinct with the fog, mouthed a few words. They were lost, and Seung-cho was lost, dazed like during the walk out of the forest after burning Sou-sam. Goodbyes always happened at night; the morning was for funerals.
“I would have asked you to stay,” Seung-cho said to the empty chair. “Given a decade, maybe I could have told you.”
Dawn spread over the blue line of the horizon. The colors reminded him of Sou-sam, her bright silk sleeves. The last night of her life he’d stroked the shoulder of one of her blouses again and again. Comforting her that he had accepted the fate of the Tse family, comforting himself with the warmth of her arm under the cloth. He could have never killed her, or anyone else—even Seung-wai came closer than him.
A stub of Bong’s cigarette burned in the ashtray. Seung-cho picked it up and finished it, good tobacco to try and clear out his head. He needed to start reading a German phrasebook. Count his money. Cajole Lou Dung with threats and prayers that the road in Vienna not be too steep. Seung-cho stood, swaying, and ambled down the deck. German phrasebook. Count his money. Offer Lou Dong incense and threaten to set it alight. A burning ship on the water: come and save him now, blood sacrifice-soaked spirit! Passport, German phrasebook, money clip, Lou Dong—there was nothing else to remember. Fading like mists at dawn, the transient times of the Tse family were lost. He had to forget to live, or else be lost in the past.
Lou Dong. There was nothing else to remember.