Night Angels(99)

His heart dropped. This was precisely the response he had predicted. She was happy, healthy, and here in America she never lost her way home. In China, she would need to start over again, learning the language, learning how to make friends, how to catch chickens and cook, just like what she had gone through years ago, and that was China before the war with Japan started. Now, with the Japanese bombers hovering in the sky, China wouldn’t be a safe home for her. Asking her to go to China with him would be asking her to go to a war zone.

But her reply also confirmed the thought that had haunted him for the past year. They had come to America together, but they had gone separate ways in Brooklyn. “Then you may stay here. I’ll give you half of what is left of my savings, not much, so you can have something to start your life.”

Her face turned pale. “Are you divorcing me? After all these years together?”

Helplessly, he stared at her. He didn’t want to part with bitterness, with acrimony, with hatred. “Grace . . .”

She stood up and went into their bedroom.

He looked around the kitchen, cleanly swept, spotless. Grace had become a capable housekeeper, sweeping, dusting, keeping the apartment tidy. The life of a housekeeper was a major departure from that of a diplomat’s wife, yet she had not complained. She had cleaned, shopped, and cooked. She had been a good wife. What should he do?

“I’m sorry I lost my temper. I don’t know what happened. Please forgive me.” Grace appeared at the bedroom door.

He looked at her. She was crying. Oh, she had not changed, still a little girl, a capricious mind. How he had loved her, showing her off in China, in Istanbul, in Vienna.

“But . . . but . . . must we part ways? Can’t we do something, my dear?”

“Of course we can.” He squeezed out a smile, looking at her, searching for a clue on her face, a clue to the real, meaningful question that could have made them whole again—would she like to?

She looked at her feet.

He was choked. Seven years of marriage.

How had it fallen apart?

Vienna had something to do with it. Those days of him issuing visas, Grace’s accident, the loss of their unborn child, the loss of his job, and maybe even Miss Schnitzler. Yes, her friend. Even today, he still believed that her death was preventable, had Grace tried harder. And he had told himself countless times that it was all in the past and he must forgive his wife, a young, vulnerable woman with a fragile mind. But it was difficult. It was as though a perfect silk strip of their relationship had been rent in the center, and when he looked at her, he could always detect the fissure, the emptiness, the disappointment, and the discontent.

What were her thoughts about Vienna? He had never asked her, but now it was confirmed. Vienna never left her mind.

He had never foreseen this: Vienna had upended many aspects of people’s lives while he was there, and now, hundreds of miles away, years later, after the losses of everything, his unborn child, his career, the memory of Vienna had dissolved his marriage.

He stood up, put his hand on Grace’s shoulder, and turned away as tears rolled down his cheeks.





CHAPTER 69


GRACE


I supposed I knew it was coming. The past year had been challenging for Fengshan as a civilian in Brooklyn. No German, no polite conversations with dignitaries, no phone calls with his superior, no visas to issue, and, worst of all, no friends. He spent most of his days in the library, researching President Roosevelt, and analyzing the country’s racism, and when he came home, he checked Monto’s homework; on Sundays, he went to church. He laughed less, became more reserved, and jogged often.

I had changed as well. My body had fully recovered, and I was healthy again. But strangely, the body that I was in became a shell, a burden; it no longer belonged to me. I began my menopause at twenty-seven; I no longer had menstruation, felt no sexual desire, and was repelled by the thought of intimacy. When Fengshan touched me in his way that had once melted me, I stiffened, even panicked—the discomfort, the pain. His look made me ashamed, and I had avoided him since.

Sleep also became troublesome, with unexpected hot flashes during the days and nights. Many nights I lay awake, drenched in excessive sweat, tormented by insomnia.

Did Fengshan know? He might; he might not.

We seldom talked, living in a tacit agreement of silence, and when we did talk, I was not interested in his opinions. He looked surprised at my lack of interest. And then we raised our voices a notch too high, and then we scoffed at each other unknowingly, but then knowingly. Lying in bed in the dark, listening to his breathing, I thought of those drugged, lonely days in Vienna as he buried his head in visas, so busy that he never thought to push my wheelchair or walk in the park with me. But visa issuance was not the salt on our marriage, I could see, for even before the issuance, I was that forgettable aide in his life. The husband must sing the melody and the wife must play the accompaniment, he had said, but why must it be so? Shouldn’t the wife carry the melody once in a while, now and then?

If the seed of our disharmony had been sown in Vienna, then in Brooklyn, it had grown to be a giant, malignant tree.

Life was still tolerable, however, with poetry and Monto, my sweet Monto. He was the most intelligent boy in the entire school; after years of taking courses in German, he now read and studied lessons in English, and all the classes, math, science, and history, were easy for him. I packed peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches for him, which he grew to like, and walked him to school every day. When a bully at school taunted him about his looks and his German-accented English, I reported it to the principal. During the winter break, I took him to the movie theaters and Broadway shows. He was my American boy.