Chapter 4
Lisan took a deep breath. It was better to tell her guardian about the job opportunity now and get it over with. The longer
she waited the more it would look as though she was trying to be evasive. But first, she would pay her respects at the small
family temple.
Tucked against the side of the house, the temple was very plain, a polished stone floor and a sloped roof held up by four
wooden columns. It was connected to the main house by a covered walkway. The name tablets honored Master Liu’s ancestors,
and Lisan burned incense to them as she had done since she was a child, an easy way to thank Master Liu for taking her into
his home. The deity she actually prayed to was the Goddess of Mercy, whose statue stood on an altar adjacent to the ancestral
name tablets. The wooden statue was lacquered a rich brown, its carved robes flowed as though lifted by a breeze. Her lips
curved up in a gentle, enigmatic smile that Lisan always found encouraging. At some point, someone had draped a string of
wooden beads around the Goddess, each bead the size of a walnut and carved with Buddhist symbols.
She took a handful of incense sticks from the box under the altar and lit them.
Kneeling, she quietly beseeched the Goddess that Master Liu would allow her to take this job.
She murmured her prayers until the sticks of incense burned down, then stood and straightened her tunic, steeling herself for the conversation to come.
When she entered the small dining room, she saw to her dismay that Fourth Uncle was with her guardian. She hadn’t heard him
arrive, but then, she had been praying in the temple. Out of all Master Liu’s brothers, this one intimidated her the most.
In any other family, one brother visiting another would be an unremarkable, normal event. However, Master Liu and his younger
brother preferred to stay out of each other’s way because they barely got along. Fourth Uncle couldn’t hide his exasperation
with Master Liu’s complete lack of interest in the family’s businesses; the two avoided each other whenever possible. Yet
they were of the same blood and would always protect each other.
Fourth Uncle turned to scowl at her, his thin face grumpier than usual. Lisan realized long ago that he appeared the elder
of the two only because he looked so stern all the time, and because he wore traditional clothing: brocade vests layered over
long scholar gowns, a skullcap, and cloth shoes, the sort of grandfatherly clothing someone much older would wear. He carried
a cane, an affectation since there was nothing amiss with his legs. Seen closer though, Fourth Uncle’s face was unlined, his
posture straight and unbent. She had never seen him in a suit, whereas Master Liu often dressed in Western-style clothing,
a habit acquired during his university days in France.
“Ah, Lisan,” Master Liu said, “my brother and I need to discuss some things in private. Cook is making up a tray for you to
take to your room.”
She nodded. “Yes, Master Liu. But there’s something I wish to tell you.” She avoided looking at Fourth Uncle. “May I come
see you once Fourth Uncle has left?”
“Tell me now,” he said, peering over his glasses at her. “We’ll be up quite late.”
Heart sinking, she took a deep breath. If Master Liu had even the tiniest inclination to let her take the job, Fourth Uncle’s presence would dampen it.
“I found a new job today, sir. As secretary to a foreign woman, Mrs. Thomas Stanton. They live out at the end of Brenan Road.
I would start on Monday.” She took a deep breath. “And I would have to live there.”
A frown marred her guardian’s face. “What nonsense! I had you leave the job at St. Clare’s and now you turn around and get
another one?”
She should’ve known better. “I thought it was just St. Clare’s you didn’t think was right.” It was the feeblest of tactics.
“Lisan, you’ve had more advantages than many girls of good family are allowed,” Master Liu said. “A modern, Western-style
education. Freedom to visit friends. Then you had an actual job at St. Clare’s. It’s enough.”
“Sir, you said that work experience would be good for me,” she mumbled, looking down at her feet.
“Well, you’ve had that experience and it’s enough,” he said, “so tomorrow you must telephone this woman, this Mrs. Stanton,
to let her know you can’t take the job after all.”
“At the end of Brenan Road?” Fourth Uncle said. “Is that Lennox Manor?”
“Yes, Fourth Uncle,” she said, “do you know the house?”
“I own it. It’s leased to an American, Mason Burnett.” Fourth Uncle turned to Master Liu, effectively dismissing Lisan. “Let’s
talk about this over dinner, Brother. You can give her a final decision in the morning.”
Master Liu paused, looked sideways at his brother, then waved his hand to indicate that Lisan should close the door on her
way out.
Her first impulse after leaving the room was to kneel in the corridor with her ear to the door, but there was no hope of eavesdropping without being noticed by one of the servants.
In fact, one of the house servants was approaching now, carrying a tray of covered dishes.
She stood against the wall to let him by, then ran upstairs to her room, pulled on a coat, and slipped outside.
It was a winter evening and silhouettes of the garden’s bare-branched trees stood out dimly in the gloom. She was the only
one outside since none of the servants would willingly brave the cold. The only person who might notice her was Old Mah the
gatekeeper, huddled inside his brick alcove. At this hour he would be downing his evening bowl of hot congee and stew, staying
close to the clay pot of hot coals that kept his little space warm. But just to be safe, she hurried along while keeping to
the shadows of trees and hedges, away from Old Mah’s line of sight.
The dining room’s window was at eye level, but she wasn’t going to risk looking in. Lisan sidled beside the window, staying
away from the light cast through its glass panes. She could hear conversation and hoped they were talking about her, because
she didn’t want to be outside any longer than necessary, not with a light rain starting to fall again.
“I still think ignorance is the best safety measure,” Master Liu was saying. “There’s no need for her to know. Not yet.”
Her? Did they mean her, Lisan? And if so, he wanted to keep her in ignorance. Of what?
Then Fourth Uncle’s voice from farther inside the room. She strained to hear but failed to make out his words.
“No, I haven’t heard from Mr. Zheng in a while,” Master Liu said. “I’m getting a bit worried. We can’t make that decision
until he sends word. It’s up to him.”
They couldn’t be talking about her now. Zheng had nothing to do with her. Again, Fourth Uncle’s voice. His reply unclear.
“Yes, that makes sense. Out of sight somewhere close but unexpected,” Master Liu replied, as though in agreement. “An unusual setting where no one would think to look.”
“But it’s also important to have someone there to keep an eye on things.” This time Fourth Uncle’s voice was louder and closer.
“I’ll take care of it. Burnett knows he hasn’t kept up his side of the bargain. He’ll agree.”
“What was the bargain?”
A latch squeaked, and she moved away from the window along the wall as quietly as she could and flattened herself on the other
side of a wooden trellis. The window opened and Fourth Uncle’s hand reached out to tap the bowl of his pipe against the stone
ledge.
“After I bought the house from Burnett, he leased it back from me for next to nothing. The bargain was that in return, he
would take on the cost of bringing it back to its original condition, both the mansion and the gardens. He hasn’t done a thing
so far.”
The window latch clicked shut. Lisan caught a glimpse of a blue sleeve as a house servant pulled dark velvet drapes across
the window.
She sighed and went back inside the house through the back door. Upstairs in her room, there was a covered tray on her desk,
and she sat down to eat, still puzzling over what she’d heard.
She couldn’t connect the scraps of sentences into a coherent discussion. She couldn’t even be certain they had been talking
about her, because they’d also mentioned Mr. Zheng, the man who worked as a buyer for Master Liu’s automobile import business.
It was unlikely he was part of any discussion about her. She shivered, her feet still cold from going outside in her thin
house shoes. She put on her nightgown and climbed under the blankets even though she was too restless to sleep.
As for what Master Liu had said about the freedom he allowed her, she had always thought it because he didn’t pay much attention to her.
She was free to visit her friends, go to parties, walk around Shanghai unchaperoned.
He didn’t even seem to care if this meant she would meet young men, her friends’ brothers and cousins.
Well, she was an orphan, so she had no brothers to escort her to functions.
And she didn’t have an amah following her anymore, not since she turned sixteen.
“You’re lucky, Lisan,” Ju Ming often said. “Your guardian is an absent-minded scholar and doesn’t care what you do since you’re
not really his daughter. My mother worries all the time about what others will think. I have to go everywhere with a maidservant
or one of my stupid brothers.” Ju Ming’s virtue had to be unassailable.
Turning over in bed to look out the bedroom window, Lisan reflected that without her small job at St. Clare’s, she felt irrelevant,
adrift and without purpose. Master Liu had never indicated whether he had any plans for her. We can’t make that decision until he sends word. He’d been referring to his agent Mr. Zheng, but it crossed her mind that it could apply just as well to her, because sometimes
she had an odd feeling that Master Liu was waiting for something to happen, for someone else to say the word before deciding
her future.