1
To the best of my recollection, I only went out with Chun Chi that one time, when I was nine. It was the happiest day of my uneventful childhood, and also the saddest.
She took me to see the flower lanterns that day. Her suggestion surprised and delighted me. Why would a blind woman want to see the lanterns? I couldn't understand. Perhaps she just wanted to make me happy. What bliss, an outing with Chun Chi. Aged nine, I cherished every scrap of time spent with her.
It was like a holiday. I wore the outfit Auntie Lan made for me at Spring Festival, and my shoes were new too, never worn outside the house. Chun Chi even had Auntie Lan steam a few red date buns for me to bring along, in case I got hungry. Flower Market Street was some distance from our home, so Chun Chi hired a horse-cart.
At the lantern festival, we walked close together, but she wouldn't let me help her. I bumped into her again and again in the ocean of people. Because she often went out to sea, Chun Chi's clothes smelt faintly of salt water, soft as seagrass. Even in the midst of so many people she seemed a little apart from the crowd. She never let anyone hold her arm, and I doubt passers-by realised she was blind.
The length of Flower Market Street was garlanded with coloured lanterns, and we were buoyed along by the current of people. Neither of us spoke, except for a moment when we passed by a little sweet stall. Hearing the stall-owner calling, Chun Chi stopped abruptly and thrust some money at him, returning with a skewer of candied melon. I was startled — in all these years, she'd never given me anything. A little later, she surprised me again with a paper lantern. As I took it from her hand, the flame looked like a trapped cricket, leaping in fright before settling down. Already I felt something was wrong.
I munched the candied melon and held the paper lantern high, like a good boy. Even as she was planning to leave me, I followed obediently behind her like a tame deer.
Four hours later, we arrived at the end of the street. Chun Chi said she was too tired to walk a step further. She sent me to the cherry blossom cake stall opposite. I took her money and, still holding the lantern high, stepped across the road. Halfway there, I turned to look - she was standing exactly where I had left her, beneath a particularly resplendent cluster of flower lanterns, the outer ring of chrysanthemums beaming down on her, making her look tiny and lost. Although she was trying hard to conceal it, there was a fearful look about her face. This lantern group was called the "drunken concubine" . I made sure I remembered the name, afraid of losing her.
When I got back with two toasty hot pieces of cake, Chun Chi was nowhere to be seen. I sensed immediately that she had left me, but still waited loyally. The weather changed, a fierce wind coming in from the north, and what had been a lovely moonlit night turned malevolent. The crowds thinned as the drunken concubine's lights flickered out, layer by layer. Even the vendors were putting away their trays of chestnut cake and eight-treasure meatballs, ready to go home.
It was only when the sky began to fill with flakes of snow that I acknowledged Chun Chi would not be coming back. She had abandoned me; she had brought me to see the lanterns in order to abandon me. At this thought, hot tears filled my eyes.
I followed the last of the crowds out of Flower Market Street. Extinguishing my paper lantern, I tossed it onto a heap of other torn and broken things. The shrieking north wind at my back, I picked a direction and ran, certain that home was in front of me. The red date buns in my shoulder bag grew hard, thumping against my back like little fists.
A thin layer of new snow made the road slippery. I lost count of how many times I fell, and still I ran. At each junction I asked someone the way. When it grew too late for passers-by, I began banging on doors and demanding directions from sleep-startled houseowners.
It was daybreak before I got home, the snow still falling fiercely. This winter was longer than expected. Auntie Lan opened the door and saw a hapless snowchild, holding an empty bag, shivering on the doorstep. She gabbled in joy, "You're back! I've been worried to death. Haven't slept a wink. How did you find your way home, such a little boy? Miss Chun Chi said she'd lost you." She pulled me towards her, brushing the snow from my body.
Chun Chi only emerged when the sun was high in the sky. She stopped in the middle of the hall as if she had heard me breathing and wanted to listen. I watched her carefully, only allowing myself to calm down when I decided she wasn't angry. I lowered my head and went back to slurping my bowl of Yangchun noodles. It was as if nothing had happened.
She couldn't have known that when she appeared, I began weeping at the sight of her, so close I thought I could hear her slow, stately heartbeat. To hide my tears I bent my head even lower, until my face was almost buried in the noodles.
We went back to normal after that. Before the winter was over, Chun Chi set out to sea again. When she left, as always, she reminded Auntie Lan to take good care of me.
2
For as long as I could remember, I'd known that even though Chun Chi took care of me, she was no relation of mine. She'd never told me where my real family was.
Auntie Lan said the first time she laid eyes on me, before my first birthday, my eyes were fearful. Chun Chi was gentler then, but smiled no more often than now. She put me in the arms of the wet nurse, Auntie Lan, then walked away without a word.
Before coming here, Auntie Lan had already heard of Chun Chi: a strange old maid living alone in a big house with no family of her own. Blind, but not content to stay quietly at home, tramping up and down between China and the South Seas on a great ship. To a respectable woman as bound up in rules and regulations as Auntie Lan, life on a boat sounded disorderly, especially for a blind woman who sang for a living. She thought Chun Chi must surely be tortured beyond endurance.
