Tinseng’s patter accompanied them through the queue into their taxi. In the quiet of the backseat, Yukying finally felt comfortable enough to ask, “Tell us a little about yourself, Shan Dao. How did you meet Tinseng?”
“It’s a funny story, actually—” Tinseng started, only to be cut off by Cheuk-Kwan.
“She didn’t ask you.”
“I tell it better!”
“A mutual acquaintance,” Shan Dao explained to Yukying, having clearly picked up on the need to ignore the brotherly sniping. “She was hosting a salon on Chinese poetry and invited us both.”
“You don’t write poetry,” Cheuk-Kwan accused Tinseng.
“But I have plenty of opinions about it,” Tinseng chirped.
“Are you a poet, Shan Dao?” Yukying asked before Cheuk-Kwan took that bait.
“No. I translate professionally. I was asked to translate Mao’s Ode to the Plum Blossom into French. Tinseng . . .” With the slightest pause, during which his gaze shifted toward Tinseng, he continued, “did not agree with my choices.”
“You’d lost the intent,” Tinseng said.
“The intent was there. So was the form.”
“Why bother trying to keep it within the confines of a 词牌名 when it’s a translation?1 The syllabic parallelism is totally lost. And your audience was French. You had the opportunity to sway them away from pessimism and say something about endurance, the way Mao intended, but instead you had them arguing about metre.”
“Metre is the vehicle by which the poet sways,” Shan Dao rejoined haughtily. “Otherwise, it would have been a speech.”
Yukying and Cheuk-Kwan exchanged a look; they could imagine, suddenly, exactly how this first meeting went.
“Who won the argument?” Cheuk-Kwan asked.
“Neither,” Shan Dao said at the same time Tinseng crowed, “I did.”
Shan Dao turned fully in his seat to glare, which delighted Tinseng. Yukying watched with interest; before he’d left, Tinseng had been muted, withdrawn in a way that had worried her. But here he was, the Tinseng from her earliest memories, the full brightness of the sun in his smile.
“It seems like Paris treated you well,” she observed.
“It did,” Tinseng nodded thoughtfully, “but I’m glad I’m leaving. I missed you too much. Not you though.” He knocked his knee against Cheuk-Kwan’s, who immediately retaliated with a smack to the head. Shan Dao watched coolly as Tinseng tried to flick Cheuk-Kwan’s ear; Cheuk-Kwan blocked, hitting his brother’s arm away.
“They missed each other,” Yukying explained apologetically. “A-Kwan, A-Seng, you’re being very rude to our guest.”
“How can I be rude when he’s not my guest? He’s my very close friend.” Tinseng’s sly grin foreshadowed trouble. “He’ll be invited to all my lectures.”
“Wait, what? Lectures?” Cheuk-Kwan’s indignation filled the car. “Since when? I thought you were coming home because you’d quit your job.”
“I did quit my job, but I know how much you’d complain about me not earning my keep, so I called in a favor and got a position at that new university opening up. Turns out, they needed to fill some adjunct positions last minute. Now you don’t have to worry about me. In fact, I’ll probably be able to move out of Yukying-jie’s after just a few months. Aren’t I amazing? You’re welcome.”
So that hadn’t changed, she noticed sadly, but it had probably been too hopeful to think Tinseng would come back understanding how valued he was. He’d always struggled with his place in his adopted family, though some of the pressure had let up after their mother had been killed in ’49. Wu-furen had refused to acknowledge that she couldn’t fight the nation’s tide, and sometimes Yukying quietly thought it had been a little too easy for her mother to die with the old China rather than adapt to the new one. Tinseng was the opposite: he was ever adaptable, a survivor no matter how he had to change. Even at twelve, Tinseng had been the one to keep them all alive and safe until their father could arrange to have them secreted out of China and established in Hong Kong. But they’d lost everything, and between the loss of his wife, his familial land, and his fortune, their father had never recovered; it had been up to the three children to learn how to survive.
Now Tinseng and Cheuk-Kwan were twenty-six, and she was an ancient thirty. She wondered if they’d learned any other lessons since those days, or if they were still just surviving.
The line for the check-in process stretched down the ramp at the dock. Passports had to be checked, rules explained, welcomes extended. Tinseng stood ahead with his friend, having walked briskly with his luggage from the taxi. Yukying moved a little slower, a bout of pneumonia during childhood having permanently damaged her lungs. Her younger brother lingered with her, eager for an opportunity to complain out of Tinseng’s earshot.
“You know what’s going to happen now. We’re not going to see him the whole trip. And what about this Shan Dao? Did you hear his accent?”
“A-Kwan,” she scolded sharply, and lowered her voice to only reach his ear. “It’s good that A-Seng brought him along. It’s good that he trusts us to introduce . . . important people in his life. He needs us,” she reminded him, “to see things he might not see.”
The glance they exchanged was a promise between them. If Tinseng was a survivor in some ways, he was his own worst enemy in others. When Yukying had heard Tinseng was moving to Paris, she’d been relieved: she’d caught him only six months before with another man, and his indiscretion had terrified her. France was the only place she knew where sodomy wasn’t a criminal act. Of course, he would still be a Chinese man in a European country, but in one part of his life, at least, he could live a little freer. If she had to lose him, it would be worth the sacrifice if he gained that for himself.
Cheuk-Kwan hadn’t seen it that way. When Cheuk-Kwan had found out about Tinseng’s proclivities, Yukying had only just stopped him before he’d confronted Tinseng; she’d made him promise not to say anything until he could discuss it calmly. By the time he’d been ready, Tinseng had already left for a five-year appointment in Paris. Cheuk-Kwan had seen it as abandonment, an invective against their family. Cheuk-Kwan had always held Tinseng on a pedestal, from which height Tinseng had seemed to control everything. When Tinseng had left, that image shattered, and with Tinseng fallen from his pedestal, it meant he was just Cheuk-Kwan’s brother—and that Cheuk-Kwan might be just as responsible for their relationship as Tinseng.
“I’ve been worried too,” she soothed with a hand on his arm. “But let’s not rush to judgment. Let’s try to get to know Shan Dao, OK?”
Cheuk-Kwan looked away. Concern hovered over him like clouds rolling in.
“You don’t know,” Cheuk-Kwan said after a few moments of silence. “Maybe they are just friends.”
Yukying made a noise that, uncharitably, could be considered a snort. It was so immodest and unlike her that Cheuk-Kwan whipped around, but all he caught was a knowing smile aimed his way.
“I don’t think so,” she said gently. “I recognize the look.”
“Ugh. I thought one of you getting married was bad.”
“Laurence has grown on you,” she teased. “Don’t deny it.”
“I’d rather die,” he said grimly, then shot her a hesitant look. “You really think . . .”
They watched for a while as the line moved. Tinseng kept glancing over at his friend, his expression the same each time. Yukying wondered at it: She’d never seen Tinseng so unreserved about his true feelings before. Unrestrained, yes; he’d always been wild and impulsive. But those had been games to him, ways to entertain himself as he’d waited for the rest of the world to catch up. The look on Tinseng’s face now was far from a game.
