“Sounds like the start of a beautiful friendship.”

“Yes, but it’s not enough for Mei-lin.”

“Why? It turns out they don’t get along?”

“Oh, they do, really well. She loves it when Rosalie comes. Sometimes she brings Paul, and they laugh even more when it’s the three of them. They sit in the garden and drink lemonade and eat red bean cakes.”

“Rosalie doesn’t like red bean cakes.”

“Paul loves them, though. I wonder if he still does? We could go back to New Jersey and take him some.” I flipped through the papers to my next flag. “Okay, this is a few weeks later. Rosalie’s been coming and going, and the general dropped by once more, with his son.”

“C. D.”

“Correct. She and the kid hit it off right away-he’s a live wire, impulsive, but well-mannered and fun. Besides that, nothing much happens. Kai-rong takes her to the theater once, and to dinner a couple of times. She likes it, but each time it reminds her how stuck she is. Still, she’s in a pretty good mood. Then things start to go downhill.”

“Why?”

“Because: ‘Father and Kai-rong had an argument today. I didn’t mean to overhear, but I couldn’t help it. I was in the garden practicing calligraphy. Teacher Lu is coming tomorrow and I haven’t touched my brushes all week! I told Number One Boy to set my table by the acacia tree. Kai-rong and Father were in Father’s study. They must not have seen me through the blossoms. I’d have left, but they might have noticed me getting up, and they’d have been so embarrassed!’ ”

“Considerate of her.”

“As you say. ‘I tried to concentrate on my brushstrokes, but I couldn’t shut out their raised voices. I didn’t make out everything, but I heard enough to know that Kai-rong doesn’t like General Zhang. I don’t know why-he’s so handsome and cultured! But Kai-rong doesn’t want him coming here. Father thinks the general’s connections among the Japanese could be helpful to us. Kai-rong said his connections to the Japanese are exactly the problem, and Father snapped at him in that tone he uses with me all the time, but almost never with Kai-rong. He said Kai-rong’s never been practical and obviously there’s no reason to hope he’s changed.

“ ‘But apparently he has changed, because I heard the next part clearly, and I didn’t like it at all: Kai-rong’s leaving soon! He wants to go to the north, on business! He says there are opportunities there. I hoped Father would stop him, but though he’s skeptical, he’s pleased Kai-rong’s showing an interest in business-something he never cared about before! So he’s letting him go. When I heard that, my hand jerked and my calligraphy was ruined. What will I do? To be locked up here again without even Kai-rong’s news from the world? No conversation, no outings, even the few I’ve been allowed? Just Father, Amah, calligraphy, embroidery-I can’t bear it! How can he leave again so soon? How can he leave me here to suffocate like this?’ ”

As I flipped the pages, I waited for a wisecrack from Bill, but it didn’t come. So I read the next flagged entry, from two weeks later. “ ‘It’s been a week since Kai-rong left. No one’s come here. The sun’s an exhausted orange glow in an unchanging gray sky. The nights are moonless, starless. The air’s thick with moisture but there’s no rain, just languid drizzle. A storm with wind, lightning, thunder-even a monsoon, oh how welcome that would be! But the air feels as I do: trapped, weary, barely able to move.’ ”

That brought the delayed wisecrack. “Uh-oh. Prose getting purple there. Wonder whose books those were that Rosalie brought?”

“Not Hemingway’s, I bet.” I lowered the papers and looked out the window. The sky over Long Island seemed a changeless gray itself. I couldn’t argue with Bill about Mei-lin’s heavyhandedness, though I had a feeling she wasn’t exaggerating how she felt. “She snaps out of it a little whenever Rosalie comes, and she’s really touching when she hears about Rosalie’s terrible news. But generally, she’s so desperate that the world’s going on without her, she doesn’t focus on much else. How close are we?”

“To Lake Grove? Another half hour, I think.”

“This is tiring, this reading and translating. And I want to get to the part I haven’t read. Can I paraphrase like you did? You can probably guess, anyway.”

“Kai-rong keeps coming and going, General Zhang keeps showing up, coincidentally when Kai-rong’s out of town, and finally he asks her to marry him?”

“He doesn’t ask her anything. He asks her father. Her father’s delighted and so’s she. She can’t wait to have her own home, her own servants, her own car to go wherever she wants in. Rosalie’s not enthusiastic. She wants Mei-lin to hold out until she falls in love. Mei-lin’s impatient with that whole idea. In fact she’s surprised to hear it from a woman in Rosalie’s position, which she admits is worse than hers in a lot of ways.”

“A lot of ways? What ways isn’t it worse in?”

“Rosalie can come and go anywhere she wants in Shanghai. Don’t worry, the irony isn’t lost on me.”

“It is on Mei-lin, I’ll bet.”

“Entirely. So Kai-rong rushes back and tries to stop her from marrying the general, but their father orders him to shut up and get with the program. In the end he doesn’t have much choice. After a certain amount more grousing, he behaves like a filial son and brother and stays in Shanghai for the wedding banquet. Which apparently was the social event of the season.”

“Was it, um, ‘grand’?”

“You liked the Cathay, you’d have loved this. Billowing silk tents in the garden, red lanterns everywhere, mounds of lilies. Clear sky, full moon. A ten-course banquet with gallons of whiskey, and champagne supplied by the Frenchman. A Chinese orchestra taking turns with the Filipino jazz band from the nightclub at the Cathay.”

“So she finally got to dance to it.”

“She did. It’s not traditional at Chinese weddings for the bride to dance, but strictly speaking it’s not traditional for her to have met the groom, either.”

“That’s why there are so many of you! Because brides don’t know what they’re getting into.”

“You’re not so far wrong. Anyway, Rosalie and Paul were there, and Kai-rong’s school friends, and the Feng sisters. In fact, most of Shanghai, it sounds like. The best man was the general’s German buddy, Major Ulrich.”

“They have a best man at Chinese weddings?”

“This was a mixed affair, a civil ceremony with a judge and then the banquet. Very modern. Mei-lin danced like crazy. She danced with her husband, and his son-”

“That must have been cute.”

“He’d had lessons and could do all the new dances, which the general couldn’t. And she danced with Major Ulrich, and with Kai-rong. And she noticed Rosalie dancing with Kai-rong, more than once. And she also noticed that neither Rosalie nor Kai-rong seemed able to stop smiling while they danced. Which she puts down to happiness for her.”

“Well, it was her wedding day.”

That was not only not a wisecrack, it was downright sympathetic.

“Plus,” he added, “she was no doubt tipsy again.”

“Oh, good. I was afraid you were getting all warm and fuzzy on me.”

“What? When?”

“Never mind. You understand it takes her three or four days to report on all this.”

“Because it takes her that long to get over the hangover.”

“Partly that,” I conceded. “But also, no one had prepared her for her wedding night.”

“Wasn’t that her Amah’s job?”

“Her amah just told her she wouldn’t like it but it wouldn’t kill her.”

“There’s a ringing endorsement.”

“Can I get points for not making any of the obvious remarks?”

“How many do you want?”

“How many do I need to make up for not bringing you a written translation?”

He threw me a quick glance. “That’s Chinese guilt working. I hadn’t even noticed.”

“There’s no such thing as Chinese guilt. Anyway, Mei-lin might have been better off just with her amah’s advice. At least she wouldn’t have been looking forward to it and she wouldn’t have felt duped. Unfortunately, the Feng sisters told her it was fun.”