“But no one ever looked,” Jiang said. “No one gave the Chinese any thought-not until much later. Indians considered us below them because many of us were in the tannery business or owned leathergoods stores. That was okay with us. We had our own people, and we got from them everything we needed.”
Had the observer walked through the door and around the spirit wall though, he would have been astonished. Inside was a large and beautiful courtyard, the heart around which the rest of the house was structured, its windows and balconies looking down benignly on mango trees and roses. At the courtyard’s center, a fountain rose and fell. Parties were held here on full moon nights, with much drinking of wine and reciting of poetry, while children played catch around the sculpted lions.
Jiang and her brother never spoke about the courtyard-or about the other parts of the house. The banquet hall with the carved rosewood table that could seat twenty-four people. Their father’s bedroom, which had a large photograph of their dead mother and was still hung with the silks she had chosen as a bride, embroidered with herons and good-luck koi. His study with the antique calligraphy scrolls he loved to collect. The hidden safe in which, because he didn’t quite trust the banks, he kept gold coins, their mother’s jade and pearl jewelry, stacks of rupees, and important documents (all except one, which he would later realize was the most important). There was no reason to tell the other Chinese of these things. They already knew, and many of the children’s friends’ houses mirrored theirs. And as for the non-Chinese-the ghosts, as they were called-the children were taught from the beginning to stay away from them. To keep family secrets safe.
“I would be the first in our family to break this taboo,” Jiang said.
IT IS AN EARLY SPRING DAY IN 1962 IN CALCUTTA AND JIANG, twenty-five years old, stands in the doorway of her father’s shoe store inside New Market, under the sign that reads feng’s fine footwear. She is proud of the sign, of which she is the author. That sign had led to some heated arguments, her grandmother claiming that such an arrogant declaration would attract bad luck. Look at the other Chinese businesses with their noncommittal nomenclatures: lucky orchid, jade mountain, flying dragon. None of them draw attention to their family name by blazoning it over their storefront. But her father had taken Jiang’s side, the way he had ever since her mother had died when Jiang was five, leading her grandmother to lament that he was nothing but a soggy noodle in his daughter’s hands.
Secretly, Jiang admits that her grandmother is right. And thank God for it, because otherwise Jiang would not be standing inside Feng’s, breathing in the smell of shoe leather, which is her favorite smell in all the world. She would be married off like her classmates, toting babies on her hip. Instead, she manages the family business, in which her older brother Vincent, a dentist with a spacious office off Dharmatala Street, has shown no interest. Though he is too loyal to the family to say such a thing, Jiang suspects that he looks down on shopkeeping.
And that is just fine with Jiang, who loves every aspect of her work. She opens the store each morning so her father, whose gouty leg has been bothering him, can sleep in. She decides which designs to order. She checks the quality of the work sent in by the shoemakers and ruthlessly sends back pieces that do not meet her stringent standards. She visits every convent school in Calcutta and speaks to the appropriate personages so that their students will be directed here to purchase uniform shoes. (The priests and nuns are happy to recommend Feng’s. The quality is excellent, and it doesn’t hurt that Feng’s provides the holy ones with free footwear.) She haggles ruthlessly with the men from the Chinese tanneries in Tangra, squatting over the leather samples they have brought in. She quells, with a single glance (as she is doing now) the two salesgirls who have a tendency to dissolve into giggles at the slightest cause.
The cause, this time, is a young man who is approaching the store. Jiang notes that he is taller than the average Indian and clean-shaven, unlike the usual scruffy Bengali male who operates under the delusion that beards are the emblems of intellectualism. His blue shirt is crisply ironed, but his sleeves are rolled up. This gives him a holidaying look that Jiang finds surprisingly attractive, perhaps because her father and brother, both formal men, would never do something like that. She decides to attend to him herself and dismisses the disappointed salesgirls with a flick of her wrist.
The man is accompanied by a wide-eyed girl of about fourteen, who clearly adores him. Jiang guesses her to be his younger sister. Just as they enter the store, he bends and whispers something funny in her ear-or is it that the girl finds everything he says funny? She bursts into laughter, then claps a self-conscious palm over her mouth. The man pulls it away. “Stop that, Meena!” he says. “It’s okay to laugh!”
Jiang is struck by his words. Has anyone in her family ever encouraged her to abandon herself to laughter? Even her father, who loves her dearly, is a cautious man. Letting her work in the store is probably the riskiest act he has undertaken in his life. And this is a temporary recklessness, because sooner or later Jiang’s grandmother will wear him down into setting up a match for Jiang. As for her brother-Jiang pictures him in his starched white shirt and face mask (to keep out germs and the ubiquitous fishy odor that he insists pervades Bengali mouths) as he bends gingerly toward a patient. A sigh escapes her and she feels a twinge of jealousy toward the girl. Then the businesswoman in her takes over. A caring brother such as this man, she thinks, would buy high-quality shoes for his sister rather than look for a bargain.
As she expects, they are here to buy uniform shoes. For Loreto House, which is the poshest of the convent schools in Calcutta. The girl moves to the foot measurement stool, but already Jiang has called out to the salesgirl to bring A-22 and 23, and C-601 and 602, in youth size 3, narrow. Four pairs of shoes arrive, two black and primly laced for schooldays, two white with tiny silver buckles for holy days. They fit perfectly. The sister offers Jiang an awed glance, and even the young man is impressed. He chooses A-23 and C-602, which are the more expensive designs, and then as Jiang is about to lead them to the sales register, he tells her that he would like to buy another pair for Meena. Her first set of high heels. Would Jiang be so kind as to pick out something suitable, since she has such fine taste? Here he glances at her feet, at the elegant square heels she is wearing, their dark blue leather a perfect match for her pencil skirt. But his glance does not stop there. It flickers (but not disrespectfully, she decides) over the skirt, which shows off Jiang’s trim figure to advantage, over the lace blouse with the tiny puff sleeves, over her neck, her chin, her mouth, and comes to rest on her eyes.
Jiang is not totally inexperienced with men. She has attended numerous socials sponsored by the China Club, where she has had occasion to fend off dozens of ardent would-be suitors. But today, as she calls out for L-66 and P-24, in beige and dark brown, she finds that her throat is dry. Meena tries on the shoes; Jiang recommends the P-24 in brown; the brother declares that it is the perfect choice.
While a delighted Meena takes a wobbly walk around the store in her grown-up footwear, her brother hands Jiang his card. Jiang has never known a man who carries a card. She looks down at the white rectangle in her hand-how heavy, how smooth-to find that his name is Mohit Das, and that he is a manager-at such a young age!-at National and Grindlays Bank. He is thanking her for being so helpful; he is asking if she would like to go to Firpo’s with him after work tomorrow for coffee and dessert; he is asking for her phone number; he is asking her name. Jiang? he says. In his mouth it sounds elegant, more exotic than she could ever have imagined herself to be. At the end of the corridor, he turns to wave. Everything has happened so fast that she is almost too stunned to wave back. But she manages. She raises her hand-still holding his card-and smiles.