The Stone Monkey

could assure his own father that the Chang line would continue. But Mei-Mei’s sadness at not having a daughter had been a source of sorrow for him too. And so Chang had found himself in a curious position for a Chinese man of a certain age—hoping for a girl, should Mei-Mei have gotten pregnant again. As a persecuted dissident and flouter of the one-child rule, the party could not have punished him more for having yet another child so he was fully prepared to try to give his wife a daughter.
    But she had been very ill during her pregnancy with Ronald and it had taken her months to recover from the delivery. She was a slight woman, no longer young, and thedoctors urged, for her health, that she not have any more children. She had accepted this stoically, as she had accepted Chang’s decision to come to the Beautiful Country—which virtually precluded the chance that they could adopt a daughter, because of their illegal status.
    Out of this terrible plight, though, had apparently come some good to balance the hardship. The gods or fate or the spirit of some ancestor had bestowed Po-Yee on them, the daughter that they could never have, and restored the harmony within his wife.
    Yin-yang, light and dark, male and female, sorrow and joy.
    Deprivation and gift . . .
    Chang rose and walked to his sons and sat down to watch the television with them. He moved very slowly, very quietly, as if any abrupt motion would shatter this fragile familial peace like a rock dropping into a still morning pond.

III
    The Register of the Living and the Dead

    Tuesday, the Hour of the Rooster, 6:30 P.M .,
    to Wednesday, the Hour of the Rat, 1 A.M .
    In Wei-Chi . . . the two players facing the empty [board] begin by seizing the points they believe to be advantageous. Little by little the deserted areas disappear. Then comes the clash between the conflicting masses; struggles of defense and offense develop, just as happens in the world.
    —The Game of Wei-Chi

Chapter Twenty-three
    His wife was getting worse.
    It was now early evening and Wu Qichen had sat for the past hour on the floor next to the mattress and bathed his wife’s forehead. His daughter had painstakingly brewed the herbal tea he’d bought and together he and the girl had fed the hot liquid to the feverish woman. She’d taken the pills too but there seemed to be no improvement.
    He leaned forward again and wiped her skin. Why wasn’t she getting better? he raged. Had the herbalist cheated him? And why was his wife so thin to start with? She wouldn’t have gotten sick on the voyage if she’d eaten right, gotten more sleep before they left. Yong-Ping, a fragile, pale woman, should have forced herself to take better care of herself. She had responsibilities . . . .
    “I’m frightened,” she said. “I don’t know what’s real. It’s all a dream to me. My head, the pain . . . ” The woman began muttering and finally fell silent.
    And suddenly Wu realized that he was frightened too. For the first time since they’d left Fuzhou, a lifetime ago, Wu Qichen began to think about losing her. Oh, there were many things about Yong-Ping that he didn’t understand. They had married impulsively, without knowing much of each other. She was moody, she was sometimesless respectful than his father, say, would have tolerated. But she was a good mother to the children, she was dependable in the kitchen, she deferred to his parents, she was clever in bed. And she was always ready to sit quietly and listen to him—to take him seriously. Not many people did.
    The thin man glanced up and saw their son standing in the doorway. Lang’s eyes were wide and he had been crying.
    “Go back and watch television,” Wu told him.
    But the boy didn’t move. He stared at his mother.
    The man stood. “Chin-Mei,” he snapped. “Come here.”
    The girl appeared in the doorway a moment later. “Yes, Baba?”
    “Bring me some of the new clothes for your mother.”
    The girl disappeared and returned a moment later with a pair of blue stretch pants and a T-shirt. Together they dressed the woman. Chin-Mei got a clean cloth and wiped her mother’s forehead.
    Wu then went to the electronics store next door to the apartment. He asked the clerk where the closest hospital was. The man told him that there was a big clinic not far away. He wrote down the address in English, as Wu asked; he’d decided to spend the money on a taxi to take his wife there and needed the written note to