That night, long after Lee had left, all the cricketers had gone home, and both Tak-Tam and Yim-Fong were fast asleep, Cheung awoke. He got out of bed and went upstairs to the hallway where the Baptista paintings hung and contemplated the Jockey Club and the invisible village behind the row of trees. Baptista was not English. He’d stood to gain nothing by making Wong Nai Chung disappear. Why, thought Cheung, do we try to forget about the things we’ve lost? It only made the sorrow amorphous and continuous. Wouldn’t it be better to hang on to the lost object? If he were a painter, he’d paint the village over and over again until it was transformed. But into what? A place of luck and joy. Ha! A jockey club. Maybe Baptista wasn’t such a fool after all. Still, Cheung could not shake his sorrow.

He returned to his bedroom and kissed his sleeping wife. Yim-Fong woke up, and smiled at him. Gently, she kissed him back. He fell onto her. But as their bodies moved, he was stirred, then overtaken by heavier emotions—rage and grief. He poured them into her, more violently than he intended.

CHAPTER 19GO-BETWEEN

July 16, 1937

I’d never liked being the go-between for my father and my sister. But playing mouthpiece for both of them in this battle of weddings was absolute murder. We all knew the bride was no longer a virgin. What in Holy Mary’s name was the point? In the meantime, I was the target of rage for each one as proxy for the other.

No one knows more about people than those who serve them. But why should I have had to serve them? Was I not an equal member of this family? I was not a man, like my father. I was not beautiful, like my sister. Did this mean I had to play second fiddle to them both? I gritted my teeth and searched within for what Professor Hughes called “sweetness and light.” I remembered that while I was called into the role of messenger, Emily’s position as the beautiful but unfortunate woman over whom men staged weddings and wars was only kind of enviable. Professor Hughes had taught us about Helen of Troy. In Helen’s shoes, I think I’d have oscillated between ecstasy and resentment over being so much loved and desired, but also so much burdened by familial and national pride and shame. For Emily, there was nothing outside the three nodes of marriage, sex, and death. And me? I ran around the bases of these three poles without ever landing on any of them. I’d die eventually, I guessed. But not having lived, as she was living, would my death count for anything? If not, might I still receive some portion of immortality? For sharing Emily’s story with some future descendent? Ha ha! What a laugh.