Later that afternoon, a cousin came by who spoke a little English. He offered to take Val and Nicole for a ride around town in his open wagon, pulled by a donkey. It was bumpy in the back and they had to cling to the sides, but Nicole squealed in delight. This life of poverty was new and exciting for her.

“Ha Suran seems very ill,” Val said to the cousin, whose name was Wang Suran.

“Yes, she is dying,” he told her in a matter-of-fact tone.

She had said as much in her letter, but Val was still shocked. “Can’t anything be done?”

He shook his head. “No, there is nothing. Our doctor will keep her comfortable until the end.”

Val shivered in the afternoon heat. She couldn’t accept it; she wouldn’t.

They turned onto a busy tree-lined avenue whose buildings had decorative facades and ornamental motifs. On one corner there was an enormous cathedral with grand frontal archways and multiple domes in green and gold.

“This is the Russian area,” her cousin said. “It’s called Daoli.”

It looked Russian, not that Val was an expert. One shop advertised stolle and piroshki, both types of pies, and the cars were Ladas and Volgas. The architecture was grand; clearly the people who lived there had money.

The cousin turned his wagon into a side street and pulled on the reins to bring the donkey to a standstill.

“There!” He pointed through a wrought-iron gate toward a mansion set in extensive grounds. “That was your father’s house.”

Val peered in full of curiosity; she hadn’t been expecting that. There were pillars alongside the entrance portico and tall, elegant windows over three floors. A curved driveway was flanked by carefully planted exotic flowers and shrubs, and a shiny racing-green sports car was parked outside.

“Good grief!” she exclaimed. He must have been one of the richest people in town. How had he come to marry her mother, who was one of the poorest? That seemed like an unequal match if ever there was one.

Chapter 31

I MET HIM IN A PARK,” HA SURAN SAID IN ANSWER TO Val’s question. “He was sitting on a bench crying. That was in 1925, when I was just sixteen. He spoke only a few words of Chinese while I spoke next to no Russian, but my heart went out to him. I sat down and put my arm around him and he clung to me, sobbing with such misery as I had never heard.”

“Why was he sobbing?” Val was mystified. She had never heard her father cry.