In the past, their separations had never lasted. It was like cutting water with a sword. They simply couldn’t resist each other. Hsu Chih-mo took the free plane ride three times a week to be with her. I learned from Hsu Chih-mo that the pilot let him borrow his farmhouse near the airport. Pearl described to me her visits to the farmhouse.
“I was like an addict running toward opium,” she said of her meetings with Hsu Chih-mo.
I kept finding out new details about the plane crash. On the day of the accident the weather was foggy. The pilot misjudged. The plane hit the mountaintop and crashed. One source said that the pilot often got absorbed in conversation with Hsu Chih-mo. They thought the accident might have taken place because the pilot was distracted.
The papers said that Hsu Chih-mo’s wife was so heartbroken that she vowed to quit opium. She declared to the public that she would devote her life to publishing all Hsu Chih-mo’s remaining work and letters.
Hsu Chih-mo’s funeral was held in Nanking.
I asked Dick, “Why not Peking? Why not Shanghai?”
“It was Hsu Chih-mo’s wish,” Dick replied. “He wanted his ashes to be scattered over the Purple Mountain and the Yangtze River.”
Had Hsu Chih-mo anticipated the possibility of his crash? I was astonished at the thought. Certainly the poet had had an active imagination. It wouldn’t have been unthinkable for him to have entertained the idea of a dramatic exit.
I remembered Hsu Chih-mo’s description of his last falling-out with Pearl. He visited me after days of drinking and sleepless nights. In fact, it was two days before he took the fatal flight.
“Will you give this to her?” he asked, holding out a package.
“She told you that this had to stop,” I responded.
“It will be the last time that I impose on you.”
“What is it?”
“My new book, a collection of poems.”
I gave him a she-won’t-read-it look.
“I don’t care. She inspired it.”
Mourners filled the streets of Nanking. White magnolias and jasmine were sold out. Dick and I had taken a train from Shanghai to Nanking. We arrived in the afternoon. Dick had sent Pearl a message before we left but received no response.
The Nanking crematorium was covered with white flowers. A photo of Hsu Chih-mo on the wall greeted the visitors. A banner that ran the length of the hall read, people’s poet rests in peace. Beyond the flower wreath was the closed casket. Dick had seen his friend’s body and said that Hsu Chih-mo would have wanted the lid closed.
No one in Pearl ’s house knew where she was. The maid said that her mistress had gone to the university. Eventually I thought of the pilot’s farmhouse.
I only had Pearl ’s vague description of the place, but I told Dick that I would look for her. Once outside the city, I was lost. It was a peasant child who pointed me in the right direction. The child had seen an airplane landing and taking off at an abandoned World War I-era military airport near the house. The spot was cradled by the surrounding hills. Waist-tall weeds grew in patches across the cracked runway.
The farmhouse was covered with wild ivy. Frogs and crickets ceased their singing as I walked to the door. Grasshoppers jumped over my feet, and one almost got into my mouth. Giant mosquitoes buzzed around my head.
The door was ready to fall from its hinges. It leaned to one side and was open. I let myself in. Once inside, I smelled the incense.
She was in an ocean-blue Chinese dress, embroidered with white chrysanthemums, the symbol of grief. She was on her knees lighting incense. She had been performing the traditional Chinese soul-guarding ceremony for Hsu Chih-mo. She had set up an altar with flowers and water.
“ Pearl,” I called.
She rose and came to me and collapsed in my arms.
Softly, I told her that I had come to deliver Hsu Chih-mo’s package.
She nodded.
I passed her the package and said, “I’ll be outside.”
When she emerged from the farmhouse, she looked like an Oriental, her eyes were so swollen from crying.
She asked me to take a look at the first page of Hsu Chih-mo’s book. The title was Lonely Night.
I had known Pearl ’s loneliness since we were children. She had always searched for her “own kind.” That didn’t mean another Westerner. It meant another soul that experienced and understood both the Eastern and Western worlds.
It was in Hsu Chih-mo that Pearl had found what she was looking for. With him she had not been lonely. If she were the cresting wave’s cheerful foam, Hsu Chih-mo would be the wrinkled sea sand beneath.
Ashes gathered at the bottom of the incense burner.
The sun set behind the hill and the room fell instantly dark.
In the future I would understand the connection between Pearl ’s accomplishments as a novelist and her love of Hsu Chih-mo. Over the eighty books she would create in her lifetime, she would carry on her affair with Hsu Chih-mo.
“Writing a novel is like chasing and catching spirits,” Pearl Buck would say of her writing process. “The novelist gets invited into splendid dreams. The lucky one gets to live the dream once, and the luckiest over and over.”
She was the luckiest one. She must have met with his spirit throughout the rest of her life. I will never forget the moment Pearl lit her last stick of incense. She composed a poem in Chinese bidding good-bye to Hsu Chih-mo.
Wild summer was in your gaze
Earth laughs in flowers
Lust in the chill of the grave
Wind’s hand touches
Mind bent with the weight of sorrow.
Orchid boat I board alone
Spring rain blurs the lantern light
Deep green are my parting thoughts of you
I considered myself lucky too. Although Hsu Chih-mo didn’t love me, he trusted me. It made our ordinary friendship extraordinary. There was commitment and devotion between us. Hsu Chih-mo had asked me to keep the original manuscripts of his poetry. His wife had threatened to burn them because in the pages she “smelled the scent of another woman.”
I became the keeper of Hsu Chih-mo’s secrets. I was so faithful that I didn’t even share those manuscripts with Pearl. I’d like to think that Hsu Chih-mo loved me in a special way. The most important lesson he taught me was that there was no one singular perspective on things or emotions in the universe-no one way of comprehending truth.
Hsu Chih-mo, the man, the child, the poet who smiled at all that passed beyond his understanding, would remain in my life. I possessed, literally, his poetry, although I wished that I had won his heart. After Hsu Chih-mo’s wife died, I began to release his poems one at a time. My intent was to make his legacy last. I created ambiguity and the public embraced it. “Let’s allow mystery to pervade,” I said to journalists.
Columnists speculated about what might have happened if Hsu Chih-mo had lived. The result was that the poems I released were printed in the newspapers. The public was hungry for Hsu Chih-mo. There were always new discoveries about his romantic life. He was more famous after death.
Over time, I became the collector of everything Hsu Chih-mo. In addition to his poems and letters, I sought copies of written materials about him, including the most frivolous gossip.
After Hsu Chih-mo’s death I moved to Nanking to be closer to Pearl and to his memory.