Joss and Gold

Fifteen

Fifteen In the Iru., two weeks, everything had been excruciatingly important, every detail potentially dangerous and to be overcome by her most focused attention. Li An could not spare the time for even a cursory consideration of Chester's request for another meeting with Suyin-Suyin who now refused to sleep without her mother present in the house. Suyin, Li An was determined, would be saved the pain of another departure. She had asked Chester not to attend the funeral. After all, she explained to Ellen, who had not asked, he had never met Grandma Yeh. In all the time she had lived with them, Grandma Yeh had never asked who Suyin's father might be. Li An sometimes had the queer feeling that Grandma Yeh fully believed Henry was Suyin's father. She seemed to have been unaware of any oddness in the circumstances of Suyin's birth, as if it had been only natural for Suyin to look as she did, unChinese and mixed. Chester had no place in Grandma's imagination , and she would not have welcomed him at her funeral. Through her grief-the shocking acknowledgment late at night of all that Grandma Yeh had meant for her and Suyin, and the almost paralytic selfish fear at the loss ofher constancy in their lives-Li An knew she had to continue as the editor in chief of BioSyn-Sign. Although the obituary informed the world about her loss, she could not carry the news of it with her into the office, where any slip in the shares would have been interpreted as a contamination. LANDING Only a generation ago, a death in the family would have meant that she would not be welcomed back into the office for at least a month, until rituals and time had purified the taint of ill fortune. She would not have been permitted to step over the threshold of another house, for death was a contagion, a stagnant water that the survivors carried like dumb vessels and that they could spill onto the healthy and fortunate. She could almost believe this, for tears, raw and plenty, lay close near her eyes. But she remained dry-eyed in the office. The newsletter depended on her editorial eye, and like her copyediting pencils, she kept herself sharpened to a point at work. BioSyn-Sign appeared when it was supposed to, mailed out on the usual date, delivered to the CEO's desk exactly on the usual morning and at the usual time. The major news was that the threatened recession in Germany had grown less threatening at the second quarter report of a steady growth in East-West trade. But a more major news item was quietly reported in the monthly snippets: Singapore and Israel had signed an understanding of mutual cooperation in the development of military aircraft. This time Ang Swee called to congratulate her on the tweaking of the company logo, a matter of some tense negotiation with the board of directors, who agreed it was time for something new but who did not want to unsettle anything when the company was doing well. He had warned her casually during a brief update, "Change and security, very tricky to have both at the same time, eh, Li An? But that is the Asian way, you know. Not like Americans. Americans never fear because they have so much land, so many opportunities, they can throw away and still be safe. For Americans, change is no change because so little risk. America is the lucky country. But we are not so lucky. We must always be sure that our change means more security. We never change for change sake but for added security, added advantage." She knew he was telling her to be careful about what kind of new logo she would produce for the newsletter. Transforming the two Ss to suggest the shapes of the dragon and the phoenix was a simple matter of computer graphics, and a reader had to be observant to make out their shapes. 259 JOSS and GOLD But once the eye saw the sinuous figures it could never not see them again. The logo suggested something European and medieval, yet it was clearly Chinese in origin, and Li An knew she could count on every board member to understand the dragon's harmonic meanings and the phoenix's regenerative energies, from the failure of...