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Robert turned to God and started to attend William Martin’s sermons on the Sabbath. William, an American Presbyterian minister, the only minister living inside the Chinese city of Ningpo, was the one foreigner he trusted not to judge him. He did not want anything to do with the other ministers that lived across the river near the Presbyterian chapel. To him they were hypocrites. He knew he was being harsh in his judgment, but he didn’t care.
He knew there was a flaw in his reasoning. William crossed the river at least once a week to visit the other Presbyterian ministers, who gossiped. They would eventually talk about him as they had talked about Hollister and his concubine, Me-ta-tae. William would hear their opinions. They would call Ayaou a whore like they had done to Me-ta-tae.
Neither Me-ta-tae nor Ayaou were whores. In China, a concubine was not a whore. In China, a concubine was a second-class wife and had no power over her life or future. A concubine, like most women in China, was property to be bought and sold.
The truth was as complicated as China—something most foreigners didn’t want to learn and probably couldn’t understand if they tried.
Master Ping, Robert’s Mandarin language teacher, said it best. “The foreigners want to force China to become a Christian nation. That is impossible. China is a nation influenced by Laozi and Confucius, a way of life older than Christianity by almost a thousand years.
“Most Chinese will ignore the missionaries as if they were invisible; yet be polite to them when face to face. How can you force someone to believe anything when he dissolves once you let him go?
“If forced, a Chinese man will agree to almost anything. Then he will go about his business as if he’d said nothing. He will follow Taoism’s path and become the rock in the stream that lets the water flow by without struggling against it. By doing nothing, nothing is left undone. Meanwhile he will live by Confucius’s concept of a well-ordered society by being true to the five great relationships. There is no room for your Christ in China. To the Chinese, evil sprouts where the five great relationships do not exist, and everyone outside of the Middle Kingdom is considered a barbarian, a devil.”
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He wanted to share his thoughts and feelings with someone else besides Guan-jiah, his Chinese servant. He wasn’t sure William was the right choice, but there was no one else he could trust. William was one of the few foreigners that, like Robert, cared about the Chinese as a people with a culture worth preserving. It worried him that William might think less of him if he discovered the truth about Ayaou and Shao-mei.
He knew the risk he was taking by attending William’s services. During one conversation while Shao-mei was still alive, William asked if he was going to convert the girls to Christianity. Although Robert was a Christian, he didn’t want to change his girls. He wanted them to stay the way they were.
He felt as if a monster had moved inside his head. It had always been a struggle for Robert to hide his feelings. If William looked, he’d see the truth. William had the ability to look into another person’s eyes and see the pain. There would be questions. Robert was learning how to turn his face into a mask but he wasn’t ready yet. Since Shao-mei’s death, he had practiced using a mirror.
Until he achieved the ability to hide his feelings, he made sure to arrive every Sabbath shortly after William started his sermon. He sat at the rear of the room near the door. When the sermon ended, he left. Sitting on that bench at the back and listening to William’s sermons worked like a drug to soothe his nerves.
He enjoyed the sermons. The American started with a prayer to God asking Him to make sure he didn’t lead his Chinese flock astray. William didn’t tell them what to think or what to do as most foreigners did. He taught them to think and find a compromise between their ancient beliefs and Christianity; to fold one inside the other. When dealing with the Chinese, it was the best choice.
It wasn’t easy for him to avoid a man he considered a friend.
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Links to Reviews for "Our Hart"
Honorable Mention in General Fiction
