Madwoman On the Bridge and Other Stories (20 page)

After that, it was just rain and snow swirling down
onto the Shanghai streets, all the way until my father
climbed onto the short-distance train, which was the
abrupt conclusion to my Shanghai trip. Also, the wretched
weather made the afternoon darken prematurely, and
my impressions of the road home are of gloom and cold.

The carriage was almost entirely empty, and every
wooden seat seemed to exude its own chill. We started
off sitting in the middle of the carriage, but one of the
glass windows had been shattered and so my father led
me to the back, near the bathroom, where the faint smell
of piss could be detected, but it was warmer. I recall that
when my father took off his blue woollen tunic suit to
drape over me, I asked him, ‘Isn’t there anyone on the
train? Just us two?’ and my father said, ‘The weather’s
bad today and it’s a slow train, so there aren’t so many
people.’

Just as the train was about to depart, four men suddenly
boarded. Carrying with them the outside chill they burst
into the carriage; the three young men were wearing
padded army overcoats, and only the old one, who was
wearing a gauze mask, had on a blue cotton tunic suit
like my father’s. As soon as they came in I knew that it
was snowing hard, for I saw that their hats and shoulders
were covered in large flakes.

This is what I wanted to tell you about: these sudden
arrivals, especially the man in the mask, who was
constantly being pressed and jostled by the three others.
They passed us and chose the seats in the middle of the
carriage, where we had been sitting before; they didn’t
seem to mind the cold. I saw the old man sitting between
two of his companions. He began to turn his head
towards us, but before he could finish this movement
his grey head was jerked back by something. Across two
rows of seats, I could see his stiff back; one of the others
took his hat off to shake the snow off, but that was all – I
didn’t hear them speak a single word.

‘Who are they?’ I asked my father.

‘I don’t know.’ My father, too, watched detachedly, but
he wouldn’t let me stand up to have a closer look, just
saying, ‘Sit down. You’re not allowed to walk over there;
and don’t stare.’

The train sped through the wind and snow of 1969,
along open country. Outside the window was almost
nocturnal darkness, and a thin cloth of snow already lay
on the idle winter fields. My father told me to look at the
snowy landscape outside, so I peered out of the window.
Suddenly, I heard a sound in the car. It was the four of
them standing up; the three wearing overcoats clustered
around the old man in the mask. They walked into the
aisle towards us and I quickly realized they were heading
to the bathroom. What astonished me, however, was the
man in the mask. He was being propped up and pushed
forward and as he glanced from behind his companions’
shoulders, he was staring at my father and me. I saw his
tears clearly; the old man in the mask had eyes filled with
tears!

Although my father pulled me forcefully towards the
window, I nevertheless saw how three of them entered
the bathroom, and that one of them was the masked old
man. One of the young men stayed outside the door; he
wasn’t much older than my brother but he threw me a
frosty glance that frightened me. I drew back my head
and quietly told my father, ‘They’ve gone into the bathroom.’

Three of them went into the bathroom, but the old man
in the mask did not come back out, only the two young
men. Then I heard the three men in overcoats whisper to
one another as they stood by the carriage links. I couldn’t
help but turn my head towards them, and what I saw
was how the three men in overcoats, one of whom was
straightening out his collar to protect his ears, opened
the door to the next carriage and disappeared from my
field of vision.

I didn’t know what had happened to the old man with
the mask. I wanted to have a look in the bathroom, but
my father wouldn’t let me move a muscle, saying, ‘Sit
down. You can’t go anywhere.’ It seemed to me that my
father’s manner and voice were very nervous. I don’t
know how much time went by before the conductor led
a cultural propaganda team into our carriage, carrying
drums, gongs and copper cymbals. Only then did my
father relax his grip on my hand, which he had been
holding throughout. He sighed with relief and asked,
‘You need to go to the bathroom? I’ll take you.’

The bathroom door was unlocked and as we opened
it a fierce gust made me shiver. With one glance, I saw
that the little bathroom window was open and that wind
and snow were blowing in. There was no one in the bathroom.
There was no masked old man.

‘The old man isn’t here,’ I cried out. ‘Why isn’t he in
here?’

‘Who’s not here?’ my father asked, avoiding my eyes.
‘They went into another carriage.’

‘The old man isn’t here. He was in the bathroom,’ I
yelled. ‘How come he isn’t here?’

‘He went into another carriage. Don’t you have to pee?’
my father said, looking at the swirling snow outside the
window. ‘It’s so cold here; hurry up and take a pee, all
right?’

I did have to pee, but suddenly I saw that on the wet,
grimy floor was a playing card. If I tell you, no doubt
you won’t believe me, but it was a Q of Hearts. As soon
as I saw it, I knew that it was a Q of Hearts, the very Q of
Hearts I had lost and been unable to find. I’m sure you
can imagine what I did – I bent down and picked up that
card from the ground or, to be more accurate, I scraped
it up and wiped the muddy snow off it. I waved it at my
father, ‘The Q of Hearts! It’s the Q of Hearts, the one I
needed!’ I remember how my father’s expression altered
rapidly – astonishment, confusion, shock and fear – but
in the end it was nothing but fear; in the end my terrified
father snatched the Q of Hearts out of my hand and threw
it with one gesture out the window, yelling confusedly,
‘Throw it out! Hurry! Don’t just hold it, blood! There’s
blood on the card!’

I would wager that there wasn’t one trace of blood on that
card, but on the other hand, it isn’t as if my father had
been speaking deliriously, either.

That 1969 trip to Shanghai acquired in my memory
a mysterious postscript – the old man in the mask, the
Q of Hearts. Through my entire childhood, my father
refused to discuss what happened on the train, and for
that reason I’ve always believed that the man on the train
must have been mute. Only a few years ago, when my
father was able to talk about events now long in the past,
did he correct this error in my memory. ‘You were still a
kid then, you couldn’t tell,’ he said. ‘He wasn’t mute. No
way he was a mute. You didn’t see it, but the mask was
moving – his tongue, his tongue had been . . . they had
. . . had . . .’

My father didn’t finish his sentence. He couldn’t; his
eyes filled with tears. I didn’t need to say anything more,
either, and the truth is that I don’t much like to dwell on
these things any more than he does. Over the years I have
often recalled the tears of the old man on the train, and
when I recall those tears, I suffer.

In any case, the Q of Hearts was just a card. I still like
to play poker with my cards, and every time I pick up a
Q of Hearts, I feel like the card has some kind of singular
import – no matter whether it’s a good move or not, I
don’t let the card out of hand lightly. I don’t know why,
but I’m used to playing it last.

Yongshan was taking her son back to Licheng to visit
relatives, but when she reached her brother Yongqing’s
house, she discovered he had recently moved away.

Some of her relatives had passed on, others had left
the city, and yet more had simply grown distant. Her
younger brother was the last of her close relatives in
Licheng, so as you can imagine, his disappearance deeply
embarrassed Yongshan in front of her son. Her brother’s
home was totally empty – Yongshan could see that
through the round hole where the lock had been. The
narrow parlour was quite dark and the only thing that
could be clearly seen was a broken white toilet; perhaps
it had broken when they’d attempted to take it out, so
her brother had left it there, a shining white ring. Out
of sheer disappointment or fury, Yongshan beat heavily
on the door. But a few knocks was not enough to calm
her frustration, so she switched hands and beat the door
even more. Her son let go of the rolling suitcase and sat
down on it.

‘They’ve moved out. What’s the point of knocking?’
he said, looking calmly at his mother. ‘Don’t your hands
hurt when you go at it like that?’

A neighbouring couple came out of their apartment,
obviously confused about the connection between these
two people and their former neighbour. The man asked
her, ‘Are you related to him?’

‘I’m his sister,’ she answered.

The woman standing behind her husband looked
Yongshan over and said, ‘You mean cousin? On which
side?’

Yongshan, understanding the meaning of the couple’s
doubtful looks, answered quietly, ‘Not cousin. I’m his
older sister.’ She blushed as soon as she finished speaking,
for she knew her tone made it sound like she was
lying. The neighbours asked no further questions, but
suggested to Yongshan that she should call her brother’s
cell phone. Her answer was, ‘I called the number, but
it’s out of service. Maybe I wrote it down wrong.’ The
woman then suggested that Yongshan enquire at the gas
company, because if she remembered correctly that was
where he had worked. Yongshan smiled confidently and
corrected her, ‘Not the gas company; the water company.
I know that. My brother called me back in January to
wish me a happy new year.’

Then they went downstairs. Her son took the suitcase
and walked behind his mother, but rather than rolling it
properly he began to drag it so that it grated against the
cement steps. ‘You don’t have to take it out on the suitcase!’
Yongshan shouted, looking behind her, ‘It’s new!’

Her son said, ‘Oh, so now I’m taking it out on the suitcase?
You’re the one getting all worked up, not me.’

‘Me? Worked up? About what?’ Her son looked as
though he would no longer bother to reply, so she explained,
‘Your uncle holds a grudge against me. He didn’t
tell me on purpose – on purpose, I know it.’

Her son and the suitcase were standing crookedly on
the steps when he said, ‘Do you call this a family visit? So
what are we going to do? Are we going to look for Uncle
Yongqing, or what?’

Yongshan stood still, not answering; she had stopped
by the window on the third floor landing and looked
outside. ‘This used to be the countryside. Something
Commune . . . "Victory Commune".’ She went on, ‘I
used to take Yongqing here to watch the open-air movies;
we would walk along the paths at night, beside the
pitch-dark paddies, and there were vegetable patches,
too, where you could hear the frogs croak in the flooded
fields, and there were fireflies sparkling back and forth.’

Her son wasn’t interested in hearing about her endless
reminiscences, and said, ‘A family visit, you said. Well,
might I trouble you to produce the family?’

Yongshan turned round to rebuke him, ‘Shut up.
Who said anything about a family visit? I haven’t been
to Licheng in six years; I’ve just come here to pay my
hometown a visit, if that’s all right with you.’

Her son looked at her a little afraid, and his taunting
turned to lamentation: ‘So, now we’re going to drag
our suitcase around the streets. People will think we’re
migrant workers.’

Yongshan twisted away, still looking out of the
window. ‘There’s nothing wrong with coming back for a
visit,’ she said and seemed to have settled on this idea.
‘We can go and see your uncle, or we can just forget it.
We’ll stay in a hotel if we have to; it won’t break the
bank.’

It was an afternoon in May, and the sun was very
fine. They were on the north side of Licheng and the
air was seasoned with the foul smell of dust and a faint,
unidentifiable floral scent. The two travellers crossed the
little square inside the gates of the housing complex; it
was a crude, cramped little square, featuring concrete
grapevine trellises, and though there were no grapevines
on them, there were flowerbeds filled with roses and
peonies. The sun lit up the faces of a few strangers here
and there, making them look golden from a distance.
They stopped for a moment in the square and her son
went to the store to buy a Coke, and when he came back
he saw that Yongshan had sat down to chat with a woman
who was knitting on the flower terrace – so he went off to
watch two men playing chess. Soon Yongshan lifted up
her suitcase and said, ‘Hurry up! What are you watching
the chess game for?’

Her son ran up to her, ‘I thought you’d met someone
you knew. What on earth were you chatting about if you
don’t know her?’

Yongshan said, ‘Can’t I talk to someone I don’t know
if I want to? I thought she was someone else – Huang
Meijuan, a girl who went to elementary school with me,
that’s who I thought she was.’

She looked forlorn for a moment before turning back
to look once again at the knitting woman, who had her
head bowed as she worked in the sunlight. The yarn was
a garish shade of peach, so she remarked casually, ‘What
a tacky colour. I wonder who would wear it?’ Then she
heaved a sigh and said, ‘Strange. It’s not as if Licheng is all
that big, but I haven’t met anyone I know since I got here.’

Her son took a sip of Coke and tilted his head to look
at the greyish-blue May sky. He pondered a moment,
then said something that sounded as though he’d learnt
it from a TV series. He must have been a good mimic, for
it struck his mother speechless.

‘It’s a shame you still remember Licheng,’ he said, ‘because
Licheng forgot about you a long time ago.’

They took the public bus to Cabbage Market; the trip was
Yongshan’s decision.

‘No matter what, we must go to Cabbage Market to take
a look at the old house. We have to go this time, because
next time there’ll be nothing left to see.’ She tried to push
her son onto the bus, but he wouldn’t let her touch him
and shrugged her hands off.

‘Don’t grab me. What is this? A kidnapping?’ he said.
‘I’ll visit whatever you make me visit – we can tour the
outhouses for all I care.’ He had likened the old house to
an outhouse. He regretted the comment as soon as it left
his lips. He stuck out his tongue, not daring to look at his
mother. Fortunately for him, Yongshan was trying to find
seats and had paid no attention to her son’s mumbling.
She claimed a seat and told him to sit down, but when he
refused Yongshan took the seat herself.

She turned her head slightly to look at the streets outside
the window, and said, ‘I remember. There used to
be a cemetery here, too, we walked past here when we
went to the open-air movies. We were always too scared
to look this way – the cemetery was to the left of the road
– so we all kept our eyes fixed right and ran for all we
were worth.’ Her son wasn’t paying any attention, and his
indifference contained a message for Yongshan: ‘Don’t
count on me co-operating. I’m completely uninterested
in this city.’ For a moment, Yongshan’s eyes wandered
between the road outside the window and her son, then
finally they fixed on her son’s suitcase.

‘Actually, I know why your uncle’s put off.’ Her line
of thought had jumped suddenly to the question of her
brother. ‘I know he’s avoiding me on purpose. They got
some money from knocking the old house down and he’s
worried I’m going to ask him for my share.’

Her son snorted and said, ‘Well, are you?’

Yongshan stared at her son and said nothing, then all
the way to their stop she remained silent. He could see
turmoil in his mother’s eyes, like brewing storm clouds,
but due to his tender age, he didn’t realize what his
mother was thinking about. Yongshan was silent and so
was her son. He followed her off the bus and waited for
her to lead the way, but she was standing beneath the bus
stop sign and looking all around her. Suddenly she said,
‘Where are we?’

Yongshan was lost. She was on her way home, but
she was lost. The water tower at the soap factory must
have been pulled down at some point, and without the
water tower, Yongshan couldn’t find the way to Cabbage
Market. How could so much be gone? Yongshan watched
the crowds of people and the buildings on both sides
with something approaching dread. She said, ‘I walked
this road for dozens of years. How come I don’t recognize
anything? Do I really need to ask for directions to get to
my own home?’

In fact, it was the same as everywhere else; the city
of Licheng had been transformed through the efforts
of various government departments. The narrow,
winding roads characteristic of the old city had been
resolutely straightened and widened, but it was more
than a physical change – they had also forced people
to abandon their old, unscientific sense of orientation.
Many women now lost their way on the streets because,
without a certain corner store, postbox or water tower,
they could no longer find the associated street. Yongshan
was just one of those disoriented women. She grumbled
for a moment, then abandoned her attempts to find the
tower. Finally, she asked directions from an old man
selling fruit by the roadside, who immediately gave her
the information she needed. The old man pointed to a
great expanse of ruins to the north and said ‘That’s the
way you’ll want to be going; where the buildings have all
been half torn down. That’s Cabbage Market.’

Yongshan hadn’t expected that her return home
after seven years would consist of an itinerary of ruins.
Looking down at the broken bricks and tiles covering
the ground she said, ‘How are we supposed to get across
this?’

Her son behind her said, ‘If you can’t get across it, then
let’s forget it. We could say we’ve paid our respects to the
old place, right?’ But Yongshan had already walked over
to pick up the suitcase. ‘We’ll have to carry the suitcase,’
she said. ‘Be careful where you put your feet; there’s
broken glass.’

And so it was that the ruins of Cabbage Market
welcomed back Yongshan and her son so many years after
their departure. Late Qing dynasty, Republican era and
socialist wood and bricks mixed together and mourned
in the May sun for their vanished ways of life, and now
the tranquillity of their mourning had been disturbed by
their last visitor. Perhaps every brick and tile in the ruin
remembered Yongshan, remembered that girl of many
years ago, scampering back and forth between Cabbage
Market and the cultural centre with an accordion on
her back. Perhaps they were saying, ‘Yongshan! Hello.
How’s that accordion practice going?’ But Yongshan
couldn’t hear them. All Yongshan heard was the rumble
of a bulldozer rolling in a construction site nearby,
mixed in with the ‘
lalala
‘ of a female rock singer coming
from a nearby music store. Besides, Yongshan was now
the mother of a thirteen-year-old and had long ago
abandoned the accordion. With difficulty, Yongshan and
her son were making the way back home. Neither one
looked very happy. The rubble itself engendered their
resentment, since it was impossible to roll a suitcase
through it. And so, despite their hostile mood, they were
compelled to carry the heavy suitcase between them.
Mother and son puffed with fatigue, and every now and
then the boy viciously kicked a glass bottle or crushed an
innocent tile fragment. Meanwhile, Yongshan cursed the
havoc and disorder of the rubble, but, as anyone knows,
rubble is never tidy, and so her complaints were somewhat
unreasonable. A rat in the rubble seemed to want to warn
the visitors about something, for it suddenly popped out
of a pile of bricks and tiles, frightening Yongshan.

‘That scared me!’ she said, covering her mouth. ‘What’s
a rat doing here? And such a big one!’

Her son said, ‘Of course there are rats in trash heaps.
Where else are you going to find rats, if not in trash
heaps?’

Yongshan frowned and took a look around. Towards
the west, a parasol tree was still standing, albeit with
great difficulty, among the piles of bricks, and towards
the east, the façade of a brick-and-wood house had
survived the wreckage, standing lofty and solitary like
a stage set. By the eaves, a line of writing could still be
clearly read: ‘Watch and Clock Repair While You Wait’.

Yongshan’s eyes suddenly lit up: ‘I know this place.
This was Mr Kang’s place. You remember him. Mr Kang
– ugly as sin but great with his hands – he fixed watches.’
She looked to the left side of the rubble, searching for
something. ‘The well was right here. I used to come to the
well every day to do the washing, clean the rice, and rinse
out the mop,’ Yongshan said. ‘How strange. Why can’t I
find the well?’

‘It’d be strange if you could,’ said her son. ‘It must be
under the garbage.’

Yongshan’s eyes paused on the tree. ‘Let’s go and have
a look.’ She sounded quite excited. ‘When I graduated
from elementary school, I carved my name on that tree,
and when I came back from the countryside it was still
there. I grew up with that tree. I wonder if my name is
still on it.’

‘I’m not going,’ her son said. ‘Go and have a look yourself
if you want to.’