Old Town (7 page)

What a disaster! I can’t think of anything to compare it to in accurately describing just how serious this all was. At that time, neither Eldest Sister nor Second Sister “had a mother-in-law” and Third Sister’s bad reputation had certainly made the two of them despair of their own prospects. Did they feel anger and resentment toward their younger sister?

Grandma’s uncle arranged for Third Sister to be the lesser wife of a wealthy yokel in his mountain district. This bumpkin sent a team of porters with the betrothal gifts, and so around West Street the Guo family was judged to have regained a little face. Not only was Third Sister going to be married, she was going to enter a good man’s home. So many poles of gifts were brought in and deployed like impressive battle formations in the Guo home that all of West Street grew alarmed.

It rained heavily that night and the virtue-guarding widow slumbered deeply. By the time she awoke, Third Sister was nowhere to be seen.

This was an even greater disaster! The skies above the Guo home had collapsed.

Third Sister had “died.” All the Guos could do now was to bear an empty coffin out of the house. However, this empty coffin couldn’t put an end to all the conjectures and rumors of the West Street neighborhood. Just about everyone knew that Third Sister had eloped with “that man.” West Street’s several “Western religion” households said that she had followed the call of God to go off and spread the Gospel. But those who had quite different feelings about the Western religion considered such talk to be the same as the Guo family’s empty coffin—the more that was hidden, the more was exposed, and that’s all there was to it.

Old Town’s photo studio was next door to the Guo Family Cloth Shop. There my grandma left more than a few memories of her youth. For sure, Third Sister also had many photographs taken. The Guo family refused to keep such shameful memories, particularly the wife of Granny’s younger brother. Pure as the driven snow all her life,
she
would not hang any photograph of Third Sister on
her
wall.

4.

I
T’S
N
EW
Y
EAR’S
now. The older members of the family have to give the festive presents of a little cash to the children
.
I receive a lot more money than my peers. My cousins almost don’t know my granny’s relatives, but I’m a member of this large clan. Because I am Granny’s little tail, wherever she goes, I tag along behind.

I have two great-aunts and four great-uncles. First Great-Uncle is a muddled drunk. On the first day of the New Year when we meet, he still knows enough to fish out a few small coins to give me. There are numerous older children and they will all give me money.

That night, before falling asleep, I’m like a miser, counting this year’s take. The total wouldn’t have exceeded the equivalent of fifty yuan today, but for me then that simply would have been an astronomical sum. Counting money is really fun. Granny is at my side and, watching me with a smile, asks, “How much? Granny will make it a round sum.” Suddenly I think I should also have a third great-auntie. Big Great-Auntie and Fourth Great-Auntie both give me New Year’s money every year. Granny ranks second among them in age, so where has Third Great-Auntie gone to? How come she doesn’t give me New Year’s money? I ask Granny this. The smile on her kindly face doesn’t change, just seems to add a trace of sorrow. “She left us when she was quite young.” I don’t ask the reason for this, and lower my head to continue counting the money.

Third Sister was dead. After a few years, the Guos no longer thought of that coffin as having been empty. People’s memories have a way of rewriting history and creating stories.

When Grandpa was seriously ill, Great-Auntie lived in Hangzhou at her eldest daughter’s home. When she found out that Second Sister’s husband was about to enter the True World, that very night she rushed back to Old Town by train. Her daughter bought her a sleeping-car ticket but she never lay down for a minute. Instead, this eighty-year-old lady actually spent the entire night in the dining car writing a letter. Even when young, she had always liked writing letters. At that time, her husband’s family as well as her own all rode the buses for no more than eight
fen
, but she preferred to spend that amount on postage stamps. Frequently she had to add another eight
fen
for overweight. Anyway, writing letters was her hobby. She hunched over the swaying and lurching dining table and wrote to Third Sister:
Second Sister’s husband has traveled to the end of his human life
. Great-Auntie’s memory restores order out of chaos. She thought of Third Sister and believed that she lived in this world in perfectly good condition.

Before our old place was razed flat by the bulldozer, every time I would return to Old Town to see relatives I always got to read the thick stack of letters that Great-Auntie had written. Her characters were packed tightly together, and everything was unpunctuated and without paragraph divisions. At the time when she was learning to read and write, Chinese didn’t have punctuation. Probably I was the only person patient and serious enough to read those letters, for I was born a curious cat.

So it turned out Granny’s Third Sister hadn’t actually died. I was deeply fascinated by the story that Great-Auntie related.

Grandpa’s Big Sister-in-Law got wind of the “empty coffin” story that blew about Old Town. She also heard the theory of her fellow believers—that the young lady had left for distant places to preach the Word. Although Big Sister-in-Law believed in Jesus the Savior, she also believed that a young lady who flaunted herself in public abandoned decorum by doing so. Inwardly she rejoiced that none of this disgrace touched the Lin family. If Ninth Brother had been betrothed to Third Sister, that empty coffin would have had to be carried out of the Lin home.

Grandpa’s eldest brother had been an official of the Qing dynasty, as had several generations of family members before him. What we today would call our monthly salary was known then as their monthly “rations.” They had to use a washbowl to hold the heavy, shiny silver
yuan
pieces. One silver
yuan
would be enough for a poor family to live on for half a year, so it was obvious how rich the Lins were. After the Revolution and the cutting off of the braid that men wore, Grandpa’s big brother straightway became unemployed and a housebound invalid as well. His two sons idled about the house chanting poetry, painting, and raising songbirds. They were a pair of spoiled playboys who affected the manner of eccentric intellectuals. With a great fortune being thus frittered away, the family’s days went from bad to worse. Big Sister-in-Law let Ah Mu and Ah Hua go. And even when all that remained was a cook, she planned not to use him either. Her two daughters-in-law had come from grand families and didn’t even know how much rice and water went into the boiler. When the Lins’ own girls left in marriage, Big Sister-in-Law could count only on Ninth Brother who was then away studying. If he brought a daughter-in-law into the home, this would help her prop up the tottering House of Lin.

During his third year’s summer vacation, Ninth Brother received a letter from Eldest Brother and Big Sister-in-Law asking him to come home to get married. Just which girl was being arranged for him wasn’t made clear. But surely it had to be Third Sister Guo. While in Shanghai, Ninth Brother had kept a three-volume diary for her, and even the barest of entries, like “Raining today. All day long bent over my desk studying,” was written with Third Sister in mind. The diary itself was Third Sister. Every day, under the lamp she would quietly listen in on all of Ninth Brother’s subtlest feelings. Unrequited love is a beautiful sign of sincerity. Studying all by himself in a strange place, Ninth Brother was never alone.

Ninth Brother took the entire surplus of what he could save daily from his scholarship fund and bought presents. Eldest Brother, Big Sister-in-Law, nieces, and nephews—everyone got a “meeting gift.” For Third Sister Guo he bought a jadeite ring, which he wanted to put on her finger in the church with the pastor’s blessing. At this time, Mr. Qiao had accepted the position of church pastor in Beijing. Ninth Brother wrote to Mr. and Mrs. Qiao to announce the happy news that during this year’s winter break he would bring his bride to Beijing to visit his two benefactors.

The rich love and affections within his Old Town home and its joyful air of marriage arrangements intoxicated Ninth Brother. He never even asked anything about the bride. All he thought about was the coming night of the painted candles and the nuptial chamber.

One night, when he was reading a book in his wing of the courtyard, his eldest nephew walked in. Ninth Brother assumed he wanted to discuss brush pen script. Uncle and nephew were only about two years apart. They had both studied and played together from when they were little and their feelings for each other were sincere and generous. This nephew was keenly interested in brush pen script, and the gift Ninth Brother had brought him was a copy-book of Song dynasty calligraphy masters. His nephew never let this out of his sight.

Nephew didn’t bother with conversational amenities but came right to the point, “Ninth Uncle, do you know whose family your bride is coming from?”

“Sure I know. Boss Guo’s Third Miss, from the cloth shop by Drum Tower.”

“For the two days you’ve been back, I haven’t slept once. Now I’ve made up my mind to tell you the real story.”

“What real story?”

“Third Sister.”

This definitely was
not
going to be good, and Ninth Brother was unwilling to listen any further. Shaking his hands right and left, he said, “Never mind what kind of a girl she is, I want her to be my wife.”

“No. Your bride isn’t the Guo’s Third Sister. It’s a distant relative on my mother’s side, someone surnamed Chen.”

What’s this?
Ninth Brother just sat there with a stunned expression, while in his brain played a scene, just like he had seen in the silent films in Shanghai. The new bride, veiled in red, sits by the marital bed. The groom comes forward, lifts the veil from over her head, and a strange face scares the daylights out of him.

Nephew said, “Ninth Uncle, if you’re unwilling to go through with this, it’s still not too late. This is exactly the reason I wanted to tell you this tonight.”

After a long, stunned pause, Ninth Brother asked, “Why would Big Sister-in-Law want to do this? I said I would marry only Third Sister Guo, and I left my picture for her to take over there in my place when they discussed marriage!”

“Just don’t think about Third Sister anymore, Ninth Uncle!”

“She’s gotten married?”

“She’s no more.”

Ninth Brother’s eyes reddened and tears seeped from them.

Nephew didn’t say that the coffin borne out of the home had been empty. He was unwilling to insult the girl that Ninth Brother so adored.

How did Ninth Brother ever get through this long, dark night? Would he have raised his head to heaven and asked God:
Oh, Lord, God, why didn’t you bless and protect Third Sister?
Tearfully, he packed up his traveling things and got ready to head back to Shanghai, never again to return to heartbreak Old Town.

By early the next morning, his sense of indignation and impulsiveness now settled down, Ninth Brother told Eldest Brother and his wife that if the bride wasn’t to be Third Sister Guo, he wanted to arrange a meeting with new prospects. This was all he could say. Eldest Brother and Big Sister-in-Law were like father and mother and he should obey them. If he had any disagreement with them, he could get it across only in a roundabout way. Before Big Sister-in-Law could open her mouth, Eldest Brother had already agreed to Ninth Brother’s request.

You can well imagine the results of this visit: Ninth Brother refused to be the groom of the Chen girl. Big Sister-in-Law again sought out her go-between, Mother Sun. A din of drums and gongs and lanterns on poles again filled the town announcing the search for a bride for Ninth Brother. He was dragged along to meet the girls of several families and in every instance he shook his head in refusal.

Very soon, the vacation would be over. All during this period, he still made daily entries in his diary. And every day, with tear-filled eyes, he would pour out his sorrows and melancholy to the now-dead Third Sister.

On the day that Ninth Brother purchased a boat ticket back to Shanghai, he couldn’t help walking to West Street. He knew Third Sister’s home was that courtyard with the dark red steps leading up to the gate. For quite some time he hung around in front of it, wanting to pay a call on her parents and just have a look at her memorial portrait. And maybe he could even manage to get a picture of her to keep as a memento. Just when he drummed up enough courage to climb the steps, my grandma, Second Sister, walked out. At first glance he thought she was Third Sister, her student uniform changed into a well-fitting
qipao
.
⁴

Standing under the sky well, Second Sister asked, “Visitor, who are you looking for?”

“Third Miss.”

Before, there were always some outsiders who could never tell Third Sister from Second Sister, but after the great scandal hit the Guos, it would have been rare for anyone to make this mistake.

“Visitor, where do you come from?”

Ninth Brother’s eyes brimmed with tears. “I too used to worship at the West Gate church. Three years ago I went to Shanghai to study.”

Oh, a student
. Second Sister now addressed him as “Sir.” “Sir, you are mistaken. Our Third Sister has gone on a long journey. I am Second Sister.”

Ninth Brother soared up to the heavens. He floated at the tip of “an eighteen-
li
cloudy mist,” as they say, and, muddled as he was, asked, “May I enter your mansion to sit for a brief moment?”