Song of Everlasting Sorrow (27 page)
Read Song of Everlasting Sorrow Online
Authors: Wang Anyi
Waterfowl swim in the wake of the boat.
Gu gu
, they cry, before taking flight.
Gu gu
, they cry, before taking flight.
“Are you cold?” Grandma asked.
Wang Qiyao shook her head.
“Hungry?”
Seeing Wang Qiyao shake her head again, Grandma realized that she was scarcely more alive than a marionette. Her spirit had wandered off and Grandma feared that when it finally returned, the child would be a changed person.
How will she be able to settle down again after everything that has happened?
At this point, the boat came to a small town and Grandma asked the boatman to fetch some rice wine. She heated the wine over the brazier and offered some to Wang Qiyao, to warm her hands even if she didn’t care for any. From vendors hawking their wares on the dock, Grandma bought some tea-flavored hard-boiled eggs and pickled bean curd to go with the wine.
How will she be able to settle down again after everything that has happened?
At this point, the boat came to a small town and Grandma asked the boatman to fetch some rice wine. She heated the wine over the brazier and offered some to Wang Qiyao, to warm her hands even if she didn’t care for any. From vendors hawking their wares on the dock, Grandma bought some tea-flavored hard-boiled eggs and pickled bean curd to go with the wine.
She gestured toward the people and houses onshore. “Wu Bridge is just like this town, only bigger,” she told her granddaughter.
Wang Qiyao’s eyes were fixed on the lichen-dappled stone wall where the boat was tied, against which the water was lapping.
Raising her eyes to look at Grandma, she felt no connection to the shriveled and odd-looking woman before her.
How horrible it is to get old!
Yet she knew this was a fate from which no one can escape. All along the winding waterways, she could think about nothing but getting old—the idea tore at her. This whole place with its endless waterways is ancient, including the sky, the water, the lichen on the stone. The Kunshan boatman couldn’t be that old, yet he looked like a fossil. She felt as if she had fallen into the bottomless abyss of time: there was nothing to hold on to. Grandma’s brazier was antique, the embroidered pattern on her shoes timeless, the wine she drank of indeterminate vintage, even the bean curd she was eating had been pickled in age-old broth. The boats and carts along the interminable waterways crawl on for all eternity. Time is a wall forged of metal that no one will ever break through. No one can withstand time. The earth endures season after season of planting and harvesting. Waterfowl sing the same tune for hundreds of years. And in a scale of time where the units are counted in centuries, people are as ephemeral as fireflies. Succeeding generations appear and disappear like the teeming eggs that fish spawn.
One is no more than a passing traveler, among innumerable others. How old is this boat that ferries people from one shore to another? How old is Wu Bridge, a place that existed even before Grandma was born?
How horrible it is to get old!
Yet she knew this was a fate from which no one can escape. All along the winding waterways, she could think about nothing but getting old—the idea tore at her. This whole place with its endless waterways is ancient, including the sky, the water, the lichen on the stone. The Kunshan boatman couldn’t be that old, yet he looked like a fossil. She felt as if she had fallen into the bottomless abyss of time: there was nothing to hold on to. Grandma’s brazier was antique, the embroidered pattern on her shoes timeless, the wine she drank of indeterminate vintage, even the bean curd she was eating had been pickled in age-old broth. The boats and carts along the interminable waterways crawl on for all eternity. Time is a wall forged of metal that no one will ever break through. No one can withstand time. The earth endures season after season of planting and harvesting. Waterfowl sing the same tune for hundreds of years. And in a scale of time where the units are counted in centuries, people are as ephemeral as fireflies. Succeeding generations appear and disappear like the teeming eggs that fish spawn.
One is no more than a passing traveler, among innumerable others. How old is this boat that ferries people from one shore to another? How old is Wu Bridge, a place that existed even before Grandma was born?
One by one, the bridges overhead receded into the background; Wang Qiyao felt they must have passed through countless gates to arrive in an ancient world that had been closed to her. She could have cried, had she not been so numb. Her sadness was mixed with a strange sensation that touched her deeply. That day, the scenery was colored in all different shades of grey. The leaves had fallen from the trees, exposing the delicate branches; the surface of the water was wrinkled by tiny waves; the lichen was made up of an infinite number of dainty dots; scratches on the sides of houses, built up line by line, accumulated into a tangled mass. Chimney smoke and the sound of laundry being beaten on fulling blocks are so primordial that one hardly notices them. The only bright spots in the landscape are the fish and the lotus blossoms printed on the aprons and headscarves of the women doing their wash on shore. Although these hand-printed patterns are also archaic, they always appear new. It is as if every era needs them and they become true living fossils. They never age, and even through the passage of time they always appear eternally contemporary. Floating down the river of time, they bob unsteadily on the surface, like water sprites, while all else sinks down to the bottom. They are like a Daoist elixir of immortality: their presence allows the world to endure even longer.
There seemed to be no end to the bridge arches they passed through in order to get into the heart of this ancient world. The chimney smoke grew denser, and the chorus of laundry blocks came at them at shorter and shorter intervals. A new spark lit up Grandma’s eyes. She snuffed out her cigarette and began to point things out to Wang Qiyao, who remained absorbed in her own thoughts. The insides of her heart were scattered, its remnants strewn everywhere. Even if she were one day to try to mend it, the scattered pieces could never be completely recovered. The boatman suddenly stopped singing and asked Grandma for directions. He swung the boat around as if heading for home. Not long after that, Grandma announced that they had arrived. The anchor was dropped and the boat drifted toward the shore. Led by Grandma, Wang Qiyao emerged from the canopy to discover that the sun had come out. Its glare made her squint. Disembarking on the arm of the boatman, Grandma paused, brazier in hand, to describe the exciting scene on her wedding day to Wang Qiyao. All the homes alongside the canal had their windows open and people were craning their necks to watch her dowry chests and decorated sedan chair being lifted onto the boat. The blossoming white gardenias set off her red wedding gown. Among the green buds on the trees, the blue water, the black roof tiles and bridge piers, she alone was a splash of red. This red, ephemeral but recurring, is part of a cycle that has been renewing itself since time immemorial.
DeuceAt Wu Bridge, Wang Qiyao stayed at the house of her Grandma’s brother, who ran a pickled foods shop famous for its pickled bean curd. Every day a fresh delivery of firm bean curd arrived from their supplier. The supplier had two sons. The elder was married with children; the younger, known to every one as “Deuce,” attended school in Kunshan and had been planning to enroll at a normal college in Shanghai or Nanjing that fall, only the unsettled political situation had prevented him from taking the entrance examinations. Deuce sported a look that is best described as “old-fashioned modern”: he had glasses, wore a camel-colored scarf around the collar of his school uniform, and parted his hair down the middle. He viewed the women of Wu Bridge with disdain, wouldn’t dream of mixing with the men, and spent most of his time reading in his bedroom instead. On moonlit nights, his silhouette made one of the local scenes—the Wu Bridge recluse. Without exaggeration, every part of Wu Bridge had its own recluse, and it was Deuce’s turn to take the stage. Recluses were bubbles on the river of Wu Bridge—the river kept on flowing, but each day its bubbles were different.
Deuce was favored with a flawlessly light complexion and delicate facial features. He spoke as softly as he walked. If he were not such a fine boy, his family would have disapproved of him and the town folks would have made him the butt of their jokes, which was what they customarily did with recluses. But Deuce aroused the parental instinct in people, and they happily indulged him. Several families had thought about making him their son-in-law. This may have had to do with the tenor of the time, in which a solitary figure held a certain appeal. People were genuinely fond of him. Deuce held himself aloof from Wu Bridge, sometimes even letting his contempt show on his face, but this only enhanced his progressive aura. He saw himself as a man of the world, and regarded Wu Bridge as a discarded remnant. He would have left if he had had his choice, but his health was not strong enough to confront the turmoil of the outside world, and he was forced to fall back on Wu Bridge. He had now become one of the discarded remnants, but his heart belonged out there.
Accordingly, Deuce was a tormented soul. There is an old saying that a man’s shadow was his spirit, but Deuce claimed he was a man without a shadow. On moonlit nights he would glare at his own shadow on the stone slab bridge and reject it.
Is that really me? Clearly, it must be someone else.
One day, walking past the pickled food shop, Deuce saw Wang Qiyao sitting inside. He was electrified.
Now there is my true shadow!
he exclaimed inwardly. From that day on he volunteered to make deliveries for the shop. He had to walk over three bridges, and his heart leaped with joy, higher as he passed over each bridge, although he did not allow it to show. With a tightly drawn face, he would drop off the bean curd, turn around, and leave. On his return trip, his heart sank at every bridge, but there was exhilaration mixed in with that sadness, and he walked with a spring in his step. He was convinced that Wang Qiyao had been mistakenly snipped off from the proper world and that she still carried with her the splendor of that other realm.
Why did she end up here?
Deuce was so grateful that his eyes grew moist. Her presence brought sunlight to Wu Bridge, ensuring that this place would never be lost. Her presence brought a glimmer of hope to Wu Bridge, providing a link between this place and the outside world. Oh, what changes she brought to Wu Bridge! Deuce had heard rumors about Wang Qiyao, but no matter how outrageous the rumors were, he was not put off. On the contrary, they fed his fantasy. To him, Wang Qiyao epitomized the opulence of Shanghai—even though this was a bygone opulence, a bygone dream. The reflected glory of Shanghai was strong enough to last through another half-century. Deuce’s heart came alive again.
Is that really me? Clearly, it must be someone else.
One day, walking past the pickled food shop, Deuce saw Wang Qiyao sitting inside. He was electrified.
Now there is my true shadow!
he exclaimed inwardly. From that day on he volunteered to make deliveries for the shop. He had to walk over three bridges, and his heart leaped with joy, higher as he passed over each bridge, although he did not allow it to show. With a tightly drawn face, he would drop off the bean curd, turn around, and leave. On his return trip, his heart sank at every bridge, but there was exhilaration mixed in with that sadness, and he walked with a spring in his step. He was convinced that Wang Qiyao had been mistakenly snipped off from the proper world and that she still carried with her the splendor of that other realm.
Why did she end up here?
Deuce was so grateful that his eyes grew moist. Her presence brought sunlight to Wu Bridge, ensuring that this place would never be lost. Her presence brought a glimmer of hope to Wu Bridge, providing a link between this place and the outside world. Oh, what changes she brought to Wu Bridge! Deuce had heard rumors about Wang Qiyao, but no matter how outrageous the rumors were, he was not put off. On the contrary, they fed his fantasy. To him, Wang Qiyao epitomized the opulence of Shanghai—even though this was a bygone opulence, a bygone dream. The reflected glory of Shanghai was strong enough to last through another half-century. Deuce’s heart came alive again.
Wang Qiyao soon began to take notice of this young delivery man. With his fair skin and effetely persnickety schoolboy style, he seemed to her a character out of an old photograph. When he spoke with her great uncle, she listened closely through the partition, and found that he was so soft-spoken he sounded like a bird. Once she ran into him on her way to buy needles and thread. He fled, blushing, to another bridge. Wang Qiyao was amused and began to take an interest in him. She discovered that he had a habit of walking by himself at all hours, and his silhouette in the moonlight was as charming as that of a virgin. He sometimes leaped with a girlish joy. One day, after he had dropped off the basket of bean curd at the front of the store and was on his way to the back room, Wang Qiyao called to him from behind, “Deuce!”
As he turned his head, she hid herself to watch the agitated and confused look on his face. This was the first time Wang Qiyao had engaged in a mischievous act of any kind since arriving in Wu Bridge, and it was Deuce who brought out this side of her. After looking around, Deuce thought he must have been hearing things, but instead of ignoring it, he shouted back, “Who’s calling me?”
Wang Qiyao put her hand over her mouth to conceal her laughter—the first time she had laughed since arriving. This too was because of Deuce.
The following day, running into him on the street, she stood in his path and said, “How come you didn’t see me yesterday with those big eyes of yours?”
Deuce was so embarrassed that he turned bright red all the way down to his neck, where a blue artery pulsated wildly. He fixed his eyes on her but did not know what to do with his hands. “Where are you heading?” she asked more gently.
Deuce mumbled that he was on his way to collect bills and showed her the account book. Wang Qiyao glanced at the handwriting on the slips and asked if it was his. Getting a grip on himself, he answered that some of it was. She asked which parts were his, and he showed her several lines of elegant tiny characters. Wang Qiyao, who knew nothing about calligraphy, praised his writing, “Not bad at all!”
The rosiness gradually faded from Deuce’s cheeks. “You’re mocking me.”
“Even the Chinese teachers at my school couldn’t have written characters the size of a fly’s head with such a fine hand,” Wang Qiyao rejoined with a straight face.
“In Shanghai, the entire educational system is focused on the sciences and other practical subjects,” said Deuce. “Calligraphy is a pastime that one indulges in during leisure hours.”
His range of reference took Wang Qiyao by surprise, and she realized she had underrated him. She tested him with a few other questions, to which he responded intelligently in the tone of a good pupil. Before they parted, she invited him to visit her more often.
Someone else delivered the bean curd the following morning. Deuce himself came in the evening wearing a pair of canvas athletic shoes newly whitened with shoe powder. He still had on his scarf and in his hand was a bundle of books. He came as a visitor, bringing candies for children in the household. The books were for Wang Qiyao, he said; with no movie theater in Wu Bridge, these might serve to entertain her in the evening. It was a random collection of books that included timeworn detective stories such as
Astounding Tales
and
The Cases of Judge Shi
, contemporary romances such as Zhang Henshui’s
The Heavy Darkness of the Night,
and magazines such as
Fiction Monthly
and
Panorama. He’s emptied his bookcase for me,
Wang Qiyao told herself.
Wu Bridge is a simple and conservative town, after all. In Shanghai a boy like Deuce would have learned how to be more cunning and slick long ago, yet how much more dashing and urbane the boys are in Shanghai!
Wang Qiyao looked again at Deuce and felt sorry for him for being buried in the backwoods. Under the lamp his face looked even paler, and a thatch of his very black hair had fallen over his forehead.
Astounding Tales
and
The Cases of Judge Shi
, contemporary romances such as Zhang Henshui’s
The Heavy Darkness of the Night,
and magazines such as
Fiction Monthly
and
Panorama. He’s emptied his bookcase for me,
Wang Qiyao told herself.
Wu Bridge is a simple and conservative town, after all. In Shanghai a boy like Deuce would have learned how to be more cunning and slick long ago, yet how much more dashing and urbane the boys are in Shanghai!
Wang Qiyao looked again at Deuce and felt sorry for him for being buried in the backwoods. Under the lamp his face looked even paler, and a thatch of his very black hair had fallen over his forehead.
She teased him. “So, when are you going to fetch your bride?”
He blushed and said he was only eighteen.
“Your eldest brother is only twenty and he already has several children,” replied Wang Qiyao, nothing daunted.
Deuce snorted, “That’s Wu Bridge for you.”
That he set himself apart from Wu Bridge showed how highly he thought of himself. Wang Qiyao told herself to mind his sensitivity, but she could not help amusing herself at his expense. “Would you like me to introduce you to a Shanghai girl?”
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