Song of Everlasting Sorrow (59 page)

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Authors: Wang Anyi

BOOK: Song of Everlasting Sorrow
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On one occasion the district political consultative committee organized a dance, and Xiao Lin, who was able to get tickets, took a few friends along. It was here that Wang Qiyao first witnessed true Latin dance. This dance stood out from the others because more than half the dancers were past fifty. Wearing everyday blue and gray outfits, those who knew each other sat together, chatting. The dance was held in a dining hall and the air was filled with the smell of grease. The floor, which had been mopped and sprinkled with powder, only managed to look squalid. The ceiling was stained yellow from accumulated smoke, but the molding was a Renaissance-style floral pattern, the hall was lined with Roman columns, and a semicircular French window looked out into the garden. The blazing lights did nothing to hide the age of the building. Under their glare, one could count every old-age blemish on peoples’ hands and faces. The static-laden music sounded hollow and pathetic as it rang out through a four-speaker boom box in the large open hall, and everyone looked tiny under the great dome.
Only after several bars of music had been played did a few couples make their way onto the dance floor. Under the large domed ceiling, they looked as if they were Lilliputians. But these little people were great dancers with decades of experience, and they burned up the floor with their consummate skill. Their demeanor was cool, but they all knew exactly what they were doing. Thirty years away from the dance floor—yet they had not forgotten a step, for they had been properly trained and had spent the necessary time practicing. And even though this was a kingdom of little people, the look on their midget faces was expressive of a solemn dignity. Can you tell what they are thinking? Do you know what they see? Something unfathomable. Their expressions contained a mixture of sorrow and joy; but what was it that aroused these feelings? The young people all fought their shyness of the dance floor; when they did dance, they felt intimidated in this atmosphere enshrouded by a somber gravity. The graying dancers were timeless, like the hall itself. Latin dance has this truly amazing power to transcend time—to transform the old, timeworn, dejected, battered, foul, and rotten into something noble and ethereal.
Wang Qiyao encouraged Weiwei and her friends to dance while she sat off to one side watching. A draft stole in from the French window. She felt as if the scene before her had been transported from thirty years earlier—the only difference was that, having gathered thirty years of dust, it looked somewhat grayer. She even fancied that she could see whole strands of dust drifting down from the old curtains onto the scene before vanishing without a trace. Once more of the young people got up to dance, however, the scene grew livelier.
A few of them were really decked out; although they looked out of place and their dancing skills were dubious, they certainly grabbed your attention. All it takes to liven up the atmosphere is a little eye-catching youthfulness. Some of these young people are dancing frantically, getting all out of rhythm but still carrying on till the bitter end, when the music stops. Some mistake dancing for walking and end up traipsing all over the hall. In the middle of the dance two men suddenly come in carrying two cartons of soda pop, instructing everyone to show their ticket stubs before claiming their bottle. Impatient dancers walk straight across the floor to get theirs. The hall suddenly fills with the sound of bottle caps popping. A few even take the liberty of going over to the boom box to stop whatever is playing in mid-song and put on their own tape instead, leaving no time for the dancers either to stop or to get in step up with the new tune. Before long it turns into a free-for-all, with people dancing the four-step to folk melodies, and the formerly decorous scene evaporates.
Wang Qiyao was sitting by herself when she was asked to dance, as it turned out, by an older gentleman. By then things were getting a bit out of control and everybody seemed to have the right to ask anyone they wanted for a dance. Slowly Wang Qiyao was led out onto the floor, surrounded by people who were oblivious to all but their own movements. Dancing to the same song, everyone did it their own way. The older gentleman wavered a bit before finally getting into rhythm; his steady steps were like a coral reef in a tumultuous sea. Wang Qiyao could ascertain the kind of person he was from the way he danced: an honest, dutiful, hard-working man with solid assets and a virtuous wife, the sort who would set foot in a dance hall only for social engagements related to his work. Back in the old days he was the kind of man that parents of unmarried girls kept a sharp lookout for. Now his hair was gray and he no longer dressed the way he used to. At the end of the dance he saw Wang Qiyao back to her seat, gently shaking her hand and bowing slightly before turning to leave. Right after that came the last song of the evening, the theme from
Waterloo Bridge
, “Auld Lang Syne.”
Besides dances organized by different work units, there were also dance parties held in people’s homes. All that was needed for these was a large room and a tape player. Zhang Yonghong’s latest boyfriend, Xiao Shen, was a frequent organizer of such parties and held them at his friend’s house. He invited Wang Qiyao to one of them, saying he wanted her to teach them how to dance. Wang Qiyao insisted that she had nothing to teach them; but she went anyway. Xiao Shen’s friend lived in the Alice Apartments, in a ground-floor flat two doors down from where Wang Qiyao used to live. Although it was dark when they arrived and the surroundings had dramatically changed in the years since she had last been there, Wang Qiyao recognized the place as soon as she set foot inside the compound. She thought it strange that over the years she had never once been back—if it hadn’t been for the dance party that night, she might never have gone back as long as she lived. The place was only three or four bus stops away from where she now lived, but it felt like a world separated by mountains and oceans. Occasionally, when her thoughts drifted to the Alice Apartments, it had seemed a previous life.
Xiao Shen’s friend’s apartment, though also on the ground floor, had a different layout from Wang Qiyao’s old place. It had two bedrooms and an extra area in the living room. His parents and sisters had, one after the other, emigrated to Hong Kong, so he was the only one left in Shanghai and had the entire place to himself. It was clean and had all the amenities, but didn’t have a lived-in feeling. The friend didn’t boil hot water for tea for the guests, but simply set out bottles of soda and beer on the table. By the time Wang Qiyao and the others arrived, several couples were already dancing slowly to the music. It was hard to tell the host apart from the guests, as people seemed to know each other very well. Everyone helped themselves to ice cubes from the refrigerator; when the doorbell rang whoever was closest opened the door; new arrivals made themselves right at home. One guest, apparently uninterested in dancing, even went to take a nap in the master bedroom.
Wang Qiyao had been invited as their dance teacher, but no one seemed interested in learning anything from her; they were all focused on themselves. She felt awkward at first, but seeing how everyone took care of themselves, she relaxed a bit. As no one else was playing host, she went to boil herself a pot of water in the kitchen and poured it into a thermos. Then she found a box of tea leaves and made herself a cup of tea before sitting down in a quiet corner. Others followed suit and made tea, but no one bothered to ask who had boiled the water, as if it should have been there in the first place. By then there were about two dozen people in the room, and someone had turned off the lights, leaving on only a single desk lamp. The shadows of people, thrown onto the wall by the hazy yellow light, resembled a black forest. Wang Qiyao sat alone in an unlit corner, content that no one was taking any notice of her. She had returned to Alice, but Alice was now a different Alice—and she was a different Wang Qiyao.
As she sat on the sofa, the teacup she was holding gradually grew cold. Amid the thick forest of shadows, her own shadow had been swallowed up. She almost forgot who she was. But she is the heart of the party! She may have been the only one not dancing, but she was the essence of the party. That essence came in the form of the memories she held within. Never mind the people waving their arms, shaking their hips, and stomping on the dance floor. They wouldn’t know a real dance move if it was staring them in the face. The music they knew was merely the cast-off shells of true music, shed in a century of metamorphoses since the days of Johann Strauss, a whole heap of them. Those swirling motions that once turned circling skirts into blossoming lotus flowers—turn and turn as they might, the figures they trace are empty air, for not a jot of romance remains. All that was left of the old romance was memories in the hearts of a select few—Wang Qiyao being one of them. The memories were fragile and could not endure being put on display, like ancient tombs best left unexcavated; once unearthed, their contents disintegrate with the first breath of air.
There is no point in such a party
, thought Wang Qiyao. Between two numbers, she heard the sound of the trolley coming from the direction of the Paramount.
Just another night at Alice’s?
she wondered.
Vacation
 
When Xiao Lin received his college admission notice, Wang Qiyao offered to send him and Weiwei on vacation to Hangzhou by way of congratulations.
“Aren’t you coming too, Auntie?” Xiao Lin asked.
Wang Qiyao thought for a moment. It occurred to her that, though Hangzhou is so close to Shanghai, she had never been. She decided to go with them. Shortly before their departure, she called Xiao Lin over while Weiwei was at work and gave him a gold bar to exchange for cash at the Bank of China. Weiwei was not to know. She had more faith in Xiao Lin than in her own daughter; he was the one she went to when she had important matters to discuss or when she was looking for advice. As for Xiao Lin, he went to Wang Qiyao for everything and turned only to Weiwei when he wanted to horse around and have a good time. But whenever he was down, he always shared his innermost thoughts with Wang Qiyao: only she could comfort him. To him she was more his friend than his future mother-in-law. She in turn regarded him at least partially as a friend; she would sometimes forget his age and tell him personal things about herself. She hesitated for a moment as she handed him the gold bar, wondering if she should tell him the story of its origin. But that was a huge secret. How many secrets had she accumulated over the decades! She listened to Xiao Lin’s footsteps as he went out the downstairs door. Around noontime he returned and handed her a stack of bills. She felt that she was cashing out her hidden past. Perhaps it was best not to bring it up after all. Xiao Lin didn’t pry. How people accumulated their wealth was one of this city’s unverifiable secrets: an old Shanghai native like Xiao Lin knew this all too well. Wang Qiyao kept him for lunch before sending him home.
During their three days in Hangzhou Wang Qiyao did her best to make herself scarce. In the mornings she would wake up before them and go out for a walk around the hotel. Their hotel was right on Inner West Lake, and she would walk along its banks all the way to Bai Causeway. The sunlight lit up the surface of the lake and she worked up a light sweat before heading back. On the way she would run into Weiwei and Xiao Lin, who were also going for a morning stroll.
“See you at breakfast,” she would say before going back inside the hotel. By this time the hot water would be have been turned on and she would take a shower, change clothes, and go down to wait for them in the hotel dining room. They would show up about fifteen minutes later. Whatever activities they had planned for the day, Wang Qiyao made sure to stay behind part of the time, as well as giving them rein to spend the evenings as they wished. Weiwei didn’t come back to the room until midnight; Wang Qiyao would close her eyes and pretend to be asleep as soon as she heard the door opening. She would listen to Weiwei bump into things as she showered and brushed her teeth, turned the light on and then off again, and finally got into bed. It was not until she heard her daughter quietly snoring that Wang Qiyao felt it was safe to turn over and open her eyes, which had grown tired from being kept closed so long. The room was actually quite bright and everything was clearly visible; the light fluctuated slightly as it reflected off the surface of the lake. Wang Qiyao thought about the Nine Creeks and Eighteen Gullies they had visited earlier that day; a Zen-inspired place of nature and solitude, and wondered what it would be like to live there as a hermit.
How wonderful it would be not to be bothered by the annoyances of the world! It would be nice to live in an isolated place where a century is like one day and there is no past or future.
But then it was a bit late for her to become a hermit. She had already paid a heavy price during the first half of her life; was it all to have been for nothing? Were there to be no harvest to be reaped from all that she had been through? Wouldn’t she be losing out by giving up halfway? When she went back to ponder what that harvest might be, her mind began to drift and she couldn’t focus any more; gradually, she fell asleep.
On the third morning she woke up to find the room bathed in sunlight and Weiwei gone without a trace. She realized that she had overslept, but she wasn’t anxious. Instead she decided to take it easy. She rested her eyes a bit longer before getting out of bed to comb her hair and head down to the hotel dining room to wait for her daughter and Xiao Lin. She waited for quite some time, and it wasn’t until the dining room was about to close that she quickly nibbled a few bites. She went to wait for them in the reception area, but they still didn’t show up. Finally she went outside to wait for them. It was already muggy on the lake; all along the Bai Causeway and the Su Causeway, tourists were out strolling, their reflections shimmering on the lake. A few wispy clouds floated overhead, but soon disappeared. The sound of cicadas rang out, but there was still no trace of those two.

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