Song of Everlasting Sorrow (64 page)

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Authors: Wang Anyi

BOOK: Song of Everlasting Sorrow
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By this time a new breed of younger and more fashionable girls had come on the scene on Huaihai Road, making Zhang Yonghong’s generation look conservative. But their conservatism wasn’t what we usually think of as conservative; it was in fact a strategy of conserving one’s strength for future attacks, of stepping back in order to spring forward. Having lived through many trends, they had gradually formed their own perspective. They had progressed beyond blindly following the latest trend and were now stepping aside to let a new generation take over the cutting edge. You could say that they had finally secured a foothold amid the raging torrents of shifting fashion. Just because they were no longer driving the trend didn’t mean they were no longer a part of it: they were the ones who controlled when fashions came and went. In contrast, though the fashions on the street may have looked explosive, they were rootless and fleeting.
Weiwei, always a step behind Zhang Yonghong, was the kind who instinctively looked to someone else for guidance. If she hadn’t had Zhang Yonghong and Wang Qiyao to steer the ship for her, Weiwei would probably have spent her entire life as a slave to fashion. But there they were, the three of them together again, heatedly discussing cuts and alterations, just like old times. Each of their outfits was the end result of extensive research and discussion. As they tried on new clothes, one would stand in front of the mirror while the other two stood on either side, carefully looking her over. Every now and then, one would turn around and find a look of loneliness on the face in the mirror, at which point she would quickly find something to say to the others in order to cover it up.
The three spent Christmas together that year. They put on newly tailored jackets, applied some makeup, and showed up for the Christmas dinner at a hotel that had just opened in the new Hongqiao Development District, where they had made reservations ahead of time. Before the taxi even reached the hotel, they were already struck by its splendor. It took them a minute to get their bearings after stepping out of the taxi. Overhead, a weblike arrangement of Christmas lights hung from the trees, which appeared to be aflame with silvery flowers. Moving on into the hotel, they were greeted by an attendant dressed like Santa Claus. The lobby was a-bustle with well-dressed visitors. They went up to the restaurant and found their seats next to a long table for twenty, where they were surrounded by young couples and parents out with their children, everyone carrying on as if they were by themselves. The three of them usually never had a shortage of things to say, but now found themselves at a loss for words and sat prim and proper in their seats. There was nothing terribly fancy about the cuisine and, because there were so many people, it actually felt like they were having cafeteria food. There was a constant flow of Christmas songs and the guests were repeatedly reminded that the bells would ring at midnight, whereupon Santa Claus would give out presents—the lucky recipients to be determined by a raffle.
The three women sensed they had come to the wrong place—this had been an utterly unsuitable choice. They could only avert their eyes as young lovers cozied up to one another. The small children were friendlier; they weren’t afraid of strangers and would come up to chat with them, livening up the atmosphere somewhat. But the forbidding parents avoided their gazes and they had to check any impulse to socialize. In any case, they felt totally out of place and ill-at-ease. They could not bring themselves to stay until midnight and, having talked it over, decided to go home. No one took any notice as they got up from their seats and left. At the door they ran into waitresses on their way into the dining room, carrying trays of ice cream, but none of them was in the mood to go back for dessert. The hallway was quiet and the elevator quietly ascended as soon as they pushed the button. When the doors closed before them, they saw that the walls on all three sides were made of mirrors, but seeing their own faces was unbearable. They remained silent, staring at the numbers over the door as they lit up, one after the other, until they finally arrived back on the ground floor. Lacking the presence of mind to ask for a cab, they walked straight out of the lobby onto the road. The roads in this new district were broad and straight, with few pedestrians, only a quiet flow of traffic coming from the direction of the airport. They walked on awhile before they thought of hailing a cab.
“Why don’t you come over?” suggested Wang Qiyao. “We can celebrate Christmas at my place.”
The girls agreed and they walked back to get a cab at the hotel entrance. It was now eleven o’clock. The city was silent, but behind its locked doors and windows all kinds of festivities were taking place. One would have had little inkling of what was going on in the city until someone came out, bringing with him the sights and sounds of the gaiety, which spilled over the sidewalks like seeds. The threesome capped off Christmas Eve at Wang Qiyao’s apartment. Coming from the raucous celebrations at the hotel, they found Peace Lane extraordinarily quiet, as if the people there were holding their breath. But the silence set off the excitement in their hearts, which had been suppressed and stifled all this time. Here was their world. They munched on snacks and exchanged gossip, telling stories they usually didn’t share with one another as the spirit moved them. Zhang Yonghong related her latest argument with her boyfriend; the occasion itself had been minor, but it had been pivotal in deciding whether they would one day get married. Realizing that Zhang Yonghong was finally thinking of marriage, Wang Qiyao encouraged her to lower her standards. She had, of course, given the same advice many times before, but because of the special mood that night, her words seemed to come straight from the heart. Not only did Zhang Yonghong hear her out; she even opened up, releasing some of the pain she had bottled up. It wasn’t that she had overvalued herself, she said, but that she looked on marriage as her only shot at getting a second chance in life.
“You all know the kind of family I was born into.... That’s why I’ve always felt that marriage was my one chance to rewrite history.”
“But you can’t expect to just walk into a situation where everything is already taken care of for you,” said Weiwei. “If you want to rewrite history, you’ll have to do it together with your husband.”
“It’s not that I want to walk into a situation where everything is already taken care of,” explained Zhang Yonghong. “What I want is some capital to live off of. If both of us start with nothing, we’ll be decrepit before we begin to see the light at the end of the tunnel. But speaking of having everything already taken care of, the one who fits that description is Weiwei. You’ve got an apartment to live in rent-free
and
a hubby in America.”
“I would have been more than happy if he didn’t go to America!” Weiwei protested. “You have no idea what it’s like being in my shoes!”
This was the first time since Xiao Lin’s departure that Wang Qiyao had heard her daughter complain. It surprised her a little, but on second thought she understood why.
“Of course things may be difficult for the time being, but all of that will pass,” said Zhang Yonghong.
“But
I’m
the one who has to get through it every single day! No one else can do it for me,” said Weiwei. “Do you know why I keep running back to Mom’s house? Because I can’t stand the sight of his parents’ snotty intellectual faces!”
Zhang Yonghong laughed. “What’s wrong with intellectual faces? I wish I could see some, but there aren’t any around!”
The three of them laughed. Zhang Yonghong stayed over that night on the sofa. They lost track of the time and fell asleep only when the morning light was already peeking through the curtains.
The sympathy they shared that night was enough to last them quite some time. After that they saw each other several times a week, and Weiwei had practically moved back in with her mother. As long as Zhang Yonghong was around, mother and daughter were able to maintain an atmosphere of mutual tolerance and understanding. Zhang Yonghong was the lubricant in their relationship. Before long, however, she met a new boyfriend and her visits became scarce again.
Six months later, Xiao Lin successfully completed the paperwork for Weiwei to join him in America, and she too left. Although it had taken only one year, the process exhausted Weiwei’s patience. She wasn’t even in the mood to prepare for the trip; all she did was to pack two suitcases, one with clothing and the other with daily necessities such as cooking utensils and a large box filled with crucifix necklaces, which she had bought on Huating Road for just pennies each—Xiao Lin had said in one of his letters that they would go for two dollars each in America.
Wang Qiyao agonized over whether to give her daughter one of the gold bars. In the end she decided against it. Weiwei had Xiao Lin to rely on, but who did she have? Wearing a plain cotton outfit and a pair of old shoes, Weiwei boarded the plane for San Francisco.
Chapter 3
 
Old Colour
 
“LAO KE-LA” REFERS to a specific breed of debonair figures active during the fifties and sixties. These were the keepers of old-style Shanghai fashion in the new society, at a time when holding on to the past was considered radical. The term probably originated with the English word “old colour,” or perhaps “old classic,” a remnant of the colonial culture of Shanghai in the day of the treaty ports. As the lingo of the city incorporated bits and pieces of foreign languages, words became dismembered and, with the passage of time, grew increasingly distant from their original meanings. By the eighties, people who fell into the category of “Old Colour” were virtually extinct. The surviving handful were all fairly advanced in age, their erstwhile shape completely transformed; eventually even the term itself was forgotten. But then something odd happened. In the mid eighties, a new generation of Old Colours emerged quietly upon the scene. Lacking their predecessors’ craving for notoriety, they were not compelled to behave ostentatiously and appeared more easygoing. It was not even easy to spot them in the crowd. Where might one go to find such a specimen?
These Old Colours—when everyone was out buying a stereo, they were listening to old phonographs. When Nikon and Minolta cameras equipped with auto-focus features were all the rage, they were busy fiddling with their vintage Rolleiflex 120s. They sported wind-up watches, drank coffee brewed in small pots, shaved with old-fashioned razor blades and shaving cream, took great delight in antique slide projectors, and wore large leather shoes shaped like boats. When you saw these markings, you could be certain that you had found one. Then, having found one, you couldn’t help but notice just how crude and boorish the so-called fashionable were in comparison. The rush to be trendy left no time for elegance or refinement. One was driven about by a succession of waves. Speed and quantity were all that mattered, and the result was that corners were cut and things got done in a slipshod manner and had eventually to be discarded. You could tell this by looking at the clothing shops where advertisements for markdowns were posted all over the walls, shelves, and counters—even the stalls outside. Before the last season’s clothes had sold out, they were two steps behind the latest fashion, which had already arrived. What choice was there but to run constant sales and markdowns?
In this crude and uncultured fashion world, the “Old Colours” were the stewards in charge of safekeeping refinement. They were the only ones paying attention to the things that mattered; though they never advertised themselves or talked about what they were doing, they had their feet firmly planted on the ground. They took things one step at a time; men of action, they let others do the talking. They didn’t even have a name. The term “Old Colour” was given to them by the few who remembered the old days, but it never gained wide circulation. A small minority called them Western-style “Yuppies,” but that never caught on either. And so they remained nameless, silently tilling their little plot of land. We could, if we chose, refer to them as nostalgic “lovers of the past,” although they were all young and didn’t have a past to love per se. But they had all been to the Bund and seen, riding on the ferry, what it looked like from out on the water: there they saw the ramparts formed by the Georgian buildings, the Gothic bell tower with its pointed steeple, and the dark forbidding windows staring back at them—all of which sent them down the tunnel of time. They had also climbed up to the rooftops to release pigeons and fly kites, and there, looking out over the sea of rooftops, a few of which jutted out like sails, felt as if they were navigating against the currents of time. Besides these, the ivy crawling up the sides of the walls and the sounds of someone playing the piano in the Western-style house next door also came to feed their nostalgia.
Wang Qiyao knew one of these “Old Colours.” He was twenty-six years old, so calling him an “Old Colour” was a bit ironic, a way of emphasizing his youth. A gym teacher at a local middle school, he normally dressed in sweatpants, and his hair looked like the bristle end of a scrub brush. He had a dark complexion from years of working outdoors. At school he kept to himself and never fraternized with his colleagues. Who would have guessed that he was an accomplished flamenco guitar player with a collection of more than a hundred jazz records? This “Old Colour” lived in a traditional
longtang
in Hongkou, with parents who were honest, hardworking government employees and watched what they spent; his sister had left home to get married. He himself occupied the third-floor
tingzijian
: his palmwood cot lay on the floor along with his record player. As soon as he entered his room, he would take off his shoes and, sitting on the bare floor, enter into his own little universe. Outside his dormer window was a slanted portion of the roof. Occasionally, during the summer, he would climb out the window with a backpack, spread a mat out over the roof tiles, and, tying himself to the windowsill with a rope around his waist, spend the evening lying outside. Looking up, he would see a sprinkling of stars suspended in the deep blue sky above. He could faintly make out the rumbling sounds of the machinery from a factory in the distance, and the smoke from the factory’s smokestack billowed white against the sky. The scattered sounds of the night seemed to have sunk down to earth, while he himself had dissolved into the air, empty of thoughts and desires.

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