Song of Everlasting Sorrow (72 page)

Read Song of Everlasting Sorrow Online

Authors: Wang Anyi

BOOK: Song of Everlasting Sorrow
6.91Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
“Our little game is coming to an end too, isn’t it?” she said.
He trembled slightly, struck by an ominous sensation.
“After all, life is like a game, right?” she continued.
He didn’t know whether to agree or disagree, but he saw her stand up and walk toward him through the smoke. She began to caress his hair, which took him off guard. She ran her hands through his hair several times and he heard her whisper, “You silly boy.”
He reached up to guide her hands but before he could touch her, she was gone. Wang Qiyao had already left the room, and as he watched her receding into the door he began to feel feverish. Upon her return she found him shivering, his teeth chattering loudly. She put down the bowl in her hand to feel his forehead, only to be caught up in his arms, like vines wrapping around a tree. When she asked him what was wrong, he didn’t say a word, but keeping his eyes closed, pulled himself against her body. She could feel that his whole body was burning and helped him over to the bed to lie down. Clamped down on her waist with both arms, he pulled her down on top of him. Wang Qiyao kept telling him to let go, but he just held on more tightly. In her panic, she slapped him in the face. But he just kept his eyes closed and held on tighter still. She continued hitting him until her hand ached. His face was coming out in red welts, and taking pity on him, she gently caressed his cheeks. To this he responded by pushing his face against hers. They lay like this for quite some time went by. As she leaned on his chest, Wang Qiyao let out a sigh, and he took advantage of her momentary passivity by turning over suddenly and pressing down on top of her.
As his fever subsided, he broke out in a cold sweat, but continued to shiver. Strange, incoherent mumblings spilled out of his mouth and Wang Qiyao had no idea what he was saying. She did all she could to sooth him, treating him like a child who needed to be comforted. She consented to whatever he wanted, doing all she could to please him. At certain moments he grew frustrated because he didn’t know how to do what he was yearning to do and ended up throwing a tantrum. In the end it was Wang Qiyao who guided him with her hand. He sobbed a few more times, desperately, as if his world had come to an end. So Wang Qiyao consoled him and did her best to encourage him. That was a long, distressful night, and many things occurred that should never have been. The lights went on and off all night as they tried to go to sleep but kept getting up. There was something odd about Peace Lane that night, it was so quiet, empty of all the usual sounds of things stirring about—the only noises were those they made. And even these sounds seemed to get swallowed up, so that the noisier they were, the lonelier it felt. They were both plagued by nightmares, emitting muffled cries. Their breath came heavily, and their eyes felt sore and dry. It was an exhausting night, and felt as if they were both being crushed under some enormous weight.
They prayed for the morning to arrive, but as the first rays of light shone on the curtain, they started to worry how they would get through this new day. He was utterly spent, so exhausted that he could barely move. But she forced herself to get up before sunrise. She couldn’t bear to look at herself in the mirror as she washed her face and brushed her hair. Quickly getting herself together, she tiptoed like a thief out of the apartment with a basket. It was still dark outside, the streetlights were still on, and there was virtually no one on the streets. Wang Qiyao walked briskly toward the market, where people were beginning to stir. By this time the sky was brightening and she felt that she had finally got past the previous night’s ordeal. The streetlights went off one by one, but a few stars were still faintly visible in the sky. She asked herself what time it was. When she got home, the bed was empty and Old Colour had gone.
Old Colour did not come back. Wang Qiyao thought it was probably just as well. With him gone, the first thing she did was to pull open the curtains to let the sunlight in, letting it dissolve the darkness from the night before. Her mind seemed to skip over that night; she kept thinking,
Nothing happened . . . nothing happened.
The ensuing days were quite peaceful, as were the nights that followed. Her social life was calmer, as everyone was busy with different things. She started a new cashmere sweater that required some very complicated knitting work. She knitted from morning until night, stopping only to eat. She kept the television on constantly, all the way until “Good-bye” appeared on the screen. Only then would Wang Qiyao put her knitting away and go to bed. She tried not to think of him, erasing his name from her mind as if he had never existed. Sometimes she would wonder,
What
’
s the difference? I still live my life exactly as I did before.
But then one day Long Legs came by and casually asked, “When is Old Colour coming back to town?”
Wang Qiyao was taken aback. She didn’t even know he had left.
“He went to Wuxi, didn’t he?” said Long Legs.
Wang Qiyao didn’t say anything, but inside herself she couldn’t help laughing a cold, mocking laugh. She cooked several dishes for Long Legs, heating up some high-grade Shaoxing wine for him, and listened to him carry on with his tall tales. Long Legs had been doing well of late; several of his business deals had gone smoothly and he told Wang Qiyao about every one of them. She listened carefully, occasionally asking questions. Long Legs was quite touched to see someone paying so much attention to him—combined with the wine, this even made him a bit teary-eyed.
“Auntie Wang, if you or any of your friends ever need to change money, come to me. I guarantee I’ll give you a better rate than the Bank of China,” he said, and went on to quote the different rates and make the calculations for her.
“But I don’t have any foreign currency. . . .” She hesitated for a moment before continuing, “Do you trade in the yellow stuff?”
“Of course!” declared Long Legs. He quoted her the price for gold on the black market as compared to the official price, rapidly calculated the difference, and cited some examples of recent transactions.
To his disappointment, Wang Qiyao said, “Well, I don’t have any gold either. . . .”
“It’s actually a very good deal,” he added, and then moved on to another topic. By the time they finished lunch and Long Legs left, it was already three o’clock; the sun was still bright, but it was beginning to wane. Long Legs was a bit tipsy and couldn’t quite walk straight. He could barely keep his eyes open. Standing there on the bustling street, he wondered,
Where should I go now?
That night Wang Qiyao sat on the sofa knitting and listening to the noisy television. Feeling utterly bored, she closed her eyes, and before she knew it she had fallen asleep. When she awoke there was white static on the screen and the room was filled with the empty buzz of the television. Opening her eyes wide, she found the room larger and emptier than usual; the lights seemed brighter too, bathing the room in a harsh white. She forced herself to get up and turn off the television and the light before crawling into bed; but as soon as the light was switched off, the moonlight shone down at the foot of her bed and she was suddenly wide awake. She gazed at the floral patterns on the curtains in the moonlight and wondered what day of the lunar month it could be for the moon to be so full. She blamed herself for dozing off earlier, because now she wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep—how was she supposed to get through the night? When people wake up alone in the middle of a quiet night, it is only natural for their thoughts to stray. The strange thing was that she didn’t remember anything important, only an insignificant night from long ago.
One night, many years ago, two men from the provinces had knocked on her door hoping to find a doctor for the patient they were carrying on a stretcher. That sharp, insistent rapping in the stillness of the night rang in her ears—at the time she didn’t know if that knock was the bearer of good news or bad. Wang Qiyao’s hearing had grown keen at this moment and she could hear everything that went on in the
longtang
. There was nobody knocking now, the entire
longtang
was deathly silent, and one could even hear the thump when a cat jumped down from a wall. Wang Qiyao took in all of these minute sounds and carefully analyzed them. This was a little game she played with herself on quiet nights to pass the time. That night Wang Qiyao ended up staying awake almost the entire night; she did doze off a few times, but it was a light sleep and the slightest sound was enough to startle her awake. Worried that the same thing might happen the following night, she forced herself to stay awake until late; but she couldn’t fight off her exhaustion and the moment she crawled under the covers she was out like a light.
She suddenly woke up to a knock on the window. Once fully awake, she heard it again—it sounded like someone throwing pebbles against the window. She got up and went over to pull the curtain back, only to discover the empty moonlit alley of the
longtang.
She stood there a moment and was about to close the curtain again when someone suddenly emerged from the shadows, stepping out into the moonlight, and looked up at her. They gazed at each other for a long while before Wang Qiyao turned to put on a jacket and went downstairs. The back door opened and the man scurried inside; no words were exchanged as they walked one behind the other up the stairs.
No lights were on inside, but the moonlight was there. They both stood facing it in order to avoid looking at each other. One sat down on the bed while the other stood, arms folded.
“You came back?” she, standing, asked after a long silence.
He, sitting, lowered his head.
“What were you running from? Don’t tell me you were afraid that I’d come after you?” This was followed by a cold laugh.
Wang Qiyao walked over to the sofa and lit a cigarette. Her moonlit face was ashen, her hair was disheveled, and the smoke rose into the air, once again obscuring her. Without speaking, he took off his clothes and crawled into bed, covering his head with the blanket. Still smoking her cigarette, she turned to face the window. The moonlight picked out her profile, which in the haze of the smoke appeared like the silhouette of a creature from another world. She was uncertain about the hour, which must have been late, as there was not a sound, not even from a stray cat. Finishing her cigarette at last, Wang Qiyao put out the butt in the ashtray before coming back to bed. This was a quiet night: everything was carried out in silence. There were no tears, no moans, even their breath seemed to be stifled. Eventually the moon moved west and the room grew dark; lying in bed, the two of them seemed to sink down to the very bottom of the earth, completely silent and still. No one could have predicted what ended up happening on that dark silent night. This is what is known as a dark secret, a secret that must not be seen, spoken of, or even thought of—nothing whatsoever can be done about it. There was but one source of noise on that silent night—the pigeons on the rooftop, who were making disturbing sounds all night as if their nests had been invaded.
At nine the next morning, on one of the few sunny days they had seen all winter, Old Colour rode his bicycle down the street.
Could I be dreaming?
he asked himself. Everything around him seemed bright and alive, making his nightmares from the night before seem insubstantial, and this terrified him. He couldn’t remember how everything had started or how it had ended. He was drawn to crowded places, as if they could bolster his confidence. He also liked the daylight and felt relaxed when he saw the sun rising. What he feared most were those moments just before dusk; he would be seized by a sudden panic and unable to sit still. He would often line up various meetings and things to do just before that time, but after dinner, around seven or eight o’clock, just before all the evening activities were about to start, he would feel compelled to get on his bike and ride toward Wang Qiyao’s apartment—it was as if the demons from his nightmares were beckoning him.
How long had it been since he had been to the record store? He didn’t even listen to the records he already had at home, which had all grown dusty. And on nights that he insisted on returning to his
tingzijian
, he would usually stay up, unable to rest. Outside the dormer window was the open empty sky; he felt if he gazed at it long enough, his heart would fall into it. At moments like this, the nightmares would return with a vengeance to his fully conscious mind; they were particularly vivid at this time and too much for him to handle alone. He couldn’t do it by himself—he had no choice but to go to Wang Qiyao. But that only created a new nightmare. Knowing that he would be restless no matter what, he became resigned to his predicament. One morning, instead of creeping away from Wang Qiyao’s bed right away, he decided to lie there watching the room slowly grow brighter. He glanced at Wang Qiyao with her head resting on the pillow, and she looked back at him. They smiled at each other.
“What should we have for breakfast?” Wang Qiyao asked, as if they were an old married couple.
Without answering, he reached over Wang Qiyao’s body for the pack of cigarettes on the headboard. Wang Qiyao handed it to him, taking one for herself; the way they lit up was also like an old couple. By that time the first rays of sunlight had come into the room, but stopped on one side of the window frame. There was a note of weariness and desolation in the thin mist shrouding the morning sunlight. As if the day was almost over before it had even begun.
“What time do you have to be at work?” Wang Qiyao asked.

Other books

Simon Says Die by Lena Diaz
Hurt (DS Lucy Black) by McGilloway, Brian
Cheat by Kristin Butcher
The Reversal by Michael Connelly
A Taste of You by Preston, Irene
Snowbound Hearts by Kelly, Benjamin