Bird Talk and Other Stories by Xu Xu

by Xu Xu

  I really loved her. I also kept telling myself that I had yet to fulfill my bargain as her nominal husband. Moreover, I simply had to see her one more time. Regardless of what happened afterward, I had to see her one more time. I wistfully returned to my hotel room. Lying on my bed smoking, I waited for the time to pass. After dinner, I no longer could contain my anguish. I inquired about a dance hall, changed, and went out. I forgot myself, got drunk, and amused myself with some French-speaking prostitutes until two in the morning. I returned to the hotel in the same dejected state. When I entered the room, Catherine was sitting on the sofa. Seeing me walk in half-drunk without a word, she got up in surprise and led me to the sofa.

  “Xu, what’s going on?” she asked.

  “What’s going on with you?” I replied in anger.

  “I can tell you everything now.” She took out two cigarettes, one for herself and one for me. She sat on the sofa next to me and appeared extremely calm and composed.

  “To tell you the truth, I haven’t come here because of an inheritance.” She paused for a moment, and then continued: “My father was Jewish and he died during the Great War. My mother is Spanish. She was a famous spy during the war. She disguised herself as a laundry woman working for the army. At the time, I was only six years old and helped her deliver the laundry. Of course my mother did not let me know that she was a spy. She is still alive now and fights in the Spanish Civil War. I don’t want to deceive you any longer. I am here to continue her life work. Shipments with ammunition are frequently sent from here to Franco, and I am here to conduct sabotage operations.”

  I was stunned. At the same time, I was not yet entirely convinced. Did this not sound too much like a story from a spy novel? I therefore asked her, “So why did you need me to come along?”

  “Without you, I wouldn’t have been able to enter the country. That’s why I needed you to become my husband, why we had to sail on the same ship, why we had to withdraw to our cabin together at night, why you had to treat me just like you would treat your real wife. All this was meant as camouflage.” She suddenly sounded exhausted and she continued with a tired voice. “I have come here three times already to do this kind of job. This time, it was a deadly mission. I made it through alive, but only because someone who loves me gave his life instead.”

  “Someone who loves you?” I asked, a little frightened now.

  “That’s right, but it’s not you. It’s that young Italian from the ship.”

  When she had finished, she threw herself in my arms, and exclaimed, now suddenly agitated, “Let’s quickly pack. There is a train for France that leaves at five. We have to leave or else terrible things might happen.”

  In that moment, it felt as if I had turned into the six-year-old her, and she had assumed the role of her mother. I did everything as she said. I had complete faith in her. Two hours later, we found ourselves aboard a train. Approaching France at sixty miles an hour, she finally seemed cheerful again and lightheartedly gazed out of the window. Then she looked at me and smiled, and we chatted a little. A lot of thoughts were running through my mind. I felt like in a dream. The whole world around me, it seemed, had changed colors. There were still many things about her and about her mission that I did not understand. I wanted to ask a lot of questions but sensed that she probably did not want to talk about these things now. But when the train had finally crossed into France, I could no longer hold back.

  “If you only needed me to bring you into the country, then why did you want me stay behind with you?” I asked.

  “Didn’t I also need you to get me out of the country? Look, I don’t want to lie to you anymore. According to my original plan, if at some point someone would have had to die, I probably would have sacrificed you. But then I fell in love with you and, because of the sincerity of your feelings during our voyage, I could never have brought myself to do it. On that evening, when it became clear that someone would have to die, the evening I slept in your embrace, I could not decide whether you would die for me or I would die for you. I could no longer bear to think about it, but no matter what, I wanted us to consummate our marriage. But then, I suddenly thought of him.…

  “So you and Sherkels had actually planned on sacrificing me.…”

  “Yes, but don’t blame him. You yourself probably would have thought of sacrificing yourself, just as I would have done the same. What’s the weight of one of us compared to the weight of the suffering of the Spanish people?”

  I did not say anything, but silently adored her.

  All the papers in Paris already carried the news about her big coup. They also mentioned the young Italian who had died in her place and who was turned into a hero. I sent news of our real marriage to Sherkels, and for a week, the two of us experienced heaven on earth. In my current state of mind, I do not have the strength to talk about just how happy we were. It simply would cause me too much grief. One week later, she left for Germany. I obviously had no right to stand in the way of that great cause of hers. After I saw her off at the station, all that remained was the image of her waving at me from the train. In that image, she appeared strong and vigorous, lively, happy, courageous, and nimble. I soon succumbed to a numb yearning for her that left me depressed and fearful. My fear and my longing for her grew stronger each day until it completely overwhelmed me. But there was no word from her.

  Not long after, there was some frightening news in the papers. I knew in my heart that it must have been about her, but still I kept waiting for word from her.

  Finally, word came in the form of a letter from Sherkels. It was simple, yet stirring:

  Her love and beauty, her spirit and flesh were a bright torch that burned for this world!

  Yes, she was light, she was fire; she was a star that gave its luster and warmth for mankind, a comet that perished in a sea of clouds.

  May 15, 1937. Paris, deep in the night.

  鳥語

  Bird Talk

  “Bird Talk” was among the first new works of fiction that Xu Xu published after arriving in Hong Kong. When it became apparent that his legacy as a writer of exotic romances would sooner or later become a political liability in the newly founded People’s Republic, Xu Xu decided to leave mainland China for what he thought would only be a temporary exile.

  While the foreign concessions of Shanghai had been returned to Chinese jurisdiction at the end of World War II, Hong Kong, which had been occupied by the Japanese in the wake of Pearl Harbor, was not returned to China but to its former colonial power, Great Britain. It soon became the destination for millions of Chinese who were displaced by the civil war between the Communists and the Nationalists that had flared up again after Japan’s surrender. For some, Hong Kong was just a stepping stone on their journey to either Taiwan, other parts of Asia, or the United States. Others, and Xu Xu would ultimately be one of them, reluctantly made Hong Kong their new home. By the end of 1950, almost two million refugees had arrived in Hong Kong, and, over the next two decades, several hundred thousand more would follow.

  The founding of a new China by Mao Zedong in 1949 had signaled the end of the Republican period (1912–49), and 1950 marked a watershed in Xu Xu’s life and in the lives of those Chinese who had left their homes and families in the mainland—Xu Xu himself became separated from his second wife and daughter after settling in Hong Kong. Something irretrievable was lost, it seemed, and, unsurprisingly, nostalgia became a common theme in the literature and film of the period. The narrator in “Bird Talk,” however, also seems to be in search of something more elusive than a lost home and appears to have gotten a glimpse of it through the story’s protagonist.

  The story opens in postwar Hong Kong, where the narrator receives news concerning a certain *Juening 覺寧. From the Chinese characters, it is clear that Juening is a dharma name or Buddhist name of religion that literally translates as Peaceful Awareness. Much of the narrative that follows is a flashback that takes the reader first to the idyllic beauty of the prewar Chinese cou
ntryside, somewhere in the lush rice-growing expanses south of the Yangtze River, and later to the bustling city of Shanghai.

  The *Three Hundred Tang Poems 唐詩三百首 that the narrator uses to teach the protagonist is a popular anthology of some of the best-loved poems from the Tang dynasty (618–907). Compiled during the Qing dynasty (1644–1912), it includes works by poets such as Du Fu 杜甫, Li Bai 李白, Wang Wei 王維, Bai Juyi 白居易 and many more. *Jessfield Park was a public garden near Shanghai’s International Settlement that had been established in 1914. Its Chinese name was Zhaofeng Park 兆豐公園. In 1944, it was renamed Zhongshan Park 中山公園, in honor of the founder of the Republic of China, Dr. Sun Yatsen (1866–1925), who is also known as Sun Zhongshan. The park is still called Zhongshan Park today.

  When I opened the parcel that had just arrived in the mail I found that it contained a copy of the Diamond Sutra. It was a large and very elaborate woodblock edition printed on exquisite paper. The handwriting on the parcel was unfamiliar, but from the postmark I could see that it had been sent from my maternal grandmother’s village. I was dumbstruck. In my bewilderment, I began to flip through the pages, gazing at the red punctuation marks. As I impatiently awaited the arrival of more news, I was overcome by a troubling feeling of anxiety and fear that began to unsettle my normal life.

  After six days, I received a simple letter that bore the same postmark. The handwriting again was unfamiliar and the letter itself was brief. “On the fifth day of the eight month of the lunar calendar,” it read, “Sister *Juening departed to wander among the immortals. Just before she passed away, she asked us to send you a copy of the Diamond Sutra.”

  So she had died! It was a dreary autumn night. I was sitting at my desk under the glare of an electric light and stared at the coarse paper with its childish, hastily scribbled handwriting until my eyes began to blur. There was a mirror on my desk, and when I saw myself in its reflection, it seemed as if my life of the past many years unfolded in front of me. It was a round mirror and, through my tear-stained eyes, its surface rippled, momentarily turning into a small pond. I was sitting on a white rock next to the pond. Staring at my tired face in the water’s reflection, I said to myself:

  “What is gone is gone, errors cannot be undone, what is lost is lost, what has vanished cannot be brought back.”

  ***

  “Breakfast is ready! Your grandma asked me to call you.”

  The silhouette of a girl appeared by the side of the pond. Her face was round and thin, and she had braids falling on each shoulder. She wore a patterned cotton shirt with rolled-up sleeves, gray trousers, and no socks. Her naked white shins were stuck in a pair of black cotton shoes that were damp from the dew on the grass. I don’t know why, but I touched her shoes with my hand and said, “Your shoes are all wet!”

  She was taken aback, turned around, and ran away. I got up. Gazing at her vanishing figure, I wondered who she was. It had been a week since my arrival at Huilan Village. How come I had never run into her before? Who was this beautiful girl? At the breakfast table, I asked grandma.

  “A dimwit,” she said.

  “A dimwit?” I was stunned. “Such a pretty girl?”

  “An embroidered pillow,” grandma said. “Pretty only on the outside.”

  “How come I haven’t run into her before?”

  “She doesn’t like to interact with people, and usually hides herself away.”

  I wanted to ask more, but just then someone came in and asked to borrow something from grandma, and so our conversation was cut short. I did not see the girl after that and forgot all about her.

  II

  Many years ago, in 19XX, I was suffering from a serious case of mental exhaustion. My heart was racing and I had insomnia. Moreover, I felt depressed and often found myself talking to myself. My doctor told me that I should find a quiet place in the countryside, and my mother suggested that I go to Huilan Village, where my maternal grandmother lived, and stay there for a few months. It was a small village south of the Yangtze River, consisting of no more than a dozen households. In front of the village there was a threshing ground covered with grass and surrounded by trees. The hills that rose behind seemed close on clear days and distant when it was cloudy. A small river flowed a few hundred steps from the village, and if you traveled it by boat or walked along its banks for about two to three miles, you reached a market town. Most of the villagers were farmers, and they all lived quiet and simple lives.

  In the back of my grandma’s house was a large garden with a bamboo thicket. There were also some fruit trees, and shrubs of wild flowers. It was surrounded by a rickety bamboo fence. In the middle stood an elegant old-style pavilion. In bygone days, this garden would probably have been a flower garden, and the pavilion a place to drink wine, admire flowers, and compose poetry. But no one engages in such refined activities anymore, so grandma used it as storage for farming tools and other objects.

  When grandma heard that I was going to stay with her, she prepared a room for me in a wing of the house that faced the front courtyard. The courtyard was bordered by the neighboring households. All day, people walked in and out and children were playing inside the yard. Bothered by the hustle and bustle, I asked grandma if I could move into the pavilion in the garden. She asked if I would not be scared at night all alone in the pavilion, but I told her that I was not afraid of ghosts. And so, after she had the room swept for me, the walls whitewashed, and things put in order, I moved into the pavilion in the garden. My move caused no small amount of amazement among the neighbors. They all thought it rather odd that I did not want to be together with everyone else and instead preferred to live on my own in a secluded corner.

  When I arrived at my grandma’s I was determined to follow my doctor’s orders. I went to bed early and even when I could not fall asleep would lie in bed and read. When I still was unable to fall asleep, I would take a sleeping pill. In the morning, I went out for walks and then had breakfast upon my return. I would take a nap after lunch and in the afternoon a hot bath. After that, I went out again and walked for a quarter of a mile or so before dinner. After dinner, older women from the neighboring villages stopped by my grandma’s place. I would listen to their chattering for a while and then retire to bed. In that way, my days passed quite agreeably. I gradually got to know the people in the village, all of whom were decent country folk. Among them was a certain Li Bingyang. He was a little over thirty and had a calm and composed nature. He enjoyed playing chess, and it turned out that he and I were a good match. He liked to come over for a game and soon we got to know each other quite well.

  III

  It felt rather peculiar on the first morning after I moved into the pavilion. While staying in the front room facing the yard, all I had heard in the morning was people’s voices. In the back, however, all I heard was the singing of countless birds that were flying in and out of the bamboo thicket. As the first rays of the sun shone into the garden, a gentle breeze stroked the leaves of the bamboo. It was spring, and the air was crisp and clean. I got up and went into the garden. I took a deep breath and looked at the world that surrounded me. Suddenly, I saw the shadow of a person next to the rickety bamboo fence. It was a girl, and she was squatting on the other side, facing the bamboo thicket inside the garden. Just when I wanted to take a closer look, she noticed me, got up, and ran away. I did not give this encounter another thought, but the next day, after I had gotten up and opened the window to gaze outside, I noticed her again. It seemed as if from amidst the chirping and trilling, she herself was making crooning sounds. I kept looking at her, and even though I was curious, I did not go outside for fear of startling her. From then on, I saw her practically every morning. I became determined to find out what she was actually up to, and after eight or nine days of observing her I rose early one morning, even before the birds had begun to sing. The sky was not yet completely light, and I went into the garden to find a place that was close enough to the fence where she usually stood, yet
also hidden by the bamboo thicket. Then I waited for her.

  It was a hazy morning. The sky was colorless except for a faint red glow in the east. Soon, the birds in the bamboo thicket started to sing. At first, there was only one, chirping away in a clear and captivating way and flying from branch to branch. Another one began to sing, as if answering the other. Just then, I heard a response from beyond the fence and I caught sight of the girl, wearing a gray dress, her hair done up in two braids. A chorus of birds began chirping away from inside the bamboo thicket. The two birds that had sung to each other flew to the fence and began trilling at the girl on the other side. The girl raised her head. Her face was round, and her eyes shone brightly. She bore a happy smile. The sounds she was making were beautiful. They neither sounded like the trilling of birds, nor did they sound like singing. The girl and the two birds seemed like old acquaintances. The birds flew back and forth between the fence and her shoulder and then landed on the fence and chirped affectionately. By then, the morning haze had already disappeared, and the sun shone onto the dewy grass. I was able to see the girl’s face clearer now. Her chin was pointed, and she had thin lips, a delicate nose, and a broad forehead. Her eyes were radiant. What was most astonishing was her skin. It seemed as if it had rarely been exposed to the sun. It was of a very light complexion, like porcelain, not at all like that of other country folk. Suddenly a bird flew into the bamboo thicket. Had it noticed me? It called out from the inside and then came flying out again. I could see that the girl was looking straight at me now, and I thought it best to come forward and greet her.