Bird Talk and Other Stories by Xu Xu

by Xu Xu

  “And he has been in the hospital in Jiujiang all this time?” I asked. Xiancheng nodded her head.

  “Do you often receive letters from him?”

  “Yes, but they are written by the nurses. He sometimes adds a word or two in his own hand,” Xiancheng replied. “After the war of resistance against Japan was over and I had graduated from high school, I did not want to go on to university. I wanted to wait for him and attend with him, and so I went to work as an assistant in a bank. After one year, I was promoted to regular clerk, but then my father died, and all our savings were eaten up by inflation. Originally, I had wanted to quit my job and go back to Jiujiang to be with him, but by then my work was feeding our family and I could not quit. And then, not long after, I was dispatched to Taiwan.…”

  “Oh love, oh sorrow!”

  I suddenly also could hear that sound in the mountains. It was deep and mournful, full of grief and anxiety, sorrow and despair. It sent a shiver down my spine. For a long time I did not utter a word. Neither did she.

  “I am sure he will be fine,” I finally said.

  “I also used to think so,” she said, “but tonight, having heard this sound, I am scared. I feel it might be a bad omen.”

  “I think you are too superstitious,” I consoled her. “Your mind is playing tricks on you. What I really heard sounded more like ‘All right, tomorrow,’ ” I lied.

  “ ‘All right, tomorrow’?” She suddenly stared at me, eyes wide open. “What do you mean?”

  “I am sure his illness will get better and he will soon be all right,” I said uneasily.

  “You’re right. I let him down, I am unworthy of his love.” She started to cry again.

  Suddenly I realized that when I had said that his illness would be getting better, I had caused this sensitive lady to think of the ill-fated heroine Lin Daiyu in *Dream of the Red Chamber ! I was extremely uneasy and did not dare say anything else. After a long while, I finally urged her to get up. “Let’s go back and get some sleep. The others might wake up and think the two of us …” Afraid that I would again say the wrong thing, I left it at that. But she had understood and probably thought that my misgivings were justified. She let me help her get up, and, turning on my flashlight, I led her back to the hotel.

  We closed the front door behind us and took off our shoes at the entrance to the corridor. Just then I was suddenly overcome by dread that someone might have noticed us. I did not know whether she felt the same, but at least she no longer seemed to be paying attention to the moaning sounds from outside and very cautiously tiptoed back into her room. When I returned to my room, I was overcome by an indescribable fatigue. And even though Mr. Wang’s snoring was even louder, and Xianmeng’s heavy breathing had not abated in the least, I immediately fell asleep.

  When I awoke the next morning, everybody had already gotten up. Mr. Wang said I really slept like a log. He said he had woken up at four in the morning and originally had wanted to wake us all up to see the sunrise, but when he had stepped outside and seen that the sky was covered with thick clouds, he had decided not to wake us. He said he had gone back to bed, but somehow could no longer fall asleep.

  Breakfast was taken in the same upstairs room with the enclosed balcony. Xiancheng was the last to come up.

  “You look rested,” I said to her.

  “Thank you,” she replied with a composed smile, but I knew that her mind was far from composed. After breakfast, Mr. Wang’s friend took the lead and we went sightseeing. We saw a lot of scenic spots and historic sites, temples, and an old lumberyard. The weather was fair. The sky would be overcast one moment and clear the next, leaden one moment and then bright again a moment later. At every step we took photos. Only Xiancheng did not want to be in any of them. Every now and then, Ms. Nie and Ms. Li would grab her arm to have her be in a photo, but each time she tactfully declined. This was something I never quite understood. Xianmeng and Cuimei naturally were used to her behavior and at times made excuses for her.

  We were a lively bunch out there on the mountain. Mr. Wang and Ms. Li had a great sense of humor, while Ms. Nie was a bit of a hypochondriac and from time to time would throw pills into her mouth. Yesterday, everyone had been tired from the journey up the mountain, but now, we were all well rested and everyone was joking around. Xianmeng was a man with a broad range of interests and could provide the backstory to each historic site we visited. Cunmei was always in high spirits when she was with him, and Mr. Shi kept telling us little anecdotes, all the while pointing out things that deserved attention. He told us the height of a certain tree or the age of a certain temple. Only Xiancheng remained silent all along. She did not join our laughter and showed no interest in anything. She just tagged along, head lowered. Dawen time and again would walk next to her. It seemed that he was trying to find an opportunity to talk to her, but none presented itself. Eventually, when she abruptly took off her raincoat, Dawen stretched out his arm to take it from her. She graciously thanked him, but thereafter did not utter another word.

  I was still holding on to the branch from the all-souls tree that she had given me the previous day and that was all the more precious to me now. There were many such trees along the way, and I broke off a branch for her, saying, “Here, let me give you one as well.”

  She accepted it with a smile and held on to it in silence. We wandered around for about two hours and then went back to the station to take the same diesel engine down the mountain. The journey continued to be lively and interesting. Only Xiancheng sat in a corner and gazed at the distant mountains and forests. I suddenly wondered whether maybe she was still hearing the sound of wailing. I listened carefully. No, there was nothing. There was only the sound of our diesel engine swiftly traveling along its rails. The train was going down at a speed three times faster than going up the previous day, sweeping past countless mountain ridges, charging through light clouds and thick fog, and passing through tunnel after tunnel.

  We arrived in Chiayi at two in the afternoon. The women went to the hotel to rest, Dawen went to Taichung to consult with the university, and Mr. Wang and Mr. Shi attended to their business at the factory. That left Xianmeng and me to wander around Chiayi for a while. I very much wanted to talk to him about the matter concerning Xiancheng, but the city streets were not the right place to talk and so I did not broach the topic. And Xiancheng? She neither took a nap nor explored Chiayi with us. Cunmei later told me that she was alone in her room, writing a letter.

  The rest of the trip proceeded as planned. Mr. Wang had bought us sleeper tickets for the ten o’clock night train, which meant that we could have dinner prior to boarding. I urged everyone to have a little drink so that we would sleep better on the train. I knew that Mr. Wang liked to drink. Xianmeng, on the other hand, drank little, and I drank even less. The women all only had three tiny cups, but to my surprise, Xiancheng turned out to be a match for Mr. Wang. She had not said a word all day, but now she was merrily drinking away with him. Had Dawen not gone to Taichung, he certainly would have happily joined them.

  In the end, Xiancheng was more than a little drunk, but she still wanted to keep drinking. Mr. Wang himself would have liked to keep going, but he had enough experience to know that Xiancheng had had enough and tried to stop her. Xianmeng and I joined in the effort and urged her to stop. Mr. Wang then divided what was left in the wine pitcher between everyone and we all drank up. Xiancheng was drunk. She seemed to be thinking that it was Xianmeng who had not wanted her to drink anymore and was quite upset. She sat there in silence until suddenly a shiny tear appeared in the corner of her eye. Cunmei and I helped her to the sofa to take a nap, and we hastily finished our dinner. Then we got on the train. The wine had done its trick. I for one slept really well that night. I only woke up twice, each time when the train had come to a stop in a station. Both times, I peered over at Xiancheng, who also seemed to be sound asleep. We arrived in Taipei early the next morning and said our farewells once we had stepped out of the railway station
.

  I took a morning shower and went back to sleep for a while. When I woke up, I couldn’t stop thinking of Xiancheng. I wanted to go and talk to Xianmeng and Cunmei. I was not going to tell them everything that had occurred two nights ago, but we had to think of a way to help Xiancheng and her boyfriend. However, after lunch, a friend came over and asked me to accompany him to visit a friend of mine who was teaching at National Taiwan University. My friend was hoping that I could introduce him, because he wanted to go to the university library and look at some books on birds. Birds were that friend’s only interest, and wherever he went he wanted to learn more about the local species. I pitied him almost as much as I pitied Xiancheng, and so I accompanied him. In that way, the day came to an end.

  The next day happened to be a Sunday. I figured that Xiancheng would not have to go to work that day, so I decided to go to Xianmeng’s place early in the morning. If Xiancheng happened to be at the house of Xianmeng’s brother, I would first talk with Xianmeng, and then we could go to his brother’s together. The front door was wide open. I walked in and went straight to the living room. To my surprise, the living room was full of people, some of whom I had met before and some whom I did not know. Xianmeng’s brother and his wife were there, and Cunmei was sitting together with some older ladies. Everyone was crying and the atmosphere was extremely solemn. No one said a word. I felt at a loss and, because I could spot neither Xianmeng nor Xiancheng among those seated, left the living room. In the corridor I ran into Xianmeng.

  “What’s all this about?” I asked in a low voice.

  “Yesterday just when we got home she received a telegram.” Xianmeng must have assumed that I already knew what had happened, having just walked out of the living room.

  “What telegram?”

  “The one they had sent to Xiancheng.”

  “What happened?”

  “Her boyfriend has passed away.”

  “Passed away? So he did die after all.… How about Xiancheng? Is she at home?” I asked.

  “She killed herself.”

  “Killed herself?”

  “Who would have thought,” Xianmeng said. “After I had helped her decipher the telegram, she did not cry. She just sat on the sofa, her face twitching. I wanted to talk to her and console her, but she paid no attention to me. After a while, she went to her room, but she came out again about half an hour later. She was holding her knitting gear and began to knit. By then, I had already told Cunmei about the telegram, and Cunmei naturally also tried to console her, but Xiancheng remained silent and only knitted away. When it was almost time to eat, she suddenly got up at said, ‘Ah, it’s done at last.’ ”

  “After lunch,” Xianmeng continued, “she said she was going to the bank. We knew she had an odd temper and did not dare to bother her. She came back at seven, had dinner, and then stayed upstairs by herself. We asked the maid to check on her, and she told us Xiancheng was writing a letter. At half past nine, she came down to the kitchen to burn a pile of letters. The maid said Xiancheng had been very cheerful and had chatted with her while burning them. Afterward, she asked the maid for hot water so that she could take a bath. When she was done, we all went to bed. This morning, the maid went into her room and noticed that there was something not quite right about the color of her face. She called me in and I immediately telephoned for a doctor. The doctor said she had been dead for at least three hours.”

  “What did she swallow to kill herself?” I asked.

  “We did not find anything in her room, but in the bathroom we later found three empty bottles of sleeping pills. She must have swallowed the contents all at once.”

  “Did she leave a note?”

  “Just a very simple one,” Xianmeng replied. “Aside from thanking us, she asked us to send what little jewelry and US dollars she owned to her younger brothers.”

  “She’s got brothers?”

  “Two,” Xianmeng told me. “Both of them are in Beiping.”

  “Working?”

  “Both are studying.”

  Just then, several young people whom I did not know arrived. They exchanged greetings with Xianmeng and I learned that they were Xiancheng’s colleagues who had come to find out more about what had happened. Xianmeng asked everyone to sit in the veranda and I sat down with them. I learned that Xiancheng indeed had gone to the bank in the afternoon of the previous day. One of the women said that Xiancheng had boxed a woolen sweater she had knitted and asked one of her colleagues to go to the post office and mail it. She waited for the colleague to return and stayed until the end of the workday. The bank holiday had only lasted until the day before yesterday, but Xiancheng had also taken off yesterday morning. Apparently, she had gaily chatted with her colleagues about the scenery at Mount Ali. No one could have guessed what was on her mind. From their conversation, I also learned that those sleeping pills came from the stock of a pharmacist who was a friend of theirs and who had asked Xiancheng and some of the others to help him sell them. For that reason, a few boxes were kept in the bank. Apparently, they were all kept in a hard-to-reach place together with some boxes of vitamins. Could it be, they wondered, that she had mistakenly …?

  Xianmeng told us that Xiancheng had already been cremated.

  “Cremated?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Xianmeng replied. “There is a place here that provides cremation in accordance with Buddhist burial ritual.”

  Addressing again Xiancheng’s colleagues, he said, “Tomorrow, there will be a simple Buddhist ceremony at Hulong Temple on Hulong Street.”

  The next day, I went to Hulong Temple. Xianmeng took me to a hall in the back where the ashes were kept. There was a line of long tables on top of which were placed candleholders, incense burners, flower vases for paper flowers, and a row of small cups filled with tea. There were wooden shelves on all four sides that were divided into lots of small squares, and on each shelf was a small, yellow porcelain urn. Each urn had a little red paper slip pasted on top. Xianmeng led me in front of one of the urns and pointed at it. I read the words “deceased cousin Xiancheng …,” but my eyes were already blurry. I no longer saw a yellow vase, but instead a face with a slightly protruding forehead, pointed lower jaw, upright nose, big eyes, and delicate eyebrows. My gaze remained fixed for a long time. Then I placed the branch of the all-souls tree she had given me into one of the vases with paper flowers. The branch was already wilted, but there still remained some leaves on it. On their back, I had written the following words:

  Oh love, oh sorrow! It is in moments of great sorrow that we grasp the meaning of deep love. Yet it is also when love is at its deepest that we experience true sorrow.

  來高升路的一個女人

  When Ah Heung Came to Gousing Road

  By 1965, the year this story was first published, Hong Kong’s population had risen from roughly half a million by the end of World War II in 1945 to almost four million. At first, most of the new arrivals had been refugees fleeing the fighting in China that had flared up again between the Nationalists and the Communists after Japan’s surrender. In the wake of the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, many more left China for political reasons, like Xu Xu himself. In subsequent years, despite the eventual tightening of immigration control on both sides of the border, there was a constant trickle of economic migrants to Hong Kong, especially during years of particular hardship in China, like the years of famine that followed the Great Leap Forward (1958–62). Hong Kong’s colonial government tended to repatriate immigrants caught in the border area, yet it tolerated immigrants who managed to reach the urban areas of Hong Kong, a policy that remained in effect until 1980. These immigrants, like Ah Heung and her two friends in the story, fueled much of Hong Kong’s economic growth in the postwar period.

  Like Ah Heung, most of the immigrants tended to come from the bordering province of Guangdong. Its capital *Canton, also known as Guangzhou, is where Ah Heung’s two friends in the story are from. By the early 1960s, Hong Kong’s e
conomy was growing rapidly, in part because of the development of light industry, particularly electronics. The fact that one of the two friends dreams of owning an electrical supplies shop appears to reflect this development. Betting on dogs and horses was a popular pastime in Hong Kong, as was frequenting local operas sung in Cantonese or watching movies from Hong Kong or Hollywood. Hong Kong in the story is depicted as a city where an individual’s hard work and dexterity might lead to a better life—the word “Gousing,” which literally means “rising high,” is not only a likely name for a road on mountainous Hong Kong Island but also a pun on Ah Heung’s ultimate fate. However, Ah Heung also displays a moral integrity toward her friends that readers would have associated with a traditional jianghu 江湖 spirit, a kind of chivalry associated with legendary bands of itinerants roaming the rivers (jiang) and lakes (hu) of southern China.

  Gousing Road is a steep little alley on Hong Kong Island. It cascades up a slope and near the top assumes the shape of a W. At the top of the slope, all the houses belong to rich folks. Because Gousing Road is lined on both sides with high rises, it is not directly exposed to the sun, and as a result it is a little cooler there on hot days.

  At the entrance to Gousing Road there used to be three street stalls. One of them was a stall selling leather shoes. The shoemaker, Old Gam, was a friendly and hardworking chap in his fifties. He usually had more work than he could finish in one day. Even though he was sewing shoes day in, day out with his head bent down low, he knew a fair bit of gossip about most of the families in the neighborhood. He was a cheerful sort and liked to chat while working. Next to Old Gam’s stall was a hardware stall that specialized in cutting keys. Business at times was good, and at other times it was slow. Its owner, Mah Daksing, was a clever but lazy fellow who was still in his twenties. Sometimes people called him to help them open their doors. The last one was a small stall selling potted flowers and miniature trees. Its owner, Sing Zyunfuk, was the youngest of the three and, like Daksing, was originally from *Canton. The two had been primary school classmates, and he had been able to come here to set up his stall largely thanks to Daksing’s connections. When Daksing had to go and help someone with a lock, Zyunfuk would look after his stall for him, and when Daksing did not have anything to do, the two of them would play chess.