So let it come. Let the very worst of his luck come. He couldn’t stay at the Chous for another day. He’d just have to go back and crowd in with his parents for a few days, like a dog that’s been given a beating outside and comes running back home with its tail between its legs. But how could he admit to his family that he’d been thrown out without losing face? In the last two days he’d gone numb with anger. It seemed as if a drumstick wrapped with cotton had been beating on a drum in the back of his brain. There was a heavily muffled, throbbing pain. He could think of no wholly satisfactory way of covering his shame that would not arouse his family’s suspicions as to why he should suddenly want to come home and live in discomfort. His family still didn’t know about the telegram from San Lü University. What if he announced this to his parents? They would certainly be pleased, and in their joy they might be more magnanimous and not probe and question him very much. He was too lazy to ponder it further and so, with this piece of good news to go on, he braced himself to go home and watch for the right moment to speak. After he had explained everything to his family, he would stay on until quite late before returning to the Chous to sleep in order to avoid meeting Mr. or Mrs. Chou. Then he would pack up his three suitcases and slip out early the next morning, leaving a goodbye note. In any case, he couldn’t face the Chous any more than they could face him. It would really save a lot of trouble. He would not be staying at home long, just until San Lü University wired his traveling expenses; then he would find a few traveling companions and set off. Since he didn’t have to go to the bank any more, he could have fun for a few days, enjoying whatever leisure provided. The idea of leisure somehow reminded him of Miss T’ang; he hurriedly forced the thought out of his mind like one skating over thin ice. His heart also managed to dodge the pain, which luckily had not yet started up.
Hung-chien arrived at his parents’ home some time after four o’clock. As soon as she opened the door, the old maidservant yelled, “Eldest Young Master is here! Madam, Eldest Young Master is here! No need to invite him here any more.”
Entering, Hung-chien saw his mother sitting by the old round dining table, holding and feeding Ah Hsiung with powdered milk. Ah Ch’ou was fussing nearby. The old maidservant shut the door and hurried back to cajole Ah Ch’ou, “Don’t make a fuss and greet Eldest Uncle like a nice boy. Eldest Uncle will give you candy.”
Ah Ch’ou shut his mouth and stared up wide-eyed at Hung-chien. As no candy seemed to be forthcoming, he went back to Mrs. Fang to continue jumping and yelling about as before.
Ah Ch’ou, P’eng-t’u’s son, was four years old. His face was so ugly at birth that one had to laugh at it. P’eng-t’u, still unaccustomed to being a father, and feeling neither the pride of the creator nor the partiality of the owner toward this lump of red flesh barely possessing the five organs and seven orifices,4 bounded into his father’s study and announced, “A freak’s been born.”
Old Fang Tun-weng, eagerly awaiting a grandson, had just divined a lot from the I Ching.5 It was the Little Beast lot: “Dense clouds, no rain.” “The spokes burst out of the wagon wheels. Man and wife roll their eyes.” “Blood vanishes and fear gives way, no blame.” He looked disconsolately at the words of the I Ching divination lot, thinking that it must mean his daughter-in-law would either have a difficult birth or else a miscarriage. Piously, he was just about to cast another lot when he heard his son’s outburst. He jumped with fright, “Don’t talk such nonsense! Has the child been born?”
Seeing how serious the old man looked, P’eng-t’u quickly replied in a very correct manner, “It’s a boy. The mother and son are both fine.”
Containing his delight, Fang Tun-Weng warned his son, “You’re a father now, yet you speak so frivolously. How will you ever teach your son in the future!”
P’eng-t’u explained, “The baby’s face really is ugly. Please give him a name.”
“All right, since you say he’s ugly, then call him Ah Ch’ou (Ugly Boy).” Remembering that Hsün Tzu6 had stated in his chapter “No Face”7 that the faces of all great saints and sages of antiquity were very ugly, Fang Tun-weng simply gave his grandson the school name of “No Face.”
Mrs. Fang understood nothing about any face or no face, but she didn’t care for the name “Ugly Boy” and insisted, “The boy has a fine face. All newborns are like that. Who says he’s ugly? I think you’d better find him some other name.”
This brought out Fang Tun-weng’s entire stock of long-accumulated knowledge. “You can’t appreciate that. If Hung-chien were here, he’d understand it.” So saying he went to the bookshelves in his study and picked out two or three volumes, which he opened up and gave his son to read since Mrs. Fang could only make out a few characters.
Fang P’eng-t’u read, “If one wishes to facilitate the raising of one’s child, he should give him a lowly name as his childhood name, such as dog, goat, or horse.” He also learned that Ssu-ma Hsiang-ju’s childhood name was Chuan-tzu (dog), Huan Hsi’s childhood name was Shih-tou (stone), Fan Yeh’s name was Chuan-er (brick), Mu-jung Nung’s name was E-nu (despicable slave), and Yuan I’s name was Yeh-i (underworld messenger).8 There were also “Striped Beast,” “Bald Head,” “Tortoise,” “Badger,” and so on. He realized then that for his son to be called “Ugly Boy” was actually rather respectable.
When Fang Tun-weng went to a teahouse that day and told everyone about it, his fawning tea companions, besides repeatedly offering congratulations, all praised his choice of a name, saying it was novel and fitting, not only elegant but also resonant. Only Mrs. Fang, while playing with her grandchild, would often rub her face against his and protest on his behalf, “Our face is so pretty! We’re a lovely little precious darling. Why accuse us of being ugly? Grandpa is so unreasonable, you go and pull his beard off.”
While abroad, Fang Hung-chien also wrote home voicing his opinion of his nephew’s school name. The two vanguard brothers in the novel The Investiture of the Gods,9 he said, were called Fang Pi and Fang Hsiang (Fang Face). The name Fang Fei-hsiang (Fang No Face) seemed to be “colliding” with the younger brother and should be changed as soon as possible. Fang Tun-weng had ignored him. Last year a few days after the war had started, the wife of the third son, Feng-i, had her first child. Fang Tun-weng, feeling deeply their “shared misfortune of war” and moved by his experiences, named him Ah Hsiung, giving him the school name “Fei-kung” based on Mo Tzu’s “Nonaggression” chapter.10 By this time Tun-weng had become addicted to giving names. He’d already thought up a whole series of a dozen or more names and merely waited for his daughters-in-law to give birth to a succession of children to come take them. A boy, for example, would be called “Fei-hsiung” (No Bear) after the story of Chiang T’ai-kung,11 and a girl would be called “Fei-yen” after a T’ang ch’uan-ch’i tale.12
During their escape from their home, the two little boys, Ah Hsiung and Ah Ch’ou, had proved to be no small burden. When that insensitive bachelor, Hung-chien, heard his parents tell about the ordeals of the escape, he inwardly faulted his two sisters-in-law for making his parents suffer, because they had not managed their children properly. It irked him now to see Ah Hsiung and Ah Ch’ou pestering their grandmother, while their own mothers were nowhere in sight.
Mrs. Fang had played the role of a filial daughter-in-law for too long. Now when it was her turn to be the mother-in-law, she simply didn’t know how to do it properly. In Western families the fighting between mother and son-in-law is an old custom preserved to this day. In Chinese families, the animosity between mother and daughter-in-law has a history no less lengthy. But when the daughter-in-law becomes pregnant, since it is on her that the mother-in-law must rely for elevation to the position of grandmother, the mother-in-law begins to make accommodations. When the daughter-in-law gives birth to a genuine, honest-to-goodness son, the mother-in-law has to make further concessions. Mrs. Fang was meek by nature, while the two young mothers were both quite shrewd. When Ah Ch’ou was born, it had been more than twenty
years since the Fangs had heard a baby cry. The old couple couldn’t help but dote on and spoil him.
As a result the daughter-in-law’s arrogance secretly increased, while the grandson’s temper visibly worsened. Feng-i’s wife’s stomach “did its part,” and her firstborn was also a boy. From then on the two sisters-in-law’s secret rivalry intensified. The Fangs did their best to appear fair to both, but behind their backs, the daughters-in-law each complained of their partiality. When Hung-chien first came back to China, the house was spacious and Ah Ch’ou had a wet nurse to look after him, so that Ah Ch’ou did not become a nuisance. After their escape, Ah Ch’ou’s wet nurse was dismissed.
Since Ah Hsiung was born at the start of the war, Third Daughter-in-law had never used a wet nurse. When they came to Shanghai, she wanted to hire one in order to gain equal footing with Second Daughter-in-law’s Ah Ch’ou. According to an unwritten rule in old families, grandparents were expected to pay for the grandson’s wet nurse. After their flight from the occupied area, Fang Tun-weng’s circumstances were greatly reduced. He had to scrimp on small expenditures and would not hire a wet nurse for his second grandchild. In speaking to Third Daughter-in-law, however, he never mentioned a word about finances, saying only that Shanghai wasn’t like their village but a disreputable place where very few of the lower-class girls were clean. Maids had children by the chauffeur or the rickshaw boy, then hired out as wet nurses. All such women carried disease, making them unfit for nursing a child. Besides, the general moral climate of Shanghai was much too debased. A wet nurse would always be asking leave to spend the night out, and if the milk underwent any changes, it wouldn’t be suitable for the child and could very well cause “lifelong regrets.” Seeing that her father-in-law expected her to take care of the baby herself, Third Daughter-in-law’s pent-up resentment swelled and so did her stomach, while her appetite diminished and her limbs grew weak. The doctor was called in and she was given some medicine. Meanwhile Ah Hsiung became the sole charge of his grandmother. The doctor had finally verified only a week ago that Third Daughter-in-law was not ill but nearly four months pregnant.
Second Daughter-in-law, supporting her quivering belly now into her sixth month of pregnancy, said privately to her husband with a scornful smile, “I’d already guessed as much. She knows perfectly well what her stomach is up to. She just wanted to trick that dumb mother of yours. All this about a swelling, an infection of the spleen. Humph, she can’t fool me!”
In a large family daughters-in-law usually have to have small stomachs for food but big ones for frustration. Once they become pregnant and their stomachs get big, they can enlarge their stomachs for food and reduce their stomachs for frustration. The bodies of these two young wives were by now like two large spiders which have just feasted on flies. Both had reached the state where the capacity of the house had become visibly smaller. Mrs. Fang was left with more work than she could handle, and the two maids decided this was a good time to fuss about a raise, which they got.
Because of Third Daughter-in-law’s illness, Fang Tun-weng developed an interest in the study of family medicine. Unlike when they lived in the country, he had few visitors in Shanghai. Next door there lived a quack doctor from his village who admired Fang’s reputation and found time off between killing people to drop by occasionally for a chat. In his village this quack had truly “practiced medicine for three generations and won fame in four quarters.” The people in that quarter must at least have had strong resistance not to have been exterminated either by his grandfather’s or his father’s medicine, leaving three of the four quarters.13 Like all lettered men of the older generation, Fang Tun-weng believed that he knew something about medicine: “If not a good official, then a good doctor,”14 as the saying went. The quack, thinking Fang had a wide range of contacts and hoping Fang would introduce some customers to him, inevitably began to flatter Fang. Such “rice gruel” is like alcohol. Everyone has a different capacity for it. Fang Tun-weng’s capacity had never been very great, but he was fed so much of it that he had almost become intoxicated, and he quite forgot himself. By coincidence Third Daughter-in-law provided him an experimental subject, and so he wrote quite a few prescriptions. When she found the medicine from her father-in-law and the neighbor doctor ineffective, she raised a fuss with her husband and insisted on calling in a doctor trained in Western medicine.15 Tun-weng was inwardly displeased when he first found out about this, but when he heard that the Western-trained doctor had diagnosed she was not ill, his displeasure nearly erupted. When the Western doctor announced the happy news that she was pregnant, he, however, could not very well get angry. Instead he just had to keep it to himself, while he looked for some other way to restore honor to his medical skills and the good name of Chinese medicine.
Mrs. Fang took Hung-chien into his father’s bedroom. On his desk were spread The Flowers in the Mirror16 and the tenth edition of the Commercial Press’s revised and enlarged edition of Proven Remedies. He was planning to excerpt the wonder remedies in The Flowers in the Mirror and record them on the blank spaces of Proven Remedies.
When Tun-weng saw his son, he said, “Oh, you’re back. I was just going to call you over for a talk. You haven’t been here for about a month. You must come home more often. As a father I’ve been too lenient with all of you. None of you knows your manners—” and leafing through Proven Remedies, he said to Mrs. Fang, “Mother, since Third Daughter-in-law is expecting, I think she could use this prescription. It’s to be taken twice a day, each dose consisting of a soup made with one whole piece of bean-curd skin—don’t cut it up—soy sauce, and sesame oil. It’s not bitter-tasting and she can take it with her meals. There’s nothing better. It won’t hurt Second Daughter-in-law to do the same. This prescription is very sound: bean-curd skin is smooth, as is sesame oil. If the placenta in the womb is smooth, the baby will come out more easily and the mother can avoid a difficult birth. Let them take a look at this prescription. Now, don’t go yet. Listen to what I have to say to Hung-chien—Hung-chien, you’re almost thirty now. You should know how to behave yourself. You shouldn’t need outdated ‘antiques’ like us prattling on. But—Mother, if we fail to discipline our son, someone else will do it for us. We can’t allow such a disgrace, can we? Your mother-in-law telephoned this morning and said you were fooling around and carrying on with women. Now, don’t argue. I’m not stupid. I don’t believe everything she says.” He held his hand out toward his son with palm down as a signal to quash any arguments. “But you certainly must have done something improper, which has come to her attention. You should of course have been properly married by now. It’s my fault. I’ve been overly indulgent toward you. From now on I’ll just have to handle everything for you. I think you’d better move back home so as not to make a nuisance of yourself, and so I can keep you under my supervision. You should put up with the hard life of ‘coarse tea and plain rice’ we have here at home for a while. Young people expect nothing but comfort. They get soft and never amount to anything.”
Fang Hung-chien seethed with shame and rage. Several dozen sentences rushed all at once to his lips, but he managed to say only, “I was thinking of moving back tomorrow. My mother-in-law is being ridiculous. She just likes to make a fuss over nothing, the goddamn—”
“Now, that is no attitude to take,” fumed Tun-weng. “I can see you’re getting more and more rude and ill-mannered. Maybe she did exaggerate, but she meant well as an elder. You young people—” Fang Tun-weng did not finish his sentence, indicating words were inadequate to describe these disgusting, ill-mannered youths.
Seeing the ugly look on Hung-chien’s face, Mrs. Fang feared a clash between father and son, and asked quickly with sly timidity, “What about that Miss Su? If you really do like her, Papa and I will go along with your wishes. We only want you to be happy.”
Hung-chien could not keep his face from reddening as he replied, “I’ve long since stopped seeing her.”
The red face did not escape the old coupl
e’s notice. They exchanged knowing glances, and with a thoroughly understanding smile Tun-weng said, “You quarreled and broke up, didn’t you? That’s very common among young couples. Affections grow stronger after every quarrel. Both of you have already regretted it inside but remain resentful and ignore each other. Am I right? At a time like that there has to be a third party to intercede. You won’t give in and admit you were wrong, so the only thing is for this old fellow to act as mediator and write her a nice, tactful letter. She’s sure to go along for my sake.” The naughtiness in Tun-weng’s smile and tone was ponderous enough to have caved in the floor.
Hung-chien, who dreaded his father’s humor and would rather he get angry, blurted out recklessly in alarm, “She’s already engaged.”
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