Fortress Besieged

by Qian Zhongshu

  “I think you are right. If they had wanted to save money, why didn’t they say so? We could have taken second-class cabins, too. Besides, didn’t the school wire every one a hundred dollars for a travel allowance? In his letter Kao Sung-nien said that the sum would be more than enough. What’s the point of saving a few dollars?”

  “That’s not true though,” said Hsin-mei. “We have no family to support; they’re older and have kids. Maybe they have to take care of family expenses. What Kao Sung-nien said isn’t necessarily so. Traveling these days isn’t like what it was during peacetime. Expenses can’t be accurately estimated. It’s better to take a little extra. How much money did you bring?”

  Hung-chien said, “I brought along all my unspent pocket money, plus the travel allowance Kao sent. One hundred sixty or seventy dollars in all.”

  “That’s enough. I brought two hundred. I’m afraid that Li and Ku left most of the school’s travel allowance at home. They brought so much luggage. If by some chance we run out of money along the way, it’ll mean trouble for everyone.”

  Hung-chien sighed and said, “I think they must have packed their entire families in their luggage—wives, sons, and even their houses. Did you notice? Li Mei-t’ing’s metal trunk is as tall as a person. They didn’t have to leave any money at home.”

  Chuckling, Hsin-mei said, “Hung-chien, I’m going to change my ways on this trip. I’m more apt to spend money on good food and luxuries than you. Li and Ku probably see us as a couple of ignorant kids who don’t know anything about bad times or who have no sensitivity toward others’ problems. From now on I won’t make any decisions; I’ll leave all questions of food and lodging up to them, so we won’t be choosing expensive hotels and restaurants and forcing them to spend money along with us. This business with the tickets is a good lesson.”

  “Chao, ol’ boy, you’re wonderful! You really have the democratic spirit. You’ll make a great president some day. We’ve already involved Miss Sun in the buying of the tickets. She’s such a shy young girl that she hardly says a word. As her ‘uncle’ you must take good care of her.”

  “True, besides, the school didn’t give Miss Sun any travel allowance. I forgot to tell you.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know. In his letter Kao Sung-nien indicated clearly that he wanted her to come, but he just sent expenses for us four. Maybe a teaching assistant’s position is so low that the school feels she doesn’t warrant any travel allowance and that there are loads of people like her around.”

  “That’s ridiculous! We’re already under salary and could have managed without the travel allowance. But this is Miss Sun’s first job. How can they expect her to put up the money? Once you get to the school, you should bring up her case with the authorities.”

  “I was thinking the same thing. There shouldn’t be any problem getting compensation.”

  “Hsin-mei, let me say something. Don’t get angry. This is the first time we’ve ever taken a trip like this, and transportation is poor. People like us with no traveling experience can barely look after ourselves, so why did you bring a delicate little Shanghai girl along? If she can’t take the hardships and gets sick on the way, won’t she be a burden? Unless you have something else in mind, then it’s—”

  “What nonsense! You think I don’t know about the troubles involved? It’s all because I couldn’t say no to a friend. She will be in foreign languages and I will be in political science. Once we get to the school, she’ll be someone else’s office wife, and we won’t have anything to do with each other. Besides, I told her at the start that the trip would be hard, that it wasn’t like Shanghai, and she said she didn’t mind.”

  “If she can take the hardships, then the trip will be easy for you.”

  Hsin-mei, gesturing as if he wanted to brush his pipe against Hung-chien’s face, said, “You want me to introduce her to you, don’t you? Well, that’s easy enough.”

  Protecting his face with his hand, Hung-chien said with a grin, “To tell you the truth, I’ve never taken a good look at her. I couldn’t say for sure whether her face is round or flat. We sure are rude! During dinner we talked among ourselves without ever paying her any attention. Then after we ate we ran off to the deck and left her by herself. She’s away from home for the first time. Being alone and deserted must make it even harder to bear.”

  “Having recently been jilted by women, we are like birds afraid of the bow; we’re frightened even by a woman’s shadow. But those tender feelings of yours have already planted the seed of love in your heart. Let’s go and tell her, ‘Mr. Fang is concerned about you.’”

  “Relax. I’m certainly not going to be your ‘lovemate.’ If you have any wine, save it until it’s time for me to drink at your and Miss Sun’s wedding!”

  “Don’t talk nonsense! What if she hears us? I recently decided that I won’t ever again go for a city girl with a college degree. I had such a hard time waiting on Su Wen-wan; from now on I want women to wait on me. I’d rather marry a simple, honest country girl. She needn’t be well-educated, just as long as she’s in good health, has a good temper, and will willingly let me be her ‘Lord and Master.’ I don’t think love has to play such an important role in life. A lot of people don’t have any romance and they go on living just the same.”

  “If my father heard you say all that, he’d certainly say, ‘The lad can be taught.’ But if you want to become an official later, a country girl doesn’t have what it takes to be an official’s wife. She couldn’t help you entertain and advance your career.”

  “I’d rather that I be an official and she be unworthy to be an official’s wife; I don’t want her to be an official’s wife and insist that I become one of those corrupt officials. If I’d married Su Wen-wan, for instance, I wouldn’t be able to go with you now to San Lü University. She’d have forced me to go wherever she wanted to go.”

  “Do you really like going to San Lü University?” asked Hung-chien, surprised. “I admire your spirit. I’m not like you. You have more conviction than I do about marriage and work. I still remember that time Ch’u Shen-ming or Miss Su said something about a ‘fortress besieged.’ Lately, I’ve been having that feeling about everything in life. For instance, I really wanted to go to San Lü University, so I accepted the appointment. But lately the more I think about it the less interest I have in it. Now I really hate myself for not having the guts to turn around and return to Shanghai on the same boat. After my last fiasco with Miss T’ang, I don’t know when I’ll ever get married. But I think if you’d married Miss Su, you’d have found it isn’t anything special. Remember the old saying that a dog loses the juicy bone in its mouth when it goes after the reflection of the bone in the water? When your dream comes true and you marry your sweetheart, it’s as though the bone has entered your stomach and you then pine for the never-to-be-seen-again reflection in the water. Tell me, after Ts’ao Yüan-lang’s marriage, what did his wife force him to do? Do you know?”

  “He is a department head in the Commission of Wartime Resources. It’s a post his new father-in-law got for him. You can call it part of Miss Su’s dowry.”

  “Oh boy! The country, the country belongs to the family! If you’d married Miss Su, wouldn’t that prestigious post be yours?”

  “Phooey! If a man has to hold onto a woman’s apron strings to advance himself, then he has no will of his own.”

  “Some people might say you are like the fox who couldn’t reach the grapes and complained that they were sour.”

  “I’m not at all envious. I will tell you something. The day Miss Su got married, I went to the wedding—”

  Hung-chien exclaimed, “Ah?”

  “The Sus invited me, so I sent a gift—”

  “What did you send?”

  “A large basket of flowers.”

  “What kind?”

  “In any case I had the florist send them. What difference does it make what kind they were?”

  “You should have sen
t apricot blossoms to show your love for each other or else narcissus to imply that her heart is too hard. If you add mug-wort to the narcissus, it shows that you’ll suffer for the rest of your life because of her. You should also include some carnations to emphasize your underlying meaning.”

  “What nonsense! Where would you get apricot blossoms or narcissus in the summer? You’re nothing but an armchair strategist. All right, since you are such an expert, why don’t you do that yourself the next time someone gets married? My reason for going that day was to see if I had the courage to watch the woman I loved for more than ten years marry someone else. Ai! When I went, I found it didn’t bother me at all. I’d never met Ts’ao Yüan-lang, so at first I thought if Miss Su saw something in him, he must be a lot better than I; I was quite upset at having been bested by someone else. But when I saw that oddball, I thought, how could she have fallen for him? To tell you the truth, a woman with taste like that doesn’t deserve to marry me, Chao Hsin-mei. I can do without her.”

  Hung-chien slapped Hsin-mei on the thigh and exclaimed, “Well said, well said.”

  “They hadn’t been engaged for more than a few days when Mrs. Su came to call on my mother. She was apologetic, mentioning what a stubborn child that Wen-wan was and how she had tried in vain to prevail on Wen-wan, even saying how this might ruin the friendship of two generations between the Su and Chao families. What was even more amazing—you will laugh when I tell you—every morning afterwards when Mrs. Su lit incense in front of the Bodhisattva, she made a silent prayer for my happiness.” Hung-chien burst out laughing. Chao went on, “I asked my mother why Mrs. Su didn’t read a few sutras to free my soul from suffering. My mother thought I was very concerned about the whole matter and found out all sorts of silly things to tell me. She said the father, Su Hung-yeh, had business to attend to in Chungking at the time and couldn’t make the wedding, but he wrote to his daughter that he wanted her to be happy and that everything was up to her. Furthermore, my mother said that Miss Su and her fiance were very Westernized and wouldn’t choose an auspicious date according to the traditional weddings but chose a Western date. May, the couple said, was the least favorable time to get married. June was the most appropriate, but they had already become engaged in June, so they postponed the wedding until the beginning of September. From what I heard, they were very particular about the day of the week, too. They said Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday were good days to get married, especially Wednesday. Thursday, Friday, and Saturday were progressively worse, so they ended up choosing Wednesday—”

  Hung-chien laughed. “That devil Ts’ao Yüan-lang must have been the one to dream all that stuff up.”

  “In short,” said Hsin-mei, smilingly, “you returned students from Europe are the most annoying; you have all the funny schemes and ideas. Well, the Wednesday of their wedding turned out to be an ‘autumn tiger,’ a real scorcher. On the way there I thought, thank God I’m not the bridegroom today. The church was air-conditioned, but Ts’ao Yüan-lang was wearing a black wool tuxedo and was so busy and hot that his whole face was perspiring. The stiff white collar he had on was yellow and limp from the sweat. I was afraid his whole plump body would melt into sweat, the way wax candles melt down to a puddle of oil. Miss Su was also a nervous wreck. During the wedding ceremony, the bride and groom looked as though they couldn’t laugh or cry. It wasn’t like a happy occasion at all but more like—no, not like they were ascending the guillotine—oh, of course, like the expressions on the faces of hardened criminals in those pictures under the ‘Beware of Pickpockets’ signs in public places. It suddenly occurred to me that even if it were my own wedding ceremony, I couldn’t help looking like a captured pickpocket either under all those thousands of staring eyes. That made me realize that all those happy wedding pictures of joyful, smiling faces were never taken on the spot.”

  “A great discovery! What I’d like to know is what happened when Miss Su saw you that day.”

  “I hid so she couldn’t see me and just talked a little with Miss T’ang—”

  Hung-chien’s heart gave such a heavy thump that it sounded like a package hitting the ground when cargo is being unloaded from a truck. He wondered how Hsin-mei could not have heard it.

  “She was a bridesmaid that day. When she saw me, she asked if I’d come to pick a fight and said that when the ceremony was over and everyone was throwing confetti on the bride and bridegroom, I wouldn’t be allowed to make a move for fear I might use the chance to throw a hand grenade or sprinkle acid. She asked my plans for the future, and I told her I was going to San Lü University. I thought probably she wouldn’t want to hear your name, so I didn’t say a word about you.”

  “Yes, that’s best! Don’t mention anything about me. Don’t mention me,” said Hung-chien mechanically, feeling like a prisoner in a darkened cell who has come upon a match and lit it, only to have it go out immediately while the space before his eyes slips back into the darkness before he has gotten a good look at it. It was like the moment when two ships scrape by each other in the darkness of night and someone in one ship glimpses an unforgettable face from his dreams in the light of a cabin in the ship opposite, but before he has time to call out, both are already far apart. That one split second of proximity seems instead like an unbridgeable gap. At that point Hung-chien could only wish that Hsin-mei weren’t so stupid.

  “I didn’t talk to Miss T’ang much anyway. The best man, a friend of Ts’ao Yüan-lang’s, kept following her and wouldn’t let her leave his sight for a second. I could see he was very interested in her.”

  Hung-chien suddenly hated Miss T’ang so much his heart stung as though pressed against a thorn. Suppressing the quaver in his voice, he said, “I don’t care to hear about such people’s affairs. Don’t talk to me about them.”

  Hsin-mei was momentarily taken aback by the abruptness of these remarks; then suddenly understanding, he put his hand on Hung-chien’s shoulder and said, “We’ve been sitting here long enough. It’s pretty windy now. Let’s go back to the cabin and turn in. We’ll be going ashore early tomorrow morning.”

  He yawned as he spoke. Hung-chien followed him. Just as they had rounded the corner, Miss Sun rose from a bench to greet them. Startled, Hsin-mei hurriedly asked her how long she had been on the deck by herself and whether or not she minded the cold, since it was quite windy. She explained that her cabin mate’s child was crying and carrying on so much it had gotten on her nerves, so she had come out for a change of air.

  Hsin-mei said, “It’s a little rough now. Do you feel seasick?”

  “I’m all right,” she said. “You and Mr. Fang must have seen a lot worse storms than this when you went abroad.”

  Hsin-mei said, “Very bad ones. But Mr. Fang and I didn’t go the same way,” and with that he nudged Hung-chien as a hint for him to say something instead of remaining so rudely silent. Hung-chien’s heart seemed at that moment to be in a race with the pain inside it, trying to run fast enough to keep the pain from catching up. He rattled off a few irrelevant remarks as though to throw out some obstacles, which would temporarily block the pain’s pursuit. He talked about all kinds of things, which had happened on his cruise abroad. When he mentioned flying fish, Miss Sun was quite intrigued and asked if he had ever seen a whale. Hsin-mei felt the question was naïve beyond a doubt.

  Hung-chien replied, “Yes, I did. Quite a few of them. Once our boat nearly got stuck between a whale’s teeth.”

  As the lamplight shone on Miss Sun’s astonished eyes, which were as round as circles painted by Giotto, Hsin-mei’s suspicions deepened, and he said, “Listen to that nonsense!”

  Hung-chien said, “I’m telling you the absolute truth. The whale was taking its afternoon nap after lunch. You know, Miss Sun, some people listen, speak, and see all with their mouths. They open their mouths to listen, to see, and even to sleep. This whale had a stuffy nose from a cold, so it was sleeping with its mouth wide open. Luckily the crevices between its teeth were stuffed up tightly with
bits of meat. Otherwise, our boat would really have been in danger.”

  Miss Sun said, “You’re fooling me, Mr. Fang. Isn’t he, Mr. Chao?”

  Hsin-mei gave a disdainful snort.

  Hung-chien said, “There really was a case where a big ocean liner slipped in between a fish’s teeth. If you don’t believe it, I can check for you.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” interrupted Hsin-mei. “We’d better go down and sleep. Miss Sun, your father entrusted you to me. I must make you go back to your cabin or you’ll catch a chill—”

  Hung-chien said with a laugh, “What a good ‘uncle’ he is!”

  Hsin-mei took the opportunity, while Miss Sun wasn’t paying attention, to give Hung-chien a hefty punch in the back, saying, “Mr. Fang here loves to tell lies. He’s fooling you with fairy tales.”

  Lying in bed, Hung-chien felt the pain in his heart bearing directly down on him and tried to save himself by chatting with his friend. “Hsin-mei, it still hurts where you hit me!”

  “You are shameless,” said Hsin-mei. “I saw everything clearly just now from the sidelines. Miss Sun—Ai! Is that girl ever sly? I was a fool to bring her along—Miss Sun is just like that whale. She opens her mouth and you, you stupid idiot, you go right on in like that boat.”

  Hung-chien, rolling over with laughter, said, “You’re too paranoid! Just too paranoid!” When his real laughter had subsided, he continued with simulated laughter in order to scare away the pain in his heart.

  “I’m sure that girl overheard everything we said. It’s all your fault. You were talking so loud—”

  “You were. Not me.”

  “Can you imagine a college graduate being that naïve and innocent? ‘Mr. Fang is fooling me, isn’t he?’”—Hsin-mei constricted his throat, giving what he considered a flawless imitation—“Well, I won’t be taken in by her! Only a fool like you would! I’ll tell you something, you can’t judge people by their appearances. Did you notice when I said you were telling her nothing but fairy tales? If I hadn’t said that, she’d certainly have asked you to lend her the book to read—”