Fortress Besieged

by Qian Zhongshu

  Ah Fu’s eyes were filled with terror, but before Hsin-mei had finished speaking, the widow sprang from her room and demanded, “How dare you bully my servant? Two ganging up against one. How shameless! What kind of men are you, bullying a widow like me? You good-for-nothings!”

  Hsin-mei and Hung-chien quickly made off. The widow, laughing scornfully in triumph, flung forth a few curses, then pulled Ah Fu back into her room. After Hsin-mei had admonished Li Mei-t’ing, Hung-chien said to Hsin-mei in private, “When that tigress came springing out, Miss Sun should have gone out for our side. She’d have been a match for her.”

  The rest of that day whenever the widow encountered the five of them she pretended not to notice them, while Ah Fu, despite his bulging face, narrowed his eyes and curled his lips at Li Mei-t’ing. Whenever the widow called “Ah Fu,” her voice dripped with honey. Li sighed half the night.

  They stayed another day at the hotel. Whenever Miss Sun ran into the widow that day she would nod and smile, and if Hsin-mei and the others were not with her, they might even exchange a few remarks about how difficult it was to get bus tickets, or how bored they were waiting at the hotel. Hsin-mei and the others, however, seemed to have just mastered the art of making themselves invisible. Whenever the widow met them on the street, she did not acknowledge their existence.

  The next day when they boarded the bus, Hsin-mei and his colleagues checked all their luggage; with little luggage in their hands, they were all able to push their way aboard and grab a seat. The widow had brought several small unchecked pieces with her. When Ah Fu boarded the bus, he looked just like a VIP shaking hands with the guests at a reception who wished he could have borrowed a few arms from the thousand-armed Goddess of Mercy. Seeing the two of them without seats, Hsin-mei said with a grin, “Good thing we quarreled with them yesterday. Otherwise we’d now have to give up our seats, and I don’t want to.” The word “I” was spoken with special emphasis.

  Li Mei-t’ing crimsoned, and they all suppressed a smile. The widow gazed over at Miss Sun, reminding Miss Sun of the wide-eyed beseeching look of a cow or horse, since the eyes are the tongue in a dumb animal. Miss Sun’s heart softened and she dropped her eyes, but still felt uncomfortable sitting there. It was not until the bus started off and a furtive glance told her the widow had also found a seat that she relaxed.

  The bus arrived at Ningtu in the afternoon. Hsin-mei and the others quickly went to pick up the luggage. There was some for everyone, but two pieces had not yet arrived. “What rotten luck!” they cried in unison. “Heaven knows how many days we’ll have to wait this time.” Inwardly they were all worrying about the money. When they inquired at the hotel opposite the bus station, they found that only two double rooms were left.

  “How will that do?” said Hsin-mei. “Miss Sun should have a room by herself. A single would be enough. The four of us have to have two rooms.”

  Without hesitation Miss Sun said, “It doesn’t matter to me. Just add a bamboo cot to Mr. Chao and Mr. Fang’s room. Won’t that save trouble and money?”

  They checked into the rooms, put down their things, and totaled up the expenses for the day. They all agreed they would have to make do with something simple for dinner, and they were just about to call the waiter when suddenly they heard someone shouting from another room, “Waiter! Waiter!” accompanied by coughing and gasping noises. It was the widow’s voice. A loud quarrel ensued. By listening carefully, they learned that the widow had ordered the hotel food and became nauseated after taking a few bites. They then learned that the food had been fried in wood oil. Ah Fu, that coarse creature, had gulped down two bowls of rice in one breath without even noticing the odor. Rice and vegetables all came up. “He even threw up last night’s dinner!” exclaimed the widow, as if he were supposed to have taken the meal eaten in Nanch’eng all the way to Kweilin.

  Li Mei-t’ing clapped his hands and said, “It must be heaven’s punishment. Now we’ll see whether that rascal gets out of hand again. We don’t need to try the food in this hotel any more. Those two have already acted as guinea pigs for us.”

  The door of the widow’s room was wide open when the five of them left the hotel. Ah Fu was moaning and groaning on the bed, while she was leaning on the table retching into a spittoon. The waiter held a glass of water in one hand and was patting her on the back with the other.

  “Ai, she’s throwing up, too!” said Li.

  “Throwing up is like yawning,” said Hsin-mei. “It’s contagious. Especially when I feel seasick, I can’t stand watching someone else vomiting.”

  A smile tugged at the corners of Miss Sun’s eyes and she said, “Mr. Li, you have medicine for settling the stomach. If you gave her some, she’d certainly—”

  Li Mei-t’ing pretended to scream and jump about on the street, crying, “Miss Sun, you’re really horrible! Now you’re making fun of me, too. I’m going to tell your Uncle Chao.”

  That evening Hsin-mei, Hung-chien, and Miss Sun made a polite pretense of yielding to each other for a while over who was to sleep on the bamboo cot. Miss Sun was compelled by Hsin-mei and Hung-chien to sleep on the bed, not as if this was a privilege a woman should enjoy, but a duty she should fulfill. Hsin-mei was too big for a bamboo cot, so Hung-chien ended up sleeping on it, sandwiched between the beds. He felt so cramped that when he lay down all he wanted to do was toss and turn, yet he was so restricted he didn’t dare make a move.

  After a short while Hung-chien heard Hsin-mei’s breathing become regular and assumed he had already fallen asleep. That guy got off easy, he thought. Here I am wedged between these two beds without nets acting as a screen separating him from Miss Sun. He then found the oil lamp on the table too bright. He put up with it for a while, but then unable to bear it any longer, he stepped softly from his bed thinking he’d get a drink of cold tea and blow out the lamp before getting back in. While making his way along the edge of the bed to the table, he inadvertently glanced at Miss Sun and noticed how clean and fresh her face was in sleep. A shock of loose hair had somehow covered her face, giving it a seductive look of abandon. The tips of her hair over the top of her nose rose and fell with her breathing. Watching it made his face itch for her, and he wished he could have reached out and brushed the hair aside. Her eyelashes seemed to flutter slightly in the lamplight. He gave a start, thinking his eyes must have been mistaken. Then her breathing seemed suddenly to become short. When he looked again, her face, immobile in sleep, appeared to redden. He hastily blew out the light and slipped back into bed but remained apprehensive for a long time.

  They rose early the next morning. Li saw the previous day’s newspaper on the cashier’s counter. The first item of news was that Ch’angsha had been burned to the ground.16 It gave him such a shock that he completely lost his voice. It wasn’t until a minute later that he regained it and could speak. They were all so upset they had no time to feel hungry, which saved them the expense of breakfast. Hung-chien didn’t know what to do, but it was as though this weren’t his affair alone. With others along, there was always a way.

  Li sighed woefully and said, “What bad luck! This trip has really had more than its share of bad luck! There were plenty of places in Shanghai wanting to keep me on or offering me a job, but I just let myself get carried away. I couldn’t refuse an old friend like Kao Sung-nien. Now after putting up with so much hardship, I have to give up halfway and go back! But who is to pay for the trip?”

  Hsin-mei said, “Even if we wanted to go back, there’s no money. I say we go on to Chian and pick up the remittance from the school, then assess the situation from there. There’s no use making plans this early.”

  Everyone breathed a sigh of relief and relaxed. Ku suddenly said brightly, “What a mess it’ll be if the money from the school hasn’t been sent.”

  The four of them all replied impatiently that he worried too much, but his remarks had called up an echo in their consciousness, and the reasons they gave one another weren’t meant to refute Ku so much as
to assure themselves. Ku immediately tried to retract his remark, like a snake trying to draw its tail back into its hole after it has been pulled, and he said, “I know such a thing is impossible. I was just mentioning it.”

  Hung-chien said, “I think the problem could be easily solved. One of us should go there first. If Chian has the money, it’ll save all five of us from going there for nothing and wasting a lot of money on bus fare.”

  “Good idea!” said Hsin-mei. “We can divide the work. Some of us can wait for the luggage while others can pick up the money. That’ll liven things up a bit, and we won’t all be stuck in one place waiting. The money was remitted to me. I’ll take my luggage and go to Chian first. Hung-chien can come along to help me out.”

  Miss Sun said gently but firmly, “I’ll go with Mr. Chao too. My baggage has also arrived.”

  Giving Hsin-mei a sharp x-ray glance, Li Mei-t’ing said, “All right. That leaves just me and Mr. Ku. But all our money has gone into the general funds. How much are you going to leave us?”

  Ku smiled apologetically at Li and said, “My luggage is all here. I think I’ll go with them. There’s no point staying here any longer.”

  Li’s face flushed with anger as he said, “So you’re all going off and leaving me here alone. All right. I don’t care. So much for the ‘comradeship of the road!’ When the going gets tough, isn’t it every man for himself? To tell you the truth, once you get to Chian and pick up the money, if you don’t give me a cent, it won’t bother Li Mei-t’ing at all! If I were to sell the medicine in my trunk, I could easily get about a thousand dollars for it in the interior. Just see if I can’t beg my way to Shanghai.”

  Hsin-mei said in surprise, “Why, Mr. Li, how could you arrive at such a gross misunderstanding?”

  Ku said soothingly, “Mr. Mei-t’ing, I won’t go. I’ll wait for the luggage here with you.”

  Hsin-mei said, “Just what should we do, then? How about if I go first by myself? Mr. Li, you wouldn’t suspect me of embezzling the general funds—you want me to leave my luggage behind as security?” He finished with a laugh to lighten the severity of his tone, but the smile was stiff and obstinate as though stuck on with dried paste.

  “Nonsense! Nonsense!” repeated Li. “I’m certainly not judging others with a petty man’s mind.”

  “The hell you aren’t!” muttered Hung-chien.

  “I just don’t think Mr. Fang’s suggestion is entirely practical—forgive me, Mr. Fang, but I always speak frankly. I mean, for example, Mr. Chao, after you get to Chian and pick up the money, will you go on ahead or turn around and go back? You can’t decide that by yourself. We all have to learn the news on the spot and come to a common decision—”

  “So,” continued Hung-chien, “we four will go on first, following the majority’s decision. Aren’t we the majority?”

  Li Mei-t’ing was without words. Chao and Ku hastily intervened, “As friends in adversity, we’ll all stick together.”

  After lunch Hung-chien returned to his room, complaining that Hsin-mei was too soft in the way he had given in to Li at every turn. “Your tendency to concede in order to accommodate everyone is really getting us nowhere! A leader sometimes has to be ruthless.”

  Miss Sun said with a laugh, “It was so funny to see Mr. Fang and Mr. Li glaring at each other and panting. It looked like they were about to swallow each other up.”

  Hung-chien laughed and said, “Damn! You saw the whole disgraceful scene. I had no intention of swallowing him. Swallowing something like that Li Mei-t’ing would wreck my stomach. And anyway, was I panting? I don’t think so.”

  Miss Sun said, “Mr. Li was blowing hot air, while you were snorting cold air.”

  Hsin-mei showed the whites of his eyes and stuck out his tongue in mock terror at Hung-chien from behind Miss Sun’s back.

  On their way to Chian, they wished the bus wasn’t so clumsy and slow, dragging back their hearts, which were so eagerly straining to go forward. At the same time they were afraid that once they reached Chian, they’d find nothing there; they wanted the bus to keep going on and on forever without ever reaching its destination just to keep their hope alive.

  After settling in a hotel, they found they had only about ten dollars left, but said laughingly, “No matter. In a short time we’ll be rich.”

  Upon inquiry at the cashier’s office in the hotel, they learned that out of fear of air raids, the bank did not open until four o’clock in the afternoon and so was now doing business. The five of them went off to the bank, keeping an eye on the way for any good restaurants, for it had been a long time since they had had a good meal.

  The clerk at the bank said that the money had arrived several days ago and gave them a form to fill out. Hsin-mei asked the clerk for a brush to fill it in. Li and Ku wedged him in on either side as though afraid he didn’t know how to write. The brush was worn to a bald stump and was more in need of an application of hair tonic than ink. It left a large smudge every time Hsin-mei touched it to the paper. Li and Ku looked on disapprovingly.

  The clerk said, “That brush is hard to write with. You might as well take the form back with you and fill it out. In any case you’ll have to find a shop guarantor to affix his seal17—but I must tell you, a hotel can’t act as a shop guarantor.”

  This gave them a terrible fright, and they began entreating with the clerk, saying they were new to the area and had no way of finding a shop guarantor and wondering if the rules could be made more flexible. The clerk expressed his sympathy and regrets, but insisted it was official business, and he had to go by the rules. He urged them to try finding someone first. They left the bank, roundly cursing the senseless rules. When they were through their cursing, they consoled one another, “Well, in any case, the money is here.”

  The next morning Hsin-mei and Li Mei-t’ing ate some stale peanuts, drank half a pot of tea from the night before, and set out together to look for local educational institutions. Some time after two o’clock in the afternoon they returned dispirited and exhausted, saying that the high and grade schools had all disbanded and resettled in the countryside. They had found no one. “Let’s worry about it after you eat. You’re dizzy from hunger.” After a few mouthfuls of food, their spirits picked up, and they suddenly recalled how courteous the bank clerk had been, and to judge from his tone, it seemed that if they really couldn’t find a shop guarantor, he might just give them the money anyway. They wanted to go that evening and gently negotiate the matter with the clerk again. At five o’clock while Miss Sun stayed at the hotel, the four men set off again for the bank. The clerk from the day before had already forgotten who they were. When the matter was explained to him, he still said they would have to have a guarantor and told them to try the Bureau of Education. He had heard that it hadn’t moved away. After returning to the hotel, they went to bed without food to save money.

  Hung-chien was too hungry to fall asleep. His body felt like an attaché case with no papers in it and his back and stomach were nearly stuck together. He then realized that what the French call “long like a day without bread” (long comme un jour sans pain) was nowhere near as bad as a night without sleep because of no bread.

  Before dawn, Hsin-mei also awoke; clicking his tongue, he said, “How maddening. There’s not even anything to eat in my dreams, let alone when I’m awake.”

  He had dreamed he was in the Capitol Restaurant Grill Room for lunch and had ordered a hamburger and a lemon cake but had waited and waited and they never came; then he awoke from hunger.

  Hung-chien said, “Please don’t talk about food. It’ll make me even hungrier. You selfish rascal, did I get anything to eat in your dream?”

  Hsin-mei laughed. “I didn’t have time to let you know. At any rate I didn’t eat anything! What if I roast Li Mei-t’ing for you? You won’t object to that, will you?”

  Hung-chien said, “Li Mei-t’ing has no meat on him, but you look fair and plump. I’ll roast you to a turn, dip you in sweet sauce, sprinkle on some
salt—”

  Through laughter interspersed with groans, Hsin-mei said, “You shouldn’t laugh when you’re hungry. Laughing makes your stomach hurt even worse. Wow! It’s like having teeth biting at you from inside. Ai ya ya—”

  Hung-chien said, “The more I lie here, the more I suffer. I’m getting up. If I go out and take a stroll, move around some, I can forget my hunger. It’s quiet on the streets in the morning. I’m going out for a whiff of fresh air.”

  “Nonsense,” said Hsin-mei. “Fresh air stimulates the appetite. You’re really asking for it. I’m saving my strength for going to the Bureau of Education. You’d better”—as he spoke he began to laugh so much he yelped in pain—“not go to the bathroom. Hold out and save something to maintain your stomach.”

  Before Hung-chien went out, Hsin-mei asked him for a large glass of water and drank it up to fill his stomach. He lay face up on his bed without moving, but the moment he turned, there was the sound of rushing waves from inside his body. Hung-chien took some spare coins from the general funds to buy some unshelled peanuts for their breakfast. Hsin-mei warned him not to eat anything on the sly.

  The shopfronts along the street, like faces of people huddling under the bedcovers, hadn’t shown themselves yet. The general store selling peanuts was also closed. Hung-chien walked on a few paces and then caught a whiff of the fragrant smell of roasted sweet potatoes. He breathed in as though quenching a powerful thirst, and his hunger immediately constricted his stomach even tighter. Roasted sweet potatoes are like illicit sex in the old Chinese saying, “Having it isn’t as good as not having it.” The smell is better than the taste. When you smell it, you feel you must have one, but once you actually sink your teeth into it, you find it’s not really anything special.

  Seeing a sweet potato stand and thinking this was much better than peanuts, Hung-chien decided to get some for breakfast. He suddenly noticed someone near the stand who closely resembled Li Mei-t’ing in dress and build. After taking a closer look, he found that indeed it was Li. Li had bought a sweet potato and was eating it, standing with his face toward the wall. Not wanting to surprise Li in the act, Hung-chien quickly went into a small alley. He waited until Li had gone before he bought some sweet potatoes and walked back. As he entered the hotel, he took care to keep them concealed from the contemptuous glance of the cashier or waiter, lest they catch on to their distressed circumstances and demand payment of their bill and pack them off.