The day after the examinations, Wang Ch’u-hou ran into Hung-chien and told him that Mrs. Wang wanted to see him and Hsin-mei to ask them what day they’d be free during winter vacation, so she could invite them over for dinner. When Wang heard that they were going to Kweilin during winter vacation, he stroked his beard and said with a laugh, “What for? My wife is planning to make matches for both of you.”
7
A MUSTACHE usually consists of two downward strokes. Wang Ch’u-hou’s mustache was just a single strip. He had grown a mustache twenty years ago, at a time when officials all groomed bushy upper lips. Anything less than that would have been inadequate to mark their status; it was like the ancient philosophers of the West who always wore a long beard under their chin as a sign of wisdom. When he was a secretary at the office of the provincial military governor, the marshal’s caltrop mustache was so impressive that it looked like it had been transplanted from a Jen-tan medicine advertisement. He didn’t dare grow that kind of mustache for fear the marshal would consider him presumptuous. While the marshal’s was a round-horned black caltrop mustache, he desired no more than a small sharp-horned red caltrop mustache. For some reason people who don’t bear arms can never really grow a proper-looking mustache; it is either too sparse or limp or droops downward from either side of the mouth like commas in Western-style punctuation, neither arching upward nor curling gracefully. On the other hand, Wang’s heavy black eyebrows could have competed strand for strand with the eyebrows of the God of Longevity.1 It was as though he had accidentally sheared off his mustache and eyebrows all at once the first time he shaved and had tried desperately to press them back on, only to get eyebrows and mustache mixed up, so that on his mouth were the eyebrows which would never grow, while on his forehead was the mustache which always flourished. With a mustache like that he might just as well not grow one at all, and so his marriage to his present wife five years ago had been a good excuse to shave it off.
However, like all officials, bandits, professional gamblers, and speculators, Wang believed in fate. Astrologers all said he was “wood-fated” and “wood-shaped.”2 Hair and mustache are like the branches and leaves of a tree. When they are missing, it means the tree has withered. People over forty are of course half bald anyway, so they must depend entirely on these few strands of mustache to show that the old tree is still in blossom and hasn’t lost its lease on life. But for his twenty-five-year-old bride, he could not be so stingy as to begrudge a single hair, so he shaved off both ends, leaving only a pinch in the middle. Then, because this pinch wasn’t thick enough, he had trimmed it into a single line, movie-star style. This may have ruined the geomantic layout of his face, for after that misfortunes happened to him one after another. His new wife fell ill as soon as she became his, and he himself was impeached and forced out of office. Fortunately, when officials take a tumble, like cats which always land on all fours, they never end up in any great distress. He consoled himself with the thought that to begin with he had never relied on his salary. Moreover, he was a scholar of the old school with the ways and habits of the former Manchu dynasty. As an official he had been highly cultured, so when he retired, he was able to discourse on scholarly subjects. His wife’s condition remained the same as ever without getting any worse. Perhaps this was due to that single line of mustache. His luck hadn’t completely turned sour.
If those few remaining strands of mustache were able to retain part of his luck, it goes without saying that he enjoyed great fortune when he had not shaved off any. For instance, his wretched first wife did her part and died, allowing him to take a beautiful wife in a second marriage. After twenty years of marriage and his one son had graduated from college, it was high time she died. Having one’s wife die is most economical. A funeral does cost a certain amount of money, but then doesn’t a divorce require alimony? And if he keeps a mistress, doesn’t he have to support two households? Many people have wives who really ought to die; they just don’t have Wang Ch’u-hou’s luck with timely bereavements. Moreover, in the case of a bereavement, people will at least send gifts. The meager gifts for a divorce or a second marriage bring in nothing, and then there are still the legal fees to be paid. Moreover, Wang Ch’u-hou, though he had been an official, was really a man of letters at heart, and men of letters always love having someone die, so they can have a subject for a memorial essay. Coffinmakers and morticians deal only in the newly dead, while men of letters can write on the stale dead of one year, tens of years, or even hundreds of years ago. “A Commemoration on the First Anniversary of Death,” or “A Three-Hundred-Year Memorial Elegy,” are both good topics. At the death of a wife or husband—since there are women writers—this makes an especially good topic. No matter how much literary talent someone else might have, your wife or husband is solely your topic. It’s a topic with a registered patent on it. While Wang Ch’u-hou was writing a memorial essay and a biographical sketch of his deceased wife during his mourning, he thought of the line from an ancient poem, “Before me is a new wife and new children. A second chapter of my life begins,” and wished he could have used it. He hoped his second wife would have children, then he would write one titled, “Written Sadly on the Anniversary of the Death of my Former Wife,” with these two lines revised and inserted.
As of now this poem still remained to be written. Since being installed in her new home, the second Mrs. Wang had not given birth but merely taken sick. She had begun by nursing her illness at home only to end up making a home for her illness. It would never leave her, and she remained quite weak and delicate all year round, which made her middle-aged husband go from pity to fear. She had been to college for a year, but then because of anemia had withdrawn to nurse her health and stayed at home for four or five years. Whenever she wasn’t dizzy or aching or having pains and discomfort in the rest of her body, she would amuse herself by studying Chinese painting with her husband or playing the piano. Chinese painting and the piano were the part of her dowry representing culture, equivalent to the college diploma (in a varnished wood frame) and the photograph in mortarboard (sixteen-inch color print in a painted wood frame) of other women. Wang Ch’u-hou, who could not understand Western music but should have known a little about Chinese painting, felt, nevertheless, that his wife’s painting was pretty good. He would always say to guests, “She enjoys such things as music and painting, endeavors which require much mental effort. So how can she ever get well!” Mrs. Wang would then say modestly to the guests, “Since my health is poor, I can’t do these things very often, so I don’t paint or play very well.”
Since moving to this small village, Mrs. Wang had become so lonesome she often quarreled with her husband. Because of her own self-importance, she looked down on the wives of her husband’s colleagues, finding them much too impoverished. Her husband felt rather uneasy about having his bachelor colleagues often drop by his house, finding them much too young. Knowing how bored she was at home, Kao Sung-nien wanted to give her a job at the school. Clever woman that she was, Mrs. Wang refused the offer at once. For one thing she knew she was not well qualified and could be nothing more than a petty clerk, which would have been an affront to her dignity. For another, she knew it was a man’s world. Even in countries like England or America where women’s rights were well advanced, it was still a man who served as God, being referred to as He and never She. When women went out to work, no matter how high their position, they were still used by men. Only by remaining hidden behind the scenes could a woman use her qualifications as wife or mistress to direct or manipulate men.
Miss Fan, the women’s adviser and a lecturer in the Education Department, was her admirer, and they often visited each other. Liu Tung-fang’s sister, a former student of Wang Ch’u-hou, also dropped in sometimes to see her, calling her “Teacher’s Wife.” Liu Tung-fang had once asked Mrs. Wang to act as matchmaker for his sister. Now, being a matchmaker and a mother are the two basic desires of a woman, so when Mrs. Wang, who had become quite bored, received thi
s commission, it was like the unemployed finding work. Wang Ch’u-hou saw no danger in being a matchmaker, since the matchmaker herself would never be given away. Mrs. Wang had already been planning to match Miss Fan with Chao Hsin-mei and Miss Liu with Fang Hung-chien. Miss Fan was older and homelier than Miss Liu, but then she was a lecturer. Her mate should be a rather high-ranking department chairman. Miss Liu was a teaching assistant, so marrying an associate professor should be quite enough. As for Miss Sun, she had never paid a call on Mrs. Wang. Mrs. Wang had met her once or twice while visiting with Miss Fan and had not had a very good impression of her.
Two days after returning from Kweilin, Hung-chien and Hsin-mei received an invitation from Wang Ch’u-hou. Ordinarily neither of them ever had any contact with Wang and had never met Mrs. Wang, so when they saw the invitation, they recalled the talk about matchmaking.
Hung-chien said, “Old Wang is a big snob. Kao Sung-nien and the three college deans are the only ones qualified to eat at his house. And of course the people in the Chinese Department. Maybe you rate, but why drag me in? If it’s to make a match, there aren’t any women around here. That old guy is really too much!”
Hsin-mei said, “I don’t mind going to get a look at Mrs. Wang. Maybe Old Wang has a niece on his or his wife’s side—Mrs. Wang is supposed to be quite a beauty—whom he wants to give to you. It was you he talked to, not me. He was referring to you alone. You feel awkward about going so you produce a phony imperial edict to drag me along with you, even saying he’s making a match for both of us! Well, I don’t want anyone making a match for me.”
After bickering about it for a while, they decided to visit the Wangs first and find out what it was all about before the joke became a reality.
The one-story, dark brick, semi-Western style house the Wangs rented was the best building in the area except for the school dormitory. It was separated from the dormitory by a stream. The stream dried up in the winter, leaving the stream bed filled with a pile of rocks like a nest of eggs in assorted sizes newly laid by the stream. When the stream was dried up, everyone stepped over the rocks instead of crossing by the wooden bridge, which just shows that as long as no danger is present, people are always ready to take the unconventional way.
The Wangs’ living room was very spacious and had a mat spread on the brick floor. The big, solid, old-fashioned redwood tables and chairs had been bought by Wang Ch’u-hou from an army officer in town. If he should ever find better prospects elsewhere, Wang could sell them to the school.
Smiling radiantly, Wang came out first and asked Hsin-mei and Hung-chien if they found it cold in the living room, then ordered the maid to bring the brazier. They remarked in unison how nice his house was, how even more elegantly it was furnished, and that of all the houses they had seen in the last six months this was by far the best.
Wang heaved a long satisfied sigh and said, “Oh, this doesn’t amount to anything! I used to have some things, but now they’ve all been lost. You never saw my house in Nanking—fortunately, it wasn’t burned down by the Japanese, but heaven knows what became of all the things I had collected in it. Fortunately, I’m not one to be affected by such things; otherwise, I’d really be heartbroken.”
Hsin-mei and Hung-chien had not only become quite used to hearing this sort of talk lately; they had even gotten in the habit of saying it themselves. To be sure, the ravages of the war had left many people with wealth and property homeless and destitute, but at the same time it gave an untold number of the destitute an opportunity to hark back to their days as millionaires. The Japanese had burned so many nonexistent houses with towers in the sky, taken possession of so many nonexistent properties, and destroyed so many one-sided romances made in heaven! Lu Tzu-hsiao, for instance, often let it be known that before the war two or three girls had vied to marry him, sighing at the same time, “Now of course it’s all out of the question!” Li Mei-t’ing had suddenly put up a Western-style house in the Chapei section of Shanghai. And now? Such a pity! Those wretched Japanese had set it on fire. The damage was simply inestimable. Fang Hung-chien had also enlarged by several times the old house in his village, which had fallen to the enemy. Amazingly enough, the house had been expanded without in any way encroaching on the neighbor’s land. Living as he did in the concession area, Chao Hsin-mei could not work any sleight of hand on his house, but as the dashing young man he considered himself to be, he did not have to sigh over the many women who had fancied him before. He merely said that if the war had never erupted, and the Office of the Negotiator had not withdrawn to the interior, he could have gone on—no, gone up, as an official.
Wang Ch’u-hou’s prewar style of living was perhaps not as lavish as he claimed, but his colleagues believed him anyway, for his day-to-day life now was certainly more comfortable than anyone else’s, and besides, everyone knew that he was a discharged corrupt official—“It’s rare indeed for the government to be so strict. But then he had already raked in all he wanted!”
Pointing to some calligraphy scrolls on the wall by well-known contemporaries, Wang remarked, “These are ones friends gave me after I escaped. Now I’ve lost heart. I won’t ever collect antiques again. There’s nothing worth collecting in the interior anyway—those two scrolls my wife painted.”
Hsin-mei and Hung-chien quickly stood up and took a close look at the two small landscape paintings. Fang Hung-chien remarked that he didn’t know Mrs. Wang could paint and was quite surprised. Chao Hsin-mei remarked that he had long heard how good a painter Mrs. Wang was and that her fame was well deserved. These two remarks were both contradictory and complementary.
Wang delightedly stroked his mustache, saying, “Unfortunately, my wife is not in good health. She finds painting and music—”
Before he could finish, Mrs. Wang herself came out. She was well proportioned without being thin but had no blood in her cheeks and was not wearing any rouge, only face powder. Her lips, however, were painted a bright red, and her Chinese dress was lavender, which made her face look unusually pale. She had long eyelashes, and eyes which slanted upward at the corners. Her hair was unwaved and put up in a bun, probably because she found the local hairdressers too inept. She was holding a leather hot water bottle in her hand. Her fingernails were completely red, not the color she had stained herself with while painting since her paintings were all blue and green landscapes.
Mrs. Wang said that she had wanted for a long time to invite them over, but her health had disappointed her, so she had put off the invitation until now. They immediately asked if she were better, then said they had never ventured to come pay a visit earlier and dinner wasn’t necessary. Mrs. Wang said that she was stronger in spring and summer than in autumn and winter, and they must certainly come for dinner.
Mr. Wang said with a chuckle, “This dinner invitation of ours isn’t for nothing. After the matches have been made, we expect our rewards. Your party in honor of the matchmaker should have eighteen plus eighteen—thirty-six tables!”
“How can we afford that!’ exclaimed Hung-chien. “We don’t even have enough money to reward the matchmaker, let alone get married.”
Hsin-mei said, “In times like these, who has the spare money for getting married? I’m barely able to take care of myself! Thank you, Mr. and Mrs. Wang, for your offer of dinner and matchmaking, but we’ll just have to say no thanks.”
Mr. Wang said, “The world has changed! Why don’t young people have the slightest enthusiasm? Not the slightest bit of romance? They refuse marriage and even feign poverty! All right, we don’t want any reward. We’ll do it all for nothing, won’t we, Hsien?”
Mrs. Wang said, “Well, for heaven’s sake! The way you two go on! I don’t know much about Mr. Fang, but the abilities you returned students carry around with you are inexhaustible assets. We know all about Mr. Chao’s family background and future prospects. The only worry is that the young lady wouldn’t be worthy—there, you think I have enough of the matchmaking spirit?”
They all j
oined her in laughter.
“If someone took a fancy to me, I’d have gotten married by now,” said Hsin-mei.
“I’m afraid you’re just too choosy,” said Mrs. Wang. “You’ll pick and choose without ever finding anyone to your liking. You newly returned single students are like baked sesame buns fresh out of the oven. For people with young daughters, there aren’t enough of you to go around. Oh, I’ve seen plenty of them. The richer they are, the less they want to get married. If they can be independent, they don’t care about a wife’s dowry or her father’s influence. They’d rather have girl friends and lead a life of profligacy; for that, they do have the money. If you’re worried about not having enough money to get married, it’s a lot more economical to take a wife than having girl friends right and left. Your excuse isn’t good enough.”
They were both horrified at hearing this and were about to reply when Wang Ch’u-hou, pretending to be angry, said, “I would like it known that I did not marry you in order to be ‘economical’ and save money. When I was young, I was known for proper conduct; I never carried on. A fine thing it would be if your remarks were misinterpreted!” With that he gave Hung-chien and Hsin-mei a mischievous wink.
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