By that time he had become hungry. He chose a cheap Russian restaurant and was about to go in when he dug his hand into his pocket to feel around and found his wallet was missing. In agitation, he perspired lightly in the chill wind, so lightly it was more like emotional steam let off than sweat. What a wretched day! I might as well return home. I don’t even have the money to take a tram. All his resentment turned on his wife. If Mrs. Lu hadn’t come, he would never have gone out and had to suffer the cold wind; and if he hadn’t gone out, he wouldn’t have lost his wallet. Mrs. Lu was his wife’s aunt and his wife had invited her over—and even if his wife hadn’t invited her, he would still lay the blame on her. Furthermore, he had always put his money in bits and pieces in all his pockets, front, back, and sides. At the most a pickpocket could clean out one pocket. Now that he had a wallet, all his money was kept together, making it that much easier for a pickpocket. It was all Jou-chia’s great idea.
Mama Li was washing dishes in the kitchen. When she saw him come in, she asked, “Master, have you had dinner?”
He merely pretended not to hear. Mama Li had never seen him return so stony-faced. Her eyes followed him anxiously out of the kitchen.
When Jou-chia saw him, she put down the newspaper, stood up, and said, “You’re back! Is it cold outside? Where did you have dinner? We waited and waited for you, but when you didn’t come back, we went ahead and ate.”
He had been expecting to eat dinner as soon as he got home. Now when he learned they had already eaten, he found a certain satisfaction in his disappointment, as though a firm foundation had been set for his outburst. Today’s quarrel would be a noisy one, he thought.
“I have no relatives to go to for a meal,” said Hung-chien sullenly. “Of course I haven’t eaten.”
“Then, hurry and have Mama Li go buy you something,” said Jou-chia in surprise. “Where’d you go? You made us wait for such a long time! Auntie came especially to see you. We waited and waited, and when you didn’t come I had her stay for dinner.”
Hung-chien was like a drowning man who grabs the end of a rope and hangs on for dear life.
“Oh, so she came, did she!” he said. “No wonder! She ate up all my food and now I have nothing. Well, I’m much obliged to her for coming, but I didn’t invite her! I don’t go to her place, so why does she have to come to mine? Your aunt is to be kept for dinner, while your husband should go hungry. All right, then, if that’s the way you want it, I’ll go hungry for a day. Don’t ask Mama Li to buy anything.”
Jou-chia sat down, picked up the newspaper, and said, “I’m always sorry when I pay any attention to you. Ungrateful wretch! If you want to go hungry, it serves you right. It makes no difference to me. You’ve quit your job at the newspaper agency. What grave national matters was the great man of justice and righteousness out attending to? Coming back so late! I take care of half of the expenses in this family and I have every right to invite company. It’s no business of yours. Besides, the dishes Mama Li cooks are poisonous. You’d be better off not eating them.”
Hung-chien’s rage redoubled and he felt a stabbing pain in his stomach, but he didn’t have a penny on him. He would have to wait till the next day to go to the bank to get some money, but in the meantime he was not going to ask Jou-chia for any.
“In any case,” he said, “you’ll be glad if I starve to death. Then your dear aunt can find a better husband for you.”
“Tsui!” said Jou-chia with a scornful laugh, “I think you’ve gone mad. You won’t die of hunger. It should clear your head a little.”
Hung-chien’s anger surged forth inside him like a second tide of water and he asked, “Is that a secret that dear aunt of yours passed on to you? ‘Jou-chia, a man shouldn’t be spoiled too much. You must starve him, freeze him, and abuse him.’”
Studying her husband’s face closely, she said, “Oh, the landlord’s servant did say she saw you come home. Why didn’t you come up the stairs openly instead of skulking about like a thief, hiding halfway up the stairs and listening in? Only those two sisters-in-law of yours are capable of doing something like that. And you call yourself a man. Aren’t you ashamed?”
He said, “I wanted to hear it; otherwise, I’d really be in the dark, not knowing how people are maligning me behind my back.”
“How did we malign you? Why don’t you say it?”
Hung-chien bluffed, “You know perfectly well yourself without my telling you.”
Jou-chia had in fact told her aunt what had happened during the winter solstice dinner the day before. Both of them had laughed and reviled in unison. Thinking Hung-chien had heard all this, she was a little flustered and said, “It wasn’t meant for your ears in the first place. Who asked you to eavesdrop? Tell me, when my aunt said she’d find you a job in the factory, did your sharp little ears pick that up?”
He gave a start and shouted, “Who wants her to find me a job? If I become a beggar, I wouldn’t want to beg from her! Isn’t it enough for her to raise those two running dogs, Bobby and Sun Jou-chia? You can just tell her that Fang Hung-chien, who ‘has no ability, but does have a terrific temper,’ will not be any running dog for a capitalist running dog.”
The two stood facing each other. Eyes blazing with anger, Jou-chia said, “Not a word she said was unjust. People feel sorry for you. If you don’t want the rice bowl, it won’t get moldy. All right, your father can ‘find a job’ for you. But there’s nothing great about depending on your old man. If you had any ability, you’d find your own job.”
“I’m not depending on anyone. I’ll tell you something. I already sent a telegram to Chao Hsin-mei today, and I just now settled everything with the moving company people. After I’m gone, you can really enjoy yourself. You can not only keep your aunt for dinner, you can even have her stay overnight. Or you can just go ahead and move in with her and let her support you like Bobby.”
Jou-chia’s lips parted slightly and her eyes opened wide. She let him finish, then said through clenched teeth, “All right, so we’re through. Your luggage and clothes you can take care of yourself. Don’t bother me about them. Last year you frittered your time away in Shanghai with no job, then went with Chao Hsin-mei to the interior. After you lost your job there, relying on Hsin-mei’s pull you came to Shanghai. You lost your job in Shanghai and now you go running to Chao Hsin-mei in the interior again. Just think about it. You follow him all your life, clinging to his coattails with your teeth. If you aren’t his running dog, then what are you? You not only don’t have any ability, you don’t even have any ambition. Don’t talk to me about moral integrity. Just be careful you don’t annoy this friend of yours. If he kicks you out, and you come back to Shanghai, I’d just like to see if you can face anyone then. I don’t care if you go or stay.”
Unable to take any more, Hung-chien said, “Then just shut up,” and he reached out and gave her a strong shove in the chest. She staggered backward, crashing into the edge of the table and knocking a glass to the floor with her arm. The pieces of glass mixed with the water.
Gasping for breath she said, “You dare hit me? You dare hit me!”
Mama Li came bursting in like a cotton pellet in her thick clothing, screaming, “Master, how could you raise a hand against her? If you hit me, I’ll yell and let everyone downstairs hear. Young Lady, where did he hit you? Are you hurt? Don’t be frightened. I’ll set my old life against his. A man hitting a woman! Your father and mother never hit you. I nursed you from the time you were a baby and never once gave you so much as a strong pat. And he hit you!”
Her tears came rolling down as she spoke. Jou-chia collapsed on the sofa sobbing bitterly. Hung-chien watched her crying piteously, but he would not pity her and only hated her all the more.
Mama Li stood by the sofa protecting Jou-chia and said, “Don’t cry, Young Lady. If you cry, I’ll cry too—” and as she spoke, she pulled her apron up to wipe her tears—“See how badly you beat her! Young Lady, I’m really thinking of telling your aunt, but I’
m just afraid once I’m gone, he’ll hit you again.”
Hung-chien said gruffly, “Ask your mistress if I hit her or not! Run over and call her aunt. I won’t hit your mistress,” and with a push and a shove, he pushed Mama Li right out of the room.
Less than a minute later she came rushing back in again, saying, “Young Lady, I asked the landlord’s daughter to call up your aunt for me. She’s coming at once. We needn’t be afraid of him anymore.”
It had never occurred to Hung-chien or Jou-chia that Mama Li was serious about it. But as the two of them were now in hostile positions, they could not very well join up and reproach her for meddling. Jou-chia forgot all about crying; Hung-chien stared at the servant in amazement like a child seeing some strange creature in the zoo.
After a moment of silence, Hung-chien said, “All right, when she comes, I’m leaving. You two women ganging up isn’t enough. You have to go get another one. Then you’ll say how I, a man, am bullying you. I’ll be back when she’s gone.” He went over and took his jacket from the coatrack.
Jou-chia didn’t want her aunt coming over and blowing up the incident, but when she saw her husband beating a retreat like this, her hate and scorn won out over her hurt. She cried hoarsely, “You’re a coward! Coward! Coward! I don’t want to see you ever again, you coward!” Each word struck like a lash meant to whip up her husband’s courage. Then as though feeling this weren’t enough, she grabbed an ivory comb from the table and hurled it at him with all her strength. Just turning his head to reply, he did not have time to dodge. The comb struck his left cheek hard and fell to the floor with a thud, breaking in two.
Jou-chia heard him cry out “Ai ya” in pain, and when she saw the spot where the comb had struck him immediately redden and swell up from the blood underneath the skin, she regretted having gone too far, but at the same time she was frightened, expecting him to retaliate. Mama Li positioned herself between the two of them.
Appalled at Jou-chia’s viciousness, and seeing her standing there stiffly holding on to the table, her tear-stained face as pale as dead ashes, her eyes all red and her nostrils flaring, swallowing saliva, he felt both pity and fear. At the same time he heard footsteps ascending the stairs and didn’t dispute with her any further, saying merely, “You really are vicious! It’s not enough that your own family knows about it, you have to raise such a fuss so all the neighbors know too. Now the landlord’s family has heard. You’ve just learned to be spiteful and brazen-faced. Well, I still plan to behave like a gentleman and keep my face. I’m leaving. Learn some more new skills when your teacher comes. You’re really a good student. You put them to use as soon as you’ve learned them. You can warn her for me that I’ll forgive her this time, but if she leads you astray once more, I’ll go there looking for her. Don’t think I’m afraid of her. Mama Li, when Mrs. Lu comes, don’t just tell her how bad I am. You saw with your own eyes who struck whom.”
He went up to the door, saying in a loud voice, “I’m going out,” slowly turned the knob to give the eavesdroppers on the other side of the door time to move away, and then went out. Jou-chia watched wide-eyed as he left the room, then collapsed on the sofa, put her head in her hands, and wept in anguish. It seemed the tide of tears didn’t flow from her eyes only, but it was as if hot tears were being squeezed from her heart and all over her body and drained out together.
Hung-chien’s nerves were too numb as he left the house to feel the cold. He was conscious only of a burning in his left cheek. His thoughts churned chaotically in his brain like snowflakes whirling about in the north wind. He let his legs carry him where they would. The all-night street lights passed his shadow along from one lamp to the next. Another self inside him seemed to be saying, “It’s all over! All over!” His scattered, random thoughts immediately seemed to come together at one point, and he was beset with anguish. His left cheek suddenly tingled. He found it damp to the touch, and thinking it was blood, was so shocked his heart stood still and his legs went limp. He moved over under a lamp post to look, and when he found no traces of blood on his fingers, realized it was only tears.
At the same time he felt exhaustion all over his body and hunger inside his stomach. He reached instinctively into his pocket, thinking he’d wait for a street-hawker to come by and buy a loaf of bread, when he suddenly remembered that he had no money with him. A hungry person can burn with anger, but like a fire fed on paper, it doesn’t last long. Having nowhere to go, he decided the best thing to do was to go home and sleep. If he did encounter Mrs. Lu, he wasn’t afraid of her. So he was the one who had started it, but Jou-chia had retaliated so viciously, the two incidents canceled each other out. He saw by his watch that it was already past ten. He wasn’t sure how long he had been out. Maybe she had already gone. Seeing no car at the entrance to the alley, he breathed a sigh of relief.
As soon as he entered, the landlady heard the noise and hurried out, saying, “Oh, it’s you, Mr. Fang. Your wife wasn’t feeling well. She went to the Lus with Mama Li and won’t be back tonight. Here’s the key to your room. She left it with me to give you. You can come over to my house for breakfast tomorrow morning. Mama Li has arranged it.”
Hung-chien’s heart sank irretrievably. He mechanically took the key and thanked her. The landlady seemed to have more to say, but he bounded up the stairs. He opened the door to the bedroom and turned on the light. The shattered glass and broken comb were still in the same place, and one trunk was missing from the pile. He stood there in a daze, mind and body too dulled to feel angry and upset. Jou-chia had left, but the room still retained her angry look, and the sound of her crying and her voice hadn’t vanished from the air. He noticed a card on the table and went over to take a look. It was Mrs. Lu’s. In a sudden fit of anger, he tore it to pieces. “All right,” he said spitefully, “you’re free to go off and leave me. Get the hell out, your mother’s egg! All of you, get the hell out of my sight!”
This brief outburst of rage consumed all his remaining energy, and he was so weak he could have broken down and sobbed his heart out. He fell fully clothed on the bed and felt as if the room were swirling around him. He thought, Oh, no. I just can’t get sick. Tomorrow I’ll have to go see the manager, and then once it’s all settled, I’ll have to get together the money for the traveling expenses. I may be able to spend the Chinese New Year in Chungking. Hope rose again in his heart, like damp firewood which won’t catch fire but has begun to smoke, and it seemed everything would work out. Before he knew it, dark earth and hazy sky merged and wrapped tight. He fell asleep like a night when all the lights have gone out. At first his sleep was brittle. His hunger tried to nip through his stupor like a pair of forceps, but he subconsciously blocked it. Gradually the forceps became loose and blunt, and his sleep became so sound it could not be pinched. It was a sleep devoid of dreams and sensations, the primordial sleep of mankind that is also a sample of death.
The old ancestral clock began chiming away as though it had stored up half a day’s time to ring it out carefully in the still of the night, counting “One, two, three, four, five, six.” It was six o’clock five hours ago. At that time Hung-chien was on his way home, intending to treat Jou-chia nicely and request her not to stir up any more unpleasantness between them over the incident of the day before. At that time Jou-chia was at home waiting for Hung-chien to come home for dinner, hoping he would make up with her aunt and go to work in her factory. The irony and disappointment of men unintentionally contained in this out-of-date timepiece went deeper than any language, than any tears or laughter.
Afterword
Fortress Besieged, or Wei-ch’eng, first serialized in Literary Renaissance (Wen-i fu-hsing) and published in book form in 1947, has been acclaimed as “one of modern China’s two best novels,”1 or her “greatest novel;”2 it has been the subject of two doctoral dissertations and one master’s thesis and various scholarly papers in English and Chinese.3 Among differing views on the merits of the novel, C. T. Hsia has highly praised the novel’s
comic exuberance and satire;4 Dennis Hu, its linguistic manipulation; Theodore Huters, its relationship to modern Chinese letters; and Mai Ping-k’un has written favorably on both Ch’ien’s essays and his fiction. What each critic has stressed is one aspect of the novel’s multifaceted brilliance, and it is the intent of this introduction to discuss the novel as an artistic whole.
On November 21, 1910, Ch’ien Chung-shu, the author of Fortress Besieged, was born into a literary family in Wuhsi, Kiangsu province. His father Ch’ien Chi-po (1887–1957) was a renowned literary historian and university professor. Ch’ien was a precocious child, noted for his photographic memory and brilliance in writing Chinese verse and prose. Upon graduation from grade school, he attended St. John’s University Affiliated High Schools in Soochow and Wuhsi. In high school, Ch’ien excelled in English. When he sat for the matriculation examination of the prestigious Tsing-hua University, it was said that he scored very poorly in mathematics but did so well in English and Chinese composition that he passed the examination with some éclat.
At Tsing-hua, Ch’ien was known as an arrogant young man, who cut lectures and kept much to himself. Among his few intimate friends was Achilles Fang, the “word wizard” (as Marianne Moore called him), who was then a student in the department of philosophy. There Ch’ien also met his future wife Yang Chiang. After graduating from Tsing-hua in 1933, he accepted a teaching appointment at Kuang-hua University in Shanghai.
In 1935, on a Boxer Indemnity Scholarship, Ch’ien went to Exeter College, Oxford, and majored in English literature. He read more thrillers and detective yarns than was healthy for a student devoted to serious research. He also developed a keen interest in Hegel’s philosophy and Marcel Proust’s fiction. Perhaps most ego-deflating was his failure to pass the probationer examination in English palaeography, and he had to sit for it a second time. Nonetheless, he did achieve his B. Litt. degree from Oxford in 1937. His thesis, composed of three meticulously researched chapters (“China in the English Literature of the Seventeenth Century” and “China in the English Literature of the Eighteenth Century”), was later published in the English edition of the Quarterly Bulletin of Chinese Bibliography (Tu-shu chi-k’an). Having taken his Oxford degree, he studied a year in Paris.
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