The Song of Everlasting Sorrow: A Novel of Shanghai (Weatherhead Books on Asia)

by Anyi, Wang

  Before long the director sent someone over to escort Wang Qiyao to the set, Wu Peizhen naturally following close behind. The lights were already set up and Wu Peizhen’s cousin was up on the scaffolding, smiling down at them. The director, on the other hand, became serious and cold, as if he did not even know them. He had Wang Qiyao sit on a bed. It was a Nanjing-style bed with ornate flower patterns carved into the woodwork, a mirror set into the headboard, and high bed curtains all around—all the signs of rustic elegance. Wang Qiyao was to play a bride in a traditional wedding ceremony. She would be wearing a crimson bridal veil over her head when the groom entered and he would pull it away, slowly revealing her face. The director explained that her character had to be bashful and charming, filled with longing and uncertainty; he unloaded these adjectives on her all at once, expecting her to capture them all with a single expression. Wang Qiyao nodded, but deep down she was completely lost and had no idea where to begin. But having decided to let everything ride, she was actually quite calm and composed. She was aware of everything going on around her, down to the shouts of “Camera” coming from the adjacent set.

  The next thing she knew, a crimson bridal veil came down over her head. Suddenly everything was swathed in darkness. In that instant her heart began pounding like a drum. She understood that her moment had come and fear welled up inside her as her knees began to tremble faintly. The set lights came on, transforming the darkness into a thick crimson hue. Suddenly she felt feverish, and the tremors worked their way from her knees up through her body. Even her teeth began to chatter. All the mystery and grandeur of the film studio hung suspended in the light shimmering outside her veil. Someone came and straightened out her clothing and then quickly walked off set. The air whisked against her as he passed by. The crimson veil fluttered a bit, for a moment softening the anxieties of that afternoon. She heard a series of “okay”s repeating in rhythmic succession around her, as if converging upon a common target. Finally came the word, “Camera.” Wang Qiyao’s breathing stopped. She could not catch her breath. She could hear the film running through the camera, a mechanical sound that seemed to override everything. Her mind just went blank. When a hand pulled away her wedding veil, she was so startled that she shrank back with fright. “Cut,” the director yelled. The set lights went dim, the crimson veil went back over her head, and they took it once more from the top.

  As they redid the scene, everything grew fuzzy. Things faded off into the distance, never to reappear, as if they had been an illusion. Then Wang Qiyao snapped out of her daze, her shivering ceased, and her heart rate returned to normal. Her eyes adjusted to the darkness once more and through the wedding veil she could make out silhouettes of people moving around. The set lights came up and this time the shouts of “OK” sounded perfunctory. When the word “Camera” was called out, it too seemed little more than a formality—but this formality still carried with it an air of authority, of unwavering power. She began to prepare the emotions the director wanted to see on her face; the only problem was that she had no inkling of how to act bashful or charming, or what it meant to be filled with longing and uncertainty. Human emotions are not simple symbols that can be called up at will. The crimson wedding veil was lifted to reveal a rigid expression; even the bit of natural charm that she normally had about her was frozen.

  As soon as he saw her through the eye of the camera, the director sensed that he had made a mistake; Wang Qiyao’s was not an artistic beauty, but quite ordinary. It was the kind of beauty to be admired in by close friends and relatives in her own living room, like the shifting moods of everyday life; a retrained beauty, it was not the kind that made waves. It was real, not dramatic—the kind of beauty that people noticed on the street and photo studios displayed in their front windows. Through the camera’s lens, it was simply too bland. The director was disappointed, but his disappointment was partly for Wang Qiyao’s sake. Her beauty will be buried and lost to the world, he said to himself. Later, in order to make things up to her, he had a photographer friend of his do a photo shoot for her—but this photo shoot turned into something quite extraordinary. One of the photos even made it into the inside front cover of Shanghai Life with the caption, “A Proper Young Lady of Shanghai.”

  And so that is how the screen test ended, just another trifling incident in the life of the film studio. After that, Wang Qiyao stopped going. She wanted to forget the whole affair—that it had ever happened. But the image of that crimson wedding veil and the dazzling studio lights were already imprinted in her mind and reappeared whenever she closed her eyes. There was a strange frisson attached to that scene; it was the most dramatic moment in Wang Qiyao’s quiet life. The moment had come and gone in an instant, but it added a dab of melancholic color to her heart.

  Occasionally, on her way home from school, something would unexpectedly stir up her memory of the screen test. Wang Qiyao was sixteen years old at the time, but that one day’s experience left her with the feeling that she had already been through a lot—she felt much older than sixteen. She started to avoid Wu Peizhen, as if the latter had stolen some secret from her. Whenever Wu Peizhen invited her out after school, Wang Qiyao would almost always find some excuse not to go. Several times Wu Peizhen even went to Wang Qiyao’s apartment to look for her, but each time Wang Qiyao had the maidservant say that she was not home. Sensing that she was being avoided, Wu Peizhen felt heartbroken, but she held on to the hope that Wang Qiyao would eventually come back to her. Her friendship changed into a kind of pious waiting; she did not even look for any new girlfriends, afraid that they might take Wang Qiyao’s place. Wu Peizhen had a faint notion that the reason Wang Qiyao was avoiding her had something to do with that failed screen test, so she too stopped going to the film studio, even breaking off contact with her cousin. The screen test became a source of sorrow for both of them, leaving them with a deep sense of defeat. Things gradually got to the point where they were no longer on speaking terms: running into one another at school, each would make haste to awkwardly get out of the other’s way. They sat on opposite sides of the classroom, but, though their eyes never met, they could always feel one another’s’ presence. A wall of pity grew between them. The incident at the film studio ended with the word “camera,” and the result was what they call in the industry a “freeze frame.” Gone, never to return, but the memory hangs on for all eternity.

  Their after-school lives gradually returned to normal; but things were not really the same—something had been snatched away. They were hurt, but neither could say where the pain was. At their girls’ school, where rumors usually flew rampant, not a soul knew about Wang Qiyao’s screen test; they had succeeded in keeping it completely under wraps. It was implicitly understood between them that they should never broach the subject. Actually, just to be chosen by a director for a screen test would already have been a great honor in the eyes of most girls—any hopes of getting a part would be a long shot in a long shot. This was also what Wang Qiyao thought at first, but once she reached that stage everything changed. Suddenly, a price had been exacted and loss was imminent. Only because Wu Peizhen stepped out of her own shoes and empathized completely with her friend was she able to understand the grief Wang Qiyao was going through.

  The Photograph

  A month had gone by before the director finally called. Wang Qiyao’s voice was stiff and a bit sardonic as she asked him just what business he had calling her. The director explained that he had a photographer friend named Mr. Cheng and wanted to arrange a photo shoot for her. Wang Qiyao replied that she was not very photogenic and told him that he had better have Mr. Cheng find somebody else!

  The director laughed. “Oh, little Yao Yao’s throwing a temper tantrum!”

  With that, Wang Qiyao was too embarrassed to refuse and gave in. The next day the Mr. Cheng in question called to arrange the time and place.

  When the time came, Wang Qiyao went to the address Mr. Cheng had given her, taking with her several cheongsams and dresses. Mr. Cheng
lived on the penthouse floor of a multistoried apartment building on the Bund. Part of his apartment had been renovated into a photo studio, complete with cardboard scenic backdrops of European castles as well as Chinese pavilions. Inside were also a dark room and a dressing room. Mr. Cheng was a young man of twenty-six; he had on a pair of goldtrimmed glasses—he was nearsighted—and was wearing a pair of suspenders over a white dress shirt and a pair of Western slacks—very sharp. He had Wang Qiyao fix herself up in the dressing room while he set up the lights.

  From the dressing room window, Wang Qiyao could see the Bund, stretched out like a white ribbon. It was a Sunday afternoon and the sunlight was especially refreshing. The clock tower at the Custom House rang the hour, its chiming gradually spreading through the air as if from someplace far, far away. People down beside the river, the size of ants, shimmered as they moved. Pulling her gaze back into the dressing room, Wang Qiyao suddenly felt flustered. Why had she gone there in the first place? Without being conscious of it, she suppressed all hope, refusing to let her expectations grow. She had already suffered a terrible blow and could not help but be discouraged. At the same time, she took a kind of perverse pleasure in watching her dreams melt away, fancying herself the heroine of a sad story. Her only reason for coming, she told herself, was out of respect for the director; for herself, she couldn’t have cared less. She looked herself over in the mirror with a feeling of ambivalence, applied some lipstick, and emerged from the dressing room without even bothering to change her outfit.

  Mr. Cheng had already set everything up for the photo shoot; a vase of white calla lilies stood on a stand in front of the orange backdrop he had hung. He asked Wang Qiyao to stand beside the stand while he took a few steps back to see how everything appeared. As he looked her over, Wang Qiyao gazed back at him with indifference, not in the least bit embarrassed. Instead she had a jaded expression that seemed to illustrate “all that she had been through”—but the look that spoke these words was naïve and one could tell that it was a bit forced and exaggerated.

  Mr. Cheng had an eye different from the director’s; the director wanted character, but Mr. Cheng wanted only beauty. Character has to be created; beauty, on the other hand, does not have any such mission. In Mr. Cheng’s eyes, Wang Qiyao was practically flawless, a perfect beauty—stunning from every angle. She did not have any of the incorrigible habits of models who were long accustomed to the camera’s eye. She was a blank sheet of paper, an empty palette that could be painted to match the heart’s desire. At the same time, there was a certain elegant poise about her and she wasn’t a bit shy. Her poise came from her experience at the screen test: it was the result of practice. Failure had given it a touch of bashfulness and an endearing modesty—in other words, she was enchanting.

  Mr. Cheng was very happy with his director friend’s recommendation. He could not remember just how many beauties had been through the door of his photo studio, but every one had come pre-stylized. They were already like finished photographs; all Mr. Cheng had to do was reproduce them. At that moment he felt a sudden surge of excitement, which communicated itself to Wang Qiyao, and, as the lights went on, a spark of indescribable hope lit up inside her. This ranked as a “second choice” kind of hope but she could feel it rising nevertheless. Of course, Mr. Cheng’s photo studio could not compare with the film studio for glamour, sophomoric and rather desolate as it was, but it exuded an air of diligence and sincerity, of honest work starting from the bottom, of active pursuit—and this won over one’s cooperation. In spite of herself, Wang Qiyao retracted her indifferent attitude and began to show interest and enthusiasm.

  No matter how unaffected they may normally be, girls like Wang Qiyao, who know all too well that they are pretty, cannot keep themselves from striking poses in front of a camera. But the poses are usually not very clever—either exaggerated, or coming across a bit forced—and the girls were shown at a disadvantage. Wang Qiyao, however, was an exception: she did not make these kinds of mistakes. She was wiser and had innate self-awareness; she had also learned from her experience at the film studio and remained calm and reserved. That is not to say that her mannerisms were free from a certain affectedness, but it was an unaffected affectedness. She acted like a somebody trying to pretend to be a nobody, and this somehow created an appearance that seemed perfectly suited to the camera. Mr. Cheng could not help himself. He took shot after shot, and Wang Qiyao in turn took to the attention like a fish to water. She began to feel a bit hot, her eyes sparkled, and her face radiated gorgeousness. One after another, she changed into all the different outfits she had brought along as, one after another, Mr. Cheng changed cardboard backdrops. One minute she would be a Chinese girl, the next she would transform into an exotic maiden from abroad. It was already noon by the time they finished the last shot and she went back into the dressing room to change. The Huangpu River glistened; the seagulls soaring above its waters looked like tiny silver spots. A car drove down alongside the riverbank and turned into a dark and quiet street, which ran straight through the tall buildings like a gully at the bottom of a canyon.

  Wang Qiyao took her time as she carefully changed back into the outfit she had came in and meticulously folded up the others. Her mind was clear and gave no thought to the pictures that had just been taken—she looked at this simply as something destined to come to naught. As she gathered up her things, she couldn’t help but admire the wonderful view from the apartment. The window, at the corner of the building situated right at the intersection of the Bund and that straight narrow road, was so high up you could see six blocks into the distance. She stepped out of the dressing room, said goodbye to Mr. Cheng before going out the door, and walked down the hall to the elevator. At the press of a button, the elevator silently ascended from the ground floor. As she stepped into the elevator, Wang Qiyao noticed Mr. Cheng standing outside his door, watching her.

  The photo later selected for the inside front cover of Shanghai Life was of Wang Qiyao wearing one of her casual cheongsams with a flowered pattern. She was sitting on a stone stool beside a stone table, her face turned slightly to one side, in a “listening pose,” as if chatting with someone outside the camera’s frame. Behind her was a traditional-style oval window and the shadows of flowers and tendrils—instantly recognizable as a painted cardboard backdrop. Although the photo was supposed to be an outdoor scene, the lighting was all artificial. Her pose was also patently artificial. In most respects it was a rather mediocre photo, the kind that can be seen hanging in the shop window of virtually every photo studio, a bit tacky; and, though the subject was pretty, she was not a stunning beauty. But there was something about that photo that made its way into people’s hearts. There is really only one way to describe the Wang Qiyao in that picture: she was a “good girl.” Hers was the look of a girl who alters herself to please other people, men as well as women. “Good girl” was written all over her face, in her posture; even the tiny, delicate flowers on her cheongsam reached out to you in friendliness. The background scene was fake, as was the lighting, even her pose—everything in the photo was contrived—but precisely because everything around her was fake, the person became real. She was not part of some conspiracy, she was merely playing out her part like a good girl; all of her cards were on the table. What you saw was what you got.

  The girl in the picture was not beautiful, but she was pretty. Beauty is something that inspires awe; it implies rejection and has the power to hurt. Prettiness, on the other hand, is a warm, sincere quality, and even hints at a kind of intimate understanding. Looking at her photo brought a feeling of true comfort and closeness, as though one could call her by name. Movie stars and models may indeed be enchantingly beautiful—but, after all, what do any of them have to do with you? They have their lives and you have yours. Wang Qiyao reached down into the bottom of your heart. The lighting in the picture also had a kind of minute intimacy that seemed to bring the image of Wang Qiyao to life. Images of people seemed to be reflected in her eyes a
nd the pleats in her cheongsam appeared to move. It was more like the kind of picture one sees pasted in a family album than the kind seen hanging in a glass frame to be admired. It would not have been found in advertisements for Soir de Paris perfume or Longines wristwatches, but would have been perfect to promote MSG or laundry detergent. Down-to-earth, with no trace of extravagance, it had a touch of resplendence of a commonplace variety; and it had a touch of sweetness, as in the faint sweetness of porridge flavored with osmanthus blossoms. It was not particularly eye-catching and it was far from unforgettable. Yet though the image failed to linger in your mind, you were bound to remember liking it the next time you laid eyes on it. It was the kind of photo you could never get sick of, yet by no means something you could not do without. In short, it was proper, comme il faut, and calming; just looking at it made one feel good. The editors over at Shanghai Life could not have exercised more wisdom than when they decided to run the photo as their inside cover spread. The photo and the name of the magazine were a match made in heaven, the photo acting like a footnote to the name. After all, what was Shanghai Life but fashion, food, and being attentive to all the details of the everyday? The image of Wang Qiyao seemed to capture the essence of all of this; the editors couldn’t have chosen a more suitable photograph.