by Anyi, Wang
“My mother also told me some rumors about Wang Qiyao.”
Mr. Cheng almost dropped the oar in his hand. His face seemed suddenly drained of blood. “Rumors are unreliable,” he retorted. “All kinds of rumors go the rounds in Shanghai.”
Stung by this absurd remark, Jiang Lili pressed on with some asperity, “I haven’t even told you the nature of the rumor, yet you are already refuting it.”
Mr. Cheng’s eyes blinked behind his glasses. He had long since forgotten to row and the boat was going around in circles. Jiang Lili was almost ready to let the matter drop, but on second thought reflected that there might not be another chance like this. Lowering her voice, she told Mr. Cheng everything that she had heard and seen. Mr. Cheng proceeded to row steadily. He did not shed any tears, but his actions became stiff and wooden, as if he had been transformed into a marionette. On reaching shore, he laid the oar against a large stone, tied the boat, and walked off, oblivious that there was a Jiang Lili still sitting there. Jiang Lili scrambled ashore and ran after him with his walking stick. She found him standing in the woods facing a tree. She walked closer, meaning to complain, but saw that he was weeping.
“Mr. Cheng!” Jiang Lili called him softly. It became apparent that he simply did not hear her. Jiang Lili tugged lightly at his sleeve, but he gave no response.
Sighing, Jiang Lili said, “You’re so upset. What should I do?”
It was only then that Mr. Cheng turned around to look at her.
“I may as well die . . .” he mumbled dejectedly.
Jiang Lili found herself crying. So she was not even a worthy rival to death! To her surprise, Mr. Cheng took her in his arms, and put his head against hers. She instinctively returned his embrace. Hope arose in her breast as she sniffed the scent of his hair tonic on his collar. Even though this hope was squeezed forcibly out of Mr. Cheng’s hopelessness, it was still hope.
In the days afterward Mr. Cheng no longer spoke of Wang Qiyao, nor did Jiang Lili. They went out every week. Whether they went to dinner or a movie, they always avoided places the three of them had gone to together, or those that Mr. Cheng had gone to alone with Wang Qiyao. They tried to steer clear of Wang Qiyao, but it was not easy. Every time they got together they felt they were doing something behind her back. Wang Qiyao had occupied a large space in each of their hearts, leaving only the edges for their relationship. Nonetheless, the feelings they had for each other were genuine: no deception or pretension there. Needless to say, Jiang Lili truly loved Mr. Cheng while he, at the minimum, did not find her objectionable. On top of that, he felt a certain gratitude, on behalf of himself and of Wang Qiyao. It was the tenderness of a brother toward a sister, a real tenderness.
For a time they saw each other almost every day, even showing up together at parties and gatherings among their relatives and friends, appearing as a couple for whom marriage was but a matter of time. This was a time of healing and calm. There were no extravagant hopes, just quiet planning along sensible lines. Mr. Cheng often dined at the Jiang house, and even the automaton-like young master of the house managed to say a few polite words to him. On Jiang Lili’s twentieth birthday her father came out to Shanghai from the interior. Solemn introductions took place, and the two men were left with good impressions of one another. Even though Mr. Cheng had not proposed formally, they spoke with each other as if they were one family. Jiang Lili’s mother began to mull over the upcoming wedding, wondering what kind of cheongsam to wear at the banquet. As she recalled her own wedding, her joy was mixed with sorrow.
In the midst of these heartwarming activities, Jiang Lili was fretful. Even when Mr. Cheng was with her, he still remained somewhat aloof. The more she got from him, the more dissatisfied she grew. By nature domineering, she had furthermore been brought up with a strong sense of entitlement. Circumstances had forced her to be tolerant for a time, but it was not a situation she could live with in the long run. Her natural tendency was to either advance or retreat; moderation was just not her style. She became extremely demanding of Mr. Cheng, especially in matters concerning Wang Qiyao, whose importance she tended to blow out of all proportion. At first she allowed a fuzzy area to exist around that forbidden territory, only fretting in private. Soon, however, she brought the fight out into the open.
One day, as they headed toward a department store on foot to buy gift certificates for a friend, Jiang Lili, annoyed at Mr. Cheng’s inattentiveness, followed his eyes to a pedicab, wherein sat a young woman in a cape enthroned among her purchases. It took her a few minutes to digest what had occurred, but when she did, Jiang Lili suddenly stopped talking. Roused from his reverie, Mr. Cheng asked why she had stopped.
“Oh,” Jiang Lili responded coldly, “I mistook that lady for Wang Qiyao and completely forgot what I was saying.”
Peeved at having his daydream exposed, Mr. Cheng merely kept quiet. This was the first time Wang Qiyao’s name had come up in their conversation since the day on the lake, and over them hung a sense of an invisible line being crossed, of skeletons being brought out of the closet. Taking Mr. Cheng’s silence to be an admission of guilt, Jiang Lili became incensed. She lost all interest in gift certificates and immediately hailed a pedicab to go home, leaving Mr. Cheng on the street. Contrite, Mr. Cheng blamed himself for not being more careful. He continued on alone to buy the certificates at the Xianshi Department Store, and, to placate Jiang Lili, also bought some pine nut candies at Caizhi Zhai. He took the trolley to her house. Jiang Lili was sitting in the living room, but upon his arrival ran upstairs to her bedroom and locked the door. Mr. Cheng did not want to raise his voice and spoke softly to her through the door, to no avail. Just as he finally gave up and was about to leave, the key turned and the door opened. There she was, her eyes swollen as large as peaches from crying. Mr. Cheng had to console her a thousand times, and it was dusk before she was mollified.
Once something happens, it tends to happen again. Gradually, Wang Qiyao became a mantra that Jiang Lili invoked all the time. Sometimes she was right—he was thinking of Wang Qiyao—but other times she was dead wrong. Mr. Cheng was unfailingly apologetic. After a while, Mr. Cheng himself became confused. Perhaps there was really no room for anyone else in his heart aside from Wang Qiyao. What might have faded away naturally over time became etched in stone. Mr. Cheng had indeed suffered grievously from his love for Wang Qiyao, but he had resigned himself to losing her. Now Jiang Lili practically taught him that he could still think freely of Wang Qiyao and let her presence remain with him day and night. Reclusive by nature, he would let his thoughts wander back to Wang Qiyao whenever he was alone. He resumed his interest in photography, taking pictures of scenery, objects, and architectural structures, but no human figures. That space he reserved for Wang Qiyao alone. He saw less and less of Jiang Lili.
Initially, Jiang Lili would not call him. When he finally came around to phone or visit, she would pretend to ignore him, even declining to see him, partly because she was still sore and partly because she was deploying the old stratagem of disarming the opponent while pretending to let him go. But when Mr. Cheng stopped calling altogether, Jiang Lili panicked. She started to call him. She felt better when she heard his voice, but that did not prevent her from remaining angry. Even when they did manage to get together, they seemed always to part unhappily. After a few instances of this, Mr. Cheng even started to decline some of her invitations to go out. They were thus back to square one—both were discouraged that their sincerity and efforts had come to naught. Jiang Lili, however, could not come to terms with this; she refused to believe that this was happening to her. Rebuffs from Mr. Cheng only provoked her to take further action, propelling her to call him again and again, until she was forced to acknowledge defeat.
In the end, she resumed her humble attitude: she simply had to see him, with no strings attached. This frightened Mr. Cheng, who went into hiding. His “fright” had little to do with Jiang Lili specifically, but with relationships between men and women in general. He had
offered up his heart twice—albeit, it is true, each time in a slightly different fashion—the first time he invested his love and the second time his loyalty. Each time he gave himself wholeheartedly to the effort, but what did he receive in return? Nothing but suffering—suffering when he didn’t get the girl, and even more suffering when he did. He began to doubt if there could ever be happiness between man and woman, and gradually grew convinced that all attempts were futile.
Jiang Lili’s phone calls were going unanswered. Going to inquire after him at Mr. Cheng’s new workplace, she was told that he was on an extended leave for a trip to his hometown. They were not sure when he would be coming back. She went to his apartment on the Bund to see if she could track him down. She had a key—which she had hardly used, because Mr. Cheng usually came to her house. There was a desolate look to the place, with its noiseless elevator, few signs of human activity, and domed ceiling. The air was swirling with dust as she inserted the key into the keyhole. Inside, dust danced in the light shining through the cracks between the curtains. After her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she saw that a heavy layer of dust had settled on the floor, the camera, the tables, and the chairs, as well as on the cloth covering the light fixtures. Standing in the middle of the room, she grieved as she recalled how, not too long ago, it had been flooded with radiant light. The chairs and the steps in front of the backdrops were still there, looking cold and indifferent. Jiang Lili went into the dressing room and turned on the lamp on the vanity table, empty now except for dust. Staring at herself in the mirror, the only living being in the apartment, she saw a heartless, hollow shell. She wandered into the dark room, which had a light of unknown source. A string of negatives were dangling from a metal wire. Upon inspection, all were scenery shots, devoid of people. She went into his bedroom, where there were a bed, a dresser, and a rack for clothes and hats. One lone dusty shirt hung on the rack. Other than that, the room was in perfect order, like a man lacking expression or words. Jiang Lili thought she could hear dust descending from the ceiling. She realized that this time Mr. Cheng would not come back to her no matter how persistent she was. She had lost him for good.
As the relationship between Jiang Lili and Mr. Cheng went through its sea changes, virtually all that Wang Qiyao did was wait—wait for Director Li. Right after he put her up in the Alice Apartments, they had spent two weeks together. To Director Li, who usually crowded two days into one, this counted as a honeymoon. After this he showed up only sporadically, sometimes for a night, sometimes for a few hours during the day. Wang Qiyao never questioned him as to where he was or where he was going. She had no interest in, nor any understanding of, politics or business matters. Her apathy pleased Director Li, who saw it as an ignorance that came out of a woman’s self-awareness and pathos. He loved her even more and regretted that he could not spend more time with her.
During this period Director Li was like an arrow on a tightly drawn bow, ready to take off at any minute. Even in sleep he would abruptly sit up, ready to give or carry out an order. He was bedeviled by nightmares that made him struggle and cry out. Wang Qiyao could only hold him tight, whispering consoling words all the while, until he woke up in a sweat. He would then turn around and embrace her. Only then would his tense body ease up a bit. Some nights he could not sleep at all. He would sneak out into the living room to listen to a Mei Lanfang record. Even with Wang Qiyao he felt he had to put up a front; only Mei Lanfang could totally disarm him and let him relax. Only Mei Lanfang on the gramophone knew what he was thinking—and Mei Lanfang would never tell. Sometimes Wang Qiyao woke up in the morning to find him gone from her bed. She would find him asleep on the sofa, the tobacco in his pipe turned to ashes; only the record on the gramophone would still be moving, going round and round.
Director Li never told her when he might be back. Wang Qiyao stopped counting the days on the calendar. Time became a straight line, registering neither day nor night. Eating and sleeping, she had only one purpose, which was to wait for Director Li to show up. It was only after she met him that she began to realize just how immense the world really was. A person could disappear without a trace for weeks on end. She also realized how isolated one’s world could become. The chime of the trolley cars sounded so far away, as if it had nothing to do with her. She understood what separation meant, and what impermanence meant. Sometimes she said to herself, Director Li is sure to return the next time it rains. Then, when it rained, she would say, He’ll be sure to come when the sun comes out. She would flip coins trying to predict whether or not he would appear. She would look at the flower buds in the vase, saying to herself, Surely he will appear by the time the flowers have bloomed. Instead of counting the days, she counted how many times the outside light reached a certain point on the wall, playing on the idea that the Chinese word for “time” is made up of the characters for “light” and “shadow.”
Feeling lonely as she waited, she tried to fill her loneliness, but the more she tried, the lonelier she felt. She could have gone to stay with her parents, but she did not want to be interrogated. For the same reason she did not want them to visit her. She had stopped phoning them, effectively cutting herself off. After the first time, Jiang Lili visited twice more, and they went to the movies together. But then she stopped coming. Nobody else called, and Wang Qiyao did not go out. She forbade the maid to go out except to buy food, and even then she severely limited the time the maid was allowed to spend on errands. She wanted the maid, too, to feel what it meant to be lonely. Loneliness added to loneliness. She ate very little, once a day at the most, and was usually oblivious to what she was eating. She sometimes put on the Mei Lanfang record and tried to figure out just what it was that Director Li got out of the songs. She also wanted to be better prepared in case he took her to another Peking opera, but the significance of the lyrics still eluded her. She felt resigned to having always to wait for Director Li. It had been a game of waiting from the outset—the days she waited far outnumbered their days together. She did not realize that waiting was the main activity at all the units in Alice Apartments.
Every time Director Li came back, Wang Qiyao could not help crying. She never complained, but Director Li knew why she was unhappy—although this did not prevent him from leaving again. Director Li too felt helpless. Even he couldn’t figure out at what point all those accumulated setbacks began to weigh him down and make him feel helpless—he whose pet phrase used to be “Go for it!” had became “Unfeasible.” Because of his willingness to take risks, he had penetrated to the very core of power, but now that he was there, he had run out of room for maneuvering and almost everything became unfeasible. People thought he was powerful, but he knew he was helpless, even when it came to his own fate. He pitied Wang Qiyao as well as himself. His loss of faith in himself only strengthened his pity for her, and he tried to be good to her. Wang Qiyao, for her part, came to yearn for him, and there existed between them the true affection of man and wife. This was a love engendered by waiting, a tenderness that contained more sorrow than joy, an affection that tried to make the most of what they had.
Wang Qiyao was not aware of how desperate the situation had become. She only knew that Director Li was growing more and more erratic, and this left her feeling ill at ease. She also began to notice that at each visit he looked more haggard and aged than the last time. She felt she was living in a cave while a storm raged outside. But what could she do except worry? His was a world in which the clouds and rain contended furiously; in her world, clouds were clouds and rain was rain. What could she do besides wait? All she could offer to Director Li was her waiting. She couldn’t even discern his world from afar, much less enter it. She listened intently for the sound of his car starting at the entrance to the longtang. It was gone in an instant.
On one of his visits Director Li turned to her after they had made love and said gravely, “You must never acknowledge your relationship with me. This apartment is rented under your name, and no one knows when I come to see you. There
may be rumors about us, but they are only rumors.”
Lying in bed next to him, she took his words to mean that he wanted to deny any involvement with her. “Of course!” she rejoined sarcastically. “I know very well I am not worthy of being associated with the Lis. I have never fancied myself a member of your family. I have never acknowledged anything.”
She spoke as if the precaution was totally unnecessary. Director Li knew she had misunderstood him, but didn’t quite know how to explain himself, so he simply smiled a bitter smile. He did not think Wang Qiyao could be petty, but there it was. Realizing her mistake, she was deeply contrite. She managed to force a smile as she looked at his drawn face and white hair, saying, “I was just teasing.”
Director Li was moved. He took her in his arms. “My whole life I feel like I have been walking on thin ice and now I’m at the edge of an abyss. This time I’m afraid I may not be able to save myself. I just don’t want you to get entangled in my problems. You who are so innocent.”
He was almost in tears as he spoke. These words came straight from his heart, and they were words he rarely allowed to escape from his lips. He spoke these words for her, but also for himself. Astonished at what she heard, Wang Qiyao wanted to interrupt him as he made these ghastly pronouncements, but the words stuck in her throat. She started to sob.
In retrospect this was an unusual night. Outside, it was abnormally dark and quiet. Not even the vendors’ clappers could be heard, and no music issued from the Paramount. It was so quiet they could clearly hear the maid in her bedroom crying in her dream. Neither of them could sleep a wink. They talked a while before becoming absorbed in their respective anxieties. Wang Qiyao wept quietly, but Director Li pretended not to notice. It was not that he did not want to comfort her, only that he did not know how. Any promise he might make would not be easily kept, so he was better off not making any. Wang Qiyao heard Director Li get up from bed and walk around the living room. She too pretended not to notice. If Director Li, with all his connections, was helpless, who could help him? It was a profoundly lonely night. They were together, yet neither could comfort the other; each was powerless to alleviate the other’s anxiety, both tormented by premonitions. Director Li’s premonitions were based on what he knew. Wang Qiyao was simply scared, sensing the coming catastrophe. She dared not think further, telling herself, Everything will be better tomorrow when the sun comes up.