by Anyi, Wang
Mahjong Partners
From that day on, in addition to Madame Yan’s regular visits to Wang Qiyao, Wang Qiyao would also occasionally call on Madame Yan. If patients showed up while she was out, Wang Qiyao would have her downstairs neighbors tell them to find her at the house at the end of the longtang. Not long after this, Madame Yan’s second-oldest child came down with the measles. He ran a high fever for days and broke out in a rash that covered his whole body. As Madame Yan had never had the measles and was in danger of being infected, she could not take care of the child and asked Wang Qiyao for help. People coming for shots were told to go directly to the Yan house. Mr. Yan was never home in the daytime and in any case was not the type that minded, so the two ladies made his bedroom into a clinic, setting up the alcohol burner on the round table for sterilizing needles. One of the children’s rooms on the third floor became the infirmary. Every hour or so, Wang Qiyao went up to check on the patient; the rest of the time they whiled away by chatting. Mama Zhang served them lunch and afternoon snacks. The Yan boy’s bout of measles had turned into a long holiday for the ladies.
During this period, friends and relatives of the Yan family came by with fruits and delicacies, but they did not go up to see the boy, staying just a few minutes in the parlor downstairs. One of the visitors, a cousin of Madame Yan’s several times removed, was known to the children and the rest of the household as Uncle Maomao. After graduating from college in Peking, Uncle Maomao had been assigned a job in the remote province of Gansu, where he naturally had no desire of going, so he came back to Shanghai and lived off his father’s savings. His father used to own a factory many times larger than that of Mr. Yan. He had received a lump sum in compensation after the government took it over, whereupon he retired with his two wives and three children to live in a house with a garden on the west side of Shanghai. Uncle Maomao was his father’s only son, but the child of the concubine. Although pampered as a boy, he had sensed the peculiarity of his situation very early on and this taught him always to calibrate his behavior so as to keep on everyone’s good side. Now, as a grown man freeloading at home, he made himself useful. Should any of the women need anything—his sisters or either one of his mothers—he made it his business to get it for them. If they wanted someone to accompany them to the hospital or the beauty salon, or to buy fabric for clothes, all they had to do was say the word. He freely offered advice on a variety of topics. He also cheerfully volunteered to discharge bothersome social duties, of which paying occasional visits to the Yan family was one.
The day that Uncle Maomao dropped by, the boy was feverish and a doctor had to be called in to give him medicine and shots. The two ladies were so busy that they did not have time to take their lunch until well past one o’clock in the afternoon. When Mama Zhang announced Uncle Maomao’s arrival, they asked him to join them upstairs. After all, he was family, and Madame Yan had known him since childhood. He sat on one side while they ate. It was a gloomy day, but the alcohol burner was still on and there was a warm feeling in the room. As soon as Mama Zhang put the dishes away, Uncle Maomao joined them at the table, and the three chatted without ceremony.
With Madame Yan guiding the conversation, both he and Wang Qiyao felt quite relaxed even though they were meeting for the first time. The bedroom setting created an atmosphere of easy familiarity, and they talked and laughed with little inhibition. When Uncle Maomao asked if they had a set of playing cards on hand and Madame Yan responded, “You have no adversary worthy of you here today,” he whispered to Wang Qiyao in an aside that he was an expert at bridge, playing every Sunday at the International Club. Wang Qiyao hastened to wave her hand, indicating that she was no bridge player.
Uncle Maomao laughed. “Who said anything about bridge? After all, who ever heard of three people playing bridge?”
“Then what did you want a deck of cards for?” asked Madame Yan as she got up to look in the drawer.
“One can do lots of things with a deck of cards besides play bridge,” he explained as he began to shuffle the deck she handed him. “Actually, bridge isn’t at all difficult. It’s fun to learn.”
He cut the cards into stacks of four each and explained how bids are made and when one should put a card into play. Madame Yan accused him of seducing them into the game by degrees, but she soon got into the spirit. Wang Qiyao, on the other hand, tried to dismiss his efforts, laughing, “We’ll be exhausted before we even get the hang of it, leaving him to play all by himself.”
“Is bridge that scary?” asked Uncle Maomao. “It’s not a trap, you know.”
He gathered up the cards and dazzled Wang Qiyao by shuffling them into a fan, then into a standing bridge. “Perhaps you’ll make more money doing card tricks at Great World Amusement Center,” Madame Yan teased him.
“I don’t know how to do tricks,” he rejoined. “But I can read fortunes. Let me read yours . . .”
“You don’t get any credit telling my fortune. You already know everything about me,” said Madame Yan tartly. “Perhaps you can prove your ability by telling us a thing or two about Wang Qiyao.”
Uncle Maomao demurred at this. “This being my first meeting with Wang Qiyao, I will not be so impertinent as to make guesses about her past or future.”
“There, you have already exposed yourself—the rest is all excuses!” Madame Yan snorted. “Real gold is not afraid of being melted in the fire. I don’t believe for a second that you can actually read fortunes.”
With his cousin egging him on, Uncle Maomao felt he really had to show his stuff. Wang Qiyao begged to be excused from the exercise, but Madame Yan goaded her. “Don’t you worry! Let him do it. I guarantee he won’t be able to figure out a single thing about you.”
Uncle Maomao shuffled the cards again and cut the deck several times, leaving only a few cards fanned out in a row. He asked Wang Qiyao to pick one out and turn it over. But as soon as she did, the patient upstairs rang the bell, and she hurried off. While she was gone, Uncle Maomao furtively asked, “Tell me, has she been married?”
“Ha! What did I say? You’re a fraud. You just won’t admit it!” Madame Yan chortled. “But to tell you the truth,” she continued in a whispered undertone, “Even I don’t know.”
Time flew by that afternoon, and before they knew it, it was dinnertime. They were having so much fun that, when the horn of Mr. Yan’s car sounded at the back door, they asked Uncle Maomao to come back the next day. Madame Yan promised she would send Mama Zhang to fetch some crab dumplings from Wang’s Family Dumpling House. The next day Uncle Maomao showed up as promised at about the same time, but this time the two women had finished lunch and were busying themselves picking the plumules from lotus seeds with large blanket needles. The alcohol burner was not on, and the air had a crisp feel. Try as they might, they just couldn’t recapture the conviviality of the previous afternoon. After the lotus seeds were done, there was nothing else to do and they all felt somewhat let down. Uncle Maomao’s suggestion that they play cards with the deck that had been left lying on the sofa went unopposed. He said he would teach them durak, a Russian card game, the simplest form of poker, and explained the rules as he shuffled the deck. When he discovered that the ladies did not even know how to arrange their cards, he helped them do that. Then he realized he had seen their hands and had to reshuffle the cards. Their spirits revived as they played.
Playing durak with the two ladies demanded only ten percent of Uncle Maomao’s attention. Madame Yan kept comparing cards to mahjong as she played, devoting only thirty percent of her mind to the game. Wang Qiyao alone was focused. She fixed her eyes on the cards, considering one card carefully before she set it down. Unfortunately, she kept winding up with the weakest hand and the other two kept winning.
Wang Qiyao finally let out a sigh. “It looks like winning and losing are predestined. One cannot force the hand of fate.”
“So, Miss Wang is a fatalist,” commented Uncle Maomao.
Wang Qiyao was about to respond when Mad
ame Yan said, “I don’t know about being fatalistic, but I do believe things are predestined. Otherwise, so many events can’t be explained. There was a ferryman in my husband’s hometown. One night, after everyone had gone to bed, someone hollered to be taken across the river. He got out bed and ferried the passenger across. When they reached the other shore, the passenger placed something hard into his hand and left in a hurry. The ferryman discovered it was a gold bar. He used it to purchase grain and made a fortune when famine struck the following year. He then took his money to Shanghai and bought stock in a rubber company that was just going public. Little did he know that the rubber company would declare bankruptcy within three months, leaving his shares totally worthless. Later, he found out that the man he ferried across the river was a robber with a price on his head.”
Enraptured by her story, they forgot about their card game and had to start all over again.
Uncle Maomao said it was mere coincidence. Wang Qiyao disagreed: “I think things had to work out that way.”
“I don’t know about coincidence” Madame Yan interjected. “All I know is that everything happens for a reason, and those reasons are set and nonnegotiable.”
“If you are predestined to have only seventy-percent happiness, and you insist on a hundred percent, you will be in trouble,” said Wang Qiyao. “My grandma told me about a courtesan in Suzhou, only moderately pretty, who captivated the heart of a Yangzhou salt merchant as wealthy as a king. He paid a sum of money to redeem her from the brothel. Soon afterward his wife died of illness and he made the courtesan his proper wife, and they had a son the following year. This should all have ended happily, but unfortunately the child began to look strange by the third month, and turned out to be deaf and dumb. Three months later, the woman fell ill with a strange disease that prevented her from eating or drinking, and she eventually died. Everyone said that her life had been shortened by her good fortune. It was not her fate to enjoy so much happiness.”
Madame Yan, touched by the story, nodded with a sigh.
“I suppose you believe the old saying, ‘When the moon is full, it begins to wane, when water reaches the brim, it begins to spill’?” remarked Uncle Maomao.
At this Wang Qiyao rejoined, “All the saying means is that each individual has a certain amount of happiness he is entitled to, and that amount is predestined and different for each individual.”
Uncle Maomao did not contradict her, and they continued to play. He had a story of his own to share with them. An old friend of his father’s had died more than a decade earlier. The moment he died, the clock on the wall stopped ticking. It was an old clock hanging high up on the wall and the family did not get around to fixing it for almost ten years. Then about six months ago, his wife passed on from some illness, and at her death the clock started to work again. It had not stopped since. They were quiet after this story. The sun had shifted to the west and the house darkened, but through the sheer curtains they could see the window across the street still bathed in brilliant sunlight. A shadow of foreboding crept into their midst. At this moment Mama Zhang came upstairs to announce that the lotus plumule soup was ready. When she asked if she should go out to pick up the crab dumplings, Madame Yan, suddenly realizing the time, hurried her off. She was instructed to take a pedicab home, not the crowded bus, where she might spill some of the juice. Wang Qiyao lit up the alcohol burner in preparation for the child’s next injection. The flickering blue flame instantly filled the room with the color of dusk.
The afternoon had not been as merry as the previous one, but it had nevertheless touched them individually. The hot juicy dumplings Mama Zhang brought back were consumed with relish, along with a fresh pot of tea. They played another round of durak until Madame Yan said regretfully, “The days are getting shorter, forcing us to quit just as the fun is starting. What if Uncle Maomao comes again tomorrow before lunch? I shall ask Mama Zhang to roast an eight-treasure duck, which she usually cooks only on New Year’s Day. It’s her specialty.”
“My mother sampled the eight-treasure duck here a few years ago,” said Uncle Maomao. “She liked it so much that she sent our family chef over to learn the dish from Mama Zhang. Aren’t we lucky to have the real thing!”
“That’s right, it has been four or five years,” said Madame Yan. “We used to visit each other much more often. Nowadays we hardly see you. When you showed up the other day, I was shocked—you’ve grown up so fast!” Turning to Wang Qiyao, she went on, “You can’t imagine what he was like as a little boy. Even in his short pants, he always wore a Western suit jacket and long white socks, and had his hair parted in the middle. He always looked like a ring bearer at a wedding.”
“You mean to say that you now find me disagreeable?” Uncle Maomao asked.
“You are not at all disagreeable ...” answered Madame Yan, a little despondently. “But your outfit certainly is!”
Uncle Maomao was wearing a well-pressed blue khaki “liberation suit.” His shoes were shiny, with slightly pointed tips. His longish hair was combed to one side, in the style of college students, exposing his clear forehead. He presented himself with style and with a studious air calculated not to call too much attention to himself. But Wang Qiyao felt herself growing excited as she imagined what he might look like in a Western suit. Madame Yan made a few more emotional remarks, sighing heavily, before the three parted.
The next day was cold with a slight drizzle. They all put on heavier clothes, and a hotpot was brought in at lunchtime. The coal fire burned bright and over it they boiled a broth with green spinach and thin snowwhite noodles. Crackling sparks occasionally shot out from the fire. With the window shades pulled halfway down and the lamp turned on, the room was filled with warmth and cheerful intimacy. It was the kind of moment one wanted to hold onto before it slipped away forever, the kind of setting in which one was apt to offer and accept comfort. The sound of raindrops pattering on the window was the weather speaking its heart, the broth in the pot was boiling with the fire’s innermost thoughts, the heavy drapery in the window and the pink lamp were silently speaking their hearts. Wang Qiyao bit into a bone as she was eating a piece of fish; she removed it with her chopsticks and the bone landed on the table upright. Madame Yan insisted that she make a wish on it. Wang Qiyao said she didn’t have anything to wish for, but neither Madame Yan nor Uncle Maomao would believe her.
“Well, suit yourself if you don’t want to believe me. But I’m telling you there is nothing to wish for,” insisted Wang Qiyao.
“You might be able to keep it from me, but it won’t be so easy with Uncle Maomao—after all, he knows how to read fortunes,” said Madame Yan.
“Not only can I read fortunes,” Uncle Maomao jumped in, “I also know how to predict the future based on analyzing Chinese characters! If you don’t believe me, write down a character and I’ll show you.”
When Wang Qiyao refused to write one down, Madame Yan spoke up, “Okay, then, I’ll give you one for her.”
Madame Yan looked around and, noticing that the sky outside was overcast and rainy, blurted out, “How about tian, or sky.”
Uncle Maomao dipped one of his chopsticks in the soup and drew the character in question on the table, . He then extended the vertical line upward, producing the character for “husband,” .
“I’ve got it,” Uncle Maomao declared. “There is a wealthy husband in Miss Wang’s life.”
Madame Yan clapped her hands in approval, but Wang Qiyao interrupted, “Hold on a minute. It was Madame Yan who chose that character, so if anyone has a wealthy husband, it’s Madame Yan. If I have to give my own character, it would be di, or ‘earth.’ ”
“Okay, then ‘earth’ it is!” announced Uncle Maomao as he wrote on the table with his chopstick.
Then he broke the character down into its components, inscribing its right side on the table, before adding the radical for “man” beside it, thereby producing the character for “he,” .
“It’s a ‘he’!” he exclaimed
, “which also means that you will have a wealthy husband.”
Wang Qiyao pointed to the other component of the character for earth, , “Look, doesn’t this show that ‘he’ is already in the ground?”
She had spoken carelessly and as soon as her words slipped her heart skipped a beat. She forced a smile to cover up her embarrassment.
Both Madame Yan and Uncle Maomao felt her comment was inauspicious, but seeing how uneasy Wang Qiyao looked, neither dared say anything more. Madame Yan got up to summon Mama Zhang to add more water to the hotpot and make the fire hotter. Uncle Maomao took the opportunity to change the topic by complimenting Mama Zhang’s eight-treasure duck. It was only after the hotpot started to boil again and sparks shot out from the fire that Wang Qiyao finally pulled herself together.
As they enjoyed the broth and the eight-treasure duck, Wang Qiyao said casually, “Speaking of wishes, who can say how many wishes there are in this world! In Suzhou there is a temple with a wishing pond where people toss in copper coins. My Grandma told me the monks live on those copper coins, but one wonders just how many of those people’s wishes are fulfilled.”
Madame Yan and Uncle Maomao thought that Wang Qiyao was through with this topic; when she brought it up again they were uncertain how to react. The broth in the pot was drying up and seemed to have difficulty coming to a boil. Wang Qiyao laughed derisively at herself for being foolish as she sipped more soup. The sky darkened a bit more as if it too had lowered its voice to listen to people speaking their hearts. Uncle Maomao told the ladies about a card game called “bluff.” Each player takes a turn setting a card face down on the table, naming the card as he does so. He may be bluffing or telling the truth. Anyone who thinks he is bluffing is free to turn the card over to verify his claim. If the card is what it is claimed to be, the person calling the bluff has to take the card in; if not, the player discarding the card has to take it back, while the person who has successfully called the bluff gets to discard one of his own cards. Uncle Maomao said that even though the game is called “bluff,” the winner is not always the person who bluffs. As Wang Qiyao and Madame Yan looked uncomprehendingly at him, he explained, “A player who does not bluff may take a little longer to discard all his cards, but he eventually does, as long as he keeps playing. One other thing: he shouldn’t call someone else’s bluff either, because that would expose him to the risk of having to take their cards in. He should simply let other people do all the bluffing and the calling while he discards his own cards one by one.”