by Anyi, Wang
“What opera did you say you were going to see? Which theater is it at?” she asked.
Kang Mingxun repeated his story, this time even more haphazardly than before. Wang Qiyao got even more confused, but pretended to understand. After a few minutes, she inquired anxiously when the show was to start, afraid that he might be late. Realizing how hopelessly entangled the situation had become, Kang Mingxun gave up trying to explain. Wang Qiyao was simply rummaging around for something to say; seeing no response from him, she too gave up pursuing the matter. They sat in silence and the room grew quiet. They could hear the neighbors moving about. The flame had gone out, and the acrid smell of unburnt alcohol filled the air. Footsteps came up the stairs. Wang Qiyao wondered with a start who else could be coming on this peculiar evening that seemed so full of foreboding. The caller was a party official from the neighborhood coming by to collect the communal fee. He did not even step inside. The two of them listened intently as the man made his way back down the stairs, step by step. He caused them some alarm when he stumbled over a step, and then, after all was well again, they exchanged a smile that seemed to bring them together momentarily. Between them there was a tension, as of an arrow cocked on a tightly stretched bowstring.
Wang Qiyao took Kang Mingxun’s empty teacup out to the kitchen. From the rear window she saw in the distance the red star atop the Sino-Russian Friendship Building, and asked herself in a prayerful mood, What is going to happen this evening? When she brought the refilled cup back into the room, Kang Mingxun was still sitting woodenly facing the window, rapt in thought. Wang Qiyao placed the teacup in front of him and took a few backward steps to her own seat. She realized they would never get through this night, and even if they did, a day would come that it would be impossible for them to get through. All this time Kang Mingxun sat facing the window, which, with its curtains drawn, made it seem as if he were looking into a wall. His pose suggested that he had something to say . . . if he only knew how to begin. Their silence told of words unspoken; they simply didn’t know where to start.
At last Kang Mingxun opened his mouth. “There’s nothing I can do,” he said.
Wang Qiyao laughed. “Do about what?”
“Everything,” he replied.
Wang Qiyao laughed again. “Just what is it that has you at such a loss?”
Her laughter was in lieu of tears. So, these were the words she had been waiting for so patiently! Nevertheless, not only did she find herself perfectly calm; she was even tempted to put him through the wringer a little. She resolved to make him lay everything out in unequivocal terms, even though any explanation he had to make was no longer relevant to her. She wanted the satisfaction of embarrassing him. Having waited this long, she was entitled at least to this much recompense.
Laughing again, she said, “So there’s nothing you can do about it . . . does that mean there’s nothing you can say either?”
Kang Mingxun did not have the nerve to face her. He turned away—now it was Wang Qiyao’s turn to watch his neck turn scarlet.
She stepped up the assault. “Really, there is no harm in telling me. I’m not going to use it against you.”
But at this point her voice quavered and her eyes filled with tears, even as she persisted in smiling.
“Say something!” She taunted him. “Why don’t you say something?”
Kang Mingxun turned to face her and said imploringly, “What do you want me to say?”
Wang Qiyao was stunned. She could not recall, for the life of her, what it was that she had wanted to get out of him. She could no longer keep up her indignation and, in panic, tears came streaming out. Kang Mingxun’s heart melted. That cloudy afternoon so many years ago came back to him, and it was as if Second Mother had turned around to face him and he was looking into her tear-streaked face.
“Wang Qiyao,” he said. “I shall be good to you.”
His words were hardly reassuring, but they did come straight from his heart. Even so, Kang Mingxun realized he had offered her no future to speak of, and he started to weep. Still crying herself, Wang Qiyao saw that he was truly pained, and this made her feel much better. Gradually, her tears stopped. Looking around her, she saw how the single lamp in the room threw off more shadows than light. She had not realized this when she was by herself, but it certainly looked sad and lonesome with the two of them there.
She smiled through her tears and said, “Really, there is no need to hold back. A woman like me is content to be able to simply live in peace. How dare I wish for more? Even if heaven helps me through today, I must still face tomorrow. The monks may have run off, but the temple isn’t going anywhere.”
“By the same token,” said Kang Mingxun, “what kind of man can I call myself? I’m forced to address my own mother as Second Mother as if she’s not even my real flesh and blood. I eke out a living anyhow, and have only myself to rely on. How dare I entertain any high hopes?”
Wang Qiyao sighed deeply. “I daresay you men want too much out of life. It is all very well to give up sesame seeds for watermelons, but I’m afraid you might end up giving up watermelons for sesame seeds.”
Kang Mingxun also heaved a long sigh. “If men demand a lot from life, then it’s because women demand so much of them. Women make demands on us, but where can we men go to make our demands? In reality, men have the least control over their own lives.”
She scoffed at this. “Who is making demands on you?”
“Not you, certainly,” he said. Then he fell silent.
“I do have one demand . . .” Wang Qiyao spoke after a long pause. “I want your heart.”
Kang Mingxun lowered his head. “I would like to give it to you . . . but I’m afraid I may not be able to.”
With those words, Kang Mingxun placed all his cards on the table. He had given fair warning and drawn a line between the two of them. Without intending it, Wang Qiyao flashed a frosty smile. “Relax, you needn’t worry.”
This was the night that the curtain would rise and all would be revealed. Unsatisfactory as it was, it was nevertheless a new beginning. It was a step forward, but also a step backward, as they made concessions to the reality of their circumstances. They had each laid out their conditions before jumping in, but they were also going ahead without considering all the consequences. Their objectives were clear; at the same time they were making things up as they went along. There was a certain amount of self-deception, of taking the easy way out, and compromises were arrived at solely because of a lack of willpower. Alone and at loose ends, with equally bleak prospects, this man and this woman, mutually attracted and sharing genuine sympathy, had chosen to grasp the happiness at hand. They sacrificed their future prospects, knowing full well that their happiness would be empty and transitory. After all, life flows like water through one’s fingers, and eternity is but an illusion. Once we have come to terms with that, nothing else really matters.
Having realized that all her hopes were in vain, Wang Qiyao oddly felt a kind of relief. Kang Mingxun’s love for her, slight as it was, was like a consolation prize in the midst of complete debacle. By contrast, having won Wang Qiyao’s love at little cost to himself, Kang Mingxun felt indebted. His heart was heavy as he emerged from her apartment and rode home on his bicycle through the dark quiet streets. Though he had been planning this night for a long time, its arrival still caught him unprepared. There were many things he had not thought through ahead of time, but it was now too late to make amends. Whatever happened was now water under the bridge.
As they lay intertwined in bed, Wang Qiyao asked Kang Mingxun how he had found out about her background. Rather than give a straight answer, he asked her how she discovered that he knew. Knowing that he would not rest until she confessed, she reminded him of the afternoon tea when he had suddenly brought up, in loving detail, the Miss Shanghai beauty contest of 1946. She knew then that he must know her identity, and that their love affair was doomed.
Clasping her close, Kang Mingxun asked, “But aren’t we
a couple now?”
Wang Qiyao responded with a chilly smile. “Yeah, a couple of wild ducks . . .”
Realizing his faux pas, he released her and turned away.
Wang Qiyao snuggled against him from behind and asked softly, “Upset, are you?”
Kang Mingxun stayed still for awhile. At length, he told her how, having been brought up by Mother, he was always shy with his own birth mother. He especially dreaded being alone in a room with her, and was always looking for an excuse to get away. He felt terrible whenever he reflected on this. Second Mother had taught him all about suffering. Finally he said that in all the twenty years he spent with Second Mother, he had never talked to her the way he had talked with Wang Qiyao tonight. Wang Qiyao drew his head toward her bosom and stroked his hair tenderly. She not only loved him, she cared enough to put herself in his place.
“I know no one could possibly compare with you,” Kang Mingxun said. “But there is nothing I can do.”
These words “nothing I can do” took on a new desolation this time. Everyone has an abyss that he cannot get across: he had never dreamt his was going to be like this. He truly had no idea what to do. Wang Qiyao told him soothingly that she would love him until the day he married; on his wedding day she would be a bridesmaid and then never see him again.
“Are you trying to kill me?” Kang Mingxun said. “How could I bear being with someone else the day I part with you?”
Even in jest, they could not avoid hurting each other, and the teasing would always end in tears.
They were extremely discreet, getting together only at hours that did not raise suspicion, but there was no way they could have escaped Madame Yan’s detection. She had been keeping an eye on them from the start and had a pretty good handle on the nature of their relationship as it started to develop. She blamed herself for having unwittingly brought them together. She blamed Kang Mingxun for not listening to her. Most of all, she blamed Wang Qiyao for throwing caution to the winds and landing all three of them in hot water. She wanted to scream at her: “Even if Kang Mingxun didn’t know what you are, there’s no way you could pretend not to know!”
Her guess was that Wang Qiyao was a former taxi dancer or a nightclub girl who had to go into hiding now that the world had changed. Madame Yan felt ill-used—she had considered Wang Qiyao a friend with whom she could share her nostalgia for a bygone world, but who now revealed herself as selfish and greedy. At the cost of giving up her beloved mahjong games, she stopped visiting Wang Qiyao, citing different excuses. Needless to say, Wang Qiyao and Kang Mingxun knew why she had stopped coming. Sasha, on the other hand, kept up his visits, whether oblivious of the situation or pretending not to have noticed, and thus became both a nuisance and a convenient smokescreen for the lovers. Once Wang Qiyao asked Kang Mingxun whether Madame Yan might tell his family about their relationship, to which he replied not to worry, that he would simply deny everything and then they would have no recourse. Wang Qiyao greeted this with silence.
After a long pause, she said, “If you deny everything with me too, what recourse will I have?”
“Whether I deny it or not, there is still nothing we can do about our situation.” Wang Qiyao was disarmed by his candor. Kang Mingxun assured her, “Whatever happens, you will always be in my heart.”
Wang Qiyao was scornful. “I am not a phantom that lives only in your heart.”
Although she said this with asperity, it was not out of anger but deep sorrow. This is something they had not counted on. They had not known that their happiness would be adulterated with sorrow, nor had they bargained on having to mortgage their future for the present. Life is a series of interlocking links; it is never easy to separate one out from the rest.
In the depths of their despair, hope grew where there was no hope and concessions were made on top of concessions. All this flowed from the initial compromise. In private, they were both secretly waiting for a miracle to deliver them from their predicament. One day Kang Mingxun arrived home to find the whole family giving him the cold shoulder. Second Mother’s face was streaked with tears, her nose red and her lips purple—he hated seeing her like that. His father had shut himself up in his room and refused to emerge for dinner. On the living room table was a boxed cake, the telltale sign of a visitor. He found out from the servant, Mama Chen, that the visitor was Madame Yan. The cake, left untouched, looked very much the part of a rejected scapegoat. He dared not leave the house the following day, which he spent going from bedroom to bedroom, paying his respects to all the elders of the house, who snubbed him at every turn. Father kept shutting himself up. Instead of crying, Second Mother took to sighing.
It wasn’t until the third day that Kang Mingxun managed to sneak out of the house to tell Wang Qiyao what had occurred. Mingled in her consternation was a new element of elation: now that things were out in the open, and light was shining in through the broken window, one could never tell what might happen next. Old-fashioned families like his cared enormously about appearances, and now that the rice was already cooked, they might just decide to let things pass and swallow their pride. Kang Mingxun also felt more at ease. He had a different secret wish. He told himself that if his father should explode and disown him as a son, he would simply leave home and that was that. On this day, they shared a stirring of hope and were more affectionate than usual. By chance, Sasha had not come by to make a nuisance of himself, which allowed them to snuggle up on the sofa under a blanket, watching silently, hand-in-hand, as the light on the closed curtains turned from bright to dark. The noise in the longtang under the window spoke for them, as did the chatter of the sparrows. These fragmentary sounds, scattering like fallen leaves and broken branches over their heads, were minute keepsakes of their love and sorrow. After night had fallen, they did not turn the light on, but let time and space evaporate around them among the dark shades, exulting solely in the solid reality of their warm bodies.
However, Kang Mingxun was to be frustrated in his secret wish. As soon as he reached home that evening, he knew that the ice had melted. Even though it was past eleven, no one demanded to know where he had been and why he was back so late. The door to his father’s bedroom was ajar, and he could be seen sitting under a down comforter reading his newspapers, his face serene. From his sisters’ rooms came music over the radio—robust modern sounds, indicating that everything had returned to normal. Mother asked him whether he wanted some dim sum. He was not hungry but nodded in acceptance of her gracious offer. As he ate the lotus plumule and jujube stew, Mother and Second Mother sat by him to knit and chat about the latest Shaoxing opera coming to town. They asked if he wanted to see it. He replied that, if Mother and Second Mother wished, he would get tickets for them.
“If you have time, that would be delightful, but don’t press yourself if you are busy,” they chirped merrily.
Three more days passed without incident. At first he thought they might ask about the affair, but it gradually dawned on him that the subject would never come up. His entire family had agreed to let the matter pass, pretending to know nothing about what had happened. The cake too had disappeared. He did not know how to react to this change in the course of events and avoided Wang Qiyao for an entire week. Instead he spent the time accompanying his two mothers to Shaoxing opera performances, escorting his sisters to Hong Kong movies, and going with his father to the Yude Bathhouse. After their baths, they lay, wrapped in towels, on the bench, drinking tea and chatting like two old friends. He recalled how things used to be when his father was still young and he himself a little boy. But now he had to turn his eyes away, heartsick at the layers of excess flesh on his father’s neck.
Day after day, Wang Qiyao waited for him, anxious at first but growing calmer as she consoled herself with the thought that, the more violent the storm in his household, the greater the possibility that a change would come. During this time, Madame Yan came by once to spy on her, but Wang Qiyao was careful not to reveal anything, only showing her the usual hosp
itality. Madame Yan, however, could not resist asking why Kang Mingxun was not there.
Wang Qiyao laughed. “Since you started keeping your distance, we no longer have a foursome for mahjong. Kang Mingxun also stopped showing up, and now only Sasha remembers me and comes regularly.”
Even as she said this, they heard footsteps on the stairs and, as if to confirm the statement, Sasha entered. To vent her anger and bitterness, Wang Qiyao made a show of abandoning Madame Yan, and talked gaily with Sasha instead. But deep down, she was being torn apart. Tears welled up in her eyes as she wondered: Will he ever come back?
It was eight days before Kang Mingxun finally came to see Wang Qiyao again. They both looked somewhat haggard. Her heart, which had been floating in uncertainty, sank, but it seemed to have landed on solid ground. This time, they each sat quietly in opposite corners, eyes averted, their faces turned away, as though each was afraid of being ridiculed by the other. The afternoon faded into night.
Wang Qiyao rose suddenly to turn on the light, asking, “How about dinner?”
In the light, they felt as if they no longer recognized each other and behaved rather stiffly.
“I have to go home for dinner,” explained Kang Mingxun, although he seemed to have no intention of leaving.
Rather than ask him again, Wang Qiyao went to the kitchen to cook, leaving him to pace by himself in the room. The people across the lane had turned on their lights and he could see them bustling about. He heard the sound of the neighbor’s door continually swinging open and slamming shut. Soon came the mildly explosive sounds of food being fried in the kitchen, followed by its aroma. He settled down, and even felt a little happy. Wang Qiyao came out with dinner—soup, a vegetable dish, and a plate of periwinkles to go with the rice. They sat down to dinner, making no mention of the past eight days. It was as if that week had never been. As they ate, they started to chat about the weather, new fashion trends, and what was happening around town. After dinner, they scanned the New People’s Evening News for a movie. Wang Qiyao suggested a new Hong Kong movie. Kang Mingxun looked at the title—he had just seen that very one with his sister—but he agreed anyway. They tidied up a bit before leaving and then, just as they were about to step out the door—Wang Qiyao already had her hand on the handle—she suddenly stopped, turned, and buried her head in Kang Mingxun’s arms. They embraced quietly for a long time. The apartment lights were already out, but the neighbor’s light, shining in through the window curtains, cast a filmy sheen on the floor.