by Eileen Chang
She smiled as though she had not heard, turned, and led him through the doorway. She sensed Chih-yung had noticed her lack of response to his comment.
They sat in the living room; the telephone rang just as Julie served the tea. She went to answer it but absentmindedly didn’t close the door behind her.
“Hello?”
“Hey.” It was Yen Shan’s voice.
A rumbling instantly resonated next to her ears like the roar of two heavenly bodies brushing past her. Her two worlds were about to collide.
“Hey, how are you? … I’m fine. Have you been busy lately?” She bantered politely, but kept it very brief while she waited for him to say what he wanted.
Yen Shan, sounding a bit annoyed, said it was nothing in particular and he’d call again another day; he hung up.
She returned to the living room and found Chih-yung anxiously pacing in circles.
“Your Shanghainese sounds very alluring,” he said. Obviously he had eavesdropped on her telephone conversation.
“I didn’t learn to speak Shanghainese until I moved to Hong Kong,” she explained. “There were some students from Shanghai in the dormitory.” There was no way to explain how someone who grew up in Shanghai couldn’t speak the language.
She didn’t say who had called and he didn’t ask.
Judy came in and chatted for a while but didn’t stay long.
Mr. Yü arrived.
When the conversation turned to Bebe, Chih-yung asked, “Have you met her?” Mr. Yü answered that he had. “Do you think she’s pretty?”
“Yes, she’s pretty,” Mr. Yü replied, chuckling softly.
“Well then you should pursue her,” said Chih-yung, grinning.
“Um,” said Mr. Yü, turning serious, “that wouldn’t be appropriate.”
This exchange grated on Julie’s nerves. “You think casual conversation and sharing a few laughs means she is easy prey,” Julie thought. “That’s what a country bumpkin thinks.” She also found it vulgar. It was a distasteful act of flattery to “present the Buddha with borrowed flowers.”
Mr. Yü often modestly bragged, “I have no accomplishments, other than a reasonably good marriage.”
They chatted until dusk, and Mr. Yü left. Julie saw him to the door. When she returned, Chih-yung grumbled to her, “Mr. Yü has really been … doesn’t such kindness to me merit a dinner invitation to this house?”
This was the first time they had ever quarreled. Julie said nothing. He should have known better. Julie and Judy rarely had people over for meals, and not being able to invite Chih-yung for dinner in the past had been excruciating for Julie. Mr. Yü certainly knew better. He had once worked in Shanghai as a dental assistant and probably stayed with Chih-yung at the time. He frequently visited, bringing along a thick dentistry textbook that he asked Julie to translate for him. She actually couldn’t translate such specialized material but the dentist didn’t appear to notice. He was pleased to have picked up a bargain in hiring this assistant who could translate for him and help garner him accolades. Whenever Mr. Yü visited in those days, Julie would go to the refrigerator and ladle out a small bowl of stewed black dates with grated lemon rind for him. The delicacy was supposed to help digestion, and Mr. Yü loved it. “I bought this with my own money,” Julie told him, to prevent him from declining out of politeness.
Julie went out to the kitchen. “Shao Chih-yung is angry,” she reported to Judy, “because I didn’t invite Mr. Yü to stay for dinner.”
Judy’s face instantly darkened. Of course she knew Mr. Yü wasn’t asked to stay because of her. In the past she had instructed Julie, “Just blame me.” Now Judy simply grumbled, “Cruel,” in English.
“I think you’re treating him differently now,” Judy said quietly as she prepared the evening meal.
Julie acknowledged her third aunt with a faint smile, thinking it was superfluous of her to have said that.
As usual, Judy retired to her room after the evening meal. Julie let Chih-yung stay in her bedroom with easier access to the bathroom, while Julie herself could use Judy’s bathroom.
She brought an ashtray to the bedroom. Chih-yung smoked a cigarette as he recounted how prior to their arrest, some Wang Ching-wei government officials “went to stay with their women.” He then concluded, “Women are like cans of peanuts—men can’t stop eating them as long as they’re around.”
Julie assumed that by “women” he was referring to mistresses.
“Do you have anything to drink?” he suddenly asked, agitated.
Peanut canapés to aid imbibing liquor? Or do you need alcohol to liven things up? “At this time of night,” she replied coldly without smiling, “I wouldn’t know where to go to buy alcohol.”
“Oh,” he said quietly, obviously struggling to control his temper.
After dispensing with news about mutual acquaintances, Julie gave a faint smile and asked, “Were you ever intimate with that Miss K’ang?”
“Um,” he acknowledged, “only once, when I was about to leave.” His voice lowered. “In the end I forced myself upon her … perhaps that is always inevitable—but of course you were different.”
Julie said nothing.
He was silent for a while before speaking again. “Hsiunan defends you by asking, ‘Isn’t that Miss Sheng good enough for you?’”
Julie immediately felt deeply offended. “Fine,” she thought, “now I need someone to speak up for me.”
Chih-yung took a small photograph out of his pocket and genially proffered it to Julie. “This is Miss K’ang.”
The creased, glossy photograph displayed a full-length portrait of Miss K’ang standing on a lawn. She had chubby cheeks and crescent-shaped cheerful eyes that pointed upward at the corners. She wore a thin cotton gown, probably sky blue though it looked as white as snow in the photo, revealing her ample bosom. Her medium-length hair curled slightly inward. She was a little plumper than Rachel’s ideal body type for a young girl.
Julie had just begun to examine the photograph in her hand when she raised her head to catch Chih-yung’s terrified expression. You really think I’m like the wives of our friends you talk about and that I would tear it up? She sneered and immediately passed the photo back.
He stuffed the picture in his pocket and changed the topic.
As the conversation progressed, seeing that Julie didn’t display any sign of anger, Chih-yung placed the ashtray on the bed and even leaned toward her. “Why don’t you come and sit here?”
She sat closer, smiling with her head lowered, not looking at him.
“I almost died from torment.” Julie had to sit up close to Chih-yung to be able to say something like that. She couldn’t clearly explain her suffering in a letter; she needed to say it to his face, to explain her feelings that evening.
She could feel him watching her intensely, yet there wasn’t the slightest trace of tears in her own eyes, which made her words less convincing, even to herself.
He obviously was waiting for her to continue, to tell him why she now felt better.
“He doesn’t care at all if I live or die,” she thought, “he’s only concerned with his own possessions.”
But she didn’t go on. Then Chih-yung spoke. “To experience suffering like that is also ideal.”
That is to say, it was good for her to experience passionate affection. His old routine of “ideal” or “not ideal” was enough to make her laugh out loud and scream in disgust.
In the past he had said, “Formal marriage can end in divorce, but informal arrangements can never be severed.” At the time she thought, “I certainly don’t believe that.”
But she also grew curious. Is it really true that “habit is second nature”? After all, man is a “creature of habit,” so that behavior of his could be more animal instinct than habit.
“Take this off, all right?” she heard him suggest.
While they were sitting face-to-face Julie had already perceived the strange desolation of the room, as if
something were missing—the electricity that once filled the air, the streamers of affection. Without those streamers she felt the two of them were somehow impoverished. Sitting on the bed felt even stranger, as though they were living inside some kind of humble hut built in a vacuum, a structure less tall than an average person that enclosed them from above, and in that vacuum, no movement felt right.
But then she found herself wriggling out of her black plum-colored narrow-sleeved cotton gown, the one he said looked like a sword dancer’s costume. He sat so close and yet felt strangely distant; she couldn’t tell if he was deliberately avoiding physical contact as she struggled to pull herself out of the narrow sleeves, feeling totally alone with no one else around.
She laughed at herself and sighed. “We really are fulfilling the proverb, ‘The lamp is out, the fuel is spent.’ This isn’t an unnatural death—there will be no disembodied spirits.” She smiled as she put her arms back inside the sleeves—underneath she only wore a silk singlet with straps—and saw Chih-yung’s aggrieved glare following her every move.
Again, her thick overcoat became the cause of resentment. He must have thought she had another lover because her bosom had changed.
She quickly fastened the buttons of her gown, smiling as she rushed out, pretending to retrieve some trifle she had left behind.
Returning to the living room, she pulled off the bedspread, disrobed, and plunged under the duvet—the fresh bedding on this cold night as frigid as an icy cave. She quickly fell asleep.
Early the next morning, Chih-yung shook her awake. Julie opened her eyes. Suddenly she wrapped her arms around his neck. “Chih-yung,” she whispered. Their past, like the Great Wall, undulated on the horizon. But in the modern age the Great Wall served no purpose.
She saw his mortified smile—it was the same smile that she saw him give at the artist’s home when she encountered his wife.
“He’s embarrassed because he doesn’t love me anymore,” she thought as she quickly pulled her arms away, sat up straight, and pulled the gown over her head. This time he didn’t even look at her.
He returned to the bedroom; she prepared some breakfast on a tray and delivered it to him, dismayed to discover that her desk drawer was in complete disarray.
Fine, have a good look and see what you can find.
After the war ended she had started to work on a full-length novel. The manuscript was piled in a stack on her desk.
“Hardly anything about me in here!” exclaimed Chih-yung, wide-eyed. He sounded angry, yet grinned. Then of course he tried to patch things up, adding, “But you write about yourself extremely well.”
Whenever she wrote about him it was either in profile or in silhouette.
She remained silent. She had never believed in anything, really, except him.
Before they had a chance to finish eating breakfast, Hsiunan arrived. Julie produced the two taels of gold she had prepared in advance to give him and handed them over to Hsiunan with a smile.
Chih-yung watched from the sidelines but said nothing.
He returned to the small township. Upon arriving, he seemed to finally realize how wrong things had become. Letters followed: “Meeting with no words, only tears… . I was disconsolate you did not kiss me. I never imagined that two people needed to make an oath to carry on well together, but now I say to you, ‘I love you forever.’”
“He thinks I’m afraid he’ll abandon me,” Julie thought. “Actually, he has never let go of anyone, including his male friends. People are essential resources for all his activities. I told him I could walk away if he wouldn’t give up Miss K’ang, but he didn’t believe me.”
Julie’s replies to Chih-yung’s letters were brief and never mentioned anything about their relationship. She sold a film script and remitted some more money to him.
He wrote again saying that he would soon have an opportunity to work, obviously afraid she would think of him as a burden. She replied: “Do not be too anxious to find work before your health is restored.”
Julie went to visit Bebe. An American sailor loafed about their house that day. He was young and blond, making him the ideal page boy to the immortals in the movies. When he saw Julie walk in wearing a peacock-blue satin jacket with peach-pink floral brocade over a pair of wide-leg black silk pants, his eyes flashed momentarily, as if to say, “Now that’s more like it.” Apart from the palatial gasoline filling stations, nothing in Shanghai had an Oriental flavor.
The three of them sat around a stove. He took out a pack of cigarettes. “Smoke?” he asked Julie.
“Thanks, I don’t smoke.”
“Don’t know why but I thought you smoked and she doesn’t.”
Julie smiled. She knew by that he meant Bebe appeared more innocent.
That day, Bebe put on her “girl next door” demeanor. She never had the courage to flirt with a sailor, but if it were a man with a shy personality, she’d occasionally slip in a few racy or even sexually explicit remarks, which sounded rather shocking to Julie’s ears. In this way Bebe feinted an attack to mislead the enemy, stimulating his curiosity so he’d have to chase for a long time before her victim realized he had been duped.
Julie asked him if he had fought in any battles. He called it “combat,” his face turning pale as soon as he uttered the word. Julie thought combat involved mounted knights of the Middle Ages, or perhaps two individuals engaging each other on the battlefield. This was the first time she had heard it used to mean going to the firing line. It sounded archaic and comical. The combat zone really is another world.
Julie didn’t stay long as the couple seemed to have plans.
“These Americans are truly an unsophisticated bunch,” Bebe said later and sneered. “Some of the conscripts had never even worn shoes before joining the army.”
Bebe said, “While they’d be quite happy to marry you, they’d be just as happy to divorce you. It’s nothing for them, really.”
Bebe angrily blurted out, “They all say you had lived with Mr. Shao.”
Stories about the romance of Julie and Chih-yung had spread far and wide. Even someone like Bebe who didn’t read the Chinese press had heard all about it.
Julie could only smile weakly as she said, “Only when he was about to leave.”
Why did she borrow Chih-yung’s answer about his affair with Miss K’ang, or at least borrow half of it? She didn’t borrow the part about rape. Julie herself felt it was too painful to look deeper, but she thought her explanation was the most Bebe would be able to withstand.
“That certainly wasn’t worth it,” said Bebe.
That is to say, Julie didn’t have an opportunity to savor the joy of sex. Bebe had read in a book: “Unmarried people should not have sexual relations. As soon as they do, a need is established and that will actually cause misery.” Bebe believed in chastity before marriage, but she needed to formulate the theoretical underpinnings for her decision. Otherwise, it would appear she merely surrendered to the reality of Chinese and Indian men not marrying women who weren’t virgins.
Julie told Yen Shan, too.
He was a little startled. “Isn’t that sacrificing one’s body?” he asked softly.
Julie’s heart convulsed in abhorrence, but she fought off the feeling to avoid letting it show.
“He seems to have the ability to dominate you,” Yen Shan said, smiling.
“Last time I saw him he was entirely different. We didn’t even shake hands.”
To be precise, they had never actually shaken hands.
“Don’t let him touch a single hair on your body,” Yen Shan said in a sudden loud outburst.
Julie suppressed her mirth, though she also felt moved by his words.
After a long silence, Yen Shan said, “You probably like older men.”
At least they’ve lived more life. Julie had always been fascinated by the complexity of life.
After Yen Shan left that day, Julie wrote a short letter to Chih-yung. She had delayed writing the letter becau
se she thought it would appear heartless to break it off while he was in trouble. Paying him back the money, of course, slightly assuaged her conscience.
When Yen Shan visited again, she smiled and passed him the letter. “I’m just letting you take a look. It has nothing to do with you; I had been wanting to write it for a long time,” she said, not wanting him to think he was the cause of the letter.
Nevertheless, it wasn’t possible to avoid Yen Shan’s influence after all. The previous day when she told him the reason for her split with Chih-yung, Yen Shan coldly scoffed, “So it was because of jealousy.” For that reason she had written, “It isn’t because of all those women of yours, it’s because I have come to realize that I will never be happy being with you.” Originally, she also had intended to add: “Even without them, there would have been others, and I cannot be enemies with half of mankind.”
But then she thought that would sound too much like venting her spleen, or at least wouldn’t appear sufficiently earnest. Forget it—that’s just the way it is. What’s the point of agonizing over the wording, again and again.
Before she sent the letter, she received two letters from Chih-yung. It was like receiving letters from someone already dead. She felt terrible.
After that Chih-yung wrote two long letters to Bebe: “She used to love me with her entire being, yet she now asks me never to write her again.”
Bebe was in a quandary. “What am I supposed to do?”
“Give the letters to me and you will have no further responsibility.”
Later Julie heard through the grapevine that the Shao family was so rattled by this new situation that they moved and Chih-yung left the small town. This time he probably didn’t dare return to the countryside, even though he had been moving back and forth between the two places.
“As if I would turn you in,” she sniffed to herself.
Brother Hsü wrote a letter to Judy in which he mentioned Ned and Jade Flower: “I heard that Second Uncle’s wife went to your elder brother’s house to say to your nephew: ‘If your second uncle had not sided with your family during litigation, you wouldn’t necessarily have won. He is now in difficulty, so you should make space for him and take him in. You surely can’t deny him this, can you?’ His nephew then gave them a room and they’ve already moved in.”