My Mistress's Sparrow Is Dead: Great Love Stories, From Chekhov to Munro
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There were two women in Zhenbao’s life: one he called his white
rose, the other his red rose. One was a spotless wife, the other
a passionate mistress. Isn’t that just how the average man describes a chaste widow’s devotion to her husband ’s memory—as spotless, and passionate too?
Maybe every man has had two such women—at least two. Marry a
red rose and eventually she ’ll be a mosquito-blood streak smeared on the wall, while the white one is “moonlight in front of my bed.” Marry a white rose, and before long she ’ll be a grain of sticky rice that ’s gotten stuck to your clothes; the red one, by then, is a scarlet beauty mark just over your heart.
But Zhenbao wasn’t like that; he was logical and thorough. He was, in this respect, the ideal modern Chinese man. If he did bump into something that was less than ideal, he bounced it around in his mind for a while and—poof !—it was idealized: then everything fell into place.
Zhenbao had launched his career the proper way, by going to the
West to get his degree and factory training. He was smart and well educated, and having worked his way through school, he had the energy and determination of a self-made man. Now he held an upper-level position in a well-known foreign textile company. His wife was a university graduate, and she came from a good family. She was gentle and pretty, and she ’d never been a party girl. One daughter, age nine: already they’d made plans for her college tuition.
Never had a son been more filial, more considerate, than Zhenbao
was to his mother; never was a brother more thoughtful or helpful to his siblings. At work he was the most hardworking and devoted of col-
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leagues; to his friends, the kindest, truest, and most generous of men.
Zhenbao’s life was a complete success. If he had believed in reincarna-tion—he didn’t—he ’d have hoped simply to pick up a new name, then come back and live the same life all over again.
Rich idlers laughed at Zhenbao and called him vulgar—liter-
ary youths and progressive types did too. But since he was vulgar in a Western way, they didn’t really hold it against him. Zhenbao wasn’t tall, but he was vigorous and quick. He had a soy-brown face and wore black-rimmed glasses, with something peculiarly unresolved in his facial expression. His posture was excellent and he didn’t joke around—unless, that is, it was appropriate to joke. He seemed frank and open, a man you could take in at a glance—and if you couldn’t quite pinpoint the sincerity in his eyes, those eyeglasses were proof enough.
Zhenbao came from a poor family. If he hadn’t struggled to rise in the world, he probably would have had to stand behind a counter in a shop, and then his whole existence would have been one tiny round of ignorance and stupidity. Instead, starting in on his new job after his studies abroad, his window opened up on the whole world: he had plenty of opportunities to look forward to and the benefits of an unfettered mind.
An amazing degree of freedom, all in all. And yet the average man’s life, no matter how good, is only a “peach blossom fan.” Like the loyal, beleaguered beauty in the story, you bang your head and blood drips on the fan. Add a few strokes of ink, and the bloodstain becomes a peach blossom. Zhenbao’s fan was still blank, but he had a dry brush, a wet inkstone, a sunny window, and a clean table—all just waiting for him to lower his brush and begin.
That blank fan did have some hazy figures in the background, like the images of people in old-fashioned clothes that one sees printed in light purple ink on elegant, mock-antique stationery. Before the wife and mistress, there had been two insignificant women.
The first was a Paris whore.
Zhenbao had studied textile manufacturing at a school in Edinburgh.
Poor students don’t have a chance to see much when abroad, and all that Zhenbao remembered of Britain was the Underground, cabbage, fog, hunger, and stuffing himself sick. As for things like opera, not until he
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returned home to Shanghai did he have an opportunity to see a Russian company perform. But one summer he ’d laid out some money, taken off some time, and gone on a tour of the Continent. When he got to Paris, naturally he wanted to see how very naughty the Parisians were, except that he didn’t have any friends who knew the town well enough to show him around. He couldn’t afford—and didn’t want—that kind of friend.
So he plunged in all on his own, afraid of what it might cost, afraid of being cheated too.
One evening in Paris, he found himself with nothing to do. He ’d eaten supper early and was walking to his lodgings in a quiet back street.
“And all my friends will think that I’ve really seen Paris,” he said to himself, almost plaintively. The streetlamps had already been lit but overhead the sun still shone, dropping bit by bit down to the roofs of the square cement buildings, dropping farther and farther. The shimmering white of the roofs seemed to be crumbling away. Zhenbao walked down the street, feeling forlorn. In one of the houses someone was playing a piano with one hand, picking out the notes: Christmas songs played very slowly, one after another. Christmas carols are joyful on Christmas Eve, but this was a summer afternoon on a long quiet street flooded with sunlight. The timing felt all wrong, like a dream so mixed-up and meaningless that it was almost funny. Zhenbao didn’t know why, but he couldn’t bear the sound of that one-finger melody.
He picked up his pace; his hand started to sweat in his pocket. He walked quickly, but then the woman in front of him, wearing a black dress, slowed down; she turned her head just a bit and gave him a glance.
She was wearing a red slip under her black lace dress. Zhenbao liked red lingerie. He hadn’t realized that a woman of this sort would be in this neighborhood, with a little hotel nearby.
Years later, when Zhenbao was telling the story to friends, he would adopt a mocking manner, happy but a tad rueful. “Before I went to Paris,”
he ’d say, “I was just a boy! I really ought to go back someday, for old times’ sake.” The memory should have been a romantic one, but oddly enough he couldn’t recall any of the romantic parts, only the upsetting ones. Foreigners always have more body odor than Chinese people do; this woman couldn’t stop worrying about it. He noticed how she ’d half
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consciously raise one arm and turn her head to sniff. The armpits of her clothing were sprayed with perfume; cheap perfume mixed with armpit odor and sour sweat made for a strange smell that he couldn’t get out of his head. But what he hated most was her constant worrying. When she came out of the bathroom in her slip, she rested her hand high on the wall, tilted her head to the side, and smiled at him—but he knew that at some level she was sniffing herself.
With a woman like this—even with a woman like this!—though he
could spend money on her, he couldn’t be her master. The half hour he spent with her filled him with shame.
There was another detail he could never forget. She was putting her clothes back on, pulling her dress over her head, and when she was half there, with the fabric still piled up around her shoulders, she stopped for a moment as if she ’d thought of something. Right then, he saw her in the mirror. She had a mass of tousled blond hair, pulled tight by the dress so that only her long, thin face showed. Her eyes were blue, a blue that ran down into the shadows under her eyes, while the eyes themselves were like two transparent glass balls. It was a cold, severe, masculine face, the face of an ancient warrior. Zhenbao was badly shaken.
When he came out, the sun was still shining, with the shadows of
the trees lying crooked in the sunlit street. This too was not right. It was terrifying.
Whoring can be sleazy, low-class, filthy-miserable, and it won’t matter—that just makes it all the earthier. But it wasn’t like that, not this time. Later, when Zhenbao had figured out ho
w to get what he wanted out of a whore, he ’d think back to that time in Paris, his first time, when he ’d been such a fool. Now he was the master of his own world.
From that day on, Zhenbao was determined to create a world that
was “right,” and to carry it with him wherever he went. In that little pocket-size world of his, he was the absolute master.
Zhenbao lived in England for a considerable time. His factory internship paid a stipend, and he rustled up odd jobs on the side. Once he ’d made himself a bit more comfortable, financially speaking, he acquired a few girlfriends. He was a nice fellow, and he wanted to meet a nice girl, not some prostitute. But he was also a busy man who couldn’t spend
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lots of time on courting; naturally he liked girls who were a little more forthright. There were only a few Chinese girls in Edinburgh, two of them classmates who hailed from the inland provinces—he found them too affected, too churchy, altogether too pious. Nowadays the churches have become something of a social scene, with quite a few beauties on display, but ten years ago, the fervent churchgoers who had love in their hearts weren’t, in fact, lovely. The lively ones were the overseas Chinese; mixed-blood girls went even farther.
Zhenbao met a girl named Rose. She was his first love, which is
why he also likened his two later women to roses. Rose ’s father was a good-looking English businessman who’d lived in southern China for many years and then, thanks to a passing fancy, married a Cantonese girl and brought her home to Edinburgh. The wife had to be living in the house still, but she was practically invisible and never took part in social events. Rose attended an English school, and because she wasn’t completely English she acted more English than the English themselves.
The English students liked to affect a certain dashing indifference, and when something really important was at stake, the affectation grew even stronger. Zhenbao couldn’t figure out whether or not Rose really loved him; he, for his part, was rather dazzled. They both liked to do things fast, and on Saturday nights they made the rounds of different dance halls. When they weren’t out on the dance floor, but just sitting around and talking, Rose never seemed to pay much attention. She ’d take out some matches and try to balance a glass on top of them. Zhenbao was supposed to help. That was Rose: solemn as could be when she was
horsing around. There was a canary at her place, and whenever it sang she thought it was calling to her. “Yes, bird?” she ’d answer right off, standing on tiptoe with her hands behind her back, and her face tilted up toward the birdcage. Her tan face was long, not round like a child ’s, but at such moments she seemed remarkably childlike. She ’d gaze wide-eyed at the bird in the cage, the whites of her eyes tinged blue, as if she were staring into deep blue skies.
Rose may have been the most ordinary of girls, but her very youth made her remarkably hard to read. Like that canary—calling out but not really saying anything to anyone.
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Her short skirt ended above her knees, and her legs were light and nimble, as delicately made as wooden legs in a shop window; her skin was as smooth and glistening as freshly planed and oiled wood. Her hair was cut very short, shaved down to a little point at the nape of her neck. No hair to protect her neck, no sleeves to protect her arms—Rose did not watch her words, and her body was open for the taking. She was carefree with Zhenbao, and he put that down to her being innocent, but her being so carefree with everyone struck him as slightly nutty. This kind of woman was common enough in foreign countries, but in China it would never do. Marrying her, then transplanting her to his hometown—that would be a big waste of time and money, not a good deal at all.
One evening he drove her home, as he often did. But this time it
seemed different because he was going to leave England soon and if he had anything to say he should have said it by now. He hadn’t. Her house was quite far from town. The faint black-and-white of the late-night road patted their faces like a powder puff. The conversation in the car was desultory in the English fashion, starting and stopping again. Rose knew that she had already lost him. Then, out of a kind of hopeless obstinacy, her heart caught fire. “Stop here,” she said, when they had almost reached her house. “I don’t want to let my family see us saying good-bye.” “I’d kiss you even in front of them,” Zhenbao said, smiling.
He reached out to wrap his arm around her shoulder, and she buried her face into his chest. The car kept going—they were well past her house before it stopped. Zhenbao slid his hand under her velvet coat and pulled her toward him. Behind her aching-cold diamonds, crinkly silver lace, hundreds of exquisite nuisances, her young body seemed to leap out of her clothes. Zhenbao kissed her, and tears streamed over her face till neither of them could tell who was crying. Outside the car, a damp, limitless fog floated in the wind. Its emptiness sapped their strength, and all they could do was hang on to each other. Rose clung to his neck, this way then that, trying to pull ever closer, wishing she could fuse her body with his, press herself into it. Zhenbao was so confused that he couldn’t think. He had never dreamed that Rose loved him so much; he could have done whatever he wanted. But . . . this would not do. Rose, after all, was a decent girl. This sort of thing was not for him.
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Rose ’s body leapt out of her clothes, leapt onto his body, but he was his own master.
Afterward, even he was surprised by his self-control. He ’d hardened his heart and taken Rose home. Just before he left, he held her moist face, with its sniffles and tears and quivering eyelashes that fluttered in his palms like some tiny winged creature. In later days, he ’d recall this experience whenever he needed to rally his strength: “If you could control yourself then, in that situation, surely you can do so now.”
His behavior that evening filled him with astonishment and admiration, and yet in his heart he felt regret. Without admitting it, he felt quite a lot of regret.
He seldom mentioned the incident, but there was not one of his
friends who was unaware of Zhenbao’s reputation as a regular Liu Xia-hui, a man who could keep perfectly calm with a beautiful woman in his lap. Word had gotten around.
Zhenbao’s grades were excellent, and before he ’d even graduated he was offered a position at Great Beneficence, an English dyeing and weaving company; he started there immediately upon his return to Shanghai.
Zhenbao’s family home was in Jiangwan, quite far from his job, and at first he stayed with some old family friends. But when his younger brother, Tong Dubao, finished his secondary schooling, Zhenbao made arrangements for Dubao to come and live with him, so he could help him with his studies; he wanted Dubao to take the entrance exam for the technical school that was affiliated with the Great Beneficence Dyeing and Weaving Company. They couldn’t both stay in the friends’ home; that would be too great an imposition. As it happened, an old classmate of Zhenbao’s, Wang Shihong, had an empty room in his place. Wang Shihong had been abroad and had come back to Shanghai two years
before Zhenbao; now he was living in an apartment on Ferguson Road.
He and Zhenbao struck a deal—the room was even furnished.
On the day he was to move in, Zhenbao left work just after dusk.
He and his brother were busy supervising the coolies as they carried the trunks in, and Wang Shihong was standing arms akimbo in the doorway, when a woman walked in from the room behind. She was washing her hair, which was all lathered up with shampoo, the white curls stand-
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ing high on her head like a marble sculpture. “While the workmen are here,” she said to Shihong, holding her hair with her hands, “have them arrange all the furniture and things. It’s no use asking our majordomo to help: he ’ll just make excuses—if he ’s not in the mood he won’t do anything.”
Dubao, my wife. I believe you haven’t met yet?”
The woman withdrew her hand from her hair to shake hands with the guests, but seeing the shampoo on her fingers, she hesitated. She nodded and smiled instead, then wiped her fingers on her dressing gown. A little shampoo splashed the back of Zhenbao’s hand. Instead of rubbing it off, he let it dry there. The skin puckered up slightly, as if a mouth were lightly sucking at the spot.
Mrs. Wang turned and went back into the other room. Zhenbao
directed the workers as they moved the bed and wardrobe, but he felt troubled, and the sucking sensation was still there. His mind wandered as he headed to the bathroom to wash his hands, thinking about this Mrs. Wang. He ’d heard that she was an overseas Chinese from Singapore who, when she was studying in London, was quite a party girl. She and Wang Shihong got married in London, but Zhenbao had been too
busy to attend the wedding. Seeing her was much better than hearing about her: under her white, shampoo-sculpted hair was a tawny gold face, the skin glistening and the flesh so firm that her eyes rose at a long upward slant, like the eyes of an actress. Her striped dressing gown, worn without a belt, hugged her body loosely, and the black-and-white stripes hinted at her figure, each line, each inch, fully alive. People like to say that the wide, long-sleeved gowns of former times didn’t flatter curvaceous beauties, but Zhenbao had just discovered that this was not the case. He turned on the faucet. The water wasn’t very hot, though the water heater downstairs was certainly on, and yet the lukewarm stream seemed to have a lighted wick running through it. Twisting and wind-ing, the water ran from the faucet, every inch of it alive, while Zhenbao’s mind went running off to who knows where.
Wang Shihong heard the sound of running water and came into the
bathroom. “Do you want to take a bath? The water never comes up hot
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in this bathroom. The hot water pipe wasn’t connected properly. That ’s one bad thing about this apartment. If you want to wash, come into our bathroom.”