Humans, Beasts, and Ghosts

by Zhongshu Qian

  It was mid-May, but each person at the table privately gasped at her words, as if hit by a gust of cold air. Zhao Yushan knew that every word his wife had spoken was a mistake, so there was no way of correcting it.

  Mrs. Li joked with a smile, “Next time, we’ll have to send the courses to the beauty parlor first to put on makeup and have them powdered and painted before we invite Mrs. Zhao to appraise them.”

  Chen Xiajun laughed heartily, “You can just borrow my painting palette and put it on the dining table.”

  Mrs. Zhao, having said something wrong, was chagrined and angry. On their way home from the party, Mrs. Zhao suddenly remembered that Mrs. Li herself was the product of a beauty clinic. She should have silenced Aimo at the time by saying, “A beauty parlor won’t be enough. You should send them to a beauty clinic.” She only regretted that she had seen the light too late and gotten the worst of it.

  From then on, she became bitter enemies with Mrs. Li and forbade her husband to go to her house. Her husband, however, wouldn’t listen. She then accused him of taking a fancy to Aimo. One day, the couple were quarreling about this yet again. Yushan had just gotten a haircut, and Mrs. Zhao obstinately asserted that he wanted to please Mrs. Li with his sleek hair and shining face. In her anger, she chewed up a piece of gum and spat it onto Yushan’s head. As a result, Yushan had to shave his head. Since it was late autumn and he could not use the weather as a pretext, he had to say that long hair would waste more of the blood in the scalp and decrease the efficiency of his mind. It didn’t occur to him that this pretext would prevent him from growing his hair out later.

  Knowing that Yushan had fallen out with his wife on her account, Mrs. Li began to invite him over for dinner and tea more often. Rumors flourished. One claimed that he had shaved his head because of a fight with his wife, while another said he did so because his love for Mrs. Li could never be requited. In short, he intended to become a monk. Lu Bolin once told him he should count the hairs he had shaved off; perhaps their number would match the number of misprints in Chinese books and he could be spared much future computation. His eyes wide open, Yushan replied, “Revered Bo, stop joking! Discovering a misprint is as momentous as discovering a new continent. . . .”

  The genteel Cao Shichang was charming and soft-spoken. Listening to him from the next room, one became fascinated for the wrong reasons. But hearing a man speaking so softly to their face, many people became impatient and itched to turn up his volume as one might turn up a radio. Yet this cultured scholar, of all people, loved to give his readers an impression of rude barbarity, as if he combined the naivete of the savage and the ferocity of a superman. His past was shrouded in mystery. If he was to be believed, there was nothing he hadn’t done. He had been a bandit in his native region; later he became a soldier for the government; and after that he had gone to Shanghai and become a gangster. He had also been a Chinese opera singer and a waiter at a grand hotel. Whenever he spoke of these and his many other romantic picaresque experiences, young men who had never lived outside of family and school would shake their heads and give the thumbs-up: “Amazing!” “Fantastic!”47 Writing about what he had done turned out to be more profitable than actually doing it, so he decided not to change his trade again. In theory, since he had so many wonderful and interesting recollections, he really should have written an autobiography and packed them all into it. Instead, he wrote only bits and pieces of some autobiographical novels. Perhaps if he really had written an autobiography, there would have been a discrepancy between all his experiences and his age, since he was still in his thirties. And perhaps, once he had finished the autobiography, it would have been inconvenient for him to make new amendments to old experiences. As the Chinese saying goes, “End one thing and put a stop to a hundred others.”

  Famous as he was in literary circles, he could never forget how little schooling he had received as a child, and he felt that those who did have “proper academic credentials” didn’t quite respect him. He was always on the lookout for some offense or insult from others. The honey-sweet voice hid that he was ready for battle, with sword drawn and bow bent.48 Because of his position he had no choice but to socialize with the Lis’ famous guests, but he really took pleasure in the company of young students—his “little friends.”49 Since he could not take part in the current conversation, he swallowed feelings of envy, anger, and scorn and carefully observed the buffoonery of the assembled “gentlemen” so that he could describe them thoroughly to his little friends when the occasion arose. Suddenly, he spotted the neglected Yigu, who looked like a little friend.

  That day’s tea party could not have excluded Fu Juqing. While Hempen Robe Physiognomy50 is not entirely reliable, sometimes one’s appearance can indeed influence one’s life. A woman with deep dimples and good teeth, for example, will naturally love to smile at people, and as she becomes known as a “happy angel,” her temperament should imperceptibly become less violent. Similarly, Fu Juqing had since childhood been somewhat slant-eyed; it was not known whether the cause was congenital or postnatal. In elementary school his teacher had always suspected that the child was looking askance at him to express his contempt. At the same time, his cold sidelong glances also seemed to find fault with the teacher’s instruction. But since Fu Juqing’s father was a member of the local gentry, teachers dared not offend him. By the time he had reached fifteen or sixteen, the intensity of his gaze had so increased that one glance from him would make you immediately feel uneasy and out of sorts, leaving you wondering if you had done something wrong, if someone had hung a strip of paper on the knot of your “melon skin” cap, or if you had forgotten to button your fly.51

  One day one of his father’s celebrity friends told him, “Every time I run into your son, he reminds me of He Yimen’s book reviews.52 Though He gave the impression of being superior, he actually only attended to details and nit-picking. Your son’s gaze has that quality.”

  Fu Juqing didn’t know exactly who He Yimen was. He had only heard that he was a critic from Suzhou and assumed that he must be someone like Jin Shengtan.53 From then on, he believed that his appearance suited him to be a critic. When he was a junior in college majoring in liberal arts, among the assigned reference readings was a poem by Pope, in which he read the famous line about Addison, the editor of The Spectator, which said in effect that Addison was good at leering and sneering.54 When he also read a chapter on “the critic eye,”55 like an ant on a hot pan, he got all worked up in the reading room of the library. Thereafter, he saw to it that everything he did and said was consistent with the appearance of his eyes. Even the tone of his articles seemed to sneer between the lines. He knew that the British, of all people, had eyes higher than the tops of their heads and that the eyes of students at Oxford, Addison’s alma mater, were higher than the tops of their top hats so that they could look down even upon the king. A few years in Britain had made him all the more contemptuous of mankind and his opinions all the more lofty sounding. One felt that, instead of being put on the table and read with bowed head, they should rather be pasted onto the ceiling and read as one might appreciate Michelangelo’s frescoes in Rome’s Sistine Chapel. His lofty views could be appreciated only by those who didn’t mind getting a stiff neck from looking up.56 In Britain, he had learned how to keep a straight face and look indifferent. Therefore, at public gatherings, if a man were beside him, strangers would assume that he was his brother and if it were a woman, that she must be his wife; otherwise, he wouldn’t be so indifferent. He, too, smoked a pipe, which, according to him, was a mark of an Oxbridge education.

  Yuan Youchun had once sneered, “Don’t listen to him toot his own horn. So what if he went to England! Anyone who wants to can smoke a pipe!”

  Yet at heart, Yuan Youchun really did hate Fu Juqing’s guts, for it seemed as if Yuan Youchun were just “smoking a foreign pipe in secret,” whereas Juqing could borrow the words from the sign on a Vietnamese opium den: “Licensed Smoking.”

  Some guests l
ooked at their watches. Others asked the host, “Should we still expect Xiajun today?”

  Mrs. Li said to Jianhou, “We will wait another ten minutes for him. He’s always like this.”

  If Yigu had been more observant, he would have noticed that the present guests, plus the host and hostess, made up ten. If Chen Xiajun were included, the number would reach eleven. Such an odd number indicated that one guest who had not originally been included had been added at the last minute. Yigu’s mind had been elsewhere, so this never occurred to him. He still entertained the old notion that people should be judged solely by their appearance and thought that these celebrity seekers of truth, virtue, and beauty should have some corresponding mark, just as butchers should all be fat and jewelers must all wear two or three gigantic rings. Little did he expect their plain-looking appearances to be such a disappointing contrast to their reputations. It was fine by him that there were no women guests. Yigu had learned from school that female students who were passionate about literature and knowledge were seldom models of beauty.57 Yet even if there had been female guests at such a gathering of intellectuals, they would surely have been unpleasing to the eye and would only have magnified the beauty of the hostess.

  Examining Mrs. Li closely, Yigu found that she was indeed a beauty. Her long, Greta Garbo hairdo was in perfect harmony with the contours of her shoulders, back, and waist, unlike many a woman whose hairstyle is an independent entity that clashes with her figure. Now around thirty, Mrs. Li’s prettiness had gradually ripened toward full-blown gorgeousness. Her complexion was dark, making her face suited to heavy makeup. She had fine eyes and teeth, with high cheekbones, making her face amenable to smiling, talking, and changing expressions.58 She often opened her mouth, but she didn’t say much—just a nod, a smile, and an occasional word or two before she turned to converse with someone else. She wasn’t the kind of woman who flaunted her talents and played the coquette. She simply enjoyed manipulating these people, like a juggler who could use both hands to toss and catch, keeping seven or eight plates aloft simultaneously.

  Yigu found it odd that the guests were all longtime celebrities in their late thirties.59 What he did not understand was that for these well-established middle-aged men, coming to Mrs. Li’s home was their only chance for an economical and safe romantic relationship that involved neither trouble, scandal, nor expense. It was a place where they could seek spiritual rest, a club they could go to escape their families. Jianhou didn’t mind their presence, but they were extremely jealous of one another. There was only one thing in which they could all cooperate: when Mrs. Li became interested in a new acquaintance they would, with one voice, disparage the person with clever, pleasant-sounding remarks. They paraded their friendship with the Lis, yet they did not lightly allow outsiders to step into the circle of friendship. Mrs. Li consequently became all the more inaccessible. In truth, they were not Mrs. Li’s friends, merely her habits. Since they had all been together for five or six years, she knew them and they knew her. They were always at her beck and call, and within her grasp, so she didn’t bother to foster new habits. Only Chen Xiajun, who came in at that moment, could be considered a relatively trustworthy devotee.

  The reason for this was that Chen Xiajun had the least to do and could come to the Lis’ more often. He had previously studied painting in France, but he didn’t have to paint for a living. He once remarked that in addition to the capitalists and the proletariat there was another class that opposed both: the idle class—spoiled young men with inheritances and no proper careers—though he himself barely managed to belong to this class. When he first returned from abroad to Shanghai, he had wanted to make an effort to earn his living by painting. Yet in Shanghai, everything Western was deemed good except Western painting. The paintings displayed in houses furnished in Western-style were Chinese center-hall scrolls,60 vertical scrolls, and horizontal scrolls. His eldest uncle was a famous painter of the traditional Chinese style, ignorant of perspective and realism. “Foreign cemetery mounds” and tap water excepting, he had never been exposed to famous mountains or beautiful rivers. Relying on collections handed down from his ancestors and Japanese collotype editions of Southern Painting,61 he would paint rivers entitled “In Imitation of Dachi”62 one day and trees and stones under the title “The Clouds and Forest Were Once Like This” the next. His paintings were in high demand, which made Chen Xiajun, who had an artistic conscience, furious. His uncle one day told him, “My dear nephew, you’ve taken the wrong path! I don’t know Western painting, but it has neither the grace nor the subtlety of purpose of our classical painting . Three days ago, for instance, the manager of a bank asked me to paint a center-hall scroll for the meeting room of his bank. It should suit and flatter the bank but it mustn’t be vulgar and obvious. How would you people who study Western painting say it should be done?” Xiajun couldn’t think of anything, so he shook his head. His uncle guffawed. Unfolding a scroll, he said, “Look what I painted!” In the painting, there was a lychee tree overladen with fruits, big and small. Inscribed on the painting was: “An Investment Brings a Manifold Profit: In Imitation of Luo Lianfeng.”63

  Seeing this, Xiajun was simultaneously indignant and amused. His uncle then asked him how to paint “happiness.” Thinking that he was really consulting him, Xiajun told him the whole story of how in Western mythology Fortuna was a blindfolded woman on a flywheel. Stroking his beard and smiling, his uncle unfolded another scroll depicting an apricot tree and five bats. The words on the painting read: “‘Apricot’ Plus ‘Bat’ Is a Homophone of ‘Happiness.’ Five Bats Allude to the Five Happinesses. My Own Creation.” Xiajun had to admire his uncle in spite of himself. His uncle also had numerous women students, most of whom were mistresses of wealthy businessmen. These rich men were busy making money all day and worried that their mistresses would feel bored and nurture wicked ideas, so they often encouraged them to pick up some hobby to pass the time. Chinese painting was the best choice, since it could be shown off but wasn’t difficult to learn. A painting tutor differed from other kinds of tutors in that he had to be famous, so as to increase one’s own respectability. Furthermore, famous Chinese painters were mostly elderly men who would not seduce women, so they were more trustworthy. Xiajun was still young and had studied painting in the decadent land of France, so people took precautions against him. They had also heard that Western painters painted from models. It would be hard to say that they weren’t painting what Silly Sister in Dream of the Red Chamber called “the fight of the demons.”64 That would be an offense against decency.

  Cold-shouldered in Shanghai, Xiajun moved to Beiping, where his self-esteem was gradually restored by some friends who shared his interests. Yet he was never fully able to recapture the drive he had had when he first returned from abroad. He was so lazy that he was loath to do anything. Consequently, people thought that he was capable of anything, if only he were in the mood, and he became famous. Talking was the only thing he was not lazy about; he talked even in his sleep at night. He was especially good at talking to women. He knew that women didn’t like men who respected them too much. He praised them in mocking tones and flattered them in offensive terms.65 The previous month, for instance, Mrs. Li had given a birthday party. She had reached a point at which she wanted others to remember the day of her birth but not the year. When she predictably told the guests that she was getting old, they protested, “Not at all! Not at all!” Only Chen Xiajun commented, “You’d better hurry up and get old! Otherwise, you’ll outshine all the young girls and they’ll never be able to hold up their heads!”

  Now that the guests were all present, the servants brought in the refreshments. Mrs. Li asked Yigu to sit beside her. After pouring a cup of tea for herself, she poured one for him and asked him how many lumps of sugar he wanted. Yigu hesitated out of politeness, “No, thank you!”

  Gazing at him and smiling, Mrs. Li whispered, “Don’t act like you did just now, denying that there are girls in your school. There’s no need
to be polite. The tea won’t taste good without sugar. I went ahead and put in some cream for you.”

  Yigu was grateful that everyone else was too busy talking to notice his embarrassment. Mrs. Li’s smile and the expression in her eyes made him so happy that his heart seemed to have been burned by something hot. He mechanically stirred the tea with a spoon, not hearing what other people were talking about for quite some time.

  Jianhou said, “Xiajun, didn’t you feel your ears burning as you came in? We were speaking ill of you.”

  “Who of us doesn’t do that behind the backs of others?” replied Xiajun.

  “I’ve never spoken ill of anyone,” Aimo put in.

  With his left hand on his chest, Xiajun bowed deeply to Aimo from his seated position, “And I’ve never said bad things about you.” Turning to Jianhou, he asked, “Why were you bad-mouthing me? Let’s hear it. As the saying goes, ‘Correct mistakes if you have any and guard against them if you don’t.’”

  Ma Yongzhong, who had to go to the newspaper office to write articles after tea, hurriedly put in, “We were complaining that you put on airs, always intentionally coming late and wasting other people’s time by making them wait for you.”

  Yuan Youchun remarked, “People have been saying that you must have picked up this artist’s habit of yours in the coffee shops of the Latin Quarter in Paris. The French have no concept of time, so they had to borrow the expression ‘Time is money’ from the English. I hold a different view. I believe you were born with this habit—no, you had the habit even before you were born. You must have refused to come out of your mother’s womb after ten months.”66

  Everyone laughed. Before Chen Xiajun could reply, Fu Juqing said coldly, “This humor is too dull and heavy. Put it on the butcher’s scale and you’ll find it to be a few catties on the heavy side.”