Humans, Beasts, and Ghosts

by Zhongshu Qian

  By that time our Writer had already made a name for himself and was in the process of turning out scripts from all his novels. These plays of his all satisfied the conditions set for healthy theater, except that they were not totally in line with the entrepreneur’s original intent. But the Writer’s reputation was so imposing that it amounted to a threat, a terror. No reader of his dared not to rave about his works along with the others. To do otherwise would be to risk being criticized as deficient in the appreciative faculties and unworthy of works of literature. At performances of his tragedies, the audience had the urge to laugh, but, cowering under his fame, they dared not laugh out loud. Every one of them hid his reactions from the person in the next seat, smothering his chuckles with the handkerchief that was brought along for tears. Of course, nothing could have been more in keeping with the spirit of the healthy drama than this. When it came to his comedies, not a soul in the house was not bored. But who had the guts to stand up and leave? Who wanted to be branded an unknowing fool? So everybody just settled on making himself comfortable, and dozed off. Sleep was of course an important part of healthy daily living. Thus, between the entrepreneur and the Writer they had a great act going, and they forged a strong friendship out of it. On the former’s fiftieth birthday, our Writer even took the trouble to solicit essays for an anthology in commemoration of the occasion.

  Now, seeing that the person talking to him was the entrepreneur, our Writer became very much heartened and beckoned him. “You appeared at just the right moment! Come help me argue my case!”

  “Argue your case!” the entrepreneur scoffed, “I’m here to settle accounts with you myself!”

  The Writer was dumbfounded. “Good heavens! Since when did we become enemies? Don’t you remember your fiftieth birthday? Didn’t I guest-edit a special section in the papers in your honor? Remember the congratulatory essay I wrote in the vernacular language—practically singing in exultation? Who could have known that you could have too much to drink that night, and die of some acute illness! I wasn’t at your deathbed, and that has been bothering me ever since. So we should only be overjoyed at this chance meeting today. Why have you turned so hostile and ungrateful?”

  “Pah! It’s precisely at your hands that I died. We have no more friendship to speak of! That special edition of yours was just special perdition. Your commemorative essay was closer to a funeral oration. You call that ‘exultation’? Execution, that’s what it was! You aren’t even aware yourself how destructive you can be. Your pen is nothing but a razor, your ink poison, and your paper might as well be a death warrant issued by Yama, king of Hell, himself. It’s not just the characters in your works that are like puppets, or clay dolls, not showing a glimmer of life; even the living human beings you describe or write about have their lives and blessings terminated. If you hadn’t written that essay, I would have enjoyed several more years of life. Just think: your tone was so reverent in that article, so virtually trembling with respect and awe, that it read like a bereft son’s memories of his father, or at least an epitaph commissioned for a princely sum. How could I take that kind of overdone adulation? You were using up all my good fortune. And I’ve been waiting here for no other reason than to get even with you.”

  As the Writer was listening to this dressing down, an unpleasant idea flashed across his mind and lodged there like a hard food particle in the stomach resisting digestion. “Didn’t I, just before my death, complete an autobiography, with the intention of publishing it as soon as I got the Nobel Prize? According to the entrepreneur, whomever my pen lands on dies. If that’s the case, I didn’t die of frustration over not getting the prize but because of a fatal autobiography.14 Why, oh why did I have to have such a murderous pen? Why, oh why did I have to have such a secretly murderous pen? Why, oh why did I have to write such a suicidal autobiography? I have nothing left but regret! But wait a second—how foolish of me! The mistake’s been made, so the thing to do now is to turn it to my advantage. So first let me use it to get rid of this bunch of devilish creditors.”

  “If what he says is true,” the Writer declared to the crowd, “my crimes have already caught up with me, and I’m suffering my just desserts. I have paid for my acts with my own life. Didn’t I write an autobiography, and wasn’t that suicide? Forget it! Forget it! Let’s consider this matter settled; we don’t owe one another a thing anymore.”

  But they protested in unison, “You aren’t getting off that easy! Your death wasn’t suicide. Suppose you loved to eat and feasted on globefish; if you got poisoned and died from it, that wouldn’t mean you killed yourself because you had grown tired of living. You wrote that autobiography to toot your own horn. You just never knew you could be slain by your own pen—that knife of a pen! We’re going to get our lives back from you no matter what. Give us our lives back!”

  The Writer started to panic, wringing his hands and pacing back and forth, muttering, “The way this is going, you’re going to end up getting my life!”

  “I think I’m ready to hand down the verdict now,” the administrator announced. “For your next life I assign you to be—”

  “Mr. Administrator,” the Writer interrupted, bowing, “could you let me say one word before you go on? I really suffered everything that could be suffered in the literary life in my last existence, so I had been fantasizing of a good life of glory and riches for my coming incarnation. Now of course I’ve given up all those wild thoughts. I fully realize how serious the sins I’ve committed are, but I’m appealing to you to consider my past good deeds as mitigation of my wrongs, and exercise leniency in your sentencing. Why don’t you, as punishment, simply designate me to be a writer again in my next life?”

  “A writer again?” The administrator was taken aback. “Aren’t you afraid of another crowd demanding their lives of you in the future?” The reaction of those gathered below was similar: all stared at the Writer in disbelief.

  “Oh, I’ll just translate,” he explained. “No more creative writing for me. That way my life won’t be in much danger, I’m sure. Besides, I’ll do literal translation—I definitely won’t try anything even close to free translation—just to make sure that the liveliness of the original isn’t lost, and also to prevent myself from being hauled into some foreign court. Take for example that fashionable American novel Gone With the Wind. I vow I’d faithfully render its title as Swept Off by the Storm—notice how ‘Swept Off’ [kuang zou] conveys both the sound and meaning of the word ‘Gone’! Dante’s masterpiece would be entitled The Heavenly Father Joking. In the same vein, I could give Milton’s epic the interpretive title A Blindman’s Song on the Fall of Suzhou and Hangzhou, but I promise I won’t do that, even though the old saying does claim that Suzhou and Hangzhou are paradises on earth, and Milton had indeed lost his eyesight. And whenever I have a problem translating, I’ll just follow those celebrated examples of transliteration: youmo for “humor,” luomantike for “romantic,” aofuhebian for aufheben [sublate]15 and so on. Since the whole thing would then be, one might say, spelled out in Chinese, how much closer could the reader get to reading the original? That’s like taking out a life insurance policy for the characters in the work.

  “Or, if you’re not happy with that, I won’t even do translations but just stick to playwriting and specialize in historical tragedy. There’s plenty to work on. Well-known historical figures such as Lord Guan, General Yue Fei, Consort Yang, Lü Zhu, Zhao Jun, and so on. Historical figures are quite dead to start with, and on top of that, tragedies should of course entertain a lot of deaths. That would make deaths here doubly warranted, so I couldn’t possibly be charged with murder. There’s a third possibility too. I could retell Shakespeare. The venerable Bard came to me once in a dream, complaining that the characters in his plays lived way too long. After these endless centuries, they had become plain sick and tired of living and were more than happy to put an end to it all and simply drop dead. So he asked me to do an act of charity, to send them off to a painless, natural death.
He added this was what that foreign culture of theirs called ‘mercy killing.’ Before he left, he complimented me, saying I was a young man to be reckoned with, even bowing to me, and repeating his words of appreciation.”

  “I have a good idea of my own,” the administrator said. “All of you listen carefully. His intention in writing an autobiography was not suicide, it’s true, but he didn’t write the congratulatory essay with an intent to kill either. The effects of these two events could be considered to have cancelled each other out; hence there’s no debt outstanding between him and the entrepreneur. But as for his depriving the characters in his works of lives, he should have to pay for that. It wouldn’t be a bad idea at all to make him, as a penalty, a character in a novel or play of some other writer’s and let him have his own taste of being suspended between life and death. The problem is, there’re so many writers of this sort that I don’t know whom to send him to. Oh, I’ve got it! Yes! In the human world there’s a young man who is currently planning to write an epoch-making mixed-genre work. He’ll be adopting the syntax of those causeries written in the style of collected sayings while employing the rhythm, meter, and form of modern poetry. The product will be a novel in five acts and ten scenes. He has the paper all ready now; the only thing he’s waiting for is inspiration. When the propitious moment comes, we can smuggle a spirit into his mind.” The administrator turned to our Writer: “Sir, no one could be a better choice than you for the hero in this work. You’re a genius, and it just happens that your successor plans to write about the genius’s sense of life.”

  “Mr. Administrator,” the hoarse voice of one of the Writer’s characters asked from down in the crowd, “did you say ‘sense of life’ or ‘sex life’? If that fledgling author is to focus on the latter, wouldn’t that be too easy”—he pointed at the Writer—“on this common enemy of ours?”

  The administrator smiled. “Relax, relax, don’t you worry about it. Our Writer’s mantle must have fallen on this young man. As soon as a person ends up in his work, the character will have a hard time telling whether he’s dead or alive, much less living life.”

  “In that case, we have no objections!” Rejoicing and jubilation. “Long live the fair administrator!”

  Our Writer made his final despairing protest. “Mr. Administrator, I’ve already dropped all consideration of my own interests and am prepared to take the rough with the smooth. I do have that much grace. But at least you should have some respect for the literary arts. This youngster is waiting for a stroke of ‘divine inspiration,’ not ‘ghostly intervention.’ How could you send my ghost to cast an evil spell on him? I can take whatever hard times you give me, but if you’re going to play a malicious joke on the arts, which should be held in the highest respect, I’ll simply refuse to go along with you. Should the Writers’ Association ever find out about this, they’ll surely issue a public statement of protest.”

  “‘A genius is but the most inspired of ghosts.’ You more than rate it. Everything’s going to be all right, just take it easy.”

  Taking the administrator’s archaic phrasing as a sign of erudition, and thinking his claim must therefore have been based on the great books—little knowing that the line had just been invented on the spur of the moment—the Writer was reduced to silence.16 Thereupon, amid the jeering and ridicule of the crowd, his spirit was escorted on its way by a uniformed elf.

  By now, the fledgling author had been waiting for his inspiration for three solid years. The reams of paper he had stocked up had by now appreciated to more than ten times their original value. But his inspiration just would not come, no matter what. Perhaps it got lost somehow, or had altogether forgotten where he lived. Finally, the enlightening thought occurred to him one day that in order to write a maiden work, he should seek it through a maiden. It was therefore no coincidence that just as the elf was bringing the Writer’s spirit over, the young man was in the process of exploring—with the principles of the experimental sciences as his guiding light and his landlord’s daughter as his coinvestigator—the secrets of life. The elf happened to be quite the gentleman, and averted his eyes. At this crucial juncture our Writer made up his mind instantly. He decided that anything was better than getting dispatched to the young man’s mind and ending up coming out of his pen. So, while the elf ’s back was turned, with a swish he scurried into the girl’s ear. Indeed, since at that time the couple was one inseparable body all tangled up, only her ears allowed unimpeded entry. Thus it was that the Writer personally, but unknowingly, gave substance to the explanation medieval Christian theologians had offered for the conception of the Virgin Mary: the female aural passage is a passage to conception (quae per aurem concepisti).

  From that moment on the young man lost a character for his book, while the girl gained a baby. He had no choice but to marry her, and the book was never to be. Whatever writing ability he once had was henceforth put to use in keeping daily accounts for his father-in-law’s grocery store. One comfort he did find, however. In traditional Chinese bookkeeping, a new line was very often begun before the previous one was completely filled, and that approximated the visual appeal of modern poetry. The language of accounting, moreover, was neither the literary idiom strictly nor the vernacular, for which reason such writing rightfully belonged in the genre of collected sayings, wherein a cross between the literary and the vernacular was the norm.

  The elf, upon his return, was severely reprimanded by the administrator. Only then did he realize that to be a subordinate meant that one could not afford to play the gentleman. To serve a superior well and conscientiously, one simply could not let a matter of honor bother the conscience.

  Later, it was reported that the baby boy grinned right from the moment of his birth. And whenever he saw his father, his smile would wax triumphant. The relatives all agreed that the baby had to have been blessed with good fortune of the highest magnitude. But so far, nobody could tell whether or not he would grow up to be a writer.

  Translated by Dennis T. Hu

  SOUVENIR

  Although this was a city surrounded by one range of mountains after another,1 spring, like raiding enemy planes, entered it without the least difficulty. Sad to say, the arid mountain region was not suited to a luxurious growth of flowers and shrubs, so though spring had arrived, it had no place to take up lodging. Nevertheless, spring managed to create a vernal atmosphere in this mountain city with no other help than the fermenting effect of a damp and stuffy Lantern Festival2 and of a few ensuing sunny days. The air of such bright, cloudless days was heavily laced with the busy dust of this mountainous region. Illuminated by the twilight of the setting sun, it imparted to the spring atmosphere a ripe yellow hue. They were the kind of days when one could dream while awake, become drunk without drinking. A wonderful season it was!

  From a street where twilight still lingered, Manqian turned into an alley deserted by the sun. The early evening chill of spring alerted her to the fact that without realizing it she had reached her home. She had no idea how she had come home, but she knew her legs were very sore. The uneven gravel road hurt her feet and made her worry about her high heels, the last luxury she had bought two years ago when she passed through Hong Kong on the way to the interior. She was a little rueful that she had not allowed Tianjian to hire a rickshaw for her. But after what had happened today, could she continue to accept his gallantry? Wouldn’t that indicate tacit approval of what he’d done? He was just the type to interpret it that way.

  Engrossed in thought, after wearily passing a few homes near the entrance to the alley, Manqian saw the mud wall that circled her own courtyard. In this area, where there was a shortage of bricks and tiles, mud walls were common. But contrasted with the neighbors’ brick and stone walls, this mud one was unsightly and had brought lots of embarrassment to its mistress. When Manqian first looked at the house, she was reluctant to rent it because of that ugly wall. Sensing her displeasure, the landlord offered to reduce the rent. It was precisely because of the w
all that the deal was made. But only recently had she made her peace with the wall and become willing to accept the protection it offered.

  Her husband, Caishu, not only accepted but also endorsed, bragged about, and praised the crude mud wall. That is, he was unwilling to accept it but used words to camouflage his true feelings. Whenever he had friends visiting him for the first time, Manqian heard Caishu say gleefully, “Its appearance is plain and simple, especially appealing for city dwellers long accustomed to Western-style homes. I took an immediate liking to it. There are so many kids who play in the alley, and my neighbors’ whitewashed walls are filled with their pencil scrawls and pictures. But my mud wall is dark and coarse—the kids can’t do a thing to it. After the last bombing raid, the police told everyone to paint their walls black. Our neighbors, terrified of bombs, scurried around getting their walls painted. But mine was naturally camouflaged already, which saved me a lot of trouble. Otherwise we would have had to hire people to paint it black. The landlord certainly wouldn’t have refunded the money for the job, so that we would have had to pay for it ourselves. And shortly after the neighbors’ walls were painted black, the kids went at it again and crisscrossed drawings in white chalk. It was just like setting up a big blackboard for the kids. It really wasn’t worth all the trouble.” At this point, Caishu’s guests would politely join him in laughter. And if his wife were waiting on the guests, she, out of a sense of obligation, would smile too.

  What Caishu neglected to mention was that the kids, unable to write on his wall, had scrawled all over his front door many Xu Residence’s of different sizes, more or less in the manner of the two ideograms Caishu had written on the red strip of paper pasted at the top of his door. This was a fact that his guests would politely refrain from mentioning.