Humans, Beasts, and Ghosts

by Zhongshu Qian

  This feeling of something less than perfection persisted and increased in the three or four weeks that followed. Even though Tianjian and Manqian became closer, he discovered that she was always evasive about physical intimacy. Not only did she seem to make few demands on him, but also she would not try to please him. Even when there were opportunities for embraces, he had to struggle with her in order to kiss her. Their kisses were never passionate, full, or harmonious.

  Not endowed by nature with stimulating or intoxicating sexual charm, Manqian was not easily aroused or carried away. During courtship she was always a cool and reserved woman. Her low-key approach, ironically, stimulated Tianjian greatly. Her indifference seemed to imply a contemptuous challenge to his passion. It stirred up even greater desire in him and intensified his temper. The situation was like the spilling of a drop of cold water on a coal-burning stove, creating a shee sound and giving off steam. Every time she rejected him, he invariably lost his temper and was on the verge of asking her if she ever allowed her husband to be intimate with her. But he thought such a question would only imply that he was obsessed with sex and too vulgar. He firmly believed that just as there was a code of honor among thieves, there were ethical rules governing extramarital relations. It seemed to him that a husband had the right to question his wife about her relationship with a lover, but never vice versa—the lover inquiring into his mistress’s relationship with her husband.

  After several rejections, Tianjian gradually realized that his time and energy had been wasted. His efforts in keeping up appearances and his careful calculations to prevent suspicion by Caishu and others had all come to naught. He had, in fact, obtained nothing. It was like wrapping up an empty box and sending it by registered mail. This type of romance he could not drop and yet it was exasperating and boring. Something must come of it! He must find or make an opportunity to capture her body and soul. A few days after the Lantern Festival, his landlady’s family would be going to the country for a few days, and, taking the initiative, he told the landlady he would watch the house for her. He planned to invite Manqian over, and if he failed in this attempt, he decided that he’d end all dealings with her. It would be far better to break off the relationship than to keep it going in a lukewarm and noncommittal manner.

  Who could have known that he would break the ice today? His passion temporarily weakened Manqian’s stubborn resistance. As if affected by his passion, she seemed to warm to him considerably. Their romance could be considered complete and concluded at this point. Nonetheless, Tianjian experienced the emptiness one usually feels after having achieved a goal. The restraint that Manqian exercised during her indiscretion seemed to suggest that she had not treated him fairly. So, in a way his success could be viewed as another failure. Because he was not happy with this outcome, he ended up feeling guilty for having cheated Manqian and grievously wronged Caishu. Since there were attractive women available, why must he dally with his biaosao? However, her abrupt departure afterward and her unwillingness to listen to his explanations and apologies made it easier for him to get out of this mess. He could now cast her aside completely on the pretext that he had affronted her and felt too ashamed to see her. And if she should seek him out in the future, he would think of some way to handle her then.

  Without giving any thought to the future, Manqian ran home in one breath and collapsed on the bed. As sober as if she had just been splashed with ice water, she knew that she did not love Tianjian. She had desired him before because of her pride, which had now vanished without a trace. The romantic tryst of a moment ago left its ghostly shadows, which seemed imprinted with a thin impression of Tianjian. Those disgusting, lingering sentiments! When would they completely fade away? When Caishu comes home in a while, how can I face him? she wondered. That night, Caishu did not detect anything strange about his wife.

  Manqian was worried that Tianjian would come back to her, like a bad habit that was difficult to break. But fortunately he didn’t show up for several weeks. Since he had had her once, he had obtained the right to have her again. If she were alone with him, she simply would not be able to cope with him. She knew he was a gentleman who would not betray her and would help her keep their secret. But what if the secret bore some kind of fruit that would be impossible to cover up? No, absolutely impossible! Could such a coincidence happen in this world? She was sorry she had been foolish, and she hated Tianjian for his impudence. She did not dare think about the matter any further.

  The weather continued to be unbearably pleasant. It was as if Manqian’s heart were a tree hollowed out with worms and unable to show any sign of growth. But also for this reason she was spared the usual vexations that came to her each spring.

  One day right after lunch, Caishu was about to take a nap when suddenly air raid sirens sounded, destroying the calm of that pleasant day. The streets filled with commotion. Because the city had not heard any sirens in three months, everyone panicked. Chinese fighter planes climbed into the sky, and the clouds were filled with the sounds of their engines as they flew away toward the city’s outskirts. The old maid, carrying a satchel on her back, demanded a few dollars from Manqian and breathlessly ran to the air shelter trench behind the alley for protection. Before she left, she said, “Madam, you and the master had better get going.”

  Lazily lounging in bed, Caishu told his wife that it was most likely a false alarm and he saw no need to fight the crowd and dust in any air shelter trench. Like many people, Manqian had the peculiar notion that even though many had died in the bombings, she herself would never be among the victims. Her husband had often quoted her as saying, “The chance of being bombed to death are as slim as winning the first prize in the aviation lottery drawings.” A while later the second air raid warning siren sounded. The siren, with its long wails, was like a huge iron throat spewing cold air toward the blue sky. When the neighborhood sank into an eerie silence, Caishu and his wife became terrified. At first they had been too lazy to move; now they were too scared to move. Manqian stayed in the courtyard by herself. Holding her breath, she gazed at the enemy planes entering the air space above the city with contemptuous ease, as if taunting the antiaircraft guns.

  The sound of the machine guns was like that of a stutterer, unable to express his meaning to the sky; or like phlegm stuck in the throat, unable to come out. Suddenly Manqian felt weak all over and did not dare to stand or look anymore. Quickly, she ran toward her bedroom. As she was about to step into the house, a noise constricted her heart and dragged it along into the abyss. As her heart began to sink, another explosion followed, lifting her heart from its depths and leaving her eardrums ringing with sound. The windows shook uneasily within their frames. The lidded cups on the tea tray clanked against one another, making their own music. So frightened was she that she fell into a chair and held her husband’s hand. Whatever resentments she felt against him all vanished so long as he was close by her now. Her head seemed to have been packed with the commotions of the whole sky. The noises of machine guns and of bombs, distinct from those of the airplanes, wreaked havoc in her mind. She could not dispel them.

  No one knows how long it was before calm was restored. The birds in the trees, after what seemed a long period of silence, began to chirp again. The blue sky acted as if nothing had happened, and one lone Chinese fighter plane suddenly flew overhead. Everything was over. Sometime later, the warning was lifted. Though there were no immediate stirrings in the neighborhood, the city seemed to be coming back to life. The old maid returned with her satchel, and Caishu and his wife went to the main street to find out what had happened.

  There was more activity than usual in the streets, people gathering to read the notice written on a strip of red cloth that had just been posted by the Air Raid Prevention Committee: “Six enemy aircraft bombed the city at random. Our casualties were extremely light. After a crushing counterattack from our planes, one enemy plane was shot down, and the rest fled the province. Another enemy plane was seriously damaged and wa
s forced to land somewhere in the outlying area. We are still searching for it.” Caishu and his wife read the notice and simultaneously said they would be able to get more definitive information if they saw Tianjian. Then Caishu rather casually asked his wife why Tianjian hadn’t come to see them for some time.

  At that point Tianjian and his plane had gone down in the rubble some forty miles from the city. He had obtained his cruel peace. A man who had been active in the air all his life could find rest only underground.

  The news came to Caishu and his wife three days later. He shed some tears, which were mingled with pride for being a relative of the dead. For the first time Manqian felt Tianjian was truly pitiable. Her feelings were exactly those an adult had toward a naughty child who was sound asleep. Tianjian’s good looks, his ability, decisiveness, and smoothness were terribly attractive to women when he was alive, but in death all his qualities had now been shrunken, softened, jabbed through by death, as if they were those of a child and couldn’t be taken seriously. At the same time she felt the relief of having been set free. What about the secret she had had with him? At first she did not want to think about it, something she’d like to keep a secret even from herself. Now, the secret, having suddenly lost some of its repugnancy, was transformed into a souvenir worthy of being kept and preserved. It was like a maple leaf or lotus petal to be folded in a book, to be allowed to fade in color with time; but every time you open the book it’s still there, and it makes you shiver unintentionally. It was as if a part of Manqian’s body had been contaminated by death, as if a part of her body had been snatched away by Tianjian and had died also. Fortunately, that part of the body was far away from her, like skin that has been shed, or hair or nails that have been cut and no longer hurt or itch.

  Soon, various city groups sponsored a memorial service for Tianjian, at which the remains of one enemy plane were displayed. Caishu and his wife attended the service. The sponsors had asked Caishu to give a talk or be responsible for some program, as was appropriate for the relative of the deceased. But Caishu staunchly refused to do anything. He did not care to appear in public on account of the deceased and was unwilling to cheapen his private grief by making a public exhibition of it. This attitude increased Manqian’s respect for him. After some hullabaloo, Tianjian’s name, along with his corpse, went cold and was forgotten. It was only after two or three weeks that Tianjian’s name was mentioned again between husband and wife. It was right after dinner, and they were chatting in the bedroom.

  Caishu said, “All the symptoms are unmistakable. Since we’re destined to have a child, there’s no way to run away from it. We should have a child, and you shouldn’t hate having one. We can afford a child at the moment. Maybe the war will be over before your delivery date. If that’s the case, all the more reason for us not to worry about it. I say, if you have a boy, we should call him Tianjian, in memory of our friendship with him during those few months. What do you say?”

  Manqian was looking for something. She walked to the window, pulled open the desk drawer, and, with her head lowered, fingered through all the items in it. Meanwhile she said, “I don’t want to. Didn’t you see the ‘Aircraft Carrier’ during the service? She was all tears and mucus, and she was dressed like Tianjian’s widow. You know what kind of person Tianjian was. The two must have known each other very well. Who knows if she hasn’t borne a child for him? Let her have a kid to honor him. I wouldn’t want to. And let me tell you something else. I won’t love this baby, because I never wanted it.”

  As usual, Caishu made no comment on what his wife had said. His wife’s last sentence increased his alarm, as if he were responsible for the child. Leaning against the back of the chair, he yawned and said, “I’m tired. Oh well, we’ll see. What are you looking for?”

  “Nothing in particular,” Manqian answered ambivalently. Closing the drawer, she said, “I’m tired too. I’ve got a slight temperature, but I haven’t done anything today, have I?”

  Indolently Caishu looked at his wife’s still slim figure, and his eyes filled with infinite tenderness and affection.

  Translated by Nathan K. Mao

  NOTES

  GOD’S DREAM

  1. “Accretionism” (literally, “the theory of successive change” [cenghua lun ]) is Qian’s term for a historiographical approach promoted by the revisionist historian Gu Jiegang (1893–1980), who sought to destroy the myth of a Chinese golden age of high antiquity (which he called “spurious history” [weishi ]) in favor of “an ancient Chinese history that was created in stages” (cenglei di zaocheng de Zhongguo gushi ) through the legends of successive ages. Gu elaborated these views in vol. 1 of Debates on Ancient History (Gushi bian ), which is analyzed in Laurence A. Schneider, “From Textual Criticism to Social Criticism: The Historiography of Ku Chieh-kang,” Journal of Asian Studies 28, no. 4 (1969): 771–88. Gushi bian was reprinted in seven volumes by the Hong Kong publisher Taiping shuju in 1962. The “New Life Movement” was a quasi-fascist cultural movement launched by the Kuomintang (KMT, or Guomindang ) government in February 1934 at the behest of Chiang Kai-shek (Jiang Jieshi [1887–1975]) and his wife, Soong Mei-ling (Song Meiling [ca. 1897–2003]). The movement, designed as an ideological alternative to Communism, called on citizens to embrace Confucian precepts of loyalty, self-cultivation, and obedience while practicing good hygiene and rejecting such “bourgeois” habits as dancing and gambling.

  2. This phrase reverses the classical Chinese idiom “to run fifty steps and laugh at someone who has run one hundred,” which derives from a parable in the classical Confucian text Mencius (Mengzi , ca. fourth–third centuries B.C.E.). In the story, Mencius relates to King Hui of the Liang kingdom how a soldier who had run fifty steps in retreat from battle mocked a companion who had run one hundred. The phrase has subsequently been used to refer to a hypocrite who is guilty, to a lesser degree, of the same fault she or he condemns in others. In the 1946 edition, Qian had fifty steps laughing at one hundred.

  3. A harmonious and inseparable conjugal couple (or pair of lovers) was said to “nest together and fly together” (shuangsu shuangfei ) like a pair of swallows or mandarin ducks. “Nest together,” as Qian’s use of the phrase in the next paragraph implies, is also a euphemism for sex. One anonymous Tang poem contains the couplet “Better to be a pair of mandarin ducks in a pond / Nesting together and flying together for a lifetime” (Buru chishang yuanyang niao, shuangsu shuangfei guo yisheng ).

  4. This title seems to mock autobiographers who claim that their works cannot cover the entirety of their lives. The precise target is obscure.

  5. A semimythical figure, Lao-tzu (Laozi [fl. fourth century B.C.E.]) is the putative author of the Tao te ching (Daodejing ), the foundational philosophical text of Daoism. Here, Qian puns on the name Lao-tzu, which means “old master” but which—turning on the meaning of the character for tzu—can also be interpreted literally as “old son.” The stories about both Laotzu and the Yellow Emperor (Huangdi ) spending a long time in utero are obscure to me but likely date to Daoist texts of the Han dynasty (206 B.C.E.–220 C.E.), which saw a revival of interest in both mythical figures.

  6. The 1946 edition reads: “. . . or a supreme dictator (like Hitler) . . .” Qian added “uni-testicled” in the 1983 edition.

  7. In the 1946 edition, this sentence is slightly different and is followed by an additional sentence: “Savage man, suspecting that divinities exist everywhere, submits to and worships them. Not even a shade of this thought had occurred to God.”

  8. The 1946 edition reads: “He wanted a companion to worship and praise him, so as to dispel the present silence.”

  9. The 1946 edition has an additional sentence here: “In pinching together a man out of a dream, he was just like those people who can slip into a dream while pinching their noses” (that is, indulge in impossible fantasies).

  10. The 1946 edition reads: “His creation of man would have been a great topic for a war of words.”

  11. Lin Daiyu ,
the melancholy female protagonist of Dream of the Red Chamber, is given to poetically pathetic gestures, the most famous of which is her burying of flower petals in the Grand View Garden after witnessing an apparent betrayal by her bosom friend, Jia Baoyu.

  12. The 1946 edition reads: “. . . appearance-conscious men always put on effeminate airs, such that fashionable women have to think of ways to be even more original and appear sexy.”

  13. This sentence is in the 1946 and 2001 editions but not in the 1983 edition.

  14. Here Qian applies to the story of Genesis the famous injunction from the Confucian Analects (book 6, chap. 20) that humans should “respect ghosts and divinities, but keep them at a distance” (jing guishen er yuan zhi ).

  15. The Chinese idea that women are waterlike probably dates back to Ming dynasty vernacular fiction. Because water changes its shape to fit any vessel, it has traditionally been taken as a metaphor for inconstancy and moral relativism. Additionally, because water always flows from high ground to low, the phrase “flow downward” (xialiu ) has come to refer to moral degeneration and indecency.

  16. The 1983 edition (but not the 1946 or 2001 editions) reads: “The more God thought about it, the angrier he became.”

  17. In the 1983 edition, the last sentence reads simply: “Okay?”

  18. Darkie brand toothpaste (Heiren yagao [literally, “Black Man Toothpaste”]) was founded in Shanghai in 1933 and became famous for its logo featuring a black man in a black top hat with gleaming white teeth. The company moved to Taiwan with the Nationalists in 1949 and, in 1990, removed the racial slur from the brand’s English name by modifying it to Darlie. The logo and Chinese brand remain unchanged.