by Vivian Yang
“Oh, my poor foreign baby doll.” She took my hand and gave it a peck. “And guess what? At your rate, we can do this again. Condiments is friends with guys who have accesses to all sorts of things. We can copy more and rent them all out.”
“Who would pay to read this stuff?”
“You’d be surprised. You know I’m good with people and very persuasive.” She sank on my ximengss and started reading an “adolescent enlightenment poem” from the book:
Yi ge wan shang,
Liang ren tong chuan.
San geng ban ye,
Si jiao chao tian.
Wu zhi mo fu,
Liu shi jin gong.
Qi shang ba xia,
Jiu jin jiu chu,
Shi feng guo ying.
One night,
Two persons in bed.
Three o’clock in the morning,
Four limbs dancing.
Five fingers exploring,
Six postures charging.
Seven times up, eight times down,
Nine ins nine outs and
Tenfold the pleasure!
I covered my ears. “Stop, would you? It’s so infantile!”
“Infantile? No. It’s real adult stuff. Can you figure out what the six postures are?”
“No, and I don’t want to.”
“Come here,” she said, scooping me over. We both landed on the mattress. “Help! I’m having a heart attack!” she screamed as my chuckles turned into laughter. The bed jerked as I heard something fall. “Stop, please!” I called out, springing over to pick up my diary book.
“What is it? You’ve got a hand-copy you’re not telling me?”
“No, it’s not a novella. It’s my own thing.”
“Let me see. Ai-ya, my Guanyin Buddha, you can write in English? My Guanyin Buddha ai-ya-ya! What do those wiggly words say?”
“Nothing … just some notes to myself over the years … and some English words and phrases I’ve been teaching myself.” I tried to play it down, knowing full well that this notebook bore witnesses to my innermost self: musings and vagaries recorded in my unbuttoned moods; tears and fears; joys and sorrows; facts and fancies; Chinglish grammar and pidgin-inspired Shanghainese diction.
“How amazing, Mo Mo. You’re a true genius. I have an idea now. You keep writing and save it well. When the foreigners are here you can charge them to read it. Foreigners are all very rich.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Oh, I forgot to tell you. My dad says there’ll be foreigners coming to teach at the Conservatory next term. He’s going to have his old job back, this time driving the School van, you see – shipping them around to the airport, the specialty Friendship Store, and fake antiques markets, etc., etc.”
“Really?” I asked excitedly. Mother would not tell me things like that although I was sure she knew about it already. Perhaps that was why she had been so busy at work nowadays – to prepare for the arrival of the foreigners. Imagine that the former Yin-gou-li-chee language would soon be popping out of the sewers and floating in the air in Shanghai! “Make sure you tell me once they are on campus. By the way, you should never mention my notebook to anyone. Promise?”
Our pinkies became entwined. “Promise!”
10 The Renaissance Shanghainese
I recognized her to be the very housewife who had a confrontation with the wet market seafood vendor over “the deadly fish that caused my old man’s loose poop.” Like several weeks ago, her graying hair was in plastic curlers. Now, standing in line before me for tofu, she spoke to a fellow housewife in flannel pajamas topped by a hand-knit woolen vest. “Can you believe? She paid for that bicycle coupon with her virginal ass!”
Tucking her bamboo vegetable basket tighter on her arm, the woman in PJs responded with a chuckle. “Let me tell you, Ah Zheng, whether or not she’ll get to ride on the new bicycle in the end remains to be seen. He’s badly in need of a bike himself, you see.”
“You’re so right.” Ah Zheng tapped the forearm of PJs and cupped her own mouth, edging an inch closer. “A slut like that. She may end up having a job done up there instead. He’d have to take her home on the back rack, he-he.” Her carrot-like finger pointed at the “Professional Veterinarian Clinic” sign in the lane, her torso swayed in my direction. Our eyes met. I averted her gaze instinctively, aware that my features had brought about recognition. She nudged PJs and they became silent.
After buying dried tofu squares I walked in the direction of the cluster of stalls selling chickens. There, a score of blood-drenched crackling birds were flipping and flapping, with some shooting into the air from the wire baskets containing their fellow doomed mates, leaving pools of blood and trails of feathers. Vendors in knee-high mackintoshes and rubber aprons were picking up the dead ones by the leg and throwing them into a vat of water for plucking as small streams of pink water run down the gutter.
What I saw next was most peculiar: a white-pelted dog with a loose leash was chasing an injured, brown-feathered rooster. This man’s best friend was turning the crowded marketplace into a circus. A swarm of people had formed a circle, some on tiptoes yet none making an attempt to separate the canine from the fowl.
“There’s a bloody good cock!” cheered one man in a faded blue mandarin top with white brimmed sleeves. “Peck that bitch hard! Yes! You’ve got nothing to lose but your little head, ha-ha!”
A younger man with a crew cut and a cigarette dangling at a corner of his mouth egged the dog on. “That’s right. Bite that chicken’s head off! There you go!”
Still others lingered around from a short distance to avoid being splashed with blood or showered with feathers. They craned their necks nevertheless so as not to miss the free entertainment. A woman nudged me aside and squeezed herself into the crowd before me, crushing the tofu in my plastic bag into shreds in the process. I was about to protest when I saw the plastic curlers on her head and decided to swallow my frustration with Ah Zheng.
Then, overriding all the cacophony, I heard him! For a split second it sounded like Coach Long’s masculine and operatic baritone. Yet this one was a touch more burnished, almost mellifluous.
“Daisy!” the voice called out in Shanghainese-accented English, its pitch urgent, its tone terse. “Daisy!” But I knew for a fact that my onetime hero Coach Long, whom I had been painstakingly purging out of my system, spoke not a word of English.
In the instant that followed, I located the man whence the voice came. Wearing a tweed jacket with a twilled silk foulard, the tall figure with a chiseled profile was at the outer edge of the crowd, either unable or unwilling to break through. The hustle and bustle surrounding the chicken stands all but drowned out his fretful yet restrained plea. Still, he had managed to attract curious stares around the fighting ring. For one thing, smartly dressed men like this were rare in open-stall markets. The flying birds’ draining blood or their last remaining load of droppings could very well soil his outfit. Furthermore, a middle-aged man with such a bearing would not ordinarily go to the market himself. An older maidservant from the pre-Cultural Revolution days would suffice. Failing that, there would be someone in his family who took care of that task.
“Daisy! Please stop! No!” the man commanded, waving an arm in the air to no avail.
The wide-eyed canine kept toying with the rooster whose head was attached to the rest of its body, ever so tenuously, by a piece of skin.
“Hao! Hao! Well done!” The crowd released one round of laughter after another. A few spectators whistled, a non-indigenously Chinese act often associated with hooliganism.
I edged toward Daisy’s master and got a closer look at him: cleanly shaven, his sharply angled cheekbones were prominently revealed, giving him a well-heeled if weathered appearance. My heart jolted when I saw his piercing eyes: they belonged to the masked and capped street sweeper near the “Pushkin graveyard”!
Ducking through the rubbernecking crowd to the middle of the action, I surprised myself by dartin
g towards the dog, aware that my bag of tofu had gotten caught in the crowd. In one scoop I took Daisy up and away. The poor rooster’s head, coated with feathers and redder throughout than its limp crest, landed by my feet.
“Ai ya-ya!” An exclamation erupted from the crowd. More whistles. Scattered laughter. Sighs of disappointment that the carnage was over. The crowd dispersed as quickly as it had gathered, clearing the way for the man to rush towards me, his eyes bright with gratitude. “It’s you! Thank you so much! I always knew you would turn out to be a remarkable girl.”
“Thank you for the encouraging nod that time. I never forgot that. I hope that incident didn’t get you in trouble for you disappeared since …”
He waved dismissively and said, “It could have been worse. I had the feeling that we would see each other again under better circumstances and here we are, thanks to Daisy.”
I handed Daisy to him. Her cold nose had been rubbing my wrist as warm air came from her nostrils. Holding the dog like a baby while ruffling its hair, he mumbled something to the effect that God had answered his prayers. He then put the chicken-fighter into a metal basket mounted in the front of his parked bicycle. I noticed the terry towel inside and envied Daisy for her movable seat. Few Shanghai residents could afford such towels for their own use let alone for a dog bassinet. Daisy immediately began gnawing on a piece of wood there that appeared to be a three-inch heel from a ladies’ shoe.
With a hand on the handlebar and a foot on a pedal to steady the bicycle, he asked with smiling eyes, “What is your name?”
“Mo Mo,” I answered in monotone, thinking that he might have put the two together and guessed I was Teacher Mo’s daughter.
“Mo as in jasmine?”
“Exactly,” I replied, amazed that he had guessed the right Mo out of its many homonyms.
“The name suits you.”
“Thanks. By the way, I like the name Daisy and she’s lucky that you treat an animal so well.”
“She’s getting old and I need to take care of her … although many regard keeping a pet to be too bourgeois for our revolutionary taste.”
The man’s own taste was by no means revolutionary. Despite his bicycle’s black paint peeling off at different places, the spokes and the bell were shiny rather than rusty, and it had a heron bird head badge. Not made in China, I concluded. There existed few Chinese models, all having the same design and a beat up look to them. I guessed that this one could be the well-cherished English brand translated as Lailin in Shanghainese. As all imports from the West had stopped after the 1949 Liberation, I had yet to see a Lailin for real, unless this was one.
From under his pressed khaki pants, his raised leg on the bicycle pedal showed his sock to be an overlapping maroon-colored diamonds on a black background, a pattern similar to the tartan skirt displayed on a Huaihai Road window. Men usually wore socks with small, bumblebee-like designs on the ankle area. His sock pattern – Argyle, I was to be told later -- his mien, his gait, his tone of voice, his polished leather shoes, indeed everything about him led me to exclaim to myself:
How FLY he is!
Pronounced fee for “figure” in pidgin, the concept of being fly was singularly Shanghainese. It first came into our locution after the Second World War, when the victorious American GIs brought with them Coca-Cola, KLIM (the reversed spelling of “milk,” as Condiments’ dad told me once in passing) milk powder, popcorn, donuts, and indeed chewing gum. Fly carries the broad meaning of being classy and knowing. A fly man is an enviable character with superb taste.
“Can I call you Uncle Fly?” I asked spontaneously.
Visibly flattered, he replied with a quick grin, “If that’s what you want to call me, by all means. Now, get on my bicycle and we’ll drop Daisy off. Then I’ll take you to dinner to thank you.”
Not wanting to appear effusive, I played coy by changing the subject. “You have a very nice bicycle.”
“Thanks. I have no pull in securing coupons for a new one. Luckily this old tank still rolls well. It’s an English make, Raleigh.”
“Lailin?”
“Exactly, now come up and try to keep your balance.”
Daisy let out a bark as though in agreement.
With a little hesitation, I eased onto the Raleigh and was greeted by a faint musky scent. It hit me that I had not sat on a bicycle since Coach Long deserted me. Taking a deep breath, I snapped out of the thought of him and exclaimed to myself: pet-lover, cologne-wearer, and Lailin-owner – what a fly Uncle Fly!
Uncle Fly’s home, a quaint gardened house, was a short ride away from my own, in the former International Settlement. I would later joke with him that I knew which one his house was the moment I saw its wire-fenced front yard as it was in a similar state of neglect as the “Pushkin graveyard”. Scraggy patches of grass intermingled with weeds. Little shrubbery was left except for a banyan tree of parched bark and listless leaves. Bamboo poles loaded with the washings crisscrossed over a barren parcel, with blouses and underwear in light colors and jackets and slacks in navy or black.
Carrying Daisy out of the metal basket, Uncle Fly dusted off a few of her hairs and pressed one of the three doorbells. Three mailboxes with different surnames written on each crowded the door frame.
While the white house where Mother and I lived came across as French, his had English-style gables and red roof tiles. Unattended ivies adorned the outside walls like interweaving cobwebs. A branch hanging down scratched me, prompting this rhetorical comment from him: “They’re just naturally fecund so they keep growing -- kind of like our population despite the ‘one child policy’, isn’t it?”
Wanting to avoid the topic of birth, I rubbed my face with the back of my hand and said, “It doesn’t matter,” referring to the cut.
“Here.” He took out a man’s handkerchief, starched and folded into a square.
“This is so nice I’m afraid I’ll soil it,”
“Don’t be silly. That’s what it’s for – to be used. At least it’s cleaner than your fine little paw.”
A tingling sensation passed through me as he blotted my forehead. “Thank you,” I said, feeling my cheeks warming up.
“Don’t mention it. Ah Fang should be down momentarily.”
“Is she your maidservant?”
“I’d stopped using that term long ago. My parents initially hired her as my wet nurse so she’s like family. Since the Cultural Revolution we only had the top two floors. The first floor had been confiscated and allocated to two working-class families.”
Just like the house Wang Hong lived in except he was the original bourgeois owner here, I thought.
“So exactly how many years has she been with you?”
“I’m not falling for that one,” he said, laughing and steering clear of the bait.
I laughed, too.
Just then, a woman whose graying hair was in a neat bun held by a lacquer pin opened the door. She gave me a polite glance and took Daisy. “She got the shots?”
“Yes, she tolerated them well, but acted up later and got in a fight with a rooster. If it were not for this girl here leaping into the fray to save her, she’d be in trouble. We’re going out to eat so no dinner tonight, Sis Fang. Thanks.”
Ah Fang looked at me with squinting eyes and said, “Thank you, pretty girl.”
Pushing the bicycle as I walked by his side, Uncle Fly asked, “Is Maison Rouge alright with you?”
Barely able to contain my excitement I replied, “Of course, thank you. I haven’t been there yet, but I’ve heard that their borscht is really authentic.”
With a faint smile Uncle Fly shook his head. “Nothing is authentic these days, I’m afraid. But borscht it is for your appetizer then.”
I knew the exact location of Maison Rouge, formerly Chez Louis on Avenue du Roi Albert. Wang Hong and I had walked past it several times, peeking into its interior through the filmy white curtains. In the 1970’s it was practically the only Shanghai restaurant serving Western food. E
ven Premier Zhou Enlai, who had been a young revolutionary in France, reportedly liked its food.
He motioned that I sit on the back of the bicycle and got on it himself. Minutes later we were at the restaurant. “This bicycle is so steady to sit on,” I said, dismounting.
“Glad you found it so. Truth be told, a bicycle is nothing to take a girl on. If only my Harley still ran … it’s been sitting in the corridor ever since the import ban on parts.”
“Your Harley?”
“That’s an American motorcycle, the most coveted toy for Shanghai’s big boys after the Second World War. They became available in China after FDR signed the Lend-Lease Bill. My late father got me one ‘on reserve’ as I was just a boy then.”
Reminded of the half-piece Made-in-America gum I received for my turning thirteen and the vanished Coach Long, I nodded in silence.
The maître d’ greeted Uncle Fly familiarly and led us to a table at the wainscoted French window. Just as I was puzzled by the many plates, forks, and knives in front of me, Uncle Fly praised me. “You’re so well-composed, Mo Mo. Get anything you want. It’s a ‘Thank You’ meal.”
“I never expected this,” I said, holding up the menu but not knowing what to order.
Uncle Fly sat back and folded his arms. “Borscht to start. You want me to pick a main for you?”
“Yes, please. Thanks.”
He smiled and ordered the Grilled Steak with Mustard for me and Baked Clam comme à la maison for himself. Desserts were Baked Alaska “For the young lady” and the Soufflé Grand Marnier and “café noir” for himself.
I sat straight with clasped hands on my lap, savoring the gladness of being called a young lady and looking forward to finding out what “café noir” was.
Leaning a bit closer, Uncle Fly asked, “Your parents work at the Conservatoire?”
“My mother does … she teaches piano.”
A twitch passed his face. He took my fingers into his hand. “Let me see.”
“I don’t play,” I murmured, withdrawing my hand.