by Lao She
‘None of the things you see in films are true.’ In her heart, Mrs Wedderburn didn’t exactly feel any great love for the Chinese, but she couldn’t resist rebutting her daughter’s arguments. ‘In my opinion, it’s very mean to laugh and make jokes about people from weak countries.’
‘Go on, Mum! If it’s not true, then every film and every play and every book is wrong, and even if fifty per cent of them are wrong, that still leaves fifty per cent that have to be telling the truth, doesn’t it?’ Mary was determined to win her mother round to her way of thinking, and, poking her head forwards, demanded, ‘Doesn’t it, Mum? Doesn’t it?’
Mrs Wedderburn gave a feeble cough and said nothing, buying time as she formulated further arguments with which to assail her daughter.
A sound came at the door, then another, like a bit of hemp rope thwacking against the wood.
‘Napoleon!’ Mrs Wedderburn said to Mary. ‘Let him in.’
Mary opened the door and in bounded Napoleon, wagging his tail.
‘Napoleon, my darling. Come here and help me make her see sense.’ Mrs Wedderburn clapped her hands and called to Napoleon. ‘She’s got no business going and listening to all that rotten twaddle, and then coming back here to try to show us how smart she is. Has she, darling?’
As Napoleon came into the room, Miss Wedderburn knelt down, knees together on the carpet, and started playing. As she crawled backwards, the little dog flattened his forelegs and got ready to leap forwards. She screwed up her mouth and suddenly let out a ‘Whooh!’ The little dog jerked himself back with a flick of his body, then gave a bark. She watched him sideways out of the corner of her eye as he sidled up to her and gently took her plump wrist in his mouth.
They carried on playing like that until Mary’s hair had got all untidy with the bumping and romping, and all the powder had come off her nose. Then Napoleon went round behind her and nipped the heel of her shoe.
‘Mum! Look at your dog – he’s bitten my new shoes!’
‘Come here quickly, Napoleon. Don’t bother playing with her.’
Mary stood up, out of breath, and after tidying her hair she brandished her fist at Napoleon. The little dog took refuge under Mrs Wedderburn’s legs, peeping out at Mary with his beady eyes blinking wetly.
Once she’d got her breath back, Mary launched into the holiday discussion again with her mother. Mrs Wedderburn was still suggesting that they go on their summer vacations separately so that the Mas could be catered for, but Mary wasn’t having a bar of it.
‘Anyway, I can’t cook, can I, Mum?’
‘Then you ought to start learning!’ Mrs Wedderburn seized the chance to take a dig at her daughter.
‘I tell you what,’ said Mary. ‘We’ll go together, and we’ll write a letter to Aunt Dolly and get her to come here and cook for them. How’s that? She lives in the countryside, so I bet she’d love to spend a few days in the city. We’ll have to pay her train fare, though.’
‘All right then. You write her the letter, and I’ll pay her train fare,’ agreed her mother.
Miss Wedderburn went to wash her hands, looked at herself in the mirror, put her head to one side and powdered her face. Examining herself from every possible angle, she kept on till the powder was spread evenly and flawlessly over her whole face. Then she fetched her stationery, pen and ink, pushed the small table right up to the drawing-room window, sat down, pulled the pleats of her skirt straight, and stuck the pen in the ink bottle.
A man outside selling apples gave a shout, so she put the pen down and pulled aside the curtain to have a look. Then she picked the pen up again, put her head on one side, drew a few tiny apples on the blotting paper, then lightly flicked the stem of the pen with her middle finger so that the ink came off the nib drop by drop, slowly blotting out the little apples she’d drawn. Next, she stuck the pen back in the ink bottle and inspected her plump hands. She pulled out a nail file and filed her nails, then placed the file on the blotting paper, but, thinking better of it, picked it up again, blew on it, and placed it beside the envelopes. Picking up the pen once more, she flicked a few further blots onto the blotting paper. Some of the blots weren’t perfectly round, so she carefully perfected them with the nib of her pen. And when she’d finished rounding off the blots, she stood up.
‘You write it, Mum. I’ll go and give Napoleon a bath, shall I?’
‘I’ve got to do some shopping!’ Mrs Wedderburn came across the room, holding the little dog. ‘How is it that when you’re writing to your boyfriends, you can dash off five or six pages with no trouble? Very strange, I must say!’
‘Nobody likes writing to their aunts!’
Mary handed her mother the pen, took Napoleon from her and ruffled his ears. ‘Come with me and have a bath, you filthy little creature!’
II
WHAT EXPERIENCE Mr Ma had gained from his three or four months in London didn’t amount to much. He’d managed to find three or four little Chinese restaurants, and went to one of them every day for his lunch. He was by now able to reach home from the shop without needing Ma Wei to guide him. His English had made fair progress, but he’d forgotten quite a bit of grammar in the process, since a lot of working-class English people don’t bother about proper grammar when they speak.
There were no fixed rules to his days. Sometimes he would hurry to the shop at nine o’clock in the morning, and on his own and at leisure rearrange the antiques in the window, as he always thought that Li Tzu-jung had set them out in a tasteless, incorrect manner. Li Tzu-jung had tried lots of times to demonstrate how things should best be displayed and how colours should be matched, so as to attract the attention of passers-by. Mr Ma would give a slight shake of his head, and pretend he hadn’t heard him.
The first time Mr Ma set out the items on display, he held each in both hands as if he was bearing a funeral slab, with his tongue stuck slightly out, holding his breath, not daring to breathe again until he’d set the object down in its place. After he’d done the window a few times, he grew emboldened, and would sometimes deliberately test his own dexterity. He’d pick things up, purposely averting his eyes, just like some airily blasé waiter serving food in a restaurant. Once, when Li Tzu-jung was also in the shop, Mr Ma got even more caught up in his display of nonchalance, and, not content with carrying things in his hands, held a small teapot in his mouth. Twitching his little moustache in a superior smile, he sneaked a sidelong glance at Tzu-jung, thinking, Oh I despise businessmen, of course. But when it comes to business, I’m up there with the best of them!
At this point, just when he was feeling so pleased with himself, his mouth suddenly felt dry and he had to cough. Gravity took its toll on the little teapot and it was smashed to smithereens. In his anxiety to save it he panicked, and the small vase and two plates he was holding became extraordinarily slippery. Li Tzu-jung ran over to relieve him of the two plates, but the neck of the vase was delicate and broke as it hit the floor.
When he’d finished with his window-dressing, Mr Ma went out and took a surreptitious look at the window of the antiques shop next door. Twirling his scrappy string of a moustache, he nodded approvingly in the direction of his own newly arranged window, and confirmed that the other shop had laid out its windows in a most tasteless manner. Yet he had to admit that his neighbour did better trade than him. Unable to divine the reason why, he could only condemn all the English as vulgar and lacking in taste.
The managers of the shop next door were a big, fat old fellow with no hair on his head, and an old woman, also big and fat but with hair on her head, a considerable quantity of it. A number of times they’d chatted to Mr Ma in an attempt to get on familiar terms with him, but he would sharply turn his head away, delivering a considerable snub, after which he would sit in his little chair and reflect upon the matter with a quiet smile. Your business may be doing well, but that doesn’t entitle you to my attention. What rudeness!
Li Tzu-jung advised him time and again to add to his stock, to print a few pam
phlets and catalogues of his wares, and to broaden his range to include things other than Chinese curios.
Mr Ma put him in his place with a few acid remarks. ‘Increase our stock? What we have already takes forever to display, doesn’t it? There’s enough here to make your eyes dizzy as it is!’
Sometimes, as the mood took Mr Ma, he’d stay away from the shop the whole day, and plant flowers and so on for Mrs Wedderburn. When the Mas had first arrived in London, the small patch of garden behind her house had nothing growing in it but a strip of grass and two half-dead dogrose bushes. She was very fond of flowers, but had no time to plant and tend them. Nor could she bear to part with the money to buy seedlings. Her daughter was forever buying cut flowers in town, but likewise professed little interest in growing flowers.
One day, without mentioning it to Mrs Wedderburn, Mr Ma bought a bunch of young plants in town: five or six rosebushes, fifteen or so wallflower seedlings, a heap of dahlia tubers which had just started sprouting, and a few rather unpromising chrysanthemums with very straggly stems and leaves, not looking very green.
He left the flowers in a corner of the garden by the wall, and first watered them with a couple of buckets of water. Then he went into the kitchen, got out the spade and trowel and made a little mound of earth in the middle of the grass, around the edge of which he planted the roses. In the middle he planted the wallflowers in a cross formation. The dahlias he planted at the foot of the walls, and he stuck in all the hopeless chrysanthemums along both sides of the little path leading to the back door.
When he’d planted all the flowers, he put away the spade and trowel, collecting a bucket of water on the way, and gave everything a good watering. Then he washed his hands and went to the drawing room to smoke a pipe. After that, he hurried off to the shop, tracked down some small sticks and some string and came rushing back, puffing and panting, to give all the flowers some support by securing them to the sticks with the string. No sooner had he finished tying them than it began to rain softly. He stood in a dreamy daze, watching the flowers gently nod in the rain, and not till the drops had drenched his hair and he was dripping with water did it occur to him to get indoors.
That afternoon, after Mrs Wedderburn had let the dog out for a play in the garden, she came rushing upstairs with wide eyes and mouth agape.
‘Mr Ma! Did you plant the flowers in the garden?’
Mr Ma shifted his pipe to the side of his mouth and gave a small smile.
‘Oh, Mr Ma! It’s so good of you! And very naughty too. Without saying a word! How much did the flowers cost?’
‘I didn’t spend a lot. It’s nice to have a few flowers to look at,’ said Mr Ma, smiling.
‘Are the Chinese fond of flowers then?’ asked Mrs Wedderburn. It would never ever occur to the English that there might be other flower lovers in the world besides themselves.
‘Yes, of course they are!’ Mr Ma caught the implication of her words, but, disinclined to argue, simply emphasised his words and squeezed out a rather pallid half-smile. He paused vacantly for a moment, then said, ‘After my wife died, I used to amuse myself planting flowers when I’d nothing else to do.’
At the thought of his wife, Mr Ma’s eyes moistened somewhat. Mrs Wedderburn nodded, recalling her husband. When he was alive, that little garden had been full of blooms all year round.
Mr Ma stood up and invited her to sit down, and the two of them chatted for more than an hour. She asked what sort of clothes Mrs Ma had liked wearing, and what sort of hats. He asked her what her husband’s favourite tobacco had been, and what government post he’d held. They chatted on with ever-decreasing understanding but ever-increasing warmth and amity. He told her that Mrs Ma used to wear a long sleeveless jacket of purple Chiang-ning silk. She’d never seen one of those. She told him that Mr Wedderburn had never been in the civil service. Mr Ma couldn’t for the life of him imagine why anyone should by choice have failed to become a government official . . .
That evening when Miss Wedderburn came home, her mother, without giving her any time even to take off her hat, rushed her into the back garden.
‘Come here, Mary, hurry. I’ve got something new to show you.’
‘Oh, Mummy, what’ve you been doing, spending money on flowers like this?’ said Mary, bending down and sniffing at a flower.
‘Me? Mr Ma bought and planted them. You’re always on about how bad the Chinese are, but now look!’
Mary hastily straightened up and stopped smelling them. ‘Nothing particularly amazing about planting a few flowers.’
‘I’m just trying to show you that the Chinese appreciate flowers like civilised people do . . .’
‘If you like flowers that doesn’t mean you don’t also like murdering people and setting places on fire! It’s true, Mum! I saw three photos in today’s paper, all taken in Shanghai. It looked awful, Mum. They chop off people’s heads and hang them on telegraph poles. And that’s not all – in the photo there was a crowd of people – men and women, all ages – watching it just as if they were watching a film.’As she said this, Mary’s face went very pale, her lips trembled uncontrollably and she fled back into the house.
After planting the flowers in the back garden, Mr Ma acquired a new duty: whenever Mrs Wedderburn was too busy, he took Napoleon out into the street for a stroll and some recreation. The little garden had originally been Napoleon’s playground, but the dog, seeing an insect, would bound high into the air to try to catch it. And as he jumped, the insect would fly away but the flowers would get knocked over. So he just had to be taken out for a stroll each day, and consequently Mr Ma acquired the noble task of doing so.
Miss Mary tried again and again to dissuade her mother from letting the elder Ma take the dog out. She’d heard that the Chinese ate dog meat. What if it just so happened that the elder Ma got peckish on the walk, and cut Napoleon to bits with his penknife? What on earth would she do then?
‘I’ve asked Mr Ma, and he says the Chinese don’t eat dogs,’ said Mrs Wedderburn, her face stubbornly set.
‘I’ve got it! Now I know what’s got you, Mum!’ said Mary, deliberately teasing her mother. ‘He’s fond of flowers. He’s fond of dogs. All he needs now is to be fond of babies!’ (The English assumption is that a man who likes flowers, dogs and little children makes a good husband.)
Mrs Wedderburn said nothing, just glared at her daughter, half frowning, half smiling.
Ma Wei tried to persuade his father not to take the dog out, as he’d seen the crowd of children who would follow Mr Ma, jeering and hooting, when he led the dog along the streets or strolled with it around some vacant site.
‘Look at old yellow face! Look at his face – all yellow and puffed up . . .’
One time a little mousy-haired boy with no front teeth even ran up and tugged at Mr Ma’s coat. Another one, a miserable little waif, picked Napoleon up and ran off with him, to make Mr Ma chase him. And once Mr Ma started pursuing him, all the other children lifted their heads and shouted, ‘Look at his legs! Just like a Pekingese! Tommy!’ – the urchin must have been called Tommy – ‘Hurry! Don’t let him catch you!’
‘Tommy!’ shouted a shrill-voiced little girl, with hair nearly as red as her cheeks. ‘Hold onto the dog. Don’t let it drop!’
When they teach history at the average school in England, they don’t teach anything about China. The only people who know anything Chinese are those who’ve been to China as merchants or as missionaries. These two types of people are usually not well disposed towards the Chinese, and when they return to England and talk about China, they don’t talk about its better aspects. And since China’s not a strong nation, and has no navy or army worth the name, how can it possibly avoid being an object of scorn for Europeans, who judge a nation’s civilisation solely on the quality of its military? What’s more, China still hasn’t produced any trailblazing scientists, literary figures or explorers. It doesn’t even send a team to the Olympics. Remember all that, and it’s not hard to see why Chinese
aren’t held in high regard.
Ma Wei tried to talk his father out of his daily walk with Napoleon, but his father wouldn’t listen. Mr Ma collected a large number of cigarette cards, intending to try to bribe that crowd of little mischief-makers with them. In the event, it only made the children enjoy their mischief all the more.
‘Call him “Chink”! Call him “Chink”! When you call him that, he gives you fag cards!’
‘Tommy! Grab his dog!’
III
IN THE small red house in Lancaster Road, Mrs Ely issued her command: the two Mas, Mrs Wedderburn and daughter, and her own elder brother were to be invited round for a meal. The first to jump to attention in response was of course the Reverend Ely.
Madam Ely held absolute power within the household. Her son and husband didn’t question her. Her daughter, now grown up, wasn’t quite as obedient as she had once been. Children get more and more difficult to deal with as they grow up, whereas husbands become easier to control as they grow old. Why otherwise would so many Western women choose to marry old fellows?
Mrs Ely didn’t issue commands with her voice alone – frankly, her whole being was a command. She had only to widen her eyes – big fawny-brown orbs, at least three times the size of her husband’s, and with permanently puffy eyelids – and husband, daughter and son would all shut their mouths, while the atmosphere would become as stern and solemn as in a court of law.
She had a little black moustache – very soft, very black and very heavy. That, surely, was the reason why the Reverend Ely had never grown a moustache? He didn’t dare compete with her. She was a head taller than him too, tall, big, and strong to boot. Her face was gaunt, and her skin looked as tough as cement and chopped-hemp plaster. On either side of her nose ran a deep, narrow furrow, right down to her mouth. When she wept – even Mrs Ely occasionally wept! – her tears had these handy channels down which to flow, but, drying almost as soon as they left her eyes, they never made it far. Her hair was a dirty white, and tied very loosely in a bun at the back of her head. If you looked at it absent-mindedly, you’d imagine you were looking at the torn-up kapok stuffing of a padded slipper.