by Yunte Huang
I now knew the outline of her childhood and life with her father, but what about her mother? Was she alive or dead? Ermei never mentioned her.
3
The weather seemed to be changing. Over the last several days my small stuffy room filled with putrid air like in a steam oven, making me dizzy. In this climate, as spring turns to summer, I usually develop a seasonal case of nerves, weakening my disposition—it drove me half mad. I began to take walks at night, when there was little traffic on the street. It did me good to stroll down an empty road alone, gazing up at the stars in the narrow strip of deep navy sky, and let my mind wander off into fantasy. On such intoxicating spring nights, I could do nothing but walk around aimlessly, and wouldn’t go home until dawn. Exhausted, I would go to bed immediately and sleep till noon. Sometimes I didn’t even get up until around the time Ermei returned from work. With sufficient sleep, my health slowly improved. Ordinarily my stomach could handle no more than half a pound of bread, but since my regimen of nightly exercises, my appetite had increased to almost double, a disaster for my purse but good news for my brain, which could now focus, being better nourished. After my strolls and before bed, I even wrote a few short stories in the style of Edgar Allan Poe. Reading them over, I found they weren’t bad. I revised them a few times, made copies, and then mailed them off. Feeling a slim hope, I also remembered that there had been no news at all about those translations I had submitted earlier. Pretty soon, I forgot about these stories, too.
As for Ermei, I now only saw her occasionally when she returned in the afternoon, since I was usually still asleep when she left her room for work in the morning. But I sensed, for some unknown reason, her attitude toward me had reverted back to the suspicion she harbored when we first met. Sometimes she would give me a searching glance, her dark, clear eyes seeming reproachful and full of admonition.
It had been over twenty days since my move to this slum. One afternoon, when I was reading by candlelight a novel I had bought from a used bookstore, Ermei hurried upstairs and said to me, “There’s a mailman downstairs. He wants you to bring your seal and sign for a letter.”
With these words, her look of suspicion became more pronounced, as if suggesting, “Aha, now we know what you are up to.” Annoyed by her attitude, I replied sharply, “What letter? I’m not expecting a letter. It can’t be mine.”
My reply had somehow made her feel triumphant, and a smile instantly appeared on her face. “Go take a look yourself,” she said coldly. “Only you know your own affairs.”
At that moment I heard the impatient mailman call from downstairs, “A registered letter!”
When I got the letter and opened it, my heart skipped a beat. It turned out one of my translations of a German story had been accepted by a magazine. The letter contained a five-dollar money order. I was about to go broke, and now these five bucks would not only cover my next month’s rent due soon, but also pay for food in the next few days. No one could guess how critical these five dollars were to me at this moment.
The next afternoon, I went to the post office and cashed the money order. It didn’t take long after walking in the bright sunlit street before I was soon perspiring heavily. Noticing the look of other people on the street, and then looking down at myself, I couldn’t help but feel shame. Beads of sweat ran down my head and neck. All those late nights when I wandered through the streets, with a spring chill lingering in deserted lanes, there had been no sun to contend with before dawn broke in the east. On those nights I had not felt that my ragged padded gown was out of season. But now, on a warm afternoon under the spring sun, I still wore the same shabby gown, strolling down the streets, unaware that my fellow creatures had all adapted to the change of seasons. How could I not feel ashamed of myself? For a moment I became oblivious to the fact that my rent would be due soon and my wallet was almost empty; I started walking toward the clothing stores on Zha Road. Not having been out and about in broad daylight for a while, I momentarily felt I had entered paradise as I watched cars and rickshaws carrying well-dressed young men and women to and fro on the streets, roadside silk shops and jewelry stores displaying luxurious items, and I listened to the beehive-like cacophony of human voices, footfalls, and bell rings. Oblivious to my own existence, and wanting to join in the songs and dance of my fellow citizens, I inadvertently started humming an old Peking Opera tune. But this illusory nirvana was shattered by the sudden ringing of a bell as I tried to cross the street and turn into Zha Road. I looked up and saw that a trolley bus was charging toward me and the fat driver, leaning halfway out of the window, glared at me and cursed loudly:
“You pigheaded imbecile! Are you blind? You deserve to be run over like a yellow dog!”
I yielded, feeling foolish, as the northbound trolley bus rumbled past in a cloud of dust. Out of nowhere, a fit of laughter overtook me. I didn’t stop laughing until I noticed passersby were giving me dirty looks. Blushing, I entered Zha Road.
At the clothier’s, I asked about prices for lined gowns and haggled to the best of my ability. The clerks, as if coached by the same master, all looked down their noses, mocking me. “You must be kidding! Don’t bother us if you can’t afford to buy anything.”
Finally I arrived at a small shop on the Fifth Avenue. At this point I realized there was no way I could get a lined gown, so I settled on a plain cotton gown and immediately changed into it. Carrying the old padded robe in my arms, I walked toward home in silence, while contemplating an idea.
“The money won’t be enough for anything now. Why not just go on a spree and be done with it?” I thought to myself. I remembered the day when Ermei brought me bread and bananas. Without a second thought, I stepped into the confectioner’s and bought a dollar’s worth of chocolates, banana candies, and cakes. Standing at the counter and waiting for the clerk to wrap them up, I suddenly remembered that I hadn’t had a bath in a month. Why not go and have one?
By the time I had the bath and got to Dent Road with my two packages, my padded robe in one hand and a bag of goodies in the other, it was already quite late, with shops along the street lit up, traffic scarce, and a cold evening wind from the Bund sending me into shivers. Arriving back at my room, I lit a candle and looked at the door of Ermei’s room to find she hadn’t returned yet. Even though I was starving, I wasn’t willing to open the bag of goodies. I wanted to wait for Ermei to come home and share them with her. I started reading, while swallowing hard from hunger. After a long wait, Ermei still had not come home. At some point, I was overcome by fatigue and fell asleep on a pile of books.
4
The sound of Ermei’s footsteps on the ladder woke me. I saw that the candle had burned down two inches. I asked her what time it was, and she said, “The ten-o’clock siren’s just sounded.”
“Why did you come home so late today?”
“The factory has received more orders, so they want us to work night shifts. More pay, but too tiring.”
“Can’t you refuse the overtime hours?”
“They are short of workers. We have no choice.”
With this, tears ran down her face. I thought she was crying from exhaustion, and felt pity for her, but I was also a little amused to see that she was still a child at heart. Opening the bag of candies, I invited her to try some, saying, “It takes time to get used to night shifts; that’s why you feel so tired. But when you get used to it, it’ll be nothing.”
She sat quietly by my makeshift desk, ate a few chocolates, and glanced at me as if she wanted to say something but couldn’t. So I urged her, “Do you want to tell me something?”
After another pause, she stammered a question:
“I . . . I . . . wanted to ask you this. Recently you went out every night. Were you mixed up with bad men?”
I was taken aback by this idea, her suspicion of me mixing with thieves and gangsters all these nights. When I stayed silent, she was convinced that she must be right about me and had found me out. “Why must you eat such fine food and we
ar such fine clothes?” She tried to persuade me, speaking gently but pleading. “Do you know what you are doing is risky? What if you get caught? How would you face other people then? We’d let bygones be bygones, but from now on I beg you to stop. . . .”
My eyes widened, my jaw dropped, I stared at her, speechless, for her ideas were so absurd that I didn’t know how to respond. Pausing for a second, she resumed:
“Take your smoking, for instance, if you quit, you can at least save a few coppers a day. I advised you long ago not to smoke, especially not the brand made by my hated factory, but you won’t listen.”
Again her eyes welled up with tears. I supposed she was crying out of resentment for her factory, but my heart wouldn’t allow myself that idea; instead, I convinced myself that her tears were shed for my sake. I mused on this for a moment, waiting for her to calm down, and then told her everything: how the registered letter had come about yesterday, how I had cashed the money order and gone on a shopping spree today, and my insomnia and the necessity of going out for long walks every night to calm my nerves. Listening to my explanations, she began to believe in me. When I was done, she noticeably blushed, lowering her head to avoid my eyes, and said shyly, “Oh, I was wrong, I was wrong. Please don’t mind what I said, I didn’t mean any harm. Your behavior was so strange, that’s why my thoughts went to crazy ideas. As long as you work hard, it will all be fine. The thing you just mentioned, what is it called again? One piece can sell for five dollars. If you can do one a day, how wonderful will that be?”
Touched by her naïveté, I suddenly had an unthinkable urge, a desire to reach out and snatch her into my arms. But my senses checked me, saying, “Commit no sin! Don’t you know the shape you’re in? Do you really want to poison this pure girl? Devil, devil, you have no right to love anyone now!”
When I had the sudden notion to embrace her, I shut my eyes for a few seconds. When reason won out, I opened my eyes again, and felt my surroundings brighter than before. With a gentle smile, I said to her, “It’s getting late, you should go to bed. Haven’t you got work to do in the morning? I promise you, I will quit smoking from now on.”
At this, she stood up instantly, and went happily back to her room.
After she left, I lit another candle, and sat there thinking things over. “From the fruits of my labor, the first five dollars I made, I have spent three. Adding to what I originally had, a bit over a dollar, I’ll have only a few dimes left after paying the rent. What shall I do?
“I could pawn my old padded robe, but I’m afraid no pawnshop will take it.
“This girl is pitiable. But my own situation is worse. She doesn’t want to work and yet the job forces her to work overtime. I want to work and yet I can’t find a job.
“Maybe I can try manual labor? But can my soft noodle limbs handle the weight of a rickshaw?
“I could kill myself; if I had the courage, I would have done it long ago. But since the idea still appeals to me, it means I’m not a complete coward.
“Aha, what did that trolley bus driver call me today?
“Yellow dog! That’s a good name for me.
“. . . . . .”
Out of my mind’s unconnected and scattered thoughts, I couldn’t find one good idea to dig myself out of the plight. A siren from a nearby factory sounded; it must have just announced midnight. I got up and put on my old padded robe, blew out the candle, and went out for a walk.
By now the inhabitants of the slum had all gone quietly to sleep. On Dent Road, facing me, there stood the modern blocks of Rixinli, with a few high windows lit up with colored lights. Balalaika music and snatches of melancholic songs, clear and lyrical, drifted into the chilly dead of night—probably it was a White Russian émigré making her living as a singer. Above it all, a layer of ashen clouds, heavy like decaying corpses, draped themselves over the sky. Where there was a tear in the drapery, one or two stars blinked through. But around these stars, even the dark sky appeared to harbor a gloomy and mysterious sadness.
July 15, 1923
(Translated by Yunte Huang and Glenn Mott)
HE HAIMING
(1887–1944)
Born in Hong Kong and a native of Hunan, He Haiming was an important member of the School of Mandarin Duck and Butterfly, a genre of popular fiction that features romantic love, knights-errant, scandals, and detective mysteries. Early in life He attended a teachers’ college in Hubei and then a military school, where he befriended young revolutionaries aspiring to overthrow the Qing monarchy. He was jailed for his editorship of a radical magazine and was sentenced to death, but the Wuchang Uprising in July 1911, which led to the demise of Qing Dynasty, saved him from death row. After a brief sojourn in Japan, he returned to Shanghai in 1915 and made a living by writing stories that often portray courtesan love. Despite his success, the income from writing was hardly sufficient to support his life of extravagance and debauchery. He died in poverty in Nanjing during the Japanese occupation.
For the Love of Her Feet
The store selling medium-priced leather footwear was located next to a large amusement park, so that the men and women entering and exiting the park each day had to pass by the storefront. Nearly everyone inside could see the bustle. The store consisted of two and a half stories, with an interior layout as follows. The upper story was made up of offices for the manager and the various bookkeepers; it also served as a storage area for a certain amount of stock. The lower story was the shop, with the commotion of a bevy of clerks making sales. The remaining half story was the basement, which housed the only factory for the enterprise.
An apprentice named Ah Fa, who had just completed his initial training, worked in this factory. He was only seventeen but had already labored in the basement for three years.
Three whole years! For a young man, shouldn’t they be as precious as gold? Wasn’t it regrettable to have to spend them in an underground factory? And yet, the skill of putting together shoes by hand had undeniably been acquired there, so that the time did not seem to have been expended in vain. It’s just that the fervent spirit of youth could never actually be shut up in any dungeon. The two street-level windows never stopped flashing with light, letting in sights of the outside world for him, as if to keep him enticed.
The daily routine of his life, on the other hand, was utterly monotonous. He was a very tiny person in a very tiny place, using his very tiny hands to do a very tiny job. Whenever he looked around, his tools and the workbench next to him all appeared so small. In his seemingly detached world of limited sunshine, everything was miniaturized according to scale. Still, he was able to leave this workspace in spirit, to uncover those little eyeballs that so rarely encountered direct sunlight, to peek semiconsciously out a street-level window time and time again. But would this limited line of vision possibly allow him to see everything in human society? Could it show him the kaleidoscopic world that he imagined existed outside his half-buried environment?
The reader ought to know that according to practice, basement windows of this sort were situated at sidewalk level along the thoroughfare. The line of vision of anyone looking out from them was exactly at the shoe level of passersby. Hence, the result of Ah Fa’s close observation of human society outside his domain was the sight of different feet—large, small, long, short—as well as shoes of varying styles for both men and women. The sidewalk outside his window, moreover, was a place everyone entering or exiting the amusement park had to pass. So the foot traffic there was far more dense than anywhere else. Bedazzled by the colorful variety of what he saw, he gradually developed a certain expertise at what had begun as curious observation.
“All these feet,” he secretly mused. “What sort of people do they belong to? Why is it that they gad about like that, so thoroughly unrestrained? Can they just be running around outside all day long? Ah, I too have a pair of feet. Why then do I have to confine myself to this little bit of space all the time, without being able to make a single spontaneous move?” His thought
s thus led from the unfettered feet of others to his own confined ones, making him feel the sharp pain of lost freedom. Then his mind began to stir once more. “Don’t those feet constantly go in and out of that park next door? The people go to seek amusement day in and day out, never tiring of doing so. I’ve only been there once myself, during New Year’s. Ah, feet! How unlucky for you to be at the end of my legs! I’m really rather sorry for you.” As if to mock him, the music from the park, carried by the wind, came through the window in waves, the clear and pleasant notes making the itch in his feet all the harder to bear. He so wanted to pick them up and rush right over there. But this dungeon of a basement was watched over by a foreman as if he were a prison guard. No one could escape using just a pair of feet. So even though he had long since flown off in his imagination, he still had to pretend to focus on the work in front of him, to do it over and over. The stitch after hempen stitch he was applying to the shiny black leather of a pair of women’s shoes seemed also to be sewing up the inner chambers of his heart. Who was there to know his pain, or to comfort him in his depression?
The greater his suffering and vexation, the more he liked to peek out the window, as if searching for the comfort he craved. For a long, long time, he found nothing at all. But looking out like that did add to his powers of perception. He was actually able to identify the feet of a good number of men and women who frequented the park. Among them was a pair belonging to a female, which he never tired of looking at, and which he could never erase from his mind. It is reasonable to suppose that any cobbler would naturally have a heightened ability to judge the aesthetics of feet. This particularly feminine pair was neither too large nor too small, too fat nor too thin. They were perfect in size, and the pair of black leather pumps they had on complemented them well. The flair they displayed when they walked made them especially attractive. No one other than a gorgeous young woman could possibly have feet like those, he thought. After that, in order to substantiate his hypothesis, he once actually hurried over to the window to look up when he saw the feet passing by. Indeed, she was as he imagined. Too bad she was walking past so quickly he was only able to catch her profile. Still, that one glance erased all questions regarding her appearance.