by Yunte Huang
A feeling of having been vanquished, of having been taken prisoner, overcame her. Worse, there seemed no hope of escape. The marriage agreement had been concluded. The wedding would probably take place next year. What means could she use to resist? What means did she have to resist? Still worse, she had heard that the man she loved was also about to get married. At the latest it would probably be this winter. Last week when they had met and talked at the Wangjiang teahouse, had he not said to her, “Meimei,** circumstances demand that we part. Even if I was not engaged, would Uncle want a poor orphan like me? And even if Uncle agreed, I’m only a clerk in the army divisional headquarters. Could I make you happy? I know you’re willing to suffer, but how can I bear to see the one I love sacrifice on my account? The doctor says I have tuberculosis. I probably don’t have long to live. That’s even more reason not to sacrifice your future.”††
Two rows of tears streamed from Mei’s eyes, but they were tears of happiness. She was glad she had tasted the bittersweet joy of true love. She sank once more into her memories, reliving that moment as if it were displayed before her like a motion picture. When her emotions had reached their peak, she had looked to see that there was no one around and pressed her face against her cousin’s shoulder. Then slowly, half unconsciously, she moved her lips closer to his. A shiver ran through his whole body. He drew gently back and said in an unsteady voice, “Cousin, I have tuberculosis.” Oh! Oh! Tuberculosis! Will it keep me from embracing this man while he is alive? Will it only let me cry at his grave?
A wild passion overtook Mei’s heart. She did not blame her cousin for his seeming aloofness. On the contrary, she was even more grateful, felt even more respect and love for his pure and honest nature. She wanted to know only why she did not have the right to love the one she loved, why she was only worthy of being a prisoner, a piece of soft, warm flesh to be toyed with. She hated the teachers at school and the old revolutionary spinster headmistress, Miss Cui, for never having discussed problems of this kind.
These two questions went around and around in her mind, but she had no answers. Finally, her nerves, half numb with exhaustion, led her to that age-old explanation: an unfortunate fate. This simple answer wrenched her, tortured her, haunted her, gnawed at her until the chirping of the birds praising the dawn aroused her with a start. The sun shone obliquely on the eaves of the house. The clock in the belly of the Negro doll ticked steadily. All was beautiful. All was calm.
Mei rolled over and sat up. In a daze, she balanced herself on the edge of the bed. She could not believe a whole night had passed. She noticed mosquito bites all over her pale upper arm. Her neck also itched. When she walked toward the window to look in the mirror, she saw that there were faint blue circles under her eyes and that her cheeks were flushed blood-red. Putting down the mirror, she sank into a nearby chair and stared vacantly at the doll sitting atop the pear-wood table.
The big hand on the Negro doll’s belly had marked the passing of a full ten minutes when Mei suddenly jumped up. She dashed off a short letter, combed her hair, changed into a pale lilac muslin skirt and blouse, and called one of the family’s maids to bring her breakfast. Her lips had recovered their smile, and her eyes, which minutes before were suffering from lack of sleep, once again radiated determination.
Mei went to school as usual. As she dropped the letter into a mailbox on the way, an unconscious smile crossed her face. No formal classes were held that day. Yesterday’s rally had already stirred up some of these normally sedate young ladies. Everywhere could be heard the buzzing of female voices absorbed in curious gossip. The old revolutionary, Headmistress Cui, suddenly became an object of great interest. Wherever she went, her long braid bouncing behind her,‡‡ there were always pockets of students secretly watching her every move. The reading room in particular was alive with activity. Group after group of students fought over month-old newspapers from Shanghai and Hankou to see how the students in Beijing had set fire to the minister’s house and beaten up a high government official, to see how afterward they had taken to the streets to make speeches, and to see how several hundreds of them had been arrested by the police. A few of the more discerning girls went a step further and searched out five or six dusty volumes of New Youth magazine. The whole school shook with nervous agitation.
Mei was no exception. But unlike the others, she was not absorbed in this intense research into recent events. Rather, she used it as a means to make the time pass more quickly. In reality, she was preoccupied with the date she had made with Cousin Wei Yu for later that day. She was also afraid that she would hear people say things like “the dry goods store sells nothing but Japanese products.” Whenever Mei ran into classmates who were talking about the boycott, she could not help feeling a bit jumpy, as if her own hidden sins had been discovered.
At ten past four Mei sneaked away to the Ziyun Pavilion. A tall, emaciated young man was already there waiting for her. They smiled and stood gazing silently at one another, then walked slowly to a large wutong tree behind the pavilion, each deep in thought, as if pondering what to say first.
“Meimei, your letter gave me quite a scare.” The young man spoke softly, his gentle eyes fixed on Mei’s face.
Mei replied with a tender smile, “Why weren’t you able to sleep well last night? You look pale and your eyes are a bit swollen. You were crying last night, weren’t you?”
The young man sighed faintly, hung his head, and allowed two imperceptible tears to drip down his cheeks.
Mei did not reply. Her lips drew together as if to speak, but she held back. She kicked a clump of grass at the foot of the tree with her toe and began mechanically fingering the hem of her muslin blouse. She hesitated for a full half minute before she said calmly, “Cousin Yu, I don’t know what was on my mind last night. But you needn’t worry. It doesn’t matter. Last night was nonsense, meaningless nonsense. But this morning I came to a decision. Let’s work out a plan to go away.”
Wei Yu raised his head in alarm and fixed his gentle gaze on Mei as if he had not understood what she meant by “go away.” Nevertheless, a look of intense gratitude was revealed as his eyes slowly filled with tears. Mei smiled and added softly, “If we go away together, there might still be hope. If we split up, the future will be unendurable!”
Tears were his only reply. Two thoughts did battle in the mind of this overly sensitive young man. He could not bear to hurt her by saying no, but he felt he should not say yes. After a painful silence, he forced out these few words: “I am not worthy of such true love, Meimei.”
This time it was Mei’s face that turned pale. She began to have the uneasy feeling that the man she loved was a coward.
“I’m a sick man. At most I’ll live another two or three years. I don’t deserve to enjoy life. Even more, I shouldn’t let the shadow hanging over my life blot out your chances for happiness. If you continue to think of me, then I will die with a smile on my face. Knowing that your future will be a good one, I’ll be able to die content.”
Although there was a slight tremor in his voice, he spoke these words with resolve. He had the aura of a martyr about to die for his principles. He shed no more tears. His cheeks were flushed with excitement.
Mei silently bowed her head. Then suddenly she spoke with total conviction: “My future most certainly will not be good.”
“Huh?”
“Because I don’t love him. I hate him.”
“Do you hate him for the reason you mentioned last time? If he’s too aggressive, it’s probably because he loves you so much.”
Mei could not but purse her lips and laugh. She shot a glance at Wei Yu and said with an air of disapproval, “When did you learn how to defend other people so well?”
“I’m not defending him. I’m just telling you the truth.”
“You call that the truth?”
Mei spoke sharply. She was clearly angry. If this had not been her trusted Wei Yu, she would certainly have thought Liu Yuchun had bribed him to lobby o
n Liu’s behalf. But coming from Wei Yu’s lips this sort of talk was quite unexpected. She looked at him intently, waiting for an answer.
“Meimei, I was wrong. Please forgive me. Of course I don’t want someone else to love you. But at the same time I really wish there was someone who could truly love you and whom you could love in return.” Wei Yu tried to dispel his feelings of guilt by defending himself.
“When did you start having such thoughts?”
“Since I found out that I had tuberculosis and knew I couldn’t make you happy.”
Again, tuberculosis. Mei’s heart pounded. She sensed that the dark shadow of this disease would tear them apart forever. She wanted to curse this godforsaken tuberculosis, but Wei Yu had already resumed speaking.
“Last year I didn’t feel this way. Meimei, at that time we were both very shy. We never talked openly about our feelings. But in our hearts we both knew. We thought about each other all the time. At that time I hated myself for being too poor. I resented Uncle for not giving his consent. But recently I’ve been reading some stories and magazines and my way of thinking has changed. . . .”
“Now you just speak the truth, huh?” There was considerable dismay in her voice as she interrupted him.
“No. I’ve just come to realize that when you love someone it doesn’t mean you have to possess her. To really love someone is to put her happiness ahead of your own. . . .”
“People only say that sort of thing in novels,” Mei interrupted Wei Yu a second time. Clearly she was not pleased with what he had to say. Moreover, she did not understand what he meant by “possess.”
“It’s not from novels. It’s philosophy—Tolstoy’s philosophy,” Wei Yu corrected her earnestly. But noticing Mei’s exhausted appearance, he lowered his head and discontinued his argument.
There was a short silence. For the first time they heard the sound of the cicadas chirping among the leaves of the wutong tree. The breeze rustled Mei’s muslin skirt. The sun shone obliquely on the sides of the pavilion. Mei wrinkled her eyebrows slightly and stared into space. In the end it was Mei who spoke first, her eyes gliding over Wei Yu’s face. “That business of yours later this year, has the date been set?”
He replied with a resigned nod of the head. But after a brief interval, he began to defend himself: “It was all my uncle’s idea. I told him that right now I’m not in a position to take care of a family, but he refused to listen.”
“But did you bring up your tuberculosis and the fact that you have only three or four years to live?”
“No. It wouldn’t have done any good.”
“Then aren’t you going to hurt her future?”
Wei Yu looked at Mei with a puzzled expression. For a moment he could not think of an appropriate reply.
“Do you think it’s all right because you don’t love her? But how can you know that she doesn’t love you? How can you turn around and cold-bloodedly ruin the life of someone who loves you?”
“I can’t worry about everything. Even if it will destroy her, it’s my uncle who is the executioner. I’m only the sword. A sword can’t move by itself.”
“But when someone wants to throw herself on the blade of this sword, then it is able to come alive, isn’t it? Then it is able to move out of the way!”
With this mild rebuttal, Mei turned her back on Wei Yu and began walking slowly toward the pavilion. She could no longer suppress the nagging suspicion, the uncomfortable sensation that gnawed at her insides. Her cousin was too passive, too timid. He was too lazy. Wei Yu only wanted to ensure his own immediate comfort. So much so that he was unwilling to brave danger for the one he loved. He placed his own comfort above all else.
By the time she stepped up onto the stone steps in front of the pavilion she could bear it no longer and turned around. But when she did, it was only to find that Wei Yu was right behind her. His feelings of apprehension brought her to a halt. They looked at each other for several seconds before Wei Yu spoke excitedly. “I’m a weakling, a good-for-nothing weakling. Meimei, you are wrong to love me. But you know what’s in my heart. I worship you. To me you are a goddess. I beg you not to be miserable because of me. I beg you to forget me. I beg you to despise me. I beg you, just let me lock my love for you away in my heart; just let me repay your kindness to me with my tears. Ah! I might as well tell you everything. I’m an evil person. Two months ago, in the middle of the night, when I was thinking of you, I found myself hugging the covers passionately, squeezing them so tight, as if they were you. Oh, I’m a beast. It’s only in the daytime, when I stand before you, that I become human again, an honest gentleman. I detest myself. When I read stories, when I look at magazines, it is in the hope of deriving some comfort from their pages, in the hope of discovering in their pages a way to save myself and save you. Now I’ve found it! A glorious ideal has relieved me of my agony, has made up for losing you. Now if I could only see you live a long prosperous life, I would be the happiest man in the world!”
Having said this, Wei Yu opened wide his troubled eyes and stared off into space. It was as if there, beyond the treetops, amid the glow of the setting sun, was the new, glorious ideal to which he owed his salvation. As if there in the distance stood an infinitely compassionate, infinitely sympathetic sage, beckoning to him with a raised hand.
Tears the shape of pearls welled up in his eyes. Was this a natural expression of his humanity, or was it the last remnant of his desire? Wei Yu was not certain himself. He merely felt an extraordinary sense of relief, as though he had just spit out something that had been lodged in his guts a long, long time.
Mei leaned against a pillar of the pavilion engrossed in thought. She did not reply. After a while she turned around and, with a strained expression, said softly, “I know what is in your heart. It’s not just fate that’s brought us to this impasse, is it? Please don’t worry. I understand what you’re saying. But please, spare me the philosophy from now on. I also have principles. I refuse to be a prisoner. It’s getting late, Cousin Yu. Good-bye!”
Mei turned and took one last look at Wei Yu, then followed the path on the right of the pavilion and walked determinedly away. Wei Yu followed slowly behind her. After about ten steps she stopped, turned around once more, and said to him, “Those stories and magazines you spoke of, I also want to read them. Would you send them to my house?”
Suddenly the evening breeze blew through Mei’s muslin blouse, revealing the hem of her pale pink camisole. Like rosy clouds it dazzled Wei Yu’s eyes and aroused his passions. Instinctively he rushed forward, about to press Mei to his bosom, but he instantly recovered his composure and stopped. In a daze, he nodded his head, turned toward a different path, and ran away.
Mei returned home bewildered. Her image of Wei Yu had begun to blur. She had always felt she understood Wei Yu completely. Now she was not sure. A few strange books had changed her Wei Yu. But how they had changed him, Mei did not really know. She just felt as though some kind of mysterious spirit had possessed Wei Yu, making his way of thinking different from other people’s, different from her own. He had become even more cowardly, even more indifferent. It could even be said that he had become frigid and aloof. But that was not the whole story. Beneath his cowardice he had a new daring and determination; beneath that icy aloofness burned a passionate desire to sacrifice himself for the happiness of another.
There was only one thing of which Mei was still absolutely certain, and that was Wei Yu’s faithfulness to her. This gave her incomparable comfort. In imitation of Wei Yu, she had come close to saying, “Even if my future knows no happiness, as long as there is someone who loves me with all his heart, my life will not have been lived in vain.”
In such a mood Mei began to feel the days pass more easily. At the same time her native eagerness to explore new things encouraged her to devour the stories and magazines Wei Yu sent over. She thirsted for an immediate knowledge of the mysterious spirit that had changed Wei Yu.
As for the fervent activity of the
“patriotic movement,” she was still just a bystander. She could not get herself interested. Although the words “inspect the dry goods store for Japanese goods” occasionally upset her, when she thought of her decision “not to be a prisoner” she became inured, feeling that the matter of Japanese products at the dry goods store had, after all, nothing to do with her. She viewed the continued progress of this convulsive mass movement as she had before, as something totally unrelated to her own personal interests.
But the patriotic movement to boycott Japanese goods was slowly developing a new focus. The students of the city’s highest educational institution, the Teachers’ College, had proclaimed a new slogan: “Liberalize social relations between the sexes.” Mei recalled that several of Wei Yu’s magazines had mentioned this, but she had not paid it any attention. Following Wei Yu’s instructions, she had read only the essays on Tolstoy. The stories were also by Tolstoy. In her excitement she had already read them twice, but they did not seem to say anything about open social relations. With a new curiosity and hope she perused them yet again.
One day on the way home from school Mei caught a glimpse of several eye-catching magazines arranged in the window of a bookseller’s shop. Each and every one had the word “new” in the title. On the front covers were also prominently displayed article titles such as “The Cannibalism of Traditional Morality.” She looked at them with surprise and joy and regretted that she was not carrying any money. The next day on the way to school she made a point of deliberately stopping in to buy one, but they were all sold out.