by She Lao
“If that’s the case,” Mr. Cao said hesitantly, “I guess I can put you up here. I have a vacant room; whether for you alone or the two of you, it makes no difference. Do you know if she can wash and mend clothes? If she can, then she can help Gao Ma. The mistress is going to have a baby soon, which will be too much for Gao Ma to handle by herself. The girl will get room and board but no wages. What do you say to that?”
“That would be wonderful.” Xiangzi wore a childishly innocent smile.
“But first I have to check with the mistress. This isn’t something I can decide on my own.”
“I understand. If she has any concerns, I’ll bring Fuzi over to let her see for herself.”
“Good.” Mr. Cao also smiled, pleasantly surprised by Xiangzi’s grasp of the situation. “All right, then, I’ll mention it to the mistress, then you bring Fuzi over in a couple of days. If the mistress gives the nod, that’s how we’ll do it.”
“May I go now, sir?” Xiangzi was anxious to find Fuzi and give her the unimaginably good news.
It was nearly eleven o’clock when Xiangzi left the Cao house, the most captivating time of a winter day. It was a beautiful day, not a cloud in the blue sky, with the sun shining down through the cool, dry air, bringing with it a refreshing warmth. The crisp sound of roosters’ crows, dogs’ barks, and peddlers’ shouts carried a long way; noise made on one street could be heard clearly on the next street over, like the cries of a crane raining down from the sky. The rain hoods on rickshaws were pulled back; the brass fittings sparkled. Camels walked alongside the pavement, slow and steady; automobiles and trams sped up and down the streets. People and horses on the ground and birds passing overhead lent the ancient city a bustling tranquility, joyously chaotic and joyously serene. The blue sky overlay all the sound and the richness of life below, surrounded by trees standing tall and silent.
Xiangzi felt as if his heart were soaring into the sky, where it wheeled along with the pigeons. He had everything: a job, wages, and Fuzi. Those few words had solved all his problems. It was more than he’d dreamed of. What a crisp, clear sky, just like the straightforward, easygoing people of the north. When good things happen to a man, even the weather cooperates. He could not recall a more captivating winter day. To celebrate his happiness, he bought a frozen persimmon, and when he bit into it, the freezing juice seeped down to the roots of his teeth and spread all the way to his chest, making him shudder. He finished it off in a few bites, numbing his tongue and gladdening his heart. As he strode off, in his mind’s eye he could see the compound, the little room, and his beloved Fuzi. If only he could sprout wings and fly to her! One sight would erase all the bad things that had happened and give him a new start in life. He was even more expectant now than he’d been when he went to see Mr. Cao. The older man was his friend and master, each of them helping the other. But she was more than a friend; she was going to give herself to him, and two people would emerge from their hell on earth, wipe away their tears, and walk forward hand in hand. What Mr. Cao said had moved him, but Fuzi could move him without saying a word. He had spoken openly and honestly with Mr. Cao and planned to open his heart to Fuzi when he saw her, saying things he would never say to another living person. She was his life; without her, nothing would have any meaning. He could no longer labor just to feed himself. He must rescue her from the room she lived in so they could be together where it was warm and clean, as happy and respectable and affectionate as a pair of lovebirds. She could stop worrying about Er Qiangzi and her two brothers and become Xiangzi’s partner. Er Qiangzi could take care of himself, and her brothers could manage by pulling a rickshaw in tandem or find another trade. But Xiangzi could not do without her. He needed her in every aspect of his life—physical, emotional, even his work—and she needed a man like him.
His impatience nearly drove him to distraction, but he was happy with knowing that Fuzi was the finest woman anywhere and the ideal match for him. He’d been married once and had had an illicit affair, had been in contact with the beautiful and the repulsive, the old and the young, but none of those women had found a place in his heart—they were just women, not true companions. Granted, she was not the chaste maiden he’d dreamed of, but that only made her someone to pity and the ideal person to help him. A naïve country girl might be wholesome and unspoiled, but she would not have Fuzi’s ability and intelligence. And what about him, a man whose heart was stained? They were well suited, neither one better nor worse than the other, like two cracked urns that both held water and stood side by side.
However he looked at it, it was an ideal match. With this in mind, he turned to more practical matters. First, he would ask Mr. Cao for a one-month advance on his wages so he could buy her a padded gown and some decent shoes before he took her to see Mrs. Cao. Presentably dressed in a new gown and plain but clean shoes, spotless from head to toe, given her appearance, her youth, and her impressive manner, she would, without question, win over Mrs. Cao.
When he arrived, drenched with sweat, at the neglected gateway, it was like a long-delayed homecoming. He found the dilapidated gate, the crumbling wall, and the gateway arch, topped by patches of dead grass, so deeply endearing. He passed through the gate and went straight to Fuzi’s room, opening the door without waiting to knock or calling to her. He recoiled from what he found. A middle-aged woman was sitting on the brick bed, wrapped in a tattered quilt in the unheated room. Xiangzi stood dumbfounded in the doorway. “What’s wrong with you?” the woman asked. “Has somebody died? What’s the idea of barging into somebody’s home? Who’re you looking for?”
Xiangzi didn’t know what to say. The sweat on his body turned cold. With his hand on the beat-up door, he didn’t dare give up hope. “I’m looking for Little Fuzi.”
“Don’t know her. Come back tomorrow, and next time, don’t just barge in on people. Little Fuzi or Big Fuzi, never heard of her.”
He sat dazed in the gateway for a long time, his mind emptied even of a sense of why he was there. Slowly it started coming back, but limited to thoughts of Fuzi, who walked pointlessly back and forth in his head, like a paper figure in a twirling lantern, first one way and then the other. He seemed to have already forgotten about Fuzi and him, as her image slowly shrank and his heart returned to normal. At that moment the sadness hit him.
When confronted by something that could turn out either good or bad, people will always hope for the best. Maybe she moved, nothing more than that. It was all his fault—why hadn’t he come to see her more often? Shame spurred him into action, wanting to make amends for his failure. First, he had to ask around. So he went back into the compound to get answers from an old neighbor. He left disappointed but still hopeful. Without pausing to eat, he went looking for Er Qiangzi, either him or the two boys. It shouldn’t be hard to find one of them, at least, out on the street.
He asked everyone he met—at rickshaw stands, in teahouses, in other tenement compounds, wherever his feet took him—but by the end of the day, there was no news.
That night he returned to the rickshaw shed, exhausted, but he couldn’t stop thinking about what had happened. After a day of disappointments, he held out little hope for the days to come. The poor die easily and are just as easily forgotten. Could Fuzi already have left this world? But if not, could Er Qiangzi have sold her again, this time to some faraway place? That was possible and, if anything, worse than if she were dead.
Xiangzi’s friendship with tobacco and alcohol was rekindled. Without cigarettes, how could he think? And without alcohol, how could he forget?
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Xiangzi walked down the street, shaken to the core, when he spotted Little Ma’s grandfather. Wearing clothes that were even thinner and more ragged than before, the old man no longer pulled a rickshaw. Now he was carrying a large earthen jar on one end of a willow shoulder pole and on the other a frayed ingot-shaped basket filled with sesame cakes, oil fritters, and a brick. He remembered Xiangzi.
Once they started talk
ing, Xiangzi learned that Little Ma had died more than six months before. So his grandfather had sold the rickety rickshaw and begun selling weak tea and sesame cakes at rickshaw stands. He was as friendly and pleasant as ever, but his back was badly bent and his eyes watered in the wind, turning his lids red, as if he’d been crying.
Xiangzi bought a cup of his tea and revealed some of the things that had happened to him.
“You thought you could make it on your own, didn’t you?” the old man said, reacting to Xiangzi’s sad tale. “That’s what everybody thinks, and what no one manages to do. I was young and strong once, and ready to take on the world. But look at me now. Would you call me strong? Even for a man of steel there’s no way out of the net we’re all caught in. Good intentions? A waste of time. Good is rewarded with good, and evil with evil, they say, but don’t you believe it! When I was young, I was known as a warmhearted, helpful person who always looked out for others. Did that do me any good? None. I even saved someone from drowning once and one from hanging. My reward? Nothing. I tell you, I could freeze to death one of these days. I now know that for poor, hardworking people there’s nothing more difficult than making it on their own. How far can a man alone leap? You’ve seen grasshoppers, haven’t you? Left alone, one of them can hop great distances. But if a child catches it and ties it with a string, it can’t even move. Yet a swarm of them can consume an entire crop in no time and no one can do a thing about it. Am I right? With all my so-called virtues, I couldn’t even keep a little boy from dying. When he got sick, I didn’t have money to buy medicine and watched him die in my arms. There’s nothing more to say, nothing. Tea! Who wants hot tea?”
Now Xiangzi understood. Fourth Master, Mrs. Yang, Detective Sun…none of them received the punishment they deserved from being cursed by Xiangzi, and in the end, his ambition got him nowhere. By relying on himself alone, he wound up like the grasshopper tied with a string, just like the old man said, and what good did having wings do him?
He lost interest in going back to Mr. Cao. If he did, he’d be back to trying his hardest to succeed, and what good would that do? Better to drift through life and not worry about it. When there was nothing to eat, he’d take out a rickshaw, and when he had enough to feed himself, he’d take a day off and worry about tomorrow later. That wasn’t just a way to get by, it was the only way. Why work hard and save up to buy a rickshaw just so someone could take it away? Better to enjoy life while he could.
If he managed to find Fuzi, he’d try again, if not for himself, then for her. But that wasn’t happening, and like the old man whose grandson had died, who was he living for? Warming up to the old man, he told him about Fuzi.
“Who wants a bowl of hot tea?” the old man called out before he gave Xiangzi a bit of advice.
“The way I see it, one of two things happened. Either Er Qiangzi sold her to be someone’s concubine or she’s been sent to the White Manor. The second possibility is more likely. Why do I say that? If, as you say, she’s been married before, finding a man who’ll want her now won’t be easy. Men expect their concubines to be virgins. So I’m guessing she wound up in the White Manor. I’m nearly sixty, and I’ve seen a lot in my time. If a healthy young rickshaw man doesn’t show up on the street for a couple of days, you’ll find that he’s either landed a monthly job or he’s made his way to the White Manor. And if the wife or daughter of one of the rickshaw men disappears all of a sudden, chances are that’s where you’ll find them. We sell our sweat; our women sell their bodies. That’s something I know. Go look for her there. I hope I’m wrong, but…Tea! Who wants a bowl of hot tea?”
Xiangzi ran out of Xizhi Gate without stopping.
After passing through Guanxiang, he was struck by the emptiness of his surroundings, with spare roadside trees on which no birds perched. The trees were gray, the ground was gray, and the houses were gray, all standing silently under a dreary sky. Looking out beyond the gray vista, he could see the cold, barren Western Hills. He guessed that the squat building just beyond the wooded area north of the railroad tracks must be the White Manor. Nothing moved among the trees, and as his gaze drifted north, he spotted some uneven clumps of withered cattail reeds standing in marshy land on the far side of Wansheng Garden. There were no people outside the White Manor, no sound, no movement anywhere, and he wondered if it really was the infamous brothel. He found the courage to walk up close, where he saw reed curtains hanging in front of the doors; they looked new, a slightly glossy yellow. He had heard men say that in the summer the women sat outside, baring their breasts to entice men passing by. Prospective guests would sing bawdy songs in loud voices as a sign that they were old hands at this. Why was it so quiet now? Had they closed for the winter?
As he stood there puzzled, a curtain near him parted and a woman’s head appeared. He was startled by how much she looked like Huniu. I came to find Fuzi, he said to himself. Wouldn’t it be bizarre if I found Huniu instead!
“Come on in, silly boy.” She sure didn’t sound like Huniu—raspy, more like the old man who sold wild herbs at Tianqiao. Hoarse and urgent.
The room was empty except for the woman and a small brick bed that had no mat; the fire burning under the bed gave off a noxious smell. A well-used quilt covering it was as greasy as the bricks themselves. The woman, who looked to be in her forties, had neither brushed her hair nor washed her face. She wore a pair of lined trousers under an unbuttoned blue padded jacket. Xiangzi had to duck to get through the door and was immediately caught in a bear hug. Two huge, pendulous breasts were pressed up against him.
Xiangzi sat on the edge of the bed since the ceiling was too low to let him stand without bending his head. He was glad he’d run into this woman, for he’d heard people talk about someone called Flour Sacks, and this must be her. The name obviously came from her large breasts, which she could fling over her shoulders. That was one of the tricks her guests invariably asked her to show them. But her fame was not limited to her enormous flour-sack breasts—she was the only independent operator in the place, here because she wanted to be. Married five times, she had, in short order, reduced all five of her husbands to shrunken bedbugs before they died, which is why she gave up on marriage and came here to enjoy what she liked to do. As an independent operator, she was also free to speak her mind, and was the one to go to when you wanted to know anything about the White Manor, while all the other women would divulge nothing about the place. Her reputation spread, and she welcomed the curious. But her answers did not come free of charge; the “tea money” she earned made her the best-paid woman in the house and the most engaging. Xiangzi knew this, so when he handed her the tea money, Flour Sacks brought an end to the enticements. He came straight to the point and asked her if she knew Fuzi. She said no. But when he described her, she knew who he was talking about.
“Yes,” she said, “there was someone like that. Young, two nice, white, protruding teeth. That’s right, we called her Tender Morsel.”
“Which room is she in?” There was a wild gleam in Xiangzi’s eyes.
“Her? Long gone.” Flour Sacks pointed outside. “Hanged herself from a tree.”
“What?”
“Tender Morsel hit it off with the other girls right away, but the life was more than the poor little thing could take. One night, soon after the lamps were lit, I recall it like it was yesterday, I was sitting outside with two or three of the other girls. Ai, just about this time. A man came up and went straight to her room. She didn’t like to sit in the doorway with the rest of us, even got a beating for it when she first came. But after she made a name for herself, we let her sit alone in her room, because some of the men wanted her and nobody else. After about the time it takes to eat, the man came out and headed straight for the woods. We didn’t think anything of it and nobody went in to see if she was all right. But when the madam came to collect the money, she found the man lying on the bed without a stitch of clothing, dead drunk. Tender Morsel had taken off his clothes, slipped into them, and run of
f. She knew what she was doing. She’d never have gotten away in the daylight, but since it was dark and she was wearing the man’s clothes, she fooled us all. Well, the madam sent people out looking for her, and when they entered the woods, they found her hanging from a tree. They cut her down, but it was too late. I tell you, her tongue wasn’t hanging out and she didn’t look half bad. She had that fetching look, even in death. In the months since, the woods have stayed quiet, and she hasn’t come out to frighten us. Such a good girl…”
Without waiting for her to finish, Xiangzi stumbled back to the road and went over to a tidy little graveyard with a dozen or so graves surrounded by pine trees that dimmed the already faint sunlight. He sat on the ground strewn with dry grass and pine needles. The only sounds were the mournful cries of gray magpies. This could not be where Fuzi was buried, he knew that, but tears streamed unchecked down his face. Gone, everything gone. Even Fuzi was in the ground. He had tried so hard, so had she, and all he had left were some useless tears, while she was now a hanged ghost. Wrapped in a straw mat and buried under an unmarked mound somewhere—that was where a life of hard work and struggle had taken her.
Back at the rickshaw shed he went to bed and slept fitfully for two days. He had no desire to go see Mr. Cao, or even to write to him. Mr. Cao could not save him now. After getting out of bed, he took a rickshaw out, his mind a blank. He gave up thinking and hoping, putting up with the grind only to fill his stomach. When that was done, he went back to bed. What could he gain by thinking or hoping? He spotted an emaciated dog crouching beside a sweet potato peddler’s pole, waiting for cast-off peelings and roots, and realized that he was just like that dog, a day’s work devoted to the accumulation of scraps. He thought only of living from day to day. Why think of anything else?
Mankind had managed to rise above wild animals, only to arrive at the point where people banished their fellow-men right back into the animal kingdom. Xiangzi lived in a cultured city but, through no fault of his own, had himself become a two-legged beast. No longer a thinking human being, even if he killed someone he could not be held accountable. Having given up all hope, he began a downward spiral that carried him to society’s lowest rung. He ate, he drank, he whored, and he gambled. He turned lazy and crafty, now that his conscience had been taken from him. All that remained was a big, tall, flesh-covered frame, just waiting to rot away and be buried in an unmarked grave.