(1896–1945)
Born into an impoverished genteel family in Zhejiang, Yu Dafu went to study in Japan in 1913. As a student of economics at Tokyo Imperial University, he lived a bohemian life, and in 1921 he published Sinking, the first collection of short stories written in vernacular in modern China. Lyrical, decadent, and honest, his stories often portray the psychodramas of young intellectuals caught in the crossfire of the new and old in a changing world and extend, in the words of C. T. Hsia, “the psychological and moral frontiers of modern Chinese fiction.” A founding member of the Creation Society in 1921 and the Chinese League of Left-Wing Writers in 1930, Yu struggled against radical politics and ideology. At the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War, he joined the national alliance of resistance and became an editor in Singapore. When the city fell, he fled to Indonesia and lived under a pseudonym. In 1945, he was tracked down and killed by Japanese military police in Sumatra.
1
For half a year I lived in Shanghai with no job, and because I was unemployed, it was necessary to change my lodgings three times. At first I lived in a birdcage apartment on Bubbling Well Road, a prison cell without guards that never saw sunlight. Except for a few tailors who looked like ferocious gangsters, the inmates of this place were mostly pitiable unknown men of letters. Hence my epithet for the place: Yellow Grub Street. After a month in Grub Street, the rent suddenly went up, forcing me to pack up a few tattered books and move to a small hotel I knew near the racecourse. At the hotel I suffered all sorts of ill treatment and had to move again. I looked around on Dent Road to the north of the Garden Bridge, a slum opposite Rixinli Lane. I found a small room there and relocated.
The houses on Dent Road stood no higher than about twenty feet. My chamber on the upper floor was so small and low that if I stretched out to yawn, my arms would poke through the dusty gray roof. Coming through the front door from an alley, you first entered the landlord’s room. Edging your way around piles of rags, mounds of old tins, bottles, and rusty detritus, you would come to a rickety ladder with missing rungs leaning against the wall. Climbing the ladder to a dark hole of two square feet, you would arrive at the second floor. This dim little space, no bigger than a cat’s face, was partitioned by the landlord into two tiny rooms. The inner room was occupied by a woman who worked at the N Cigarette Company. As she had to come and go through my cubby at the top of the ladder to get to hers at the back, my monthly rent was a few coppers cheaper than hers.
The landlord, a man in his fifties with a bent back, looked older than his age. His sallow face had a dark oily sheen. His eyes were of different size perched above high cheekbones. The wrinkles on his forehead and face were filled with a fine coal dust, which, despite his efforts every morning, could not be washed out. He got up at eight or nine every day. After a fit of coughing, he went out with a pair of bamboo baskets dangling on a shoulder pole. He returned around three or four most afternoons, still carrying two empty baskets. Occasionally he came back with the baskets full, loaded with the same kinds of rags, rusty junk, bottles, and so on that already littered his chambers. On these nights, he would get some wine and sit by the edge of the bed drinking by himself, cursing freely in an incomprehensible dialect.
My first encounter with my housemate on the other side of the partition was on the afternoon I moved in. At about five o’clock, when the fleeting light of a spring day drew close to dusk, I lit a candle and began to arrange the few books I had brought with me from the hotel. I divided them into two stacks, one big and one small. Then I placed two large picture frames on top of the larger stack. I had sold all my furniture, so this setup of books and picture frames would have to serve as a desk during the day and a bed at night. Done with the task, I sat down on the smaller stack for a smoke, facing my newfangled desk. With my back turned against the trapdoor, I pulled slowly on the cigarette and stared at the candle. Just then I heard a movement from the ladder. Turning around, I could see nothing but my own enlarged shadow, but my ears plainly told me that someone was coming up. I stared into the darkness for a moment, and then a pale oval face and the slender torso of a female figure came into view. Seeing her face, I knew instantly that she must be my housemate on the other side of the partition. Earlier when I had come looking for a place, the landlord had told me that besides him, there was only a female worker living in this house. Liking the cheap rent and the fact that there was no actual housewife or kids around, I took the place without any hesitation.
I waited until she came up the ladder, stood up, and bowed to her politely. “Excuse me,” I said, “I just moved in today. I hope you will not mind.”
She made no reply, but her big dark eyes looked at me solemnly. She then unlocked her room and went in. Ours was just a brief encounter, but for some unknown reason I felt a kind of pity for the waif. Her high-bridged nose, pale oval face, and slight wispy figure, all appealed to my sympathy. But as someone struggling to make ends meet myself, I had no time to care for someone who at least had a job. A moment later, I returned to my previous state, sitting still on the small stack of books, staring at the candle.
A week had passed since I moved into the slum. Every day my neighbor went to work at seven in the morning and returned after six that evening. She would always find me sitting on top of my books, staring at the candle flame or oil lamp. Perhaps my long idling stirred her curiosity; one day when she returned from work, came upstairs, and saw me standing there, letting her pass like the first day, she suddenly stopped and looked directly at me. “What are you reading every day?” she stammered in a halting voice. She spoke a pure lilting Suzhou dialect, producing an effect on me beyond description, so I will only transcribe her words in plain Chinese.
Her question made me blush. Even though I was sitting there day in and day out peering into several foreign books I had opened, my mind was in such a state of confusion that I wasn’t able to read a single line. Sometimes I let my imagination conjure up strange patterns and plugged them into the space between the lines. Other times I only flipped through pages looking at the illustrations and invented fantasies inspired by the images. Due to my insomnia and malnutrition, this trancelike state was not difficult to induce. I saw it as a form of sickness. Also, my heavy padded gown—my only worldly possession—was so threadbare that I could not go out in it for walks. As there was no natural light in the room, I had to light a lamp or candle day and night, causing my overall health to decline still further, my eyesight weakened, leg muscles atrophied. In such a sorry state, how could I not feel exposed by her question? So I replied vaguely, “I wasn’t really reading. It’s just that it doesn’t look good sitting around idly all day. That’s why I put books in front of me.”
She gave me another searching glance, seemingly confused by what I had said, and then disappeared into her partition.
It would be untrue to say that in those days I had completely abandoned the idea of employment or had not done anything at all. There were times when my mind hadn’t been so cloudy, and I’d translated a few poems from English and French, as well as short stories from German that were each about four thousand words in length. I sneaked out quietly at night, after everyone had gone to sleep, to mail these translations to some new publishers. Since my hope for finding employment in other fields was all but dashed, this line of work, relying on my dried-up brains, remained the only possibility for me. If the editors happened to like my work and publish those pieces, it wouldn’t be hard to get paid a few dollars in royalty. Since my relocation to Dent Road, by the time she first spoke to me, I had submitted three or four such pieces of translation.
2
Living in the muddled foreign concessions in Shanghai, one hardly noticed the change of seasons or passage of time. After my move to the slum on Dent Road, I felt that my ragged cotton gown was getting heavier and warmer day by day. I thought, “Perhaps spring will be over soon?”
Even so, without two nickels to rub together, I couldn’t afford to go anywhere, and could only stay in my dark cubby, sitting by the light, day and night. One day, sometime around late afternoon, when I was sitting there as usual, my housemate suddenly came upstairs with two paper bags. When I stood up to let her pass, she put down one bag on my desk and said, “Here’s some grape jam bread for you. You can have it tomorrow. I also bought some bananas. Would you like to come eat them in my room?”
While I helped her with the bag, she unlocked the door to her room and invited me in. We had shared the loft for two weeks, which seemed to have bolstered her trust in me as an honest and respectable man. All trace of suspicion on her face during our first meeting was gone. After we went in, I saw that it was not yet dark outside. There was in her room a south-facing window, through which reflected sunlight could enter and shine on this small space containing a bed made of two planks, a black lacquer side table, a wooden chest, and a round stool. The bed wasn’t equipped with a mosquito net, but with two clean blue-cloth quilts. On the side table there was a small foreign tin box, perhaps for her toiletries, that was spotted with grease. Picking up the few half-worn cotton gowns and work pants from the stool and putting them on the bed, she invited me to sit down. I felt a bit uneasy because of her hospitable gestures, so I said, “We are housemates; there’s no need to be so polite.”
“I’m not being polite. It’s just that every day I come home, you always stand up to let me pass. I feel much obliged.”
With those words, she opened the bag of bananas and handed them to me. She also took one for herself, sitting on the bed, peeling and eating.
“Why do you stay at home every day? Why not go out and get a job?”
“My plan was to get a job, but I couldn’t find anything. I tried.”
“Do you have any friends?”
“Yes, but given my circumstance, no one’s disposed to see me anymore.”
“Did you go to school?”
“I studied at a foreign school for a few years.”
“Where are you from? Why don’t you go home?”
Her questions made me suddenly aware of my own situation, of how I’d become, since the previous year, so dejected day by day that I had totally forgotten things such as, “Who am I?” “What is my current situation?” or even “Am I happy or sad?” At her questioning, I began to recall all the difficulties endured over the past six months. I became speechless, sitting there looking at her. My silence must have made her think that I was also a vagabond; an expression of sadness mixed with loneliness spread across her face, followed by a gentle sigh. “Ah, are you just like me?”
After another sigh, she lapsed into silence, her eyes moist and red. I tried to divert her with a question. “What do you do at the factory?”
“I pack cigarettes.”
“How many hours do you have to work each day?”
“From seven in the morning to six in the afternoon, a one-hour break at noon, that’s ten hours of work a day. They cut your pay if you work less than that.”
“How much is the pay?”
“Nine dollars a month, that’s three dollars for ten days, or three cents an hour.”
“How much do the meals cost?”
“Four dollars a month.”
“So, if you work for ten hours a day without an absence, your income would be five dollars a month. Is that enough for rent and clothes?”
“Hardly! Besides, that manager is . . . well . . . I . . . I hate that factory. Do you smoke?”
“Yes.”
“You’d better not smoke. And if you must, don’t smoke our brand. I really hate it.”
I noticed her teeth were clenching, and decided to drop the topic. When I finished my banana, darkness had crept into the room. I stood up, thanked her, and left for my cubby. Usually, because she was exhausted by work, she would go to sleep immediately after coming home. But that night, she seemed to have stayed up till midnight. After that evening, she would always talk to me when she got home and I learned about her past.
Her name was Ermei Chen, born in Dongxiang, Suzhou, but she was raised in the countryside near Shanghai. Her father, before passing away the previous fall, had also worked at the cigarette factory. They had shared the same tiny room and gone to work together every day, but now she was left alone. The month after her father’s death, she would cry all the way to work in the morning and cry again on the way back in the evening. Seventeen years old, she had no siblings or close relatives. The cost for her father’s burial was covered by the fifteen dollars he had entrusted to the landlord downstairs before dying, who indeed took sole charge of the matter.
“He is a good man, our landlord,” she said. “He never takes advantage of me; otherwise, I wouldn’t have been able to go to work every day just like when my father was still alive. But that factory foreman, Mr. Li, is an evil man. Knowing my father is dead, he’s been harassing me.”
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 wear 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)