(1904–1986)
The life of Ding Ling is a powerful testament to the uneasy relationship between feminism and revolution in modern China. Born Jiang Bingzhi into a genteel family in Hunan, Ding Ling lost her father when she was only four and was brought up by her independent mother. Always a free spirit, she went to Peking in 1924 and lived with an editor who would later become a revolutionary martyr. In 1928, the publication of Miss Sophia’s Diary, an anarcho-feminist novella about a tubercular young woman’s emotional life and erotic passion, brought her into prominence. In 1932 she joined the Communist Party and became a pioneer of revolutionary literature, but still with a penchant for independent thinking, a character trait that often got her in deep water. Her novel about land reform, The Sun Shines over the Sanggan River (1948), won the Stalin Prize in Literature. After the founding of the People’s Republic of China, she enjoyed appointments in key positions and continued to publish widely, until 1955 when she became a target of political purge and suffered over twenty years of exile, persecution, and imprisonment. She was rehabilitated in 1979 and allowed to write and publish again.
December 24
The wind’s up again today. The blowing woke me before day broke. Then the boy came in to start the stove. I know I’ll never get back to sleep again. I also know that my head will start whirling if I don’t get up. Too many strange thoughts run through my mind when I lie wrapped in the covers. The doctor’s instructions are to sleep and eat a lot and not to read or think. Exactly what I find most impossible. I can never get to sleep until two or three o’clock in the morning and I’m awake again before dawn. On a windy day like today, it’s impossible to keep from brooding over every little thing. I can’t go outside when the wind’s this strong. What else can I do but brood, cooped up in this room with nothing to read? I can’t just sit vacantly by myself and wait for time to pass, can I? I endure it one day at a time, longing for winter to be over fast. When it gets warmer, my cough is bound to clear up a little. Then if I wanted to go south or back to school, I could. Oh, God, this winter is endless!
As the sunlight hit the paper window, I was boiling my milk for the third time. I did it four times yesterday. I’m never really sure that it suits my taste, no matter how often I do it, but it’s the only thing that releases frustration on a windy day. Actually, though it gets me through an hour or so, I usually end up even more irritable than I was before. So all last week I didn’t play with it. Then out of desperation, I did, relying on it, as though I was already old, just to pass time. I read the newspaper as soon as it comes. I start, systematically, with the headlines, the national news, the important foreign reports, local gossip, and then . . . when I’ve finished the items on education, party propaganda, economics, and the stock market, I go back to the same announcements I read so thoroughly yesterday . . . and the day before . . . the ones recruiting new students, the notices of lawsuits over division of family property. I even read stuff like ads for “606” and “Mongolian Lark” venereal tonics, cosmetics, announcements of the latest shows at the Kaiming Theater, and the Zhenguang Movie Theater listing. When I’ve finished everything I toss the paper away, reluctantly. Every once in a while, of course, I find a new advertisement. But what I can never get free of are the fifth- and sixth-year anniversary sales at the fabric shops, and the obituaries—with apologies to those not contacted personally.
NOTHING TO DO after the paper except sit alone by the stove and work myself into a rage. What infuriates me is the daily routine. I get a nervous headache every day as I sit listening to the other inmates yell at the attendants. Such loud, braying, coarse, monotonous voices, “Attendant, bring hot water!” or “Washbasin, attendant!” You can imagine how ugly it sounds. And there is always somebody downstairs shouting into the telephone. Yet when the noise does let up, the silence scares me to death. Particularly inside the four whitewashed walls that stare blankly back at me no matter where I sit. If I try to escape by lying on the bed, I’m crushed by the ceiling, just as oppressively white. I can’t really find a single thing here that doesn’t disgust me: the pockmarked attendant, for example, and the food that always tastes like a filthy rag, the impossibly grimy window frame, and that mirror over the washbasin. Glancing from one side you’ve got a face a foot long; tilt your head slightly to the side and suddenly it gets so flat you startle yourself. . . . It all infuriates me. Maybe I’m the only one affected. Still I’d really like a few fresh complaints and dissatisfactions. Novelty, for better or worse, always seems just out of reach.
Weidi came over after lunch. The familiar hurried sound of his leather shoes carried all the way from the other end of the corridor and comforted me, as though I’d suddenly been released from a suffocating room. But I couldn’t show it. So when he came in, I simply glanced silently at him. Weidi thought I was peeved again. He clasped my hands tightly and cried, “Sister, Elder Sister!” over and over. I smiled. Of course. Why? Oh, I know. I know what’s behind those shy glowing eyes. I understand what it is that he’d rather keep from others. You’ve been in love with me for such a long time, Weidi. Has he captured me? That is not my responsibility. I act as women are supposed to act. Actually, I’ve been quite aboveboard with him. There isn’t another woman alive who would have resisted toying with him, as I have. Besides, I’m genuinely sorry for him. There have been times when I couldn’t stand it any longer, when I wanted so badly to say, “Look, Weidi, can’t you find some better way of going about this? You’re making me sick.” I’d like Weidi a whole lot better if he’d wise up, but he persists with these stupid abandoned displays of affection.
Weidi was satisfied when I smiled. Rushing around to the other end of the bed, he tore off his overcoat and leather hat. If he’d turned his head and glanced at me just then, he’d have been saddened by my eyes. Why doesn’t he understand me better?
I’ve always wanted a man who would really understand me. If he doesn’t understand me and my needs, then what good are love and empathy? Father, my sisters, and all my friends end up blindly indulging me, although I never have figured out what it is in me that they love. Is it my arrogance, my temper? Or do they just pity me because I have TB? At times they infuriate me because of it, and then all their blind love and soothing words have the opposite effect. Those are the times that I wish I had someone who really understood. Even if he reviled me, I’d be proud and happy.
I think about them when they forget me. Or I get mad at them. But then when somebody finally does come, I end up harassing him without really meaning to. It’s an impossible situation. Lately I’ve been trying to discipline myself not to say whatever jumps into my mind, so I don’t accidentally hurt people’s secret feelings when I’m really only joking. My resulting state of mind as I sat with Weidi can easily be imagined. If Weidi had stood up to go, I’d have hated him because of my depression and fear of loneliness. Weidi has known this for a long time, so he didn’t leave me until ten o’clock. But I deceive no one, certainly not myself. The fact that Weidi waited around so long gave him no special advantage. In fact, I ended up pitying him because he’s so easy to exploit and because he has such a gift for doing the wrong thing in love.
December 28
I invited Yufang and Yunlin out to the movies today. Yufang asked Jianru along, which made me so furious I almost burst into tears. Instead I started laughing. Oh, Jianru, Jianru, how you’ve crushed my self-respect. She looks and acts so much like a girlfriend I had when I was younger, that without being aware of what I was doing, I started chasing her. Initially she encouraged my intimacies. But I met with intolerable treatment from her in the end. Whenever I think about it, I hate myself for what I did in the past, for my regrettably unscrupulous behavior. One week I wrote her at least eight long letters, maybe more, and she didn’t pay the slightest bit of attention to me. Whatever possessed Yufang to invite Jianru when she knows I don’t want to dredge up my past all over again? It’s as though she wanted to make me mad on purpose. I was furious.
Though there was no reason for Yufang and Yunlin to notice any change in my laugh, Jianru must have sensed something. But she can fake it—play stupid—so she went along as though there was nothing between us. I wanted to curse; the words were on the tip of my tongue, when I thought of the resolution I’d set myself. Also I felt that if I were that vehement she’d get even more stuck on herself. So I just kept my feelings to myself and went out with them.
We got to the Zhenguang Theater early and met some girls from our province at the door. Those girls and their practiced smiles make me sick. I ignored them. Then I got inexplicably angry at all the people waiting to see the movie. So I capitalized on the situation, and as Yufang talked heatedly with the girls, I slipped away from my guests and came home.
I am the only person who can excuse what I did. They all criticize me, but they don’t know the feelings I endure when I am with other people. People say I am eccentric, but no one notices how often I’m willing to toady for affection and approval. No one will ever encourage me to say things that contradict my first impulses. They endure my eccentricities constantly, which gives me even more cause to reflect on my behavior, and that ends up alienating me even further from them.
It is very late and the entire residence is quiet. I’ve been lying here on the bed a long time. I have thought through a lot of things. Why am I still so upset?
December 29
Yufang phoned me early this morning. She’s a good person and wouldn’t lie, so I suppose Jianru really is sick. Yufang told me that Jianru is sick because of me and wants me to come over so she can explain herself. Yufang and Jianru couldn’t be more mistaken. Sophia is not a person who likes listening to explanations. I see no need for explanations of any kind. If friends get along that’s great; when you have a falling-out and give someone a hard time, that’s fair enough too. I think I am big enough not to require more revenge. Jianru got sick because of me. I think that’s great. I’d never refuse the lovely news that somebody had gotten sick over me. Anyway, Jianru’s illness eases some of the self-loathing I’ve been feeling.
I really don’t know what to make of myself. Sometimes I can feel a kind of boundless unfathomable misery at the sight of a white cloud being blown and scattered by the wind. Yet faced with a young man of, what, about twenty-five?—Weidi is actually four years older than I—I find myself laughing with the satisfaction of a savage as his tears fall on my folded hands. Weidi came over from Dongcheng with a gift of stationery and envelopes. Because he was happy and laughing, I teased him mercilessly until he burst into tears. That cheered me up, so I said, “Please, please! Spare the tears. Don’t imagine I’m so feminine and weak that I can’t resist a tear. If you want to cry, go home and do it. You’re bothering me.” He didn’t leave. He didn’t make any excuses, either, or get sullen, of course. . . . He just curled up in the corner of the chair, as tears from God knows where streamed openly, soundlessly, down his face. While this pleased me, I was still a little ashamed of myself. So I patted his head in a sisterly way and told him to go wash his face. He smiled through his tears.
When this honest, open man was here, I used all the cruelty of my nature to make him suffer. Yet once he’d left, there was nothing I wanted more than to snatch him back and plead with him: “I know I was wrong. Don’t love a woman so undeserving of your affection as I am.”
January 1
I don’t know how people who like to party spent their New Year’s. I just added an egg to my milk. I had the egg left over from the twenty that Weidi brought me yesterday. I’ve boiled seven eggs in a tea broth; the remaining thirteen are probably enough to last me for the next two weeks. If Weidi had come while I was eating lunch, I’d have had a chance to get a couple of canned things. I really hoped he’d come. In anticipation, I went out to the Danpai Building and bought four boxes of candy, two cartons of dianxin, and a basket of fruit to feed him when he got here. I was that certain he’d be the only one to come today. But lunch came and went and Weidi hadn’t arrived.
I sat and wrote five letters with the fine pen and stationery he’d brought me a few days ago. I’d been hoping I’d get some New Year’s picture postcards in the mail, but I didn’t. Even the few girlfriends I have who most enjoy this kind of thing forgot that they owed me. I shouldn’t be surprised that I don’t get postcards. Still, when they forget about me completely, it does make me mad. On the other hand, considering that I never paid anyone else a New Year’s visit—forget it! I deserve it.
I was very annoyed when I had to eat dinner all by myself.
Toward evening Yufang and Yunlin did come over, bringing a tall young fellow with them. How fortunate they are. Yufang has Yunlin to love her and that satisfies them both. Happiness isn’t just possessing a lover. It’s two people, neither of whom wants anything more than each other, passing their days in peace and conversation. Some people might find such a pedestrian life unsatisfying, but then not everyone is like my Yufang.
She’s terrific. Since she has her Yunlin, she wants “all lovers to be united.” Last year she tried to arrange a love match for Marie. She wants things to work out for Weidi and me, too, so every time she comes over she asks about him. She, Yunlin, and the tall man ate up all the food I’d bought for Weidi.
That tall guy is stunning. For the first time, I found myself really attracted to masculine beauty. I’d never paid much attention before. I’ve always felt that it was normal for men to be glib, phony, cautious; that’s about the extent of it. But today as I watched the tall one, I saw how a man could be cast in a different, a noble, mold. Yunlin looked so insignificant and clumsy by comparison. . . . Pity overwhelmed me. How painful Yunlin would find his own coarse appearance and rude behavior, if he could see himself. I wonder what Yufang feels when she compares the two, one tall, the other not.
How can I describe the beauty of this strange man? His stature, pale delicate features, fine lips, and soft hair are quite dazzling enough. But there is an elegance to him, difficult to describe, an elusive quality, that shook me profoundly. When I asked his name, he handed me his name card with extraordinary grace and finesse. I raised my eyes. I looked at his soft, red, moist, deeply inset lips, and let out my breath slightly. How could I admit to anyone that I gazed at those provocative lips like a small hungry child eyeing sweets? I know very well that in this society I’m forbidden to take what I need to gratify my desires and frustrations, even when it clearly wouldn’t hurt anybody. I did the only thing I could. I lowered my head patiently and quietly read the name printed on the card, “Ling Jishi, Singapore. . . .”
Ling Jishi laughed and talked uninhibitedly with us as though he were with old, intimate friends; or was he flirting with me? I was so eager to avoid seduction that I didn’t dare look directly at him. It made me furious when I could not bring myself to go into the lighted area in front of the table. My ragged slippers had never bothered me before, yet now I found myself ashamed of them. That made me angry at myself: How can I have been so restrained and boring? Usually I find undue attention to social form despicable. Today I found out how moronic and graceless I could seem. Mmm! He must think I’m right off the farm.
Yufang and Yunlin got the feeling that I didn’t like him, I was acting so woodenly, so they kept interrupting the conversation. Before long they took him off. They meant well. I just can’t find it in me to be grateful. When I saw their shadows—two short, one tall—disappearing through the downstairs courtyard, I really didn’t want to return to my room, now suffused with the marks of his shoes, his sounds, the crumbs of his cake.
January 3
I’ve spent two full nights coughing. I’ve lost all faith in the medicine. Is there no relationship at all between medicine and illness? I am sick to death of the bitter medicine, but still I take it on schedule, as prescribed; if I refuse medication, how can I allow myself any hope for recovery? God arranges all sorts of pain for us before we die to make us patient and to prevent us from rushing toward death too eagerly. Me? My time is brief, so I love life with greater urgency than most. I don’t fear death. I just feel that I haven’t gotten any pleasure out of life. I want . . . all I want is to be happy. I spend days and nights dreaming up ways I could die without regret. I imagine myself resting on a bed in a gorgeous bedroom, my sisters nearby on a bearskin rug praying for me, and my father sighing as he gazes quietly out the window. I’ll be reading long letters from those who love me, friends who will remember me with their tears. I urgently need emotional support from all these people; I long for the impossible. What do I get from them? I have been imprisoned in this residence for two full days: no one has visited me and I haven’t even gotten any mail. I lie in bed and cough; I sit on the stove and cough; I go in front of the table and cough—all the time brooding over these repulsive people. . . . Actually, I did receive a letter, but that just completed my total wretchedness. It was from a tough Anhui guy who was pestering me a year ago. I ripped it up before I had even finished reading it. It made my flesh crawl, reading page after page of “love, love, love, love, love.” How I despise grandstand affection from people I loathe.
But can I name what I really need?
January 4
I just don’t know how things went so wrong. Why did I want to move? In all the fuss and confusion I’ve also deceived Yunlin. The lies came so easily I felt I almost had an instinct for it. Were Yunlin to know Sophia was capable of deceiving him, how wretched he would be. Sophia is the baby sister they love so much. Of course I’m upset now, and I regret everything. But I still can’t make up my mind. Should I move? Or not?
I had to admit to myself, “You’re dreaming about that tall man.” And it’s true: for the last few days and nights I have been enmeshed in wonderful fantasies. Why hasn’t he come over on his own? He should know better than to let me languish for so long. I’d feel so much better if he’d come over and tell me that he’d been thinking of me too. If he did, I know I wouldn’t have been able to control myself, and I’d have listened to him declare his love for me and then I’d let him know what I wanted. But he didn’t come. I guess fairy tales don’t usually come true. Should I go looking for him? A woman that uninhibited would risk having everything blow up in her face. I still want people to respect me. Since I couldn’t think of a good solution, I decided to go to Yunlin’s place and see what would happen. After lunch I braved the wind and set off for Dongcheng.
Yunlin is a student at Jingdu University and rents a room in a house in Qingnian Lane near the university, between the first and second colleges. Fortunately I got there before he’d left and before Yufang had arrived. Yunlin was surprised to see me out on such a windy day, but wasn’t suspicious when I told him I’d been to the German Hospital and was just stopping by on my way home. He asked about my health. I led the conversation around to the other evening. Without wasting any energy, I found out that Ling Jishi lives in Dormitory No. 4 in the second college. After a while I started to sigh and talk in vivid terms about my life at Xicheng Residence Hall, how lonely and dismal it was. And then I lied again. I said I wanted to move because I want to be near Yufang. (I already know that Yufang was going to move in with him.) When I asked Yunlin if he would come help me find a room near theirs, he seemed delighted and didn’t hesitate to offer his help.
While we were looking around for a room, we just happened to run into Ling Jishi. So he joined us. I was ecstatic and the ecstasy made me bold enough to look right at him several times. He didn’t notice. When he asked about my health and I told him I’d completely recovered, he just smiled, skeptically.
I settled on a small, moldy room with low ceilings in the Dayuan Apartment House next door to Yunlin. Both Ling Jishi and Yunlin said it was too damp, but nothing they said could shake my determination to move in the next day. The reason I gave was that I was tired of the other place and desperately needed to be near Yufang. There was nothing Yunlin could do, so he agreed and said that he and Yufang would be over to help me tomorrow.
How can I admit to anyone that my only reason for choosing that room was because it’s located between the fourth dormitory and Yunlin’s place?
He didn’t say good-bye to me so I went back to Yunlin’s with them, mustering all my courage to keep on chatting and laughing. Meanwhile I subjected him to the most searching scrutiny. I was possessed with a desire to mark every part of his body with my lips. Has he any idea how I’m sizing him up? Later I deliberately said that I wanted to ask Ling Jishi to help me with my English. When Yunlin laughed, Ling Jishi was taken aback and gave a vague, embarrassed reply. He can’t be too much of a bastard, I thought to myself, otherwise—a big tall man like that—he’d never have blushed so red in the face. My passion raged with new ferocity. But since I was concerned that the others would notice and see through me too easily, I dismissed myself and came home early.
Now that I have time for reflection, I can’t imagine my impulsiveness driving me into any worse situation. Let me stay in this room with its iron stove. How can I say I’m in love with this man from Singapore? I don’t know anything about him. All this stuff about his lips, his eyebrows, his eyelashes, his hands, is pure fantasy. These aren’t things a person should need. I’ve become obsessive if that’s all I can think about now. I refuse to move. I’m determined to stay here and recover my health.
I’m decided now. I’m so full of regret! I regret all the wrong things I did today, things a decent woman would never do.
January 6
Everyone said I was being terribly foolish when they heard I’d moved. And when Jin Ying from Nancheng and Jiang and Zhou from Xicheng all came over to my damp little room to see me and I started laughing and rolling around on the bed, they all said I was acting like a baby. That amused me all the more and made me consider telling them what’s really on my mind. Weidi dropped by this afternoon too, miserable because I’d moved without discussing it with him first and because now I’m even farther from him. He looked straight through Yunlin when he saw him. Yunlin, who couldn’t figure out why he was so angry, stared right back. Weidi’s face darkened even further. I was amused. “Too bad,” I said to myself, “Weidi’s blaming the wrong man.”
Yufang never brings up the subject of Jianru anymore. She has decided to move into Yunlin’s room in two or three days. She knows I want to be near her and won’t leave me alone longer than that. She and Yunlin have been even warmer than ever.
January 10
I’ve seen Ling Jishi every day, but I’ve never spoken more than a few words to him, and I’m determined it’s not going to be me who mentions the English lessons first. It makes me laugh to see how he goes to Yunlin’s twice a day now. I’m certain he’s never been this close to him before. I haven’t invited Ling Jishi over either; and although he’s asked several times how things are going now that I’ve moved, I’ve pretended not to get the hint and just smile back. It’s like planning a battle. Now I’m concentrating all my energy on strategy. I want something, but I’m not willing to go and take it. I must find a tactic that gets it offered to me voluntarily. I understand myself completely. I am a thoroughly female woman, and women concentrate everything on the man they’ve got in their sights. I want to possess him. I want unconditional surrender of his heart. I want him kneeling down in front of me, begging me to kiss him. I’m delirious. I go over and over the steps I must take to implement my scheme. I’ve lost my mind.
Yufang and Yunlin don’t detect my excitement; they just tell me I’ll be getting better soon. Actually, I don’t want them to know. When they say how improved I am, I act as if I’m pleased.
January 12
Yufang already moved in, but Yunlin moved out. I can’t believe the two of them; they’re so afraid of her getting pregnant that they won’t live together. I suppose they feel that since they can’t trust themselves to make “good” decisions when they’re in bed together, the best solution is to remove sexual temptation completely. According to them, necking is not too dangerous, so their list of proscriptions doesn’t preclude the occasional stolen encounter. I can’t help scoffing at her asceticism. Why shouldn’t you embrace your lover’s naked body? Why repress this part of love? How can they be so preoccupied with all the details before they’ve even slept together! I won’t believe love is so logical and scientific.
Of course, when I tease them they never get angry. They’re proud of their purity, and laugh at my childishness. I suppose I understand how they feel; it’s just another one of those strange, unexplained things that happen in life.
I went to Yunlin’s tonight (I guess I should call it Yufang’s now) and we told ghost stories, so I didn’t get back until ten o’clock. When I was a child I used to sit in my auntie’s lap and listen to Uncle tell strange tales from the Liaozhai all the time. I loved to hear them, especially at night; but I never let anyone know how much they frightened me, because if you said you were afraid, that was the end of the stories. The children wouldn’t be allowed out of bed and Uncle would have disappeared back into the study. Later, in school, I learned some rudimentary science from the teachers, and pockmarked Mr. Zhou inspired me enough to trust the books so I outgrew my terror of ghosts. Now that I’m grown up, I always deny the existence of ghosts. But you can’t halt fear by simple declaration, and the thought of ghosts still makes my hair stand on end. No one grasps fully how eager I am to change the subject when the topic comes up. That’s because later, when I’m sleeping alone under the covers at night, I think about my dead auntie and uncle and it breaks my heart.
On the way back, I felt a little jumpy when I saw the dark alleyway. What would I do, I thought, if a monstrous yellow face appeared in the corner, or a pair of hairy hands reached out at me from that frozen alley? But a glance at the tall strapping man beside me—Ling Jishi—acting as my bodyguard, reassured me. So when Yufang asked me if I was frightened, I just said, “No. No, I’m not.”
Yunlin left with us to go back to his new room. He went south, and we went north, so we’d only gone three or four steps when the sound of his rubber-soled shoes on the muddy boards was no longer audible. “Sophia, you must be scared,” said Ling Jishi, reaching out to put his arm around my waist. I considered freeing myself, but couldn’t. My head rested on his shoulder. What would I look like in the light, I thought, wrapped in the arms of a man so much taller than I am? I wriggled and slipped free of him. He let go, stood beside me, and knocked at the door.
The alley was extremely dark. But I could clearly see which way he was looking. My heart fluttered slightly as I waited for the gate to open.
“Sophia, you’re frightened.”
The bolt creaked open as the doorman asked who was there.
“Good ni—” I said, but before I’d finished, Ling Jishi was holding my hand tightly.
Seeing the large man standing beside me, the doorman looked surprised.
When the two of us were alone in my room, my bravado disappeared. I tried to conceal my discomfort with a little conventional chatter, but couldn’t manage that either. “Sit down,” was all that came out, and I went to wash my face. I can’t remember how we got off the subject of the supernatural.
“Sophia, are you still interested in studying English?” he suddenly asked.
It was he who had come looking for me. He’s the one who brought up the subject of English. He’d never sacrifice his time just to help me with my English, and no one as old as I, over twenty, could be deceived by such an offer. I smiled and said, “I’m too stupid. I probably wouldn’t do very well. I’d just make a fool out of myself.”
He didn’t say anything, just picked up a photograph from the table and toyed with it. It was a picture of my older sister’s daughter, who had just turned one.
By that time I’d finished washing my face and was sitting at the end of the table. He looked at me and then back at the little girl, then at me again. It’s quite true. She does look a lot like me, so I asked him, “Cute, isn’t she? Does she remind you of me?”
“Who is she?” There was unusual earnestness in his voice.
“Tell me, don’t you think she’s cute?”
He asked again who she was.
Suddenly I realized what he meant by the question, and I had an impulse to lie about it. “She’s mine.” I snatched the photograph and kissed it.
He believed me. I made a fool of him. My lie was a complete success. His seductiveness faded in the face of my triumph. Otherwise how—once he’d revealed such naïveté—how was I suddenly able to ignore the power of his eyes and become so indifferent to his lips? I had triumphed indeed, but it cast a chill over my heated passion. After he left, I was consumed with regret for all the obvious chances I’d let slip away. If I’d shown more interest when he pressed my hand, if I’d let him know I couldn’t refuse him, he’d have gone a lot further. I’m convinced that if you dare to have sex with someone you find reasonably attractive, the pleasure must be like bones dissolving, flesh melting. Why was I so strict and tight with him? Why had I moved to this shabby room in the first place?
January 15
I certainly haven’t been lonely recently. Every day I go next door to visit, and at night I sit and talk to my new friend. Yet my condition continues to deteriorate. That discourages me, naturally, since nothing I desire ever ends up helping me. Is this craving really love? It’s all so completely absurd. Yet when I think about dying—and I think about it frequently—I’m filled with despair. Every time I see Dr. Kelly’s expression I think to myself, it’s true, say what you like: there’s no hope left, is there? I laugh to mask the tears. No one knows how I cry my eyes out late at night.
Ling Jishi has been over several nights in a row, and he’s telling everybody he’s helping me with my English. Yunlin asked me how it was going, but what could I say? This evening I took a copy of Poor Folk and put it in front of Ling Jishi, who actually began to tutor me, but then I threw the book aside. “You needn’t tell people you are helping me with my English anymore,” I said. “I’m sick and no one believes it anyway.” “Sophia,” he said hastily, “shall we wait until you’re feeling better? I’ll do whatever you want, Sophia.”
My new friend is quite captivating. Yet for some reason I can’t bring myself to pay much attention to him. Every night as I watch him leave morosely, I feel intense regret. Tonight, as he put on his overcoat I said to him, “I’m sorry. Forgive me, but I’m sick.” He misunderstood what I meant, took it for convention. “It doesn’t matter. I’m not afraid of infection,” he said. Later I thought that over. Perhaps his comment had a double meaning. I don’t dare believe people are as simple as they appear on the surface.
January 16
Today I received a letter from Yunjie in Shanghai that has plunged me into a deep depression. How will I ever find the right words to comfort her? In her letter she said, “My life, my love are meaningless now.” Meaning, I suppose, that she has less need than ever for my condolences or tears shed for her. I can imagine from her letter what married life has been like even though she doesn’t spell it out in detail. Why does God play tricks on people in love like her? Yunjie is a very emotional and passionate person, so it’s not surprising that she finds her husband’s growing indifference, his badly concealed pretense at affection, unbearable. . . . I’d like her to come to Beijing, but is it possible? I doubt it.
I gave Yunjie’s letter to Weidi when he came over, and he was genuinely upset because the very man making Yunjie despair is, unfortunately, his own older brother. I told Weidi about my new “philosophy of life.” And, true to form, he did the only thing instinct gives him leave to do—he burst into tears. I watched impassively as his eyes turned red and he dried them with his hands. Then I taunted him with a cruel running commentary on his little crying jag. It simply didn’t occur to me then that he might indeed be the exception, a genuinely sincere person. Before long I slipped off quietly by myself.
In order to avoid everyone I know, I walked alone around the frigid, lonely park until very late. I don’t know how I endured the time. I was obsessed with one thought: “How meaningless everything is, how I’d rather die and have done with it.”
January 17
I was just thinking, maybe I’m going crazy. It’s fine with me if I lose my mind. I think, once I’ve got to that point, life’s sorrows will never touch me again. . . . It’s been six months since I stopped drinking because of my illness. Today I drank again, seriously. I can see that what I’m puking now as a consequence is blood-redder than wine. But my heart seemed commanded by something else, and I drank as though the liquor might ease me toward my death tonight. I’m so tired of being obsessed by these same endless complications.
January 18
Right now I’m still resting in my bed. But before long I’ll be leaving this room, maybe forever. Can I be certain I’ll ever have the pleasure of touching these things again—this pillow, my quilt? Yufang, Yunlin, Weidi, and Jinxia are all sitting protectively in a gloomy little circle around me, waiting anxiously for dawn when they can send me to the hospital. I was awakened by their sad whispers. Since I didn’t feel much like talking, I lay back and thought carefully over what had happened yesterday morning. It wasn’t until I smelled the stench of blood and wine in the room that I was overcome with agony and convulsive tears. I had a premonition of death as I lay in the heavy silence and watched their dark, anguished faces. Suppose I were to sleep on like this and never wake up . . . would they sit just as silently and oppressively around my cold, hard corpse? When they saw I was awake, they drew near me to ask how I felt. That’s when I felt the full horror of death and separation. I grabbed at each of them and scrutinized their faces, as though to preserve the memory forever. They all wept, feeling, it seemed, that I was departing for the land of the dead. Especially Weidi; his whole face was swollen, distorted with tears. Oh! I thought, please, dear friends, cheer me up, don’t make me feel worse. Then, quite unexpectedly, I started to laugh. I asked them to arrange a few things for me, so out from under my bed they dragged the big rattan box where I kept several little bundles wrapped in embroidered hankies. “Those are the ones I want with me when I go to Union Medical College,” I told them. When they handed me the packages I showed them they were stuffed full of letters. I smiled again and said, “All your letters are here,” which cheered them up a bit. I also had to smile when Weidi took a picture album from the drawer and pressed it on me as though he wanted me to take that along too. It contains a half dozen or so photographs exclusively of Weidi. As a special favor I let him hold my hand, kiss it, and caress his face with it; and so, just as we’d finally dispelled the sensation that there was a corpse in the room, the pale light of day broke across the horizon. They all rushed about in an anxious flurry searching for a cab. Thus my life in the hospital began.
March 4
It was twenty days ago that I got the telegram notice of Yunjie’s death. Yet for me each passing day means more hope of recovery. On the first of this month, the crowd that had brought me to the hospital moved me back to the freshly cleaned and tidied residence. Fearing I might get cold, they’d even set up a little iron coal stove. I have no idea how to convey my thanks. Especially to Weidi and Yufang. Jin and Zhou also stayed two nights before they had to go. Everyone has played nursemaid, letting me lie in bed all day feeling so comfortable it’s hard to believe I’m living in a residence and not at home with my family. Yufang decided she’s going to stay with me a couple more days, and then, when it warms up, she’ll go to the Western Hills to find me a good place to convalesce. I am so looking forward to getting out of Beijing, but here it is March and it’s still so cold! Yufang insists on staying here with me. And I can’t really refuse, so the cot set up for Jin and Zhou remains for her to use.
I had a change of heart about some things during my stay in the hospital. I must credit it to the overwhelming kindness and generosity of my friends. Now the universe seems full of love. I am especially grateful to Ling Jishi. It made me so proud when he visited me in the hospital. I thought that only a man as handsome as he should be allowed to come to the hospital to visit a sick girlfriend. Of course, I was also aware of how much the nurses envied me. One day that gorgeous Miss Yang asked me, “What’s that tall man to you?”
“A friend.” I ignored the crude implication.
“Is he from your home area?”
“No, he’s an overseas Chinese from Singapore.”
“Then he’s a classmate, right?”
“No, he isn’t.”
She smiled knowingly. “He’s just a friend, right?”
Of course I had no reason to blush and I could have called her on her rudeness, but I was ashamed to. She watched the way I closed my eyes indecisively, pretending to be sleepy. Finally she gave a satisfied laugh and walked off. After that she always annoyed me. To avoid further trouble, I lied whenever anyone asked about Weidi. I said he was my brother. There was a little guy who was a good friend of Zhou’s whom I also lied about. I told them that he was a relative or close friend of the family from my home province.
When Yufang leaves for class and I am alone in the room, I reread all the letters I’ve gotten in the last month or so. It makes me feel happy and satisfied to know there are so many people who still remember me. I need to be remembered. The more the better. Father, needless to say, sent me another picture of himself, hair whiter than ever. My older sisters are all fine, but too busy taking care of their children to write more often.
I hadn’t yet finished rereading my letters when Ling Jishi came by again. I wanted to get up but he restrained me. When he took my hand, I could have wept for joy.
“Did you ever think I’d make it back to this room?” I asked him. He gazed, tangibly disappointed, at the spare bed shoved up against the wall. I told him that my guests were gone but that the bed was left up for Yufang. When he heard that, he told me that he was afraid of annoying Yufang and so he wouldn’t return that evening. I was ecstatic. “Aren’t you afraid that I’ll be annoyed?” I said.
He sat on the bed and told me in detail what had happened over the past month, how he had clashed with Yunlin over a difference of opinion: Ling Jishi felt I should have left the hospital earlier, but Yunlin had steadfastly refused to allow it. Yufang had agreed with Yunlin. Ling Jishi realized he hadn’t known me very long and that therefore his opinion did not carry much weight. So he gave up. When he happened to run into Yunlin at the hospital, he would leave first.
I knew what he meant, but I pretended not to understand. “You’re always talking about Yunlin,” I said. “If it hadn’t been for Yunlin, I wouldn’t have left the hospital at all, I was so much more comfortable there.” I watched him turn his head silently to one side. He didn’t answer.
When he thought Yufang was about to return, he told me quietly that he’d be back tomorrow. Then he left. Shortly after that Yufang came home. Yufang didn’t ask and I didn’t tell her anything. She doesn’t like to talk too much, since with my illness I might easily exhaust myself. That was fine with me. It gave me a chance to think my own thoughts.
March 6
After Yufang went to class, leaving me alone in the room, I started thinking about weird things that go on between men and women. It’s not that I love boasting, actually, it’s just that my training in this regard is far greater than all of my friends’ combined. Still, recently I’ve felt at a spectacular loss to understand what is happening. When I sit alone with Ling Jishi, my heart leaps and I’m humiliated, frightened. But he just sits there, nonchalantly, reaching over to grasp my hand from time to time, and tells stories about his past with apparent naïveté. Although he carries on with supremely natural ease, I find that my fingers cannot rest quietly in his massive hand; they burn. Yet when he rises to go, I feel an attack of anxiety as though I am about to stumble into something really horrible. So I stare at him, and I’m not really sure whether my eyes seek pity or flash with resentment. Whatever he sees there, he ignores. But he seems to understand how I feel. “Yufang will be back soon,” he says. What can I say to that? He’s still afraid of Yufang! Normally I wouldn’t like to have anybody know what kind of private fantasies I’ve been having recently; on the other hand, I do feel the need to have someone understand my feelings. I’ve tried to talk indirectly with Yufang about this, but she just covers me with the quilt loyally and fusses about my medication. It depresses me.
March 8
Yufang has moved out, and Weidi wants to take over her job. I knew I would be more comfortable with him here than I was when Yufang nursed me. If I wanted tea in the middle of the night, for instance, I wouldn’t have to creep back under my quilt with disappointment, as I did when I heard Yufang snoring and I didn’t think it would be fair to disturb her sleep. But I refused his kind offer, naturally. When he insisted, I told him bluntly, “If you are here I will be inconvenienced in a number of ways, and anyway I’m feeling better.”
He kept insisting that the room next door was empty and he could live there. I was just at my wit’s end when Ling Jishi came in. I didn’t think they knew each other, but Ling Jishi shook Weidi’s hand and told me they’d met twice before at the hospital. Weidi ignored him coldly.
“This is my little brother,” I said with a laugh to Ling Jishi. “He’s just a kid who doesn’t know how to act in mixed company. Drop by more often and we’ll have a great time together.” With that Weidi really did turn into a child, pulling a long face as he rose and left. I was annoyed that somebody had been present when this took place, and I felt it would be best to change the subject. I also felt apologetic toward Ling Jishi. But he didn’t seem to notice particularly. Instead he just asked, “Isn’t his last name Bai? How can he be your younger brother?”
I laughed. “So you only let people surnamed Ling call you ‘Little Brother’ or ‘Big Brother,’ ’’ I said to him, making him chuckle.
These days when young people get together, they love to explore the meaning of the word “love.” Although I feel at times that I understand love, in the end I can never really explain it. I know all about what goes on between men and women. Perhaps what I already know about it makes love seem vague, makes it hard for me to believe in love between the sexes, makes it impossible to think of myself as someone pure enough, innocent enough to be loved. I am skeptical of what everyone calls “love.” I’m just as skeptical of the love I’ve received.
I was just becoming aware of the realities of life when those who loved me made me suffer by allowing outsiders the chance to humiliate and slander me. Even my most intimate friends abandoned me. And it was precisely for fear of the threat of love that I left school. Although I mature more each day, those previous liaisons influenced me so much that I still have doubts about love and sometimes thoroughly despise the intimacy love brings. Weidi claims he loves me. Then why does he make me so miserable all the time? He came over again this evening, for instance, and as soon as he got here, he burst into tears and sobbed his eyes out. No matter what I said—“What’s wrong with you? Please talk to me,” or “Weidi, say something, I beg you”—he just carried on as before. Nothing quite like this had ever happened before. I exhausted myself trying to guess what catastrophe had befallen him until I couldn’t think of any other possibilities. Eventually he cried himself out. Then he started in on me.
“I don’t like him.”
“Who’s bullying you, Weidi? Who made you cry and throw this tantrum?”
“I don’t like that tall guy. The one you’re so close to now.”
Oh! I really hadn’t realized until then that he was furious over something I had done. Without thinking, I started to chuckle. This insipid jealousy, this selfish possessiveness, this is love? I couldn’t help myself. I broke into laughter. And that, of course, did nothing to calm poor Weidi’s raging heart. In fact, my condescending attitude increased his fury. Watching his blazing eyes, I got the feeling that what he really wanted was to rip me to shreds. “Go ahead and do it,” I thought to myself. But he just put his head down, started bawling again, and, rubbing tears from his eyes, staggered out the door.
A scene like this might conceivably be considered an ardent expression of tempestuous love. Yet Weidi stages these things for me with such artless lack of forethought that he defeats himself. I’m not asking him to be false or affected in the expression of his love. It’s just I feel it’s futile for him to try to move me by acting like a child. Maybe I’m just hard by nature. If so, I deserve all the anxiety and heartbreak that my failure to live up to people’s expectations has brought me.
As soon as Weidi left, I scrutinized my own intentions. I recalled in vivid detail someone else’s tenderness, someone else’s warmth, generosity, and openly passionate bearing, and I was so drunk with sweet joy that I took out a postcard, wrote a few sentences, and ordered the attendant to take it over to Dormitory No. 4.
March 9
When I see Ling Jishi sit so relaxed and casually in my room, I can’t help pitying Weidi. I pray that not every woman in the world will neglect and disdain his great sincerity, as I do, thus submerging myself in a morass of guilty sorrow I cannot get free of. More than that, I hope a pure young girl comes along who will redeem Weidi’s love, fill the emptiness he must feel.
(Translated by Tani E. Barlow)