(1896–1981)
After Lu Xun, Mao Dun is universally regarded as the greatest writer in twentieth century China. Born in Zhejiang into a family sympathetic to social reform, Mao Dun, whose real name was Shen Yanbing, entered Peking University in 1914. A member of the Literary Research Society, he edited Short Story Monthly and became actively involved in the insurgent Communist movement. A political setback caused by Chiang Kai-shek’s purge of Communists led to Mao Dun’s disillusion and despair in the late 1920s and early 1930s, a period in which he produced his best work: a trilogy entitled The Eclipse was published in 1927, followed by Rainbow (1930), considered by many his finest for a psychological depth new to Chinese literature, and then the novel The Midnight followed in 1933. In the People’s Republic era, Mao Dun was a towering figure, serving as the minister of culture from 1949 to 1965 and the chairman of China’s Writers Association from 1949 to 1981.
Chapter One
The golden rays of the rising sun pierced the light smoky mist that hung over the Yangtze River, dispersing it to reveal the blue-green of the mountain peaks on either shore. The east wind played a soft, enchanting melody. The muddy waters of the Yangtze gradually plunged through the narrow gorges, now and then producing a bevy of small whirlpools in its wake.
An indistinct growl, like the roar of a great animal, issued forth from behind the wall of mountains upstream. After a few minutes it grew into a long, proud bellow, transforming itself into a thundering echo between the cliffs on the two sides of the river. A light green steamship burst majestically through the remaining fog, sailing effortlessly downstream. In an instant, the heavy rumbling noise of its engine swelled up on the surface of the river.
It was the renowned steamship Longmao, which plied the Sichuan waters of the Yangtze River. On this day it had pulled up anchor at dawn in Kuifu and was rushing to make the journey to Yichang by two or three in the afternoon. Although it was only eight in the morning, the ship was already packed to the rails with third-class passengers who had come up for a breath of fresh air. The passageway outside the dining hall on the uppermost deck was not as crowded. In fact, there were only two women leaning against the green iron railing, looking out into the distance at the magnificent, clear view of the Wu Gorge.
They stood shoulder to shoulder, facing the bow of the ship. One, her body slightly turned at the waist, her left forearm leaning on the railing, looked about twenty years old. She wore a pale blue soft satin waist-length blouse, beneath which a long black skirt that billowed out in the wind accentuated the elegance of her slender and graceful body. She had short hair. Two jet-black wisps of hair brushed the cheeks of her oval face, complementing a pair of long, thin eyebrows, a straight nose, two teasingly beautiful eyes, and small, round lips. She displayed all the characteristics of a flawless Oriental beauty. If viewed from behind, she appeared to be the essence of tenderness. But her eyes revealed a vigorous and straightforward spirit. And her small mouth, which was usually tightly closed, gave proof of her resolute disposition. She was the kind of person who knew her goal and never turned back.
Her companion was a short, fat, middle-aged woman. Her face was not unattractive, but her thick lips drooped at the corners, imparting an air of gloom to her appearance. Her clothes were of high-quality material, but their style was old-fashioned. Her feet had once been bound but were now released from their confinement. Encased in black boots that were too large, their humplike deformity looked like two round balls. Next to the long, narrow natural feet of her young companion, they looked quite miserable and pathetic.
The two did not speak to each other. The grandeur of the scenery had long since cleansed their minds of all thoughts. Their hearts were empty, free of concerns, intoxicated by the vastness of the natural beauty surrounding them.
The boat’s whistle shrieked once again. Far off in the distance a cliff intruded on the landscape, blocking the river and piercing the sky. The river cut through the tall peaks that lined both banks. They seemed to form two towering natural dikes, barring any possibility of continued forward passage. The sun shone like a ray of gold, sparingly clothing only the tops of the high peaks in its brilliance, leaving the mountain below a carpet of dark green. The boat continued to push unswervingly forward, its whistle blasting with ever more urgency. The cliffs that all but obstructed the river moved gradually toward the two women, higher and higher, more and more imposing, the luxurious growth of trees halfway up their sides becoming faintly visible.
“This is only the first of the twelve peaks of Wushan.” The middle-aged woman, as she addressed her companion, nodded her head with an air of self-importance and such vigor that the large but loosely fastened bun anchored to the back of her skull bounced back and forth as if about to fall off.
The young woman replied with a smile, turning her head to avoid the foul odors that emanated from the large bun. Slowly she took a step forward, concentrating even more intently on the vista ahead. The precipice rushing toward her was now so close she could no longer see its tip. Clusters of jade-green cedars spread like a belt diagonally across the middle of the mountain. Below, thrust directly into the water, were reddish brown rocks dotted here and there with climbing plants. All of this, this screen of mountains, grew slowly larger, moved slowly closer. Then, suddenly, it shuddered and gently turned around, as if to show off another aspect of its glory.
Bu . . . hong! The whistle gave a joyous cry, and the boat navigated the bend in the river. On the right the mountains that had been soaring to the heavens moved out of the way; once again the limitless waters of the Yangtze rushed between the mountain peaks.
“That’s just like the Yangtze! From a distance it looks impassable. It’s only when you get there that you see there’s a way through. Who knows how many bends like this there are. Miss Mei, this is your first time. You must find it very interesting indeed!” the middle-aged woman called out loudly from behind. Unfortunately, the east wind was so strong that her words of experience were scattered with it. Mei, who was gazing absentmindedly at the eastward-flowing Yangtze, did not hear a thing.
The unbelievable beauty of the Wu Gorge had deeply moved her. She thought of her own past. It too had been so treacherous, so quick to change. It too had had its dead ends and rebirths. Light and darkness were interwoven into the fabric of her life. She had already courageously made it halfway through. What would the rest be like? This puzzle called the future! Mei had no fantasies. Yet neither was she pessimistic. She was simply waiting, quietly, like a boxing master who has established his position and is waiting for his opponent. Hardship was deeply branded on this young life.
Quite a few people probably envied her life. But she herself still saw her past as worthy of the word “vicissitude.” During the last four years she had begun to attract people’s attention as a “prominent member of the nouveaux riches.” In west and south Sichuan everyone knew of Miss Mei. She was no ordinary girl. She was like a rainbow. But she had never wanted her life to be like this, nor was she happy this way. She simply charged forward with the spirit of a warrior, doing what circumstance dictated. Indeed, her special talent was “charging forward.” Her only ambition was to overcome her environment, overcome her fate. During the last few years her only goal had been to rein in her strong feminine nature and her even stronger maternal instincts.
On bright spring days and sorrowful rainy nights, she would occasionally feel the ancient legacy of being female stirring in her heart. At such times she would stare into space, immersed in a flood of loneliness and remorse. It was also at times like these that she fell to lamenting her unfortunate fate and conjuring up a million regrets about the vicissitudes of her existence. Nevertheless, her hardships had already cast her life into a new mold, and the whirlwind May Fourth Movement had already blown her thinking in a new direction. She could not look back. She could only strive to suppress and eradicate the traditional in her nature and adapt to a new world, a new life. She did not pause. She did not hesitate. She felt no contradictions.
The Yangtze was now struggling with difficulty to squeeze through the Wuxia Mountains. The river seemed a symbol of her past. But she hoped her future would be as open and surging as the Yangtze would be below the Kui Pass.
Mei could not suppress a smile. She turned her head and saw the middle-aged woman squinting at her, a reminder that the woman had been jabbering at her with that air of authority that older people so often displayed. Mei did not really like this companion, with her dejected look, but neither was she willing to needlessly offend her. Besides, as long as Mei did not have to smell that rancid hair, she didn’t mind listening to the woman’s pretentious din.
“Mrs. Wen, the wind is strong. Aren’t you scared?” Mei spoke cordially. Stepping daintily inside, she deliberately took a position upwind.
“What hardships and bitterness haven’t these old bones known? How could I be scared of the wind? This spring when we demonstrated for women’s suffrage, the wind was stronger than this and there was a raging rainstorm too. That didn’t scare me. Without even opening my umbrella, I led the sisters to the provincial governor’s office to make our demands.”
Mrs. Wen spoke excitedly, the bun at the back of her head bobbing unceasingly.
Mei pursed her lips to hold back a smile, all the while feigning total admiration.
“Why didn’t you participate then, Miss Mei? Oh, yes, you’re the governor’s private secretary, the trusted lieutenant of the boss. You’re already an official. But Miss Mei, being an official isn’t the same as suffrage. Suffrage is . . .”
As she reached this point, the woman paused for a moment and moved a bit closer to Mei in preparation for an extended harangue. Mei took a half step back to guard her position upwind and adroitly interrupted the other woman: “I’m only the provincial governor’s family tutor. What’s all this about being a private secretary? That’s just a rumor started by people who want to ridicule me. And that’s not all people have been saying. It’s better to just laugh it off. Mrs. Wen, you lost your husband as a young woman. You of all people should know that people with loose tongues like nothing more than to insult a woman, to spread reckless gossip.”
Mrs. Wen’s jowls twitched, but she did not reply. Any mention of her youth always depressed her. Nevertheless, her days of “fearing rumors” had long since passed. She was now a wholehearted member of the movement for political suffrage. Yet on the day they had rushed into the provincial assembly and she had heard the guards cursing her as an “old tigress on the prowl,” for some reason her ardent spirit had flagged. Subconsciously, she thought back to the past indiscretion that had cast a shadow over her future. She felt that as a woman, the only prerequisite for taking a role in society was that she be pure and above reproach. In believing that a woman should remain ever faithful to one husband and never remarry, she was of one mind with many of those who opposed the suffrage movement.
“The provincial governor advocates the new thought. On the question of relations between the sexes, he has some special views. No doubt Mrs. Wen has heard people speak of them?”
Seeing her companion’s discomfort, Mei laughed and changed the direction of the conversation. But the term “relations between the sexes” was probably still very alien to the ears of this eloquent and ardent supporter of women’s suffrage. She looked slightly puzzled at Mei and did not answer. Mei winked knowingly and continued, “This special viewpoint goes like this: A wife is a companion for life. A companion is a friend. The more friends the better!”
Suddenly the boat’s whistle sounded again, two short spurts followed by a long, loud wail. The warning bell on top of the boat also began to clang wildly. Hiding in the hollows carved out of the hills on both banks of the river, local bandits had begun firing guns in the direction of the boat. This happened quite often. Suddenly the boat was filled with the chaotic sound of passengers’ footsteps. By the time Mei grabbed Mrs. Wen and ran to the passageway in front of the dining hall, she had already heard the intermittent and then continuous sounds of gunfire coming from the left. The first-class passengers, who had already arisen, were now pushing and shoving to be first to squeeze down the narrow stairway leading to the cabins below. One of the crew gestured at Mei and her companion to go below as well. Without thinking, Mei took a step forward, but her nose was instantly assaulted by the stench of Mrs. Wen’s hair. She stopped.
“I’m not going down. A boat moving with the current goes very fast. Even bandits’ bullets won’t be able to reach us,” Mei said with a slight smile.
She did not wait for Mrs. Wen’s reply but walked sprightly through the dining hall to her own cabin, lay down on the bed, picked up a book, and began to read. As it happened, her cabin was on the right-hand side of the boat. The reflection of the sun flashed across the window. Mei got up, thinking to pull down the curtains, when she saw a wooden junk on the water unfurl its sails. It moved along the edge of the cliff and in an instant was gone. She listened carefully. The gunfire had stopped. She returned to her bed, lay down, and yawned. Her nights had been filled with dreams, her sleep unsettled. Once again this morning she had arisen too early. She felt very tired. Folding her hands under her head, she lay back on the pillow and closed her eyes.
The doorknob to the cabin turned softly. Mei opened her eyes lazily and saw Mrs. Wen standing in front of the bed. She must have been jostled by the crowd, for her bun was about to come apart. It drooped limply down the back of her neck, and her temples were sticky with beads of sweat.
“How dare those gangsters even open fire on foreign ships. Aiya! But you’re the bold one, Miss Mei. Bullets don’t have eyes. It’s not worth getting yourself killed.” Mrs. Wen sank heavily onto the bed. She spoke breathlessly.
Mei smiled charmingly, sat up, walked to the window, and leaned over the dressing table. She considered advising Mrs. Wen to rearrange her bun, but in the end Mei changed her mind.
“The pity is it interrupted our conversation. Mrs. Wen, do you think what the governor said was correct?”
“Important people think differently from us common folk.”
A casual observer might have thought that Mrs. Wen was just being polite, but her attitude was exceedingly earnest. Mei laughed faintly. She lifted her foot and lightly kicked the tassels on the lower part of the curtains with the pointed toes of her white leather high-heeled foreign shoes.
“But he said only that a wife is a companion for life, not that a husband and wife are companions for life.”
Mrs. Wen opened her eyes wide in total incomprehension.
“He now has five of these companions for life,” Mei quickly continued. “He treats them very thoughtfully and equally, but he guards them jealously. You’d almost think he used eunuchs in that famous garden of his. It’s practically his Afang Palace.”*
Mrs. Wen did not grasp the point of these words. But the number five conjured up rumors she had heard and aroused her interest. “I’ve heard that some are extremely ugly. Is it true?”
This time it was Mei who did not entirely understand. But just as she threw Mrs. Wen a startled glance, Mei realized what her companion was referring to. With a laugh, she stretched and coldly replied, “There was one who once wrote a poem containing the lines, ‘I’d rather be concubine to a hero / than be the wife of a common man.’ She’d probably qualify as the world’s ugliest woman.”
The sun’s rays outside the window abruptly fell into shadow, as if the boat had entered a tunnel of some kind. Mei craned her neck to see but noticed only an exceedingly tall cliff slowly receding, its peak hidden from view. Suddenly, suspended before her eyes were row after row of trees, both tall and short, their trunks straight and thin like those of the hemp. Mei drew back her head and looked at Mrs. Wen’s dazed expression. “One of the peculiarities of the general† of the Afang Palace,” Mei added, “is that almost all his companions are kind of ugly.”
A profound silence crept into the room. The normally talkative Mrs. Wen seemed to have been stricken speechless. She suddenly lay back on the bed and covered her face with her hands. Her fat, clumsy body and her unnaturally small feet all reminded Mei of that woman dwelling deep within the Afang Palace who would rather not be the “wife of a common man.”
Images out of the past slowly began to congeal in Mei’s mind, enveloping her consciousness like a veil of smoke. As in a dream, she was once again a family tutor in that large garden. She saw the familiar layout of man-made hills, the fish pond, and the Western-style gazebo. Ah! That unforgettable gazebo. It was there that she had refused the temptation of money and jewels. It was not that she did not like luxuries but that she valued her freedom more. Above all, she did not want to become a prisoner of the Afang Palace. It was also there that she had come to know the jealousy that had been bred in women by thousands of years of dependence on men. The vision of a small round face with a pair of fierce triangular eyebrows rushed into her mind. And then the smooth, shiny barrel of a Browning revolver, staring at her like the eye of some bizarre monster.
A barely audible snort of contempt rose up from deep within Mei, waking her out of her gloomy reverie. It was the same snort with which the yuanzhu bird in Zhuangzi’s famous story replied to the owl who was cherishing his piece of rotting rat meat as if it were a precious jewel.‡ In fact, the last lesson Mei had taught as a family tutor was that very fable, “The Owl Gets a Rotten Rat.”
A faint snoring arose from the bed. Mrs. Wen had fallen asleep. Mei glanced out the window and then walked softly out of the cabin, back to the passageway outside the dining hall. She sat down on one of the rattan chairs.
On both banks of the river, mountains so tall they had never been inhabited jutted out of the muddy waves and pierced the sky like two high walls. The steamship Longmao puffed asthmatically down the middle of the river. Every once in a while a junk or two appeared on either side, but they clung so closely to the cliffs that it seemed as if those aboard could stretch out a hand and pick the wisteria growing on the rocks. Below the distant towering cliffs ahead were several small wooden boats. Crowded together as if immobile in the narrow pass, they seemed to leave no space for the steamship to squeeze through. But only a few minutes later, with a triumphant blast of its whistle, the Longmao was hurrying past. Only then was it clear that the Yangtze was really wide enough for four steamships. The wake created by the steamship’s propellers dashed against the shore, and the snail-like wooden boats clinging to the cliffs swayed like a gathering of drunken men.
Mei smiled as she looked at the wooden boats. She admired the great power of this machine and had no pity for the snail-like objects being buffeted by the violence it created. She had complete faith in the huge monstrosity that carried her and was intensely conscious that this mammoth product of modern civilization would bring her to a new future. Although before her was a world unimaginably strange, it was surely more vast and more exciting than anything she had known. Of this she was firmly and unalterably convinced.
But she had no illusions. The experience of the last four or five years had taught her three lessons: never long for the past, never daydream about the future, but seize the present and use all your abilities to cope with it. Her past was just like a boat moving through the Wuxia Mountains. She often saw precipices blocking her path, convincing her that there was no way out. But if she bravely and resolutely pressed on, she would always discover that the road ahead was actually very wide. Then as she went a little farther on, the cliffs would again loom before her, and a way out would seem even more remote. If at that point she had looked back from whence she had come, she would have seen that the mountains were already hidden by clouds. To look back on the past was unbearable. The future was indistinct and full of hazards. She could only seize the present and press forward with both feet planted firmly on the ground. She was a “disciple of the present.”
A hot wind passed over her. The sun’s rays danced on the water like myriad specks of gold. It was almost noon. Mei leaned back in the rattan chair and felt her eyelids grow heavy. Although the scenery before her was fascinating, it now made her feel somewhat weary. The endless river pressed between the barren mountains, twisting and turning interminably as the torrents of water rushed ceaselessly forward, always promising new mysteries and yet always the same. And amidst it all, the ever-present triumphant, yet mournful, sound of the ship’s whistle.
She slumped down in the chair, letting herself drowse off to escape the monotony. No thoughts of the past disturbed her peace, and no thoughts of the future came to arouse her emotions.
A waiter arrived to call her to lunch. She found out from him that it would be around three o’clock before they reached Yichang and concluded that this so-called fast steamship was no better than a slow boat after all. She wished she could cross the Kui Pass immediately. The closer they approached the Sichuan border, the more her impatience grew. To Mei, everything about Sichuan was narrow, small, meandering, just like the river flowing before her.
After lunch, taking advantage of a reprieve from Mrs. Wen’s incessant chatter, Mei withdrew into the cabin to take a nap. She had long since found this leading member of the women’s suffrage movement boring. Now Mei had begun to hate her. She hated her vulgar manners; she hated her extreme narrow-mindedness; she hated the way she put on airs to mask her base nature; she hated her extremely muddled ideas on women’s rights.
Half consciously, she compared herself to Mrs. Wen. Then, suddenly, Mei thought of what would happen after they reached Shanghai. She asked herself, “We are representatives, but as a group, what do we represent? How will we be able to accomplish our collective mission?” She could not but laugh. She admitted to herself that she had used her attendance at the National Student League conference as a pretext to evade the advances of that diminutive warlord. She knew if she did not escape now, it would be difficult to avoid being forced into becoming one of the ladies of the Afang Palace. As to whether her companion, Mrs. Wen, also had personal motives for attending, Mei was even less inclined to speculate.
All thought of sleep departed. From Mrs. Wen, Mei’s mind wandered to recollections of other acquaintances. Xu, a good friend from middle school with whom she had kept in touch until two years ago, when she was a teacher in southern Sichuan, leaped into her mind. “She’s in Nanjing,” Mei thought excitedly. And with this a multitude of disconnected memories streamed into Mei’s head, finally driving her from her bed.
A rumbling sound arose from the deck. From outside the window came the sound of swarming footsteps. Mrs. Wen stuck her head in through the window and shouted joyfully, “Don’t you want to see the Kui Pass? We’re almost there!”
Mei replied with a smile. The enthusiasm of the throng outside made her feel hot. She changed into a muslin blouse, wiped her face with a towel, and ran nimbly out to the passageway.
Lofty cliffs still stood on both banks, but now they were not so high and had begun to slope slightly. Behind them rose row after row of mountains, each taller than the ones before. The rays of the sun had now turned them a brilliant golden color. The wind had died down to a gentle breeze, as if it too had barely awoken from its afternoon nap.
The boat seemed to be moving more slowly. The splashing of the waves became more even. The whistle emitted a constant arrogant bellow like the cries of the heralds in ancient times who ordered the people to make way for an approaching official.
Many people were lined up along the railing, staring straight ahead. Mrs. Wen was among them. Mei stood in the passageway. She clasped her hands behind her neck and gently swayed her shoulders from side to side. Her short sleeves fell back to her shoulders, revealing her snow-white arms like two triangles on either side of her head. The sight of her bare skin attracted quite a few sideward glances. Mei bit her lip and grinned as if no one else were there. Then, impulsively, she raised her eyebrows and skipped off, cutting right through the clusters of passengers to the door of the captain’s cabin.
About one hundred feet from the front of the ship, two walls of stone jutted out of the water and faced each other across the river, so vertical and smooth they seemed to be sliced out of the rocks with a knife. There were no trees, no vines, no ferns, only the pitch-black rocks looming majestically over the river like a monumental doorframe without its top. Joining these two strange stones were row after row of undulating mountains. Each billowing wave of the Yangtze rushed to be first to reach the shore, crashing violently against the foot of the cliffs.
The boat’s whistle once again let out a long earsplitting shriek as the Longmao sailed into the great stone gateway. Mei craned her neck to see. The intensity of the sun made her dizzy. She felt as though the rapidly receding stone precipice was swaying, about to topple. Instinctively, she closed her eyes. She saw a flash of red light and then all was dark.
Mei buried her face in her hands and thought to herself, “So this is the Kui Pass. This is the great pass out of Sichuan. This is the demon pass§ that separates Sichuan from the rest of the world!” These thoughts left Mei momentarily distracted, until the boat’s whistle once again roused her. She lifted her head and felt a blinding flash from the returning sunlight. The Yangtze opened up before her, so broad that she could not see the shore. All that was visible were distant, smoky objects like the shadows of clouds lying on the horizon. As if a great weight had been lifted from her chest, Mei smiled, raised her arms high, and took a deep breath. She paid tribute to this glorious work of nature. It was only at that moment that she fully realized the vastness and power of the Yangtze River.
She turned her head to the right. The cliffs of the Kui Pass were still faintly visible. The pass itself now seemed but a crack among the myriad peaks, and within the crack lay a mysterious darkness.
“From here on you won’t be seeing any more good scenery. Once you leave Sichuan the Yangtze is really quite ordinary. The Kui Pass is a natural boundary.”
From her left came the sound of Mrs. Wen’s voice. Mei turned her head and saw Mrs. Wen straining to move her small feet. As she nodded and walked away, Mei pursed her lips in a smile and called gently after her, “This is also the last time we’ll be following a meandering, narrow, dangerous, mazelike route. From here on we enter the broad vast world of freedom!”
Chapter Two
When Mei was eighteen years old she was enrolled as a student at the Yizhou Girls’ School in Chengdu. It was in that same year, on May 4, that the students of Beijing began their historic mass movement. Their initial attack on the Zhao mansion¶ gave rise to the raging tide of “May Fourth.” The flames that burned through the Zhao mansion set fire to the zeal of young people throughout China.
Within a month this raging tide, this spark, had burst forth and spread all the way to Chengdu, that remote and enigmatic land on China’s western frontier. Mei had gone to Shaocheng Park to witness the activity generated by a rally to boycott Japanese goods. The slogan of the rally was “patriotism.” Of course, Mei knew that she should love her country, but the slogan was too general, too broad to arouse her enthusiasm. She remained only a spectator. At the time she was too caught up in her own personal dilemma, one that she could not resolve. Only three days earlier, without her consent, her father had betrothed her to her first cousin, Liu Yuchun.
When she returned home from the rally that evening, her father had himself just returned from getting drunk at the Lius’. He had apparently heard something at the Liu Dry Goods Store because instead of going straight to sleep as usual, he summoned Mei and began to rant, “So, this is our great republic! Students meddling in other people’s private affairs! They plan to go to the dry goods store to inspect it for Japanese goods. If they find any they’ll confiscate them, and they even intend to impose a fine. It’s ridiculous. It’s impossible. I can’t believe the yamen# won’t take any action.’’
Mei lowered her head and said nothing. The words “inspect the dry goods store” pierced her like a knife. The earthshaking patriotic cries at Shaocheng Park, which had seemed so remote to her this afternoon, now turned out to be directly related to her personal problem. In the future she would have to be the proprietress of a store that secretly sold Japanese goods. This prospect intensified her misery. That day, when she heard people shout, “Patriotism,” she hadn’t given it a second thought, for she knew she had never sold out her country. Now her complacency was gone. Suddenly she felt like a notorious traitor.
“Heh! What they say sounds good enough. They say they want us to buy Chinese products. Well, I’m a genuine doctor of Chinese medicine, the real article. But in recent years look how unpopular, how poor I’ve become!”
Her father spoke wheezingly, filling the room with the stench of alcohol. From the students, he moved on to his usual routine of cursing his son. His tongue thick from drink, he laboriously recited the past events that Mei had heard so often before. How he had sold off family property to send his son to study in America. How, later, he had sold more family property to pull the right strings to get his son a job. How his son, who was happily living far away, never even asked whether his father was dead or alive. His eyes were completely red by the time he finished his tale.
“The year before last he was employed in the office of the Shaanxi military governor, but he still wired home again and again asking for money. Last year he became a magistrate and he stopped coming to me for money. But his telegrams and express letters also stopped. Ah! This is the way a son who studies abroad and becomes an official acts. The one with real promise is that child Yuchun. He was an orphan. I took him into our home only because he was related to us. Later, when I sent him to be an apprentice at the Hong Yuan Dry Goods Store at the Yuelai market, it was only so he’d have a way to make a living. And with nothing but his bare hands he turned around and made a fortune.”
Her father closed his eyes and nodded his head in satisfaction. Then, abruptly, he opened them wide and shouted, “How dare those student bastards prevent people from selling Japanese goods!” Repeating himself once more with venom, Mei’s father then staggered into his own room.
Mei watched his retreating figure and heaved a great sigh. If there hadn’t been a maid still standing in a dark corner of the room, Mei would have already let the tears welling in her eyes pour out. Her eyes darted in every direction, like a drowning person searching desperately for something to hang on to. There was nothing, only the flickering flames of the kerosene lamp leaping toward her, the ancient wooden furniture gaping dumbly all around her, and the chill of a household in decline that pierced her to the marrow.
Biting her lip to hold back the tears, Mei fled into her own bedroom. Here the warmer atmosphere comforted her somewhat. On a delicate pear-wood table were arranged the mementos of the blissful days of her childhood: an exquisitely dressed doll; a red-lipped, white-toothed Negro figure with a small clock in its protruding belly; two peacock feathers inserted in a tea-green triangular glass vase. These were all relics of better times, five or six years ago, before her mother had died. Mei, without a mother and without sisters, had used these toys to replace the intimacy of real flesh-and-blood relatives. Now she stared absentmindedly at these mute, though almost human, friends. Confused thoughts crossed her mind, but none took root in her consciousness. It was as though she were being assaulted by disconnected images—the dry goods store, Japanese products, Cousin Liu, marriage, the rally at Shaocheng Park—each throbbing feverishly in her head.
Impulsively, she went to her bed and took out a small inlaid ebony box. She lifted the lid. It was completely empty except for a single photograph of the face of a slightly feminine-looking young man. Mei gazed at the photo for a few minutes, then closed the box and lay down on the bed. A vision of another man flashed before her eyes. On his round face were two broad, thick eyebrows and a pair of shrewd eyes. He was not basically bad-looking. He just displayed too much of the vulgarity of the crafty businessman.
Mei buried her face in the pillow and gritted her teeth. How she hated that man! Her secret hatred of him was as great as her secret love for the other man. But it was not her secret love for the one that caused her to hate the other. She had hated him for a long time. Both were her cousins, but for some reason she had never felt as close to her father’s sister’s son, who had been raised in her own family, as she felt toward her other cousin on her mother’s side. Although she did not want him to, the former continually pursued her. From the time Mei was barely old enough to know about sex, he, already an adult, had constantly looked for opportunities to flirt with her. She still had a scar on her arm where he had scratched her. This was something a proud girl like Mei could not tolerate. She carried in her bosom the secret of this humiliation. She secretly detested this man. Yet it had now been decided that she was to spend the rest of her life with this very person.
A feeling of having been vanquished, of having been taken prisoner, overcame her. Worse, there seemed no hope of escape. The marriage agreement had been concluded. The wedding would probably take place next year. What means could she use to resist? What means did she have to resist? Still worse, she had heard that the man she loved was also about to get married. At the latest it would probably be this winter. Last week when they had met and talked at the Wangjiang teahouse, had he not said to her, “Meimei,** circumstances demand that we part. Even if I was not engaged, would Uncle want a poor orphan like me? And even if Uncle agreed, I’m only a clerk in the army divisional headquarters. Could I make you happy? I know you’re willing to suffer, but how can I bear to see the one I love sacrifice on my account? The doctor says I have tuberculosis. I probably don’t have long to live. That’s even more reason not to sacrifice your future.”††
Two rows of tears streamed from Mei’s eyes, but they were tears of happiness. She was glad she had tasted the bittersweet joy of true love. She sank once more into her memories, reliving that moment as if it were displayed before her like a motion picture. When her emotions had reached their peak, she had looked to see that there was no one around and pressed her face against her cousin’s shoulder. Then slowly, half unconsciously, she moved her lips closer to his. A shiver ran through his whole body. He drew gently back and said in an unsteady voice, “Cousin, I have tuberculosis.” Oh! Oh! Tuberculosis! Will it keep me from embracing this man while he is alive? Will it only let me cry at his grave?
A wild passion overtook Mei’s heart. She did not blame her cousin for his seeming aloofness. On the contrary, she was even more grateful, felt even more respect and love for his pure and honest nature. She wanted to know only why she did not have the right to love the one she loved, why she was only worthy of being a prisoner, a piece of soft, warm flesh to be toyed with. She hated the teachers at school and the old revolutionary spinster headmistress, Miss Cui, for never having discussed problems of this kind.
These two questions went around and around in her mind, but she had no answers. Finally, her nerves, half numb with exhaustion, led her to that age-old explanation: an unfortunate fate. This simple answer wrenched her, tortured her, haunted her, gnawed at her until the chirping of the birds praising the dawn aroused her with a start. The sun shone obliquely on the eaves of the house. The clock in the belly of the Negro doll ticked steadily. All was beautiful. All was calm.
Mei rolled over and sat up. In a daze, she balanced herself on the edge of the bed. She could not believe a whole night had passed. She noticed mosquito bites all over her pale upper arm. Her neck also itched. When she walked toward the window to look in the mirror, she saw that there were faint blue circles under her eyes and that her cheeks were flushed blood-red. Putting down the mirror, she sank into a nearby chair and stared vacantly at the doll sitting atop the pear-wood table.
The big hand on the Negro doll’s belly had marked the passing of a full ten minutes when Mei suddenly jumped up. She dashed off a short letter, combed her hair, changed into a pale lilac muslin skirt and blouse, and called one of the family’s maids to bring her breakfast. Her lips had recovered their smile, and her eyes, which minutes before were suffering from lack of sleep, once again radiated determination.
Mei went to school as usual. As she dropped the letter into a mailbox on the way, an unconscious smile crossed her face. No formal classes were held that day. Yesterday’s rally had already stirred up some of these normally sedate young ladies. Everywhere could be heard the buzzing of female voices absorbed in curious gossip. The old revolutionary, Headmistress Cui, suddenly became an object of great interest. Wherever she went, her long braid bouncing behind her,‡‡ there were always pockets of students secretly watching her every move. The reading room in particular was alive with activity. Group after group of students fought over month-old newspapers from Shanghai and Hankou to see how the students in Beijing had set fire to the minister’s house and beaten up a high government official, to see how afterward they had taken to the streets to make speeches, and to see how several hundreds of them had been arrested by the police. A few of the more discerning girls went a step further and searched out five or six dusty volumes of New Youth magazine. The whole school shook with nervous agitation.
Mei was no exception. But unlike the others, she was not absorbed in this intense research into recent events. Rather, she used it as a means to make the time pass more quickly. In reality, she was preoccupied with the date she had made with Cousin Wei Yu for later that day. She was also afraid that she would hear people say things like “the dry goods store sells nothing but Japanese products.” Whenever Mei ran into classmates who were talking about the boycott, she could not help feeling a bit jumpy, as if her own hidden sins had been discovered.
At ten past four Mei sneaked away to the Ziyun Pavilion. A tall, emaciated young man was already there waiting for her. They smiled and stood gazing silently at one another, then walked slowly to a large wutong tree behind the pavilion, each deep in thought, as if pondering what to say first.
“Meimei, your letter gave me quite a scare.” The young man spoke softly, his gentle eyes fixed on Mei’s face.
Mei replied with a tender smile, “Why weren’t you able to sleep well last night? You look pale and your eyes are a bit swollen. You were crying last night, weren’t you?”
The young man sighed faintly, hung his head, and allowed two imperceptible tears to drip down his cheeks.
Mei did not reply. Her lips drew together as if to speak, but she held back. She kicked a clump of grass at the foot of the tree with her toe and began mechanically fingering the hem of her muslin blouse. She hesitated for a full half minute before she said calmly, “Cousin Yu, I don’t know what was on my mind last night. But you needn’t worry. It doesn’t matter. Last night was nonsense, meaningless nonsense. But this morning I came to a decision. Let’s work out a plan to go away.”
Wei Yu raised his head in alarm and fixed his gentle gaze on Mei as if he had not understood what she meant by “go away.” Nevertheless, a look of intense gratitude was revealed as his eyes slowly filled with tears. Mei smiled and added softly, “If we go away together, there might still be hope. If we split up, the future will be unendurable!”
Tears were his only reply. Two thoughts did battle in the mind of this overly sensitive young man. He could not bear to hurt her by saying no, but he felt he should not say yes. After a painful silence, he forced out these few words: “I am not worthy of such true love, Meimei.”
This time it was Mei’s face that turned pale. She began to have the uneasy feeling that the man she loved was a coward.
“I’m a sick man. At most I’ll live another two or three years. I don’t deserve to enjoy life. Even more, I shouldn’t let the shadow hanging over my life blot out your chances for happiness. If you continue to think of me, then I will die with a smile on my face. Knowing that your future will be a good one, I’ll be able to die content.”
Although there was a slight tremor in his voice, he spoke these words with resolve. He had the aura of a martyr about to die for his principles. He shed no more tears. His cheeks were flushed with excitement.
Mei silently bowed her head. Then suddenly she spoke with total conviction: “My future most certainly will not be good.”
“Huh?”
“Because I don’t love him. I hate him.”
“Do you hate him for the reason you mentioned last time? If he’s too aggressive, it’s probably because he loves you so much.”
Mei could not but purse her lips and laugh. She shot a glance at Wei Yu and said with an air of disapproval, “When did you learn how to defend other people so well?”
“I’m not defending him. I’m just telling you the truth.”
“You call that the truth?”
Mei spoke sharply. She was clearly angry. If this had not been her trusted Wei Yu, she would certainly have thought Liu Yuchun had bribed him to lobby on Liu’s behalf. But coming from Wei Yu’s lips this sort of talk was quite unexpected. She looked at him intently, waiting for an answer.
“Meimei, I was wrong. Please forgive me. Of course I don’t want someone else to love you. But at the same time I really wish there was someone who could truly love you and whom you could love in return.” Wei Yu tried to dispel his feelings of guilt by defending himself.
“When did you start having such thoughts?”
“Since I found out that I had tuberculosis and knew I couldn’t make you happy.”
Again, tuberculosis. Mei’s heart pounded. She sensed that the dark shadow of this disease would tear them apart forever. She wanted to curse this godforsaken tuberculosis, but Wei Yu had already resumed speaking.
“Last year I didn’t feel this way. Meimei, at that time we were both very shy. We never talked openly about our feelings. But in our hearts we both knew. We thought about each other all the time. At that time I hated myself for being too poor. I resented Uncle for not giving his consent. But recently I’ve been reading some stories and magazines and my way of thinking has changed. . . .”
“Now you just speak the truth, huh?” There was considerable dismay in her voice as she interrupted him.
“No. I’ve just come to realize that when you love someone it doesn’t mean you have to possess her. To really love someone is to put her happiness ahead of your own. . . .”
“People only say that sort of thing in novels,” Mei interrupted Wei Yu a second time. Clearly she was not pleased with what he had to say. Moreover, she did not understand what he meant by “possess.”
“It’s not from novels. It’s philosophy—Tolstoy’s philosophy,” Wei Yu corrected her earnestly. But noticing Mei’s exhausted appearance, he lowered his head and discontinued his argument.
There was a short silence. For the first time they heard the sound of the cicadas chirping among the leaves of the wutong tree. The breeze rustled Mei’s muslin skirt. The sun shone obliquely on the sides of the pavilion. Mei wrinkled her eyebrows slightly and stared into space. In the end it was Mei who spoke first, her eyes gliding over Wei Yu’s face. “That business of yours later this year, has the date been set?”
He replied with a resigned nod of the head. But after a brief interval, he began to defend himself: “It was all my uncle’s idea. I told him that right now I’m not in a position to take care of a family, but he refused to listen.”
“But did you bring up your tuberculosis and the fact that you have only three or four years to live?”
“No. It wouldn’t have done any good.”
“Then aren’t you going to hurt her future?”
Wei Yu looked at Mei with a puzzled expression. For a moment he could not think of an appropriate reply.
“Do you think it’s all right because you don’t love her? But how can you know that she doesn’t love you? How can you turn around and cold-bloodedly ruin the life of someone who loves you?”
“I can’t worry about everything. Even if it will destroy her, it’s my uncle who is the executioner. I’m only the sword. A sword can’t move by itself.”
“But when someone wants to throw herself on the blade of this sword, then it is able to come alive, isn’t it? Then it is able to move out of the way!”
With this mild rebuttal, Mei turned her back on Wei Yu and began walking slowly toward the pavilion. She could no longer suppress the nagging suspicion, the uncomfortable sensation that gnawed at her insides. Her cousin was too passive, too timid. He was too lazy. Wei Yu only wanted to ensure his own immediate comfort. So much so that he was unwilling to brave danger for the one he loved. He placed his own comfort above all else.
By the time she stepped up onto the stone steps in front of the pavilion she could bear it no longer and turned around. But when she did, it was only to find that Wei Yu was right behind her. His feelings of apprehension brought her to a halt. They looked at each other for several seconds before Wei Yu spoke excitedly. “I’m a weakling, a good-for-nothing weakling. Meimei, you are wrong to love me. But you know what’s in my heart. I worship you. To me you are a goddess. I beg you not to be miserable because of me. I beg you to forget me. I beg you to despise me. I beg you, just let me lock my love for you away in my heart; just let me repay your kindness to me with my tears. Ah! I might as well tell you everything. I’m an evil person. Two months ago, in the middle of the night, when I was thinking of you, I found myself hugging the covers passionately, squeezing them so tight, as if they were you. Oh, I’m a beast. It’s only in the daytime, when I stand before you, that I become human again, an honest gentleman. I detest myself. When I read stories, when I look at magazines, it is in the hope of deriving some comfort from their pages, in the hope of discovering in their pages a way to save myself and save you. Now I’ve found it! A glorious ideal has relieved me of my agony, has made up for losing you. Now if I could only see you live a long prosperous life, I would be the happiest man in the world!”
Having said this, Wei Yu opened wide his troubled eyes and stared off into space. It was as if there, beyond the treetops, amid the glow of the setting sun, was the new, glorious ideal to which he owed his salvation. As if there in the distance stood an infinitely compassionate, infinitely sympathetic sage, beckoning to him with a raised hand.
Tears the shape of pearls welled up in his eyes. Was this a natural expression of his humanity, or was it the last remnant of his desire? Wei Yu was not certain himself. He merely felt an extraordinary sense of relief, as though he had just spit out something that had been lodged in his guts a long, long time.
Mei leaned against a pillar of the pavilion engrossed in thought. She did not reply. After a while she turned around and, with a strained expression, said softly, “I know what is in your heart. It’s not just fate that’s brought us to this impasse, is it? Please don’t worry. I understand what you’re saying. But please, spare me the philosophy from now on. I also have principles. I refuse to be a prisoner. It’s getting late, Cousin Yu. Good-bye!”
Mei turned and took one last look at Wei Yu, then followed the path on the right of the pavilion and walked determinedly away. Wei Yu followed slowly behind her. After about ten steps she stopped, turned around once more, and said to him, “Those stories and magazines you spoke of, I also want to read them. Would you send them to my house?”
Suddenly the evening breeze blew through Mei’s muslin blouse, revealing the hem of her pale pink camisole. Like rosy clouds it dazzled Wei Yu’s eyes and aroused his passions. Instinctively he rushed forward, about to press Mei to his bosom, but he instantly recovered his composure and stopped. In a daze, he nodded his head, turned toward a different path, and ran away.
Mei returned home bewildered. Her image of Wei Yu had begun to blur. She had always felt she understood Wei Yu completely. Now she was not sure. A few strange books had changed her Wei Yu. But how they had changed him, Mei did not really know. She just felt as though some kind of mysterious spirit had possessed Wei Yu, making his way of thinking different from other people’s, different from her own. He had become even more cowardly, even more indifferent. It could even be said that he had become frigid and aloof. But that was not the whole story. Beneath his cowardice he had a new daring and determination; beneath that icy aloofness burned a passionate desire to sacrifice himself for the happiness of another.
There was only one thing of which Mei was still absolutely certain, and that was Wei Yu’s faithfulness to her. This gave her incomparable comfort. In imitation of Wei Yu, she had come close to saying, “Even if my future knows no happiness, as long as there is someone who loves me with all his heart, my life will not have been lived in vain.”
In such a mood Mei began to feel the days pass more easily. At the same time her native eagerness to explore new things encouraged her to devour the stories and magazines Wei Yu sent over. She thirsted for an immediate knowledge of the mysterious spirit that had changed Wei Yu.
As for the fervent activity of the “patriotic movement,” she was still just a bystander. She could not get herself interested. Although the words “inspect the dry goods store for Japanese goods” occasionally upset her, when she thought of her decision “not to be a prisoner” she became inured, feeling that the matter of Japanese products at the dry goods store had, after all, nothing to do with her. She viewed the continued progress of this convulsive mass movement as she had before, as something totally unrelated to her own personal interests.
But the patriotic movement to boycott Japanese goods was slowly developing a new focus. The students of the city’s highest educational institution, the Teachers’ College, had proclaimed a new slogan: “Liberalize social relations between the sexes.” Mei recalled that several of Wei Yu’s magazines had mentioned this, but she had not paid it any attention. Following Wei Yu’s instructions, she had read only the essays on Tolstoy. The stories were also by Tolstoy. In her excitement she had already read them twice, but they did not seem to say anything about open social relations. With a new curiosity and hope she perused them yet again.
One day on the way home from school Mei caught a glimpse of several eye-catching magazines arranged in the window of a bookseller’s shop. Each and every one had the word “new” in the title. On the front covers were also prominently displayed article titles such as “The Cannibalism of Traditional Morality.” She looked at them with surprise and joy and regretted that she was not carrying any money. The next day on the way to school she made a point of deliberately stopping in to buy one, but they were all sold out.
Dispirited, she went to school but was in no mood to listen to the lectures. Instead she daydreamed. She imagined that she saw a rush of powerful roaring waves rolling over all that was old and rotten. She was convinced that extraordinary and new things were spreading everywhere. Her small corner of the world was the only place they had not yet reached. And even if they did, she would never get her hands on them. Restlessly she gazed around the room. She despised her dull, lazy, torpid classmates. Then suddenly, unexpectedly, she saw a student, Xu Qijun, sitting not far from her, reading one of the magazines with the word “new” in the title.
After class Mei rushed over to Xu Qijun. Peering over her shoulder, Mei saw that this was the very magazine that had slipped through her fingers. “Ah, I never suspected you were the one who bought it,” Mei called out gleefully. She turned half around and leaned on Xu Qijun’s shoulder as though they were old friends. Xu turned her head, looked at Mei with dark, penetrating eyes, and said with a smile, “Are these also on sale in the city? Mine were sent to me by my brother in Beijing.”
The two classmates, who had barely known each other by sight, suddenly began an intimate conversation. An indescribable but clearly sensed force drew them together. In the course of this animated discussion Mei again heard many strange new terms. Although she did not yet fully understand their meaning, each one gave her a feeling of rapture, of exhilaration. The two girls did not even hear the bell signaling the next class.
When Mei returned home that day she carried under her arm a bundle of magazines, all lent to her by Xu Qijun. Although the weight under her arm had increased, there was a greater spring in her steps. She felt that a new world had opened up before her. She had only to walk in and there would be happiness and light.
Her exploration of the new thought and the sudden acquisition of a new friend made Mei temporarily forget the anxieties evoked by her personal problems. From the crack of dawn when they went to school until the evening when it grew dark, she and Xu Qijun were inseparable. The two of them became a target of gossip at school. Some even suspected them of lesbianism. Summer vacation was near. The dates for final examinations had already been set. But Mei and Xu remained engrossed in the new books and magazines. The only time they opened their textbooks was in class, when they propped them up on their desks to fool their teachers.
Because of Wei Yu’s original suggestion, Mei still concentrated on Tolstoy. But Xu seemed to be a disciple of Ibsen. Every other word out of her mouth was Ibsen. Each saw herself as the representative of her chosen writer. In reality, neither really understood the works of these two great masters. They had only a very vague idea of their meaning and even misinterpreted them in many places. But at the same time they shared a common conviction: Tolstoy and Ibsen were both new, and because they were new they were definitely good. This common faith strengthened the girls’ friendship and brought their very souls together.
Examinations finally ended. On the evening of July 1, the first day of vacation, Mei’s father suddenly took ill. The old man had returned home drunk at eight o’clock. At ten he started complaining of stomach pains, after which he threw up everything he had eaten. He wrote himself a prescription, which he himself prepared, but it had no effect. Mei did not sleep all night. She sat in her father’s sickroom, wild and confused thoughts pouring through her agitated mind. Just before dawn her father seemed a bit calmer, but within half an hour he went into a rage over his son’s lack of filial piety. Gasping, he jumped up and began ranting about dragging his son back and reporting him to the magistrate for disobedience to his father. All Mei and the maid could do was muster their strength to pull the old man back to bed. This melodrama lasted until eight o’clock the next morning, when the patient finally calmed down and Mei frantically sent for a doctor.
Later that morning, when the patient appeared to be resting easily, Mei returned to her own room to try getting a little sleep. But in her overly excited condition she could do no more than close her burning eyes and let her muddled thoughts overcome her. She pondered the fact that Xu Qijun would be returning home to Chongqing today. Mei’s new friend had promised to mail her more new books, but Mei did not know when they would arrive. She also wondered whether her plans to spend the vacation reading would be upset and hoped her father would get well quickly. It also troubled her that Wei Yu had not been by all week. She turned these matters over and over in her mind. Time and again she rolled over to place her feverish cheeks on the coolest part of the mat.§§ Mei dimly heard the singing of birds in the trees outside her window. The voice of their servant, Auntie Zhou, drifted over from the living room, followed by the shuffle of footsteps. Finally, there was what sounded like a fly buzzing incessantly around her ear.
“Master Liu is here.”
As the humming congealed into these words, Mei awakened from her exhausted stupor. She opened her eyes and stared vacantly in front of her. The maid, Chuner, stood grinning at the foot of the bed. Mei frowned and shook her head as if to say, “Don’t bother me,” then turned over and pretended to be asleep. She had expected him to come. She really had been hoping someone would come to drive away her depression. If only it had not been him! All thought of sleep departed. Mei jumped up and ran to the door to lock it but changed her mind. She left it half opened as before, walked to the window, and sat down in her chair. She spoke softly but proudly to herself: “Will he dare?” The small hand on the belly of the Negro doll showed that it was precisely three o’clock. The oppressive heat of the July sun muted all sound. There was only the chirping of the cicadas in the wutong tree outside the window. Mei sat stiffly upright in her chair, as if awaiting some grave omen.
Suddenly the door creaked. Mei watched, startled. The face of Chuner, her thick lips parted, peered in and then quickly withdrew.
“Chuner!”
Mei’s stern shout drew Chuner back inside. She stood fearfully in the doorway. Her thick lips, which lent an air of stupidity to her face, were half opened, almost as if to smile.
“Has Master Liu gone yet?”
“He’s gone.”
“Is my father asleep yet?”
“Not yet. Master Liu and the old master talked a long time. First the old master was happy; then he got angry.”
Mei cocked her head and hesitated. She thought this very strange and looked at Chuner’s fat face with disbelief. She knew this tricky little girl would not stoop to lying, so maybe she was making a wild guess. But Chuner stepped closer and went on in a whisper, “Master Liu said to the old master that if he and the young mistress got married earlier, the old master could move into Master Liu’s house. That way, if he got sick again in the middle of the night he wouldn’t have to worry. Auntie Zhou told me your wedding will be next month!”
“Damn!”
Mei’s color changed slightly, but she quickly recovered her air of indifference and scrutinized Chuner as if to test the reliability of her words. Then Mei laughed bitterly and asked, “And what did my father say?”
“The old master was very happy. Then I don’t know what Master Liu said, but the old master started getting angry. The old master cursed the bastard student troublemakers and the yamen for not taking any action.”
Mei closed her eyes and sneered. With the words “Button your lip,” she ordered Chuner out, and holding her head in her hands, she sank into thought. She guessed what “Master Liu” must have said, but could her father really have agreed to carry it out next month? Mei was extremely upset. Although she had already decided on a way to deal with things, she had hoped they would not come to a head so soon.
That night Mei’s father slept peacefully, and by the next day he had nearly recovered. While chatting with him, Mei tried to bring up the subject of her anxieties. Her father spoke to her with vehemence. “It was just some sort of bug, but everyone figured I was on my deathbed. Yuchun even wanted to rush the marriage without allowing time for the necessary arrangements. Heh! That youngster is really shrewd. I intend to live a few more years yet. I want to carry out your wedding with the full ceremony. With the students making such a fuss, who knows how much Yuchun will lose? Naturally, I would prefer that you wait until his business picks up before you get married. He sure knows how to talk. He said that I was getting old, that I was always sick, and that if you two got married soon, he’d have me live with you so he could look after me day and night. Ha! I, Dr. Mei, am not the type who follows his daughter to her husband’s house just for a free meal ticket!”
Mei smiled. She knew her father intended to use all of this to get something out of the Lius. The severe criticism of “commercialized marriages” in her magazines immediately sprang to mind. But as long as her father’s ideas helped further her own “delaying tactics” she was happy. She expressed the desire to “wait at least until I’ve graduated from high school,” then quickly found a pretext to leave her father’s presence.
“Worry about tomorrow when it comes. For the present, just walk the path that lies before you,” Mei thought as she sat in her own room. She smiled as she picked up a copy of Weekly Review¶¶ that Xu Qijun had left and began reading it enthusiastically.
Before she had finished a page, she heard the sound of voices coming from the living room. She threw down the magazine and ran out. In the anteroom off her father’s bedroom she saw a handsome young man in a military uniform. It was Wei Yu. He had come to inquire about Dr. Mei’s illness and say good-bye.
“I’ve already seen Uncle. Tomorrow I’m leaving for Lüzhou.” Wei Yu spoke these words rapidly, then looked intently at Mei. His eyes appeared moist.
Mei forced a smile and, acting the hostess, invited him to come sit in the library. This tiny side room had once served as Dr. Mei’s examining room. Then it had been used as the classroom for the children in the family. Recently, it had been abandoned altogether, and although it was still kept spotlessly clean, it already showed signs of disuse. Mei had hurriedly thought of this place so they would not be disturbed.
It took ten minutes for Mei to find out that Wei Yu’s unit was starting out for Lüzhou and could end up going into battle. She also discovered that Wei Yu had been promoted to lieutenant. She stared at him. He spoke with exasperating slowness. A million questions lodged in Mei’s throat, waiting for a pause to burst out.
“It’s because we heard there would be fighting that a lot of the men who managed the division’s paperwork resigned. So they promoted me a grade. Of course, I don’t know how to fight, but when you think about it, it’s not so terrible. If I’m killed, that’s okay. If I’m lucky enough not to be killed, I’m hoping the experience will improve my health. I think this should stir up my spirit. You see, Meimei, I’m wearing a uniform now. If I can’t be a healthy person, I might as well die. This is my last act of courage, my last hope. But there’s an eighty or ninety percent chance I’ll die. If we lose the battle, I won’t be able to escape, someone like me. . . .”
Wei Yu stopped abruptly. Although he felt the iron hand of fate tightly gripping him, the new books and magazines he had been reading of late kept him from letting the final words of self-denigration escape his lips. He cast his eyes downward, then glanced once more around the room. It was still the same old library. Events of ten years ago rushed into his mind. Back then his parents were still alive. Back then he had studied in this very room, sharing the same desk with Mei. Back then they had often pretended that they were bride and groom kneeling before the altar on their wedding day. It was also back then that their two hearts had become inextricably intertwined, inseparable for eternity. Now, now the two hearts were still the same, but everything around them had changed. He had to acknowledge the power of reality. He had to sever the feelings of love he had harbored for ten years. He could not hold back his tears.
Mei did not share his feelings of sorrow. She had been waiting patiently for Wei Yu to continue speaking. When it seemed likely that there would be no more, her questions began pouring out. “When will you be back? Do clerks also have to go to the front? It will take about ten days to get to Lüzhou, won’t it? When you’re traveling by land, they’ll have to give you a sedan chair, won’t they?”
This string of questions interrupted Wei Yu’s train of thought. He smiled at Mei and replied as slowly as before, “There’s no telling with the army. Maybe once we get there we won’t fight. Right now no one knows. Even if we do fight, of course they won’t send me to the front. But if we lose I’ll need two strong legs to escape. I’d rather get shot at! When will we be back? That’s even harder to say.”
For a moment it was silent. They exchanged glances. Then Wei Yu laughed bitterly and added, “This could be our last good-bye. I pray, Meimei, that you will have a peaceful and happy future.”
Mei smiled knowingly and said with gravity, “I hope when you get to Lüzhou there is a battle. I hope you win. I know you are going to win. I have faith that this will be the beginning of your career. When that happens, when that happens, everything will be different. I’m waiting for that moment.”
Smiling again, Mei stood up energetically, like a brave woman seeing her sweetheart off to war. Suddenly she remembered something. Staring strangely at him she whispered, “You probably won’t get back this year. What about that matter of yours?”
As he replied, Wei Yu stood up and straightened his uniform. “If we don’t return there is nothing they can do about it. They can’t send her to Lüzhou, can they? Anyway, who says we’ll stay in Lüzhou. When you’re dealing with the army, who knows what will happen?”
A sudden gust of wind blew open the glass doors. Outside was a small courtyard with several stalks of bamboo and a flower bed covered with dense moss. Beside the flower bed stood a few broken flower pots filled with scraggly weeds. Mei walked woodenly over to close the doors, then turned and faced Wei Yu. He stood in the doorway, about to leave. She could not help smiling. It was a smile that said, “Our hearts are one,” a comforting smile, an approving smile. It was also a smile of hope.
(Translated by Madeleine Zelin)
* The Afang Palace housed the harem of the first emperor of the Qin Dynasty (221–207 B.C.).
† Mei refers to the governor as a general because most provincial governors during this so-called warlord period of Chinese history were powerful commanders of personal armies whose political role grew out of their military power.
‡ This is a reference to the section in Zhuangzi entitled “The Floods of Autumn,” in which the philosopher chides the prime minister of the kingdom of Liang for fearing his job is coveted by the philosopher. He likens the prime minister to an owl who has just caught a rat and fears it will be stolen by the phoenix flying overhead. Just as the phoenix eats and drinks only the purest and most delicate foods and would not want the rat, Zhuangzi would have no interest in such a job.
§ This is a pun on the word gui, or demon, and the name of the pass as well as an expression of Mei’s hatred of her isolation in Sichuan.
¶ This was the home of Cao Rulin, minister of communications in the central warlord government and one of the three pro-Japanese officials who were targets of student wrath following China’s mistreatment at Versailles.
# A yamen was the office of the head of any administrative unit.
** “Meimei’’ is a term used to address a younger sister. Here it demonstrates affection and the fact that the two are cousins.
†† Traditional Chinese morality contained strong proscriptions against the remarriage of widows.
‡‡ Traditionally only young unmarried girls in China wore their hair in braids. Used by a middle-aged woman like Miss Cui, this hairstyle could become a symbol of feminism and the rejection of marriage.
§§ It is a common practice in parts of China to place straw mats on one’s bed in summer to avoid the sticky heat of sleeping on sheets.
¶¶ Founded in Shanghai in 1919, this Kuomintang, or Nationalist Party, organ was one of the most important new journals to appear during the May Fourth period.