CAT

 

“‘Don’t beat a dog without considering his master’s face,’ they say,” Yigu muttered. “In that case, I shouldn’t beat the cat until I see her mistress’s face.”

Trying to suppress his rising anger was like combing a tangle of matted hair. The mistress, indeed, had yet to show her face, and that damned cat was off hiding who knows where, so he couldn’t beat it anyway. It was his usual rotten luck—two and a half days of work wasted! Mr. Li was napping and, to judge by his routine, wouldn’t come to the study until nearly three o’clock. But all this simmering resentment would have cooled off by then, and Yigu felt he had to let it out while it was still hot. Fortunately, at that moment Old Whitey brought in the tea. Pointing at the tattered manuscript on the table, its words and lines scattered like city dwellers after a heavy bombing, Yigu exclaimed, “Just look! I went home for lunch and came back to find this mess! Before I left, I gave the final draft to Mr. Li to read. Who’d have thought that after he finished with it he’d leave it on my table instead of putting it in the drawer? Now it’ll have to be copied again!”

Having nodded along as he listened to Yigu, Old Whitey now shook his head and heaved a sigh. “What a disaster! This must be Taoqi’s doing. Taoqi’s so taoqi— so naughty! The mistress spoils her so nobody dares touch a single hair of hers. Mr. Qi, please ask the master not to let Taoqi into the study anymore.” With that, he shuffled out slowly with his back hunched.

The Taoqi in question was the black cat who had made this mess. Back when she lived in a poor home east of the Forbidden City,¹ she was called “Blackie,” but Mrs. Li found this name too vulgar. She laughed. “Wouldn’t that make for a perfect match with our doorkeeper, Old Whitey? He’d have a fit if he heard that.”

The day the cat was sent to the Lis’ house, on Nanchang Street, Mrs. Li was having friends over for tea, and all the guests wanted to come up with a good name for it. A poet who admired Mrs. Li said, “During the Western Renaissance, a dark complexion was the ideal of beauty. When we read sonnets by Shakespeare or the French Pleiades poets,² we see that the women they fell for were all dark beauties. I personally find black more mysterious than white, too—more suggestive and enticing. The Chinese have always favored women with white skin, but that’s an immature aesthetic view, like children who only like to drink milk because they’re not old enough to drink coffee. This cat is beautiful and dark, so why don’t we borrow a ready-made name from Shakespeare’s poetry and call her ‘Dark Lady’?³ Nothing could be more refined.”

Hearing this, two guests grimaced at each other, because the poet was obviously alluding to the lady of the house. Mrs. Li, naturally, was delighted, but she found the name “Dark Lady” too long. Having received an American-style education, she was in the habit of calling everyone by his nickname to show her familiarity. Had she run into Shakespeare himself, she would have called him “Bill,” so nicknaming the cat was just the thing to do. She took the poet’s suggestion but settled for a shorter version: “Darkie.”

Everyone applauded, “Miao!—Wonderful!”

The sound baffled the cat, who thought that people were imitating her own mewing and chimed in, “Meow! Meow!”

Nobody realized that the new nickname meant not “Dark Beauty” but “Blackie”—precisely the name that Mrs. Li found so vulgar. One eminent elderly man didn’t say a word at the time, but after returning home stayed up half the night digging through books. First thing the next morning he called upon Mrs. Li and bad-mouthed the poet: “What does he know? I didn’t want to argue with him at the time, so I kept my peace, but the Chinese, too, have always liked dark, beautiful women. For instance, in classical Chinese, Daji’s⁴ name was written with characters that meant that she was dark and beautiful. Daji is a perfect transliteration of ‘Darkie,’ and it’s faithful to the meaning besides. Ha-ha! What a coincidence! What a coincidence!”

Secure in her mistress’s affection, the cat seemed to take great delight in causing trouble. Within a week, people were slurring her foreign name, transforming it into a homophone of “Darkie”—Taoqi. And so, like a fashionable student from a missionary school, this rascal had both a Chinese name and a Western name. In addition, it had acquired a posthumous, hybrid name while still alive.⁵

The cat had been living at the Li home for less than two years. During those two years, the Japanese occupied three eastern provinces; Beiping’s government was reshuffled once; Africa lost a nation and gained an imperialist state; and the League of Nations revealed itself to be a League of Dreams or a League of the Blind.⁶ Yet Mrs. Li did not change her husband, and Taoqi still enjoyed her mistress’s affections and her own naughtiness. In this world of never-ending calamities, how many people are as steadfast in their “isms” and beliefs?

This was the third day in Qi Yigu’s probationary period as Li Jianhou’s private secretary, but he had yet to have the good fortune to glimpse the famous Mrs. Li. When speaking of this Mrs. Li, we can use only what Chinese grammarians term “superlatives.” Of all famous wives, her appearance was the most beautiful, her manners the most admirable and forthright. Her living room was the most tastefully decorated, she entertained the most frequently, the dishes and hors d’oeuvres served at her parties were the most exquisite and sumptuous, and she had the largest circle of friends. What’s more, her husband was the tamest and never got in her way. If, in addition to according her all these virtues, we were to announce that she lived in prewar Beiping, you would immediately arrive at your conclusion: she was the most refined and elegant wife in the country with the world’s most ancient civilization. This is because Beiping—the same northern capital that had been reviled by such Ming and Qing dynasty celebrities as Tang Ruoshi and Xie Zaihang⁷ as the most vulgar and filthiest of cities—had, in the recent prewar years, suddenly come to be renowned as the most refined and beautiful city in the land. Even Beiping’s dust, which lies three feet thick on any windless day, now seemed to have the very hue and aroma of antiquity. History museums from newly founded small European and American countries sent scholars to bottle it up for display, as though it contained the plundered remnants of the three imperial dynasties of the Yuan, Ming, and Qing.⁸

Ever since the capital had moved to the south, Beiping had lost its usual political function.⁹ At the same time, like every useless and obsolete thing, it became a display item of historical value. Like a shoddy secondhand goods stall rebranded as an illustrious antiques shop, the reality remained unchanged but the psychological impact on the customer was enormous. Think how embarrassing it is to buy cheap things at a secondhand goods stall! To patronize an antiques shop, however, you must have money, an addiction to ancient things, and discriminating tastes. As such, those with no intention of accumulating secondhand junk begin buying antiques, and those who can afford to shop only at secondhand stalls have their status elevated to refined antique collectors. Should you happen to have lived in Beiping at that time, you could pass yourself off as worldly and brag to your friends in Nanjing or Shanghai, as if to live in Beiping conferred title and status. To claim that Shanghai or Nanjing could produce art and culture would be as ridiculous as to assert that the hand, foot, waist, or stomach could think as well as the head.

The discovery of the remains of “Beijing man” at Zhoukoudian further demonstrated the superiority of the Beiping resident. Beijing man was the most developed of the apes, just as the Beiping resident was the most civilized of the Chinese.¹⁰ Therefore, at that time, when intellectuals were advancing the idea of a “Beijing [or Capital] school” in the newspapers, they traced their origins back to Beijing man. As such, even though Beijing had changed its name to Beiping, they did not call themselves the “Beiping school.”¹¹ The “Beijing school” was composed almost entirely of southerners, who were as proud of residing in Beiping as the Jews were of their adopted countries, and Beiping never left their lips. Since moving to Beiping, Mrs. Li’s foot fungus infection had not recurred—an unexpected bonus of living in the cultural center.

Mr. and Mrs. Li’s fathers were both relics of the Qing dynasty.¹² Whereas Mrs. Li’s father was famous, Mr. Li’s father was rich. A few months before the Revolution of 1911,¹³ Mrs. Li’s father had accepted an appointment as a provincial governor, hoping that he could rustle up some money to compensate for his financial losses from prior years.¹⁴ Yet the Wuchang Uprising seemed to have occurred specifically to foil his plans, and he cursed the Republic through clenched teeth.¹⁵ Luckily, one of his former students had forfeited his integrity to become an important official of the Republic and honored him with a monthly stipend. Mr. Li’s father lived in the foreign concessions in Shanghai, cherishing ideas of the past, enjoying the modern life of the present, and spending money of the future by borrowing on the security of his monthly stipend. Eventually, he hit upon the retired gentleman’s road to riches. Today, some nouveau riche would be seeking an officiant for his son’s wedding; tomorrow, a comprador banker would be looking for someone to preside over his mother’s funeral. Each had a need for these Qing relics, and the honorarium would usually be equal to his monthly stipend. The beauty of it was that compradors’ mothers would never all die out, and that sons of the nouveaux riches would all live to a marriageable age. His writing was unremarkable and his calligraphy undistinguished, but he discovered that so long as he affixed the seals from his several official titles, “Presented Scholar of Such and Such a Year” or “Governor of Such and Such a Province,” there would be people willing to pay big money for both. He realized then that the fall of the Qing offered certain compensations, and that being a relic was worthwhile after all. He became so even-tempered and amiable that he even allowed his daughter to attend a foreign school.

Mr. Li’s father, who was from the same hometown as Mrs. Li’s father, was an extremely early promoter of Westernization.¹⁶ As an expectant provincial inspector, he had written a report to the throne on how to “enrich the nation and the people” and been sent to Shanghai to procure machinery from foreigners. Yet the Qing dynasty fell too soon to reap the benefits of his report, so he ended up enriching only himself.

He once toured abroad as an attaché and upon his return to China summed up his gleanings in a four-line family motto: “Eat Chinese food, live in a Western house, marry a Japanese wife, and you’ll have no regrets!” His in-laws’ thorough knowledge of past, present, and future perfectly complemented his own thorough knowledge of China, Japan, and the West. Little could he have imagined that his muddleheaded son, Jianhou, would misremember his old man’s motto in reverse order. First, he took a Westernized wife who was even harder to deal with than a Western wife. Aimo—now Mrs. Li—had graduated from a fashionable girls’ school run by Americans. An irritable and irritating little girl to begin with, having been trained by Chinese Christian converts she not only was unsubmissive to her husband but even felt that he by himself did not suffice to wait on her. Second, as both husband and wife alike considered themselves to be civilized people, they were obliged to move to Beiping to live in an old-style Chinese house. Naturally, the facilities were far less Westernized than those in Shanghai. Third, eating Japanese food gave him stomach trouble—but that’s a long story.

Since childhood, Mrs. Li had been dissatisfied with her looks on two counts: her skin was not supremely white, and her eyelids were not double-fold. The first point mattered little to her. Who cared for that kind of pale, pinkish foreign doll face?¹⁷ Her natural looks were lovely enough. Her single-fold eyelids, however, were a serious defect indeed. The richness of her heart lacked a means by which to fully express itself, just as a landlocked country with no seaports has difficulty exporting its products. Not until she was in school did she learn that the single-fold eyelid was the national emblem of Japanese women, for which very reason that resourceful people, who had already stolen the sky and put up a sham sun,¹⁸ had established beauty clinics. Unable to alter their height, they had to endure the national nickname “dwarf slaves,” but there was no facial feature they could not improve. The ugly became beautiful and the grotesque were transformed into demonic seductresses.¹⁹

When Mr. Li proposed to her, she had set many conditions, item no. 18 being that they should spend their honeymoon in Japan. Immediately upon arrival, Mrs. Li went to a beauty clinic to have her eyelids altered and the dimple in her left cheek deepened. She knew that after the operation she would be unable to show her face for two weeks, and she was worried that Mr. Li, unable to endure the solitude of the honeymoon, would be unfaithful to her in such a romantic country. Thus, before checking herself into the clinic she had told him, “You know, I’ve undertaken this arduous, interminable eastern journey across the oceans to suffer here only for your sake. My only desire is to please you—my face is your pride. When my eyes are bandaged and I’m in pain and darkness, will your conscience permit you to live it up outside? If you love me, you’ll do as I say. Don’t go out running around with anybody. Also, you’re such a greedy eater. After I’ve entered the beauty clinic, I don’t want you going to Chinese restaurants or eating big meals. Every meal, it’s only Japanese food for you. Promise? If you love me, you should share my suffering. It’ll be a comfort to me while I’m in pain. Besides, if you don’t eat so well it’ll dampen your desire and you won’t fool around and ruin your health. What’s more, since you’re on the short side, you’d be unsightly if you stuffed yourself and put on more weight. If you betray me or lie to me I’ll find out and that’ll be the end of our relationship.”

Two weeks later, Jianhou went to the clinic to pay the bill and pick up his wife. He hadn’t lost weight, but his face had grown sallow and saggy, and he looked listless. In contrast, Mrs. Li’s eyes, newly bought for five hundred Japanese yen, further enhanced her original beauty, like the lights used in art photography. Her eyes and eyelashes worked in concert for every sort of expressive display—opening, closing, brightening, darkening, sharpening, and misting up—holding Jianhou spellbound. He wondered if two technicians were hiding in her eyes managing it all scientifically. How else could they move so confidently, convey feelings so exactly, or attain such precisely calculated effects? Jianhou had been his father’s son; henceforth, he threw himself wholeheartedly into being his wife’s husband.

Their friends discussed this privately. How could a woman as beautiful as Mrs. Li have married Jianhou? Surely there were more capable men out there with wealth and family backgrounds similar to Jianhou’s. In fact, Heaven had not mismatched this pair. To be the husband of a woman like Mrs. Li was a lifetime occupation, a Trade No. 361 added to China’s so-called three hundred and sixty trades.²⁰ This full-time job was busier than being a doctor and more exhausting than being a porter,²¹ not allowing for other interests or goals in life. Although people mocked Jianhou behind his back for being “a husband whose prestige comes from his wife,” or a minor celebrity who basked in her aura, Mrs. Li had never thought of it that way. Jianhou’s vanity about his wife was not that of the ordinary man who possesses a beautiful wife—that is, it was not the satisfaction of the master. Rather, it was the satisfaction of the possessed, of being a servant. It was like the posturing of servants of rich families, entourages of famous people, or native employees in colonial administrations. This sort of vanity at being possessed was a rare virtue among husbands, one that enabled Jianhou to be tolerant and open-minded. Mrs. Li knew that such a husband was as indispensable as the zero in Arabic numerals. Though zero itself has no value, without it one could not make ten, one hundred, one thousand, or even ten thousand. Any figure multiplies tenfold when a zero is added, so the zero, accordingly, gains significance by following it.

Ten years into their marriage, Mr. Li was happy and plump. His wife said he was a good husband, and his wife’s friends considered him a decent pal. Yet last month, quite by accident, he had been badly upset. At a large banquet, a brash, young playwright had shared a table with the couple. This upstart playwright, having learned of Mrs. Li’s presence, could not contain his enthusiasm. So busy had he been with praising Mrs. Li and showing off that his mouth had hardly had time to eat. By the time the third course had been served, he had persuaded Mrs. Li to grant him a visit and, having achieved his objective, could finally turn part of his attention to the food. It’s difficult to keep one’s mind on two things at once, and he was busy enough as it was. Paying Jianhou any attention was really beyond his capacity, so he never addressed even a casual remark to him. Jianhou was thoroughly displeased, and once they returned home he complained about the young man’s ignorance of the ways of the world.

The young brat was as good as his word and arrived on their doorstep the next day with a batch of his writings in hand, asking specifically to see Mrs. Li. In a fit of childishness, Jianhou immediately hid himself just outside the living room to eavesdrop. After greeting Mrs. Li, the fellow spotted Taoqi sleeping on the sofa and exclaimed, “How cute! How content!” After asking for “advice” on his manuscript, he then inquired about a few of the guests who frequented the Lis’ house, saying that he would like to meet them all if possible. Mrs. Li replied noncommittally that she would invite him to tea sometime and they could get acquainted. He still didn’t leave and turned the conversation to Taoqi, saying that he loved cats too. Cats were creatures that possessed all of the three virtues: reason, emotion, and courage. When hunting for mice, they were like knights vanquishing bandits and making the world safe for good people. When sitting quietly and praying to Buddha, they were like philosophers contemplating the meaning of life. When mewing for mates, they were like poets singing to express their emotions. He added that although Thai cats and Persian cats were the best cat breeds, neither were the peers of Taoqi. In short, he flattered Mrs. Li and praised Taoqi without once inquiring after Mr. Li.

This incident caused Jianhou to self-reflect. He was silent and sullen for two days and then resolved to make a change in his personal life. From now on, he no longer wanted simply to bask in the reflected glory of his wife. He wanted his own career. He would either get a government position or become a writer. After some thought, he decided to try writing first. On the one hand, it would demonstrate that he was not just pretending to be educated, and on the other, writing itself might lead to a government position. Having settled on this plan, he kept it from his wife at first, fearing that she would rain on his parade. Then one day, when he could not hold back any longer, he told her his decision.

To his surprise, Mrs. Li agreed. “It’s time you asserted yourself. I’ve been too selfish, not realizing that I’ve been hindering your career! From now on, you can focus on your writing; there’s no need for you to accompany me at social events.”

What to write about? Jianhou was not very bright. As a student, he had always borrowed notes from classmates, and while studying abroad, he had even paid a Jew to write his thesis. After their marriage, his circle of acquaintance broadened and he learned a slew of trendy terms and stock phrases that he could pass off as his own views at appropriate points in conversation. In fact, the contents of most famous works were nothing special. Having never written any books or articles in his youth, Jianhou took his book too seriously, becoming as apprehensive as a middle-aged woman about to give birth for the first time.

He carefully pondered which genre might suit him best. True, he had few brains, no ideas, and no ideals. But sometimes great works do not require good brains, just a good butt. According to Zheng Xuxi, Germans believed that having “sitting flesh” (Sitzfleisch) was a prerequisite for an intellectual.²² If he could but sit down well, he would have no trouble, say, assembling a proper name index to The Water Margin or Dream of the Red Chamber. Such work represented Western scientific methodology as well as an academic tool for the twentieth century. But, regrettably, indexing was a job for college students or minor editors and was thus beneath him.

Alternatively, there was cookbook writing. When it came to cuisine, he was an indisputable authority. His wife could not give a party without his supervision, and his culinary prowess, needless to say, earned the praise of his friends. Suffering from stomach trouble and abstaining from drinking and smoking had made his sense of taste sharper and his palate more discriminating. Every fine meal he ate at least thrice. He first imagined its taste and ate it once in his imagination. Next, when actually eating he heeded the doctor’s warning not to indulge himself and would linger at the table, reluctant to leave. Then he would recollect its taste afterward, savoring it in his mind all over again. Having chewed it over repeatedly, each meal’s hidden defects and virtues were all exposed. It was true: if he deigned to write a cookbook, he could outdo Brillat-Savarin.²³ Yet the thought of Savarin was accompanied by unhappy thoughts. The name of Savarin had been mentioned by Chen Xiajun, the disgusting chap who had frequented their home the year before last. Knowing that Jianhou was fond of fine food, he one day brought over the first edition of Savarin’s famous Physiologie du goût. Having forgotten all his French, Jianhou spoke up rashly, “You are mistaken: I suffer from stomach trouble, not gout. There is no point in giving me a book about the physiology of gout.”

To this day he could not forget the laugh of that bastard, who then remarked maliciously to Aimo, “It’s a great pity that your husband isn’t a translator. Someday you should ask Fu Juqing to appoint Jianhou to be the special editor of an Anthology of World Famous Literary Works and then throw a party with the money he earns.” Worse still, Aimo had laughed along with him. His interest in writing a cookbook had thus been swept cleanly away. Besides, preaching the art of eating was hardly a serious career for a modern man.²⁴

Xiajun had once teased him, “Foreign tea and coffee companies pay handsomely for dégustateurs. They are asked to taste all kinds of teas and coffees, after which the goods are graded and priced. These people usually drink about a hundred cups of tea or coffee a day. Fortunately, they only taste it quickly with their tongues and then spit it out without swallowing; otherwise, they’d get diarrhea or insomnia. What with your stomach trouble, this would allow you to taste the food without having to eat it. It’s a pity that big restaurants don’t have dégustateurs and that nobody is appointing you to be the examiner of the kitchen. That tongue of yours is going to waste!”

Jianhou was afraid that Xiajun would ridicule him if he got wind of his plan to write a cookbook. Having turned this over and over in his mind, he settled on a travelogue about Europe or America—something interesting as well as meaningful and neither too easy nor too hard. He could hire somebody to help without actually having to call it a collaboration. So long as one has indeed toured Europe and America oneself, there’s nothing wrong with getting a scribe to set down the impressions. The assistant would be no different from a stenographer who records a speaker’s words for a collection of lectures and has no claim whatsoever to its authorship. This approach perfectly suited Jianhou, who by nature couldn’t motivate himself to pick up a pen. The first step was to hire a private secretary, preferably a college student looking to make some money.

At that time, patriots in Qi Yigu’s school were causing an uproar. A large group of them had been arrested, charged, and thrown in jail. Yigu was timid by nature and his widowed mother, afraid that he might be implicated by his schoolmates, asked him to stay home for a while. Having been introduced in a roundabout way, he had called on Jianhou for the first time four days earlier. This big kid of nineteen wore a blue Chinese jacket, baggy Western trousers, and black, square-toed leather shoes, and had the habit of putting his left hand in his trouser pocket. His hair was pressed yet still unkempt, and his attractive face flushed as soon as he entered the house. His eyes were deceptively black and bright; neither his heart nor his intellect matched the profundity, intensity, and liveliness of his eyes. Jianhou was very pleased with this lad. After a few questions, he asked him to start work the following day, with a month’s probationary period. Once Yigu had left, Jianhou went in and excitedly told Aimo that he had settled on a satisfactory secretary. Aimo was amused and compared him to a child who had just gotten a new toy. She also remarked, “I have Taoqi. Who cares about your secretary!”

Rubbing her face against Taoqi’s body, she addressed the cat, “We don’t care about his secretary, do we?—oh, no! How terrible!” Taoqi had licked some powder off Mrs. Li’s face. Throwing the cat off her, she got up from the sofa and went to look in the mirror.

In the two and half days since he had arrived at the Lis’, Yigu had gotten along swimmingly with Jianhou. Though shy, he was not intimidated by his employer. Jianhou, on the other hand, since the day he had first learned to speak, had never met anybody who would let him rattle on and on and still lend him an ear as earnestly, patiently, and enthusiastically as did Yigu. Never before had he realized he possessed such eloquence. In these two days, his self-esteem—like the mercury in a thermometer in the mouth of a typhoid patient—shot straight up.

Now he realized the function of a private secretary. Those who had them felt themselves magnified many times and elevated many levels. Jianhou first discussed with Yigu the title of the travelogue and how it would be written, and spoke in passing of many foreign customs. Thus it was that by lunchtime on the first day, Yigu already knew how popular Jianhou had been while studying in America; how much his annual expenses had been; how tough his college courses had been and how difficult it had been to graduate; how astonishing technological civilization was and how the cars in New York City alone, put end to end, would make a line long enough to circle the globe. He heard, too, how Jianhou had introduced China to the Americans; what the colors and designs were of the Chinese robes he had worn to fancy dress parties; how his landlady had cooked chicken for him every day when he was sick; and how an American girl had sent him flowers every day with a get-well note marked with an “X.”

“Do you know what that means?” Jianhou smiled and asked mockingly, “Go ask your girlfriend, and she’ll tell you that it stands for a kiss. This is a common convention overseas, where people socialize freely.”

They settled on two possible titles: Journey to the West and Roaming in Europe and America.²⁵ The former was simple and straightforward, whereas the latter was modern.

Coming back to work after lunch, Yigu learned that in order to write the travelogue, in addition to taking down Jianhou’s impressions, he would have to consult America’s National Geographic and Travel, as well as Baedeker and Murray’s²⁶ city guides, for supplemental material. The next morning, Jianhou decided that the travelogue should be written in reverse chronological order, beginning with his return from America via Europe and Italy by ship. His reasoning was that travelogues typically begin with departure—one boards a ship and peers around commenting excitedly on commonplace things like your run-of-the-mill lower-class provincial. Having spent three years in America, he qualified as an expert on Western civilization, so he traveled to other countries for fun. Even new sights and spectacles would not cause him to make astonished exclamations and lose his dignity, like a country bumpkin visiting the big city. He said, “This return tour was at least akin to Lin Daiyu entering Rongguo Mansion, whereas going abroad at first was more or less like Granny Liu stepping into Grandview Garden.”²⁷

Yigu had been dragged along by some friends to listen to a magnificent rendition of “Daiyu Burying Flowers,” sung by a famous Beijing opera female impersonator, so this wasn’t the first time he had seen a plump and sturdy Lin Daiyu (as if, in Sequel to Dream of the Red Chamber, Daiyu had taken the invigorating pill given to her by the fairy Disenchantment before she went to bury the flowers),²⁸ but Yigu couldn’t help laughing when Jianhou gesticulated and compared himself to Daiyu. This made Jianhou even more pleased.

Yigu hurriedly said, “If that’s the case, Mr. Li, we’ll need to change the title again.”

Thinking for a moment, Jianhou remarked, “I happened to read in the newspaper the day before yesterday that someone is translating Hardy’s The Return of the Native. The name’s already there for the taking, so I’ll title my book The Return of the Sea Voyager.²⁹ Good, don’t you think?”

After lunch, Jianhou suddenly decided to write the preface first. As a rule, although the preface appears at the front of a book, it is written after the book is finished.³⁰ Yigu thought to himself that writing the preface first was, like the main text, a case of writing in reverse order. As Jianhou recounted, Yigu transcribed, rearranged, developed, and revised. Up till lunchtime of the day Taoqi made the mess, Yigu had been working on a draft for Jianhou’s perusal. Two and a half days of labor had extinguished his reverence for Jianhou. Youthful extremism caused him to despise his master, seeing only Jianhou’s dullness, vanity, and lack of intellect and overlooking his amiable nature. He should have been grateful that Jianhou was willing to pay him so handsomely for such a nonpressing job, but all he felt was resentment that Jianhou’s wealth enabled him to waste a young man’s time and energy by having him write meaningless stuff on his behalf. Seeing the draft torn to shreds by the cat, he had no choice but to suppress his temper and recopy it. Maybe the damn cat was a bold and sensible critic. Who’s to say that its decimation of this cultural relic did not in fact constitute the most straightforward and effective criticism of this draft? Yigu smiled wryly at this thought.

When Jianhou learned of the matter, he not only expressed his sympathy but also apologized to Yigu for his own negligence, such that Yigu had no reason to be cross anymore. The next morning, as soon as Jianhou saw Yigu, he said, “My wife has invited you to tea at four thirty this afternoon.”

Yigu, overwhelmed by this unexpected favor, managed a polite, sheepish smile.

Jianhou continued, “She has been looking forward to meeting you. Last night, I told her that Taoqi had made trouble for you. She was very apologetic and gave Taoqi a scolding. Since there happens to be a tea party today, she wants to invite you in for a chat.”

This made Yigu feel unworthy of Mrs. Li’s company. He was too ignorant of etiquette and lacked the proper attire to meet a fashionable lady, so he was bound to make a fool of himself. He declined, saying, “I’d feel embarrassed meeting all those strangers.”

“There’s nothing to be embarrassed about,” Jianhou responded kindly. “You’ve heard of all the people who’ll be coming today, and only in my home can you see them all together. Don’t miss your chance. I have to go out to run some errands. In the meantime, would you please collect materials about New York for chapter one? At four-thirty I’ll come to bring you in to tea. If I don’t show up, please ask Old Whitey to take you in.”

Yigu didn’t feel like doing anything all morning. Fortunately, Jianhou was not there, so he could take breaks as he pleased. He wanted very much to meet all those people whose names exerted such a magnetic force, but at the same time he was afraid that they would make fun of him and look down on him.

“I wouldn’t feel so shy if Jianhou escorted me in, but if Old Whitey did I’d be embarrassed to walk all the way into the living room without any protection. What if Jianhou does fail to return and I have to ask Old Whitey to lead the way? That’d be a problem! If I go in on time, none of the other guests will have arrived and the mistress will surely tease me for coming early and staying late for the food, like a brave soldier in battle who is the first to charge and the last to retreat. I can’t risk it. But if I go in after the guests have arrived, all eyes will be on me, which would be even more unbearable.”

After thinking it through, he saw that there was only one way out. “I must listen carefully for the doorbell around four thirty. Old Whitey will pass the study when he escorts guests to the living room. As soon as the first guest goes in, I’ll follow right after. The hostess and the guests will be busy greeting one another, so no one will notice me and I won’t get nervous.”

In the end, Jianhou accompanied him in. They had no sooner entered the living room than Yigu’s face flushed and his eyes clouded over. He was vaguely aware that a fashionable woman was greeting him with a smile. After sitting down, Yigu fixed his eyes on the carpet. He didn’t have the strength to raise his head to have a look at Mrs. Li. He could only uneasily sense her presence before him.

Suddenly he found that his feet were stretched too far out, and he hurriedly retracted them, his blush deepening a shade. He had also failed to catch what Mrs. Li was saying about Taoqi.

Seeing how shy Yigu was, Mrs. Li took a liking to him out of pity. Thinking that the child must have never come into contact with women, she asked, “Mr. Qi, is your school coed?”

Mrs. Li knew very well that by that day and age a school that did not take in girls was as disreputable as a monastery that did.

“No.”

“Really?” Mrs. Li was very much surprised.

“Yes, yes!” Yigu desperately corrected himself. Mrs. Li gave Jianhou a meaningful look and said nothing, only smiling at Yigu. This smile of Aimo’s was exclusively for Yigu. Like the dog-skin plasters sold by boxers at Tianqiao³¹ or the misty poetry of the European and American Pleiades,³² the smile contained so much richness that one would never believe it if he heard that it encompassed such elements as consolation, protection, fondness, and encouragement.³³ Yigu still dared not look straight at Aimo, so Aimo’s smile, like a prayer for victory, a charitable donation, or other well-meant offerings, did not confer any benefits upon its intended recipient. Just then, Old Whitey showed in more guests. Aimo went to receive them, but her mind was still on that intelligent-looking lad. She thought it was high time he received a lesson in the emotions.

Jianhou patted Yigu on the shoulder. “Relax!”

The Lis understood that Yigu was shy, so they introduced him to the guests only in passing as they arrived, pointing at him and nodding to him from afar. They let him sit on an inconspicuous sofa by the wall. Gradually, Yigu became more relaxed as he gazed upon these famous guests.

The tall man speaking in a loud voice was Ma Yongzhong, a noted political analyst who published editorials daily in the newspaper Correct Argument. No matter what political change may have occurred, abroad or at home, he always managed to demonstrate post-factum that it was precisely as he had expected or hinted. Now that his reputation was big, he began to talk big. Especially in private conversation, you would feel that he was a politician rather than a political analyst. He not only was able to hold forth about the domestic and international political situations, but did so as though he were a crucial mediator. He sounded like a meteorologist in his observation tower—come wind or rain, it was all under his control. Once, in one of his essays, he publicly told his readers about one of his personal habits: before turning in every night, he always tore off the calendar page of that day, unlike most people who would wake up to find it was still “yesterday’s day.” From this minor detail, one can infer the type of man he thought himself to be. Since Sino-Japanese relations were very tense lately, he felt no “dismay” for lack of topics for his editorials.³⁴

The man leaning back on the sofa with his legs crossed, smoking, was Yuan Youchun. As a child he had been taken abroad by foreign missionaries, and following those pedantic Westerners had infected him with the most vulgar airs of Westernization: that of churches and the YMCA. After returning to China he condescended to take an interest in the culture of his homeland and began making efforts in that direction. He believed that China’s old civilization was best represented by playthings, petty cleverness, and hack entertainment writers. In this sense, his enterprise was much like the Boxers’ cause of “Supporting the Qing and Eliminating the Western”:³⁵ he shelved high-minded Western religious theory and began to promote the style of intellectual hangers-on such as Chen Meigong and Wang Baigu. Reading his writing always felt like eating a substitute—margarine on bread or MSG in soup. It was even closer to the “chop suey” served in overseas Chinese restaurants: only those who had never sampled authentic Chinese cuisine could be tricked into thinking it was a real taste of China. He hoodwinked Chinese know-nothings and hoodwinked foreigners—those who were merely know-nothings in Western suits. He had recently published several articles discussing the Chinese national psyche, in which he proposed that traits common to mankind were unique to the Chinese people.³⁶ His pipe was famous. He mentioned it frequently in his articles, saying that his inspiration derived entirely from smoking, the same way Li Bai’s poems were all the product of his drinking. Some suggested that he must be smoking not pipe tobacco but opium, since reading his articles made one yawn, as with the onset of a habitual craving, or want to sleep, as if one had taken an anesthetic. It was suggested that his works be sold not in bookstores but in drugstores as sleeping pills, since they were more effective than Luminal and Ortal but had no side effects. All this, of course, was said by people who envied him, so naturally none of it could be taken seriously.

Among those who spoke unkindly about him behind his back was his friend Lu Bolin, who sported a small Japanese mustache and whom he flattered and was flattered by in return. He never claimed to smoke pipe tobacco, but that was the only possible explanation for the color of his face. Not only did the black circles under his eyes seem to be the effect of smoke, but even their shape was like smoke, curling about and calling for deep thought. As for the dark redness of the tip of his nose, it could only be likened to that of steamed shrimps or crabs.³⁷

Sunflowers excepted, nothing and nobody was more partial to the rising sun than was Lu Bolin.³⁸ The Chinese attitude toward Japanese culture had been that Japan had consistently been forced to content itself with being second-best. Since the West was too far away, the Chinese had to make do with Japan’s jerry-built culture. Knowing very well that this kind of mind-set was detrimental to his aspirations, Lu Bolin conceived a brilliant idea. The Chinese, in their hearts, disdained the Japanese goods they bought in lieu of Western goods, while Westerners often bought old Japanese things, having mistaken them for rare Chinese treasures. The secondhand stores of London or Paris even displayed Japanese silk nightgowns embroidered with curved dragons, their tags all marked “for the use of the Royal Empress Cixi.”³⁹ He believed that in order to convince Western students in China to treat him with greater respect, he had to propagate this kind of Western viewpoint. The Chinese were biased and looked down on modern Japan, which imitated the West, while he advocated ancient Japan, which imitated China. Because Japan was so adept at imitating the West, it was accused by people of being devoid of creativity. But though Japan did a poor job at imitating China, Lu nevertheless praised it as having its own distinctive style that deserved emulation by the Chinese. It was akin to saying that sour wine has the fine quality of thick vinegar, but he took this one step further and regarded vinegar as standard wine. Any Chinese cultural relic that was devoid of the spirit of bonsai, haiku, or the tea ceremony, he derided as mere trash.⁴⁰ He held that one’s character, conduct, and writings should display a subtle and distinctive style. Unfortunately, however, his own writings seemed like “Greater East Asian Writing”⁴¹—half Chinese and half Japanese—conveying no “subtle style” at all. His writing was consequently famous for “giving food for thought.” Yuan Youchun had this to say behind his back: to read his stuff, one could only feel that he was trying very hard to be subtle but somehow failed. He was like a dog whose tail has been cut: no matter how crazily it wags its tail bone, it fails to ingratiate itself. It was none other than he who had given Taoqi the name “Daji.”

Zheng Xuxi, the scientist, though skinny and short, had a big heart and was not boring in the least. He had once studied astronomy in Germany. Perhaps influenced by German culture, he had decided to become a “whole man” (Gesamtmensch)⁴² and an intellectual imperialist, embracing every field of knowledge as his own territory. He considered himself extremely poetic, full of romantic imagination and sentiments, and also possessing the skill to fuse the richness of life with scientific precision. As a consequence, he talked about the stars in Heaven as if he were talking about stars in Hollywood.⁴³ One middle-aged woman scientist who had vowed to remain single went to his lecture on electromagnetism. Amid the cheers and laughter of the audience packing the hall, she alone turned red with embarrassment when he explained the attraction between positive and negative electrons as being like love between the sexes. He often aired his views on political and social problems and was doted on by young people. Lately, however, he hadn’t been feeling well. In an article in support of a strike by the students’ patriotic movement, he wrote that his purpose in going to Germany to study astronomy had been to wipe away national shame. After the Boxer Rebellion, the Germans had taken away Chinese astronomical equipment; therefore, he wanted to introduce German astronomical theory into China, as he considered it to be a fine example of the “victory of the spiritual over the material.” In other circumstances, his story might have been on everyone’s lips and increased his fame accordingly. Unfortunately, since the League of Nations had decided to offer China only “moral support,” young people had become disgusted with terms like “spiritual victory,”⁴⁴ and Zheng Xuxi was severely attacked.

The man dressed in a Western suit and with his head shaved, Zhao Yushan, was the director of a certain academic organization. This organization employed many college graduates to edit esoteric and profound research reports, the most famous of which was Zhao Yushan’s “A Statistical Study of Misprints in Chinese Publications Since the Invention of Printing.” It was said that this subject could not be exhausted in a single lifetime and thus could best foster the spirit of endurance required for academic research. He often claimed, “The import of finding one misprint is no less than that of Columbus’s discovery of the New World.” Since listeners had no way to interview Columbus himself about this theory, they could only nod their heads in agreement with Zhao Yushan. He was dry and uninteresting, a man of few words. But since he had sacrificed all his hair for Mrs. Li, he was entitled to frequent invitations to the Lis’. He and his young wife did not get along well. The lady loved excitement and was in such good health that she seemed totally impervious to noise. Whatever she did, she had to have noise in the background. All day long, if the phonograph wasn’t on, the radio was. This, in itself, was enough to give Yushan headaches, but she was an avid moviegoer as well. On the silver screen, whenever the hero and heroine begin to kiss during a climactic love scene—be it on land, sea, or in the air—music always floats in from afar to enhance the mood. Therefore, at certain times in the bedroom she insisted on playing music, from hymns on Christmas Eve to the Qingyun Song on the night of National Day, driving her husband to the brink of neurasthenia.⁴⁵

When they had first come to Beiping, the Lis once invited the Zhaos over for lunch. As soon as Mrs. Zhao saw Mrs. Li, she despised her eagerness for the limelight and her ability to have all the men at her beck and call. After the meal, everyone praised the meal, complimenting the cook’s skill and Jianhou’s supervision. Jianhou said, “Hold your praise! We have Mrs. Zhao with us today. She has a university degree in home economics and is an authority on culinary matters. We should ask for her opinion.”

Mrs. Zhao didn’t let this opportunity to belittle Mrs. Li slip by. Recalling a rule from her home economics lecture notes and feeling secure in the knowledge that she had strong backing, she said, “The dishes were delicious, but the colors were a bit monotonous. Too many of the dishes were steamed in clear soup and not enough were braised or stewed, so the colors were not well distributed and made no symphonic effect on the senses.”⁴⁶

It was mid-May, but each person at the table privately gasped at her words, as if hit by a gust of cold air. Zhao Yushan knew that every word his wife had spoken was a mistake, so there was no way of correcting it.

Mrs. Li joked with a smile, “Next time, we’ll have to send the courses to the beauty parlor first to put on makeup and have them powdered and painted before we invite Mrs. Zhao to appraise them.”

Chen Xiajun laughed heartily, “You can just borrow my painting palette and put it on the dining table.”

Mrs. Zhao, having said something wrong, was chagrined and angry. On their way home from the party, Mrs. Zhao suddenly remembered that Mrs. Li herself was the product of a beauty clinic. She should have silenced Aimo at the time by saying, “A beauty parlor won’t be enough. You should send them to a beauty clinic.” She only regretted that she had seen the light too late and gotten the worst of it.

From then on, she became bitter enemies with Mrs. Li and forbade her husband to go to her house. Her husband, however, wouldn’t listen. She then accused him of taking a fancy to Aimo. One day, the couple were quarreling about this yet again. Yushan had just gotten a haircut, and Mrs. Zhao obstinately asserted that he wanted to please Mrs. Li with his sleek hair and shining face. In her anger, she chewed up a piece of gum and spat it onto Yushan’s head. As a result, Yushan had to shave his head. Since it was late autumn and he could not use the weather as a pretext, he had to say that long hair would waste more of the blood in the scalp and decrease the efficiency of his mind. It didn’t occur to him that this pretext would prevent him from growing his hair out later.

Knowing that Yushan had fallen out with his wife on her account, Mrs. Li began to invite him over for dinner and tea more often. Rumors flourished. One claimed that he had shaved his head because of a fight with his wife, while another said he did so because his love for Mrs. Li could never be requited. In short, he intended to become a monk. Lu Bolin once told him he should count the hairs he had shaved off; perhaps their number would match the number of misprints in Chinese books and he could be spared much future computation. His eyes wide open, Yushan replied, “Revered Bo, stop joking! Discovering a misprint is as momentous as discovering a new continent. . . .”

The genteel Cao Shichang was charming and soft-spoken. Listening to him from the next room, one became fascinated for the wrong reasons. But hearing a man speaking so softly to their face, many people became impatient and itched to turn up his volume as one might turn up a radio. Yet this cultured scholar, of all people, loved to give his readers an impression of rude barbarity, as if he combined the naivete of the savage and the ferocity of a superman. His past was shrouded in mystery. If he was to be believed, there was nothing he hadn’t done. He had been a bandit in his native region; later he became a soldier for the government; and after that he had gone to Shanghai and become a gangster. He had also been a Chinese opera singer and a waiter at a grand hotel. Whenever he spoke of these and his many other romantic picaresque experiences, young men who had never lived outside of family and school would shake their heads and give the thumbs-up: “Amazing!” “Fantastic!”⁴⁷ Writing about what he had done turned out to be more profitable than actually doing it, so he decided not to change his trade again. In theory, since he had so many wonderful and interesting recollections, he really should have written an autobiography and packed them all into it. Instead, he wrote only bits and pieces of some autobiographical novels. Perhaps if he really had written an autobiography, there would have been a discrepancy between all his experiences and his age, since he was still in his thirties. And perhaps, once he had finished the autobiography, it would have been inconvenient for him to make new amendments to old experiences. As the Chinese saying goes, “End one thing and put a stop to a hundred others.”

Famous as he was in literary circles, he could never forget how little schooling he had received as a child, and he felt that those who did have “proper academic credentials” didn’t quite respect him. He was always on the lookout for some offense or insult from others. The honey-sweet voice hid that he was ready for battle, with sword drawn and bow bent.⁴⁸ Because of his position he had no choice but to socialize with the Lis’ famous guests, but he really took pleasure in the company of young students—his “little friends.”⁴⁹ Since he could not take part in the current conversation, he swallowed feelings of envy, anger, and scorn and carefully observed the buffoonery of the assembled “gentlemen” so that he could describe them thoroughly to his little friends when the occasion arose. Suddenly, he spotted the neglected Yigu, who looked like a little friend.

That day’s tea party could not have excluded Fu Juqing. While Hempen Robe Physiognomy⁵⁰ is not entirely reliable, sometimes one’s appearance can indeed influence one’s life. A woman with deep dimples and good teeth, for example, will naturally love to smile at people, and as she becomes known as a “happy angel,” her temperament should imperceptibly become less violent. Similarly, Fu Juqing had since childhood been somewhat slant-eyed; it was not known whether the cause was congenital or postnatal. In elementary school his teacher had always suspected that the child was looking askance at him to express his contempt. At the same time, his cold sidelong glances also seemed to find fault with the teacher’s instruction. But since Fu Juqing’s father was a member of the local gentry, teachers dared not offend him. By the time he had reached fifteen or sixteen, the intensity of his gaze had so increased that one glance from him would make you immediately feel uneasy and out of sorts, leaving you wondering if you had done something wrong, if someone had hung a strip of paper on the knot of your “melon skin” cap, or if you had forgotten to button your fly.⁵¹

One day one of his father’s celebrity friends told him, “Every time I run into your son, he reminds me of He Yimen’s book reviews.⁵² Though He gave the impression of being superior, he actually only attended to details and nit-picking. Your son’s gaze has that quality.”

Fu Juqing didn’t know exactly who He Yimen was. He had only heard that he was a critic from Suzhou and assumed that he must be someone like Jin Shengtan.⁵³ From then on, he believed that his appearance suited him to be a critic. When he was a junior in college majoring in liberal arts, among the assigned reference readings was a poem by Pope, in which he read the famous line about Addison, the editor of The Spectator, which said in effect that Addison was good at leering and sneering.⁵⁴ When he also read a chapter on “the critic eye,”⁵⁵ like an ant on a hot pan, he got all worked up in the reading room of the library. Thereafter, he saw to it that everything he did and said was consistent with the appearance of his eyes. Even the tone of his articles seemed to sneer between the lines. He knew that the British, of all people, had eyes higher than the tops of their heads and that the eyes of students at Oxford, Addison’s alma mater, were higher than the tops of their top hats so that they could look down even upon the king. A few years in Britain had made him all the more contemptuous of mankind and his opinions all the more lofty sounding. One felt that, instead of being put on the table and read with bowed head, they should rather be pasted onto the ceiling and read as one might appreciate Michelangelo’s frescoes in Rome’s Sistine Chapel. His lofty views could be appreciated only by those who didn’t mind getting a stiff neck from looking up.⁵⁶ In Britain, he had learned how to keep a straight face and look indifferent. Therefore, at public gatherings, if a man were beside him, strangers would assume that he was his brother and if it were a woman, that she must be his wife; otherwise, he wouldn’t be so indifferent. He, too, smoked a pipe, which, according to him, was a mark of an Oxbridge education.

Yuan Youchun had once sneered, “Don’t listen to him toot his own horn. So what if he went to England! Anyone who wants to can smoke a pipe!”

Yet at heart, Yuan Youchun really did hate Fu Juqing’s guts, for it seemed as if Yuan Youchun were just “smoking a foreign pipe in secret,” whereas Juqing could borrow the words from the sign on a Vietnamese opium den: “Licensed Smoking.”

Some guests looked at their watches. Others asked the host, “Should we still expect Xiajun today?”

Mrs. Li said to Jianhou, “We will wait another ten minutes for him. He’s always like this.”

If Yigu had been more observant, he would have noticed that the present guests, plus the host and hostess, made up ten. If Chen Xiajun were included, the number would reach eleven. Such an odd number indicated that one guest who had not originally been included had been added at the last minute. Yigu’s mind had been elsewhere, so this never occurred to him. He still entertained the old notion that people should be judged solely by their appearance and thought that these celebrity seekers of truth, virtue, and beauty should have some corresponding mark, just as butchers should all be fat and jewelers must all wear two or three gigantic rings. Little did he expect their plain-looking appearances to be such a disappointing contrast to their reputations. It was fine by him that there were no women guests. Yigu had learned from school that female students who were passionate about literature and knowledge were seldom models of beauty.⁵⁷ Yet even if there had been female guests at such a gathering of intellectuals, they would surely have been unpleasing to the eye and would only have magnified the beauty of the hostess.

Examining Mrs. Li closely, Yigu found that she was indeed a beauty. Her long, Greta Garbo hairdo was in perfect harmony with the contours of her shoulders, back, and waist, unlike many a woman whose hairstyle is an independent entity that clashes with her figure. Now around thirty, Mrs. Li’s prettiness had gradually ripened toward full-blown gorgeousness. Her complexion was dark, making her face suited to heavy makeup. She had fine eyes and teeth, with high cheekbones, making her face amenable to smiling, talking, and changing expressions.⁵⁸ She often opened her mouth, but she didn’t say much—just a nod, a smile, and an occasional word or two before she turned to converse with someone else. She wasn’t the kind of woman who flaunted her talents and played the coquette. She simply enjoyed manipulating these people, like a juggler who could use both hands to toss and catch, keeping seven or eight plates aloft simultaneously.

Yigu found it odd that the guests were all longtime celebrities in their late thirties.⁵⁹ What he did not understand was that for these well-established middle-aged men, coming to Mrs. Li’s home was their only chance for an economical and safe romantic relationship that involved neither trouble, scandal, nor expense. It was a place where they could seek spiritual rest, a club they could go to escape their families. Jianhou didn’t mind their presence, but they were extremely jealous of one another. There was only one thing in which they could all cooperate: when Mrs. Li became interested in a new acquaintance they would, with one voice, disparage the person with clever, pleasant-sounding remarks. They paraded their friendship with the Lis, yet they did not lightly allow outsiders to step into the circle of friendship. Mrs. Li consequently became all the more inaccessible. In truth, they were not Mrs. Li’s friends, merely her habits. Since they had all been together for five or six years, she knew them and they knew her. They were always at her beck and call, and within her grasp, so she didn’t bother to foster new habits. Only Chen Xiajun, who came in at that moment, could be considered a relatively trustworthy devotee.

The reason for this was that Chen Xiajun had the least to do and could come to the Lis’ more often. He had previously studied painting in France, but he didn’t have to paint for a living. He once remarked that in addition to the capitalists and the proletariat there was another class that opposed both: the idle class—spoiled young men with inheritances and no proper careers—though he himself barely managed to belong to this class. When he first returned from abroad to Shanghai, he had wanted to make an effort to earn his living by painting. Yet in Shanghai, everything Western was deemed good except Western painting. The paintings displayed in houses furnished in Western-style were Chinese center-hall scrolls,⁶⁰ vertical scrolls, and horizontal scrolls. His eldest uncle was a famous painter of the traditional Chinese style, ignorant of perspective and realism. “Foreign cemetery mounds” and tap water excepting, he had never been exposed to famous mountains or beautiful rivers. Relying on collections handed down from his ancestors and Japanese collotype editions of Southern Painting,⁶¹ he would paint rivers entitled “In Imitation of Dachi”⁶² one day and trees and stones under the title “The Clouds and Forest Were Once Like This” the next. His paintings were in high demand, which made Chen Xiajun, who had an artistic conscience, furious. His uncle one day told him, “My dear nephew, you’ve taken the wrong path! I don’t know Western painting, but it has neither the grace nor the subtlety of purpose of our classical painting . Three days ago, for instance, the manager of a bank asked me to paint a center-hall scroll for the meeting room of his bank. It should suit and flatter the bank but it mustn’t be vulgar and obvious. How would you people who study Western painting say it should be done?” Xiajun couldn’t think of anything, so he shook his head. His uncle guffawed. Unfolding a scroll, he said, “Look what I painted!” In the painting, there was a lychee tree overladen with fruits, big and small. Inscribed on the painting was: “An Investment Brings a Manifold Profit: In Imitation of Luo Lianfeng.”⁶³

Seeing this, Xiajun was simultaneously indignant and amused. His uncle then asked him how to paint “happiness.” Thinking that he was really consulting him, Xiajun told him the whole story of how in Western mythology Fortuna was a blindfolded woman on a flywheel. Stroking his beard and smiling, his uncle unfolded another scroll depicting an apricot tree and five bats. The words on the painting read: “‘Apricot’ Plus ‘Bat’ Is a Homophone of ‘Happiness.’ Five Bats Allude to the Five Happinesses. My Own Creation.” Xiajun had to admire his uncle in spite of himself. His uncle also had numerous women students, most of whom were mistresses of wealthy businessmen. These rich men were busy making money all day and worried that their mistresses would feel bored and nurture wicked ideas, so they often encouraged them to pick up some hobby to pass the time. Chinese painting was the best choice, since it could be shown off but wasn’t difficult to learn. A painting tutor differed from other kinds of tutors in that he had to be famous, so as to increase one’s own respectability. Furthermore, famous Chinese painters were mostly elderly men who would not seduce women, so they were more trustworthy. Xiajun was still young and had studied painting in the decadent land of France, so people took precautions against him. They had also heard that Western painters painted from models. It would be hard to say that they weren’t painting what Silly Sister in Dream of the Red Chamber called “the fight of the demons.”⁶⁴ That would be an offense against decency.

Cold-shouldered in Shanghai, Xiajun moved to Beiping, where his self-esteem was gradually restored by some friends who shared his interests. Yet he was never fully able to recapture the drive he had had when he first returned from abroad. He was so lazy that he was loath to do anything. Consequently, people thought that he was capable of anything, if only he were in the mood, and he became famous. Talking was the only thing he was not lazy about; he talked even in his sleep at night. He was especially good at talking to women. He knew that women didn’t like men who respected them too much. He praised them in mocking tones and flattered them in offensive terms.⁶⁵ The previous month, for instance, Mrs. Li had given a birthday party. She had reached a point at which she wanted others to remember the day of her birth but not the year. When she predictably told the guests that she was getting old, they protested, “Not at all! Not at all!” Only Chen Xiajun commented, “You’d better hurry up and get old! Otherwise, you’ll outshine all the young girls and they’ll never be able to hold up their heads!”

Now that the guests were all present, the servants brought in the refreshments. Mrs. Li asked Yigu to sit beside her. After pouring a cup of tea for herself, she poured one for him and asked him how many lumps of sugar he wanted. Yigu hesitated out of politeness, “No, thank you!”

Gazing at him and smiling, Mrs. Li whispered, “Don’t act like you did just now, denying that there are girls in your school. There’s no need to be polite. The tea won’t taste good without sugar. I went ahead and put in some cream for you.”

Yigu was grateful that everyone else was too busy talking to notice his embarrassment. Mrs. Li’s smile and the expression in her eyes made him so happy that his heart seemed to have been burned by something hot. He mechanically stirred the tea with a spoon, not hearing what other people were talking about for quite some time.

Jianhou said, “Xiajun, didn’t you feel your ears burning as you came in? We were speaking ill of you.”

“Who of us doesn’t do that behind the backs of others?” replied Xiajun.

“I’ve never spoken ill of anyone,” Aimo put in.

With his left hand on his chest, Xiajun bowed deeply to Aimo from his seated position, “And I’ve never said bad things about you.” Turning to Jianhou, he asked, “Why were you bad-mouthing me? Let’s hear it. As the saying goes, ‘Correct mistakes if you have any and guard against them if you don’t.’”

Ma Yongzhong, who had to go to the newspaper office to write articles after tea, hurriedly put in, “We were complaining that you put on airs, always intentionally coming late and wasting other people’s time by making them wait for you.”

Yuan Youchun remarked, “People have been saying that you must have picked up this artist’s habit of yours in the coffee shops of the Latin Quarter in Paris. The French have no concept of time, so they had to borrow the expression ‘Time is money’ from the English. I hold a different view. I believe you were born with this habit—no, you had the habit even before you were born. You must have refused to come out of your mother’s womb after ten months.”⁶⁶

Everyone laughed. Before Chen Xiajun could reply, Fu Juqing said coldly, “This humor is too dull and heavy. Put it on the butcher’s scale and you’ll find it to be a few catties on the heavy side.”

His face slightly reddening, Yuan Youchun shot Fu Juqing an angry look, and replied, “The British measure by the pound, not the catty. You’re not such an Englishman after all.”

Taking a sip of his tea, Chen Xiajun said, “What a shame! What a shame! Such good tea is used to wet your throats for quarreling! I didn’t mean to have you wait for me. I just went to the station to see off a friend and his family who were leaving for the south. That’s why I was late. An inauspicious wind is blowing across the land these days. Many people want to leave here. Old Ma, do you think war will break out or not? You ought to be better informed than we are.”

Cao Shichang said meaningfully, “You should read his editorials. No private interviews about state affairs now.”

Several voices chimed in at the same time, “We need to ask him because we can’t make heads or tails of his editorials.” Yigu too felt that this was of immediate concern to him and waited for Ma Yongzhong to speak after finishing his sandwich.

Mrs. Li said, “Right! I need to be prepared. If Beiping is really all that dangerous, I’ll have to reclaim the rented house in Shanghai, and Jianhou will need to go to the south to see to it. Yet that summer three years ago was even worse than now. Japanese aircraft were circling overhead and everyone was fighting for transportation to return south. The second-class corridors were full of passengers. In third-class, one couldn’t even roll over at night. All kinds of funny things happened. The big problem later turned out to be no problem at all, and those who had left came back. Much ado about nothing. We’re used to false alarms these past few years. It may be that nothing happens. Yongzhong, what do you think?”

Ma Yongzhong carefully chewed his bread, as if bearing in mind, as he had learned in his physiology class, that starch should be digested in the mouth. When he finished, he used the napkin beside the dish to wipe away the crumbs on his chest and frowned. “Hard to say . . .”

Mrs. Li coquettishly feigned anger, “That won’t do! You have to tell us.”

Fu Juging said, “Why are you so hesitant? Let’s hear what you have to say. To tell you the truth, Mr. Ma, I’ve never taken what you say seriously. Unlike with your editorials, you don’t have to be responsible for your talk here. For good or bad fortune, we can pray and draw divination sticks at temples, or prognosticate with the eight trigrams,⁶⁷ or consult those people who run the glyphomancy stalls.⁶⁸ We won’t act based on what you big political analysts say.”

Pretending not to have heard that, Ma Yongzhong said to Mrs. Li, “I don’t think that war will begin immediately. First of all, we are not fully prepared. Second, I was informed that if Japan makes war on us, Russia might seize the opportunity to attack her. I can’t tell you the source of this information, but it’s quite reliable. Third, Britain and the U.S., because of their interests in the Far East, will not sit around and do nothing while watching Japan invade China. I know they have a tacit understanding with our authorities concerning actual support. The Japanese are afraid of Russia and can’t ignore Britain and the U.S., so they won’t dare to start areal war. Fourth, our government is on excellent terms with Hitler and Mussolini. Germany and Italy sympathize with us. They won’t help Japan in order to pin down Britain and the U.S. So, as I see it, there won’t be a war for the next two or three years. But, there are always unforeseen circumstances.”

Mrs. Li said angrily, “What an annoying person you are! Just as I was feeling a little bit relieved by all you had said, you came out with that one depressing line.”

Ma Yongzhong smirked apologetically, as if an unexpected war were going to be the fault of his inaccurate prediction. Cao Shichang asked, “If that’s the case, then how to end the present tense situation?”

Yuan Youchun said disdainfully, “Huh! What else can we do but give way?”

Ma Yongzhong replied gravely, “We can only endure and make temporary concessions.”

“That’s terrible!” Jianhou said. Yigu echoed him in his heart.

“It will get worse if we don’t concede,” Fu Juqing and Lu Bolin said simultaneously.

Chen Xiajun said, “Concede! Concede! How long can we continue to concede? At most, the nation will be subjugated. It would be better if we fought to the bitter end with Japan. Actually, we shouldn’t be so reluctant about losing Beiping. In this atmosphere of compromise and momentary ease, we are quickening the pace of subjugation. I can’t bear it! Fighting is the only way out.” With this he struck the table to show that he was as good as his word, as if to say that this was how the Japanese should be fought.

Zhao Yushan, who was sitting on his right, was so startled that he jumped up, spilling tea all over his clothes.

“Look what you did!” Mrs. Li said with a laugh. “Be careful not to break my cups. ‘Fight!’ Will you go to the front to fight?”

Xiajun apologized to Yushan, “It’s all my fault. Your wife will quarrel with you again about the tea stain . . .”

Hearing what Mrs. Li said, he turned back, “I will not. I cannot. What’s more, I dare not. I am a coward. I am afraid of gunfire.”

Jianhou shrugged his shoulders and winked at the other guests.

Fu Juqing said, “The fact that you can admit your cowardice shows the greatest courage. Nowadays, nobody dares to say that he’s afraid of fighting a war. You are the only one who dares to speak so frankly. Some people conceal their cowardice under the guise of policy, saying that we should maintain peace, that we should compromise temporarily, and that we shouldn’t act rashly and be swayed by personal feelings. Others shout loudly that we should fight. Actually, they only wish to make an empty show of strength and frighten Japan with shouting. They don’t want the war, nor do they believe there will be one. In short, everyone is a coward, yet they pretend to be brave. No one dares to be an honest coward. You, on the other hand, support the fighting of the war. That’s a little bit contradictory.”

Xiajun poured milk onto his plate and summoned Taoqi to lick it. Stroking Taoqi’s fur, he replied, “It’s not contradictory in the least. It’s a mentality shared by traditional Chinese and cats alike. We always say that ‘Those who are good at fighting wars deserve the severest punishment’ and that ‘A good army is an inauspicious thing.’ But we also say, ‘Don’t use an army unless you have to.’⁶⁹ We are afraid of fighting and fight only when it becomes impossible to avoid. Before we fight we are afraid of death, but when we fight we are so afraid that we forget death. I’m no Sinologist, but I vaguely remember a certain famous general once saying that soldiers’ courage comes from fear. They are afraid of the enemy, but they are even more afraid of their own general, so they have to go all out against the enemy. To take another example, cats are the most cowardly domestic animals; yet we see children scratched by cats but never bitten by dogs. If you compare infants under one year old with puppies and kittens of the same age, you will see how kittens differ from those two other types of four-legged domestic animals. A child will cry if you pretend to strike him, while a puppy will lie down with its four limbs in the air and wave its two forepaws, as if to ask you not to hit it, rocking its body from left to right. A kitten, on the other hand, will become fiercer the more afraid it is. Its whiskers will stand on end and the muscles in its paws will tighten like the string of a drawn bow as it prepares to risk its life. Yet we all know that cats are far less brave than dogs. Therefore, to be afraid of war yet able to fight a war is not as contradictory as Juqing thinks.”

Yuan Youchun realized that he could insert this discussion into his article about the traits of the Chinese and didn’t say anything, as if he had not heard it.

Lu Bolin said, “I never knew that Xiajun was a speechmaker. What has happened today might well be made into the title of a chapter in a novel, ‘Banging the Table, Chen Xiajun Makes a Vehement Declaration; Teacup Overturned, Zhao Yushan Becomes Soaking Wet and Angry,’ or ‘Chen Xiajun Compares Himself to a Kitten; Zhao Yushan’s Wife Resembles a Tiger.’”⁷⁰

Everyone laughed at Lu Bolin’s wickedness. Shaking his head, Zhao Yushan said, “Rubbish! Poorly done.”

Cao Shichang remarked, “I don’t have Mr. Chen’s courage. But we intellectuals have responsibilities toward our country and should hasten to do what we can. I think we should call for international sympathy. To begin with, we should get the media’s support and sanction Japan for its perfidious actions. Those of you who know foreign languages should carry out this kind of unofficial propaganda. Mr. Yuan has made a lot of progress in this respect. Mr. Fu, perhaps you should try this too. Last spring, a Chinese art exhibition held in London drew the attention of cultured people throughout the world toward China. That’s the best kind of opportunity. We shouldn’t miss it! We must strike while the iron is still hot, and if it isn’t hot, we’ll strike it until it is!”

Yigu was fully convinced by this, thinking that Cao Shichang was quite reasonable.

Fu Juqing said, “You overestimate me. Only Youchun can do this. But you also overestimate foreign sympathy. Sympathy is merely an emotional luxury. There’s nothing practical about it. We all sympathize with Yushan, for instance, yet who will help him tame his wife? We’ve seen with our own eyes that Chen Xiajun made him spill tea on himself, and our revered Lu Bo made caustic remarks to him. Have we defended him against the injustice? If foreigners know it’s in their best interest, they will naturally come to our rescue. Modern media is unlike traditional Chinese pure talk.⁷¹ In autocratic countries, the government controls the media, not the other way around. In democracies like Britain, all the nation’s presses are in the hands of one or two publishing magnates. These people are not intellectuals with brains and hearts, just ambitious capitalists who want to expand their wealth and influence through the newspapers. How can they uphold justice? As for the London art exhibition, let me give you some food for thought. A British friend of mine wrote to me to say that Europeans took an interest in Japanese art because Japan had won the Russo-Japanese War. Now they are positive that if a Sino-Japanese war begins, China is going to lose. That’s why they’ve suddenly become interested in Chinese art. When a big house is about to change hands, neighbors will go pay a visit.”

“Talking about all these things is useless,” Lu Bolin said with a yawn. “In any event, China can’t bring credit to itself and has to rely on others. Whether we concede to Japan or seek protection from Britain or the U.S., it’s either Tweedledum or Tweedledee. I see no difference between them. Both are a disgrace to the nation. The Japanese harbor ill intentions, to be sure, but how much better are the British and the Americans? I’d prefer Japan, which at least is of the same race and shares a great deal with us in culture. I know I’ll be vilified for saying this.”

Chen Xiajun said, “What else can we expect from an out-and-out ‘Japanese expert’? Many peacetime ‘Japanese experts’ will collude with the Japanese when war breaks out. Revered Bo, I’m awfully sorry if I’ve offended you. We Hunanese speak crudely and know no taboos.”

Lu Bolin went livid at this last utterance. His face turned white and his hand trembled over his beard. In China, only people from four provinces—Guangdong, Guangxi, Hunan, and Shandong (which barely makes the list)—could say such cocky things to others as “We people of such and such a place are born this way.” It was as if their native places were themselves a principled debating standpoint or a battle slogan. Lu Bolin was a native of the area bordering the Shanghai-Hangzhou-Nanjing railroad. The name of his hometown didn’t sound especially good. Others used his birthplace to mock him, or explain away his disposition, so it wouldn’t enhance the force of his argument. Therefore, he couldn’t think of anything at the moment to counter Chen Xiajun’s “We Hunanese.” Besides, he had just predicted that he would be vilified. Now that his prediction had come true, why complain?

Zheng Xuxi hastened to ward off an argument, “I can’t decide whether or not it makes political sense for us to declare war, and I’ve already been disparaged by young people for saying too much. But from a suprapolitical point of view, war might be necessary for our national spirit. An epic war would stimulate our people’s latent virtues and help us restore spiritual health and national self-esteem. Of course, we would be unable to avoid pain, casualty, horror, homelessness, famine, and all the disasters wrought by Ibáñez’s ‘Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.’⁷² But these are all necessary in the course of war. Amid the overarching atmosphere of glory and heroism, we would have compensation for local pain. Such is life. Beauty and virtue are distilled from ugliness and evil. The same is true of the fresh milk, snow-white sugar, fragrant tea, and delicious snacks on the table. Once inside us, these good things change property and shape through the biological and chemical processes of our intestines and stomachs, turning into a mushy and messy state too horrible to imagine. We should protest the injustice done to these fragrant and sweet good things. Yet, without this filthy process, how can the body become beautiful and healthy? I—”

Mrs. Li cut him short, “You’re about to make people start vomiting. We women don’t enjoy listening to such roundabout arguments. Life is full of disgusting and loathsome but unavoidable things. If this war can’t be avoided, you don’t have to find profound reasons to demonstrate that it’s reasonable and good. Your attempt to justify war doesn’t glorify war; on the contrary, it profanes the truth. Listening to you, we become suspicious of all truths and imagine that they, too, are merely compelling cover-ups for wrongs. Our task is not necessarily a good one. Your opinion sounds like self-delusion. I don’t buy it.”

Yigu was spellbound by Aimo. He turned and listened to her attentively, his eyes like two fires burning bright with surprise and admiration. Seeing this, the sharp-eyed Chen Xiajun winked at Aimo, smiling. Aimo turned to look at Yigu. Yigu was so embarrassed that he bowed his head. He twisted off pieces of bread and rolled them into little balls.

Chen Xiajun immediately asked, “May I know this gentleman’s name? I came in late and didn’t have the pleasure of making your acquaintance.”

Yigu felt ten pairs of eyes setting his two cheeks on fire. He wished he could kill Chen Xiajun with one stab of the knife. Meanwhile, he heard his voice answering, “My name is Qi.”

Jianhou said, “I forgot to introduce him to you! Mr. Qi helps me arrange material. He’s very bright.”

“I see, I see!” was Chen Xiajun’s answer. If Heaven indeed obeyed human wishes, Chen Xiajun would have felt his cheeks burn as though slapped by Yigu.

“You haven’t hired a woman . . . woman secretary?” Yuan Youchun asked Jianhou.

He had meant to say “woman clerk” but suddenly remembered that this title was too straightforward, and feared it might be unpleasant to Yigu’s—the clerk’s—ear. He congratulated himself for shrewdly switching to the more polite “secretary.”

Cao Shichang said, “That’s out of the question! Would his wife allow that? Besides, a woman secretary wouldn’t be much help.”

Mrs. Li said, “That’s not true. He can use as many women secretaries as he wants. It’s none of my business. Don’t put it all on me. Right, Jianhou?”

Jianhou giggled foolishly.

Yuan Youchun said, “Only Jianhou can use a woman secretary without causing a scandal about seducing girls of good families. With a wife as beautiful as Aimo at home, he has high standards. It’s hard for him to appreciate anyone else.”

Glancing at Jianhou, Chen Xiajun said, “I doubt he’d have the nerve to seduce.”

Suppressing his anger, Jianhou forced a smile, “How do you know I don’t have the nerve?”

“Treason!” Xiajun shouted. “Aimo, did you hear that? You’d better keep an eye on your husband immediately.”

Aimo replied with a laugh, “If someone falls in love with Jianhou, so much the better. It shows my good taste in my choice of a husband. I should be delighted if other people share my taste. I don’t mind in the least.”

Aimo’s response was pleasant enough but actually beside the point, since Chen Xiajun was talking about Jianhou’s falling in love with another woman, and not another woman’s falling in love with him. But nobody corrected her.

Chen Xiajun continued, “Jianhou might have the nerve but not the appetite. For us who have reached middle age, so long as one of the two basic desires, for food and sex, is still strong, that means we aren’t old yet. These two desires have something in common. From a man’s diet, we usually can infer his libido . . .”

With his eyes on the teacup in front of him, Lu Bolin said, as if talking to his own beard, “Aimo said just now that she’s not jealous! But she loves to eat fish sautéed with vinegar. Voilà!”⁷³

Jianhou said, “That’s right! Xiajun only spouts nonsense, as if he knew everything.”

Paying no attention to Lu Bolin, Xiajun rolled his head as he told Jianhou, “I assume she’s jealous since she loves to eat fish sautéed with vinegar. Be careful not to enjoy yourself too much.”

Mrs. Li said, laughing, “That’s irresponsible talk. Okay, okay, so I’m a vinegar bottle, a vinegar jar, a vinegar barrel. Go on.”

Like a rubber ball that had been pricked and deflated, Xiajun said lazily, “There’s nothing to talk about. Jianhou has a small appetite, so he probably isn’t greedy for love affairs.”

“He must also be constantly improving his skill as he does with cuisine. There aren’t many women who can satisfy his aesthetic standards,” said Fu Juqing.

Hearing this, Jianhou was very pleased.

“That’s a completely erroneous statement,” Xiajun burst out. “The women most likely to win men’s love are not beauties. On the contrary, we should guard against plain and commonplace women. When we see a famous beauty, we can only look up to her. We dare not love her. Those of us who have grown ugly before we’re old feel inferior and hopeless, so we don’t lust after swan’s flesh like a toad. Her beauty increases the psychological distance between her and us. It’s like a danger sign that makes us timid and cowardly, and we dare not approach her. If we pursued her, we’d be like soldiers on a suicide mission, forging ahead with foreknowledge of failure. On the other hand, when we run into an ordinary woman whose looks are at best not repulsive, we go out with her with our guard down. Pow! One day, we suddenly discover that she’s been stealthily making a nest in our hearts. We fall in love without knowing why and without justification. Beauties are like the enemy’s regular army: you know how to guard against them, and even if you lose the war, you can account for it. But ordinary women are like Franco’s Fifth Column in the Spanish Civil War, spying on you and subverting you while you’re still daydreaming. Take our wives or other women we’ve loved, for example: none of them can be considered beautiful. Yet when we were wooing them, we still sometimes found it difficult to sleep and eat. Young as this Mr. Qi is, I assume you’ve had your fill of experience, eh? Ha, ha!”

Xiajun’s earlier comments had made Yigu involuntarily admire him for his keen observations of human emotions. Little expecting the question to be directed to him, he turned red and speechless, and his hatred for Xiajun was rekindled.

Mrs. Li quickly put in, “You’re disgusting, Xiajun. Mr. Qi, don’t pay any attention to him.”

Yuan Youchun said, “Xiajun, just now you said that our wives are not beautiful. Is Jianhou included in this ‘we’?”

Both Cao Shichang and Zhao Yushan chimed in with him.

Mrs. Li said with a laugh, “He’s certainly included. I used to be ugly even when I was young. Now that I’m old, I’m even more so.”

Realizing that he had stuck his foot in his mouth, Chen Xiajun shrugged, scratched the back of his head, and grimaced. Even Lu Bolin laughed.

Ma Yongzhong said, “You’re all being silly! My newspaper office has two women clerks who’re very conscientious workers. Yushan, aren’t there women researchers in your institute?”

Zhao Yushan answered, “We have three, and they’re all quite good. Most young women would never come to our institute because they’d consider it boring. In my experience, women university students who major in the natural sciences, Chinese literature, history, and geography are honest and sincere. Only those who major in Western literatures are worthless. Their heads are filled with romantic ideas, but they know nothing. Nor have they mastered foreign languages. But they invariably want to figure out the meaning of life or become a woman writer or become a diplomat’s wife and entertain Westerners—they’re extremely restless. Juqing once introduced one of these precious creatures to our institute, but I finally got rid of her. Juqing is still mad at me.”

Fu Juqing said, “The reason I’m mad at you is because you’re obstinate and narrow-minded and intolerant toward others.”

Zheng Xuxi said, “That’s right, Yushan should have retained her. Maybe the academic atmosphere could have exerted a subtle influence on her, making her fitter for the environment and transforming her into a capable person.”

Lu Bolin chuckled. “That reminds me of a joke. More than ten years ago, my family still lived in the south. One spring, I accompanied my wife to Mount Potuo to burn incense and stayed overnight in the guest room of the monastery. I wasn’t pleased with the look of the bed and asked the monk if there were any bedbugs. The monk assured me that there were no bedbugs: ‘Even if there are one or two, they’re under the influence of Buddha and don’t drink blood. Should they happen to bite—Amitabha!—don’t kill them, sir. To take a life in a pure Buddhist monastery is a sin.’ Good heavens! I was bitten so badly that night that I didn’t sleep a wink. Later, I found out that some people really did listen to the monk. One old lady who went to burn incense with her daughter-in-law caught one bedbug and put it in her daughter-in-law’s bed to ‘free captive animals and accumulate virtues,’⁷⁴ making her daughter-in-law yelp. That joke has made the rounds. When Xuxi said that environment might change one’s character by persuasion, I was reminded of the vegetarian bedbug in the monastery.”

Everyone had a good laugh. After laughing, Zheng Xuxi said, “Revered Bo, you shouldn’t mock the monk. There’s some truth in what he said. Bedbugs are just too far removed from Buddhism. It’s what Xiajun calls ‘the vastness of their psychological distance.’ That’s why the bedbug didn’t change its nature. Those creatures, which have higher intelligence, can be infected by their masters’ habits. Biologists and animal psychologists agree on this. For instance, if the master likes joking and his guests laugh loudly, his dog will also acquire a sense of humor from its surroundings and behave comically, sometimes even stretching its face to imitate a human smile. Darwin once observed that dogs could imitate humans’ humor. Over ten years ago, I read the German psychologist Preyer’s book on child psychology,⁷⁵ which also mentions this. So it’s not empty talk when I say that an academic atmosphere might alter a woman’s character.”

Lu Bolin remarked, “I haven’t seen a dog smile; I’ll have to keep a dog to experiment with later. But I’m all for your scientific demonstration. I love books, and the mice in my home are influenced by the master. They’ve taken a special liking to books and are always chewing on them. Perhaps the monks secretly ate meat and that’s why the bedbugs in the monastery didn’t abstain from blood. You were absolutely right.” He winked at Mrs. Li, as if to draw her attention to his clever irony.

Zheng Xuxi shook his head, “You, old man, are incredible.”

Yuan Youchun said, “Why use a dog as an example when we have Taoqi at hand? If you watch her figure when she moves, so supple and strong, sometimes she really does resemble Aimo, especially when she stretches. Being kept in the Lis’ house, she has gotten accustomed to the beautiful mistress’s example and changed imperceptibly.”

Mrs. Li said, “I don’t know whether to curse you or to thank you.”

Chen Xiajun said, “His remark is totally incorrect. Taoqi has indeed spent many years with the Lis. But she also has a master. Why doesn’t she imitate Jianhou? Don’t laugh or Jianhou will think I’m making fun of him! If Jianhou were living in sixteenth-century France, many a woman would fall for the contours of his body and offer to be his secretary for free. Back then, it was fashionable for men and women to stick out their paunches, called panserons in French,⁷⁶ and the higher the better—a practice diametrically opposed to the modern one of women’s binding their abdomens and exaggerating their hips. If Jianhou can be considered handsome by classical French standards, then he could certainly be Taoqi’s model. That’s why I say that Mr. Yuan has mistaken effect for cause. It isn’t that Taoqi imitates Aimo. Rather, Aimo has made a thorough study of Taoqi and developed her own distinctive style. Aimo won’t get angry when she hears this. The consummate Western beauty who brought an empire to its knees was the Egyptian empress Cleopatra. According to ancient Egyptian custom, the more a woman resembled a cat, the more beautiful she was.⁷⁷ Among our wives, Aimo is certainly the most attractively dressed. Come winter, for instance, my wife looks like a sack of corn flour. Only you look perfect. Your clothes don’t seem to be made for the body; rather, your body seems to adapt itself to the clothes. You’ve imitated Taoqi and dressed up in furs. You couldn’t say that Taoqi grew fur to imitate you, could you?”

Aimo laughed. “Watch out or Jianhou might punch you! You’re just talking nonsense.”

Passing an éclair to Xiajun, Jianhou said, “Could you cut it out, please? Here, put this in your idle mouth so that it’ll stop spouting nonsense.” And indeed Xiajun took the dessert and bit into it, thus ending his long-winded speech spanning antiquity and modernity.

Fu Juqing said, “I’ve been thinking about what Xiajun said. There is indeed a ‘psychological distance’ in love. That’s why in the West Cupid shoots arrows only in secret. To shoot an arrow certainly requires the proper distance. If it’s too close to the heart, the arrow can’t be shot, while if it’s too far away it won’t reach its target. People of drastically different social position find it difficult to fall in love with each other. Yet, it’s just as difficult for those who are close blood relations—this distance is not purely psychological. Have any of you had this experience? From afar a woman looks gorgeous and lovable, but when we get closer we discover it’s all a sham: she’s not beautiful in the least; nor is her makeup or her technique of applying it up to par. I can’t figure out what women like this are up to. They take great trouble and time dressing up but in the end must be viewed from a distance of ten yards away! Perhaps they want men to fall deeply in love with them from afar, so that when they get closer and discover the truth, it’s too late to repent. All they can do is leave their mistake uncorrected, make the best of it, and love them to the end. After hearing Xiajun, I realized that they are like guns and cannons in that their effective range is preset. I can’t think how many women of this sort I run into every day. I detest them! They seem to want to cheat my love away and I almost get taken in, but, lucky for me, I live in modern times. China has opened up, and I have the opportunity to observe them carefully and rectify the illusion at first glance. If I lived in ancient times, when things were closed up, I would only be able to gaze at a woman as she leans on the railing of a high building or catch a glimpse of her when she pulls back her curtain while being transported by donkey cart. She would be within sight but beyond reach. My only option would be to fall in love with her at first sight and then take the trouble to woo her. How unfair! I shudder to think of it!” Fu Juqing shivered as he spoke.

Jianhou laughed so heartily that his entire short, stout body rocked, joining his mouth in the laugh.

Chen Xiajun, who had long since finished his dessert, said with a sigh, “Juqing is too haughty. If we middle-aged men still have desire, we shouldn’t be so exacting. Not only do we have to lower our standards in the matter of looks, we also have to be less demanding when it comes to feelings. Ten years ago, I looked down on those old men who turned a blind eye to their young mistresses’ messing around behind their backs. They played the fool and let it be. Now, I’m beginning to understand and sympathize with them. Unless you tolerate a woman’s love for others, you can’t expect her to tolerate your love for her. When I was studying art in Paris, I went out with a Corsican girl. Then I found out that she was a pious Catholic and would marry me only if I joined the church. It was as if she were a receptionist who solicited customers for the church. I had to get rid of her. At the time, I wanted a woman to love me heart and soul, leaving no place for anyone else. Even God was my rival in love. I felt she should forsake him for me, that her love for me should surpass any religious considerations. But now I am more content and completely lack such high expectations. If a lovely woman were so merciful as to bestow some leftover affection upon me, I would shed grateful tears like a beggar who gets leftover soup or cold meat. One glance, one smile, or one blush from her, and I would remember and savor it for days. Fight a war? We’re too old, yet not old enough, since we still worry we’ll be drafted. Fall in love? We’re too old, but not really. We’re so worried because we’re afraid we’ll be left out.”

Ma Yongzhong stood up to say, “What Xiajun just said was demoralizing and shameless. It’s getting late. I have to go now. Mrs. Li, Jianhou, thank you. Goodbye, good-bye! Don’t bother to see me out. Mr. Qi, see you.”

Cao Shichang also echoed that what Xiajun had said was a threat to public morals.

After listening to Xiajun, Jianhou looked dumbfounded, as if Xiajun’s words had started him thinking. He stood up hurriedly when he heard his name spoken and joined Aimo in saying, “Won’t you stay a little bit longer? Good-bye, good-bye.”

Yigu took out his watch. Seeing that it was getting late, he too wanted to leave. He wished that all the guests would take their leave at the same time so that he could just say a polite word or two while the group was milling about and then sneak out. But the other guests were all snugly seated and didn’t look as though they were about to leave. Fearing that his mother might be worried, he couldn’t sit still any longer and began to plot out how to get through the awkwardness of repetitively bidding farewell to each of the guests.

Seeing him look at his watch, Mrs. Li said, “It’s still early, but I dare not keep you any longer. See you tomorrow.” Yigu mumbled a few words of thanks to Mrs. Li. Since it was the first time he had come as a guest, Jianhou saw him out to the gate. After leaving the living room, Jianhou closed the door behind him, but Yigu heard chattering and laughter, which the door could not contain. He groundlessly assumed that they were going on about him and felt his face grow hotter.⁷⁸ He jumped onto the tram and suddenly remembered Mrs. Li’s “See you tomorrow.” He carefully recalled what Mrs. Li had said to him at parting and sorted out the three words “See you tomorrow.” Those three words had not yet turned stiff and cold, and Mrs. Li’s voice still lingered. “Tomorrow” was spoken smoothly and therefore set off the “see you,” which was clear and emphatic. Yet the emphasis was so light that the words seemed to have been touched only slightly. His memory preserved the phrase to the word, and his heart palpitated with joy. To Yigu, the next day was worth waiting for and worth desiring. A smile spread over his face. He was so overjoyed that he wanted to share his happiness with the other passengers on the tram. A middle-aged woman sitting across from him, seeing Yigu smile at her, misinterpreted his intentions and shot him an angry glance before frowning and turning her head away. Encountering this puzzling rebuff, Yigu calmed down.

After he returned home, his mother naturally inquired whether Mrs. Li was beautiful. Yigu insisted that Mrs. Li wasn’t very beautiful, saying that her skin wasn’t white, that her cheekbones were too high, and that she had other defects besides. If Yigu had not been so infatuated with Aimo, he might have said that she was very attractive, but he now seemed to have a new secret. Still a new arrival, this secret hid itself in his heart, too shy to meet strangers, so, without realizing it, he conformed to the protective diplomatic and military strategy of feinting east and attacking west. Back when his mother had gotten married as a young woman, the Chinese had yet to invent courtship, and if a go-between came and a girl’s parents happened to ask their daughter if she were pleased with the man, she would blush, bow her head, and not utter a word. At most she would say, “Let mom and dad decide,” and then rush off to her room. This would be the most discrete statement a girl could make to express her feelings. Who would have expected that some twenty or thirty years later the world would have changed so greatly and that her son’s heart, a big boy’s heart, would be so complex? Therefore, she only teased her son for being such a keen observer, and said nothing else.

That night, Yigu had several bizarre dreams, including one in which he dreamed that he had carelessly spilled tea on Mrs. Li’s clothes. This so mortified him that he felt like crawling under a rock and had to escape that dream. He then dreamed that Taoqi had scratched his nose and that Chen Xiajun had called him a cat louse. He was furious and was about to retort when the dream shifted. He was stroking Taoqi’s fur, and all of a sudden, he found that it was Mrs. Li’s hair. He woke up feeling thoroughly ashamed of himself, too ashamed to face the Lis the next day. On the other hand, he was secretly delighted and revisited the dream over and over, against his conscience.

Mrs. Li hadn’t taken Yigu seriously. As Jianhou was seeing Yigu out, Chen Xiajun said, “That kid looks quite bright. Aimo, he should be your private secretary. He would be at your beck and call for sure. He is just at the age to be infatuated with you.”

Aimo answered, “I’m not sure whether Jianhou would agree.”

Cao Shichang said, “Xiajun, you are impossible. You’ve bullied that kid enough today. He hasn’t seen enough of the world. Poor lad!”

Xiajun said, “Who’s bullied him? I saw him with his eyes wide open in astonishment. He’s naive to the point of being pitiable. That’s why I teased him—to loosen him up.”

Lu Bolin said, “You think you were just teasing. You have no clue what’s appropriate. No wonder Jianhou was angry with you.” Everyone agreed with him. At that point, Jianhou came back. The guests stayed for a while and then departed, one by one. In the latter half of the night, in the middle of a dream and without any reason, Aimo thought of how Yigu looked at her and what Chen Xiajun had said that day. She suddenly woke up, elated by the feeling that she was not yet a middle-aged woman, and then turned onto her side and fell back asleep.

The next day, Yigu was describing for Jianhou how he, Jianhou, had gazed down from the top of a big hotel in New York—how the electrical wires, pedestrians, and cars had made him so dizzy that he almost tumbled out of the window. Aimo knocked on the door and came in. She glanced at them and then turned as if to leave, saying, “You’re busy. I’m not going to interrupt you. It’s nothing.”

Jianhou said, “We’re not busy. Do you want to read the preface to my travelogue?”

Aimo said, “I remember you already told me the gist of the preface. Fine, I’ll read it together with the first chapter after you finish it. It’s not interesting to read the preface by itself. Jianhou, may I ask Yigu to write invitations, when he has time, for our party three days from now?”

Yigu hadn’t expected Mrs. Li to take the cover off his name—no surname, no “Mister”—leaving his name stark naked, like a man going into a massage parlor for the first time and not expecting the masseuse to take all his clothes off.

He said hurriedly before Jianhou could answer, “Certainly, certainly! But I’m afraid that my handwriting isn’t good enough—”

With this modest remark, Yigu had meant to appear at ease, instead of clumsy to the point of incoherence. Jianhou, of course, agreed. Yigu took the guest list from Aimo’s hand and willingly began to write invitations for Aimo, leaving the dizzy Jianhou by the window of the thirty-second floor of the New York hotel. Writing Jianhou’s travelogue had made him feel as if he had been wronged, but in doing something as trivial as writing invitations he became, on the contrary, as pious as a monk using his own blood as ink to copy Buddhist sutras. After returning home, he still considered this trifle proof that Aimo thought highly of him. The next day, he answered several unimportant letters for Aimo. On the third day, he read a new novel that Aimo had been given by the author and gave her a synopsis of it, because the author would be meeting Aimo the following day. Far from being a chore for Yigu, these tasks made him return home in the afternoon with the feeling that his day had been extraordinarily fulfilling and nurtured in him hopes for the next day that he otherwise would never have dared contemplate.⁷⁹

The day Yigu had been asked to write the invitations, Mr. Li had already been feeling somewhat unhappy. By the time Mrs. Li asked Yigu to read the novel for her, Mr. Li thought that this would not only stop the writing of the travelogue but, like a hot knife cutting lard, would waste the best part of the day—the time before and after noon. He couldn’t expect Yigu to work for him any more that day. At the moment, he had been too embarrassed to blow up, but he harbored a vague fear that Aimo would snatch this secretary from him. In Aimo’s presence, he said to Yigu sulkily, “You go read your novel. Give the draft to me. I’ll write it myself.”

With a faint smile on her face, Aimo asked, “What’s the hurry? One day matters little to your writing. What if I offended the author tomorrow? If I weren’t expected to keep house for you, I would have read the book ages ago.”

At the time, Yigu knew only that Aimo wanted him to work for her and failed to grasp the implied meaning of Jianhou’s words. He gave the draft to Jianhou, which Jianhou took. Though he didn’t say anything, Jianhou’s yellow face turned greenish.

Casting a glance at Jianhou, Aimo smilingly said to Yigu, “Thanks!” She then left the study.

Yigu sat down to read the novel. What bad luck for the author! Eager to show Aimo the severity of his discernment and the loftiness of his standards, Yigu felt compelled to be overcritical of the plot and the writing, as if he had been instructed by Fu Juqing. Jianhou sat absentmindedly in front of the spread-out draft, unable to write a single word. It had always been his job to watch the time and tell Yigu to go home and have lunch. Yet that day, not until the servant came in to ask him whether he would have lunch did he give Yigu a forced smile, implying that he could leave. Seeing Yigu take the novel home with him, Jianhou became even angrier. He went into the dining room and sat down to drink his soup. Neither he nor Aimo said a word. Women, after all, are creatures that have been oppressed since the dawn of creation and are thus more patient.

Jianhou broke the ice by saying, “Would you please not use my secretary later? I have important things for him to do. If you want him to do those trifles, you should do so in the afternoons, when he has finished with my serious business.”

“Hm.” Aimo said in English, “So you’re blowing up at me, are you? The maid is standing close by and listening. Aren’t you embarrassed? Is this the appropriate place to start a quarrel? Just now, you embarrassed me in the presence of your dear secretary. Now you’re finding fault with me over lunch. I suggest that you not get angry at mealtimes, otherwise you’ll have a relapse of your stomach trouble. One of these days, you’re going to bully me so much that I’ll have stomach trouble too. Would that make you happy? Besides, today we’re having fried lobster, which is difficult to digest.”

Although the maid didn’t know English, she understood enough from Aimo’s tone and countenance and sniggered to herself, “They must be boiling over with anger at each other! Your gobblygook can’t fool me.”

After lunch, the couple went into the bedroom. As soon as the maid had made up the bed for Jianhou’s nap and had left the room, Jianhou burst out, “Did you hear what I said?”

Sitting on the sofa and smoking, Aimo said, “I heard! How could I not hear? Maids, old and young, heard it too. Your voice could be heard by people at Tiananmen and in the Haidian district. Everyone knows you’re scolding your wife.”

Jianhou didn’t want to expand the war and give up his nap, so he said in conclusion, “Just so long as you heard it.”

Without looking at her husband, Aimo said as if to herself,⁸⁰ “But you want me to obey you. Certainly not! It’s up to me when I want to use him. Quite the big husband, scolding me in front of the secretary and the servants!”

Jianhou felt that his prone position was not advantageous for quarreling. The bed was a woman’s territory. Only a woman could talk to a guest while lazing in bed. Women and beds were fit for each other, and each shone in the other’s company. If a man lay in bed, he would be like an army that loses its esprit de corps without a secure defensive position. Jianhou sat up and said, “I’m the one who hired this secretary. He should listen to me. If you want him to do odds and ends, you should ask me first.”

Aimo threw away her cigarette so that she could use her mouth exclusively for arguing. “As long as you’re employing him,” she said, “I’m going to call on him if I have things to do. To be honest, the work you give him is not necessarily more meaningful than what I ask him to do. If you had any talent, you’d write the book yourself instead of asking somebody else to write it for you!⁸¹ Cao Shichang, Lu Bolin, and Fu Juqing have all written many books. None of them used a secretary!”

Jianhou was so angry he struck the bed and barked, “All right, all right! Tomorrow I’ll send that Qi kid packing and nobody will have a secretary.”

Aimo replied, “If you fire him, I’ll hire him. I have so many little things to do, whereas your travelogue . . .”

“If you’re busy,” Jianhou retorted, “why don’t you hire another secretary instead of grabbing mine?”

“And why shouldn’t we economize when we can, my dear sir?” Aimo asked. “I’m not a mindlessly extravagant woman. Besides, have I demanded a share of the family assets?”

“I wish that the boundary between us were clearer.” Jianhou said.

Aimo stood up. “Jianhou, make sure you don’t regret this later. If you want to divide up the family assets, then divide them we will!”

Jianhou realized that he had gone too far but insisted stubbornly, “Don’t deliberately misinterpret me. You’re making a mountain out of a molehill.”

Aimo sneered, “I didn’t misinterpret you. You always feel that others look up to me more than to you, so you’re jealous. You believe the nonsense Xiajun was spouting two days ago and have made up your mind to find another woman. Don’t worry, I won’t get in your way.”

Losing momentum, Jianhou gave an awkward laugh. “Ha-ha! Isn’t that sheer exaggeration? Sorry, I’m going to sleep.”

He lay down and pulled the covers over his head, not uttering a sound. Five minutes later, he poked his head out.

“Will you get the novel back from that kid?” Aimo asked. “I’m not going to ask him to read it for me.”

Jianhou replied, “You needn’t feign benevolence and righteousness. I have some errands to run in the afternoon, so I’m not going to the study. If you want to use Qi Yigu, go right ahead. I’m not going to write anything anymore. It’s all the same. Whatever is mine you always take over in the end. All my friends are estranged from me and drawn to you. All the servants busy themselves for you first, while my affairs are always delayed. Your convenience trumps my command. It’s a good thing that we don’t have children. Otherwise, they would be like beasts and barbarians, acknowledging only their mother and not recognizing me as their father.”

Mrs. Li’s attitude on breeding children resembled the slogan of the Soviet Union’s state abortion institution: “First-timers welcome, but please don’t come again.” Mrs. Li’s gynecologist, however, had given her a severe warning that she was not fit for childbirth. Therefore, not even one soul had reincarnated in her womb. Behind her back, their friends called her a true “peerless and heirless beauty.”⁸²

“How pitifully you talk!” she retorted. “What a wretched husband! Servants listen to me because it’s me who keeps house. Who wants to do that? All the worry has given me a headache. Starting tomorrow, you can take care of it, then all the servants will flatter you. As for friends, that’s even more absurd. Why is it that all my friends from school days have abandoned me since I married you? You haggle over your friends with me, but who’s to blame for the loss of my friends? Besides, aren’t our present friends common to both of us? What’s the point in distinguishing whether they’re good to me or to you? You’re so naive. As for the secretary, these are precarious times. Who knows how long we can employ him? If we move back south, we can’t take him with us, can we? But, if you fire him now, you still have to give him a month’s salary. I don’t necessarily need him. But even if you’re not going to write anything, there’s no need to dismiss him right away. He might come in useful occasionally for errands. Let’s see how the situation looks in a month and then decide. If you consider this merely a woman’s pettiness, I’ll be provoked into saying something you dislike again. Anyhow, you take care of everything. It’s all up to you.”

Hearing his wife speak plausibly and at length and call him “naive,” Jianhou found it difficult to go on quarreling and waved his hand. “Don’t say that! You’re always right. Let’s call a truce.”

“See how easy it is for you to say ‘truce’!” Aimo replied. “If I were to believe you, we’d have broken up long ago.” She left the room as she said this, ignoring Jianhou’s hand, which was stretched out for her to grasp and seal their truce. Jianhou lay there alone, wondering how it was that even though reason was on his side, he seemed at a loss for words and reason after a short quarrel and had to apologize to her, only to be given a cold shoulder. The more he thought about it, the more indignant he became.

For the next four or five days, Jianhou seldom came to the study. He was always out, and no one knew what he was doing. Once or twice, he failed to accompany Aimo to dinner parties, but Yigu’s work was not reduced. Jianhou did not tell him that he had decided not to write the travelogue and kept him busy by telling him to translate material to arrange later. Aimo also frequently asked Yigu to write invitations and thank-you notes for her. Occasionally she would sit for a while and chat with him.

Yigu didn’t have any sisters, and he had few contacts with his relatives. As his widowed mother’s only son, he was kept under strict guard. Thus, despite having been in college for a year, he had never spoken to a girl. Even a tightly sealed bottle of soda pop will reveal floating air bubbles when the bottle is held up against the sunlight, and so it was with Yigu. Though he was outwardly uptight, deep in his heart a kind of foolish, unclaimed love had been stirring. The number of women in the heart of your average girlfriendless boy of eighteen or nineteen is equal to that in the thirty-six harems of an emperor, while the filth in his heart sometimes surpasses that of a public restroom. In the meantime, he entertains lofty ideas about love, hoping to find a woman whose sentiments match his for an intimate yet chaste relationship. He pushes aside physiological impulse or conceals its true nature beneath layer upon layer of gloss.⁸³

After Yigu got to know Aimo, his general and aimless affections gradually focused. To a boy with no experience in love, the charms of this mature, middle-aged woman were like late spring weather or a down comforter—snug, soft, and hard to wake up from.⁸⁴ A love object is merely a means to fulfill one’s life’s needs. Therefore, in one’s youth, one tends to fall in love first with someone older, because a young person needs to mature and will unconsciously choose a more experienced partner. In old age, however, one always falls madly in love with someone younger, because an old man dreams of rejuvenation, which we also see in his final endeavors.

After his second week at the Lis’, Yigu had admitted to himself that he loved Mrs. Li.⁸⁵ What would come of this love? He had no time to think about that. He only wished he might often have the opportunity to continue being close to her. Whenever he heard her voice, his heart would thump and his face would flush red.⁸⁶ This could not escape Aimo’s eyes. Yigu dared not fantasize that Aimo loved him. He was sure only that Aimo liked him. But sometimes he lacked even this much confidence, thinking that he was only dreaming and that Aimo would certainly despise him should she learn of it. He would then busily search her small gestures and expressions—ones that Aimo herself might not remember—for evidence that his hopes were not just wishful thinking. But this was not enough. What on earth did Aimo think? He had no way to determine this. What if she didn’t like him? Fine! He didn’t care. So be it! To hell with her! He would put her out of his heart. But after he had done this and awoken from his sleep, he found that she still occupied his heart, and that his first thoughts were about her. One moment he would feel as happy as if he had risen to Heaven; the next, as dejected as if he had fallen into Hell, swaying on the swing of lovesickness.

When Yigu arrived at the Lis’ on Monday of the third week, Old Whitey informed Yigu as soon as he opened the door that Jianhou had gone back south the day before. Yigu immediately asked why and whether Mrs. Li had also gone. Only after ascertaining that Jianhou had gone to Shanghai to see to the house and that Aimo wouldn’t be leaving right away did he calm down. Yet he still felt uneasy. The possibility of parting had cast a shadow on his heart. He moped about for quite some time before Aimo came to the study. She told him that Jianhou had returned home on Saturday saying that news from outside was not good, that war was inevitable, and that they should move as soon as possible. He had thus left for Shanghai the day before in a hurry.

Pretending to be calm, Yigu said, “Mrs. Li, you’re not leaving Beiping right away, are you?”

He waited for an answer like a patient waiting for emergency treatment.

As Aimo was about to answer him, Old Whitey came in to report, “Madame, Mr. Chen is here.”

Aimo said, “Please ask him to come to the study—I will pack up and leave too after Mr. Li comes back. Yigu, you should go to school in the south. It will be safer than here.”

Though he had expected such an answer, Yigu still felt desperate and heartbroken when it actually reached his ears. It was all he could do to keep himself from crying.

Chen Xiajun shouted as he came in, “Aimo, I never expected that you would take my advice and that Jianhou would let you have his private secretary.”

After saying hello to Yigu, he said to Aimo, “Jianhou took the train back south yesterday.”

Aimo said, “You’re well informed. Did Old Whitey tell you that?”

“I was the first to know. I saw him off yesterday.”

“That’s strange. Had he informed you ahead of time?”

“You know that the sight of me gives him a headache. Why on earth would he tell me? Since I haven’t had much to do these days, I’ve been going to the station whenever a friend leaves. I manage to see all kinds of people this way. Yesterday, I was seeing a relative off, and quite by chance, I met your husband. He seemed to feel uncomfortable running into me and wanted to hide, but I called out to him. He told me that he was going to Shanghai to look for a house. Why didn’t you go see him off yesterday?”

“We’ve been married many years, so we’re not like lovers who can’t bear to part. Anyway, he’s only going to Shanghai. There’s no point in my seeing him off, and besides, he didn’t want anyone to see him off. He didn’t have any large trunks, only a briefcase.”

“He had one female second cousin returning with him to the south, didn’t he?” Xiajun fixed his gaze at Aimo.

Aimo jumped up. “Ah? What?”

“It was just him and a girl of seventeen or eighteen in his sleeper. She looked quite humble and by no means attractive. She also wanted to hide when she saw me. Is that strange or what? Jianhou said she was his second cousin, so she must be your second cousin too. Isn’t she?”

Aimo turned pale. “He doesn’t have any female second cousin! Isn’t this a bit odd?”

“Yes! At the time I also asked, ‘Why haven’t I ever heard you mention her?’ Holding the girl’s hand, Jianhou said to me, ‘Go ask Aimo, she knows.’ His tone was quite solemn, and I felt it a bit odd that he didn’t say much at the moment. Jianhou looked very out of sorts! I parted with him then and there.”

Aimo’s eyes could not have opened wider. She said, “There’s something shady going on here. What did that girl look like? Did Jianhou tell you her last name?”

Suddenly, Chen Xiajun slapped his side and rolled with laughter. Aimo was incensed. “What’s so funny?”

Yigu hated Xiajun for coming and interrupting their talk. Now seeing Aimo angry, he was angry too. Still laughing, Xiajun said, “Sorry, I can’t help laughing. That idiot Jianhou really was as good as his word. Now I understand. That girl is his new lover and they were stealing away south for their honeymoon. Little did he expect to run into a disgusting fellow like me. He knew that the matter couldn’t be disguised, so he simply asked me to inform you. Ha-ha! I had no idea that Jianhou would pull such a trick. He was goaded into doing this at that tea party. I find it hilarious that he carried out my suggestion to the letter. Even the girl he chose was plain looking and behaved awkwardly. She looked like no more than an ignorant child who would exchange friendship for being treated to a meal and a couple of movies. Beiping is full of girls like that. In her eyes, Jianhou is wealthy and great; one might compare her to that divorced American woman who got to know Britain’s Prince of Wales! Ha-ha! How will this end?”

Aimo was so angry that she could hardly hold back her tears. She said, “Jianhou is such a jerk! Treating me like this—”

At that moment, all Aimo’s fashion and competence faded away, leaving behind only the weak and pitiful nature of a woman. Seeing Aimo cry, Yigu was at a loss. He suddenly found that when Aimo cried, her age and all the defects in her looks were laid bare. Her tearstained face, like ink-written characters that have been splashed with water, had become obscured and swollen.⁸⁷ Her tears, meanwhile, reminded him that she was still Jianhou’s woman. Those tears were for him.

Chen Xiajun knew in theory that a woman’s anger could lessen once she had cried, just as a fierce wind can be stopped by the rain, but when he actually saw tears he became confused and kept repeating, “You’re crying? Can I do something? I’ll do anything to help.”

“It’s all your fault,” Aimo said angrily. “What can you do? Go away. I’ll call you if I need you. I’m fine. I’m only mad because Jianhou has left me in the dark. I’ve been so muddleheaded.”

Knowing Aimo’s temper, Xiajun said something inconsequential and left. Aimo didn’t see him off but sat on the sofa, her teeth clenched. The tearstains on her face were like dried streaks of rain on a window.⁸⁸ Yigu saw that, in hatred her face had assumed a sharp, hardened, even murderous look. He sensed that this was a formidable woman and grew scared. It occurred to him that today it would be better if he went home. He got up. “Mrs. Li . . . ,” he began.

As if awakening from a dream. Aimo said, “Tell me, Yigu, do you love me?”⁸⁹

Yigu was taken aback by the sudden question and didn’t know how to answer.

“Don’t think I don’t know,” Aimo said playfully. “You’re in love with me.”

How to deny that, yet not annoy the other person? An impossible question. Yigu didn’t know what Mrs. Li meant. Nor did he want to reveal his feelings to her. He only felt that the situation had turned grave and wanted to escape.

Seeing that he had not taken the bait the second time, Aimo demanded impatiently, “Say something!”

Looking frustrated, Yigu stuttered, “I, I dare not.”

That wasn’t the answer Aimo had expected. His awkwardness enraged her, yet when she thought of Jianhou her will hardened and she replied, “That’s interesting. Why don’t you dare? Are you afraid of Mr. Li? You’ve seen how absurd Mr. Li is. Are you afraid of me? What’s so scary about me? Please sit down. Let’s discuss this in detail.”

Moving to one side, Aimo vacated half the sofa and patted it, inviting Yigu to sit down. The meaning in Aimo’s question was unmistakable. Yigu felt like he had awakened from a dream. Day and night he had fantasized an exquisite scene of himself wooing Aimo. Never had he expected it to turn out like this. He suddenly remembered Chen Xiajun’s laughter just now. To others, Jianhou’s love affair with that girl was merely a joke. All flirtations and clandestine love affairs, to the persons concerned, were incomparably sentimental, romantic, and bold. But to outsiders they were dubious, ludicrous, and fodder for gossip; as a rule, they could only win a lascivious smile. Yigu, as yet untempered by the ways of the world, recoiled in fear at the thought.

Already incensed and seeing Yigu’s hesitation, Aimo grew even angrier. “I asked you to sit down. Why don’t you sit down?” she demanded.

Hearing the order, Yigu had to sit down. No sooner had he sat down than he jumped up and exclaimed, “Ouch!”

The sudden recoil of the sofa springs also jolted Aimo. Startled as well as enraged, Aimo asked, “What’s wrong with you?”

“Taoqi was hiding under the sofa and scratched my heel,” Yigu replied.

Aimo burst out laughing. Yigu pursed his mouth and protested, “It hurt! My sock might be torn.”

Aimo caught Taoqi and put the cat on her lap. “Now you can sit down and be at ease,” she told Yigu.

Yigu was frantic because he couldn’t think of any pretext for refusing. Wearing a serious expression, he blurted out rubbish: “This cat may not be human, but I always feel she understands what we’re saying. She’s like a third party. There are so many things that are inconvenient to say in her presence.” Only after he had said it did he find it ridiculous.

Aimo frowned. “You’re such a difficult lad. Fine, you put her outside.”

She passed Taoqi to Yigu. Taoqi struggled. Yigu grabbed her by the back of the neck, an act that was itself upsetting to Mrs. Li, held the study door ajar, threw Taoqi out, and immediately shut the door. Taoqi yowled nonstop, the sound so high-pitched it pierced the nerves of one’s ears. It turned out that he had shut the door too fast and it had caught the tip of the cat’s tail. Aimo could stand it no longer. She stood up and slapped Yigu in the face. As she opened the door to free Taoqi, she said, “Get lost, you big fool!”⁹⁰ Taoqi scurried in with a painful tail, and Yigu ran out to the street with his cheeks burning. He didn’t even wait for Old Whitey to open the gate. “Big fool! Big fool!” The words resounded in his head like the sound of rice being husked with mortar and pestle.

Now that Yigu had gone, Mrs. Li regretted that she had been so rude. She realized that she had been acting strangely today and was amazed that she had gotten so worked up on Jianhou’s account. All of a sudden she felt old, so old she seemed to be crumbling away. Fame, status, and appearance were like so many heavy burdens that she was too tired to shoulder any longer. She wished only that she had a place to escape to where she could forget her pride, avoid her current friends, not have to dress fashionably or put up a glamorous front, and not be obliged to look beautiful and young for anyone.

At that moment, the train, which had started out in Beiping the day before, had entered Shandong province. Jianhou looked out the window. His heart was as dry and withered as the yellow soil that flashed past. The previous day’s excitement, like the exhilaration of drunkenness, had left behind only a hangover. Jianhou figured that Chen Xiajun was sure to report to Aimo, and that it would be impossible for him to back down with good grace if things got complicated. The girl sitting beside him was plain and naive and not worth breaking up his family for. He acutely regretted having set a trap for himself in a moment of muddleheadedness when he had been unable to swallow an insult. The girl who held Jianhou’s arm and watched the scenery outside the window was ignorant of all his thoughts. She felt only that her future was like the never-ending tracks of the train, stretching out limitlessly ahead of her.

Translated by Yiran Mao