Old Town (35 page)

5.

T
HE
CORNER AT
West Gate had several sights which always moved me and left me with deep impressions that remain vivid and alive to this very day.

Every day, a middle-aged man, lean and lanky, holding a bamboo broom taller than he is, sweeps the street back and forth without a trace of expression on his face. He does this in every season of the year and from sunup to sundown. My grandmother and Mrs. Chen frequently bring him water to drink and move out a small bench for him to rest on. He hears and sees nothing. It is as if he were sweeping a city totally devoid of people. People say that he had been a professor in the history department of Old Town’s university, sentenced to sweep the streets during the Cultural Revolution. From that point on, he never tired or grew bored doing this.

A fat little frizzle-haired guy is always standing under the lamp at the intersection with his hands clasped behind his back. He rouses the West Gate folk from their dreams every day at the crack of dawn, just like a rooster crowing at the daylight. He has quite a resonant voice and had once been recruited into the army’s performing artist troupe. He was in uniform for a few months but then for some unknown reason had been sent home again. From that time on, the West Gate intersection is the stage he performs on.

There’s a woman, a compulsive rag and junk collector, pushing a little bamboo cart. She picks up whatever she sees lying around. Her home is on the other bank of the city moat, but she likes to sleep out in the open all around West Gate. Time and again her people haul her back home, and even married her off to a bachelor in the mountain district, but she’s still got to run back to rag-pick around West Gate.

There’s another woman—who doesn’t show up every day—who’s like a migratory bird, for only during a certain season does she come to linger briefly around West Gate. She looks like a porter, for on her shoulder there always hangs a towel of indeterminate color. She stands far off in some dark and gloomy corner near the rice shop, and the way she looks at you is equally dark and gloomy. I always feel that she harbors ill intent and every time I run into her I feel uncomfortable all over.

One time I was watching Chaofan and my younger cousin at the intersection flicking marbles. Suddenly I raised my head and found myself looking straight at that woman whose ghastly stare seemed locked right on me. At the time I was holding on to my little cousin who had barely learned how to walk. I was afraid this woman was going to snatch the little girl from me and run off with her, so I went home and called Grandma. Grandma’s expression told me that she knew that woman, but when she walked over there, the other woman left in great hurry. Grandma chased after her a ways, but that woman kept on running.

Grandma told me that the woman was Chaofan’s mother, someone called Huang Shuyi. I was so startled at this news that my eyeballs just about popped out of my head. I had always supposed that Chaofan didn’t have any mother, just like Rongmei next door, whose own mother had breathed her last when Rongmei came into this world.

Grandma said that when Huang Shuyi was young she had stood out from all the rest. She had dimples in her cheeks and she smiled so very sweetly that no one expected her to develop a mental disorder. A perfectly fine girl from a respectable family had become a wraith-like vagrant. Grandma’s head was buried in her sewing as she mended one of my cousins’ socks, when suddenly out of nowhere she said, “Enchun was ill-fated. Your ma was too.”

People laugh at the blind man feeling the elephant. In fact, in this confused and tumultuous cosmos of a billion universes, who
isn’t
a blind man feeling an elephant? Each person can stand at only a certain perspective and interpret the world based on his or her own cognitive powers. My grandmother, using her own, decided that Huang Shuyi was mentally deranged. Later on, I had the opportunity to “feel the elephant” from a different angle and came to the opposite conclusion. Huang Shuyi wasn’t mentally deranged. Her nerves were as tough as steel rebar.

That girl who smiled so sweetly had been a student in the music department of the Teachers’ Training College and was the offspring of an illustrious and influential family. Her father had been a student the government sent to study overseas during the early years of the Republic. Her family owned Old Town’s sole electric light company. Her elder brother, Huang Jian, brought Huang Shuyi into the Communist Party and he himself was one of the leaders of the Old Ridge guerrillas. In the winter of 1947, she and Enchun received orders to leave Old Ridge and go to a little town on the seashore and, using teaching as their cover, engage in underground work. At that time she was secretly in love with Enchun and she thought that Enchun was secretly in love with her, and that it was only because of the Revolution that he had temporarily put aside the love of a boy for a girl. The Revolution was about to succeed. The Guomindang government and the Communist Party were confronting each other across the natural barrier of the Yangzi River. If only this line of defense could be breached, China would enter the heavenly Communist Age. When that time came she would ask Enchun to stay on in this beautiful little town, teach, get married, and have children.

Huang Shuyi had brought a radio from her home. Plugging it into an electrical source, she heard the female broadcaster screeching at the top of her lungs that the Yangzi was an unbreakable natural barrier and that recovery of the north was imminent. Enchun’s reaction was to reach over to turn it off. But Huang Shuyi stopped him.

“When you listen to the Guomindang radio broadcasts you’ve got to turn everything around. When they say “unbreakable,” it means “the situation’s critical.” This is the just the reason I wanted to bring this radio with us.”

She raised her head and gazed with a deep look on her face at Enchun standing beside her. “The Revolution is about to succeed. Have you thought about life afterward?”

“I may go back to school and continue my studies. What about you?”

“I’d like to stay here. I’ll ask for the piano to be shipped over, and then have seven children. Every evening they’ll gather around me and sing as I play. Don’t you feel that would be heaven on earth?”

Enchun heard the overtones of this particular melody, blushed, and laughed awkwardly.

Huang Shuyi liked best of all the way he would blush, and she didn’t let him off the hook. “I’m going to name the seven children after the seven notes of the scale. What do you think?”

Enchun blushed even more deeply.

The days when they taught by the seaside were the good times that Huang Shuyi would never forget. Every day she listened to the radio and longed for the beautiful vistas of the communist heaven. The seventeen-year-old Teachers’ Training College student thought of communism as a magic bottle gourd that could make everyone realize his or her own dreams.

That night at midnight, the radio transmitted the news that the Yangzi “has fallen.” Huang Shuyi sprang out from underneath her covers and rushed barefooted to knock on Enchun’s door. Then she ran dragging him to the seashore and shouted out, “Oh, victory!” The two young revolutionaries went crazy with happiness. The naturally bashful Enchun, very much out of character for him, joined her in singing and leaping about.

However, a completely unforeseen misfortune was awaiting Huang Shuyi. One month before, the sound of a rifle shot on Old Ridge had announced, unnoticed, the prologue of her mortal struggle with destiny.

Our story again has to return to the beheaded and publicly displayed communist. Huang Shuyi’s brother, Huang Jian, had been ordered to make a special trip to Old Town to meet this fellow and bring him into the mountains. The arrangement was for the newcomer to go to the Zhang home as a porter, and according to plans, Huang Jian would go with him to Old Ridge. As it happened, though, just at this time Huang Jian’s old grandmother became seriously ill. That communist who gave his life had been a high-level leader. When he found out about the grandmother, he gave permission to Huang Jian to stay in Old Town for a few more days. Three days later the grandmother’s condition took a turn for the better and Huang Jian immediately hurried back to Old Ridge. The moment he arrived at the mountain pass he was tied up by his battle-ready guerrilla comrades, locked up in a cave and interrogated. He wrote report after report. He had suspected the Zhangs, but the only person who could vindicate him could no longer speak. Who would believe him now? When the news of the public display of the beheaded communist arrived from Old Town, immediately Huang Jian was shoved out of the cave and shot dead.

When Old Town was on the eve of Liberation, Huang Shuyi’s father chartered a boat to go to Taiwan and made a special stop at the little seaside town to meet his daughter. There were six boys in the Huang family and only that one girl. The father could have abandoned his oldest son, Huang Jian, but could not bear losing this daughter. The boat waited in the bay for two days and two nights. And for two days and two nights the father and the daughter argued fiercely. The mother brought in several serving maids and she and they all lined up and knelt down in front of Huang Shuyi. In tears herself, Huang Shuyi knelt down in front of them. Seeing that their daughter was bound and determined and there was nothing further that could be done, they wiped their tears and departed.

Four months later, Old Town and the little seaside town simultaneously announced their peaceful liberation. Huang Shuyi wrote to the provincial leaders seeking their help to locate her elder brother. The answer she received was this: “The traitor and special agent Huang Jian has already been executed by gunfire.” That was the start of the long, long and bitter journey to overturn her brother’s verdict.

1.

C
HRYSANTHEMUM RAMBLES ON
listlessly, skipping from one topic to the next. “Where are you now?” “I suppose you haven’t slept at all tonight.” “Is that mixed-blood guy fun?”

She gives me no chance to reply. One question mark is followed by yet another. At this very moment she is sitting in that coffee shop on East Chang’an Avenue, absentmindedly stirring her coffee as she gazes out through the plate glass wall at the heavy flow of traffic outside. If she is wasting her time all by herself in a coffee shop, it’s a sure sign that she’s hit a low point. But she’s not in any hurry to tell me what’s happened.

Has our grand scheme totally fallen through?
I am beginning to get a bit anxious. In business, the duck will often fly right out of the pot even after it’s cooked. How much more so when we haven’t yet even gotten hold of a single duck feather? Wouldn’t the sure money-maker my schoolmate held in his grasp also be attracting swarms of business raiders? He could say to Chrysanthemum, “OK, I can give this whole program to you,” and say the same thing to someone else. So long as there’s no contract, social talk is like a ship passing by without a trace. You can’t take it seriously.

The train’s public address system is just then announcing the Yangzi Bridge in Chinese and English. Joseph is glued to the window taking pictures and recording an audio explanation of the scene. “This is the famous Yangzi River. The Yangzi divides China into north and south…”

I’ll go along nicely with this boss and maybe I’ll not only be well looked after but can also keep up with my daughter’s tuition payments. I’m suddenly feeling a bit tired of it all, like I’ve lost the drive to cope with all the winds of change in the market.

I want to say this to encourage Chrysanthemum: “Never mind! Haven’t you already started several companies? You know all about making money and about losing it too. You’ve got to keep your cool when things change.”

Chrysanthemum’s question has nothing to do with what I am thinking. “Answer me this and tell the truth: I’ve gotten old, haven’t I? Have I lost my appeal?”

For a second I am at a complete loss and it takes awhile for my brain to start moving again. “You sounded so serious; I thought something big had happened.”

“A woman loses her appeal—isn’t that big enough?”

“This isn’t your style. Ms. Chrysanthemum’s appeal radiates in all directions, so always have faith in yourself.”

“No, I’m done for. To tell you the truth, I just had my thirty-sixth birthday.”

“You’re thirty-six. So?”

“I haven’t had a baby yet. I’m thinking of marrying any old cat or dog I meet so I can have a kid.”

“What’s wrong? What’s made you this negative all of a sudden?”

“Do you know, yesterday evening that classmate of yours actually asked me, ‘How old is your child?’ And then he took his daughter’s picture out of his wallet. O heaven! And to think of all that French perfume I sprayed myself with for nothing!”

I just can’t help it. I laugh so hard I double up. “Hey, everybody fumbles it sometime. It’s not that big a deal.”

“This has been a signal. It tells me that men no longer look at me from an aesthetic angle. I don’t have any aesthetic worth now. I went back home, washed off the makeup, and as I stood in front of the mirror, I counted on my fingers how old I am. After thirty-six comes thirty-seven. How could I be thirty-seven? Forty isn’t far off, and that’s what scares me!”

I sense that Chrysanthemum is really upset and I don’t know what I can say to comfort her. Sometimes I too can feel awful about the passing of my own youth and then a vast inner emptiness always spreads within me.

After a long silence, Chrysanthemum continues, “Our pal is actually willing to work with us. All we need is for you to get back so things can start moving. But how come I can’t feel happy about this? What’s the real point of making money? Let’s say we make mountains of silver and gold, we’re still going to get old and die.”

I ought to be happy about the news she’s conveyed, but I stay with her train of thought.

“So just go ahead and include marriage and a kid on your agenda.”

“And marry whom?”

“That Ah Mu who fixes your computer…hasn’t he always been nuts about you?”

From having her computer fixed, Chrysanthemum got to know an upright but not terribly scintillating fellow. She calls him “Ah Mu.” Ah Mu likes her. For him it’s sweetness itself to be able to run around being her male housemaid. Whatever is broken or not working in her home, with one telephone call Ah Mu is at the door, tool kit in his hand. He doesn’t say much. When he arrives he just silently sets to work. In two years he’s said only two things to express how he felt: “I’ve been divorced for five years and have no child,” and “I think of you every day.”

“Him?” Chrysanthemum shouts. “Oh, right, thanks a lot! You’ve got me entering the church in my wedding dress, hand in hand with Ah Mu? If my previous boyfriends and my former husband found out that I married that blockhead, I’d be laughed to death…”

“Or else advertise for a partner?”

“Advertising is even more hopeless. Does a good man have to go to a matchmaking center?”

“Then I just don’t know what you should do.”

“I never counted on you to tell me what to do. Just listen to me gripe and moan. That’d be good enough. The sun will go on rising as it always does, the days will pass as before, and after a while I’ll just go and register the new company. Which of us two do you see being its legal representative?”

“You just go ahead and take full charge of the business matters, and it wouldn’t be a bad idea to hire another person.”

“You’ve got your own thing going. Have you been kidnapped and gotten all mixed up?
Ai
, these days if I could only get all mixed up like that, I’d be happy. Go ahead with your own thing.”

Now that I’ve shut off my phone, I’m just sitting here in a depressed daze. Chrysanthemum always treats me as the receptacle for all her bad moods, the place where at every turn she dumps her mental garbage. Maybe by now she has already recovered her usual smugness and high spirits, while my skies have been blanketed by all the trash she has left behind. It always takes me a long time just to break free of it all.

The Yangzi Bridge has receded far into the distance without my noticing it. I find Joseph sitting beside me, and apparently he’s been here for quite a while now. He is looking closely at me, his eyes showing genuine concern.

“It looks like you’re not too happy.”

“It’s nothing. Really, it’s nothing.”

I force a smile, then suddenly everything goes blurry. I quickly shift my glance to what’s outside the window. It’s at this moment I discover the weakness I hid within me for so many years now. The ambushes and open attacks of this world no longer hurt me, but I haven’t the strength to resist a warm gaze.

Chrysanthemum says that the next time she marries she definitely wants a church wedding ceremony. Although she hasn’t the slightest idea what religion is all about, she has a special fascination for the wedding ceremonies she sees in the movies. Every time the pastor on the screen asks the groom, “Are you willing to love her forever, whether in wealth or in poverty, or in sickness or in health?” she is so moved that tears stream down her face. Instantly her normally sultry expression disappears as if it never existed and she is as enchanting as the purest angel.

She once loved a married man, someone who was rich and successful, and she wanted to be his bride. So she went to the Lama Temple to burn incense and to the North Church on Ganwashi Street to sing “Alleluia,” a Buddhist rosary on her wrist and a chain with a cross on it hung around her neck. For the first time in so many years, she had met a man worth talking marriage to. It was also the heaviest blow she ever suffered in a lost love. But she still has not abandoned her dream of someday having her own church wedding ceremony.

Chrysanthemum likes successful men and doesn’t see this as vulgar snobbery. She says that every cell on a successful man’s body just glows. But men who are beaten down and frustrated by life she finds as stifling as the air during the plum rains. Without a shred of pity she runs away from one plum rain season to another, including that husband of hers who made her love him so much she slashed her own wrist.

If she ever really does stand in church beside a groom who is both rich and in good health, she would say to the pastor with teardrops in her eyes, “I am willing” to love him forever, whether in poverty or wealth, or in sickness or health. She is entranced by the solemnity of religion. She doesn’t realize that when you stand in front of God, “one promise is worth a thousand pieces of gold.” But just let the day come when he is no longer wealthy or in good health, she’d say he isn’t lovable anymore, or that he’s turned into something hideous. She’d have a hundred reasons for leaving him.