67
Fang here. Are you Miss Su? You want to speak to Fang
Hung-chien. Hung chien's not in. I'll have him call
you when he gets back. Miss Su, you must come visit
sometime when you're free. Hung-chien often says how
pretty and talented you are,' and she went on and on
in the same breath. I meant to explain, but I couldn't
get in a word. I thought all that rice gruel was
being. poured down the wrong ear,ii so I very rudely
hung up on her. Who was
that?"
"That's my relative, Mrs. Chou, the wife of the
general manager of the bank where I work. Your cousin
had called just before I left the house, so Mrs. Chou
thought the call was from her again."
"Oh, no! What a mess. Mrs. Chou surely blames my
cousin for being so rude. I hadn't hung up for more
than five minutes when my cousin called again to ask
whether I'd talked to you. I said you weren't home,
and then she gave me your office number. I thought you
were probably on the way there, so I might as well
wait a while before calling. Then of all things, my
cousin called me fifteen minutes later for the third
time. I was getting a little mad. When she found out I
hadn't yet got in touch with you, she told me to hurry
and call you before you'd reserved a table. I said if
he's reserved a table then I will go. What difference
would it make? She said that wouldn't be good and
invited me to her house for dinner. I replied that I
wasn't feeling well either and wasn't going anywhere.
Later I thought my cousin was just too silly. I
decided to accept your invitation and not make any
call."
Hung-chien said, "Miss T'ang, today you haven't just
honored me with your presence, you've been a real
savior. As host I am more than grateful. I'll have to
invite you out many more times. If none of the invited
guests shows up, it means the death sentence for the
host as far as his social life is con cerned. Today
was a close call!"
Hung-chien ordered food enough for five or six people.
Miss T'ang asked if there would be any other guests,
for how could two people eat so much. He said it
really wasn't that much, prompting her to remark, "You
noticed I didn't have any refreshments yesterday, so
now you're testing to see if I'll eat anything, aren't
you?"
He knew she wasn't one of those dainty women who will
screw their mouth up to the size of the tip of an
eyedropper at a dinner party, so he re plied, "This is
the first time I've been to this restaurant and I am
not sure which dishes I like best. If I order a few
extra, then I'll have a wider choice. If this one
isn't any good, then there's that one. I won't starve
you this way."
"That's not eating, that's more like the Divine
Farmeri6 testing a hundred varieties of herbs. Isn't
that a little extravagant? Maybe all men like to be
extravagant in front of women they don't know."
"Maybe. But not in front of all women they don't
know."
68
"Just in front of stupid women, right?"
"What do you mean?"
"If women weren't fools, they'd never be impressed by
a man just be cause he is extravagant. But don't
worry, all women are foolish, just as foolish as men
expect them to be. No more and no less."
He wondered whether these remarks came from naive
candor or from what her cousin had called her social
experience. When the food was served and they were
eating, he asked her for her address, suggesting she
write it on the blank page at the back of the book he
had brought along to read, as he never liked the idea
of carrying little address books around. When he saw
she had written down her phone number, he said, "I
won't be calling you up. I hate talking to friends
over the phone. I'd much rather write a letter."
"Yes, I feel the same way. Friends should enjoy seeing
each other face to face. Talking over the phone is
considered having contact, but you haven't seen each
other, and what you say over the phone can't be kept
like a letter to be taken out and read over several
times. A phone call is a lazy man's visit or a miser's
lettet, not what you would expect from a friend.
Besides, did you notice that a person's voice over the
phone often sounds unrecognizable or unpleasant?" she
said.
"You are right, Miss T'ang. At the Chous where I live,
there's a phone right outside my room. The noise gives
me a headache every day. Often at the most
unreasonable hours, such as in the middle of the night
or in early morning, someone will call. It's such a
nuisance. Luckily televiewing isn't in wide use;
otherwise it'd be even worse. There'd be people spying
on you when you're in the bathtub or in bed. As
education becomes increasingly widespread, the number
of people writing letters decreases. Unless it's an im
portant business matter, people are afraid to write
letters, and they'd rather call on the phone. I think
that's because it's easy to make a fool of yourself in
writing a letter. People in high positions can often
speak quite well but can't handle a pen effectively.
But with a phone call a person can dispense with a
visit from someone repulsive or hide his poor writing
ability. So the telephone has been considered a great
gift to mankind."
Fang Hung-chien babbled on happily, urging Miss T'ang
to eat from time to time. He, on the other hand, ate
very little. By the time they had their fruit for
dessert, it was nine o'clock. She wanted to leave, and
he didn't dare keep her. After paying the bill, he
asked the waiter to call a taxi to take her home. He
told her he had promised to go see Miss Su the next
day and asked if she was going. She replied she might
but doubted Miss Su was really sick. He then asked,
"Should we tell her about our dinner tonight?"
"Why not? No, no. I got mad a while ago and told her I
wasn't going anywhere today. All right, whatever you
decide. In any case you can't go to
69
her place until after work tomorrow, and I will go a
little later."
"I was thinking of visiting you the day after
tomorrow. Would you mind?"
"I'd be glad to have you. It's just that our house is
very cramped, noth ing like Miss Su's Western-style
house with a big garden. If you don't mind visiting a
modest home, come by all means."
"May I meet your father?" he asked.
"Not unless you have some legal questions to ask him.
He usually stays in his law office and doesn't get
home until late in the evening. My parents have
absolute trust in my sisters and me. They've never
interfered with or checked up on our friends," she
replied.
The taxi arrived as Miss T'ang was speaking, and
Hung-chien helped her into it. On his way home in the
rickshaw, he thought the day had turned out to be
unexpectedly perfect. But Miss T'ang's parting remark
about "our friends" made him jealous as he conjured up
visions of a huge throng of young men secretly
surrounding her.
When Miss T'ang arrived home, her parents teased her,
"Well, our social butterfly is home." She went to her
room and was changing her clothes, when the maid said
Miss Su was on the phone. She went downstairs to
answer the phone, but halfway down the stairs she
changed her mind, stopped, and in structed her maid to
say, "Young Lady'7 isn't feeling well and has gone to
bed." Indignantly, she thought, That must be my cousin
checking up to see whether I'm home or not. She is
such a bully. Fang Hun g-chien isn't hers, and he
doesn't need her to look after him like that! The more
she interferes, the closer 1 will let him get to me. I
can never love Fang Hun g-chien; love is a grand and
complicated emotion, and it's never so simple and
easy. If I could fall in love with someone that
easily, then I can't either believe in or submit to
love.
The following afternoon Hung-chien bought some flowers
and fruit and went to the Sus. The moment he saw Miss
Su, he burst out without giving her a chance to speak,
"What happened yesterday? You got sick, she got sick.
Was it anything contagious? Or were you afraid I'd
poison the food? Was I 2 ever mad! I just went to eat
by myself. I could have cared less that you
weren't coming. All right, all right, now at least I
know what a couple of stuck-up girls you are. Next
time I won't risk a refusal."
Miss Su apologized, "I really was sick. I felt better
by afternoon but didn't call you up for fear you'd
scold me for playing jokes on you, changing my mind
from one moment to the next. When I told Hsiao-fu I
was sick yes terday, I didn't tell her not to go. Let
me call her up and ask her over. It's all my fault.
Next time I will be the host."
She then called up Miss T'ang to ask if Miss T'ang
felt better and invited her over, saying that
Hung-chien was at her house. After she hung up, she
70
took the flowers Hung-chien had given her and smelled
them, instructing the servant to arrange them in the
vase in her bedroom. Turning to Hung-chien, she asked,
"When you were in England, did you know a Ts'ao
Yuan-lang?"
Hung-chien shook his head.
"He studied literature at Cambridge. He's a new-style
poet who's just returned from abroad. His family and
mine have been friends for generations. Yesterday he
came to see me, and he's coming again today."
"Oh, so that's it," said Hung-chien. "No wonder you
didn't show up yesterday. All that time you were
discussing poetry with someone. We're uncouth, just
not worthy of your acquaintance. This Mr. Ts'ao hails
from the illustrious Cambridge University, while we
are nominal students from newly established colleges.
How could we ever qualify to make friends with him?
Tell me, since your Eighteen Poets of the Colloquial
Style doesn't seem to mention him, are you planning to
include him in the next edition?"
Miss Su was half angry and half amused. Waving her
finger at him, she said, "You like being jealous, and
it's over nothing." Her expression and im plication
frightened Fang Hung-chien so much that he became
wordless, and he blamed himself for having done too
well at feigning anger.
Presently Miss T'ang came in. Miss Su said to her,
"Such airs you put on! I called up yesterday to ask
about you, and today you didn't even return the call.
Now you wouldn't come until I invited you. Mr. Fang
was asking about you."
"Am I good enough to put on airs?" said Miss T'ang. "I
keep getting bossed around; is it so strange that I
don't come until summoned? If I refuse to come after
being invited, then you can call me self-important."
Afraid that Miss T'ang might say something about her
three telephone calls the day before, Miss Su quickly
put her arm around Miss T'ang's waist and said
placatingly, "Look at you. I was joking and you take
it so seriously." She then peeled an orange Hung-chien
had brought and shared it with him.
The doorman showed in a perfectly round-faced man,
announcing, "Mr. Ts'ao." Hung-chien gave a start. How
did his last year's shipmate, Mrs. Sun's child, grow
so big already, he wondered, and nearly called Mr.
Ts'ao "Broth er Sun." Mrs. Sun's child and the guest
did resemble each other a great deal,
and somehow Fang felt that it was inappropriate for a
poet to have such a plump face and big ears, as if
those features would mean that his poetry couldn't be
any good. Then he suddenly remembered that the T'ang
poet Chia Tao'8 noted for his poetic leanness, was
also round-faced and squat in stature, and he
shouldn't judge Ts'ao Yuan-lang by his appearance.
When the introductions and pleasantries were over,
Ts'ao Yuan-lang took a redwood bound copybook from his
briefcase and solemnly presented it to Miss Su,
saying, "I brought this today especially to ask for
your opinion."
Hung-chien then realized it was not a copybook but a
notebook of fine
71
Hsuan calligraphy paper in a deluxe mounting put out
by the Jung-pao Print ing House.'9 Miss Su took the
notebook and leafed through it, saying, "Mr. Ts'ao,
let me keep it so I can study it. I will return it
next week. OK? Hung~ chien, you haven't read Mr.
Ts'ao's work, have you?"
Hung-chien was just thinking what wonderful poetry
this must be to be recorded in such a fancy notebook.
Reverently he took it from Miss Su; he found
standard-type-face characters written very evenly with
a brush. The first poem of fourteen lines was entitled
"Adulterous Smorgasbord," with the small number "1"
beneath it. After studying the poem carefully, he
discov ered that the poet's annotations were on the
second page. This "1," "2," "3,"
"4," and so on indicated the sequence of the
annotations. Note "1" was "M~lange adult~re." The poem
read as follows:
The stars of last night tonight stir ripples on the
wind
swirling into tomorrow night (2).
The full, plump white belly of the pregnant woman ~s
pasted tremblingly to the heavens (3).
When did this fleeing woman who had maintained a
chaste widowhood find a husband? (4)
Jug! Jug! (5) In the mud-En ange e ii mondo!20 [sic]
(6) a nightingale sings (7),
Hung-chien skipped to the last couplet:
The summer evening after the rain is saturated and
washed; the earth is fertile and fresh.
The smallest blade of grass joins in the soundless
outcry. "H7irsind!" (30)
At the end of the poem the sources of the words and
phrases were care fully noted, including excerpts from
the poetry of Li I-shan,2' T. S. Eliot, Tristan
Corbiere, Leopardi, and Franz Werfel. Hung-chien
surmised that the "belly of a pregnant woman" referred
to the moon; the "fleeing woman," to Ch'ang O;22 and
the "nightiogale in the mud," to a frog. He did not
have the stomach to read any further and put the book
down on the tea table, saying, "There's not one word
without a source. It's almost like what traditional
poets call 'scholar's poetry.' Isn't that style
neoclassicism?"
Ts'ao Yuan-lang nodded and repeated "neoclassic" in
English. Miss Su asked which poem it was and then she
read through "Adulterous Smorgas bord." When she
finished reading it, she exclaimed, "Such a marvelous
title. There's one phrase that's especially good: 'the
soundless outcry.' Those words truly capture summer's
bursting, squirming vitality. How wonderful that Mr.
Ts'ao was able to express everything so xvell!"
Upon hearing this, the poet was so delighted that his
plump face, as round
as the T'ai-chi diagram,~ was flooded with butter.
Hung-chien suddenly had the alarming suspicion that
Miss Su was either a big idiot or a superb liar.
Miss T'ang also went over the poem and said, "Mr.
Ts'ao, you're too cruel to us unlearned readers. I
can't read any of the foreign words in the poem.
The poet said, "The style of this poem is such that
those who can't read the foreign words can appreciate
it all the more. The title is an assortment, a mixture
of different ideas. You just have to note how each
person's poetic phrase is used. Naturally the mixture
of foreign words with the Chinese gives it a random,
disorganized impression. Miss T'ang, didn't you get
this haphaz ard, mixed-up feeling?"
Miss T'ang nodded her head in agreement. Like the
surface of a pond at the drop of a pebble, Ts'ao
Yuan-lang's face was wreathed in smiles. He said,
"Then you've grasped the essence of the poem. There's
no need to look for its meaning. If the poem has any
meaning, so much the worse for it."
Miss Su said, "Excuse me, all of you wait here a
minute. I will show you something."
When Miss Su had gone, Hung-chien said, "Mr. Ts'ao,
when Miss Su's second edition of the Eighteen Poets of
the Colloquial Style comes out, it'll certainly
include you as the nineteenth."
Ts'ao Yuan-lang said, "Not a chance. I'm much too
different from the other poets; we don't go together.
Miss Su told me yesterday that she wrote that book to
get her degree. Actually she doesn't think much of
their poetry."
"Oh, really?"
"Mr. Fang, have you read her book?"
"I did, but I don't remember much." When Miss Su gave
him a copy, he had merely flipped through it to see
who the eighteen poets were.
"In the preface she quotes a parable by Jules Tellier
about a man whose hair was falling out. The man went
to get a haircut, but the barber told him he needn't
bother because his hair would all fall out by itself
in a few days. For the same reason, most of modern
literature is not worth criticizing. That parable is
quite apt."
"I guess I didn't notice that," Hung-chien could only
say, thinking to himself: Good thing I don't want to
marry Miss Su; otherwise, I'd have to read her book
just as carefully. Too bad Chao Hsin-mei's French is
not good enough to read books; otherwise, he could
certainly make Miss Su happy the way Ts'ao does now.
Miss T'ang said, "The poets my cousin discusses in her
book are like eighteen strands of fallen-out hair; in
the future Mr. Ts'ao will be like the single strand of
hair that the miser refuses to part with."24
They all laughed. Miss Su returned to the room
carrying a purple san dalwood fan case. Winking at
Miss T'ang who smiled and nodded, Miss Su
72 73
removed the case's lid, took out a woman's carved
garu-wood folded fan, handed it to Ts'ao and said,
"There's a poem on it. Please read it."
Yuan-lang opened the fan and read it aloud in the tone
of a monk beg ging alms or an actor reciting the
spoken part of opera. Hung-chien couldn't make out a
word, for the chanting of a poem, like a dying man
talking in his sleep, was in the native dialect. After
reading it aloud, Yuan-lang then read it once more to
himself, his lips puttering up and down in the manner
of a cat chanting the sutra. Then he exclaimed, "Very
good! It's simple and sincere and has the flavor of an
ancient folk song."
Seemingly bashful, Miss Su said, "How sharp you are,
Mr. Ts'ao! Tell the truth. Is the poem any good?"
Fang Hung-chien took the fan from Ts'ao Yuan-lang. As
soon as he saw it, he was filled with disgust. On the
perfectly good gilt-flecked fan was the following poem
written askew with a fountain pen in purple ink:
Surely I've not imprisoned you?
Or have you taken possession of me?
You burst into my heart,
Shut the door and turned the key.
The key to the lock was lost
By me, or maybe by you yourself.
Now there's no way to open the door.
Forever you are locked in my heart.
Below in small characters were: "Autumn, twenty-sixth
year of the Republic (1937), an old work copied for
Wen-wan. Wang Er-k'ai."
This Wang Er-k'ai was a well-known young politician, a
middle-level official in Chungking. Miss Su and Miss
T'ang meanwhile both looked at Fang Hung-chien,
anxiously waiting for his reaction to the poem. He put
down the fan and with a wry face said, "The palm of
whoever wrote those characters should be spanked. I've
never seen fountain pen writing on a fan; well, at
least, he didn't write anything in English."
Hastily Miss Su said, "Never mind the calligraphy.
What do you think of the poem?"
Hung-chien said, "Could someone as ambitious as Wang
Er-k'ai for high political office write good poetry?
I'm not asking him for a job, and there's no
obligation for me to flatter him," totally unaware
that Miss T'ang was frowning and shaking her head at
him.
"You are so obnoxious!" fumed Miss Su. "You're
completely prejudiced. You shouldn't be discussing
poetry." With that she took the fan from him.
Hung-chien said, "All right, all right, let me read it
again calmly and objectively."
Miss Su pouted and said, "I don't want you to," but
she let him have the fan again.
Suddenly pointing at the poem on the fan, Hung-chien
exclaimed, "Oh, terrific! This poem was cribbed."
Miss Su's face livid, she said, "Don't be ridiculous!
How could it have
been cribbed?"
Miss T'ang opened her eyes wide in amazement.
"At the very least it was borrowed-a foreign loan. Mr.
Ts'ao was quite right when he said it had the flavor
of an ancient folk song. Remember, Miss Su? We heard
the professor talk about this poem in the history of
European literature class. It's a German folk song of
the fifteenth or sixteenth century. When I studied
German with a tutor before I went to Germany, I came
across it again in a beginning reader. It started out,
'I am yours, you are mine,' and the rest of the poem
went something like, 'You've been shut in my heart.
The key is lost, and you can never get out.' I can't
remember the exact words but I couldn't be mistaken
about the general outline. There could never be such a
coincidence."
Miss Su said, "I don't remember this poem ever being
discussed in the history of European literature
class."
Hung-chien said, "How could you not have? Maybe you
didn't pay close attention in class. You didn't have
to jot down everything the way I did. You can't be
blamed for that. You were attending classes in your
own major and your not taking notes just showed how
knowledgeable you were. You knew everything the
professor said, but I was an auditor from the Chi nese
literature department; if I didn't keep my pen busy in
the classroom, I'd have been laughed at by you for
being so ill prepared for the course that I couldn't
understand the lecture well enough to take notes."
Miss Su became wordless; Miss T'ang just lowered her
head. Ts'ao Yuan lang guessed that Fang Hung-chien's
knowledge of German was about as good or as bad as his
own. Besides, Fang was a Chinese major, so he couldn't
be too brilliant. For in a university, science majors
look down on humanities majors, foreign language
majors on Chinese majors, Chinese majors on philos
ophy majors, philosophy majors on sociology majors,
and sociology majors in turn on education majors.
Since education majors have no one to look
down on, they can only despise the professors in their
own department.
Immediately Ts'ao Yuan-lang blurted out, "I knew the
poem had a model. Didn't I say it had the flavor of an
ancient folk song? But Mr. Fang's attitude is contrary
to the spirit of literary appreciation. You Chinese
majors all have the nasty habit or even obsession of
textual authentication. If a poem has allusions, it
means more to someone who can recognize them; reading
it will bring to mind countless others which can set
it off in ~ Mr. Fang, if you read T. S. Eliot's
poetry, you'd realize that every phrase in mod em
Western poetry has its source, but we never accuse
those poets of plagia r,sm. Do we, Miss Su?"
74 75
Fang Hung-chien wished he could have said, No wonder
your honorable work is such a hodgepodge. You experts
don't find it at all strange, but 'we laymen feel
obliged to report to the police when we have nabbed
the thief and recovered the goods. Instead, he merely
said with a smile, "Don't take it too hard. Gifts to
women are rarely one's own; it's nothing more than bor
rowing flowers to offer to Buddha. If the donor is an
official, you can assume that the gift was fleeced off
someone else." As he spoke he wondered why Miss T'ang
was not paying much attention.
Miss Su said, "I don't like your cutting remarks. So
Fang Hung-chien is the only intelligent person in the
world."
Hung-chien stayed a little longer; with no one in the
mood for more conversation, he said goodbye and left
before anyone else. Miss Su did not try to keep him.
After he'd left the house he was vaguely uneasy, aware
that his remarks might have offended Miss Su, that
Wang Er-k'ai must be one of her worshipers. But
remembering he was to visit Miss T'ang the next day,
he, in anticipation, forgot everything else.
When Fang Hung-chien arrived at the T'angs the next
day, Miss T'ang's maid told him to wait in Miss
T'ang's study. When Miss T'ang saw him, she said, "Mr.
Fang, you made a terrible mistake yesterday. Did you
know that?"
Fang Hung-chien reflected for a moment; then he said
with a smile, "You mean your cousin is mad at me
because I criticized that poem?"
"Do you know who wrote the poem?" She saw his blank
uncomprehend ing look and went on, "It was written by
my cousin, not by Wang Er-k'ai."
"What!" he exclaimed. "Don't put me on. Didn't it
plainly say on the fan, 'An old work copied for
Wen-wan'?"
"It was Wen-wan's old work that was copied. Wang
Er-k'ai knows my uncle and was Chao Hsin-mei's boss.
He's married, but last year when my cousin returned
from abroad, he was trying to ingratiate himself with
her. He made Chao Hsin-mei so angry that Chao lost
weight. Usually, when a per son is filled with rage,
he swells up and gets fat, don't you think? Later the
executive offices of the government all moved to the
interior. Anxious to be an official, Wang finally cast
my cousin aside and went to the interior, too. This is
why Chao Hsin-mei refused to go there. The fan was
Wang's present to my cousin, and he had someone
specially carve the design on it. And the poem was my
cousin's favorite piece."
"That moron, two-bit politician. The inscription on
the fan was so am biguous that it got me in trouble.
Damn! What do I do now?"
"What do you do? Luckily, you are a smooth talker. A
few sentences should be enough to clear the matter."
Pleased and humbled by this remark, he said, "It's
such a mess now; I am afraid it won't be easy to
remedy the situation. I'll go home and write a letter
of apology to your cousin immediately."
76
"I'd really like to know how you'd write such a
letter. Let me learn how and maybe I can use one
someday."
"If it proves very effective, I'll certainly make a
copy of the letter for you. Did they criticize me much
after I left yesterday?"
"The poet said all kinds of things, but my cousin
didn't say much. She said your Chinese is very good.
So quoting a friend of his, the poet said that
nowadays if someone wanted to have good Chinese, he'd
have to study for eign literatures. Before, people
majoring in Western science had to know foreign
languages, and now people in Chinese literature have
to be well versed in Western languages first. This
friend of his is supposed to be returning from abroad
soon, and Ts'ao Yuan-lang wants him to meet my cousin.
"Oh, another jerk! If he's a friend of that poet, he
couldn't have much on the ball. You saw that poem of
his, something about the 'smorgasbord and adulterer.'
You can't tell what it's all about. And it's not
honest, unpretentious incoherence, but presumptuous,
arrogant, and shameless. It insults the reader's
intelligence."
"I'm too ignorant about such matters; I am not
qualified to comment, but it seems to me somebody who
has studied at a prestigious university abroad
couldn't be as bad as you say. Maybe that poem of his
was meant to be funny."
"Miss T'ang, studying abroad today is like passing
examinations under the old Manchu system. My father
used to say that if a man failed the third- degree
examination, no matter how high an official he became,
he'd carry that regret around for the rest of his
life. It's not for the broadening of knowledge that
one goes abroad but to get rid of that inferiority
complex. It's like having smallpox or measles, or in
other words, it's essential to have them. Once a child
has had the smallpox or measles, he can grow up
protected, and if he comes in contact with these
diseases later on, he has no fear of them. Once we've
studied abroad, we've gotten the inferiority complex
out of the system, and our souls become strengthened,
and when we do come across such germs as Ph.D.'s or
M.A.'s we've built up a resistance against them. Once
we've had smallpox, we can forget about ever having
caught it; similarly, someone who's
studied abroad should also forget about ever having
gone abroad. People like Ts'ao Yuan-lang can never
forget that they have studied abroad; everywhere they
go they have to brag about their Oxford or Cambridge
backgrounds. They are like those people who have
contracted smallpox and got pock marked and brag about
their faces as if they were starred essays."26
Smiling, Miss T'ang said, "If people heard you say all
that, they'd just say you were jealous because their
universities are more famous than the one you went ~
Unable to think of a reply, he gave a silly smile. She
was glad that she Sometimes caught him speechless. She
then said, "Yesterday I wondered why
77
you didn't know that the poem was my cousin~s. You
must have read her poems before."
"I came to know your cousin on the boat coming home.
It's been a very short time. We'd never even talked
before. Remember that day when she said my school
nickname was 'The Thermometer'? I am not interested in
new- style poetry, and I don't think it's worth
getting interested in it just for your cousin s sake."
"Hmm, if she found that out-"
"Miss T'ang, listen to me. Your cousin is a very
intelligent and talented woman, but how should I put
it? An intelligent and talented woman was born to make
a stupid man swoon before her. Since he himself has no
talent, he looks upon her talent as something
mysterious and wonderful, and so he pros trates
himself before her in worship the way a penniless
pauper idolizes a rich man."
"In other words, someone as intelligent as Mr. Fang
would prefer a stu pid, illiterate woman."
"Woman has an intelligence all her own, and it is as
nimble and lively as her person. Compared to that kind
of intelligence, talent and scholarship are sediments.
To say a woman is talented and scholarly is like
praising a flower for balancing on the scale with a
cabbage or potato-utterly pointless. A truly
intelligent woman would never try to become a genius.
She'd just find clever ways to loaf around."
"What if she wanted to get a Ph.D.?" she asked with a
smile.
"She'd never think of getting one in the first place.
It's only women with talents like your cousin who want
a Ph.D."
"But nowadays even to graduate from a run-of-the-mill
university, you have to write a thesis."
"Then the year she is to graduate, there'd be a change
in the world situa tion. The school would hold its
commencement exercise early, and they'd let her
graduate without requiring a thesis."
She shook her head in disbelief and dropped the
subject. They quickly exhausted their topics of
conversation, for pleasantries bear no repetition once
they have been spoken. Though the words that lovers
speak to each other are inexhaustible, Fang Hung-chien
and Miss T'ang were not lovers. He felt that every
subject that could be safely mentioned had been
spoken, and he could not say any more if he were not
to step beyond the bounds of propriety. Noticing his
silence, she said with a smile, "Why don't you say
something?"
Responding with a smile, he said, "Well, why don't
you?"
She told him that in the courtyard of her country home
were two cinna mon trees, each over a hundred years
old. When she was little she often no ticed that a
whole flock of noisy sparrows in the trees would
suddenly fall
silent; then after a brief pause just as suddenly they
would start up all at once. And she commented that it
was the same way with human conversation.
On his way home Fang Hung-chien mentally drafted the
letter to Miss Su, convinced that it would be more
appropriate to write it in the classical style, since
its ambiguity contained a terseness that would make it
an excellent tool for glossing over or playing down an
error.
After dinner he wrote a rough sketch, amazed at his
greatly increased ability to write the uncruth.
Worried that the joke might have gotten out of hand,
he lay down his brush halfway through the letter; but
when he thought how Miss T'ang would appreciate and
understand the letter and how the lies would bring
smiles to her lips, he continued on happily. The
letter read as follows:
Yesterday when you showed me the poem on the fan, I
was vexed at seeing that such a beautiful piece of
writing had been composed by none other than a vulgar
common official. In my surprise and resentment, I made
the un fair accusation that it must have had a model.
Though I derived momentary pleasure, I really felt
uneasy. I am beholden to you for your kindness. I de
serve a stern rebuke.
At the end of the letter he backdated it to the day
before and then added two more lines:
P.S. After writing this letter, I left a whole day and
night go by before sending it to you. Suffering such a
defeat in front of Mr. Ts'ao was most up setting. I
hated it.
He then put down the day's date. He read the letter
twice again with com~ plete satisfaction. In his
imagination, it was not Miss Su but Miss T'ang read
ing the letter.
The next day when he arrived at the bank, he dropped
the letter at the mail section to be delivered to Miss
Su by a special messenger. In the evening he went home
and had just reached his bedroom when the telephone
rang. He reached over and answered it.
"The Chous' residence. Who's calling, please?" He
heard a woman say, "Guess who this is."
Hung-chien said, "It's Miss Su, isn't it?"
"Right." Crisp laughter.
"Miss Su, did you get my letter?"
"Yes, I did. You are childish. I don't blame you.
Don't I know your tem perament?"
78
79
"You may be willing to forgive me, but I can't forgive
myself."
"Oh, is it worth getting so upset about such trivia?
Tell me, do you really think that poem is good?"
Making every effort not to let the smirk on his face
slip into his voice, Hung-chien said, "I just wish
such a good poem hadn't been written by Wang Er-k'ai.
It's too unfair!"
"Let me tell you something. It wasn't."
"Then who wrote it?"
"I wrote it just for fun."
"What? You wrote it? Well, I'll be damned!"
He was thankful that they were talking by telephone
and not by tele vision. Otherwise, the interesting
combination of the glee on his face and the alarm in
his voice would have certainly made Miss Su
suspicious.
"You were entirely justified in saying that the poem
had a model. I got the idea from Tirsot's collection
of old French folk dance tunes and felt it was fresh
and interesting, so I wrote a poem in imitation.
According to you, there's a similar German version.
It's obviously very common."
"Yours is more lively than the German poem."
"You mustn't flatter me. I don't believe you!"
''That's not flattery.~~
"Are you coming over tomorrow afternoon?"
Hung-chien answered quickly that he was, and since she
still hadn't hung up, he didn't hang up either.
"Yesterday you said men don't give their own things to
women. What did you mean by that?"
He laughed apologetically and replied, "Because his
own things are so lousy, he's ashamed of them, so all
he can do is borrow someone else's things to offer.
For instance, in inviting a lady out for dinner, if
his house is too cramped and the cook's no good, then
he has to go to a restaurant and make use of its
facilities and cooking."
Miss Su giggled and said, "OK, you win. I'll see you
tomorrow."
His head damp with perspiration, he wondered whether
it was from nervousness or from his hurried walk home.
That evening Fang Hung-chien copied out a draft of the
letter, enclosed a short note with it, and sent it to
Miss T'ang. He wished he could have writ ten in
English, since the tone of a letter in literary style
was so impersonal, while the tone of a letter in
colloquial style too easily turned into obnoxious
familiarity. Only a letter in English would permit him
to write openly, "My dear Miss T'ang," and "Very truly
yours, Fang Hung-chien." These common terms of address
in Western correspondence only sounded offensive and
sick ening in Chinese. He was well aware that his
English was imbued with the
spirit of the free speech of the British and the
Declaration of Independence of the Americans in not
being bound by the rules of grammar. Otherwise, were
he really to depend on a foreign language to "dear"
Miss T'ang, it would be like a political offender
carrying out his activities while hiding in the
foreign concessions in China.
In the next month or two he saw Miss T'ang seven or
eight times, wrote her a dozen or so letters, and
received five or six replies from her. The first time
he received a letter from her, he read it once before
going to sleep, then put it next to his pillow, and
when he awoke in the middle of the night, he turned on
the light to read it again. When he had read it
through, he switched off the light and settled back
down; then mulling over what the letter had said, he
couldn't resist turning on the light again and reading
it once more. Later on the letters he wrote gradually
became a day-to-day collection of random notes, which
he took to the bank with him. Whenever he came across
a subject of interest or thought of a phrase, he would
pick up his pen and carry on a private, intimate talk
with Miss T'ang on paper. Sometimes even when he had
nothing to say, he would still want to write something
such as, "Today at the bank I drafted several letters
and now at last I can catch my breath, stretch,
a-a-a-ah! Can you hear my yawn? The waiter came to say
lunch is ready. I'll talk to you later. Maybe you're
having lunch now. May you 'Eat a bite more and live
till 9994,' or, I still have more to say in this
letter I'm about to send you, but as you can see, the
page is already full. There's only this tiny space on
the paper and I can barely squeeze in the sentence
from my heart, which is still too shy to look you in
the face. Oh! The page- He always considered
letter-writing a small comfort which, while better
than nothing at all, couldn't compare with the joy of
meeting her face to face. Then when he did see her,
there was so much he couldn't bring himself to say; he
would then think it was still better to have written a
letter. However, seeing her soon became an addiction.
At first, a date with her could "won derize" the day
before and the day after by virtue of their
association. Gradu ally he wished he could see her
every day and even every minute. Once he had written
and sent a letter off, he would be forever worrying
about it, afraid that when it, like a flaring arrow,
reached its destination, it would be nothing but dead
ashes by the time she received it.
Miss Su and Miss T'ang saw less of each other than
before, but Fang Hung-chien, caught between Miss Su's
alternating threats and kindness, had no choice but to
go to the Sus often. Waiting for him to make his
formal declaration of love, Miss Su inwardly faulted
him for being so frivolous and tardy; he, on the other
hand, was waiting for a chance to explain that he did
not love her, and wished he weren't so tenderhearted
and could be courageous enough to cut the Gordian
knot. Every time he went to the Sus, he came
80
81
away reproaching himself for having gone one more time
and talked so much again. He gradually realized that
he was what Westerners called a "moral weakling," and
was worried that Miss T'ang would detect this major
flaw in his character.
One Saturday afternoon after returning home from
having tea with Miss T'ang, he saw on the table an
invitation from Chao Hsin-mei for dinner the next day
and was struck with the horrible thought that this
might be Hsin mei's engagement party. That would be
disastrous. Miss Su would start con centrating her
affections on him all the more. Miss Su called to ask
if he had received the card or not and Hsin-mei had
asked her to invite him; moreover, she told him to see
her the next morning.
The next day Miss Su said that Hsin-mei had insisted
that he come, as a chance for everyone to get
together. At first he was going to ask why Hsin mei
had invited him, but the words shrank away from the
tip of his tongue. Not wishing to mention Hsin-mei's
antagonism toward him any more for fear of deepening
Miss Su's misunderstanding of him, he asked instead if
any oth ers were invited. She said two of Hsin-mei's
friends had also been invited.
"Is that little fatso and big poet Ts'ao Yuan-lang
included? If he is, they can save on the food. Just
looking at that meatball face of his will make people
feel full," he said.
"Probably not. Hsin-mei doesn't know him. I know how
petty both you and Hsin-mei are. Hsin-mei would start
quarreling the moment he saw Yuan lang. Well, my place
here is not a battlefield, and I am not going to let
the two of them meet. Yuan-lang is a very interesting
fellow. You're so biased; I think your heart must be
way over in your armpit. Since that time, I haven't
let you and Yuan-lang meet so as to avoid any
squabble."
He was going to say, "Actually it makes no difference
to me," but under her doting gaze, he couldn't say
anything. At the same time, he was greatly relieved to
learn that Ts'ao Yuan-lang had been added to the list
of Miss Su's worshipers.
"What do you think of Chao Hsin-mei?" she suddenly
asked.
"He is more capable than I and has a very dignified
bearing. He is sure to l)e a success in the future. I
think he is in fact an ideal-uh-man."
If God had praised the devil or a socialist had
eulogized the petty bour geoisie, Miss Su could not
have been more astonished. She was all set for
Hung-chien to ridicule Hsin-mei, whereupon she xvas
going to uphold justice by arguing in Hsin-mei's
defense. She then said with a sniff, "The guest is
already praising the host before he's even had a bite
of food! Hsin-mei's been writing letters to me almost
every other day. I needn't repeat what's in the
letters, but they all say he's losing sleep. I get so
sick of reading them! Who told him to lose sleep?
What's that got to do with me? I am not a doctor!"
She knew perfectly well his losing sleep had quite a
bit to do with her without having to ask a doctor's
opinion.
"As the poem from the Book of Odes27 goes, 'The noble
young lady,! Waking and sleeping he sought her;! He
sought her but could not find her,! Waking and
sleeping he longed for her.' His letters are a
manifestation of genuine Chinese culture," Hung-chien
said with a grin.
Glaring at him, Miss Su said, "Isn't it a pity he
doesn't have your good fortune! You don't know how
lucky you are. All you do is make fun of peo ple with
your wisecracks. I don't like that about you.
Hung-chien, I wish you'd learn to be more kind. I'm
really going to get after you about that in the
future.~~
He became speechless with fright. Miss Su had business
to attend to at home, so she agreed to meet him that
evening at the restaurant. He went back home and for
the rest of the day remained glum and despondent,
feeling he could no longer go on as before and must
clarify his position to her as soon as possible.
When Hung-chien reached the restaurant, the other two
guests were already there. One was hunchbacked with a
high forehead, large eyes, and a pale complexion. He
was wearing a gold wire-rimmed pince-nez and a West
ern suit with cuffs covering his fingers. His face
smooth, with neither a mus tache nor wrinkles, he
resembled an infantile old woman or an elderly child.
The other guest had a very proud bearing. His nose was
straight and high; his profile gave the impression of
a ladder propped against his face. The bow tie at his
neck was so large and neat that Hung-chien was struck
with hopeless admiration. When Hsin-mei saw
Hung-chien, he greeted him warmly. During the
introductions, Hung-chien learned that the hunchback
was the philoso pher Ch'u Shen-ming and the other was
Tung Hsieh-ch'uan, a former attache at the Chinese
legation in Czechoslovakia. Transferred back to China,
Tung had not yet been assigned a new post; he wrote
excellent old-style poetry and was a great literary
talent.
Ch'u Shen-ming's original name was Ch'u Chia-pao.
After attaining fame he found Chia-pao (literally,
family treasure) unsuitable for a philosopher and
changed it, following the precedent set by Spinoza, to
Shen-ming (liter ally, careful and clear), taken from
the expression "consider carefully and argue clearly."
He was known as a child wonder, though some xvondered
about his sanity. He had refused to graduate from
grade school, high school, or college, for he felt no
teacher was good enough to teach or test him. He
harbored a special hatred for women, and though
extremely nearsighted, he had refused to be fitted for
glasses for fear of getting a good look at women's
faces. He always said that man's nature was composed
of a natural humaneness and an animal disposition, and
that he himself was all natural disposition. He
82 83
was an avid reader of foreign philosophical journals,
and if he came across the addresses of any
world-renowned philosophers, he would write them
saying how much he enjoyed their works. He culled his
praise of their works from the review sections of
philosophy journals and added a word here or deleted a
word there and passed everything off as his own
opinion.
In the intellectual world, Western philosophers are
the biggest whiners; they don't wield the experts'
authority as scientists nor do they enjoy as much
popular fame as men of letters. So, when suddenly from
thousands of miles away came a letter of praise,
needless to say they were so thrilled that they nearly
forgot philosophy. China, as they saw it, was a
primitive country, heaven knows how mean and backward,
and yet here was a Chinese who wrote with sense. In
their replies to Ch'u Shen-ming, they praised him as
the founder of a new philosophy of China and even sent
him books. If he wrote them again, however, he rarely
received any more replies. The reason was that these
vain old men would show off his first letter among
their colleagues only to find that everyone else had
received a similar letter and had been similarly
called "the greatest philosopher of modern times."
Inevitably they became angry and disappointed.
With some thirty or forty of these replies, Ch'u
Shen-ming had awed innumerable people. One wealthy,
talent-loving official spent ten thousand ounces of
gold to send him abroad. The only Western philosopher
who did not respond to his letter was Henri Bergson,
who dreaded having strangers come pester him and kept
his address confidential and his telephone number
unlisted. After Ch'u Shen-ming arrived in Europe,
Ch'u, in a last-ditch effort, sent a letter to Bergson
to make an appointment for a visit, but to his chagrin
the letter came back unopened. From then on, he
bitterly hated Intuitivism. On the other hand,
Bergson's rival, Bertrand Russell, was willing to
humor the Chinese and therefore invited him over for
tea. From then on Ch'u studied mathematical logic.
When Ch'u went abroad, for the sake of convenience, he
had to wear glasses, and so it happened that his
attitude toward women gradually changed. Though he
loathed women and could smell them three doors away,
he de sired them, which was why his nose was so sharp.
His mind was filled with them. If he came upon the
expression a posteriori in mathematical logic, he
would think of "posterior," and when he came across
the mark "X" he would think of a kiss. Luckily he had
never made a careful study of Plato's dialogues with
Timaeus; otherwise he would be dazed by every "X"
mark. Now he was translating into English a work on
the Chinese view of life written by the official who
sent him abroad. Every month he drew out a sum of
money from the National Bank for living expenses and
lived a very leisurely life.
Tung Hsieh-ch'uan's father, Tung I-sun, was an old
scholar who had
served as an official for the Republic of China but
had not forgotten the former Manchu regime.
Hsieh-ch'uan himself was quite gifted and wrote
old-style poetry in the same way his father did. A
country of active scholar- generals, China is unlike
France, which, if it had one or two generals capable
of wielding a pen, would want them to be revered at
the National Academy. While Hsieh-ch'iian's military
strategems were not too different from those of most
scholar-generals, his poetry, even if it hadn't been
the work of a scholar-general, would still have been
considered quite good. But writing can reduce one to
poverty. He never had much luck as an official, even
though this was not necessarily a misfortune for the
soldiers. As a military attach6, instead of discussing
military affairs, he criticized his superiors and
peers for their literary incompetence, and for this
reason he was transferred back to China. Shortly after
his return, he decided to look for another job.
Fang Hung-chien viewed Tung Hsieh-ch'uan as a very
distinguished individual, so when he heard Chao
Hsin-mei say Hsieh-ch'uan was the son of a famous
father, he was overwhelmed and said, "Mr. I-sun is
well known both at home and abroad. Mr. Tung lives up
to his distinguished heritage-a man of both literary
and military talents." He thought this would be
considered the highest form of praise.
Tung Hsieh-ch'uan said, "My poetic style is different
from my father's. In his youth he followed wrong
models. Even now he still hasn't gotten away from the
styles of Huang Chung-tse and Kung Ting-an28 of the
Ch'ien-lung and Chia-ch'ing periods.29 I started right
off writing in the style of the T'ung chih and
Kuang-hsu periods."30
Fang Hung-chien didn't dare venture a word. Chao
Hsin-mei asked the waiter for the menu he had
submitted the day before and gave it a final scru
tiny. Tung also asked the waiter for a brush and ink
stone, took the menu from the tea table, and quickly
leafed through it. Fang Hung-chien was per plexed.
Ch'u Shen-ming sat silently and stiffly, smiling as
though contemplating something interesting in the
depths of his subconsciousness. His enigmatic smile
would make that of the Mona Lisa amount to nothing.
Hung-chien tried to talk to him. "Mr. Ch'u, what
philosophical questions have you been study ing
recently?"
With a nervous expression, Ch'u shot a glance over at
Hung-chien and then turned to Chao Hsin-mei. "Old
Chao,21 Miss Su should have been here by now. Waiting
for a woman like this-this is the first time in my
life."
Hsin-mei gave the menu to the waiter, turned around
and was about to agree, when he saw Tung Hsieh-ch'uan
writing something. He asked quickly, "Hsieh-ch'uan,
what are you up to?"
"I'm composing a poem," replied Tung, without raising
his head. |
