Fortress Besieged
By Ch'ien Chung-shu
Translated by Jeanne Kelly and Nathan K. Mao
Author's Preface
In this book I intended to write about a certain segment of society and a certain kind of people in modern China. In writing about these people, I did not forget they are human beings, still human beings with the basic nature of hairless, two-legged animals. The characters are of course fictitious, so those with a fondness for history need not trouble themselves trying to trace them out.
The writing of this book took two years altogether. It was a time of great grief and disruption, during which I thought several times of giving up. Thanks to Madame Yang Chiang, who continuously urged me on while holding other matters at bay, I was able through the accumulation of many small moments to find the time to finish it. This book should be dedicated to her. But lately it seems to me that dedicating a book is like the fine rhetoric about offering one's life to one's country, or handing the reins of the government back to the people. This is but the vain and empty juggling of language. Despite all the talk about handing it over, the book remains like the flying knife of the magician—released without ever leaving the hand. And when he dedicates his work in whatever manner he chooses, the work is still the author's own. Since my book is a mere trifle, it does not call for such ingenious disingenuousness. I therefore have not bothered myself about the dedication.
December i~, 1946 CH'IEN CHUNG-SHU
Translators' Preface
Ch'ien Chung-shu ranks among the foremost twentieth-century Chinese novelists, and his novel Wei-ch'eng (Fortress Besieged) is one of the greatest twentieth-century Chinese novels. After receiving extensive treatment of his works in C. T. Hsia's A History of Modern Chinese Fiction in 1961, Ch'ien was largely neglected until recently. The present translation of Wei-ch'eng reflects that renewed interest, and it is hoped that it will generate even greater interest in Ch'ien Chung-shu and his works.
This translation is the cooperative effort of Jeanne Kelly and Nathan K. Mao. Whereas Jeanne Kelly did the first draft of the translation, Nathan K. Mao revised it; in addition, Mao wrote the introduction, refined the footnotes, and prepared the manuscript for publication. Despite our divided tasks, this book is our joint responsibility.
We wish to thank Professor Joseph S. M. Lau of the University of Wisconsin and Professor Leo Ou-fan Lee of Indiana University for their expert editing assistance, patience, and encouragement; Chang Hsu-peng for help in the first draft of the translation; James C. T. Shu of the University of Wisconsin and Professor Mark A. Givler of Shippensburg State College for reading the entire manuscript and offering their advice; Mr. George Kao of the Chinese University of Hong Kong for permission to reprint chapter one, published in Renditions (No. 2, Spring 1974); and lastly Professor C. T. Hsia of Columbia University for supplying us with biographical and bibliographical information on Ch'ien Chung-shu.
We also wish to express our gratitude to Mr. Ch'ien Chung-shu himself for reading the biographical part of the Translators' Introduction as well as the Author's Preface during his visit to the United States in April-May of 1979. He clarified several items of biographical detail and made some corrections. We are deeply honored that this translation has the author's full endorsement and support.
Chevy Chase, Maryland
Chambersburg, Pennsylvania
JK
NKM
Introduction
Fortress Besieged, or Wei-ch'eng, first serialized in Literary Renaissance (Wen-i fu-hsing) and published in book form in 1947, has been acclaimed as "one of modern China's two best novels,"' or her "greatest novel;"2 it has been the subject of two doctoral dissertations and one master's thesis and various scholarly papers in English and Chinese.3 Among differing views on the merits of the novel, C. T. Hsia has highly praised the novel's comic exuberance and satire;4 Dennis Hu, its linguistic manipulation; Theodore Huters, its relationship to modern Chinese letters; and Mai Ping k'un has written favorably on both Ch'ien's essays and his fiction. What each critic has stressed is one aspect of the novel's multifaceted brilliance, and it is the intent of this introduction to discuss the novel as an artistic whole.
On November 10, 1910, Ch'ien Chung-shu, the author of Fortress Besieged, was born into a literary family in Wuhsi, Kiangsu province. His father Ch'ien Chi-po (1887—1957) was a renowned literary historian and university professor. Ch'ien was a precocious child, noted for his photographic memory and brilliance in writing Chinese verse and prose. Upon graduation from grade school, he attended St. John's University Affiliated High Schools in Soochow and Wuhsi. In high school, Ch'ien excelled in English. When he sat for the matriculation examination of the prestigious Tsing-hua University, it was said that he scored very poorly in mathematics but did so well in English and Chinese composition that he passed the examination with some ~cIat.
At Tsing-hua, Ch'ien was known as an arrogant young man, who cut lectures and kept much to himself. Among his few intimate friends was Achilles Fang, the "word wizard" (as Marianne Moore called him), who was then a student in the department of philosophy. There Ch'ien also met his future wife Yang Chiang. After graduating from Tsing-hua in 1933, he accepted a teaching appointment at Kuang-hua University in Shanghai.
In 1935, on a Boxer Indemnity Scholarship, Ch'ien went to Exeter College, Oxford, and majored in English literature. He read more thrillers and detective yarns than was healthy for a student devoted to serious research. He also developed a keen interest in Hegel's philosophy and Marcel Proust's fiction. Perhaps most ego deflating was his failure to pass the probationer examination in English palaeography, and he had to sit for it a second time. Nonetheless, he did achieve his B. Litt. degree from Oxford in 1937. His thesis, composed of three meticulously researched chapters ("China in the English Literature of the Seventeenth Century" and "China in the English Literature of the Eighteenth Century''), was later published in the English edition of the Quarterly Bulletin of Chinese Bibliography (Tu-shu chi-k'an). Having taken his Oxford degree, he studied a year in Paris.
Returning to China in 1938, the second year of the second Sino-Japanese War, Ch'ien, at home in the literatures of two or three major European languages, taught at the National Southwest Associated University in Kunming; i the National Teachers College at Lan-t'ien in Pao-ching, Hunan province; Aurora Women's College of Arts and Sciences in Shanghai; and Chi-nan University in Shanghai. From 1946 to 1948 he was also the editor of the English language periodical Philobiblion, published by the National Central University Library in Nanking.
Among the small corpus of pre-Communist works by Ch'ien, the following are noteworthy. At Tsing-hua he wrote a number of short stories and vignette-type essays for Crescent Moon (Hsin yuieh) and Literary Review (Wen-hsiieh tsa-chih) magazines. In 1941 the essays were published in Shanghai as a volume entitled Marginalia of Life (Hsieh tsai jen-sheng pien shang). Some of the short stories were anthologized in his 1946 publication entitled Men, Beasts, and Ghosts (Jen, Shou, Kuei). In 1948 he published On the Art of Poetry (T'an yi in), composed in an elegant wen-y en, or classical, style.
After the Communist victory in 1949, he returned to Peking to teach at Tsing-hua University. While still in Shanghai, Ch'ien had become dissatisfied with Fortress Besieged, and thought he could do better. He began to write another novel to be called "Heart of the Artichoke" (Pai-ho hsin), after Baudelaire's phrase "Le coeur d'artichaut." He had written some 3,000 to 4,000 words, but unfortunately the manuscript was lost in the mail when the Ch'iens moved from Shanghai to Peking. He has not worked on the novel since then.
In Peking Ch'ien first worked as a researcher in the Foreign Literature Institute of the Academy of Sciences; then he transferred to the Chinese Literature Institute of the same academy. Since the foundation of the Institute of Literature in the Academy of Social Sciences in 1952, he has been one of its two senior fellows, the other being Yu Ping-Po, well-known for his studies on the Dream of the Red Chamber (Hung-lou meng). Ch'ien's wife Yang Chiang is a researcher in the institute.
Ch'ien seems to have abandoned the writing of his earlier vitriolic works and restricted himself to literary scholarship. His most significant post-1949 work has been Annotated Selection of Sung Poetry (Sung-shib hsiian-chu), which was published in 1958. Later he headed a team of scholars responsible for the writing of the T'ang and Sung sections of a history of Chinese literature. In 1974 it was widely rumored that he had died. The rumor prompted C. T. Hsia to write a memorial essay, "In Memory of Mr. Ch'ien Chung-shu" (Chui-nien Ch'ien Chung-shu hsien-sheng) ~6 Ch'ien, how ever, is alive and well and has been "resurrected" after the fall of the Gang of Four. His recent activities include visits to Rome in the fall of 1978 and to the United States in the spring of 1979 as a member of Chinese academic delegations. While he was in Italy, he talked with three scholars who were translating or had translated Fortress Besieged into French, Czech, and Russian. Yang Chiang was a member of a Chinese delegation in Paris while her husband was in America. Her most recent publication was a Chinese translation of Don Quixote in 1978, and it is now in its second printing.
In 1979 Ch'ien published a book containing four studies, one on Chinese painting and Chinese poetry dating back to the 1930s and the other three essays written since 1949 (including one on Lin Shu, which was partially translated by George Kao and published in Renditions). Also in 1979 a new edition of Annotated Selection of Sung Poetry with thirty additional notes was published.
Ch'ien's most important publication in 1979, however, is a mammoth work of over one million words entitled Kuan-chui pien, in four volumes. Each section focuses on one major classical Chinese work: I ching, Shib ching, Chuang-tzu, Lieh-tzu, Shib-chi, Tso-chuan, and the complete pre T'ang prose. Altogether ten studies, both philological and comparative (Western), comprising the four divisions of ching, shib, tzu, and chi, are written in a style more elegant and archaic than that of On the Art of Poetry. Ch'ien wanted to show the world that there is at least one person in China who can write in this style and has not broken with the old tradition; he also hoped to inspire younger Chinese everywhere to study the Chinese past. Kuan-chui pien, Ch'ien believes, will be his masterwork.7
Ch'ien's B. Litt. thesis, On the Art of Poetry, and Annotated Selection of Sung Poetry are all works of solid scholarship. The first represents meticulous research; the second contains many references to Western poetics from Plato to the Abb~ Bremond and an honest evaluation of Chinese poets and their shortcomings; and the preface to the third is a masterpiece of literary analysis.8 Apart from these works, Ch'ien is primarily a satirist in his essays and short stories. For example, the first essay in Marginalia of Life is "Satan Pays an Evening Visit to Mr. Ch'ien Chung-shu" (Mo-kuei yeh fang Ch'ien Chung-shu hsien-sheng), a satire on man through the super natural, the targets being hypocrisy and ignorance. In "On Laughter and Humor" (Shuo hsiao), he attacks those lacking humor; he mocks and scorns false champions of moraFortress Besiegedlity in "Those Who Moralize" (T'an chiao-hsun); he chides the hypocrites in "Men of Letters" (Lun wen-jen) and literary charlatans in "Illiteracy" (Shih wen-mang). In a similar vein, his vitriolic fire is also apparent in his short stories, most notably in "Inspiration" (Ling kan), a satiric and harsh attack on the writing profession itself and a lampoon on a number of well-known literary figures. Lampooning as much as he does in Men, Beasts, and Ghosts, he is also a fine writer of psychological insight. His story "Cat" (Mao) is a good example of marital strife which mars the happiness of a certain Li family. Even finer than "Cat" is "Souvenir" (Chi nien), often considered the best story in Men, Beasts, and Ghosts. A study of the seduction of a lonely married woman by an air force pilot during the Sino-Japanese War, it emphasizes the heroine's feelings of guilt, fascination, revulsion, and relief toward her extramarital affair. Also well done is the story's ironic ending. After the pilot dies in action, the woman's husband, not knowing of his wife's infidelity and impregnation by the pilot, suggests that they commemorate the dead pilot by naming the baby after him, if it is a boy.
Fortress Besieged, however, remains the best of Ch'ien's pre-1949 works. Structured in nine chapters, it is a comedy of manners with much picaresque humor, as well as a scholar's novel, a satire, a commentary on courtship and marriage, and a study of one contemporary man.
The nine chapters can be divided into four sections, or what Roland Barthes calls "functional sequences": 9 Section I (chapters 1—4); Section II (chapter 5); Section III (chapters 6—8); and Section IV (chapter 9). Section I begins with the story of Fang Hung-chien, who is returning to China from Europe in 1937; continues with his brief visit to his hometown, Wushi, and his experience in Shanghai; and concludes with his accepting a teaching appointment at the newly established San Lii University in the interior. Section II is relatively short and centers on the trials and tribulations Fang Hung-chien and others encounter in their journey to the university; Section III highlights in vivid color the true story of Chinese pseudo-intellectuals within the confines of an academic environment; and Section IV details the trivial misunderstandings between Fang Hung-chien and his bride and ends with the dissolution of their marriage.
In each of the four sections, Ch'ien Chung-shu emphasizes the hero's experiences from hope through frustration to defeat; a functional unit in itself, each section has its own curve of hope, frustration, and defeat. Furthermore, Section I serves as a microcosm for the other sections. The theme of "besiegement" is seen in Ch'ien Chung-shu's description of the various types of pressures closing in on Fang Hung-chien in Section I; the pressures are amplified in Sections II and III and concretized in Section IV. Traits of character that we are to know in excruciating detail for tens of pages are unmistakably sketched in a few. Fang's ineffectualness as a person in Section I clearly hints at the failures that are to haunt him in later sections. An inkling of the types of characters we are to meet in other sections also surfaces in Section 1. For example, the comprador Jimmy Chang in Section I is to return as Mrs. Lu in Section IV; the effeminate pseudo-intellectuals in Miss Su's circle are to be reborn as gossipmongers and power grabbers in Section III, and Japanese collaborators in Section IV. Even the boat trip in Section I is to be repeated in Section II and Section III to indicate the ebbing of the protagonist's fortunes.
Even though Section I serves as a microcosm for the whole book and reveals the structural cleverness of the novel, this is not to say that the tone and mood of each section is the same; in fact, a definite pattern toward the worsening of Fang Hung-chien's fortunes can be discerned. Section I has the frivolousness of spring; Section II, the comic delights of summer; Section III, the somberness and seriousness of fall; and Section IV, the worst moments of wintry chill. By making each section a separate unit, by fashioning Section I into a sampling of the other three sections, and by showing the continuous change of tone and mood from Section I through Section IV, the author demonstrates that he is a very careful artist who fabricates and engineers every small part to fit his overall plan, down to the point of sup plying us with an omniscient narrator who steers us all the way. The result of this careful engineering is a mighty singleness and a massive consistency.
Besides the careful engineering that goes into the structure of the novel, Fortress Besieged is a comedy of manners in its presentation of representative segments of the author's time. We meet the lowly porters, shopkeepers, innkeepers, bus drivers, country folk, soldiers, prostitutes, and French policemen serving their mother country in her Concessions in China; the middle- class returned students, country squires, journalists; and the rising middle class bankers, compradors, factory managers, Japanese collaborators, and others. Each group has its own particular characteristics, somewhat exaggerated and simplified, by which they are easily comprehensible. In minute and accurate detail, Ch'ien Chung-shu shows their idiosyncrasies. What results are brilliant caricatures of avaricious porters, defensive shopkeepers, superstitious countryfolk, hollow intellectuals, vulgar compradors and businessmen?
In Section II there is also a great deal of picaresque humor, resulting from the interplay of characters and their very different standards and assumptions. One brief example must suffice. After traveling for some time on the road, Fang Hung-chien and his companions check into a nondescript inn. In examining the menu, they learn that there is "milk coffee" available and they ask the waiter for more information.
The waiter assured them at once that it was good stuff from Shanghai with the original seal intact. Hung-chien asked what the brand was. This the waiter didn't know, but in any case it was sweet, fragrant, and top quality, for one paper bag made one cup of coffee.
"That's coffee candy to cajole children with," said Hsin-mei, suddenly understanding.
"Don't be so particular," said Hung-chien in high spirits. "Bring us three cups and then we'll see. At least it should have a little coffee flavor."
The waiter nodded and left. Miss Sun said, "That coffee candy has no milk in it. How could it be called milk coffee? Milk powder must have been added to it."
Hung-chien jerked his mouth in the fat woman's direction and said, "As long as it's not her milk, anything'll do."
Miss Sun frowned and pouted in a rather charming expression of disgust.
Reddening, Hsin-mei restrained a laugh and said, "You! Your re marks are disgusting."
The coffee came; surprisingly enough it was both black and fragrant with a layer of white froth floating on the top. Hung-chien asked the waiter what it was. The waiter said that it was milk, and when asked what sort of milk, he replied that it was the cream.
Hsin-mei remarked, "It looks to me like human spit."
Hung-chien, who was about to take a drink, brusquely shoved the cup away, saying, "I won't drink it!" (pp. 156—157)
Fortress Besieged is also a scholar's novel. Throughout the novel, par ticularly in Section 1, references are made to Chinese and Western literature, philosophy, logic, customs, laws, educational systems, and other areas such as foreign languages and feminism. The author's knowledge is so wide that he is probably modern China's foremost "scholar novelist," a designation for a special class of literary men "who utilized the form of a long narrative not merely to tell a story but to satisfy their needs for all other kinds of intellectual and literary self-expression."'0 Among the works of Chinese lit erature that belong to this special category are Journey to the West (Hsi yu chi), Dream of the Red Chamber (Hung-lou meng), The Scholars (lu-un wai-shih), Flowers in the Mirror (Chin g-hua yuan), Yeh-sou p'u-y en, T'an shih, and Yen-shan wai-shih."
However, a distinction must be drawn between Fortress Besieged and the others. Whereas the others are mostly episodic in nature and often digress on such subjects as astrology, arithmetic, calligraphy, gardening, medicine, and so forth for the sole purpose of displaying their authors' erudition, Fortress Besieged has structural unity and never burdens the reader with unnecessary or excessive information on any subject. The author's knowledge merely helps the narrative strand of the novel in supplying the reader with an observant, witty, and rhetorical narrator.
The narrator is indeed all of the above. His observations are sharp and direct. Remarking on the filth on the deck of Vicomte de Bragelonne, he muses: "The French are famous for the clarity of their thought and the lucidness of their prose, yet in whatever they do, they never fail to bring chaos, filth, and hubbub, as witness the mess on board the ship" (p. 4). In a second instance, the narrator's wit bubbles forth in his description of Miss Pao: "When men students saw Miss Pao, they burned with lewd desire, and found some relief by endlessly cracking jokes behind her back. Some called her a charcuterie—a shop selling cooked meats—because only such a shop would have so much warm-colored flesh on public display. Others called her 'Truth,' since it is said that 'the truth is naked.' But Miss Pao wasn't exactly without a stitch on, so they revised her name to 'Partial Truth'" (p. 7). Rhetorically, the narrator takes a great deal of delight in word play. His penchant for definitions is seen in the following two examples: "It is said that 'girl friend' is the scientific term for sweetheart, making it sound more dignified, just as the biological term for rose is 'rosaceae dicotyledonous,' or the legal term for divorcing one's wife is 'negotiated separation by consent'" (p. 26). In another case, he writes, "Kao Sung-nien, the president of San Lu University, was an 'old science scholar.' The word 'old' here is quite bothersome. It could describe science or it could just as well be describing a scientist. Unfortunately, there is a world of difference between a scientist and science. A scientist is like wine. The older he gets, the more valuable he is, while science is like a woman. When she gets old, she's worthless" (p. 192).
The author's knowledge of Chinese classics and Pidgin English unquestionably helps him to better caricature Mr. Fang Tung-weng, the protagonist's father, and Mr. Jimmy Chang, a Shanghai comprador. In the case of the former, his every thought is an allusion, a proverb, or a quote from the classics, as evidenced in the following letter advising his son to pay more attention to school work:
I did not begrudge the expense of sending you hundreds of miles away to study. If you devoted yourself to your studies as you should, would you still have the leisure to look in a mirror? You are not a woman, so what need do you have of a mirror? That sort of thing is for actors only. A real man who gazes at himself in the mirror will only be scorned by society. Never had I thought once you parted from me that you would pick up such base habits. Most deplorable and disgusting!
Moreover, it is said that "When one's parents are still living, a son should not speak of getting old." You have no consideration for your parents, who hold you dearly in their hearts, but frighten them with the talk of death. This is certainly neglect of filial duties to the extreme! It can only be the result of your attending a coeducational school—seeing women around has put ideas in your head. The sight of girls has made you think of change. Though you make excuses about "autumnal melancholy," I know full well that what ails you are the "yearnings of springtime." (pp. 9—10)
Fang Tung-weng's style of writing is the man himself: allusive, self- righteous, prejudiced, traditional, and pedantic. The success of the portrait of Fang Tung-weng is due, to a large extent, to the author's understanding of the empty posturings of the traditional country squire whose ideas are those of the imperial past though he lives in the modern twentieth century.
On the other hand, Ch'ien Chung-shu's portrait of Jimmy Chang is precise. The following is a description of Fang Hung-chien's visit with Jimmy (the words in italics are in English in the original):
As Mr. Chang shook hands with Hung-chien, he asked him if he had to go downtown every day. When the pleasantries were over, Hung-chien noticed a glass cupboard filled with bowls, jars, and plates and asked, "Do you collect porcelain, Mr. Chang?"
1
THE RED SEA had long since been crossed, and the ship was now on its way over the Indian Ocean; but as always the sun mercilessly rose early and set late, encroaching upon the better part of the night. The night, like paper soaked in oil, had become translucent. Locked in the embrace of the sun, the night's own form was indiscernible. Perhaps it had become intoxicated by the sun, which would explain why the night sky remained flushed long after the gradual fading of the rosy sunset. By the time the ruddi ness dissipated and the night itself awoke from its stupor, the passengers in their cabins had awakened, glistening with sweat; after bathing, they hurried out on deck to catch the ocean breeze. Another day had begun.
It was toward the end of July, equivalent to the "san-fu" period of the lunar calendar-the hottest days of the year. In China the heat was even more oppressive than usual. Later everyone a greed the unusual heat was a portent of troops and arms, for it was the twenty-sixth year of the Republic (1937). The French liner, the Vicomte de Th-agelonne, was on its way to China. Some time after eight in the morning, the third-class deck, still damp from swabbing, was already filled with passengers standing and sitting about-the French, Jewish refugees from Germany, the Indians, the Vietnamese, and needless to say, the Chinese. The ocean breeze carried with it an arid heat; the scorching wind blew dry the bodies of fat people and covered them with a frosty layer of salt congealed with sweat, as though fresh from a bath in the Dead Sea in Palestine. Still, it was early morning, and people's high spirits had not yet withered or turned limp under the glare of the sun. They talked and bustled about with great zest. The
Frenchmen, newly commissioned to serve as policemen in Vietnam or in the French Concession in China,1 had gathered around and were flirting with a coquettish young Jewish woman. Bismarck
3
once remarked that what distinguished French ambassadors and ministers was that they couldn't speak a word of any foreign language, but these policemen, although they did not understand any German, managed to get their meaning across well enough to provoke giggles from the Jewish woman, thus proving themselves far superior to their diplomats. The woman's handsome husband, who was standing nearby, watched with pleasure, since for the last few days he had been enjoying the large quantities of cigarettes, beer, and lemonade that had been coming his way.
Once the Red Sea was passed, no longer was there fear of the intense heat igniting a fire, so, besides the usual fruit peelings, scraps of paper, bottle caps, and cigarette butts were everywhere. The French are famous for the clarity of their thought and the lucidness of their prose, yet in what 'er they do, they never fail to bring chaos, filth, and hubbub, as witness the mess on board the ship. Relying on man's ingenuity and entrusted with his hopes, but loaded with his clutter, the ship sailed along amidst the noise and bustle; each minute it returned one small stretch of water, polluted with the smell of man, back to the indifferent, boundless, and never-ending ocean. Each summer as usual a batch of Chinese students were returning home after completing their studies abroad, and about a dozen of them were aboard. Most were young people who had not as yet found employment; they were hastening back to China at the start of the summer vacation to have more time to look for jobs. Those who had no worries about jobs would wait until the cool autumn before sailing leisurely toward home. Although some of those on board had been students in France, the others, who had been studying in England, Germany, and Belgium, had gone to Paris to gain more experience of night life before taking a French ship home. Meeting at a far corner of ti'' earth, they became good friends at once, discussing the foreign threats a1~ internal turmoil of their motherland, wishing they could return immediately to serve her. The ship moved ever so slowly, while homesickness welled up in everyone's heart and yearned for release. Then suddenly, from heaven knows where appeared two sets of mahjong, the Chinese national pastime, said to be popular in America as well. Thus, playing mabjong not only had a down- home flavor to it but was also in tune with world trends. As luck would have it, there were more than enough people to set up two tables of mahjong.2 So, except for eating and sleeping, they spent their entire time gambling. Break fast was no sooner over than down in the dining room the first round of mah jong was to begin.
Up on deck were two Chinese women and one toddler, who didn't count as a full person-at least the ship's company did not consider him as one and had not made his parents buy a ticket for him. The younger woman, wearing sunglasses and with a novel spread on her lap, was elegantly dressed. Her skin would be considered fair among Orientals, but unfortunately it looked stale and dry; and even though she wore a light lipstick, her lips were a little too thin. When she removed her sunglasses, she exposed delicate eyes and eye brows, and when she rose from the canvas lounge chair, one could see how slight she was. Moreover, the outline of her figure was perhaps too sharp, as if it had been drawn with a square-nibbed pen. She could be twenty-five or twenty-siX, but then the age of modern women is like the birthdates tradi tional women used to list on their marriage cards, whose authentication re quired what the experts call external evidence, since they meant nothing in and by themselves. The toddler's mother, already in her thirties, was wearing an old black chiffon Chinese dress;3 a face marked by toil and weariness, her slanting downward eyebrows made her look even more miserable. Her son, not yet two years old, had a snub nose, two slanted slits for eyes, and eye brows so high up and removed from the eyes that the eyebrows and the eyes must have pined for each other-a living replica of the Chinese face in news paper caricatures.
The toddler had just learned to walk, and he ran about incessantly. His mother held him by a leather leash so that he could not run more than three or four steps without getting yanked back. Bothered by the heat, tired, and irritable from pulling, the mother, whose thoughts were on her husband who was gambling down below, constantly scolded her son for being a nuisance. The child, restricted in his movements, turned and dashed toward the young woman reading the book. Ordinarily the young woman had a rather con cited, aloof expression, much like that of a neglected guest at a large party or an unmarried maiden at a wedding feast. At that moment her distaste for the child surfaced so much so that not even her sunglasses could hide it. Sensing J1 that, the child's mother apologetically pulled at the strap and said, "You zi~ughty child disturbing Miss Su! Come back here! How studious you are, Miss Su! You know so much and still you read all the time. Mr. Sun is always telling me, 'Women students like Miss Su give China a good name. She's beau tiful and has a Ph.D. besides. Where can you ever find such nice people?' Here I went abroad for nothing and never even cracked a book. I keep house, and I forgot everything I'd learned as soon as I had him. Hey! You pest! I told you not to go over there. You're up to no good. You'll get Miss Su's clothes all dirty for sure."
Miss Su had always scorned the poor, simple-minded Mrs. Sun and de tested children, but when she heard all that, she was quite pleased. Smiling pleasantly, she said, "Let him come. I love kids."
She removed her sunglasses, closed the book she had been staring at va cantly, and with utmost caution she clasped the child's wrist before he could wipe his hands all over her clothes. "Where's Papa?" she asked him. Without answering, the child opened his eyes wide and went, "Poo, poo," at Miss Su, spitting out saliva in imitation of the goldfish blowing bubbles in the tank in the dining room. Miss Su hast ily let go of his arm and pulled out a handkerchief to protect herself. His mother yanked him away, threatening to slap him. Then sighing, she said, "His father is gambling down below. Where else? I can't understand why all men like gambling so much. Just look at the ones on this boat. Every last one of them is gambling his head off. I wouldn't mind so much if it brought in a little something. But my husband, Mr. Sun, he's already gambled away a tidy sum and he just keeps going. It makes me so mad!" When Miss Su heard these last petty remarks, she, in spite of herself, felt a renewed contempt for Mrs. Sun. "You know, Mr. Fang does not gamble," she remarked coldly.
Mrs. Sun turned up her nose and sniffed. "Mr. Fang! He played too when he first got on the boat. Now he's too busy chasing Miss Pao, so naturally he can't spare the time. Romance is the big event of a lifetime, far more impor tant than gambling. I just can't see what there is about that Miss Pao, coarse and dark as she is, to make Mr. Fang give up a perfectly good second-class berth for the discomforts of the third class. I see those two are getting on gloriously. Maybe by the time the boat reaches Hong Kong they'll get mar ried. It's certainly a case of 'fate bringing people together from a thousand ii away.'
Miss Su felt a painful stabbing in her heart when she heard that. To an swer Mrs. Sun and to console herself, she said, "Why, that's quite impossible! Miss Pao has a fianc6; she told me so herself. Her fiancé even financed her studies abroad." Mrs. Sun said, "She has a fiance and is still so flirtatious? We are already antiques. At least we've learned something new this time. Miss Su, I'll tell you something funny. You and Mr. Fang were classmates in China. Does he always say whatever he pleases? Yesterday Mr. Sun was telling Mr. Fang about his poor luck in gambling, and Mr. Fang just laughed at him for having been in France all these years and not knowing anything about the French supersti tion; Mr. Fang said that if the wife is unfaithful and has an affair, the husband is sure to take first prize if he buys a lottery ticket, and he is sure to win if he gambles. And he added that if a man loses at gambling, he should take it as a consolation. When Mr. Sun told me all that, I scolded him for not asking that Fang fellow just what he meant. Looking at it now, it seems Miss Pao's fiance could certainly take first prize in the aviation lottery. If she became Mr. Fang's wife, Mr. Fang's luck at gambling would have to be good." The viciousness of a kind, simplehearted soul, like gritty sand in the rice or splinters in a deboned fish, can give a person unexpected pain. "Miss Pao's behavior is just too unlike a student's. And the way she dresses is quite disgraceful-" Miss Su remarked.
The toddler suddenly stretched his hands behind their chairs, laughing and jumping about. The two women looked around and saw that it was none other than Miss Pao coming toward them, waving a piece of candy at the child from a distance. She was wearing only a scarlet top and navy blue, skin- tight shorts; her red toenails showed through her white, open-toed shoes. Per haps for a hot day in the tropics, this was the most sensible attire; one or two non-Chinese women on board dressed exactly like that. Miss Su felt that Miss Pao's exposed body constituted an insult to the body politic of the
Chinese nation. When men students saw Miss Pao, they burned with lewd desire, and found some relief by endlessly cracking jokes behind her back. Some called her a charcuterie-a shop selling cooked meats-because only such a shop would have so much warm-colored flesh on public display. Others called her "Truth," since it is said that "the truth is naked." But Miss Pao wasn't exactly without a stitch on, so they revised her name to "Partial Truth."
As Miss Pao approached, she greeted the two women, "You're sure up early. On a hot day like this, I prefer to loaf in bed. I didn't even know when Miss Su got up this morning. I was sleeping like a log." She had intended to say "like a pig," then on second thought decided to say "like a corpse." Final ly, feeling a corpse wasn't much better than a pig, she borrowed the simile from English. She hastened to explain, "This boat really moves like a cradle. It rocks you until you're so woozy all you want to do is sleep."
"Then you're the precious little darling asleep in the cradle. Now, isn't that cute!" said Miss Su. Miss Pao gave her a cuff, saying, "You! Su Tung-p'o's little sister,5 the girl genius!" "Su Hsiao-mei" (Su's little sister) was the nickname the men students on board had given Miss Su. The words, "Tung-p'o" when pro nounced by Miss Pao in her South Seas accent sounded like tombeau, the French word for tomb. Sharing a cabin with Miss Pao, Miss Su slept in the lower berth, which was much more convenient because she didn't have to climb up and down every day; but in the last few days she had begun to hate Miss Pao, feeling Pao was doing everything possible to make her life miserable-snoring so loud ly she couldn't sleep well, and turning over so heavily it seemed the upper berth would cave in. When Miss Pao hit her, she said, "Mrs. Sun, you be the judge of who's in the right. Here I call her 'precious little darling' and I still get hit! To be able to fall asleep is a blessing. I know how much you enjoy sleeping, so I'm always careful never to make a sound so I won't wake you up. You were telling me you were afraid of getting fat, but the way you like to sleep on the ship, I think you must have gained several pounds already." The child was yelling for the candy, and as soon as he got it into his mouth, he chewed it up. His mother told him to thank Miss Pao, but he paid no attention, so the mother had to humor Miss Pao herself. Miss Su had already noticed that the candy cost nothing. It was just a sugar cube served aboard the ship with coffee at breakfast. She despised Miss Pao for the way she put on. Not wanting to speak to Miss Pao anymore, she opened her book again, but from the corner of her eye she caught a glimpse of Miss Pao pulling two deck chairs over to an empty spot some distance away and arranging them side by side. She secretly reviled Miss Pao for being so shameless, but at the same time hated herself for having spied on Miss Pao.
At that point Fang Hung-chien came on deck. As he passed by Mrs. Sun and Miss Su, he stopped to say a few words. "How's the little fellow?" Mrs. Sun replied curtly, not paying much attention to him. |
