After greeting Wang and Ruan, Zhuang said: “I just got here. I figured you’d come soon. Let’s offer the sacrificial drinks together.” They laid the case on the bier, lit some incense and candles, and knelt on one knee to burn spirit money in a clay bowl by the bier. Then, a cup of liquor in hand, they each offered three kowtows and six bows and, calling out “Brother Gong,” sprinkled the liquor into the burning paper.
“It’s dark out; why don’t they have lights in the yard?” Ruan asked as they got to their feet. “And no one is crying. It’s so quiet, it doesn’t look like someone has died in this house. Where’s Gong Xiaoyi? Xiaoyi, where are you? Why aren’t you holding the wake and greeting the guests?”
The mourning relatives wailed a few times before stopping. Some went into the yard to fetch a lamp from one of the side rooms, while another walked to the bedroom to get Gong Xiaoyi. A while later the relative came out to say, “Cousin Xiaoyi is sick.”
Zhuang and some of the others went to the bedroom; it was in total disarray, with the walls in tatters, though edges of the money were still visible. Xiaoyi was curled up in bed, foaming at the mouth, his limbs quivering with spasms, his body shaking uncontrollably. Ruan walked up and slapped him. “Why couldn’t you be the one who died? The vice will be gone only when you’re dead.” With his eyes fixed on Zhuang, Xiaoyi did not respond.
“All right; that’s enough. He just needs a fix. You can scream at him, you can hit him, he won’t know,” Zhuang said. “Let’s go sit out there and talk about what needs to be done now, since Xiaoyi is not going to be much help.”
They all went to another side room, all but Zhao Jingwu, who stayed behind and took out three small packages of opium when everyone was gone. “These are from your Uncle Zhuang. He was afraid you’d need it during the funeral preparations. And he was right.”
“Uncle Zhuang is the only one who’s nice to me,” Xiaoyi said as he lit up. A few puffs later he was a different person, fully energized. “Go on out there, Brother Zhao. Let me lie here for a while.”
“Are you looking to get revenge again?” Zhao knew what he was like.
“No, no more revenge. I’ve killed everyone in the city many times over. This time I’m just going to enjoy it and ask Buddha, the Holy Mother, and the immortals to sing.”
“Don’t enjoy it too much. Friends of your father’s have come to pay their respects and are outraged that you, the filial son, did not go out to greet them. Do you need another slap? Your mother isn’t home yet, and if the elders get angry and leave, what are you going to do with your father’s body? Leave it out there to stink and rot away?” Zhao dragged Xiaoyi over to the side room.
Zhuang, Wang, and Ruan were assigning tasks to the relatives — contacting the crematorium, hiring a vehicle to transport the corpse, buying funeral garb, and getting an urn. Someone asked if Xiaoyi’s mother had been notified and was told that a telegram had been sent. She would fly back early the next morning, and would need to be picked up at the airport. They had to make sure that nothing happened to her if she was overcome by grief. Xiaoyi, who was listening quietly off to the side, kowtowed to each of them when they were done. “Everything requires money; where am I going to get it? Why don’t I sell the two jade-inlaid tables tomorrow?”
“You’re still thinking about selling stuff?” Ruan Zhifei said. “Do you want your father to turn over in his grave? When your mother gets back, we will talk to her about it. You just go kneel there and burn some paper for your father.”
The three of them scrounged up a writing brush and ink to decorate the mourning hall. It looked terrible for a famed calligrapher to have nothing but his picture in the hall after his death, so Zhuang took up the brush and wrote In Mourning for Mr. Gong Jingyuan, to be pasted above his photo. For the two sides of the picture, he wrote In Life and Death a Son, Xiaoyi and Here and There, the Companionship of Four Friends. Then he wrote two long couplets for the gate: A big eater and drinker, he could make and spend money for the good life and A great calligrapher and painter, he could come and go at ease for a carefree departure.
“This couplet is perfect,” Ruan said. “It could not have been a more accurate depiction of his life. No one who sees this would dare say anything bad about him. But I think the couplet in the mourning hall was too highbrow for me to understand.”
“What’s so hard to understand?” Wang asked. “One is about how he gave Xiaoyi life and died at his son’s hand, then vented his anger at the useless boy. The other one is about the four of us, who are well known to everyone in Xijing. Now that he’s gone, he’s there and we’re here, and we feel that our time is also running out, so we express our grief. Is that what you meant, Zhidie?”
“You can read it however you want,” Zhuang said as he got someone to place a wreath at the entrance before affixing a length of wire to hang black crepe and fabric. Finally the yard felt funereal. Ruan sent someone to find a tape of mourning music, which he played on a cassette deck. “He was, after all, a good friend of ours,” he said, “and we often got together at hotels because of his connections. Whenever we went out for a drink, he’d be the one who paid. Now that he’s gone, we’ll have fewer chances to enjoy good food, if nothing else. He lived an active life, but ended up like this because of his worthless son. These days, people are opportunists; when he was alive, they nearly wore out his threshold coming for his calligraphy, but now that he’s dead, not even their dogs will come when called. He’s lucky he had us. Let’s write more on the mourning scroll to express our sadness over his death and extol his fame one last time. That way it won’t look too dreary when his wife returns from Tianjin.”
Agreeing that it was essential, Zhuang spread out the paper to let Wang write something.
“I’m not very literary to begin with, and now that I’m here, my brain has dried up,” Wang said. “When I came in the past, we wrote and painted together, but that will never happen again. So let me paint something.” After licking the inky tip of his brush, he stood still for a moment before putting it to work, and with a carefree flick of his wrist, a vivid sketch of an orchid appeared before their eyes.
“Fantastic!” Ruan Zhifei said. “A lush orchid is the perfect portrayal of his personality. He was brilliantly talented and lived an unrestrained life. I know that some people were critical of him, but no one can deny that he wrote every single door sign on Xijing Street. And there’s no official, no matter the rank, who doesn’t have one of his scrolls hanging in his house. But I’ve never seen any painter add roots to an orchid. Why draw a jumble of messy roots, without putting it in soil or a pot?”
“I shudder when I think about how an outstanding figure like our friend Gong died with nothing, and that’s why I didn’t paint the soil or a pot,” Wang said as he wrote I cry for my brother Gong / Sadly, he has departed this world. He finished up with Respectfully, Wang Ximian. Finally he imprinted his seal. It was now Ruan’s turn.
“I’m a terrible calligrapher,” he said, “but I won’t ask Zhidie to write for me. It’s just that I can’t think of a single line and must ask for your help, Zhidie.”
“Just write whatever is on your mind.”