Jiang Lili had never been to Alice Apartments, though she knew of it by reputation. She felt a certain apprehension, but also a bit of a thrill in anticipation of her adventure. The afternoon was overcast, with dark clouds hanging low. The pedicab driver gave her a strangely appraising look. Once past the Paramount, the streets took on a different air. As Jiang Lili paid the driver and walked toward the iron gate of the longtang, she could feel eyes watching her from behind. Inside the complex silence reigned. All the windows were shut and shaded. Jiang Lili thought she could tell which window belonged to Wang Qiyao: it must be the one with the rustic floral pattern. Could Wang Qiyao really be living here? It was with some trepidation that she rang the doorbell, not certain whether seeing Wang Qiyao appear was something she hoped for or dreaded. Meanwhile, the sky had darkened further as it prepared to unleash its rain. The door opened a crack, revealing a sliver of an indistinct face. With a provincial Zhejiang accent, the person behind the door asked who she was looking for.
“I’m looking for my classmate, Wang Qiyao,” Lili replied. “My name is Jiang.”
The door was shut again, but reopened soon after to let her in. The floor gleamed with wax. There, at the other end of the dark living room, in the doorway of a brightly lit bedroom, stood Wang Qiyao. She was in a floor-length dressing gown; her long hair had been permed into large wavy rolls, and she seemed taller. As each stood, backlit, able to see the other’s silhouette but not her face, a feeling came over both of them that was at once familiar and strange.
“How do you do, Jiang Lili?” Wang Qiyao asked.
“And how do you do, Wang Qiyao?” Jiang Lili returned.
When they moved over to the sofa in the middle of the living room, the maid had already brought tea, and they both sat down.
“How are your mother and your brother?” Wang Qiyao asked.
Jiang Lili responded politely to her queries and glanced around. A little light had stolen in around the edge of the window curtains, and she could see that Wang Qiyao had gained a little weight and that her complexion was lustrous. Along the bottom of her pink dressing gown was a border embroidered with large flowers. The sofa and the lampshade were also covered with large flowers. She remembered how Wang Qiyao used to favor tiny little flowers in her cheongsams, and thought to herself that those flowers had turned grandiose along with their mistress.
Pretty soon they ran out of things to talk about, and simply sat facing each other in awkward silence. They couldn’t talk about the past; things had changed so drastically that it was hard even to remember what had happened.
“I have come,” Jiang Lili began after a long silence, “because Mr. Cheng asked me to see you.”
Wang Qiyao smiled faintly. “What does Mr. Cheng do to keep himself busy these days? Is he still doing photography? Has he bought new equipment? Several lamps burned out in his studio, and he was talking of replacing them.”
“He has not touched those things in a long time.” Jiang Lili replied. “These days he can hardly work up enough energy to turn on an electric light, much less the lamps in his studio.”
Wang Qiyao laughed. “That old Mr. Cheng! Sometimes he really acts like a naughty child.” Then she asked, “How about you, my dear? When are you going to get your Ph.D.?”
Having made this first jab at Jiang Lili, Wang Qiyao grew livelier and took aim with another. “And have you written any new poems lately?”
Jiang Lili was livid. How dare she speak to me as if I were a child? Rounding on Wang Qiyao, she asked, “What about you, Wang Qiyao? You must be doing very well?”
Wang Qiyao raised her chin a little bit.
“Not bad.”
It was an expression she had never shown before: the heroic pose of a martyr.
Then she went on, “I know what is going through your mind. I even know what your mother thinks. Your mother is certain to compare me to your father’s kept woman in Chongqing. Please excuse my bluntness, Jiang Lili, but if I don’t say these things aloud, we shall have nothing else to say to each other. I understand you are avoiding the subject so as not to embarrass me. Therefore let me talk about it.”
Jiang Lili felt her face turning red and white by turns. She wished a hole would open up in the ground into which she could burrow; at the same time, she had to acknowledge Wang Qiyao’s superiority in handling the situation — she had certainly hit the nail on the head.
“I hope you do not mind my making this comparison,” Wang Qiyao continued. “How should I put it?. . Your mother is like the fabric sewn on the outside, to be shown to the world, because she is presentable. The woman in Chongqing is the fabric used for the lining. It mayn’t be presentable, but it’s inexpensive and serves a necessary function. Your mother and the woman in Chongqing are each mistress of her respective domain, neither taking away from the other. Whether we end up as one or the other is not within our personal control. It is all fate.”
Jiang Lili had ceased to be agitated. Even though her parents were being used as examples, she felt she was being given a lecture on life. The matter under discussion bore no resemblance to the relationships in her romantic novels, but it was straightforward and had a ring of truth. Wang Qiyao spoke unexcitedly, as if she were analyzing someone else’s affairs with cold detachment.
“Of course, it would be ideal if one could both be presented to the world and serve a real function,” she went on to say, “but we all come with our distinct properties. Rather than making do, it’s better to put each fabric to its most fitting use. This is to pursue the ideal in a far-from-ideal world. Furthermore, there’s an old saying that even the moon goes through cycles of perfection and incompleteness, and when the vessel is full, the water spills over. Who’s to say that, lacking the other half, one might not be more secure as a result?”
Jiang Lili listened intently. Perhaps Wang Qiyao was justified in belittling her after all. Putting things this way, her explanation could even make her mother feel better about the woman in Chongqing.
Wang Qiyao was right. With the taboo subject now out in the open — exposed in all its starkness and simplicity — they both felt much more at ease. To Jiang Lili’s queries about Director Li, Wang Qiyao answered truthfully, recounting for her an outline of the events that had led her there. She even took Jiang Lili to see their bedroom, but before they entered, she rushed forward, blushing, to stuff something from the bed into the dresser. Jiang Lili realized that Wang Qiyao was no longer the pure young girl she once had been and that henceforth there would always be a line dividing them. After they returned to the living room, Wang Qiyao ordered the maid to go out and buy some crabmeat buns for snacks. As they ate, they gossiped about Wang Qiyao’s neighbors, thereby confirming many rumors and correcting others floating about in Shanghai. The sky outside brightened. They seemed to have gone back to old times, putting their differences aside. They acted as if Mr. Cheng did not exist and talked more about Director Li. Wang Qiyao showed Jiang Lili his pipes, large and small, in a metal box. She took one out and clowned around, puffing away at it. When Jiang Lili stood up to say goodbye, Wang Qiyao insisted that she stay for dinner. She even made a show of asking the maid to prepare special dishes. The maid was as enthusiastic as the mistress at the prospect of entertaining their first dinner guest.