Wang Qiyao laughed. “Wu Peizhen, little did we know that you would turn out to be the luckiest among the three of us!”
“The three of us?” Wu Peizhen asked in confusion. “Which three of us?”
“You, me, and Jiang Lili,” Wang Qiyao replied.
Hearing Jiang Lili’s name, Wu Peizhen was a little upset. She turned her head away. In her heart she had always felt that Jiang Lili had snatched Wang Qiyao from her. Although she was now married and more mature, she still kept unsettled scores from her schoolgirl days — we tend to keep these kinds of scores well into old age.
Without noticing that Wu Peizhen was piqued, Wang Qiyao continued, “We are no match for you. Jiang Lili will probably end up as an old maid, whereas I am neither a wife nor a concubine. You are the only one who married well, with endless years of pomp and prosperity ahead of you!”
Wang Qiyao became increasingly excited as she talked. Her eyes sparkled as she scratched her nails back and forth against the sofa, so hard that they were on the verge of breaking. Not knowing what to say, Wu Peizhen lowered her head. Then, impulsively, she grabbed hold of Wang Qiyao’s hands and said, “Come with me to Hong Kong!”
Wang Qiyao was caught off guard and totally lost her train of thought. When she realized what Wu Peizhen had said, she snickered. “How would I go with you? As a servant? A concubine? If a concubine, I may as well stay in Shanghai. No purpose served by simply moving around.”
“Don’t you ‘concubine’ me,” Wu Peizhen replied. “You understand perfectly what I meant. I have always regarded you as my better.”
A quiver ran through Wang Qiyao and she felt limp. She twisted her head toward the wall, and stared at it for a moment. When she turned her face back toward Wu Peizhen, it was full of tears.
“Thank you, Wu Peizhen,” Wang Qiyao murmured through her tears. “But I cannot leave. I have to stay here and wait for him. If I leave and he comes back, what would happen then? He will be back. If he does not find me here, he is going to blame me.”
The next day, at the time of Wu Peizhen’s scheduled departure, Wang Qiyao thought she could hear the whistle of the boat leaving the shore. The times they spent together scrolled by in her mind, one scene after another. During that period of their lives, they were like white silk, on which words were later to be written; then the words became sentences, and the sentences strung together to become history. Those wordless days had been carefree days. They could do what they wished: they had no responsibilities; even their sorrows were irresponsible sorrows. The relationship she had with Wu Peizhen did not involve responsibility — it was pure friendship. That was not the case with Jiang Lili, where personal interests always had to be considered — this did not mean, of course, that considering such things was anything to be ashamed of. Her friendship with Wu Peizhen was like a plant floating in clear water, whereas her friendship with Jiang Lili resembled a lotus growing in a mud pond. With Wu Peizhen’s departure, a large section of Wang Qiyao’s life history was snipped off and taken away — the section on which there were no words. The rest of the scroll was full of words, some smudged because they were written when the brush was weighed down with too much ink. The free flow of calligraphy suffers when it is executed with too much earnestness.
Wang Qiyao went on waiting for Director Li. She dared not go out again after having missed him that day. Ever since she started noticing her neighbors’ empty windows, she also could not bring herself to open her own windows. The curtains were tightly drawn so that she could avoid noticing the moving lights on the wall. In her apartment the lamps burned brightly both day and night. The clocks were not wound, so there was no sense of time. The only sounds emitted from the gramophone — the voice of Mei Lanfang going, Yi yi eh eh, round and round, over and over.
Wang Qiyao wore a floor-length dressing gown all day long, with a belt loosely tied around her waist, looking somewhat like Mei Lanfang on stage playing the female role in Farewell, My Concubine. This thing called time — if you ignore it, it will go away, she thought to herself. She grew calmer, and found that she had begun to understand Mei Lanfang. She grasped just what it was that Director Li heard in his voice. It was the gentle but tenacious striving of women. The striving was like a needle hidden in cotton. It was directed toward men, and toward the world. While men understood this, women themselves were not conscious of it. This was what constituted that little bit of true understanding between men and women.
Mei Lanfang’s singing voice served as a foil to the silence of Alice Apartments. This silence was a feature of Shanghai in 1948. Silence filled many anthill-like concrete buildings, and may even be said to have held some of them up. It was the other, complementary, side of the city’s energy, like shadows cast by light. Wang Qiyao had shut off the world outside. She had stopped reading the newspapers or listening to the radio. The news was confusing and unremitting: a crucial battle between the Nationalists and the Communists was being fought in Huaihai; the price of gold was soaring; the stock market collapsed; Wang Xiaohe was shot by the government; the Jiangya steamship running between Shanghai and Ningbo exploded and 1,685 people sank to the bottom of the sea; a plane flying from Shanghai to Peking crashed, and among the dead was an adult male under the pseudonym of Zhang Bingliang, known to us as Director Li.
Part II
Chapter 1
Wu Bridge
WU BRIDGE IS the kind of place that exists specifically to be a haven for those trying to escape from the chaos of the world. In June when the jasmine blooms, its fragrance permeates the whole town. The canals divide themselves into endless configurations as they flow beneath the eaves of the houses on the water. The black-tiled eaves are neatly aligned, as if delicately drawn with a fine paintbrush. Stretching over the canal, one after another, are arched bridges, also delicately drawn. There are many such towns in the Jiangnan region, and they always evoke feelings of nostalgia. But once the turmoil of the day is over, people are always eager to return to the cities and start the race all over again. The scenery in small towns like this comes straight out of an old-style landscape painting; the austere concept of emptiness is incorporated therein. White is the shade of colorlessness, black is the mother of all hues — together, they conceal all things, embrace all things, and bring all things to an end. But the painstakingly applied brushstrokes also suggest a Western-style picture, because in it are people buying and selling, cooking and dressing, going about their daily lives, and enjoying moments of leisure in the middle of their labor. So, beneath the void is solidity, and a multiplicity of actions lie behind the ascetic exterior. These qualities combined are what makes these towns especially suitable for wounded refugees from the cities.
An uncanny wisdom seems to pervade these places — a chaotic kind of understanding, intelligence born of ignorance. The people are all monkish, neither joyful nor sad, not passive, not aggressive; devoid of rancor, their behavior changes with the seasons. Their wordless philosophy is open to interpretation. In the morning, sunlight comes in like a rainstorm, striking Wu Bridge from all directions; smoke rises from kitchens, mist from the trees. The light, smoke, and mist of Wu Bridge blend into a soundless melody.
Bridges are the principal feature of this place, its very soul. To outsiders, they suggest the Buddhist idea of being ferried to the other shore. Wu Bridge is a place of compassion. Beneath its bridges the water swiftly flows, carrying all refuse away. Overhead the clouds glide by, preparing rain for the earth. The bridges let boats pass underneath, and people walk over them to the other side of the canal, where the long eaves stretch out from the houses to shield them from the sun and the rain.