One by one, the bridges overhead receded into the background; Wang Qiyao felt they must have passed through countless gates to arrive in an ancient world that had been closed to her. She could have cried, had she not been so numb. Her sadness was mixed with a strange sensation that touched her deeply. That day, the scenery was colored in all different shades of grey. The leaves had fallen from the trees, exposing the delicate branches; the surface of the water was wrinkled by tiny waves; the lichen was made up of an infinite number of dainty dots; scratches on the sides of houses, built up line by line, accumulated into a tangled mass. Chimney smoke and the sound of laundry being beaten on fulling blocks are so primordial that one hardly notices them. The only bright spots in the landscape are the fish and the lotus blossoms printed on the aprons and headscarves of the women doing their wash on shore. Although these hand-printed patterns are also archaic, they always appear new. It is as if every era needs them and they become true living fossils. They never age, and even through the passage of time they always appear eternally contemporary. Floating down the river of time, they bob unsteadily on the surface, like water sprites, while all else sinks down to the bottom. They are like a Daoist elixir of immortality: their presence allows the world to endure even longer.
There seemed to be no end to the bridge arches they passed through in order to get into the heart of this ancient world. The chimney smoke grew denser, and the chorus of laundry blocks came at them at shorter and shorter intervals. A new spark lit up Grandma’s eyes. She snuffed out her cigarette and began to point things out to Wang Qiyao, who remained absorbed in her own thoughts. The insides of her heart were scattered, its remnants strewn everywhere. Even if she were one day to try to mend it, the scattered pieces could never be completely recovered. The boatman suddenly stopped singing and asked Grandma for directions. He swung the boat around as if heading for home. Not long after that, Grandma announced that they had arrived. The anchor was dropped and the boat drifted toward the shore. Led by Grandma, Wang Qiyao emerged from the canopy to discover that the sun had come out. Its glare made her squint. Disembarking on the arm of the boatman, Grandma paused, brazier in hand, to describe the exciting scene on her wedding day to Wang Qiyao. All the homes alongside the canal had their windows open and people were craning their necks to watch her dowry chests and decorated sedan chair being lifted onto the boat. The blossoming white gardenias set off her red wedding gown. Among the green buds on the trees, the blue water, the black roof tiles and bridge piers, she alone was a splash of red. This red, ephemeral but recurring, is part of a cycle that has been renewing itself since time immemorial.
Deuce
At Wu Bridge, Wang Qiyao stayed at the house of her Grandma’s brother, who ran a pickled foods shop famous for its pickled bean curd. Every day a fresh delivery of firm bean curd arrived from their supplier. The supplier had two sons. The elder was married with children; the younger, known to every one as “Deuce,” attended school in Kunshan and had been planning to enroll at a normal college in Shanghai or Nanjing that fall, only the unsettled political situation had prevented him from taking the entrance examinations. Deuce sported a look that is best described as “old-fashioned modern”: he had glasses, wore a camel-colored scarf around the collar of his school uniform, and parted his hair down the middle. He viewed the women of Wu Bridge with disdain, wouldn’t dream of mixing with the men, and spent most of his time reading in his bedroom instead. On moonlit nights, his silhouette made one of the local scenes — the Wu Bridge recluse. Without exaggeration, every part of Wu Bridge had its own recluse, and it was Deuce’s turn to take the stage. Recluses were bubbles on the river of Wu Bridge — the river kept on flowing, but each day its bubbles were different.
Deuce was favored with a flawlessly light complexion and delicate facial features. He spoke as softly as he walked. If he were not such a fine boy, his family would have disapproved of him and the town folks would have made him the butt of their jokes, which was what they customarily did with recluses. But Deuce aroused the parental instinct in people, and they happily indulged him. Several families had thought about making him their son-in-law. This may have had to do with the tenor of the time, in which a solitary figure held a certain appeal. People were genuinely fond of him. Deuce held himself aloof from Wu Bridge, sometimes even letting his contempt show on his face, but this only enhanced his progressive aura. He saw himself as a man of the world, and regarded Wu Bridge as a discarded remnant. He would have left if he had had his choice, but his health was not strong enough to confront the turmoil of the outside world, and he was forced to fall back on Wu Bridge. He had now become one of the discarded remnants, but his heart belonged out there.
Accordingly, Deuce was a tormented soul. There is an old saying that a man’s shadow was his spirit, but Deuce claimed he was a man without a shadow. On moonlit nights he would glare at his own shadow on the stone slab bridge and reject it. Is that really me? Clearly, it must be someone else. One day, walking past the pickled food shop, Deuce saw Wang Qiyao sitting inside. He was electrified. Now there is my true shadow! he exclaimed inwardly. From that day on he volunteered to make deliveries for the shop. He had to walk over three bridges, and his heart leaped with joy, higher as he passed over each bridge, although he did not allow it to show. With a tightly drawn face, he would drop off the bean curd, turn around, and leave. On his return trip, his heart sank at every bridge, but there was exhilaration mixed in with that sadness, and he walked with a spring in his step. He was convinced that Wang Qiyao had been mistakenly snipped off from the proper world and that she still carried with her the splendor of that other realm. Why did she end up here? Deuce was so grateful that his eyes grew moist. Her presence brought sunlight to Wu Bridge, ensuring that this place would never be lost. Her presence brought a glimmer of hope to Wu Bridge, providing a link between this place and the outside world. Oh, what changes she brought to Wu Bridge! Deuce had heard rumors about Wang Qiyao, but no matter how outrageous the rumors were, he was not put off. On the contrary, they fed his fantasy. To him, Wang Qiyao epitomized the opulence of Shanghai — even though this was a bygone opulence, a bygone dream. The reflected glory of Shanghai was strong enough to last through another half-century. Deuce’s heart came alive again.
Wang Qiyao soon began to take notice of this young delivery man. With his fair skin and effetely persnickety schoolboy style, he seemed to her a character out of an old photograph. When he spoke with her great uncle, she listened closely through the partition, and found that he was so soft-spoken he sounded like a bird. Once she ran into him on her way to buy needles and thread. He fled, blushing, to another bridge. Wang Qiyao was amused and began to take an interest in him. She discovered that he had a habit of walking by himself at all hours, and his silhouette in the moonlight was as charming as that of a virgin. He sometimes leaped with a girlish joy. One day, after he had dropped off the basket of bean curd at the front of the store and was on his way to the back room, Wang Qiyao called to him from behind, “Deuce!”