As he turned his head, she hid herself to watch the agitated and confused look on his face. This was the first time Wang Qiyao had engaged in a mischievous act of any kind since arriving in Wu Bridge, and it was Deuce who brought out this side of her. After looking around, Deuce thought he must have been hearing things, but instead of ignoring it, he shouted back, “Who’s calling me?”
Wang Qiyao put her hand over her mouth to conceal her laughter — the first time she had laughed since arriving. This too was because of Deuce.
The following day, running into him on the street, she stood in his path and said, “How come you didn’t see me yesterday with those big eyes of yours?”
Deuce was so embarrassed that he turned bright red all the way down to his neck, where a blue artery pulsated wildly. He fixed his eyes on her but did not know what to do with his hands. “Where are you heading?” she asked more gently.
Deuce mumbled that he was on his way to collect bills and showed her the account book. Wang Qiyao glanced at the handwriting on the slips and asked if it was his. Getting a grip on himself, he answered that some of it was. She asked which parts were his, and he showed her several lines of elegant tiny characters. Wang Qiyao, who knew nothing about calligraphy, praised his writing, “Not bad at all!”
The rosiness gradually faded from Deuce’s cheeks. “You’re mocking me.”
“Even the Chinese teachers at my school couldn’t have written characters the size of a fly’s head with such a fine hand,” Wang Qiyao rejoined with a straight face.
“In Shanghai, the entire educational system is focused on the sciences and other practical subjects,” said Deuce. “Calligraphy is a pastime that one indulges in during leisure hours.”
His range of reference took Wang Qiyao by surprise, and she realized she had underrated him. She tested him with a few other questions, to which he responded intelligently in the tone of a good pupil. Before they parted, she invited him to visit her more often.
Someone else delivered the bean curd the following morning. Deuce himself came in the evening wearing a pair of canvas athletic shoes newly whitened with shoe powder. He still had on his scarf and in his hand was a bundle of books. He came as a visitor, bringing candies for children in the household. The books were for Wang Qiyao, he said; with no movie theater in Wu Bridge, these might serve to entertain her in the evening. It was a random collection of books that included timeworn detective stories such as Astounding Tales and The Cases of Judge Shi, contemporary romances such as Zhang Henshui’s The Heavy Darkness of the Night, and magazines such as Fiction Monthly and Panorama. He’s emptied his bookcase for me, Wang Qiyao told herself. Wu Bridge is a simple and conservative town, after all. In Shanghai a boy like Deuce would have learned how to be more cunning and slick long ago, yet how much more dashing and urbane the boys are in Shanghai! Wang Qiyao looked again at Deuce and felt sorry for him for being buried in the backwoods. Under the lamp his face looked even paler, and a thatch of his very black hair had fallen over his forehead.
She teased him. “So, when are you going to fetch your bride?”
He blushed and said he was only eighteen.
“Your eldest brother is only twenty and he already has several children,” replied Wang Qiyao, nothing daunted.
Deuce snorted, “That’s Wu Bridge for you.”
That he set himself apart from Wu Bridge showed how highly he thought of himself. Wang Qiyao told herself to mind his sensitivity, but she could not help amusing herself at his expense. “Would you like me to introduce you to a Shanghai girl?”
“You are making fun of me.” This, with lowered head, sounding aggrieved.
Seeing that she had hurt his feelings, Wang Qiyao went on hastily, “You are at an age when you should be thinking about your career. What are your plans?”
Deuce explained how he had been going to attend a teaching university in Nanjing when his plans were thwarted by the political situation. Mention of the political situation sent a chill down Wang Qiyao’s spine and she fell silent. Deuce sensed that he had inadvertently touched a sore spot. Rather than questioning her, however, he tactfully offered comfort by saying that things would have to settle down eventually, life has its ups and downs, and — quoting the Book of Changes—when misfortune has reached its limit, good fortune is sure to follow. It was at just such a juncture, when everything seemed uncertain, that Wang Qiyao found herself in the backwater town of Wu Bridge. She had supposed that her life no longer mattered, much less her heart. But suddenly she was struck by a subtle feeling that her heart was coming back to her.
Deuce had the same feeling. Wang Qiyao was like a mirror to him. Only when he sat in front of her did he understand himself. He started to come by every other day and stayed chatting until the moon rose in the sky. Sometimes, when the weather was warm, they walked the streets together. Lights shone out from under the canopies of boats in the canals and from houses along the canals, and the water sparkled with moving threads of light. Their hearts were both clear and serene.
“Hey, Sis, is the moon in Shanghai the same as this?” asked Deuce.
“It looks different,” replied Wang Qiyao, “but it’s actually the same.”
“Actually, there are two moons,” retorted Deuce. “One is the moon, and the other is its shadow.”
“I didn’t know you were a poet!” Wang Qiyao laughed.
She thought of Jiang Lili, who seemed now to be a person from a previous life. She thought that poetry, an affectation for Jiang Lili, came naturally to Deuce. Deuce demurred, “You are the poet, not me.”
Wang Qiyao refrained from laughing aloud and said, “How could I be a poet? I can’t recite a single line of classical poetry, or even modern poetry, for that matter.”
“Poetry is not about any which lines,” Deuce replied in earnest. “Some people think that if you cut sentences to roughly the same lengths and arrange them in lines, that’s poetry. Others think that poetry is written by linking sentimental words. To them poetry is about striking a pose.”
Wang Qiyao felt the latter was a perfect description of Jiang Lili’s poetic style.
“Actually, poems are pictures drawn with words,” said Deuce. “Take these examples: ‘The moon over the land of Qin and the House of Han shines its beams upon the Radiant Palace Lady.’ That’s like a painting! ‘We called her a thousand times before she came out, still holding the pipa half concealing her face.’ That’s another one! Or how about, ‘Her jade face is streaked with lonely tears, raindrops glistening on pear blossoms in the spring.’ Isn’t that a painting? ‘Behold the slender peach tree, its flowers shimmering!’ They are all word pictures, aren’t they?”
Wang Qiyao’s listened intently. She had not cared much for poetry, but this pricked her interest. Deuce, however, stopped talking.
“Tell me more!” She urged him.