by Xu Xu
What I am about to relate happened six or seven years ago on a wintry evening around midnight. I was walking out of Xiangfen Alley and onto *Nanjing Road. The moment I turned the corner, right there by the tobacco store, I saw a woman entirely dressed in black. There was an incomparable pureness to her beauty and, strange as it might sound, I had the impression that somehow she looked familiar, yet I could not recall then where it was that I had seen her before. Was it because I was drawn to her beauty or because I wanted to figure out where I had seen her before? In any case, I could not help but throw another glance at her. I also no longer remember now whether that tobacco shop handed out matches or had an incense coil for their customers to light their cigarettes, but, just as she turned around, she let out a puff of smoke from the cigarette she was smoking and I got a whiff of its aroma. I am a bit of an expert when it comes to recognizing the smell of tobacco. Maybe it is a kind of talent: While studying at various universities in Europe, I attended lectures by maybe twenty professors, and I recognized them all by their tobacco. A hint of their tobacco, even with doors closed, was enough for me to tell who was standing in front of the door or walking past. Thus, the moment I smelled her cigarette, I knew she was smoking a *Pin Head. Surely Pin Heads were a little strong for that lady, and I immediately assumed that she must be a heavy smoker with blackened teeth. What a pity to have such exquisite beauty spoiled by a row of blackened teeth, I thought. I was already on my way again when she suddenly interrupted my thoughts:
“Human, tell me the direction to *Xietu Road!”
I jumped with bewilderment. As she spoke, I was able to see her teeth, or I should say: Her teeth grabbed my attention. They shone bright white, like a precious sword under the moon. But once she had closed her mouth again, I also noticed a particularly fierce look in her eyes. Her face, which at first had been lit up by the shop’s red neon lights, was in fact silvery white and drained of all color. Her lips looked especially sallow and bloodless. Had she put on too much powder? Was she recovering from an illness? Still contemplating, I almost asked, Why don’t you put on some rouge? But it was she who spoke again:
“Xietu Road, I said Xietu Road.”
It suddenly occurred to me that the reason she looked so pale might be because her clothes were all black. She was wearing a black *qipao, black coat, black stockings, and black shoes. I also noticed that her clothes seemed much too thin. They were all single-layer, and the coat did not have a fur lining. Besides, her stockings were made of silk and she was wearing high heels. Could it be that her face was white from cold? I wanted to look at her fingernails, but she was wearing a pair of fine white gloves on her hands, one of which was holding the cigarette she was smoking.
“Human! Why are you looking at me like that?”
Her face was solemn, but overwhelmingly beautiful. It now made me think of the face of a silver female bust I had seen in a shop window somewhere along *Avenue Joffre in the French Concession of Shanghai. So that was why I had thought that I had seen her before! The beauty of her face lay in its harmonious structure that lacked any crudeness. I felt a little comical about my déjà vu experience, but nevertheless put on a serious face and said, “Even when asking for directions you should be a little polite. Fine if you don’t want to call me ‘Sir’ or ‘Master,’ but how about a simple ‘Mister’? What’s this business calling me ‘Human’? You are neither a goddess nor the almighty.”
Actually, I was thinking that her beauty had something rather divine, and so my last sentence had been spoken somewhat inadvertently.
“I am not a goddess,” she replied. “I am a ghost.”
Her face was of a chilling beauty, like that of a white jade that had been extracted from deep inside a mountain of ice. As for her voice, I can hardly find words to describe it. Were I to compare it to the sound of melting icicles hanging from a cliff in a tranquil valley and dripping drop by drop onto the surface of a perfectly still pond, then this might capture its clearness, but not its sharpness.
“A ghost?” I exclaimed laughing, and thinking to myself: “So one can see ghosts on Nanjing Road now.”
“That’s right, I am a ghost,” she replied
“A female ghost walking the city streets, getting a light at a tobacco shop, smoking Pin Heads, and asking a gentleman for directions?” I had to laugh hard, supporting myself by leaning against a wall. It was cold and there was not a soul in the streets. I took out my pipe and started to smoke.
“You don’t believe in ghosts?”
“Never believed in them until now, take my word for it. But if one day I do, it certainly won’t be on Nanjing Road, and it certainly won’t be on account of a beautiful woman who lights her Pin Heads at a tobacco shop and then asks some guy for directions.”
“But surely you are afraid of ghosts?”
“How can I be afraid of them if I don’t believe in them?”
“Well then, would you mind accompanying me to Xietu Road?”
“Why do you want to go there this late?”
“Because I know my way home from there.”
“So how did you get here?”
“I walked and walked until I found myself in this place.”
“I’ll call you a cab to take you there.”
“What’s that supposed to mean? You can’t walk that far? Or you think I can’t call a cab myself?”
“So you are a ghost then, and you are not afraid of a stranger walking you to that godforsaken part of town?” I laughed again.
“Ghosts are at home in godforsaken places. It’s you who should be afraid!”
“Afraid of what?”
“You … you should at least be afraid of getting lost. You know that ghosts plot their complex routes in deserted roads so that people unfamiliar with them will get lost? You must have heard the expression ‘lost in the spirit world’? Well, in crowded places like Nanjing Road, it’s ghosts who get lost because the routes of humans are even more complex.”
“What you are saying is that you are a ghost who is ‘lost in the human world’ and it is for that reason that you can’t find your way home anymore?”
“That’s right.”
“In that case, I’ll accompany you, but you must then show me the way out from there.”
“Of course.”
For each of her last four replies she had worn a different facial expression, but taken together, all four formed yet another expression altogether. When she had uttered the first reply, she had raised her eyebrows. With the second, the corners of her eyes had trembled; with the third, her nostrils had flared up; and when she gave me her fourth reply, a dimple appeared on her cheeks and her white teeth sparkled. At that point, even if she had said that she would have to bite me to death once we had reached our destination, I still would not have declined her.
And so we started walking, as if we had given up waiting for the streetcar. She was smoking her cigarette and I was smoking my pipe. I was too absorbed by my own thoughts and hence was not talking, but soon she picked up the thread of our conversation.
“I guess you have never before walked the streets with a ghost, have you?”
“Neither am I now, and I don’t foresee it ever happening.”
“But you are walking with one by your side this very moment.”
“I don’t believe there are ghosts this beautiful.”
“So you think a ghost ought to be less beautiful than a human?”
“That goes without saying. Humans turn into ghosts only after they die.”
“You think that a ghost resembles a human corpse? Let me tell you, you are very much mistaken if you believe that the ugliness of a corpse in any way compares to the form of a ghost!”
She laughed out loud after she had said this. This was the first time I heard her laugh for, until now, she had only smiled silently. The sound of her laughter reverberated. When she stopped, it was as if the echo from her laughter slowly rose toward the sky, and even after it had already entered the clouds could
still be faintly heard. I gazed at the sky.
“The ugliness of a corpse,” she continued, “is the final destination of all human beauty, which is why there is no beauty in the human world. In the final analysis, all beauty is ugliness.”
“But ghosts at best resemble humans and thus can never be more beautiful than they.”
“You are not a ghost, so how do you know?”
“How about you, since you are not a human?”
“But I used to be a human, and a very lively one at that.”
“And you still are now, I believe.”
She gazed at the sky and said, “Nature for sure is beautiful.”
“The night especially,” I replied.
“Don’t you think that the night is more beautiful than the day?”
“Yes, I think it is.”
“And the night belongs to ghosts.”
“If you really are a ghost, I admit that ghosts are a million times more beautiful than any human, but you are a human.”
And so we kept walking. The conversation went from the beauty of ghosts to the existence of the soul, truth, and illusion, epistemology, ethics, and love. She cited the works of Plato and Aristotle, Kant and Fichte, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Bergson. She also talked about the Buddhist philosopher Nagarjuna and mentioned some other Indian names I do not remember, and she drew on Confucius and Laozi, Mencius and Zhuangzi, and even the idealist neo-Confucian Wang Yangming. She then talked about Freudian psychoanalysis and Einstein’s theory of relativity, and even about electric waves and electrons.
At first, I was still trying to respond, but eventually all I did was listen to her. By then, we were already near *Xujiahui. It was deathly silent and freezing cold. Not a soul was in sight. The change in our surroundings added to my astonishment over her encyclopedic knowledge and slowly made me believe that maybe she really was a ghost after all. Yet I was not afraid, for there under the bright moonlight, my soul had already been completely captivated by her appearance and the way she carried herself. If she had wanted me to die, I would have obliged happily.
There was a gust of wind. I shivered and asked, “Aren’t you cold?” I wanted to call her by her name, but suddenly realized that I did not know it. And so I added: “What should I call you?”
“You can call me Ghost.”
“Ghost? I don’t think I like that. Can’t you tell me your name?”
“It’s only because you are used to those common names typically given to humans, like Cuixiang, Baoying, Jumei, or Daiyu. That’s why you also have to give a name to things non-human, just like when people call their dogs John or their cats Marie, or call a pavilion ‘Drop of Verdant’ and a mountain ‘Heavenly Scale’ or ‘Celestial Eye.’ It even goes as far as people calling their homes ‘Villa Rustica,’ ‘Castle in the Clouds,’ or ‘Foggy Manor.’ It’s simply a sign of poor taste.”
“Well then, how about I call you ‘goddess’? Because if you really are not a human, then you surely must be a deity. And even if you turn out to be a human after all, the term ‘goddess’ still does justice to your noble bearing.”
“I am a ghost all right, and there is no reason to believe that ghosts don’t possess noblesse. What is it about the word ‘ghost’ that you find so deplorable? Since I am a ghost,” she said angrily, “why do you want to call me ‘goddess’?” But then she suddenly laughed and said, “Human, it turns out you are just an ordinary mortal.”
She was of course right and so I kept silent. Our pace was slow, resembling more a leisurely stroll than a walk home. My eyes fixed on the horizon, I wondered whether she was observing me. I did not dare to meet her piercing gaze. The night was still and one could have heard the falling of a leaf. We walked in silence for about ten minutes until she said, “I think you should just call me ‘ghost.’ ”
“But aren’t there lots of ghosts? How could I be so generic and just call you ‘ghost’?”
“Isn’t it the same for humans? It would be just as generic as me calling you ‘human.’ ”
“Exactly! But I leave it to you to call me whatever you wish to call me.”
“I don’t believe that humans are free to call each other whatever they like. In human society, isn’t a son obliged to call a father ‘father’? That’s why one needs to follow a certain rationale when it comes to addressing humans.”
“So what rationale does your method of address rely on?” I seemed to be losing ground.
“It’s because you are the only human I know. If you don’t know any other ghosts, either, then what’s so irrational about calling me Ghost?”
“All right then, I won’t argue anymore.”
I seem to recall that afterward, we did not talk much until we got to Xietu Road. I wanted to see her all the way home, but she said it was at least another three miles and under no circumstances would she let me accompany her. We then agreed to meet again at a future date, at eight o’clock on a certain evening in the same place where we parted that night.
Our second encounter happened on a moonlit night. We wandered through some desolate parts of town, and by the time I returned home it was already dawn. The third time, we again met at the same place and again walked through extremely remote areas. I almost did not find my way home. From then on, our meetings became a routine, and we would meet once every three nights at the same place at the same time, rain or shine, and not once did either of us fail to show. She was a hearty walker and a great conversationalist. The reason I have little to show for in any one field of study, but instead like to read broadly, has much to do with her influence. She really was extremely erudite. Whether it was metaphysics or materialism, astronomy or entomology, she had something to say about everything. Once, we went to a café on Avenue Joffre that was run by a Jew. She spoke Hebrew to the owner and I guessed that she probably spoke quite a few other languages as well.
This friendship of ours had already lasted about a year and a half when one summer night while walking near *Longhua we got caught in a thunderstorm. Usually, when it looked as if it might rain, she would wear a raincoat and carry an umbrella, which she then would lend me in return for my hat. But that day, the rain had come unexpectedly. Since we were wearing summer clothes, we were drenched in no time. Had it been winter, I would have immediately wrapped my coat around her, but that day I was only wearing a thin cotton gown, which was soaked by the time the first two drops of rain had fallen.
“Human,” she said, “today is your lucky day. I will grant you what you have begged me a hundred times and what I have always refused you. Come, let’s go to my home to shelter from the rain.”
And with that, she quickened her pace. The rain was so hard now I could barely keep my eyes open. Finally, we reached a village on the outskirts and after a couple more turns found ourselves in front of a door. She opened it with a key and pulled me in. We passed through a long dark corridor to reach a staircase. At the top of the stairs, there was a large, sparsely furnished room. It was decorated in an odd-looking way. All the furniture was made of mahogany. The bed was huge and had a black canopy the likes of which I had never seen still being used by people. But I had to content myself with admiring it from afar, for it stood at quite a distance from where she invited me to sit down around a table by the window. We smoked. Outside the window, I saw a large field that was bordered by two rows of single-storied houses from which not a speck of light emanated.
“Those houses …?”
“That’s where the ghosts of our family live.”
“And you live here alone.”
“That’s right.”
She then served me some coffee and we quietly looked at the moon rising in the sky. Suddenly I noticed a Chinese flute and a violin on a shelf. “Ghost,” I said (I had long gotten used to this form of address and thought it natural and rather intimate), “you play a number of instruments.”
“I play a little, but it’s just to distract myself when I feel lonely or bored. I am certainly no musician nor keen to
be on stage.”
I asked her to play a tune to embellish this quiet moonlit night and, facing the window, she began to play the violin. I stood behind her and waited for her to finish. When she turned around, I put my hand on her shoulder and, without knowing what I was doing, said, “Ghost, I love you, do you know that?”
But she freed herself and picked up a cigarette and a box of matches from the table. Her face was expressionless. I did not dare to look at her and waited for her to say something. She took a drag and exhaled the smoke, but she only spoke after she had exhaled for a second time.
“You know that you are a human and I am a ghost.”
“You really think that humans and ghosts need to keep their distance?”
“No, but ghosts are weary of all human ways, and love we consider an extremely childish and laughable matter.”
With the coming of dawn, she asked me to leave. She asked me to come back to this place after three days. She walked me to the door and pointed me in the direction home. After walking no more than a few steps, I looked back and saw that she had already returned inside. I walked back again and took out a red pencil (that was all I had on me) to leave a mark on the wall of her house. I wrote the words “mysterious existence.” On the way back, I also made sure to remember every turn I took. I did not feel like going home to sleep and just wandered around until daybreak, when I went into a little teahouse. Over some tea and sesame cake, I contemplated that if she really were a ghost, then that house of hers should be a grave during the day, just as in all those old Chinese stories. I then took a nap in the teahouse until the sun had risen high in the sky, drank a couple of cups of warm wine, and, relying on my mental map, began to trace my steps back to her place. All along, my heart was beating fast with excitement. There really were only two possible outcomes: Either that house of hers was in fact a house, which would mean that she was a human, or else it was a tomb, which would mean that she really was a ghost. I was sure that I would soon have an answer.
