Old Town

by Lin Zhe

  “Sure I know. Boss Guo’s Third Miss, from the cloth shop by Drum Tower.”

  “For the two days you’ve been back, I haven’t slept once. Now I’ve made up my mind to tell you the real story.”

  “What real story?”

  “Third Sister.”

  This definitely was not going to be good, and Ninth Brother was unwilling to listen any further. Shaking his hands right and left, he said, “Never mind what kind of a girl she is, I want her to be my wife.”

  “No. Your bride isn’t the Guo’s Third Sister. It’s a distant relative on my mother’s side, someone surnamed Chen.”

  What’s this? Ninth Brother just sat there with a stunned expression, while in his brain played a scene, just like he had seen in the silent films in Shanghai. The new bride, veiled in red, sits by the marital bed. The groom comes forward, lifts the veil from over her head, and a strange face scares the daylights out of him.

  Nephew said, “Ninth Uncle, if you’re unwilling to go through with this, it’s still not too late. This is exactly the reason I wanted to tell you this tonight.”

  After a long, stunned pause, Ninth Brother asked, “Why would Big Sister-in-Law want to do this? I said I would marry only Third Sister Guo, and I left my picture for her to take over there in my place when they discussed marriage!”

  “Just don’t think about Third Sister anymore, Ninth Uncle!”

  “She’s gotten married?”

  “She’s no more.”

  Ninth Brother’s eyes reddened and tears seeped from them.

  Nephew didn’t say that the coffin borne out of the home had been empty. He was unwilling to insult the girl that Ninth Brother so adored.

  How did Ninth Brother ever get through this long, dark night? Would he have raised his head to heaven and asked God: Oh, Lord, God, why didn’t you bless and protect Third Sister? Tearfully, he packed up his traveling things and got ready to head back to Shanghai, never again to return to heartbreak Old Town.

  By early the next morning, his sense of indignation and impulsiveness now settled down, Ninth Brother told Eldest Brother and his wife that if the bride wasn’t to be Third Sister Guo, he wanted to arrange a meeting with new prospects. This was all he could say. Eldest Brother and Big Sister-in-Law were like father and mother and he should obey them. If he had any disagreement with them, he could get it across only in a roundabout way. Before Big Sister-in-Law could open her mouth, Eldest Brother had already agreed to Ninth Brother’s request.

  You can well imagine the results of this visit: Ninth Brother refused to be the groom of the Chen girl. Big Sister-in-Law again sought out her go-between, Mother Sun. A din of drums and gongs and lanterns on poles again filled the town announcing the search for a bride for Ninth Brother. He was dragged along to meet the girls of several families and in every instance he shook his head in refusal.

  Very soon, the vacation would be over. All during this period, he still made daily entries in his diary. And every day, with tear-filled eyes, he would pour out his sorrows and melancholy to the now-dead Third Sister.

  On the day that Ninth Brother purchased a boat ticket back to Shanghai, he couldn’t help walking to West Street. He knew Third Sister’s home was that courtyard with the dark red steps leading up to the gate. For quite some time he hung around in front of it, wanting to pay a call on her parents and just have a look at her memorial portrait. And maybe he could even manage to get a picture of her to keep as a memento. Just when he drummed up enough courage to climb the steps, my grandma, Second Sister, walked out. At first glance he thought she was Third Sister, her student uniform changed into a well-fitting qipao.4

  Standing under the sky well, Second Sister asked, “Visitor, who are you looking for?”

  “Third Miss.”

  Before, there were always some outsiders who could never tell Third Sister from Second Sister, but after the great scandal hit the Guos, it would have been rare for anyone to make this mistake.

  “Visitor, where do you come from?”

  Ninth Brother’s eyes brimmed with tears. “I too used to worship at the West Gate church. Three years ago I went to Shanghai to study.”

  Oh, a student. Second Sister now addressed him as “Sir.” “Sir, you are mistaken. Our Third Sister has gone on a long journey. I am Second Sister.”

  Ninth Brother soared up to the heavens. He floated at the tip of “an eighteen-li cloudy mist,” as they say, and, muddled as he was, asked, “May I enter your mansion to sit for a brief moment?”

  Second Sister should have turned away this unexpected visitor. There were no adult men at home. A man and a woman should have no contact outside of marriage, it is taught. What’s more, he was looking for Third Sister. Third Sister was a painful sore that the whole family feared to touch. But this student’s face was delicate and unusually handsome. A pair of sincere and kindly eyes that seemed to radiate some magic power confused Second Sister’s sense of principle. She invited Ninth Brother into the main parlor, and only while she served him tea did she remember that the shop boy was waiting to go with her to South Town to buy some goods. So she handed Ninth Brother over to Eldest Sister who was right there also, teaching her little brother to read. “Sis, serve another cup of tea to this gentleman.”

  Great-Auntie not only loves to write letters, she also loves to talk. And so, in the space of two cups of tea, the entire tragic fate of the Guo family was related to the visitor. Because of Third Sister’s “elopement,” Father, in grief and sheer exasperation, coughed blood and died, Mother and old Grandmother took to their sick beds, and in two years, not one person had come to the Guo home to discuss marriage.

  Ninth Brother had already accepted the fact of Third Sister’s no longer being in the land of the living. Now he found out that she actually hadn’t died but had eloped. It must have been with a man she had been infatuated with. This was gratifying news. In Shanghai, Ninth Brother had absorbed new ideas and new concepts. He approved of free love. At this moment, however, he felt as if he had fallen into a bitter sea on a dark night. Each pounding of the violent waves was one blow to his heart. He couldn’t hear Eldest Sister’s mournful chatter. He bowed his head and lost himself in his own world. As a Christian, he realized that he was sinning. Third Sister was now some other man’s wife and he shouldn’t be thinking of her anymore. He silently asked Jesus for help: Lord, just let me forget Third Sister, and let me bless her from an ordinary heart.

  At some point, who knows when, the sound of Old Lady Guo’s groans and moans brought Ninth Brother out his dark thoughts and back to reality. A doctor’s sense of responsibility extricated him from his melancholy and he said to First Sister, “I’m studying medicine. May I have a look at Auntie’s illness?”

  First Sister wiped the tears from her eyes with a handkerchief and looked blankly at Ninth Brother, “Oh, yes, now I remember. You are Young Master Lin. One year, Mother Sun came here to discuss the possibility of marriage. But we Guos don’t have good luck.”

  After Ninth Brother took pulses and diagnosed the problems of the two old people, he went to the only Western clinic in all of Old Town to get some medicine. When he retraced his steps to the Guo household, it was already evening. Eldest Sister responded to his voice and opened the gate. His gaze was absorbed by Second Sister sewing by the lamplight. Her needle-runs and thread-pulling were like a work of art. Oh, so beautiful! He knew that three generations of Guos relied on that pair of nimble and skilled hands. Day or night, Second Sister sewed and embroidered to pay for the doctors and the medicine for their mother and grandmother and for her little brothers’ private tutor. Ninth Brother was filled with sympathy and tenderness.

  Three days later, Mother Sun arrived at the Guo home with Ninth Brother’s proposal of marriage to Second Sister.

  Out of sympathy for the Guo family, Ninth Brother had made up his mind to become their son-in-law. Although he felt rather more inclined toward Second Sister, he really wasn’t particular about which of the daughters he marri
ed. It was his Big Sister-in-law who decided on the choice of Second Sister. Second Sister’s sewing artistry was renowned throughout Old Town. People said that the qipao she sewed made fat women look less plump and thin ones not so skinny. How the Lins needed such an intelligent and capable girl to manage the household! They had three generations, over twenty mouths to feed, and no one who earned any money. Outwardly, they still had to maintain the dignity of a great family and a grand home. Grandchildren had to be sent to the “foreign” school. And on every festive occasion, the whole household had to change into new brocades and damasks. Big Sister-in-Law urgently wanted Second Sister to marry into the Lin family. She hoped Ninth Brother would alter his travel plans and extend his stay for nine or ten days to wed and consummate his marriage. After that, he would leave his bride in her mother-in-law’s home. Before the bride had even crossed the threshold, Big Sister-in-Law had already mentally cancelled the additional outlay for that year’s new clothes.

  Ninth Brother did not fulfill Big Sister-in-Law’s wishes, though. The Guos needed Second Sister more than the Lins did. These days, as he was treating his future mother-in-law’s illness, he could see with his own eyes the difficult straits that family was in. He agreed with his future mother-in-law to wait for the eldest of the Guo brothers’ betrothal before returning to marry Second Sister. He also agreed that he and Second Sister would take care of her younger brothers.

  This marriage built on feelings of responsibility and sympathy gave Ninth Brother unlooked-for happiness. In Second Sister, he found all the fantasies and hopes he had invested in Third Sister. Many decades of the winds and rain of human life would prove that he and Second Sister were a loving union of man and wife matched in heaven.

  CHAPTER THREE – HAPPY FAMILY PORTRAIT

  1.

  I NO LONGER go anywhere by train. Over the past few years, the market has been so hectic that I just take a plane from one city to the next for signing contracts and meeting important clients. So all these cities leave me with pretty much the same impression: airport, hotel, and banquet room. Time being gold and with the money state of mind so urgent, I haven’t got the time or inclination to sit and watch the countryside pass by from inside a swaying train.

  The itinerary that Joseph had arranged for our journey south would take three days. I thought he did this to economize. Many Americans will buy grand homes and big-name cars but they are strict when they budget small financial matters. To save a few pennies, they’d drive way out of their way to fill up with cheaper gas. This is by no means uncommon and nobody thinks it odd. I told Joseph I could buy half-price plane tickets that wouldn’t be much different from the train fare. This came as a big surprise to my travel companion. He said he thought that going by train cost a lot more than by plane. But that’s in America, where the railway industry is like some decaying aristocracy. Even though its prospects grow more and more bleak, it still keeps its prices high. But Joseph’s choice of going by train had nothing to do with price. He just wanted to watch the changing scenery as the train moved from north to south.

  Ours is a slow train that invariably stops at every station it comes to. The male protagonist of the Old Town story has already cut off his long braid when, puffing and panting, our train is about to enter Tianjin.

  On the platform, I get a call from Chrysanthemum. She has just received reliable information that one of my university schoolmates is about to take over the top position in an American media group’s Asia-Pacific division. She wants me to drop everything and get right back to Beijing. There I am to launch a diplomatic offensive to capture the agency rights to produce one or two programs. “We’ll be partners,” she says, “and split the equity fifty-fifty.” Give her thirty percent of the colors and Chrysanthemum would be gutsy enough to open a dye works. She has operated at least five different companies, all of which went broke. Lately her work has not been going too well. Her relationship with her boss is very tense and she’s consumed once again by the idea of running her own show.

  This news arrives just a bit too late. Joseph has bought two boxes of Tianjin-style fried dough twists and with a grin calls me back onto the train. I really do want to say that I can’t go with him to Old Town, but I just don’t have the strength to get the words out. It’s hard to get off when you ride a tiger, and this slow-moving train is the “tiger” I can’t get off.

  We have just moved past the platform when Chrysanthemum again chases after me. She thinks I am now on my way back home after ditching Joseph and that this evening we can arrange a “Hongmen” banquet to sew up that top executive.5 When she finds out that I am still riding the tiger, she gets so wrought up she can barely breathe. I can well imagine the spit flying out her mouth and all her facial contortions, her one hand holding the phone, the other waving about in great agitation. “You’ve gone totally nuts! Have you gotten all confused by that mixed-blood guy?” I run to the connecting section between the train cars and make a gentlemen’s agreement with her. At this moment, my company will be recommencing operations and for the period I’m away she has full authority in any and all business matters. With her youth and good looks, Chrysanthemum is very sure of herself in tackling key relationship issues. As far as I’m concerned this is just a delaying tactic on my part. I don’t want to come across with a beggars-can’t-be-choosers expression in front of my old schoolmate. So I have Chrysanthemum convey to him that right now I’m working for another American media company.

  Joseph seems very interested in Third Sister. “Third Miss Guo never went back home? Unless she really had died, she must have gone back to pay a visit to her parents.”

  I have the impression, from where I don’t remember quite clearly, that later on, Third Sister did return home and was refused entry by the master of the household at that time. Maybe that was how Great-Auntie wrote it in one of her letters, but Grandma told me more than once that her big sister could never keep imagination and reality straight and that a lot of what was in her letters was just made-up stuff.

  Following Old China’s rules on virtue and propriety, when the older generation of males of the Guo family were no longer alive, the oldest son would have been the master of this household. The oldest of my granny’s younger brothers was not yet eighteen years old and already a hopeless drunk, so it was his wife who became the master of the household in every sense of the word. She had been only fifteen when she married into the Guo home and two days into the marriage she went down to the kitchen to prepare the meals. At that time, she wasn’t very tall, so she used a bench to stand on beside the stove as she stir-fried the vegetables. Obedient to her husband, caring and filial to her mother-in-law, she was in every way the “dutiful wife and loving mother” prescribed by Confucius. She had the authority to represent the Guo family in refusing to welcome Third Sister when she returned.

  Joseph said, “She could have gone looking for her two older sisters.”

  “I don’t know whether she did so or not. If there’s time, I can take you to the old folks’ home to ask my great-aunt.”

  “Oh, I definitely want to go to the old folks’ home. That’s where you can find living history.”

  Does Great-Auntie have the ability to think clearly, apart from that business of the Guos’ “second fetus”? I doubt it. Way back when I was in Lompoc taking care of old Helen, your grandmother, the Bible was the only thing she knew clearly. Other than that, she didn’t even remember her own name.

  Why are you so interested in Third Sister? Are you connecting her with your grandma’s own experiences? That’s not possible. Such coincidences happen only in trashy pop novels, or in my great-aunt’s own mental mishmash of the real and the unreal. So don’t try to look for proof at the old folks’ home. That’ll make you even more brain-soft than someone one hundred years old.

  Second Sister was forever working her needle and thread in the lamplight. Completed qipao and men’s long gowns were always piling up like mountains beside her. During festival seasons, she had to work
the whole night through to get things done on time. She really had no time for long-winded discussions about matters of the heart. Every evening, after putting everybody else to bed, her big sister would stay by her side. She really wanted to help Second Sister, but she created more work than help. Her simplest lockstitch and button sewing would make Second Sister spend even more time redoing her work. Eldest Sister’s eyes weren’t good—maybe it was excessive myopia—and even when she brought the needle and thread right up to the tip of her nose, her stitching was all over the place. When Ninth Brother sent his first letter to Second Sister, it was just a few simple words of greeting. Eldest Sister urged Second Sister to write a reply. Second Sister said casually, “Just send back a few words for me,” and First Sister happily set about grinding ink and writing the letter. This was what she was best at. So the two sisters squeezed together under the lamp, one busily sewing, the other ghost-writing a love letter. Every time Second Sister saw Eldest Sister writing on and on, she was amazed: how can she make so much out of just those few words I spoke to her?

  Ninth Brother’s own letters became longer and longer and the envelopes these were stuffed into felt very heavy. And the love in this frequent correspondence steadily grew. When he held the pen to paper an endless affection swelled up in him, just as it did when, several years earlier, he had bent over his desk writing entries in his diary for Third Sister. Second Sister and Third Sister now had fused into one person.

  For several decades thereafter, Great-Auntie took pleasure in talking about her letters to her sister’s husband during those years. Right up to her old age, when her mouth had only four or five teeth left in it, she could still remember what particular Tang verse and Song lyric she had quoted in her letters. When speaking of the fun in writing this correspondence, her smile would transform that wrinkly old face into a blossoming chrysanthemum. Her own marriage had not been a happy one. She bore a lifelong grudge against her mother’s bias in favor of Second Sister. My great-grandmother hadn’t followed the order of precedence in first letting her eldest daughter find a husband, causing Great-Auntie to miss catching Ninth Brother, who turned out to be such a good husband. Still, she would be forever grateful for her father’s turning away the Lin family’s marriage overture for Third Sister on the grounds that he had to arrange his eldest daughter’s own marriage first.