Old Town

by Lin Zhe

  Outside the gate was the world in its second great war. Japanese-occupied Shanghai still reeked of blood and terror but whenever Mrs. Yang washed and cooked the rice she had a deep sense of heavenly well-being and happiness. From then on for the next several decades, even though now in her twilight years she enjoyed a perfectly comfortable life and never had to worry about clothes or food, she would still watch the rice jar closely. Whenever the level of rice fell ever so slightly she would top it up. It was only when the jar was filled to the brim would she feel a happiness beyond all others. Her children accepted this as some kind of unsettled problem from the war period. Actually, she was missing the time in heaven that Young Mr. Lin had given her.

  After putting the Yang’s family life in order, Young Mr. Lin had wanted to return to his own home. That afternoon, before going out to buy a boat ticket, he was in exceptionally good spirits and, stepping through the gate on his way out, he turned around and hugged the woman’s little son and lifted him high in the air. “In Uncle’s home there’s a boy as big as you. Probably he won’t recognize his daddy!” This was first time she saw the withdrawn and mournful Young Mr. Lin’s face break into a dazzling and childlike smile. But the Japanese had unexpectedly closed down the sea lanes and he returned from Sixteen Wharf Landing looking dejected and distracted, just like a wave-ravaged sand castle that was crumbling. As he sat in the corner with his head down, weeping gloomily, his brokenhearted expression made Mrs. Yang think of an abandoned child. A maternal impulse stirred within her and she felt the strong urge to go over and draw him to her breast and comfort him.

  In her whole life, Mrs. Yang had never cried in a man’s arms, not even her husband’s. When Old Yang joined the army, the situation hadn’t been as grave as this. No one had realized that things could get this bad and certainly had no feeling of parting for the last time. Her bitterest weeping found a companion in Young Mr. Lin’s tears, and he also put aside his man’s mask more than once to cry and snivel in her presence.

  Brother Yu in Hangzhou found a job for Young Mr. Lin at the church-run hospital. He brought medicine to the homes of patients and gave shots to those who despised the idea of being sick and thus might spread infections. One evening he came back especially late, and sat there silently in his usual corner of the room, seemingly preoccupied. Mrs. Yang guessed he must be thinking of home again. She had heard many stories about Old Town and Second Sister off and on and could feel just how much Young Mr. Lin loved his family. She didn’t know how to comfort him. Quietly she cooked dinner and brought it to the table, and quietly she brought out her sewing. She was sewing a lined jacket for him. She too had an agile pair of hands. She looked down, sensing that Young Mr. Lin’s gaze was fixed upon her and this made her rather uncomfortable and flustered. There was the sound of a repressed sigh in the room. She put down her sewing and handed him a glass of water. “The Japanese can’t close off the sea lanes forever. You’ll be getting home soon. For now just consider this place as home and the three Yang children as your own…” She seemed to realize that it wasn’t too proper for her to speak like this so she added, “You are their savior and they ought to look upon you as a kind of second father.”

  The little Yang boy was just then playing by the gate, and hearing sounds in the house he timidly went inside. Young Mr. Lin hugged him and let out a stifled sob. Mrs. Yang knew that something serious had happened. Was it his home and family in Old Town? Young Mr. Lin was always listening to the news from Old Town. In Shanghai there was an Old Town Fellow Residents Association and he often went there.

  That night, after the children and the old lady had gone to sleep, Mrs. Yang led Young Mr. Lin to a nook in the little alleyway in back for a talk. They didn’t dare go off too far. Once it was dark, Shanghai was like a dead city. The Japanese military police patrols grabbed anyone they saw.

  Young Mr. Lin stood there facing the wall. He didn’t have the courage to look at Mrs. Yang. This pathetic woman still didn’t know her husband had perished a few months before in Shanxi. Brother Yu had gotten this news in some roundabout way and, unable to bring himself to face her with it, placed this difficult task with Young Mr. Lin. Am I going to tell her or not? A fierce struggle raged within Young Mr. Lin.

  Mrs. Yang wanted to ask about Second Sister and the three Lin children. Young Mr. Lin never stopped sending off letters to Old Town though he never received any reply. Did he finally get a reply today that brought bad news? She didn’t dare voice this question.

  Young Mr. Lin finally turned toward her and drew out an envelope from inside his shirt. Packed in the envelope was money that Brother Yu had collected from various people. Young Mr. Lin didn’t have the courage to say what this was all about, but simply handed the money to her. Mrs. Yang didn’t have to open the heavy envelope to know what it meant. Her legs began to give way, her stomach knotted, and she crouched slowly down on the ground. Then she curled up and convulsed violently as if in a fit of malaria. Young Mr. Lin never expected that her instincts would have been so sharp. He didn’t say a single word but just stood there numbly waiting for her to keen and wail. She ought to have a bitter cry over this. Seconds passed by, then minutes. She didn’t cry. She just lay there contorted and trembling without making the slightest sound.

  Young Mr. Lin stood by awkwardly and helplessly. “It is improper for the unmarried to have physical contact,” the ancients taught. To avoid any suspicion of impropriety, he right then and there made up his mind to move out of the Yang home, even though here were Old Mrs. Yang and the children, the gate was left wide open during the daytime, and at night he slept with the eldest Yang boy in the little space under the stairs. There was nothing at all to be suspicious about, but he still felt he ought to move a distance apart from them. But now he was like an actor who had forgotten the plot and his lines. He stood there blankly on the stage, his mind floating back to Old Town and seeing Second Sister anxiously watching for him. I have to return home alive for Second Sister’s sake…he told himself.

  He heard Mrs. Yang sobbing next to his ear and felt that half his face was damp and hot. He couldn’t figure out how she could now be in his arms. He froze for an instant then grasped her more tightly. Their heads touching, they cried together for a long time, a very long time.

  The next day, life went on as it always had. They decided to conceal this entirely from Old Mrs. Yang and the children. Six months later when the old lady was dying, she held on to Young Mr. Lin with one hand and Mrs. Yang with the other. “I’m going now. My son is there waiting for me. He and I feel at ease with you both being together.” They looked at each other in surprise. Had the Old Lady borne the grief of losing her son in silence all this while?

  As she thought of this scene across the long passage of the years, Mrs. Yang, now with grandchildren surrounding her knees, could not help feeling her heart give a leap. At that earlier time, she was indeed like a wife tied by love to her husband and tied by love to Young Mr. Lin. It was a hopeless feeling. Young Mr. Lin was a man with a family. She had seen the Happy Family Portrait that he had carried concealed on him. His wife was so dignified and beautiful that she herself felt utterly unworthy. Shanghai during the Japanese occupation had been named the Isolated Island. Would the Isolated Island be forever cut off and all alone? She didn’t dare think about the future, didn’t dare imagine what this home would be like when there would be no Young Mr. Lin.

  4.

  THE GRANDDAUGHTER OF the Shanghai “relative” said, “When the news of Grandpa’s death reached Shanghai, Grandma was just then sick and unable to get out of bed. She wanted me to buy a piece of black crepe. She sewed a black sleeve band and wore it for a whole year.”

  She called them Grandpa and Grandma, without adding “your” and “my.” This confused me, as if my grandfather were actually her grandfather, and our family with our blood ties to him had instead become outsiders of no relationship standing. Impatiently I corrected her. “Your grandma wore black crepe for my grandpa.” She laughed.
“Ever since I was little I thought the person in that photograph in my grandma’s room was my grandpa. Nobody explained it to me. I also just took it for granted that your family was another of Grandpa’s families. Didn’t all the men in the old society have several families?”

  So, my grandfather held such an important place in a family with which I hadn’t the slightest connection! Even though he left Shanghai and returned to Old Town, he was still that indispensable member of their family. Whenever I reflected on this, odd and mixed-up feelings would spring up in my head. It’s hard to describe the sensation they produced.

  I couldn’t help being curious and speculating how my grandmother would have felt had she known all this. I remember that every year Grandma would buy some high-quality dried bamboo shoots and olives, and sew them up in cloth and hand them to Grandpa to send to the Shanghai relative. During the “Cultural Revolution” when Grandpa was shut up in the study sessions, she even wrote replies on his behalf to the Shanghai relative.

  Was Grandma ever envious or jealous? And that Shanghai woman, adoring and clinging to a man whose main thought was to return to his own home, who never for one instant forgot his own home, and who longed to be reunited with his beautiful wife—who could say what this tasted like for her?

  The old-fashioned women of Chinese tradition were old, old books written in the classical style, deep and vast and far beyond our understanding.

  Mrs. Yang received the news of Young Mr. Lin setting out from Old Town on his journey and supposed that he would be bringing his wife so that they could revisit all the old places together. In his letters he often said he wanted to bring Second Sister to Shanghai to meet her and the children. It was because Second Sister was going to brighten her home with her presence that she swept and cleaned the place over and over again, and over and over again tried on her clothes. That’s also why she removed and hid all traces of Young Mr. Lin in her house. She fixed up the master bedroom for them and bought a complete set of brand new bedclothes. She herself planned to move into that little space under the stairs that Young Mr. Lin had lived in then. It still contained the single bed and the little dresser that he had used. For twenty years she had considered Young Mr. Lin as her own man, but she had never felt jealous or schemed to replace Second Sister. She just always humbly and modestly hid behind the figure of Second Sister and felt an inner admiration for this Old Town woman whom she had never met.

  Sometimes back then a frightening idea had even flashed in her mind, a hope that the war would go on and on and the sea lanes to Old Town would be sealed off forever. Such thoughts were unforgivable sins and she would reprove herself severely every time she had them. But she never revealed any word or deed aimed at detaining Young Mr. Lin. She actively assisted him in his search for a road home. It was she who introduced the Old Town Fellow Residents Association to him. She even helped him to find out how to go overland back to Old Town. No matter what the day and age, there are always people brave enough to do business at the risk of their lives. Old Town’s silks and specialty products could still be bought on the market and she relayed this discovery to Young Mr. Lin. It showed that in addition to going by sea there were other ways home. Together they leafed through maps, devising a return route. In those days there was a railway going from Shanghai to Hankou. From Hankou he could take a roundabout route through Jiangxi and cross over the mountains to Old Town. Such a way was very long and dangerous. She asked Young Mr. Lin to take her eldest son with him as a traveling companion. She told him to give the boy an education and send him back to Shanghai when the war ended. All this on her part actually made Young Mr. Lin hesitant. Every time the hope of returning home was kindled within him, he would immediately sink into sorrow over the idea of their parting.

  Always after the children were asleep they would discuss important moves. At that time in Shanghai there were nightly blackouts so they would sit face-to-face at the dining table. The main room had a lattice wall of glass and on every small square of the lattice were pasted strips of white rice-character paper. With the weak rays of light from the small sky well penetrating through, they could still dimly see each other. Young Mr. Lin lowered his head and let out a deep sigh. She sensed that he could not bear leaving this family. That was all she needed to know, and tears of happiness and satisfaction flowed down her cheeks. She reached out and, grasping his pale and delicate hand in hers, comforted him and urged him to leave Shanghai.

  My Shanghai relative’s granddaughter and I surreptitiously conjectured about romance between my grandpa and her grandma, these two illfated mandarin ducks who had both lost their mates in the chaos of war. Did they, in occupied Shanghai, in their forlorn despair, in guilt and the reproaches of conscience, have “a flash of thirsty pleasure”?51

  But let’s not forget that they were both Christians. She and I were both studying history at university when Freud was all the rage, and we discussed sex frankly and without inhibition.

  Actually, that was beside the point. Is there anything that touches the depths of one’s being more than two souls who were so entwined?

  Day after day, Young Mr. Lin struggled with his irresolution. Finally he decided he would go. They were divided in their views about taking the eldest Yang son. Mrs. Yang said that she wouldn’t allow him to leave unless he took Number One Son. Young Mr. Lin said that he couldn’t let a child risk this kind of danger. He told how he had been separated on the Yangzi River from his orderly, Young Li. If anything happened to this child, he could not face his former colleague Yang and Old Mrs. Yang.

  Just then, Mrs. Yang received a returned letter, one that Young Mr. Lin had written to Second Sister. Some good-hearted person at the post office in Old Town added a few words on the back of the envelope: “The Lin Residence at 26 Officials Lane has been destroyed. The death or survival of its residents is not clear.” Should I give this letter to Young Mr. Lin? Mrs. Yang was extremely hesitant to do this.

  That evening when Young Mr. Lin returned to the Yang home and the children all shouted out, “Foster Daddy!” he showed no reaction. Looking numbed, he straightway buried himself in his little space under the stairs. Mrs. Yang entered and saw him silently weeping as he held up his Happy Family Portrait in front of him. As it happened, he had just found out from the Old Town Fellow Residents Association that the Japanese had bombed Old Town a second time. Renowned Officials Lane and Stipend Lane now no longer existed! It was also said that the head of the Old Town Salt Monopoly Bureau and his family, more than ten people, had been blasted into bloody pieces. There was nothing left of them that could be identified with any certainty. And that family’s home had been just on the other side of the wall of the Lin home!

  Young Mr. Lin gazed wretchedly at Mrs. Yang. “Second Sister and the children wouldn’t have been staying in the house, I suppose?” he said, seemingly out of nowhere.

  Mrs. Yang’s pocket held that returned letter. She knew what he meant. Crouching down beside him, she said, “Second Sister is such an intelligent and capable woman. She would know how to protect herself and the children. I’m sure she’d have taken them with her and escaped from Old Town early on.”

  “Where could she go? A woman with three children wandering in hardship from one place to the next. And without money. It’s been a long time since I sent her money.”

  “The children are grown. They can look after themselves and look after their mother too.”

  Young Mr. Lin seemed willing to believe Mrs. Yang’s reasoning and he calmed down some. A moment later his face grew all contorted again. “Second Sister looks soft and quiet, but inside she’s strong and unyielding. She’d rather die with dignity than go on living without it.”

  Mrs. Yang got up and covered his mouth with her hand. He was crying his heart out in a keening and mournful way. She cried too but was it for unfortunate Second Sister, or for her own hopeless feelings?

  For a while after that, they didn’t mention Old Town. The days passed and Young Mr. Lin proved himself to
be the man of this house in deed as well as name. Every day he went out to earn money. And every month he handed over to Mrs. Yang the exact amount of the miserable salary he earned at the hospital. Every evening Mrs. Yang sat under the lamp with its black cloth covering making clothes for Young Mr. Lin. Autumn had just begun and she was sewing a lined cotton jacket for him. She even dug out a piece of fine silk that she had from her dowry and was thinking of making him something for next summer. She was like an ostrich, her head buried in her own world, a world in which she supposed that Young Mr. Lin would stay with her, year after year.

  The peace and calm of life in this home lasted until a navigation route to Old Town was opened. The news of this had just been made public and already boat tickets for the next three months had been sold clean out. The shipping company would no longer issue tickets beyond three months in the future. Young Mr. Lin, who had been beside himself in excitement over this development, now lost all poise in despondency over his inability to buy a ticket. His unmistakable change of emotions that day was like a pair of scissors cutting Mrs. Yang’s delusional world into pieces. He was Second Sister’s man. He was Second Sister’s man every minute of every day. When it came time for the property to revert to its original owner, she was happy for his happiness and despondent in his despondency. Late at night she often cried herself awake from dreaming. They were two lives in adversity and tribulation adhering to each other. I am in you. You are in me. We are indistinguishable from each other. Today if we were pulled apart—one inch, one centimeter—while still living, oh, I could never bear the pain.

  Sometimes she felt so very much alone in her unhappiness. Young Mr. Lin couldn’t understand how she felt.

  Young Mr. Lin resigned from his job. Now, early every morning, he would be at the dock under the moon and stars to wait for someone to return a ticket. When the sun sank into the western sky, the same scene played at the gateway: he would come home hanging his head and looking upset. She held back her pain and did the best she could to appear tenderhearted. She filled a pan of water for him to wash his face with and squeezed out a hot towel and handed it to him. She silently accompanied his incessant sighs.