by Eileen Chang
Chih-yung smiled. “Oh, I see,” he said.
The day after the Japanese surrender, Bebe dragged Julie out to celebrate. They sat opposite each other in a European bakery by the large bright windows, but in fact Julie was both anxious and joyful.
Chih-yung spoke about his old colleagues—obviously, he had heard some news via Araki. “Such unthinkable fools,” he sneered. “One after another they sit at home waiting to be arrested.”
Then he smiled. “Yesterday the Japanese lady here showed me a huge cabinet, suggesting I could hide in it if there was ever an inspection. I can’t hide in there. It would be much too embarrassing for me to be found inside a cabinet.”
“That’s him,” thought Julie. What he fears most is an assault on his pride. In the morning, before leaving the apartment, Julie would always tell him to carry his shoes in his hands and put them on outside.
Chih-yung would pause for a moment, then say, “I better put them on now. Otherwise it would be too embarrassing if Third Aunt suddenly opened the door.”
Chih-yung stomped noisily down the corridor in his leather shoes. As she lay in bed her heart shuddered with each step he took.
“Third Aunt knows for sure,” he frequently speculated.
Julie knew that her aunt knew, and her heart sank at the thought, but she always replied with a worried smile, “No, she doesn’t.”
Julie saw Chih-yung out the back door. It was a shorter distance and wouldn’t be as noisy as shutting the front door, which Judy would certainly hear. The kitchen door opened onto the rear terrace. Beyond the iron balustrade of the long and narrow terrace, the vast expanse of Shanghai opened out in the distance. Wisps of clouds buffeted in the gentle breeze; the horizon appeared so high at the edge of the world. At the end of the terrace, the flimsy back entrance with wooden horizontal slats resembled a humble cottage door. In the gentle morning breeze Julie only wore a long dark green singlet that covered her briefs, her bare legs exposed, her thighs as slim as her waist.
After he left, Julie latched the wooden door, returned to her room, and emptied the cigarette butts from the mosquito coil tray next to the bed.
As it wasn’t possible to use an alarm clock, Chih-yung would focus his mind before going to sleep and wake up at the right time, then kiss Julie once and nudge one leg aside, leaving her other leg bent with her foot still on the bed.
“Again?” she’d say hazily.
Julie didn’t want to wake up, preferring to just lie beneath the canopy of the mosquito net. As the ship lurched from side to side, she drifted off to sleep, as if being rocked in a cradle.
“They have a huge green mosquito net, as big as a whole room,” he joked when they were back in the Japanese family’s house. “They hang it up at night.”
“Just like in an Ukiyo-e woodblock print,” Julie replied. She didn’t mention that she found the mistress of the household quite attractive, unlike the chubby long-faced women who hung mosquito nets in Japanese woodblock prints, women with faces that looked a little like half-full sacks of flour.
He went to close a slatted door. She stood up and followed him. “Don’t … haven’t you only just recovered?”
“Don’t worry. I’m fine now.”
She still thought it inappropriate to be intimate in someone else’s house during a time of danger—especially in an atmosphere of hostility.
Chih-yung closed the other slatted door. Julie stood watching the silhouette of him slipping on his cotton shoes.
The large wooden bed wasn’t as comfortable as her own narrow couch. Perhaps because their encounter this time was rather listless, she felt the need to demonstrate her affection. She curled up in his embrace and suddenly murmured, “I want to go with you.”
She was so close to him she could feel a twinge of fear pass through Chih-yung, but he calmly replied, “Wouldn’t that be both of us surrendering.”
“Right now I have no way out anyway.”
“That’s only temporary.”
In her mind’s eye the countryside was a barren land stretching for a thousand miles, like a bird’s-eye-view photograph in which, for some reason, light and shade, protrusions and depressions were reversed to make paths between the fields look like trenches as deep as a person’s height, in which people rushed back and forth. But in this infertile land of crimson mud, there was no place to hide the smallest item, even the metal container Auntie Han brought with her, unless one buried it in a cavern.
Chih-yung and Hsiunan probably had connections and solutions, unlike Julie who knew nothing of such matters. Perhaps it’d be all right if he went. But just hand him over to them like this?
“Could you go to England or America?” she asked. Her voice was barely audible, but as soon as the words left her lips she felt another strong wave of fear pulse through Chih-yung. To be a coolie? Illegal entry by a war criminal. She would have no way of supporting herself without a degree, so why drag him along? It was all because of her mother that, like a seaman’s daughter who always faced the sea, Julie would think about escaping to a foreign land whenever danger loomed, despite being aware of the hardships of living far away from home. Rachel had stressed again and again how difficult the average student’s life really was abroad, fearing Julie wanted to go just for fun.
Chih-yung opened the slatted door. The Japanese lady’s young daughter had come to invite Julie over for tea to thank her because she had presented a gift, as well as to pray for everyone’s safety.
She must have already come by and, seeing the door closed, went back to report to her parents. Julie furrowed her brow.
The living room was fitted with a traditional tatami straw-mat floor and rice-paper screen doors, though the host sat on a chair. The stout man, a typical Japanese military officer, nodded in greeting.
The little girl, who had a pageboy hairstyle, slid open the screen door, carried the tea tray in, and knelt down to place the tray on the tatami mat. The hostess poured the tea and served it. Offerings had been placed on the table in front of the altar dedicated to Buddha, along with a bronze chime and wooden fish, but the scene didn’t look right to Julie. Then the host struck the chime and recited some scriptures while the hostess chanted in a manner that seemed discordant with the way Chinese monks chanted sutras.
The windows and the weathered latticework, a faded green, all faced west, making the room very hot. The chanting and reciting dragged on past sunset, though Julie didn’t understand a single word. The exotic atmosphere, the almost tropical heat, for some reason reminded Julie of a scene in a novel written about a black youth who lived in the West Indies, which described his returning home during the high-school summer break. The small wooden house with a tin roof faced the sea, its back to the hills, making it as hot as an oven. His mother toiled a whole day under the eaves, cooking a local dish called green parrotfish curry, with piles of red and yellow curry powders at the ready.
The ritual finally ended and Julie returned to Chih-yung’s room. It was about time for her to leave.
“They chant sutras from morning to night,” Chih-yung grumbled.
Julie again felt she should ask Chih-yung if he needed money but held back.
“Maybe you shouldn’t come tomorrow.”
“Yes,” she conceded with a detached smile. “Wouldn’t want to bump into anyone on the way here again.”
When the tramcar reached the Bund it encountered a victory parade and couldn’t continue. Everyone had to disembark and Julie found herself in the middle of a writhing crowd. She squeezed her way past the Shanghai Race Club. The entire length of Nanking Road was a sea of thousands of bobbing heads. The usually flat winding road became three-dimensional, standing up in the dusk as if covered with insects, wriggling and squirming. Through a series of ceremonial arches set up in the middle of the road, a convoy of jeeps and military trucks slowly passed by, but everything seemed insignificant compared to the vast hordes of people everywhere. Even the bursting of firecrackers could barely be heard, the occasiona
l pop and bang and loud echoing explosions all muffled.
An American air force officer sat high on the hood of a vehicle. A group of men walked along next to the jeep, stretching their arms out to touch his leg. The young Jewish man was obviously a little overwhelmed by the enthusiasm of the crowd. His eyes sparkled with joy under his boat-shaped cap, and he was smiling so hard it exaggerated his hooked nose, though his smile also betrayed embarrassment. Although homosexuality seemed quite common in America, especially in the military, he obviously felt a little awkward with many Asian men caressing his thigh. Julie only saw that one face out of all the hundreds of thousands of faces in the crowd, though he never saw her, something she found unfathomable.
Julie did her best to walk slowly against the tide of humanity, but she knew she had feet of clay and going against the tide of the times was doomed to failure. She moved at a glacial pace, thinking to herself: It takes three hours to hit upon one metaphor, and still the fear I won’t understand? So extremely tedious.
The throngs of people were jubilant. Women strolled leisurely about but apparently no one took advantage of them—even the pickpockets had taken the day off.
By the time she finally arrived home Julie was exhausted. She shook her head, groaned, and collapsed onto her bed.
Two days later, Hsiunan showed up at night with Chih-yung and arranged to pick him up the next morning. After seeing Hsiunan off, Julie dropped into Judy’s room to inform her, “Shao Chih-yung is here.”
Judy came out into the living room to meet him. She beamed with warmth when she greeted Chih-yung, acting friendlier than usual.
Chih-yung had exchanged his shabby army uniform for a Western suit, but he still looked as thin as he did when he had just recovered from his illness. He leaned against the steam heater. “My little rebellion didn’t get off the ground,” he said in a self-mocking tone. Then he spoke of the chaotic events in central China after the cease-fire.
While Julie helped prepare dinner, Judy chuckled. “Shao Chih-yung is behaving like he wants to be emperor.”
Julie also laughed. She returned to the living room and asked, “Do you want to bathe? It might not be as convenient in the countryside.”
She searched unsuccessfully for a clean bath towel, and handed him a face towel first before finally finding a large towel, which she brought to the bathroom. Julie couldn’t resist running the tips of her fingers down his golden spine. His back was tight and supple, as if water would roll off his skin and dry without the need of a towel.
This was the first time he openly spent the night at the apartment. After dinner, Judy immediately retreated to her room. All the doors along the corridor were closed tight like an impregnable wall, as if the doors all knew the two of them would embark on a night of ca-rousing. Julie felt uncomfortable.
At the Japanese family’s house Julie had once said to Chih-yung, “If it’s no trouble, please give me the letters I wrote to you. I’d like to write about us.”
Hsiunan must have brought the letters with her. After Hsiunan departed, Chih-yung handed over a large bundle to Julie. “Here are all your letters.” His eyes betrayed a hint of contempt.
Why? Did he think it was an excuse to get all those steamy letters back?
She couldn’t help thinking of the marriage certificate buried in the trunk.
That day he probably had a function to attend in the evening because he came back early, around two o’clock, and said, “Let’s take a nap.” The nap lasted for two hours. “Not done yet?” she asked in amazement every so often.
“Ow, ow! I’m going to be in pain again.”
Getting out of bed felt like leaving a morning movie screening. The sun was still high and she didn’t know what to do with the rest of the day, making her feel empty.
Chih-yung probably felt the same way. He asked if she had an inkstone, then said, “Buy a blank marriage certificate, all right?”
Julie didn’t like secret marriage ceremonies, believing them to be nothing more than a self-deception. But she recalled seeing large marriage certificates with red dragon and phoenix designs in the shopwindows where Bebe took her to buy velvet flowers at the embroidered goods stores on Fourth Avenue. She loved the atmosphere of that street and set off alone, taking the tram to Fourth Avenue. She chose a gold-colored blank certificate with the most classical design, which also happened to be the largest.
“Just one?” asked Chih-yung when he saw it.
Julie stared at him with a startled expression. “I didn’t know we needed two.”
It hadn’t occurred to Julie that each party should retain a certificate. The shop clerk hadn’t mentioned it, either. She didn’t want to imagine what had gone through the shop clerk’s mind—naturally, he would assume it was for an unofficial union and the certificate for the bride was proof of said union. Most old-school merchants like him are kindhearted and wouldn’t disabuse Julie. She wondered what had become of the other certificate.
The shop was too far away to go back and buy a matching certificate. She felt depleted and drained.
Chih-yung smiled as he prepared the ink stick and wrote, “Shao Chih-yung and Julie Sheng hereby contract to live forever as husband and wife, in harmony and tranquility, serenity and blissfulness.” He then said, “I know you don’t like stringed instruments so I didn’t use them as convention dictated, ‘As harmonious as the chin and the sze.’” He smiled again. “In this case I’ll have to put my name in front of yours.”
The two of them signed. Julie took possession of the one copy for safekeeping. But as it was so big she couldn’t find a good place to store it, nor did she have a strip of silk to tie it if she rolled it up. She ended up hiding it at the bottom of a trunk and never showed it to anyone.
“Araki wants to go to Yen-an,” Chih-yung told Julie on their last night together. “Quite a few Japanese officers have thrown in their lot with the Communist Party in order to be able to keep fighting. When you see him tell him it would be better for him to return to Japan. There is still hope for the future of his country.”
Now at last he talked about Miss K’ang.
“When I was getting ready to leave she cried nonstop. She’s just as beautiful when she cries. The hospital compound was chaotic with people coming and going and rushing about, but she just lay in bed crying. ‘He’s a married man,’ she lamented. ‘What can I do?’”
So he only came after he and Miss K’ang parted like lovers, saying their final farewell.
“Lay in bed crying.” Where was that bed? In the nursing staff’s dormitory? Was he allowed in there? In the hinterlands perhaps a person of influence can go anywhere he likes. In the West, in the days before sofas, wasn’t it common for people to receive guests at their bedside?
Once again, Julie attempted to excuse and justify what she had just heard because she couldn’t face reality. Of course it was his bed. He was about to leave so of course it was his bedroom. She lay on his bed crying.
Chih-yung had never said whether or not they had sexual relations, but what he insinuated already headed down that path.
Now Julie was convinced that Miss K’ang was a manipulative girl who, despite being only seventeen or eighteen, had matured early and already must have had a few years of experience in the real world under her belt. But hinterlands were notoriously conservative places. Miss K’ang wouldn’t dare share intimacies, and so Chih-yung must have idolized Miss K’ang even more. Julie felt this to be a sore point that she couldn’t broach with him. He still felt insecure about Miss K’ang, and to him that really was their final farewell.
During the day, Julie’s single-bed couch in the corner of the L-shaped room was covered with a bronze-colored brocade bedspread and a pile of colorful cushions.
It had never felt particularly cramped before when the two of them shared that bed, though it did feel like they each possessed an extra arm, which she wished she could have amputated. Now it felt very crowded, as if two trees had fallen on top of each other, branches entan
gled, each getting in the way with the other.
That summer the heat made it unbearable to lay against each other, as if suffocating on smoke, but soon after peeling apart, they’d roll into each other again. Like busy little ants scampering up an endless range of volcanoes, only to tumble down before clambering up again. Suddenly lavender lightning flashed several times, illuminating the room then throwing it into darkness again. After a brief duration, deafening peals of thunder rolled past, slow then fast, hurtling down to the earth from every angle of the sky.
A heavy rain fell for a long time, a cacophony of splatters and splashes, while in the darkness glassy sprouts seemed to grow out of the ground, luxuriant white weeds, followed by trees and a forest of rain.
“I’m so glad I have no reason to go outdoors.” Julie laughed. Chih-yung paused. “Hey,” he responded, “perhaps you could try not to be quite so self-centered.”
“And you’re not in any danger going back home? Does anyone follow you?” it suddenly occurred to Julie to ask.
Chih-yung smiled. “The secret police have long known I come here every day.”
Julie said nothing but looked obviously shaken. Her vanity solidified in Chih-yung’s mind. He used to fear that Julie would suddenly fall in love with someone else, like Natasha in War and Peace. Later, when he realized she had no second thoughts, he stopped worrying about her loyalty and became less restrained. What other choice did she have?
Actually, Julie didn’t harbor any thoughts of leaving him; she simply couldn’t help reminiscing now that the bed seemed too small and narrow for them.
There were so many memories crammed into the corners of this small room—it felt suffocating without recollecting any of them. The wall light illuminated the brick-red curtain, casting a red glow.
Finally the day came when the two of them became entangled to the breaking point. Chih-yung, annoyed, sat up to smoke a cigarette. “This is a matter of trust.”
Julie always felt instant antipathy toward people who put her down with hyperbolic accusations. Chih-yung’s words sounded all too familiar. Do fickle men in love stories always say things like that? Julie slid behind him and off the bed without saying a word.
