Shifu, You'll Do Anything For a Laugh (18 page)

The upper half of her body was all but swallowed up by the semicircular shade, so he couldn't see the expression on her face. About all he could see was the dark skirt clinging to her legs to reveal her unattractive, protruding kneecaps. She didn't make a sound, as if his suggestion had fallen on deaf ears. Fewer and fewer cars passed up and down the street, but she kept hailing them, taxis and non-taxis alike, trying to get one of them to stop.

After the rain died down a bit, they finally managed to flag down a red Xiali taxi. He opened the door and let her in first. Then he climbed in and closed the door. “Where to?” the cabbie asked impassively.

“Shen Garden!” she said before he could answer.

“Shen Garden?” the cabbie replied. “Where's that?”

“Forget Shen Garden,” he blurted out. “Take us to Yuan-ming Gardens.”

“No, Shen Garden!” she said in a flat but insistent voice.

“Where is Shen Garden?” the cabbie asked again.

“I said, forget Shen Garden,” he repeated. “Take us to Yuanming Gardens.”

“Would you make up your minds?” the cabbie said impatiently.

“I told you we want to go to Yuanming Gardens, so take us there.” He was beginning to sound shrill.

The cabbie turned back to look at him. He nodded to the gloomy driver. Three times she repeated her desire to go to Shen Garden, but the driver sped down the wide-open street without a response, sending water spraying to both sides. A strange sense of tragic solemnity overcame him as he sat there. Sneaking a look at her, he saw what looked like a pouting smile on her lips. He also noticed that her hand was shaking as she gripped the door handle, as if she were trying to make up her mind to do something rash. He held her right hand tightly to keep her from opening the door and jumping out of the taxi. The hand was cold and clammy, like a dead fish. But it didn't seem as if she wanted to pull it back, since it didn't even twitch. He held it tight, anyway.

The taxi turned onto a narrow street cluttered on both sides with light-colored trash, with the occasional glint of green watermelon rind. Colorful sheets of flypaper draped in front of roadside diners fluttered in the wind and rain. Coarse, dirty women in revealing blouses leaned against doorways, cigarettes dangling from their mouths beneath bored expressions. The sight took his thoughts vaguely back to the town where she lived. “Driver,” he said anxiously, “where are we?”

The driver didn't reply. The interior of the taxi was steaming up; the sound of the windshield wipers snapping back and forth was unnerving.

“Where are you taking us?” He was nearly shouting.

“Take it easy!” the driver shot back angrily. “You said you wanted to go to Yuanming Gardens, didn't you?”

“Why are you taking us this way?”

“Which way would you like me to take you?” the driver asked coldly as he slowed down. “Come on, tell me, which way do you want to go?”

“How should I know? But this way seems wrong.” Then, softening his tone of voice, he said, “You're the driver, you know the way better than I do.”

“I'm glad to hear you say that,” the driver replied scornfully. “This is a shortcut. It'll shorten the trip by at least three kilometers.”

“Thank you,” he said.

“I was going to knock off for the day to go home and get some sleep,” the driver said. “Who in his right mind would be out in weather like this? I just felt sorry for you folks… .”

“Thank you,” he repeated. “Thank you.”

“I'm not out to cheat you,” the driver said. “Just give me an extra ten yuan. It was your good luck to run into an honest man like me. Now if… if you think you're paying too much, get out now and you don't owe me a cent.”

As he looked out the window at the gray sky, he said:

“It's only an extra ten yuan, isn't it, driver?”

The taxi sped out of the small street and turned into an even more deserted dirt road with deep muddy puddles. The car raced madly along, splashing water on the roadside trees. The driver was cursing under his breath, either at the road or at the people, hard to tell. Meanwhile, he sat there biting his tongue, his mind filled with ominous premonitions.

The taxi forged its way off the dirt road and onto a gleaming asphalt street. With one last curse, the driver swerved around another corner and screeched to a halt in front of an open gate.

“Is this it?” he asked.

“It's a side entrance. The Western Garden is down the way a bit,” the driver said. “I could tell that's what you two wanted to see.” He looked down at the meter, added ten yuan to the amount, and handed it through a hole in the wire divider.

“I can't give you a receipt,” the driver said.

He ignored him as he opened the door and got out. Then he held the door for her, but she climbed out the other side.

The cabbie turned his car around and drove off. He cursed softly to himself, but once the curse was out, instead of harboring ill thoughts toward the driver, he actually felt grateful to him.

It was still raining. Leaves shone on the roadside trees, clean and incredibly appealing. She stood there in the rain, her face pale as she gazed blankly off into the distance. Taking her by the arm, he said:

“Let's go, dear. Here's your Shen Garden.”

Submissively, she let him lead her through the gate into the garden, where peddlers manning stalls along the way shouted out invitingly:

“Umbrellas, umbrellas here. Beautiful, sturdy umbrellas . .

He walked up to one of the stalls and bought two umbrellas, a red one and a black one. Then he walked up to the ticket counter, where he bought a pair of admission tickets. The ticket seller had a large, doughy white face. Her penciled eyebrows looked like two thick green worms.

“What time do you close?” he asked her.

“We never close,” doughface replied.

Holding their umbrellas over their heads, they walked into Yuanming Gardens, he in front holding the black umbrella, she following with the red one. The rain beat a steady tattoo on the plastic skins. Clusters or pairs of people passed by in front of them. Some were strolling casually, gaudy umbrellas in hand, while those without umbrellas were scurrying along in the downpour.

“I thought we'd be the only miserable souls….” He regretted the words as soon as they left his mouth. So he quickly changed directions. “But this is special. If it weren't raining so hard, the place would be packed. It always is.”

He felt like saying, “Today Yuanming Gardens belong to just you and me.” But he caught himself just in time. Together they strolled along the winding path, which glistened like glass. Half-grown lotus leaves and cattails floated on top of the pond off to one side, where frogs leaped along the water's edge.

“Wow, isn't that something!” he shouted excitedly. “Now if only there were a water buffalo grazing by the pond and a flock of white geese gliding on the surface, it would be perfect.” Lovingly, he looked at her pale face and said, his voice filled with emotion, “You always sense what's best. If not for you, I'd never have had a chance to see Yuanming Gardens like this.”

With a heavy sigh, she said:

“This isn't my Shen Garden.”

“You're wrong, this
is
your Shen Garden.” He felt like a stage performer. In a tone of voice pregnant with meaning, he added, “Of course, it's
my
Shen Garden too. It's
our
Shen Garden.”

“How can you have a Shen Garden?” The sudden sharpness in her eyes made him feel as if he had no place to hide. She shook her head. “Shen Garden is mine, it's mine. Don't you dare try to take it away from me!”

The excitement of a moment before turned to ashes; the scenery around him lost its appeal.

“You're squashing them!” she shrieked in alarm.

Instinctively, he jumped to the side of the path, as she cried out even more shrilly, “You're squashing them!”

When he looked down, he saw an army of tiny jumping frogs. No bigger than soybeans, they were fully formed, little pocket-sized amphibians. Countless numbers of the little things lay squashed on the path, forming perfect outlines of his footprints. She squatted down and moved the little carcasses around with her finger, which was nearly bloodless, with a gray fingernail and an accumulation of dirt. Feelings of disgust, like dregs of filth, welled up from the bottom of his heart.

“Little miss,” he said mockingly, “I didn't squash any more than you did. That's right, you didn't squash any fewer than I did. Sure, my feet may be bigger than yours, but you take more steps, so you squashed at least as many as I did.”

She stood up and muttered, “That's right, I squashed at least as many as you did.” She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and said, “Froggies, froggies, how come you're so small?” Then she burst into tears.

“Enough of that, little miss,” he said almost jokingly to mask his disgust. “Two-thirds of the people in this world are struggling against deep waters and raging fires, you know!”

She stared at him through her tears.

“They're so small,” she said, “but their bodies are perfectly formed!”

“Perfect or not, they're only frogs!” He grabbed her by the arm and pulled her forward. But she threw her umbrella to the ground and, with her free hand, tried to peel his hand away

“We can't spend the night here all because of a few frogs!” he said angrily as he shook off her hand. But he could see in her eyes that it was futile to try to get her walking again, if she was going to have to squash more frogs in the process. So he picked up her umbrella, took off his shirt, and used it like a broom to shoo the disgusting things off the path ahead. Scattering madly, the little frogs eventually opened up a narrow lane for them. “Hurry up,” he said with a tug, “let's go.”

Ultimately, they wound up in front of an area covered with rubble. By then the rain had all but stopped and the sky was clearing. After folding their umbrellas, they climbed to the top of a huge boulder that had, sometime in the past, been carefully chiseled by stonemasons. He wrung out his rain-soaked shirt, then shook it out and put it back on. He sneezed, putting as much effort into it as possible to win her sympathy; it didn't work. Shaking his head in mockery of himself, he stood atop the rock and, like all mountain climbers who have reached a summit, thrust out his chest and gulped in the clean air. His mood turned bright and sunny, like the sky, now that the rain had stopped. The air is so clean and fresh here, he was about to remark to her. But he didn't. It was as if they were the only people anywhere in that vast garden, and to him that seemed almost miraculous. Now that he was in a good mood, he took another look at the rubble-strewn ground around him. The huge chiseled rocks were so famous, so evocative, had been framed in so many lenses and shown up in so many poems, yet now they were as common as rocks anywhere. They stood silently, yet somehow seemed to be unburdening themselves of thousands upon thousands of words. They were, in the end, silent stone giants. There in front of the ruins, a pond over which a fountain had sprayed water two centuries earlier was virtually covered by waterweeds, sweet flag, and reeds. Wild grasses he couldn't name flourished in the cracks between rocks.

After helping one another down from the boulder, they went over and climbed another one that was even higher and bigger. Cool winds swept past, slowly drying the clothing that clung to their bodies. The hem of her black skirt began to flutter in the breeze. When he rubbed his hand over the rock, which had been washed clean by the rain, a clean, fresh aroma rose up to greet him. As if a deep, dark secret had been revealed to him, he said:

“Smell this. It's the smell of a rock.”

She was gazing fixedly at a stone column that had once supported some large edifice; she looked as if she hadn't heard him. Her gaze seemed capable of boring into the column to discover what was deep inside. At that moment he noticed the strands of gray hair by her temples. A long sigh rose up from the depths of his heart. He reached over and picked up a strand of hair that had fallen to her shoulder and said with heartfelt emotion:

“The time just flies by, and here we are, getting old.”

She responded by revealing what was on her mind:

“The words carved on these rocks will never change, will they?”

“Rocks change,” he said. “The cliché that seas dry up and rocks rot away, but the heart never changes is nothing but a beautiful fantasy.”

“But in Shen Garden nothing ever changes.” She was still staring at the rocks, as if conversing with them, while he was reduced to being an inconsequential audience of one. But he was determined to respond to her comment. In a loud voice, he said:

“Not a single thing in this world is eternal. Take this famous garden, for instance. Two hundred years ago, when the Qing emperor built it, no one could have imagined that in the short space of two centuries it would be reduced to ruins. Back then, the marble stones in the vast halls on which the emperor and his ladies took their pleasure might now be the rocks on which commoners have built a pigsty.”

Even he sensed how dry and inane his comment was, little more than nonsense. He knew she hadn't heard a word, so he didn't go on. Taking a damp pack of cigarettes out of his pocket, he picked out one that was relatively dry and lit it with his lighter.

A pair of magpies flew past above them and landed on the top of a distant tree, where they chirped noisily. He felt like saying, See how free birds are! But he'd gotten into the habit of swallowing his comments before they broke loose. Just then, a joyous squeal erupted from her mouth and sparks lit up the darkness in her eyes. He cast a surprised look at her, then looked where she was pointing. There in the gray-blue sky was a gorgeous rainbow. She was hopping around like a little girl and shouting at the top of her lungs:

“Look, look!”

Her joy was infectious. The multicolored bridge arching across the sky drove all thoughts of the dark realities of life out of his head, and he was instantly immersed in childlike delights. Without being aware of it, they had drawn close together, as they gazed intimately into each other's eyes. No evasions or sidesteps, no hesitation or wavering; first their hands joined naturally, and then they fell just as naturally into each other's arms. They kissed.