Alice Apartments is the quietest spot in the entire city. This quiet does not resemble the unruffled calm of a maiden. It is the quiet of a woman on shore straining to catch sight of her husband at sea, a forced quiet. Here is a fantasy land purchased at the price of loneliness and relinquished youth. In this fantasy land, one day is a hundred years. The streets of Shanghai are filled with would-be Alices, women who are discontent with being ordinary, women full of dreams. Opportunities are severely limited in this city of freedom. Women who make it into these apartments are the elite corps among Alices.
If you were to take the roof off Alice Apartments, you would see a charming world of satin, gauze, velvet, and tassels. Even the wood furniture glows with a silken light. There is a profusion of soft, bright fabrics. The footstool standing next to the bathtub, the cushion on the sofa, the bed curtains, the table covers, all are richly embroidered with resplendent threads. The colors are magnificent; of red alone there are a hundred shades. Flowers run riot everywhere: embossed on lampshades, carved on dressers, worked into the glass of the picture windows, and sprinkled all over the wallpaper, not to mention those that stand in vases, hide inside handkerchiefs, and sit submerged in jasmine tea. Violetscented cologne, rose-colored lipstick, nail polish the shades of impatiens, dresses smelling faintly of chrysanthemum . . . these and more proliferated with all their coquetry at Alice Apartments. Flirtatious in the extreme, and feminine to the uttermost. This is a woman’s world. No other place in this city of concrete and steel is so soft, so warm. The light fixtures are shaded to bathe everything in a gentle, dreamy glow. Everything is so supple that you feel that if you were to try to grasp it, it would flow out from between your fingers.
Something else is special about Alice Apartments: a surfeit of mirrors. Mirrors on both sides of the doors, by the bed, next to the dresser, over the sink, on the vanity table; tiny mirrors in powder compacts; and, finally, mirrors next to pillows, to throw light onto the walls for amusement. Everybody therefore appears in doubles at the Alice Apartments, in loneliness or in joy: one is real and the other a reflection; one is authentic and the other an illusion. Songs from the gramophone are also echoed in the apartment in pairs. The needle of the gramophone grows dull from wear—it plays on two grooves at once. Dreams are the shadows of wakefulness, darkness the shadow of light: each is one half of a pair.
Like a woman’s heart, Alice Apartments is made up of countless silken filaments: on the walls, the windows, the beds, the floors, the tables and chairs; in sewing boxes, in makeup cases, in the clothes hanging up in the closet, threading in and out of golden and silvery beads. It is rather a nest for a woman’s heart. For the heart is like a bird that wants to fly as high as it can, tirelessly, heedless of danger. Alice Apartments is a nest resting on the uppermost branch. Alighting, the bird feels it has found a home.
The women in Alice Apartments are not born, nor have they been brought up by their parents: free spirits, their bodies are the essence of heaven and earth. They are wind-borne seeds, disseminated from the sky, that grow into wild, rambling plants. They spread in all directions, putting down roots wherever there is soil; they do not adhere to principles, nor do they fit any mold; they have an irrepressible urge to live, and dying they have no regrets. However, being untethered and carefree, they often become disoriented; they waver. Birds plunge down from the sky at such moments, as hesitation saps their energy, confidence, and hope. The greater the heights to which they ascend, the greater are the dangers they must face.
Alice Apartments may look quiet on the surface, but underneath it is restive, because the hearts of those who live there are oppressed. You can hear this in the ringing of the telephones behind those heavy window curtains. It reverberates in the large living room, even though, having passed through satin and brocade, the eager sound is muted. The telephone is a crucial item in the Alice Apartments, serving as the artery through which life-force flows. The telephone’s ringing runs through the apartments like the undercurrents of a river. No need to find out who the callers are—it does not matter—we need only know that the calls come in the form of a summons, or of consent; they have a revitalizing effect on Alice Apartments. The telephone rings out even in the middle of the night, when it is most unsettling. The sound shoots through the heart’s loneliness, and the heart remains agitated long afterward. Doorbells ringing are of equal significance. Unlike the lingering notes of telephones, however, doorbells tend to be snappy, assertive, overbearing. They are undercurrents powerful enough to affect the direction of the river. No need to find out who presses the buttons; enough to know that they are people capable of carrying out commitments. These two kinds of sound roam Alice Apartments at will with a proprietary air. Alice Apartments—sumptuous, dreamlike, fabulous—float atop these two kinds of ringing. They are the beads that, strung together, make the necklace.
Alice Apartments have their lively moments, always heralded by a doorbell. When the doorbell rings, the heavy curtains can barely contain their giddy merriment. These festivals occur regularly at Alice Apartments, but not according to the calendar. The merriment may last several months, or only one unforgettable night. Laughter and joviality are suspended during these precious hours, as are tears. Normally the maids have hardly anything to do, but at these festivals they are so busy that they have to have the event catered or bring in outside chefs from the Yanyun Restaurant. For these festive occasions, red lanterns are hung, red candles lit, new clothes put on, and comforters embroidered with mandarin ducks taken out from the chests. Festivals come at different times for the residents of Alice Apartments, but one or another seems to be taking place the whole year round. They take turns being merry. At the Paramount Nightclub, not too far away, merriment is also being had by all, an overpowering merriment, but one does not know what kind of squalor lies behind the merriment there. In contrast, the gaiety at Alice Apartments is genuine through and through. What you see is what you get. The Paramount is like a rushing river, but Alice Apartments is like a harbor, waiting for people to come home. They party all night long at the Paramount, but all that changes the next morning. At Alice Apartments, things are kept on an even keel, day after day, night after night.
Charming and mysterious places such as the Alice Apartments are not unique. Blissful little enclaves like it are scattered throughout Shanghai. To outsiders they look like anthills with thick, shell-like walls; who can guess that behind that gray cement lie beautiful and exotic worlds? Their beauty is the beauty of fireflies, shining brightly during their brief lives, all their energy expended on one flare. Afterward, their decaying bodies nourish the ivy, which mourns their beauty. The residents of these places strive to fulfill their ideal of femininity and keep up their hope for happiness. But the strivings into which they pour their souls do not count for much—they are mere remnants in the hands of fate. Places such as the Alice Apartments are therefore like graveyards. The place locks its residents away so that it alone can enjoy them. The inmates come of their own free will, but their arrival marks the end of freedom. Here is a prison of the heart, a prison of volition, a prison of hope. They become the prisoners of place, putting their vestigial hope into the ivy, for ivy is capable of climbing walls and crawling out through cracks. Thus, the Alice Apartments are also about sacrifices, ritualistic sacrifices offered to the goddess of liberty, and to their own selves. That is what “Alice” means.
There is another name for such places: “society girl apartments.” Being a “society girl” is a profession unique to Shanghai, halfway between wife and prostitute. This profession, which dispenses with titles, does not operate according to rules; only what actually takes place matters. It is a livelihood that bears some resemblance to being a free-roaming nomad, who goes from pasture to pasture, seeking shelter in tents. The apartments are the girls’ tents, which they make as beautiful as they can. The girls themselves are beautiful, even elegant; their elegance is in a class of its own, judged by its own standards. Having relinquished the roles of wife and mother, they metamorphose into femininity itself. It would not be excessive to declare that their beauty is an asset to the city, the pride of Shanghai. We must express our gratitude to the people who nurture them, for they have performed an aesthetic service for mankind.
These women spend their entire lives trying to display their beauty for a brief season, like flowers that blossom only once every hundred years. What a splendid sight when these flowers bloom! They have made themselves beauty’s emissaries—beauty is glorious, even if the glory is as fleeting as passing clouds, gorgeous dusk clouds that enfold the entire earth. Nothing belongs to them, but they do not mind being clouds. Brief as their time is, they enjoy it up there, looking down on earth. So what if time is transitory, so what if it is illusory, so what if the clouds should transform into ivy, to crawl through the cracks and walls to wait for the next century?
Farewell to Alice
Wang Qiyao moved into the Alice Apartments in the spring of 1948. This was a year of great turmoil and unrest, with China embroiled in a civil war the outcome of which was still poised in the balance. The world within Alice Apartments, however, remained as sumptuous and cozy as ever. Nineteen-year-old Wang Qiyao had settled down and found a home of her own, but when she moved in, she did not let anyone know except her family.
When Mr. Cheng called, he was told that she had left for Suzhou to stay with her maternal grandmother, and they were not certain when she might be back. Mr. Cheng then took a trip to Suzhou, at a time when the gardenias were in full bloom. He thought he caught a glimpse of Wang Qiyao in every doorway by a gardenia tree. He even found teacups no bigger than a fingernail for sale, and all the little girls who played with those miniature tea sets looked just like Wang Qiyao as a child. Wang Qiyao had left her imprint on all the cobblestones, but there was no sight of her. He arrived in Suzhou with a sinking feeling, and with that same sinking feeling he left. On the night train back to Shanghai, his heart was as dark as the scenery outside, and tears rolled down his face. He could not understand why he should be so dejected, yet sadness took firm hold of him.
After his return, he abandoned his search for Wang Qiyao; he also abandoned photography. Every morning and night he walked blindly past his photo studio, and went straight out the door or into his bedroom. There were too many things he would rather ignore. At twentynine, he was single and had no thought of marriage. He did not care about his career, and having given up his hobby as well, he seemed to have stopped caring altogether. He roamed the streets of Shanghai with a fedora on his head and a walking stick in his hand, looking like a character in a classical European painting. His despair was part genuine, part performance—for the benefit of himself as well as for others. There was a measure of satisfaction and hope in his acting.
In the days that Mr. Cheng was looking for Wang Qiyao, someone else was looking for Mr. Cheng. This was Jiang Lili. She too ran into one setback after another, but she never gave up. She first went to the Western firm where Mr. Cheng had been employed. They told her he had quit but suggested she try another firm where he might have gone. To the second firm she went, and was told there was no such person. When she returned to the first place to try to learn Mr. Cheng’s home address, the secretary decided it was better not to give it out, especially seeing how anxious Jiang Lili was. Stumped, Jiang Lili’s only remaining option seemed to be to go to Wang Qiyao for help, even though she knew this was not a smart move. To her dismay, Wang Qiyao had also disappeared. This set her wondering if the two had gone off together. But it seemed unlikely, there being no wedding news from either. It was from Wu Peizhen that she eventually got hold of Mr. Cheng’s address. During their meeting, Wang Qiyao’s name never crossed the lips of either, but she was on both their minds. Even though Jiang Lili and Wu Peizhen had been classmates for years, they had rarely spoken. Wang Qiyao, a scar on the heart of each, was the only connection between them. Jiang Lili hurried to the address once she had it in hand.
Taking the elevator to the top floor, she found his apartment door shut. No one answered the doorbell. She decided to wait for him, leaning against the banister of the staircase, where she could look out the hall window. The water of the Huangpu River at dusk ran dark crimson. A steamboat blew its whistle. She felt adrift.
When will he be back? How long has it been since she saw him? How did he behave the last time? What was he like the first time they were together?
She was caught in a myriad emotions. Red clouds formed on the horizon and slowly turned black. Pigeons went flying separately, each to its own destination. The light in the building had turned on automatically, but still there was no sign of Mr. Cheng. Jiang Lili’s legs had become sore and she felt chilled, though not hungry. The elevator made quiet but distinct sounds as it went up and down, but never rose to the top floor. There was a great deal of activity for a while, as people came home from work, but the elevator never came up. Jiang Lili spread her handkerchief at the top of the stairs and sat down. She firmly believed that, sooner or later, Mr. Cheng would come home—she
would
see him. Outside the misty night shone with lights; inside the building was enshrouded by a tomblike solemnity. One realized that people lived here only when, occasionally, a door flew open, voices were heard, and the smells of dinner came floating up. Jiang Lili hunched over on the cold marble step and wrapped her arms around herself, determined to ignore the passage of time. It was then that she heard the elevator rising to the top floor and saw Mr. Cheng step out. For a few seconds she could not believe her own eyes and failed to recognize him. He had always been slim, but now he was a bag of bones, a hanger for clothes and hat, supported by a walking stick. She felt sorry for him without venturing to guess why he was so gaunt.