“How should I know?” was the retort. “Why don’t you ask him?”
“Sasha surely had someone in mind,” she insisted.
It was clear that Kang Mingxun knew who it was, but he only said, “If you really wanted to know, why did you shut him up the other day just when he was about to tell us?”
Mortified, Wang Qiyao argued that she had done nothing of the sort. Why would whatever Sasha said have had anything to do with her?
“If it has nothing to do with you, then why do you want to know so badly?” Kang Mingxun pressed on mercilessly.
His words reopened old wounds: Wang Qiyao felt deeply hurt. Her face turned red. It was only after several minutes that she managed to retort, “You are all in the same league, all black as crows.”
“Remember that Sasha is in the other camp,” Kang Mingxun joked. “He grew up eating Russian bread.”
Wang Qiyao smiled at this peace offering. In reality, they had gone in a circle and ended up where they had started; the feeling that they had actually gotten somewhere after all this running around was but an illusion.
There is, however, something to be said for illusions. Though lacking substance, illusions can serve as the basis on which more substantive structures can be built. Should those structures subsequently collapse, something of substance may nevertheless remain. This situation can be compared to the Viennese Waltz in ballroom dancing: stepping forward and back, back and forward, a couple glides from one end of the floor to the other; when the music stops, they may quite likely wind up in the same place where they began, but they will still have a sense of fulfillment and elation. Playing hide-and-seek with Kang Mingxun created, in part, the same kind of illusion for Wang Qiyao; but she also began deliberately to take the false for the real, twisting meanings to suit her own purposes. Her games drove Kang Mingxun to his wits’ end. She would occasionally refer to the two of them as “us” and Madame Yan and Sasha as “them.” Although this in itself didn’t seem to signify anything terribly scandalous, it still put Kang Mingxun in a bit of a flutter, uncertain whether this was a good thing or a bad thing.
On one occasion, he asked Wang Qiyao, “Why do you put my cousin in the same camp as Sasha? Don’t tell me that she grew up on Russian bread too?”
“Isn’t he her son in-law?” Wang Qiyao giggled. “Of course they’re in the same camp!”
They all laughed, but Kang Mingxun wasn’t sure if he liked her explanation. They were lost at a crossroads groping about in the dark, each boldly tried to capture the other without himself getting caught. Whole narratives, protracted and intricate, were embroidered out of these illusions. When they found themselves alone again, Wang Qiyao made the next move.
“What do you mean by accusing me of pushing your cousin over to Sasha’s side?” she asked.
“Need you ask?” Kang Mingxun retorted. “It is complicated enough without you sticking your nose in. . . .”
Each question was framed inside another, which in turn led to another. They were like shadow-boxers; it might look as if the two of them were advancing and retreating in an endless cycle, but by the time they were finished, they would know which of them was the stronger, and who was to be the victor.
They both eagerly volunteered to take care of everything for the group’s afternoon tea parties, but this was a mere pretext to enable them to carry on with their games of ambiguous repartee; these occasions were the murky waters in which they could go fishing unnoticed. During an afternoon or evening of idle chat, there would always be opportunity for them to sneak in one or two coded messages, veiled words that were indeed as slippery as live fish and just as hard to catch hold of. Back and forth they parried, neither acknowledging the real matter at hand; each feigned ignorance of all innuendo while refusing to allow the other to get away with doing the same. As baffling and complicated as this mode of communication might sound, the parties concerned were not in the least bit confused; to them, everything was crystal clear. In their hearts everything was as clear as a well-balanced account. Well-matched opponents, they moved with economy and precision, bending their wits to the challenge of the game. Every so often they would become momentarily dazzled and diverted by their own virtuosity, but they quickly reminded themselves of their true purpose. For pointless and childish as the game might seem, at its core lay a profound anguish. This anguish was for one’s own self as well as for the other; there was empathy and consideration in it, and yet also a relentlessness, because, after all, everyone always puts themselves first.
In truth, Kang Mingxun had discovered everything he needed to know about Wang Qiyao quite early; he was just good at keeping it to himself. The very first time they met, he thought she looked vaguely familiar. His suspicions were aroused when he found that she lived so reclusively and in such straitened circumstances, and the furniture in her apartment certainly spoke of an intriguing past. Living in this time of epochal change, Kang Mingxun was perceptive beyond his years and, wise in the ways of the city, was all too aware that people’s lives could be transformed in an instant. Peace Lane was a crevice in the city into which many fragmented lives had drifted. He saw shimmering behind Wang Qiyao an aura of splendor that belied her present ascetic life. One night, as they were playing mahjong, the lamp cast a shadow over her face; her bright eyes sparkling mysteriously in the darkness, she threw down her tiles with a lift of the eyebrows and a coy laugh. Somehow her expression reminded him of a screen diva from the thirties, Ruan Lingyu. Of course, Wang Qiyao was not Ruan Lingyu . . . but who was she then? He didn’t know it, but he was teetering on the brink of discovering her secret.
Then, one day, passing a photographer’s shop with a picture in its window of a woman in bridal veil, he was immediately struck by a feeling of déjà vu. His mind raced back to another photograph that had hung in the same window long ago. If he had made the connection with Wang Qiyao at that moment, the riddle would have been solved; instead it slipped past. His interest in her seemed to intensify with every moment they spent together. He saw wrapped in her unadorned simplicity a rare beauty that infused everything around her with glamour; but in that austerity he also caught a glimpse of passion, and this too infused itself into her surroundings.
Who was this woman
? Kang Mingxun pined for the city’s vanished glory, of which only the trolley bell remained, and it saddened him every time he heard it ring. Wang Qiyao was like a mysterious shadow of that feeling; like a phantom that came and went unsummoned, she haunted him. He swore to himself that he would get to the bottom of this.
I must uncover her past. . . . But where to look?
In the end the answer simply fell into his lap. One day, while chatting with “Mother,” the mistress of the house, and “Second Mother,” his father’s concubine and his own birth mother, that famous event of a decade earlier came up—the Miss Shanghai Beauty Pageant. His birth mother even remembered the name of the girl who came in third place—Wang Qiyao. To Kang Mingxun it was like suddenly awakening from a dream. Yes, those eyes that recalled Ruan Lingyu, the familiar image he had once seen hanging in the photo shop window, the “Proper Young Lady of Shanghai” featured in
Shanghai Life
, the rumors that she had later become the kept woman of some powerful man . . . it all added up. There it was, the entire story of Wang Qiyao’s life, fantastic and poignant.
Out of this puzzle a new Wang Qiyao emerged; her romantic past, alive with enticing details, presented itself before him. The real Wang Qiyao finally rose up from behind all of those secrets; her face, her smile, all came to life for him. This may have been a brand-new Wang Qiyao, but it was also a reincarnation of the old Wang Qiyao. He could barely recognize her, yet somehow seemed to know her only too well. He felt the joy and excitement of having something restored to him.
This is now an entirely different city,
he thought to himself,
the street names have changed, the buildings and streetlights are but the shell of their former selves, their core melted away and replaced.
In the past even the breeze whispered of romantic longings, and the parasol trees told stories as they waved in the wind; now the breeze is nothing but dead air and the trees mere bark and leaves, all their magical charm overthrown. He had tried to keep up with the times, but his heart was still trapped in the past, leaving him hollowed out and empty. But Wang Qiyao was a true relic of the past: she would be able to help him steal his heart back from yesterday.
He didn’t go back to visit Wang Qiyao for several days after this. When Madame Yan telephoned, he claimed he was tied up with business at home and couldn’t make it. He agonized over what he should say to Wang Qiyao but eventually decided to say nothing and behave as if nothing had happened. When Wang Qiyao asked why he had not joined them, he said he had been busy. When she wondered aloud whether he had found some more interesting places to go, he simply smiled and placed the package he had brought—a box of fancy cakes from Big Chang’s Bakery—on the table. Wang Qiyao hurried out to get plates for the cake. She had just given an injection to a patient and still had the scent of alcohol on her hands. Wearing a cardigan over a cotton
cheongsam
, with a pair of old-fashioned cotton shoes with straps, she busied herself getting the tea ready.
Suddenly Kang Mingxun recalled a hotpot dinner at his cousin’s townhouse, back around the time they first met, when he had tried telling everyone’s fortune based on random words that came to their minds. Wang Qiyao had picked the character for “earth,” whereupon he pointed to the right half and said it could be construed as “he.”
Impulsively, she pointed to the left half, made up of the “dirt” radical, exclaiming, “This shows that ‘he’ is buried, doesn’t it?” and her face was immediately stricken with grief.
Now he understood the cause of her sorrow.
Pity welled up in him, also a sense of loss, for Wang Qiyao as well as for himself. Feeling depressed, he spoke very little and remained aloof and listless the remainder of the afternoon. His gaze, turned outside the window, happened on the cracks and water stains on the neighbor’s balcony. The whole world looked damaged—nothing was perfect any longer. In contrast to the waxing and waning of the moon, this disintegration was unrelenting; the chipped only gets more chipped, the broken more broken, until one day nothing would be left but squalid ruins. Perhaps one day, when everything has completely disintegrated, the cycle will start over again. But life is short, and if it is someone’s misfortune to be born in a period of disintegration, he may have no hope of ever seeing perfection.
Kang Mingxun was the son of a concubine but the only male progeny in his family. As a child, he learned that he had to please his father’s proper wife, whom he was taught to address as “Mother,” as well as his birth mother. His father might take his second wife, “Second Mother,” to intimate social gatherings, but on formal occasions the family was represented by Father, Mother, and Kang Mingxun. Mother was by nature a manipulative person. Tradition and common practice already made her position one hundred percent unassailable, but she also had grievance on her side. She therefore claimed one hundred and thirty percent of privilege. The thirty percent extra that was her due naturally got deducted from Second Mother.
Father was conservative, so, as much as he adored Second Mother, hierarchy always came first. Everyone in the household had their proper place according to rank and age. As the male progeny, Kang Mingxun spent more time with Mother than with his own birth mother and thus became much closer to his half-sisters than he ever was to his own sisters. He felt the need to ingratiate himself, as if he would be rejected otherwise. He was vaguely aware that Mother’s love had to be won, whereas Second Mother would always be there for him whether he desired her love or not. Consequently, he was consequently much more solicitous of Mother and inclined to neglect Second Mother, to the extent that he would deliberately distance himself from her so as to please Mother. Even as a young boy he had always shown this unseemly tendency to align himself with the strong to exploit the weak—thanks to a healthy instinct for survival.
Once, while playing hide and seek with two of his sisters, he climbed the stairs to the third floor and pushed open the door of Second Mother’s bedroom; the bed skirt was moving, so he knew that someone must be hiding under the bed. But, on sneaking in, he saw Second Mother, sitting at the edge of the bed with her back toward him, head slumped over and shoulders shuddering. He stood stock still as his younger sister rushed out from underneath the bed and, jubilant and shrieking, ran past him. But instead of chasing her, he just stood there, transfixed.
It was a cloudy day. The teak furniture was gleaming, as was the waxed floor. Second Mother sat facing the window, her figure delineated against the dim light, her hair messy like a bird’s nest, her narrow shoulders pathetically small. Sensing someone behind her, she looked around through her tears, but before she had seen him, he had already run out of the room. His heart was beating wildly, and he was overcome by a mixture of pity, revulsion, and deep sadness. To camouflage his emotion, he emitted a gleeful shriek so loud that Mother came out to scold him. At this moment, Second Mother’s tousled head appeared at the top of the stairs, and his heart filled with hatred for her. This hatred grew in direct proportion to his pain. As he slowly matured and became adept at navigating this complicated environment, the pain and the hatred diminished until they were no more than hazy impressions, lighter than dust motes. Yet it was precisely these hazy impressions from his past that would sway the decisions he made during the crucial moments of his life.