My relations with Wei Lien-shu were, come to think of it, rather odd, for they began with one funeral and ended with another.
I used to hear his name mentioned when I was at the city of S. It was said that he was a very strange fellow: He specialized in zoology and yet taught history in the middle school; he was aloof and supercilious in manner and yet had a tendency to mind other people's business; he insisted that the family system must be destroyed and yet he always sent part of his salary to his grandmother as soon as he received it, with never a day's delay. There were many other stories told about him. He was, in a word, a character in the city of S, an unfailing topic for idle conversation. In the fall of one year I happened to be staying with some relatives at Cold Stone Mountain. Their name was Wei and they were Lien-shu's kin. But they knew even less than I about him and seemed to look upon him as if he were a foreigner. "He is different from us all," they said in summing him up.
This was not strange, for although modern education already had a history of over twenty years in China, Cold Stone Mountain did not even have a primary school. In this mountain village Lien-shu was the only one who had gone out to study. He was, therefore, really different. However, they also envied him, for he was said to earn a lot of money.
Toward the end of fall, dysentery began to be prevalent. I was rather alarmed by it myself and was thinking of returning to the city. I heard that Lien-shu's grandmother was among those afflicted and that she was in a very serious condition because of her age. There was no physician in the village. Lien-shu's immediate family consisted only of his grandmother, who lived a simple, quiet life with a maid-servant. Lien-shu had lost his parents in his childhood and had been brought up by this grandmother. She suffered a great deal of privation in her day, but now she was without wants. Since Lien-shu was unmarried, his house was naturally a very quiet and lonely one. This was probably one of the things that caused people to look upon him as somewhat odd.
Cold Stone Mountain was one hundred li by land, seventy li by water, from the city, requiring at least four days for a special messenger to reach Lien-shu and back. In the monotony of village life, an event like this was news of the first magnitude, which everyone wanted to find out about. On the second day it was said that her condition had become critical and that a special messenger had been despatched. But she breathed her last during the fourth watch of the same night, her last words being, "Why can't I have a last meeting with Lien-shu?"
The head and nearer members of the clan, representatives from the grandmother's family, and idlers gathered in a crowded room to devise ways and means to cope with the situation. They figured that by the time Lien-shu arrived it ought to be encoffining time. The coffin and burial clothes had been prepared long in advance[1] and required no attention. The one problem was how to deal with the chief mourner, for they anticipated that he would want to introduce innovations in the funeral ceremonies. As a result of this council it was decided that the chief mourner must fulfill three conditions: he must wear white; he must kowtow; he must have Buddhist and Taoist priests to conduct funeral services.[2] In other words, everything must be done as it had always been done.
After they had decided upon these essentials they arranged to meet again in the front hall of the house of mourning on the day of Lien-shu's arrival and conduct a bold parley with him. They agreed to dispose themselves in strategic positions and to support one another in a concerted attack. All the villagers gulped with excitement and curiosity, as they waited for developments. They knew Lien-shu for a "revolutionary" who "eats religion,"[3] a man devoid of common sense and justice, and they anticipated a violent struggle between the parties, perhaps even something quite unexpected.
It was said that Lien-shu arrived in the afternoon. Entering the house, he only made a slight bow before the spirit tablet of his grandmother, whereupon the head of the clan proceeded with the prearranged program. He summoned Lien-shu to the front hall, and, after a rather long introduction, launched into the subject in hand. He was echoed from one end of the hall to the other, giving Lien-shu no chance to put in a word in rebuttal. Finally the relatives tired themselves out and silence fell on the room, with everyone watching tensely Lien-shu's mouth. But Lien-shu betrayed no emotion whatever. He simply said, "I'll do everything you say."
This was entirely unexpected. One burden fell from the hearts of those present, but at the same time a new and heavier burden seemed to take its place, for Lien-shu's acquiescence appeared too fantastic to be true and might really mean something else. The curious villagers were very much disappointed. "How strange it is," they said. "He says that he'll do everything they want. Let us go and see." He would do everything they wanted him to meant that everything would be done in the usual and customary way, which in turn meant there was nothing much to be seen. But the villagers wanted to be there just the same, and so after twilight they all foregathered in the funeral hall with eager anticipation.
I was among those who went to see the ceremony, sending beforehand incense and candles as an offering to the deceased. When I arrived at the house of mourning, I found Lien-shu already engaged in enshrouding the dead. He was a short man of lean, sharp features, with loose hair and a thick dark beard; his eyebrows occupied a good portion of his face, which was dominated by two bright and burning eyes. He did his job of enshrouding well; he did it in an orderly and methodical manner, as if he were an expert at it, and he impressed the spectators favorably in spite of themselves. According to the well-established tradition of Cold Stone Mountain, the representatives of the family of the deceased were bound to offer criticisms no matter how well things were proceeding. Lien-shu was never ruffled by these criticisms, but quietly and obligingly made whatever changes that were demanded. A white-haired old lady standing before me could not help emitting a sigh of appreciation.
The enshrouding was followed by kowtowing, then weeping, which the women did with improvised librettos. The body was then put in the coffin, followed by more kowtowing and weeping until the lid was nailed down. A momentary silence was almost immediately succeeded by a tenseness, a feeling of surprise and dissatisfaction in the atmosphere. It had suddenly occurred to everyone, as it occurred to me, that during all the time Lien-shu had not shed a single tear. He only sat distractedly upon the mourner's straw mat, his eyes glittering out of his swarthy countenance.
The encoffining was concluded in this atmosphere of surprise and dissatisfaction. The spectators were about to disperse, as Lien-shu continued to sit abstractedly on the straw mat. But suddenly his tears began to flow. They were followed by sobs which immediately turned into the long howls of a wounded wolf in the wilderness deep at night—cries of pain, fury, and sorrow. This was something uncalled for by old tradition; the assemblage, taken by surprise, did not know what to do. After a while, a few went up to him to persuade him to stop crying. Others joined the group until he was entirely surrounded, but he continued to utter his heartbreaking cries, oblivious of the people around him.
As their efforts to quiet him were of no avail, they desisted and walked away from him awkwardly. He wept for about half an hour, then suddenly stopped and went inside without a word of thanks to the mourners. Someone went in to peep and came back with the report that he had gone into his grandmother's room, that he was lying down and appeared to have gone off to sleep.
Two days later, the day before I was to start back for the city, I heard heated discussions among the villagers. They said that Lien-shu wanted to burn up most of the furniture as offerings to his grandmother and to distribute the rest to those who had served her in her lifetime and particularly to the maid who waited upon her at her deathbed. Moreover, he wanted to let the maid have the use of the house as long as she lived. His relatives and kin talked against it until their tongues were worn out and their lips were dry, but it was no use.
Probably it was chiefly out of curiosity that I stopped by his house on my way to the city to offer him my condolences. He came out wearing unhemmed white cotton, and looked very much the same as when I first saw him, very much aloof. I comforted him the best I could, but except for a few perfunctory grunts, he only said, "Thank you for your kindness."
Early in the same winter we met for a third time in a bookstore in the city of S. We nodded to each other as acquaintances, but it was not until toward the end of the year, after I lost my position, that we came to know each other well. I went to see him often because I had nothing to do and wanted company and also because I was told that, though he was by nature aloof, he liked to associate with those in unhappy circumstances. However, fortunes rise and fall, and those in unhappy circumstances do not always remain so; consequently he did not have many friends of long standing. This reputation was indeed true for he received me as soon as I sent in my card. His guest room was simply furnished with some bookcases, tables, and chairs. Though he was known as one of those dreadful "innovators," there were few "new" books on the shelves. He had heard that I had lost my position. After the usual words of greeting, host and guest fell silent. He smoked furiously and did not throw away his cigarette until it burned almost to his fingers.
"Have a cigarette," he said, as he reached out for his second.
I took a cigarette and as we smoked we talked about teaching and books. But soon our conversation lagged again and I was about to leave when I heard footsteps and chatter; four children came rushing in. The oldest was about eight or nine, the youngest four or five, all very dirty and homely enough. However, Lien-shu's eyes lighted up with pleasure as he stood up and walked into the inner room, saying, "Big Liang, Little Liang, come here! I have got the mouth organs that you asked for yesterday."
The children followed him into the other room and soon emerged, each with a mouth organ. Almost as soon as they stepped out of the guest hall they began to quarrel. One of them was crying.
"There is a mouth organ apiece and they are all the same," he said to them, "so do not fight over them."
"Whose are they, all these children?" I asked.
"They are the landlord's. They have no mother, only a grandmother to take care of them."
"Is the landlord single?"
"Yes. His wife died three or four years ago and he has not married again. Otherwise he would not rent his spare room to a bachelor." He smiled a wry smile as he said this.
I wanted to ask him why he had remained single, but decided that we did not know each other well enough for that.
As I got better acquainted with Lien-shu I found him a good person to talk with. He had something to say on almost every subject and everything he said was marked with originality.
Some of his visitors were not very easy to put up with. They must have read Lost,[4] for they often referred to themselves as "unfortunate youths" or "forgotten men." They sprawled languidly on the chairs like so many crabs, sighing and smoking incessantly. Then there were the children, always quarreling, upsetting cups and saucers, demanding sweets, and generally making a nuisance of themselves. But as soon as Lien-shu saw them he lost his usual coldness; he seemed to cherish them more than his own life. I was told that when Third Liang had the measles he was so upset that his swarthy countenance looked darker than ever. It turned out to be a light case. The child's grandmother thought it a good joke and liked to tell about it.
"Children are always good. They have not yet been contaminated," he said to me one day as he noted my impatience with the children.
"That is not necessarily true," I said, indifferently.
"You are wrong. Children do not have the bad traits that grownups have. If they become bad later on—the kind of badness that you attack—it is because of their environment. They are not bad to start with. I think the only hope for China lies in that."
"I do not agree. If children do not have the seeds of badness in them, how can they bear bad flowers and fruits when they grow up? It is only because a seed carries within it the embryo of leaves, flowers, and fruits that it sends forth these things later on. How could it be otherwise?"
I was at the time reading Buddhist sutras, having nothing better to do—very much like the great who become vegetarians and talk about Zen the minute they are kicked out of office. However, I understood nothing about Buddhism, though I talked thus glibly of cause and effect.
Lien-shu became furious at me; he looked at me contemptuously and would not say another word. I was not quite sure whether he had nothing to say or whether he felt that I was beneath his dignity. But I noticed that he assumed the cold manner that I had not seen for some time. He smoked two cigarettes in silence. I fled as he reached for a third.
This difference between us was not cleared up until three months later, probably partly because he had forgotten about it and partly because he himself happened to have been abused by "innocent" children, and therefore felt that there was some justification in my blasphemy against them. This was, of course, only my guess. It came out at my lodgings, after we had been drinking some wine. Looking up reflectively he said with an air of sadness, "It is really very strange when you think of it. As I was coming towards your house I saw a very small child. He waved at me the reed leaf that he was holding and said 'Kill him!' He was hardly old enough to walk."
"It is because he has been corrupted by his surroundings."
I immediately regretted saying that, but he did not seem to mind, and went on drinking and smoking furiously.
"By the way," I said, trying to cover up my blunder by changing the subject, "what has brought you here? I know you are not in the habit of calling on people. We have known each other for more than a year but this is the first time that you have come to my place."
"I was just going to tell you: you must not come over to my lodgings to see me. There are two persons there, one old and one young, that will nauseate you."
"One old and one young? Who are they?" I asked with surprise.
"My elder cousin and his younger son. Huh, the son is exactly like his father."
"I suppose they have come to see you and at the same time take in the sights of the city?"
"No. He says that he wants to talk to me about my adopting that boy."
"Oh," I said with astonishment. "But you aren't married, are you?"
"They know that I am not going to marry. But that does not matter. What they really want is to adopt that old house of ours in Cold Stone Mountain. I have nothing besides this old house as you know; I spend everything as soon as I get it. This dilapidated house is the one thing I own. The only interest that my cousin and his sons have in life seems to be to drive out the old maidservant who is living in it."
The bitterness with which he said this chilled me. I tried to comfort him: "I do not think that your kinsmen could be that bad. Their only fault is that they are somewhat oldfashioned and reactionary in their thinking. I remember that they were very solicitous and eager to comfort you when you cried so sorrowfully at the funeral."
"They were just as solicitous and eager to comfort me when my father died, though that did not prevent them from trying to make me sign away my house." He looked up and stared into empty space as if trying to form a picture of just what had happened then.
"In a word, the crux of the matter is that you have no children. Why is it that you would not marry?" Finally I hit upon the subject which I had had in mind for so long a time; this seemed a more appropriate moment to discuss it than any other since I had known Lien-shu.
He looked at me with surprise and then cast his eyes down and stared at his knees. He lit a cigarette and continued to smoke, without answering my question. Dreary and cheerless as Lien-shu's circumstances were, he was not allowed to live his life in peace.
Gradually there appeared in the tabloid papers anonymous attacks upon him, and gossip about him became more frequent among the teaching fraternity. Now, the gossip was not that of curiosity and amusement, as formerly, but that of malice and was intended to do him harm. I knew the reason: it was because he had recently published some articles. I paid no attention to the attacks and gossip. The people of the city of S hated most outspoken and indiscreet utterances and never failed to punish those who were guilty of such indiscretions. It had always been so; Lien-shu himself knew this. In the spring I heard that he had been relieved of his post by the principal of the school. It seemed rather sudden but in reality it was the logical sequel; it seemed sudden and unexpected only because I had been hoping that those I knew might avoid this fate. The people of S did not, on this occasion, go out of their way to do Lien-shu ill; it was merely their customary way of dealing with non-conformers.
I was occupied with my own problems at the time and was making preparations for going to Shan-yang to teach in the following fall. So I did not have time to go to see him. When I finally found time, it was more than three months after Lien-shu had been relieved of his post. Even then it did not occur to me to call on him. Walking by the main street one day, I stopped at one of the secondhand book stands and something I saw gave me a shock. It was an early printing of the Chi-ku-ko edition of the Shih-chi so-yin, which I recognized as having belonged to Lien-shu. He liked books but was not a collector. To him this must have been a rare edition that he would not have parted with except under absolute necessity. However free with his money he might have been, could it be possible that he had come to this only three months after he lost his position.^ Thereupon I decided to call on Lien-shu. I bought a bottle of kaoliang spirits, two packages of shelled peanuts, and two smoked fish heads.
The door to his room was closed. I called to him but there was no answer. I thought he might be sleeping, so raised my voice a bit, at the same time knocking on the door.
"He must have gone out," Big Liang's grandmother—that fat woman with triangular eyes—stuck out her gray head from the window across the yard and said in a loud and impatient voice.
"Where has he gone to?" I asked.
"Where has he gone to? How is one to know? But he cannot have gone far, so you might as well wait. He will be back by and by."
I pushed the door open and walked into the guest room. Truly, "an absence of one day is like three autumns. " The room was dismal and empty. Not only was there little furniture left, but of his books there remained only those bound in foreign style which no one in the city of S could possibly want. The round table was still there, the table which used to be surrounded by languid and sad-looking young men, neglected geniuses, and dirty, noisy children, but which was now so quiet and covered only with a thin layer of dust. I put the bottle and packages on the table, pulled up a chair and sat down facing the door.
The landlady was correct. "By and by" the door opened and a man came in as quiet as a shadow. It was Lien-shu. It might have been due to the lateness of the afternoon, but he did seem to me darker than ever, though he was otherwise the same.
"Ah, so you are here! How long have you been here?" He seemed glad to see me.
"Not very long," I said. "Where have you been?"
"Nowhere in particular. I just went out for a walk."
He also pulled up a chair and sat by the table and we began to drink and to talk about his losing his position. However, he did not want to talk much about that. He regarded it as something to be expected, something which he was now used to and which should cause no surprise, something hardly worthy talking about. He kept on drinking as he always did and talked about society and history in general. I noticed his empty bookcases and, recalling the early printing of the Chi-ku-ko edition of the Shih-chi so-yin, I felt a sense of melancholy and sadness.
"Your guest room seems so desolate. Don't you have many visitors nowadays?"
"No. They don't want to come because I am depressed. A man in low spirits makes others uncomfortable. No one likes to visit the park in the winter." He took two draughts in succession without saying anything. Suddenly he looked up at me and asked, "I don't suppose you have any assurance of getting a position either?"
I was about to give vent to my feelings on the subject when he cocked his ears to listen and went out with a handful of peanuts. Outside was the sound of talk and laughter of Big Liang and his brothers. The children fell silent the moment he went out and seemed to have gone away. He followed and talked to them, but they did not answer him. He came back into the room as quietly as a shadow and put the peanuts back in the package.
"They don't even want to eat my things," he said in a low, mocking, defiant tone.
I felt saddened, but I said with a forced smile, "Lien-shu, I think you take things too hard. You are too misanthropic . . . "
He smiled a wry smile.
"I have not yet finished what I was going to say. I suppose you think that we, we who occasionally drop in to see you, come here because we have nothing else to do and are only trying to use you as an object of amusement?"
"No, not always, though I think that way sometimes. People like to shop for material for conversation."
"You are wrong there. People are not in reality like that. The truth is that you have woven yourself a cocoon of loneliness and wrapped yourself up in it. You ought to try to concede more light in the world."
"Perhaps it is so. But tell me, where comes the silk filaments with which the cocoon is made? Of course there are many people like that in this world. My grandmother was one of them. Though I have not shared her blood I might yet inherit her fate. It does not matter very much, for I have mourned both for her and for myself."
I recalled vividly his grandmother's encoffining, every detail reappearing before my eyes.
"I never understood your heartrending cries at the time," I bluntly stated.
"You mean at my grandmother's encoffining? Yes, it would be hard for you to understand it," he said as he lit his lamp. "Yes, it happens that our acquaintance began at that time. You wouldn't know, of course, that that grandmother of mine was my father's stepmother; his own mother died when he was three years old." He reflected, drank some spirits, and finished his fish in silence.
"I did not know these things at first, of course, though there was one incident which troubled me even as a child. My father was still living and our family circumstances were fair. In the first month it was the custom in the family to hang up our ancestral portraits and to make offerings before them. I loved to look at those portraits of gorgeously costumed men and women; it was an occasion which came but rarely. The maidservant who held me in her arms always pointed to one portrait and said: 'This is your real grandmother. Kowtow to her and ask her to protect you and make you grow up fast and as strong as dragons and tigers.' I could not understand why I should have another 'real grandmother' when there was one in the house already. But I loved this 'real grandmother,' who was not so old as the grandmother in the house. She was young and beautiful, and wore a red dress embroidered with gold, and a pearl hat. In the portrait she looked almost as young as my mother in hers. Whenever I looked at her, her eyes were always fixed on me and her smile seemed to become brighter. I knew that she must love me very much.
"However, I also loved the grandmother in the house, the grandmother who was always sitting and sewing slowly, under the window. No matter how gaily I played in front of her and called to her, I could not make her happy and laugh. She always seemed so sad, so different from other people's grandmothers. But I loved her just the same, though later on I began to drift away from her. This was not because I realized as I grew older that she was not the true mother of my father but because she was always, day in and day out, year in and year out, sewing and sewing, sewing away like a machine. I could not understand why she was like that and I was impatient with her machinelike ways. But she kept on sewing as she always did; she took care of me and looked after me. She never scolded or punished me, though she never smiled or laughed. She was like this after my father died. Later on we depended almost entirely upon her sewing for our support. Naturally she became even more of a stranger to gaiety and laughter. She managed to send me to school—"
The lamp burned low, the kerosene was about dry. He got up, took a small tin from the bookcase and replenished it.
"Kerosene has gone up twice this month," he said as he adjusted the wick. "Living is going to be more and more difficult—Her life went on like this even after I graduated and got a job and our life became more secure. She probably never stopped sewing until she grew ill and had to lie down.
"Her last years were, I suppose, not so very hard and she lived to a ripe old age. I need have shed no tears, especially when there were so many to mourn at her funeral. Even those who had persecuted her in her lifetime appeared saddened. But I—somehow I saw then before my eyes the whole of her life, the lonely and solitary life that she had woven for herself and which she spent her days in ruminating upon. Moreover, I felt that there were many people in the world like her. It was for those people that I cried. I was still the plaything of my emotions.
"The way you feel about me is the same as the way I used to feel about her. But I was mistaken. Her loneliness was not of her own making entirely; I know that I myself had gradually drawn away from her and had neglected her as far back as I can remember."
He lapsed into another silence, his head lowered in thought, while his cigarette burned on. The lamp flickered.
"Ah, how bitter it is to think that no one would mourn for you after you are dead," he said as if to himself. After a while he raised his head and said to me, "I suppose there isn't anything that you can do. I must find something to do as soon as possible."
"Don't you have any other friends to call upon?" For I was then at the end of my own resources.
"There are still a few, but most of them are situated much as I am."
When I left Lien-shu the round moon was in the middle of the sky.
It was a very still night. Conditions in the educational world at Shan-yang were very bad. Two months after I got there I had not received a penny of my salary. I had to cut out even cigarettes. But the officers of the school, although they earned only fifteen or sixteen dollars a month, were every one of them contented men who knew their places and who worked from morning till night, in spite of their sallow faces and skinny bodies, thanks to the "copper sinews and iron bones" they had gradually cultivated. Moreover, they had to stand up every time they met their superiors. They were not people who "must have enough of food and clothing before they can be expected to know the rites and proper conduct." These things always reminded me of the words of Lien-shu when I took leave of him. His circumstances had gone from bad to worse. There was an air of diffidence about him, whereas before he had been merely silent and aloof. Hearing that I was about to leave the city, he came to see me at night and said haltingly, "I wonder if there is anything you can do for me there?—Even if it is just a clerical job at twenty or thirty dollars a month, it would be all right. I . . . "
I was very much surprised. I never thought that he would demean himself to this. I did not know what to say.
"I . . . I want to live a few more years . . . "
"I'll see what I can do there. You can be sure that I'll do the best I can."
This was my promise and it recurred to me often and with it Lien-shu's face and his halting, diffident words—"I want to live a few more years." Then I would try to recommend him for jobs. But what was the use? There were more people than jobs and the net result of my efforts was that I received a few words of regret from those I approached and Lien-shu received a few words of apologies from me. As the end of the semester approached, things grew worse. The Weekly Student, published by the local gentry, began to attack me. My name was, of course, never mentioned, but the attacks were so cunningly phrased as to give the unmistakable impression that I was trying to stir up trouble in the educational world, my attempts to find work for Lien-shu being alluded to as an effort to place my own kind.
I was forced to lie low and to shut myself up in my room after classes; I was even afraid that my cigarette smoke might arouse suspicion that I was trying to stir up trouble. Naturally I had to abandon my efforts to help Lien-shu. Thus time dragged on until the middle of winter.
It had been snowing all day and it continued to snow into the night. It was so quiet outside that you could almost hear the stillness. I sat alone with eyes closed in the dim lamplight and seemed to see the falling snow flakes add to the vast expanse of snow. In my native home everyone was busy making preparations for the New Year celebrations. I was again a young boy and was making a snow Lohan, with my playmates in the backyard. The Lohan's eyes were made by sticking in two pieces of coal, and they appeared very black against the snow. The eyes blinked and became Lien-shu's eyes.
"I want to live a few more years," I heard a familiar voice say.
"Why?" I asked without any apparent reason; the question sounded idiotic the moment I uttered it.
This idiotic question woke me from my reveries. I sat up and lit a cigarette. I opened the window and looked out: the snow was falling thicker than ever. Someone knocked on the gate; there was a sound of footsteps which I recognized as those of the porter. He pushed open my door and handed me a letter in a long envelope. The handwriting was very cursive but I made out in a glance the words "Sealed by Wei." It came from Lien-shu.
This was the first letter which I had had from since I left S. I knew of his lazy habits and did not miss his letters, though sometimes I could not help resenting his silence. Now his letter aroused my curiosity and I opened it hastily. The handwriting inside was also very cursive. The letter read as follows:
SHEN-FEI :
How should I address you?[5] I'll leave the space blank and let you fill in whatever you like. It does not make any difference to me.
Since we parted I have received three letters from you and have answered none of them.
You may like to know something about me and so here is the story in brief: I have now become a failure. I used to consider myself a failure, but I know now that I was not then a failure. It is now that I am definitely a failure. Formerly, when there was someone who wanted me to live a few years longer, when I wanted myself to live a few more years, it was impossible for me to live. Yet now, when there is little reason for me to live, I keep on living . . .
But should I go on living as I am?
The man[6] who wanted me to live longer is no longer living. He was murdered by his foes. Who were his murderers? No one knows.
How fast life changes! During the past year I almost came down to begging, I might say that to all intents and purposes I did come to that. But there was something that meant something to me, something for which I was willing to beg, to starve, to suffer loneliness, and to toil. I was not willing to suffer the annihilation of death. See how much the mere fact that someone wants me to live can mean to me. But now this is no more, this someone no longer lives. At the same time I feel that I have no justification for living. How do others think? They do not think I have any right to live either. At the same time I feel that I must go on living to spite those people that do not want me to live. Fortunately there is no longer anyone who wants me to live; fortunately, I shall cause no one any unhappiness. I do not want to cause anyone who wants me to live any unhappiness. Now there is no such person left—not a single one. I am glad, I am really happy: I have begun to do myself the things that I used to hate; and to oppose and to reject everything that I used to admire and to believe in. I have truly failed—and at the same time I have become a success.
Do you think that I have gone mad? Do you think that I have become a hero or a great man? No, no. It is all very simple; I have recently become an advisor to General Tu at eighty dollars cash[7] a month.
Shen-fei : What do you think of me now? Think whatever you like; it makes no difference to me.
Perhaps you still remember my guest room, the room where we met for the first time in the city and where we met before we parted. I am still using the same guest room. But here there are now new guests, new gifts and presents, new flatteries, new wire-pullings, new kowtowing and bowing, new mah-jong games and drinking matches, new hatreds and new nausea, new sleeplessness and pulmonary hemorrhage . . .
In one of your letters you said that you were not very happy in your new teaching post. Do you want to become an advisor too? Tell me if you do and I'll get you an appointment. It really doesn't matter if one becomes a mere gatekeeper, for there will also be new guests and new gifts and presents, new flatteries . . .
We have had a heavy snow here. How is it where you are? It is now late at night. I have just spit some blood and I feel wide awake. I suddenly realize that you have written me three letters since fall. What pleasant surprises they were. I must send you some news of myself. I hope you are not too disappointed.
I don't suppose I shall write again; you know how I am about letters. When are you coming back? If early enough we might yet see each other. But I am afraid that we have to go our separate ways. So you had better forget about me. I thank you from the bottom of my heart for your efforts to help me. But you had better forget me, for I am now "all right."
LIEN-SHU.
DECEMBER 14
Although I was not "too disappointed," I had a depressed feeling after rereading his letter carefully, a feeling which was not, however, unmixed with gladness. In any case, I thought, his livelihood was no longer a problem with him, which meant that I need not worry about him, though on my part I had done nothing concrete to help him. I had an impulse to write an answer, but the impulse vanished immediately as I did not have anything adequate to say.
I really began to forget him; his face no longer appeared so frequently in my memory. But in less than ten days after I got his letter I suddenly began to receive the Academic Weekly published in the city of S. I rarely read these things, but since they were mailed to me, I naturally glanced through them. These reminded me of Lien-shu, for there were often poems and other items about him in the Weekly, such as "A visit to Mr. Lien-shu on a Snowy Night," "A gathering in the Study of Advisor Lien-shu," and the like. In the column headed "Chats of an Academician" there were frequent accounts of Lien-shu's oddities, now described as anecdotes and there was always a suggestion that "an unusual man always has his unusual ways."
I did not know why it was but while I was receiving these reminders of Lien-shu his face grew more and more vague in my memory. Yet at the same time I felt more strongly bound to him and often experienced for him an anxiety that I could not understand. In the spring the Weekly ceased to come. Meanwhile the Shan-yang Weelkly Student began to publish serially a long article entitled "Truth behind Humors." In it the writer alluded to the unsavory activities of certain persons which well-informed people had known about and deplored for a long time. I was among these certain persons and again I found it necessary to be extremely careful, to take care not even to let cigarette smoke fly out of my window. Such caution kept one busy and enforced inactivity. I ceased to think about Lien-shu. I might say that I had really forgotten him.
In spite of all my efforts to be discreet, I did not last through the semester. I left Shan-yang toward the end of May.
From Shan-yang I went to Li-cheng and from there to Tai-ku. After more than half a year of wandering I was still without a job, and I decided to return to the city of S. It was in the afternoon of an early spring day when I arrived; the sky was overcast and everything was enveloped in gray. There was a vacant room in my former lodginghouse and again I put up there. I had thought of Lien-shu on the homeward journey, and decided to go over to see him after supper. Carrying with me two packages of the steamed cakes for which Wen-hsi was famous, I walked through miles of wet road, avoiding the numerous dogs that lay indolently in the street, and finally arrived at the house where Lien-shu lived. It was bright inside. I smiled as I thought that this must be because he was now an advisor to General Tu. But when I looked up I discerned clearly a strip of paper pasted at an angle on either side of the door. Big Liang's grandmother must have died, I thought as I stepped into the gate and went toward the inner court.
There was a coffin in the dimly lit court. Beside it stood a soldier or bodyguard in military uniform talking to someone who turned out to be Big Liang's grandmother. There were also a few laborers in short coats. My heart began to beat violently. The old woman turned around and saw me, whereupon she cried, "Ah, you have returned? Why couldn't you have come back earlier?"
"Who—who has died.?" I asked though there was little doubt now in my mind as to who it was.
"His Excellency Wei. He passed away day before yesterday."
Looking around I found the guest room rather dark, probably lit with only one lamp. But the center room was hung with mourning curtains and outside stood Big Liang and his brothers.
"He is laid out in there," Big Liang's grandmother said, pointing to the room. "After His Excellency received his appointment I gave up the center room to him. He is laid in there now."
Before the mourning curtains stood a long narrow table and in front of that, a square table. On the latter were laid out ten dishes of food. I was stopped by two men in long white robes as I stepped into the room; they stared at me with fishy eyes betraying surprise and suspicion. I told them who I was and of my friendship with Lien-shu, attested to by Big Liang's grandmother, whereupon their eyes and hands relaxed and they allowed me to go in.
No sooner did I bow than there came the sound of weeping from below. I looked in that direction and saw a boy of over ten years of age prostrated on a straw mat. He was in white, a large string of hemp tied around his closely cropped head.
After I had exchanged greetings with the men in white and had learned that they were the closest relations of Lien-shu, I begged to be allowed to take a last look at an old friend. They tried to dissuade me, saying that they would not think of putting me to the trouble, but my persistence prevailed and they lifted up the mourning curtains.
Now I beheld Lien-shu in death. How strange it was! Though his short coat and his trousers were wrinkled and bore traces of blood and though his face was painfully thin, he looked very much the same as I used to know him. His mouth and eyes were closed and he seemed to be sleeping peacefully. I almost wanted to hold my hand over his nose to see if he was not actually still breathing.
All was still as death, the living as well as the dead. I came out from the room, followed by his cousin who spoke a few appropriate words, saying that his "brother" had "joined the ancients" when he was just in his prime and on the threshold of great things, and that this was not only a great misfortune to his "decaying clan" but was also a severe shock to his friends. He seemed to be making apologies for Lien-shu; such eloquence as this was rarely encountered in one from a mountain village. After this speech everything was again still as death, the living as well as the dead.
I felt weary but I was not particularly sorrowful. I joined Big Liang's grandmother in the yard and talked with her. I learned from her that the encofiining time was near, that they were only waiting for the burial clothes, and that when the cofhn lid was nailed down those born in the years of the Rat, Hare, Ox, and Cock must not be present. She became very much interested in her subject and poured out a stream of words. She spoke of his illness, of the last months of his life, and of her candid opinion of him.
"Do you know that His Excellency became quite a different person after he came under his lucky star? His head was raised high and he looked self-assured. He no longer acted so stiff and formal before people. You know, of course, that he used to act like a dumb person, he used to address me as lao-tai-tai [venerable madam]. But later he called me an old wench. Yes, it was great fun. Once he received a present of pai-shu[8] from Hsien-chü. He didn't take such things himself, so he threw it out into the yard—right here—and said, 'Old wench, you take it and stuff yourself with it.' People came and went all the time after he came under his lucky star. I gave up the center room to him and moved into one of the side chambers myself. He was so different from ordinary people after he came into the 'red period in his horoscope'—we used to talk and joke a lot. If you had come a month earlier, you would have been in for some good fun, for there were banquets two days out of three: with jolly conversation, laughter, singing, versifying, games . . .
"He used to fear the children more than children feared their father. He was always so gentle and patient with them. But he was quite different of late. He teased and joked with them and Big Liang and his brothers all liked to play with him and went to him whenever they had the opportunity. He had so many ways of teasing them; he would make them bark like dogs or kowtow to the ground before he would buy them what they wanted. Oh, it was such fun. Two months ago Second Liang asked him to buy a pair of shoes for him. He had to kowtow three times. He is wearing those shoes now, still in good condition."
She stopped when one of the men in long white robes came out. I asked her about Lien-shu's illness. She did not know much about that. She said that he had been growing thinner and thinner but no one paid any attention to it, as he always seemed to be in such good spirits. A month or so ago he had several hemorrhages, but did not seem to have consulted any physician. Then he had to stay in bed. He lost his speech three days before he died and could not say a word. His Honor Thirteen came from Cold Stone Mountain and asked whether he had any money saved up, but he did not say a word. His Honor Thirteen was suspicious and thought he was only pretending to be unable to speak, but Big Liang's grandmother was not sure about that. Some people say that consumptives lose their power of speech before their death.
"But His Excellency was a very strange man," she said suddenly, lowering her voice. "He would not try to save anything, but spent his money like water. His Honor Thirteen is inclined to think that we have gotten something out of him. But the truth is that we never got even a whiff of his money. He spent everything no one knows how or on what. He would buy something one day and sell it the next. Or he would destroy what he bought—no one knows how or why. When he died he left nothing. He had squandered everything. Otherwise it would not be so quiet around here now . . .
"Yes, he was a reckless one. He would not think about the most important things in life. I have tried to advise him that he should get married, at his age. It would have been easy for him to find a good match in his recent circumstances. He might at least have bought a couple of concubines, if he could not find a suitable match. One must try to be respectable. But he only laughed at me saying, 'Old wench, are you still trying to be a matchmaker?' He took nothing seriously and would not heed any advice no matter how sincerely it was offered. If he had listened to my words, he would not have to feel his way around in the other world all by himself. At the very least he would have some dear one to mourn for him."
A store clerk arrived with a package of clothes. The relatives of the deceased took out the clothes and went behind the mourning curtains. Presently the curtains were pulled back. The underclothes had been changed; now they proceeded to put on the outer garments. These occasioned some surprise to me, for he wore khaki military trousers with wide red stripes and they were putting on a military coat with bright gold shoulder stripes. I did not know what rank the stripes represented nor how he won that rank. He was put in the coffin in a rather awkward position; at his feet were placed a pair of brown leather shoes, a paper sword by his side and, to one side of his pale dark face, a military cap with a gold band.
The three relatives wept for a while over the coffin, then stopped and wiped off their tears. The boy with a string of hemp tied on his head withdrew; Third Liang also went out of sight. They must have been born under the signs of the tabooed animals.
I went up to take a last look at Lien-shu as the laborers lifted up the coffin lid.
He lay peacefully in his ill-fitting and incongruous clothes, with his mouth and eyes closed and the corners of his mouth curled in a cold smile, as if he were amused by his amusing corpse.
Mourning wails began simultaneously with the hammering of the laborers. The mourning distressed me. I retreated into the yard and continued to retreat until I was out on the street. The damp roadway was clearly visible. Looking up I found that the thick clouds had disappeared and the full moon was exuding a cold, still brilliance.
I walked very rapidly as if trying to break through something heavy and oppressive, but I could not. Something seemed to be trying to struggle its way out of my ears. After a long while it succeeded in freeing itself. It was as a long howl, the howl of a wounded wolf in the wilderness deep at night, a howl that conveyed pain, fury, and sorrow.
My heart felt lighter, and I walked on serenely on the damp, stone-paved road under the moonlight.
- ↑ Death being one of the three most important events in a person's life, the Chinese make preparations for it as well as for the other two—birth and marriage. It is not uncommon for elderly people to select their coffins and store them in a spare room in the house.
- ↑ The Chinese believe in the diversification of their other-worldly investments; hence a mixture of Buddhist, Taoist, and Confucian rituals is used at the more elaborate funerals.
- ↑ That is, living on the benefits derived from the missionaries by embracing Christianity: the "rice Christians" of American journalists.
- ↑ A story by Yü Ta-fu published circa 1922.
- ↑ Chinese usage requires some such word as "elder brother" or "friend" after the name.
- ↑ It is often impossible to tell whether the person referred to is "he" or "she," as here.
- ↑ Around the 'twenties there was a general depreciation of paper currencies.
- ↑ Atractylis lancea, variety of ovata formalyrata, used for medicine and in soups.