Wang Anyi - The Song of Everlasting Sorrow

Wang Qiyao had been invited as their dance teacher, but no one seemed interested in learning anything from her; they were all focused on themselves. She felt awkward at first, but seeing how everyone took care of themselves, she relaxed a bit. As no one else was playing host, she went to boil herself a pot of water in the kitchen and poured it into a thermos. Then she found a box of tea leaves and made herself a cup of tea before sitting down in a quiet corner. Others followed suit and made tea, but no one bothered to ask who had boiled the water, as if it should have been there in the first place. By then there were about two dozen people in the room, and someone had turned off the lights, leaving on only a single desk lamp. The shadows of people, thrown onto the wall by the hazy yellow light, resembled a black forest. Wang Qiyao sat alone in an unlit corner, content that no one was taking any notice of her. She had returned to Alice, but Alice was now a different Alice — and she was a different Wang Qiyao.

As she sat on the sofa, the teacup she was holding gradually grew cold. Amid the thick forest of shadows, her own shadow had been swallowed up. She almost forgot who she was. But she is the heart of the party! She may have been the only one not dancing, but she was the essence of the party. That essence came in the form of the memories she held within. Never mind the people waving their arms, shaking their hips, and stomping on the dance floor. They wouldn’t know a real dance move if it was staring them in the face. The music they knew was merely the cast-off shells of true music, shed in a century of metamorphoses since the days of Johann Strauss, a whole heap of them. Those swirling motions that once turned circling skirts into blossoming lotus flowers — turn and turn as they might, the figures they trace are empty air, for not a jot of romance remains. All that was left of the old romance was memories in the hearts of a select few — Wang Qiyao being one of them. The memories were fragile and could not endure being put on display, like ancient tombs best left unexcavated; once unearthed, their contents disintegrate with the first breath of air. There is no point in such a party , thought Wang Qiyao. Between two numbers, she heard the sound of the trolley coming from the direction of the Paramount. Just another night at Alice’s? she wondered.

When Xiao Lin received his college admission notice, Wang Qiyao offered to send him and Weiwei on vacation to Hangzhou by way of congratulations.

“Aren’t you coming too, Auntie?” Xiao Lin asked.

Wang Qiyao thought for a moment. It occurred to her that, though Hangzhou is so close to Shanghai, she had never been. She decided to go with them. Shortly before their departure, she called Xiao Lin over while Weiwei was at work and gave him a gold bar to exchange for cash at the Bank of China. Weiwei was not to know. She had more faith in Xiao Lin than in her own daughter; he was the one she went to when she had important matters to discuss or when she was looking for advice. As for Xiao Lin, he went to Wang Qiyao for everything and turned only to Weiwei when he wanted to horse around and have a good time. But whenever he was down, he always shared his innermost thoughts with Wang Qiyao: only she could comfort him. To him she was more his friend than his future mother-in-law. She in turn regarded him at least partially as a friend; she would sometimes forget his age and tell him personal things about herself. She hesitated for a moment as she handed him the gold bar, wondering if she should tell him the story of its origin. But that was a huge secret. How many secrets had she accumulated over the decades! She listened to Xiao Lin’s footsteps as he went out the downstairs door. Around noontime he returned and handed her a stack of bills. She felt that she was cashing out her hidden past. Perhaps it was best not to bring it up after all. Xiao Lin didn’t pry. How people accumulated their wealth was one of this city’s unverifiable secrets: an old Shanghai native like Xiao Lin knew this all too well. Wang Qiyao kept him for lunch before sending him home.

During their three days in Hangzhou Wang Qiyao did her best to make herself scarce. In the mornings she would wake up before them and go out for a walk around the hotel. Their hotel was right on Inner West Lake, and she would walk along its banks all the way to Bai Causeway. The sunlight lit up the surface of the lake and she worked up a light sweat before heading back. On the way she would run into Weiwei and Xiao Lin, who were also going for a morning stroll.

“See you at breakfast,” she would say before going back inside the hotel. By this time the hot water would be have been turned on and she would take a shower, change clothes, and go down to wait for them in the hotel dining room. They would show up about fifteen minutes later. Whatever activities they had planned for the day, Wang Qiyao made sure to stay behind part of the time, as well as giving them rein to spend the evenings as they wished. Weiwei didn’t come back to the room until midnight; Wang Qiyao would close her eyes and pretend to be asleep as soon as she heard the door opening. She would listen to Weiwei bump into things as she showered and brushed her teeth, turned the light on and then off again, and finally got into bed. It was not until she heard her daughter quietly snoring that Wang Qiyao felt it was safe to turn over and open her eyes, which had grown tired from being kept closed so long. The room was actually quite bright and everything was clearly visible; the light fluctuated slightly as it reflected off the surface of the lake. Wang Qiyao thought about the Nine Creeks and Eighteen Gullies they had visited earlier that day; a Zen-inspired place of nature and solitude, and wondered what it would be like to live there as a hermit. How wonderful it would be not to be bothered by the annoyances of the world! It would be nice to live in an isolated place where a century is like one day and there is no past or future. But then it was a bit late for her to become a hermit. She had already paid a heavy price during the first half of her life; was it all to have been for nothing? Were there to be no harvest to be reaped from all that she had been through? Wouldn’t she be losing out by giving up halfway? When she went back to ponder what that harvest might be, her mind began to drift and she couldn’t focus any more; gradually, she fell asleep.

On the third morning she woke up to find the room bathed in sunlight and Weiwei gone without a trace. She realized that she had overslept, but she wasn’t anxious. Instead she decided to take it easy. She rested her eyes a bit longer before getting out of bed to comb her hair and head down to the hotel dining room to wait for her daughter and Xiao Lin. She waited for quite some time, and it wasn’t until the dining room was about to close that she quickly nibbled a few bites. She went to wait for them in the reception area, but they still didn’t show up. Finally she went outside to wait for them. It was already muggy on the lake; all along the Bai Causeway and the Su Causeway, tourists were out strolling, their reflections shimmering on the lake. A few wispy clouds floated overhead, but soon disappeared. The sound of cicadas rang out, but there was still no trace of those two.

That morning Weiwei and Xiao Lin had gone for tea at Park Number Six, then directly from there to rent a boat on the lake. They didn’t get back to the hotel until noon. They thought they would run into Wang Qiyao when they got back, but when they didn’t they simply had lunch and went upstairs to grab a few things before going out again. Xiao Lin, who was sharing a room with someone else, went to put his belongings in the women’s room. Opening the door, they were startled to see Wang Qiyao sitting up in bed reading a comic book, a whole pile of comics stacked up beside her.