Wang Anyi - The Song of Everlasting Sorrow

Long Legs also had questions for Wang Qiyao, but they were usually a hundred times more childish than the sorts of questions Old Colour used to ask; sometimes they were almost laughable. But Wang Qiyao would always patiently answer each one, at the same time sighing to herself at how adorably silly his questions were. I’ll bet he is putty in Zhang Yonghong’s hands, she thought. Perhaps it was Zhang Yonghong’s good luck. But then she would smile wryly to herself: The only question is how long can Long Legs keep this up. No one in the world spends money the way he does. Most people are careful about how they spend their hardearned money, but Long Legs throws money away as if it isn ’ t even his! Yet her thinking this way only showed that she did not understand him. This was a man only too willing to spend his money on others. In fact, that was precisely his motivation for making money; otherwise he would have never bothered putting himself through so much grief and unrest. He himself had virtually no expenses. As mentioned earlier, he only needed the very basics when it came to clothing and was even less concerned about eating — a bowl of thick gruel with preserved cabbage was enough for a meal. Even at fancy banquets he spent most of his energy serving others and barely even touched what was on his plate. His personal needs were minimal; all he needed were the clothes on his back and a bite to eat. His happiness came from providing others with food, drink, and merriment; on the few occasions when someone else tried to pay the bill after dinner, he became furious because he felt they were cheating him of his enjoyment.

Nevertheless, Long Legs often fretted about being short of cash. Currency trading was a business always in flux and he couldn’t rely on it for a steady income. His family would occasionally give him money, but that was never enough. A friend once got him a job showing around a group of overseas Chinese who wanted to go sightseeing and shopping, but in the end he insisted on treating them to meals and ended up spending more than what he took in. His friend tried to tell him that the meals were covered under the agreed-upon package, but he replied, “I’m just making friends!”

That’s how much emphasis Long Legs placed on friendship. But people didn’t know that, behind that magnanimous façade, he worried about money day and night. In truth, the money he had already borrowed from his sisters added up to a small fortune; he tried to avoid thinking about that. He would sometimes dip into the money he had set aside for trades, telling his clients he would come with the cash a few days later. Luckily, his credit was good and everyone knew how loyal he was to his friends, so they would let him slide for a few days. But he knew only too well that he couldn’t make a habit out of doing this, or the floodgates would break wide open. When he really got into a bind and had nowhere else to turn, he would tell everyone he was going out of town for a few days to stay with a relative who had just come back from abroad; that would buy him a few more days of extra time. During those days, no one would see him at those convivial dinner parties or hear him fighting to pay the bill. Who would have thought that he was actually sitting on a bench in a small isolated park in the northeast corner of the city? There he watched the children play on the slide, their high-pitched screams of joy ringing out in the open air and echoing far, far away in the outskirts of the city. Sparrows pecked at the sand at his feet and kept him company. He would sit there the entire day, heading home only after dusk when the park closed. Reaching home, he would eat the leftovers that his family had kept covered for him. On days like this, he didn’t even have money in his pocket for a small bowl of dumplings.

Prosperous Shanghai was in every sense of the term a place where power was everything; people without money or power had no place here. Long Legs, in spending money on his friends, was actually paying his dues in this power market. The flashing neon lights, the new fashions that came and went with blinding speed, and now new additions — like pop songs and discos — made Shanghai a place frothing with incessant excitement; would you be willing to sit and watch it pass you by? For people like Long Legs, who spent their days and nights sauntering through the city’s splendor, every day was like Christmas: how could they be expected to endure a boring, uneventful lifestyle like the common herd? Even with their eyes closed, they could still differentiate light from the dark. Walking down a dark, shady street, they could sniff out through the walls where all-night dance parties were raging and where people were only sleeping. They were the sharpest sort of people — how could they possibly settle for “ordinary”? Only after understanding this can one sympathize with the sufferings of Long Legs as he sat there by himself in that park; then one would know what he was thinking without even having to ask.

The park was actually only around a half-hour’s ride from downtown, but it was another world; there even the wind and the air were lonely, not to mention the people. He wondered what his friends were doing. What was Zhang Yonghong doing? When he was with her, all he thought about was how to please her. Now that he was alone, he found himself thinking about his future with her. This was a state of mind quite alien to him. To people like Long Legs, who got through life by means of hustling, the future is something that arrives on its own and there was no point in thinking about it. Now that he sat down to ponder it, Long Legs discovered that his mind was blank. His confusion about the future was partly because he simply didn’t know, but also because he had no plans. His mind went in circles as he realized that he and Zhang Yonghong had no real future to speak of — all they had were the days ahead of them. These days could be reduced to eating out and going to dance parties and on shopping trips — things that made up the essence of life, the most important things — but all of those things required money. And so his thoughts came full circle…. Everything came back to money.

When Long Legs made his return, it was with a new, completely refurbished appearance. He was in high spirits, smiling from ear to ear, had a sharp new haircut, and was wearing fresh clothes, and his wallet was stuffed with cash — even his posture was better than it had been in years. He wanted to invite everyone out for barbeque at the Beer Garden, the new restaurant that had just opened in the Jinjiang Hotel. It was an early autumn night. The candles on the tables flickered in the wind, as did the flames in the barbeque pit, the wine inside the glasses had a shiny luster, and the faint smoke from the pit faded into the breeze. Tears almost came to Long Legs’ eyes as he thought: Am I dreaming? The canvas canopy above them was like a sail, billowing up from time to time, as if carrying them off to some warm place far, far away. That was how an evening in Shanghai ought to be — all other occasions were the dregs of this one. Such a sudden departure followed by a dramatic return surely meant adding an exciting new chapter to his family myth. On nights like this, in a place as beautiful as a crystal palace, people tended to believe whatever they were told — adults too need a place to exercise their imagination. A few insects nibbled gently on people’s feet on the lawn, all around them was Western-style architecture, the leaves of French parasol trees hung down over them, and melodious music played. But all of this was only secondary: what was most important was inside their hearts — what they were feeling in their hearts! They didn’t seem to be people at all, but celestial beings. But the words deep inside Long Legs’ heart didn’t form complete sentences, his song was out of tune; his knees were knocking gently and his fingers tapping against his leg could not keep time. What’s intoxication? This was intoxication. It had only been a few days, but Long Legs had already experienced two different lives.