Wang Anyi - The Song of Everlasting Sorrow

Long Legs hadn’t come by in several days and Wang Qiyao was almost certain he was a fraud; but when he showed up at last, she was confused again. Long Legs didn’t bother explaining where he had been; instead he carelessly put down a bag of gifts on which DUTY FREE was printed in both Chinese and English. Wang Qiyao wondered where he had been, but instead of inquiring about that, asked him why he hadn’t brought Zhang Yonghong along. Even before she had finished her question, Zhang Yonghong came up the stairs — she had been out in the longtang making a phone call. As it turned out, Old Colour was there too, and the four of them sat down to chat. After his brief absence, Long Legs looked around Wang Qiyao’s apartment and felt quite moved: It hasn ’ t changed one bit. He felt as if he had been gone an eternity, but all the people and things here were still the same; it was as if they had all been awaiting his return and he felt a warmth surging into his heart.

In order to get his life back, Long Legs had become a swindler. Two nights earlier, in a longtang off Lujiazui Road in Pudong, he was exchanging money with a client when he secretly replaced a stack of ten twentydollar bills with one dollar bills. There was nothing new about this type of scam, but for Long Legs it was the first time: a shameful blemish on his record as a currency trader. On the ferry from Pudong back to Puxi, Long Legs gazed up at the moon veiled in clouds and his heart sank. If he hadn’t had nowhere else to turn, he would have never gone down that path. Part of Long Legs’ good-natured disposition was his purity, but now that purity had been tarnished and his heart ached silently. At that moment he looked out across the water and saw the lights and majestic architecture of Shanghai on the opposite shore. The buildings were like a mountain range rising before his eyes, gilded by the lights of the city. The night was calling out to him and oh, how it captivated his soul!

AGAINST THE CLAMOR of the city, who could hear the prayers being uttered in Peace Lane? Who would notice people whose dearest wish in life is not to be praised for merit but only to avoid making mistakes? Here a lean-to shed has been added on to the terrace and the courtyard roofed over to make a kitchen. If you were to look down upon the rooftops of the city, you would find them in utter disarray, worn and dilapidated, structures built on top of structures, taking up every bit of free space. This was especially true of the older longtang, like Peace Lane — it’s a miracle that they haven’t collapsed yet. About a third of the tiles were broken, patched over in places with bits of felt, the wooden frames on the doors and windows were blackened and rotting, with everything in view a uniform ash gray.

But though it was falling apart on the outside, the spirit of the place remained; its inner voice, though stifled, was still audible. But amid all the noises of this city, just what did this voice amount to? There was never a moment of peace and quiet in the city; the day had its sounds, as did the night, and between them they drowned that voice out. But it was still there — it couldn’t be silenced because it was the foundation upon which the hubbub and commotion fed; without it all of those noises would have been nothing but an empty echo. But what did this voice say? Two words: to live . No matter how loud the noise became, no matter what a rumpus it made, or how long it carried on, it could never find those two words. Those two little words weighed a ton, so they sank, and sank — all the way down, to the very bottom; only immaterial things like smoke and mist could float up to the surface. It was impossible to listen to this voice without crying. The prayers whispered in Peace Lane went on day and night, like an ever-burning alter lamp, but they weren’t burning on oil: inch by inch, they were burning thoughts. In contrast, the chaotic noises echoing in the city’s air were nothing but the scraps and leftovers of life, which is why they could be so liberally strewn about. The prayers concealed throughout those thousands of Shanghai longtang rang out louder and clearer than all the church bells in Europe: they created a rumbling thunder that seemed to emerge from the earth itself, the sound of mountains crumbling. A shame we had no way of participating in this ourselves, but just looking at the abyss they created was enough to make the heart grow cold. See what they have done to this place! It is hard to say whether this was a form of construction or destruction, but whatever it was, it was massive.

What Peace Lane prayed for was peace itself. You could hear it even from the bell that was rung every night to warn people to mind their kitchen fires. Peace is not something ordinary, but Peace Lane had an ordinary heart and its prayers were quite humble as well; these modest requests, however, were not easily granted. No major disaster had befallen Peace Lane in many years, but little things kept coming up, such as someone falling off the balcony while bringing in their laundry, another getting electrocuted when he turned off a light switch with a wet hand, pressure cooker explosions, rat poison accidentally ingested. If all these, who died wrongful deaths, had cried out, their howls would have been deafening. So how could one not pray for peace and security?

In the early evening, when the lights came on, you could see in all the windows the watchful eyes of frightened people looking out for signs of trouble. But whenever something bad did happen, no one ever saw it coming. This was where Peace Lane had gone numb and where it displayed its pragmatism. The residents were never prepared for the closest dangers. Yes, they understood the dangers of fire and electricity, but beyond that they had no imagination. And so if you were to see the people of Peace Lane praying, they would be like idiots reciting a book from memory, chanting with their lips but not their minds, repeating the same incantations over and over again. Meanwhile the flowerpot sitting on the windowsill was just an inch away from falling down, but no one ever bothered to move it; the termites had already done their work on the floors, but no one ever seemed to care; illegal structures kept being added one on top of the other, causing the foundation to sink, yet another one was about to be built. During the typhoon season, when Peace Lane shook and rattled and it appeared as if the entire neighborhood was going to pieces, people curled up in their rooms, complacently enjoying the cool breeze brought by the storm. What people in Peace Lane prayed for was to be able to live in a fool’s paradise — they would rather turn a blind eye and never ask questions. The pigeon whistles sounding in the morning sang of peace, announcing the good but never the bad; but even if they had, would that have made a difference? You might be able to escape it in the first round, but would you escape in the second? Put that way, those prayers must imply an acceptance, a sort of Daoist resignation to reality. For want of anything else to pray for, night after night they pray for peace, but that was just wishful thinking.

The wind whistles across the street and down the alleys, picking up handfuls of dead leaves along the way. Sunlight, also in handfuls, seemed reluctant to leave the long, winding longtang behind. Summer was gone, autumn waning. The houses at the end of longtang had their doors and windows all tightly shut. The sweet-scented oleander shed its petals; stories that never got a chance to be told were swallowed back down and kept quiet. This was the moment when the Shanghai longtang showed their solemn side; their solemnity carried weight and from it you could feel the pressure of time. This longtang had already built up its own history and history always shows a stern face, making the longtang put its frivolous side away. How unruly it used to be! — Seductive eyes peeking out of every corner, one false step and you would be ensnared.