Wang Anyi - The Song of Everlasting Sorrow

Occasionally, on her way home from school, something would unexpectedly stir up her memory of the screen test. Wang Qiyao was sixteen years old at the time, but that one day’s experience left her with the feeling that she had already been through a lot — she felt much older than sixteen. She started to avoid Wu Peizhen, as if the latter had stolen some secret from her. Whenever Wu Peizhen invited her out after school, Wang Qiyao would almost always find some excuse not to go. Several times Wu Peizhen even went to Wang Qiyao’s apartment to look for her, but each time Wang Qiyao had the maidservant say that she was not home. Sensing that she was being avoided, Wu Peizhen felt heartbroken, but she held on to the hope that Wang Qiyao would eventually come back to her. Her friendship changed into a kind of pious waiting; she did not even look for any new girlfriends, afraid that they might take Wang Qiyao’s place. Wu Peizhen had a faint notion that the reason Wang Qiyao was avoiding her had something to do with that failed screen test, so she too stopped going to the film studio, even breaking off contact with her cousin. The screen test became a source of sorrow for both of them, leaving them with a deep sense of defeat. Things gradually got to the point where they were no longer on speaking terms: running into one another at school, each would make haste to awkwardly get out of the other’s way. They sat on opposite sides of the classroom, but, though their eyes never met, they could always feel one another’s’ presence. A wall of pity grew between them. The incident at the film studio ended with the word “camera,” and the result was what they call in the industry a “freeze frame.” Gone, never to return, but the memory hangs on for all eternity.

Their after-school lives gradually returned to normal; but things were not really the same — something had been snatched away. They were hurt, but neither could say where the pain was. At their girls’ school, where rumors usually flew rampant, not a soul knew about Wang Qiyao’s screen test; they had succeeded in keeping it completely under wraps. It was implicitly understood between them that they should never broach the subject. Actually, just to be chosen by a director for a screen test would already have been a great honor in the eyes of most girls — any hopes of getting a part would be a long shot in a long shot. This was also what Wang Qiyao thought at first, but once she reached that stage everything changed. Suddenly, a price had been exacted and loss was imminent. Only because Wu Peizhen stepped out of her own shoes and empathized completely with her friend was she able to understand the grief Wang Qiyao was going through.

A month had gone by before the director finally called. Wang Qiyao’s voice was stiff and a bit sardonic as she asked him just what business he had calling her. The director explained that he had a photographer friend named Mr. Cheng and wanted to arrange a photo shoot for her. Wang Qiyao replied that she was not very photogenic and told him that he had better have Mr. Cheng find somebody else!

The director laughed. “Oh, little Yao Yao’s throwing a temper tantrum!”

With that, Wang Qiyao was too embarrassed to refuse and gave in. The next day the Mr. Cheng in question called to arrange the time and place.

When the time came, Wang Qiyao went to the address Mr. Cheng had given her, taking with her several cheongsams and dresses. Mr. Cheng lived on the penthouse floor of a multistoried apartment building on the Bund. Part of his apartment had been renovated into a photo studio, complete with cardboard scenic backdrops of European castles as well as Chinese pavilions. Inside were also a dark room and a dressing room. Mr. Cheng was a young man of twenty-six; he had on a pair of goldtrimmed glasses — he was nearsighted — and was wearing a pair of suspenders over a white dress shirt and a pair of Western slacks — very sharp. He had Wang Qiyao fix herself up in the dressing room while he set up the lights.

From the dressing room window, Wang Qiyao could see the Bund, stretched out like a white ribbon. It was a Sunday afternoon and the sunlight was especially refreshing. The clock tower at the Custom House rang the hour, its chiming gradually spreading through the air as if from someplace far, far away. People down beside the river, the size of ants, shimmered as they moved. Pulling her gaze back into the dressing room, Wang Qiyao suddenly felt flustered. Why had she gone there in the first place? Without being conscious of it, she suppressed all hope, refusing to let her expectations grow. She had already suffered a terrible blow and could not help but be discouraged. At the same time, she took a kind of perverse pleasure in watching her dreams melt away, fancying herself the heroine of a sad story. Her only reason for coming, she told herself, was out of respect for the director; for herself, she couldn’t have cared less. She looked herself over in the mirror with a feeling of ambivalence, applied some lipstick, and emerged from the dressing room without even bothering to change her outfit.

Mr. Cheng had already set everything up for the photo shoot; a vase of white calla lilies stood on a stand in front of the orange backdrop he had hung. He asked Wang Qiyao to stand beside the stand while he took a few steps back to see how everything appeared. As he looked her over, Wang Qiyao gazed back at him with indifference, not in the least bit embarrassed. Instead she had a jaded expression that seemed to illustrate “all that she had been through”—but the look that spoke these words was naïve and one could tell that it was a bit forced and exaggerated.

Mr. Cheng had an eye different from the director’s; the director wanted character, but Mr. Cheng wanted only beauty. Character has to be created; beauty, on the other hand, does not have any such mission. In Mr. Cheng’s eyes, Wang Qiyao was practically flawless, a perfect beauty — stunning from every angle. She did not have any of the incorrigible habits of models who were long accustomed to the camera’s eye. She was a blank sheet of paper, an empty palette that could be painted to match the heart’s desire. At the same time, there was a certain elegant poise about her and she wasn’t a bit shy. Her poise came from her experience at the screen test: it was the result of practice. Failure had given it a touch of bashfulness and an endearing modesty — in other words, she was enchanting.

Mr. Cheng was very happy with his director friend’s recommendation. He could not remember just how many beauties had been through the door of his photo studio, but every one had come pre-stylized. They were already like finished photographs; all Mr. Cheng had to do was reproduce them. At that moment he felt a sudden surge of excitement, which communicated itself to Wang Qiyao, and, as the lights went on, a spark of indescribable hope lit up inside her. This ranked as a “second choice” kind of hope but she could feel it rising nevertheless. Of course, Mr. Cheng’s photo studio could not compare with the film studio for glamour, sophomoric and rather desolate as it was, but it exuded an air of diligence and sincerity, of honest work starting from the bottom, of active pursuit — and this won over one’s cooperation. In spite of herself, Wang Qiyao retracted her indifferent attitude and began to show interest and enthusiasm.

No matter how unaffected they may normally be, girls like Wang Qiyao, who know all too well that they are pretty, cannot keep themselves from striking poses in front of a camera. But the poses are usually not very clever — either exaggerated, or coming across a bit forced — and the girls were shown at a disadvantage. Wang Qiyao, however, was an exception: she did not make these kinds of mistakes. She was wiser and had innate self-awareness; she had also learned from her experience at the film studio and remained calm and reserved. That is not to say that her mannerisms were free from a certain affectedness, but it was an unaffected affectedness. She acted like a somebody trying to pretend to be a nobody, and this somehow created an appearance that seemed perfectly suited to the camera. Mr. Cheng could not help himself. He took shot after shot, and Wang Qiyao in turn took to the attention like a fish to water. She began to feel a bit hot, her eyes sparkled, and her face radiated gorgeousness. One after another, she changed into all the different outfits she had brought along as, one after another, Mr. Cheng changed cardboard backdrops. One minute she would be a Chinese girl, the next she would transform into an exotic maiden from abroad. It was already noon by the time they finished the last shot and she went back into the dressing room to change. The Huangpu River glistened; the seagulls soaring above its waters looked like tiny silver spots. A car drove down alongside the riverbank and turned into a dark and quiet street, which ran straight through the tall buildings like a gully at the bottom of a canyon.