Wang Anyi - The Song of Everlasting Sorrow

Deuce was favored with a flawlessly light complexion and delicate facial features. He spoke as softly as he walked. If he were not such a fine boy, his family would have disapproved of him and the town folks would have made him the butt of their jokes, which was what they customarily did with recluses. But Deuce aroused the parental instinct in people, and they happily indulged him. Several families had thought about making him their son-in-law. This may have had to do with the tenor of the time, in which a solitary figure held a certain appeal. People were genuinely fond of him. Deuce held himself aloof from Wu Bridge, sometimes even letting his contempt show on his face, but this only enhanced his progressive aura. He saw himself as a man of the world, and regarded Wu Bridge as a discarded remnant. He would have left if he had had his choice, but his health was not strong enough to confront the turmoil of the outside world, and he was forced to fall back on Wu Bridge. He had now become one of the discarded remnants, but his heart belonged out there.

Accordingly, Deuce was a tormented soul. There is an old saying that a man’s shadow was his spirit, but Deuce claimed he was a man without a shadow. On moonlit nights he would glare at his own shadow on the stone slab bridge and reject it. Is that really me? Clearly, it must be someone else. One day, walking past the pickled food shop, Deuce saw Wang Qiyao sitting inside. He was electrified. Now there is my true shadow! he exclaimed inwardly. From that day on he volunteered to make deliveries for the shop. He had to walk over three bridges, and his heart leaped with joy, higher as he passed over each bridge, although he did not allow it to show. With a tightly drawn face, he would drop off the bean curd, turn around, and leave. On his return trip, his heart sank at every bridge, but there was exhilaration mixed in with that sadness, and he walked with a spring in his step. He was convinced that Wang Qiyao had been mistakenly snipped off from the proper world and that she still carried with her the splendor of that other realm. Why did she end up here? Deuce was so grateful that his eyes grew moist. Her presence brought sunlight to Wu Bridge, ensuring that this place would never be lost. Her presence brought a glimmer of hope to Wu Bridge, providing a link between this place and the outside world. Oh, what changes she brought to Wu Bridge! Deuce had heard rumors about Wang Qiyao, but no matter how outrageous the rumors were, he was not put off. On the contrary, they fed his fantasy. To him, Wang Qiyao epitomized the opulence of Shanghai — even though this was a bygone opulence, a bygone dream. The reflected glory of Shanghai was strong enough to last through another half-century. Deuce’s heart came alive again.

Wang Qiyao soon began to take notice of this young delivery man. With his fair skin and effetely persnickety schoolboy style, he seemed to her a character out of an old photograph. When he spoke with her great uncle, she listened closely through the partition, and found that he was so soft-spoken he sounded like a bird. Once she ran into him on her way to buy needles and thread. He fled, blushing, to another bridge. Wang Qiyao was amused and began to take an interest in him. She discovered that he had a habit of walking by himself at all hours, and his silhouette in the moonlight was as charming as that of a virgin. He sometimes leaped with a girlish joy. One day, after he had dropped off the basket of bean curd at the front of the store and was on his way to the back room, Wang Qiyao called to him from behind, “Deuce!”

As he turned his head, she hid herself to watch the agitated and confused look on his face. This was the first time Wang Qiyao had engaged in a mischievous act of any kind since arriving in Wu Bridge, and it was Deuce who brought out this side of her. After looking around, Deuce thought he must have been hearing things, but instead of ignoring it, he shouted back, “Who’s calling me?”

Wang Qiyao put her hand over her mouth to conceal her laughter — the first time she had laughed since arriving. This too was because of Deuce.

The following day, running into him on the street, she stood in his path and said, “How come you didn’t see me yesterday with those big eyes of yours?”

Deuce was so embarrassed that he turned bright red all the way down to his neck, where a blue artery pulsated wildly. He fixed his eyes on her but did not know what to do with his hands. “Where are you heading?” she asked more gently.

Deuce mumbled that he was on his way to collect bills and showed her the account book. Wang Qiyao glanced at the handwriting on the slips and asked if it was his. Getting a grip on himself, he answered that some of it was. She asked which parts were his, and he showed her several lines of elegant tiny characters. Wang Qiyao, who knew nothing about calligraphy, praised his writing, “Not bad at all!”

The rosiness gradually faded from Deuce’s cheeks. “You’re mocking me.”

“Even the Chinese teachers at my school couldn’t have written characters the size of a fly’s head with such a fine hand,” Wang Qiyao rejoined with a straight face.

“In Shanghai, the entire educational system is focused on the sciences and other practical subjects,” said Deuce. “Calligraphy is a pastime that one indulges in during leisure hours.”

His range of reference took Wang Qiyao by surprise, and she realized she had underrated him. She tested him with a few other questions, to which he responded intelligently in the tone of a good pupil. Before they parted, she invited him to visit her more often.

Someone else delivered the bean curd the following morning. Deuce himself came in the evening wearing a pair of canvas athletic shoes newly whitened with shoe powder. He still had on his scarf and in his hand was a bundle of books. He came as a visitor, bringing candies for children in the household. The books were for Wang Qiyao, he said; with no movie theater in Wu Bridge, these might serve to entertain her in the evening. It was a random collection of books that included timeworn detective stories such as Astounding Tales and The Cases of Judge Shi , contemporary romances such as Zhang Henshui’s The Heavy Darkness of the Night, and magazines such as Fiction Monthly and Panorama. He’s emptied his bookcase for me, Wang Qiyao told herself. Wu Bridge is a simple and conservative town, after all. In Shanghai a boy like Deuce would have learned how to be more cunning and slick long ago, yet how much more dashing and urbane the boys are in Shanghai! Wang Qiyao looked again at Deuce and felt sorry for him for being buried in the backwoods. Under the lamp his face looked even paler, and a thatch of his very black hair had fallen over his forehead.

She teased him. “So, when are you going to fetch your bride?”

He blushed and said he was only eighteen.

“Your eldest brother is only twenty and he already has several children,” replied Wang Qiyao, nothing daunted.

Deuce snorted, “That’s Wu Bridge for you.”

That he set himself apart from Wu Bridge showed how highly he thought of himself. Wang Qiyao told herself to mind his sensitivity, but she could not help amusing herself at his expense. “Would you like me to introduce you to a Shanghai girl?”

“You are making fun of me.” This, with lowered head, sounding aggrieved.

Seeing that she had hurt his feelings, Wang Qiyao went on hastily, “You are at an age when you should be thinking about your career. What are your plans?”

Deuce explained how he had been going to attend a teaching university in Nanjing when his plans were thwarted by the political situation. Mention of the political situation sent a chill down Wang Qiyao’s spine and she fell silent. Deuce sensed that he had inadvertently touched a sore spot. Rather than questioning her, however, he tactfully offered comfort by saying that things would have to settle down eventually, life has its ups and downs, and — quoting the Book of Changes —when misfortune has reached its limit, good fortune is sure to follow. It was at just such a juncture, when everything seemed uncertain, that Wang Qiyao found herself in the backwater town of Wu Bridge. She had supposed that her life no longer mattered, much less her heart. But suddenly she was struck by a subtle feeling that her heart was coming back to her.