Wang Anyi - The Song of Everlasting Sorrow

However, the shadows cast by the moonlight on the flowery curtains are always soft and beautiful. On cloudless nights, the moon illuminates the entire room, not with daylight’s intense glare, but seemingly through a veil, bathing the room with a gentle radiance. The lilies on the wallpaper and the orchids embroidered on the comforter seem to have been drawn with a fine brush, every line and stroke clear and distinct. The faint sounds of a phonograph playing — what is it? — Zhou Xuan’s “Song of the Four Seasons” make their way into the room. No matter how noisy and chaotic it may be outside, the young lady’s bedchamber is always quiet. The incense, half burned, leaves a pile of ash in the dish. Only six of the twelve chimes of the clock are heard, for the lady has fallen asleep.

Hers is a silent dream. Behind the cavernous windows of the back longtang apartments, who else could possibly aspire to these perfectly pure dreams? They are like clouds drifting over the hectic turmoil below, trance-like and short-lived, yet blissfully ignorant that they are destined to be short-lived, occurring night after night. The stitches in the embroidery frame, the scribbles in the margins of a book — line after line, fine and closely spaced — are the language of the heart. The language of the heart is also silent, steeped in moonlight, eye-catching and yet reticent, full of emotions it cannot even begin to articulate.

The moon begins to descend in the western night sky. The darkest moment comes just before the sunlight creeps up onto the horizon. Then, as the first rays of the morning begin to light up the sky, the dream and the language of the heart vanish, like wild geese in flight disappearing over the horizon without a trace. This was but a flash of gentle activity, soft as water in a night where silence reigns supreme, like a single cloud floating above the moiling world. In the morning, the flowery curtains are drawn halfway to reveal an air of anticipation — as if the window had been biding its time the whole night through. The glass of the windowpane is free from even the slightest smudge. And, although there is not a soul in the apartment, the room is filled with anticipation, a nameless, rootless anticipation that expects to be disappointed. Even so, it is free of resentment or regret. During the bustle of the morning, with everyone as impatient as the crowing rooster, this is the only thing that sits helpless, defenseless, passive, and undemanding, yet still fervent with hope. This hope is a flower that bears no fruit, just as everything else is fruit without flowers. This is the only pristine and incorruptible corner in all the longtang of Shanghai.

On the rooftops are young pigeons; in the bedchambers are the young girls’ hearts. The last rays of the westerly sun that come through the window seem to be singing an elegy, pouring their hearts out in a final display of emotion. On an afternoon bristling with activity, this is the only bit of helplessness. There is something ancient about this helplessness, reminiscent of classical poetry or a plucked zither — but who is there to listen? It cannot even measure up to a floating cloud. Clouds can transform into wind and rain, whereas this can only turn into mist, to be blown away on the wind, leaving no trace behind. Sadly, the vestal bedchamber in the Shanghai longtang will sometimes turn into a mirage, a resplendent earthly paradise that vanishes in one fleeting moment.

This vestal bedchamber has actually undergone a mutation. Drawing whatever it can from its environment, it is always eager to learn, but follows no fixed rules. It builds itself up from scratch on the assumption that everything is up for grabs. Here old Chinese parables like Tales of Virtuous Women coexist with Hollywood romances; high-heeled shoes are worn under a cheongsam of indigo blue. Elegant verses—“Evening falls over the Xunyang River as I see off my guest, Maple leaves and bamboo reeds rustle in the autumn wind” and such like — are intoned alongside popular song lyrics like “Back when we were young.” Confucian homilies on the segregation of the sexes are discussed in the same breath as women’s liberation. One exalts Ibsen’s Nora as a spiritual leader for having the courage to leave home while deep down inside idolizing Oriole in The Western Wing, who finds a strong man she can depend on for the rest of her life.

It is not that there are no rules here, just that these rules are simply too complicated to sort out. In the end, everything is blended together in the bedchamber. You cannot lay a charge of deliberate fraudulence, because the heart remains true and is totally in earnest. Like the farmer who rises with the sun and returns from the fields at dusk, each young lady has also worked diligently on the management of her bedchamber. It is not always easy to distinguish the well-bred ones from the uncouth, or those who are decent from their opposite. The rich girl behind the big black gate at the rear of the longtang and the dancing girl in the tingzijian next door serve equally as models: sedate and dignified, flirtatious and sensual — it’s up to them to choose between these. Their mothers hope that they will find a good husband, their male teachers challenge them to declare their independence, and their foreign priests incite them to follow the Lord. The fine clothes in the store window call out to them, the famous stars on the silver screen call out to them, even the heroines of their favorite novels call out to them. Their bodies may be sitting in the bedchamber, but their hearts and minds are somewhere else. Countless roads lie before them, but in the end all rivers flow into the sea. With Western dress sizes on their lips, they are thinking about fabrics for their next cheongsam . Their hearts are wild; they desire to travel the world, but they couldn’t be more timid and hesitant, always needing the maidservant to see them off and pick them up when they go to the late movie. On their way to and from school, they cross the street only in large groups. They are so bashful they dare not raise their head in the presence of a stranger. The dirty banter of the streetside bum is enough to reduce them to tears. And so you see, it is a bit of a contradiction. In the final analysis, they have only themselves to blame for the trouble they get into.

The vestal bedchamber could not be more irksome than in the afternoon. During the spring and summer the windows are open and, all at once, the cries of cicadas screeching in the parasol trees, the hubbub of the passing trolley cars, the clapping of the sweets peddler, and the songs on the neighbor’s phonograph force their way inside, disrupting your peace of mind. Most annoying of all are the faint and trivial sounds that are barely noticeable. You cannot tell what they are or where they come from — incessant, insistent, ambiguous, and shady. You can neither catch hold of them nor chase them away. These curious sounds fill up your heart, making these idle afternoons doubly tedious.

In autumn and winter the haze can linger for days on end. The haze of the Jiangnan region around the lower Yangtze valley has a weight to it; it presses down upon your heart. But how quiet it is — even a sigh is gulped down and comes back out as mist. The fire in the charcoal brazier, originally placed there to drive away the mist, flickers as it is choked by the thickness of the enshrouding haze. The alternations of dark and light, warmth and cold in these afternoons unite to perturb you. When you awaken, they assault your eyes and ears. They plague your dreams as you sleep. When you are at your needlework, they pull at your needles and thread, and as you read, they play with the sentences on the page. If two of you are sitting together chatting, they twist and tug at your words. Afternoon comes midway through the day, when all the daily anticipations and hopes are approaching an end, and with that come impatience and despondency. Even hope is a struggling kind of hope. This is the Götterdammerung of the bedchamber, when the heart has grown old before life has even begun. Just thinking of this, your heart is rent asunder. But you mustn’t tell a soul — even if you did, there would be no way to explain.