Wang Anyi - The Song of Everlasting Sorrow

At the memorial service Jiang Lili’s mother-in-law’s incessant wailing almost drowned out the eulogies delivered by the factory leaders. Her weeping evoked a chorus of answering tears; the mournful wails of the family from the countryside gave the entire service a feeling of genuine sorrow.

Mr. Cheng was among of the first batch of people to commit suicide in the summer of 1966. Looking back on the previous year, all the nonstop merriment seemed like a bad omen; when the cup overflows, disaster follows. But the coming storm was something that took most city dwellers completely unaware. Only a few people of the older generation sensed what was to come and had been quietly brewing. Thus one might say that the gaiety of 1965 was only enjoyed by those common city dwellers who did not sense the danger in the air. To them, the catastrophe of the following summer came out of the blue. Strangely enough, the oleander blossoms in the longtang that summer were as gorgeous as they had ever been; the gardenias, magnolias, tuberoses, impatiens, and roses were in bloom everywhere, filling the air with their fragrance. Only the pigeons were on edge. They would rise abruptly from the rooftops, tracing circles in the sky before returning briefly to their rooftop perches, only to fly away again in panic. They stayed in flight until their wings were nearly broken and blood almost ran from their eyes; they had witnessed too much. No tragic scene — whether causes or consequences — escaped their eyes.

Longtang alleys of all shapes and sizes ran all over the city, and it was during the summer of 1966 that the red- and black-tiled rooftops riddled with protruding dormer windows and concrete terraces were all pried open suddenly, their secrets laid bare for everyone to see. These secrets, conciliatory or compromising, damp and moldy, reeking of rat piss, were in the process of rotting away, destined to become so much fertilizer to provide nourishment for new lives — because even the most insignificant of lives must pay the price of sacrifice. These secrets, light but copious, could creep between the bricks and through the cracks in the walls, dispersing throughout the city’s air. But before anyone could notice the stench of their decay, they would already have transformed themselves, giving rise to new life. Now, when what lay underneath all those rooftops was revealed, the scene was shocking. Dubious tales, unveiled, went on to pollute the city’s air. One such tale told of a headstrong girl who, failing to heed the family rules, was locked away for twenty years. By the time she was released, she could no longer walk, her hair had grown gray, and her eyes could no longer withstand the sunlight. Who could have imagined that hidden beneath these rooftops lay private prisons, no better than rat holes, where prisoners scurried around in the dark?

This was also the setting in 1966 for the Great Cultural Revolution, which played out in the streets of the longtang of Shanghai. The revolution was a force that swept away everything in its path; it had the power to touch people down to their very souls. It penetrated into the hidden hearts of the city. From this point forward there was no place to hide, everything was caught in its grip. Those hidden hearts had largely relied upon the cover of darkness provided by the city in order to survive. Although they existed in secret, unknown to most, they were the greater part of what kept the city alive — its life-force. They were like the submerged portion of an iceberg. The city’s brilliant lights that sparkled in the night, and the bustling activities carried out during its day, all had their foundations in these secrets; these secrets were the fuel that fed the flames of the life on the surface, only no one saw them. Well, now that the curtains have been torn open, these hearts are already half dead. Don’t just look at the dark, corrupted side of these hearts, for within they are shy, sensitive, and full of humility; they can endure suffering but not being exposed. You could almost call this a sense of dignity.

That summer all of the city’s secrets were laid bare, paraded throughout the streets. Due to the size and variety of the population, the secrets accumulated over the previous hundred years in this city exceeded what most cities accrue in a thousand. Just one secret wouldn’t have amounted to anything, but, put together, the whole was massive — a huge secret. These were secrets that could not be spoken, they were secrets that could not even be revealed through tears; these secrets were the beginning — and the end — to so many songs of joy and sorrow. Look, if you will, at the shattered glass vessels, the smashed antique porcelain, and the books, phonograph records, high-heeled shoes, and store signs all going up in flames! Look at the mahogany furniture, men and women’s clothing, pianos and violins that, virtually overnight, ended up piled high at all the second-hand stores! These are the leftover carcasses of those secrets, the fossilized remains of people’s private lives. You could also see the torn photographs scattered about the garbage cans; the torn faces in the ripped pictures looked like ghosts of the wrongly accused. In the end, actual corpses did appear, strewn along the crowded city streets.

Once all the secrets were exposed, the sediments that had been dug up along with them floated through the air, and gossip proliferated. The stories of illicit passions that we heard were only half true. And although we only half believe them, that does not stop us from perpetuating them. The alleys, lanes, streets, and roads of the city were all enveloped in a living hell. The gossip that was released had been chewed over by the toughest of tongues, which twisted and warped the words until they were unrecognizable even to the speakers themselves. You should never wholeheartedly believe the gossip you hear, but neither should you completely discount such rumors; because underneath the sensationalism there is always a grain of truth. That grain of truth is, in fact, quite simple, because it always stems from human nature — it all depends on how you listen to what you hear.

Thousands of monstrous people and events seemed to be born overnight. From the placid waters of yesterday to the terrifying calamities of today, everything was instantly transformed. You need only look at the black-and-white big-character posters displayed beside the road. Then there were the crudely printed colored handbills tossed down from high buildings, which scattered throughout the city. Those alone were enough to leave one completely confused as to what was happening. The city’s heart had been warped beyond all recognition; its eyes too had gone askew, so that no matter what it looked at, nothing was what it had once seemed to be.

The roof hanging over Mr. Cheng’s world was also torn open. In this new era he was made into a cunning special agent; his camera was his weapon and the women who came calling to have their portraits taken were actually his stable of spies, whom he personally trained to seduce victims and extract their secrets. That summer practically any plot was plausible. The floor of his apartment was ripped out and the walls smashed, but the mystery surrounding him only deepened. He was interrogated for several days and nights, but they couldn’t get anything out of him. In the end they locked him up in the toilet of an institution for an entire month. During that month, Mr. Cheng was reduced to a zombie. All he did was eat, sleep, and write confessions, all in accordance with the whim of his captors. His mind became a blank. All night long he had to put up with the dripping sound of the leaking toilet, which was like an hourglass counting off the time.

One night, after being locked up for a month, Mr. Cheng was suddenly released at two o’clock in the morning. As the public buses had stopped running at that hour, he had to walk all the way home. The streets were deserted, as was the Bund alongside the river. When he arrived at his building, he found it deathly silent. The elevator was locked on the ground floor and a lamp hanging from the domed ceiling projected ashen light down onto the lobby floor. As he climbed the stairs that wound around the elevator, the echo of his footsteps rang out under the dome. Through the windows, he could hear the sound of the water lapping on the shore and see the navigational lights on the pitch-black river. When he reached the top floor and pushed open the door to his apartment, he was surprised to find it quite bright inside. All the curtains had been torn down and the moonlight was shining down on the floor. It was so bright that he didn’t even remember to turn on the light. Instead, he walked over to stand in the moonlight for a while before sitting down on the floor.