Wang Anyi - The Song of Everlasting Sorrow

That night the moonlight shone throughout the city into many curtainless windows, where it shifted across the floor. Whether occupied or not, the rooms into which the moonlight shone were always empty — rooms where piles of old items were stacked up in the corners, items all dating from long ago, long forgotten by their owners. The scene was reminiscent of abandoned ruins. The rooms were empty, as were the people who lived there, shells of their former selves — everything had been ransacked and taken away. In truth, the grinding away had begun decades earlier and most of the damage was already done; why should this recent episode matter? That night, the moonlight moved through many empty rooms and into the hearts of those shells of men, its light shining even into the cracks in the floor. Then a wind picked up, initially along the foot of the walls, but eventually it began to gather strength and emit a harsh whistling sound. Occasionally there would be a door or window not properly shut that would slam as the wind whipped through; the loud bang was like applause extolling the power of the wind. Loose pieces of paper and fabric were picked up by the wind and blown across the floor. These were the broken relics of the past, about to be swept into the trash, performing their final dance.

Nights like that were cold and desolate; those were nights devoid of thoughts, devoid of dreams — they were like death itself. When the sun comes up, things are bound to be better; one can then go out to see and hear what is going on. But at that moment there is nothing to see, nothing to hear. The streets are filled with stray cats that have formed packs to wander all over the place. Their eyes resemble human eyes; they are like exiled souls sleepwalking through the night. Sometimes they hide in dark corners, wailing mournfully as they gaze up at those empty rooms. No matter from how high a place they leap down, they always land silently on their feet. And once they step into the darkness, they disappear, leaving behind not a trace or shadow; in truth, they are those unfortunate souls driven out of the empty shells of flesh they once inhabited. Another creature that may very well be an exiled soul is the water rat running through the sewers. Day and night, these rats traverse the sewer lines running beneath the city’s alleys, lanes, roads, and streets on their way to the Huangpu River. But they often die before reaching their destination. Even so, the day always comes when their carcasses eventually find their way to the river, where they are flushed away. Rarely sighted, this animal never fails to shock those who actually see it. But on that moonlit night, there is a commotion brewing in the underground sewers, a veritable parade of water rats. On that night, we were the ones to be pitied. No longer were we free to act as we pleased; those hearts that were once free have been exiled to a place far, far away. Fortunately, everyone was asleep, lost in a state of numb ignorance; and by the time they woke up, a boisterous new day lay waiting, with so much for them to see, hear, and do.

Mr. Cheng slept with his eyes open that night. As the moonlight and the wind passed before his eyes, he thought he was caught in a dream of the past. He did not notice his surroundings, nor what had happened to his home. It was the ferry whistle that first woke him up; then the shadow of the dying moon; and, finally, the first rays of the morning sun. He lifted his head and heard a voice speak to him: If you are going to go, go quickly. It is already late. Without stopping to consider what this meant, he stood up and climbed over the windowsill. The window was already open, as though it was waiting for him. The wind whipped past his ears. He felt as light as a feather and seemed to swirl around in the air as he fell to the ground. At that hour not even the pigeons had awakened, the first milk truck of the morning had yet to set out on its route, but there was a ship that had left shore, making for the mouth of the Suzhou River. No one witnessed Mr. Cheng’s flight, and his empty shell of a body struck the ground in silence. His time in the air was quite long, more than enough for him to reflect on a few things. The moment he left the window, his mind seemed to come back to him. He thought: Actually, it was all over a long time ago. . It’s just that the ending dragged on much too long. It wasn’t until the moment his body hit the ground that he finally heard the sound of the curtain falling.

Have you ever seen a building with one of its walls torn down, leaving all of the rooms inside naked and exposed? The people are gone, and the rooms they once lived in are reduced to nothing but empty boxes. It is difficult to imagine the kinds of scenes that must once have played out in those empty boxes, places that were once the stage for stories of life and death. Those empty boxes appear so small, so crude; it is almost impossible to imagine someone living there for even a day. They look so flimsy — the staircase looks like it was built for a mouse and would collapse under a human footstep. Take a look at the blue sky outside the rear window; there might just as well be no window. The doors, too, appear pointless; they look silly being there. Yet these are precisely the kinds of wooden and brick boxes within which we live our lives, playing out the good days and the bad.

Let us put the wall back in place; otherwise we will hear cries of mourning, mourning the loss of those vanished days. Let us stack those boxes back up the way they were, into tall buildings, and connect them into a longtang , in front of which runs a main street and behind which lies a small alley, both of them bustling with people and cars. No matter how many rooms are left empty and abandoned in the city, there will always be more people to fill them. The people in this city are like water that finds its way into every open crevice.

In this city one never has the leisure to mourn what has been lost; everyone is too busy fighting for a spot in line. That would be like cramming a century into a single year and a year into a single day; but, with an approach like that, you could use up someone’s entire life and not even fill the slightest gap hidden between the teeth of history. If one is intent on mourning, he can dedicate his entire life to it. But even if one mourns for an entire century, on the hundred and first year everything will disappear like clouds and mist. One need not have long-term goals to live in this city; but then one should not be too fixated on the present either: to plan for a hundred and one years into the future is just about right. Then one should simply enjoy life in one of those brick or wooden boxes, accepting the good days along with the bad. Although there is a certain resignation to this type of life, what other choice do we have? How else can we find happiness for ourselves? You should know that there lies, in those densely packed boxes, a basic and most sanguine article of faith. And even when all the boxes are empty, that faith shall remain. There was chalk writing scrawled all over the windowsills, the floor, the walls, the outside of the building and in the stairwell. The messages were in the hand of a child and they read, “Down with Wang the Mongrel Dog!”

That is what faith is all about.

WEIWEI WAS BORN in 1961. By 1976 she was fifteen, the age when most girls blossom. If you suppose, because her mother Wang Qiyao was beautiful, that Weiwei must have been pretty too, you would be gravely mistaken. Weiwei was not particularly attractive; although she did inherit her mother’s eyes, they were the kind of eyes that look dull unless lit up by charm and emotion. The period in which Weiwei grew up, however, was incapable of providing the environment for honing those qualities. She couldn’t help but be dull; there was even a rather coarse air about her. To be attractive during those years, a girl needed to rely on genuine merit: there was no room for weakness. Weiwei obviously did not qualify as “good-looking.” She would often overhear people discussing her, saying how she wasn’t as pretty as her mother. Such comments fostered a jealousy in her, especially as she entered puberty. Seeing how young and graceful her mother still appeared, she felt that she was being robbed of her own beauty. Those comments also had an effect on her mother, allowing her to maintain the psychological upper hand. Wang Qiyao could calmly face her maturing daughter without the oppressive feeling that her own time was ticking away. As soon as Weiwei was old enough to fit into Wang Qiyao’s outfits, she began fighting with her mother over clothes. Occasionally Wang Qiyao would, with the best intentions, tell her daughter that a certain dress was too old-fashioned for her; but that would only make Weiwei want to wear it even more. She acted as if her mother had only said that as a dirty trick to prevent her from wearing the dress.