Su Tong: Madwoman On the Bridge and Other Stories

As evening approached, Wenqin and the madwoman were seen walking down The East is Red Street. The two women attracted attention in different ways. Naturally people noticed the white velvet cheongsam the madwoman was dressed in, and the sharper-eyed among them soon observed what was different about the madwoman’s collar. The safety pin totally ruined the elegant effect and made people burst out laughing. But because they knew all about the state of her mind, the bizarre appearance of a safety pin seemed perfectly reasonable and no one gave too much thought to the question of what had happened to the frog. The impression the madwoman had always given was that she loved to show off her elegant appearance, and now they assumed she had lost even her vanity. But no one really cared; let her wear whatever she felt like. Let her dress in a cheongsam if she wanted, and if she wanted to fasten it with a safety pin, then so be it.

Luckily, the walk passed without incident. When they reached Wenqin’s home on Sunflower Alley, she tried her luck. Tentatively she asked the madwoman, ‘Now, you can get home by yourself. You know the way, don’t you?’

But the madwoman was not fooled, she had a crystalclear recollection of the promise Wenqin had made. ‘The silk scarf. Your black scarf with the golden flowers, you promised to give it to me. You’re a welcher if you don’t.’

Wenqin rolled her eyes and said, ‘Your memory’s better than mine. Are you sure there’s anything wrong with you? It’s just a silk scarf; I’ll give it to you like I promised. Wait here, I’ll go in and get it.’

‘Oh no,’ the madwoman said. ‘What if you go in and don’t come back? I’m coming with you.’ Wenqin was growing angry. ‘What are you talking about? Just because you’re ill, you can’t go around behaving like this. Following me around like a little dog, sticking to my heels.’ Having raised her voice, Wenqin noticed that people were looking at them, so she adopted a milder tone and said, ‘My father-in-law’s ill in bed and not in any state to be seen. If you really don’t trust me you can come along, but you can’t go inside. My mother-in-law is very superstitious, she won’t let anyone like you into an invalid’s house.’

The madwoman stood outside the door of Wenqin’s house on Sunflower Alley. There were no sunflowers to be seen, but people had planted white, yellow and purple chrysanthemums on their windowsills and in their gardens, all of them half dead by now. As the madwoman waited for Wenqin’s silk scarf, she bowed her head to examine the chrysanthemums in front of the door; then, not satisfied with merely looking, she bent down to pick some. Just at that moment, a loud noise behind her gave her a fright. It was a little girl wearing a red neckerchief, who approached her while twirling a skipping rope. Girls in red neckerchiefs always reminded the madwoman of her daughter.

‘You’re not Susu. I thought you were my own girl, Susu.’ She ran after the skipping girl and asked, ‘What time is it? Do you know my daughter Susu? You’re out of school now, aren’t you?’

The girl stood still and stared at the madwoman in astonishment. First she looked at her face, then nervously she examined her cheongsam. ‘Why are you wearing a dress like that? That’s the sort of dress women spies wear in the movies!’

The madwoman said, ‘This isn’t a dress at all; it’s a cheongsam. Everybody used to wear them, before.’

The girl seemed only partly to understand this. Finally, her curious gaze rested on the madwoman’s collar. She pointed at the safety pin and said, ‘You’re so lazy! Why don’t you sew on a new button if the old one fell off? Why did you use a safety pin?’

The madwoman lifted her hand to her collar and let out the first sharp cry. By the time Wenqin came out with the silk scarf, the little girl who had provoked the disaster had vanished without trace, leaving only the madwoman. Her face was pale as snow, she had thrown the sandalwood fan to the ground, and her left hand gripped her collar tightly. Her right hand was pressed against her chest and she sent forth one sharp scream after another. Wenqin knew that there was no sense in denying the truth; the game was up. She was flustered now, too, and the neighbours were converging on the door to her home. But there was something that frightened Wenqin even more: as well as the missing frog, according to the madwoman’s choked cries, a gemencrusted brooch had also disappeared!

In her desperation, Wenqin forgot the madwoman’s precarious state of mind. She poked her in the face with one finger. ‘What brooch? What precious stones? That’s a malicious lie! I’ve never seen you wear any brooch.’ How could Wenqin be anything but flustered? The frog was a small affair — and it was true she bore responsibility for that, but it was only a frog, it didn’t really distress her — the brooch, on the other hand, was a catastrophe that had materialized out of thin air. How could Wenqin fail to be confused? And in her confusion, she began to abuse the victim: ‘What butterfly brooch? What precious stones? You loony! Be mad if you want to, but you needn’t try and con me while you’re at it.’

The incident that became known as ‘the time the madwoman raised Cain’ consisted of the events of that early evening. In fact, the madwoman did not raise Cain; she merely gave sharp cries and wept. Everybody there learned from her cries that she had lost two articles: a frog fastening and a brooch. Although exquisite, the frog was only a dress fastening; but the brooch sounded rare and valuable, and its loss accounted for the gravity of the situation. Everyone looked at Wenqin with eyes that demanded an explanation. Then the madwoman seized a part of her dress, as if that would make her produce the missing belongings, and refused to let go; meanwhile, Wenqin refused to explain. She held a black scarf in her hands which she tried to wrap around the madwoman’s neck; but the madwoman wouldn’t accept it, and the impression given was that she was refusing some kind of bribe. Soon the women were fighting, madly entwined, accompanied by sharp screams from them both.

Wenqin’s pretty face flushed red as a pig’s liver with fury. ‘She’s mad! Mad! You all know that!’ She tried to shake off the madwoman and raised one hand to make an oath to her neighbours: ‘She’s sick in the head, but you aren’t. I’ll tell you what really happened. I borrowed the frog to make a pattern from it. But this brooch or whatever, that’s her madness talking. If I’ve ever seen this brooch of hers, may lightning strike me down!’

At one point, Wenqin’s husband Luo came out and tried to part the two women, but to no avail. He took no further steps, apparently thinking of the undignified impression it would make, and instead stood by with a sombre expression on his face and his hands on his hips. That was all he could do as the women flew at one another; for whenever women fight, no man can feasibly intervene, much less if one woman is the Mahogany Street madwoman and the man a cadre in the Ministry of Health. Luo heard the madwoman crying. His wife was crying too, and as she cried she turned around to reproach him, ‘Luo, you wimp! Why don’t you do something to make this loony go away? Hurry up and make her go away!’

Luo rubbed his hands, took a step forward and grabbed the madwoman with one hand. But then, realizing he couldn’t bear the loss of face, he retracted it again. The next moment the neighbours saw him clap himself on the forehead — evidently he had found a solution to the problem. They watched him run down the alley, a few children at his heels. They all ran down to the public phone outside the general store — apparently Luo’s solution was going to be found at the end of the phone line — and the children listened as he made the call, instructing someone to dispatch an ambulance right away. Who was the patient? Luo bawled into the receiver, ‘What do you mean, is it high blood pressure? Is it heart disease? What do you mean, is it serious? If it weren’t serious, would I be calling you? Since you have the nerve to ask, it’s a loony, a wild loony on the loose, making a scene in front of my house.’