The Real Story of Ah-Q (39 page)

This new life, I now sensed, was within my grasp.

This most insufferable of Beijing winters – we had survived it. We were like powerless dragonflies caught by a malicious child, then tied up and tortured, almost to death; and yet not quite. But after it all, we had been left sprawled weakly over the ground, the end in clear sight.

Three letters to the editor of
Freedom’s Friend
finally yielded a response: an envelope containing two book tokens, for twenty and for thirty cents. The pursuit of a fee had already cost me nine cents in stamps – a whole day’s food. Yet more futility. Then the inevitable finally happened.

Once winter began turning into spring, and the wind became less harrying, I spent even more of my time away from the house, wandering about; I never returned home before dark. As usual, I joylessly turned towards home one dusky evening; as usual, my steps slowed even more melancholically at the mere sight of the gate. When I went in, however, I discovered our rooms in darkness. I groped for a match, surprised by the strange sense of desolation about them.

The landlord’s wife came to the window to call me out.

‘Zijun’s father came to take her back,’ she informed me briefly.

I stood, speechless at the unexpectedness of it – as if I had just been dealt a blow to the back of my head.

‘She went with him?’ I eventually managed, after some time had passed.

‘Yes.’

‘Did she… did she say anything?’

‘No. She just told me to tell you when you came back – that she’d gone.’

I could hardly believe it; and yet the emptiness of the rooms spoke for itself. I looked for Zijun everywhere but found only a few dismal, broken bits of furniture, no human figure concealed within their sharp outlines. Next, I searched for a letter, or any kind of note she might have left me. Again, nothing; only salt, dried chillies, flour and half a cabbage gathered in a single pile, a few dozen coins next to them. She had left me the entirety of our joint stores and savings – a solemn, silent instruction to sustain life as long as I could.

Oppressed by my surroundings, I fled into the courtyard, the dusk thickening about me. Bright light shone out of the paper windows in the main room of the house; I could hear my landlord and his wife laughing, playing with their daughter. Despite the heaviness of my heart, an escape route slowly, dimly glimmered into view: high mountains, great marshes, vast metropolises, dazzlingly lit banquets, trenches, the darkest of nights, a stabbing knife, silent footsteps…

My mood lifting, I thought of my travel costs, and sighed.

I lay in bed, eyes shut, contemplating the path I now planned to take. Before half the night was through, I could see it. A mass of food seemed to appear out of the darkness, then Zijun’s waxen face, her childlike eyes wide open in entreaty, gazing at me. When I shook myself, darkness returned.

Yet my heart was still heavy. Why couldn’t I have waited a few days longer – why had I been in such a hurry to tell her the truth? What did she have left now? A life spent in the debt of a grimly authoritarian father, despised by all she encountered; everything empty of meaning. Walking this road of life, burdened with hollowness and contempt. How terrifying! And at the end of this road: an unmarked grave.

I shouldn’t have told her the truth. For the sake of the love we had once shared, I should have smiled and told her lies for ever. Truth is a luxury not everyone can afford; to Zijun, it had brought only desolation. Lies bring their own hollowness, but they do not oppress like the truth.

I’d thought that if I told Zijun the truth, she could stride forward once more, without regret, just as she had done when we had first decided to live together. I now realized I had been mistaken. Back then, she had drawn her courage from love.

Lacking the courage to bear the burden of falsity, I set upon her the heavier burden of the truth. Now that she had loved me, she would bear this for the rest of her life, despised wherever she went.

I’d thought of her dying… What a coward I was: I deserved to be thrown aside by those who were stronger than me – whether they spoke the truth or lies. Yet she still wanted me to go on living as long as I could…

I wanted to escape the empty bleakness of Goodluck Lane. If I left this place behind me, I could imagine Zijun was still by my side, or at least in the same city; that one day, she might visit me unannounced, as she had done when I was still in the hostel.

But after none of my letters and appeals got any response, I was obliged to call on an old family acquaintance – a former schoolmate of my uncle’s, and long-term resident of Beijing – whom I had not visited for several years. He seemed to know everyone in Beijing, where he was still a celebrity for having years ago competed in the Imperial College examinations.

His doorman superciliously barred my way, probably because my clothes were so old and tattered. When, eventually, I gained an entrée, I was treated no less coolly. He recognized me easily enough: he knew all about our affair.

‘Obviously, you can’t stay on here,’ he stonily responded to my request for help in tracking down a new situation. ‘But where else can you go? Very difficult… By the way, that – that
friend
of yours, Zijun. She’s dead, you know.’

For a while, I was too shocked to speak.

‘Really?’ I eventually stuttered out.

‘Ha! Of course. My servant, Wang Sheng, is from the same village.’

‘But… how did she die?’

‘How should I know? She’s dead – that’s all that matters.’

I’ve forgotten how I took my leave from him and returned home. I knew he had no reason to lie to me; now Zijun would never come back. She had been denied even the possibility of living out a life burdened with hollowness and contempt. The truth I had told her had determined her fate: to die unloved!

Of course I couldn’t carry on in Beijing; but where else could I go?

Desolation and the silence of the grave were everywhere about me. I seemed to see the lonely darkness of all who had died a loveless death and hear their bitter, despairing struggles.

Still I expected new things – unnamed, unforeseen – to come along. Day after day, though, there was nothing: only the loneliness of the grave.

I no longer went out as much as I once had done. I spent my days sitting or lying in the cavernous emptiness of the apartment, allowing the deathly silence to eat at my soul. Occasionally, the silence would shudder into retreat, permitting new hopes – unnamed, unforeseen – to glimmer out at me.

One overcast morning, when the sun seemed unable to fight its way out of the clouds and even the air seemed weary, I heard a broken patter of footsteps and a snuffling noise. When I stared about me, the room was still empty. Then, glancing down at the floor, I found a tiny, thin animal: half-dead, covered in dust.

I looked again: my heart missed a beat, then began to pound.

It was Tag. He had come back.

I was driven away from Goodluck Lane as much by Tag’s reappearance as by the obvious hostility of my landlord and his household. But where
could
I go? I still had many paths open to me, I could still see this – and sometimes I glimpsed them, felt them bifurcating before me. But still I did not know how to advance towards them.

After much thought, I decided that returning to the hostel was the only course open to me: to that same old shabby room, the same old plank bed, the same old moribund locust tree and wisteria. This time, everything that had brought me happiness, love, life was now gone, replaced only by hollowness, a hollowness that I had created with the truth.

I still have many paths open to me: I must stride forward, for the sake of living. But still I cannot think how to begin. Sometimes, I see life as a long, grey snake, crawling towards me. I wait, and I wait, watching it approach – then suddenly it vanishes into the darkness.

The early spring nights drag on as always. Sitting tediously awake, I remember a funeral I saw on the street this morning, led by paper cut-outs – of people and horses – and shadowed from the back by almost melodious wailing. How ingeniously simple and yet final the whole thing was.

But now I see Zijun’s funeral, oppressive in its hollowness, snaking along a long, grey road, escorted into the void by contempt.

I hope there is a hell, where dead spirits gather. There, buffeted by the infernal roars of retribution, I will seek out Zijun, tell her of my sorrow and regret, and beg her forgiveness, before the poisonous flames of the underworld consume them in fire.

I will take Zijun in my arms once more, and beg her to take mercy on me, or whatever she will…

How hollow all this is; emptier even than the new paths before me. All I have now is this spring night, stretching infinitely out. I am alive, and must make strides towards a new life. Writing of my sorrow and regret – for Zijun, and for myself – this is the first step towards that life.

A dirge of funeral wails is all I have to bury Zijun with, to bury her in oblivion.

I need to forget, for my own sake; I must stop thinking that I buried Zijun in oblivion.

I must take the first strides towards a new life, burying the truth deep in the wound in my heart, silently advancing, guided only by the principles of forgetting and falsehood.

Finished on 21 October 1925

Since there was never much public welfare to be attended to at the Bureau of Public Welfare, a handful of office workers were, as usual, gossiping about family problems. Until Qin Yitang began choking on his own pipe, obliging everyone else to fall silent until he recovered.

‘At it again last night they were,’ he eventually spluttered, still holding on to his pipe, face purple from the effort of drawing breath ‘Rowing all the way out to the front gate. Nothing I could do to shut them up.’ His lips – fringed with grey bristle – were still trembling. ‘Son Number Three’s insisting Number Five should make good the family money he’s thrown away on government bonds.’

‘It’s always about money,’ Zhang Peijun sighed, standing up from a shabby divan, his deep-set eyes shining with benevolence. ‘Why do brothers have to haggle over every last dollar? It all evens out in the end, doesn’t it?’

‘There’s not many families like yours out there,’ Qin Yitang observed.

‘We don’t fuss over details, my brother and I. It all evens out in the end. We don’t get hung up about money. It’s the only way. Whenever I see a family about to fall apart, I always tell them how we manage things. You should say something to them.’

‘They’d never listen.’ Yitang shook his head.

‘I don’t reckon your chances,’ Wang Yuesheng cut in, casting an admiring glance at Peijun. ‘They broke the mould when they made you two; I’ve never met a pair of brothers like you. The fact is, neither of you has a selfish bone in his body. A rare thing.’

‘All the way out to the gate…’ Yitang repeated.

‘How is your brother?’ Wang Yuesheng now asked. ‘Busy as ever?’

‘Still eighteen hours of classes a week, with ninety-three compositions to mark on top. It’s too much for anyone. He’s been off the last few days with a fever. Must have picked up a cold somewhere.’

‘Keep an eye on that,’ Yuesheng said solemnly. ‘I read in today’s newspaper there’s something nasty doing the rounds.’

‘What’s that?’ Peijun quickly asked.

‘Can’t remember off the top of my head. But it’s a fever of some sort.’

Peijun rushed off to the reading room.

‘Amazing,’ Yuesheng sighed admiringly to Qin Yitang, watching him go. ‘You’d think they were joined at the hip. If everyone took a leaf out of their book, we’d all be happy families. It’s beyond me, though.’

‘He said he should make good the family money he’d thrown away on government bonds…’ Yitang muttered peevishly to himself, dropping some paper charcoal into the burner.

A quiet fell over the office, presently shattered by Peijun’s footsteps and voice, instructing the office boy to telephone one Dr Bodinus and have him come straightaway to the home of Zhang Peijun, at Tongxing Court. His voice had a stammering tremble to it, as if some terrible catastrophe loomed.

Yuesheng could see immediately how anxious he was. He knew that although Peijun was a great believer in Western medicine, he rarely splashed out on doctors, because he didn’t earn much. But here he was, calling out the most celebrated and expensive physician in town. Going out to check on him, Yuesheng found his colleague standing white-faced by the telephone, listening to the office boy making the call.

‘What’s up?’

‘It says in the paper there’s – there’s a scarlet – scarlet fever epidemic. When I – I was leaving for the office after lunch, Jingfu’s face was bright red… He’s on another call? Ah – ask them to telephone him wherever he is, tell him to come straight over to Tongxing Court, Tongxing Court.’

After hearing out the end of the phone call, Peijun rushed back into the office and snatched up his hat. Wang Yuesheng followed on behind, infected by his anxiety.

‘If the bureau chief comes by, will you explain there’s an illness in the family and I’ve gone to fetch the doctor?’ he gabbled, nodding away in panic.

‘Just go,’ Yuesheng urged. ‘He doesn’t come in every day.’

But Peijun had already fled.

When he emerged on to the street, Peijun didn’t bother even to haggle with the rickshaw man as he usually would. ‘Fast as you can!’ he begged, grabbing the first decent puller he saw, after cursorily asking the fare.

All was peaceful as ever around their apartment – the houseboy sitting by the entrance, playing the
huqin
¹
as always. Walking into his brother’s room, his heart beat even faster: his brother’s face looked more flushed than ever, his breathing laboured. His forehead scalded Peijun’s outstretched hand.

‘What’s wrong with me?’ Jingfu asked, his eyes anxious. ‘Nothing to worry about, is it?’

‘Oh, no,’ he stammered back, ‘just a cold.’

Normally he was a great enemy of superstitious forebodings, but there seemed to be something horribly ill-omened about Jingfu’s face and voice, as if the sick man himself had some kind of presentiment. Even more disturbed, Peijun immediately left the room to call softly for the houseboy, whom he had telephone the hospital again: Had they found Dr Bodinus yet?

‘Yes, yes,’ the houseboy said into the receiver. ‘Still out, then.’

Peijun couldn’t even stand, much less sit, still. And yet, in the midst of his panic, he clutched at his brother’s only hope: maybe it wasn’t scarlet fever. But the doctor was still out of reach… Bai Wenshan, one of their neighbours, practised Chinese medicine. Maybe he could have a go at a diagnosis. But Peijun had said so many disparaging things about Chinese medicine to him – and he might have heard him telephoning for Dr Bodinus.

In the end, he asked him to come over anyway.

The good-natured Bai Wenshan immediately put on his tortoiseshell dark glasses and followed Peijun into Jingfu’s room. He took Jingfu’s pulse, asked a few questions, looked at his chest then calmly took his leave. Peijun followed Bai back to his own rooms.

He asked Peijun to sit down but said nothing.

‘My dear Wenshan,’ Peijun broke the silence, ‘what’s wrong with my – ’

‘Red measles. You can see the spots already.’

‘So it’s not scarlet fever?’ Peijun cheered up considerably.

‘Western doctors call it scarlet fever. Chinese medicine calls it red measles.’

Peijun’s hands and feet immediately went cold.

‘Is there a cure?’ he asked anxiously.

‘Yes. If you’re lucky.’

Too dazed to register what he was doing, he asked for a prescription and walked out of the room. Passing the telephone again, he remembered Dr Bodinus. This time, the hospital told him they’d reached him, but he was very busy, and the earliest he would make it over would probably be tomorrow morning. Once again, he begged them to get him to come today.

Returning to the sickroom, he lit a lamp. Jingfu’s face, he now felt, was redder than ever and speckled with angry scarlet spots; even his eyelids were swollen with fever. When Peijun sat down, he felt as if he was being prickled by a carpet of needles. As the night grew quieter, each car horn seemed to sing out to him – in his state of tensed expectation – more clearly than the last. Sometimes, he was so convinced that this, at last, was Dr Bodinus’s car that he would jump up to greet him, but long before Peijun reached the gate the car would speed past. Making his way disappointedly back through the courtyard, he saw a bright moon had risen to the west. A neighbour’s ancient locust tree cast its shadow along the ground, darkening his own melancholy.

A crow cawed. Nothing exceptional in that: three or four nests of them were lodged on the locust tree. But this evening, it almost transfixed him with terror. When he crept back into Jingfu’s room, his heart still in his mouth, he found him lying there, eyes closed, face bloated. Yet he was not asleep: probably alerted by Peijun’s footsteps, he opened his eyes; the lamplight illuminated a wretched glint to them.

‘A letter?’ Jingfu asked.

‘N-no, just me,’ he stammered. ‘I thought, just to be on the safe side, I’d have a Western doctor take a look at you. To get you better faster. I’m still waiting for him.’

Saying nothing, Jingfu closed his eyes. Peijun sat by the desk in front of the window. The room was sunk in stillness, disturbed only by the laboured breathing of the sick man and the ticking of an alarm clock. A car horn sounded in the distance: he tensed again, listening to it draw nearer and nearer, until it seemed about to stop by the entrance – then rushed on. Again and again this performance was repeated, until he was able to distinguish between all manner of car-horn timbres: some were like whistles, others like the beat of a drum, others like farts. Some barked like dogs, or quacked like ducks, or bellowed like oxen, or clucked like a hen, or hooted like… He began to hate himself for having failed to note, on previous occasions, the noise that Dr Bodinus’s car made.

The occupant of the rooms opposite was still out – probably at the opera, as usual, or at one of those teahouse-brothels. It was late, and the traffic began to thin out. The severe silver moonlight bleached the window paper white.

Mind and body exhausted, slowly relaxed by the tedium of waiting, he no longer worked so hard at differentiating the various car horns. Now, however, his disordered mind took advantage of the lull, insisting that Jingfu had scarlet fever, that he wasn’t going to recover. How would the two families get by, if he was their sole support? Prices were always going up – even in the provinces. It would be hard enough buying essentials for his own three children, and then his brother’s, too. But what about school fees as well? If he had to choose which of them he would send to school, then obviously it made sense to choose his Kang’er, the cleverest of the bunch. But then everyone would accuse him of favouritism…

And what about the funeral? There wasn’t even enough money to buy wood for the coffin. And even if they found the money, how would they get it back home? Best leave it in the public cemetery for the time being.

A patter of footsteps suddenly approached from a distance. He sprang up, and out of the room.

‘Our late emperor is in the White City…’ warbled their merry neighbour from over the way. Peijun almost rushed at him in furious disappointment, until he saw behind him the houseboy with a storm lantern, hazily illuminating a pair of leather shoes topped by a tall man with a white face and a full, dark beard – Dr Bodinus.

He flew forward to greet his precious visitor and led him to the sickroom. The two of them stood by the bed, Peijun holding up the lamp.

‘He’s running a fever, doctor…’ he muttered breathlessly.

‘For… how long?’ Bodinus drawled, hands in trouser pockets, considering the face of the sick man.

‘The day before yesterday. No, the day – the day before the day before that.’

The doctor nonchalantly took his pulse, then asked Peijun to hold the lamp higher, so he could examine his brother’s face more carefully, and to loosen his clothes, to examine his body. Finally, he rubbed Jingfu’s stomach with a finger.

‘Measles,’ Bodinus muttered, in English, as if to himself.

‘Measles?’ Peijun translated into Chinese, his voice quivering with surprise.

‘Measles.’

‘Really?’

‘Really. Measles.’

‘Did you never have measles when we were boys?’ Peijun joyfully asked his brother.

But the doctor had already moved over to the desk, forcing Peijun to leave the bedside before his brother had answered. He watched as the doctor rested one foot against the chair, drew a piece of paper towards him over the table and scribbled out an almost illegible prescription with a stunted pencil he took out of his pocket.

‘I suppose it’s too late to get it tonight?’ Peijun asked, taking the piece of paper.

‘Tomorrow will do. Take it tomorrow.’

‘Will you come back tomorrow?’

‘There’s no need. Don’t give him anything sour, spicy or too salty,’ the doctor instructed, as he headed for the door. ‘Once the fever’s gone… send a… urine sample to my clinic… for testing. Put it… in a clean glass bottle… clearly labelled.’

Stuffing a five-dollar bill into his pocket, he went on his way. Peijun saw him to his car, turning back inside once the motor started. The doctor’s car, he made a mental note, mooed like a cow. Not that this knowledge was any use to him now, he thought.

Back inside the apartment, even the lamplight had a jubilant glow to it. Peijun felt that great things had been achieved, that peace had been restored; but at the same time, a sense of anticlimax. Handing cash and prescription to the houseboy, who had followed him back inside, he told him to get it from the Beautiful Asia Pharmacy first thing in the morning. The doctor had told him this was the only reliable pharmacy in the city.

‘Beautiful Asia! On the east side!’ he pursued the boy out of the door. ‘Don’t go anywhere else. Don’t forget: Beautiful Asia!’

The courtyard was bathed in silver-white moonlight. Now their carousing neighbour had gone to sleep, all was silent. Only the alarm clock on the table ticked merrily, rhythmically on; the sick man’s breathing was still audible but perfectly regular. Soon after sitting back down, Peijun remembered what had amused him before.

‘How come someone your age has never had measles?’ he asked wonderingly, as if contemplating a miracle.

The sick man made no response.

‘You wouldn’t remember. We’d have to ask Mother.’