Madwoman On the Bridge and Other Stories (3 page)

‘You dirty old hunchback! What business is it of yours
who I wear it for?’ Wenqin picked up a piece of chalk and
threw it at him. ‘Let me tell you something: a lot of the
clothes I’ve ordered are stored in my chest. Even if I don’t
wear them, I can still take them out and look at them.
They make me feel better.’

‘After all the work I put into that clothing, you let it
rot away in a chest? When I think how demanding you
were when I was making it: if the end of a thread was
too coarse you kicked up such a fuss! And then you
take it all home to stick in a box?’ The tailor looked as
if he couldn’t quite bring himself to laugh. He stared at
Wenqin, and suddenly his face hardened. ‘Well, I won’t
make clothes for you, not any more. The money I earn
off you is like a traitor’s reward: I end up holding myself
in contempt.’

‘Oh, yes? Or maybe you don’t even know how to make
a cheongsam!’ Wenqin was clearly irritated. She held it in
check for a moment, and then went on baiting him. ‘And
here was I thinking you were the best tailor in the city!
Best tailor my arse, if you can’t even make a cheongsam.’

‘I never said I was the best in the city, did I? In a
profession like this, it doesn’t matter who says they’re the
best; it’s the clothing that does the talking in the end.’ After
clowning about, the tailor grew more serious. Avoiding
Wenqin’s eyes, he squinted sideways at the madwoman,
sizing her up as she stood by the shop window. ‘Has the
lady comrade come here to stroll around? Why doesn’t
she take a seat?’ Still the madwoman stood by the
window, stretching one of her hands into the window
display to fondle something.

‘Never mind her,’ said Wenqin, ‘she can’t sit still. Just
tell me how we should go about taking the measurements.’

‘You’re a little fuller than she is. Chest, waist and
hips will all be different. What choice do we have? Get
her to take her cheongsam off and put it on yourself.
That’s the only way to do it if you want accurate measurements.’

The madwoman raised her head and walked daintily
around, pointing at the clothing hanging on the racks
with her sandalwood fan. She pointed at a tawny army
uniform and said, ‘The People’s Liberation Army.’ Then
she pointed at a white shirt and said, ‘Red Guards.’ Then
it was blue trousers: ‘Junior Red Guards.’ A black skirt:
‘Old women.’ In the course of pointing at all the clothes
she reached a dress with blue polka dots that reminded
her of her daughter, Susu. She turned around and asked
Wenqin, ‘What time is it? Shouldn’t Susu be on her way
home?’

Wenqin glanced at her wristwatch and said, ‘No rush,
no rush.’ But her body tensed, and with a glare at the
tailor she said, ‘I’m not in any mood to chatter the day
away here. Hurry up and get started. I have a million
things to do at home and I must get back.’

The tailor chortled and said, ‘You want me to get
started? On whom? Shall I help you undress?’

Wenqin raised one finger and tapped herself on the
forehead. ‘Tricked me again! Every time I come here I’m
swept up in your chatter. You flirt away without my even
noticing.’

Wenqin lured the madwoman behind a printed curtain,
into what passed for the tailor’s bedroom. There was a
wooden-framed single bed and a portrait of the heroine
from
Azalea Mountain
¹
was pasted on the wall over its
head; her eyes stared fiercely, while the position of her
hands suggested cool calculation. Underneath the bed
was a spittoon that hadn’t been emptied in several days
and emitted a sour, noxious odour. Wenqin had changed
in there before and immediately took care to pull the
curtain shut behind her before fastening both ends with
iron clips. Despite her precautions, the madwoman was
far from reassured and cried out in alarm, ‘What kind
of place is this? I want to go out. I don’t want to change
here.’

‘You’re driving me mad,’ Wenqin replied. ‘You’re not
the MC for the cultural ensemble any more. There aren’t
any dressing rooms: the women who come to the tailor’s
all change here. There’s a curtain. What are you afraid of?
Do you think Mr Li’s some kind of pervert?’

On the other side of the curtain, Mr Li was indeed
behaving well. First he went to pour himself some tea
and glugged the aromatic liquid down, then he hummed
something from a revolutionary opera: ‘Rosy aurora-aha,
mirrored in Yangcheng Lake’s waters-a-ah-a.’
²
In his
bedroom, all was not so harmonious. The madwoman
refused to strip and Wenqin was too impatient. After
much twisting and turning the struggle died down, and
all the tailor heard was the light swishing of cloth against
cloth and the sound of rubbing hands. After a moment,
Wenqin lifted up the curtain and walked out of the bedroom
clad in the white velvet cheongsam. She stretched
both hands out to the tailor, then made a half turn. She
modelled the clothing in a bashful yet confident manner,
as if to ask, ‘How does it suit me?’

The tailor called out, ‘Ooh-la-la!’ and clapping his
hands as he advanced on her, he grabbed her by the
waist and said, ‘It looks great. Even better than it did on
her.’

As the tailor took Wenqin’s measurements, he forgot
the madwoman even existed, and after some overzealous
measuring, Wenqin suddenly gave him a resounding
slap, saying, ‘Nasty hunchback! I’m in a good mood
today so I’ve been letting you get away with it, but you’d
better keep your mind on this cheongsam. If you do a
bad job, don’t think I’ll let it go lightly.’

‘If I were going to make a mess of it, I wouldn’t have
taken the job,’ he assured her. ‘Even if I were ten times
braver, I wouldn’t dare put anything less into it than you
deserve.’

The two of them suddenly became aware that the madwoman
had begun to pace restlessly behind the curtain.
‘What time is it?’ she muttered. ‘The time? Oh, no – it’s
totally dark outside already. Susu must have left school a
long time ago.’ The curtain suddenly bulged – the madwoman
had thrust her face against it and was saying, ‘It’s
dark outside. Why don’t you let me go home? Give me my
cheongsam back and let me go home!’

Wenqin assured her, ‘It’s all right, all right. There’s
nothing wrong. What are you screaming about? Are you
scared of the dark? There’s no light on in there, so it
is
a
little dark. If you’re afraid, I’ll get Mr Li to turn on the
light for you.’

For some reason the tailor smirked as he went to turn it
on. As soon as he lit it, the silhouette of the madwoman
was clearly visible through the curtain. The sudden
appearance of the shadow frightened the madwoman
and she shouted, ‘Oh!’ The shadow giving a little jump.

Wenqin saw immediately that the light wasn’t helping
and rushed to turn it off. Then she turned back to rebuke
the tailor. ‘I should have known. No sense in trying to
stop a dog from eating shit, is there, you wretch?’

‘What are you swearing at me for?’ demanded the
tailor. ‘You told me to turn on the light yourself.’

Wenqin was confused for a moment. She went to the
curtain again, intending to lift it back, but then she
retracted her hand and said to the tailor, ‘Measure my
shoulders . . . my shoulders! Hurry up and measure
them.’

‘I’m trying to but you keep squirming around, you’re
not making it easy for me.’

Wenqin took a sidelong glance at the curtain and
lowered her voice. ‘Don’t frighten her. Can’t you tell she’s
not right in the head?’

The tailor looked a little ashamed and said, ‘I noticed,
yes. Too bad.’ Still shamefaced, he began to work faster.
Then he sighed deeply. He took the tape measure and slid
it around her. ‘Here, at the waist – I haven’t really got it
right yet. The waist is the hardest part of a cheongsam so
don’t blame me if it’s wrong . . .’

‘If it’s not right I’ll only pay you half your fee.’

The tailor didn’t respond to that but stood sideways
on to her and measured every detail of the way Wenqin’s
body corresponded to the cheongsam’s measurements.
Identifying a problem, he suddenly took hold of
something; it was one of the frog fastenings of the
cheongsam.

‘I almost forgot – I’m going to have to take off one of
these lute frogs. They’re really hard to make. If I don’t have
one for the pattern, I can’t make them from scratch.’

This immediately made Wenqin anxious, and she
rolled her eyes, warning him to bear in mind that the
madwoman was behind the curtain. Then she lowered
her voice to confer with him. ‘You can draw, can’t you?
You can draw it now and make it from that.’

‘What a great idea!’ the tailor responded. ‘And then I’ll
draw an aeroplane and make that too, shall I?’

This retort struck Wenqin dumb momentarily and she
twisted her hands and said, ‘Then what are we going to
do? I couldn’t bear to take one off. If she was normal,
we could discuss it with her. But her mind’s gone and,
besides, she’s petty; she’d never agree to it. What if you
didn’t make lute frogs but some other nice ones instead?’
Before the tailor could even answer yes or no, Wenqin
shook her head. ‘No, no. I really love these frogs. If I’m
going to go to all this trouble to make a cheongsam, I
can’t have just any fastenings.’

‘Well then, what should we do about telling her? Shoot
first, ask questions later? Tell her after we’ve already gone
through with it?’

Wenqin looked at the printed curtain, then at the
tailor, gritted her teeth and said, ‘Take it off. In any case,
we’ll sew it back on when we’re finished.’

The tailor picked up the razor blade near him and
was about to cut the frog off when he hesitated and said
quietly, ‘I don’t know. I’m a bit nervous about this. I
mean, not only is her mind gone, this cheongsam is her
life. If we take off a frog, don’t you think she might make
a scene?’

Wenqin put one hand to her mouth. ‘My heart’s
beating like mad,’ she said. ‘A beautiful thing like that
. . . obviously it’s hers, but we’ll never get anywhere by
asking her.’

The tailor blinked. He thought it over for a moment,
then he found a safety pin and gave it to Wenqin, saying,
‘I’ll take the frog from the collar, it’ll be less noticeable.
In a second you’ll have to fasten it for her with the safety
pin. If we just keep talking, maybe we can get away with
it.’

Wenqin was staring directly at the lute frog, her expression
wavering between fear and resolve. I want this frog.
I must have it, she thought, and in the end she said, ‘It’s
not as if it’s important. I’m just borrowing it for a few
days. Whether she notices or not, we’ll have to do it. Take
it off.’

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!’