Song of Everlasting Sorrow (15 page)

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Authors: Wang Anyi

BOOK: Song of Everlasting Sorrow
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Wang Qiyao was second runner-up in the beauty pageant; “Miss Third Place,” they called her. The title seemed to be custom-made for her. Her beauty and seductiveness, too understated, were not enough to make her the queen, but perfect for Miss Third Place. It was necessary to have a Miss Third Place. She was especially cut out to meet this intrinsic need, to play the supporting role: she symbolized the solid core underneath the resplendent surface, in no way inferior to the others and in fact truly representative of the quiet majority. In this city of romance, girls like her are the most elementary ingredient. The streets of Shanghai are crawling with girls who could have been Miss Third Place. Girls who come in first and second are always busy going to fancy parties and taking care of their various “foreign affairs.” We never see them—except when they are trotted out on important occasions. They are a regular part of every grand affair. Girls like Miss Third Place, however, are a part of everyday scenes. They are familiar to our eyes, and their
cheongsams
never fail to warm our hearts. Miss Third Place therefore best expresses the will of the people. The beauty queen and the first runner-up are both idols, representing our ideals and beliefs. But Miss Third Place is connected to our everyday lives: she is a figure that reminds us of concepts like marriage, life, and family.
Chapter 3
 
Mr. Cheng
 
MR. CHENG HAD STUDIED railway engineering, but his true love was photography. During the day he was on the staff of a Western firm, while at night he took photos and developed them at his home studio. His favorite subject was women—in his eyes the female form was the most elegant composition in the world. He had studied women and believed that a woman’s best years were between the ages of sixteen and twenty-three, when delicacy and maturity were equally alluring. He spent his entire salary on his hobby; it was a good thing that he did not have any other hobbies, or a girlfriend. He had never been in love. His love lay under the lens beneath the mercury-vapor lights, always upside down. His love was in the darkroom being developed, bathed in crimson light, floating to the top of the water like a lotus made of paper. Perhaps after gazing at so many women through the lens of his beloved camera, he could not help but assign them a secondary status. Mr. Cheng gave little thought to things like marriage. His parents in Hangzhou would sometimes bring the issue up in their letters, but he paid them no heed. All his energy and emotions were devoted to photography. Merely to touch the equipment brought him happiness. He felt as if each item in his studio could speak to him and understand his joy and pain.
In the 1940s photography was still a modern hobby, which naturally made Mr. Cheng a modern youth. At twenty-six, however, he was already an old youth. When he was a bit younger he had indeed been fascinated by all the modern playthings. Whatever was fashionable in Shanghai, he was sure to give it a whirl. He had been enraptured in turn by the gramophone, tennis, and Hollywood movies, and just like all modern youths, he was fickle in his interests, always tiring of the old and moving on to the new. But once he fell in love with photography, he pledged his steadfast devotion, to the abandonment of everything else. He had first been attracted to photography because of its modern appeal, but once he was hooked, he no longer pursued what was in fashion. Photography enraptured him the same way some people fall head-over-heels in love. Suddenly he realized that his entire past had been squandered in aimless desires and pointless distractions. Yet, though much precious time and money had been wasted, Mr. Cheng congratulated himself for having discovered all this in good time.
Since his discovery of photography, he no longer qualified as a young man in pursuit of the modern; gradually he had gotten too old for that. Surface novelties could not move him any more. What he needed now was true love. No longer did his heart wander as it had in his youth. He felt a hollowness that needed to be filled with something, and that something was true love. From the outside, Mr. Cheng still looked very modern, with his slick hair parted down the middle, gold-rimmed glasses, three-piece suit, shining leather shoes, fluent English, and knowledge of all the Hollywood stars, but his heart was no longer modern. This was something that those modern girls who pursued him did not know—and this was also the reason they always went away empty-handed.
Mr. Cheng certainly had his share of admirers. He was at the suitable age for marriage and the object of attention for numerous romantic young ladies and their parents. He had a proper job and earned a respectable salary, not to mention a very interesting hobby. Poor girls! Little did they know, as they sat before the camera casting suggestive glances, that they were directing these at a cold, unfeeling machine. It was not that Mr. Cheng didn’t pick up on all this; he was simply not interested. In his eyes, the girls who visited his photo studio were not real. Their every pout and smile was for the camera; none of it had anything to do with him. It was not that he did not admire their beauty; it simply did not affect him.
At twenty-six there were already some things to which he was impervious; he was quite different from the reckless seventeen- or eighteen-year-old boys who chase after their desires without the slightest regret or worry about what might happen tomorrow. A twenty-six-year-old heart has already begun to grow a shell; the shell may have some cracks and fissures, but by the age of thirty-six any remaining fissures would have been sealed. Who could still squeeze her way into a crack in Mr. Cheng’s heart? Finally, a candidate appeared, and her name was Wang Qiyao. On that Sunday morning when Wang Qiyao first walked into his studio, she didn’t immediately grab his attention—the lighting had filled the room with a soft darkness. Perhaps it was just this lack of any immediately striking quality that led Mr. Cheng to let his guard down. It was as if she had quietly stolen in on him.
Mr. Cheng was not terribly excited at first. He thought that Wang Qiyao was just like all the other girls you see on the street and it was hard for him to get inspired. But after each photo he seemed to discover something new about her. With each shot there was something more to explore, and so he took shot after shot, completely enchanted by what he saw. Even when he was finally finished, he still felt as if there was so much more to capture on film. Actually, that something was the lingering impression she left. Mr. Cheng suddenly began to feel disappointed by his camera. All it could capture was the “here and now”; it was helpless when it came to capturing that “lingering impression.” He began to realize his inadequacy in the face of beauty.
So there is a kind of beauty that can travel through the air
, he thought
. How limited the art of photography is!
After Wang Qiyao left, he couldn’t help but open the door to take a last glance at her as she stepped into the elevator. Seeing her figure behind the elevator’s closed steel gate was like beholding the luminous moon obscured by a layer of cloud.
That afternoon Mr. Cheng completely lost track of time while developing the photos in his darkroom—not even the sound of the Customs House’s bell could break his trance. He anxiously awaited the appearance of Wang Qiyao’s face in the water as if he had just learned to develop photos; but this time he wasn’t anxious about getting the technique right—he was anxious to see her. An image gradually began to form on the photographic paper and slowly grow darker; it was as if Wang Qiyao was walking toward him. He could feel his heart twitching.
Wang Qiyao had come to divide Mr. Cheng’s heart against itself. She was not merely another woman captured by his lens, for she had an added significance that eluded the grasp of his camera. Actually, Mr. Cheng didn’t want to grasp anything. He felt he had lost something—something deep inside—and he needed to get it back. And so he tried different tactics, but the whole process took place in the dark because he didn’t know what the cause was—just as he could never know the outcome. He submitted Wang Qiyao’s photo to
Shanghai Life
magazine, never imagining that they would actually publish it. Knowing that people were handling her picture, however, didn’t make him feel good. Not only had he failed to find that missing something on the inside but he seemed to lose something else as well.
The picture had been Mr. Cheng’s favorite, but now that it was published, he came to disdain it. Only once did he visit the photo shop that had Wang Qiyao’s picture on display in the window, and this was late at night. There were barely any people or cars still out on the streets, the city lights were all dark, and the late-show crowds that had been lingering around outside the movie theater were already gone. As Mr. Cheng stood outside the shop window, an awkward feeling welled up inside him; the image in the window was so close and yet so far. In the window he could see his own reflection, the face under his fedora hat revealing traces of sorrow. Standing there under the streetlights of the deserted road, he felt lonely. Beyond those pockets of excitement animating this city that never sleeps lurks the loneliest breed of loneliness.
After this he did two more photo shoots with Wang Qiyao, but not only did he fail to find what he was looking for, but each time he seemed to come away with an indescribable feeling of loss. At the same time, Wang Qiyao did not even seem to be looking into Mr. Cheng’s camera; she was looking into the eyes of the people. Each pout, every smile was arranged for the front or back cover of another magazine; her image seemed to be waving to her readers. Mr. Cheng felt as if his eyes were not his own; they represented the people. That was the last time that he suggested Wang Qiyao sit for his camera.
He thought of asking her out, but couldn’t bring himself to. On one occasion he called her up, having already bought two movie tickets, but as soon as Wang Qiyao picked up the phone, he lost his nerve and said he was calling about something else. Although at twenty-six Mr. Cheng had seen his share of beautiful women, he had always viewed them with detachment. In many respects he couldn’t even measure up to a sixteen-year-old boy. At the very least, sixteen-year-olds have courage, but Mr. Cheng had neither courage nor experience—he had nothing. Mr. Cheng’s dream of having a date with Wang Qiyao was only realized after she became friends with Jiang Lili. He ended up inviting both of them out. That was the only way he could get up the nerve to ask. And although Wang Qiyao didn’t say so, she was secretly quite pleased. Not that she was interested in Mr. Cheng, but she was eager to be on a more equal footing with Jiang Lili. Since she had become close with Jiang Lili, the two had spent all their time around the Jiang social circle, and now Wang Qiyao finally had a chance to take her out with one of
her
friends. That night Mr. Cheng invited them to an American film at the Cathay Theater. He arrived first and waited for them at the entrance; the two schoolgirls were in high spirits as they came down the street, chatted animatedly in the sunlight under the parasol trees. The clear sky was festooned with a few silk-like clouds, their shadows dancing on the side of the buildings. A man taking two girls out is a wondrous sight. It is an event of bashful solemnity, a grand affair that leaves one full of thoughts and questions. Some afternoons are designed especially for these types of dates, afternoons redolent with languor, ambiguity, feigned naiveté, and genuine feeling.
Jiang Lili had heard about Mr. Cheng, but this was the first time they met. Wang Qiyao introduced them before they entered the theater. Jiang Lili sat between Wang Qiyao and Mr. Cheng. Of course there is always something going on between the two who sit on the outside and although the one in the middle acts as a partition, she is also a bridge. When Wang Qiyao offered Mr. Cheng some olives, Jiang Lili had to hand them over. When the film’s dialogue got complicated, Mr. Cheng would translate for Jiang Lili, who would in turn pass on the translation to Wang Qiyao. Throughout the movie Wang Qiyao was holding Jiang Lili’s hand as if they were trying to isolate Mr. Cheng. And though Mr. Cheng was equally attentive to both girls, Jiang Lili was actually getting in the way. The theater was pitch black, save for the column of rotating light emanating from the hole in the projection room to create an illusionary world. The cinema was far from full at this afternoon show; people sat scattered in twos and threes throughout the theater, and everyone seemed occupied with their own thoughts. The dialogue on the screen reverberated above their heads and buzzed in their ears. Feeling somewhat intimidated, the three of them pressed close against one another. Jiang Lili could hear the sound of breathing and hearts beating only inches away; she didn’t catch much of the film, but instead served as a mouthpiece for the two sitting on either side of her. Although Mr. Cheng leaned close, whispering to her, every word was meant for Wang Qiyao, even if his utterings did happen to reach Jiang Lili’s ears first.
As they emerged from the theater onto the sunny street, Mr. Cheng appeared a different person. Afterward they went for coffee, the two girls sitting together on one bench with Mr. Cheng on the opposite side. Although Mr. Cheng’s words were directed at Wang Qiyao, he kept looking at Jiang Lili. Wang Qiyao didn’t answer his questions; Jiang Lili spoke for her. Their conversation was not about anything in particular, just small talk, and either of them could have answered. But gradually Jiang Lili began to say more and hog the conversation. Mr. Cheng would ask a question clearly directed at both of them, but she would answer only for herself, while Wang Qiyao remained silent. Mr. Cheng had no choice but to follow Jiang Lili’s lead. In the end the two of them were having a heart-to-heart talk. They acted as if they were close friends who had known one another for years, as Wang Qiyao watched from the sidelines. What a shame that, although Mr. Cheng was completely consumed by Wang Qiyao, he couldn’t share a word with her, nor did he dare look directly at her. Jiang Lili’s words were like a river overflowing with literary phrases, but it was awkward for Mr. Cheng to let his eyes linger on her, so he stared into his cup of coffee. Reflected there in the cup was Wang Qiyao’s image, but still she did not speak. Only when he looked down did Jiang Lili stop talking. She too lowered her head to gaze into her coffee cup—and there was reflected Mr. Cheng’s image, looking down in silence.

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