Song of Everlasting Sorrow (6 page)

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Authors: Wang Anyi

BOOK: Song of Everlasting Sorrow
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The moonbeam writes Wang Qiyao’s name on the
longtang
walls; the pink leaves of the oleander spell out Wang Qiyao as they fall to the ground; the lamplight behind the screened window also inscribes her name; now and again a soft voice whispers in Shanghai dialect with a Suzhou inflection, and what it utters is the name of Wang Qiyao. When the peddler of osmanthus porridge sounds his clapper to attract customers, he seems to be counting off the hours of the night for Wang Qiyao. The young writer in the third-floor
tingzijian
, having finished his take-out supper, is busy writing a modernist poem dedicated to Wang Qiyao. The dewdrops on the parasol tree are the traces of Wang Qiyao’s tears. By the time the maidservant slips out the back door to meet her lover, Wang Qiyao is lost somewhere faraway in her dream.
If there were no Wang Qiyao, the Shanghai
longtang
would lose all their passion. This passion seems to have been squeezed out from the fissures of everyday life, like the golden dandelions growing out of the cracks in the wall, sneaking out where you least expect them. But this passion also seems to dissolve and spread, like lichens creeping across the wall. It can sustain itself on nothing but wind and dew; this is what is meant by “A single spark can start a prairie fire.” However, the process involves tenacious struggle and inconsolable pain. It is because there is passion in the Shanghai
longtang
that there is also pain; as for the name of this pain, it too is called Wang Qiyao. Occasionally one finds in the Shanghai alleys a wall completely covered with a thick carpet of Boston ivy; the ivy, with its old, clinging tentacles, is emblematic of passions that have persisted through time. In persistence is inconsolable pain, on which are inscribed the records of time, the accumulated debris of time as it is pressed down and slowly suffocated. This is the everlasting sorrow of Wang Qiyao.
Chapter 2
 
The Film Studio
 
FOUR DECADES THE story spans, and it all began the day she went to the film studio. The day before, Wu Peizhen had agreed to take Wang Qiyao to have a look around the studio. Wu Peizhen was a rather careless girl. Under normal circumstances, she would have suffered from low self-esteem because of her homeliness, but because Peizhen came from a well-to-do family and people always doted on her, she had developed unaffected into an outgoing young lady. What would have been poor self-esteem was replaced by a kind of modesty—modesty ruled by a practical spirit. In her modesty, she tended to exaggerate other people’s strengths, place them on a pedestal, and offer them her devotion. Wang Qiyao never had to worry about Wu Peizhen being jealous of her—and she certainly had no reason to be jealous of Wu Peizhen. On the contrary, she even felt a bit bad for Wu Peizhen—because she was so ugly. This compassion predisposed Wang Qiyao to be generous, but naturally this generosity did not extend any further than Wu Peizhen.
Wu Peizhen’s carelessness was the function of an uncalculating mind. She appreciated Wang Qiyao’s magnanimity and tried even harder to please her as though repaying her kindness. Basking in each other’s company, they became the best of friends. But Wang Qiyao’s decision to befriend Wu Peizhen meant, in some way, that she was pushing a heavy load onto Wu Peizhen’s shoulders. Her beauty highlighted Wu Peizhen’s unattractive appearance; her meticulousness highlighted Wu Peizhen’s lack of care; her magnanimity highlighted Wu Peizhen’s indebtedness. It was a good thing that Wu Peizhen could take it; after all, the weight of everyday living did not rest as heavily on her. This was partly because she had plenty of psychic capital to draw on, but also because she simply did not mind. Things came easy to her and she was willing to bear more than her share. Thus an equilibrium of give-and-take was maintained between the two girls and they grew closer by the day.
Wu Peizhen had a cousin who did lighting at the film studio. Occasionally he would come over to see her. In that khaki uniform of his, with its copper buttons, he came across as a bit flashy. Wu Peizhen really could not have cared less about him; the only reason she kept him around was for Wang Qiyao. The film studio was the stuff of girls’ dreams—a place where romance is created, the kind that appears on the silver screen in movies that everyone knows as well as the off-screen type that one hears about in the enchanting gossip and rumors surrounding the lives of film stars. The former is fake but appears real; the latter is real but seems fake. To live in the world of the film studio is to lead a dual life. Girls like Wu Peizhen who had all of their needs taken care of seldom wallowed in dreams; moreover, as the only girl in a house full of boys, she grew up playing boys’ games and never learned the social skills and canniness most girls picked up. However, after making friends with Wang Qiyao, she became more thoughtful. She came to see the film studio as a gift that she could offer to Wang Qiyao. She arranged everything carefully, only informing Wang Qiyao after she had already set a date, and was surprised when Wang Qiyao greeted the news with apparent indifference, claiming a prior engagement. This compelled Wu Peizhen to try to change Wang Qiyao’s mind by exaggerating the glamour of the film studio, combining stories her cousin bragged about with others from her own imagination. Before long, it was more like Wang Qiyao was doing
her
a favor by going with her. By the time Wang Qiyao finally gave in and agreed to go some other time, Wu Peizhen was acting as if yet another gift that she herself had to be thankful for had been bestowed upon her, and she ecstatically scurried off to find her cousin to change the date.
Wang Qiyao did not, in fact, have any prior engagement, nor was she as reluctant as she appeared; this was simply the way she conducted herself—the more interested she was in something, the more she held back. This was her means of protecting herself—or then again, was it part of a strategy of disarming an antagonist by pretending to set her free? Whatever the reason behind her action, it was impenetrable to Wu Peizhen. On her way to her cousin’s place, she was consumed with gratitude for Wang Qiyao; all she could think about was how much face Wang Qiyao had given her by agreeing to the invitation.
The cousin was the son of Wu Peizhen’s uncle on her mother’s side. This uncle was the black sheep of the family. He had driven a silk shop in Hangzhou into the ground and Wu Peizhen’s mother had dreaded his visits because all he ever wanted from her was money or grain. After she gave him some heavy doses of harsh words and turned him away empty-handed several times, he gradually stopped coming around and eventually broke off all relations. Then one day his son had showed up at her door wearing that khaki uniform with copper buttons and carrying two boxes of vegetarian dim sum as if they represented some kind of announcement. Ever since then he would come by once every two months or so and tell them stories about the film studio. Nobody in the house was interested in his stories—nobody, that is, except Wu Peizhen.
Wu Peizhen went to the address in Qijiabing in search of her cousin. All around were thatch-covered shacks surrounded by small unmarked trails that extended in different directions, making it virtually impossible to find one’s way. People stared at her. One glance told them that she was an outsider, but just as she was getting ready to ask directions they would immediately look away. She finally found her cousin’s place, only to discover that he was not home. The young man who shared the shack with her cousin asked her in. He was wearing a pair of glasses and a set of coarse cotton clothes. Wu Peizhen was a bit shy and waited outside. This naturally drew more curious gazes. It was not until dusk that her cousin finally staggered in with a greasy paper bag holding a pig’s head or some other cheap meat he had bought over at the butcher’s shop.
By the time Wu Peizhen got home, her family was already at the dinner table and she had to fib about where she had been. But she didn’t have an ounce of regret; even when later that evening she saw the blisters on the soles of her feet from all that walking, she still felt that it was all worth it. That night she even had a dream about the film studio. She dreamed of an elegantly dressed woman under the mercury-vapor lamps. When the woman turned to her and smiled, Wu Peizhen saw that she was none other than Wang Qiyao; she was so excited that she woke up. Her feelings for Wang Qiyao were a bit like the puppy love that a teenage boy feels for a girl for whom he is willing to go to the edge of the earth. She opened her eyes in the pitch-dark bedroom and wondered:
Just what kind of place is this film studio anyway?
When the day finally arrived, Wu Peizhen’s excitement far surpassed that of Wang Qiyao; she could barely contain herself. A classmate asked them where they were off to. “Nowhere,” Wu Peizhen casually responded, as she gave Wang Qiyao a knowing pinch on the arm. Then she pulled Wang Qiyao aside and told her to hurry up, as though afraid that that their classmate would catch up and force them to let her in on their pleasure. The whole way there Wu Peizhen couldn’t stop jabbering, attracting curious glances from people on the street. Wang Qiyao warned her several times to get hold of herself. Finally she had to stop in her tracks and declare she wasn’t going any further—they had not even set foot in the studio and Wu Peizhen had already embarrassed her enough. Only then did Wu Peizhen cool down a bit.
To get to the studio they had to take the trolley and make a transfer. Wu Peizhen’s cousin was waiting for them at the entrance; he gave each of them an ID tag to clip on her chest so that they would look like employees: that way they could wander around wherever their hearts desired. Once inside, they walked through an empty lot littered with wooden planks, discarded cloth scraps, and chunks of broken bricks and tiles—it looked like a cross between a dump and a construction site. Everyone approaching went at a hurried pace with their heads down. The cousin also moved briskly, as if he had something urgent to take care of. The two girls were left straggling behind, holding hands, trying their best to keep up.
It was three or four o’clock, the sunlight was waning and the wind picked up, rustling their skirts. Both of them felt a bit gloomy and Wu Peizhen fell silent. After going a few hundred steps, their journey began to feel interminable, and the girls began to lose patience with the cousin, who slowed down to regale them with some of the rumors floating around the studio; his comments, however, seemed to be neither here nor there. Before their visit all of those anecdotes seemed real, but once they had seen the place everything was now entirely unreliable. Numbness had taken hold of them by the time they entered a large room the size of a warehouse, where uniformed workers scurried back and forth, up and down scaffolding, all the while calling out orders and directions. But they did not see a soul who even faintly resembled a movie star. Thoroughly disoriented, they simply trailed after Wu Peizhen’s cousin, but had to watch their heads one second and their feet another, for there were ropes and wires overhead and littering the ground. They moved in and out from illuminated areas into patches of darkness and seemed to have completely forgotten their objective and had no idea where they were—all they did was walk. After what seemed an eternity, Wu Peizhen’s cousin finally stopped and had them stand off to one side—he had to go to work.
The place where they were left standing was bustling with activity; everyone seemed to be doing something as they moved briskly around the girls. Several times, rushing to get out of one person’s way, they bumped into someone else. But they had yet to lay eyes on anyone who looked like a movie star. They were both getting anxious, feeling that the whole trip was a mistake. Wu Peizhen could hardly bring herself to look Wang Qiyao in the eye. All of a sudden, the lights in the room lit up like a dozen rising suns, blinding them. After their eyes adjusted they made out a portion of the warehouse-like room that had been arranged to look like one half of a bedroom. That three-walled bedroom seemed to be the set, but everything inside was peculiarly familiar. The comforter showed signs of wear, old cigarette butts were left in the ashtray, even the handkerchief on the nightstand beside the bed had been used, crumpled up into a ball—as if someone had removed a wall in a home where real people were living to display what went on within. Standing there watching they were quite excited, but at the same time irritated because they were too far away to hear what was being said on set. All they could see was a woman in a sheer nightgown lying on a bed with wrinkled sheets. She tried to lie in several different positions; on her side one moment, on her back the next, and for a while even in a strange position where half her body extended off the bed onto the floor. All this became somewhat boring. The lights turned on and off. In the end, the woman in bed stopped moving and stayed still in the same position for quite some time before the lights once again dimmed.
When the lights came back on, everything seemed different. During the previous few takes the light had been marked by an unbridled brilliance. This time they seemed to be using a specialized lighting, the kind that illuminates a room during a pitch-black night. The bedroom set seemed to be further away, but the scene became even more alive. Wang Qiyao was taking in everything. She noticed the glow emitting from the electric lamp and the rippling shadows of the lotus-shaped lampshade projecting onto the three walls of the set. A powerful sense of déjà vu gripped her, but no matter how hard she tried, she could not remember where she had seen this scene before. Only after shifting her gaze to the woman under the lamplight did she suddenly realize that the actress was pretending to be dead—but she could not tell if the woman was meant to have been murdered or to have committed suicide. The strange thing was that this scene did not appear terrifying or foreboding, only annoyingly familiar. She could not make out the woman’s features; all she could see was her head of disheveled hair strewn out along the foot of the bed. The woman’s feet faced the headboard and her head lay propped against the foot of the bed, her slippers scattered on opposite sides of the room. The film studio was a hubbub of activity, like a busy dockyard. With all the cries of “Camera” and “OK” rising and falling amid the clamor, the woman was the only thing that did not move, as if she had fallen into an eternal slumber. Wu Peizhen was the first to lose her patience; after all, she was the more brazen one. She pulled Wang Qiyao away so they could go look around other parts of the studio.

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