The Real Story of Ah-Q (33 page)

After a morning spent in front of the mirror, flicking through
A Textbook of Chinese History
and Yuan Liaofan’s
Chronology
,
¹
he began to feel that books truly were the root of all evil, and that life was most unfair.

He started by directing this new sense of universal grievance at the category of parents, who, it now occurred to him, were pretty derelict in caring for their offspring. When he’d been a boy, for example, he’d always been scrambling up mulberry trees to steal mulberries. Did his parents care? Not a jot. Of course, it ended badly, with him falling off and cracking his head open. Did they get him to a proper doctor? Not a bit of it. And to this very day, a wedge-shaped scar disgraced the top of his left eyebrow. Even though he’d grown his hair, then parted and combed it to cover the scar, it remained visible at the tip: a blot on his otherwise flawless countenance that a female student (should she – perish the thought! – happen to glimpse it) would inevitably hold against him. Heaving a sigh of complaint, he set the mirror down.

His next target was the sadistic compiler of
A Textbook of Chinese History
, with his total lack of consideration for teachers. Although there was some overlap with Yuan Liaofan’s
Chronology
, there were large chunks that were very different. How on earth was a jobbing lecturer to hash the two into a single lecture? A piece of paper sandwiched between the pages of the textbook now filled him with new bile: at the teacher who had resigned halfway through the course. ‘Start at Chapter Eight,’ it read. ‘ “The Rise and Fall of the Eastern Jin Dynasty”.’
²

If only the swine had left him some of the Three Kingdoms, the bit just before the Eastern Jin, he wouldn’t be having such trouble preparing now. He’d read all the right novels, he knew all the Three Kingdoms stories like the back of his hand: the three oaths in the peach orchard, Zhuge Liang borrowing the arrows, Zhou Yu’s three rages, Huang Zhong beheading Xia Houyuan on Dingjun Mountain, and so on and so forth – he could have talked all term about the Three Kingdoms.
³
Or the Tang dynasty, he knew that, too: about Qin Qiong selling his horse, and other nuggets of reliable historical fact he had grasped from close readings of popular fiction. But no: it had to be the wretched Eastern Jin. With another indignant sigh, he took up Yuan Liaofan’s handiwork once more.

‘Ha-ha! Wheedled your way in for a peep, have you? You old fox!’

A hand reached over his shoulder and poked him hard in the chin. He chose not to honour this approach by turning round: he knew both voice and hand belonged to his old gambling partner, Huang San, who must have limped quietly up behind him. Though they were old friends – only a week ago, they’d had a big night out together (mahjong, opera, wine, women, the works) – since publishing in the
Great China Daily
his hugely influential polemic (‘On the Duty of Every Chinese Citizen to Keep Our National History in Order’) and since his letter of appointment from the Academy of Virtuous Female Talent had come through, our learned friend had begun to have his doubts about this Huang San; to suspect that he was, in fact, a rather substandard individual.

‘Ssssshh!’ he hissed, grimacing under the weight of his own gravitas. ‘Can’t you see I’m busy writing my lecture?’

‘I thought you told Bo you were only after a job up at the school so you could subject the learned lovelies to a closer “examination”. Ha-ha-ha!’

‘Well, Bo comes out with all sorts of crap.’

Taking a seat next to the desk, Huang San spotted, lying half-open between a mirror and a chaotic stack of books, a large red card, which he snatched up and – eyes widening – began to read.

‘ “Gao Erchu”? Who’s he?’ Huang San wanted to know as soon as he’d read it through. ‘You? Changed your name, have you?’

Our learned friend honoured Huang San with a supercilious smile; he had indeed changed his name. The problem with Huang San was that he had no talents beyond the mahjong table; he’d never bothered to apply himself to the progressive disciplines of modern culture. He’d never even heard of the great Russian literary genius Gorky; how could he hope to understand the profound significance of his change of name.
^†
Yes: a supercilious smile was quite sufficient as a response.

‘Don’t waste your time with this rubbish, Ganting!’ Huang San threw down the card of appointment. ‘It was bad enough when all the boys’ colleges kept on popping up – a real threat to public order. And now they’re opening them for girls, too. Where will it all end? Keep well out of it, I say.’

‘I beg to differ. Anyway, Madame Ho wouldn’t take no for an answer.’ Given that Huang San didn’t have a good word to say about his new school and his watch was telling him it was half past two already – just half an hour before class – his face wrinkled with irritation.

‘All right, forget it.’ Ever sensitive to his friends, Huang San quickly changed the subject. ‘I’ve turkey to talk with you: we’ve a situation on our hands this evening. Mao Zifu’s eldest has come up from Maojia Village to get a fengshui expert to check out grave plots for him. He’s two hundred big ones – that’s silver dollars to you intellectuals – on him. So, we’ve fixed up a table for tonight: me, Bo and you. You’ve got to come – chance of a lifetime. We’ll clean him out!’

Our learned friend muttered something unintelligible.

‘You can’t let us down! Now, I’ve still got stuff to sort out with Bo, but it’s at my place as usual. The idiot’s hardly out of nappies – he’ll be a lamb to the slaughter. Just give me the marked mahjong tiles.’

Heaving himself slowly to his feet, our professor took the box of tiles from the head of the bed and handed it over. His watch was now saying 2.40. Huang San had his points, he thought to himself, but he knew perfectly well that he was about to start a new job, and yet he’d still insisted on coming round to badmouth the college, disrupting his preparatory train of thought. It was a jolly poor show.

‘We’ll talk more this evening,’ he said as coldly as he could. ‘I’ve got to go and teach.’

Casting a baleful glance at the
Chronology
, he picked up his textbook, placed it in his new leather briefcase, carefully set his new hat upon his head, then went out with Huang San. Once out of the door, he lengthened his stride, swinging his shoulders as a carpenter would his drill. Soon, Huang San had lost sight of him.

On reaching the Academy of Virtuous Female Talent, Gao handed over his freshly printed name-card to a hunchbacked old gatekeeper. Promptly invited to enter, he followed the hunchback down a couple of corridors, before finding himself in the staffroom – which presumably doubled as a reception. As Principal Ho was out on other business, he was received by the grey-bearded Dean of Studies, one Wan Yaopu, justly celebrated under the pen-name of Altar Boy to the Jade Emperor,
⁴
who had recently had a series of poems – presented as a lyrical exchange between him and a certain female immortal – printed in the
Great China Daily
under the title of ‘Consecrations at the Altar of the Gods’.

‘A-ha-ha-ha! Chu, old chap! A delight, so long awaited!’ Wan Yaopu cupped his hands in repeated salute, his knee joints bobbing perhaps half a dozen times, as if threatening to give way to a squat.

‘A-ha-ha-ha! Yao, old chap! A delight, so long awaited!’ His briefcase tucked under his arm, Gao mirrored his interlocutor’s performance.

They both took a seat. A servitor in an indeterminate twilight zone between this world and the next brought over two cups of hot water. Gao saw that the wall clock opposite was saying only 2.40 still – fully half an hour out from his watch.

‘A-ha-ha-ha! What a masterpiece that was… that… ah… “Treatise on Our Duty to the Chinese National Essence”. Oh, yes, not a word out of place. Worth a hundred readings, at the very least! A true example to the young, oh, yes, indeed! Next to you, this towering giant of letters, I am an upstart, a mere puppy, a writer of bagatelles and peccadilloes.’ After a recupping of the hands, he went on, in a lower voice, ‘Our humble poetry society, the Sacred Writing Sands of Abundant Virtue, is in daily contact with our immortal muse, who goes by the name of Flower-Heart Pearl
⁵
– no doubt a flower fairy banished to the grimy world of mortals. Will you join us? She is excessively fond of exchanging poems with celebrities – and if they are progressives, too, all the better! Chu, old chap, I’m sure she’d be captivated by you. A-ha-ha-ha!’

But Gao Erchu was not excessively in the mood to expound upon questions of poetic immortality, for in the few minutes across which this exchange had taken place, he had forgotten almost every word of his scanty preparations concerning the rise and fall of the Eastern Jin. In some distress, fragmentary warnings welled up in his disordered mind – that he should preserve his dignity at all costs, that his scar should be kept obscured, that he should read slowly from the textbook, that he should gaze with cool composure upon his students. And yet, through it all, the wretched Yaopu went rumbling on.

‘… presented with a water chestnut… “Drunkenly ascending the emerald clouds on a midnight-blue phoenix” – how transcendently unconventional!… After five entreaties from dear old Zheng, we finally got our pentasyllabic quatrain… “Quoth ye not that the sleeves of scarlet brush the Milky Way”… And then Flower-Heart Pearl said… Is this your first time… This is our botanical garden.’

‘Hmm? Oh.’ Aroused from his confused thoughts, our learned friend suddenly realized Wan Yaopu was pointing something out to him. Following the direction of his finger, he discovered outside the window a brief expanse of wasteland, on which a handful of trees were growing. A single-storey building, containing three rooms, lay directly opposite.

‘And those are the classrooms,’ Yaopu went on, his finger still resolutely pointing.

‘Ah, yes?’

‘The students are very manageable. Outside classes, they’re devoted to their sewing.’

‘Ah, yes?’ Now in substantial difficulties, Erchu was hoping beyond hope that Yaopu would finally run out of things to say; that he would be given a chance to collect himself, to return to the rise and fall of the Eastern Jin.

‘Regrettably, a few of them want to write poetry; but it would never do to encourage that. Lending a hand with the modernization of the country is one thing; but writing poetry – quite inappropriate for young ladies from good families. Between you and me, our immortal muse isn’t all that keen on the idea of female students: what’s sauce for the gander isn’t always sauce for the goose, and all that. Offends the cosmic order of things, what? I’ve had the privilege of exchanging views with her on the subject more than once…’

Hearing a bell ring, Gao Erchu leapt to his feet.

‘Sit down! Please. That’s the bell for the end of class.’

‘You must be terribly busy, please don’t let me hold you – ’

‘No, no, no! I’m not busy, not busy in the slightest! In my laughably humble opinion, promoting women’s education is in step with the way of progress and the modern world, but you have to stop things getting out of hand. Perhaps our muse’s displeasure is heaven’s way of telling us to nip things in the bud. As long as we stick to the middle road, keep everything within the bounds of reason, practise the Doctrine of the Golden Mean, and keep coming back to the national essence – then we should steer a safe course. Eh, what, Chu, old chap? Even Flower-Heart Pearl considers this a view “not entirely without merit”. A-ha-ha-ha!’

Just as the servitor delivered another two cups of hot water from the twilight zone, the bell rang again.

After bidding Gao to take a couple of sips, Yaopu slowly hauled himself to his feet and led him across the botanical garden, and into the classroom.

Gao stood, heart pounding, to one side of the lectern, the room a blur of bobbed hair. Wan Yaopu fished out a letter from somewhere inside his gown, opened it out and read it to the students, keeping his eyes fixed on the text.

‘This is Mr Gao, Gao Erchu, a famous scholar and author of the universally celebrated article “On the Duty of Every Chinese Citizen to Keep Our National History in Order”. Out of admiration for Gao-er-ji, the great Russian man of letters, the
Great China Daily
has written, Mr Gao changed his name to Gao Erchu. The emergence of such a bright star is indeed a happy day for the firmament of Chinese letters. Now, after continued entreaty from Principal Ho, he has at last deigned to come and share his wisdom with us…’

To Gao, everything seemed to have fallen very quiet and very still: Yaopu had vanished, leaving him alone, horribly alone, on one side of the lectern. Stepping up to the podium – for there seemed no other course open to him now – he bowed, struggled to find calm within, and reminded himself that dignity was to be preserved at all times. He slowly opened his book and began to discourse on ‘The Rise and Fall of the Eastern Jin’.