While Miss T'ang greeted him as "Mr. Chao," Miss Su said,"Oh, good, you're here.I'll introduce you: Fang Hung-chien, Chao Hsin-mei."Chao Hsin-mei shook hands with Fang Hung-chien,superciliously glanc ing at him from head to toe as if Hung-chien were a page from a large-type kindergarten reader to be glossed over at one glance. He asked Miss Su, "Didn't you come home with him on the boat?"Hung-chien was dumbfounded. How did this Chao fellow know who he was? Then it suddenly occurred to him that Chao might have seen the item in the Shanghai paper,and the thought made him feel uncomfortable. Chao Hsin-mei looked smug to begin with, and after hearing Miss Su confirm that I Hung-chien indeed came home with her on the same ship, he acted as if Hung-chien had turned into thin air and ignored Hung-chien completely. If Miss Su hadn't bothered to speak to him, Hung-chien would really have felt that he had thinned into nothingness, like a phantom of early dawn upon the cock's crowing or the Taoist truth, which can be "looked at but not seen, expounded but not grasped."Miss Su explained to Hung-chien that Chao Hsin-mei was a family friend, a returned student from the United States, a former section chief of the for eign office who had not gone with the office to the interior because of illness. She added that he was at the moment a political editor at the Sino-American News Agency. She did not, however, recite Hung-chien's background for Chao Hsin-mei, as if Chao already knew all about it without being told.
With a pipe in his mouth, Chao Hsin-mei lounged on the sofa; looking at the ceiling light, he asked, "Where do you work, Mr.Fang?" Somewhat annoyed by the question, Fang Hung-chien felt he must an swer it. And since the "Golden Touch Bank" didn't sound impressive, he answered vaguely, "For the time being I'm working at a small bank."Admiring the smoke ring he had blown, Chao Hsin-mei said, "A great talent gone to waste. Such a pity! Such a pity! What did you study abroad,Mr. Fang?" "I didn't study anything," said Hung-chien crossly.Miss Su said, "Hung-chien, you studied philosophy, didn't you?" Chortling, Chao Hsin-mei said, "In the eyes of those of us engaged in real work, studying philosophy and not studying anything amount to one and the same.""Then you'd better find an eye doctor right away and have your eyes examined. Eyes that see things like that must have something wrong with them," said Fang Hung-chien, purposely guffawing to cover up his ill feelings.Chao Hsin-mei, quite pleased with the wisecrack he had made a moment ago, was for the moment unable to say anything in reply and puffed away furiously on his pipe. On the other hand, Miss Su tried hard not to laugh, though she was a little ill at ease. Miss T'ang, meanwhile,sat with a distant, aloof smile on her face, as if she were watching a fight from the clouds. It suddenly dawned on Hung-chien that Chao's rudeness toward him had stemmed from jealousy, for Chao had obviously taken him as his love rival. All of a sudden, Miss Su began calling Fang Hung-chien Hung-chien instead of Mr. Fang, as though she wanted Chao Hsin-mei to know her intimacy with Fang. Having two men battle over her must be a woman's proudest moment, Fang reflected.Well, why should make myself Chao's enemy for nothing. Let Chao go ahead and love Miss Sul he decided. Unaware of Fang Hung-chien's intention, Miss Su thoroughly enjoyed the battle of two men over her, but she was worried that the exchange might get too fierce and in a moment separate the victor from the vanquished, leav ing only one of the two as the sole survivor and terminating all the excitement around her. She was even more worried that the vanquished might be Fang Hung-chien. She had tried to use Chao
Hsin-mei to rouse Fang Hung-chien's courage, but perhaps Fang Hung-chien, like the war news in the newspapers for the last few days, had been "maintaining the present strength through strategic retreats."
Chao Hsin-mei's and Su Wen-Wan's fathers had been colleagues and had rented a house in Peking together during the early years of the Republic. Hsin-mei and Miss Su had been friends since childhood. When Mrs. Chao was pregnant with Hsin-mei, everyone thought she would have twins. By the time he was four or five, he was as tall as a seven- or eight-year-old, so that whenever the servant took him on a trolley car, the servant would always have to argue with the conductor over the "no fare required for children un der five"rule. Though Hsin-mei's body was huge, his head,resembling a large turnip with nothing in it, was not.In grade school he was the butt of his classmates'jokes; for with such a large target, no shot could ever miss the mark. With Miss Su and her brother and sister, he used to play "cops and robbers." The two girls, Miss Su and her now married older sister, could not run very fast, so when it came their turn to play the "robber," they insisted on being the "cop." When Miss Su's elder brother played the robber, he re fused to be caught. Hsin-mei was the only one who would be a good little robber and take a beating. When they played Little Red Riding Hood, he was always the wolf,and when he ate up Miss Su or her sister, he would pick them up and make a strange expression by rounding his eyes and opening his mouth wide. In the part where the woodcutter kills the wolf and cuts open the wolf's stomach, Miss Su's brother pressed him into the mud and tried to dig at his stomach. Once Miss Su's brother did really cut through his clothes with scissors. While Hsin-mei was amiable by nature, it didn't follow that he therefore must have a poor mind. His father believed in physiognomy, so when he was thirteen or fourteen, his father took him to see a famous woman physiog nomist who praised him for his "fire planet square, earth shape thick, wood sound high, cow's eyes, lion's nose, chessboard piece's ear, and mouth shaped like the character for 'four.' "And she said his physiognomy fit the description of a high official according to her Hemp Robe fortunetelling book.Moreover, she predicted that he would achieve great fame and high political status surpassing that of his father. From then on Hsin-mei considered himself a statesman.When Hsin-mei was little, he had a secret crush on Miss Su. One year when Miss Su was critically ill, he overheard his father say, "Wen-wan is sure to recover.She is destined to be an official's wife and has twenty-five years of a 'helpmate's fortune.'" He henceforth concluded that she would be his wife since the woman physiognomist had predicted he would be an official. When Miss Su returned from abroad, he thought he would renew their childhood friendship and propose to her at an appropriate time. But to his surprise, when Miss Su first came home, every other word she said was Fang Hung-chien, a name which she abruptly dropped after the fifth day. The reason was that she had discovered an old issue of a Shanghai newspaper and her sharp eyes had noticed an item in it that others had overlooked.It must be said that her long years of friendship with Hsin-mei did not add up to love, just as in winter no one can add today's temperature to yesterday's to come up with a warm spring day for tomorrow. It must also be said that Hsin-mei excelled in making speeches in English; his resonant and fluent American speech,resembling the roll of thunder in the sky, when oiled and waxed, would slip halfway through the sky. Speeches, however, are delivered from a podium, with the speaker looking down at his audience. On the other hand, a marriage proposal has to be made by the person stooping down to half his height and earnestly entreating the other with an uplifted face. And since Miss Su was not his audience, he never had a chance to exercise his talent.Though Chao Hsin-mei was jealous of Fang Hung-chien,it was not an it's-either-you-or-me type of enmity.His haughty rudeness was an imitation of Mussolini's and Hitler's attitude toward representatives of small nations during negotiations. He thought he could overwhelm and scare off Hung chien with the forbidding mannerism of Mussolini or Hitler. But when he encountered a retort from Hung-chien, he could neither pound the table nor roar like the Italian ruler or raise a fist in a shout of authority like the German leader. Fortunately he knew the diplomat's secret of using a cigarette to create a smoke screen if he found himself temporarily at a loss for vords. When Miss Su came to his rescue and asked him about the var, he proceeded to
recite from memory the editorial he had just written. Continuing to ignore Fang Hung-chien, he kept up his guard against Fang; his attitude resembled that of a person toward germs when inquiring after the health of someone with a contagious disease.
Hung-chien was not interested in Hsin-mei's talk and thought primarily of striking up a conversation with Miss T'ang, but Miss T'ang was listening to Hsin-mei with rapt attention. He prepared to wait for Miss T'ang to leave, then he would get up himself and ask her for her address when they left to gether. Hsin-mei finished analyzing the current war situation, looked at his watch and said, "It's now almost five o'clock. I'll run to the newspaper office for a while and then come take you to dinner at the 0 Mei-ch'un.If you want Szechwanese food, that's the best Szechwan restaurant. The waiters all know me there. Miss T'ang,you must join us; Mr. Fang, if you are in the mood,why not come join the fun? I'd be glad to have you." Before Miss Su could answer, Miss T'ang and Fang Hung-chien both said it was late and they had to go home. They declined the invitation but thanked Hsin-mei, nonetheless. Miss Su said, "Hung-chien, stay a while. There's something I want to talk to you about. Hsin-mei, my mother and I have a social engagement today, so let's eat at the restaurant some other day, all right? Tomorrow afternoon at four-thirty, all of you are invited to come here and have tea with Mr. and Mrs.Shen, who've just returned from abroad. We can have a good chat." When Chao Hsin-mei saw Miss Su detain Fang Hung-chien,he left in a huff. Fang Hung-chien rose and intended to shake hands with him but had to sit down again.
"That Chao Hsin-mei is strange. He acts as if I had offended him in some way. He hates me so much that it shows on his face and in his speech." "Don't you hate him too?" asked Miss T'ang with a sly smile. Miss Su blushed and scolded her, "You're awful." When Fang Hung-chien heard Miss Su's remark, he dared not deny hating Chao Hsin-mei but merely said, "Miss Su, thanks for inviting me to tea, but I don't think I will be coming." Before Miss Su could open her mouth, Miss T'ang said,"You can't do that? It's all right for the audience not to show up,but you're one of the prin cipal actors. How can you not come?" Miss Su said, "Hsiao-fu! If you utter any more nonsense, I'm not going
to pay any attention to you. Both of you must come tomorrow!" Miss T'ang left in Miss Su's car. Hung-chien, face to face with Miss Su, tried his best to say something that would dilute or clear the thick and stifling atmosphere of intimacy. "Your cousin has a sharp tongue. She seems quite intelligent too." "That girl is very capable for her age. She has a slew of boy friends that she fools around with!" Hung-chien's disappointed look sent a twinge of jealousy through Miss Su's heart. "Don't think she's naive. She is full of schemes! I always thought that a girl just entering college who is already involved in love affairs can't have much of a future. I mean, how can someone who runs around with boys and leads a wild mixed-up life still have time for study? Don't you remember our classmates, Huang Pi and Chiang Meng-t'i?Who knows what's become of them now?"Fang Hung-chien quickly said he remembered them. "You were quite popuiar yourself in those days, but you always looked so arrogant. We could only admire you from a distance. I never dreamed that we would be such good friends today."With that Miss Su felt better. Then she brought up some old school matters; and when Hung-chien saw she really had nothing important to say, he said, "I'd better be going. This evening you still have to go out with your mother on a social engagement."Miss Su said, "I don't have any engagement. That was just an excuse, because Hsin-mei was so rude to you. I don't want to make him any more arrogant."Hung-chien said nervously, "You're too kind to me."Miss Su glanced at him; then lowering her head she said, "Sometimes I really shouldn't be so kind to you." The tender words he was supposed to say at that point squirmed in the air and rushed to the tip of his tongue to be spoken. He didn't want to say them, yet he couldn't remain silent. As he saw Miss Su's hand resting on the edge of the sofa, he reached out and patted the back of her hand. She drew back her hand and said softly, "You go now. Come a little early tomorrow afternoon." She walked him to the door of the living room. As he crossed the threshold, she called,"Hung-chien." He turned around and asked what was the matter. She said, "Nothing. I was just watch ing you.Why did you dash forward without even turning your head? Ha, ha, I have become such an unreasonable woman. I wanted you to grow eyes at the back of your head. Come early tomorrow." When he left her, Fang thought he had become a part of spring, at one with it in spirit and no longer the outsider of two hours ago. As he walked along, his body felt so light that it seemed the ground was floating upward. Just two small matters bothered him.
First, he should never have touched Miss Su's hand; he should have pretended he didn't understand what she meant. Being too softhearted, he had often catered to women without intending to, because he didn't want to offend them. In the future he'd just have to talk and act more decisively and not let things get serious. Second, Miss T'ang had many boy friends and might already be in love with someone. So vexed by this fact, he struck his cane violently against a roadside tree and decided he'd better quash all hope from the very start. What a disgrace it would be if he were to be jilted by a teen-age girl! Disconsolately, he hopped on a trolley car and saw a young couple sitting nearby whispering tender words to each other. On the boy's lap was a pile of high school textbooks; the girl's book covers were all decorated with pictures of movie stars. Though she was no more than sixteen or seventeen, her face was made up like a mask kneaded out of gobs of rouge and powder. Shanghai is certainly avant-garde culturally. The phenomenon of high school girls painting and plastering their faces to attract men is rare even abroad, he reflected. But this girl's face was so obviously faked, for no one would pos sibly believe that powdered wafer cake pasted on her face could be her own. It suddenly occurred to Fang that Miss T'ang did not use any makeup. A girl who works hard at making up either has a boy friend already and has discov ered a new interest or value in her body, or else she's looking for a boy friend and is hanging out a colorful eye-catching signboard to attract a man's atten tion.Since Miss T'ang dresses plainly, she obviously doesn't have a man in her life, he concluded. His conclusion had such a profound psychological basis and had followed such precise logical reasoning that he couldn't sit still in his seat.When the trolley car reached his stop, he rushed ahead and jumped off without waiting for the trolley car to come to a stop, nearly falling down as he did so.by supporting himself with his cane and pushing against a utility pole with his left hand, he managed to check his downward momen tum. He broke out in a cold sweat from the scare, and a layer of skin was scraped from his left palm. He was also rebuked by the trolley car attendant. When he reached home he applied some tincture of merthiolate to his palm,blaming Miss T'ang for his mishap and promising to get even with her later. Like foam, a smile floated up from his heart to his face, and the pain was immediately forgotten. It didn't occur to him, however,that the scrape might have been punishment for his having put his hand on top of Miss Su's a while ago.The next day when he arrived at the Sus, Miss T'ang was already there. Before he had sat down, Chao Hsin-mei came. Chao greeted him and then said, "Mr. Fang, you left late yesterday and came early today. This must be a good habit you developed in the banking business. Your diligence is commendable. Congratulations.""Thank you, thank you." Fang Hung-chien had thought of saying that Hsin-mei's early departure and late arrival must be in the bureaucratic tradi tion of a yamen mandarin,9 but he changed his mind and kept the thought to himself. He even smiled pleasantly at Hsin-mei. Hsin-mei, on the other hand, had not expected him to be so meek and was startled to find that he had struck at thin air. Meanwhile, Miss T'ang looked surprised and so did Miss Su at the lack of drama. However, Miss Su assumed that Fang's meekness was the mag nanimity usually demonstrated by the victor, and since Hung-chien knew she loved him, Hung-chien felt no need to quarrel with Hsin-mei.Mr. and Mrs. Shen arrived. While introductions were made and pleas antries exchanged, Chao Hsin-mei picked the sofa nearest Miss Su and sat down. The Shens sat together on a long sofa, and Miss T'ang sat on an embroidered couch between the Shens and Miss Su. Next to Mrs. Shen, Hung chien sat by himself. He had no sooner seated himself than he regretted it immensely,for Mrs. Shen had an odor about her for which there is an elegant expression in classical Chinese as well as an idiom in Latin, both using the goat as a comparison: yun-ti and olet hircum (smelling like a goat). Mingled with the scent of face powder and the fragrance of flowers, this smell was so strong that it made Fang Hung-chien queasy, yet he was too polite to smoke a cig arette to dispel the stench. Here was a woman just returned from France all right, bringing back to China a whole "symphony of foul odors" from the Paris marketplace. Fang never ran into her while in Paris, and now of all times there was no escape from her; the explanation seemed to be that Paris was big while the world was small.Mrs. Shen was rather odd-looking and very heavily made up; the two black bags under her eyes were like round canteen bottles, filled probably with hot, passionate tears; the thick lipstick had been washed into her mouth and colored the yellowish, rough ridges of her teeth red, making her teeth look like hemorrhoids dripping with blood or the clues to a bloody murder in a detective yarn. Her speech was full of French exclamations such as "Tiens!" and "la la!" as she squirmed her body around into various seduc tive
poses. Each twist of the body let off a fresh wave of the smell. Hung chien wished he could have told her that it was quite enough if she'd just talk with her mouth and be careful not to twist herself in two.Mr. Shen's lower lip was thick and drooping. One could tell at a glance that he was a man who spoke much and quickly as though he had diarrhea of the mouth. He was describing how he had propagandized the war to the French and how he had won the sympathy of quite a few people for China's cause. "After the withdrawal from Nanking,'they all said China was fin ished. I said to them, 'During the war in Europe, didn't your government also move the capital out of Paris? Yet you were the final victors!' They had noth ing to say to that, no sir, not a thing."Hung-chien was thinking, Governments may be able to move their capitals, but can't change my seat.As though offering an expert's opinion, Chao Hsin-mei observed, "An excellent answer! Why don't you write an article about it?""Wei-lei [Mrs. Shenil put those remarks of mine in the foreign corre spondence column in a Shanghai paper.
Didn't you see it, Mr. Chao?" asked Mr. Shen with a touch of disappointment.Mrs. Shen twisted around and gestured at her husband, saying with a coquettish smile, "Why bring up that thing of mine? Who'd ever have no ticed it?"Hsin-mei said quickly, "Yes, I did see it. I was very much impressed. Now I remember, it had the part about relocating the capital.""I didn't see it," Hung-chien interrupted. "What was it called?"Hsin-mei said, "You philosophers study timeless questions, so naturally you don't read newspapers. It was called-uh-it's on the tip of my tongue. Why can't I think of it just now?" He had never read the article in the first place but couldn't pass up the chance to humiliate Hung-chien.
Miss Su said, "You can't blame him. He probably was in the country at the time the article appeared, and he might not have seen any newspapers. Right, Hung-chien? The title is quite easy to remember: 'Some Letters to My Sisters in the Motherland.' At the top was a
headline in large type which went something like this,'A Verdant Island of Europe in the Azure Blood of Asia.' Mrs. Shen, is my memory correct?""Oh, that's right," said Hsin-mei, slapping his own thigh. " 'Some Letters to My Sisters in the Motherland' and 'A Verdant Island of Europe in the Azure Blood of Asia.' Beautiful titles. What a good memory you have, Wen wan!"Mrs. Shen said, "Gee, you even remember that silly thing of mine. No wonder all the people who know you say you are a genius."Miss Su said, "If it is something good, you don't have to remember it. It'll leave a deep impression by itself."Miss T'ang said to Hung-chien, "Mrs. Shen wrote her article for us women to read. You're one of the brothers in the motherland,' and you can be forgiven for not having noticed it."Since Mrs. Shen was not young and since her letter was not addressed to her "nieces and grandnieces in the motherland," Miss T'ang, by reading it, had been elevated to the status of Mrs. Shen's sister.To make amends for his forgetfulness, Hsin-mei flattered Mrs. Shen, say ing that the Sino-American News Agency was going to publish a women's magazine and asking for her help. The Shens grew even more friendly to ward Hsin-mei.The servant drew the curtain separating the dining room from the living room, and Miss Su invited everyone to step inside for refreshments. Hung chien felt like a criminal having been granted a pardon.When he finished eating, he returned to the living room and quickly sat next to Miss T'ang.
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