Fang Hung-chien wished he could have said, No wonder your honorable work is such a hodgepodge. You experts don't find it at all strange, but 'we laymen feel obliged to report to the police when we have nabbed the thief and recovered the goods. Instead, he merely said with a smile, "Don't take it too hard. Gifts to women are rarely one's own; it's nothing more than borrowing flowers to offer to Buddha. If the donor is an official, you can assume that the gift was fleeced off someone else." As he spoke he wondered why Miss T'ang was not paying much attention.Miss Su said, "I don't like your cutting remarks. So Fang Hung-chien is the only intelligent person in the world."Hung-chien stayed a little longer; with no one in the mood for more conversation, he said goodbye and left before anyone else. Miss Su did not try to keep him. After he'd left the house he was vaguely uneasy, aware that his remarks might have offended Miss Su, that Wang Er-k'ai must be one of her worshipers. But remembering he was to visit Miss T'ang the next day, he, in anticipation, forgot everything else. When Fang Hung-chien arrived at the T'angs the next day, Miss T'ang's maid told him to wait in Miss T'ang's study. When Miss T'ang saw him, she said, "Mr.Fang, you made a terrible mistake yesterday. Did you know that?" Fang Hung-chien reflected for a moment; then he said with a smile, "You mean your cousin is mad at me because I criticized that poem?""Do you know who wrote the poem?" She saw his blank uncomprehend ing look and went on, "It was written by my cousin, not by Wang Er-k'ai.""What!" he exclaimed. "Don't put me on. Didn't it plainly say on the fan, 'An old work copied for Wen-wan'?"
"It was Wen-wan's old work that was copied. Wang Er-k'ai knows my uncle and was Chao Hsin-mei's boss.He's married, but last year when my cousin returned from abroad, he was trying to ingratiate himself with her. He made Chao Hsin-mei so angry that Chao lost weight. Usually, when a per son is filled with rage,he swells up and gets fat, don't you think? Later the executive offices of the government all moved to the interior. Anxious to be an official, Wang finally cast my cousin aside and went to the interior, too. This is why Chao Hsin-mei refused to go there. The fan was Wang's present to my cousin, and he had someone specially carve the design on it. And the poem was my cousin's favorite piece.""That moron, two-bit politician. The inscription on the fan was so am biguous that it got me in trouble.Damn! What do I do now?""What do you do? Luckily, you are a smooth talker. A few sentences should be enough to clear the matter."Pleased and humbled by this remark, he said, "It's such a mess now; I am afraid it won't be easy to remedy the situation. I'll go home and write a letter of apology to your cousin immediately."
"I'd really like to know how you'd write such a letter. Let me learn how and maybe I can use one someday." "If it proves very effective, I'll certainly make a copy of the letter for you. Did they criticize me much after I left yesterday?""The poet said all kinds of things, but my cousin didn't say much. She said your Chinese is very good.So quoting a friend of his, the poet said that nowadays if someone wanted to have good Chinese, he'd have to study for eign literatures. Before, people majoring in Western science had to know foreign languages, and now people in Chinese literature have to be well versed in Western languages first. This friend of his is supposed to be returning from abroad soon, and Ts'ao Yuan-lang wants him to meet my cousin."Oh, another jerk! If he's a friend of that poet, he couldn't have much on the ball. You saw that poem of his, something about the 'smorgasbord and adulterer.'You can't tell what it's all about. And it's not honest, unpretentious incoherence, but presumptuous,arrogant, and shameless. It insults the reader's intelligence."
"I'm too ignorant about such matters; I am not qualified to comment, but it seems to me somebody who has studied at a prestigious university abroad couldn't be as bad as you say. Maybe that poem of his was meant to be funny." "Miss T'ang, studying abroad today is like passing examinations under the old Manchu system. My father used to say that if a man failed the third-degree examination, no matter how high an official he became,he'd carry that regret around for the rest of his life. It's not for the broadening of knowledge that one goes abroad but to get rid of that inferiority complex. It's like having smallpox or measles, or in other words, it's essential to have them. Once a child has had the smallpox or measles, he can grow up protected, and if he comes in contact with these diseases later on, he has no fear of them. Once we've studied abroad, we've gotten the inferiority complex out of the system, and our souls become strengthened,and when we do come across such germs as Ph.D.'s or M.A.'s we've built up a resistance against them. Once we've had smallpox, we can forget about ever having caught it; similarly, someone who's studied abroad should also forget about ever having gone abroad. People like Ts'ao Yuan-lang can never forget that they have studied abroad; everywhere they go they have to brag about their Oxford or Cambridge
backgrounds. They are like those people who have contracted smallpox and got pock marked and brag about their faces as if they were starred essays."Smiling, Miss T'ang said, "If people heard you say all that, they'd just say you were jealous because their universities are more famous than the one you wentUnable to think of a reply, he gave a silly smile. She was glad that she Sometimes caught him speechless. She then said, "Yesterday I wondered why you didn't know that the poem was my cousins. You must have read her poems before."
"I came to know your cousin on the boat coming home.It's been a very short time. We'd never even talked before. Remember that day when she said my school nickname was 'TheThermometer'? I am not interested in new- style poetry, and I don't think it's worth getting interested in it just for your cousins sake.""Hmm, if she found that out""Miss T'ang, listen to me. Your cousin is a very intelligent and talented woman, but how should I put it? An intelligent and talented woman was born to make a stupid man swoon before her. Since he himself has no talent, he looks upon her talent as something mysterious and wonderful, and so he pros trates himself before her in worship the way a penniless pauper idolizes a rich man.""In other words, someone as intelligent as Mr. Fang would prefer a stu pid, illiterate woman.""Woman has an intelligence all her own, and it is as nimble and lively as her person. Compared to that kind of intelligence, talent and scholarship are sediments.To say a woman is talented and scholarly is like praising a flower for balancing on the scale with a cabbage or potato-utterly pointless. A truly intelligent woman would never try to become a genius.She'd just find clever ways to loaf around.""What if she wanted to get a Ph.D.?" she asked with a smile.
"She'd never think of getting one in the first place.It's only women with talents like your cousin who want a Ph.D.""But nowadays even to graduate from a run-of-the-mill university, you have to write a thesis.""Then the year she is to graduate, there'd be a change in the world situation. The school would hold its commencement exercise early, and they'd let her graduate without requiring a thesis."She shook her head in disbelief and dropped the subject. They quickly exhausted their topics of conversation, for pleasantries bear no repetition once they have been spoken. Though the words that lovers speak to each other are inexhaustible, Fang Hung-chien and Miss T'ang were not lovers. He felt that every subject that could be safely mentioned had been spoken, and he could not say any more if he were not to step beyond the bounds of propriety. Noticing his silence, she said with a smile, "Why don't you say something?"Responding with a smile, he said, "Well, why don't you?"She told him that in the courtyard of her country home were two cinna mon trees, each over a hundred years old. When she was little she often no ticed that a whole flock of noisy sparrows in the trees would suddenly fall silent; then after a brief pause just as suddenly they would start up all at once. And she commented that it was the same way with human conversation.On his way home Fang Hung-chien mentally drafted the letter to Miss Su, convinced that it would be more appropriate to write it in the classical style, since its ambiguity contained a terseness that would make it an excellent tool for glossing over or playing down an error.
After dinner he wrote a rough sketch, amazed at his greatly increased ability to write the uncruth.Worried that the joke might have gotten out of hand,he lay down his brush halfway through the letter; but when he thought how Miss T'ang would appreciate and understand the letter and how the lies would bring smiles to her lips, he continued on happily. The letter read as follows:
Yesterday when you showed me the poem on the fan, I was vexed at seeing that such a beautiful piece of writing had been composed by none other than a vulgar common official. In my surprise and resentment, I made the unfair accusation that it must have had a model.
Though I derived momentary pleasure, I really felt uneasy. I am beholden to you for your kindness. I deserve a stern rebuke.At the end of the letter he backdated it to the day before and then added two more lines:
P.S. After writing this letter, I left a whole day and night go by before sending it to you. Suffering such a defeat in front of Mr. Ts'ao was most up setting. I hated it.He then put down the day's date. He read the letter twice again with complete satisfaction. In his magination, it was not Miss Su but Miss T'ang reading the letter.The next day when he arrived at the bank, he dropped the letter at the mail section to be delivered to Miss Su by a special messenger. In the evening he went home and had just reached his bedroom when the telephone rang. He reached over and answered it."The Chous' residence. Who's calling, please?" He heard a woman say, "Guess who this is."Hung-chien said, "It's Miss Su, isn't it?""Right." Crisp laughter."Miss Su, did you get my letter?""Yes, I did. You are childish. I don't blame you.Don't I know your tem perament?""You may be willing to forgive me, but I can't forgive myself.""Oh, is it worth getting so upset about such trivia?Tell me, do you really think that poem is good?"Making every effort not to let the smirk on his face slip into his voice, Hung-chien said, "I just wish such a good poem hadn't been written by Wang Er-k'ai.It's too unfair!""Let me tell you something. It wasn't.""Then who wrote it?""I wrote it just for fun.""What? You wrote it? Well, I'll be damned!"He was thankful that they were talking by telephone and not by tele vision. Otherwise, the interesting combination of the glee on his face and the alarm in his voice would have certainly made Miss Su suspicious.
"You were entirely justified in saying that the poem had a model. I got the idea from Tirsot's collection of old French folk dance tunes and felt it was fresh and interesting, so I wrote a poem in imitation.According to you, there's a similar German version.It's obviously very common.""Yours is more lively than the German poem.""You mustn't flatter me. I don't believe you!"''That's not flattery."Are you coming over tomorrow afternoon?"Hung-chien answered quickly that he was, and since she still hadn't hung up, he didn't hang up either."Yesterday you said men don't give their own things to women. What did you mean by that?"He laughed apologetically and replied, "Because his own things are so lousy, he's ashamed of them, so all he can do is borrow someone else's things to offer.For instance, in inviting a lady out for dinner, if his house is too cramped and the cook's no good, then he has to go to a restaurant and make use of its facilities and cooking."Miss Su giggled and said, "OK, you win. I'll see you tomorrow."His head damp with perspiration, he wondered whether it was from nervousness or from his hurried walk home. That evening Fang Hung-chien copied out a draft of the letter, enclosed a short note with it, and sent it to Miss T'ang. He wished he could have written in English, since the tone of a letter in literary style was so impersonal, while the tone of a letter in colloquial style too easily turned into obnoxious familiarity. Only a letter in English would permit him to write openly, "My dear Miss T'ang," and "Very truly yours, Fang Hung-chien." These common terms of address in Western correspondence only sounded offensive and sick ening in Chinese. He was well aware that his English was imbued with the spirit of the free speech of the British and the Declaration of Independence of the Americans in not being bound by the rules of grammar. Otherwise, were he really to depend on a foreign language to "dear" Miss T'ang, it would be like a political offender carrying out his activities while hiding in the
foreign concessions in China.In the next month or two he saw Miss T'ang seven or eight times, wrote her a dozen or so letters, and received five or six replies from her. The first time he received a letter from her, he read it once before going to sleep, then put it next to his pillow, and when he awoke in the middle of the night, he turned on the light to read it again. When he had read it through, he switched off the light and settled back down; then mulling over what he letter had said, he couldn't resist turning on the light again and reading it once more. Later on the letters he wrote gradually became a day-to-day collection of random notes, which he took to the bank with him. Whenever he came across a subject of interest or thought of a phrase, he would pick up his pen and carry on a private, intimate talk with Miss T'ang on paper. Sometimes even when he had nothing to say, he would still want to write something such as, "Today at the bank I drafted several letters and now at last I can catch my breath, stretch,a-a-a-ah! Can you hear my yawn? The waiter came to say
lunch is ready. I'll talk to you later. Maybe you're having lunch now. May you 'Eat a bite more and live till 9994,' or, I still have more to say in this letter I'm about to send you, but as you can see, the page is already full. There's only this tiny space on the paper and I can barely squeeze in the sentence from my heart, which is still too shy to look you in the face. Oh! The page- He always considered letter-writing a small comfort which, while better than nothing at all, couldn't compare with the joy of meeting her face to face. Then when he did see her,there was so much he couldn't bring himself to say; he would then think it was still better to have written a letter. However, seeing her soon became an addiction.
At first, a date with her could "won derize" the day before and the day after by virtue of their association. Gradu ally he wished he could see her every day and even every minute. Once he had written and sent a letter off, he would be forever worrying about it, afraid that when it, like a flaring arrow, reached its destination, it would be nothing but dead ashes by the time she received it.Miss Su and Miss T'ang saw less of each other than before, but Fang Hung-chien, caught between Miss Su's alternating threats and kindness, had no choice but to go to the Sus often. Waiting for him to make his formal declaration of love, Miss Su inwardly faulted him for being so frivolous and tardy; he, on the other hand, was waiting for a chance to explain that he did not love her, and wished he weren't so tenderhearted and could be courageous enough to cut the Gordian knot. Every time he went to the Sus, he came away reproaching himself for having gone one more time and talked so much again. He gradually realized that he was what Westerners called a "moral weakling," and was worried that Miss T'ang would detect this major flaw in his character.
One Saturday afternoon after returning home from having tea with Miss T'ang, he saw on the table an invitation from Chao Hsin-mei for dinner the next day and was struck with the horrible thought that this might be Hsin mei's engagement party. That would be disastrous. Miss Su would start con centrating her affections on him all the more. Miss Su called to ask if he had received the card or not and Hsin-mei had asked her to invite him; moreover, she told him to see her the next morning. The next day Miss Su said that Hsin-mei had insisted that he come, as a chance for everyone to get together. At first he was going to ask why Hsin mei had invited him, but the words shrank away from the tip of his tongue. Not wishing to mention Hsin-mei's antagonism toward him any more for fear of deepening Miss Su's misunderstanding of him, he asked instead if any oth ers were invited. She said two of Hsin-mei's friends had also been invited."Is that little fatso and big poet Ts'ao Yuan-lang included? If he is, they can save on the food. Just looking at that meatball face of his will make people feel full," he said."Probably not. Hsin-mei doesn't know him. I know how petty both you and Hsin-mei are. Hsin-mei would start quarreling the moment he saw Yuan lang. Well, my place here is not a battlefield, and I am not going to let the two of them meet. Yuan-lang is a very interesting fellow. You're so biased; I think your heart must be way over in your armpit. Since that time, I haven't
let you and Yuan-lang meet so as to avoid any squabble."He was going to say, "Actually it makes no difference to me," but under her doting gaze, he couldn't say anything. At the same time, he was greatly relieved to learn that Ts'ao Yuan-lang had been added to the list
of Miss Su's worshipers."What do you think of Chao Hsin-mei?" she suddenly asked.
"He is more capable than I and has a very dignified bearing. He is sure to l)e a success in the future. I think he is in fact an ideal-uh-man."If God had praised the devil or a socialist had eulogized the petty bour geoisie, Miss Su could not have been more astonished. She was all set for Hung-chien to ridicule Hsin-mei, whereupon she was going to uphold justice by arguing in Hsin-mei's defense. She then said with a sniff, "The guest is already praising the host before he's even had a bite of food! Hsin-mei's been writing letters to me almost every other day. I needn't repeat what's in the letters, but they all say he's losing sleep. I get so sick of reading them! Who told him to lose sleep?What's that got to do with me? I am not a doctor!"She knew perfectly well his losing sleep had quite a bit to do with her without having to ask a doctor's opinion."As the poem from the Book of Odes27 goes, 'The noble young lady, Waking and sleeping he sought her; He sought her but could not find her, Waking and sleeping he longed for her.' His letters are a manifestation of genuine Chinese culture," Hung-chien said with a grin. Glaring at him, Miss Su said, "Isn't it a pity he doesn't have your good fortune! You don't know how lucky you are. All you do is make fun of people with your wisecracks. I don't like that about you.Hung-chien, I wish you'd learn to be more kind. I'm really going to get after you about that in the future.He became speechless with fright. Miss Su had business to attend to at home, so she agreed to meet him that evening at the restaurant. He went back home and for the rest of the day remained glum and despondent,
feeling he could no longer go on as before and must clarify his position to her as soon as possible.When Hung-chien reached the restaurant, the other two guests were already there. One was hunchbacked with a high forehead, large eyes, and a pale complexion. He was wearing a gold wire-rimmed pince-nez and a Western suit with cuffs covering his fingers. His face smooth, with neither a mus tache nor wrinkles, he resembled an infantile old woman or an elderly child.The other guest had a very proud bearing. His nose was straight and high; his profile gave the impression of a ladder propped against his face. The bow tie at his neck was so large and neat that Hung-chien was struck with hopeless admiration. When Hsin-mei saw Hung-chien, he greeted him warmly. During the introductions, Hung-chien learned that the hunchback was the philoso pher Ch'u Shen-ming and the other was Tung Hsieh-ch'uan, a former attache at the Chinese legation in Czechoslovakia. Transferred back to China,Tung had not yet been assigned a new post; he wrote excellent old-style poetry and was a great literary talent.Ch'u Shen-ming's original name was Ch'u Chia-pao.After attaining fame he found Chia-pao (literally,family treasure) unsuitable for a philosopher and changed it, following the precedent set by Spinoza, to Shen-ming (liter ally, careful and clear), taken from the expression "consider carefully and argue clearly."He was known as a child wonder, though some xvondered about his sanity. He had refused to graduate from grade school, high school, or college, for he felt no teacher was good enough to teach or test him. He harbored a special hatred for women, and though extremely nearsighted, he had refused to be fitted for
glasses for fear of getting a good look at women's faces. He always said that man's nature was composed of a natural humaneness and an animal disposition, and that he himself was all natural disposition. He was an avid reader of foreign philosophical journals,and if he came across the addresses of any world-renowned philosophers, he would write them saying how much he enjoyed their works. He culled his praise of their works from the review sections of philosophy journals and added a word here or deleted a word there and passed everything off as his own opinion.In the intellectual world, Western philosophers are the biggest whiners; they don't wield the experts'authority as scientists nor do they enjoy as much popular fame as men of letters. So, when suddenly from thousands of miles away came a letter of praise,needless to say they were so thrilled that they nearly forgot philosophy. China, as they saw it, was a primitive country, heaven knows how mean and backward,and yet here was a Chinese who wrote with sense. In their replies to Ch'u Shen-ming, they praised him as the founder of a new philosophy of China and even sent him books. If he wrote them again, however, he rarely received any more replies. The reason was that these vain old men would show off his first letter among their colleagues only to find that everyone else had received a similar letter and had been similarly called "the greatest philosopher of modern times."
Inevitably they became angry and disappointed.With some thirty or forty of these replies, Ch'u Shen-ming had awed innumerable people. One wealthy,talent-loving official spent ten thousand ounces of gold to send him abroad. The only Western philosopher who did not respond to his letter was Henri Bergson,who dreaded having strangers come pester him and kept his address confidential and his telephone number unlisted. After Ch'u Shen-ming arrived in Europe,Ch'u, in a last-ditch effort, sent a letter to Bergson to make an appointment for a visit, but to his chagrin the letter came back unopened. From then on, he bitterly hated Intuitivism. On the other hand,Bergson's rival, Bertrand Russell, was willing to humor the Chinese and therefore invited him over for tea. From then on Ch'u studied mathematical logic.When Ch'u went abroad, for the sake of convenience, he had to wear glasses, and so it happened that his attitude toward women gradually changed. Though he loathed women and could smell them three doors away, he de sired them, which was why his nose was so sharp.His mind was filled with them. If he came upon the expression a posteriori in mathematical logic, he
would think of "posterior," and when he came across the mark "X" he would think of a kiss. Luckily he had never made a careful study of Plato's dialogues with Timaeus; otherwise he would be dazed by every "X" mark. Now he was translating into English a work on the Chinese view of life written by the official who sent him abroad. Every month he drew out a sum of money from the National Bank for living expenses and lived a very leisurely life.
Tung Hsieh-ch'uan's father, Tung I-sun, was an old scholar who had served as an official for the Republic of China but had not forgotten the former Manchu regime.Hsieh-ch'uan himself was quite gifted and wrote old-style poetry in the same way his father did. A country of active scholar- generals, China is unlike France, which, if it had one or two generals capable of wielding a pen, would want them to be revered at the National Academy. While Hsieh-ch'iian's military strategems were not too different from those of most scholar-generals, his poetry, even if it hadn't been the work of a scholar-general, would still have been considered quite good. But writing can reduce one to poverty. He never had much luck as an official, even though this was not necessarily a misfortune for the soldiers. As a military attach6, instead of discussing military affairs, he criticized his superiors and peers for their literary incompetence, and for this reason he was transferred back to China. Shortly after his return, he decided to look for another job.
Fang Hung-chien viewed Tung Hsieh-ch'uan as a very distinguished individual, so when he heard Chao Hsin-mei say Hsieh-ch'uan was the son of a famous father, he was overwhelmed and said, "Mr. I-sun is well known both at home and abroad. Mr. Tung lives up to his distinguished heritage-a man of both literary and military talents." He thought this would be considered the highest form of praise. Tung Hsieh-ch'uan said, "My poetic style is different from my father's. In his youth he followed wrong models. Even now he still hasn't gotten away from the styles of Huang Chung-tse and Kung Ting-an of the Ch'ien-lung and Chia-ch'ing periods. I started right off writing in the style of the T'ung chih and Kuang-hsu periods."Fang Hung-chien didn't dare venture a word. Chao Hsin-mei asked the waiter for the menu he had submitted the day before and gave it a final scrutiny. Tung also asked the waiter for a brush and ink stone, took the menu from the tea table, and quickly leafed through it. Fang Hung-chien was perplexed.Ch'u Shen-ming sat silently and stiffly, smiling as though contemplating something interesting in the depths of his subconsciousness. His enigmatic smile would make that of the Mona Lisa amount to nothing.Hung-chien tried to talk to him. "Mr. Ch'u, what philosophical questions have you been studying recently?"
With a nervous expression, Ch'u shot a glance over at Hung-chien and then turned to Chao Hsin-mei. "Old Chao,Miss Su should have been here by now. Waiting for a woman like this-this is the first time in my life."
Hsin-mei gave the menu to the waiter, turned around and was about to agree, when he saw Tung Hsieh-ch'uan writing something. He asked quickly, "Hsieh-ch'uan, what are you up to?""I'm composing a poem," replied Tung, without raising his head.(The End)
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