Fortress Besieged Read online

  Up on deck were two Chinese women and one toddler, who didn’t count as a full person—at least the ship’s company did not consider him as one and had not made his parents buy a ticket for him. The younger woman, wearing sunglasses and with a novel spread on her lap, was elegantly dressed. Her skin would be considered fair among Orientals, but unfortunately it looked stale and dry; and even though she wore a light lipstick, her lips were a little too thin. When she removed her sunglasses, she exposed delicate eyes and eyebrows, and when she rose from the canvas lounge chair, one could see how slight she was. Moreover, the outline of her figure was perhaps too sharp, as if it had been drawn with a square-nibbed pen. She could be twenty-five or twenty-six, but then the age of modern women is like the birthdates traditional women used to list on their marriage cards, whose authentication required what the experts call external evidence, since they meant nothing in and by themselves. The toddler’s mother, already in her thirties, was wearing an old black chiffon Chinese dress;3 a face marked by toil and weariness, her slanting downward eyebrows made her look even more miserable. Her son, not yet two years old, had a snub nose, two slanted slits for eyes, and eyebrows so high up and removed from the eyes that the eyebrows and the eyes must have pined for each other—a living replica of the Chinese face in newspaper caricatures.

  The toddler had just learned to walk, and he ran about incessantly. His mother held him by a leather leash so that he could not run more than three or four steps without getting yanked back. Bothered by the heat, tired, and irritable from pulling, the mother, whose thoughts were on her husband who was gambling down below, constantly scolded her son for being a nuisance. The child, restricted in his movements, turned and dashed toward the young woman reading the book. Ordinarily the young woman had a rather conceited, aloof expression, much like that of a neglected guest at a large party or an unmarried maiden at a wedding feast. At that moment her distaste for the child surfaced so much so that not even her sunglasses could hide it. Sensing all that, the child’s mother apologetically pulled at the strap and said, “You naughty child disturbing Miss Su! Come back here! How studious you are, Miss Su! You know so much and still you read all the time. Mr. Sun is always telling me, ‘Women students like Miss Su give China a good name. She’s beautiful and has a Ph.D. besides. Where can you ever find such nice people?’ Here I went abroad for nothing and never even cracked a book. I keep house, and I forgot everything I’d learned as soon as I had him. Hey! You pest! I told you not to go over there. You’re up to no good. You’ll get Miss Su’s clothes all dirty for sure.”

  Miss Su had always scorned the poor, simple-minded Mrs. Sun and detested children, but when she heard all that, she was quite pleased. Smiling pleasantly, she said, “Let him come. I love kids.”

  She removed her sunglasses, closed the book she had been staring at vacantly, and with utmost caution she clasped the child’s wrist before he could wipe his hands all over her clothes.

  “Where’s Papa?” she asked him. Without answering, the child opened his eyes wide and went, “Poo, poo,” at Miss Su, spitting out saliva in imitation of the goldfish blowing bubbles in the tank in the dining room. Miss Su hastily let go of his arm and pulled out a handkerchief to protect herself. His mother yanked him away, threatening to slap him. Then sighing, she said, “His father is gambling down below. Where else? I can’t understand why all men like gambling so much. Just look at the ones on this boat. Every last one of them is gambling his head off. I wouldn’t mind so much if it brought in a little something. But my husband, Mr. Sun, he’s already gambled away a tidy sum and he just keeps going. It makes me so mad!”

  When Miss Su heard these last petty remarks, she, in spite of herself, felt a renewed contempt for Mrs. Sun. “You know, Mr. Fang does not gamble,” she remarked coldly.

  Mrs. Sun turned up her nose and sniffed. “Mr. Fang! He played too when he first got on the boat. Now he’s too busy chasing Miss Pao, so naturally he can’t spare the time. Romance is the big event of a lifetime, far more important than gambling. I just can’t see what there is about that Miss Pao, coarse and dark as she is, to make Mr. Fang give up a perfectly good second-class berth for the discomforts of the third class. I see those two are getting on gloriously. Maybe by the time the boat reaches Hong Kong they’ll get married. It’s certainly a case of ‘fate bringing people together from a thousand li away.’” 4

  Miss Su felt a painful stabbing in her heart when she heard that. To answer Mrs. Sun and to console herself, she said, “Why, that’s quite impossible! Miss Pao has a fiancé; she told me so herself. Her fiancé even financed her studies abroad.”

  Mrs. Sun said, “She has a fiancé and is still so flirtatious? We are already antiques. At least we’ve learned something new this time. Miss Su, I’ll tell you something funny. You and Mr. Fang were classmates in China. Does he always say whatever he pleases? Yesterday Mr. Sun was telling Mr. Fang about his poor luck in gambling, and Mr. Fang just laughed at him for having been in France all these years and not knowing anything about the French superstition; Mr. Fang said that if the wife is unfaithful and has an affair, the husband is sure to take first prize if he buys a lottery ticket, and he is sure to win if he gambles. And he added that if a man loses at gambling, he should take it as a consolation. When Mr. Sun told me all that, I scolded him for not asking that Fang fellow just what he meant. Looking at it now, it seems Miss Pao’s fiancé could certainly take first prize in the aviation lottery. If she became Mr. Fang’s wife, Mr. Fang’s luck at gambling would have to be good.” The viciousness of a kind, simplehearted soul, like gritty sand in the rice or splinters in a deboned fish, can give a person unexpected pain.

  “Miss Pao’s behavior is just too unlike a student’s. And the way she dresses is quite disgraceful—” Miss Su remarked.

  The toddler suddenly stretched his hands behind their chairs, laughing and jumping about. The two women looked around and saw that it was none other than Miss Pao coming toward them, waving a piece of candy at the child from a distance. She was wearing only a scarlet top and navy blue, skintight shorts; her red toenails showed through her white, open-toed shoes. Perhaps for a hot day in the tropics, this was the most sensible attire; one or two non-Chinese women on board dressed exactly like that. Miss Su felt that Miss Pao’s exposed body constituted an insult to the body politic of the Chinese nation. When men students saw Miss Pao, they burned with lewd desire, and found some relief by endlessly cracking jokes behind her back. Some called her a charcuterie—a shop selling cooked meats—because only such a shop would have so much warm-colored flesh on public display. Others called her “Truth,” since it is said that “the truth is naked.” But Miss Pao wasn’t exactly without a stitch on, so they revised her name to “Partial Truth.”

  As Miss Pao approached, she greeted the two women, “You’re sure up early. On a hot day like this, I prefer to loaf in bed. I didn’t even know when Miss Su got up this morning. I was sleeping like a log.” She had intended to say “like a pig,” then on second thought decided to say “like a corpse.” Finally, feeling a corpse wasn’t much better than a pig, she borrowed the simile from English. She hastened to explain, “This boat really moves like a cradle. It rocks you until you’re so woozy all you want to do is sleep.”

  “Then you’re the precious little darling asleep in the cradle. Now, isn’t that cute!” said Miss Su.

  Miss Pao gave her a cuff, saying, “You! Su Tung-p’o’s little sister,5 the girl genius!” “Su Hsiao-mei” (Su’s little sister) was the nickname the men students on board had given Miss Su. The words, “Tung-p’o” when pronounced by Miss Pao in her South Seas accent sounded like tombeau, the French word for tomb.

  Sharing a cabin with Miss Pao, Miss Su slept in the lower berth, which was much more convenient because she didn’t have to climb up and down every day; but in the last few days she had begun to hate Miss Pao, feeling Pao was doing everything possible to make her life miserable—snoring so loudly she couldn’t sleep well, and tur
ning over so heavily it seemed the upper berth would cave in. When Miss Pao hit her, she said, “Mrs. Sun, you be the judge of who’s in the right. Here I call her ‘precious little darling’ and I still get hit! To be able to fall asleep is a blessing. I know how much you enjoy sleeping, so I’m always careful never to make a sound so I won’t wake you up. You were telling me you were afraid of getting fat, but the way you like to sleep on the ship, I think you must have gained several pounds already.”

  The child was yelling for the candy, and as soon as he got it into his mouth, he chewed it up. His mother told him to thank Miss Pao, but he paid no attention, so the mother had to humor Miss Pao herself. Miss Su had already noticed that the candy cost nothing. It was just a sugar cube served aboard the ship with coffee at breakfast. She despised Miss Pao for the way she put on. Not wanting to speak to Miss Pao anymore, she opened her book again, but from the corner of her eye she caught a glimpse of Miss Pao pulling two deck chairs over to an empty spot some distance away and arranging them side by side. She secretly reviled Miss Pao for being so shameless, but at the same time hated herself for having spied on Miss Pao.

  At that point Fang Hung-chien came on deck. As he passed by Mrs. Sun and Miss Su, he stopped to say a few words. “How’s the little fellow?” Mrs. Sun replied curtly, not paying much attention to him.

  Miss Su said with a smile, “You’d better hurry. Aren’t you afraid someone will get impatient?”

  Fang Hung-chien blushed and gave a silly smile, then walked away from Miss Su. She knew perfectly well she couldn’t keep him back, but when he left, she felt a sense of loss. Not a word of the book sank in. She could hear Miss Pao’s sweet voice and laughter and couldn’t resist looking at her again. Fang was smoking a cigarette. As Miss Pao held out her hand toward him, he pulled out his cigarette case and offered her one. Miss Pao held it in her mouth, and as he made a gesture with his fingers on the lighter to light it for her, she suddenly tilted her mouth upward, and touching her cigarette with the one he was smoking, breathed in. With the cigarette lit, Miss Pao triumphantly blew out a puff of smoke. Miss Su was so furious that chills ran through her body. Those two have no sense of shame whatsoever, she thought, right in full view of everyone using cigarettes to kiss. Unable to bear the sight any longer, she stood up and said she was going below. Actually she knew there was no place to go below the deck. People were playing cards in the dining room, and the sleeping cabins were too stuffy. Mrs. Sun was also thinking of going down to her husband to see how much money he had lost that day, but she was afraid if he had lost badly he would take it out on her as soon as she asked him, and there would be a long quarrel when he returned to the cabin. Thus, she didn’t dare get up rashly and only asked her son if he wanted to go down and pee.

  Miss Su’s condemnation of Fang Hung-chien for being shameless was actually unjust. At that moment he was so embarrassed that it seemed to him that everybody on deck was watching him. Inwardly he blamed Miss Pao for being too overt in her behavior and wished he could have said something to her about it. Although he was now twenty-seven and had been engaged before, he had had no training in love. His father had passed the second-degree examination under Manchu rule6 and was a prominent squire in his native district south of the Yangtze.7 Nine out of ten of the emigrants from this district living in big cities were now either blacksmiths, bean-curd makers, or sedan-chair carriers. The most famous indigenous crafts were clay dolls; and for young men entering college, civil engineering was the most popular discipline. The intractability of iron, the insipidity of bean curd, the narrowness of sedan chairs, and in addition, the smell of earth could be called the local traits; even those who became rich or high officials lacked polish.

  In the district a man named Chou had become wealthy from a blacksmith shop he opened in Shanghai. Together with some fellow villagers in the same business, he organized a small bank called the Golden Touch Bank,8 serving as manager himself. One year, remembering the saying about returning home clothed in glory, he chose the Ch’ing Ming Festival9 to return to his district to offer obeisance at the family temple, attend to the ancestral graves, and make acquaintances with local notables. Since Fang Hung-chien’s father was one of the respected men in the community, in due time Chou paid him a visit. Thus they became friends and went on to become in-laws.

  While Fang Hung-chien was still in high school, in compliance with his parents’ decision, he became engaged. He had never met his fiancée; merely viewing a bust photograph of her had left him feeling indifferent. Two years later he went to Peking to enter a university and had his first taste of coeducation. Seeing couple after couple in love, he grew red-eyed with envy. When he thought how his fiancée had quit school after one year of high school to learn housekeeping at home in order to become a capable daughter-in-law, he felt an uncontrollable aversion toward her. Thus, bewailing his fate and feeling resentful toward his father, he went about in a half stupor for several days. Then suddenly he woke up, and mustering his courage, he wrote a letter home asking for release from the engagement.

  Since he had received his father’s guidance in literary composition and placed second in the high school general examination, his letter was couched in an elegant style without incorrectly using any of the various particles of literary Chinese. The letter went something like this: “I have of late been very restless and fitful, experiencing little joy and much grief. A feeling of ‘autumnal melancholy’10 has suddenly possessed me, and every time I look into the mirror at my own reflection, so gaunt and dispirited, I feel it is not the face of one destined for longevity. I’m afraid my body can’t hold up much longer, and I may be the cause of a lifetime of regret for Miss Chou. I hope you, Father, will extend to me your understanding and sympathy and tactfully sever the ties that bind. Do not get angry and reject my plea and thus help bring me everlasting woe.”

  Since he felt the wording of the letter was sad and entreating enough to move a heart of stone, he was quite unprepared for the express letter which came from his father. It gave him a severe scolding:

  I did not begrudge the expense of sending you hundreds of miles away to study. If you devoted yourself to your studies as you should, would you still have the leisure to look in a mirror? You are not a woman, so what need do you have of a mirror? That sort of thing is for actors only. A real man who gazes at himself in the mirror will only be scorned by society. Never had I thought once you parted from me that you would pick up such base habits. Most deplorable and disgusting!

  Moreover, it is said that “When one’s parents are still living, a son should not speak of getting old.” You have no consideration for your parents, who hold you dearly in their hearts, but frighten them with the talk of death. This is certainly neglect of filial dudes to the extreme! It can only be the result of your attending a coeducational school—seeing women around has put ideas in your head. The sight of girls has made you think of change. Though you make excuses about “autumnal melancholy,” I know full well that what ails you are the “yearnings of springtime.”11 Nothing can escape this old-timer’s sharp eye. If you carry on with this foolishness, I will cut off your funds and order you to discontinue your studies and return home. Next year you will get married at the same time as your brother. Give careful thought to my words and take them to heart.

  Fang Hung-chien was shaken to the core, never expecting his father to be quite so shrewd. He wasted no time in getting off a reply begging forgiveness and explained that the mirror was his roommate’s and not something he had bought himself. Within the last few days, after taking some American cod liver oil pills and German vitamin tablets, his health and spirits had taken a turn for the better, and his face had filled out, he assured his father, except that the high cost of medicine had been more than he could afford. As for his marriage, he would like to ask that it be postponed until after his graduation. For one thing, it would interfere with his schooling; for another he was still unable to support a family and would not feel right about adding to his fat
her’s responsibilities.

  When his father received the letter, which proved that the father’s authority had reached across several hundred miles, his father was extremely gratified. In high spirits, his father sent him a sum of money so he could buy tonic medicine. From then on, he buried his feelings and dared not indulge in vain hopes. He began reading Schopenhauer and would often say wisely to his classmates, “Where is romantic love in the world? It’s entirely the reproductive urge.” In no time at all he was a senior in college and was to marry the year following his graduation.

  One day an express letter came from his father. It read as follows: “I have just received a telegram from your father-in-law. I was greatly shocked to learn that Shu-ying was stricken with typhoid fever, and due to the negligence of a Western-trained doctor, she passed away at four o’clock in the afternoon on the thirteenth of this month. I am deeply sorry. Marriage was so close at hand; all good things have unexpected setbacks. It is all due to your lack of good fortune.”

  The postscript read: “This may be a blessing in disguise.12 If you had married three years earlier, this would have cost us a large sum of money.

  But with a family of such virtue as ours, if the marriage had taken place earlier, perhaps Shu-ying would have been spared this calamity and lived a long life. One’s marriage is predestined, and you have no cause to be overly grieved. You should, however, send a letter of condolence to your father-in-law.”

  Fang Hung-chien read this with the joy of a pardoned criminal. But for the girl whose life had been cut short he felt a tinge of pity. While exulting in his own freedom, he wanted to help lessen others’ grief. He therefore wrote a long letter of commiseration to his would-be father-in-law.