12

The sixtieth birthday of Big Master Gunglin of the old second branch was to be celebrated with a private performance of Peking opera by famous singers. Mostly only big gangsters had birthday parties like this nowadays. In their set such displays would seem out of place after the fall of the empire even if it was already twenty years after. They were people who had lost their country, so to speak, finding shelter in the foreign settlements. Their land in the interior was exposed to the civil wars. A common subject of conversation when they met was the difficulty of collecting ground rents. Going into business was too risky without experience. Nothing was quite worth it after officialdom where 'capital and profit are one to ten thousand', according to the old saying. Government jobs were out of the question. It would be collaborating with the enemy, disgracing the family. They were in fact all in the same position as Yindi, as she had put it, a widow living on some dead money. The rich ones did not show off on birthdays either. Ninth Old Master went to the West Lake in Hang-chow every year to avoid his birthday.
The Yaos and their relatives spoke of the coming event with a sour little smile, slightly embarrassed.
'The old master is in such good spirits.'
'They say it's the sons who insisted.'
'It's always supposed to be the sons' idea.'
'Are you going?'
'Well, got to be there cheering.'
Nobody would miss it. Two of the four great female impersonators were coming down specially from Peking with their own retinues and would make no trouble about the billing on the scarlet programme sheet. The gas-lit stage was set in the courtyard that was covered for the occasion by mat roofing. The seats extended on to the porches. The women sat in the balcony that ran around three sides of the courtyard with stringed bulbs on the handrails, a necklace around all the faces, the pretty ones leaping to the eye. Yindi was lost in the fashionable crowd. At just over forty, she dressed like an old lady in a baggy dark silk gown with a few pieces of inconspicuous jewellery so that nobody could comment in any way. But she made up for it with loud greetings and observations in a matter-of-fact manner, unsmiling.
'So the gowns are long again, but sleeves are getting shorter and shorter. A couple of years ago the knees were out, now it's the elbows. Always getting longer or shorter, never any peace. Can you wonder at all the wars? One day when gowns and sleeves are neither long nor short, there'll be law and order in the world.'
'How do you think of such things?' Second Mistress Sun said laughing with an abstracted look behind the eyes that Yindi had come to recognize. Her remarks were being committed to memory to make the rounds, yet another famous joke to be recalled and pondered every time there was a fresh upheaval and change of government, wondering if this could be the millennium, for in a way they believed in her. And she did not mind any more.
Watching the show she pulled her niece's pigtail. Big Master's elder daughter was talking to the girl in front with elbows planted on the other's chair back.
'Ai-yo, Miss, why have you lost so much hair? Your pigtail used to be a handful. Why, the young lady must be pining for her in-laws.'
The girl blushed and grabbed back her pigtail. 'Second Aunt is always like this.'
'We must send word to the Yangs to hurry up with the wedding.'
'Really, Second Aunt!' She jerked around to face the other side holding her hair.
'Good for you, you didn't cut your hair. Most girls have,' said Second Mistress Sun.
'The Yangs probably won't let her,' Yindi said. 'Our Big Mistress herself has cut her hair.'
`It saves trouble to cut it short,' said Second Mistress Sun.
The girl had got up and moved to another row.
'Really, you!' Second Mistress Sun whispered half laughing. 'Even when I kept interrupting.'
'Miss pretends to be angry but she's grateful to me at heart. What's the sense of long engagements? "The cat gets thin from yowling, the fish gets high from hanging." '
'You're worse than ever,' giggled Second Mistress Sun. 'Presuming on your age.'
'Well, "The old should be gay, the young should be steady." '
'So her brother is going abroad,' Second Mistress Sun went on interrupting. 'We must send word to the Yangs to hurry up with the wedding.'
'Really, Second Aunt!' She jerked around to face the other side holding her hair.
'Good for you, you didn't cut your hair. Most girls have,' said Second Mistress Sun.
'The Yangs probably won't let her,' Yindi said. 'Our Big Mistress herself has cut her hair.'
`It saves trouble to cut it short,' said Second Mistress Sun.
The girl had got up and moved to another row.
'Really, you!' Second Mistress Sun whispered half laughing. 'Even when I kept interrupting.'
'Miss pretends to be angry but she's grateful to me at heart. What's the sense of long engagements? "The cat gets thin from yowling, the fish gets high from hanging." '
'You're worse than ever,' giggled Second Mistress Sun. 'Presuming on your age.'
'Well, "The old should be gay, the young should be steady." '
'So her brother is going abroad,' Second Mistress Sun went on interrupting.
'Everybody wants to go abroad nowadays. With our Yensheng it's not that I can't bear to have him sentenced to exile. In times like these even if you come out first in the foreign imperial examination, you'd still be sitting home when you're back. Of course it's different if you have a rich father.' The word 'rich' had come to stand for 'influential' in their circles. As it was not nice to say that somebody had become an official they would just say lightly, 'So-and-so has got rich.' Not long ago Big Master had 'come out of the mountains', that is, come out of retirement, to take a post in the Nationalist government. There were already a few relatives who had joined the war lords' governments in the north but he was the first among the Yaos.
'You'd never let your Yensheng go,' Second Mistress Sun murmured smiling, afraid of being overheard talking about Big Master. She was a timid soul. When she was with Big Mistress or Third Mistress she would look guilty if she so much as said, 'I played mahjong with your Second Mistress the other day,' for fear they would think gossip had been passed on to the most vicious tongue.
'Have you seen Big Mistress?'
'She's sitting over there.'
'Is Big Master here?'
They dropped their voices at the very mention of him. 'Probably not yet. Look, there's Pink Cloud,' said Second Mistress Sun.
The actress was walking past the front row followed by her train of admirers, turning to nod at friends in the audience. She wore a man's gown and an English checked cap at a rakish angle. A pigtail hung down her back. The footlights alongside shone brightly on the vermilion mouth and round silver face.
'Is that the one that was on just now? Look at that big pigtail─like the young men when we were young. Is that the fifth son of the house behind her?'
'Yes, they say he quarrelled with today's manager to put her number further back.'
'No wonder they say it was the sons that wanted this show─with all the famous names to help boost her. Before it was female impersonators, now it's females. Still they have to get themselves up to look like neither man nor woman.'
She saw her son down below. It was always a shock to see from afar someone right in front of you all day long, as if the proportion was wrong. As he pushed past the row of seats in his black silk box jacket worn over the blue gown he dipped his head in apologetic little bows like an old man's doddering nods. Actually he was well-made, pale with gold-rimmed glasses on a high nose and poised as small men often were, just more old-fashioned than his cousins. They were the worst, always laughing at him. Relatives also wondered why he alone was so small and thin in a tall family. They blamed it on her salty food. She had to save even in the days of Old Mistress in order to squeeze the money for opium out of their allowances, mother and son dining in their rooms on pickles, salted vegetables and salted fish which stunted his growth, dried him up and choked him so he got asthma. She was furious when she heard this. Asthma he'd had from birth, got it from his father. They forgot how small Second Master had been, they had been conditioned to forget him even when he was alive. Old Mistress had been short too and so was Ninth Old Master the grand-uncle.
'There's our Yensheng,' she explained her leaning forward to look.
'Ah, yes. A grown man now.' The ruminative tone was faintly disagreeable. Again thinking of his height and diet?
'Twenty already and still a child, afraid of people,' she said.
'That's why it's so ridiculous, the things people make up,' Second Mistress Sun murmured carelessly.
She could hear there were words within words. 'What about?' she asked smiling.
'Such a joke. He was said to have been host at a singsong house party.'
'Oh? Our Yensheng? You should have seen him in front of women. His eyes look at his nose and his nose looks down at his heart.'
'That's why it's such a joke.''
Where did you hear this?'
'Now who was it that was saying─look at this memory of mine. Somebody was said to have run into Third Master one day─'' She looked away as she spoke the name but Yindi knew she was being closely watched for any change of expression. It was common knowledge that he and she were not speaking. She was said to have slapped his face. There had been a lot of talk. It had to do with a loan, but even then. As to there actually being anything between them, the general opinion was he hadn't come to that yet, his own sister-in-law after all and getting on to forty. She wouldn't dare either.
'And Third Master wanted him to come along because Yensheng was throwing a party for the first time he said, and didn't know enough people to fill the tables.'
'This is still more strange,' she said. 'We haven't seen Third Master for years.'
'I thought it sounded unlikely.'
'How on earth did he think of it, using a child's name as a lure.'
'Well, anything is possible with your Third Master.' 'When was this?'
'Not so long ago, was it?'
Tor one thing he never goes out alone.'
'Perhaps it's just as well for a boy to get some experience in the outside world.'
'A fine start if he were to follow in the footsteps of his Third Uncle.'
'At least with an old hand by his side he won't be cheated.'
The joke cut her like a knife. 'Who knows what it was all about really? Did anybody actually see him?'
'I don't think the man went. This kind of talk always goes in my right ear and comes out the left ear. I remember this much only because it's so funny.'
'I just wonder what started this talk.'
'Don't take it seriously or I'd blame myself for telling you.'
'How is Third Master doing?'
'I don't know, haven't heard.'
'Is Third Mistress here?'
'I haven't seen her.'
'Third Mistress is pitiful now.'
'She's all right,' the other whispered. 'Some peace and quiet at last as I told her.'
'Have you been to her new house?'
'Yes, it's small but she doesn't need much room all by herself.'
'Third Master never comes?'
'Just as well, although I shouldn't say this.'
'Just left her like that, after so many years of marriage. After all she took for him from Old Mistress.'
'Well, your Third Mistress is a model wife.'
'That's just it, too much of a model. Even I can't stand it looking on.'
With their conversation safely back in the old groove they both felt this was the right moment to stop and turn back to the stage. First she looked for Yensheng. He wasn't where she had just seen him. She looked all over the courtyard underneath feeling suddenly lost. Come to think of it he had been going to the Chans lately to listen to interpretations of Buddhist classics. Old Mr Chan had been a mandarin once and had taken up Buddhism now that he was half paralysed. He formed a Society of Buddhist Studies and put out little books. Yensheng sometimes brought one home. The old man smoked opium and was a late riser. The sessions often ended after midnight. No wonder. . .
Third Master was not down there either. The last few years relatives had seen to it that she was never in the same room with him because they were not on speaking terms. But Yensheng could have run into him among the men guests. They must have slipped away together and Yensheng came back to the party later. The women upstairs wouldn't know, like today. That was what shook her most, the two of them getting together turning against her. If he had come to her, although she wouldn't even see him it would still be different. Could it be just his idea of a joke? Taking her son out? He used to be given to these pranks. But she dismissed the idea instantly almost as a fresh outrage.
Last time it was her own fault to have hit him in front of people. Of course the talk had got out. Fortunately everybody lived apart these days and the eldest branch wanted as little to do with the other two as possible. After all this was not like the case in Nanking where their Cousin Fung lived openly with a widowed sister-in-law and used her money, with his wife in the same house. The fact was that she sat home by herself year in and year out, her servants and warders could bear witness. And it was not as if she had anybody else, then it would have been within his rights as brother-in-law to catch her as he had threatened when he walked out of her house. As it was, her only fear was that he might sink so low he would get on heroin and come for money, and when he was not let in would shout outside the door, capable of saying anything and carry on for days, sleeping in the alley. There was also one like this among their relatives.
She heard he had got rid of one of his concubines. Then it turned out there was a new one installed on Medhurst Road.
'This one has money,' people snickered.
'Is Third Master using her money?' she would ask.
'With these singsong girls, if they just share expenses it's rare enough.'
'What does she look like?'
'Nothing much, they say.'
'How old?'
'Old. Retired twice already.'
'Well, they say those that know how to play around prefer old ones.' She made a point of joking freely when he was mentioned.
So he had found somebody with money. And it couldn't have been all because of money in spite of the uncomplimentary things they said. Only men had been to his place and they never spoke well of other men's concubines lest they seemed covetous. This had proved something to her and actually made her feel a little better.
But how hard these singsong girls were, and at this age they were the mosquitoes that have lived on to the autumn, with a real bite to their sting. If the woman was not openhanded he would still have to scrounge around for money. And there was still the other concubine to support. He had left his wife for good and relatives saw very little of him. She could imagine, when one contact after another had been used for the last time, his thoughts would turn to her again, just as she kept thinking of him, coldly but always going back. She felt it now, the chill dead weight creeping up pulling her along, endless, two big snakes half-heartedly wringing each other to death.
Did he tell Yensheng? He wouldn't since he hadn't all along. But you can't tell, now that he is getting old and down and out he may want to brag. Surely it's not a good way to make friends, to say things about a man's mother? What can't you say in a singsong house? Trying to make him stay a little longer at night, 'What are you afraid of? She's a good one herself.' She had not noticed any change
in Yensheng's manner lately. Was he so deep? He was his father's son. She never could tell how much Second Master had guessed why she hanged herself.
'Ugh!' an abrupt cry from the back rows downstairs. The cheers said how, good, compressed into the half-strangled ugh.
Here it was back again, that day in the temple. She never knew she had to go through that again, that bursting bottled-in loneliness of being in a crowd out of key with the tumult inside her, the innards all shaken and scrambled and the feet melted away, no ground to stand on. Where did he get the money? He didn't learn to borrow against his inheritance? With that familiar clause, 'Wait for the end of Mother's natural years.' But she was not Old Mistress's age, nor was the family known for being rich as before. Had he stolen anything? Not jewellery; she had opened the jewellery box today when she was dressing and did not notice anything missing. But land and house deeds?
'Ugh! Ugh!' up went the cheers.
She could not leave early. Some men never stayed long, it was understood that they had to go home to smoke opium, but there was no excuse for women. Besides she wouldn't want Second Mistress Sun to see her go in a hurry.
Dinner was late and took for ever, then back to the opera. She sat far away from Second Mistress Sun and soon got up to find the hostesses to take her leave. The amah she brought went down to look for Yensheng. She was gone a long time and came back to say that the servants of the house could not find him.
'We're going, we won't wait for him,' she said.
The men downstairs called rickshas for her. Now that cars became more common, private rickshas were out of fashion. She did not need one at the house anyway and those ricksha pullers were the worst, teaching the young masters bad ways. A couple of years ago when Yensheng went out she used to have a servant go with him. But this was not done nowadays and she had to let him go about alone like the other boys, so now this.
Once home she checked the papers in a rosewood box she kept locked in the bureau. The antiques, silver, paintings and calligraphies were all packed in trunks on the top floor, too late to open them tonight. He was bound to be back in the middle of it. Seeing them may put ideas in his head. Besides it was no use her looking. Dealers had to be called in to check them against lists to see if fakes had been substituted. There were people on hand who could teach him such tricks.
She questioned the servants separately. They all said they knew nothing about it. Of course they were afraid of trouble, especially to come between mother and son. When the thing blew over it would be the servants who would get the blame. What was more, she knew these people were listless under the austerities of these years with her. They wouldn't dare show it but they wouldn't put themselves out. They had learned to get by merely keeping out of her way.
She would come back to them another day. She searched his room herself and found nothing. There was the stack of movie synopses he collected, standing three feet high. He always took a pile every time, it was free and beautifully printed on glossy paper. He like Douglas Fairbanks and Vilma Banky with her yellow hair worn in a bun like a Chinese, billed simply as Miss Banky or Miss Pung Kai, the only actress thus honoured because she looked so ladylike─so unlike his mother, she sometimes suspected, that was why he liked her. He always sat at the end of a row near the exit in case of fire. This was so unlike him, entirely because somebody else put him up to it, like the Emperor Kwang Hsu turning against the Dowager Empress, all the more hateful for being a puppet. Fire blew out of her eyes when she saw him walk in.
'How is it Mother came back first? Feeling all right?' He sat down pretending to be calm.
'Where did you go?' she began casually enough, lying on the couch.
'The show is just finished. How is it you didn't stay till the end?'
'Looked everywhere and couldn't find you. Where did you run off to?'
'I was there. Unless I was backstage watching them make up.'
'Still lying, taking everybody else for dead, running off all the time mucking around. Buddhist sermons indeed─make them up as you go, just paper houses pasted together to cheat the dead.' She shouted him down so he stopped speaking.
'Say where you went. Speak.' She sat up. 'Come here. I'm asking you. Where did you go? Good examples you don't follow, you learn from your Third Uncle. Is he somebody you can mess around with? He hates me because of borrowing money. Now he wants you to make me die of anger and you're fool enough to do it?'
He just sat there saying nothing. She suddenly ran over and pulled out thirty-odd dollars from his pocket. 'Where did you get this? Speak.'
She finally slapped him left and right as if questioning a thief. He was so angry he blurted out, 'Third Uncle lent me.' He knew this hurt most.
'Good, your Third Uncle has money. You go and be his son. If you're going to be like him I'd rather have you dead. Beat you to death, beat you to death ' She hit him on the head and face. 'How much did you take from him? It's easy money to use?'
Backing and parrying he started to hit back, at which Old Cheng appeared by his side pulling at his arms dragging him away. 'Ek, Young Master! It's late, Mistress, ask him tomorrow. Young Master has always been timid, he's probably too frightened to speak, he's never seen Mistress in such a temper.'
It was a way out. She let Old Cheng push him out of the room and put him to bed. Sons so big do not get beatings except with a plank administered in the ancestral temple in the presence of elders of the clan. But not for a thing like this. The whole world is on the side of the young man stepping out.
She had him closely watched and spoke to him again the next day, wept and made scenes invoking motherhood and widowhood. But no matter how she was nice to him one day and bad the next, she never got another word out of him. He had the air of waiting it out. If she locked him up she would not be able to keep it up for long. Relatives would blame her first off for not getting him a wife before this. Boys were at large the minute they were finished with the schoolroom. His old tutor had left last year. Without imperial examinations the study of the classics was a long weary road without landmarks, generally terminated by marriage.
But people were marrying later. His cousins of the eldest branch were drifting around with nothing to do, taking lessons in German and tennis, counterparts to their sisters' French and piano playing. Before their father's defection they were talking of going to high school at their age, a missionary school, less disloyal than government-run schools. Other families more on the fringe were less discriminating about schools and colleges. Some boys even worked in government banks. It was supposed to matter less with the younger generation, that much further away from their ancestors. The news was broken in an offhand way half defiantly to nonplussed recipients who could only answer faintly, 'Oh, good. Banks are good,' or 'Good to go to college.' Those that could afford it got round the rule by sending their sons abroad or to British Hong Kong for schooling. Even girls went to school in the last couple of years, at least the younger ones. Hers was about the only household that adhered strictly to the unspoken tradition. Yensheng filled his father's place and lay low, 'doused the light and nurtured darkness' like all the older men. It suited her. She knew it would be a losing business one way or another for him to go out into the world. It was not that she didn't think him intelligent enough─just innate motherly pessimism, as common and incurable as a mother's optimism. She still believed that her son would be different. He could stay at home like the older generation without their other side, the women and gambling that made up for the uneventfulness of their lives and invariably got out of hand. She had never realized before the irresistible pressure of the vacuum, what amounted to the force of life itself.
All she knew about the singsong houses were the concubines that came out of there, some not even pretty. They seemed to lose their powers once they were out of the light of that world, so inaccessible to her it was almost beyond jealousy. They not only ruined Third Master but left him childless. Practically all singsong girls were barren, maybe because of the abortion herbs that their madams had forced on them too often. And he devoted his life to them, the one legitimate source of love and romance and as vast as the sea, overwhelming by the sheer force of their numbers. They got him into the habit of 'looking into the pot while eating from the bowl', as the saying goes. With her he had never been all there. And now little as she had they were going to take it too.