15

Sometimes she said to Yensheng, 'We get laughed at, as if we can't afford to get you another wife, or is it because my evil name is out and people won't give us their daughter?'
He said he didn't want one.
'He's had enough,' she explained to relatives. 'He's afraid of getting another one like that.'
As long as the position remained vacant she could always send for the matchmakers in case Dungmei got out of hand. She was big with child again, walking around with chest and stomach out, looking quite bold. She was no fool, she knew the more children the harder it would be for him to remarry. It put most people off to hear there was already 'somebody in the room', not to say a whole brood of heirs. The children were underfoot all the time but to move the lot of them downstairs would be letting Dungmei off too lightly, although there were times when she got on her nerves. There would be a word or a look as if between a married couple─not that Yensheng paid her much attention.
He didn't turn out badly. In fact he was smart enough in his quiet way on the few times they had to negotiate business to tide things over when money from the land was held up. She let him handle it, he could be trusted because he wanted to win her confidence. How long would he hold on to the things once out of her hands? She could only hope he would know better by then.
Her greatest satisfaction remained the relatives. Big Master had got into trouble a few years ago. The headlines had died down with still a paragraph in the newspapers every now and then, the biggest embezzlement case in the Nationalist regime. Relatives were hard put to it to find anything to say. He only escaped jail by going to hospital for his liver. A frame-up they said, by a colleague who put the blame on him. She would call it real retribution. So grasping at the division of property─not so easy to do the same in the outside world. He was the capable one, but he did not seem to know the old saying, `Without connections at court don't be a mandarin.'
He kept appealing from his hospital sanctuary. The trials were strung out for years passing from hand to hand and all palms had to be greased. The costs came to a fortune in debts. Ninth Old Master just made sympathetic noises when Big Mistress went to kotow to him weeping begging for help. After all he had brought it on himself.
He finally left hospital quietly, the case closed, part of the missing funds paid. He died broke within the year. Big Mistress packed up and moved to Peking where the living was cheaper. They still had lots of relatives there and everybody likes the Peking climate, dry and bracing. The political climate was also more sympathetic, the north had never quite belonged to the Nationalists.
'It's good up north,' Yindi said to her son. 'They say the Japanese are all over the place now. If the Japanese must come it couldn't be helped, it's another thing to rush up to meet them.'
Quite a few families had moved away. The cost of living was too high, especially the opium. It would be embarrassing to keep moving to ever smaller places while in the interior they could still live in style. Some even moved to their land in the country and played squires, knowing very well it was unsafe there.
'Their ancestors got them land and houses in Shanghai and they have to go and live in bandit dens,' she said to Yensheng.
Signs of war with Japan frightened the new country squires into moving back again, paying exorbitant key money to rent a house. There was fighting in Shanghai too but it never got to the British or French settlements. She had to credit Third Master with more sense than these people, he hung on here for better or worse. Word came that one of his concubines had moved in with the other.
'They must really pinch and save now. Don't the two quarrel living together?'
'Leave it to Third Master, he's smart.'
'What does he live on nowadays?'
'His concubine has money.'
'And the other one? She supports her too?'
'Well, our Third Master is smart.'
'Not easy for him either, he's getting on now, and with a young master's temper like his.'
It was all speculation. Nobody had been to see him and his servants were not in touch with relatives' servants as they came from a different source, either recommended by his friends or brought over from the singsong house. With the growing blank over the years there was more respect for him. In their set there was an unspoken admiration for anybody able to fend for himself by fair means or foul without falling back on family or relatives.
'They say he never gets out of the house, not even downstairs.'
She remembered him saying, 'I seldom ever go out. Getting old, not welcome any more.' He had been barely forty then but without money was naturally not as popular as before. One thing about him, he was sensitive. Don't tell her he does not miss the fun and crowds because he is getting old, it's the only life he knows; or because he has company─two scoops of stale water out of the sea he loves. He just made himself as comfortable as he could in his hole and shut out prying eyes to have a clean quiet end, not unlike her there. She tried to give these people nothing more to talk about and seemed to hear an answering silence from him. Nobody knew what there had been between them and that grew with the years. She had a peculiar understanding for him like that between husband and wife, even when the wife knew nothing about her husband's business. It was a wonder that he was still himself after years of that wearing emptiness. She could stand it much better, being used to it, yet she sometimes did not act like herself. At least he had never tried to see her on the chance of some money. He knew it wouldn't be any use, he had said she was hard. He still remembered.
If there was some wishful thinking in her seeing him as being in the same boat, it so happened that more and more people were put into her position. When the Japanese finally took over the foreign settlements everybody who could afford it stayed home and 'doused their lights and nursed darkness' in the ancient tradition for evil times. Men did not go out to work, most jobs smacked of collaborating. So not just her relatives but all of the more scrupulous people had come to be like her, a widow who stayed home to keep watch over her chastity. Now she could pinch pennies legitimately as everybody was doing. She set Dungmei to work making briquettes, she made them rounder than the servants. She squatted in the backyard mixing it with mud, patting it into egg-shape with a spoon, her plaid cotton gown flung high behind above the ample bottom.
But she was not a good housekeeper. Yindi got so exasperated that she went down to the kitchen herself to show the cook how to save the rationed oil. Dip a writing brush in the bottle and draw a few strokes in the pan. Yensheng could not eat the vegetables fried like this, he had to have special dishes prepared for him upstairs. But she only saved where people could not see. The number of servants remained about the same, only the cook used to be a man, now they made do with a cook amah like most other families. At the Suns it was now Second Mistress Sun who 'went down to the stove' herself as if to the mines. They were a large family, always hard up and the old couple were still living. Dainty giggly little Second Mistress Sun whom she used to joke with would make her appearance towards the end of the dinner, slightly flushed but neat and hen-like, trying to be self-effacing, taking compliments with a murmured, 'Oh, were the shrimp balls all right?'
'Second Mistress Sun is so capable, she can cook a whole feast,' people marvelled behind her back, actually horrified. 'Just like in a restaurant, eggs scrambled as fine and even as fish scales, chopsticks cannot pick them up.'
In the occupied city each family had to contribute a man to stand guard in the neighbourhood. Those who had no manservants would hire a man by the hour. At the Suns it was Second Master Sun himself. Yensheng had happened to see him and described to her how Second Uncle Sun stood in front of the sentry box outside the alley, tall, thin and high-shouldered, chin up and half smiling cynically with his big tortoise shell glasses, a rope over one shoulder tied to the policeman's club slung low on his long gown.
They have too many mouths to feed, Yindi said, and we haven't got too many? Time was when they used to say her branch had so few people and even now hardly realized how much manpower she had. Her grandsons seldom appeared when there was company.
Nowadays when she was mentioned it was always, 'They still just have that Miss Dung?' smiling disgustedly with the face all screwed up. 'There's only her? Never remarried. How many children now?'
She was more criticized for not getting her son another wife than for maltreating her daughter-in-law which after all was the custom. But it was unheard of for a young widower to stay single for life.
She was angry when she heard of it. Trust these people always to have something to say. The year of the war in Shanghai her brother's family had been refugees from the Old City, so she had helped to resettle them in Hangchow where one of their sons had a job. With the shop gone she thought to give these people that much less to talk about. She knew their every inflection and flicker of expression, just let a few words reach her ears and she could see it all. That was her trouble, unable to pretend to be half blind and deaf like all the truly blessed old ladies. She admitted it herself.
Relatives who had moved away would ask grinning, when they came to town, 'Second Mistress is still like that? How is it we haven't heard about her all this time?'
'She's ill,' whispered almost defensively. 'She has gallstones.' Her illness had given her new dignity, excusing her from all the gatherings that wouldn't have included her anyway.
'How are they doing now?'
'Oh, they're rich,' in a still lower whisper with a half-wink and nod.
'There's still just that Miss Dung? How many children now?'
There were so many, they all looked about the same size, dark and squat with sturdy legs, in khaki shorts and canvas shoes. They went to an alley school near by. By the time it came to them everybody went to school. The family could only show their opinion of the system by choosing the nearest and cheapest. After they got home they chased each other downstairs from one room to another, but silently like a group of rats rolling heavily over the floor and back again. They had the run of the downstairs suites because their parents had moved downstairs. The dark rooms grown shabby and untidy had the air of a caretaker's apartment. The white sliding doors had yellowed unevenly like dental plates and had the same smell. It was dark enough to put the lights on in the afternoon but there was just the opium lamp on Yensheng's couch.
Dungmei pretended to straighten out the things on top of the bureau. She took a couple of steps forward seeing there was no one around and stood before his couch with a coltish awkwardness that sat oddly on her broad-beamed figure, the old sweater pulled awry at the back, stuck at the top of the bulge.
'No mention of coal money,' she blurted out petulantly in a low grunt without indicating upstairs with the least movement of the eyes or head which she held down stiffly.
Curled up on his side, hands tucked in his sleeves, looking coldly at the lamp, he made a small noise that meant he wanted no part of it. She turned to drive out the children rolling noisily into the room.
Yindi faced her own lamp upstairs. Because of illness she smoked in bed, not such an open place as the couch and less lonely with nobody lying opposite her. There was just the little slave girl sitting on the low stool in front of the bed cleaning the pipe bowl. There weren't slave girls any more, this one was just a child Old Cheng picked up, intended for her grandson when they grew up, which would be a saving. While waiting for some fellow countrymen to take her home she had permission to keep her here to help out. Little girls were often called Little Slave Girl in their part of the country, a convenient reminder to Dungmei. Yindi would sometimes purposely scold her a bit or give her a slap when Dungmei was around. Now that the singsong houses were enjoying a new boom, patronized by the hoarders, small businessmen that got rich quick, they had spoiled it for Yensheng. He had stopped going altogether, a good thing in itself, only he kept to his lairs downstairs more than ever. This Dungmei was too good a breeder. People laugh when it comes in litters like pigs. She was pennypinching only for the sake of the children's future. What was going to happen if this went on? Especially in times like these when money was not worth anything. A couple of years ago she used to give Yensheng thirty cents a day for pocket-money. Singsong houses used the credit system and settled three times a year. But he liked to take walks to get his own candies which most smokers seem to need, or to the street of antique stores to buy a little chipped bowl or an inscribed brick or half a seal-colouring box. There were trunkfuls of antiques at home that he had never even seen, but as long as it amused him . . . The thirty cents gradually rose to a dollar, two dollars. With the change of currency after the occupation it went steadily up to two hundred dollars, five hundred. This year nobody knew how much tips to leave at New Year visits. It had always been eight dollars from near relatives, ten at the most and two or four dollars from distant relatives. By rights everybody should have waited to see how much she gave so as not to top her, she was the oldest branch now that the eldest branch had moved away. She was angry and told them off through other relatives. Of the old ninth branch Ninth Old Master and his wife had both passed away and the son and daughter-in-law were younger than her. They were still the richest by far but as there had been talk that the son was not Ninth Old Master's, if he was not considered a real Yao then he did not count. That would leave just her branch, at least still keeping up appearances carrying on in the same house. Twenty years was as a day to them even if they flourished only in numbers. At least they wouldn't die out like the third branch. As for the eldest branch with their fanciful children, ruined as they were, the youngest daughter had to go and marry her teacher. Everything said about girls' schools would seem to be proved true. Big Mistress was unwilling but evidently unable to do anything about it. It must have been too late.
'Theirs is "teacher-pupil love",' people said smiling, using the new term. There were such cases. Nobody would say much about it. 'He first taught her in junior middle school,' they'd whisper, smiling sweetly, not quite looking each other in the face. So it had started when she was in her early teens.
'He resigned,' they said. There must have been a real scandal and this in the conservative north. 'Wu Hsichen has quite a temper,' they had learned after the marriages He was always called by his full name like all peripheral relatives.
The second son now was married to a relative by family arrangement, only the young couple got on too well together. Second Young Mistress put her chin on his shoulder watching him play mahjong with his mother. Big Mistress couldn't get used to the sight, spoke to her about it and she got up and went to her own room crying, and straight away agitated for moving out to be on their own. Second Young Master was working as a government clerk in Peking. People just said, 'He found a small job,' and let it go at that.
Playing mahjong yet. All so normal.
'Big Mistress is pitiful now,' everybody said. She probably depended on what money her eldest sent her from Shanghai, the son that had been abroad. He had got on the good side of a vice-president of the new government bank, played the market with him and ran around with him and cabaret girls. It does pay to study abroad. His wife played mahjong with the wives of the puppet officials, as proud as could be. What would happen after Japan fell? It would not be long now, Germany was already defeated. She had to keep track of these things, anybody with land in the interior was affected by the wars. She pored over the old book of prophecy, The Picture of Back Massagers, little men sitting in a row massaging each other's back. Each had someone behind him doing what he did to the one before him. There were other drawings of the same childlike men in kimono jackets and trousers, one standing on the other's shoulders and in other mysterious poses, accompanied by cryptic verses. But the terror was confined to the pages of the thin little book. Whatever massacre or holocaust may come true, by the time it got to Shanghai the worst of it was rising prices. Didn't the fall of the Manchus count as a great calamity? And of course the coming of the Japanese. Once you have weathered through the Japanese, you need not be afraid no matter who comes. Shanghai is still Shanghai and it's not as if you poke your head out and show your face like Little Feng of the eldest branch. He thought he was clever to have got the benefits without taking a government post. Besides he probably thought he had nothing to lose after his father's scandal. His father's fling with the Nationalists
was actually another asset with the regime here who particularly welcomed defectors from Chungking.
'So on the strength of his poor father and great grandfather he got to be Hsu Yuehting's hanger-on,' she had said to Yensheng.
'Little Feng is rich now,' people said smiling, using the same euphemism for official influence but their smiles were broader. Before, with all the changes of government since the republic it had still been one's own people, still polite to one another, it was never anything to get one's head chopped off for, not like now when you were called traitor. Really, compared to the pair of them in the eldest branch, father and son, Third Master didn't come off so badly. The only trouble with Third Master was he never looked ahead, not that she'd turn round and speak well of him now that he was dead. It had been a real shock, without hearing anything about him being ill. Only fiftythree─having got to this age herself she couldn't help feeling it counted as a short life. Of course he had ruined his health by being cooped up in the house all these years, never so much as stepping on the ground to get a breath of earth. And two concubines to keep him company and they weren't always pregnant either like this one of Yensheng's. Maybe it was just as well he died now while it could still be said that he'd had a good life, with two concubines to see him off at the end. In a few more years they would be old. There is hardly any point in growing old with two women. They were still staying together as his widows, presumably the one still supporting the other. She must say that was rare. He didn't end up so badly. If he had sunk too low she wouldn't have face either, after all with a woman─
Then she heard Old Mistress Sun had been to see his two concubines. The two lived in a tiny room between floors in a little alley house, with no furniture other than a bed.
'What is there to do all day long except to sit or lie down?' they had said. 'We sit on the bed back to back.' She was also aghast.
'How old are they?' she asked. 'One is younger than the other, isn't she? Actually if anybody wants them why not just go, although I shouldn't be saying this.'
Everybody was just as horrified to hear that Second Master Liu and his brother-in-law had both got rid of their thirty-year-old opium habit. It had just got too expensive for them. There was always a moment of silence after the news was whispered, smiling, embarrassed by such extremities. News came far in between but the days and months were going so fast it seemed to her that endings caught up with people quickly nowadays. Time was always on her side. The worse the times the more it proved she was right. It went faster and faster, stronger for being compressed, blowing by her ears with a roar. She could feel it go, with a sudden chill running like a thread being pulled down her back or sides, a little frightening but not a bad feeling. Of course Third Master's death made her think of herself and she was ill too but illness is just a thing people have to carry around with them as they get on in life.
She uncapped a stick of eucalyptus balm and rubbed it on her temples enjoying the mint smell and the cold, that felt like somebody else's thumbs pressed on her temples. With the slight shift of position also came the odour of old clothes and stale smoke and she nestled in deeper. She picked up a pair of tweezers in the tray to pluck at the lampwick and took the glass chimney off the pale copper lamp base with cut-out patterns. The glass was hot, somehow a pleasant surprise. Looking out from under the bed curtains the room was larger and the ceiling higher than ever. The closed grey windows were a long way off. She wondered if it was already getting dark outside. The little slave girl was nodding─never had enough sleep day and night. She picked up the little lamp and brought the steady flame like a soy bean to the child's hand, all of a piece with the chubby wrist and the same width. The unexpectedly heavy parry as of a stumpy forefoot nearly knocked the lamp on the floor. It reminded her of the time she had burned a man's hand. Suddenly it all came back, the banging on the boarded shopfront, she standing right behind it, her heart pounding louder than that, the hot breath of the oil lamp in her face, her fringes coming down muffling the wet forehead and her young body picked out in the dark by the prickly beads of perspiration. Everything she drew comfort from was gone, had never happened. Nothing much had happened to her yet.
'Miss! Miss!'
Her name was being called. He was calling her outside the door.