"Yes," said the girl with a look as stiff as newly ironed starched cotton.
Li Hsin, from Hualien and a newcomer to Taipei, was not accustomed to the coldness of city people. With a glance at the girl, be took a seat on the right at the front of the bus, and took a handkerchief out of his trousers pocket to wipe the perspiration off his forehead. Then he opened a small notebook. After turning several pages, he found the address and read it silently to himself. "No.6, Lane 96, Keelin Road." He thought a moment, then turned to the conductress.
"Beg pardon, Miss. Would you please let me know when the bus gets to Keelin Road?"
Perhaps it was the polite way Li Hsin addressed her, or the anxious look in his eyes, but she nodded with a friendly smile before she turned to look at the street where a girl was passing by, wearing a peach-red skirt bellying out like a huge mushroom.
It was mid-afternoon. There were only four passengers aboard the bus. "It's like a special bus taking me to visit Lily." Li Hsin smiled to himself, putting the notebook back in his pocket. Twelve years had gone by since he had seen her last. She had been his first girl.
As a matter of fact, he had not seen much of her, nor had much chance to talk with her. The truth was that he had few actual memories. As a middle-aged man, he had pretty much lost his taste for young girls and had begun to fancy mature women, like the secretary of his office, a woman who had a way of glancing at him with a knowing smile. She also had a fine plump figure. He had an especially good look it the other day when she had stood on the steps outside with the wind molding a purple dress close to her body.
But the still young Lily symbolized the dream of his youth, a faraway and beautiful dream. Some time ago he had learned that Lily had come to Taiwan from the mainland, but he had no chance to visit her until he was transferred to Taipei from Hualien.
Li Hsin glanced at the others on the bus. Opposite him were an old man and a middle-aged chap about his own age. The old man, dressed in a khaki Sun Yat-sen suit with the collar buttoned, had a high, broad forehead and big, thick lips, supposedly an infallible sign of future wealth. The old fellow must have been popular with the matchmakers as a young man, Li Hsin thought, smiling. The middle-aged man was fat; he looked like a skinful of paste, soft and shapeless. There was a woman sitting in the rear. Li Hsin saw that she had a pug nose, the nostrils red and chapped.
When the bus stopped at North Gate; a man wearing a stylish suit and a scarlet tie got on. He had a wooden, angular face, as if a carpenter had hewn away too much of his cheeks with a sharp chisel. The old man moved aside a little to let the newcomer squeeze in between himself and the fat man.
"Thank you, old gentleman," the man said.
"You speak Szechuan dialect. Do you come from Szechuan?"
"Yes, yes. You come from there?" The old man smiled and nodded vigorously. "May I know your name?"
The man took out a visiting card and tendered it to him with both hands, a traditional politeness that Li Hsin didn't see much of any more.
"Oh! A writer I see. A writer. I see ... " The old man's voice trailed off.
The man on the other side of the old man stretched his neck to get a look at the card. "Chi Tze-fei." Rolling his eyes for a moment, he exclaimed: "Oh! Chi Tze-fei! I've read a novel of yours. What's the title? Let me see—it was called When The Cherry Blooms Again. A love story. Right?"
"Yes. May I know your name?" The writer held out his right hand with a wide smile.
Taking his hand, the admirer fished a visiting card out of his breast pocket with his left hand and handed it to the newcomer.
"Oh! It's Mr. Wu! Wonderful... the card's full of titles! On both sides! Why, at least twenty!" The writer still held Wu's hand.
"You flatter me. They're all honorary—just honorary." Mr. Wu drew pack his hand.
At that moment, the writer realized he was neglecting the old man'. He turned to him: "May I know your name, sir?"
"Ching."
"What do you do, Mr. Ching?"
"I'm commander-in-chief of my own armed forces—chickens and ducks and dogs. My job's taking care of them." He laughed dryly. "Old people like me aren't much use any more."
"Don’t say that. You're just like my old teacher!" the writer said with a slight bow. "I suppose when you were on the mainland."
"Well, I was a magistrate for a long time and then became an administration officer back in Szehuan. Of course, it's been sixteen years since I left."
Szechuan ... sixteen years. Li Hsin took in these words. It was sixteen years ago in Szechuan that he had met Lily. She had been a girl of fifteen. He was in his early twenties. One evening, looking out the window, he saw a girl coming toward the house, silhouetted against the setting sun. She wore a skyblue dress, and with the golden halo behind; it seemed as if she were stepping down from heaven. She had come to visit his younger sister. He had stepped out to greet her. When she nodded or shook her head or smiled, she held her handkerchief over her lips. When he heard her speaking Nanking dialect, he teased her by nicknaming her "Nanking Radish."
"Don't be silly," she protested. "My name is Lai Ai-li! They all call me Lily!" Then put her handkerchief back over her lips as she started to smile.
Li Hsin's sister betrayed her friend by whispering to him that Lily had broken a tooth in a fall and always tried to hide it-with a handkerchief
"It doesn't matter. She's prettier than you anyhow. She has a little dimple," Li. Hsin teased his sister.
The two girls whispered to each other under the peach tree in the yard. They would stop short when Li Hsin came close to them, then burst out laughing when he moved away. His sister betrayed her friend again when she said: "The nickname she wants to give you is 'Skinny Monkey'!"
"Ha! What makes you think I mind!"
Li Hsin roused himself from his meditation and found no girl with a handkerchief over her lips but an old man wearing a yellow Sun Yat-sen suit.
" ... I've known three sorts of girls," Mr. Wu was saying quietly. "One kind has distinguished parents but no learning. Another has learning but no family to speak of. The third ... the third has neither learning nor distinguished parents. So ... it's a hard nut to crack."
"What does getting married have to do with the girl's parents?" the writer asked sarcastically.
"Oh! You can't get along without them." Mr. Wu puckered his eyebrows. "In the first place, you can go to their house to eat when your amah is away. Second, your mother-in-law can look after your children, if your wife has to go on working in the office. In the third place, you always have some ready- made peacemakers to bring your quarrel with your wife to an end should the occasion arise. Four, you …"
The old man and the writer burst out laughing before Mr. Wu could finish. The woman with the pug nose leaned forward to look at Mr. Wu, her lips curling. Li Hsin bit his lips to hold back his own laughter.
Only Mr. Wu was not inclined to laugh or even to show signs of a smile. He turned abruptly to the writer.
"Mr. Chi! How do you write your stories? I'd like to ask you for advice. For my own life, as a matter of fact." He shook his head regretfully. "I've managed to get myself into my share of trouble along the way. What's happened to me would make a couple of good, long love stories."
"It's not that simple to write a story." The writer raised his eyebrows and prepared to launch into a little speech. "You've got to weep with your characters, to laugh with them, to sigh with them, and ... "
Mr. Wu interrupted with a sigh of his own. Li Hsin wondered whether he was sighing over his long-gone romances or the difficulties of a writer.
"There are many approaches in fiction. I can't tell you all of them in a few words," the writer went on. "I like to use all of them. Realism, romanticism, naturalism, impressionism, symbolism and ... " He paused, racking his brains for more nomenclature of his calling.
"My goodness! So many isms!" Mr. Wu seemed stunned. "Nowadays, you'll hear about isms everywhere. Ism, ism, ism. You get so mixed up that you can't tell one from another. We seldom heard anything like that in the old times. But we got along very well-even better than we do now." The old man shook his head and sighed again.
Li Hsin felt that the bus was like a stage and that he was watching it without concern for what happened. He turned to look out the window. The bus was passing through the district of Yuen Huan, Round Circle, formed by a collection of shacks selling Taiwanese food. The neon signs invited passers-by into the winehouses. Girls outside showed their pale, short legs through the high slashes of their tight-fitting dresses. He saw, too, the innumerable everyday-goods stands, the smart-looking young hoodlums wearing peg trousers and cowboy boots, small boys running and calling under the over-hanging roofs—all the bustle and wickedness of throbbing life. The boys suddenly ran up against a fruit stand and deliberately turned it over. Fruit was scattered everywhere. The vendor cursed and swore. The boys clapped their hands gleefully, watching the fruit roll every which way, gleaming in the sun.
Li Hsin was touched with a sense of joy at so much life. Almost all the misbehavior of youth is poetry, he thought, a strange sort of poetry, overflowing with vitality. He had experienced such joy as a young man, experienced it with Lily. It had been in the early winter. The fields swept away to an extensive orchard, which glimmered in the sun, its branches like fancy lace against the ash-blue sky and the jade-green fields. The sunlight, the fields, the gentle wind and Lily—all were delicious to remember. Li Hsin had sneaked into the orchard with Lily and his sister. They were planning to steal some tangerines, mostly for the thrill of illicit excitement. Li Hsin was to climb the trees and do the actual picking, while the girls acted as lookouts at the two entrances to the orchard. If anyone came, the girls would call out a seemingly innocent "Hey!" of warning.
Li Hsin had always been a gentle boy. That day he wondered where his courage came from. He was very active, a real "skinny monkey", among the tangerine trees. Having accumulated their golden loot under a tree, he perched himself in a treetop to enjoy the wind - a warm, dry, caressing breeze. He saw Lily looking around like a scared rabbit, and waved until she ran to him with her black hair flowing in the wind and her cheeks flushed from the sun. She perched herself on another branch of the same tree. He was so busy picking big tangerines for Lily he forgot to eat any himself. She wore a white sweater and a pomegranate-red scarf. Her legs, tanned and smooth, were swinging from the branch while she peeled and ate tangerines. The little dimple showed on her cheek, as if it were brimful of tangerine juice and so sweet that Li Hsin wanted to touch it with the tip of his tongue. The wind elf fanned the leaves here and there with soft tiny wings, stirring the exhilarating scent of the tangerines.
Suddenly a dog barked from the distant bamboo hedge. Somebody was coming! The dog rushed into the field, just ahead of a tall peasant woman, her head wrapped in a piece of white cloth. She shouted at them in anger and struck the ground with a bamboo pole. Li Hsin scrambled down the tree and reached for Lily. In a panic, she jumped right into his arms. Her face flamed up. He also felt his face hot to the roots of his hair as he held her young warmth. He took her by the hand and began to run. Her scarf, blown up by the wind, flapped over his face.
"Hey, people are coming! Hey!" Now Li Hsin's sister was crying out a belated warning in a voice which sounded as though she were strangling.
When they got out of the orchard, they found her steaming like a hot mantou1 fresh from the pot, her skirt full of tangerines and her mouth smeared with juice.
"Lily! You're to blame," she complained. "You didn't do your duty as a lookout—instead you climbed the tree to help brother eat tangerines!"
"But what's that smeared on your mouth, young lady?" Li Hsin said.
Lily smiled in appreciation for his reply, and the dimple played again on her cheek. They laughed all the way home and Lily nearly slipped into a paddy-field.
"Ai-yo! I'm dying with laughing! I can't laugh any more!"
Li Hsin, startled, wondered to hear real feminine laughter from behind him. He turned to find two women laughing in the rear of the bus. One was the woman with a red pug nose; the other had got on the bus with several other passengers while he was lost in his memories of Lily. Li Hsin could see little of her except a projecting stomach and swollen legs. Two children were kneeling on the seat between the two women, looking out the window.
"Ai-yo! Have you ever heard anything like that? It's her own business to bear the child. She couldn't make it come out so she cursed her husband! Didn't she know it's a job he can't do without her? Ai-yo! I can't laugh any more!" The woman with the swollen stomach spoke Mandarin with a Nanking accent.
"When are you going to give birth to this one?"
"Next month, around the 12th. That's what the doctor says anyhow!"
"Mass production!" Pug Nose said. "But the last one is only 10 months old. Right?"
"Yes. I tell you—I end up with a big stomach like this every year. I don't really want any more children. But... " The woman paused with a brief laugh. "His papa is a nasty person! Come on! Let me tell you." She whispered to the other woman. They laughed in unison.
"Look!" Pug Nose said. "There goes Miss Sung! In the pedicab! Over there!"
"That old maid! She's over fifty. The very sight of her makes me sick. She could have found a man as a young girl. Look she always dresses herself in the same coquettish way, even at her age! Look at her! That skinny frame! Like a dried stick! Who in the world would want her?"
"But she's got to depend on somebody! Things aren't as easy as when we were on the mainland."
"Then why was she so particular when she was young? It's like selecting melons in a field. The more choice you have, the worse the melon you'll get. And when you get older, you'll grab hold of anything!
"That man of hers is her junior by twenty years. Twenty years! She could be his old mother! That old maid! We all call her old maid! Let me tell you. That man was chasing another girl, but she happened to love a friend of my husband's. A man loaded with money. His wife stayed behind on the mainland. I know this girl he was after—an easy woman! She suffered from T. B. All the other boys left her except him. He pursued her madly; went to visit her at the hospital with a bunch of flowers every day. They said they got married by order of their child. Understand what I mean?
"Ai—that dog! A very fierce dog! I went to their house once. Oh! Very beautifully decorated! It was a German dog ... "
What a repulsive chatterbox! Li Hsin frowned, and turned to get a look at the woman. But she was hidden by several other passengers, and he could see only her swollen legs. The three men sitting opposite him had stopped talking. The bus rocked along like a huge cradle. The old man and Mr. Wu looked drowsy. The writer looked out of the window, a cigarette between dry lips. As the bus stopped at the corner of Chung Shan North Road, a girl wearing an apricot-colored skirt got on. She stood in front of the two women instead of taking one of the vacant seats. The woman speaking Mandarin with a Nanking accent started up again.
"Do you really think so? You think I still look so young? I tell you, if I didn't bear so many children, I'd look even younger. Nowadays I hate to look at myself in the mirror. His papa said for fun that I look like a big duck." Her laugh was like a quack.
The girl who had just got on frowned and stepped to the front of the bus. Li Hsin glanced at the vacant seat beside him and then at her. But she stood straight and quiet, as though of stone, head up and staring out the window.
"Most young girls are strange like that. They act as if all the world's under their feet," Li Hsin thought. He saw that the girl was slender, had a sharp chin, and very narrow eyes. She was not to his taste. But straight black hair and the proud look in her eyes gave her a look of freshness.
She must be around twenty, Li Hsin thought, about the age of Lily when he met her again in Chungking, the wartime capital, where he had stayed for his college education. It had been summer. The day before he was supposed to leave Chungking for the town where his family lived, he was sauntering about the streets and saw a girl approaching. Wearing a silver-gray dress and sun-glasses, she carried a violet parasol.
He could not keep his eyes off her. What a dainty girl! To his surprise, she took off the sun-glasses and spoke to him:
"Hello! Don't you recognize me?"
It was Lily, whom he had not seen for more than four years. The first thing he noticed was that she did not have a broken tooth any more. He felt confused, somehow, and was at a loss for words. She told him that she had come to Chungking to take the entrance examination of the university.
That evening, Li Hsin plucked up his courage to visit her at the house where she was staying, but found her out. The next day he left Chungking. If he had seen her that evening, what would have happened? Would she ...
Something swished in front of him. He leaned back with blinking eyes as an apricot-colored skirt switched past him. The girl in the front of the bus was moving to the rear, obviously offended with him for staring at her during his meditation.
He shrugged his shoulders, smiled meaninglessly, and turned to look out the window. The black chimney of the funeral parlor was coming in sight. A funeral procession was passing by. The mourners, dressed in white, cowls hiding their faces, lamented so loudly that Li Hsin could hear them over the noise of the bus. A red coffin followed a group of boys carrying epitaphs written on long strips of white cloth hanging from poles. The band played the foreign tune "Auld Lang Syne" on bugles and drums and the old Chinese tune "Chao Chun Yuan"2 on flutes at the same time. All the passengers except the old man watched the procession with interest. The old man sat up straight, his back to the funeral cortege. The writer elbowed Mr. Wu.
"What do you think of the funeral procession?" A meaningful smile was at the corners of his lips.
"The dead man should be proud of a mournful, magnificent funeral like this," Mr. Wu said.
"Do you know what I was thinking about?" The writer's smile spread all over his face, like soft butter over bread. He took a smug look at his reflection in the window-glass. "We writers should make the best use of life. Trifles which may be meaningless to others may be meaningful to us. For example, I got an idea for a story as soon as I saw this funeral procession!"
"Really?" Mr. Wu looked his wonderment.
The old man turned to gape at the writer with admiration.
"I've got the idea for a very touching love story. A man's dead. He's handsome, smart, romantic ... "
"Just like you!" Mr. Wu put in.
The writer inclined his head gallantly. He continued: "Well. Two women are in love with him. One's tender, pretty, like the moon, while the other is bright and warm, like the sun ... "
"He was lucky to be alive!" Mr. Wu could not refrain from envying the dead man.
"Yes! He was!" The old man chuckled, animatedly.
"Listen to me." The writer tried to recapture the conversation. "Both women are in love with him. Well, the man's dead. So the two women meet at the funeral!" To show what he meant, the writer tapped the index-finger of one hand against that of the other.
"And then they'll have a fight, of course, quarreling right over the corpse!" Mr. Wu said with a serious look.
"Ha! Intriguing! Very intriguing!" The old man nodded his head vigorously.
"Fighting? No!" The writer gave him a stern look. "Well -. they meet at the funeral. Then - let me see ... " He rubbed his forehead in thought. "Well, I've got to have a hard think about this. Yes, a hard think!" He added this with a smile.
Li Hsin started to enjoy the quiet moment that followed. The two women, however, began to buzz again.
" ... This son of mine!" It was the voice of the woman who spoke Mandarin with a Nanking accent. "He's his father's pet. Look - he's the image of him! Sweet, isn't he? He's superior to the other boys, because I managed to get him born on the eighth of the fourth month, the birthday of Buddha. I tell you, the injection they gave me when I was in labor worked marvelously. Young as he is, he can read your face and never let himself be outwitted, and talks almost the way adults do."
"What do you do with your time these days?" Obviously Pug Nose had no interest in any other woman's son.
"Play mahjong. Say, do you know, I won by a very rare combination the other day!"
"I'd like to join you; any time you're short a player."
"Good! You're always welcome. I'm very particular about those I play with. I'd rather do nothing than play with those who have bad manners at the mahjong table and those who give you their money coin by coin. I ... "
"We have the same likes and dislikes! We're made for each other! You know, you really have a sweet boy!" Pug Nose dragged the child into her arms.
The bus, bumping roughly along a stretch of the road which was under repair, jolted violently as one wheel dropped into a hole.
"Ai-yo!" The woman put both hands on her big stomach. "He was right when he asked me not to go out like this. But I was bored at home and took the two kids out to window shop."
"Your husband's very nice to you."
"Yes. I tell you, he's very nice except for being nasty when we ... " Laughing, she whispered the rest to her companion, and then raised her voice. "So when I play mahjong at night, he'll sit beside me without complaining. If I sit up all night at the mahjong table, he'll sit up all night with me. You know something—the one hundred and thirty-six mahjong tiles are much dearer to me than my husband!" She chuckled to show that this was only a joke.
Li Hsin turned to have another look in her direction. He still could see only the swollen legs. The women's chatter was getting on his nerves. "How long will it be before the bus gets to Keelin Road?" he asked the conductress.
"A few minutes. The bus has to take this long way round because the road's under repair."
In a few minutes! He would see Lily in a few minutes! He was so excited he took out the notebook to read her address once more. No.6, Lane 96, Keelin Road. His heart began to pound. He wondered whether Lily would recognize him. He had long ceased to be a "skinny monkey". Middle-aged now, he was getting stout and was already bald on the crown. What should he call her? Lily? No! It was not proper to call a mother by her pet name. Call her Mrs. Chou then? That would also be embarrassing. It would sound as if they were strangers. He could not stand that. He decided to avoid calling her by any name.
Instead, he would look her in the face and ask quietly, "Remember me?" Maybe she would stare a moment, then nod her head with a faint smile. The dimple would play in her cheek again. Her broken tooth would reveal itself then. Oh, no. That's the way she smiled as a little girl. The broken tooth had disappeared when he met her in Chungking. He tried to imagine how she looked now. But the little Lily who smiled with her handkerchief over her lips or enjoyed tangerines in the treetop with legs swinging interfered with his imagination. Maybe she would not smile as she had used to, but sit quietly in the corner of the room, holding her child. He would find something in her eyes, something misty and sad which hadn't been there when she was a girl. Maybe she would wear a loose hair-knot, tied with a ribbon of sky-blue, the same color as the dress she had worn when he first met her, a color in harmony with a woman like her. She would ask her children to stay with him for a while, of course. And he would like the youngest girl best, because she was the image of little Lily. He would hold her in his lap and ask her whether she knew him. She would certainly know him, because their mother had often told them about him, told them in a tender voice...
" ... Mister! We're here at Keelin Road! I've called you twice already!" It was the conductress.
Li Hsin started up and turned in time to see the back of the pregnant woman preparing to leave the bus with the two children. Pug Nose was shouting out the window.
"Mrs. Chou, wait a minute! I want to play mahjong with you and I've forgotten your address. What is it?
"No.6, Lane 96, Keelin Road!" The woman answered in that Mandarin with a Nanking accent.
Li Hsin felt as though he had just been struck in the stomach. One of the two children slipped on the steps while getting out of the bus. Li Hsin stepped forward and picked him up. The boy began to cry.
"Why don't you watch what you're doing? You clumsy boy!" His mother seized him by the hand, then turned to Li Hsin. "Thank you, Mister." She gave him a polite smile, and a dimple appeared in her cheek, startlingly youthful in the fleshy face.
Li Hsin collapsed into the seat beside him, holding onto the cold brass pole.
"Are you getting off or not?" The conductress was impatient.
"I . . . I'm not." He forced the words from his lips.
"Hmm .... Crazy!" The conductress gave him a cold look and banged the bus door shut.
"Ai!" The old man shook his head. "Nowadays there're more and more strange people around." Li Hsin could hear him muttering to himself.
Pug Nose stretched her neck to have a look. Mr. Wu looked at him first, then at the others. The writer gazed at Li Hsin thoughtfully, then took out his notebook to scribble something. Maybe Li Hsin would have the honor of serving as the model for the hero of the story he was going to call "The Funeral".
Everybody looked at Li Hsin—but none of them know why. He wasn't even sure himself.
1A steamed bun made of white wheat flour.
2A song lamenting the tragedy of a beauty who was married to a barbarian warrior in exchange for peace.