Dawn Blossoms Plucked at Dusk Page 6

  Father's breathing became very laboured, until even I could scarcely bear to hear it; but nobody could help him. Sometimes the thought flashed into my mind, “Better if it could all be over quickly....” At once I knew I should not think of such a thing, in fact I felt guilty. But at the same time I felt this idea was only proper, for I loved my father dearly. Even today, I still feel the same about it.

  That morning Mrs. Yan, who lived in the same compound, came in. An authority on etiquette, she told us not to wait there doing nothing. So we changed his clothes, burnt paper coins and something called the Gaowang Sutra, and put the ashes, wrapped in paper, in his hand....

  “Call him!” said Mrs. Yan. “Your father's at his last gasp. Call him quickly!”

  “Father! Father!” I called accordingly.

  “Louder. He can't hear. Hurry up, can't you?”

  “Father! Father!”

  His face, which had been composed, grew suddenly tense again; and he raised his eyelids slightly, as if in pain.

  “Call him!” she insisted. “Hurry up and call him!”

  “Father!!!”

  “What is it?... Don't shout.... Don't...”

  His voice was low, and once more he started panting for breath. It was some time before he recovered his earlier calm.

  “Father!!!”

  I went on calling until he breathed his last.

  I can still hear my voice as it sounded then. And each time I hear those cries, I feel this was the greatest wrong I ever did to my father.

  October 7

  ■ Fragmentary Recollections

  Mrs. Yan has long been a grandmother, and may even be a great-grandmother; but in those days she was still young, with just one son three or four years older than myself. Though very strict with her own son, she was kind to other people's children and no matter what trouble they made would never go to tell their parents. So we all liked to play in her house or in its vicinity.

  To give one example. In winter, we noticed early one morning that a thin layer of ice had formed in the water vat, and we started eating the ice. Fourth Mrs. Shen, seeing us do this, cried: “Don't eat that! It'll give you bellyache.” And my mother, hearing this, rushed out to give us all a scolding; moreover, we were forbidden to play there for hours. We decided that Fourth Mrs. Shen was the root of this trouble, so we stopped referring to her respectfully and gave her a new nickname “Bellyache.”

  Mrs. Yan, however, never behaved like that. If she saw us eating ice, she would say with a kindly smile: “All right, have another piece. I'll keep count to see who eats most.”

  Yet certain things about her displeased me too. One happened very early when I was still very small. I had chanced to go into her house when she and her husband were reading a book together. When I went up to her, she thrust the book under my nose and said: “Look. What do you think this is?” I saw in the book a picture of a house in which two naked people seemed to be fighting, and yet it didn't look exactly like fighting. As I was puzzling over this, they started roaring with laughter. This annoyed me immensely, for I felt greatly insulted, and for about ten days or more I did not go back there.

  Another thing happened when I was over ten, competing with some other children to see which of us could spin round the most times. From the side she kept count: “Fine, eighty-two! Another spin, eighty-three! Fine, eighty-four!...” But Ah Xiang, the one spinning, suddenly fell down—just as his aunt happened to come into the room. At once Mrs. Yan said: “See, didn't I say you'd fall? You wouldn't listen to me. I told you not to do it, not to spin....”

  Nevertheless, children still liked to go to her place. If we knocked our heads and raised big bruises, then went to mother, she would at best give us a scolding, then rub on some ointment; but if she had no ointment we would get the scolding plus a few extra slaps. Mrs. Yan, however, never blamed us. She would promptly mix some powder with alcohol and apply this to the sore place, assuring us that this would not only stop the pain but prevent there being any scar in future.

  After my father's death I went on going frequently to her house, only not to play with other children but to chat with her and her husband. At that time there were many things I would have liked to buy, things to read or eat, only I had no money. Once when I mentioned this, she said: “Just take some from your mother. Isn't her money yours?” When I told her my mother had no money, she said I could take her trinkets to raise money on them. When I told her there were no trinkets, she said: “Perhaps you haven't looked carefully. If you search the drawers of that big chest and odd corners of the room, you're bound to find a few pearls or things of that sort....”

  This advice seemed to me so odd that once more I stopped going there. Sometimes, however, I was really tempted to open the big chest and make a thorough search. Probably it was less than a month after this that I heard a rumour to the effect that I'd been stealing things from home to raise money on. This really made me feel as if plunged into icy cold water. I knew the source of the rumour. Should such a thing happen now, provided I could find somewhere to publish by exposure, I would certainly unmask the rumourmonger. But at that time I was too young. When slandered, I seemed to feel myself truly guilty of some crime, afraid to meet people's eyes, afraid to receive consolation from my mother.

  All right, then leave the place!

  But where could I go? I knew all the people of S— by sight, and they didn't amount to much—I seemed to have seen through them. I must find people of a different type, a type detested by the people of S—, whether they were beasts or devils. At that time the whole town was scoffing at a newly opened school called the Chinese-Western School where, in addition to Chinese, they taught foreign languages and mathematics. But already it had become a target for all. Some literati well-versed in the works of the sages even concocted a bagu essay by stringing together phrases from the Four Books to deride it. This famous essay at once spread throughout the town, a fine topic of conversation for everyone. All I remember now is the start of the opening:

  “Master Xu said to Master Yi: I have heard of Chinese culture being used to change the barbarians, but not of us being changed by the barbarians. Now times have changed: uncouth bird-like tongues are all considered as polite languages....”

  What followed I forget. Doubtless similar arguments to those of the present-day champions of our national essence. However, I too was dissatisfied with that Chinese-Western School, for it taught only Chinese, mathematics, English and French. More uncommon subjects were taught in the Qiushi College in Hangzhou, but its fees were high.

  The schools that asked for no fees were in Nanjing, so naturally I had to go to Nanjing. I do not know the present name of the school I first attended. I believe for a while, after the revolution, it was called the Thunder-and-Lightning School, a name reminiscent of such titles as “Primordial Ultimate Formation” or “Formless Void Formation” in the Canonization of the Gods. Anyway, as soon as one entered Yifeng Gate one could see its flagpole, two hundred feet high, and a chimney-shaft the height of which I do not know. The lessons were simple: virtually four whole days a week were spent on English: “It is a cat.” “Is it a rat?” One whole day was spent on classical Chinese: “The Superior Man comments: Ying Kaoshu should be called a man of supreme piety, for loving his mother he extended that love to the prince.” One whole day was spent on writing Chinese essays: “One Who Knows His Own Strength and That of the Enemy Is Invincible in Battle,” “On Ying Kaoshu,” “On How Clouds Follow the Dragon and Wind the Tiger,” “One Content with Chewing Cabbage Root Can Accomplish All Things Under Heaven.”

  When I first entered school I was naturally put in the third or lowest grade. In my cubicle were one table, one stool and one bed, this latter consisting of only two planks of wood. Students of the first and second grades were different, having two tables, two or three stools and one bed with as many as three planks. Not only did they stride with a lordly air to their classrooms, a pile of big, thick foreign books under their arms, qu
ite unlike the third-grade students who took only one English primer and four volumes of Zuo's Commentary to the “Spring and Autumn Annals”; even when emptyhanded they would walk with arms akimbo like crabs, making it impossible for a student of a lower grade to get past. It is some time now since I last met such crab-like swells. Four or five years ago I chanced to find an old gentleman in this posture on a broken-down chaise longue in the Ministry of Education, and the fact that he was not a graduate of the Thunder-and-Lightning School shows that this crab-like attitude is quite prevalent in China.

  The flagpole was fine. Not because it was “standing erect,” a symbol of something, as our “Eastern Neighbour's” sinologues would say. But because it was so tall that crows and magpies could only perch on the wooden disk halfway up it. If one climbed to the top, one could see Lion Mountain nearby and Sans-Souci Lake in the distance—but whether one could really see so far, I can't actually remember clearly now. Also there was no danger, for there was a net underneath and if one fell it would only be like a small fish falling into a net. Besides, since the net had been set up there, I heard that no one had fallen.

  There had originally also been a pool where students could learn to swim. But two young students were drowned there. By the time I went to the school the pool had been filled up, not only filled up, a small shrine to Lord Guan Yu had been built on the spot. Beside this shrine was a brick incinerator to burn waste paper with writing on it, and over its opening was the large horizontal inscription: “Respect Written Paper.” It was unfortunate though that the filling up of the pool had denied the ghosts of the two drowned students the chance to find substitutes but forced them to haunt the place, even though there was “Sagacious and Imperial Lord Guan Yu the Conqueror of Devils” to control them. People who run schools are usually kindhearted, so each year on the fifteenth of the seventh month they always engaged a troop of monks to chant masses in the gymnasium. The corpulent, red-nosed chief monk, wearing his Buddhist headdress, would chant incantations: “Hui-zi-le, pu-mi-ye-hum! Om-ye-hum! Om! Ye! Hum!!!”

  This was the only advantage enjoyed by those classmate predecessors of ours after being suppressed for a whole year by Lord Guan Yu—though I was not clear just where the advantage lay. So each time this happened I used to reflect that we students had better be more careful.

  It always seemed to me that something was not quite right, but I had no means of putting this into words. Now I have discovered a fairly close approximation: it seemed to me that it was “murky.” So I had to leave. Nowadays it is not so easy just to leave. For “just minds and gentlemen” and the like will accuse you of getting a new contract from a college by cursing people or of posing as an “eccentric scholar,” and they will pass high-minded, cutting remarks. At that time, though, it mattered less. A student's subsidy for the first year was only two taels of silver, and one got five hundred cash for expenses during the first three months on probation. So there was no problem, and I went to sit for the entrance examination of the School of Mining and Railways. At least, I think that was its name, but I cannot remember clearly, and no longer having my diploma with me I have no means of checking. The entrance test was not hard. I was accepted.

  This time instead of “It is a cat,” we learned “Der Mann, Die Weib, Das Kind.” For Chinese, in addition to “Ying Kaoshu should be called a man of supreme piety,” we also studied the Etymological Lexicon with Commentaries. Our essay subjects were slightly different too; for instance, “On the Need to Have Effective Tools to Do Good Work” was a subject we had never written on before.

  Then there was physics, the science of the earth, the science of metals and stones... all these were quite novel. I must point out, however, that the last two were what we now call geology and mineralogy, not ancient geography or the study of bronze and stone inscriptions. Only drawing diagrams of cross-sections of rails was rather troublesome, while parallel lines were even more tiresome. The director in the second year, however, was a Reformist. Reading in his carriage he would usually read the Contemporary Gazette, and the subjects he set for Chinese examinations were quite different from those set by the teacher. Once he chose “On Washington.” The disconcerted Chinese teacher had to come and ask us: “What is this thing, Washington?...”

  Then it became fashionable to read new books, and I learned that there was a book called Evolution and Ethics. On Sunday I went to the south city and bought it: a thick volume lithographed on fine white paper, costing five hundred cash. Opening it—it was written in fine calligraphy—I read the preface:

  “Huxley, alone in his room in southern England, with mountains behind the house and plains in front, had a fine view from his window. He wondered: what was this place like two thousand years ago, before Julius Caesar came here? There must have been nothing here but primitive wasteland...”

  Well! So the world contained a man called Huxley who sat thinking in this way in his study and came up with such novel ideas! I read the book through at one sitting, and in it I found the “survival of the fittest,” and Socrates, Plato and the Stoics as well. The school had a reading-room where of course you could find the Contemporary Gazette; moreover, there was the magazine Selected Translations, its title written in the style of Zhang Lianqing's school of calligraphy in a most attractive blue.

  “Something is wrong with you, child. Take this article and read it, then copy it out,” one of my family elders ordered me sternly, passing me a newspaper. Taking it I read, “Your subject Xu Yingkui begs to report....” I can't remember a single sentence of that article now, but at all events it attacked Kang Youwei's reforms. I can't remember either whether I copied the article out or not.

  I still did not feel that anything was “wrong” with me. Whenever I had time, I would as usual eat cakes, peanuts and paprika and read Evolution and Ethics.

  But we also had one very unsettled period. That was during the second year, when we heard that the school was going to be closed. This was not strange, for this school had been set up because the Governor of Jiangnan and Jiangxi (probably Liu Kunyi) had heard that the Qinglongshan coal mine had good prospects. By the time the school opened, the mine had already dismissed its engineer and replaced him with someone not so adequate. Their reasons were: first, the original engineer's salary was too high; secondly, they felt it was easy to run a coal mine. So in less than a year, the output of coal became not so adequate too, until finally it was only enough to fuel the mine's two pumps; so water was pumped to get coal, and this coal was used to pump water—the production and consumption were well balanced. Still, as the mine made no profit, there was naturally no need for a mining school. And yet, for some reason, the school was not closed. When we went down in our third year to see the pits, the sight was rather pathetic. Of course the pumps were still working, but water lay half a foot deep in the pit, more was dripping down from above, and the few miners toiling there looked like ghosts.

  Of course we all looked forward to graduation. But when the time came, we felt rather let down. We had climbed the flagpole several times, but needless to say were not half qualified to be sailors; we had attended lectures for several years and been down the pits several times, but could we mine gold, silver, copper, iron or lead? The fact was, we had no such faith ourselves, for this was not as simple as writing an essay “On the Need to Have Effective Tools to Do Good Work.” We had climbed two hundred feet into the sky and burrowed two hundred feet into the earth, but the result was that we still could do nothing. Knowledge was something that “could not be found even by searching the blue sky above and the yellow springs below.” Only one course was left to us: to go abroad.

  The authorities approved of study abroad, and agreed to send five students to Japan. But one of these five did not go, because his grandmother wept as if it would kill her. That left just four of us. Japan was very different from China; how should we prepare ourselves? A student who had graduated a year ahead of us had been to Japan; he should know something of conditions there. When we we
nt to ask his advice he told us earnestly:

  “Japanese socks are absolutely unwearable, so take plenty of Chinese socks. And I don't think bank-notes are any good; better change all the money you take into their silver yen.”

  The four of us all agreed. I don't know about the others, but I changed all my money in Shanghai into Japanese silver yen, and I took with me ten pairs of Chinese socks, white cloth socks.

  And later? Later we had to wear uniforms and leather shoes, so those cloth Chinese socks proved completely useless. And as they had long given up using silver coins of the one-yuan denomination in Japan, I changed mine at a loss into half-yuan coins and bank-notes.

  October 8

  ■ Mr. Fujino

  Tokyo was not so extraordinary after all. When cherry blossom shimmered in Ueno, from the distance it actually resembled light, pink clouds; but under the flowers you would always find groups of short-term “students from the Qing Empire,” their long queues coiled on top of their heads upraising the crowns of their student caps to look like Mount Fuji. Others had undone their queues and arranged their hair flat on their heads, so that when their caps were removed it glistened for all the world like the lustrous locks of young ladies; and they would toss their heads too. It was really a charming sight.

  In the gatehouse of the Chinese students' hostel there were always some books on sale, and it was worth going there sometimes. In the mornings you could sit and rest in the foreign-style rooms inside. But towards the evening the floor of one room would often be shaken by a deafening tramp of feet, and dust would fill the whole place. It you questioned those in the know, the answer would be: “They are learning ballroom dancing.”