The Real Story of Ah-Q (35 page)

Motivated substantially by curiosity, I’m afraid, I made sure my way home took me past his front door, taking the opportunity to offer my condolences. He emerged wearing unhemmed white mourning clothes, his face as expressionless as before. Though I tried my best to find words of comfort, all I got in response – beyond a few grunts – was ‘Thank you.’

Our third meeting took place in early winter of that year, in a bookstore in S—. We nodded at each other, acknowledging recognition. But the event that drew us into a more intimate acquaintance was the loss of my job towards the end of the year, after which I began calling regularly on Lianshu. Primarily, of course, because I was bored – because I had nothing better to do with my time. And also because I’d heard from other people that, even though he seemed so reserved, he had a special sympathy for those who were down on their luck. But the way of the world is fickle; people down on their luck don’t stay like that for ever; and so his friendships seldom lasted. The first part of the rumour was true enough: as soon as I presented my name-card, he asked me in. His home consisted of two adjoining rooms, sparsely furnished beyond tables, chairs and a few bookshelves. Everyone said he was terrifyingly progressive in his politics, but I didn’t see many new books on his shelves. Though he knew about me having lost my job, once we’d exchanged the standard pleasantries we sat opposite each other in increasingly oppressive silence. He smoked very quickly, I noticed, refusing to release his cigarette on to the ground until the butt was burning his fingers.

‘Have a cigarette,’ he suddenly said, as he reached out for another himself.

I accepted it and began talking a little about teaching and books, but still I felt oppressed by the occasion. Just as I was thinking of leaving, a bustle of voices and footsteps broke out by the door. Four children rushed in, the oldest seven or eight, the youngest three or four. Their hands, faces and clothes were filthy; none of them struck me as particularly appealing. But Lianshu’s eyes immediately lit up as he sprang to his feet and walked into the adjoining room.

‘Daliang, Erliang,’ he called as he went, ‘I’ve bought the harmonicas you wanted yesterday.’

The children surged towards him, began tooting on their harmonicas then jostled their way out again. Just out of the door, a fight mysteriously broke out and one of them began to cry.

‘There’s one for each of you,’ he shouted as he followed them out, ‘they’re all exactly the same. No fighting!’

‘Who are
they
?’ I asked.

‘The landlord’s children. Their mother’s dead – there’s just a grandmother to look after them.’

‘The landlord hasn’t remarried?’

‘No. Even though his wife died three or four years ago… If he had, there wouldn’t be bachelor accommodation going for someone like me.’ He gave a slight smile – one without any warmth.

Though I was very keen to know why he himself had never married, I felt too embarrassed to ask; I hardly knew the man.

Once you got to know Lianshu, though, he turned out to be quite a talker. He had a great many views on all kinds of subjects – many of them startlingly acute. The most tiresome thing about him was his other guests: fashionably disaffected youths, most of them, who spent the good part of their time draped over his chairs, like indolent crabs, scowling, smoking and railing against the harsh cruel world that had turned them into ‘superfluous men’. Then there were his landlord’s children, always fighting and arguing with each other, knocking over bowls and plates, cadging cakes and sweets, till your ears buzzed with their racket. But Lianshu melted the moment he saw them: they seemed to be more precious to him than his own life. Once, when the next to youngest came down with measles, I heard he was so worried even the grandmother laughed at him afterwards – when the illness turned out not to be serious – for his excessive anxiety.

‘Children are good by nature,’ he earnestly explained to me one day, sensing my impatience perhaps. ‘It’s their innocence.’

‘Not necessarily,’ I carelessly replied.

‘You’re wrong. Children aren’t bad, like adults; they’re incapable of it. It’s only later they become bad like you say – and that’s all down to environment. It’s nurture, not nature – they start out well. They’re China’s only hope.’

‘But if children don’t have the roots of evil already in them, how come they go on to produce the fruits and flowers of evil? A seed produces branches, leaves, or fruit or flowers of a certain sort because it carries them inside as embryos. Everything happens for a reason…’ Perhaps I had had too little to do with myself for too long. I was beginning to sound like one of those government types forced out of office, who take up Buddhism in the political wilderness. I’d recently been idling my way through the sutras, and even though I didn’t have a clue about the philosophy behind them, still I rambled incautiously on.

Lianshu merely glared at me – though whether it was because he had nothing to say, or because he scorned to engage in debate with me, I couldn’t tell. After watching him silently smoke his way through two cigarettes, I sensed a revival of his earlier aloofness, and fled as soon as he drew out a third.

It took our friendship three months to recover. In part, perhaps, because the memory of the argument had faded; but also, perhaps, because he began to perceive a new menace around those little innocents of his, prompting him to reconsider my needling arguments. I’m just extrapolating from something he said around that time, after a few cups of wine at my lodgings.

‘The strangest thing,’ he observed, his face half-tilted up to the ceiling, slightly clouded with melancholy. ‘I saw a little boy on my way over here. Pointing a reed at me and saying, “You’re dead!” He was so small, he was barely able to walk.’

‘That’s nurture, not nature.’

I immediately regretted my facetiousness. And yet he didn’t seem to take offence, concentrating on drinking and, in between whiles, smoking.

‘Tell me,’ I clumsily changed the subject. ‘You hardly ever call on other people – what’s brought you out of your hole today? We’ve known each other over a year, but this is the first time you’ve come here.’

‘I just wanted to warn you not to come over in the next few days. I’ve a couple of particularly unpleasant visitors.’

‘Who are they?’ His announcement surprised me.

‘My cousin and his boy. Ha! Like father, like son.’

‘A social visit?’

‘No. They’ve something they want to talk to me about. They want me to adopt the boy.’

‘You? Adopt a child?’ I exclaimed incredulously. ‘But you aren’t even married.’

‘They know that. But they don’t care. All they want is to secure that ruin of a house on Hanshi Mountain. It’s the only thing I own in the world. You know I spend my salary as soon as I get it; I’ve no other savings. Their sole ambition in life is to see my grandmother’s old housekeeper thrown out on to the street.’

I was chilled by his cynicism. ‘I’m sure they’re not as bad as all that,’ I tried to argue. ‘They’re just a bit old-fashioned. Remember at the funeral, when you were crying – they were all trying their best to comfort you – ’

‘They wanted me to sign over the house to them when my father died, too. So they were full of sympathy at that funeral, as well…’ He stared up into space, as if thinking back over the past.

‘But the real problem is that you don’t have a child yourself. Why is it that you never married?’ I found myself gifted with an opportunity to steer us on to a subject I had always felt curious about.

He glanced at me in surprise, then looked down at his knees and, without answering my question, applied himself to his latest cigarette.

Yet even in this provincial backwater of ours, Lianshu was not to be allowed any peace. Small local newspapers began launching anonymous attacks on him, while he was often the subject of gossip in local schools – the old mockery, but this time with teeth. Since I knew this intensification of hostilities was clearly the result of his recent fondness for publishing articles, I didn’t take much notice. The people of S— had a particular aversion for the free expression of strong views; and once an opinion was circulating in the public domain, retaliation – most likely anonymous – was inevitable. Lianshu himself knew all this perfectly well. But when spring arrived, I heard his school principal had dismissed him. Although I allowed the news to startle me, I had no decent grounds to have expected that things would ever have turned out otherwise. I’d merely clung to the hope that my own friends would have the luck to escape the wringer of public opinion. Instead, the good burghers of S— had merely conformed to type.

In truth, I was so taken up with concerns about my own livelihood – pursuing the possibility of a teaching post in Shanyang, to begin in the autumn – I had no time to call on him. But even when I found myself with a little more time on my hands – almost three months after his dismissal – still I failed to pay him a visit. One day, though, pausing idly at a second-hand bookstall along the town’s main street, I was shocked to discover – sandwiched between other books – a valuable Ming-dynasty edition of a classic historical commentary. I’d seen it on Lianshu’s shelves: he was fond of books but no great collector, and it would have been one of his most prized possessions. He must have been desperate to sell it off. Had only a few months of unemployment reduced him to this? Money had always passed through his hands like water; he had no savings to speak of. I resolved then and there to go and see my old friend, picking up en route a bottle of spirits, two bags of peanuts and a couple of smoked fish-heads.

His door was shut. I tried calling out: no response. Wondering if he had fallen asleep, I tried shouting louder and rapping on the door.

‘He’s out!’ the corpulent form of the Liang grandmother bellowed irritably out of the window opposite, her triangular eyes set beneath a mass of grey hair.

‘Where’s he gone?’ I asked.

‘How would I know?… Where
can
he go? Hang on and he’ll be back soon.’

I opened the door and walked into his sitting room. I felt as if I hadn’t been there for years. A scene of desolation greeted me: most of the furniture and books were gone, leaving a mere handful of foreign-looking books that the average reader in S— would have no interest in. The round table in the middle of the room was still there, but while in the past it had always been surrounded by passionate young melancholics, frustrated eccentric geniuses and filthy, ill-behaved children, now it was peacefully overlaid with a thin layer of dust. I placed the bottle of spirits and bags of food on the table, pulled over a chair and settled down to wait, facing the door.

Soon enough, the door did indeed open, and a shadowy figure – Lianshu – slipped in. Maybe because of the dusk gloom, his face looked even darker than usual; but it was otherwise unchanged.

‘How long have you been here?’ He seemed pleased to see me.

‘Not long,’ I said. ‘Where’ve you been?’

‘Nowhere much. Just wandering.’

He pulled another chair over and sat down by the table. We began to drink and to talk about his dismissal. But he didn’t seem that interested in talking about it; it was something he’d long expected, and that he’d seen happen plenty of times before; what more was there to say? As in the past, he applied himself to the business of drinking in a fairly dedicated fashion, while tossing out a variety of views about society and history. I happened to glance at the empty shelves. Reminded of the book on the stall, I was overcome with a vague sorrow.

‘It’s so bleak in here… Haven’t you had many visitors lately?’

‘No. They keep away – they’re afraid of the mood they’ll find me in. It’s not much fun keeping company with depression. Who likes visiting a park in winter?’ He took another couple of gulps and sat in silence, thinking. Suddenly, he looked back up at me.

‘Still no news about that job of yours?’

Even though I knew he was drunk, I still allowed myself to be irritated by the question. Just as I was about to make some response, I noticed him listening out for something. Scooping up a handful of peanuts, he went out – the Liang children were laughing and shouting outside.

But the moment he went out, the children’s voices faded to nothing – they’d obviously run away. He chased after them, trying to say something, but I didn’t hear their reply. Slipping back inside, he replaced the handful of peanuts in the bag.

‘They won’t even eat my food,’ he muttered, softly self-mocking.

I forced a smile through the melancholy of it all. ‘Sometimes, I think you make life more difficult for yourself than you need to. You’re too pessimistic about people.’

He responded with another of his bleak smiles.

‘I suppose you think people only visit you – people like me – because we’ve nothing better to do, for a bit of entertainment?’

‘No. Well, sometimes, maybe. Or maybe you’re after anecdote material.’

‘Well, you’re wrong,’ I sighed. ‘People aren’t like that. You’ve spun a cocoon of loneliness around yourself. Can’t you try to see the bright side of things?’

‘Maybe you’re right. But where did I get the silk for my cocoon in the first place? And there are plenty of people like me in the world; my grandmother for one. Even though we weren’t blood relatives, maybe she passed on her destiny to me. But I’ve shed all the tears I’m going to shed for her, and for myself.’