A Chance Encounter

Editor

I hear you're traveling to China. South or north?

Novelist I plan to make my way from south to north.

Editor Are your preparations finished?

Novelist Mostly. What troubles me is that I still haven't managed to finish all the travel accounts and gazetteers I meant to read.

Editor (with little interest) Are there really that many books like that?

Novelist More than you'd think. By Japanese writers, there's Seventy-Eight Days of Travel, A Record of Chinese Civilization, Wandering Through China, Chinese Buddhist Antiquities, Chinese Customs, The Character of the Chinese People, Yanshan and the Waters of Chu, A Small Survey of Suzhou and Zhejiang, Notes and Observations from North China, Ten Years on the Yangtze, A Sightseeing Journey, Record of Campaign Dust, Manchuria, Bashu, Hunan, Hankou, Impressions of Chinese Grace, China...

Editor You've read all of those?

Novelist No, not one yet. Then among books by Chinese writers there are Comprehensive Gazetteer of the Great Qing, A Guide to the Sights of Yandu, Talks of a Traveler in Chang'an, The Imperial Capital...

Editor No, no, that's quite enough titles.

Novelist I don't think I've even mentioned a single book written by Westerners, though...

Editor Books on China by Westerners can't amount to much anyway. More importantly, you'll write that story for me before you leave, won't you?

Novelist (suddenly crestfallen) Well, in any case, I intend to finish it before then, but...

Editor When exactly are you scheduled to leave?

Novelist As a matter of fact, I'm due to leave today.

Editor (as if startled) Today?

Novelist Yes. I'm supposed to catch the five o'clock express.

Editor Then that leaves you only half an hour before departure, doesn't it?

Novelist That's about the size of it.

Editor (irritably) Then what is to become of the story?

Novelist (now more and more dejected) I'm wondering that myself.

Editor This sort of irresponsibility won't do at all. Still, with only half an hour, I can't very well ask you to write something on the spot...

Novelist Quite right. In a Wedekind play, during half an hour like this, an unlucky musician might burst in, or some lady somewhere might kill herself, and all sorts of things might happen, but... Wait a moment. There may be some unpublished manuscript or other still in my desk drawer.

Editor That would be extremely convenient, if so...

Novelist (rummaging through the desk drawer) An essay won't do, I suppose?

Editor What essay?

Novelist "The Harmful Effects of Journalism on Literature."

Editor That definitely won't do.

Novelist How about this? In terms of form, it's a short piece...

Editor It's called "A Chance Encounter." What did you write about?

Novelist Shall I read it to you? It will take about twenty minutes...

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This happened during the Zhishun era. In old Jinling on the Yangtze there lived a young man called Wang Sheng. Gifted by nature with talent and ability, he was handsome as well. Since people called him "the marvelously elegant young Wang of the Wang family," one may imagine his bearing. Yet though he had reached the age of twenty, he had still not taken a wife. His family background was respectable, and he possessed a fair inheritance from his parents. For indulging at will in the refinements of poetry and wine, no station in life could have been more convenient.

And indeed, Wang Sheng, together with his close friend Zhao Sheng, led a free and easy life. At times they would go to hear the theater. At times they would spend their days gambling. Or they might pass an entire night drinking at a table in one of the wine houses around the Qinhuai. On such occasions, the composed Wang Sheng, entranced before his porcelain cup, would sit listening to the song of some singer, while the cheerful Zhao Sheng, nibbling vinegared crab and raising cup after cup of Jinhua wine, would launch into lively discussions of the merits of various courtesans.

Yet for some reason Wang Sheng, since the autumn of the previous year, had abruptly ceased all such heavy drinking, as if he had forgotten it altogether. Nor was it only heavy drinking. He had withdrawn completely from every pleasure of eating, drinking, whoring, and gambling. Zhao Sheng and their many friends naturally found this change strange. Some said Wang Sheng must at last have grown tired of dissipation. Others said there must be some lovely woman somewhere. But Wang Sheng himself, no matter how often he was asked the reason, merely let a faint smile escape him and never gave any answer at all.

After this had gone on for about a year, Zhao Sheng paid Wang Sheng a visit for the first time in some while. Wang Sheng told him he had composed it the night before and showed him a thirty-couplet poem in the style of The Story of Yingying. Amid its brilliant parallel phrases there ran throughout a note of ceaseless lament. No one but a young man in love could possibly have written even a single line like that. Returning the poem to Wang Sheng, Zhao Sheng cast him a sly glance and said:

"Where is your Yingying?"

"My Yingying? I have no such person."

"Do tell your lies elsewhere. Isn't that ring proof enough?"

Sure enough, on the small table Zhao Sheng pointed to lay a ring of purple gold set with green jade, resting atop an open book. The owner of the ring was certainly no man. Wang Sheng picked it up and his face clouded for an instant; but he soon regained an unexpected composure and slowly began the following tale.

"I have no Yingying, as you call her. But there is a woman I love. The reason I stopped lifting cups of Taibai wine with you and the others since last autumn was certainly because that woman appeared in my life. Yet the relation between her and me is nothing like the commonplace romance you imagine between a gifted scholar and a beauty. From that alone, of course, you cannot possibly understand what I mean. Or rather, not only can you not understand it, you may even begin to suspect the whole thing is a lie from beginning to end. I would find that disagreeable, so I think I shall now tell you everything exactly as it happened. Boring though it may be, hear me out.

"As you know, I own fields in Songjiang. Every autumn I go there myself to collect the year's rent. Well, on my way back from Songjiang last autumn, when my boat came as far as the banks of Weitang, I saw a house with a wine banner hanging out, surrounded by willows and locust trees. From the painted-looking vermilion balustrades turning this way and that, it seemed to be quite a substantial establishment. Outside, where the balustrade continued, dozens of crimson hibiscus plants cast their shadows onto the river water. My throat was dry, so I immediately ordered the boatmen to moor at the house with the wine banner.

"When I went inside, just as I expected, the house was spacious and the old master of the place was no vulgar fellow. On top of that, the wine was bamboo-leaf green, and the dishes were perch and crab, so you can imagine my satisfaction. Truly, for the first time in a while, I forgot all the melancholy of travel and drank my cups in a mellow haze. Then suddenly I noticed someone peering out at me now and then from behind a curtain. But the instant I looked that way, whoever it was would vanish behind it at once. And whenever I looked away, the person would again fix a steady gaze on me. It seemed to me I caught glimmers between the folds of the curtain of a kingfisher-feather hairpin and golden earrings, though I could not be certain. Once, indeed, I thought I glimpsed there a face as lovely as carved jade. But when I turned around sharply, there was still nothing but the curtain itself hanging down in languid folds. After this had happened several times, drinking somehow began to feel oddly dull to me. So, tossing down a few coins, I returned once more to my boat.

"That night, however, dozing alone in the boat, I dreamed that I went again to the same house with the wine banner. When I had visited it by day I had not noticed, but the house had many gates, and after passing through them all, at the very back there stood a small embroidered chamber. Before it was a splendid grape arbor, and beneath the arbor a stone-lined pond perhaps ten feet across. I remember that when I came to the edge of the pond, I could distinctly count the goldfish in the moonlight. On either side of the pond grew two drooping thread cypresses. Against the wall there was a screen of dark green cypress, and beneath that rose an artificial hill of piled stones, as artful as nature itself. The grasses on the hill were all varieties of golden-thread embroidery plants, and so even in that season's chill they had not withered. Between the windows hung a carved flower cage in which a green parrot was kept. When the parrot saw me, it said, 'Good evening'—that too I have not forgotten. Hanging beneath the eaves was a pair of small wooden cranes suspended in the air, each holding a smoking stick of incense in its beak. Peering through the window, I saw in an antique bronze vase on the desk several peacock feathers standing upright. Beside them were writing implements of an indescribable neat elegance. And as if awaiting someone, there also hung a jade flute. On the wall were pasted four sheets of gilt paper with poems inscribed on them. The style seemed modeled on Su Dongpo's poems of the four seasons. The calligraphy was certainly in an imitation of Zhao Songxue. I remember every poem, but there is no need to recite them now. What I want you to hear about is the woman, beautiful as a jade immortal, who sat there alone in that moonlit room. Never have I felt so keenly the beauty of a woman as when I saw her."

"'A beauty graces the inner chamber, A heavenly being exiled down to earth,' eh?"

Smiling, Zhao Sheng quoted the opening couplet of the poem Wang Sheng had just shown him.

"Something like that."

Though he had said he wished to tell the tale, Wang Sheng answered only thus and then kept his mouth shut for a long time. At last, as though he could wait no longer, Zhao Sheng gently nudged his knee.

"And then what happened?"

"Then we talked together."

"And after talking?"

"She played the jade flute for me. I think the tune was 'Falling Plum Blossoms in the Wind'..."

"Was that all?"

"When that was done, we talked again."

"And then?"

"Then suddenly I awoke. And when I opened my eyes, there I was as before, asleep in the boat. Outside the cabin, as far as the eye could see, there was nothing but the boundless water of a moonlit night. If I tried to tell you how desolate I felt at that moment, not a single person under heaven could understand.

"Ever since then, my heart has thought constantly of that woman. And what is more, even after returning to Jinling, every night, if only I slept, that house would unfailingly appear again in my dreams. In fact, the night before last, when I gave the woman a crystal fan pendant in the shape of twin fish, she pulled off this ring of purple gold and green jade and gave it to me. Then when I awoke, the fan pendant had vanished, and in its place, by my pillow before I knew it, this ring had been left behind. If that is so, it is hard to believe that my meeting with her is nothing but a dream. Yet if it is not a dream, then what is it? At that point, I too am at a loss.

"Even if one supposes it is a dream, I have never seen the daughter of that house except in dreams. Indeed, I do not even know for certain whether such a daughter exists. But even if she does not truly exist in this world, I cannot imagine that the heart with which I think of her could ever change. As long as I live, I believe I shall go on longing for the girl I see in dreams, together with that pond, that grape arbor, and that green parrot. That is all there is to my story."

"Certainly not a commonplace love affair of a gifted scholar."

Half pitying, Zhao Sheng raised his eyes to Wang Sheng's face.

"Then since that time, you have never once gone to that house?"

"No. Not once. But in about ten days I am to go down to Songjiang again. When I pass through Weitang then, I mean without fail to bring the boat once more to that house with the wine banner."

And in fact, about ten days later, Wang Sheng duly fitted out a boat and went downstream to Songjiang as before. And when he returned, Zhao Sheng and their many friends were astonished by the beauty of the young girl who came up from the boat with him. As it happened, this girl had truly kept a green parrot by the window of her room, and since the previous autumn she too had constantly dreamed of Wang Sheng, whose figure she had secretly peeped at from behind the curtain.

"There are strange things in this world, after all. Why, on their side as well, it seems that somehow the crystal twin-fish fan pendant was found lying by her pillow..."

Zhao Sheng told Wang Sheng's story to everyone he met. At last it reached the ears of the man of letters Qu You of Qiantang. Qu You at once took the story and wrote from it the beautiful Record of a Strange Encounter at Weitang....

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Novelist Well? How is that for a piece?

Editor The romantic side of it is good enough. In any case, I'll take this short piece.

Novelist Wait. There's still a little left. Let me see... Qu You wrote the beautiful Record of a Strange Encounter at Weitang. That's where we are.

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But neither Qu You of Qiantang nor friends such as Zhao Sheng knew of the following exchange that Wang Sheng and the girl had when the boat carrying the newly married couple left the wine house at Weitang.

"At last the play ended without a hitch. I don't know how many times I broke into a cold sweat telling your father that absurd novel-like lie that I dreamed of you every night."

"I was worried too. Did you tell lies to your friends in Jinling as well?"

"Yes, I lied to them too. At first I said nothing. But one of my friends happened to spot this ring, so I had no choice but to tell them the dream story I was supposed to tell your father."

"Then no one else knows the truth. No one knows that last autumn you secretly came into my room..."

"I do. I do."

At the voice, both of them turned their startled eyes in the same direction. Then at once they burst out laughing. In the carved flower cage hanging from the mast, the green parrot looked down shrewdly at Wang Sheng and the girl....

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Editor That's superfluous. Doesn't it spoil the reader's pleasure after all that trouble? If this piece is going in the magazine, you absolutely must cut only that last section.

Novelist That still isn't the end. There's a little more after it, so please bear with me and listen.

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But neither Qu You of Qiantang nor the blissfully happy Wang Sheng and his wife knew of the following exchange between the girl's father and mother when the boat left Weitang. Both husband and wife, wiping at their eyes, stood beneath the willows and locust trees by the water's edge and watched the boat depart.

"Old woman."

"Old man."

"Well, well, the play has ended safely enough, and nothing could be more auspicious than this."

"It truly is the happiest thing one could hope for. Only listening to our daughter and son-in-law tell those painful lies was such a strain on me. You told me to keep silent as though I knew nothing, old man, so I did my best to keep up appearances. But now, really, without going to the trouble of such lies, couldn't they simply have been together from the start...?"

"Come now, don't scold them so much. Daughter and son-in-law were embarrassed and racked their brains to invent that lie. And from the son-in-law's point of view, unless he said something like that, he may have thought we would never easily give him our only daughter. Old woman, whatever is the matter with you? At such a happy wedding, you mustn't go on crying like that."

"Old man, as though you weren't crying yourself..."

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Novelist Only five or six more pages and it's done. Since we're at it, let me read the rest as well.

Editor No, I've had quite enough of what comes after. Let me have that manuscript a moment. If I leave you to yourself, the piece seems likely to go on getting worse and worse. Even up to now, I think it would have been far better to cut it off earlier. At any rate, I'm taking this short piece, so please consider it settled.

Novelist But you can't cut it there...

Editor Good heavens, if you don't hurry, you'll miss the five o'clock express. Never mind the manuscript now and call for a motorcar at once.

Novelist Is that so? Then this is serious. Well then, goodbye. I leave it in your hands.

Editor Goodbye. Safe journey.

(March, 1921)