Categories
Excerpt from He Qifang's The Peddler
By Canaan Morse, published July 15, 11:12a.m.
He Qifang (1912-1977) was a poet, essayist and revolutionary of the Modern Period, one of the group of well-heeled but oppressed and intellectually voracious young people who, having at one point campaigned for democracy, threw their lot in with the Communist Party once the Nationalists proved themselves incompetent at solving the country's problems. He began as a poet and a creative nonfiction writer, and his first publication Record of Painted Dreams (hua meng lu) is composed of a series of brief but intense pieces of poetic prose, which in their manipulation of tense and image show a kind of sensitivity that is hard to find anywhere else in the literature of that period.
The more I listen to Wolfgang Kubin, the more his opinions unsettle me, but I agree with him in spirit on one point: the sixty years before 1949 produced an incredible amount of original, well-wrought and moving work. Most of it has fallen through and disappeared into the gap that opened up between the last generation of China students and this one, in part due to a lack of good quality translations, which damages its appeal as fashionable literature. He Qifang is an extreme example of a first-class writer who has been almost entirely forgotten.
Below is one of the shortest entries in the Record, entitled The Peddler. I'm gonna take it on faith that it's bad manners to copyright, though I do plan on publishing this later.
The handled drum in the peddler’s hand began to sound. A day in June, as the westward-tilting sun covers with light the white outer wall and the pagoda trees standing outside of it, their numberless layers of leaves deeply green. The metallic whine of the cicadas suddenly ceases, and a stillness follows—while no one knows how long this old estate has been around, it is still surprising to see travelers come this way. The outer door lies half-closed, as if pushed softly by the inattentive hand of someone going out. Yet here carrying his yellow wooden crate comes the peddler, over the grassy bank of the outlying field, turns in, passes an ancient ancestral tomb and, knowing without needing to look that this is the Liu family estate, begins rotating his lifted wrist, and the beng-beng-beng of his drum comes pulsing out.
Now he’s come to the front door, and let’s take this opportunity to get a good look at him: tall, with an oily brown, weathered face from which the curves of his skull along with a spotty white beard protrude, set beneath a broad-brimmed, sunbeaten straw hat. He is one of those rarely-met old men who have preserved both their toughness and good humor, which comes out in their bright, vigorous laughter.
He reaches out and pushes the door open. Alarmed at this lack of politeness? This is the outermost door, left unlocked during the day and only closed at night—and the peddler, who is not a rare guest in that house, knows all that perfectly well. Look at his calm, unhurried demeanor as he steps, the yellow wooden crate in his arms, through the door and into the main courtyard, paved with stones. Watch him as he walks forty or so paces across the courtyard and stops silently in front of the imposing double-doors with their rusted iron rings; the drum in his hand hoots once again.
The drum is his salutation, it says, “Dailies Lin is here.” Dailies Lin is his name. Nobody asks him where he lives, who lives with him, how old he is. People are simply too accustomed to his presence to ask these kinds of questions; when he passes by the peasants’ thatched cottages, they and their wives call him over to buy needles or a few feet of cloth. To the landlords’ houses he comes like a migrating bird (though more than once a year), seemingly to decorate their silent estates. But today, no sign of movement comes from behind the door. He sets down his drum, lays his hat down on the stone doorstep to use as a pad to sit on and lowers his head. What is he thinking about, this old man still living off his own his own labor? He couldn’t be thinking of taking a nap, could he, here in the westward-slanting sunlight?
A sharp creak as the door opens, and an old female servant steps out. “Dailies Lin? How long have you been out here?”
“Just a couple of minutes.” “Why didn’t you say something? If I hadn’t come out to trim the vegetables…” “I just sat down to rest for a minute. I figured somebody’d come out sometime during the afternoon.” “Well, the master does usually come out for a walk right around this time.” “Just not today?” “Well, he’s been ill.” “In that case, may I burden you to tell the mistress I’m here.”
The master of this house has fallen ill. Is the peddler surprised by this? In fact, he does appear to be slightly at a loss. Just think, such a genial old man, blessed with the fortune of having wealth and living a peaceful life, merely lacking some minor element of constitution, just as this old estate merely lacked the warmth of human occupation and activity. He was just like the squire in the fairy tale, who had to wait until old age before he had a son. His daughters had all long ago been married away, and even the son, who had been pampered during his time at home, had gone far, far away, leaving the house with only the two ancient parents and a handful of servants within. The servants were forbidden to speak in loud voices, and their steps were almost soundless as they moved through the rooms, along the corridors, over the stairs.
Dailies Lin knows all of this. Moreover, he remembers that the old landlord never made an issue of conversing with someone of his social station, and liked to sit and chat with Lin, talk about the year’s harvest, or about affairs in the city. As it was only on the rare chance that the landlord went into the city, Dailies Lin often did most of the talking when the subject arose, but that never seemed to irritate the old man either; sometimes, they even talked of his son. “I hear the young master’s quite the good student, that he’ll grow up to do big things.” “If this were years ago, perhaps…” A sigh. “Is he not going to come back to find a wife?” “…We get matchmakers over here with offers every now and then.” “A man like you, you must have a hard time choosing.” “No, it’s just that he won’t listen to me. We are not the masters of our children’s affairs anymore.”
The old female servant comes out once more, this time accompanied by a tan-colored mutt. The mutt knows Dailies Lin too, and trots over to sniff at the edges of his clothes, wag-wag his tail. “The mistress wants to ask if you’ve got anything new today?” “Ah, nothing worth looking at. If the mistress really needed something quality, she’d ‘a sent someone to the city to buy it.” But he opens the crate anyway. Likely, the servant’s already been told to pick out a few things as she thinks best. Even if he didn’t sell anything, Dailies Lin still had to come by; but mistresses of estates like these, even if they didn’t need anything, always had to pick out a little of what he had.
“The mistress said you’re to have dinner here.” “Thank her very much, but it’s still early. Tell her I asked after the master’s health.” “Well, where are you off to now?” “Doesn’t matter where I’m off to, I’ve still got to go.”
Our obdurate, lanky old friend once again raises his broad-brimmed straw hat to his head. The evening sun is dazzling. His crate already on his shoulder, he walks out the door, and is suddenly immersed in the realization of his age and the weight of his burden. Will he head now for a market and get something for dinner? Will he stop at a road house to rest? Will he toss and turn on a wooden mat bed, his mind full of thoughts he’s never had before? Already, he’s come down from the outer yard, turned, crossed through a rice paddy and come to the main road. Once again he raises the little drum in his hand, just as friends raise their hats high and wave from afar when they part from us, and beng-beng-beng it peals out once again.
Comments
Is the past tense of the first sentence deliberate?
Phil, July 16, 1:14p.m.
It is. I chose a past tense because it seems to me to transmit more fully the spontaneity of the first sentence, in which the drum announces the entire character of the peddler to the reader. Originally, the entire first paragraph was in past tense--in the case of the first line, so that it might be noticeable, in the case of the others, so that they might exude the feeling of timelessness I felt in the original. That being said, there are no obvious grammatical markers in the first paragraph indicating tense (but then, there rarely are in Chinese), and I've already made the switch to present tense within the rest of the paragraph, making the first sentence seem awkward. I'll leave that up, but thank you very much for pointing that out.
On another note, Dailies Lin's name is Lin Xiaohuo, literally Small Goods Lin. What do people think of the translation I use?
Canaan Morse, July 16, 3:13p.m.