‘I don’t care,’ said Duckling.
‘In that case,’ said Young Lillie, ‘I will pick for you. Do you think that Jinzhen would be all right?’
‘Fine,’ replied Duckling.
‘In that case I’ll be called Jinzhen.’
‘I hope that you live up to your name in future,’ said Young Lillie.
‘Fine,’ Duckling replied, ‘I will try and live up to my name.’
‘That means I hope that in the future you will shine like gold,’ said Young Lillie.
‘Fine,’ Duckling replied, ‘I will try to shine like gold.’ After a moment, Young Lillie asked another question: ‘Do you like your name?’
‘Yes,’ said Duckling.
‘I would like to change one of the characters in your name,’ said Young Lillie. ‘Would that be okay by you?’
‘Okay,’ said Duckling.
‘I haven’t even told you which character I want to change,’ said Young Lillie, ‘so why do you just agree?’
‘Which character?’ Duckling asked.
‘I want to change the character zhen meaning “sincerity” to the zhen that means “pearl”,’ said Young Lillie. ‘Is that okay with you?’
‘Okay,’ replied Duckling. ‘The zhen that means pearl.’
‘Do you know why I have changed that character in your name?’ Young Lillie asked.
‘No,’ said Duckling.
‘Would you like to know?’
‘Well. . I don’t know. . ’
To tell the truth, the reason that Young Lillie wanted to change the character in his name was purely out of superstition. In Tongzhen, just like the rest of the Jiangnan region, there was a popular saying: ‘Even the devil is scared of a feminine man.’ That means that when a man has some feminine quality, he has both yin and yang in his nature and the two complement each other. Strength is complemented by pliability. They thought that this was the way to produce the very best kind of man — a truly outstanding individual. It was because of this that local customs developed a million ways to balance yin and yang, including the names that they gave to their sons. A father who hoped for great things from his son would often deliberately pick a girl’s name for him, in the hope that this would guarantee him a sterling future. Young Lillie wanted to tell Duckling this, but then he decided that it would not be quite appropriate. After hesitating a bit, he realized it would be best if he kept his reasoning to himself. So in the end he just said: ‘Right, that’s decided then. You are going to be called Jinzhen, the zhen that means “pearl”.’
By that time, the skyline of C City was just emerging on the horizon.
Once they had arrived at the docks, Young Lillie called for a rickshaw, but he did not go home. Instead he went straight to a very well-respected primary school near the West Gate, to find the headmaster. The headmaster was a man named Cheng. This man had once been a pupil at the high school associated with N University, and when Young Lillie was a student — and later as a junior instructor at the university — he would often teach classes at the high school. Cheng had a remarkably lively character and was much admired by his fellow students; he had made a deep impression on Young Lillie. When he finished high school, his grades were such that he could easily have gone on to university, but by that time he had been bewitched by the uniforms of the National Revolutionary Army. When he came to say goodbye to Young Lillie, he was already shouldering a gun. In the depths of winter two years later, Cheng came back to see Young Lillie again. He was still wearing the uniform of the National Revolutionary Army, but this time he did not carry a gun. Looking more closely, Young Lillie realized that it was not only the rifle that was missing, the arm that was needed to hold it was also gone, leaving an empty sleeve. As Cheng manoeuvred himself awkwardly into place, Young Lillie felt more than a little uncomfortable. He gingerly took hold of his remaining hand — the left one — and realized that it was just as strong as normal. He asked whether he could write with that hand and Cheng said that he could. Young Lillie then provided him with a letter of introduction to a newly established primary school near the West Gate, where he could train as a teacher. This gave the wretched man a new lease of life. Because of his handicap, when he first became a teacher, everyone called him One-Arm. Now that he was the headmaster, people still called him One-Arm, because he had single-handedly made the school was it was.
A couple of months earlier, Young Lillie and his wife had hidden out at the school when the battle raging around the city was at its height — they had lived in the shed attached to the carpentry workshop. Today, the moment that Young Lillie clapped eyes on One-Arm, he said, ‘Is the shed where I used to live still empty?’
‘It is,’ replied One-Arm. ‘There are just a couple of basketballs and footballs in there.’
‘I’d like it if this young man could stay there,’ said Young Lillie. He pointed to Duckling.
‘Who is he?’ asked One-Arm.
‘Jinzhen, your new student,’ said Young Lillie.
From that day onwards, no one called him Duckling any more; everyone called him Jinzhen.
‘Jinzhen!’
‘Jinzhen!’
This new name marked the beginning of Duckling’s life in the city and everything that happened to him after that; it was also the end of his connection with Tongzhen.
As for what happened over the course of the next couple of years, the most reliable witness is Young Lillie’s oldest daughter, Rong Yinyi.
5
Everyone at N University called Miss Rong the Master; Master Rong, but I do not know whether this was the result of their fond memories of her father, or out of respect for her unusual position. She never married, but that is not because she never fell in love. Rather, it is because she fell in love too deeply, too painfully. The story goes that when she was young she had a boyfriend, a brilliant student from the physics department of N University, specializing in wireless technology. Supposedly he could make a triple waveband radio for you from scratch in the space of a couple of hours. Once the War of Resistance broke out, given that N University was a hotbed of patriotism in C City, it is hardly surprising that every month there were students abandoning their studies to join the army, rushing headlong for the front line. One of the students who left was Master Rong’s boyfriend. For the first couple of years after he joined the army, he and Master Rong were able to keep in touch, but later on they gradually lost contact. The last letter she ever received from him was sent from the city of Changsha in Hunan province in the spring of 1941. It explained that he was now engaged in top-secret research work for the military and that he would temporarily have to break off contact with his family and friends. He wrote over and over again about how much he loved her and how he hoped that she would wait for him. The last line was the most moving: ‘Darling, wait for me to come back to you. The day that the Japanese are defeated will be our wedding day!’ Master Rong waited until the Japanese were defeated and then she waited until the Liberation, but still he did not come back — there wasn’t even word that he had died. She heard nothing until 1953 when someone returned from Hong Kong bringing a message for her, saying that he had gone to Taiwan many years earlier and was now married with children. He told her to find someone else.