* * *
On that autumn afternoon, the madwoman stood on the bridge waiting for her daughter Susu. She would leave school and come home only in the early-evening, at about five o’clock, but the madwoman was standing on the bridge by a little after two. Perhaps she had nowhere else to go; perhaps she had already lost any sense of time passing. Everyone knew that something had gone wrong with her mind last spring. I suppose what happened next was pure coincidence, but it’s often the case that if you wait for blossoms to open, you are rewarded with a bee sting. For Susu did not come, Cui Wenqin did.
Cui Wenqin came.
Forgive me for interpolating a few explanatory sentences at this point. Wenqin was the youngest doctor in the clinic on Mahogany Road, as well as one of the most famous women on the north side of town. She was extraordinarily beautiful, and she gave injections; it was therefore only natural that some people were given to unwholesome flights of fantasy about her. Apparently there were even a few who, although perfectly healthy, were so obsessed by her that they submitted themselves to injections just so they could be in her company. What they hoped to gain by this you can probably guess without my telling you.
Wenqin had in fact administered injections to the madwoman, but they had turned out to be ineffective for her illness, and were discontinued, so although the madwoman had no recollection of the doctor who had treated her, Wenqin remembered her clearly. The shocking sight of a beautiful woman in a state of mental collapse had touched her, and she kept pointing at her as if she were a painting, gasping in admiration. An intelligent woman openly admiring another woman’s appearance is unusual enough, but since the latter’s mind had gone, Wenqin’s gasps were genuinely heartfelt. Some people wondered if this admiration might simply be a form of pity, though the madwoman provoked no similar feeling in others. Instead, the women who took their children to the clinic for inoculations would try to curry favour with Wenqin by saying, ‘Look how pretty auntie is. Look how simple her clothes are. And it doesn’t hurt at all when she gives you your injections.’
But Wenqin liked to talk to people about the madwoman’s illness, appearance and clothes — especially when it came to her startling, beautiful clothes, Wenqin’s praise was unstinting. She would say, ‘There’s nothing she daren’t wear, and she looks good in it all. Have you seen her cheongsam? A white velvet cheongsam! Except for people in movies, I’ve never seen anyone look as good in a cheongsam as she does.’ A colleague, although disapproving, hit the nail on the head when he said, ‘You would look good in it, too. Too bad there’s nothing wrong with your head! Because even if you did have a cheongsam like that, you’d never dare put it on.’
Wenqin walked past the bridge and spotted the madwoman at a glance — or rather her white velvet cheongsam. You could tell that she approached the madwoman only in order to be closer to that cheongsam. And though she exclaimed, ‘Why ma’am, fancy meeting you here!’ in her voice, so filled with pleased surprise, there was a quite different greeting, ‘Why, white velvet cheongsam, fancy meeting you here!’ Anyone could see that Wenqin was madly in love with that cheongsam, and that it was a love that ran bone deep, though at the moment it burned white hot as well.
People had only ever seen her in the tailored-to-fit military uniform she always wore; never in a cheongsam. It wasn’t that she wouldn’t give cheongsams a chance, rather that cheongsams hadn’t given her one. She was Wenqin, after all; she wasn’t the madwoman, though at that moment who could have said which one of them loved the cheongsam more? Wenqin’s eyes betrayed her secret though; the way she gazed at that white velvet cheongsam was like a famished bee discovering a flower garden. She stopped in her tracks and began talking to the madwoman, although really she was talking to the cheongsam.
‘What soft material. And tailored so snugly. And aren’t the fastenings beautiful. Are these called lute frogs? How are they made, I wonder?’ At first, when Wenqin touched the white velvet, she did so reverently, with utmost care, so as not to damage it, but gradually the movement became more rapacious, almost abandoned, her hand stroking in circles about the madwoman’s waist. It was as if she were surveying something with a caliper, the result of which always remained unclear and had to be repeated constantly. When her hands slipped down to the madwoman’s buttocks, she realized she had gone too far and immediately slid them up to her back. But she was not yet sated and clutched once again at the madwoman’s shoulders.
‘How unbelievably well it fits!’ Wenqin exclaimed. ‘I’ll bet it was the one you used when you were MC in the performance troupe, wasn’t it? You couldn’t find another one like it in the whole world now. This kind of velvet — you can’t buy material like it any more, even in Shanghai.’
The madwoman gave her a charming smile, and at the same time inspected the cheongsam. Wenqin’s fulsome praise gratified her, though she was a little concerned there might be wrinkles where Wenqin had touched it. She arranged her fingers in the orchid position to act like an iron, and flattened out the tiny creases. Wenqin was a little insulted by this and remarked, ‘You really take care of this cheongsam, don’t you? It won’t hurt it just to touch it. Still, no wonder. You only have this one, don’t you? I saw you wear it in the summer, too.’
Stung, the madwoman replied, ‘Who says I have only one? I have six cheongsams: this white velvet one, then there’s the red velvet, two of silk — they’re patterned — and two that are cotton but look good anyway. So altogether I have six cheongsams, only my husband cut up the other five so this is the only one left.’
Wenqin was looking at her sideways, listening somewhat doubtfully. Abruptly, she interrupted the madwoman, asking, ‘Red velvet? Can you make cheongsams from red velvet?’
The madwoman replied, ‘Naturally. They all say my red velvet cheongsam is the one I look best in.’
Wenqin’s eyes lit up. ‘They do sell red velvet in the fabric shop. And I won’t even need coupons — the clinic bought some so we could make cloth flowers!’
Wenqin lingered on the bridge a moment longer. She had now stopped staring at the madwoman and her cheongsam, and instead she was looking around herself, deep in calculation. She clapped her hands, reaching a decision, and said, ‘I’ll go and buy it right now.’ With that, she turned round and walked off the bridge.
At first, the madwoman didn’t realize what Wenqin had gone to do; she was just waiting for Susu, but instead of her daughter, once again it was Wenqin who appeared. The madwoman watched her as she crossed the bridge with a bolt of red velvet clasped in her arms. As she approached, the madwoman asked, ‘What have you bought all that red velvet for?’
Wenqin grasped her by the arm and said, ‘Do me a favour. Come with me for a moment to the tailor’s. I need you to lend me your cheongsam so Mr Li can make a pattern from it.’ Strangely, whenever it was anything to do with clothing or make-up, the madwoman cottoned on right away. She stared at Wenqin, her eyes widening, and protested, ‘No, I’m not going. I don’t want him to make a pattern from my cheongsam.’
But Wenqin had clearly prepared for this. She caught the madwoman’s hand tighter in her grasp. ‘Don’t be so petty. I’m only borrowing it to make a pattern. It’s not as if anything bad will happen to it. Besides, yours is white velvet, mine is red — they’re different, don’t you see?’
But the madwoman kept trying to free her hand, and said, ‘I don’t have time to go with you to the tailor’s. I have to wait here for Susu; Susu’s about to leave school.’