The tailor chortled and said, ‘You want me to get started? On whom? Shall I help you undress?’
Wenqin raised one finger and tapped herself on the forehead. ‘Tricked me again! Every time I come here I’m swept up in your chatter. You flirt away without my even noticing.’
Wenqin lured the madwoman behind a printed curtain, into what passed for the tailor’s bedroom. There was a wooden-framed single bed and a portrait of the heroine from Azalea Mountain1 was pasted on the wall over its head; her eyes stared fiercely, while the position of her hands suggested cool calculation. Underneath the bed was a spittoon that hadn’t been emptied in several days and emitted a sour, noxious odour. Wenqin had changed in there before and immediately took care to pull the curtain shut behind her before fastening both ends with iron clips. Despite her precautions, the madwoman was far from reassured and cried out in alarm, ‘What kind of place is this? I want to go out. I don’t want to change here.’
‘You’re driving me mad,’ Wenqin replied. ‘You’re not the MC for the cultural ensemble any more. There aren’t any dressing rooms: the women who come to the tailor’s all change here. There’s a curtain. What are you afraid of? Do you think Mr Li’s some kind of pervert?’
On the other side of the curtain, Mr Li was indeed behaving well. First he went to pour himself some tea and glugged the aromatic liquid down, then he hummed something from a revolutionary opera: ‘Rosy aurora-aha, mirrored in Yangcheng Lake’s waters-a-ah-a.’2 In his bedroom, all was not so harmonious. The madwoman refused to strip and Wenqin was too impatient. After much twisting and turning the struggle died down, and all the tailor heard was the light swishing of cloth against cloth and the sound of rubbing hands. After a moment, Wenqin lifted up the curtain and walked out of the bedroom clad in the white velvet cheongsam. She stretched both hands out to the tailor, then made a half turn. She modelled the clothing in a bashful yet confident manner, as if to ask, ‘How does it suit me?’
The tailor called out, ‘Ooh-la-la!’ and clapping his hands as he advanced on her, he grabbed her by the waist and said, ‘It looks great. Even better than it did on her.’
As the tailor took Wenqin’s measurements, he forgot the madwoman even existed, and after some overzealous measuring, Wenqin suddenly gave him a resounding slap, saying, ‘Nasty hunchback! I’m in a good mood today so I’ve been letting you get away with it, but you’d better keep your mind on this cheongsam. If you do a bad job, don’t think I’ll let it go lightly.’
‘If I were going to make a mess of it, I wouldn’t have taken the job,’ he assured her. ‘Even if I were ten times braver, I wouldn’t dare put anything less into it than you deserve.’
The two of them suddenly became aware that the madwoman had begun to pace restlessly behind the curtain. ‘What time is it?’ she muttered. ‘The time? Oh, no — it’s totally dark outside already. Susu must have left school a long time ago.’ The curtain suddenly bulged — the madwoman had thrust her face against it and was saying, ‘It’s dark outside. Why don’t you let me go home? Give me my cheongsam back and let me go home!’
Wenqin assured her, ‘It’s all right, all right. There’s nothing wrong. What are you screaming about? Are you scared of the dark? There’s no light on in there, so it is a little dark. If you’re afraid, I’ll get Mr Li to turn on the light for you.’
For some reason the tailor smirked as he went to turn it on. As soon as he lit it, the silhouette of the madwoman was clearly visible through the curtain. The sudden appearance of the shadow frightened the madwoman and she shouted, ‘Oh!’ The shadow giving a little jump.
Wenqin saw immediately that the light wasn’t helping and rushed to turn it off. Then she turned back to rebuke the tailor. ‘I should have known. No sense in trying to stop a dog from eating shit, is there, you wretch?’
‘What are you swearing at me for?’ demanded the tailor. ‘You told me to turn on the light yourself.’
Wenqin was confused for a moment. She went to the curtain again, intending to lift it back, but then she retracted her hand and said to the tailor, ‘Measure my shoulders. my shoulders! Hurry up and measure them.’
‘I’m trying to but you keep squirming around, you’re not making it easy for me.’
Wenqin took a sidelong glance at the curtain and lowered her voice. ‘Don’t frighten her. Can’t you tell she’s not right in the head?’
The tailor looked a little ashamed and said, ‘I noticed, yes. Too bad.’ Still shamefaced, he began to work faster. Then he sighed deeply. He took the tape measure and slid it around her. ‘Here, at the waist — I haven’t really got it right yet. The waist is the hardest part of a cheongsam so don’t blame me if it’s wrong. ’
‘If it’s not right I’ll only pay you half your fee.’
The tailor didn’t respond to that but stood sideways on to her and measured every detail of the way Wenqin’s body corresponded to the cheongsam’s measurements. Identifying a problem, he suddenly took hold of something; it was one of the frog fastenings of the cheongsam.
‘I almost forgot — I’m going to have to take off one of these lute frogs. They’re really hard to make. If I don’t have one for the pattern, I can’t make them from scratch.’
This immediately made Wenqin anxious, and she rolled her eyes, warning him to bear in mind that the madwoman was behind the curtain. Then she lowered her voice to confer with him. ‘You can draw, can’t you? You can draw it now and make it from that.’
‘What a great idea!’ the tailor responded. ‘And then I’ll draw an aeroplane and make that too, shall I?’
This retort struck Wenqin dumb momentarily and she twisted her hands and said, ‘Then what are we going to do? I couldn’t bear to take one off. If she was normal, we could discuss it with her. But her mind’s gone and, besides, she’s petty; she’d never agree to it. What if you didn’t make lute frogs but some other nice ones instead?’ Before the tailor could even answer yes or no, Wenqin shook her head. ‘No, no. I really love these frogs. If I’m going to go to all this trouble to make a cheongsam, I can’t have just any fastenings.’
‘Well then, what should we do about telling her? Shoot first, ask questions later? Tell her after we’ve already gone through with it?’
Wenqin looked at the printed curtain, then at the tailor, gritted her teeth and said, ‘Take it off. In any case, we’ll sew it back on when we’re finished.’
The tailor picked up the razor blade near him and was about to cut the frog off when he hesitated and said quietly, ‘I don’t know. I’m a bit nervous about this. I mean, not only is her mind gone, this cheongsam is her life. If we take off a frog, don’t you think she might make a scene?’
Wenqin put one hand to her mouth. ‘My heart’s beating like mad,’ she said. ‘A beautiful thing like that. obviously it’s hers, but we’ll never get anywhere by asking her.’
The tailor blinked. He thought it over for a moment, then he found a safety pin and gave it to Wenqin, saying, ‘I’ll take the frog from the collar, it’ll be less noticeable. In a second you’ll have to fasten it for her with the safety pin. If we just keep talking, maybe we can get away with it.’
Wenqin was staring directly at the lute frog, her expression wavering between fear and resolve. I want this frog. I must have it, she thought, and in the end she said, ‘It’s not as if it’s important. I’m just borrowing it for a few days. Whether she notices or not, we’ll have to do it. Take it off.’
As evening approached, Wenqin and the madwoman were seen walking down The East is Red Street. The two women attracted attention in different ways. Naturally people noticed the white velvet cheongsam the madwoman was dressed in, and the sharper-eyed among them soon observed what was different about the madwoman’s collar. The safety pin totally ruined the elegant effect and made people burst out laughing. But because they knew all about the state of her mind, the bizarre appearance of a safety pin seemed perfectly reasonable and no one gave too much thought to the question of what had happened to the frog. The impression the madwoman had always given was that she loved to show off her elegant appearance, and now they assumed she had lost even her vanity. But no one really cared; let her wear whatever she felt like. Let her dress in a cheongsam if she wanted, and if she wanted to fasten it with a safety pin, then so be it.