Ma boles second life, p.1
Ma Bo'le's Second Life, page 1
Ma
Bo’le’s
Second
Life
Also by Xiao Hong in English Translation
The Dyer’s Daughter: Selected Stories
The Field of Life and Death
Market Street: A Chinese Woman in Harbin
Memories of Mr. Lu Xun
Tales of Hulan River
Xiao
Hong
Ma
Bo’le’s
Second
Life
Translated from
the Chinese, Edited,
and Completed by
Howard Goldblatt
Copyright © 2018 by Howard Goldblatt
First edition, 2018
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data: Available.
ISBN-13: 978-1-940953-81-6
The translator has completed the original unfinished work and has placed it in a contemporary context. A full explanation is given in the translator’s afterward.
This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature
Design by N. J. Furl
Open Letter is the University of Rochester’s nonprofit, literary translation press:
Dewey Hall 1-219, Box 278968, Rochester, NY 14627
www.openletterbooks.org
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Author/Translator/Author
Ma
Bo’le’s
Second
Life
December 1984.
Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government has just signed a joint declaration to return the British Colony of Hong Kong to China in 1997, when the ninety-nine-year lease runs out. The news has captured the attention of the media and virtually all the colony’s residents. But not David Ma, a graying, somewhat dour English-language storyteller for Hong Kong Radio. He has only one thing on his mind and he is livid.
Ma Bo’le was a coward even before the war.
“My father was no coward, not before, during, or after the war! I should know. Eccentric, sure, but a coward? Never!”
He cannot read beyond the first line on the sheet of paper he is holding before throwing it down on the table and looking unhappily at the woman sitting across from him.
She does not respond right away, just gazes at him, as if waiting for an ill-behaving child to get over a tantrum. She is local, of clear Cantonese stock—petite, with a small face ending in a pointed chin, hair cut short to exude efficiency. She wears an expectant smile. It does not win him over, but she will wait patiently, as she did moments before, when she explained what she was there for …
… at the Hong Kong Historical Society we have come into possession of a handwritten manuscript from around the time of the Japanese invasion of Hong Kong, one that we think will interest you. It was discovered in an overlooked first-floor closet in a building on Lock Road in Tsim Sha Tsui that once served as the offices of a Chinese-language literary magazine. It shut down not long after the December 1941 attack. The manuscript was in poor shape, given all those years of heat and humidity, with mildew, mice, and insects making parts of it unreadable. Some pages were missing. Unfortunately, that included the first page, so we don’t know its title or who wrote it. Interestingly, the writing and, to some degree, the tone, change after chapter fourteen, which implies that, for whatever reason, there were two authors, but I suspect we’ll never know either of them. We are, however, confident that the manuscript dates from the early 1940s, and that it was likely being considered for publication in the magazine. The main character’s name is given in the first line, as you can see …
“Tell me, do you really expect me to dignify that insulting rubbish with a comment?”
While he is justifiably indignant over seeing Ma Bo’le reviled in print, hazy images of his father before, during, and after the war have already begun slipping into the crevasses of his mind, awakening memories that had long lain dormant. His guest notices what appear to be expressions of conflicting emotions on his face as he gazes into the middle distance.
“Please don’t be angry,” she says, “because this is where it gets interesting. Believe it or not, we think that the anonymous author was someone in possession of a wealth of information about your family, and wrote what appears to be a novel about you all, especially your father, beginning up north before the war, and ending here in Hong Kong a number of years later.”
“My family, you say?” Ma’s incredulity is palpable. “You must be joking. Who could possibly have written something like that? And did you say it’s a novel, one that was written almost three decades ago?”
“That’s right, and you, Mr. David Ma, are one of the characters in it, along with your mother, a younger brother named Joseph, and a sister called, interestingly, Jacob. Does that sound like your family? They are from Qingdao and came to Hong Kong via Shanghai, Hankou, Wuchang, and Chongqing. One of my colleagues recalled an interview you gave on local TV some time ago, and the story in this manuscript seemed familiar to her, familiar enough for me to come talk to you about it.”
“My God, this is beyond belief. So that’s what this is?” he says and points to the stack of paper she has placed in front of him.
“Yes. We asked one of our editors to work on it, and she has produced a readable version. That is what you see before you, Mr. Ma.”
Though Ma’s office is far from soundproof, and radio station activity produces an undercurrent of sound—noise, even—just beyond the door, he is oblivious to what is occurring around him as he tries to process the information he has just received and sort out his emotions.
“I see doubt in your eyes, but I would be surprised if you weren’t curious about what is written in those pages. So, what do you say, may I leave it with you, in hopes that you will read it and, when you’ve finished, share your impressions with us? We would like to make it widely available in book form.”
“Why in the world would you want to do that?”
“For several reasons. It was, after all, written and would have been published here in Hong Kong, which is of considerable interest to us at the Society. Many people in China saw the colony as a safe haven in the years before the war, and Hong Kong residents are justifiably proud of the city’s role as a sanctuary of sorts from time to time. Your family’s varied involvement with the city is part of that. But what’s more, family sagas are wonderfully illustrative of how historical memory is created, and this one, partly because it is a novel, is a captivating read.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“Then say yes.”
“All right, once I come to grips with the whole idea, I’ll read it, and we’ll talk again.”
“On behalf of the Society, I thank you.”
• • •
After shaking hands with the bemused Mr. Ma, the representative, Ms. Lam, leaves his office and takes the subway back to Society headquarters to report on her success.
David Ma still has trouble believing what he has just learned. After telling stories about ancient and modern life to a listening audience of Hong Kong residents, he has suddenly found himself a character in a novel and confronted with a story that is compellingly personal. Curiosity and trepidation pull him in opposite directions as he contemplates not only the awkwardness of reading about his own family, his father, in particular, but also the distinct possibility that his story could one day be made available to strangers, people who will be free to pass unflattering judgment. With a nervous look at the two-inch-thick pile of paper on the table, he gets up, goes into the bathroom to splash some water on his face, and, once he has regained his composure, sits down to read for the second time the line that started it all …
THIS IS A WORK OF FICTION, NOT THE TRUE ACCOUNT OF A REAL FAMILY.
Chapter One
Ma Bo’le was a coward even before the war.
Though not a brave man, he always had his wits about him. If he did not like how things were going, he fled, whether he had a destination in mind or not. He ran like a man one step ahead of a raging torrent. His catchphrase? Always look for the nearest exit.
It was escape that took him to Shanghai one year. He had told his father he wanted to enroll as a student at a Shanghai university, and since his request was met with silence, he made a second plea the following day. This time his father fumed, snatched his glasses off his face, and glared at his son.
That was a bad sign. Ma Bo’le could sense his wife’s hand in it. But that was to be expected, since he was seeing another woman at the time, something that had already led to more than one argument. She had obviously gone bellyaching to his father, had probably told him he planned to go to Shanghai to be with that other woman. There was bound to be trouble if he stuck around. So he waited until his wife was off visiting her parents for a couple of days to ask once more for permission to study in Shanghai. This brought the iss
That night Ma Bo’le packed, convinced that the moment of escape was at hand. He crammed everything he could—more than a dozen toothbrushes, toothpowder, the works—into his wife’s pigskin suitcase. Might as well take them all, he figured. He’d be a fool not to. If he passed them up now, he would not have another chance later. He also found and packed some hand towels and soap—Lux Soap, the best on the market. He’d have to wash his face wherever he went, and he couldn’t do that without soap.
He then turned his attention to a stack of his wife’s embroidered hankies, more than a dozen in all: muslin, cotton, satin, some of such high quality she could not bring herself to use them. The thought of taking these along could give him a lift. He laughed merrily, realizing the special use to which he could put them. Wouldn’t it be rich if he gave them to … her? (The “her,” of course, was his former paramour.)
Ma Bo’le was delighted. He closed up one suitcase and moved on to the next, stuffing his entire collection of neckties—twenty or more, old and new—into it. Then there were twenty-odd pairs of socks, some brand new, others so old and threadbare they were no longer wearable, and still others that had not been washed since their last wearing. This was no time to be fussy, so into the suitcase they all went.
But not everything found its way into the suitcases, and by the time he’d finished, the floor was so littered with rejects that the room looked like a junk heap. His wife’s talcum powder covered the bed, white everywhere, and the floor was a repository for worn-out shoes, socks with gaping holes, plus a motley assortment of children’s things. But what did he care—he wasn’t coming back.
For reasons only he could fathom, Ma Bo’le hated pretty much everything about his opulent surroundings. His home life was lackluster, dreary, and irremediably dull. It was debilitating. Any young man experiencing it over a long period of time would waste away, vegetate, stagnate under a layer of moss. It was the sort of home that screws up a young man’s head.
One glance at Ma Bo’le’s father, Old Mr. Ma, and you know how bad things were: After rising each morning, the head of the household fell to his knees, eyeglasses in hand, and prayed to the Christian God for the better part of an hour. Sometimes he covered his face with his hands and remained immobile as a statue. Then, his prayers completed, he put on his glasses and retired to the parlor to sit at an old Chinese-style ironwood table and read the gilt-edged Bible given to him by a foreign missionary. Since this particular Bible was a prized work of art, he permitted no one to touch, let alone read, it, not even his wife. Just ask Ma Bo’le, who opened it for himself one afternoon, when he thought his father would not notice, and never forgot how that turned out. The old man revered his Bible more than he did the Ma family genealogy. In fact, ever since Mr. Ma’s conversion to Christianity, the genealogy had been stored away, seeing the light of day only over the New Year’s holiday, when it was casually displayed for anyone who cared to look at it. This in contrast to the family Bible, which, in all its forbidding sanctity, was in full view the year round.
In earlier days, Ma Bo’le’s father was the quintessential Chinese Mandarin, with his long, bronze-colored and somberly patterned Mandarin gown, formal, high-soled footwear, and fingernails a half inch in length. But then, thanks to the ministrations of a Canadian missionary who was highly regarded by members of Chiang Kai-shek’s Christian government, he’d converted to the foreign religion, a change that was marked as well by a fondness for the popular alien tongue. When his foreign friends from church dropped by, he called his servants “Boy” and had them serve his guests the fashionable drink: “Beer!”
When the beer was poured, leaving foamy heads in the glasses, he turned to his guests and said: “Bottoms-up!”
Mr. Ma’s credo was: Western things are better than Chinese things. Western children are plumper, Western women are more accomplished, Western drinking glasses are more durable, and Western textiles are unmatched anywhere.
Owing to his exaggerated admiration for Westerners, he regularly lectured his sons on the glories of studying English and dressing in Western clothes. He must have been pleased with the results, for even his grandchildren got the message. Like children in the foreign community, they went around in short pants and suspenders, and greeted each other with: “Goo-da mah-ning.”
Later in the day they switched to: “Goo-da day!”
“Hello, how do you do?” was how they greeted foreigners.
Dawei, the eldest grandson, was an anemic boy with small, almond-shaped eyes. His younger brother, Yuese, had a moon face like his mother’s, the only difference being the stream of snot that often decorated his upper lip. Yage, the youngest, was nearly perfect, the apple of her parents’ eye. A darling child with dark, fetching eyes and chubby arms, she hardly ever cried, and though she was only three years old, she looked nearly as old as Yuese, who was five. Their English names, chosen by their grandfather in honor of his favorite Biblical characters—David, Joseph, and Jacob—were how he insisted they be known.
But foreign ways were not all the old man taught his grandchildren. He also instructed them in Bible-reading. From time to time he would call them together, line them up at the table, and solemnly intone a passage from the Good Book. Given their juvenile understanding of things, these passages seemed to include little more than “Our Lord Jesus said,” “Our Father tells us not to do this or that,” “David rent his garments,” “A shepherd in Bethlehem,” “Pharisees as hypocrites,” and so on.
These sleep-inducing sessions invariably led to confusion, with passages intermixed with Bible stories they’d heard in Sunday school. Standing there picking their noses or biting their nails as time dragged on, they stared blankly ahead and began to doze off. Long after their Grandfather had sent them outdoors, they were quietly rubbing their eyes and yawning instead of playing with other children.
Then there was Ma Bo’le’s wife, whose mind, he believed, was never visited by a single thought. She had not picked up a book or written an entry in her diary since the birth of their first child. Day in and day out she made a show of burying her nose in the Bible, but without actually reading it. She may not have believed in Jesus, but with the family property hanging in the balance, it was a good idea to appear to believe. Father had made it clear that his estate would go only to devout followers of the Lord Jesus.
No one was allowed to buy anything on the Sabbath, not fruit and not vegetables. This restriction hit the children hardest in the hot summer months, when watermelon peddlers hawked their goods at the gate. It was necessary for their mother to plan ahead, buying and putting aside anything they hoped to eat on the Sabbath. Often the only way to keep them from misbehaving was to sneak out and buy them something to eat, and woe be it to her if the old fellow got wind of it. Naturally, he would say nothing at the time, since it was the Sabbath. But the next day he would call her out, stand her in front of the table, and read to the poor soul from his gilt-edged Bible.
Once, as Ma Bo’le’s father was leaving church with his eight-year-old grandson Joseph in tow, the boy spotted a man in Western attire just beyond the church gate. Assuming he was a foreigner, he turned and greeted him: “Hello, how do you do?”
The man patted him on the head and said in Chinese: “For a little fellow you do well with English.”
Upset by the discovery that the man was actually Chinese, he tugged on his grandfather’s sleeve. “Grandpa,” he said, “that Chinese man doesn’t even know how to speak English!”
Ma Bo’le, who had gone to church with them, was disgusted. But, to be fair, he too held his fellow Chinese in contempt, often commenting on them with an expression he’d once heard a foreigner use when nearly run down by a rickshaw:
“Bloody Chinese!”
The way the Chinese crowded and jostled one another on public buses was a case in point. He pushed and shoved with the best of them, but only until someone knocked his hat off.
“Bloody Chinese,” he’d complain, “must you push?”
If someone bumped into him while he was out walking and neglected to say, “Pardon me,” he’d glare at the thoughtless pedestrian and curse:
