In this week’s Translation Tuesday, novelist Jin Yucheng captures memories of Suzhou in this haunting excerpt from “A Cold Season.” Jin’s Proustian narrator evokes scenes which portend his sense of misplacement: buildings are ragged shades of decay; pedestrians roam silently like spirits; a young man appears pallid and skeletal as he laments his lost love, whose beauty is described as “bleak.” The only breaks in the town’s somber quiet are the omnipresent folksongs which seem to follow the narrator. Jin is a virtuoso of temporality and consciousness; here he slows down and speeds up the narrative via exquisite sensory detail. “Back then,” the narrator begins, though the recalled images of gloom are obfuscated by time and the town’s cold rain.
Back then, I could still sit by the bank all day, watching boats, looking at the town’s bridges. There were shops on both banks, the narrow streets boarded on top with awnings to protect them from the rain and sun. During the rainy season the buildings were ragged and gloomy, the color of mildew and decay. Pedestrians passed each other in a breathless, soundless silence, as intangible as spirits. It was a mournful scene. If you pushed open the window casements, inlaid with shell, you could hear the plaintive sound of girls singing folktales alongside the pluck of silken strings, filling the town with their poetry. Only in the pitch dark nights, by the lights from between the green plastered walls, could you see the fishing lights far off on the lake.
Back then, I met a young man who worked at a hair salon. I went to sit at the store, reading the outdated newspapers brought up the waterway. The store was beleaguered, with only one revolving chair; out the window there was the river, and the post holding the shop up was sunk in the water. Sometimes, if a boat hit this post, the revolving chair and the mirror would sway, like bodies in a boat. He drew near the window and told the boat below, “Turn the rudder.” He had pallid skin, and was somewhat shy. He leaned against an engraved window (possibly taken from some old house), the casement inlaid with yellow-grey shell, forming a gloomy background. There was a lot of water-stained propaganda on the walls. The store was always damp. I only wanted to look for a quiet place in my old hometown, and certainly didn’t intend to talk to him much. He led me to an old room, this was where he slept, its four sides made up of fir partitions, very dim. He poured me tea, turned his white face toward me, and in the middle of our small talk, said he had no hope left in this life. I thought, he might just be talking from out of these surroundings. We were silent for a moment. He said, somewhat abruptly, that he had fallen in love with a married woman. He looked at me, with a face that seemed as though he was about to laugh, but his complexion was ghastly, and those skeletal white hands crawled up, he stroked his own face, his hands looked like a woman’s. I wanted to say something to comfort him, but found I had nothing to say. Next door I heard the high, shrill voice of a Suzhou folk singer, it was extremely depressing. It also seemed to be raining. From a rattan case he withdrew a large picture frame, the room was poorly lit, the only thing I could see clearly was the picture of him and the girl. He put the picture frame on my knee, and it was heavy and squashed my leg. All I could do was ask a few trivial questions, and I heard the girl worked at a shop selling southern goods. As I stayed in this room, I was aware I had become somewhat hypocritical and was acting a little disagreeable, and didn’t know what I said. He seemed aware it would be best to not talk too much longer, but despite that continued to talk about him and the woman. He said they had been caught together in this house.
We drifted apart not long after that.
I took turns around the town by myself. Later I found I often walked by that southern goods store, and stopped these amblings. Except for the morning rush hour, business in the town was very slow. I saw the young wife sitting at the old desk out front, bleakly pretty, the old radio set near her broadcasting those wailing Suzhou folk songs.
The nights were as cool as water, and I sat on a stone bridge over the town’s river. I heard someone on the bridge say, I might only be able to stay if I agree to find a woman here. If I agree, we can set a time, and go wait at the entrance to the silk shop. I’m not getting flustered, I haven’t agreed.
I’m worried, I’m not satisfied.
I think we are always going to be anachronisms.
The drizzle fell steadily, and in the night, the shallow bridge, the village houses, all faded in the distance, so I could see nothing clearly.
Hearing the sound of oars in the water, I remembered the young man from the hair salon had said, we should leave this small town, we won’t stay in this town for very long.
I’d found his words obscure and hard to understand.
Translated from the Chinese by Cleo Qian
Jin Yucheng is a Chinese novelist and literary editor. He was born in Shanghai in 1952. During the Cultural Revolution, he spent eight years on a farm in Northeast China. In 1977, he returned to Shanghai and worked in the West Shanghai Workers’ Culture Palace. Jin Yucheng started to publish works in 1985. His debut story, “The Lost River,” won a national essay contest. “The Wind Birds” won the Shanghai Literature Award. He then joined Shanghai Literature, the literary journal where he is still the the acting editor-in-chief. Blossoms, his first major novel published in 2013, sold almost one million copies and was a literary phenomenon of the decade, winning numerous literary awards including the Mao Dun Literary Award, the most prestigious prize in China. Rights have been sold to US (FSG), France (Gallimard), Spain (Navona), Italy (Guanda), and Japan (Hayakawa). Wong Kar-Wai is developing the novel into his next feature film.
Cleo Qian is a writer based in New York.
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