TUNG NIEN

(1950–    )

The kind of abject poverty which inflicted so much suffering on Chung Liho’s characters in the fifties has not surfaced in Taiwan fiction in the seventies. This does not mean that Taiwan has become an “affluent society” equal to the United States or Western Europe. But in fairness it must be said that with industrialization the majority of the people have enjoyed a standard of living unparalleled in recent Chinese history. However, concomitant with material improvement are problems of alienation and social discontent, generating from awakened aspirations and frustrated desires. Such problems become all the more acute when the person in question is a country youth relocated in a cosmopolitan city like Taipei and hoping to find employment. Tung Niens “Fire” in this anthology is thus a realistic portrait of a good-natured young man from the countryside who vents his anger at an indifferent society by destruction and self-immolation.

Tung Nien (pen name of Ch’en Shun-hsien) has worked as a marine radio operator and has made good use of his experience in a number of stories. In 1978 he was invited to visit the United States for three months under the auspices of the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa. His stories are collected in The Rainy Little Town (Lo-yü ti hsiaochen, Taipei, 1977) and in Fire (Ta-huo, Taipei, 1979). He is at present an art editor at Lien-ching Press.

Fire

Translated by Nathan K. Mao and Winston Yang

As the ancient wall clocks struck three times in one home after another, the waning moon, slanting against the western sky, dropped behind a cluster of tall buildings. Without a speck of light, the sky was so somber that when blazing flames shot up from the roof of a dark building, the sight seemed exceptionally frightening. In any case, this was deep in the night, and residents in the neighborhood all seemed to be in peaceful and profound slumber.

Hsiao San’s¹ father was a carpenter who worked on a fixed salary at a factory. He made just enough to support his family of five. Hsiao San’s mother wanted to supplement the family income by taking a job, or at least by working part time, but her health was simply too poor. For his three children’s tuition, Hsiao San s father often had to work overtime at night or moonlight in the neighborhood. Regardless of how hard the father worked, the family always lived from hand to mouth and was strapped for funds. And the family’s debts were gradually mounting.

Hsiao San’s eldest brother finally graduated from college and completed his military obligations. A few days after leaving the army, the Investigation Bureau of the Ministry of Justice notified him to report for work as he had passed his job-qualifying examination.

On a hot, summer afternoon, he returned from Taipei, and he was perspiring heavily. His father said kindly to him, “Eldest, why don’t you go to the beach for a soak?”

Ta Ko² did not like swimming, and would rather cool off by sitting in the shade under a tree, but because of Hsiao San’s proddings, he went to the beach.

They had a good swim. They swam from the islets by the shore to the outer sea, and they returned when no more outlying islets could be seen. They lay on the beach, which was filled with people. Nearby were more than two dozen senior high school students, a few of whom had just taken the joint college entrance examination. They had probably not done well, because they were griping about this and that. Ta Ko was in a very good mood; never had he felt better. He was thinking how his family would soon see better days, and reflected upon how hard he had worked for his degree. Hsiao San was also in a good mood, because he had just taken the joint entrance examination for Taipei’s senior high schools and he had done well. After a short break, Ta Ko said he had to go home to pack his belongings. Hsiao San had already had enough of a good swim and did not care to sunbathe on the hot beach anymore, so he also wanted to leave.

Just after they had changed their clothes and were ready to leave for home, they saw a high school student and a younger boy who were having a squabble. The latter was either fifteen or sixteen, about the same age as Hsiao San, but his speech and mannerisms were those of an older hooligan, and he was very intimidating. The high school student lost his restraint and slapped him once on the face. Suddenly the younger boy pulled a knife from his pocket and released the shining switchblade. Terrified, the high school student quickly hid behind Ta Ko.

“Little brother,” Ta Ko said amiably, “ai, don’t fool around with the knife. What if- . . .”

“Mother’s—,³ what does this have to do with you? You think you are tall and strong?” Waving his knife, the boy roared, “Get out of my way, or you’ll catch it.”

Embarrassed, Ta Ko very much wanted to step aside, but the high school student followed him closely, either behind him or circling around him. No one saw exactly how it happened, but in the confusion that ensued, the boy missed his target and stuck the blade into Ta Ko s back.

Thus Hsiao San’s brother died. This tragedy grieved Hsiao San’s father to no end. The sudden worsening of the family situation made it impossible for Hsiao San and his father to go on with their plan. His father had always insisted that his sons should finish their college education before going to work, but this was no longer possible.

Hsiao San came to Taipei, not as a result of having passed the entrance examinations—for under those circumstances he would rather have failed—but to make a living.⁴ He apprenticed at a beef-cake shop on Eight Virtues Road. Old and childless, the shopkeeper and his wife treated him rather kindly, so for two years he was well fed and became big and strong. His slightly dark skin and unshaven face made him look as if he were twenty-five or twenty-six when he was only seventeen or eighteen years of age.

Business slackened, and the cake shop finally closed. But soon, through an advertisement posted on a sidewalk billboard, Hsiao San found a job as an apprentice at a small ironworks factory. So he lived on Wen-chung Street, just to be close to where he worked.

It was a three-story building. The first floor was a beauty salon for women; the second and third floors, partitioned into more than ten cubicles, were rented to students and factory workers. Hsiao San lived on the third floor with a colleague as his roommate. After work the two would sometimes go to a movie together, or they had midnight snacks at some sidewalk food stalls. He enjoyed this kind of life very much, until one day his colleague left for military service. All alone, after work he’d still go to a movie or have some midnight snacks from time to time, but he felt something was missing.

His work was undemanding. All day he was expected to stand beside an iron-planing machine shaped like a bull’s head. Since the machine was automatic, he had to do nothing else but insert pieces of iron between the iron pinchers, turn the machine on and let the scraper smooth the surfaces. The job was so easy that he became bored with it after a while. Going to work was a painful chore, yet returning home after work wasn’t any better either. For a while he looked forward to weekends. He would go home every weekend and his mother would cook some meat and make a bowl of good soup for him, even though dinner was still skimpy. At home when he ran into his old schoolmates he felt inferior to them. Not able to combat the feeling of inferiority, he fabricated all sorts of excuses, including that he had to work overtime, and gradually stopped going home. Nonetheless he sent home what remained of his salary at the end of each month. In the beginning, he tried his best to send the even amount as printed on the remittance slip,⁵ to the extent of straining his own budget. For this reason he was always close to the point of starvation. No one asked him to do that; he did it willingly. He was a good boy. Yet he was not exactly like those unreflecting “good boys” who took their suffering in stride and never rebelled. Even when they had occasional grievances, they merely blamed their fate. He greatly resented his fate, and as he had only a junior high school education he couldn’t exalt his thinking to a higher level of abstraction. Therefore his rebellion was substantively aimed at his tangible surroundings, and his solid physical build contained instantly combustible rage.

The room he rented was the smallest one on the top floor. Situated on the end of a balcony, it was a storage room adjacent to the toilet and the shower. It was so tiny that it could barely hold one wooden bed. Because people went to the toilet and the shower all the time, he always kept his door tightly shut. Sometimes when it got too stuffy in his room he would sit on a high-legged round stool in a corner on the balcony and watch the crowd moving to and fro in the alley. Or he would simply study the structures of his neighbors’ doors and windows across the street. He was such a gloomy and eccentric fellow, his neighbors in the same building never said hello to him, and, for his part, he made no effort to greet them. It seemed he never entertained any idea of getting to know anybody, either. Moreover, the tenants moved in and out, and no one would know where they were from or where they were moving to.

Now the situation suddenly changed. It was no longer a question whether he cared to know who his neighbors were: the knowledge was forced upon him. Next to his room lived five young bricklayers; from their speech, manners, and boisterousness he gathered that they, like himself, were young people. Directly across from him lived three or four girls who pandered their charms at a disreputable place disguised as a coffeehouse. Every night after eight or nine the bricklayers either played rock music and hit songs at the highest possible volume, or else they wrestled one another, making a lot of noise, banging the wooden beds and walls. Sometimes this lasted until midnight. When they were drunk, they were even more crazy. As for those girls, if they did not spend the night with their patrons, they’d come home around one or two in the morning. Drunk or sober they would argue boisterously or gossip incessantly. He was deeply disturbed by these people, not to mention the noise of running water that might occur any time from the toilet and the shower. He was never able to get a sound sleep.

His landlord did not live on the premises, so there was no one to impose any discipline. When tenants couldn’t take the noise any longer, they simply moved out, one after another. From time to time he thought about moving out too, but he was afraid he couldn’t find a room as cheap as the one he had. All he could hope for was that after he worked a little longer he would get a pay raise from his boss. As for his awful neighbors, he hated as much as he feared them; the long-haired bricklayers greatly outnumbered him, and the prostitutes usually associated with thugs. These were the facts. At one time he lost his temper, and he yelled at them from his room as loudly as he could. What he received in return was momentary peace and quiet, after which everything quickly returned to normal—only the next morning he noticed one of his slippers outside his door was missing. For a good many days in a row he hoped his missing slipper would return. In the end, however, not only did the missing slipper fail to turn up, but the remaining slipper also disappeared as well. He was quite upset over that pair of missing slippers for a few days, even though they cost only NT$10.00.⁶ He did not buy new ones, and made a point of trying to retrieve his old ones. He even took the risk of crawling into the bricklayers’ and the prostitutes’ rooms—all to no avail. In any case, a little clue left him fully confident that he would eventually find the slippers. He discovered that the girls had only one pair of slippers in their room. Thus, he reasoned that they’d be wearing his slippers during the day or after midnight—at times when he wasn’t around.

For several successive days he went to bed late in order to check on the girls. Any time anyone came home and opened the door, he’d stick his head out from his door to see who it was. Finally, one night he caught one of the girls.

“Hey, lady,” he roared after the girl in anger, “those slippers are mine!”

The girl was startled by his roar. Placing both hands on her chest, she looked at him, in surprise.

“Those slippers you’re wearing are mine,” he repeated, pointing at her feet. “I’ve been looking for them for days, and there they are, on your feet.”

“What?”

“What, what? The slippers you’re wearing are mine. Which one of you stole them?”

“Oh, I didn’t know,” the girl said, hurriedly removing her slippers. “I just moved in.”

Upon learning that she had just moved in, Hsiao San instantly felt apologetic about his own rudeness. He not only assumed a polite tone, but let her wear his slippers until she changed into someone else’s. He was especially nice to her, because he had a good impression of her even before their first meeting. The reason was simply this: without any particular hobby to occupy himself with, and without any method to block out the noise of the bricklayers and the girls, he had developed, in time, the ability to distinguish the identity of each speaker from their conversations. In fact, apart from not being able to tell what they looked like, he was very familiar with the voices, personalities, and the names of his neighbors. The newcomers name was Ai Yüeh. She had had a tenth-grade education. On two occasions she cried bitterly because she had been forced to drink beyond her capacity by her clients. She bared her sufferings by singing a Taiwanese song or a popular sentimental song in Mandarin. Hsiao San was deeply moved, as he listened on the sly in the next room.

From then on any news of the girl became the major diversion in his humdrum existence. He was very willing to go to bed late to wait for the girls to come back, and to listen to their banter. And almost without fail they would mention her in their conversation. Those jealous of her would mock her; those who cared for her would teach her how not to hurt a client’s feelings while succeeding in avoiding unnecessary harassment. It seemed she was quite popular at one of those coffeehouses. She came home every night and stayed home Saturdays and Sundays.

Recently he began to pay even more attention to what went on across the hall. Whenever a door was opened he would stick out his head and look around—with the same anxiety he experienced when he was looking for his slippers. Finally, he felt he couldn’t hold his feeling in any more and started writing her a love letter. He tore up what he wrote again and again, until he gathered enough courage and dropped whatever he had written in the mailbox. But he got no reply. He felt embarrassed and ashamed for days on end. However, there was no difference that he could detect in the way the girls acted or talked toward one another. So he wrote her another letter. He reiterated how he admired her, how sympathetic he was toward her, and how he had made a vow to get her out of bondage. This time he received her reply in a note which was slid directly into his room under his door. That night he was so ecstatic he couldn’t sleep. After work he stayed up waiting for her until twelve o’clock. But she did not come home that night.

“Ai Yüeh is not coming home tonight?” one of the girls said.

“No,” another girl said. “Maybe she’s spending the night with the guy who writes her every day.”

“Oh, really, who could that be? Very mystifying indeed.”

“It’s either Hsiao Chang or Hsiao Lin. Humph, they’re really head over heels for her.”

When he thought of Hsiao Chang or Hsiao Lin, of a taxicab racing toward such and such a hotel on such and such a street, he felt so anguished that he lost all zest for life. He lay like a corpse on a hard, cold bed, staring at the darkened ceiling. At first he entertained some hope, thinking that she must have been so intoxicated by her client that she did not know what she was doing. He hoped that the taxi had a long distance to go—far enough for her to sober up—then she would think of him and rush back. Anyway, he kept waiting and waiting. Next door’s clock struck to tell him that it was four in the morning. Whatever should have happened must have already taken place. His hopes were dashed. He swore he’d never speak to her again. Yet, he couldn’t resist switching on the light and taking her letter out from under his pillow to read once again. Word for word, again and again he slowly digested her feelings. In doing so he forgave her instantly, although not totally. Something kept gnawing at his heart, making him feel melancholy. But out of this rose a feeling of warmth toward her, an understanding from shared suffering. He crawled out of bed and wrote her a letter, pretending that he knew nothing about what happened during the night and that he was merely replying to her letter. It was nicely written, the sheet wet from his tears.

For three successive nights Ai Yüeh did not come home at night. Then she was home every night. She was not a diligent writer; her handwriting was ugly and her diction crude. But as long as she wrote him, he was happy.

Their first date was at Hsiao Mei Ice Cream Parlor, and they ordered some fruit. They went back to the same place three more times, but because it cost more than he could afford, later he stopped going there. For her part, she also seemed reluctant to go out with him during her work hours, as it would reduce the tips she got from drinking patrons. Since they couldn’t meet in the evenings and he must work during the day, they really couldn’t have a decent date until Sunday. Sometimes he was tempted to have a real go at it and loosen his purse strings in order to take her downtown to see a movie or to go on a picnic in the mountains. But all she wanted to do was chat a bit with him in his dingy room, usually on Sunday mornings. Afterwards, she would disappear for the rest of the day.

Because of jealousy he often wanted to forget her completely. Moreover, each time he saw her, he discovered that she had become more dissolute, as could be seen by the fact that she no longer complained about her bitter life when drunk. Instead, she used dirty words freely and continuously. Yet, whenever he saw her, he would forgive her for all these blemishes and treat her as he would a maiden.

With someone to care about, life was more pleasant. His serious attitude and efficiency so impressed his employer that he was given a more responsible job and a salary raise. Even though the increase was not much, this small extra income enabled him to become a more decent lover. He and the girl saw each other so often that he had an illusion about happiness. After he had mastered a trade, he thought, he would have a family and be established in a job, just like everyone else, so long as he continued to work hard. Ever since he had this hope he forgot he was still under twenty-one, and treated her like she was his wife. His feelings toward her became much stronger, particularly after one incident.

The incident happened unexpectedly. One Saturday night she staggered into his room in a drunken stupor. She was like a rape victim. He was so frightened and tense that when she started to gyrate her body, he, bending over her and trembling, showered his liquid of lust upon her body. This caused her to sober up immediately, and, without a word, she got up, dressed, and started smoking at the head of the bed. He too had calmed down a great deal. He held her hand and sat next to her, intending to do it all over again. But she seemed to be interested only in smoking. After she finished her cigarette, she left.

From then on, he never heard her voice again or saw even a shadow of her. From the talk of her friends, he learned she had moved away and had changed her place of employment. He continued to write to her, hoping that someone would transfer his letters to her. Those letters stayed cold in the mailbox. Thus, no matter how deeply apologetic he was or how much he loved her, she gradually faded from his memory. This somewhat idealized version of his first love left its painful marks on his innocent heart, and he felt as though he had recovered from a major illness that had enfeebled him to such an extent that he wasn’t capable of feeling anything.

When he had regained his normal ability for feeling and thought, he was badly scorched by the memory of his affair with Ai Yüeh, so much so that he was driven to smoldering anger. One night, he could no longer bear the commotion from the next room and he pounded on the plywood partition.

“Hey,” he screamed, “I need to go to sleep.”

A peal of laughter came as a response. The people next door also pounded on the wall as hard as they could. “What are you yelling about?”

“Shit!” Dashing out of his room he pushed into their room through the unbolted door and confronted them angrily: “You people have no heart! You know what time it is? If you don’t need to go to bed, I do. I’ve got to go to work tomorrow. Don’t push me too far just because there’re so many of you. I’ll fight you with my life.”

He stood by the door, nearly filling up the space of the doorway. His daring life or death rage stunned them. Startled and dumbfounded, they either sat on or stood by their beds. No one spoke a word. When he saw a knife attached to a wooden club by the beds, he became scared. He apologized, explaining how he was an insomniac and how he had lost his self-control. After he said that, he dragged his trembling legs out of their room. He nearly leaped into his own room and cautiously bolted the door. Out of fear, he took a pair of pliers with him to bed.

“Motherfucker!” someone shouted in anger. “It was already too much that he pounded on the partition. He even barged in! This, this simply shows he never gives a shit about us. We must teach him a lesson.”

“Well,” someone else put in. “I told you guys before. Don’t overdo it. We really made so much noise that no one could sleep.”

“God damn it! Why must he, a young buck, go to bed so early?” another one was heard saying. “Don’t we all have to get up early every morning to work?”

With the exception of the fair-minded one, the rest of the group continued to complain, but since it was very late, they soon settled down. Hsiao San breathed a sigh of relief and put down his pliers. He thought he would buy them some fruit after work the next day just to make friends with them.

He actually did buy some fruit the next day, but something else happened. Just after he had taken his bath and returned to his room, someone knocked twice on his door—very hard. After a little hesitation he stuck his head out and looked. A capless old policeman was standing outside the room directly across from his. He heard another policeman yelling. Thinking that the policemen were there to check on the residency papers, he took out his mobile residency declaration and put it on the table. To save money, he didn’t have his hair cut as often as he should, so his hair always looked a bit too long. For this reason he did not care to meet the policemen,⁷ and stayed put in his room. It seemed that the two policemen hadn’t come to check the residency papers, but he still did not know what was going on. As he tried to eavesdrop, his neighbors were being taken away by the police.

They returned home late. When he detected their footsteps, he was about to open his door to greet them, but before he did that, someone knocked on his door hard, yelling, “Get out!”

“What for?” he asked curiously as he opened the door. They were all in the hallway; they all looked angry and drunken. What surprised him the most was that their hair had been cropped. “What for?” the one who just asked him to come out said, “Look at our hair.”

“What about your hair?”

“Fuck your mother! Yesterday you pounded on the wall and barged into our room, yet we didn’t do a thing to you. Weren’t we nice enough? Why in your mother’s name did you tell the cops to catch us gambling?”

“Tell the cops about your gambling? Oh, no, I didn’t.” He realized that it was a serious matter and he became extremely nervous. He raised his voice trying to explain, but because the misunderstanding had come so suddenly and sounded so absurd, he couldn’t help laughing.

“You asshole, you’d better stop laughing. Soon after we started our mahjong game I saw you pass by our door and look us all over.”

“My heavens! I was on my way to take a shower,” Hsiao San explained immediately. “I took a look only to see if all of you were back. You see, when I got off work today I bought two bunches of grapes especially for you guys. Yesterday I overdid it and I felt sorry about it. Now all I want is to offer you my apology and see if we could become friends; and if I want to be your friend, why would I betray you to the police? Moreover, I didn’t see you gamble. As a matter of fact, I like you to gamble, because gambling doesn’t make as much noise as your hard rock.”

“Shut your trap and stop acting. Screw the grapes! Your mother’s—. What’s wrong with hard rock? What’s wrong with relaxing a bit after a day of work? It’s none of your fucking business, just as our mahjong game is none of your goddam business!”

“Really, it’s no big deal for us to be caught gambling and fined a few dollars,” another person said. “What really made me mad is that they cut off our hair. How can we meet people with this short hair?”

“Oh, please calm down, listen to me.”

“You go to hell,” the leader slapped Hsiao San in the face. “ ‘Calm down’ my ass!”

Hsiao San was shocked and momentarily stunned by the slap. They were so puny and he was so big. His humiliation gave him the illusion that he could calm them down, so he violently retaliated with a punch, which immediately got him in a confused scuffle. The scuffle lasted only a short while, but he was already covered with the wounds inflicted by clubs and other weapons. At last, all he could do was flee to his room for his life. He forced the door shut, then collapsed on the floor, completely exhausted.

The girls who lived directly across from his room woke him. Two girls were quarreling and calling each other names because of their jealousy over one patron. One girl was thoroughly drunk, cursing and crying at the same time. He had no interest in them. To his alarm he discovered his face was covered with blood, his mouth and nostrils were filled with the strong stench of blood, and his body was stiffening. He could not move. He felt something wrong with his chest and he had trouble breathing. When he breathed, bubbles of foamy blood gushed out of his nostrils. In addition, he was chilled all over and felt dizzy. Then suddenly he was frightened by the thought of his brother. After that knife had been stuck into his back, his brother ran, with the knife, toward home. After taking two or three steps, he uttered his last words, “My God, save me!” Now his brother’s trembling desperate cries once again reverberated in his ears. At the same time, he remembered the last exchange between the bricklayers: “Enough? That asshole! We’ll show him something more spectacular.” At this his fear was replaced by extreme grievance and rage. A terrible suicidal thought was born in his heart. He wanted to burn everything away. He gave this idea much thought and debated with himself. He thought of that clear, refreshing sea coast, the azure waves, and the pleasant sounds they made; he thought of that noisy bull-headed planing machine, and that crazy prostitute Ai Yüeh. Then he thought of his poor parents. He believed that when they saw his miserable, pitiful condition, they’d shed tears of sorrow. Thinking of his parents, he finally broke into tears.

He had been lying on the floor. As a matter of fact, he couldn’t do anything but lie there. It was late at night; not even the sounds of cars could be heard. He groped along the wall of the hallway toward the kitchen. He closed the door and the window. Before closing the window he looked outside. Not too far away was one street lamp, and its gradually dimming light in the darkness created a silver hue amidst the lanes and rows of houses. It stood by itself in desolation and in sadness, much like how he felt. He turned on the girls’ gas burner and his own little gas burner; like poisonous snakes, they hissed immediately. Not giving a second look, he staggered back to his own room. He used a wet towel to clean off the bloodstains on his face, and put on some clean street clothes and shoes. He wanted to polish his shoes, but he had neither the time nor the energy. The gas smell was getting strong. He struck one match, then another, still another.

The flame was getting higher and higher. In the chasm between buildings, there were rumbling noises and hollow sounds of explosions. The fire created a red hole in the sky and made the dark night even darker with its whirling smoke. Police cars and clanking fire engines came from everywhere, and the shrill police sirens awakened the residents who lived in the nearby blocks. Light came out of all windows, people ran in the streets, and the curious gawked at the fire. When they saw that ball of frightening, strange-looking fire, they shook their heads and sighed. Firefighters in black uniforms climbed to rooftops everywhere, like phantoms. Water spurted out of their rubber hoses and spread across the sky like a fountain jetting its water, surrounded by wild fire. That water fell on the desolate streets under the streetlights like glistening teardrops.

NOTES

1. Literally, “Little Third,” referring to the third one of the siblings; here it is used as a proper name.

2. Literally, “Eldest Brother”; here used as proper name.

3. A profanity.

4. Presumably, Hsiao San must have matriculated into one of the colleges in Taipei, but now he came to the capital not for study but for work.

5. The money order form provided by Taiwan’s postal offices prints the remittance amount in columns, such as $100, $200, $1,000 and so forth, presumably for the convenience of their customers. Thus, instead of writing down the dollar figure, all the customer has to do is to circle the amount he wants to send.

6. The exchange rate is roughly one US dollar to NT$40.00.

7. Regarding the hippie style of living as a form of Western decadence, the Taiwan government in the early seventies was most unhappy with the sight of long-haired and unconventionally dressed young men and women. One common penalty meted out to the men for breaking any law was to give them a free crew cut.