love in a fallen city【倾城之恋】.pdf

LOVE IN A FALLEN CITY

Translated by Karen S. Kingsbury



SHANGHAI'S clocks were set an hour ahead so the city could "save daylight," but the Bai
family said: "We go by the old clock." Ten o'clock to them was eleven to everyone else.
Their singing was behind the beat; they couldn't keep up with the huqin of life.

When the huqin wails on a night of ten thousand lamps, the bow slides back and forth,
drawing forth a tale too desolate for words oh! why go into it? The tale of the huqin
should be performed by a radiant entertainer, two long streaks of rouge pointing to her
exquisite nose as she sings, as she smiles, cover-ing her mouth with her sleeve .. but here
it was just Fourth Master Bai sunk in darkness, sitting alone on a ramshackle balcony and
playing the huqin.

As he was playing, the doorbell rang downstairs. For the Bai household, this was most
unusual; people didn't pay social calls after dark, not in the old etiquette. If a visitor came
at night or a telegram arrived without warning, either it meant that some event of huge
import had transpired or, most probably, some-one had died.

Fourth Master sat still and listened, but since Third Master, Third Mistress, and Fourth
Mistress were shouting all at once as they came up the stairs, he couldn't understand
what they were saying. Sitting in the room behind the balcony were Sixth Young Lady,
Seventh Young Lady, and Eighth Young Lady, along with the Third and Fourth Masters'
children, all growing increas-ingly anxious. From where Fourth Master sat on the
darkened alcony, he could see everything in the well-lit 10om. So when the door opened,
there was Third Master in his undershirt and shorts, standing on the raised doorsill with
his legs stuck out wide, reaching behind his thighs to slap at the mosquitoes, and calling
out to Fourth Master: "Hey, Old. Four, guess what? That fellow that Sixth S