Love by Eileen Chang

On Looping Instance

First, my translation of Eileen Chang’s short story “Love.” A brief essay will follow.

“Love” by Eileen Chang

This is true.

In a village there was a girl from a moderately well-off family. A natural beauty. Many sought her hand, none successfully. She was fifteen, maybe sixteen that year. It was a spring evening. She stood at the back gate, her arm wrapped around a peach tree. She remembers wearing an off-white shirt the color of the moon. She’d seen the boy from across the way before but they’d never spoken. He walked over. Then, not far now, he stood still and, in a soft voice, said, “Oh, you’re here too?” She didn’t say anything. He didn’t continue. They stood for a while longer then went their separate ways. 

That was that. 

Later on the girl’s relatives, through a bit of trickery, sold her into concubinage in a far-off county. She was resold again and again. She survived innumerable tempests. In her old age, she still recalled that one instance and would speak often of that spring evening under the peach tree at the back gate, and the boy. 

That out of the millions of people you meet the ones you do. That out of the millions of years in the endless expanse of time’s wasteland you were not a step too early, not one step late—somehow right on time. There’s nothing to say then but ask, in a soft voice, “Oh, you’re here too?”

I am writing on the Four Won’t Youth today (Chinese of my age who won’t date, won’t marry, won’t buy homes, and won’t have kids) and translating some Eileen Chang poetry towards that end. In their rejection of the state-society’s barometers of adulthood, I see shades of John Cusack’s iconic line as Lloyd Dobler in 1989’s Say Anything…: “I don't want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a career. I don't want to sell anything bought or processed, or buy anything sold or processed, or process anything sold, bought, or processed, or repair anything sold, bought, or processed.” Dobler was a sort of American Four Won’t Youth, albeit an amorous one. But it was the set-up to that line that brought me back to Eileen Chang’s “Love.” The father of Dianne, Lloyd’s love interest, asks him about his career plans:

“What’re your plans for the future?”

“Spend as much time possible with Dianne before, uh, she leaves.”

“Seriously, Lloyd.”

“I’m totally and completely serious.”

Love, as Lloyd sees it here, is a fleeting instant—blink and you might miss it. The future is now and all-consuming. Somehow, that mix of Eileen Chang poetry and Four Won’t Lloyd’s views on romance bring me back to the stiflingly hot classroom on the first floor of Buttrick Hall where as a second-semester senior I took a modern Chinese literature course in Chinese. It was spring when I first read “Love.” We memorized it and were graded on our recall of the final line. Chang captures how memory is a mixture of confluence and effort. I have never forgotten this old woman and the ember of memory she stoked throughout her life. Words are failing me and I have an article to publish, so I will finish here: when writing, I listen to the same song on repeat. Sometimes for days. For the past 48 hours it has been Raspberry Jam by the Allah-Las. It creates a looping instance, allowing me to retrace again and again and again the thin tendril of memory and thought slipping through the folds of my mind. The mind is a loose sheet of sand made up of the grains of memory. Is it not a delight to find one and ask, in a soft voice, “Oh, you’re here too?”