Endless War: Fiction and Essays by Wang Wen-hsing

The Black Gown

257 The Black Gown March 1964. The second story Wang wrote in the United States is the darkest in the author’s oeuvre. It describes a dinner party where a five-year-old girl is confronted by an attention-hungry intellectual. “The Black Gown” demonstrates the mature author ’s ability to control his language. Wang also employs rarely used forms of characters and creates new characters to convey special meanings. The setting is the former Taipei residence of Yu Guangzhong, a well-known Taiwan poet, and the prototype of the little girl is Yu’s youngest daughter. Wang and Yu were old friends and Wang was a frequent visitor at the Yu home. v It was a September evening in Taipei. The calm skies reflected the end of the turbulent typhoon season and signaled the tranquility of the days to come. I was attending a banquet given by a friend of mine, a member of the literary set. The banquet was held to celebrate his son’s one-month birthday. My friend had three older daughters, but there had never been a similar feast for them. It was only because the parents were exceptionally delighted at the birth of a son this time that a special celebration was called for. I arrived at my friend’s house neither too early nor too late, just when all the guests were assembled in the living room exchanging pleasantries while waiting for the chef to complete his preparations. The living room was tastefully decorated in the Japanese style, with delicate landscape patterns carved above the doorway. Creamcolored sofas lined the room. Next to it was a verandah with glasspaneled doors that had been slid to the side, allowing the room to open out into the garden. The guests, teacups in hand, were either sitting or standing, and because they were conversing leisurely 258 v SHORT FICTION among themselves, they could hear the droning of insects in the garden as well as watch the fireflies flitting back and forth. There were many guests that evening, close to forty. I was acquainted with only a few, as most of them were relatives of the family . I lit a cigarette, joined some people I knew and leisurely exchanged remarks on the trifles of daily life. White-clad, tray-bearing waiters milled about us, as did the guests. The gentlemen frequently let out booms of laughter, while the ladies fluttered their fans lightly like so many dancing butterflies. Just then I happened to notice among the guests a man wearing a black Chinese gown. He appeared to be quite busy, first talking with a group of people in one corner, then chatting with another cluster in a different spot. What aroused my interest was his black gown, for such outfits were by no means common in Taipei, just as bushy beards were not frequently seen. Naturally, there were some eccentric individuals fond of donning long gowns and sporting beards in the city, but only a very few. This man was comparatively young—he could not have been more than thirty, and was handsome , with a pair of black-rimmed glasses over a well-shaped nose. He also seemed to have a wide circle of acquaintances. I watched him greeting almost every guest in the room. I had no idea who the bizarre character was, but just then I heard someone else hail him from across the room: “Hi, Mr. Jin, it’s been quite a while, where have you been lately?” “Over at Zhongxin University. How are you, Mr. Lin?” “Fine, fine,” the man addressed as Mr. Lin replied. “Oh, by the way, I happened to come across another of your articles yesterday, the one on existentialism in Politics Monthly. Very profound indeed. Quite a lengthy discussion, too, I should say. Around thirty thousand words, wasn’t it?” “It was nothing, nothing at all, sir. I would appreciate your valuable comments.” It was only then that I realized who the young man was. He had emerged only recently as a figure of no small repute in academic circles. Within just three short years of graduating from the philosophy department of a certain college, he had managed to climb the black gown  v 259 to the position of lecturer. The remarkable thing about him, though, was not his scholarly ability—indeed, that consisted of only a few thin volumes—but his adroitness in advancing himself. On...