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The opening is not altogether successful. The introductory descriptive passage is quite laboured and is not aided by the fact that the reader is informed twice that it is 2 o'clock in the morning: "Just then the sound of a clock could be heard
striking twice, clang, clang, which told those who were listening, that the time was now 2 o'clock".
The narrative technique used in this story is worthy of comment. Zhang, unusually for him, combines an impersonal narrator, the shadowy other figure observing the young man in the park, with a highly personalised third-person respondent whose strong feelings and memories are recorded with almost "first-hand" understanding. Unfortunately this bold experiment jars and strikes as being unconvincing.
The several strange nocturnal occurrences recorded by the narrator and experienced by the young man who is the centre of interest of the story trigger off memories in the young man's mind. The first of these occurrences is a black crow flying ,to its nest to feed its chicks — a very curious thing to happen in the middle of the night. As if this were not enough to remind the young man of his childhood and his relationship with his mother, the train of thought is hammered home when the sound of a child crying and then being comforted by its mother is heard. This method of orchestrating events to trigger off a train of memories by what would appear to be a psychological association of ideas is clumsy if carried out in an unsubtle way as Zhang does here. Whilst the use of flashbacks in this story marks a development in literary technique, this advance is dissipated by the use of clumsy plot devices*
Having set the young man thinking about his childhood, the flow of childhood memories then continues unabated, one memory following fast upon the heels of another. The young man recalls how his father died when he was eight. On his death-bed, the father expressed the wish that his son should receive a good education. His widowed mother did her utmost to carry out the father's wishes. In spite of his mother's kindness and devotion, the young man is led on by others to reject her. With its theme of filial impiety, this story looks forward to 'Dream lasting Three
'Under the Moon', Zhang is using a far less realistic method and his moral purpose is in consequence far more transparent.
As this story develops, it becomes less and less realistic. Gripped by remorse, the young man has a vision of his mother coming to him (as he stands in the moonlight in the park). He begs his mother for forgiveness for his unfilial behaviour and in his fantasy he hears his mother answer his begs for forgiveness; "What need have you to weep? All you need to do is to be capable of regret, and then I will be able to forgive you." The use of a vision is very curious and combined with the themes of guilt, remorse and forgiveness, helps to lend this story a religious quality.
In the last two lines of the story, Zhang avoids a conventional ending by introducing a deflationary twist to the denouement.
When the young man makes a move to embrace the vision of his mother, once more imploring her forgiveness, he puts his arms round a void and receives no response to his entreaties. This dissolving of the fantasy in the last line of the story has the effect of implying a return to reality, a reality in which the young man's mother does not exist and by extension the need for the young man to seek the forgiveness of his mother and suffer remorse is called into question.
The dissolution of the vision also has the effect of making the reader wonder what Zhang's real feelings about filial piety and respect for parents were. The negating of the vision can also be seen as a method of keeping his authorial self covered, a side-stepping of the possibility of being called to task for advocating a mode of behaviour that was not widely accepted at this time. The use of a shadowy narrator standing in the
sidelines in the moonlight under the tree in the park, using the third person to recount the young man's actions, thoughts and words, tends also to suggest a deliberate policy of distancing on the part of the author/narrator in this story.
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Z h a n g s last two detective stories; 'The Ax e 1 and 'X1.
Zhang's next story 'The Axe' is another of the Xu Changyun stories. 'The Axe* appeared in the Shanghai magazine
Zhentan shi.jie <<^ » in November 1923.
This is by no means Zhang's most interesting or exciting detective story. The plot is relatively simple and the action slow-moving. A child disappears and Xu and Gong go to investigate. Whilst they are at the scene of the disappearance, news comes that the mother of the child has just received an anonymous letter. This letter makes no ransom demand and urges the mother not to worry, promising that the child will be returned sooner or later. The mystery is eventually solved when Xu discovers the child with his supposedly dead father hidden in an underground room.
Once more Gong Renzhi is the first-person narrator. But on this occasion Gong is not present at the time when the case is finally cracked. Just before Xu discovers the father and son hiding in the underground room, Gong develops a headache and hurries off home. This gives Xu the chance to reveal the
denouement of the case upon his return home to the amazement of Gong. The explanations of why the father faked his disappearance six years earlier, never letting the secret out even to his
family, are hard to accept. The father who is an old schoolmate of Xu and Gong was apparently involved in a gangland feud, and a member of the gang had sworn to kill him.
The story hints at a world of violence, where feuds, revenge, and vendettas are commonplace, but these do not form the forefront of the story and the ponderous mechanics of the plot make the story seem implausible.
Zhang's next story entitled 'X' is the last of his Xu Changyun 2
stories and appeared in December 1923* It is one of Zhang's more successful detective stories and combines an interesting plot with an interesting style. The story is divided into two units. The first unit fills in the background to the case and
1 Zhentan shijie 13 (1. 11* 1923) 11 pages. It appears translated