recently become an advisor to General Tu at eighty dollars cash[1] a month.
Shen-fei : What do you think of me now? Think whatever you like; it makes no difference to me.
Perhaps you still remember my guest room, the room where we met for the first time in the city and where we met before we parted. I am still using the same guest room. But here there are now new guests, new gifts and presents, new flatteries, new wire-pullings, new kowtowing and bowing, new mah-jong games and drinking matches, new hatreds and new nausea, new sleeplessness and pulmonary hemorrhage . . .
In one of your letters you said that you were not very happy in your new teaching post. Do you want to become an advisor too? Tell me if you do and I'll get you an appointment. It really doesn't matter if one becomes a mere gatekeeper, for there will also be new guests and new gifts and presents, new flatteries . . .
We have had a heavy snow here. How is it where you are? It is now late at night. I have just spit some blood and I feel wide awake. I suddenly realize that you have written me three letters since fall. What pleasant surprises they were. I must send you some news of myself. I hope you are not too disappointed.
I don't suppose I shall write again; you know how I am about letters. When are you coming back? If early enough we might yet see each other. But I am afraid that we have to go our separate ways. So you had better forget about me. I thank you from the bottom of my heart for your efforts to help me. But you had better forget me, for I am now "all right."
LIEN-SHU.
DECEMBER 14
Although I was not "too disappointed," I had a depressed feeling after rereading his letter carefully, a feeling which was not, however, unmixed with gladness. In any case, I thought, his livelihood was no longer a problem with him, which meant that I need not worry about him, though on
- ↑ Around the 'twenties there was a general depreciation of paper currencies.
