She got out of bed. In the kitchen, she prepared plates of fried eggs, thousand-year eggs, tofu, and smoked pork, carrying them all on a platter to her father-in-law’s room.
The visitor was a playboy. He pushed a bundle of money toward her father-in-law and said, “This is yours. What do you think about it, as long as—”
As Darky entered, her father-in-law stepped on the guest’s foot and slapped his hat down over the money on the table. Darky was quick to pretend she’d seen nothing. She murmured shyly, “It is midnight and dark; I cannot cook anything good.” The visitor gazed at her with bold, queer eyes. Darky hurriedly felt her coat buttons in case they were buttoned wrong. Her gesture made the visitor laugh.
“Go and sleep,” said her father-in-law. “There’s nothing else for you to do here.”
Darky went to her room with impunity and sat on the mud-brick bed. Her small husband was already awake. “Who is it,” he asked, “the mayor?”
“No, the mayor has a big nose. This guy looks like a large fish.”
“It must be Wang of the east village,” her small husband said. “He’s made a killing in the transportation business, so he’s rich enough to marry a country girl with a face as tender as water.”
Darky’s face grew dim. She said nothing.
Her husband added, “Dad made a tidy sum, too.”
“If Wang is doing the business,” Darky asked, “how could your dad make anything from it?”
“Dad has a share in the business.”
Suspicious about the family’s income, Darky persisted. “Where did he get the money to invest?”
Her small husband’s eyes shone. “You think you’ve married an ordinary guy? My dad may not be an official, but do you know what he deals with? You may be ugly, but you have an ugly duckling’s fortune.”
“I don’t care about the money. When I married you, you were just a poor bachelor.”
“I know you’re afraid of our fortune. You fear you can’t be a good match for me.”
Darky shut up. She heard her father-in-law inviting his guest to drink more. The sounds of plates hitting the floor suggested they were already a bit high. Her husband asked, “Why so silent?”
“I’m not worried about me,” she said, “but about you. Blood money will make you bloody. You’re really not so wealthy—why did your mother ask me for the money for her coffin when we married?”
Her small husband answered, “The money of the guy next door is not bloody; why don’t you go and live with him?”
Darky got into bed, pulling up the quilt to cover her body from head to toe. Her eyes had closed, but her heart could not. A stream of black blood was boiling inside. She hated the poverty of the life she had come from and her failure to make herself a good match for her husband. She hated her husband for having money and, therefore, thinking himself better than her.
When the cock crowed three times in the early morning, she fumbled for her clothes. It was time to boil feed for the pigs. The courtyard was bright with water, for the rain had not stopped.
Suddenly, the sky above the courtyard next door flashed red. She was so surprised that she climbed the wall for a look. There was a bonfire on the neighbor’s step, and a man squatted beside the fire. A new carrying pole stood with one end under the threshold and the other end over the fire. The man bent the carrying pole with his hands, and it sprang like a bow.
“Early bird Mu Du,” Darky shouted, “we seldom have good rain. Why don’t you sleep for a while longer?”
Mu Du, startled, turned his head. The fire made his face look as red as pig’s blood. Seeing it was Darky, he just grinned.
She shouted again. “It’s only a carrying pole. No need to care about it too much!”
“If I don’t make it soft, it chafes.”
“It is still a burden for a man,” she said. “Are you going to the Southern Mountain to carry alpine rush?”
“Let Bald-Head in the southern courtyard do that. He makes a return trip in three days and makes no more than three yuan. I’m much stronger than he is.”
“Some guys go out to do big things,” Darky said. “They make thousands of yuan.”
Mu Du replied, “I don’t have a pull cart. Even if I could afford one, I don’t have the guts.”
Darky gave a long sigh. She felt sorry for him, for he was poor and clumsy. He lived with his dad. He was over thirty but not married yet. There was no woman in his family to do needlework. When Mu Du’s pants wore out, one could see black-and-white thread twisted around the patch.
Darky wanted to ask, “How could Bald-Head be as clever as you are? Besides, to carry alpine rush you have to walk mountain paths. A clumsy guy like you must be very careful.” But she swallowed the words.
As she was about to go back down the ladder, Mu Du called out, “Darky, here’s a hot one for you.” His hands fumbled in the ashes and picked out something blackish. He tossed it from hand to hand with a loud exhale. He quickly stepped to the wall below her and, on his tiptoes, offered her the object. It was a fist-sized potato.
Darky said, “No eating, I haven’t washed my face.” She went down one step but came up again and found Mu Du, with a different hand, working hard to pass the potato to her, his dark belly open to her view. She caught the potato; it was hot as a piece of charcoal. She broke it in two. Hot steam rushed out, the two halves shining in the dawn. She took a bite.
“Isn’t it good?” Mu Du asked with a satisfied grin.
Darky was already down from the ladder. Her hair, after the rain shower on the wall, was dripping wet.
2
Winter came. Mu Du had worn out two carrying poles. Nasty bumps grew on his shoulder. But even if nipped, the bumps did not hurt. His family remained steady and could afford the essential things—cooking oil, salt, soy sauce, and vinegar. He made a set of new winter cotton-padded clothes for his father. Their life was neither too rich nor too humble.
November 6 was a bright day. The father and son made a new and longer carrying pole. They scorched it over the fire and rubbed it repeatedly with soybean oil. Like a mirror, the carrying pole reflected the two men’s disheveled hair and unclean faces.
In the courtyard at high noon, they set up an altar with an incense burner and laid the new carrying pole, with red ribbons on both ends, horizontally upon it. Mu Du knelt down in the dust, piously kowtowing to worship the god of the carrying pole. He felt indebted to the carrying pole for providing his family pocket money and therefore freeing him from carrying alpine rush.
Since the weather was growing cold, Mu Du planned to get charcoal from deep in the mountains. After their worship, his father tied a bag of food at one end of the carrying pole and six pairs of straw shoes to the back of Mu Du’s belt to send Mu Du on his journey. Mu Du walked backward to the courtyard gate and then turned around and stood at attention. He bit his teeth thirty-six times, and then he drew four horizontal lines on the ground with his right thumb and five vertical lines across those four. He began his incantation, “Four Horizontal Lines and Five Vertical Lines”:
Today I begin my working life.
King Yu protects me on my way.
King Chu You drives bandits away.
Thieves dare not creep into my yard.
Tigers and wolves avoid me and my home.
It is a long journey from my home.
A man on my way might almost die.
In such a hurry and moment of haste,
The protection of the goddess is sent to me.
After the incantation, Mu Du strode out without turning back.
Watching his son step out of sight, Mu Du’s father picked up a clump of mud and placed it on the Four-Five Lines. He leaned on the gate, tears blurring his eyes. The sound of firecrackers came from the courtyard of his neighbor.
In the twelfth lunar month, Darky’s father-in-law, the credit agent, bought a share of a mushroom farm in the town. With ample capital, the farm purchased mushroom spores and built many workshops; after successf
ul cultivation, its earnings doubled several times. The credit agent received money like running water. Darky’s father-in-law sold his house and built a courtyard in the downtown area, all brick from top to bottom and as grand as a lord’s temple. The villagers were surprised by the family’s sudden wealth. Darky, too, was stunned.
When it was time for the family to pack their belongings and move to the grand new home, many people came to lend a hand. On the trailer Darky placed a stone pillow she had taken from her parents’ home, but her small husband threw it away.
“That’s my pillow!” Darky shouted.
Her husband replied, “You now live in the town; must you act like a savage?”
“I’ve been used to it from childhood,” she protested. “Without it, my head fills with fever.”
Her small husband cursed, “Miserable wretch!” and then deliberately left the stone pillow behind.
Panic-stricken, Darky just stood there for a while. Neighbors eyed her, but she did not talk back, nor did she weep. Picking up the greasy pillow, she hugged it and then gave it to Mu Du’s father. “Uncle,” she said, “we are leaving. I give this to you. It is a star fallen from the sky. All his life, my grandpa used it and passed it down to my dad. When I got married, my mum gave it to me as dowry. The pillow is quiet and cool. When your head touches it, it will soothe your eyes.”
From then on, Darky lived in the town. Her life became busier; now not only did she do all the cooking for the family, but she was also put in charge of domestic tasks like feeding the chickens, the pig, the dog, and the cat. All the daily fieldwork fell to her. Moreover, her parents-in-law insisted that not even a tiny mote of dust or single speck of wheat straw could be left in the courtyard each day. Darky slept less than ever.
Her small husband complained of her gluttony and demanded she keep slim. He called her “Black Soybean,” for as her body grew slender, her skin darkened.
At the end of the year, Darky’s husband bought her a pair of leatherette shoes. Each market day, Darky was asked to wear the shoes, but they made her large feet ache. By the time she came back from the market and took off the shoes, her eyes brimmed with tears. She knew her small husband was not fond of her and thought her ugly. She was born plain. How could a pair of leatherette shoes change that?
Her husband beat her and threatened her with a knife. Finally, Darky grabbed her husband, whose arms and legs seemed to be frozen, and threw him onto the kang as if it were a manure basket, saying, “I’m showing you my strength!”
When outsiders heard about this incident, they joked about it. As Darky worked in the fields, someone would ask, “So, Darky, have you taught your man a lesson again?” Darky kept silent. The questioner would needle a little more: “Darky, why not wear your leather shoes? Your family is so well-off, why don’t you ask your father-in-law for a wristwatch?”
After hearing these jokes too many times, Darky began to wonder: How did the family become so rich? Many households do business in the town, and no others have made money so easily.
When her small husband returned home that evening, she asked him about the secret to his father’s wealth. Her husband answered, “I’ve been hearing the jokes and gossip, too; they all envy us. If anyone asks again, just say, ‘We’re not breaking any laws, so what’s the problem?’”
Darky’s father-in-law continued to have frequent late-night visitors. Whenever she would enter the room, they’d stop talking. In the daytime, her father-in-law would invite town officials to drink and eat. One time the mayor, drunk, pointed his finger in her father-in-law’s face and shouted, “You motherfucker! You just run a credit cooperative, but you live a better life than me, the mayor. I warn you, I’ve gotten anonymous letters claiming that you were sticky-fingered with the loans.”
Her father-in-law turned pale and hurried to help the mayor onto Darky’s kang, serving him tea and vinegar. Soon the mayor threw up all over the bed.
Shortly afterward, rumors circulated around town that her father-in-law had pledged to contribute 30,000 yuan to enlarge the local elementary school and improve education in the town. Darky wondered where so much money was tucked away and how much her family had in total.
School officials from the county came to make a public announcement; her father-in-law stood on the rostrum, his face glowing with excitement, red silk draped over his shoulders and a big red flower pinned on his breast. From then on, the red silk banner awarded to him hung in the main room at home. When the gate to their yard was wide open, passersby could see a stretch of brilliant red from the street.
After the school was renovated and expanded, her father-in-law became the honorary schoolmaster, and Darky’s small husband was hired as a gym teacher. He became an important man in the school, leading his students to play basketball happily every day.
At first, Darky did not understand how her father-in-law, such a stingy person at home, could become so generous in public—but now she understood. At night her small husband tormented her in bed, telling her that now she was not the wife of a farmer but the wife of a government official. Darky did not feel the benefit of his being a cadre; on the contrary, she suffered more. In the darkness he called out the name of the prettiest maiden in the town and forced Darky to answer his cry. Darky was livid: “She is herself, and I am myself. Go and fuck her, if you dare!”
Eventually her angry challenge was accepted. One night her husband did not return home. Two days later, Darky went to the school; in her husband’s room she saw the prettiest woman in the town. Her husband claimed that they were discussing education.
Maybe these two really are learning together, Darky thought. Maybe I shouldn’t interrupt. On leaving, she said to her husband, “You’ve been here for several days. The room is damp—you should buy some charcoal to keep it warm it at night.”
For a month or two, her husband stayed away. At first she felt relieved, relaxed; she enjoyed getting a good night’s sleep. But eventually she began to feel lonely. When she saw her husband she noted that, like a lamp burning too much oil, he was getting thinner day by day. She started to feel upset. She went to the school again, only to find that her husband and the beautiful woman were still “learning” together. With no hard evidence, Darky returned home in low spirits.
At the school there was a workman from West Plain who cooked lunch for the teachers in the daytime and guarded the doors in the evening after the teachers left. Sitting on a stool at the school entrance, he listened to a radio at the maximum volume, his cigarette twinkling in the darkness. Darky became acquainted with him during her frequent visits to the school. His name was Lai Shun. He had a mole between his brows and appeared honest and well behaved but miserably poor. On his feet were a pair of yellow rubber sandals that sloshed as if filled with water.
Whenever Darky came to the school, Lai Shun would shout, “Come here!” He’d offer her his low stool and let her enjoy the music on his radio.
On one visit, Darky said, “Lai Shun, you’re good at making ends meet. You earn a state salary. But you wear these rubber shoes all the time. Don’t they hurt your feet?”
As shy as a cat, Lai Shun drew his feet back. “It’s not that I don’t want to be decently dressed. I earn only twenty-eight yuan each month, and I have an eighty-year-old, muddleheaded grandpa, a mum who’s an invalid, and three younger sisters in school. I’m not as lucky and happy as your husband!”
“Oh, your grandpa’s still alive?” With three elders in the family, Lai Shun would be in debt for half his lifetime in order to afford three coffins. To change the subject, she asked about his wife.
Lai Shun snorted. “How can I get a wife? The year before last, I was engaged to a girl, but then she broke it off and married a cripple whose father suddenly became rich. I left home in a fury and came here to work.”
Darky heaved a sigh for him.
Three days later, Darky took a pair of cloth shoes from the bottom of a chest and brought them to Lai Shun. He took it as a joke, speaking favorably
of her neat stitches but not daring to sincerely accept them.
“You have high taste, Lai Shun!” Darky said. “Do you mind that they’re not made from corduroy? I made them for my husband, who wore them for a day and then put on leather shoes the next day. Try them on. Do they fit?”
After washing his feet in a basin, Lai Shun squeezed his long, thick feet into the shoes. Darky laughed heartily, suggesting he could make do with them by cutting the buckle with scissors. Lai Shun agreed but didn’t follow her suggestion. After work, he put on the new shoes and skipped around like he was doing a folk dance.
On hearing that Darky had given his new shoes to Lai Shun, her small husband shrugged. “Lai Shun is unlucky,” he said. “He’s over thirty years old, but still a virgin.”
Darky frowned. The single man longs for a wife, she thought, while the married man leaves the wife alone at home for two months!
Her small husband added, “Since you have given him shoes, why not offer him something rarer?”
Darky spat out, “What rubbish!”
However, her small husband continued seriously, “No, it makes sense. Let’s not mind each other’s affairs.”
“Do you want me to loosen the halter for you?” Darky asked. “I know what you’re doing at the school. Those women don’t come there to play basketball.”
They began to quarrel. He raised his hand to strike. Not strong but nimble, he punched Darky in the stomach and went back to school.
After a severe tongue-lashing from her parents-in-law, Darky endured a sleepless night. When she rose at daybreak, she had pitch-black circles beneath her eyes.
Darky set out for the school, planning to make a scene. But as she neared the entrance, she had second thoughts. Her small husband had behaved badly, but he was now a teacher. What a disgrace for him if she made a scene at his workplace!
Lai Shun spotted her and greeted her warmly. When he asked about the dark circles under her eyes, Darky pulled him into a private corner and said tearfully, “Lai Shun, you’re an honest man. Tell me, does my husband behave himself here? Please tell me the truth!”
Old Land, New Tales: Twenty Short Stories by Writers of the Shaanxi Region in China Page 5