Old Land, New Tales: Twenty Short Stories by Writers of the Shaanxi Region in China

by Chen Zhongshi

  Darky, sitting as custom demanded inside on the kang, could do nothing but wait, listening to the noisy feast in the yard and the cheerful chatter and hearty laughter of the guests teasing Mu Du. Looking out through the window lattice, she saw the wall that reminded her that she had once been part of the neighboring family. Mu Du had handed her a hot potato over that wall. She thought of the strange meanderings of human lives.

  She scanned the group of guests, but did not see Lai Shun. Her heart grew heavy. Mu Du came inside, muttered, “Headache,” and fell onto the bed and immediately into drunken sleep.

  Soon Mu Du’s hunchbacked father came in and repeatedly called his son, trying to wake him. “You should take care of your guests!” he said loudly. “How could you get so drunk while everyone’s still here?” He left and came back with a pillow for his son. Darky was amazed to see that it was the stone pillow she had given the father many years ago.

  When night fell, Mu Du woke and saw Darky in her bridal clothes sitting under the light. His heart was filled with the passion of a new bridegroom. Shyly he spoke her name, but could find no other words. Too timid to approach her, he just rubbed his hands restlessly like a bashful, naughty boy.

  Darky took pity on him; Mu Du was plain looking, poor, inarticulate, inexperienced, and still a virgin. Today I marry him, she told herself, and I will be his woman from now on. So she combed her smooth, bright hair and pretended to be a bit shy, but a seductive passion showed in her eyes. Mu Du blew out the candle and pounced like a hungry tiger.

  When Darky awoke at dawn, the scene looked completely different. The arm around her body was as strong and hard as an iron stick, with protruding veins and muscles and overgrown yellow hair. Her eyes fell on the shiny mulberry carrying pole leaning against the bedroom gate. That pole had had to feed two mouths in the family, and now there was a third. Her husband, strong as an ox, would exert his energy and life with her body as with the carrying pole—day in and day out, year in and year out. Her body tingled.

  When Mu Du finally awoke, he spoke vehemently about new experiences and feelings. About how he would love her and dote on her. He could kill a dog with a punch, but he would never lay his fist on her; he would live only with her, perfectly content for the whole of his life, never even looking at other women. He also spoke of the loneliness he’d felt, as a bachelor, when he saw two dogs in heat in a cornfield.

  Darky asked, “Mu Du, why didn’t you invite Lai Shun to the feast yesterday?”

  “I did,” Mu Du replied. “He promised to come, but he never showed up.”

  “He’s a nice guy; don’t appear too proud in front of him. Find an opportunity, and treat him to a hearty drink.”

  “Sure,” Mu Du agreed.

  On the third day after the wedding, as Mu Du was passing by a wheat field after selling his alpine rush, Lai Shun popped out from behind a wheat stack. He had grown thinner, his eyes bleary. He said to Mu Du, “You’re living a happy life now! With a wife, you are a somebody!”

  Mu Du cupped his hand in salute and complained that he had missed Lai Shun on his wedding day.

  “Since I didn’t go that day,” Lai Shun said, “would you make up for it today?”

  “Absolutely! I just sold some alpine rush, so I have money in my pocket. You just wait here—I’ll fetch the wine!”

  Mu Du rushed into town and back like a gust of wind, returning to Lai Shun with a bottle of wine. Mu Du suggested they go to his home, where they could drink out of glasses, but Lai Shun said, “No need. It’s OK to drink here without any dishes.” So the two went behind the wheat stack and started drinking.

  Mu Du was not a good drinker; after several swigs he began to see double. Lai Shun continued to drink and persuaded Mu Du to drink more. Sipping his wine, at first he congratulated Mu Du on his marriage. But soon he whimpered, “Mu Du, you are my friend—you can take my clothes, but you shouldn’t have taken my wife!”

  Startled by Lai Shun’s words, Mu Du said that he would never do such a dirty thing; he was not an animal.

  Lai Shun persisted. “Darky should’ve been my wife; I proposed to her first. I offered three hundred yuan, while you gave three hundred fifty. You won Darky’s hand in marriage only because I’m poor!”

  Mu Du replied sharply, “Lai Shun, you wrong me as well as Darky. She didn’t refuse you because you offered less money. She didn’t even accept my betrothal money.”

  For a long while Lai Shun sat in a daze. “Really?” he said finally, with a boozy hiccup.

  Mu Du swore to it, pointing toward heaven. Lai Shun raised the bottle and said, “Then I wronged her. I fall behind you. Come, let’s drink. I drink . . . and you drink, too!”

  Because Mu Du felt so guilty for putting Lai Shun down, he forced himself to keep drinking. Soon the earth and sky were spinning around him, and his body felt as soft as ooze. A child nearby, viewing the scene, hurried off to report to Mu Du’s hunchbacked father.

  When the old man arrived, Lai Shun was trying to pour more wine into Mu Du, who was so drunk he had passed out. The hunchback wrested the bottle from Lai Shun and smashed it to pieces, cursing: “Lai Shun, you are disgusting; you hate my son because you didn’t get Darky! You know Mu Du is honest and simpleminded. How dare you try to drown him with alcohol!”

  Lai Shun, who was almost drunk, hastened to insist that he had no evil intent. The hunchback couldn’t restrain his anger and hit Lai Shun on the head. Grumbling and swearing, the old man carried Mu Du home on his back.

  4

  No one was sure how much fire was beneath the smoke. Lai Shun earned wide infamy and dared not call at Darky’s home for a long time.

  As for Darky, she did not believe that Lai Shun bore such ill will, and she remained concerned for him. When she explained to Mu Du how she felt, he didn’t know what to say; it was hard to separate right from wrong. However, the hunchbacked one, like an owl, would curse Lai Shun whenever he spotted him, even from far away. At home with his son and daughter-in-law, he would proclaim, “Our home is poor, but a humble family still has pride. No wildcat would dare bully us.”

  Mu Du didn’t understand his father’s anger, but Darky knew he was speaking to her. Mu Du might not be a good match for you, he was saying, but since you are now his wife, you must keep the fences intact. You cannot be a woman of two minds.

  Darky’s face might have shown divided feelings, but her heart did not. She remembered the suffering her former husband had caused her when he’d brought another woman into the family. She understood clearly how to behave as a good wife.

  The town school bell always woke Darky at dawn. The drawn-out peals rang through the house and into her ears, reminding her of the pale-faced bell ringer. She could not imagine him sleeping soundly at night. After ringing the bell, what must he think about while sitting at the school gate by himself?

  Mu Du usually awoke after the bell. He went to the fields and dug the ground hard, stripped to the waist, sweat wriggling like earthworms down his dusty back. Or he would carry alpine rush or charcoal on his shoulder pole from deep in the mountains. He would trudge the saw-toothed mountain ridges, black all over, eyes wide as a newly wrought porcelain jug. Exhausted by his heavy labor, he was hardly aware of the sweet wife waiting for him on the kang and would fall quickly into a deep sleep.

  With Darky in the family, father and son no longer wore ragged clothes. Darky cared for their things and cooked them delicious meals. Nevertheless, the poverty-stricken home still seemed a bottomless pit. The family worried deeply about their failure to keep up with their neighbors, let alone surpass them.

  Darky spoke to her husband. “You carry your shoulder pole all over the mountains to the point of exhaustion, while the credit agent’s family earns money so easily. Let’s think about other things we might do.”

  Mu Du asked, a little suspiciously, “So, you’re missing that family again?”

  “Why would I miss them? Do you think I’m that shameless? It’s just that others make a killing throug
h business; why not us? I don’t expect us to get rich quick, but we don’t have to remain poor all our lives.”

  As for what kind of business they could take up, Mu Du, like a tiger, wanted to swallow the sky but did not know where to take his first bite. Darky was equally at a loss. One day, when Mu Du went to town and passed the straw-bag factory in which the credit agent owned stock, he saw an imposing scene: an even expanse of straw-twisting and bag-sewing machines in the yard, and men and women in a flurry of work. Unable to resist, Mu Du stepped admiringly into the yard, watching and touching here and there. Suddenly a bold idea struck. Seeing the credit agent come through the front gate, he asked warmly, “Uncle, does your factory still want hands?”

  The credit agent looked down, examining Mu Du over the top of his spectacles, and said, “Absolutely we want hands!”

  Without hesitation, Mu Du asked, “Would you hire me? I’d like to sew straw bags, too!”

  The agent laughed in front of the workers. “Do you see that stone pestle in the corner? Show us how many times you can lift and tamp it!”

  Mu Du pulled off his shirt and took a deep breath. He raised the stone pestle and brought it down hard. One, two, three . . . he tamped forty-eight blows, sweat streaming from his face. He stood up and said, “I’m hungry. But after four bowls of noodles, I can manage sixty blows in a row!”

  The workers, watching, laughed up their sleeves. The creditor said, “That’s enough. You were born for this. Go find a family building a wall and work for them!” Mu Du realized that he had been made fun of and became purple with anger.

  When Mu Du came home and told Darky what had happened, she snapped, “Why did you turn to him for help? I’d rather we starve to death than beg at his door!”

  “Since he has refused me work in his factory,” Mu Du replied, “I won’t ask for help again. Instead I’ll ask for a loan from the credit cooperative. With capital we could do business in town.”

  Darky protested, “Never ask him for anything! Do you think he’ll grant you an honest loan? Whoever borrows from him must send him secret bribes. I would rather throw a gift into the river than offer it to him!” The couple argued for a long time before finally sitting face-to-face in silence.

  The following day, Mu Du left gloomily—but at noon he came back all smiles. He told Darky that he had come across the seventh son of the Wang family, a young man who was honest but footloose. As he had neither capital nor business acumen, he had gone to work in the coal mines at Tong Guan, beyond the mountains. Digging coal in the pits was as dangerous as dealing with ghosts or visiting the Palace of the Devil, but the lad had returned home safe and sound after earning 1,300 yuan in three months. And now he was buying rafters and bricks to build a new house.

  Darky had never been to Tong Guan and little understood the conditions of the coal mines. But she was delighted to find a way to earn a lot of money through hard labor. So the couple immediately began to collect expenses, clothing, and other things Mu Du would need for traveling. However, when Mu Du’s hunchbacked father heard their plan, he shook his head like a rattle-drum and said, “I went to Tong Guan in the old days; you had to exchange your life for money. I learned that good girls refuse to marry men in Tong Guan, because once married there they would make black water for three years and eventually become widows.”

  As soon as he mentioned widows, the father knew he’d made a slip of the tongue; when her former husband had left, Darky became what was known in the village as “a living widow.”

  Darky, undeterred, suggested, “It is really difficult to make money with hard labor. Why not invite the seventh son of the Wang family and ask him what it’s really like there?”

  So they invited the Wang son home and questioned him closely about the situation at Tong Guan. He told them, “Indeed, it is hard, but not as horrible as your dad has said. You can make a lot of money—if you were born lucky.”

  Mu Du was convinced. “I got married in my thirties. Ain’t I a lucky dog?” Once he had made up his mind to go to Tong Guan, neither his wife nor his father tried to stop him.

  On the day Mu Du was to go, his family invited the seventh son of the Wang family to dinner. They urged him to guide and support Mu Du throughout the journey. Mu Du, slow-witted and dim eyed, would have to depend wholly on Wang away from home. The seventh son stroked Mu Du’s chest in a gesture of reassurance.

  So the elderly father again set up an incense burner and asked Mu Du to kowtow to heaven, the earth, and successive generations of ancestors. Then Mu Du walked backward to the courtyard gate and turned around to stand in the doorway. Once more he murmured the incantation for going out and drew four horizontal lines and then five vertical lines across them as a protective talisman. The family tearfully saw him off on his journey.

  After Mu Du left, Darky had to sleep on the big earthen kang alone. Mu Du’s snoring had always invited her to tuck herself into a deep sleep. Now, without his thundering roar, she awakened frequently during the night. Looking out the window, she saw the night sky where the moon was bright and the stars sparse. As the silvery moonbeams poured over the bed, she prayed thousands and thousands of times for her husband. Nevertheless, the school bell ringing at daybreak sounded like a drearily weeping chant.

  Darky shouldered all the work in the field. She hoed the ground, carried manure, and reaped the wheat. When others had finished autumn sowing, she was still busy digging the ground. In the moonlit night, the hunchbacked father helped her in the field—but at his advanced age, he grew so exhausted that he coughed blood and had to lie down. She had to send for a traditional doctor and boil the prescribed medicinal herbs on the stove.

  When Darky returned to the field, she found that the area she’d left unworked two days before had grown smaller. She was suspicious. Steamed buns left out might be stolen, but work left undone? Who on earth would be so kind?

  It was the end of the month, when dark clouds swallowed the moon at night. Getting ready to take up her digging, she saw a shadow bending and rising at the border of the field. She sneaked up and, to her surprise, found it was Lai Shun.

  Standing behind him, short of breath, she said nothing. Lai Shun turned around at the sound of her breathing, and his eyes gave off an astonished gleam in the dark.

  Burning with rage, Darky asked, “Who allowed you to dig for me?”

  Lai Shun replied, “I can’t go to your home; can’t I at least come to your field?”

  Darky didn’t know what to say. After a long silence, she raised her pickax to dig the ground, and Lai Shun followed suit. Though they stood side by side, they were separated by the panic of one and the grief of the other.

  At night the sky seemed painted with charcoal. There was not a single soul in the fields, not even a wandering dog. A marmot scratched the earth nearby, oblivious to human affairs. Darky and Lai Shun continued digging till the cock crowed. Though the newly hoed soil was not virgin land, it gave off a rich and delicate fragrance from the quiet night’s humidity. They sat on the edge of the field. Their strenuous labor had quelled the tension between them, and their excitement dispelled their exhaustion.

  Darky tried to tamp down her arousal. She said, “Lai Shun, thank you so much. You’d better hurry back home and sleep.”

  Her words, uttered gently and full of tenderness, filtered through the dim night air. Lai Shun replied, “I wouldn’t be able to asleep if I tried.”

  “Well,” Darky said, “then come to my house, and I’ll cook something for you.”

  “You’d dare?”

  Darky knew he was right; she did not dare. Though the hunchbacked father was ill, he was neither deaf nor blind. Her husband was away; she couldn’t lead a robust man into her home in the dead of night, even if no one else was around to see and spread rumors. She lowered her head and said, “Lai Shun, don’t come and don’t help me any more.”

  In a righteous rage, Lai Shun jumped to his feet, shouting, “I will help you! I can’t watch you living such a miserable life!”
He smelled strongly of tobacco smoke and sour male sweat. He approached her in the darkness. She felt two hands—burning, rough, but trembling—grasping her own. She jumped back as if from an electric shock. Then, waving her hands aimlessly in the air, she ran home.

  The following noon, the town postman delivered a letter written by Mu Du from his dark underground world thousands of miles away. Mu Du was still as uneducated as Darky was. The letter was written on a sheet of cigarette paper; it consisted of only one short sentence:

  “It gets colder now, I can’t sleep well at night, bring me my hairy ¤¤.”

  Darky read the letter three times and failed to understand the meaning of ¤¤. Was he talking about what they did together in the dark? She was a little annoyed at Mu Du’s one-track mind, but she knew that he missed her. She pictured his ugly but lovely face and mentally scolded him with a sullen look. You shameless man!

  Mu Du’s hunchbacked father searched her face as she read the letter and then happily pinched the fifty yuan from the envelope and asked what his son had said. Darky, flustered and bashful, read the letter out loud. Her father-in-law said, “Oh! He wants us to take his hairy lambskin coat to him. He doesn’t know how to write ‘lambskin,’ so he drew circles instead.” Darky’s face turned red with embarrassment.

  Alone, Darky laughed at her own ridiculous assumption. Her husband barely knew how to write and only did so when it was absolutely necessary. Writing a letter was as difficult as working in the pits. How could he be carefree enough to flirt with her on paper?

  She exhaled a deep breath and began worrying about her simple and honest husband, away from home and family. How did he get his meals? Where did he sleep? What was it like to crawl through the dark pits, hauling coal, where the eyes were useless and one had to be alert to terrible danger with all one’s senses? She counted herself lucky that she had escaped the hands of Lai Shun the night before and that she had not betrayed her husband, who risked his life to make money for her.