by Zhou Daxin
Nuannuan’s heart started beating faster as she heard Grandma’s words.
Chapter 48
The days had grown warmer every day since the sowing of autumn crops. More visitors came to Chu Wang Village to hide from the heat in the city. One afternoon, Nuannuan was putting up the mosquito nets in guest rooms with Shallot and three other staff when Daming, Shallot’s daughter, ran into the room and said: “Mom, dad is asking for you at home. They are driving us out of our house!”
Shallot dropped everything and ran out after she said to Nuannuan: “I have to go home.”
Nuannuan knew that it must be caused by the expansion of Shang Xin Yuan, which would have to do with herself. So she followed Shallot.
When Nuannuan arrived at Shallot’s house, she found Shallot, Changlin, Jiuding and several people in the village were arguing in Shang Xin Yuan with the accountant Mr. Han whom Xue Chuanxin brought from the provincial city. Juiding was speaking: “You want us to leave our home for this amount of money? You are killing us! Don’t even think about it!”
Mr. Han was smirking: “You want to raise the money? Aren’t you a greedy lot? Here is the deal: when the time comes, you will have to leave!”
Nuannuan’s face clouded. She stepped up and said to Mr. Han: “Mr. Han, who gave you the right to threaten people here? They have lived in these houses and worked in these fields for generations. You don’t have the right to take that away from them!”
Seeing Nuannuan, Mr. Han put up a bitter smile and said: “My boss Mr. Xue and your husband the Leader Kuang made the decision. I am only here to deliver the news and hurry people up. If you have anything to say, say it to those two. The ownership of these lands is ours, according to the order from above.”
Nuannuan answered motionlessly: “I don’t care whose order it is. People in this village did not agree with that, so you cannot force them to!”
Mr. Han shrugged and left. Shallot, Jiuding and the others walked next to Nuannuan and said: “If it wasn’t for you, he will keep threatening us!”
Nuannuan tried to offer them some comfort: “Don’t be afraid. Officials from above have forbidden random acquisition of farmland. If they push you anymore, we will sue them!”
The crowd felt more assured. Shallot said: “Nuannuan, I’m afraid that you will have to talk to Kaitian and Mr. Xue. Otherwise they will still send people to drive us away.”
Nuannuan nodded and agreed.
Nuannuan planned to talk to Kaitian about the farmlands in the village during lunch, but he did not come home. Nuannuan thought that he was having lunch in Shang Xin Yuan and decided to delay the talk to that evening. After lunch, several guests arrived and Nuannuan sent them to their rooms. All of a sudden, she heard people crying and shouting outside. She walked out and saw Luoluo, daughter of Uncle Black Bean, running towards the Red Lake in tears with her mother running behind her while crying in panic: “Luo … Luo …”
Nuannuan asked her: “What happened?”
Luoluo’s mother did not stop running. She kept saying: “Luoluo, stop! Stop for your mother!”
Shallot came out, too. She looked at Luoluo and said in fear: “Oh dear, that girl is going to throw herself in the lake!”
Nuannuan heard the warning and found her heart skipping a beat. Luoluo was indeed running in such a way that made others feel as if they were never going to see her again. Nuannuan turned and started running towards the lake.
Shallot was right. Nuannuan had only started running towards her when Luoluo reached the lakeside. She jumped into the lake. Her mother burst into a desperate cry behind Nuannuan and fell to the ground. Nuannuan’s heart sank, uttering under her breath: “What a silly girl!”
She paused for an instant and started running towards the lake as fast as she could.
It seemed that Luoluo had been determined to kill herself. She picked the most dangerous spot to jump: the water was deep and there were a lot of rocks underneath. Nuannuan reached the lakeside. She tore off her blouse and jumped in herself. Nuannuan was the best swimmer amongst all women in Chu Wang Village. She took a look at the water ripples and dived into the lake. It only took a blink of an eye for her to pull Luoluo out of the water with her collar in her hand. Shallot, Huiyu and several others who had come to help all jumped in to pull Luoluo back. Luckily Luoluo had not inhaled too much water. Nuannuan laid her down flat on the ground and shook her body. Slowly, Luoluo woke up. Seeing people surrounding her, she burst into tears.
Nuannuan and Shallot helped Luoluo into Chu Di Ju and changed her wet cloths. They laid Luoluo down to take a rest and then found Luoluo’s mother, who could not stop crying standing aside, so they went into another room to ask about the situation. Luoluo’s mother hesitated for a while before she started talking whilst weeping: “I can tell that both of you have a good heart. But I will be honest with you: it’s all Shang Xin Yuan’s fault!”
Nuannuan did not expect her to say so. Luoluo’s mother stopped crying and sighed: “Isn’t Shang Xin Yuan paying the girls for the massage job? Girls in the village all know about it and some of them were persuaded. They would change into clean cloths and go to massage the guests there during the night in secret. But they must share the income with Shang Xin Yuan. My Luoluo could not earn much working in the city. She knew that her dad wanted to refurbish the house. So she went working in Shang Xin Yuan behind our back. I knew that she had been sneaking out during the night in new cloths after dinner, but I did not pay much attention. Now that she is a big girl, she should be dating and we are not meddling with her business. But things went bad. Days ago she started throwing up a lot and her dad told me to take her to the Mei’s Pharmacy. Old Doctor Mei tested her pulse and dragged me aside. He whispered to me that Luoluo is pregnant. I was stunned! She is only eighteen years old and she is not seeing anyone at all. Can’t you see how bad this news is? Back at home I pinched her and asked her what happened. She cried and told me about the massage job in Shang Xin Yuan. She also gave me all the money she had earned. Those people from the city, what bastards! They took advantage of my innocent daughter! What am I supposed to do? With her dad’s temper, he will explode if he knows! I thought about it for one day and one night and decided that I couldn’t hide it from her dad. Of course, his face turned cold like steel, and he picked up a wooden stick to hit her. I tried to stop him but I could not. He beat her so hard that she had to roll over on the floor to hide. Luoluo did not ask for this, but what can she do? She chose to kill herself …”
Nuannuan was too stunned to react. Xue Chuanxin, Kuang Kaitian, look what you have done! Shallot sighed and said: “Bad Karma!”
Nuannuan said: “Auntie, don’t be afraid. I am on your side. I’ll go talk some sense into those people in Shang Xin Yuan and I will stop them from poisoning our girls. You should take Luoluo home and secretly talk about Luoluo’s abortion with Uncle Black Bean so that no one else will know about it.”
Luoluo’s mother held Nuannuan’s hand and said: “Your auntie trusts you on this. We must not let another person know about Luoluo’s situation. Shallot, you are a sister to her, you must also keep the secret, or no one will ever marry her in the future.”
Nuannuan went to see Luoluo after discussing with her mother. Luoluo was still crying. She said: “Sister Nuannuan, you should not save me. I’d rather die.”
Nuannuan answered with a soft, comforting voice: “Silly girl! Your parents had raised you, how can you kill yourself before paying them back? They will not stop being sad if you die. You are not as brave as I thought you were, thinking of death whenever there is a problem …”
Nuannuan found out from Luoluo that a couple of girls in the village were doing the same massage work in secret. Like Luoluo, they would all make excuses to leave home after dinner and run to Shang Xin Yuan. They’d ask the reception to find them clients and share the income with Shang Xin Yuan. At first they really offered massages to the clients with the simple skills they learnt. However, in order to earn more money, they gradu
ally accepted whatever the clients asked of them. Luoluo also told her that Xuehua, another girl in the village, had been infected with some venereal disease from the clients. She had constantly felt this itchiness around her groin and she had to sneak to Juxiang Street to buy some paste.
Nuannuan was overwhelmed by anger. She wanted to run to Shang Xin Yuan and fight with Xue Chuanxin and Kaitian so that they could understand how bad things had turned and stop whatever they were doing. However, she knew that she must talk with Kaitian first because Xue Chuanxin would not even see her without Kaitian’s consent.
Nuannuan made dinner and helped her in-laws and Dangen eat. But Kaitian had not returned home. Nuannuan became anxious. A neighbour came over and said that the Leader asked him to tell Nuannuan that he would not be home for dinner due to some business matter that he had to discuss with Mr. Xue. During bedtime, Kaitian did not return and Nuannuan was worried that he would not come home that night. He had spent many nights out recently. Nuannuan decided to go to Shang Xin Yuan herself to find Kaitian: no matter how big your business is, you should have finished the discussion by now!
Nuannuan knew her way around Shang Xin Yuan. The security guard nodded to salute her and the girl working in the reception hastened to greet her.
“I’m looking for Dangen’s dad.” She walked straight towards her old office, knowing that Kaitian used it as an office and a bedroom.
“Madam Nuannuan!” the receptionist girl tried to stop her.
“What is this?”
“No, no, nothing at all. Please take a seat and I will take the Leader to you.”
“I don’t need you to take him to me.” Nuannuan was suspicious of the girl’s nervous attitude. Is Kaitian hiding something from me? She did not stop and paced up. She reached in her pocket for the key and thrust the office door open.
It was dark in the room, but the darkness did not stop Nuannuan from seeing. She saw clearly, on the single bed that she used to sleep in, two people sat up in a rush. Kaitian’s surprised voice called out: “Who is it?”
Nuannuan did not answer, She only turned the light on. Seeing her, Kaitian hastened to reach for his clothes. Nuannuan recognized the girl next to him who was apparently taking her time putting on some clothes. She was one of the six girls that Xue Chuanxin brought from the provincial city. Nuannuan neither cried nor cursed Kaitian. She did not even say a word. She stood there and watched the two putting on their clothes. Kaitian, who had finished covering himself, did not know what to say. He stood aside in embarrassment. After the girl walked out, Nuannuan spoke in a calm, indifferent tone: “Tomorrow we should go to Ju Xiang Street and get an official divorce. In the future you don’t have to worry about me showing up when you sleep with other women.”
Nuannuan turned to leave. Kaitian opened his mouth as if he was about to call her back. Yet he did not. He followed her out of Shang Xin Yuan and stood beside the gate. He stared at her figure disappearing in the night.
The next day during breakfast, Kaitian came home. Nuannuan did not say anything and the family ate their breakfast in peace. After breakfast, Nuannuan had Dangen lead Kaitian to her room, then she sent Dangen out. She spoke to Kaitian without emotion: “I have thought about the divorce agreement: we will halve the deposit; I won’t take any part of the old house; Shang Xin Yuan, which we invested in, will be yours, and Chu Di Ju, which we built ourselves, will be mine; I will not participate in South Water Landscape Company either and you shall have all the other incomes; Dangen can eat and sleep with either of us, but we will each pay half of his future tuition fee. What do you think?”
Kaitian seemed hesitant. He nodded and said: “Sure.”
Nuannuan wrote down the agreement on the paper. Each of them took one and signed. Nuannuan said: “Now we should go through the formalities.”
Things went well on Juxiang Street. Staffs at the registration office were satisfied to see the divorcing couple with an agreement and no emotional dispute. They all knew of Kaitian, the Leader and the famous entrepreneur. When the staff gave him the certificate of divorce, he smiled and said to Kaitian: “Mr. Leader, you are the third divorce I handled this year. I heard that today in the city, people have stopped wishing the newly-weds a long and prosperous lifetime together because marriages are not supposed to last. I think it’s time that we do so here, too …”
Nuannuan and Kaitian returned to the street. Nuannuan said: “I need to go buy something.”
She left on her own, without even a glance back at Kaitian.
Nuannuan sat next to a cluster of reeds by the side of the Red Lake until sunset. She did not want to go back to the village when the day was bright because people might want to ask about her business on Juxiang Street. To her comfort, she did not run into anyone on the road from the entrance of the village to the courtyard of the Kuangs. It had saved her the pain of answering questions. She gave the two jin of salt to her mother-in-law and went in her room to pack. When her mother-in-law called her to have dinner, she sat down and ate a little. Her mother-in-law then asked her the whereabouts of Kaitian. She did her best to smile and said: “Mom, you’ll have to ask him. I officially divorced him today. From now on, I have nothing to do with him, and no right to ask about his business.”
Kaitian’s mother dropped her chopsticks in shock. She stared at Nuannuan and asked in a shaky voice: “Is it true?”
Nuannuan took the certificate out of her pocket and handed it to her.
Nuannuan walked out of the courtyard gate with her things in her hands. Kaitian’s parents were crying behind her. Dangen walked behind her in confusion. He knew that his mother was going to spend the night in Chu Di Ju, but he did not understand why his grandparents were in tears: his parents did not fight, and it was not the first time that his mother went out after dinner.
“Grandpa, grandma, I will wake up early tomorrow and come back to see you!” He turned and shouted towards the courtyard.
Nuannuan put Dangen to sleep in a guest room in Chu Di Ju. She sat in the dark and gazed upon the night sky from the window. The sky was empty that night. Neither the moon nor the stars could be seen, instead, the thick clouds lingered in the darkness. As she kept gazing, Nuannuan suddenly felt unbearably empty inside. The home that she had devoted to just vanished in an instance. From now on, she would be a divorced woman on her own. What had happened to my life? Where did I go wrong? …
Shallot came to work the next morning and the staffs told her that Nuannuan stayed in a guest room. She thought that the couple had been fighting again and rushed over. Nuannuan had just washed her face, though her eyes were still red when she helped Dangen dress. Shallot spoke with a smile: “Did the happiest young couple fight again?”
Nuannuan faked a smile and waved the divorce certificate in front of Shallot: “There is no couple here. From today on, it will be Leader Kuang and Chu Nuannuan.”
Shallot took the certificate and spoke in surprise: “Silly! How can you divorce him now? He is the Leader, and the vice president of Shang Xin Yuan. He has power and money. Do you know how many women want something to do with him? You just gave away your position as his wife! They must be so happy to know!”
“Let them be happy. Whoever wants him can take him. I don’t want him anymore.”
After lunch, Nuannuan went to her parents’ home with Dangen. She had decided to acknowledge them of the divorce because she knew that she could not hide it, and it would be better if they heard about the divorce from her instead of the gossips from other seniors in the village. When she arrived, Dad, Mom, Grandma and her sister were all at home and they were happy to see her with Dangen. Mom was doing some needlework by the gate. She stopped and held Nuannuan’s hand: “Have you been too busy? You don’t look well.”
Nuannuan felt tears in her eyes hearing Mom’s loving words. She did her best to stop the tears from dropping down.
“Grandma, dad, mom, I have something to tell you.”
“What is it? Do you want us to take care of Dangen?”
Mom turned and held Dangen in her arms to kiss him. “You have grown taller again! Do you miss Grandma? How are your father’s parents doing? Your father …”
“I just divorced Kaitian.”
“What?” Dad, Mom and her sister all cried out. Grandma kept silent, but her grey hair shook as she shivered. She stared at Nuannuan with her hands shaking on her knees.
“What nonsense are you talking about? You have a child together. How can you divorce?” Mom’s face turned pale in shock.
“Was he the one who wanted a divorce?” Dad asked, his teeth clenching. “Because he is the Leader? Because he is rich now?”
“No, it was me,” said Nuannuan, lowering her head. “I can’t live with him anymore, so I thought I might as well …”
“What do you mean you can’t live with him anymore? Do you think you can live as a divorced woman? Don’t you feel any shame at all? No woman in Chu Wang Village dare divorce her husband!” said Dad, he was extremely angry and kept hitting the chair next to him.
Grandma knocked her cane on the ground and interrupted Dad’s scolds: “Let Nuannuan explain.”
Nuannuan flushed. She bowed her head furthermore and mumbled: “He cheated on me.”
Grandma coughed and said: “I have guessed so. That kid has been the king in Chu Wang Village since he was elected the Leader; he has been the richest man since you started making money; he has been the man with all the time in the world since you stopped working in the fields. Of course he can mess around with women. I have guessed so. But I didn’t know it would happen this soon!”
“Did you hear about it from other’s gossip or …” Mom flushed, too. She could not ask her straightforward. It was not something that a mother could simply talk about with her daughter.
“I caught him.” Nuannuan bowed her head even more.