by Lu Xun
She hadn’t been born in Luzhen. Early one winter, when my uncle was looking for a new maidservant, old Mrs Wei – a middle-woman in these sorts of transactions – brought her along to the house. Around twenty-five or twenty-six at the time, she wore a black skirt, a blue jacket and a lighter blue waistcoat, her hair tied up into a bun with a white cord. Though her face had a sallow, greenish tinge to it, her cheeks were pink. Mrs Wei introduced her as Xianglin’s wife, the neighbour of one of her mother’s relatives. Her husband had died, so she’d left home to look for work. Uncle frowned; my aunt knew what was worrying him – the fact she was a widow. But seeing as she had a good sturdy look, with big, strong hands and feet, and kept her eyes fixed docilely on the ground and let others do the talking for her, she seemed the kind of person who would know her place and do what she was told. And so, my uncle’s scowl notwithstanding, she was kept on. During the trial period, she seemed to work harder even than the men, toiling all day without a rest. On the third day she was formally hired, at five hundred coppers a month.
Everyone called her Xianglin’s wife. Though no one ever asked her what her surname was, it was probably Wei, as she had come from the village of Weijiashan – literally the ‘Mountain of the Wei Family’, where everyone shared the clan surname. She said very little, speaking out only when spoken to, and briefly even then. It took a good ten days to reveal she had a tyrannical mother-in-law; a brother-in-law around ten years old, who could gather firewood; and that she had lost her husband – a woodcutter, too, around ten years her junior – that spring. That was about the sum total of what was known of her.
As the days flew by, her prodigious capacity for work continued. On she went, not minding what she was given to eat, never sparing herself. Everyone said the Lus’ maid worked better than a man. Single-handedly she took charge of the New Year’s preparations: dusting, mopping, slaughtering the chickens and the geese, cooking through the night; no extra hired help was required. Yet she seemed content: her mouth tilting up into a smile, her face growing fairer and plumper.
A little after New Year, though, she returned from washing the rice by the river rather paler than usual. Just now, she said, she’d seen a man loitering a way off on the other bank. She was worried he was an older cousin of her husband, come looking for her. When my aunt – surprised by this string of revelations – tried to find out more, Xianglin’s wife went silent.
‘I don’t like it,’ Uncle frowned, when he heard. ‘Sounds like she’s run away from home.’
And indeed she had.
Around ten days later, just when everyone was forgetting what had happened, Mrs Wei reappeared, this time bringing with her a woman in her early thirties, whom she introduced as their maidservant’s mother-in-law – the late Xianglin’s mother. She conducted herself with unusual self-possession, for a peasant from the mountains. After exchanging a few pleasantries, she explained apologetically that she was here to take her daughter-in-law back home. It was the busy farming season, and they were short on labour – everyone at home was either too old or too young.
‘We can’t stop her mother-in-law taking her back,’ Uncle said.
Her wages were reckoned as coming to one thousand seven hundred and fifty coppers; the entire untouched sum – which she had kept deposited at the Lus’ – was handed over to her mother-in-law, who then picked up Xianglin’s wife’s clothes, thanked Uncle and Aunt, and left. It was now noon.
‘Where’s the rice?’ Aunt eventually exclaimed, her stomach reminding her it was lunchtime. ‘Didn’t Xianglin’s wife go out to wash it?’
Everyone went off in search of the rice basket: my aunt checked first in the kitchen, then in the hall, then in the bedrooms – no sign of it. After looking unsuccessfully about outside, Uncle walked all the way down to the river, where at last he found it, sitting upright on the bank, next to a bunch of vegetables.
That morning, he was told, while he was out, a boat – its white awning pulled fully across – had been spotted moored on the river. No one knew whose it was, though neither was the question given much thought. Just as Xianglin’s wife knelt down to wash the rice, two men – both peasants from the mountains, by the looks of them – rushed out of the boat. One had grabbed her, then, helped by the other, dragged her down into the boat. After screaming a while, she fell silent – probably because she had been gagged. Then a couple of women stepped on to the bank: Mrs Wei, with someone they didn’t recognize. No one got a proper look at what was going on in the boat, though Xianglin’s wife seemed to be lying on the deck, tied up.
‘What a dreadful business!’ said Uncle. ‘All the same…’
Aunt cooked the rice herself that noon, while their son, Aniu, saw to the fire.
Mrs Wei returned after lunch.
‘What a dreadful business!’ repeated Uncle.
‘What on earth do you want?’ Aunt spat at her, as she washed the bowls. ‘How dare you come back here? First you bring her to us, then you help kidnap her back! Causing all this trouble – making us look like idiots! Really – what will everyone think of us?’
‘I was tricked,’ the old woman wailed. ‘I came back to explain. When she asked me to find her a place, I had no idea her mother-in-law didn’t know about it. Please accept my apologies – I’m too old and stupid. But you’ve always given people a second chance, to make up for their mistakes – I’ll find you someone better, I promise.’
‘All the same…’ began Uncle.
And so the matter of Xianglin’s wife was closed and, not long afterwards, forgotten.
Except by Aunt, who was always going on about Xianglin’s wife, because most of the maidservants she subsequently hired turned out to be unsatisfactory: either lazy, or greedy, or both. ‘I wonder how she is now?’ she would mutter to herself, whenever she brought the subject up – meaning that she hoped she’d come back. In the first month of the next lunar year, this hope finally died.
As the month drew to a close, a rather tipsy Mrs Wei called to wish the family a happy New Year. She was later than usual, she said, because she’d been staying with her mother’s family a few days. Inevitably, the subject of Xianglin’s wife came up.
‘Well,’ Mrs Wei chattered merrily, ‘things are looking up for her. Her mother-in-law came to drag her back because she’d already been promised to Mr Ho’s sixth in Hojia. She got hitched a few days after they got her home.’
Aunt was astonished: ‘What a thing for a mother-in-law to do!’
‘You’ve money to spare, you would say that. Poor country people like us – we can’t afford to be too particular. She’s got another son who wants a wife. She needed the bride price from remarrying her daughter-in-law for the dowry. She’s sharp as a tack, and tough with it. She had it all planned – got her married off in the mountains. She wouldn’t have got much for her if she’d married her to someone from the same village. But it’s not often you get a woman who’ll marry into the back of beyond, so she got eighty thousand coppers for her. And now the younger son’s married: his wife set them back only fifty thousand, and she’s still got over ten thousand left, even after the wedding. She had it all planned, all right!’
‘Didn’t Xianglin’s wife mind?’
‘It wasn’t up to her. She made a row, of course. But they tied her up, threw her in the bridal chair and lugged her off to the husband’s house. Then it was just a case of getting the garland on her, forcing her to kneel and locking her in the bedroom. Job done. But Xianglin’s wife was quite something – the fuss she made, I mean. Everyone said it was because she’d been working for an educated family. I’ve seen a thing or two, let me tell you. When women get remarried, some of them scream and some of them cry, some try to kill themselves, some refuse to bow at the altar, some even smash the wedding candles. But Xianglin’s wife was something else. First, she screamed and shouted herself hoarse all the way to Hojia. Then after they’d pulled her out of the bridal chair, they couldn’t get her to kneel – not even with two men and her brother-in-la
w forcing her. The moment they let go of her, just a little bit, she smashed a great big hole in her head against the incense table. They couldn’t stop the bleeding – not even with two handfuls of incense ash and two pieces of red cloth to bind it. It took every pair of hands they could muster to get her locked in the bedroom – and you should have heard her curse, my goodness…’ Shaking her head, Mrs Wei looked down at the floor and fell silent.
‘Then what happened?’ Aunt asked.
‘I heard she didn’t get up the next day.’ She looked back up at Aunt.
‘And after that?’
‘Oh, she got up after that. By the end of the year, she had a baby, a boy. He’ll turn one this year. While I was at my mother’s just now, a few of the villagers went to call on the Hos. They said they’d seen the pair of them – both thriving, mother and son. No mother-in-law to worry about, a strong husband, with lots of work in him; a house of their own. Things are looking up for her, and no mistake.’
Aunt stopped mentioning Xianglin’s wife.
But one autumn – probably a couple of years after the news of her change in fortune had been put about – Xianglin’s wife stood again in Uncle’s hall. A round basket, shaped like a water chestnut, she had placed on a table; her bedding lay under the eaves. She wore the same black skirt, blue jacket and lighter blue waistcoat as before, her hair still tied back with a white cord. Her face still had a greenish-yellow tinge to it; but the pink had left her cheeks. Tears hung at the corners of eyes cast dully down at the floor. As before, she was in the company of Mrs Wei, who – her features arranged into an expression of charitable indulgence – verbosely explained matters to Aunt.
‘… Heaven truly moves in mysterious ways. We all thought her husband looked strong enough for anything, but there he was – carried off by typhoid, in the prime of life. He’d shaken it off, then he ate a bowl of cold rice, and the fever came back. She still had her son, though, and she could work, chopping wood, picking tea, raising silkworms. She would have managed. Then her child was taken by a wolf! A wolf in the village – at the end of spring! And now she’s got no one. Her uncle’s taken the house and thrown her out. She’s nowhere to go except back to her old place. She’s no other ties now, and I happened to notice you were needing a new servant, so I thought we’d try our luck. Better to have someone who already knows her way around the place…’
‘I was so stupid,’ Xianglin’s wife now picked up the story, raising her lifeless eyes. ‘I knew wolves came down into the villages when it snowed, because there was nothing to eat in the mountains. But I didn’t know they came in spring, too. Soon as it was light, I got up, opened the door, and put some beans in a little basket, then told Ah-mao to sit on the doorstep and shell them. Such a good little boy, he was, always doing whatever I told him, so out he went. I was out back chopping wood and washing rice. After I’d got the rice in the pot, I thought I’d steam the beans, too. But when I called out to him, he didn’t reply, and when I went out to look, all I could see was the beans, scattered all over the ground – but no Ah-mao. He wouldn’t have gone to someone else’s house to play. I asked everywhere – no sign of him. Then I started to get worried, and begged my neighbours to go out looking for him. That afternoon, they got as far as the valley, where someone spotted one of his little shoes caught on a bramble. This was a bad sign, they all said – looked like he’d been taken by a wolf. A bit further in, they found him, in the lair, his guts eaten away, his little hand still holding tight on to that basket…’ She broke down into sobs.
Though Mrs Wei’s exposition had left her undecided, tears reddened Aunt’s eyes by the time Xianglin’s wife was finished. After further, brief thought, Aunt told her to take her basket and bedroll to the servants’ quarters. Mrs Wei sighed, as if relieved of a heavy burden. Looking much easier in herself than she had done on arrival, the returnee set out her bedroll, just as she had done in the past, without needing to be reminded. And so she resumed her career as a maidservant in Luzhen.
Everyone still called her Xianglin’s wife.
And yet she seemed very different. After a few days back at the Lus’, her employers began to feel she wasn’t as quick as before: that her memory was much worse; that her lifeless face never smiled. Soon, Aunt began to articulate her discontent – at least in her tone of voice. Uncle had frowned when she’d rejoined the household, just as he had done the first time. But he had put up no substantial resistance to her return, given the problems they had lately had with maidservants. All he had done was offer Aunt a few quiet words of warning: however tragic someone like Xianglin’s wife might seem, she would bring her bad luck with her. She could help out around the house, but she mustn’t touch anything to do with the sacrifices – Aunt would have to prepare all the food herself. If it wasn’t ritually clean, the ancestors wouldn’t touch it.
Before, Xianglin’s wife had been rushed off her feet during the all-important sacrifices, but now there was nothing for her to do. When the table had been positioned in the middle of the main hall, and the tablecloth tied down around it, she began setting out wine cups and chopsticks as she had done before.
‘Put them back!’ Aunt panicked. ‘I’ll do it!’
Xianglin’s wife pulled back her hand, embarrassed, then picked up a candlestick.
‘Put that down!’ Aunt fussed again. ‘I can manage.’
Xianglin’s wife circled about, trying unsuccessfully to find something she could do, then walked dazedly off. The only task available to her that day was to sit by the stove and mind it didn’t go out.
Though everyone in the town still called her Xianglin’s wife, though they still spoke to her, there was no longer any warmth in their smiles or in their voices. Ignoring the change in them, she kept her eyes fixed ahead of her and concentrated on telling everyone she met her tragedy.
‘I was so stupid,’ she said. ‘I knew wolves came down into the villages when it snowed, because there was nothing to eat in the mountains. But I didn’t know they came in spring, too. As soon as it was light, I got up, opened the door, and put some beans in a little basket, then told Ah-mao to sit on the doorstep to shell them. Such a good little boy, he was, you know, always doing whatever I told him, so out he went. I was out back chopping wood and washing rice. After I’d got the rice in the pot, I wanted to steam the beans, too. But when I called out Ah-mao! he didn’t reply, and when I went out to look, all I could see was the beans, scattered all over the ground – but no Ah-mao. I asked everywhere – no sign of him. Then I started to get worried, and begged my neighbours to go out looking for him. That afternoon, they got as far as the valley, where someone spotted one of his little shoes caught on a bramble. He’s done for, they all said – he must have been taken by a wolf. A bit further in, there they found him, in the lair, his guts eaten away, his poor little hand still holding tight on to that basket…’ She broke down into sobs.
Her story certainly had an impact on those who heard it. Men would walk awkwardly away, the smirk fading from their faces, while women exchanged their looks of contempt for sympathetic profusions of tears. Some old women – those who hadn’t heard her recitation about town – would seek her out specially to hear her tragic story. When she broke into sobs, their own tears, ready at the corners of their eyes, would also gush out; then, with a sigh, they would leave, perfectly satisfied and still discussing it animatedly among themselves.
Over and over she repeated it, gathering small groups of listeners about her. But soon everyone knew it too well – from memory – and even the town’s most devout old lady Buddhists were left unmoved. The moment she began, her audiences felt only irritation.
‘I was so stupid – ’
‘Yes, yes, you knew wolves came down into the villages when it snowed, because there was nothing to eat in the mountains,’ they would impatiently interrupt before stalking off.
She would stand there, mouth hanging stupidly open, watching as they distanced themselves, before moving on herself – as if she, too, were
bored with her own tragedy. And yet she went on trying other prompts to bring up her story – small baskets, beans, other people’s children.
‘If my Ah-mao were still alive,’ she’d say if she saw a child one or two years old, ‘he’d be as big as that…’
Frightened by the look in her eyes, the children would tug their mothers away. Again, she would be left alone, walking listlessly off. In time, everyone learnt to tease her about this new trick of hers.
‘If your Ah-mao were still alive,’ they would ask, trying not to smirk, whenever a child happened to be in sight, ‘wouldn’t he be about as big as that?’
Perhaps it hadn’t yet dawned on her that her sorrow, having been chewed deliciously for so long, had now been reduced to dregs, to be spat out in disgust. But even she could read the mockery in their smiles, comprehending that no response was required, beyond a silent glance across at them.
Around ten days before New Year, Luzhen always turned into a hive of activity. Even with an extra man about the house, hired to help out with the celebrations, there was still too much to do at Uncle’s, so they asked a Mrs Liu to lend a hand with slaughtering the chickens and geese. Since she was a Buddhist, though, she refused to kill living things and would only wash the sacrificial vessels. Xianglin’s wife sat idly around, watching the fire, then watching Mrs Liu at work. A fine snow was slowly falling.
‘I was so stupid,’ she sighed, staring off into the middle distance, as if no one else was listening.
‘There you go again,’ Mrs Liu glanced impatiently at her. ‘Is that scar from when you smashed your head when you got married?’
She mumbled a yes.
‘Why did you go along with it in the end?’
‘What?’
‘You must have wanted it, or else – ’
‘He was too strong for me.’
‘I don’t believe you. You’re strong, too – you could have fought him off. You must have wanted it in the end, then pretended afterwards he was too strong for you.’