Under the Hawthorn Tree

by Anna Holmwood

  Fang knelt down to pick up the money and faltered. ‘Now what? I’ve used up the money he gave me for the bus and I’ve failed. What will I say to him? Take the money, for my sake.’

  Jingqiu didn’t want to get Fang in trouble. ‘Don’t worry, go back and tell him that I’m working at the cardboard factory gluing boxes. The money’s good and the work’s not hard, so I don’t need his money, nor his concern. If you say that, he won’t blame you.’

  Fang mulled over the excuse and agreed. ‘I’ll say it, but you have to help me with the details, otherwise I won’t do it. I’m not good at lying, my heart pounds and it only takes a few questions before I’m found out. See? Old Third told me over and over not to say whose money it was, and yet it didn’t take much for you to get it out of me.’

  Jingqiu helped Fang to flesh out the details of the lie, including the address of the cardboard factory, the direction in which the main gate faced, that they had met at the factory and that Jingqiu would be working there all holiday.

  ‘So don’t do any dangerous work in real life, because if something happens Old Third will know I lied,’ Fang pleaded.

  After having sent Fang off Jingqiu decided not to spend even more money on another bus ticket so walked back, her head filled with images of Cao Daxiu. She had never seen her, but a clear picture floated in front of her eyes; despite her worn clothes she was an attractive young woman. Then came an image of Old Third hugging Daxiu on a mountain top. Old Third was kind to her, so whatever he wanted she must have given him; Old Third had reached his tongue into her mouth and Daxiu had done nothing to stop him.

  She returned home with a headache, and without eating went to lie down. Her mother was alarmed, thinking the day had been too hot for work. She asked Jingqiu a few questions, but after receiving Jingqiu’s clipped replies she decided not to persist.

  Jingqiu slept for a while until Wang arrived to say that the boss wanted everyone to work overtime that evening. ‘If the boat stays an extra day tomorrow the factory will have to pay an extra day’s wages. If we work from six until nine tonight we’ll get paid half a day’s wages, for only three hours’ work.’

  As soon as Jingqiu heard this her head was too excited to hurt and she forgot to be angry any more. If she applied the Marxist theory she had learned at school to the situation, you could say it would be better to concentrate on her economic base first. She thanked Wang, gulped down two bowls of rice, grabbed her bamboo basket and shoulder pole, and rushed off to work. All the temporary workers were gathered at the river, and some had even brought family members. Who wouldn’t do three hours’ work for half a day’s wages?

  That evening they worked more than three hours, however, heaving the sand down from the boat, and so the boss offered to pay a full day’s wages for their trouble. But now the work was finished, they weren’t required the next day. If any more work came up he would call on them.

  The thrill of hitting it big time was diluted in an instant by the news of their impending unemployment, and Jingqiu felt dejected. Tomorrow I have to go back to Director Li and who knows if there’ll be a job. She had started to trudge with heavy steps back towards home when the boss came running up to her, offering her a few painting jobs if she was interested. She could start tomorrow at the factory repairs unit.

  Jingqiu couldn’t believe her ears.

  ‘Will you do it? You’re hard-working, and I trust you. Also, painting requires attention to detail, it’s better for a woman to do it.’

  Jingqiu was wild with joy. So this is what they mean by ‘luck the doors can’t keep out’! The next day she would go to the repair unit to paint. People said that the paint was poisonous, but the work was easy, and you got ten cents more per day. Who cared if it was poisonous or not?

  That whole summer luck was on her side. To her surprise her lie to Old Third came true and she really did work at the cardboard factory for two weeks, gluing boxes. You were supposed to be struck by lightning for lying, and yet she had come out not only unscathed, but with an actual job at the factory’.

  This time she would work at the machines with the regular workers. They gave her a white hat, and told her to tie her hair back with a leather belt from the workshop, in case her long hair caught in the machine. The regular workers were given white aprons which made them look like they worked in a textile factory, but the casual workers worked without, so it was obvious who had a permanent job and who was only temporary.

  Jingqiu really wanted to sneak herself an apron and try it on: it felt truly wonderful to be employed. The work was simple, all she had to do was put two flat pieces of cardboard and one corrugated piece into a machine, and then it would swipe glue on them and press the three pieces together into one sheet. These could then be used to make boxes. The only technique she had to learn was to line up the corners when she put the cardboard into the machine, otherwise it would come out crooked and would have to be thrown away.

  Jingqiu was a meticulous person, always striving to do her best, as well as a fast learner. The other workers on her machine liked her because she was quick and reliable, and never slacked off. A few of them let Jingqiu take care of everything while they slipped out the back door to browse in the nearby shop. Every day they finished their quota early and once the inspector had checked their work they were free go to the common room to rest until they were allowed to go home.

  Once, the factory distributed pears, one and a half kilos to the regular workers and just one kilo to the temporary workers. At the end of the day, she carried the pears back home and presented them to her family as if she were a magician that had conjured them into existence. She told her sister to eat. Her sister was overjoyed; grabbing three pears she went to wash them so they could have one each. Jingqiu declined, saying she had already eaten some at the factory. ‘That’s the thing about pears, if you eat too many you get sick of them.’

  Jingqiu watched her sister read while nibbling at a pear. After half an hour she still hadn’t finished. Jingqiu’s heart ached, and quietly she made a promise to herself: when I earn some money I will buy a big basket of pears so my sister can eat as many as she pleases, so many that she will never want to eat another pear again.

  Unfortunately her job at the cardboard factory lasted barely two weeks. It was only when someone told her that she needn’t come the next day that she really understood that she was just a temporary worker. She was reminded of a sentence in one of the classical poetry books Old Third had lent her: ‘In dreams I know not that I am a guest, / a moment of stolen happiness.’

  So she returned to Director Li’s house to wait for a job, and the fear that went along with waiting. She was back to the exhaustion of it all. Old Third was but a remote concern compared to her nervousness and exhaustion.

  Chapter Sixteen

  In the days after starting back at school in the autumn Jingqiu was very busy, not with studying but with a confusion of other things. That term, apart from continuing on the girls’ volleyball team, she was also training with the ping-pong team for a forthcoming competition. Normally the sports teams had an agreement that each student could only play for one team so that they could concentrate properly on one sport. But Jingqiu’s circumstances were special; the two coaches, Mr Wang for ping-pong and Mr Quan for volleyball, had negotiated to let her play both.

  Mr Wang thought Jingqiu a vital part of his team, not only because she was the best girl in the whole of No. 8 Middle School, but for another important, what you might call historical, reason.

  Jingqiu had started on the ping-pong team at junior high. One year, there had been a city-wide competition in which Jingqiu had come in the top four. In the semi-finals she had met another student from her team, Liu Shiqiao, with whom she was often paired during practice. Jin
gqiu held her bat upright, in an attacking grip, whereas Shiqiao held hers in a horizontal, defensive grip. The coach knew that Shiqiao met the ball securely, but lacked ferociousness in her attacks, the killer instinct you might say, unlike Jingqiu who lashed and served the ball as if killing was in her blood. So the coach had taught Shiqiao to wear her opponent down through a process of attrition, slowly weakening her adversary rather than looking for the fatal shot. Then, when her opponent finally lost patience, it would be her own mistakes that finished her off. As they were both on the same team Jingqiu naturally knew Shiqiao’s strengths and weaknesses, not to mention the coach’s tactics, so she had perfected her own way of dealing with her. Usually during practice it was Jingqiu who came out on top.

  They were playing instant knock-out. In the second round Jingqiu had been drawn against a player from the city sports academy. It was like a small theatrical troupe up against an operatic company, so Mr Wang told her he had no great hopes but that she should just ‘Go for it, and try not to get skinned alive’. Her opponent must not take the glory in all three games. Mr Wang didn’t even stay to watch the match on the grounds that it would be pointless to waste his energy over it. Even the umpire was not bothered to watch properly.

  But who was to know that, perhaps because of a nearly absolute lack of expectation on the part of those around her, Jingqiu really did go for it. She thwacked from left and from right. Perhaps her fearless way of attacking had shocked her opponent. Or perhaps because her methods weren’t particularly ‘operatic’ the girl hadn’t known how to respond. Smashing this way, crashing that way, Jingqiu eventually knocked out the girl from the sports academy.

  Mr Wang was jubilant but the rest of the competitors panicked. The girls who competed against her in the following rounds were beaten calmly and Jingqiu progressed through the competition. Shiqiao happened to have a lucky competition too, and so, in the semifinals, the two girls met.

  After they had tossed for who was to play on what side and who was to start, Mr Wang walked over to Jingqiu and rasped under his breath, ‘Let her win, d’you hear me?’

  Jingqiu was given no explanation as to why she was supposed to let Shiqiao win, but she thought that maybe it was the coach’s special tactic, that he was thinking of the glory of the whole school. Every ping-pong player at the time knew that the Chinese national team had the tradition that for the country to come on top individuals had to let their team members win sometimes. So, with a heavy heart, Jingqiu let Shiqiao win a game, only to have the same instructions repeated. Jingqiu put her doubts out of her mind and returned the ball sloppily, letting Shiqiao win the match.

  Only afterwards did Jingqiu ask the coach, ‘Why did I have to let her win? What tactic was that?’

  ‘The people who get into the finals are invited to train with the provincial sports academy,’ Mr Wang replied, ‘but your class background is bad, they’d reject you as soon as you got there. You’d feel terrible.’

  Jingqiu was so furious she had to fight back her tears. So the sports school would reject me, but I could’ve still come first, or second, in the city, so why make me throw the contest? Isn’t that worse that being rejected by the school?

  Later Jingqiu’s mother got to hear of it and being equally upset she went to see the coach, brandishing the logic ‘you can’t choose your class background, but you can choose your future’ to clarify the error of his actions.

  Mr Wang repeated his explanation; he had done it out of concern for Jingqiu’s feelings, but despite his good intentions he did regret his decision. If he’d let Jingqiu play the school might have won the Yichang title, Shiqiao only came second. Jingqiu told her mother to forget it. It’s done now, there’s no point. She left the ping-pong team and joined the volleyball team instead.

  But Mr Wang wanted to remedy the wrong he had done to Jingqiu, and in reality, he hadn’t found anyone in the whole school better at ping-pong than Jingqiu, so he negotiated with the volleyball coach to let her continue with ping-pong so that she could compete in the next city-wide competition. The volleyball team were also in training for a competition, and along with school work, every spare moment seemed to be given over to training for the two teams.

  One Thursday afternoon, when Jingqiu was practising ping-pong, Mr Wang came in and said to her, ‘I just saw someone outside the canteen carrying a big bag looking for Teacher Jingqiu, maybe he’s looking for your mother. I took him to your house but your mother wasn’t in, no one was. Today the teachers are visiting parents so perhaps that’s where your mother is. I told him to wait in the entrance to the canteen, why don’t you go see what it’s about?’

  Jingqiu rushed over to the canteen and saw Lin crouching, as stiff and dignified as a stone lion, in the doorway. The crowds streaming in and out were giving him curious looks. Jingqiu ran over and called out. As soon as he saw her, he stood up and pointed to the bag beside him. ‘Some walnuts for your mother.’ Then he pointed a bit further away and said, ‘Some kindling for you. I’m going.’

  Jingqiu watched as Lin walked away, her heart pounding. She wanted to make him come back but she was too timid to grab him. She called out, ‘Hey, hey, don’t go, won’t you at least help me carry it all to my house?’

  As if jolted awake Lin turned back. ‘Oh, they’re too heavy? Let me do it.’ He swung the bag on to his back, picked up the basket, and followed Jingqiu to her house.

  ‘Have you eaten?’ Jingqiu asked as she started scraping out the oven to make food.

  ‘Yes, in a restaurant,’ Lin answered proudly.

  Jingqiu thought it odd that Lin would have eaten in one of Yichang’s restaurants. She poured him a cup of boiled water and asked him to rest while she looked for something into which she could transfer the walnuts so that he could take his bag back with him. ‘Did you go to Yumin’s home town? Is her family well?’ Jingqiu asked.

  ‘Her family?’ Lin looked confused. Jingqiu thought it possible that he had gone all the way there, picked the walnuts and left without saying a word to Yumin’s family.

  Jingqiu remembered Auntie saying Lin had been quite incapable of lying ever since he was small. His eyelids would flutter non-stop if he told a fib, making it easy for Auntie to suss him out. Jingqiu looked at his eyes and saw he was blinking a little, but the evidence was inconclusive. Inside the bag was another smaller bag with rock sugar in it. ‘Did you buy the sugar?’

  ‘My big brother bought it.’

  So, even Sen had been implicated. ‘You can only buy rock sugar with a doctor’s prescription, where did Eldest Brother get one?’ she asked, while sneaking twenty yuan of the summer’s earnings into Lin’s bag. She rolled the bag up and tied it with a piece of string, guessing that it would be unlikely that Lin would find the money before he got home. But if he didn’t find it once he got there, Auntie or Yumin might wash the bag and the twenty yuan would be ruined. She decided to take him to the bus station, and only once the bus had started moving would she tell him about what she had put in his bag.

  ‘Big Brother knows a doctor and he made up the prescription.’

  Lin’s answer sounded too prepared, nor was it like his normal way of speaking. His eyes were blinking rapidly. She decided to trick him, to find out if he’d come on his own or with someone else. ‘The ticket has gone up ten per cent, it’s expensive now, isn’t it?’

  Lin blushed, then started counting on his fingers. ‘Gone up? Up to twenty yuan and eighty cents? Damn it, it’s exploitation, that’s what it is.’

  Jingqiu now knew for certain that he hadn’t come on his own. He didn’t know the price of a ticket, and had calculated ten per cent to be ten yuan. Most probably he came with Old Third who must be hiding somewhere. She let Lin sit a while longer. That way Old Third would wait until, thinking
Lin had lost his way, he had to come looking for him.

  But Lin couldn’t be forced to stay and was adamant that he should go. He had to hurry to catch the bus. Jingqiu had no option but to take him to the station. Once they reached the campus gate, however, Lin wouldn’t let her go any further. He was obstinate, and looked as if he might use force to hold her back, should it be necessary.

  Jingqiu had to give up. She didn’t leave, however, but stood behind the window of the campus reception and watched Lin. Lin waited by the river looking around him before walking over the bank down to the river. He reappeared moments later with another person. Jingqiu could see it was Old Third. Despite his faded army uniform, he looked keen and spritely. The two of them stood by the river talking, as Lin pointed frequently in the direction of the campus gate, and the two jabbed and punched each other, laughing. Lin must have been recounting his near miss. Then Old Third turned to look in the direction of the gate. Frightened, Jingqiu ducked out of his line of sight. He must have seen me, she thought. But he hadn’t. He stood looking, until eventually he followed Lin towards the river crossing.

  She followed them, keeping her distance. Old Third was acting like a child, tottering along the small mud wall that had been built up along the edge of the river, rather than walking on the road. It was only just over four inches wide, and Old Third nearly lost his balance a few times, frightening her until she almost called out. He could have rolled down the bank and into the water. But he put his arms out and swayed a bit before finding his balance again, and then, picking up speed, ran as if along a balance beam.

  She really wanted to call out to them, but if Old Third had been hiding from her then it would be too embarrassing to do that. He really was as Fang had described him, a soft-hearted man who couldn’t bear to see people suffer. He had helped Daxiu, he had helped her, and now he was helping Lin. He must have bought the bus tickets that day, and knowing that Lin wouldn’t know the way, taken him all the way to the campus gate.