‘Do you like it? I went especially to the tree to take it. Once you’ve got your job, and it’s permanent, I’ll take you to that tree and we can have our photo taken there. I’ve got a camera and I can develop my own pictures. I’ll take lots of pictures of you in all sorts of poses, from all angles, I’ll develop lots, big ones even, and put them all over my walls.’
He took out some money from his pocket and put it on the table by her bed. ‘I’m leaving this money for you. If you don’t want me to cut my hand again you’ll take it. You mustn’t work for that hunchback Wan again. If the cardboard factory has work then that’s fine, but if you don’t listen to me and go back to work for that man, or do any kind of dangerous work, I’ll be angry. I won’t leave you, but I will cut myself again. Do you believe me?’
She nodded. ‘I won’t ever go back to work for that man.’
‘Good. The problem is only temporary. That is why I’m leaving this money here, there is no way your mother will be angry with you.’
He knelt by the side of the bed and took her in his arms. They remained wrapped in each other’s arms until he stood up decisively and said, ‘I’m going. You stay there, don’t get up, you’ve only just put the cream on your feet and you don’t want them to get dirty.’
She sat on the bed, listening to him leave, unlock his bike, and ride it away, until everything was once again plunged into silence.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
A short while after Old Third left her mother and sister returned. Jingqiu looked at the clock; it was nearly eleven.
‘Did Sun say where he was staying tonight?’ her mother asked, a hint of worry in her voice.
‘Whenever he doesn’t have somewhere to stay he spends the night in a pavilion by the river, but by now the crossing will have closed. Maybe he’ll sit on the bank . . .’ The words caught in her throat, and she faltered.
Her mother sat on the bed. ‘I know you don’t want to let go of him, and he doesn’t look like a bad boy, but what are the options? You’re still so young, and even the girls and boys over twenty in relationships invite criticism. You’ve started so early – your job isn’t yet sorted out – and I’m telling you you can’t see him, for now. It will be a test of his intentions. If he’s sincere he won’t run away just because he can’t see you for a year, but if he can’t pass the test . . .’
‘Mother, you don’t need to explain, I know you only want the best for me. You go to bed, we’ve got work tomorrow.’
‘Are you working tomorrow? Your feet are so badly injured and you didn’t say a word to me about it.’
‘It would only have made you worry, what would have been the point? It’s fine, he told me not to go tomorrow and I agreed.’
‘If you’re not working tomorrow then you won’t need your rubber boots,’ her sister said.
‘What rubber boots?’ her mother asked.
‘That Sun boy bought them for her,’ Jingqiu’s sister piped up. ‘He came one morning with them and he cried when he saw how bad her feet were.’
‘He’s just like your father,’ Jingqiu’s mother sighed. ‘He also cried easily. When men cry it’s either because they are especially empathetic or because they are weak. Sun seems like an empathetic boy. What about his family?’
‘I’m not quite sure,’ Jingqiu replied. ‘I know he’s got a younger brother and a father. His mother killed herself . . .’
‘I’ve heard that that sort of thing runs in families. The children of depressed people are easily depressed themselves. What is Sun like? He seemed a bit particular when he was calculating how long it’d be before he got to see you.’
Jingqiu thought back to when he was making those calculations; it was cute. Her mother asked her some more questions about Old Third, how old he was, whether he smoked or drank, fought and swore, where he went to school, what his hobbies were, where he was from, that sort of thing. ‘Why didn’t you ask him yourself when he was here?’ Jingqiu asked in turn.
‘He would have thought I was checking him out as a prospective son-in-law, I couldn’t give him that impression lightly. My goal in speaking with him was to tell him not to come to visit you.’ Jingqiu recalled the proud way Old Third had said that her mother had already agreed to their relationship, and she felt touched with sadness on his behalf. ‘What does his father do?’
‘He’s a district level commanding officer.’
Her mother fell silent before saying, ‘I thought he seemed different from most boys. Someone from that kind of background can’t easily understand people like us. Who did the People’s Liberation Army liberate? Workers and farmers oppressed by landlords and capitalists. His father and your father belong to two irreconcilable classes. His family obviously doesn’t know about you . . .’
Jingqiu hadn’t thought about that before, but now that her mother mentioned it, it was a serious question. She hoped with all her heart that it wasn’t true. ‘But his mother was the daughter of a capitalist, and his father didn’t abandon her.’
‘You’re right, the Communist Party takes a very different attitude to capitalists than it does to landlords. In those days capitalists represented the rising, progressive, productive forces, whereas landlords represented a declining force. The first thing the Communist revolution wanted to do was get rid of the landlord class. Don’t get your hopes up. His family is a barrier you can’t easily overcome and he might lose interest sooner rather than later.’
Jingqiu said, ‘He said he would wait a lifetime . . .’
‘Who can’t say that? Who hasn’t said it? To open your mouth and say “a lifetime” is naive. Who can predict the way things will go at such a young age?’ Her mother saw a look of rebellion in Jingqiu’s eyes. ‘You’re still young, you haven’t got much experience of people so you believe him as soon as he says it. Wait until you’ve grown up, then you’ll discover every man will say that when he is chasing you, they all say they can wait a lifetime. But if you ignore him for a year, you see if he’ll wait. He’ll have gone already.’
If mother knows men won’t wait a year, thought Jingqiu, why did she tell Old Third to wait? She’s using it as an excuse to test him. She was desperate to tell Old Third what her mother had said, but she also thought that if she told him he wouldn’t really be tested at all.
Do all men exaggerate and not keep their word? I probably should test Old Third to see how long he will wait for me. The problem is, say he waits for a year, that doesn’t prove he could wait two. If he waits two years that doesn’t prove he could wait a whole lifetime.
She didn’t even really know what ‘making him wait’ meant. If she made him ‘wait’ for her did that mean he had to ‘love’ her? By asking ‘could you wait a lifetime for me?’ wasn’t she really asking ‘could you love me for a lifetime?’ She wasn’t used to using that word, ‘love’. But these two words, ‘wait’ and ‘love’ still seemed to mean slightly different things.
Lost in her own thoughts, she had no idea if her mother had spoken or not, she only heard her sister say, ‘I’m asking you, what happened to his hand? When he came this morning it was fine.’
‘He told me to go to the hospital but I wouldn’t, so he cut himself. He bled lots.’
‘He seemed so sensible,’ her mother said, her brow furrowed. ‘How could he do such a crazy thing? That shows he’s immature. Erratic people are dangerous and easily take to extremes. If they like you, they can like you too much, if they hate you, they hate you too much, it’s like that whatever they do. It’s better to keep a distance from people like that.’
Jingqiu had thought that her mother would be moved by this, but she called it dangerous. Her mother had once told her that when her father
was young he had a tendency towards extreme behaviour, and that when her mother either paid him too little attention or didn’t believe him he would start tugging furiously at his hair, pulling it out in large clumps. She knew that their courtship had been complicated. Her father’s parents had originally arranged a marriage for him back in his village, and in fact not just one; as he had been set to inherit from two branches of the family, from his grandfather’s real son (his father), and also from his grandfather’s younger brother, who had no son, each branch of the family had arranged a wife for him. In order to escape these marriages he ran away to study, but as his grandfather was dying he was forced to marry both of the women chosen for him.
Later, Father had met Mother, and he went through all kinds of hardships in order to leave his two wives and remarry. Mother waited a long time to marry, until she was almost thirty. Father and Mother worked in different cities after they were married, so father only came to visit once every couple of weeks, but they wrote to each other frequently. During the Cultural Revolution, when Mother was being criticised at No. 8 Middle School, these letters were used as evidence that Jingqiu’s parents were living a capitalist lifestyle.
It was her granny who had talked to outsiders about the letters. She lived with Jingqiu’s mother, Jingqiu and her brother and sister, while her father lived on his own. Granny was old-fashioned and thought her mother had bewitched her father in order to make him leave his first two wives. According to Granny, only the first wife was truly legal, and it simply wasn’t proper to divorce and remarry. She couldn’t stand seeing them being affectionate towards each other, so she used to say that they were extravagant, wasting their money on trains and stamps.
After her father was sent home to be re-educated through labour they discussed divorce, mainly because they were worried about what effect his denunciation would have on the children. But Mother thought that Father was already so desperately poor and lonely that were they to divorce, he might not survive. She had sought the children’s opinions, saying that they were only really considering a divorce for their sake, and that they would only go through with it if the children were worried about how their father’s class status would impact on them.
They replied that she shouldn’t do it. This was just how it was, even if she divorced him they would still be his children and people wouldn’t necessarily regard them as innocent anyway. So her mother didn’t divorce her father, but neither did they have much contact in person in case people criticised them for it.
Through all this, though, her parents continued to write to each other frequently. Her father sent his letters to a sister of his who had married a man with a good class status, and who in this way had avoided attack during the Cultural Revolution. Her mother would go regularly to their house to collect the letters, but she never let the children go in case people made the connection between them and their father.
Jingqiu was lost in her thoughts until she heard her mother ask, ‘Has Sun ever had a girlfriend?’
Jingqiu knew if she said that Old Third had previously had a fiancée it would give a bad impression, so she stuttered, ‘Not that I know of.’
‘Men always hide that kind of thing if they can. If you don’t ask he definitely won’t bring it up himself. But at his age, and as the son of a cadre, if he says you’re the first I wouldn’t quite believe it.’ Her mother hesitated before asking, ‘Has he ever asked you back to his room on his own?’
‘No, he has lots of roommates.’
‘Is he normally . . . disciplined when he’s with you? He hasn’t . . . stroked or touched you, has he?’
The words ‘stroked’ and ‘touched’ nearly made Jingqiu vomit. How can Mother use such horrible words about Old Third? But she thought carefully. Had he been disciplined? Apart from the time when he had been too forward on the mountain, he had been very disciplined, and he had never ‘stroked’ or ‘touched’ her. He had held her, and had rested his head on her chest, but he had never stroked her chest, or anywhere else for that matter.
‘No,’ she said firmly.
Her mother let out a long breath and explained, ‘A young girl should have backbone, there are some things that you should only do after you’re married, and before that you should say no, firmly. It doesn’t matter how nice he is to you, nor what promises he makes, you must say no. He can promise you the world, but as soon as you do it he won’t respect you, he’ll think you’re nothing. When that happens the power is all his, if he wants you he can have you, but if he wants to dump you it’ll be nearly impossible to find another boyfriend.’
Jingqiu really wanted her mother to explain more clearly what those things were that you couldn’t do until you were married, but she couldn’t find the words to ask, so instead she pretended not to be interested.
‘Ah,’ her mother sighed. ‘I always thought you understood how things are, I never imagined you’d get involved in all this so soon. These days they are promoting a policy of later marriages and you’re only eighteen, so even if you marry at twenty-three you’ve still got four or five years to wait. If he clings on so tightly then . . . things can easily happen between you two, and your reputation will be ruined.’
Her mother followed this with numerous examples of ‘ruined’ girls: Little Wang who worked at No. 8 Middle School’s factory had originally been part of the city song and dance ensemble, as had been his girlfriend of the time. They were not yet married but she got pregnant, and when their work unit found out Little Wang was demoted to factory work and the girl was sent to work in No. 3 Middle School’s factory. Everyone knew about their bad behaviour, so now they scarcely dared show their faces around town.
Then there was Mrs Zhao, a teacher at the same school as Jingqiu’s mother. She gave birth only seven months after she got married, and although she had not been punished, people had looked down on her since. Then there was . . . .
Jingqiu knew every one of these ‘ruined’ girls, and they had all received various punishments for getting pregnant out of wedlock, or some other misdemeanour. Whenever anyone spoke of them they would curl their lips and speak in disparaging tones.
‘Lucky I found out before it was too late, otherwise who knows what might have happened. Don’t have any more contact with him. Spoiled sons of officials like him are experts at playing with girls’ feelings. He hasn’t got his prize yet so he’s chasing you with all he’s got, but once he’s got you he’ll tire of you in a heartbeat. And even if he doesn’t tire of you his family will never agree to it . . . And even if they agree, you’re so young, and he’s already . . . so mature. I think he’ll struggle to get through the next four or five years. Something will happen sooner or later.’
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The next day Jingqiu went to the paper factory to give in her notice. Hunchback Wan was, surprisingly, very polite. ‘I’ll calculate your hours at once and you can take the note yourself to Director Li, that way you won’t have to worry about it.’ This was exactly what had been troubling Jingqiu. If it hadn’t been for her concerns that hunchback Wan might not give her her hours, she wouldn’t have come all the way to give in her notice. She took the form Mr Wan had written for her, said thank you, and left his office.
Jingqiu had also wanted to say thank you to Zhang Yi but he was working the day shift, as one of his roommates had informed her on the bus. As she was leaving she bumped into Mr Liu so she thanked him, and reminded him about her brother. Mr Liu promised he wouldn’t forget.
Once back at home she took over preparations for the evening meal, letting her sister go out to play with Zhong Qin. She boiled the mung bean congee and then lay down on her bed to think. She was very worried about Old Third’s cut. It must have been very deep, otherwise why would he need two stitches? She wasn’t too worried about the fac
t that his blood wasn’t clotting properly as the doctor was always saying the same about her mother, that she had ‘a reduced platelet count’. As soon as she bumped herself she would bruise, so she was often green and purple all over. Jingqiu hadn’t inherited the problem, but neither did it seem very serious.
Yet, some fears lingered as she recalled the scene of Old Third slicing his hand; how could he have been so quick? She had seen him take out his knife, but before she could ask what he was doing he had cut himself. He was crazy, but she was willing to excuse it as a moment of desperation.
She had not dared tell her mother about the money Old Third left the previous evening because she already sensed that the more her mother knew about Old Third, the more things she found to criticise. If her mother knew that Old Third had given her money she would definitely say he was using it as bait.
Jingqiu stayed at home the whole day, and the next she accompanied her mother to the other side of the river to glue envelopes. Her mother had not agreed at first, saying that she needed to rest her feet a little longer, but for some reason suddenly changed her mind and took Jingqiu with her, showing her how to glue the envelopes. Jingqiu was a fast learner, working at great speed. The neighbourhood committee had rules about how much work they would assign, and as her mother had a pension they would only let her earn a small supplement based on the proportion of her earnings that she had lost. This meant that her mother could only take home around seventeen yuan a month.
Under the Hawthorn Tree Page 26