Under the Hawthorn Tree

by Anna Holmwood

  The week passed slowly, and that Sunday evening Miss Zhao, who the day before had gone home for a holiday, had still not returned to the farm. After another two days a letter arrived saying that she had had an abortion and would need to rest at home for a month. Jingqiu was stunned by this news. If Miss Zhao wasn’t coming back for a month that would mean Jingqiu couldn’t go back to Yichang the following week. There were only the two of them in charge of the food, so someone had to stay.

  She was burning with anxiety, and she rushed to find Mr Zheng. ‘I promised Mother I would go home next weekend, and if I don’t, she’ll be worried sick.’

  ‘Miss Zhao is staying in the city, your mother will know that, and that you have to stay on the farm. She won’t be worried. The school will send someone to replace Miss Zhao. If you wait just a week or two I’ll give you a couple more days’ holiday. You’re the only one preparing all our meals now, so work will be a bit tough, but you’ll be helping all of us at the farm.’

  Jingqiu was so miserable she could barely speak. She had no idea how she was going to let Old Third know that she couldn’t make it. Thankfully there had been no letter from him, so that meant that there was no definite diagnosis yet. She would just have to be patient for a few more days, and trust that Old Third would understand.

  After a few days, the school sent Miss Li to the farm and Jingqiu begged Mr Zheng to let her take time off to go back home. Mr Zheng had planned that Jingqiu stay another week so that she could teach Miss Li how they did things, but Jingqiu flatly refused. Mr Zheng had never known her to refuse an instruction like this and he was not happy about it, but ultimately felt he had no choice and let her go.

  It was already a week later than their prearranged date, but Jingqiu believed that Old Third would wait for her. She set off very early on Saturday morning and made her way from Fujia Plateau to Yanjia River, where she caught the first bus to the county hospital. She went straight to Old Third’s ward but he wasn’t there and the other people in the ward were all new so they had never heard of Sun Jianxin.

  Jingqiu went to Nurse Gao’s room but Old Third wasn’t there either. She ran to find Nurse Gao but was told it was her day off. She begged and pleaded to be told where Nurse Gao lived and she rushed to her house, but Nurse Gao was not home. She waited there until well into the afternoon when Nurse Gao finally returned from her mother-in-law’s house. Jingqiu introduced herself as Sun Jianxin’s friend, and said that she was trying to find out where he had gone.

  ‘Oh, you’re Jingqiu? You’re the one Sun borrowed my room for that day?’ Jingqiu nodded. ‘Sun left the hospital a while ago,’ Nurse Gao continued. ‘He wrote you a note, but I left it in my room at the hospital. Come, we can go and get it.’

  Jingqiu was overcome with emotion, the events of that night crowding her thoughts.

  Old Third’s note. It wasn’t in an envelope, but folded into the shape of a dove. A bad feeling came over her.

  I am so sorry that I lied to you, this is the first time, and will be the last time that I ever do so. I don’t have leukaemia, I made it up so that I could see you one last time before I left.

  My dad hasn’t been well recently, and he wants me to go back home to look after him, so he secretly arranged for me to be transferred. I should have gone back ages ago, but I wanted to see you, so I waited for an opportunity. It was heaven’s will that I got to see you one last time, that I spent such a wonderful day and night with you. Now I can leave with no regrets.

  I once promised your mother that I would wait for you for thirteen months, and I also promised you that I would wait until you turned twenty-five. It seems like I can’t keep these promises. The love between a man and woman cannot do anything to resist an order from one’s superiors. Blame me if you want, it is all my fault.

  The man with the same name as me can protect you from future tempests, he will do everything for you, I trust that he is a good person. If you let him grow old with you then I will be happy for you both.

  The letter was like a blow to the head with a cudgel. Jingqiu felt dull, she couldn’t understand what it was Old Third was saying. He must have leukaemia. He’s lying so that I will forget him, so that I will move on and live a happy life.

  ‘Do you know what was wrong with Sun?’

  ‘Didn’t you know? He had a very bad cold.’

  ‘Why did I hear that he has . . . leukaemia then?’ Jingqiu asked carefully.

  ‘Leukaemia?’ Nurse Gao’s surprise confirmed that she wasn’t pretending. ‘I didn’t hear that. If he did have it, he wouldn’t be in this small hospital, surely? We don’t have much here and anyone with anything the least bit serious gets transferred elsewhere.’

  ‘When did he leave?’

  Nurse Gao thought for a second. ‘It must have been two weeks ago. I was on the day shift, and I change every week, so yes, it must have been two weeks ago.’

  ‘Did he come back last weekend?’

  ‘I don’t know, but he had given back the keys to my room.’

  Did he write the letter because I didn’t come? Did he overreact? But Old Third wasn’t the type to read so much into her missing their appointment.

  She didn’t know why she was still sitting there, it wasn’t going to bring Old Third back. She thought of going to find him at the second unit, but when she asked Nurse Gao the time, she discovered it was too late, there were no more buses to Yanjia River. All she could do was thank Nurse Gao and on the bus to Yichang.

  Once at home, it was impossible for her to be calm. The worst of it was that she didn’t know what was really going on. She had never been so depressed and she found it difficult to talk to family and friends.

  Officially, she had three days off, but first thing on Monday morning she left for the farm. The excuse she gave her mother was that the newly arrived Miss Li didn’t know how to prepare the food, and it would be better for her to go back early. But she got off the bus in Yiling and went back to the hospital. She headed straight for Old Third’s old ward. He wasn’t there, of course, but she just wanted to make doubly sure.

  Then she went to the in-patient department to see if they could tell her why Old Third had been in hospital, but they told her to speak to Dr Xie. She found Dr Xie’s office, and discovered two middle-aged female doctors talking about knitting. When Jingqiu said that she wanted to speak to Dr Xie, she was asked to wait for a moment outside.

  Jingqiu could hear them arguing over a rather simple knitting pattern, so she walked in and told them roughly how it should be done. The two women closed the door, took out their needles and wool, and asked Jingqiu to show them, then to write it down on a piece of paper. The doctors discusssed it a bit longer, making sure they had understood, until one of them, who turned out to be Dr Xie, eventually asked what she could do for Jingqiu.

  ‘I just wanted to ask why Sun Jianxin was admitted to hospital.’ She explained her concerns, that he had a terminal illness but was afraid of hurting her and so had run away. If that was the case she would go to him, and look after him for the next few months.

  The two doctors sighed and gasped. She was so brave, they said. ‘I don’t remember, but I’ll check for you,’ Dr Xie said and rifled through some papers in a large cabinet. She pulled out a notebook and flicked through it. ‘He had a bad cold. The injection, medicine, and drip we gave him are all used to cure colds.’

  Jingqiu left the hospital with her stomach in knots. She was happy for him that it was only a cold, but the fact that he had disappeared leaving only that note puzzled her deeply.

  As soon as she got off the bus at Yanjia River, without thinking she found herself running towards the middle school in search of Fang. She didn’t care that she wou
ld be in the middle of a class, she stood outside one of the classroom windows and waved until the teacher came out to see what was the matter. She told her that she was looking for Miss Zhang Fang and the teacher left, fuming, to find Fang.

  ‘What brings you here now?’ Fang said, rather surprised.

  ‘Why did you say it was your brother in the hospital that day when it was clearly . . . him?’

  ‘We all call him brother . . .’

  ‘The illness you said he had that day, how come the hospital says he doesn’t have it? Who told you he had it?’

  Fang hesitated before replying. ‘He said so himself, I wasn’t lying.’

  ‘He’s been transferred back to Anhui, did you know that?’

  ‘I’d heard. Do you want to go to Anhui to look for him?’

  ‘I don’t have an address for him there. Do you have it?’

  ‘Why would I have it?’ Fang grumbled. ‘If he didn’t give it to you, why would he give it to me? I don’t know what dirty secret’s going on between you two.’

  ‘There’s no dirty secret, I’m just worried that he’s got leukaemia, and that he doesn’t want me to know, to worry about him. And now he’s run off to Anhui. Jingqiu pleaded with Fang. ‘Do you know where the second unit is stationed? Could you go with me? I want to go but I’m scared that he’s avoiding me.’

  ‘I’ve still got classes. I’ll tell you where it is, but you have to go on your own. It’s close, I’ll point you in the right direction.’

  Jingqiu walked in the direction Fang had pointed and found it without any difficulty. It was only half a kilometre from Yanjia River, so no wonder Old Third spent his lunch hours wandering around the town. She asked the men who were working there where Sun Jianxin was and they replied that he had already left for Anhui. ‘His father’s a high-ranking official. He organised a new work unit for him ages ago. He’s not like us other guys, we don’t have anyone behind the scenes pulling strings for us, we’ll have to spend the rest of our lives working out here.’

  Jingqiu didn’t know what to think. Maybe Old Third is scared I’ll be worried about his health and so he lied to me, and has now run off to die on his own. But all the evidence seemed to refute this conclusion; the hospital’s records suggested that he was being treated for a cold, and his friends in the second unit confirmed that he’d had all the paperwork in order to transfer to Anhui a long time ago. It didn’t seem possible that Old Third had bribed all these people to trick her. In the end it was only Fang and Old Third who had said that he had leukaemia; she had never seen any concrete evidence. But Jingqiu couldn’t understand why Old Third would want to lie to her about this. He said it was so that he could see her one last time, but he only told her it was leukaemia after they had met, not before.

  But there was another problem, one she hadn’t allowed herself to think about before, one that shook her to her core: her old friend was late. It was normally very regular, and it was only ever early, never late. This could mean only one thing, that she was pregnant. This much at least she knew from the many stories she’d heard.

  Those stories had all, without exception, ended tragically, and because they were all girls who Jingqiu knew personally, that made them even more terrible. One girl from No. 8 Middle School, who everyone called Orchid, started going out with a rascal who got her pregnant. Apparently Orchid tried every possible way of getting rid of the child, including carrying an incredibly heavy shoulder pole while jumping from a height. The baby was born in due course, but perhaps as a result of the jump or the fact that she had used a long strip of material to tie up her bump in the last months, the baby was born with two sunken ribs. Her boyfriend was sentenced to twenty years in prison because of this pregnancy, and for getting into numerous fights. The baby was given to her boyfriend’s mother to bring up, and the two families were left to suffer in unspeakable misery.

  Orchid’s story wasn’t even the most tragic, all the harm it really did her was to her reputation, lessening her chances of making it back to the city; at least her boyfriend acknowledged the child as his own, which saved Orchid her life. There was another girl, called Gong, who got pregnant. Her boyfriend came home with some herbs which he claimed could get rid of the child. She secretly boiled them with water and drank the bitter mixture, and it ended up killing her. Her story was much discussed at No. 8 Middle School; the girl’s family wanted the boyfriend to pay with his life, and the two sides slogged it out in public until the boy’s family had to move away.

  Jingqiu had heard that you needed a certificate from your work unit in order to have an abortion at the hospital, and maybe even a certificate from his work unit too. This has to be why he’s run away. So he’s taken off, leaving me to deal with it on my own. Yet, it didn’t matter how she twisted and turned it, she couldn’t see that Old Third was that kind of person, he had always been so good to her, always so considerate in every respect. How could he put her in such an awkward position and not care? Even if he really did have leukaemia, that was surely no excuse for letting her deal with this all on her own? He could always have waited until this was sorted before disappearing on her.

  There was only one explanation for his behaviour: he had only wanted to get his way with her. All of it, he had done it just to ‘succeed’ with her. The more she thought about it, the more this seemed to explain Old Third’s behaviour. He had worked so hard for so long, all for that night at the hospital. If he really didn’t want her to worry about his illness he would never have said he had leukaemia, he would have taken the secret with him to the grave. Why, exactly, did he reveal that he was terminally ill? It could only be so that he could get what he wanted. He knew how much she loved him, and he also knew that she would do anything for him if she thought he was about to die, including letting him do that.

  Her chest felt like it was burning, she didn’t know what to do. If she was pregnant there were only two options; one was to end her troubles by ending her life, but her death would only be a relief to herself and not to her family, they would forever be the subject of gossip. The second option would be to have an abortion at the hospital, but that would be a great cost to both her pocket and her reputation, and she would have to live with the shame of it for the rest of her life. She couldn’t even begin to imagine giving birth to it, that would be too unfair to the poor child. It would be one thing for her to have to live with the shame, but to implicate an innocent baby!

  The next few days after she got back to the farm were a living hell for Jingqiu. She was in a constant state of anxiety. Thankfully, however, her old friend arrived, and she was so relieved that she sobbed. It really was like setting eyes on a long-lost friend, and the discomfort became something worthy of celebration. As long as she wasn’t pregnant, everything else was manageable.

  There were two reasons why people said that it was awful for a young girl to be cheated into losing her virginity: because it would ruin her reputation, and because she couldn’t be married off afterwards. Jingqiu no longer needed to worry about being pregnant, so the only thing left to be concerned about was whether or not she could be married. But if Old Third was only ingratiating himself with her to get what he wanted, she couldn’t imagine there was anyone in this world who could really love her.

  She didn’t even blame Old Third. If I was worth his love, he would have loved me; if he didn’t, that’s because I’m not worth it. But if he didn’t love her, why did he spend so much time and effort trying to get her? Maybe all men were like that: the harder it was to get you, the harder they tried. He pretended to be interested for so long, but it was all because he was yet to get what he wanted.

  And then there was all that stuff about ‘mung bean soup’. He must have been bragging with his roommates, saying that she was the ‘mung bean soup’ he used to
cool off. To her, he called it ‘flying’, to them it was all about ‘putting out his fire’. Just the thought of it was disgusting.

  Then there were the letters. He said he wrote to her at the farm, but Mr Zheng promised on his Party membership that he hadn’t sent them back. At first she had suspected Mr Zheng of lying, but now she realised it must have been Old Third, and that he hadn’t written to her at all.

  And . . .

  She didn’t want to think about it any more, it seemed like everything could be explained, it had all been a game from beginning to end, sitting by the river in the evenings, crying, cutting himself, each scene more desperate than the last, until, when he thought there was no hope of prevailing, he thought up the idea of telling her he had leukaemia.

  The strange thing was that as soon as she had seen through him, seen him for what he was, her heart no longer ached and she was no longer consumed by regret over her actions. Wisdom comes from mistakes. Knowledge doesn’t just come from nothing. People may draw on their own experiences to tell you what to do, but you can’t learn everything that way. True wisdom can only really come from your own experience. And so every generation must make its own mistakes.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Jingqiu had not yet finished her six months at the farm when she was sent back to Yichang to teach. It was a sort of good fortune wrought from disaster, only it was someone else’s disaster, not her own. She took over class 4A at No. 8 Middle School’s adjoining primary school from a Mrs Wang. She was the kind of teacher who was of even temper, honest in her work, and yet was simply not that suited to teaching, especially when it came to discipline. Every day was a struggle and she couldn’t keep control of her class.

  Recently it had fallen to Mrs Wang’s class to begin their labouring duties. Every school was given the task of collecting scrap iron. The school had a deal with a factory over the other side of the river whereby the students could rummage for scrap screws and nails in their rubbish bins and give them to the national iron-smelting commission. One day when Mrs Wang was bringing her troops back from the factory her students began to fall out of line. She rushed to and fro trying to maintain discipline and didn’t notice a few of the naughtiest kids disappear.