by Xinran
It was as if Big Ma knew what she was thinking.
‘You know, I was planning to buy myself a birthday lunch today, at the Kentucky Fried Chicken next door to your shop,’ he said.
‘Is today your birthday?’
‘Yes, it’s my birthday. And now you’re the first friend in this city to know, apart from the personnel manager at the hotel who took my details for his records.’
‘Do I count as your friend?’
‘Of course you’re a friend. Anyone from Anhui is a friend of mine.’
‘What gave you the idea of coming to our restaurant instead of going to Kentucky Fried Chicken?’
‘Well, it wasn’t exactly my idea. I was walking past when I saw a big crowd and heard someone shout, ‘Seems like there’s some fooling around going on in the Happy Fool.’ The name of the restaurant sounded familiar so I pushed to the front out of curiosity to see what was going on. At first I thought I ought to keep my head down because country boys shouldn’t rub city people up the wrong way. I was just about to leave when an old guy next to me mentioned that the girl inside was from Anhui. Well, I couldn’t not get involved then. So I tried a bit of bluff. I can’t say I know much about cooking – apart from making myself the odd bowl of noodles and chopping up meat to eat in flatbread – but I could see that worm had been planted the minute I clapped eyes on it. It was obvious where they’d smeared the mud across the leaves themselves.’
‘I didn’t see anything …’ said Three, shamefacedly.
Big Ma laughed. ‘I thought it was strange that you hadn’t noticed. Looks like you were scared out of your wits, getting picked on like that.’
‘How did you come to the city to work?’ Three wished she could learn everything about this man at once.
‘Well, I used to love driving the tractor at home so I persuaded relatives to help me find a job delivering goods in the local town. It was great driving through the streets and looking around: one day there’d be a wedding, the next day a new general store would open. They were always putting up new buildings or widening the roads … You wouldn’t believe how much that town changed in the two and a half years I was there. Later on I found a friend to help me take the test for my driving licence …’
‘Driving licence?’ Three didn’t know what he was talking about.
‘A driving licence is a little book that proves you’ve passed your driving test. You need it before you’re allowed to drive on the roads otherwise you can get sent to prison.’
‘But why did you need a friend to help you get it?’ Three asked.
‘We casual labourers don’t get anywhere without a few friends in the right places. Those driving test officials have deep pockets: if you don’t have connections, you might as well throw your money into a bottomless pit. Of course, I’m not saying your friends can help you with the actual driving. When you do that test there are traffic police watching and it all has to be above board. But there’s also a written test and, if you’ve got a friend, they can help you understand what the questions mean, and the examiner will turn a blind eye if you just copy out the answers.
‘Anyway, when I’d got my grown-up driving licence, I thought I should start earning some grown-up money. I knew you could earn big salaries down in the south, but you had to get someone to put in a good word for you. So I decided to start closer to home. I’d heard Nanjing was a rich city – emperors had lived there – so I went to check it out. My luck was in. The job centre near the big willow found me a position loading and unloading delivery vans for a chain store. But it was hard work. Every box weighed fifty kilos, and I had to lift more than five hundred boxes a day. Later on some of my mates heard I had a driving licence and helped me get myself into the small ads in the newspaper as a driver …’
‘Why did you have to be in the newspaper to find a job?’ Three asked. She was embarrassed about all the questions she was asking, but Big Ma seemed to be a very patient person.
‘People pay attention to what’s in the papers. It’s a bit more reliable than the job centre. Anyone who advertises there is bona fide, if you know what I mean.’
Three wasn’t sure that she did, but she was curious now about newspapers.
‘Where do you get this paper?’ she asked.
‘You have to buy one, of course. The best one is the Evening News. It costs one yuan a throw.’
‘One yuan!’ Three exlaimed. ‘You could buy half a meal with that!’
‘Too expensive for you, eh? It’s not expensive if you find a good job. Take this five-star hotel where I work. The wages are more than twice what I got at the chain store, it’s not tiring, and I get to drive; we have fixed working hours, and there are statutory public holidays.’
‘Statutory public holidays?’ Three was in awe of how much Big Ma knew.
‘Statutory public holidays are rest days set down by the government. If you add in the days off that the hotel gives, that makes over sixty free days a year. We can take those days off at harvest time to go home and help bring in the wheat. Of course, we can go home for Spring Festival too if we want. But we can’t always take the same periods off each year. It wouldn’t do for all the staff at the hotel to be on holiday at the same time, so we have to rotate … And you? Do you go home for Spring Festival? How long have you been working in Nanjing?’
Big Ma listened carefully as Three explained that her uncle had helped her find a job in the city, but that he himself worked in Zhuhai. The next time she would see him would be when they both returned home for Spring Festival. Three was so busy talking about her new life at the Happy Fool that they made a complete circuit of the Confucius Temple without her noticing. It was only when Big Ma said that he ought to get back to the hotel that she realised the time.
‘Do you often come to the Confucius Temple for deliveries?’ she asked hopefully.
‘Sure,’ said Big Ma with a smile, ‘I’m over here a lot. There’s a well-known dry cleaner’s in Red Guard Lane. Our hotel sends loads of stuff there. When you have the same day off as me, I’ll take you out. You can tell me all about the art of arranging vegetables. Can you arrange flowers too? City people really like flower arrangements!’ Big Ma began fishing out his keys as he walked towards a white minivan. As he started the engine he shouted to Three through the window: ‘I’ll take you for a spin out to the Sun Yatsen Mausoleum sometime. Bye!’
Three raised her hand in farewell as the van sped into the distance. It was a long time before she let it fall. Then she rushed back to the Happy Fool to ask Wang Tong where she could find books about flower arranging. If Big Ma thought she should know what flower arranging was, then she should. Any craft Big Ma was interested in, she would learn.
Big Ma and Three saw each other several times over the next few weeks. Their conversations were slightly awkward because Three was so shy, but if they stuck to the subject of flower arranging, everything went well. Big Ma would do his best to reply to Three’s torrent of questions: ‘Who takes care of all the house plants and flower arrangements in your hotel? Can you make flower arrangements in winter? What are hothouse flowers like? Why do foreigners like dried flowers … Don’t they realise that flowers are at their best with the dew still on them? If city people love flowers so much why do they separate them from their roots? Can a flower stuck in a vase be as pretty as a flower growing in a field? If you put different smelling flowers together, won’t the scents all get muddled up? Why do you say flowers are like women?’
The two of them visited parks and botanical gardens to look at the flowers, and went to bookshops in search of flower-arranging manuals. But there was one place that Three longed to see, but to which Big Ma never took her: his hotel. She thought of asking him, but felt too embarrassed. After all, her mother said that unripe fruit was good to look at but not to eat: you had to wait until it was ripe for it to be truly delicious. Three thought she ought to wait for the day when Big Ma offered to take her to see his hotel.
Even when she was not with him, Big
Ma occupied a lot of space in Three’s head. One day Wang Tong asked her what she was daydreaming about. She was worried that Three had become quieter since her encounter with the worm-wielding thugs. ‘Are you still bothered by that business the other day?’ she asked.
‘No, it’s nothing like that …’ muttered Three, trying to dry up the glasses in front of her as nonchalantly as possible. ‘Only … What is love?’
Wang Tong’s lips curved into a smile, but she spoke as if this was the kind of thing they always talked about. ‘Love is being happy when you see a person and sad when you don’t. Why? Have you fallen in love with someone and not told me?’
‘No, no …’ said Three blushing. ‘Don’t worry. When I have, you’ll be the first to know, all right?’
In fact, Three longed to tell someone she had fallen in love. She thought of confessing to her sisters, but she was worried that they would start asking her questions she couldn’t answer. Even now, she didn’t know who Big Ma’s family were, or what they did, nor did she fully understand Big Ma’s character or why he behaved in certain ways. If her two nosy little sisters started interrogating her, what would she say? The only thing she knew for certain was that this feeling had nothing to do with rutting animals, as she had once thought. Big Ma had not so much as touched the tips of her fingers, but Three already felt that she belonged to him. She had given him her heart. She was sure her mother and father had never experienced anything like this. If her father had, he wouldn’t treat her mother like a lump of rock. And how could her mother have felt these things when she was simply ‘taken’ from her parents? Three wanted so much to run home and whisper her secret in her mother’s ear: your stone daughter has burst into flower!
But it seemed that Three was living an illusion …
One day, she had arranged to meet Six after lunch outside the bargain warehouse to the east of the Confucius Temple. The plan was to do some shopping there before going on to the Dragon Water-Culture Centre to pick up Five, who wouldn’t be free until later. The girls had heard from city people that this was the best time of year to pick up bargains; the same goods would go for several times the price in the month before Spring Festival. They wanted to find some presents to take home when the holiday came. The two sisters were just greeting each other in front of the warehouse when Three spotted Big Ma going in through another entrance. Her heart skipped a beat. There was a girl at his side! For a moment Three couldn’t move for shock. Then she started thinking. Perhaps it hadn’t been Big Ma after all. Grabbing Six’s hand she persuaded her to go straight into the warehouse so that they didn’t miss any bargains. She couldn’t rest until she had found out whether it really was Big Ma that she had seen.
The warehouse was three storeys high and crammed full of stalls selling pretty, eye-catching things in every imaginable shape and colour. Shoppers had to squeeze through the narrow gaps between stalls, and the sound of haggling was deafening. Men bellowed, women screeched and little children wailed and shrieked. It was as if all of Nanjing’s small traders had squashed themselves into the building. Six was thrilled, and immediately headed for the bargain clothing stalls where the prices were slashed through with big red crosses. She was so caught up with trying to decide what to buy for her mother and father, and what her married sister and Four might like, that it was some time before she realised that Three was no longer at her side.
The poor girl was pushing her way through the crowds, her heart crying out to Big Ma. She desperately wanted to find him, but at the same time she was afraid to. Eventually she caught sight of his tall, burly figure standing by a rail of trousers. Sure enough, there was a girl beside him, laughing and chatting away. One of Big Ma’s hands was even resting on her shoulder! In that instant Three felt her blood turn to ice, and a chill creep from her head to her heels. The bright colours of the building faded to grey; the noise and bustle vanished, leaving only an awful stillness. She thought she could feel herself dissolving.
When Six caught up with her sister she barely recognised her. Three, who five minutes before had been vibrant and happy, had suddenly lost all colour. There was not a trace of life on her face, no gleam of humanity in her eyes. She didn’t even answer her sister’s questions.
Six hastily helped Three outside, sat her down on the warehouse steps, and bought a bottle of iced water to bathe her palms and forehead. After a while, Three heaved a sigh and tears began to trickle down her cheeks. Six asked her what was the matter, but Three would not answer, saying only that she wanted to go home straightaway. Then she walked off without so much as a backward glance. Puzzled and confused, Six went to meet Five, who still couldn’t go out by herself, wondering all the while what could have happened to her big sister.
Three went back to her little room and cried bitterly. Why had Big Ma not told her he had a girlfriend? Why couldn’t he see what was in her heart? It had never occurred to her that Big Ma would take her out for any other reason than romantic interest. In her village, no man would be seen with a girl unless this was the case.
Suddenly the world of the city, which Three had thought she was beginning to understand, became a harsh and alien place with incomprehensible rules of its own.
Three tossed and turned all night, and the next day she made such a mess of the restaurant’s display, breaking the stems of vegetables and squashing the melon, that the cook had to nip out for extra supplies while Wang Tong was looking the other way. It was the time of year when the market was filled with wonderful peaches. Usually Three adored inventing new ways to hang these fruits on the wall, but today she just couldn’t think what to do. She spent the day listlessly watching the customers come and go. That night, and for many more, she soaked her pillow in tears.
10
English Lessons
For the next two months dark clouds covered Three’s sky. She became silent and withdrawn, and had no enthusiasm for her work. If Big Ma came to the restaurant to ask her to go out, she hid in the kitchen and asked the cook to pass on a message that she was busy. On her days off, she stayed in her room and didn’t see her sisters.
Wang Tong was worried. When Three had come back early from her day off, she had assumed the sisters had had a row that would blow over. But Three’s mood didn’t improve for several days so she phoned the Book Taster’s Teahouse to speak to Six about it. After hearing from Six that she had no idea what was the matter with her sister, Wang Tong began to think again. Slowly she came to the conclusion that it must have something to do with Big Ma. She asked her husband how he thought she should help Three. ‘Imagine coming to a city like Nanjing when you had never seen a television or a car,’ she said to him. ‘Her heart is like a blank sheet of paper, ready to absorb whatever lands there.’
Guan Buyan discussed the matter with his father and brother.
‘Remember the expression “marry the dog and follow the dog, marry the cock and follow the cock”,’ said Old Guan. ‘Once a girl marries, she forgets her past and gives everything to her husband. If you really want to help this little girl, introduce her to a husband. Time will do the rest.’
His brother Guan Buyu agreed. ‘People are always saying that a first love is for ever, but that’s nonsense. Find her another young man and she’ll be much better.’
And so Buyan, Buyu and several other well-meaning people from under the big willow tried repeatedly to introduce Three to different young men. But it was no use: nobody could be as good as Big Ma and Three didn’t want to meet any of them.
Wang Tong was at her wits’ end. She couldn’t bear to see Three wasting away in front of her, but nor could she think how to help. She was certain she had to find a way to get Three to talk to someone about her pain, but she couldn’t persuade her to go out with her sisters. In the end it was a festival that provided her with the opportunity she needed. Three had always felt a responsibility to help her younger sisters understand life in the city, Wang Tong knew this, so she made use of the coming Double Ninth Festival to half coax, half orde
r Three to meet up with Five and Six. ‘How will they know how to celebrate the festival if you don’t tell them?’ she said encouragingly. ‘Why don’t you all go to the Qifangge Snack Bar and have a good chat.’
Five and Six had not seen their sister for almost two months, and were shocked by how much she had changed. Three, who had always been so rosy-cheeked and sturdy, had become almost unrecognisable. Her face was grey and lifeless, her shoulders were hunched, and she had lost so much weight that her bones were clearly visible through her flesh.
‘Whatever’s the matter with you?’ asked Five. ‘Six said we shouldn’t disturb you. She had an idea that you were courting because the cook at your restaurant told her secretly. But how can courting wear a body out like this?’
When Three saw her sisters’ concern and pity, she burst into tears, even though she thought she had wept herself dry. Over a meal of duck-blood soup, tofu stewed with meat, and rice-balls with osmanthus flowers, she told them the whole story. Tears dripped into her food as she talked about how she had thought Big Ma was her boyfriend. Five and Six cried too. They were all so overwrought that they took three hours to finish three tiny bowls of snacks, much to the displeasure of the waiters who were annoyed that three migrant worker girls could hog a profitable table after spending only a few yuan. As for the tears, the waiters weren’t particularly surprised: the Double Ninth Festival was when Nanjingers honoured the older generations, and around that time, there was always the odd person weeping into their soup over their dead parents.
Five and Six were at a loss as to how to console their sister. It seemed to them that there was little they could say to make her feel better. So, instead, they tried to make jokes to take her mind off things. The fact that there were so many festivals in the city but no one seemed to know exactly how to celebrate them, made them laugh.
‘All the books about ancient folk customs were burned after 1949,’ said Six, wisely, ‘and now there are very few old people who remember them. That’s why it’s so confusing. Do you remember how Bao Daye in our village used to say that the Double Ninth Festival was about old city people climbing high hills and looking into the distance, hoping for long life, but Uncle Two said everyone in Zhuhai ate rice cakes with red letters on to bring good luck? And here in Nanjing they keep changing their minds. One minute they are buying chrysanthemums, the next they’re saying that you need branches of dogwood to “drive off evil”!’