by Yan Lianke
Chapter Two
In the middle of the harvest season, Third Daughter suddenly decided she wanted a husband and a family, and also to learn about sex. By the time Fourth Wife You was fifty, she had succeeded in finding husbands for her two elder daughters, and while they lived an impoverished life with their new families as they had with her, at least they had a life. Although both of her elder daughters were addled, when their illness wasn’t acting up they could still sew buttons and count to ten. They knew how to go out and buy salt, and could bring back the correct change. They knew to bow their heads when a man looked at them, and only when their illness acted up did they fall to the ground, vomiting, foaming at the mouth, convulsing, and ultimately losing consciousness. But Third Daughter was different. She couldn’t count to seven even when her illness wasn’t acting up, and when she went to the village market to buy staples such as oil and salt, she never remembered to bring back the change. Whenever Third Daughter had her period, Fourth Wife You had to help her clean herself. Fourth Wife You had always assumed that Third Daughter would never have a chance to learn about sex, but now she was saying that she did in fact want a family and a husband, just like her elder sisters. Standing in the field of ripe corn, looking at her daughter’s glow of excitement, Fourth Wife You saw some sparks in the sunlight fly between the cornstalks. The sky was high and the clouds were sparse, and the sound of corn being harvested on the ridge traveled toward them as clouds of dust rained down on the stems and leaves of the corn plants. The calm summoned Stone You from his grave, whereupon Fourth Wife You asked her daughter in his presence, “Daughter, what did you just say?”
Third Daughter straightened her neck and replied, “I want a family, and I want to be able to hug a man at night while I sleep, as my sisters do.”
Fourth Wife You thought for a while, then asked, “What kind of man do you want?”
Third Daughter replied, “I want a wholer, not a cripple or a one-eyed freak. I want a good man, not the kind who would make me go into the fields to harvest corn.”
Stone You said, “Daughter, don’t you know what you are?”
Fourth Wife You said, “What is she? Whatever she is, she inherited it from your family.”
Stone You said, “Can she find a wholer?”
Fourth Wife You spat on the ground and snorted. “We can look for a wholer, and if we can’t find one, we can look for a semiwholer. You can go to each village on the mountain ridge and find a suitable man for our Third Daughter to marry.”
At this point, Third Daughter looked at Fourth Wife You in surprise, and exclaimed, “Ma, you’re crazy, too, and talk to people who don’t even exist.”
Fourth Wife You said, “Daughter, go pick some corn. If your brother tugs at your clothing again, you can slap him. After the fall harvest, and after we have planted the next crop, I’ll find you a good family to marry into. I’ll find you an even better husband than either of your two sisters have.”
Third Daughter’s eyes widened in surprise. Her mouth trembled and her cheeks turned bright red.
She hopped over into the depths of the cornfield. Immediately, the sound of harvest rippled across the ridge, like a river overflowing its banks. There was the smell of autumn and of cornstalks being trampled, which mixed together like smoke, blanketing the sky and the earth.
The mountain ridge was left completely bare after the hectic autumn harvest. The cornstalks had been cut down and left to dry at the head of each family’s field so that they could be used as kindling in the winter. In the bare fields along the mountain ridge, some people had already begun plowing the earth and planting the next wheat crop, while others, because they had neither ox nor plow, had no choice but to take a shovel and do it by hand. Fourth Wife You led Third Daughter and Fourth Idiot to hoe the fields the first day. At one point, she went into a gully to pee, and when she returned she found that her daughter had unbuttoned her shirt and was giggling as her brother sucked her breasts.
Fourth Wife You simply stared. She knew she couldn’t delay in finding Third Daughter a husband, so she picked up her spade and immediately took her children home, then proceeded to lock her son up in a room. Their house had a small garden, and the entire courtyard was filled with piles of corn and postharvest smells and shadows. The house had three main rooms and two side rooms. The three main rooms included two bedrooms in which Fourth Wife You and Third Daughter each had a bed. Of the two side rooms, one was a kitchen and the other was Fourth Idiot’s bedroom. The window in the latter bedroom had a wooden frame that was built right into the wall. When one of her children had an episode, Fourth Wife You would lock them up in this prisonlike room. The door was two inches thick and was made from a combination of ash and persimmon wood. When the door was locked from the outside, there was absolutely no way of opening it from the inside.
Fourth Wife You locked Fourth Idiot up in this room. He climbed to the window like an aggrieved criminal and began shouting, “Ma, Ma! I didn’t have an episode. My mind is completely clear. I won’t touch my sister’s nipples anymore, OK?” Fourth Wife You ignored him, and instead changed into a freshly washed fluorescent blue shirt and combed her hair with a wooden comb. She removed several cold buns and placed them on the kitchen counter, then put half a bowl of noodles on the corner of the stove. Finally, she brought Third Daughter over to the kitchen doorway, pointed, and said, “Your mother is going to find you a family to marry into. At noon you can cook a bowl of noodles, and you and your brother can each have two steamed buns. You can hand your brother a bowl of noodles through the window.”
Fourth Wife You asked, “Can you do that?”
Third Daughter replied, “Yes, I can.” Then she added, “Ma, find me a good family to marry into. Find me a wholer.”
Without another word, Fourth Wife You went into the courtyard, collected half a bowl of crushed rocks, then handed the bowl to Fourth Idiot through the window, saying, “Count these rocks. If you count them right, I’ll let you out. If you count them wrong, you can continue stewing inside.” Then she walked out into the street.
She passed a middle-aged woman nursing an infant. “Fourth Wife You, where are you headed on such an important day?”
Fourth Wife You replied, “A relative is sick, and I’m going to visit.”
The woman asked, “But aren’t you planting wheat? It’s important to plant the wheat.”
Fourth Wife You replied, “My relative’s illness is terminal, so I really need to go, even if it means not planting the wheat.”
Fourth Wife You didn’t tell the woman that she was actually trying to find a family for her daughter to marry into. Her four idiot children had made her infamous throughout the Balou Mountains. No one in the neighboring villages called You Village by its actual name; they all called it Four Idiots Village. The residents of You Village complained that those from other villages were rude and that Fourth Wife You had ruined their village’s reputation. Several years earlier, when Fourth Wife You was looking for husbands for her two elder daughters, the villagers leaked the secret of her daughters’ illness, and no one would have them. Fourth Wife You had stood at the eastern edge of the village and shouted at the top of her lungs,
“Hey … I want everyone to listen carefully … I’ll fuck your ancestors, I’ll dig up their graves. You’re trying to keep my two elder daughters from finding husbands. You told everyone that my family is full of idiots, but when did this family of idiots ever keep you from screwing around, or keep your elders from kicking the bucket? Now, everyone listen to me … from this point onward, my children will marry whomever they choose, and whoever says otherwise will get sores in their mouths, run pus from their gums, get cancer of the throat, and after they die their graves will be dug up by grave robbers and their bones will be left out to be devoured by wild animals!”
Fourth Wife You moved to a pile of shit in the center of the village and cursed, then to a tree stump on the western side of the village and continued to curse. She cursed in all direction
s as she walked from one end of the village to the other. The door to every house was open, and people’s heads popped out like eggplants along the edge of the fields. But by the time she finished cursing at the western end of the village, and turned around to head back, the doors of every house were tightly shut, and the street was completely empty. The chickens and pigs were so terrified that they cowered in nooks and crannies.
Half a year later, the two elder daughters moved out of Fourth Wife You’s home and into those of their respective husbands. Eldest Daughter’s husband was a cripple who walked with a cane and had to lean on his bed when he wanted to go to sleep. Second Daughter’s husband, meanwhile, had a bad eye, which was always covered with a yellowish film as though it hadn’t been washed properly. Before the marriage, both men asked Fourth Wife You if her daughters were really cured, and she said, “Yes, and if you don’t believe me, go ask around the village.” They did so, and the villagers all said they hadn’t heard that Fourth Wife You’s children were sick, and even if they had been sick when they were younger, they were better now.
The cripple married Eldest Daughter in the latter half of that year. It was snowing hard on the day of the wedding, and after their marriage, their lives were dark and cold. By contrast, the one-eyed man married Second Daughter at the start of spring in the following year. The sun was shining brightly on the day of the wedding, and the wind was blowing down from the mountain ridge like a sheet of silk. Their lives, however, stumbled along. On the first night of her marriage, Second Daughter had an episode and began foaming at the mouth. At the time, One-Eye happened to be in bed with her, and afterward each time they tried to sleep together her illness would act up, and she constantly had to take medication. The summer after Second Daughter was married off, Fourth Wife You went to visit her son-in-law’s home. Her village was located thirty-nine li from that of her son-in-law, but before she had gone ten li she heard her daughter crying after having to take her medicine. When she arrived at their house, she found a pile of empty medicine bottles so high it reached the window ledge.
She asked One-Eye, “If she gets sick every time you try to sleep with her, couldn’t you simply not sleep with her?”
One-Eye replied, “I didn’t get married until I was already thirty-seven, and if I can’t sleep with my wife, then why did I get married at all? If I can’t sleep with my wife, how will my family name live on?”
After that, Fourth Wife You never returned to the home of her second son-in-law, and she rarely visited that of her first son-in-law either. As a result, she didn’t know whether or not her daughters’ illnesses were still acting up, nor whether Second Daughter ever ended up getting pregnant. Originally, Fourth Wife You had planned to visit her two daughters after the autumn harvest, but then the problem of her Third Daughter’s marriage presented itself.
The mountain ridge was vast and endless. The wind brought in surge after surge of the smell of freshly turned earth. Sometimes, Fourth Wife You would pass people going to the market beyond the Balou Mountains. Both of Fourth Wife You’s elder daughters had married into families who lived beyond the mountains. Outsiders were normally not willing to marry women from the mountains, feeling that a visit to the in-laws would be too much work. This was even more true of the Yous, whose idiot children could only look to the deep hills for mates. Fourth Wife You walked quickly as the sun’s shadows fluttered around her like black veils. Li Village, Liu Gully, and both Large and Small Scholar Town were now all behind her, like discarded sheets of paper strewn across the sunlit hills. She proceeded alone, accompanied by the sound of countless sparrows and grasshoppers. In the afternoon, after the sun had passed its highest point, she heard footsteps slowly approaching, like an old person clapping. The sound faded into the distance, and she lifted her head to see if she could figure out exactly what the footsteps sounded like, whereupon she discovered that her husband, Stone You, was following her. She asked, “Where are you going?”
He replied, “If you keep going west to Wu Ravine, you’ll find five brothers who are all bachelors, any one of whom would make a match for Third Daughter.”
Fourth Wife You stopped and looked at her husband skeptically. She noticed that a mosquito had landed on his left cheek, so she swatted it away and proceeded forward. When she reached an intersection, she stood there uncertainly, and her husband said, “You should take the road heading west.” So, she took the road heading west, and soon saw Wu Ravine Village in front of her. The village was not very large, only a hundred or so residents. In front of the village there were several villagers busy harvesting the corn and planting wheat. Because she was so dressed up and was walking so quickly, the villagers all stopped what they were doing and stared at her. One of her sisters recognized her from a distance. The woman’s family was large, with many children and grandchildren, and the three generations were out in the fields planting wheat. They held their hands up to their foreheads to block the glare of the sun as they looked at her. Suddenly, the woman pulling one of the plow’s side ropes threw the rope down.
The woman’s son-in-law asked, “Ma, what are you doing?”
The woman replied, “That’s one of my sisters from when I still lived with my mother.”
Stone You pulled Fourth Wife You to the entrance of the village and told her to wait there for a moment.
When the woman came over, she shouted, “Hey, are you my younger sister?”
Fourth Wife You called out in surprise, “Sis … it’s you!”
The woman said, “This is such a busy time of year. How is it that you’ve come all the way here?”
Fourth Wife You said, “I’ve come to find a husband for Third Daughter. I hear that in your village there is a family with five sons, none of whom has a wife.”
They stood there on the side of the road, staring at each other. After a while, their eyes filled with tears. As girls, they had gone together into the fields to fetch water and take the cattle out to graze, but after they each married they rarely had a chance to see each other. The woman was only about half a year older than Fourth Wife You, but looked as though she were more than a decade older, and had endured hardships that Fourth Wife You could only imagine. The woman had only just turned sixty, and was already walking unsteadily and had a face full of wrinkles. Fourth Wife You watched her, and said, “Sis, you’re old, and have gone completely gray.” The other woman replied, “You’ve also aged. I heard that before you even turned thirty, you were widowed with four children. I always said that I wanted to visit you and your children, but could never seem to find the time.” Fourth Wife You asked, “How are your grandchildren doing? I hear you replaced your house with a tile-roofed one. I couldn’t leave my children alone, or else I’d have come to help cook for you while you were building your new house.”
The woman stared at her in surprise, and asked, “Then who’s looking after Third Daughter and Fourth Idiot now, while you’re here?”
Fourth Wife You replied, “I locked Fourth Idiot in his room.”
The two sisters chatted there at the head of the field, until the tractor came rumbling over and the old man in the cabin urged them to return home. Only then did it occur to them that they should start heading back.
When they entered the village, Fourth Wife You saw that her sister did indeed have a new tile-roofed house with a courtyard—a house so new that the smell of sulfur from the bricks still lingered. The path through the courtyard and the ailanthus tree in the center were still enveloped in waves of dust from the new tiles. Under the tree, Fourth Wife You complimented her sister on how big and bright the new building was, how straight its girders were, how good its wood was, and she told her sister how much she envied her good life. Eventually, she broached the topic that had brought her there, revealing countless shameful details about Third Daughter and Fourth Idiot. The other woman lit a fire, rinsed some vegetables, kneaded some dough, and boiled some water. Then she went to a house in the back of the village and, in the blink of an eye, had summone
d the eldest of the five sons. He was almost forty years old, and was thin and hunchbacked. When he heard that there was someone who wanted to marry her daughter to one of the brothers, he entered the room smiling brightly. He brought fresh dates, and invited Fourth Wife You to sit under the ailanthus tree and eat the dates as they chatted about the crops, the harvest, the drought, the house, and countless other topics.
Fourth Wife You asked, “So, none of you are married?”
The eldest son bowed his head and replied, “No, we’re not.”
Fourth Wife You said, “My daughter is twenty-eight years old, by the lunar calendar.”
Eldest Brother replied, “In my family, Second Brother is thirty-five, Third Brother is thirty-three, Fourth Brother is thirty, and Fifth Brother is only twenty-seven.”
Stone You said, “Either Second Brother or Third Brother would be fine.”
Fourth Wife You said, “I think it would be best to have my daughter marry Fourth Brother, since the two of them are closest in age.”
Eldest Brother replied, “Of the five of us, Fourth Brother is definitely the most handsome. He is trained as a carpenter, and a matchmaker has already offered to set him up with a young woman from a neighboring village.”
Fourth Wife You asked, “How about Third Brother?”
Eldest Brother said, “Third Aunt mentioned that your third daughter has epilepsy, but is not unattractive. I understand that she can work and cook, and can even sew. Our second brother is deaf, having lost his hearing as a result of a fireworks accident when he was young, but apart from that there’s nothing wrong with him. Do you think your daughter could get engaged to Second Brother?”
Stone You said, “She and Second Brother would make a good match.”
Fourth Wife You said, “That won’t do. I want to find a wholer for Third Daughter to marry. If only I can find her a wholer, then our family wouldn’t need any betrothal gifts. In fact, we’ll even give the groom’s family a dowry chest, a double bed made from ailanthus wood, and a bedding set, together with two sets of year-round men’s clothing.”