by She Lao
He didn’t respond.
“What’s wrong, forget how to talk? I can teach you, you know.”
He merely grunted. What else could he do? He knew he had a shrew for a wife, but one who could cook and clean house, who could yell at him one minute and help him out the next, and that made him uncomfortable. He picked up a steamed bun and ate it. This was better food than he was used to, and piping hot. And yet something was missing—it didn’t bring as much pleasure as the food he wolfed down most of the time, and it didn’t raise a sweat.
When lunch was finished, he lay down on the heated bed, pillowed his head in his hands, and stared at the ceiling.
“Hey, come here and help me wash up,” she called from the outer room. “I’m not your housemaid, you know!”
He sat up lazily and looked her way as he went to help with the dishes. Normally ready to help with almost anything, this time he worked with feelings of resentment. Back at the rickshaw shed he’d given her a hand plenty of times, but all he felt now was disgust. He had never hated anyone as much as he hated her. But he couldn’t say why that was. He kept his anger bottled up inside, knowing he couldn’t break it off with her and that there was no point in arguing. As he paced the floor of the two rooms, life seemed to be one endless grievance.
After she put the dishes away, she took a look around and sighed. “Well,” she said with a smile, “what do you say?”
“What do you mean?” Xiangzi was crouched down by the stove, warming his hands. They weren’t really that cold, but that was one way to keep them busy. The two rooms really did seem like a home, but he didn’t quite know where to put his arms and legs.
“Take me out for some fun. How about White Cloud Monastery? No, too late for that. Let’s just go out for a stroll.” She wanted to get as much enjoyment out of this new marriage as possible. The wedding itself hadn’t been anything to brag about, but the freedom to do as she pleased felt good, so why not have a grand time with her new husband, at least for a few days? In her father’s home she’d always had food to eat, clothes to wear, and money to spend, but she’d lacked the companionship of a man; now she looked forward to strolling the city’s streets and temple fairs with Xiangzi at her side.
Xiangzi said no. In the first place, he considered walking in public with one’s wife shameful. Second, the only thing you could do with a wife like this was keep her hidden at home. This was nothing to be proud of, but the less she was in the public eye the better. To top it off, he was sure to meet acquaintances out there, since there wasn’t a rickshaw man anywhere in West City who didn’t know all about Huniu and Xiangzi. The last thing he wanted was for people to whisper behind his back.
“Let’s talk things over, all right?” He remained crouching by the stove.
“What’s there to talk about?” She walked up to him. Xiangzi rested his hands on his knees and stared at the flames. After a long silence he managed to say, “I can’t sit around with nothing to do.”
“You live to suffer!” She laughed. “Your hands itch if you can’t pull a rickshaw for one day, isn’t that right? Look at my father. After he was too old to keep living only for pleasure, he opened a rickshaw shop. He doesn’t have to pull a rickshaw, doesn’t have to work at all. He gets by on his wits alone. You could learn a thing or two from him. What’s so great about pulling a rickshaw anyway? We can continue this conversation after we’ve enjoyed a bit of life. Nothing has to be decided immediately. What’s the rush? I’m not going to argue with you over the next few days, so please don’t pick a fight.”
“I want to talk things over first.” Xiangzi was not going to back down. Since he could not pack up and leave, he had to find something to do, and that meant taking a firm stand. He did not want to keep swinging back and forth, getting nowhere.
“All right,” she said as she moved a stool up next to the stove, “let’s hear what you have to say.”
“How much money do you have?”
“I knew it. That’s exactly what I expected to hear. You married me for my money.”
Xiangzi felt like he was choking. He swallowed hard. Old Man Liu and all the men at Harmony Shed thought he was money-hungry and that he’d taken up with Huniu only for what he could get. And now she was saying the same thing! After losing his rickshaw and all his money, he wound up subjugated by what little money she had. Even the food he ate was hers to dispense. He could hardly keep from grabbing her around the neck and throttling her! Choke her till he saw the whites of her eyes. Then, once she was good and dead, he’d slit his own throat. They both deserved to die. He was no more human than she, and he deserved to die, too. What right did they have to go on living?
Xiangzi stood up to go out, regretting having come home. Huniu softened her attitude once she saw the look on his face. “All right, I’ll tell you. I started out with about five hundred yuan. The sedan chair, three months’ rent, the papering, the clothes, and what I gave you, altogether nearly a hundred, which leaves four hundred. I tell you, there’s nothing to worry about, so let’s enjoy ourselves while we can. You’ve been sweating away in front of a rickshaw for years, and you deserve to have a good time for a change. And me? I’ve been a spinster all this time, and I’m ready for some fun. We’ll keep at it till the money’s gone, then go to the old man and get some more. I’d never have left home if not for the fight we got into that day, but I’m not mad anymore, and he is, after all, my father. I’m all he’s got, and he’s always liked you, so we throw ourselves at his feet and apologize, and he’ll be in a forgiving mood. It’s foolproof! He’s rich, and we stand to inherit his money. There’s nothing unreasonable or improper about that. It’s better than being a slave for somebody else. You go over in a few days. Now, he might refuse to see you, so you return a second time. That will give him enough face to come around sooner or later. Then I’ll go and sweet-talk him, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he asked us to move back. When that happens, we can throw out our chests and not have to worry about anyone looking crooked at us. But if we stay here and try to stick it out alone, we’ll always be on people’s blacklist. Am I right or aren’t I?”
This was all new to Xiangzi. Since the day Huniu had come to the Cao house looking for him, his only thought had been that, after they were married, he’d get her to buy him a rickshaw and he’d be back on the street. Spending his wife’s money was not honorable, but since their relationship was the kind he couldn’t talk about, what did it matter? That she might have other ideas never occurred to him. He could hold his nose and do as she said, but that was not in his nature. As he mulled over what she said, he realized that if someone steals money from you, there is nothing you can do about it. And when someone gives you money, you have no choice but to take it, and from that moment on, you are no longer the master of your own aspirations and strength: you belong to someone else. You are your wife’s plaything and your father-in-law’s servant. A man alone is nothing—a bird, perhaps, that falls into a trap when it tries to feed itself. But if it’s content to be fed, it must live in a cage and sing for its food until the day it’s sold to someone else.
He did not want to go see Fourth Master. He had a physical relationship with Huniu but not with the old man. She’d tricked him, and he refused to go to her father with his hand out. “I can’t sit around doing nothing” was all he said. Best to avoid wasting breath or getting into an argument.
“A man born to suffer,” she taunted. “If you want to keep busy, open a shop.”
“Not me,” Xiangzi replied tensely, the veins in his forehead standing out. “I can’t make money doing that. I pull a rickshaw. I like pulling a rickshaw!”
“Well, I tell you, I’ll not have you pulling a rickshaw. I won’t let you climb into my bed all sweaty! You see things your way, I see them mine, and we’ll find out who comes out on top. You got yourself a wife, but I paid for it, every cent of it. So who do you think ought to listen to whom?”
Once again, Xiangzi could say nothing.
CHAPTER SI
XTEEN
Xiangzi’s period of idleness lasted till the fifteenth day of the first month, the day of the Lantern Festival, when he could no longer endure it.
Huniu, who was in good spirits, busied herself boiling glutinous rice balls and making dumplings, visiting temples during the day and viewing colorful lanterns at night. Xiangzi had no say in anything as she plied him with all sorts of tasty treats, some bought on the street and others homemade. The compound was home to seven or eight families, most of whom packed a dozen or more people into a single room. Among them were rickshaw men, street vendors, policemen, and servants, all caught up in activities of one kind or another, with no time to relax. Even children were put to work, fetching gruel in the mornings and scrounging for bits of coal in the afternoons. Only the very youngest were free to play and tussle in the compound, their bare bottoms turned red by the freezing air. Ashes from stoves and dirty water were unceremoniously dumped in the middle of the compound and left there; the water froze on the ground and served as a skating rink for the raucous children when they returned from their coal collecting. The days were hardest on the elderly and the women. The old folks, hungry and in need of warm clothing, lay on their ice-cold brick beds, waiting for their younger kin to bring home a bit of money so they could eat. Sometimes their wait was rewarded, sometimes not. If they returned empty-handed, the angry young men were just looking for an excuse to start an argument. Meanwhile, the famished old folks had no choice but to swallow their tears. The women not only had to take care of their elders and their children but also deal with the family’s wage earners as well. And being pregnant did not free them from their duties, even though they had to get through the days with chunks of corn bread and bowls of gruel; no, it was still their duty to go fetch gruel from the public canteens and perform whatever other odd jobs cropped up. Then, after the old folks and children were fed and put to bed, they washed and mended clothes under the weak light of an oil lamp. Clad in rags and with a bowl or less of gruel in their stomachs, the heavily pregnant women did their work only after everyone else was fed, with wind whistling in through holes in one wall and carrying all the warmth out of the tiny rooms through cracks in another. Riddled with disease, these women had lost most of their hair before they reached the age of thirty, but they worked on, from sickness to death, when they were buried in coffins paid for by charitable people in the community. Girls of sixteen or seventeen, having no trousers to wear, simply wrapped a tattered cloth around themselves and did not venture outside—for them the rooms were virtual prisons where they helped their mothers with their chores. If they needed to visit the latrine, they first made sure that the compound was deserted before slipping outside unnoticed. They did not see the sun or blue sky all winter long. The ugly ones would take over for their mothers in time, while the decent-looking girls knew that sooner or later they would be sold by their parents to enjoy a good life, as they say.
Huniu felt smug about living in such diminished surroundings. As the only resident of the compound who had no need to worry about food or clothing, she was free to take strolls and enjoy life. With her head held high, she came and went as she pleased, comfortable in her superiority and happy to ignore her poor neighbors for fear of being contaminated by them. Peddlers who came to the compound sought out customers to buy their cheap fare: meat pared from bones, frozen cabbage, raw bean juice, mule and horsemeat. But after Huniu moved in, peddlers of sheep’s head, smoked fish, buns and pastries, and spicy fried tofu began shouting their wares at the compound gate. As Huniu carried her purchases back to her rooms, nose in the air, children would stick their thin, dirty fingers in their mouths when she passed by, as if she were royalty. Intent on enjoying the fruits of life, she could not, would not, dared not witness the suffering of others.
As someone who had been born to poverty, Xiangzi took a dim view of her behavior; he knew what it was like to suffer and had no appetite for the expensive food she brought home. What disturbed him even more was the realization that she was plying him with good food to keep his mind off going out to pull a rickshaw, like fattening up a cow to get more milk. He was little more than her plaything. Out on the street, he’d seen a scrawny old bitch set her sights on a strong, well-fed male when she needed a lackey. He not only hated this life but also was worried about what he was becoming. A man who sold his muscle had to keep fit at all costs; good health was everything, and at this rate, one day he would be reduced to skin and bones, an empty hulk. The thought made him shudder. Pulling a rickshaw was the only way he could survive. Out all day running, he’d return home at night and sleep like a baby, dead to the world. By not eating her food, he’d stop being her plaything. There was no way around it—no more compromises. If she’d buy him a rickshaw, well and good; if not, he’d rent one. And that is what he did, without telling her.
On the seventeenth day of the month he started pulling a rickshaw again, an all-day rental. After two long hauls, he experienced something for the first time ever—leg cramps and sore hips. He knew why and consoled himself by attributing it to a three-week layoff. A few more hauls to limber up his legs and he’d be back.
He picked up another fare, this time as part of a group of four. When they were all ready, they chose a tall forty-year-old to take the lead. He smiled, well aware that the other three men were fitter than he, but he gave it his all, unwilling to use age as an excuse for slowing the youngsters down. After they’d run nearly half a mile, the men praised him: “How’s it going? Getting tired? You’re doing fine!”
He called back breathlessly, “I have to keep the pace up with fellows like you behind me.” He was running at such a fast clip that even Xiangzi had to work hard to keep up. But the old fellow had a funny way of running: quite tall, he had trouble bending at the waist, so his torso was like a block of wood that forced him to lean forward and stretch his arms behind him. It looked more like dragging something along than running. Since his back was straight as a board, he had to swing his hips from side to side, while his feet, which barely cleared the ground, twisted their way forward at a good pace. It was obviously hard work. People had to hold their breath as they watched him take corners, seemingly caring only if he, and not his rickshaw, safely made it through.
When they reached their destination, he laid down the shafts of his rickshaw, hurriedly straightened up, and grimaced as beads of sweat dripped noisily to the ground from his nose and earlobes. His hands shook so badly he could hardly hold the money he was given.
A bond formed among the men, who parked their rickshaws together, dried themselves off, and began a round of banter. All but the older man, who kept to himself for a few moments, racked by dry coughs; after spitting out gobs of white phlegm, he recovered enough to join in the conversation.
“I’m beat,” he said. “My heart, my hips, my legs, they all pretty much fail me. I try to stretch, but my legs don’t want to move. That’s got me plenty worried.”
“Not the way you were running a minute ago,” a short twenty-year-old said. “You can’t call that slow. You’ve got no reason to feel bad. Look at the three of us—we were sweating right along with you.”
Even those consoling words were not enough to keep him from sighing.
“But you make it hard on yourself the way you run,” another one said, “and that’s no joke for a man your age.”
The tall fellow smiled and shook his head. “There’s more to it than age, my friends,” he said. “I tell you, men in our line of work have no business starting a family, and that’s the truth.” Having gotten their attention, he lowered his voice and said, “Once you’ve got a family, you’re on the go day and night, never a minute to yourself. Just look at my hips—stiff as a board, no spring in them at all. And if I grit my teeth and start running hard, I nearly cough my lungs out and my heart feels like it’s about to burst. Take my word for it, for men like us, spending the rest of our lives as fucking bachelors is the only answer. Even those fucking sparrows are free to pair off, but not us. An
d then there are the kids, a new one every year. I’ve got five, all waiting to be fed when I get home. Rickshaw rents are high, food’s expensive, and there isn’t enough work to go around. What’s the answer? Bachelorhood. Go visit a whore when you feel the need, and if you wind up with syphilis, so what. Everybody’s got to die sometime. This business of starting a family, you wind up with more mouths than you can feed, and you can’t die in peace.” He turned to Xiangzi. “Am I right or aren’t I?”
Xiangzi nodded.
A man looking for a ride walked up, and after the short fellow got the price he was looking for, he handed the fare over to the tall fellow. “You take him, old friend. You’ve got five kids at home.”
“All right,” he said with a smile. “I’ll take this one, though I shouldn’t. But I can buy some more flatbread to take home. See you later, friends!”
As he watched the man run off, the short fellow muttered, “A fucking lifelong bachelor, no wife to share a bed, while those rich bastards have four or five women to wrap their arms around!”
“Never mind them,” one of the others piped up. “People who do what we do have to be careful. What the tall guy said was right. What does marriage get us? A good time? No! It’s nothing but trouble. You gnaw on hard corn bread day in and day out, and are squeezed from all sides. That’ll finish off even the strongest among us.”
With this comment, Xiangzi picked up his shafts. “I’m heading south,” he said in a conversational tone. “There’s no business here.”
“See you later,” the two youngsters said.
Appearing not to have heard them, Xiangzi walked off, striding purposefully. His hips ached, they really did. At first he planned to knock off for the day, but he couldn’t face the idea of going home. It wasn’t a wife who was waiting for him—it was a blood-sucking demon!
The days were getting longer. He made a few more rounds and it was still only five o’clock. After turning in his rickshaw, he killed some time in a teahouse, until a couple of bowls of tea spiked his appetite and he decided to get something to eat before going home. Once he’d finished off twelve ounces of meat-filled pastries and a bowl of red-bean millet congee, he belched loudly and then headed slowly home, where he knew a storm awaited. But he didn’t care, for he was determined not to argue with her. He’d go straight to bed and be back on the street with his rickshaw tomorrow, whether she liked it or not.