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Chapter 9

THE WOMEN'S ASSOCIATION WAS GOING TO hold a meeting. As usual, Moon Scent went
next door to pick up Sister-in-Law Gold Have Got.
"She is washing clothes by the stream," said Big Aunt.
After Moon Scent left, Big Aunt grumbled after her, "If you want someone to go, go yourself. No, you must drag others along. Other people have work to do. In this family the old ones are too old and the young ones too young. Who is going to do the work if she goes to meet-ings all day long? Calling for her all the time, like calling the soul of the dying back to the body. You still aren't the Chairman of the Women's Association. You need not be so anxious, dropping in at every house to drag other people to the meeting. Husband and wife—husband and wife certainly think alike. So you are a Labor Model." She switched over to Gold Root, her voice going higher and higher. "People just give you a few words of praise and you lose your head. You do not stop to think: where is the nine tan of grain you reaped? Where has it gone to? You end up just as empty-bellied as we are."
"All right, all right, say no more!" whispered Big Uncle.
"Ai, the young people are such fools!" Big Aunt sighed as she sat there plaiting flax. "They cannot hear a few kind words without wanting to lay down their lives for somebody. They willingly dig out their hearts and dig out their livers. I, the old woman, have lived longer than you people. Just the salt I have eaten would make a bigger pile than all the rice you have put in your bellies. The things I have seen are many. One moment this army comes; one moment that army comes. After the army come the bandits. And this time it is worse than any bandits. You can't even bury four ounces of millet under-ground and get away with it. Yes, they always know."
"Hai-yah, Old Lord Heaven, what kind of talk is this?" cried Big Uncle. "Gone crazy today!"
At this Big Aunt started to shout, "Don't be afraid, old man! Don't be afraid! I won't get you involved. Let them report me. Let them gain credits. No matter how anxious to please Comrade Wong-they still end up just as empty-bellied as we are."
Big Uncle finally gave up trying to stop her. He knew that Gold Root was in the hills gathering firewood and that Comrade Ku had gone to town to buy the food he ate in secret. They had seen Gold Root going out. But it happened that he had returned without being seen and was in his room all this time.
Moon Scent also had come back because she forgot to tell Gold Root to keep an eye on the child and see that she did not slip into Comrade Ku's room. As soon as she entered the courtyard she heard Big Aunt's voice yelling, but she could not make out whether she was quarreling with the old man or scolding her daughter-in-law. When she came to her own room, she found Gold Root standing near the doorway in a gangling, awkward pose.
She jerked her head toward next door. "Quarreling with whom?" she asked.
He looked at her uncomprehendingly.
Then she heard what Big Aunt was shouting. Gold Root's face was harsh with pain. She looked away from it quickly. She hated that old woman for hurting him.
"Big Aunt, don't talk so loudly!" she shouted across the wall. "It is all right if we hear you. But what if somebody else hears and goes to report you? You would blame it on us and we would never be able to clear ourselves."
"Don't think I am afraid of being reported!" Big Aunt shouted back. "An old woman like me is a candle in the wind and frost on the tiles—I cannot last long anyhow. But you people who are young and have a future to think of—do not blacken your heart and do harm to others or you would not come to a good end."
"All right, all right, say one sentence less," urged Big Uncle.
"Calling other people black-hearted for no reason," yelled Moon Scent. "An elder not behaving like an elder living to a great age, but all your days seem to have been lived out by a dog."
"You dare scold me! Am I someone whom you might scold?" her aunt cried out. "Crazy! Do you eat rice or do you eat dung?"
"Everybody say one sentence less," pleaded Big Uncle
"Let it go at that," said Gold Root to his wife.
"The dead hag!" hissed Moon Scent. "Why do you not die, you dead hag?"
"Ah, you women!" Gold Root said disgustedly.
"Go and report me! Get my daughter-in-law to report me to the Women's Association! Go ahead!"
"You never will stop-never will stop," said Big Uncle between clenched teeth, and there was a sound of scuf-fling and muffled blows.
"All right, beat me! Beat me!" wailed Big Aunt. "At my age, with my grandsons so big already, you still beat me? Beat me to death then! I don't want to live! I haven't the face to go on living."
Things clattered to the ground as Big Aunt rolled all over the room howling with grief.
"Go and make peace between them," said Gold Root to Moon Scent.
"I certainly am not going."
Gold Root finally went himself. "All right, all right, Big Uncle." He pulled the old man aside. "At your age, and married for so many years-people will laugh."
Big Aunt sat on the ground boo-hooing. Stray short hair, white and tough like cats' whiskers, fell over her cheeks.
Panting with his exertions, Big Uncle turned a desper-ately beseeching face to Gold Root and tried to explain how this madness suddenly came over her and it really had nothing to do with Moon Scent. Gold Root managed to shake him off. When he came home the room was empty. Moon Scent had gone to the meeting.
From that day onward Big Aunt and Moon Scent ceased speaking to each other.
KU HAD BEEN GOING TO THE VILLAGE PUBLIC office every day the last few days, to help write antithetical couplets for the Spring Scrolls to be sold to the farmers during the New Year. Householders always bought a new set every year to paste on the folding doors. Prices varied with the number of words. In the old days the wording usually went like this:
"On this ground, blessings abound and sons are born; Within this door, gold piles up and jade accumulates."
But now it was more likely to be
"May Chairman Mao live to ten thousand years”
“May the Communist Party weather a thousand autumns."
The characters were just as beautifully balanced and looked just as handsome as before in lustrous black on plain red or coral-patterned paper. But somehow it was not the same.
It was on a cold, dark, snow-brewing day that Gold Root's sister Gold Flower came home from Chou Village. Ku was still home when she came, so she and her family just sat around chatting without saying much. As soon as Ku left, she started telling her family about her troubles. Her mother-in-law, she said, was more polite to her than to the others because she was a newcomer. So her sisters-in-law could not stand it and banded up together to say bad things about her. They said she was lazy and greedy and her husband starved himself to save his food for her. Her mother-in-law believed this and got veiy angry and scolded the son. It was all lies, Gold Flower said, though it was a fact that they all were not eating much.
When Moon Scent returned from Shanghai and brought her back presents, the towel and the scented soap, it had caused a lot of comment. Ever since then Gold Flower's new in-laws had always been hinting that she should go back home and borrow money. This time her mother-in-law openly asked her to do it, saying that otherwise they could not possibly get through the New Year.
"Ai-yah," said Moon Scent, "if I had only known how hard up we are in the country, I would never have bought those things and made trouble for you."
Gold Flower went on recounting her sufferings in a stolid monotone, her eyes fixed on the ground and her hands tucked under her jacket. The room was very cold.
There were pauses in which they all sat breathing out white smoke.
"Be patient, Sister," Moon Scent consoled her. "You are fortunate that Brother-in-Law treats you well. Al-though life is hard for the time being, it cannot be helped. It is the same with everybody. As to what kind of a life we lead here at home, other people may not know how it is, but you know, Sister." In turn she began a detailed account of how bad things were in their own household.
Gold Root listened and said nothing. He could not expect his wife to part with what little was left of her savings. But his bowels turned with anguish when he thought of the time when he and his sister were children together. Whenever he caught a good cricket be gave it to her. And on the third of the third moon when the townfolk came out to the country to visit their ancestral graves, he ran from grave to grave and hovered around waiting for the give-away rice-flour balls. He was very good at collecting those cakes so that there was always plenty for both of them.
In summer he caught grasshoppers in the fields, tied them up with a blade of grass, and asked his mother to fry them in oil, the whole string of them, till they were half-burned and crisp and tasty.
They had always been poor. He remembered lying in bed in the morning when his mother was taking rice out of the great earthen jar, and he could hear the dipper scrape against the bottom of the jar. At that dreaded scratchy sound he felt a chilly, acidy sadness seep into his bones.
And one day he knew there was nothing to eat in the house. As lunchtime approached he called out to his sister, "Come out and play, Sister Gold Flower." Gold Flower, being much younger than he, had no sense of time. They played and played in the fields. Then he heard his mother calling them, "Gold Root! Gold Flower! Come have your lunch!" He was astonished. They went home and he found she had boiled some beans which she had meant to keep for seeds. The beans were very nice. His mother sat watching them with a smile as they ate.
Now he was fully grown and an owner of land, and yet it seemed he was just as helpless as before against the force of circumstances. His sister came to him weeping and he had to send her away empty-handed.
Sitting with knees wide apart, he bent forward until he was almost doubled up, one hand fumbling around with the back of his neck. When Gold Flower's long story was at an end, Moon Scent rose and went over to the other side to prepare lunch.
Then he also got up and walked over to Moon Scent who was taking rice out of the great earthen jar.
"I want to have a meal of properly cooked rice today, instead of that watery stuff," he said in a low voice. "I want it hard enough for the grains to be counted."
"All right. Now go away. It would look queer to Sister," she mumbled under her breath without turning her head.
When he came back to Gold Flower, she had dried her tears and was playing with Beckon. Leading the child by the hand, she peeped into Ku's room.
"Let me have a look at my old room," she said.
"You must not go inside," said Beckon, "or Ma will beat you."
"Why?"
"And you must not look in when the man is at home. He will be eating and Ma would beat you."
Beckon enjoyed romping around with her aunt. Then it was time for lunch. They had the same thin gruel as they had always, with some stringy wild vegetables float-ing in it. Gold Root was so angry he could hardly get it down his throat. He ate in silence, then suddenly set down his bowl with a clatter and went outside the house to smoke his pipe.
It began to snow. At first the tiny flakes were only visi-ble against the dark bulk of the hill. Then they could be seen as myriads of grayish specks descending slowly from the white sky. Gold Flower said she had to start back. Moon Scent asked her to wait and see if the snow would stop, but she seemed restless. After a while she again stood up to go.
"Do not go, Aunt. Stay with us." Beckon hung on to her.
Moon Scent said jokingly, "If you don't let her go back home to your new uncle, he'll come and beat you up."
Gold Root took his huge orange oilpaper umbrella and thrust it into his sister's hand.
"But you might need it yourself," Gold Flower pro-tested, not looking at him but at her sister-in-law.
Moon Scent assured her they could easily drop in and fetch it someday when they passed by Chou Village. They saw her out to the road, the two women walking under the umbrella, with Gold Root following a few steps behind. But before they reached the mouth of the vil-lage he turned back abruptly without a word of fare-well.
The snow soon turned into rain, as it often did here, south of the Yangtze. Moon Scent came home alone without an umbrella. She was wiping her clothes when Gold Root went at her.
"I told you not to give us that thin gruel for lunch. I would have thrown it in your face if Sister hadn't been here."
"We ate what we always ate. Sister is no guest."
"She seldom ever comes and you even grudge her a full meal."
"If we cook something special for her she would think that is what we have every day. She would think we are well off and yet we still won't lend her money."
Gold Root said, after pausing for reflection, "She would never think that of us."
"She is just a child. Besides, she would tell her hus-band, and the whole family would know. You know how people talk."
"She need not tell anybody."
"I would have told you, if it had been me!"
He was silent after that.
The room was dark and close in the rainy afternoon, with a smell of wet cloth shoes. Gold Root went and lay down on the bed. After some time he sat up with a jerk, rolled up the old, much-patched wadded blanket, slung it over one shoulder, and started for the door.
"What are you doing?" cried Moon Scent. "Where are you going?"
"I am going to pawn this and buy me a drink of wine." "You are crazy!" She clutched at the blanket with all
her strength. "We would freeze to death in this weather." "What do I care? This kind of life is not worth living." "Who ever heard of anything like this-pawn the wad‑ded blanket in the middle of 'the nine's'! We would die
of cold!"
"I'll try and get into a game of dominoes; with my win-nings I can redeem it."
The Chinese divide winter into nine times nine days. "No, no!" she gasped.
She tugged and he tugged, and she began to weep out of exasperation. Suddenly he let go and turned away dis-gusted. She flopped down hard on the dirt floor. Then she picked herself up, and the blanket and, still crying, shook the dust off it.
"But what did he expect me to do?" she thought. "Lend her money to help feed all her in-laws while we starve to death?"
She had to keep telling herself that, to whet her anger. Because even though she had all the reasons on her side she felt unaccountably guilty. He seemed so depressed that it alarmed her.
After supper she went to bed early, rolling the blanket tightly around Beckon and herself. Later, when Gold Root came to bed and tried to pull the blanket loose, she held on firmly and said, "You can do without the blanket. You are not afraid of the cold."
He gave the blanket such a jerk that it nearly landed her and the child on the floor. Then, to her surprise, he blew out the lamp and lay down quietly with all his clothes on. He did not seem to care one way or the other.
He lay awake for a long time. He wanted very much to take her in his arms and drown his sorrows in her, in place of the drink that was denied him. But he was deeply ashamed of himself. And in China the commonest joke is that about the poor man who, though starving, is still amorous, and is jeered at by his wife.
Near midnight, when she was sure he was asleep, she spread out the blanket and, feeling around in the dark, tucked it in under him. And in his sleep his arms slid around her out of habit.