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2

The boy selling oil puffs at a stall slept half-naked on the board where the dough was kneaded. The wire cage for Folding the foot-long oil puffs stood empty near his head. The breakfast rush was over.
The street barber sat nodding on his stool. Aside from plaiting men's pigtails and shaving their front hair to get a domed forehead he also rented his towel and enamel basin to passers-by who wanted to wash their faces. With the business and with the afternoon heat upon him, he gradually sank forward in sleep, burying his face in the basin.
A hawker came with a flat pole on his shoulder loaded with bamboo chairs stacked mountain-high. He parked is wares on the shady side of the street, conveniently sat in one of those stumpy pale green chairs and went to sIeep.
Yindi sat behind the counter under the vertical signboard that said in big gilt characters, Children and old men not cheated. Further out to her left stood another black-and-gold sign board, one of a pair that flanked the shopfront reaching down to the pavement, Sesame oil from small grind-stone, peanut oil and sesame butter. She was edging a slipper with the kind of cross-stitch called 'mistaken to the end'. I t had a nice tragic ring and the pattern of thin broken ices was more delicate than the usual dog-tooth. Her needle grew rusty from perspiration. Her eyes also felt gritty. The sun had got to the two big white enamel jars beside her with big yellow tongues of peanut butter hanging out. The buzz of the flies made her still drowsier.
She looked up and saw her grandparents coming, holding palm-leaf fans overhead for shade. They must be in bad straits or they wouldn't choose such a scorching day to walk all the way here from the country. She was sorry to have to tell them that Bingfa and his wife were not at home, gone for the day with the children to the wife's family.
It always depressed her to see the red-cheeked timidly smiling old couple in their faded and patched blue garments. Without asking them whether they had had lunch she wiped the table, set out two pairs of chopsticks and went into the kitchen to warm the rice and the left-over dishes although it was already mid-afternoon. There was cabbage, melon and bean-curd. The tall wooden rice bucket was painted bright red with the ubiquitous goose handle rearing its flat head straight up, a round eye on each side. As she filled their rice bowls she patted down the rice so that it stood out of the bowl in a high mound round at the top. There were actually two bowls in one. Still her grandmother said, 'Press it, Miss, press harder.'
Husband and wife sat down facing each other and ate quietly. The blinding sunlight shone right into their faces but they seemed not to notice it in their heavy dream-like calm. Now and then their bowls and chopsticks tinkled faintly. Watching them she felt a little dazed and forlorn, like waking up dry-mouthed in the setting sun after a long nap.
They each finished three hard-packed bowls of rice. The old woman helped her to clear away the dishes while the old man napped in a chair, his fan over his face.
As they returned to the front of the shop after washing up they heard in the distance the thin flat twang of three-strings, the instrument played by blind fortune-tellers. The blind man was a long time in coming. The desultory music of the three-strings threaded in and out of the streets and alleys lined with black-roofed white houses, the little tune repeating itself winding in and out in a connected swastika design. For Yindi it called up a vision of her future set out like the plan of a town. Her hand went inside her blouse counting the copper coins in the pocket.
Her grandmother was also digging into her pocket. 'Let's call in the fortune-teller,' she said with a guilty little giggle.
'You want your fortunes told, Grandmother?' She decided that she would wait and see if the man got the facts right in her grandmother's past.
They waited at the door. The little street was mostly frame houses with open fronts, the worn brownish-red paint quite hidden by all the big lacquered signboards. The upper-storey windows seemed to bulge out with glass like dirty soap bubbles, yellow at the edges.
'Mr Fortune-teller!'
She hoped that their shouts would attract Young Liu's attention so he would know her grandmother was here. Maybe he could manage to slip over for a while and ask for news of home. But he seemed occupied at the pharmacy.
Ever since this talk of making her a blind man's concubine she had felt a kind of constraint, not unmixed with disgust, at the sight of the blind fortune-tellers in the street. She hung back a little as the man approached with his stick. The old woman took him by the elbow and helped him over the doorstep. He did not have a little boy to guide him around, probably because he was familiar with the neighbourhood. He was middle-aged, his sallow face was leonine with down-slanting ridges. Genteel and cautious, he looked like a tailor in his wrinkled long gown. And like tailors and all men whose profession subjected them to women's whims, he wore the sour smile of patience taxed to the limit.
The old woman got him a chair. 'Sit down, Sir.'
'Ao, ao!' he answered, affecting the falsetto of the singing storytellers of Soochow. First placing a hand on the back of the chair, he lowered himself into the seat.
The old woman drew up a chair and sat opposite him, close enough to rub knees with him so she would not miss a word. After she had told him her date and hour of birth he mumbled to himself making some calculations. Then tuning up the three-strings he readily sang of her life, naming all the important events.

'. . . I figure in your fourteenth spring
You lost your kind parent first thing.
I figure in your fifteenth spring
The red luang bird star was moving.'
Standing behind her grandmother's chair she tried to catch the lines rattling on with great rapidity. The kind parent means mother, the opposite of the severe parent, father. She understood that much and the star of the red luang bird is the marriage star. She did not know when her great grandmother died but she seemed to have heard that her grandmother had been engaged before birth, what was called 'pointing at the belly to make a marriage'. But she was not married early, so nothing could have happened at the age of fifteen. So this fortune-teller was no good. She was glad she did not waste her money on him. She thought it strange that the old woman did not seem aware of any mistakes. And she could not have missed anything; being an old hand at this she must be thoroughly familiar with the phraseology. She kept nodding her head encouragingly saying 'Um, um,' acknowledging the various events with a smugly satisfied air as if everything had turned out just as she said.
Her two sons were both shiftless. He said she could lean on one of her sons and could look forward to ten years of 'old luck'.
'And then? What else?' she pressed, placidly insatiable. 'How am I going to end up?'
Yindi thought with some astonishment, at sixty-five she still thinks she will end up different from what she is now.
He sighed. 'It's a happy ending even if it's late in coming.' He sang another couple of lines repeating his promises.
'And what else? What else?'
Yindi felt ashamed for her when he said with an embarrassed little laugh, 'There isn't anything else though, Old Mistress.'
She paid him reluctantly and led him out of the shop. This time Yindi knew that Young Liu definitely saw them but he showed no sign of recognition. She was upset, wondering if he had heard anything about her, about those people looking her over as a prospective concubine. It couldn't be about the row with the carpenter that night?
'Your side gets all the sun,' said her grandmother. Was she comparing this side with the pharmacy across the street? Then she had also seen Young Liu. She did not greet him either.
'I wonder when your brother and sister-in-law are coming home,' she said. 'I want to speak to them about something,' she added importantly. She was so proud to have come to them on some business apart from borrowing money, she couldn't go away leaving it unsaid. There had been a struggle, she was not supposed to tell Yindi who was not to be told at all if the others were against it.
'Young Mr Liu's mother came to see us yesterday,' she finally said and Yindi understood at once. 'Young Mr Liu is so nice, so quiet and good-natured,' she said half to herself. 'He's got a good job. Although they're not rich they'll always have rice to eat. They have very few people in the family, nice and quiet. His elder sister is married already and the younger one will be before long. The mother is easy to get along with.'
Yindi reached up to rub the needle on her hair and went on sewing.
'You are the only granddaughter we have, Miss. It would be nice to have you living near us. No use being shy. Poor child, you have no mother but you can tell Grandmother. It's all right to tell Grandmother.'
`Tell you what, Grandmother?'
'You don't have to be shy with Grandmother.' 'What's the matter with Grandmother today? I don't understand a word you say.'
The old woman cackled and was content to let the matter drop. She was clearly willing.
The fortune-teller was coming back after making his round. At the sound of the three-strings strumming far off she felt a strange sense of loss in the midst of her happiness. She need not wonder any more about the future. Her fate was sealed.
Somehow she had never thought of it from that angle, that she would be living with his mother in the country raising cabbages, in a yellow mud house surrounded by yellow mud smelling of night soil with here and there a tree misted by pink blossoms for a short while in spring. He would be home only for a few days out of the whole year. All year long she would be alone with the old woman and time, whose one idea was to make her an old woman.
Young Liu was not the pushing kind. He would probably remain a shop-assistant to the end of his days. They had clerks with whiskers in the same store, much respected. They wore long gowns while her brother with his messier job wore jacket and trousers like a labourer, but he owned his business. People would say it was a pity, she could have done better. Perhaps it was only natural qualms when it actually came to making an irrevocable decision, the more so because of the possibilities that all beautiful girls seemed to have, something incalculable about them. No matter how restricted, they may yet end up as empress or courtesan. She did not know exactly what it was that made her say, when her grandmother asked again what time Bingfa would be home, 'They won't be back for dinner.' The old couple could not wait that long. They decided to go home and come again the next day.
Bingfa and his wife returned with the children soon after they left and were none too pleased to hear that they had been here. Bingfa's wife remarked that they had come for money not so long ago. Throughout dinner she criticized the way they handled their money and let themselves be imposed upon by their no-good sons.
Yindi said nothing. She was heavy-hearted wondering how her brother and sister-in-law would take the Lius' proposal. What to do if they disapproved? It was one thing to put up a fight against a match and another thing to insist on marrying somebody. Of course there must be something between them. How far had it gone? Her sister-in-law was sure to make the most of it behind her back.
After dinner somebody banged on the door calling hoarsely for 'Sister-in-law Bingfa'. It sounded like that Wu woman. Coming just now it filled her with dread. How is it tonight of all nights? Whatever it is this time, it's going to make things that much more difficult.
Bingfa's wife hurried down to open the door. She sounded a little embarrassed and apologetic because of what had happened before but Aunt Wu was loud and hearty. As they came upstairs she even asked, 'Where's Miss? Gone to bed already? I'm getting to be famous as a matchmaker. All the girls run and hide wherever I go.'
She was dark and squat, freckled even on the arms, or were those 'longevity spots', the brown marks of age? Nobody knew how old she was. In her profession it was not so good to grow old. People began to wonder about your faculties and judgment. Her pop eyes stared seriously out of the round open face. The starch on her blue glass-cloth blouse smelled sour with sweat. When she came into the room where the light was brighter, Bingfa's wife saw she was wearing all her gold rings and ear-rings and at the back of her head a gold ear-spoon tucked into the little bun and a small red plush bat with a gold paper cutout of the character fu stuck between its wings. Bien fu, bat which puns with fu, blessings.
'You went to a wedding?'
'No, I've just been to the Yaos to wish their Old Mistress a happy birthday.'
'We've been out too, only just came back,' Bingfa's wife said.
`I came here straight after the birthday feast. Running around in this hot weather—I wouldn't do this for just anybody, to tell you the truth.'
'Yes, isn't it hot today?'
Aunt Wu demanded attention with a downward movement of her palm-leaf fan and raised her voice so that it could be heard in the next room; she did not trust them to repeat it correctly. 'It just happened when I was there today their young masters and mistresses came up to kotow to Old Mistress, and she saw that they all came in pairs. All except Second Master. So afterwards Old Mistress said, the second branch should have a wife too, otherwise it won't look right on such occasions. It doesn't matter if the family is not well off as long as the girl is nice. So I said, in that case the Chai girl is just right.' She stuck her fan into the back of her collar and leaned forward to whisper, 'Old Mistress was not pleased. She said, Old Wu, you've been snubbed once already, do you want to be snubbed twice? After all there are plenty of girls in the world.'
The Chais could only smile.
She scratched the back of her neck with the fan handle. `So I risked losing my old face; I said, Old Mistress, it just shows that the girl has character. She doesn't want to be a concubine no matter how rich and great the family is. As Confucius said, choose a wife for her virtues, choose a concubine for her looks. Not that this girl has no looks, I needn't boast, your own people have seen for themselves. And Old Mistress laughed saying, Confucius never said any such thing. But there is something in what you said.'
When she saw that the husband and wife still smiled saying nothing she leaned closer and dropped her voice, letting it rise again as she went on, 'Now I say a sentence only when there is such a sentence. This may offend you: Old Mistress said a shop in the interior is all right, in the same city it's too near, embarrassing in front of relatives. I said hey-yee! Old Mistress, you don't know these old business families in the Old City; they keep to themselves, ordinarily they'd never give their daughters to outsiders─isn't that so?'
Bingfa's wife said uncertainly, 'Of course nothing could be better if she's to go over there as the big one.'
'I don't blame you for being uneasy, but go outside and ask around: Does a family like theirs have to cheat to get a concubine? It was all because of what Old Mistress said before, as the second branch has no wife the concubine will have to run the house, so she has to be from a respectable family and can read and write and calculate, on top of being pretty. That made it difficult, otherwise they wouldn't have put it off for so long─lucky for your young miss. You wait and see: the three teas, the six gifts, the red lamps, the flowered sedan-chair, all the usual marriage trimmings, if there's one thing missing, just collar Old Wu and slap her face. Really when good luck comes, even the city wall can't hold it back. I don't know what good deeds your ancestors must have done. You can't find such a match even if you go looking for it with a lantern.'
Bingfa cleared his throat. 'Aunt Wu is no outsider, it's all right to tell you, we'd want to ask my sister first—'
'After all a brother and sister-in-law are not the same as parents,' his wife put in. 'This is a matter of a lifetime. Best to ask herself.'
'Sure, ask her. Your young miss is no fool. Their two young mistresses, one is a daughter of the Mas of Kaifeng, the other is Premier Wu's granddaughter, and both beauties, the pick of the pick. Their Second Master is just three years older than your young lady. His eyes are inconvenient but everybody says he's the best of the brothers. So learned and as gentle as a girl. In case your young lady goes over there and finds any one thing I said to be untrue, if she tells me to die standing up I won't dare die sitting down.'
They all laughed. She left saying she would come for the answer tomorrow. After a whispered consultation Bingfa's wife went into Yindi's room. She was sewing with her back to the door.
'Miss, you must have heard what Aunt Wu said.' But she sat down and told her everything all over again. 'What do you think, Miss?' she asked several times without getting an answer but no tears either, which emboldened her to snatch the sewing away. 'Talk, Miss.'
Yindi kept her head down and started to pluck veins off her palm-leaf fan.
'Speak, Miss.'
Finally, with a violent twist of her body that sent the long pigtail flying into the air, she turned around in her chair to face the other way. 'Such a nuisance!'
'At last Miss has opened her golden mouth.'
Bingfa's wife got up and did obeisance half-laughing, placing one hand on top of the other over her right ribs and moving the hands up and down a bit. 'So then congratulations, Miss.'
She was gone. The room seemed changed and the lamplight had taken on a reddish tint. Yindi sat plucking veins off her fan. So the man she married would never see what she looked like. Part of her died at this. All the blind men she knew told fortunes. Some had horrible-looking eyes. What kind did he have? You must not believe matchmakers. What else was wrong? It must be something very bad. But amidst the sense of danger and treachery she already saw him as the young Peking opera actor in a night scene sitting with an elbow on the table, eyes closed on the handsome face painted pink and white. It was as if she was to live out the rest of her life on a lighted stage with music accompanying her every movement. Or on a lighted lantern like the painted figures on it, their red sleeves turned a pale orange against the light.
She thought of Young Liu. It was all his own fault for not sending the matchmaker earlier. That was just like him. People like that would never amount to much in the world. For all you know he had hesitated because people talked about her. She felt sorry about it all the same. But wasn't it fate that he should wait until the same day as the Yaos?
The sound of the neighbours' babies crying, the angry voices and loud spitting, the scuffling of a slipper sole rubbing out the spit on the floorboards, these familiar night noises seemed to be already receding into the distance. How tired she was of being poor. Every little thing could become a sin or sacrifice and turn people against each other. She had known that ever since her mother died. When her father died she was still little and her brother was not yet married. If only her mother was here to hear the news.
Her straw mat rustled and crunched all night with her turning and tossing. The cocks were crowing when she went to sleep. Soon she was awakened by the night-soil cart coming from afar in the moist grey dawn, the wooden wheels rattling over the cobblestones. Every now and then one of the men pushing and pulling it gave a yell to wake up everybody to come out and empty their chamber pots. The cry heard in half-sleep sounded even louder and more terrifying, a short gruff bark with no word to it, curiously uncertain as if he was the only man in the world and no longer knew how to speak, ecstatic too because it was all his, all the desolation.
Her sister-in-law was up. It was not a girl's place to go out groping in the dark. The thumps of the bound feet on the stairs were as heavy and well-spaced as a gang of labourers beating down piling. After a while a board rattled as it was forced down from the shopfront. She dozed off again in these every-day noises, reassuringly close.