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3

Even before the wedding the Chais had started making preparations for the 'third day's homecoming'. The shop was boarded up with only one panel left out to make a narrow entrance. Written on a slip of red paper pasted across the boards were two lines, Joyful event in the family. Business suspended for the day.
Everything was ready. A sacrificial table was set up in the rear of the shop hung with second-hand ancestral portraits. Bingfa had chosen plump personable men and women in court gowns of lower ranks. Government posts being openly on sale nowadays, anybody fairly well off would buy himself at least a title. The embroidered chair covers and apron for the table were rented but the tableware and candlesticks and incense pot were all newly bought with a grim kind of enjoyment. There are occasions in life when extravagances become necessities and one can indulge with a clear conscience.
Relatives had already arrived when Aunt Wu came with the news that the bride and groom would not be coming. Second Master was not well and Old Mistress did not think he should risk going out. He had always been delicate. Bingfa and his wife gathered that he wanted to get out of kotowing to the Chais' ancestors or maybe Old Mistress did not want him to. Everybody Asked after him but obviously all thought it was just an excuse.
Aunt Wu had refused to come today because she insisted t hat she could not sit with Second Master and his bride. But now there was no reason why she should not stay for dinner. Bingfa and his wife had to swallow their anger, The joy matrons took it up from there. Both petite, in their thirties, dressed in dark clothes, one of them reached for some sugared dates and set them before the newlyweds. 'Bride and groom, have some mi tzao,' she chirped. 'Tien tien mi mi! So sweet on each other!'
The other offered them balls of parched rice. 'Bride and groom, eat up this huan-hsi tuan. Tuan tuan yuen yuen, always together.'
Her companion set down a handful of red dates and dragon eyes. 'Bride, have some dzao dze and gwei Yuen. Dzao sheng gwei dze, give birth soon to a son who will be a high official.'
They rattled off the phrases one after the other while the couple sat idol-like leaving their offerings untouched.
Bingfa's wife whispered, 'Does Gu Nana wish to go upstairs and rest a while?' It was expected of the bride that she would want to be alone with the women of her own family and have a good cry.
She got up and they went upstairs together. Her old room was empty. The bed stripped of bed-curtains had nothing on it but an old mat. The chair had been taken downstairs where it was needed with all the people coming. Dust had settled on the bare table. She felt as if she had died and was back as a ghost.
'Come to my room, Gu Nana. There's nowhere to sit here.'
But she went in and sat down on the bed. Bingfa's wife sat down beside her. She began to cry. For a while her sister-in-law did not know what to say.
'Don't feel bad, Gu Nana. Gu Ta's health is poor but it's not as if he has to go out and earn a living. What is there to worry about in a family like theirs? He depends on you for everything, and that's more than most married couples can say. Gu Nana has always wanted to be the best. So many people envy you now. You'd be a fool not to know.'
She turned away.
'Don't feel bad, Gu Nana, in a year or so you'll have a son. With his opportunities there's no telling what he will get to be. Your later years will be your best yet.'
The rouge rubbed off Yindi's wet cheeks stained her handkerchief pink.
'Don't feel bad, Gu Nana, you'll ruin your make-up. Let me go and get you a hot towel.' But there was a sudden hubbub downstairs. It seemed to come from outside. She went and looked out of the window.
It was the sedan-chair carriers arguing over their tips couching it in the most auspicious phrasing, 'Rise in officialdom, Master-in-law! Rise higher!' they clamoured.
Somebody came running upstairs, her eldest boy. 'Father says to get him some more money,' he whispered and waited at the door.
'All right, I'll be right down.' She in turn waited for him to go down before she went to open the trunk in her room.
Yindi took a peep standing well to one side of the window. The thick crowd looked black at the door. The grey cobblestones were spattered with bits of pinkish red paper from the firecrackers. A ladder leaned against the wall a few feet away had a man's shirt knotted on one of the rungs. She recognized the willow-striped cotton. It was that carpenter's ladder─back from a job of work just in time to watch the fun. There was Young Liu across the street, the face leaping to the eye making the rest of them just a humming blur. He stood outside with another clerk, both looking this way with hands folded at their back, smiling slightly like everybody else. All those pairs of dark glistening eyes like flies settled on an open wound. She had known it was going to be bad but there had seemed no choice but to stick it out. In fact she was furious when she heard that this visit had been cancelled. It had been such a quiet wedding. The betrothal gifts were just simple gold and silver jewellery, six of each, northern custom her brother had said. The trousseau that the Yaos had offered to buy for her with a great show of understanding, first sent to her home, then paraded to their house─the passage of the trousseau─made a poor show. The attitudes of the servants and relatives were plain to see. What kind of a marriage was this if there weren't even any third day's homecoming? How was she going to live among them? She could not let it pass.
She had not said a single word to the bridegroom ever since she came. But this morning when she learned for sure that they were not going she had broken her silence to tell him how his family must look down on her.
'Come sit over here; I can't hear you,' he had said looking disgustingly happy.
'Are you deaf as well as blind?'
She found him more tolerable when he lapsed back into his usual sullenness, his face blank and closed. She came and sat beside him on the bed. For a while neither of them spoke. She lifted a corner of the large silk handkerchief tucked under a button and dabbed daintily at her lips with it. She glanced at him sideways and flicked his face with the handkerchief. 'Angry?'
'Angry? What about?' His hand found her knee and slowly crept upwards.
'No, don't. Don't. "In bed, husband and wife; out of bed, lady and gentleman." Somebody may come in any minute and how am I going to live this down? You don't care. Don't─listen! If you don't go home with me today and kotow to my parents you're not their son-in-law and I'll never have anything to do with you again. See if I don't mean it.'
'It's not me that said anything about not going.'
But she knew he did not like to go out and a shop was after all not like a private house. 'Then speak to Old Mistress.'
'Who ever heard of a bridegroom of two days speaking for the bride? Embarrassing.'
'You embarrassed? You're shameless.' She pushed him away and quickly buttoned up her jacket looking around the bed-curtains to see if anyone was coming. His face stiffened. To soften the blow she added, 'Men are all like this,' and gave him another push.
He melted at once. 'Don't worry, I'll do what I can,' he finally said. 'I know, it's all because of your filial piety.'
Putting it all on filial piety, the highest virtue, so he need not feel ashamed for giving in to her. So here they were, trapped across the border in the land of the living, smaller than she remembered but still the only real world with people she knew, and she could kill them all looking down from her window.
The hubbub had grown louder after Bingfa's wife went down and he had presumably passed around the new batch of tips.
'Rise higher, Master-in-law!'
'All right, all right, you people, level your heart a bit,' the Yao servants intervening added to the noise. The sedan-chairs, no longer used except on occasions like these, had been hired along with the bearers. 'Master-in-law is being polite to you, and still so greedy?' said the servants of the house. 'That's enough, Master-in-law has granted face, so all right now. See if we don't tell on you when we get back.'
'Rise higher, Master-in-law, rise higher!'