Chapter 2

IN THE MORNING THE PEOPLE OF THE VILLAGE crowded around Gold Root's door to see the bride. Gold Flower sat in state while a chosen old woman combed her hair and made up her face. Actually, nowa-days, with the hair worn short, there was not much to be done, and since Gold Flower had already applied powder and rouge liberally, the other woman merely made a few retouches. But it was a necessary ceremony, expressive of the wish that the bride would live as long and have as many sons and grandsons as the old woman called the chiuen fu t'ai t'ai on this special occasion-the completely blessed lady. Big Aunt was disqualified be-cause she had lost her only son during the war. He was taken away by the soldiers and had not been heard of since.
At the proper time the bride started out on foot for Chou Village, ten li away. A boy cousin walking in front of her beat a big gong to herald her coming. Behind her came Gold Root carrying Beckon in his arms and holding an unlit lantern—he wouldn't be coming back until late at night. He had his hands full so the bride carried her own bundle. Rotund in her thickly padded long gown, she had a big red artificial flower pinned on her breast, the same kind as was worn by Labor Heroes and newly enlisted men in the big meetings to recruit soldiers to go fight in Korea.
As the little procession moved through the village, the gong clanging methodically, everywhere women and children shrieked, "Come see the bride! Come see the bride!" A crowd saw them off at the end of the village. Big Aunt stood at the front shouting auspicious sayings. She would be going to the wedding feast later, with her husband.
"Where is that old man?" She looked over her shoul-der. "He missed seeing the bride go off."
The old man was sitting on a small stone well topped by two boards, an open-air commode by the wayside. Sunning his back and smoking his long pipe, he nodded affably and smiled at the bridal procession as it filed past.
"Big Uncle, be sure to come early to the feast," Gold Root shouted to him.
"Ai, I am coming, I am coming," he called back. The old man looked almost girlish with his smooth-chinned, delicate oval face, his slight build, and the gathered fullness of the blue work skirt he wore over his padded gown. His eyes were white and staring, half-blind from disease, and he had to tilt his head at a coquettish angle to see properly.
He and Big Aunt arrived at Chou Village before sun-down. They took their grandchildren with them, leaving their daughter-in-law behind to look after the house. The wedding guests had already sat down to the feast. The bride and groom had the most honored places at the head of the center table, sitting side by side, each wearing a big red flower at the breast. A single beam of the setting sun crossed the room. The young bride looked like a clay figure painted pink and white, seated in the dusty path of the sun. There was about her an air of unreality and also, oddly, of permanence.
Gold Root being shin ch'in, new relative, sat at the exalted end of another table. Big Uncle and Big Aunt were led to a third table and after much polite arguing were coerced into occupying the places of honor. Four young women hovered around serving the dishes-pre-sumably all daughters-in-law of the house. With prim dig-nity Big Uncle looked down into his bowl of rice, pick-ing at it from time to time.
The food was very inferior for so important an occa-sion, but the groom's mother was a good hostess, bustling around all the guests, pointing out choice morsels, apolo-gizing for this and that. She moved with surprising agility for an old lady with bound feet. Observing that the old man was eating nothing but rice, and very little of that, she fluttered to his side, a large, dark, slightly batlike butterfly.
"There is nothing much for you to eat-I blush for the poor food. But at least you must have enough rice-you cannot go home empty-bellied."
She snatched a dish of shredded pork and bamboo shoots off the table and emptied it into his rice bowl, all in one neat, well-rounded movement, catching him off guard. The old man was meek but there was also a limit to what he could take. He stood up indignantly. "How am I to eat this?" he demanded in a loud voice. "Why, I cannot even see the rice! How am I to eat th is?"
But eventually he subsided and with a gentle, injured air started to dig for the rice buried under the juicy layer of pork and bamboo shoots.
The marriage feast was half through when the kan int of Chou Village came in to join them. He was Comrade Fei, a serious-looking, round-faced young man with puffy cheeks and a fresh complexion. In imitation of veteran cadres like Comrade Wong over in Gold Root's home village he had let his padded uniform get very dirty to show he was too busy serving the people to attend to himself. A shiny patch of grease extended down his collar in a deep V. And like these old Party campaigners he had a face towel tucked at the back of his waistband, to wipe the siveat off his face, a habit which had been picked up from the Japanese soldiers during the war.
Gold Root had also adopted the style and tucked a towel under the string that held up his padded pants. Only the ends of white towel showed under his jacket at the back, but it was enough to make him feel a bit self-conscious. The towel had been sent him from Shang-hai by his wife, and was quite new, for he never used it except for this purpose. Four red characters printed at the bottom said, "Wish you good morning."
All stood up to make room for Comrade Fei. After much ceremonious argument it was finally the old woman who moved over to have him sit next to her husband at the head of the table. There was no wine, but the unusual warmth of the crowded room in this cold weather and the effect of a full meal on empty stomachs made everybody look flushed and slightly tipsy.
Comrade Fei was friendly and convivial, asking all the guests how they fared during the harvest, how many tan of grain they reaped, how many catties of ramie. Gold Root had been made a Labor Model for his efforts during the harvest, and Big Aunt made much of the fact. She was at the top of her form. She had a word for every-body. To Comrade Fei she flung all sorts of remarks, which might not have direct bearing on the present con-versation but which were always well-timed and musical. "Ai, everything is fine now! The poor have turned! Now things are different from before. If not for Chairman Mao we would never have this day! We will go on suffer-ing, I don't know how long, if our comrades in Keming-tang had not come!" Big Aunt mixed up Kunch'antang, Communists, with Kemingtang, revolutionists, which only meant the early revolutionaries who had overthrown the Manchu dynasty, back when Big Aunt was a young girl. So she persisted in referring to the Communists as Kemingtang and sometimes even as Kuomintang, the Nationalists who had been chased over to Formosa. But it was a pardonable mistake at her age, and on the whole she impressed Comrade Fei as being a remarkably pro-gressive old woman.
She pressed the groom's mother to eat more, saying, "You are too busy looking after everybody else! You starve yourself!" And she said to Beckon, when the hostess piled food into her bowl, "See how this lady loves you! You stay here tonight, all right? Your aunt is stay ing, and you want to be with your aunt, don't you? Didn't you cry yesterday because she is leaving?"
The little girl went on quietly with her meal, her black eyes imperturbable.
Big Aunt tried to frighten her. 'We are leaving with-out you. You are not going home with your pa. You think it is that easy-you fill your stomach and just wipe the oil off your mouth and walk off? You have been sold to this house!"
The others all laughed, and the hostess said, "Ai, you are staying here from now on. You are not going home."
The child said nothing. If she was beset by doubts and fears she showed no signs of it. But after dinner she went up to Gold Root and hung on to him, not letting him out of her sight.
It was after the feast that the real fun began, when the guests followed the newlyweds into the bridal cham-ber and thought up every means they could to embarrass the bride. In the old days it was a real carnival when most rules of propriety were relaxed, and uncles and grand uncles were at liberty to tease the young woman marrying into their family. "Within three days there is no difference between young and old," as the saying went. Usually on the next day, though, conditions re-verted back to normal.
On this occasion people seemed reluctant to let them-selves go, owing to the presence of the kan pu. But Com-rade Fei apparently wanted everybody to have a good time and even took the lead in things. Gradually the guests warmed up and somebody shouted, "We want the bride and groom to hold hands." Big Aunt officiated as the bride's spokesman, making excuses and bargaining for her. After a lot of heated parley the guests won their point, but the bride and groom still made no move to comply with the request. It remained for Big Aunt to take hold of their hands and join them.
Then somebody demanded that the bride sit in the groom's lap and call him "elder brother." Everybody was convulsed at the very suggestion. The bridegroom made a desperate attempt to escape from the room but was grabbed hold of and pushed back to his seat on the edge of the bed, beside the bride. This time the negotiations took even longer.
"All right, all right," the man who did the most talking said huffily, "the bride does not give me face."
"Don't be angry, Uncle," said Big Aunt, addressing him as the bride would. "Let the bride pour you a cup of tea."
"Who wants tea?"
The bride remained adamant in her mute, unsmiling immobility. Matters remained at a deadlock until Com-rade Fei suggested that she should sing for them as a compromise.
"Hau-hau! Good-good," the crowd shouted.
Big Aunt bargained it down to one song only. At last Gold Flower stood up by the table and turning to face the wall sang the marching song of the pa lu, the famous Eighth Route Army, which made its name stand in the popular mind for all soldiers in the Communist rank.
"Another one! Let's have another one!" Comrade Fei clapped and called out, and everybody took it up.
"All right, one more. But after this one, please let the bride have some rest. It is late now and perhaps it is about time for us all to start out for home."
The guests promised nothing, but finally the bride had to give in and this time she sang in her reedy little voice "Hey la la," another recent song she had learned in Winter School.
"HEY LA LA LA!
HEY LA LA LA!
RED CLOUDS IN THE SKY-aah yah! RED FLOWERS ON EARTH-aah yah!"
Comrade Fei came up and tugged at her arms. "Turn around and face the audience," he said.
When she jerked away he caught at her and suddenly started to laugh. His laughter was loud and clear and had a surprised ring. In the brief struggle she pushed him violently against the table, knocking off a teacup which broke to pieces on the ground.
"Sui-sui p'ing-an! Every year safe and sound," Big Aunt said immediately, almost automatically, punning on the word sui, which also meant "break."
Comrade Fei looked a bit uncertain, as if undecided on what attitude to take. Before his anger had time to crystallize, Big Aunt had already rattled on, "Ai-yah. Why is this bride so bad-tempered? It is all in fun! Don't you know that on your wedding day 'the more racket they make, the more prosperous you will grow'? Lucky for you Comrade Fei is not as childish as you are. If he takes you seriously, he might really get angry."
Then she turned to the mother-in-law. "Don't be angry, old sister. Our girl here has lost her parents early and has not learned any manners, as you can see. From now on it is your job to discipline her. But let it go this time—give me face. Please! Be as tolerant as Comrade Fei. See, he is not a bit angry."
Fei smiled thinly, straightening his cap. "This bride certainly has a temper. The bridegroom better take care. Otherwise he is sure to end up henpecked." And he laughed.
The incident was closed but the mother-in-law's face now wore a very unpleasant look. The family had been put to shame in front of all the guests. Outwardly the bride was not to blame, but no doubt she had brought it all on herself. It was also to be feared that the kan pu might take it out on them sometime in the future. Of course the mother-in-law could not very well say any-thing, it being the bride's first day in the house. But the atmosphere was strained and the party broke up soon afterward.
Carrying Beckon in his arms, Gold Root went home with Big Uncle and Big Aunt and their grandchildren. The moon was out and they did not light their lanterns. When they had left Chou Village far behind and were walking across the silent fields Gold Root said grimly to the old man, "That Comrade Fei is no good."
The old man sighed. "There are always good ones and bad ones."
The old woman said pacifyingly, "He must be lonely. The kan pu never get to go home all the year round." Then she observed, "That mother-in-law of Gold Flower she seems to be a capable woman. But I think maybe a little bad-tempered."
"That is no problem nowadays-there is the Women's Association," said Gold Root.
"Ah, yes, there is always the Women's Association. And now there is even talk of forming a Daughters-in-Law Association." A mother-in-law herself, Big Aunt smiled bitterly. "Not easy to be a mother-in-law nowa-days!"
After reflection Gold Root said, "Of course it all de-pends on the kan pu in charge of the village."
The old couple said nothing to that. They all remem-bered the case of that woman in Peach Creek Village who had gone to complain of cruel treatment by her in-laws, asking for a divorce. She was tied up to a tree and beaten with a rod by the kan pu, who was old-fashioned enough not to take the New Marriage Law too seriously.
The people in the villages had previously been fright-ened by propaganda spread by the old government about the sharing of wives under Communist rule, the loose morals and easy divorces. So they were greatly reassured by the measures taken by this kan pu to uphold the old standards. Of course it was a most improper thing to do to ask for a divorce. But they did think her in-laws went too far when, after the Kan pu sent her back to their house, they strung her up and beat her in turn, breaking three stout sticks in the process. Breaking one stick would have been enough.
One of the little grandchildren cried out as he slipped and fell from the footpath. The old couple stopped to rub his leg for him, and Gold Root walked on ahead of them with Beckon, who had fallen asleep in his arms. The moon was high overhead, oblong, white, and cold, like a freshly peeled lotus seed, and the cloudless, colorless dark sky was a great desolation that closed down upon him all around. The crooked little path showed up palely in the darkness. Here and there by the side of the path, in the fields below, were the crouching forms of the tiny houses sheltering unburied coffins. Families who put off burying their dead because they could not afford the expense built those little makeshift houses no bigger than a man, complete with black-tiled roofs and white‑painted walls. Too homely to be toylike, they stood guard in the fields like doghouses.
He had not gone half the distance when he had already worked off the dinner and was hungry again. At this stage it was not a disagreeable sensation, feeling all empty and clean inside and so light, almost as if he could easily walk upside down and romp around the moon. He wondered a little at this bottomless pit of a stomach which all his labors, year in and year out, could never fill.
Beckon suddenly spoke. "Aren't we home yet, Pa?" "Shut your mouth-the wind is strong. Shut your mouth tight."
Heading for the darkness and silence that was home, he missed his wife more than ever. Just now at the Chous', the teasing of the bride had made him think about the same scene at his own wedding. The guests had made all the routine requests and had been more than usually wearisome in their demands, probably be-cause his bride had been uncommonly good-looking. Even after they finally left, some of them had stayed behind to listen under the window and set off a string of firecrackers to scare the newlyweds.
People always said he had the most beautiful wife of them all. And maybe they would think that he had reason to worry, when she had been alone in the big city for so long. Women who went to work in the city often asked for divorces, buying their husbands off with a sum of money. Somehow he had never speculated on the chance of her doing this. Whether it was due to a great faith, or a great fear, or whatever it was, his thoughts had always stopped before they reached that point.
Perhaps he had been more uneasy than he realized, and had wondered about it too long, so that even her talk of coming home did not completely reassure him. Ever since she had gone away he had felt ashamed of himself. He had allowed such a small amount of money to stand between them. In sleepless nights he thought that she, too, must despise him in her heart, and it could never be the same again between them.
The thought of her burned restlessly in him like a precarious small flame cupped in his hands against the wind, its darting tongue searing his palms. He did not like to recall the last time he saw her. That had been the time when the soldiers were everywhere catching men and taking them to the front, and the country was not safe for young men. So he went to Shanghai to look for work, and to see his wife. He had never been out of the country before. It made him feel clumsy and gawky, the big city with its mountain-high buildings and roaring traffic, and everybody either snarling or sniggering at him. For the first time in his life he was conscious of his shaved head, his ill-fitting, too-tight clothes. He found a cousin to stay with who had a job as watchman in an alley. In the afternoons he would go to visit his wife Moon Scent at her employer's house. She would come down to the kitchen when she had time and sit with him on opposite sides of the greasy table, both facing front. She asked about everybody in the village and all their relatives in the neighboring country, and he made his answers with a half-smile, looking straight ahead, lean-ing forward with laced fingers and knees wide apart. The talk was desultory but they had to keep it up as there were always people around and it would look funny if they were to sit together without speaking. He wasn't
much for talking; it seemed to him that he had never done such a lot of talking in all hip, life.
The cement-paved kitchen opened straight into the alley. It rained most of the time he was in Shanghai and Moon Scent would have his dripping umbrella opened Out to dry with its handle stuck through the short wooden bars on the little door, painted a greasy-looking dark crimson. The orange oilcloth umbrella loomed big and bright as a setting sun in the dingy gloom. People kept coming into the kitchen and she would pause in their talk to smile at them sweetly and, as it would seem, apologetically. Often she would spring up to remove the umbrella from its perch, to allow them to pass.
For some reason everybody used the back door, the front door being permanently locked. Moon Scent said it was the same with every house in the alley. Bejeweled ladies going to parties in their shiny silk gowns and high-heeled gold shoes trotted past the grimy dark kitchen, and wet nurses with babies in their arms wandered in and out.
He frequently ate there. Sometimes when he came in too late for lunch she would fry some cold rice for him, pouring oil into the pan with a defiant air. She never told him about her mistress who now made it a daily practice to check up on their store of rice and coal briquettes, wondering out loud at the rate at which it went, hinting of a new leakage. Employers never liked it when amahs had relations who showed up in the kitchen. And in the case of husbands their displeasure bordered on disgust. Moon Scent still remembered when one of the amahs spent the night in a small hotel with her husband, causing no end of talk and shocked laugh-ter in the household.
She never told Gold Root any of these things. Still, he could not help sensing that his presence embarrassed and inconvenienced her. At the end of a fortnight, when he failed to find work anywhere, he said he was going home. He went to buy the railway ticket with money she gave him. The trip had been entirely pointless, a sheer waste of her hard-earned money. He bought a pack of cigarettes for himself with the change, out of a kind of perversity which he did not attempt to justify.
Before leaving on the train he had called on her for the last time. They were expecting company for dinner and there would be duck-feet soup. Moon Scent was in the kitchen cleaning the evil-smelling bright orange webbed feet with an old toothbrush. He sat down and lit a cigarette, his bundle resting on the bench beside him. They had drained all their conversational resources during the past fortnight and there was absolutely noth-ing left to say. In the silence he heard something rustling alarmingly in the garbage pail underneath the sink.
"What was that?" he asked.
It was a doomed hen roosting there waiting for the cooking pot with its feet tied together.
The train was not due until hours later. Meanwhile, there was nothing to do but to sit there and wait until it was time to go. Moon Scent said all the expected things over and over again for the want of conversation, telling him to remember her to everybody. After she fin-ished with the ducks' feet, she shelled beans. Then she found, to her extreme embarrassment, that she was throwing the beans on the ground and keeping all the pods. She bent down and picked up the beans hastily. Luckily there was nobody around, and Gold Root did not notice anything.
Having shelled the beans and plucked the roots off the vegetables, she swept the floor and threw all the rubbish into the pail under the sink. The hen clucked with apprehension.
When Gold Root got up to go she saw him to the door, wiping her hands on her apron and smiling ab-sently. Opening his umbrella, he stepped onto the yel-lowish-gray cement pavement dimpling with rain. His heart was a trodden and squashed thing that stuck to the bottom of his soles. He wished he had never come to the city.