Chapter 10

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.