9

Put off until after the burial, and still divided exactly as before,' she told her brother and his wife the first time they came after she had moved, in stage whispers hissed across the room. Anybody who has lived in a big family could never get over the habit of whispering. 'Ninth Old Master wouldn't come. Somebody even said I should hand him a cup of tea and ask his pardon. I asked who had said this, and only then heard no more of it. I don't care, I tell everybody I see─why, we did get less. Just look at where the others moved to, a foreign house and garden for each wife and concubine.'
'Gu Nana's house here is good,' Bingfa's wife said.
'This house is cheap,' she said.
Hers was an old foreign-styled house like everybody else's except this was in an alley, a dingy cement row. There was no bathroom but the white woodwork and sliding double doors downstairs had been fashionable once. Now that she had a house of her own at last she didn't do much about furnishing it, not just to prove that she did get less, but also because she did not like to show her own tastes for fear of being laughed at as the new rich. These people, as she said, the one thing they can do is laugh at others. Even the inherited things were not on view unless they had been in use all along, lest it be said that she was so pleased with the crumbs that fell to her. Her original rosewood suite was now downstairs in the parlour, leaving her own room quite bare. The big ornate bed was getting to be an old curiosity; she had it put away. With-out going so far as to buy a brass bed like everybody else she used an old iron four-poster. Some plain tables and chairs were set by the window on the other side of the large room. Everybody sat so far away, looking at one another under the forty watt light they all seemed to have a strange darkness in the face. There was a mixed feeling as in a reunion after a war amidst ruins. She sat on the opium couch, the only new piece of furniture because there had been no such thing in the house before, with the ban on opium. Simple as it was it stuck out guiltily like an unmade bed, which was what it looked like, with just a thin white pad on it and two pillows on the inner side along the wall. It added to the makeshift refugee feeling.
'It's nice here, and lots of room,' Bingfa's wife said. 'When Cu Nana has a daughter-in-law and many grand-sons she'll need all this space too.'
'That would be some time yet.'
'It won't be long now. Seventeen this year isn't he? Two years older than our Ahmei.'
The reference to their daughter was not lost on her. 'He's still too young. Nowadays they don't marry early. The boys in the eldest branch are well over twenty and not yet engaged.' Mentioning his Yao cousins immediately put a deep gulf between them.
'It doesn't matter with boys,' Bingfa's wife murmured. 'When the time comes Gu Nana must be careful to find out everything─best if the families know each other. She'd also be a companion to Gu Nana. It must be lonely here sometimes.'
'Of course, haven't I learned enough of a lesson from matchmakers? As to being lonely, after so many years in their family you know there're worse things than loneliness.'
Ahmei came in holding her little sister by the hand. They had only brought the younger ones today. Her son was next door teaching the little boy to play draughts.
'Don't you want to watch them play?' Bingfa's wife asked the girls.
'Don't understand,' Ahmei said.
'Stupid,' her mother said smiling. 'Her little sister is the bright one.'
'Come here,' Yindi called to the little girl and felt the back of her neck. 'Ai-yo, how is it so sticky?'
'She had her bath before she came,' her mother said smiling defensively, a bit embarrassed. 'Sweated all over again running around.'
She was ticklish and twisted away, the stiff little pigtails all over her head brushing against Yindi in turn. She suddenly hugged the child convulsively and kissed her.
'She's the only one among the lot that looks like Aunt, no wonder Aunt loves her,' said her mother. 'How about giving you to Aunt for a daughter? Aunt has no daughter. We'll leave you behind when we go, all right? Eh? All right?'
The child did not answer.
'Have some sweets,' Yindi said. 'Pass us the cured plums, Elder Sister.' Ahmei brought the glass dish over. 'Take these next door,' she gave the child an extra handful and lay down to fill her pipe with an opium pellet.
All eyes in the room were naturally focused on her feet as she lay crosswise with her head to the wall. Trousers were getting shorter and much wider. She dressed con-servatively but even she showed her ankles, whittled slim, in white cotton stockings. No silks were worn in mourning as silkworms meant the taking of lives. The grey cloth shoes were padded at the tips to look like the fashion-able 'half-large' feet, the bound feet let out. She did not make it as long and lumpy as some did and the feet, once said to have come out well from the binding─as they often didn't─remained shapely. Bingfa felt a little uncomfortable, the more so because it was his own sister. He was an old-fashioned businessman and they were the most old-fashioned of all. His wife whispered half laugh-ing to his daughter making conversation, then they too lapsed into silence.
'What time is it?' he said. 'We better go early. Difficult to get rickshas later.'
'Yes, once they hear it's the Old City they won't go because they can't get return fares.'
'It's lonely in the Old City now,' he said. 'The dump-ling shop across the way has closed down too. New Year is the only time there's any business.'
'What dumpling shop?' Yindi said.
'Right across from us, where the pharmacy was.' 'The pharmacy is gone?'
'Oh, long ago. Gu Nana hasn't been back for some time now. Somehow shops across the street never seem to last.' Evidently they had often drawn comfort from the observa-tion.
'If anybody wants mine I'd sell it too,' he said. 'You should have long ago, for Gu Nana's sake.'
She averted her head with a little snort. 'In times like these nobody cares any more. As long as you can get by it's considered good.'
'Nowadays it's the wholesaler that makes money,' he said crossing his legs looking into space. He had friends willing to take him on, only he needed capital. He had mentioned this earlier today, the only time he opened up.
`If the pharmacy's gone then what about Young Mr Liu?' she asked.
'Just what I was asking Ahdoo's mother the other day, I said where's Young Mr Liu working now and is his mother still alive?' Bingfa's wife said. 'Funny we still call him Young Mr Liu─not so young any more.'
'Born in the year of the snake,' Yindi said.
Bingfa was startled. Of course she knew his age because of the proposed match, but she lay there smiling, her eyes half shut in the light of the little opium lamp, looking levelly at them from far away.
'Everybody's gone,' she said. 'Is the carpenter still there?'
'What carpenter?' he asked his wife in a low voice.
'Who else? That fool who came and made a row that night,' Yindi said and he and his wife both smiled embarrassedly. They remembered how the man had held on to her hand and she burned him with the lamp to make him let go.
'Who? Who?' Ahmei whispered to her mother who ignored her.
'He was drunk,' he said.
'Drunk indeed─always like that, only he wouldn't have been so bold without the wine to cover his face.'
'He's always like this, no accounting for him,' said her brother's wife. 'Not long ago his wife came up from the country to look for him. She grabbed him by the shirt on his chest and fought him from shop to street and from street to shop. He had money to shoot pheasants and none to send home.' Streetwalkers were called pheasants, wild hens.
She was shocked. And she had thought she taught him a lesson that he would never forget. He had betrayed her memory. Even having a wife in the country was an out-rage, though only to be expected. She could not stand for him to have any life aside from the scene with her that night. 'He wasn't like this before,' she said.
'Always like this,' her sister-in-law said, too absorbed in the story. 'Over forty, getting on to fifty now, time to pack up your heart and take it home, everybody told him. In the end they persuaded the wife to go back.'
She said nothing and did not talk much after this. Bingfa's wife finally noticed it and did not know where she had given offence.
'Well, shall we go?' she asked Bingfa. Speaking to her husband her voice turned gruff showing some of her dis-appointment.
'It's still early, not eleven yet,' Yindi said.
'It's hard to get rickshas when it's late.'
She soon gave in. 'Come early next time.'
She saw them to the head of the stairs while her son went down with them. She called him by his formal name Yensheng now. He was a quiet boy. This evening on the pretext of teaching his little cousin draughts he hardly spoke to the others.
'Where's Young Master?' she asked after they had left and was told that Young Master had already gone to bed. She had a mind to lose her temper with him tomorrow. Unless he had overheard the hints of his marrying one of their girls? She wouldn't blame him in that case. They were really impossible today, couldn't wait to lay hands on her money and force their daughters on her. If the older one wouldn't do there was still the little one. In the Yangtze River the back waves push at the front waves, as the saying goes. The younger generation would shove her aside when she herself had scarcely arrived. And to talk about it when the children were right in the next room─at his age the very mention of a match could make the heart grow wild. He had been quite sensible so far, and knew enough to be afraid of her. All these years when she had been tucked out of sight in her room even servants would tread on her if they weren't afraid of her, not to say her son─how else would she have any control over him? He would go the way of the boys of the eldest branch, little devils all of them, only afraid of Old Mistress, capable of anything once out of her sight. Yensheng had enough sense to keep out of their way. Still, growing boys studying in the same schoolroom in a big house where the comings and goings were impossible to trace from upstairs─that had been a real worry. Now she got him a resident tutor of his own who also wrote letters for them on occasion. The old gentleman was over seventy but he wouldn't be studying many more years anyway and with the teacher living in and she a widow, it wouldn't cause talk.
Being left alone together all of a sudden took some getting used to. He seemed almost wary. That healthy fear of her was just as well. He'd be easily spoiled with all those examples before him and he an only son and her sole glory. But tonight she would have liked to chat a little just to take the taste of the visit out of her mouth. They never talked about her brother and his family. They upset her every time she saw them. She was going to have trouble sleeping again. She had an amah undo her hair and clean it with fine-toothed bamboo combs stuffed with cotton wool.
She was sitting at the back window. It was so hot, not even a breath of air at this hour. A steamy odour came up at night from the little alley below in slow puffs and waves, a mild pent-up smell richer than sweat. This was where the elbow of the new jerry-built alley came right up to within a foot of the downstairs window, one reason why this house was a bargain. Old City never had anything like this. There the little houses were old and not so crowded. What smells there were would be more of excretion than secretion.
Suddenly there was a quarrel going on. Blanketed by the thick warm blackness the voices sounded startlingly near, yet muffled. It could be some distance away on the street. All she could hear was a young woman bawling:
'I won't have it. I won't have it. Nobody's ever beaten me. I'm his what, he beats me?' It sounded like a child's half-forced tearless howls.
Several people spoke at once.
'Go home first, it's late,' advised a bossy woman with a Nanking accent, the only bystander whose voice and delivery seemed trained to carry. 'What you want to say can be said tomorrow.'
She got up to look out of the window and could see nothing in the solid darkness. Not even any light from the houses. Could it be because the alley was so narrow? The hubbub sounded no nearer. Straining to hear, she was furious with the amah for interrupting embarrassedly, 'It's not like in the old house with the big garden, Mistress. There you don't hear the street brawls.'
'Huh! the old house. Enough brawls inside.'
'I won't have it. I won't have it.' The young woman's wails seemed to have drifted away down the street.
'Go home and have it out with him,' advised the woman from Nanking, addressing herself more to the crowd than the couple who were apparently no longer with them. 'He's in the wrong too, could have said his say nicely. Instead when he opens his mouth it's to scold, when he moves his hand it's to strike.'
The howls faded away up some street vertical in the darkness that had the city up like a map on the wall.
When she was young she had often heard of such unions and separations, usually of people who had spouses else-where in the country. Somehow these things did not seem so bad among poor people. The hardships of life made their own rules. Some of those affairs lasted a lifetime. They did not have to end badly. But the people involved had to be poor, especially the woman. The man could walk in on her any time and take anything he wanted.
When you give your body over to be loved you have also given it over to be robbed and abused.
It was no good thinking of that teeming world she had grown up in. After the amah had gone to bed she moved over to the window on the other side away from the smell and continued to air her hair. It gave her quite a turn to see her face reflected in the window glass of the house opposite. Just the face alone with no hair showing, a blue-shadowed moon afloat on the dark pane. Far off and in this light she looked young and mysteriously beautiful. She could not resist smiling tentatively at the reflection raising her hand at it. It frightened her to see the face smile back at her beckoning slightly. She found herself going towards it at once. Or at least it was something that issued from the top of her head, almost ticklish in its lightness, sailed across and was gone. The face was still smiling palely at her from the dark room across the way. A ghost. Perhaps she had hanged herself sixteen years ago and did not know it.
She quickly went and lay down on the opium couch and lit the little lamp, comforting even on a hot day. The trouble with opium couches was that they were always arranged for two to lie tête a tête. Here as nowhere else she felt her husband lingering on. With the glassed-in flame shining into her eyes he could very well be curled up on the other side of the tray. Actually what was the differ-ence whether he was still here or not?
Smoking more would keep her awake. She just rolled pills for tomorrow over the burner, more than she needed, weaving one brown cocoon after another to keep from going to bed. She got so tired she was beginning to burn them or let the raw thin paste drip hissing into the lamp. Here it was still a well-lighted public place. There she would be by herself in the dark, nothing to think about except for the day's grievances told over and over again in the same words. The comfort of bed soon turned into a mere awareness of the disposition of the arms and legs that stiffened and soured on her almost right away. Roll over and the rearranged pattern made itself evident after a minute, as tiresome as the ugly cotton print curtain that hid the chamber pot beside the bed. Flat on her back and the parallel white lines of the leg bones stretched out straight before her, thick from the strain. The brush strokes paused to gather strength at the kneecap and again at the ankle and thrust hard into empty black space. Despite the constant shifts her neck was cramped. Sometimes she could feel the dumb mouth inside her, lips pressed lightly against each other, unendurable just by making them-selves felt. The old saying about women was 'At thirty like a wolf, at forty like a tiger.'
She just lay there lingering over the little lamp in her eyes and the whole city lying low and darkened at her feet. Perhaps it was going to rain. Every sound outside seemed to be separately wrapped and rolled in wet cloth to keep it fresh. That familiar noise was one of the panels being forced open on a boarded shopfront. Then followed the soft full-bodied splash of water on the pavement. Some-body had washed his feet and thrown out the water.
'Ae-ho . . . red-bean cake! Sweet lo. . . tus-seed gruel!' a hawker chanted tunefully in a tenor voice sweetened by distance. Steamed cakes of rice-flour studded with red beans, and sugared rice gruel with red dates and lotus seeds, midnight snack for late sleepers. The long-drawn little melody reached instantly inside her making a hollow and a silence in the heart.
She listened with her eyes on the window. He came nearer with each call. She waited with dread anticipating sadness. He had turned into the alley. She had never heard it so close, something to do with the damp heavy air. The threads of hoarseness running through the voice could be felt with a hand like the veins on a bamboo. A common pleasant voice, rather young, sang loudly, AE-HO...RED BEAN CAKE! SWEET LO...TUS-SEED GRUEL!' The voice hung naked and drawn out in the black rectangle of the window.