14

From time to time reports came that Yensheng's fiancee was ugly.
'It can't be?' Yindi said. 'These people have wicked mouths. Your Aunt Chu has seen her only a few years back. It's true there's the old saying, girls change eighteen times as they grow. But the photograph looks her age and your aunt says it's a good likeness.'
'The photograph is bad enough,' he said.
'Some people don't photograph well. I've always said we should ask somebody else to go and take a look, but it's hard to find an excuse to go to a town like Wuweichow. And if it's too obvious her family wouldn't let her be seen. If we weren't related they wouldn't even let a photograph fall into people's hands.'
He would make himself ridiculous if he harped on the subject. But it evidently worried him.
'There's no broken engagements in our family,' she said. 'Theirs is not a family to trifle with either. The only thing to do is still to try and get somebody to find out more. How are we going to word it, to break with a young lady for no reason that you could name? People will think the worst. It will ruin a girl.'
As their side had originally stipulated for a short engagement, the marriage took place in due course in less than a year. The modern 'civilized weddings' as they were called, were staged in hotel restaurants with bridesmaids and best man and foreign bridal gown and veil in funereal white or pink as a compromise. Yindi was ready to go along with it but the civil ceremony requires a witness and an elder to sponsor the union. Both have to be men of distinction
if the families involved want face. Ever since she had trouble matchmaking for her son she had seen through all these relatives and family friends. She did not want to go around begging favours for a thing like this. So it was going to be an old-fashioned wedding which would also dispense with the hired hall. The custom now was to serve cakes and soft drinks after the ceremonies, followed by a Chinese feast in another restaurant, then home to kotow to ancestors and elders in private, with some of the guests returning later for the teasing, 'the row in the bridal chamber'. Since they were starting in the middle with the rituals at home, most of the guests would be there.
'An old-fashioned wedding!' the women had said smiling. 'Why, you seldom get to see one nowadays.'
She put it all on the bride's family. 'They want it. They still go by the old rules.'
She did not overdo it, put on a show of antiquities for their amusement, for it was that, even in the nostalgic women who murmured when children laughed, 'Yes, it was all like this before,' with a curious smile. It was like before but funny, countrified now, mocking their most important memories.
She had toned down everything, just an occasional silk sash draped around the house and over the doors, scarlet crossing bright green, the ends gathered and tucked into hydrangea balls. A red one was worn by the groom over one shoulder. This and the black satin skull cap were the only things that distinguished him from the other men, all in black jackets and blue gowns. He looked sheepish milling around mingling, and often pulled at the sash smiling down at it quizzically.
'Not here yet,' the guests took turns whispering with a half frown, half smile. They had run out of things to say and there was nowhere to sit in the cavernous under-furnished rooms.
'Have to wait for the auspicious hour,' said another. 'It's time now.'
'It must be the flowered sedan-chair is too busy. Today is an auspicious day, so many weddings it was hard torent one. They're rare now. This one is from the Old City.'
'It's not so far from the Old City to the hotel.'
The bride's party was staying in a hotel.
'Not here yet!'
Finally there were tense low cries, 'It's here, it's here.' The children rushed out and everybody else pressed forward. A string of firecrackers was set off outside the front door, never used before this. He hung back, so did his mother who had just come downstairs, smiling and self-effacing. There was no music, she would have none of that flute band that did for both weddings and funerals and sounded rather like the bagpipes that foreign soldiers march to.
Out of the crowd there was at last a glimpse of the bride in scarlet, blinded by the red kerchief over her head and face, helped by the two hired matrons of joy. The figure seemed rather willowy in the close-fitting short jacket and long skirt of embroidered red silk. The square of scarlet cloth flung over the head dated from more primitive times. The cheap dye came out thinner and darker than the red suit. Just the size of a small tablecloth, it jutted out stiffly somewhere beneath the chin making a monstrous hatchet profile. It made him more nervous.
After they had kotowed to heaven and earth and ancestors they were taken to the bridal chamber and the bride was seated on the bed. Nowadays people object to the wedding chamber all in scarlet, like a red sea they say; the glare is dizzying. So this room looked very ordinary with a four-poster and a mosquito net. The only hint of joy was the stack of new padded blankets along the wall inside the bed with their shiny pink and light green silk facings. The colours somehow struck a chill against the raw cold of the house and the dinginess.
He was dragged over to the bed. An older cousin's wife handed him a scales stick to lift the cloth off her head. He pretended not to know what to do with it and finally complied as a joke. There was an audible gasp in the crowd, mostly children. The unveiled face looking down weighted by the phoenix crown had slit eyes and no chin under the big lips. He barely glanced at her and was about to pass the stick back to the older women and walk away unconcerned.
'Hey, toss the kerchief to the top of the bed!' said the woman. 'Toss it high now. Top of the bed.'
He pitched it up with a wave of the stick and made his escape but the bride remained on display the rest of the day holding her pose with bowed head. At the feast she was placed at the head of the table with him, still immobile. Afterwards she was moved back again to the bed. The two matrons of joy kept things going. Despite their neat servant-like appearance they had to be good-looking as well as quick-tongued in their profession to draw fire away from a pretty bride, and when the bride was unattractive the men could tease them instead. Very few people stayed tonight for the row in the chamber. The mother-in-law was not supposed to be present at the 'row' and was seen only briefly earlier at the edge of the crowd in the doorway.
She said as soon as she had a moment alone with her son, 'Ai-ya, how is the bride so ugly? What to do? What to do?'
The bride came to her the next morning and spoke in a low hoarse voice like a man with a cold.
'As if reared on cornhusk,' she said behind her back.
'Well, you've seen our bride,' she said to relatives. 'Chop up her lips and they'll make a heaping dish.'
Yensheng took it coolly. Anyway it was just a duty that he owed his family. Of course it was a hard blow. He was always made to feel he was not as good as the others ever since he was little, and now this. His mother was to blame, but the presence of the intruder drew them even closer together. There were whispered consultations on the opium couch like emergency meetings, except that they were still able to laugh. He was the privileged observer in the clan war with the Fungs of Wuweichow who had bested them in a bargain, or the reporter covering a war between two provinces both keen on good public relations, giving him all facilities at the front. Where he had been reticent about the singsong girls, his present anxiety to dissociate himself from the ugly newcomer loosened his tongue.
The bride was not entirely unaware of what went on behind her back. She came in every morning with the single word of greeting, 'Mother,' gruff and unsmiling. She wore a low S-shaped chignon and a wispy fringe and the fashions of a few years ago, the short blouse and long gathered skirt of the same thin wool in faint plaids of neutral colours. They looked quite smart on her. She powdered heavily over her freckles with just a dab of lipstick to the centre of the mouth. She had the plain girl's defensive calm and seemed to assume her duties in the house matter-of-factly, which annoyed Yindi very much.
'Never seen such a bride. Like a woman who's been married for years.'
She found fault with her all the time. Thirty years a daughter-in-law, thirty years a mother-in-law, every woman has her turn. Not a day passed without an incident. Yensheng's wife would cry in her room. Some‑times he found himself furtively comforting her. But he would tell his mother in detail what she was like in bed. They were like old girl friends; now that he was married he felt obliged to satisfy the widow's curiosity and could not help boasting a little.
He was beginning to go out again, to keep out of the trouble at home he said. She asked enough questions to feel sure that he had not been seeing Third Master. Still she kept him short. Not cutting much of a figure among the singsong girls he was commendably blase about them. He did all right in the long run, he could speak Shanghai dialect like the native his mother was and merged into the scene. He kept his head, there was never any talk of taking anybody home. She was proud of him for the first time in his life. He was smarter than his uncles and all the other men. As her representative in enemy territory he did not lose face for her.
'Cousin Yensheng is bad,' now his girl cousins were saying.
'How?'
The other would turn away making a small disgusted noise as if she was not going to answer. 'Whoring, how else?'
Only old people went to singsong houses, or old-fashioned businessmen, so it was not only bad but unfashionable. The next time they saw him they could not help giving him another look and there seemed to be something sinister under his old-fashioned exterior. He stood by the table, small and slight in his dark blue gown, no glasses now, the exquisitely carved face very pale, slick hair parted in the middle, rather like the degenerate rich young men of the interior that they read so much about in modern fiction. He bobbed his head quickly to acknowledge their greetings scarcely glancing their way, in the old approved manner. He waited on his mother with a cynical smile at the back of his eyes. She paid him no attention in front of people, just a muttered order now and then without looking at him, the same as she did towards her daughter-in-law.
It was the lunar New Year. The house buzzed for days with the constant off and on of relatives dropping in to pay their respects. The marcelled girls put on their coats as soon as they had kotowed and warmed their hands under the big fur collars. 'You freeze to death at Second Aunt's,' they complained when they met at other houses.
'Yes, no fire in this weather.'
'People say they warm up leftover cups of lotus seed tea and serve them over and over again. So revolting.'
'I really dread going there. The things Second Aunt says!---just make you die of anger.'
'What was it this time?'
'What else but her kind of talk?' Nothing could make her repeat it.
'Sister-in-law is so pitiful, standing in the hallway peeling lotus seeds, dipping into cold water when the frostbites on her fingers have burst. Why not let the amahs do it, you ask her and she's scared to death, "Mother will be angry." '
Yensheng's wife had to keep her neck down for hours standing in front of the cracked little red bureau. One of the girls got her a chair but could not induce her to sit down. She could be seen from inside the room where Yindi sat on the bed under the parted curtains of dirty white glass cloth. She had been ill and looked small and thin huddled in an old black serge jacket and trousers and spoke faintly, practically inaudible across the room where the guests were seated. Even the iron four-poster looked strangely small standing by itself along the middle of the wall. The servants here also had a way of making themselves scarce. Especially at this time of year with tipping so much in the air they took care not to hang around. It was the custom in some households for the mistress to keep part of the money in the little red packets left on the table.
'Why, what's the matter with you, Second Mistress?' Big Mistress called out in the jocular tone used towards old ladies that may be slightly deaf. 'How come that you weren't well? How so?'
'Hai,' she sighed, 'Big Mistress, this illness of mine all comes from being angry.'
'Why, how is that?' the other pretended not to understand. 'It's not stomach cramps like mine is it? Mine really comes from anger, aches after every meal.' The petite Big Mistress had put on weight, every inch the mandarin's lady all round. Holding office in the monogamous Nationalist government did not reform her husband but at least all his children were hers, that loathsome Little Pu notwithstanding.
'Ah now, what have you got to be angry about, you're blessed.'
'You're the blessed one. But how did you get to be so fragile? How so?'
The relatives had already diagnosed her ailment as the result of that same salty food that had stunted her son's growth. The dishes were salty so it took less to go with the rice. It was mostly hearsay as few had sampled them. For occasions like her son's wedding, cut-rate feasts were ordered from restaurants. Callers were never asked to stay for dinner but once a year on her birthday there was a tea. Everybody who happened upon it was herded over to the ceremonial round table with scarlet tablecloth. She stood leaning across the width of it distributing sweet stuffed buns made to look like peaches and other steamed buns, keeping a grim eye on her chopsticks, not looking at the recipients, grown-ups or children. She had to give them what they were obliged to eat.
This year during the New Year visits some of the older women were pressed to stay for mahjong. It was one of her better days, she felt strong enough to play. Yensheng's wife came in to ask a question woodenly and went out again.
'You can't tell by looking at our young mistress, so stiff and glum,' she said at the mahjong table. 'Huh! the minute she sees Yensheng she has to go sit on the chamber pot.'
There was a flutter of nervous laughter. To prove it she told more about her son and daughter-in-law and got more laughs. 'How did I know? My control doesn't extend to their bed. But these things get out. Men's mouths open wide. When they get together it's all a joke to them. To think that in the days of Old Mistress we were scolded if we so much as mussed our hair a bit coming back from lunch, what with husband and wife eating by themselves in their own room. "Willing to do anything to please a man," was how everybody used to criticize a woman, not just the mother-in-law. So unfair we thought. If the man is not pleased it's your fault again. But how long will it last if the man doesn't respect you? Nowadays it's—really we've never heard the likes before. And we still speak of "families like ours"!'
In time this travelled back to Yensheng's wife's ears. She took it up with him at night, cried and would not let him touch her again. They quarrelled constantly and sometimes fought. This encouraged Yindi to tell people about them at every opportunity.
The story spread gingerly between husband and wife and contemporaries. Two ladies would put their heads
together as if whispering about a grave illness. One would suddenly burst into an exasperated snort of laughter and bend forward to nibble the other's ear some more with distaste.
'That's all they like to talk about in their family,' the other would complain.
Yensheng's wife fell ill. At first Yindi said she was pretending. As it dragged on a doctor was summoned who said it was a weakness of breath and deficiency of blood, understood to be tuberculosis.
'When am I going to hold a grandson in my arms with things as they are?' Yindi said. 'We don't want little tubercular demons either. And you ought to have somebody near you, you shouldn't be running out day and night and ruin your health. I'll give you Dungmei, she's grown.'
He had never considered the slave girl, being too used to her as a dirty runny-nosed child. Only recently he had lost his temper at her at dinner.
'Dungmei brought in the soup with her thumbnails in it again,' he cried.
Yindi had suddenly discovered some good in her. 'She's fair-skinned. "Whiteness alone hides three blemishes." Dressed up she will look a different person. A five-shorts figure is lucky for a woman. Short neck, short arms and legs means money and blessings. That big square behind means many sons. It's just borrowing her belly for a son. We need to pour on the joy to thin out all this bad luck. A slave girl "put back in the room" doesn't really count. She won't be called Mistress Concubine. Miss Dung will do. Dungmei to us,' hinting that it would not preclude a serious purchase when there was the money for it. He knew better than to ask. The wars continued. Now it was against the Communists in Kiangsi. The cost of opium soared from the special tax that financed the campaigns. Prohibition by taxation was the slogan. Then came downright prohibition and opium went still higher. Smuggling was a government monopoly. The great dark cakes indented in the centre like a rough mortar came with a piece of thin yellow paper pasted over it stamped For Incineration at Provincial Capital, in large archaic type like the official papers of the dynasties. The hunk of dark earth had a faint fragrance at its strongest when the sacking was first unwrapped. Cooked in an open pot on a little earthen stove at the head of the staircase it smelled burned, sweet and penetrating. There was a mysterious bustle all over the house as if some Taoist high priest had been asked down to concoct his medicine in seclusion. Nobody ever remarked on the smell but even the servants smiled slightly as they went in and out.
The brew was poured into little brown jars and doled out to the white copper vial, part of the paraphernalia on the tray. Lying face to face with him, eyes riveted to the little light, she sometimes found herself looking at his pipe bowl resting on top of the lamp, just at the hole on the snout of the closed clay bowl, a sooty runny nostril blowing in and out, beady black and filmy. How much money has gone into this little eye, as more and more people were saying. It wheezed away, the tiny buzz buzz regularly spaced could be annoying. But no matter how expensive it was still under control, not like the abyss waiting for him outside the door. It held the family together. They had their own atmosphere here in the clouds of blue smoke, and this was home while the singsong houses were society to him.
She knew he would settle down to Dungmei. Smokers like to have everything close at hand. A cigarette tin lined with newspaper nestles beside the pillow to save the trouble of leaning over to use the spittoon. He did not even mind his wife's looks.
Dungmei had a permanent wave in the latest style called airplane head, with wings of tight curls set high on the sides of the head. Buxom in a red-trimmed gown of flowered silk she kotowed to him and went to kotow to his wife, being their joint property from now on. But it would be bad omen to kneel to someone in bed. Only corpses received obeisances lying down. The amahs stopped her.
'Just say it, it's the same.'
It was not, and gave her position another boost. Yindi had put her in the front room and gave her the best amah. She made her take charge of housekeeping and praised her to the skies. Yensheng's wife lying in the back room lacked everything. No doctors came any more. When her family in Wuweichow finally got word of it they asked a relative to call at the house and see their daughter. After the visit Yindi sat in her own doorway shouting for hours: 'Life is hard here, then don't marry into: our house. More like an ancestor has come to stay! Want to go home, go and never come back again, thanks be to heaven and earth. I know Dungmei is the trouble, she's in the way. There're those that will straddle the latrine hole and not move their bowels, but won't let others get their turn. Endless fights for separate beds, so what's wrong with separate rooms? What did we want a daughter-in-law for, if not for carrying on the line, I'd like to ask our in-laws. They want to talk to us, good, we want to talk to the matchmaker too. Cheating with a photograph. Then palming a tubercular demon on us.'
She got into the habit of straddling a bench across the doorstep yelling in the direction of the sick room. Almost every day something touched it off. When Dungmei became pregnant she called out, 'If it's a boy she'll be set upright the minute the tubercular demon draws her last breath.' A concubine made a wife is 'set upright'.
The third child and second boy was born before the wife died. There was no more mention of setting anybody upright.