Thanks to his brisk business, Ma Jianhua employed more waitresses than any other restaurant in the village. The two girls at Ma Changyi’s gate had been working at the restaurant only a short time. Seeing the knife in Ma’s fist, they were so scared that they instantly covered their breasts with their hands. They lowered their heads, letting him pass without saying a word.
Ma Jianhua would replace the old waitresses with new, younger, and prettier ones every three months. Ma Changyi never concerned himself with his son’s business. To him, each of the girls was a stranger. Although he often went to his son’s restaurant to dine, none of the girls’ faces remained in his memory.
One early spring night, when he had just fallen asleep, Ma Changyi was awakened by the sounds of cries. First he heard his daughter-in-law crying and then another girl’s cries. Unable to go back to sleep, he sat up but didn’t go out right away. He went to his wooden cabinet and took up the knife he had sharpened that day. His rough hand moved lightly over it, producing a sound as slight as waving wheat. The knife felt cool and smooth in his hand. After stroking the knife twice, he licked the blade with the tip of his tongue. It tasted like iron, a mixture of sweet and salty. When he put down the knife, the courtyard had fallen silent again.
Ma Changyi left his room. Walking lightly, he crossed the yard, which was bathed in fluid moonlight, and went up to the second floor. He knew his son and daughter-in-law didn’t share a room, that his son had a room of his own on the second floor, where he spent most of his free time. Upstairs he stopped at his son’s door. He could hear the sounds of his son in bed with a girl. He wanted to leave, but his feet refused to move.
The girl was twittering and sobbing, and then there was silence. Was that the slim girl who often served him a meal? Or was it the fat girl with fair skin? Or was it the girl from Sichuan Province with the big, round eyes? Ma Changyi could hear nothing but the sound of the moon burning on the roof of the building. He went back downstairs softly.
Ma Jianhua had one hobby: collecting girls’ hair. Whenever he went to bed with a girl, he would collect several strands of her hair and stick them in his diary, labeled with a number. His wife had long suspected that her husband was unfaithful, but she couldn’t find a way to confront him until she discovered his revolting habit. When she found the diary, she also saw that the numbers went up to sixteen. She was startled and went to confront him; he only cursed her and sent her out of his room.
Ma Changyi was aware of the differences between him and his son; they had different ways of living. Ma Changyi had tried to change his son, but in vain.
When he was a student in middle school, Ma Jianhua didn’t behave well. One time, he and two classmates had left the school and put up a stall to sell vegetables, without saying anything to their teacher. When Ma Changyi found out, he threatened his son with the knife, saying, “Set your mind to study, or I’ll cut off your hands.”
The son had stretched out his arm and said, “Go ahead, cut here!”
The butcher’s face had turned sallow in anger. He threw down the knife and left.
Later, when his son failed the college entrance examination, Ma Changyi tried to persuade him to repeat his studies for a second year, but Ma Jianhua refused to listen to him; instead he went to the county seat and found a job managing a snooker hall. Ma Changyi went there and broke all the billiard sticks. Nevertheless, his son still went his own way.
Ma Changyi, who had been a butcher for half his life, longed to see his son’s success. He wished only that his son not follow in his footsteps as a peasant butcher.
When Ma Jianhua had been a child, studying in primary school, his father used to make him kneel down as a punishment, but most of the time the boy was obedient. When Ma Changyi’s son was born, the butcher was much older than most of the other village fathers of his generation; therefore he devoted more love to his son than to his daughter. He still remembered one night when his son had a severe stomachache; he’d carried the boy on his back to the county hospital, in spite of the heavy rain and cold wind, his wife holding an umbrella over them.
When their son entered high school, the couple bought no new clothing the entire year in order to save enough money to allow their son to dine in the teachers’ canteen, which served better food. They did everything they could to benefit their son’s studies and his future—but he refused to follow the road laid out for him.
When Ma Jianhua got married, Ma Changyi no longer worried about his son’s future. Still, he tried to teach the lad how to conduct himself in society by setting a good example, hoping Jianhua would become an honest, kind person who dealt fairly in business. Whenever he pointed out these lessons, his son made no reply but simply smiled. The father couldn’t fathom what lay in his son’s mind.
It was apparent to Ma Changyi that his son and daughter-in-law were not on good terms, and he knew that his son had affairs with the girls from his restaurant. But how could he talk with his son about such things? The old to the young? Sometimes he felt he could forgive his son, for whenever he turned on the TV, what he saw was men and women wrapped in each other’s arms, or a man going to bed with a woman, or a woman being the third party in a couple’s marriage. No wonder young men had been so influenced. At other times he couldn’t forgive his son at all, for it was immoral for a married man to go to bed with another woman. He couldn’t let his son live such a life.
It was only when he was sharpening the knife that he could forget all these thoughts.
Knife in hand, Ma Changyi left the courtyard, crossed the main road, and came around to Muck Street behind his yard, where there was a stack of dried wheat straw and a stack of firewood. He waved his knife and stabbed it into the straw as if into his enemy. He stabbed with a quick motion, producing a sound like that of cutting hair. Pulling out, stabbing in, pulling out, stabbing in—Ma moved around the stack, repeating the maneuver. He unfastened his buttons and rolled up his sleeves. He appeared to be greatly excited. After stabbing dozens of times, he scraped his knife on a pile of hard firewood; it sounded like knife scraping bone. The knife became blunted and its blade turned flat.
Looking at the knife, he smiled grimly. Then he returned to his courtyard and immediately set to sharpening it again. After he made it sharp, he would blunt it, and then sharpen, and then blunt. It was his daily routine.
Ma Jianhua had wanted to pull down all five rooms of the old one-story house when he was putting up the new building in the courtyard, but Ma Changyi wouldn’t allow it. The older man preferred to live in the house he had built himself. Therefore, three old rooms were pulled down and the other two remained, dull in tone and ill-matched to the impressive new building. A stranger passing by would think that Ma Jianhua was practicing “one country, two systems” at home, leaving his father in a shack while the son enjoyed relative comfort. In fact, the younger man had had no choice but to yield to his father’s stubbornness. He often tried to persuade his father to have the old house pulled down, but his father always remained silent. If Ma Jianhua continued to press the matter, Ma Changyi would take up the knife and scrape his own leg. Seeing this, Ma Jianhua would drop the argument.
When Ma Changyi had originally built his five-room house, many Songling villagers cast envious eyes on him, saying Ma Changyi was a successful, capable man. The house was a highlight of his life and career. The year after the house was built, he had gotten married and then lived with his wife in the house for decades. But to his bitter sorrow, his wife, who was ten years younger than he, died five years ago. She was only forty-nine years old when she died. On her deathbed she asked him to sit beside her so she could smell her husband’s body. It was the smell of knives and butchered pig’s meat, a smell that had kept her company for thirty years.
The first night of their marriage, when he wanted to go to bed with her, she shed painful tears and said, “You are harder than your knife!”
He replied, “The harder a man is, the more he’s loved by a woman. Don’t believe it? Just ha
ve a try!”
At first his wife couldn’t bear the smell of the meat and the frightening blade between his legs, but after some time, the woman grew greedy for the smell. The strong, hot, sticky scent on its own would arouse her intense desire. When they were in bed together, she’d say lustily, “You’re so hard—do whatever you like.”
When Ma Changyi came home after killing pigs, his wife would hold the knife bag and slide out the knife. It was her way of hinting, and he readily took the hint. Then the smells of meat and iron filled every corner of the house.
When she was alive, she used to assist Ma in his work—helping him sharpen his knives, or holding the pig’s leg for him, or pulling out the pig’s intestines in order to remove the waste.
Ma Changyi and his wife had hard times, too. Like most peasants, they labored for three periods of the day—early morning, late morning, and afternoon. Sometimes they’d have to labor in the evening as well. They had only one pair of work trousers between them. Ma Changyi gallantly insisted that his wife wear the trousers, while the woman refused so that her husband could wear them. Often neither one would give in, both of them choosing to endure the cold instead. When they were both working at the reservoir construction site, alternating shifts, whichever of the couple was currently on the job would wear the pants.
In winter, they went to cut firewood near Beishan Mountain. Ma Changyi cut firewood at the bottom of the valley while his wife carried the firewood out of the valley. Standing at the foot of the mountain, Ma Changyi looked up at the woman’s bent and curved back, and his eyes suddenly brimmed with tears. What a good woman! When she returned for the next load, as he bound up the firewood and loaded it on her back, he gazed at her sweat-moistened, flushed face and could no longer control himself. He rushed to lift her and made her lie down on her back without even releasing the bundle strapped to her, so that she lay on top of the firewood. Before the woman could pull her arms from the rope, he had already removed her trousers. His blood was boiling with urgency. Bending over her body, he said, “You just lie down. I won’t let you carry firewood—you just carry the butcher Ma Changyi.”
With her arms around his waist, she said emotionally, “I will carry you, and carry you for my whole life.”
In Ma’s eyes, there was no better woman. No one could take his wife’s place. He had a rough appearance but a considerate heart. More than once he had said to himself, “I have to provide her with better clothing and better food. I’ll make more money with my knife so that she can live a better life.”
In the winter of 1985, Ma Changyi was called to kill pigs for the peasants in Beiyang Village. He spent five days in a row killing pigs before he returned to Songling.
That night when he entered his home, smelling strongly of blood, his wife noticed that he looked gloomy. Something was wrong, but she didn’t know what. Without a word, Ma Changyi threw himself down on the kang and stared at the ceiling. The woman removed his cotton-padded shoes and socks. She covered his legs with the quilt. When she went to untie the buttons of his cotton jacket, he pushed her hand away and took the jacket off himself. The bloody scent grew stronger; it was coming from his body. When she lay down beside him, she found a white cloth wrapped around his hairy chest. She asked him what had happened; he remained silent.
She untied the white cloth and found a bloody cut across the left side of his chest. Startled, she asked, “Did this happen while you were slaughtering pigs?” Ma Changyi nodded his head. “But for years you’ve never had an accident when you killed a pig.” She shook her head incredulously.
Ma Changyi didn’t reply, but this strong, stoic man began to shed tears, so his wife asked no more questions. After applying some medicine to the wound, she dressed it with a strip of clean, white gauze.
That night, Ma Changyi tossed and turned on the kang. His wife asked him, “Is it painful?”
He told her it was not a physical pain, but a mental one. His wife hugged him from behind. Ma Changyi said, “Hold me tightly, tightly.” Holding each other, the couple slept that way until daybreak.
Ma’s birthday fell a week later, on January 2. That night the couple had a busy and beautiful time in bed, just as they had when they were young, making the earth and the ocean shake. When they finished, Ma Changyi, not wanting to keep a secret from his wife, told her how he had gotten the wound on his chest.
On the night of December 27, after the day’s slaughters were finished, his host had entertained him with fat meat and wine. Later, his host went out to bring meat to his mother-in-law. Ma Changyi was sleeping in a spare room for the night when the host’s wife pushed the door open and came in. She quickly stripped off her clothes and crawled under Ma’s quilt. Before Ma Changyi realized what was happening, the woman had already put out the light, and while one hand reached under the quilt for his manhood, the other stroked his hairy chest.
His heart beating fast, Ma turned around and caught sight of his knife bag on the cabinet. The knife was as bright as a lamp; in that light he could see his wife, her face an image of health, kindness, intimacy, and affection. He heard the knife saying, “Ma Changyi, you said you would love me for your whole life, and that you would never give your heart to another woman. Is that true?” Hearing the knife crying in the bag, Ma quickly pushed the naked woman away, turned on the light, and jumped off the bed. He reached into the bag for the knife. Turning pale with fright, the hostess heard Ma Changyi asking her to leave immediately. Before she’d crossed the threshold, Ma Changyi had already made a cut in his chest with his knife. He spent the rest of the night in the host’s cowshed.
When Ma finished recounting the story, his trembling wife held him in her arms. He wanted to continue speaking, but she stopped him. She suggested letting his manly blade speak instead, and Ma Changyi had another busy and beautiful time with his wife in bed.
Afterward, his wife asked him tenderly, “Changyi, this knife is yours, and also mine, right?”
Ma Changyi replied, “Yes, and yes.”
His wife laughed.
When his wife left this world, Ma Changyi was sick with grief. Wherever he went, he felt empty: in the house, in the courtyard, in the whole world. His nights were sleepless.
The knife always brought his wife’s figure to mind, so Ma took the knife with him wherever he went. His unusual behavior frightened the villagers, including his son. Eventually some village cadres were able to convince Ma Changyi not to bring the knife into the field, to his relatives’ homes, or to the market. But he often got out of bed at midnight to sharpen the knife in the courtyard. He felt restless if he didn’t sharpen his knife even for one day.
After his wife died, he found ten pairs of shoes in the cabinet, all handmade by her. Ma Changyi took them all out, looked at them for a while, and set them on top of the cabinet. Every few days he would take the shoes out and dry them in the sun, and then store them again atop the cabinet. Five years passed; he had never put any of the shoes on his feet. At night, after gazing at all the shoes for a long time, he would smell them, inhaling the smell of cloth, the needle, the thread, the color, and a smell he couldn’t quite identify. He would put his hands into the shoes, absorbing their warmth, softness, smoothness.
The butcher’s daughter-in-law always wondered why her father-in-law had the shoes displayed on the cabinet. She thought he wanted to show the villagers how devoted her mother-in-law had been. One day she put the ten pairs of shoes back inside the cabinet. Ma Changyi grew sullen and told her to take them out.
She said, “They’ll get dirty. Besides, why don’t you ever wear them?”
“None of your business,” Ma Changyi said. “Just take them out and put them on top of the cabinet.”
The daughter-in-law had to take all the shoes back out and display them on the cabinet as before.
The night the dance hall opened, Ma Jianhua was worried that the music from the speakers would disturb his father’s sleep, so he tried to keep the volume at a reasonable level. At eleven o’clock tha
t night, he came down to the courtyard to see if his father had fallen asleep. Upon entering the courtyard, he saw his father sharpening a knife. A bright moon was drifting in the sky above the silvery white yard. The moonlight, like the tongue of a cow, was licking Ma’s silvery-white body, which looked transparent, like an artifact of the moonlight. Ma Changyi was deeply absorbed in sharpening his knife. The knife glittered crisply under the bright moon.
Standing at a distance, Ma Jianhua could see his father swaying slightly, his feet beating rhythmically to the movement of his body, which was also the rhythm of the dance music upstairs. It looked like his father was not so much sharpening a knife as dancing with a knife. The butcher waved the leaflike knife, admiring it in varying positions. The knife was burning like the moonlight. Ma Jianhua couldn’t see his father’s expression; he could only see the knife dancing happily in the courtyard, under the bright, fine moonlight. Ma Jianhua could see nothing but the knife. The whole yard was filled with its overwhelming smell.
He didn’t have the patience to see more. He went back upstairs quietly.
The following day, when the father and the son met, they had only to look into each other’s eyes; after an embarrassed moment, they passed each other without a word.
One night, Ma Changyi came up to the third floor and stood quietly outside the dance hall, still as a wooden stake. Ma Jianhua pulled the door open; seeing his father there, he invited the older man in to have a look. Ma Changyi said, “I am only sharpening my knife.” Only then did Ma Jianhua notice that his father was holding the knife.
Old Land, New Tales: Twenty Short Stories by Writers of the Shaanxi Region in China Page 27
