"So you're Ma Benyi?"
"Mmm."
"You're a Communist Party member?"
"Mmm."
"D'you want to get married?"
"Whassat?" Benyi was cutting up pigfeed and hadn't been listening properly.
"I asked, do you want a wife or don't you?"
"Wife?"
She drew a long breath, put down the parasol she'd brought with her: "I'm not bad-looking, am I? I can have children as well, you can see that. If you're happy with that, then I…"
"Uh?"
"That's what I'm here for."
"Here for what?" Benyi still hadn't quite got it.
Tiexiang stamped her foot, "I'm yours."
"My what?"
Tiexiang twisted her neck and glanced over the door: "To sleep with!"
Benyi jumped in fright, too stunned to produce a single sentence, "You you you you where did you spring from you spirit woman… Bloody hell, where's my basket?"
He fled indoors. Tiexiang pursued him inside: "What's there to complain about? Look at my face, look at my hands, my feet, all there, all present and correct. Look, I'll be frank with you, I've even got some of my own money. You can relax, I've got an educated man's baby inside me, if you want it, you can have it. You don't want it, then get rid of it. I just wanted to show you I can have children, there's nothing wrong with my body…"
Before she'd finished, she heard someone slip out the back door.
"You must've stored up lots of secret good deeds in an earlier life to land someone like me-" Tiexiang stamped her foot in fury; a noisy sob followed shortly.
Later, Benyi dispatched his same-pot brother Benren to send this spirit woman on her way. When Benren came to the door, he discovered the woman was already chopping up pig grass; wiping her hands, she got up to bid him sit down and took out the kettle to boil some tea. She really wasn't bad-looking, either. Seeing that her full, round buttocks and thick legs were the properly child-bearing sort, he went a bit tongue-tied and failed again and again to come up with the words required to send her packing. He later told Benyi: "She may be a bit of a spirit, but she looks pretty healthy. If you don't want her, I'll have her."
That night, Tiexiang didn't go home-she stayed at Benyi's place.
Things worked out pretty simply: Benyi didn't get a matchmaker, didn't buy any betrothal gifts, he got it all on the cheap. Tiexiang also got what she wanted: as she put it later, she'd been fed up with government surveillance and with her four mothers weeping and wailing all day long, fed up with the daily threats and nags of the handyman next door. So she made up her mind, walked out of the door with nothing but a parasol, and swore she'd find a member of the Communist Party to look after her. As things turned out, she succeeded at the first attempt and a few days later really did take a demobilized revolutionary soldier and Party Branch Secretary back home with her. The neighbors on both sides eyed her with more respect and, after one look at the medal pinned on Benyi's chest for resisting America and helping Korea, the cadres became a few degrees politer to her family.
The two of them went to the government office to register. The government office said she was too young, she should come back in two years. When it became clear that nothing she said was having any effect, her apricot eyes hardened and she told the secretary who handled official seals: "If you don't register us, I won't go, I'll have the kid at your place and say it's yours. How'd you like that?" The secretary jumped in terror and scrambled to sort everything out, the sweat running down his face. He watched their back-views-hers and her bridegroom's-recede far off into the distance, his mind still unhinged with fear: that spirit woman, he said, d'you think she'll stay like that?
Bystanders also shook their heads and tut-tutted: she truly was Master Nine Pockets' daughter, they said, she'd eaten the food of every family in town and the skin on her face was thicker than shoe soles. If she was like this now, what would she be like later?
As Benyi afterwards slowly came to realize, it would be hard to say this marriage business had turned out well for him. Tiexiang was about ten years younger than him and so reserved the right to flare up into tempers at home; sometimes, when her spirit got quite carried away, it only took the slightest thing not to go her way, the tiniest provocation, and she'd be yelling about how god-forsaken Maqiao Bow was, how could anyone live there? She cursed Maqiao's roads for being uneven, cursed Maqiao's mountains for being too steep, cursed the gully holes for burying people alive, cursed the rice for having too much sand in it, cursed the firewood for being so wet you choked on the soot, cursed the way you had to run seven or eight li to buy a needle or soy sauce. What with her cursing this way and that, her curses inevitably ended up directed at Benyi. If she just cursed and left it at that, it would've been all right, but once in a particularly violent screaming fit she actually chopped off the head of an eel. What'd happened to patriarchal law? For better or for worse, Benyi was still her old man, for better or for worse a Party Secretary; how'd he gotten himself into this mess with eels' heads?
While Benyi's old ma was still alive, she too was helpless before her daughter-in-law, whose rages spared not even the old: "Are you never going to die, you old crock, I don't care how old you are, how heavy you are, will you never end? Just go and die! Why don't you just go and die?"
Generally speaking, Benyi turned a deaf ear to such remarks-he was, in fact, a little deaf. Even if sometimes, at the end of his tether, he yelled "I'll do you in!" all it took was for his wife to shut her mouth just for a moment and no real action would be taken. His moment of greatest authority was when one slap of his hand sent Tiexiang rolling into the middle of a flock of terrified ducks who scattered into the air in all four directions. That, as he put it, was the time that good overpowered bad, the east wind overpowered the west wind. When she clambered up again, Tiexiang would have thrown herself into the pond if she hadn't been stopped by the villagers. She had no choice but to run back to her parents' house, and nothing was heard of her for three months. Once again, it was Benren who, with two catties of potato flour and two catties of baba cakes, finally went to make peace with Tiexiang on behalf of his same-pot brother, and who drove her back on a dirt cart.
In the foregoing narrative, the reader may have noticed that the word "spirit" came up a few times. Maqiao people, it should by now be apparent, used the word "spirit" to describe any kind of unconventional behavior. People from around here were anxious above all else to affirm human ordinariness, to affirm that humans were conventional beings. Any unconventional behavior was, essentially, inhuman behavior, derived from the mysterious shadows of the netherworld, from superhuman forces of heaven or destiny. If the problem wasn't a spiritual (i.e., mental) matter, then it had to be a matter of spirits (i.e., ghosts or divinities). Maqiao people used the word "spirit" for both these two meanings, probably considering the difference between the two to be of little importance. Any story about spirits began with fantasies of a spiritually abnormal nature. People always babbled and danced insanely in front of altars to spirits. Maybe spiritual disorders were just spirits in worldly, vulgarized form. A whole bundle of expressions-"spirit-fast," "spirit-brave," "spirit-good," "spirit-weird," "spirit-pretty," "spiritsmooth"-referred to achievements that temporarily transgressed ordinary human limits, often witnessed in people close to the obsessive derangement of spiritual disorder, close to the spirits, and who were putting their mental state to positive use, either subconsciously or unconsciously.
A spirit like Tiexiang's, everyone said, just had to be possessed by evil forces.
*Rude (continued)
: Tiexiang didn't much like spending time with Maqiao women, and after getting off work she'd hustle her way in amongst the men and really let herself go. Benyi didn't like this much, but there was nothing he could do. So although going to the mountains to cut down trees was men's work, she wanted to join in the fun too. When she got to the mountain, she grasped the axe as she would a chicken, gritted her teeth, but still didn't manage to
chop even so much as a toothmark; the axe ended up ricocheting off to who knew where, while she collapsed onto her bottom in laughter, her body dissolving into waves of giggles. After this fall, things got busy for the men. She ordered this one to beat dust off her, asked that one to extract the thorn from her finger, instructed this one to go look for the lost axe, commanded that one to hold the shoes she'd just trodden in the wet without realizing. Under the spell of her gaze, the men all hovered around in raptures. Her piercing cries, the tragic convulsions of her body, the possibility that at careless moments a wider expanse of dazzling white… something would glint out of her neckline or cuffs got the men (and their roving eyes) buzzing around.
Her fall had been far from heavy, but having tried a couple of steps on tiptoe she insisted it hurt too much to walk and demanded that Benyi carry her home on his back-never mind that Benyi was just then in conversation on the mountainside with two cadres visiting the forestry station.
"You spirit! Can't you get someone else to lean on?" Benyi's patience was low.
"No, I want you to carry me back!" she stamped her little foot.
"Just walk, you can walk."
"Even if I can walk, I still want you to carry me!"
"Firstly, there's no blood, secondly you haven't broken anything."
"My back hurts."
And so Benyi had no choice but to submit once more to his young wife, abandoning the forestry station to carry her down the mountain right in front of everyone. He knew that if he hadn't carried her off then, she might have announced her period had come, or something similar. She was someone who just wouldn't shut up, who'd publicize women's secrets at any opportunity, making her body a subject of general understanding and concern, a topic of conversation, the intellectual property of all men. Her periods were, in short, a great ceremonial event for the Maqiao collective. She wouldn't of course advertize them directly. But she'd say her back hurt, then remark meaningfully on how she hadn't been able to go near cold water for the last few days, then dispatch some man to the clinic to buy her some angelica, even yell at Benyi while they were in the fields to go back home and boil her some angelica or an egg- all this, of course, was quite sufficient to notify people of the phase her body was entering on, to underline her femininity, to excite male imaginations, to attract knowing smirks.
Whether in terror or delight, she made an extraordinary number of exclamations. Even if she was only expressing surprise at a caterpillar, the dulcet tones of her "aiyas" led men to suspect there had to be another context or background to them, to daydream about her pose in that context or background-and all sorts of other things besides. She wasn't responsible for these fantasies, of course, she was responsible only for the caterpillar. But that caterpillar of hers could triumph over the other women's ginger-salted-bean pounded tea and all their other distractions, could wrest men away, have them trot over obediently to shower her with attention, to perform any physical task she demanded of them. Every time this happened, shoulders back and head held high, she'd walk beneath the gaze of other Maqiao women, glowing with the undisguisable joy of victory.
I later heard Maqiao people whisper among themselves that this woman's dizzying, bewitching cries were really rude and got the better of at least three men.
First of all was a director from the County Cultural Institute, who came once to check on cultural work in the village and who stayed in her house; a secretary he brought with him was palmed off on Fucha. From that time on, the Cultural Institute director took a particular interest in Maqiao, and his fleshy face, grinning from ear to ear, would often pop up-here and there, in her kitchen, as if it had set down roots and started to grow. People said he'd give out free agriculture manuals, as well as free fertilizer quotas and disaster relief funds; whatever Tiexiang wanted she got. Getting the institute director to do things was even easier than ordering a child around-the director (a commissioned official) even helped her haul the toilet bucket, lurching over to the vegetable garden to empty it onto the manure heap.
Later on there was a handsome young lad, Tiexiang's nephew (allegedly) who worked in the photography institute in Pingjiang's county seat and who'd come down to the countryside to serve poor and lower-middle peasants. Tiexiang took him on a tour around nearby villages, explaining how good his photography was, getting people interested and fighting to have a look at the photographs the young lad was already clutching, which were, of course, a dozen or so photographs of Tiexiang in all kinds of different poses. This was the first time Maqiao people had seen a camera, so naturally they were curious. Something else they were curious about was an old watch belonging to the young lad, which for some months was fastened round Tiexiang's wrist. Some said that people cutting firewood on the mountain had spotted the two of them walking together hand-in-hand along the mountain road. Was this the sort of thing an aunt and a nephew did? What was going on between them?
Finally, people even said that Tiexiang had seduced Precious Huang, that Precious Huang had lugged to her house a made-to-order stone feeding-trough and drunk five whole cups of cold water without stopping, knots of flesh all over his body rising and rolling. This had sent Tiexiang into raptures of lust and she'd insisted that Precious Huang help her cut her fingernails-it was really hard to cut her right hand, she said. Afterwards, she secretly made a pair of shoes and delivered them over to Precious Huang's. Unfortunately, Precious Huang was too precious to understand her feminine wiles: he returned the shoes to Benyi saying they were a little bit small, they pinched his feet; he reckoned they'd fit Benyi better. Benyi fell silent, his face darkening immediately, his neck twisting to one side.
Not a shadow of Tiexiang was seen over the following few days. When she reappeared in public, she had a cut on her neck. When people asked about it, she said she'd been scratched by a cat.
That wasn't the truth-her old man had beaten her.
The Tiexiang with a cut at the base of her neck stopped horsing around with the men and quieted down. But then she suddenly got friendly with Three Ears.
It would've been stretching a point to call Three Ears a man-in most women's eyes he had no significance as a man-so of course there was no harm in him and Tiexiang getting friendly. Three Ears was Zhaoqing's second child, but he'd run wild as a boy and had turned out so disobedient and unfilial that Zhaoqing chased him out of the house with a hoe; he then joined up with Ma Ming, Master Yin, and Hu Erce from the House of Immortals and became one of Maqiao's Four Daoist Immortals. The nickname "Three Ears" came from an extra piece of flesh shaped like an ear that had come up in his left armpit. People said he'd been too stubborn in his previous life and the King of the Underworld had given him an extra ear this time around to make him listen harder to what his elders and the government said. He kept this under wraps like some kind of treasure-he wouldn't exhibit his precious third ear to just anyone. Whoever wanted to have a look had to hand over a cigarette first. If you wanted to have a feel, then the price doubled. He could also turn his right hand over, bring it around past his backbone, and grab hold of his right ear; anyone wanting to see this miracle had at the very least to buy him a bowl of wine in the supply and marketing cooperative.
He showed Tiexiang his third ear for free: seeing Tiexiang happy made him especially happy. He was very proud of his superfluous ear; in fact, he thought his nose, eyes, and mouth were pretty good, too. A few years earlier, he'd ascertained by looking in the mirror that he was not Zhaoqing's real son and had insisted his mother reveal the current where-abouts of his real father. He'd made such a fuss about this that his mother wept and wailed and he came to blows with his father (both of them drew blood). This, of course, further confirmed him in his conclusions: was this the behavior of a father? Chasing him out of the door with a rake? He wasn't awakened yesterday, Three Ears, he wasn't going to believe what this sonofabitch told him. He went looking for Benyi, politely offered him a cigarette, cleared his throat, set his expression, and made as if to discuss with the Party Secretary some matter of g
reat import such as national family planning. "Uncle Benyi, as you know, the current revolutionary situation throughout the nation is indeed excellent, under the central leadership of the Party all cow demons and snake spirits have shown their true faces, those that are false are proved false, those that are real are proved real, the revolutionary truth is becoming clearer and clearer, the eyes of the revolutionary masses are brighter and brighter. Last month, our commune held a Party Representatives meeting and will next decide how to deal with the question of water conservation…"
Benyi's patience was, as ever, low: "Stop beating around the bush, if you're gonna fart, then do it quickly."
Three Ears stammered and meandered his way to the question of his natural father.
"Don't you ever look at yourself when you're having a piss, you scrawny wimp, what sort of dad d'you think you should have? Shortie Zhao's already too good for you." Benyi ground his teeth.
"Don't be like that, Uncle Benyi. I don't want to bother you or anything, I'd just like you to tell me something."
"Tell you what?"
"How was I really born?"
"Ask your mother! How should I know?"
"You're a Party cadre, I'm sure you know what really happened."
"What're you talking about? It was your mother who gave birth to you, you piece of trash, what would I know about it? I haven't even looked hard enough at her to see whether her eyebrows go straight across or straight up."
"That's not what I mean, all I was saying…"
"I've got work to do."
"So that's your final answer-you won't tell me?"
"Tell you what? What d'you want me to say? Hmm? Sticking a toad in a dragon's bed's easy enough to do, so what'll it be? D'you want a regiment commander or a director for a dad? Just say the word and I'll take you to find one. How about it?"
Shaogong, han - A Dictionary of Maqiao.html Page 27
