Three Sisters

by Bi Feiyu

  Youqing's wife had been under the weather for a couple of days. She could not pinpoint the cause, but something was making her listless. So she did the laundry, scrubbing clothes to pass the time. Then she washed the sheets and the pillow covers. And still she wasn't satisfied, so she dug out her summer sandals and brushed them clean. That done, she suddenly felt lazy, not wanting to move. She was bored. Wang Lianfang wasn't there. Peng Guoliang had no sooner left than Wang had to attend a meeting. She'd feel better if he were here. Anytime she was restless or bored, going to bed with Wang reenergized her. Youqing had stopped touching her, refusing even to sleep in the same bed. She was shunned by the village women, which left her nothing, nothing but Wang Lianfang. From time to time she was tempted to seduce one of the other men, but that was too risky. Wang was such a jealous lover he frowned if he even saw her having a pleasant conversation with another man. He was, after all, Wang Lianfang. But what does a woman live for? All that makes life interesting is a little pleasurable roughhousing in bed. And it's not a pleasure she can simply call up whenever she wants. Everything depends on whether or not the man is in the mood.

  The sight of all that fresh laundry depressed her even more, since now she had to rinse it out. Too sore at first to bend over, she finally summoned energy from somewhere and carried a few articles of clothing over to the pier. She had barely rinsed the first piece, one of Youqing's jackets, when she spotted Yumi crossing the concrete bridge, coming her way. One look at her distant gaze and ashen face told her that Yumi had just said good-bye to Peng Guoliang, for she appeared weightless, like a shadow on a wall. It took a special girl not to just go sailing off the bridge into the river.

  Yumi cannot go on like this, Youqing's wife said to herself. It could ruin her health. So she walked up the bank, stood at the foot of the bridge, and greeted Yumi with a smile.

  "Gone, is he?"

  Yumi looked down, but her gaze was a puff of smoke, ready to be blown away by the first gust of wind. She acknowledged Youqing's wife despite her callous feelings toward her, nodding as she walked past.

  Youqing's wife wanted to say something to make her feel better, but Yumi was clearly in no mood to accept kind words from her. So she just stood there watching the girl's back take on the appearance of a moving black hole. Absentmindedly, Youqing's wife asked herself, Why are you trying to make her feel better? No matter what you say, she'll soon be an aviator's wife—the pain of separation eating at her represents something worthwhile, a stroke of luck, a woman's good fortune. And what do you have? No need to do anything.

  After Yumi left, Youqing's wife ran behind the pigpen, bent over, and retched. It was lumpy and watery; she threw up more than she'd eaten that morning. Then she leaned against the wall of the pen and opened her eyes; dewy tears hung from her lashes. I must be sick, she said to herself. There's no reason I should be this nauseous. But as she thought back she realized that her discomfort over the past couple of days had been just that: nausea. She bent over again and emptied a puddle of bile. With her eyes closed, she laughed at herself.

  You sorry piece of goods, you're acting like you're carrying a little Party secretary inside you, she said to herself. It was this self-demeaning comment that got her thinking. Her little relative hadn't visited her for a couple of months, but she hadn't given it a thought, hadn't dared to. She laughed again and said sarcastically to herself, Not a chance. Do you really buy the idea that you're productive outside and lazy at home?

  "Yes," the doctor said.

  "How can that be?" she asked.

  He just smiled and said, "I've never seen such a woman. Go home and ask your husband."

  So she counted back. Youqing had been at the irrigation site that month. She stared straight ahead. He might be a fool, but he's no idiot. I can trick heaven over this, and maybe earth as well, but I'll never trick him. So do I keep it or not? It would be her decision, hers alone.

  Youqing's wife made a bowl of fried rice for her husband and watched him eat. She shut the door, picked up the clothes beater that she kept behind the door, and laid it on the table. "Youqing," she said, "I'm not barren." Not understanding what she was trying to say, he kept eating. "Youqing," she said, "I'm pregnant." She added, "It's Wang Lianfang's." This time he understood.

  "I can't have another abortion. If I do, that might really keep me from having your child." She paused. "Youqing, I want to have this one.

  "Youqing, if you say no, I'll die with no complaints." She looked down at the clothes beater on the table. "If you can't swallow that, then go ahead, beat me to death." As he sat there with the last bite of food in his mouth, Youqing banged his chopsticks down on the table. His neck and his gaze were rigid and straight. Then he got to his feet and picked up the beater. His arm was bigger around than the beater and harder. She shut her eyes, and when she opened them again, her husband was gone.

  Confused and panic-stricken, she ran out to look for him and found him in her mother-in-law's shed, where she stood in the doorway and watched as he got down on his knees in front of his mother and said, "I've failed my ancestors, I don't have what other men have." He still hadn't swallowed the last mouthful of rice, which now littered the floor around him, yellow and glossy. His wife shivered as she looked into the eyes of her mother-in-law. Then she backed out of the doorway and went home, where she dug an old length of rope out of a basket. After tying a noose, she flung the rope over a roof beam and checked to see if it would hold her weight. Then she climbed onto a stool, looped the noose around her neck, and kicked the stool out from under her.

  Youqing's mother burst into the room. A clever and perceptive woman, she had seen the look in her daughter-in-law's eyes and had known that something bad was about to happen. Grabbing her daughter-in-law's legs, she pushed upward. "Youqing," she shouted. "Hurry. Hurry!"

  Youqing stood there in a fog, oblivious to all that had happened over the past few minutes. He just kept looking around, trying to figure out what was going on. Finally, he cut his wife down. His mother shut the front door, then rushed over excitedly, squatted down, and opened her arms. She began slapping her own buttocks, her hands like a pair of magpies.

  "I'm glad you're pregnant," she said in a soft voice. "Go ahead, have this one. It's wonderful you're not barren."

  A spring wind is wild—as a spring wind ought to be. There is an old saying that "A spring wind can cleave rocks, so wear a hat if you don't want a split forehead." That, in essence, is the power of a spring wind. Where cold weather is concerned, neither the third nor the fourth nine-day period after the winter solstice ranks as the coldest. For that, one must wait for deep autumn or early spring. The ground splits during the winter months, but since people protect themselves with padded clothing and seldom go out into the fields, the effects of the cold are seldom felt. That is not the case in deep autumn or late spring, when hands and feet have chores to do and cannot be constricted by heavy clothes. The harder the work, the more a person sweats, and thin clothes are the only answer. Winds seldom rise up in deep autumn, but early in the morning and late in the afternoon the ground is covered by chilled dew—a silent cold, but especially bitter. What makes early spring different is the wind. While not particularly biting, it blows with great force; but most important is its patience as it meticulously whistles and howls past every bare branch from morning to night, each limb of a fine tree like a new widow. The chill of an early spring day owes its existence to the unpredictable winds.

  The vast fields of wheat were green and appeared full of life. But on closer examination, every shivering tassel gave off an icy chill. In the springtime there is nothing worse than frost. Three frosty days inevitably lead to spring rains; old-timers like to say that "Rains come three days after a frost." Spring rains are as precious as oil, but only for crops; for humans they are sheer misery. It will rain for days on end. Different from normal rainfalls; not a downpour, but a mist that wraps around you so that you cannot hide. Everything is wet, the air and the ground; even pillows reta
in a dampness that makes the days cold and dirty.

  There was water everywhere in Wang Family Village; moisture filled the air, the wind blew. People went to bed early and slept in late, and those who knew how to economize got by on two meals a day, a tradition passed down by their forebears. During the period between harvests and plantings, they slept a lot, finding hunger easier to stave off horizontally than vertically. With less food in their bellies, it was only natural to slack off, and the pigs in their pens suffered. Unlike humans, pigs were incapable of lying down to sleep when they were hungry. And so they made loud, noisy complaints—ear-assaulting sounds, unlike the happy clucking of chickens and the barking of dogs, which have an almost serene quality, especially from a distance. Those were comforting sounds. But who can stand the noise of pigs when they sound like the transmigrated souls of hungry ghosts? Day in and day out they gave cacophonous voice to their grievances.

  No sun in the sky and no moon. Darkness brought tranquillity to Wang Family Village. The sky turned dark, and Wang Family Village was once again stilled.

  Then something really big happened.

  There had been no warning signs before Wang Lianfang was caught in Qin Hongxia's bed. Wang Family Village was quiet, all but the sows and boars in their pens, complaining of hunger. Dinners were cooking on stoves whose chimneys sent smoke into the air to merge with the evening fog; steam rose from countless treetops. All in all, it felt like a peaceful night lay ahead until the stillness was shattered when Wang Lianfang and Qin Hongxia were caught in bed, thanks to Qin's foolish mother-in-law. When it was over, people called her a dimwit, a simple-minded woman. Why all the shouting? Shout if you must, but "Help, murder!"? What was that all about?

  If the mother-in-law had been a woman with her head on straight, Wang Lianfang would have gotten away just fine. Unfortunately, he was dealing with a simpleton. Everything was progressing just fine when Qin Hongxia's mother-in-law began shouting, "Help, murder! Help, murder!" Her shouts traveled far in the moist air and rang clear, alerting neighbors, who picked up whatever was handy and ran into Qin Hongxia's yard. Her husband, Zhang Changjun, an artilleryman stationed in Henan province, had resolved his organization problem—in other words, his application to join the Party—the year before and was scheduled to be discharged in the fall. Since he was away from home, Qin Hongxia's neighbors helped out whenever they could, so when her mother-in-law bellowed "Help, murder!," how could they not come to her rescue? She stood in the middle of the yard, so breathless that she could only point to the window that she'd thrown open. The door, on the other hand, was tightly shut. Neighbors filled the yard. One crept cautiously up to the window, carrying pole in hand, while another, emboldened by the rake he held, kicked the door open. Wang Lianfang and Qin Hongxia were frantically getting dressed, but the way their buttons were misaligned showed that they were wasting their time. Wang tried to appear unruffled, but he'd been caught in the act, and there was no getting out of it. Losing his customary calmness, he took out a pack of Flying Horse cigarettes and said, "Have a cigarette, there's enough for all of you."

  Did he really think this was the time to smoke?

  It was a grim situation. Most of the time, if someone offered Wang a cigarette, he checked the brand before he accepted it. Now here he was offering everyone a Flying Horse, and there were no takers. Yes, a grim situation.

  The deathly stillness that night was so acute you'd have thought a murderous rampage had wiped out the village. By that time, Wang Lianfang was in town, standing in front of the commune Party secretary's desk. Wang Lianfang's superior was livid. Under ordinary circumstances he and Wang Lianfang had a special relationship, but now he was pounding the table. "What were you thinking?" he roared. "How could you be so stupid?"

  Wang Lianfang went soft; his eyes were closed and he was slumping badly.

  "Maybe I should be placed on probation," he said prudently.

  That ratcheted up Commune Secretary Wang's anger. He banged the table again. "Stop mouthing shit," he shouted. "The wife of a soldier on active duty? This is high voltage stuff! This time the law's involved."

  The situation had turned even more grim. Wang Lianfang knew instinctively that unless he thought of something quick, the law really would be involved. Nothing had happened to him the first time—or the second, for that matter—but he wouldn't be so lucky this time. Everything changed when his superior said the law was involved. The commune secretary unbuttoned his tunic and stood with his hands on his hips, his elbows raising the back of the tunic high above his waist. This was how leading officials invariably reacted to a crisis, even in the movies. Wang Lianfang's eyes were glued to the secretary's back as he threw open the window and thrust out his arms: "They caught you in the act, so tell me, what am I supposed to do? What the hell am I supposed to do?"

  Punishment was meted out with the same speed that the incident had been discovered. Wang Lianfang lost both his job and his Party membership. Zhang Weijun took over as branch secretary. Wise decisions across the board. Wang Lianfang met them with silence, and there was nothing members of the Zhang clan could say.

  Events followed a logical course, slow when they needed to be and fast when that was required. Wang Lianfang's family crumbled in a matter of days. On the surface, of course, everything seemed normal: the bricks and tiles remained in place, needles and thread stayed by the bed where they belonged. But Yumi knew that her family had unraveled. Happily, Shi Guifang had said nothing about Wang Lianfang's affairs from the beginning, not a word. Her only reaction was to dissolve into belches. This time, she had lost face as a woman on two levels, so she took to her bed and slept for days. When she finally got up, she was a study in languor, but not the sort of languor that had followed Little Eight's birth. That had been accompanied by a sense of pride, for it had been her own doing, happily floating with the current. This time she sailed against the tide, and she had to find the strength to deal with it. That would take hard work and perseverance. Now, when she opened her mouth to speak, a foul odor emerged.

  Yumi avoided talking to her mother as much as possible, for whatever Shi Guifang said came out like a belch; obviously, the words had steeped inside her for too long. And Yusui turned out to be a huge disappointment. The little whore was old enough to know better. Yusui actually had the nerve to kick a shuttlecock around with Zhang Weijun's daughter and made matters worse by losing to a girl who was tiny all over: tiny face, tiny nose and eyes, and thin, haughty lips. The Zhangs were shoddy goods, all of them. And the shuttlecock? A bunch of lousy chicken feathers. Yusui was born to betray her family—why else would she let someone like that beat her? Now Yumi saw her sister's true character.

  Nothing escaped Yumi's eyes, and she staunchly kept her composure. Even if Peng Guoliang never flew a People's Liberation Army airplane, she would not stoop to Yusui's level of contempt. If people look down on you, it's probably your fault. Since Yumi had found the strength to keep Peng Guoliang from breaching that last stronghold, she had to fear no one; as usual, she spent her days strolling around the village with Wang Hongbing in her arms. She behaved no differently now than when Wang Lianfang had been the local Party secretary.

  Yumi found all those foul females beneath contempt. Back when her father was sleeping with them, they were blocks of stinky tofu, ripe to have holes punched in them by a chopstick. But now they were acting like proper ladies, like chunks of braised pork.

  The rotten piece of goods Qin Hongxia returned to the village with her child after spending two weeks at her parents' home. With nice rosy cheeks, she looked as if she'd gone home for a postpartum lying-in. To think she had the nerve to come back at all! The river stretched out in front of her, but she lacked the courage to jump in and wouldn't even fake an attempt for show. She affected a bashful look as she crossed the bridge, as if all the village men wished they could take her for a wife. Some of the women sneaked a look at Yumi when Qin Hongxia reached the foot of the bridge, and Yumi knew that their eyes were on her. How was
she going to deal with this? What was she going to say or do to this woman? As Qin Hongxia passed by, Yumi stood up, switched Wang Hongbing from one arm to the other, and went up to her. "Aunty Hongxia," she said with a smile, "you're back, I see." Everyone heard her. In days past, Yumi had always called Qin Hongxia "Sister," but now it was "Aunty," a change pregnant with dark hints that made any response all but impossible. At first the gathered women did not realize what was happening, but one look at Qin Hongxia's face told them what Yumi was up to. She had mischief in mind, but was clever and experienced enough not to give it away. The way Qin Hongxia smiled at Yumi was unbearably awkward. No woman with a sense of self-awareness would have smiled under those circumstances.

  Wang Lianfang decided to learn a trade. After all, he had a family of ten to feed, and from now on, at the end of fall, no more perks would come his way. He lacked the constitution to farm alongside the commune members; but mainly it was a matter of face. He had no illusions about himself. He considered the loss of his position as Party secretary an acceptable price to pay for having slept with so many women. But to start hauling manure with men who had been his underlings—or digging ditches, or planting and harvesting—would have been a crippling disgrace. Learning a trade was the way to go. He gave the matter serious thought. Standing in front of his maps of the world and the People's Republic of China, a cigarette in one hand, the other resting on his hip, he narrowed his choices to: cooper, butcher, shoemaker, bamboo weaver, blacksmith, painter, coppersmith, tinsmith, carpenter, or mason.

  Now it was time to synthesize, compare, analyze, study, choose the refined over the coarse, the honest over the fraudulent, examine things inside and out, and study appearance versus essence. Given his age, his strength, and the prestige factor, he settled on painter. He made a list of the qualities of the trade he found appealing.