by Geling Yan
She saw Duohe bend down to pick up a towel and wrap the child in it. She ducked hastily to one side. She had no desire for Duohe to see her gaping at them like that. And Duohe did not see her – the tune she was humming flowed on, smoothly and seamlessly, which showed that she was too preoccupied to look at anything. She stood up, dripping wet, and walked over to the column of sunlight. A young mother, dripping wet, her stomach no bigger than before the child, a line below her navel the colour of soy sauce leading directly into the thicket of bushy black hair between her thighs. There was enough hair growing down there to cover half a head. And there was enough growing on Duohe’s head for two heads. She came from a barbarian, hairy race, which made the sight in front of Xiaohuan seem still more shocking. There was a strange twisting in Xiaohuan’s guts, and she did not know if she was sickened by what she saw or not. No. All too clearly she was not sickened. The body of this young mother from an alien race, a body free from shame, showed Xiaohuan what a woman could be like. She had never really considered what exactly a woman was, and as a woman herself, she was too closely involved to get any sense of how matters really stood. Now she was outside looking in through the window at a woman who was like a little female animal. Xiaohuan was horribly upset, there was no way for her to put what she was seeing and thinking into any kind of order in her mind. If she were to get someone better read to assemble her thoughts and ideas, they would probably have come up with something like this: she was looking at a woman who was utterly female – skin and flesh poured full of milk, causing those parts that stuck out to bulge shamelessly, and then come together in the unfathomable place where her thighs met, descending into deeper darkness. Since the world began, how many hunters had become ensnared by the lure of those black bushy threads, dark and deep as a mystery? And it was not a lure without reason; its ultimate purpose was to give birth to a little ball of pink flesh.
Xiaohuan thought of Erhai. He had been lured in, and a part of Erhai had been transformed into this little ball of flesh. Xiaohuan did not know if she was jealous or moved, but for a moment all the strength drained out of her body and her heart. What would he want with this lure, if it could no longer give birth to a fruit of flesh and blood? If between her legs was a dark, dried-up barren land, just like Xiaohuan herself.
It was not until the Dragon Boat Festival that Xiaohuan officially met the child.
That day she had just got up, and Erhai came in carrying the baby, saying that Duohe was busy in the kitchen making Japanese red-bean balls, so he had to hold the girl for a while.
Xiaohuan took one look at him and said: ‘Is that a winter melon you’re carrying? Who carries a kid like that?’
Erhai shifted his hold to an even more awkward grip. Xiaohuan grabbed the bundle off him and made a cradle for the child with her arms. She looked at the fair-skinned, chubby baby girl, with her double chin and extra creases around her eyes – it had only been two months and already life had exhausted her, she could not even be bothered to open her eyes fully. It was so strange, how could Erhai’s eyes have moved onto the face of a baby girl? And his nose too, and those eyebrows. Xiaohuan nudged one small hand out of the bundle of swaddling clothes, and her heart trembled: the fingers and nails were all Erhai’s. The Jap woman did not have such long fingers, such strong, healthy, four-square fingernails. She did not realise that she had been staring at the child for so long; it was very rare for Xiaohuan to concentrate on anything for a stretch without smoking. She traced the child’s forehead and eyebrows with her fingertips. It was Erhai’s eyebrows that she loved the best, they were neither dark nor faint, and all their expression was in the arch and the tip. The baby had gone to sleep again. This child truly was no trouble at all. Those eyes were really just like a camel. Xiaohuan was perhaps even fonder of Erhai’s eyes than his eyebrows. Was there any part of Erhai that she was not fond of? She had not been aware of it, that was all. And even if she had known, she would not have admitted it, even to herself.
After that, Xiaohuan always had Erhai carry the child over to their room. The thing she found most touching about the little girl was her sweet, tractable nature. She had never seen a baby that was so easy to soothe. Two lines of a song and she would chuckle, five lines and she would go to sleep. She wondered how she could be so pathetic? She had hugged another woman’s child until she became a piece of her heart.
That day all the family members were choosing a name for the child. They could not keep calling her ‘girlie this, girlie that’, after all. Whenever someone thought of one, Erhai wrote it down with a brush pen, but they kept failing to come up with a name that everyone could wholeheartedly accept, although they had filled a whole sheet of paper with names.
‘Call her … Zhang Shujian,’ Stationmaster Zhang said.
Everybody understood what he meant. Erhai’s official name was Zhang Liangjian.
‘Doesn’t sound nice,’ said Erhai’s mother.
‘It sounds fine! What’s wrong with it?’ Stationmaster Zhang said. ‘It’s only different from Zhang Liangjian by one character.’
Erhai’s mother laughed, and said: ‘Zhang Liangjian doesn’t sound nice either. Why has everybody always called Erhai Erhai, from primary school right the way through to now?’
‘You have a go then!’ said Stationmaster Zhang.
Erhai looked over the column of characters from start to finish. They were all either pedantic and overly literary or too countrified and commonplace. Duohe came in from nursing the child in the next room. Duohe would never open her garments to bare her breast in front of other people. She looked at everyone’s faces.
Rolling smoke around her mouth, Xiaohuan said: ‘What’re you looking at? We were saying bad things about you just now!’ She chuckled, and took the stem of her pipe from her mouth and knocked out the ashes. ‘As soon as your back’s turned we all start scolding and exclaiming over the Jap devils’ wicked goings-on – we just can’t help ourselves!’
Erhai told Xiaohuan to stop acting daft. Duohe was looking at them like that because she wanted to know what the child was going to be called.
Stationmaster Zhang flipped through the dictionary again. Back when Erhai was born he had gone through the Analects of Confucius to find the two characters Liangjian. At that moment Duohe uttered several sounds. Everyone looked at her. Duohe had never spoken aloud to anyone in the family before, although they often heard her singing to the child in Japanese. Duohe repeated those Japanese sounds over again, then looked from that person to this and back again, her eyes very bright. Erhai passed the pen over to her, and a piece of paper. She put her head on one side, pursed her lips, and wrote down on the paper ‘Chunmei’, a name that shared its second character with Kumi, the little girl whose life Duohe had saved.
‘That’s a Jap name, right?’ Stationmaster Zhang asked Erhai.
‘We can’t go calling a Zhang child by a Japanese name,’ Erhai’s mother said.
‘So only Japs get to be called “Chunmei”?’ Stationmaster Zhang bellowed at his wife. ‘We’re still allowing them to occupy these two Chinese characters of ours?’
Duohe looked fearfully at the old couple. She had very seldom seen Stationmaster Zhang in such a fury.
‘Those Japanese characters came from us!’ said Stationmaster Zhang, jabbing at the paper with his finger. ‘I say we do call her Chunmei, so there! I’m taking back what they took from us! So pipe down, the lot of you, that’s settled.’ He waved his hand and went out of the door to meet the next train.
From then on whenever Xiaohuan was at a loose end she would take the child in her arms for a walk in the streets. When it was feeding time, she would carry her back home, and when she was fed she would carry her away again. The child’s pale, delicate skin became tanned by the sun, and she developed little red, raw patches on her cheeks from the wind. As time passed she became less peaceful, and drool and unclear babbling began to issue from her mouth, where teeth were just starting to sprout.
One day Erhai’s mother wen
t to the village on an errand, and saw an adult and a baby lying on the stage in the courtyard of the little theatre. She came closer, and saw Xiaohuan and Chunmei, both fast asleep.
Erhai’s mother had always let her daughter-in-law have her own way, but this time she stamped her bound foot and started to shout. She said how could Xiaohuan do such a thing, did she want the child to roll down the steps, and do herself a terrible mischief? Xiaohuan woke up, gathered up the child in her arms, and brushed the dust, melon-seed husks and cigarette ends off the pink cloak. At this moment, Xiaohuan, who had always had the upper hand with her mother-in-law, found herself without a word to say. Erhai’s mother snatched the child from her and headed straight home without even doing her errand, bound feet drumming on the ground as she went.
Ten minutes later Xiaohuan came home, having shaken off every trace of the stunned, tongue-tied look she had worn in the village, and quite recovered her taste for dressing down her mother-in-law. Was she condemning her because she was a stepmother? Was she saying that she carried the child out of doors every day and dropped her until the blood flowed from her eyes, nose and mouth? Even if Xiaohuan had harboured such crooked intentions she wasn’t about to let anyone wag their finger in her face and scold her, and certainly not when her motives were entirely pure.
‘Let’s say what’s on our minds: who wanted this girlie to go tumbling down and shed blood everywhere?’ Xiaohuan said.
Since she had married into the Zhang family, Xiaohuan had never raised her voice in a quarrel like this. This time nobody thought about holding her back. Erhai took himself off to the fields to hoe the weeds, Stationmaster Zhang went to walk the tracks, and he took Duohe along to give him a hand picking up rubbish from the railway line.
Erhai’s mother pointed a finger at Xiaohuan. ‘So is that step a place to go to sleep?’
Xiaohuan pushed Erhai’s mother’s finger aside, saying: ‘And if I did let her sleep there, what of it?’
‘Then you wanted to make the child fall and hurt herself on purpose!’
‘How can you think such lovely things about me? If I wanted her to fall to her death, would I go to all that trouble? I’ve been carrying her around every day, all I had to do was hold the brat up by her legs, let go and drop her head first on the ground! Why wait until now?’
‘I’m asking you! What did you think you were doing?’
Tears suddenly welled up in Xiaohuan’s eyes. Her face twisted briefly into an unpleasant grin. ‘I … do you really not know? I want to get a knife and slaughter that little Jap woman! Nobody can pay me back for that little life that came out of my belly! Never mind how many wicked things the Japs have done, I just want a life back, in exchange for my child who never saw the light of day!’
Erhai’s mother knew that Xiaohuan was shrewish, but she had never experienced the full force of her venom. She had meant to reproach her for being sloppy and negligent, for putting the child down near such tall, narrow steps. Now she could see that Xiaohuan’s eyes had gone completely wild, buried deep above their thick, heavy eye bags, and there was a good chance that she would forget herself and do something rash.
At that moment Erhai came back, panting for breath.
‘What are you doing?’ he said. ‘I could hear the child crying half a mile off!’
‘A half-Jap girl, you all think she’s so special! Keeping the family line going! You get the bastard of those murdering, fire-raising Japs to carry it on for you!’ Xiaohuan was beside herself, in an ecstasy of shouting and cursing.
Erhai took several steps closer, grabbed her and dragged her away. He managed to get the lower half of her body inside their room, while the upper half was still clutching at the door frame, that expression of insane joy still on her face.
‘Have the Japs not brought enough disasters down on your family? Now you’re actually inviting a wolf cub into the house!’
Erhai finally dragged the rest of Xiaohuan inside, and savagely shut the door. It never did to pay any attention to Xiaohuan at these times. He looked at her; she had collapsed on the floor, crying and carrying on, so he walked up to the kang, took off his shoes and sat down. He neither saw nor heard Xiaohuan’s curses and fuss, ignoring them completely. Sure enough, by the time he had finished his pipe, Xiaohuan only had sniffling noises left.
‘I can’t carry on like this. I can’t carry on living like this,’ Xiaohuan muttered. Clearly her outbreak had more or less run its course.
Erhai refilled his pipe, and stolidly struck a match on the sole of his shoe.
‘Now if I were to run off and throw myself down a well, you wouldn’t even bloody drag me out. You wouldn’t even go and get a rope. Isn’t that right, Zhang Liangjian?’
Erhai gave her a look. She had already pulled herself onto her hands and knees, and was dusting herself down.
‘Is what I say true or not? You wouldn’t get a rope to haul me out, would you?!’ Xiaohuan said.
Erhai wrinkled his eyebrows.
‘Do you know why I’m always taking the child out?’
Erhai breathed in a mouthful of smoke, and exhaled. His eyebrows flicked up at the tips, indicating that he was waiting to hear what else she had to say.
‘So when the day comes that you put that Jap woman back in the sack and throw her away, the child won’t feel like she’s lost her ma, as she’ll already have got close to me. D’you see?’
Erhai’s eyes briefly widened, scanning Xiaohuan’s face for a while. His eyeballs behind their lids were in constant motion. Xiaohuan could see that her words had disconcerted and upset him. Xiaohuan, do you really mean that? Erhai asked himself and replied in his mind, I dare say she’s just saying that because it feels right at the time.
Xiaohuan looked at Erhai’s expression. She had ground him down, right down to the quick. She stretched out a hand to rub his cheek. Erhai dodged out the way, which made Xiaohuan feel frightened and hurt.
‘You said that once she’d had a kid you’d put her in a sack and take her to the mountain and dump her. Did you say that or didn’t you?’ Xiaohuan said.
Erhai let her get on with it: say whatever you like, who cares.
‘Once she’s given birth to a son you’ll throw her out.’
Xiaohuan could see it all. If at this moment she were to say, Look at you, see how you’re hurting! I’m just teasing you! he’d feel a bit more easy in his mind. But she wasn’t going to say that, not her! She was all in a muddle herself, unclear whether her words were just fighting talk, or whether she was speaking the truth.
When Xiaohuan next went for a stroll in the village, people saw that she had made a little straw hat for the chubby little girl, woven out of new wheat straw. Xiaohuan’s fingers were nimble, even if she was a bit lazy. So long as you didn’t put her to any trouble, she’d eat anything you gave her, cursing and laughing, and make do with it, but from time to time she would make an effort, and when the fit was on her she could help the village shop make over ten different kinds of fancy steamed buns. Everyone in Stationmaster Zhang’s house worked, there was no master or mistress, there was only a Young Mistress, Xiaohuan, who was a lady of leisure, all they asked of her was that she would be happy, like a nice warm firepot, to bring a bit of warmth and liveliness wherever she went. When the people saw the plump baby girl with this straw hat on her head, looking absurdly appealing, they all said, ‘That girlie’s getting more like Xiaohuan all the time!’
‘Are you having a go at me, or at her?’ asked Xiaohuan.
‘The little girl’s got so fat with all that eating that her eyes never see the light of day!’
‘What’s with all the little girl this and girlie that? We’ve got a proper formal name now, you know, she’s called Chunmei.’
People’s tongues were not so complaisant once she was out of sight. ‘Is Chunmei a Chinese name?’
‘How come it sounds a bit Japanese? I knew a Japanese schoolmistress a while back called Jimei.’
‘Where’s that little Japanese woman St
ationmaster Zhang brought back? How come we never see her go out of doors?’
‘Maybe they bought her to be tied up and drop her pups in the house?’
One evening, Xiaohuan saw that Erhai had brought a big bucket of water to the room, where he proceeded to scrub his skin red. Whenever he washed like this, as though his life depended on it, Xiaohuan knew exactly what he was up to. Erhai was not willing to go dirty to the Jap woman’s kang. Girlie was over a year old, and they were already feeding her millet porridge with goat’s milk. It was about the time for Duohe to conceive a second child. Xiaohuan smoked her pipe, stared at him and sniggered to herself.
Erhai gave her a look. She made a pretence of opening her mouth, as if she did not know what to say, and just sniggered again.
‘Brother, you smell fine just the way you are,’ Xiaohuan said. ‘Was it her that made you have a good wash? You should tell her that Japs are hairy but we Chinese are smooth, there’s no need to go scrubbing as if you hate your own skin!’
Erhai played deaf, as usual.
‘Or is your mother on at you again? Your father can’t wait either. Seven whole silver dollars. Or is it you who can’t hold it in any longer? I bet she’s been lifting up her shirt, giving you an eyeful behind my back. Is that it?’
Erhai threw his flannel back into the bucket. ‘Give Girlie her medicine, don’t keep wittering on.’ As usual, he neutralised her joking words, said in an attempt to let off steam. ‘No sign of her cough getting better.’
Every time Erhai went to Duohe’s to spend the night, Xiaohuan would look after Girlie and have her sleep in her bed. Girlie coughed all through the night, so Xiaohuan could not sleep.
Xiaohuan was twenty-seven, and no longer of an age to say ‘That’s it, I’ve had it with you, I’m off to marry some other man’, but sometimes she would see herself in the mirror while combing her hair, and think that the round-faced woman in it was still worth a look. Sometimes she heard people compliment her: ‘Xiaohuan looks good whatever she wears!’ or ‘How come Xiaohuan still has the narrow waist of an eighteen-year-old?’ She had a beautiful neck, sloping shoulders like flowing water and long, white fingers like spring onions. Her face was not that of a top-ranking beauty, but once you were used to it, it was full of charm. When she was in one of her hot-headed moods, her estimation of her looks would become exaggerated, and she truly thought that she could reshuffle the cards she had been dealt with Zhang Erhai to start a new game with a new man. Since Duohe had been bought in, she often thought in this way.
