Chapter 1: 1화 얼음물 한 대야

"Twenty-five yuan, not a cent less."

Liu Cuifang's voice drilled in from the outer room, through the door pasted over with newspaper, like a blunt knife scraping the bottom of a pot.

Lin Wanyue opened her eyes.

Above her was a roof of sorghum stalks, a single elm beam, and two strings of dried chilies hanging from the beam. The kang was heated too hot; the mat under the bedding scorched her back until it ached. A kerosene lamp sat on the windowsill, its wick trimmed very short, a bean-sized point of yellow light that lit half the face on the New Year picture on the wall.

She raised a hand and looked at her own hand. The fingers were slender, there were no chilblain scars on the knuckles, and no calluses on the web of her thumb from ten years of tossing a ladle.

From the outer room came another sound — an enamel mug knocking against the stovetop.

"Her father, say something, will you?" Liu Cuifang kept her voice down. "The Wang family in Houtun (the back village) has agreed to twenty-five. They'll come first thing tomorrow morning to fetch her. As her father, you can't let your daughter eat my food for twelve years for nothing."

Lin Jianguo coughed, his voice muffled. "Wanyue is still young..."

"Eighteen already! I had already given birth to Qiuyue at eighteen."

Lin Wanyue sat up slowly.

She remembered this night. On this night in her previous life, she had knelt on the kang and cried, cried until past midnight, until her throat was hoarse, and the next day she was hauled to Houtun on a sledge, a piece of red cloth over her head, and under that red cloth was a life traded for twenty-five yuan.

In the three years that followed, whenever Wang the Cripple got drunk he beat her with a belt. On the twenty-third of the twelfth lunar month, Little New Year, she curled up in the woodshed with half a torn sack over her, listening to firecrackers outside, swallowing her breath away one mouthful at a time.

When she opened her eyes again, it was the back kitchen of Hongxing Restaurant. Master Chen had dug her out of a snowdrift and said, girl, your life is tough. She stood at that stove for ten years, from washing dishes to running the ladle, training up a hand of knife work and heat control, and saved three hundred and twenty yuan — and before she could spend it, she was gone again.

Now she had come back.

Lin Wanyue threw off the quilt, set her feet on the kang mat, and cold rose up from the soles of her feet. She put on her padded jacket and fastened the buttons one by one.

The door curtain of the outer room was a piece of blue cloth washed pale. She lifted it with one hand and went out.

A kerosene lamp burned in the outer room, its shade blackened with soot. Liu Cuifang sat cross-legged on the edge of the kang stitching a shoe sole, the awl driving into the thick cloth with a hiss. Lin Jianguo squatted at the mouth of the stove feeding corn stalks into the firebox, the firelight on half his face, his brows knotted into a lump.

On the kang table sat half a basin of cornmeal porridge, already skinned over. Beside it was an enamel mug, with a few grains of sorghum settled at the bottom.

"Oh, you're awake." Liu Cuifang did not even raise her eyelids. "Good, you're awake — let me tell you about tomorrow. The Wang family in Houtun, a bride price of twenty-five yuan, they'll come early tomorrow to fetch you. Go over there and live properly, and don't shame this family."

Lin Wanyue stood under the door curtain and did not move.

"Auntie," she spoke, her voice not loud, "that twenty-five yuan — is it for me, or for Qiuyue?"

Liu Cuifang's awl paused. "What kind of talk is that, girl? A bride price goes to the family, of course. Your father raised you to this size—"

"My father raised me?" Lin Wanyue took a step forward and stood still before the kang table. "From the age of eight I went up the back hill to gather coal lumps — three thousand jin in one winter, and the team recorded the work. At ten I went to help in the Third Company canteen, washing vegetables, tending the fire, chopping filling, and Master Chen Guizhi credited me with half a worker's work points. Up to this year, that makes a full eight years."

She picked up the enamel mug, looked at the few grains of sorghum at the bottom, and set it down again.

"The Third Company's work point accounts are locked away at company headquarters. One day's work is twelve cents. I did more than two hundred days of work a year, more than sixteen hundred in eight years, which comes to more than one hundred and ninety yuan. That money — I never saw a single cent of it."

Liu Cuifang's face darkened. "You eat mine and drink mine, and you dare settle accounts with me? Which piece of clothing you've worn since you were small wasn't made from cloth I bought? The year your mother died, wasn't it me who arranged the coffin—"

"The year my mother died, the sewing machine was sold for forty yuan," Lin Wanyue said.

The room went quiet at once. In the firebox, a corn stalk popped with a crack and threw out a spark.

Lin Jianguo raised his head.

"That Butterfly-brand sewing machine — my mother brought it as part of her dowry, and it always stood in the east room. In the third month after my mother passed, Auntie said the family had no grain, and pushed the sewing machine to the supply and marketing cooperative and sold it. Forty yuan — I remember it." Lin Wanyue looked at Liu Cuifang. "If Auntie wants to settle the food account, then let's settle it item by item. Eight years of work points, one hundred and ninety; the sewing machine, forty; together, two hundred and thirty. The cornmeal I've eaten these years — count thirty jin a year, two hundred and forty jin in eight years, at eight cents a jin, nineteen yuan twenty. That leaves two hundred and ten yuan eighty. Auntie, when will you give it to me?"

The shoe sole in Liu Cuifang's hand dropped onto the kang.

"You — you're talking nonsense—"

"Master Chen at the Third Company canteen keeps the accounts. Accountant Old Zhou at company headquarters keeps them too." Lin Wanyue said, "If Auntie won't admit it, then before the Wang family comes to fetch me tomorrow, I'll invite Master Chen over first, and we'll check it face to face in front of a roomful of people."

Her voice stayed low the whole time, sentence by sentence, like chopping filling — neither fast nor slow, every cut of the knife landing on the board.

Liu Cuifang opened her mouth and said nothing.

Lin Jianguo closed the stove door, stood up, and rubbed his hands together. "Wanyue, your auntie is also... also doing it for this family..."

"Dad," Lin Wanyue turned her head and looked at him, "when my mother died, I was eight. What you promised her — do you still remember?"

Lin Jianguo's lips moved, he made no sound, and he squatted back down.

Liu Cuifang came back to herself, changed the look on her face, and squeezed out a little smile. "Oh my, Wanyue has grown up, she's learned to talk. Auntie was only teasing you. This bride price business — how could I really not care about you? Sit down and have a mouthful of porridge."

Lin Wanyue did not sit.

"Where is the marriage contract?" she asked.

Liu Cuifang's eyes flickered. "What marriage contract?"

"If the Wang family wants to marry someone, there has to be a marriage contract. Bring it out and let me look."

"That thing is kept by your father." Liu Cuifang turned her head. "Her father, take it out and show her, so she can set her heart at rest."

Lin Jianguo fished an oiled-paper packet from behind the stove and opened it layer by layer; inside was a sheet of red paper. His hand trembled a little as he handed it over.

Lin Wanyue took it and held it close under the kerosene lamp.

The red paper was cut neat and square, with characters written on it in a brush, the ink marks old.

"...Hereby Lin Wanyue, aged eighteen, daughter of Lin Jianguo of the Third Company of Red Flag Farm, is betrothed to Wang ... of Houtun..."

The name after that character "Wang" had been blacked out with a blob of ink. It was laid on thick, yet a stroke showed faintly through from underneath — not the level horizontals and straight verticals of a character like "cripple," but more like the character "Gu," a vertical on the left, a horizontal fold on the right, and a dot on top besides.

Lin Wanyue's fingers stopped on the paper.

She had never seen this marriage contract in her previous life. In her previous life she had been pushed and shoved by Liu Cuifang into the sledge, the red cloth had come down over her head, and she had seen nothing clearly. Later, at Wang the Cripple's house, that marriage contract had been kept pressed at the bottom of a chest by Wang the Cripple, and she had never dared to rummage for it.

Now she saw it clearly: what this marriage contract originally named was not Wang the Cripple. Someone had taken ink and blacked out the original name, and added three other characters below it. The added characters were in fresh ink, the edges still bleeding.

"Auntie," she raised the red paper, "who was originally written here?"

Liu Cuifang leaned over for a look, her face showing no change. "Who could it be? Just the Wang family. One stroke was written wrong, so it was blacked out and written again."

"Written wrong and you black it out with ink?" Lin Wanyue brought the paper closer to the lamp. "This stroke underneath is the character 'Gu.'"

"Your eyes are deceiving you, girl." Liu Cuifang reached out to snatch it.

Lin Wanyue stepped back, folded the red paper up, and stuffed it into a pocket inside her padded jacket.

"I'll keep this marriage contract for now."

"You—"

"When the Wang family comes tomorrow, I'll ask them face to face." Lin Wanyue said, "If the Wang family acknowledges this marriage contract, I'll go with him. If they don't, then whose marriage contract this is will have to be made clear."

The smile on Liu Cuifang's face could no longer hold; the corner of her mouth twitched. She looked at Lin Jianguo. Lin Jianguo kept his head down and did not make a sound.

"Fine, fine." Liu Cuifang sat back on the kang and picked up the shoe sole again. "This girl's wings have hardened. Keep it, then, keep it. Tomorrow you'll have your chance to talk."

Lin Wanyue said nothing more. She picked up the half basin of porridge that had skinned over, went to the stove, stirred it with a spoon, ladled out a bowl, and ate it with a lump of pickled vegetable.

When she had finished eating, she washed the bowl and put it back on the bowl rack. As she passed Liu Cuifang, she paused.

"Auntie, my mother's sewing machine, the Butterfly brand, has a plum blossom carved on its head. If one day I see it in someone's house, I'll be able to recognize it."

The awl Liu Cuifang was stitching the sole with went astray, pricked her finger, and she hissed.

Lin Wanyue went back to the east room.

The east room was small: one kang, one elm chest, and a chipped mirror set on the chest. She took off her padded jacket, sat on the edge of the kang, took the marriage contract out again, and looked at it by the small kerosene lamp on the windowsill.

She made out the characters on the red paper one by one. In her previous life she had not known how to read; it was at Hongxing Restaurant that Master Chen taught her. In ten years she learned more than three hundred characters, enough to read recipes and keep accounts.

The blacked-out name at the bottom of the marriage contract had thick strokes and a heavy start to each stroke — a man's handwriting. At the altered place, the three newly added characters, "Wang the Cripple," were in thin strokes — Liu Cuifang's hand.

She turned the marriage contract over. There was nothing on the back, just a sheet of red paper.

But when she held the paper up to the lamp, a faint mark showed through inside it — where the ink had soaked through when the original words were written. She squinted and studied it for a long time, and made out half of the character for "Chang," and half of the character for "Feng."

Gu Changfeng.

Battalion commander of the Third Battalion, Gu Changfeng.

Lin Wanyue set the marriage contract down and pressed her hands on her knees.

She had heard this name in her previous life. The people of the Third Company had said that Commander Gu had come to the farm that winter to collect recruits, had eaten a meal in the canteen, and had praised Master Chen's pork stew with vermicelli. At the time she had been washing dishes in the back kitchen, and had glanced through the door curtain and seen only a back — shoulders very broad, a walk that leaned a little to one side, from an old wound in the left shoulder.

And after that? After that she had gone to Houtun and heard nothing more.

How could this marriage contract be Gu Changfeng's?

She could not work it out. Liu Cuifang, a dependent of the Third Company — how could she get hold of a marriage contract bearing Gu Changfeng's name? Unless this marriage contract was real to begin with, unless someone had truly promised this marriage, and Liu Cuifang had altered it, wanting to trade her for twenty-five yuan.

She folded the marriage contract up again, stuffed it into the lining of her padded jacket, and pressed the jacket under her pillow.

The lamp in the outer room was still lit.

Lin Wanyue blew out the lamp in her own room, lay down, and kept her eyes open.

After who knows how long, lowered voices came from the outer room. It was Liu Cuifang, and Lin Qiuyue.

"...Where was the medicine put?"

"In the little paper packet behind the stove. Tomorrow morning make her a bowl of porridge and put it in. Once she drinks it she'll go muddled, and when the Wang family comes they can tie her up, lift her onto the sledge, and go. Once she reaches Houtun and the raw rice is cooked into cooked rice, what can she do then?"

"Mother, that medicine won't hurt her, will it?"

"The barefoot doctor gave it, it's for calming the nerves — put in a bit more and she'll just sleep. Stop talking nonsense. Tomorrow you just carry the porridge in, and don't give anything away."

"And if she won't drink it?"

"Won't drink it?" Liu Cuifang gave a cold laugh. "If she won't drink it, you tell her this porridge was made specially for her by her father, to see her off. With her father — could she refuse to give him face?"

Lin Wanyue lay on the kang, motionless.

Outside the window the wind scraped at the window paper, puff, puff. Far away a dog barked, barked twice, and stopped.

She pulled the quilt up a little higher, to cover her chin.

Under the pillow, the hard corner of the marriage contract dug into her hand.