Chapter 3: غدًا نأتي للعروس

The sky had not yet fully brightened, but Liu Cuifang's voice already had.

"Wretched girl, are you up or not! The Wang family's donkey cart will be here at noon, and you're still lying there playing dead?"

Lin Wanyue bit off the last bit of thread. The marriage contract was already sewn into the lining, against the side over her heart. She pulled on her padded jacket and went out, and ran straight into Liu Cuifang coming out of the kitchen with a basin of wash water. The water was warm, with two bits of dried scallion skin floating on top.

"Wash your face." Liu Cuifang thumped the basin down on the ground. "Wash your face white and clean, comb your hair smooth. When people come to look over a bride, the first thing they look at is the face."

Lin Wanyue crouched down and washed her face. The water went cold fast; she scrubbed twice and got up.

"Mother, I want to make Father something hot to eat."

"Make what? The Wangs will take you away at noon. Why waste the firewood?"

"Just one meal." Lin Wanyue laid the towel on the rack, her voice not loud. "Father raised me for eighteen years. If I leave home without even making him a hot meal, what will the people of Third Company say when it gets out? That the Lin family married off a daughter and would not even let her light the stove?"

Liu Cuifang's mouth opened a little. What she feared most was people talking, especially the women of the company gathering in a knot to wag their tongues. She poured the water out of the basin and snorted: "Make it! Hurry up and make it! Then change your clothes when you're done!"

Lin Wanyue went into the kitchen. The cornmeal was in the vat; she scooped out two ladlefuls, thought about it, and added half a ladleful more. The soybean flour was in a coarse cloth bag; she grabbed two handfuls. She got the fire going in the stove and boiled water first. When the water boiled, she mixed the cornmeal and soybean flour together and scalded them, stirred them into flocs with chopsticks, then kneaded with her hands. There was not much dough, and she kneaded it carefully: knead a round, let it rest a while, rest a while, then knead another round.

There were footsteps outside the door. Chen Guizhi lifted the curtain and came in, a blue cloth kerchief wrapped around her head, carrying half a bowl of tofu dregs.

"Girl, last night when you came to my place to borrow a grater, I felt something was off." She set the bowl on the stove top and jerked her chin toward the east room. "Your mother still had her lamp on in the second half of last night."

"Mm." Lin Wanyue took the tofu dregs and mixed them into the dough. "Auntie, do me a favor today."

"Say it."

"Just sit here in the kitchen stitching shoe soles. If you hear any movement from the east room — don't leave."

Chen Guizhi looked at her, then slowly took an unfinished shoe sole out of her apron pocket: "Your father isn't a bad man at heart, he's just too easily swayed."

"I know." Lin Wanyue pulled the kneaded dough into pieces and pressed them flat one by one. "That's why I'll make him breakfast first."

Chen Guizhi sat down on the kitchen threshold, and her awl pierced through the shoe sole with a hiss.

Lin Wanyue added water to the pot and set in the steaming grate. She arranged the dough pieces inside and closed the lid tight. The flames in the stove licked the bottom of the pot, and steam squeezed out around the edge of the lid, carrying the sweet smell of soybean flour.

"Auntie," Lin Wanyue crouched before the stove, tending the fire, "what kind of man is Gu Changfeng?"

Chen Guizhi's hand paused, the awl stopping in midair: "Why are you asking about him?"

"On the marriage contract, the groom's name has been changed by someone. Under the old ink, I made out the character Gu."

Chen Guizhi put the shoe sole down and lowered her voice: "Commander Gu lived in Third Company for a winter. The year before last, during a field training exercise, the soldiers he led were quartered at our company headquarters. The man doesn't talk much. When he came to the canteen for food, he never picked and chose; whatever he was given, he ate. Once I scalded my hand, he set down his lunch box and went to the clinic to get ointment for me, and by the time he came back his food was cold, and he didn't say a word." She paused. "He's a man who sticks stubbornly to what he believes is right. Once he's set on something, nine oxen couldn't drag him back."

Lin Wanyue lifted the pot lid, and steam surged up into her face. She picked the steamed corn buns into a basket: cornmeal mixed with soybean flour, golden yellow, risen soft and fluffy.

The kitchen curtain was lifted. Liu Cuifang, her hands covered in flour, darkened her face: "A few steamed corn buns and that's it? Where are the dishes?"

"A stew." Lin Wanyue put the chopped pickled cabbage into the pot, and fished two pickled cucumbers out of the jar in the corner, shredded them and tossed them with minced garlic. While the pickled cabbage and tofu stewed in the pot, she set the steamed corn buns on the table, and separately brewed a bowl of toasted-flour porridge for Lin Jianguo alone.

Liu Cuifang slapped a pair of chopsticks down in front of Lin Jianguo: "Eat! Once you've eaten and seen your daughter onto the cart, you'll have done right by the Lin family ancestors."

Lin Jianguo picked up the bowl of porridge, opened his mouth, and made no sound.

Lin Wanyue sat down opposite him. She ate a bite of a steamed corn bun, chewed it through carefully, and put down her chopsticks.

"Father."

Lin Jianguo raised his head.

"This match with the Wang family — did you agree to it?"

"Your mother arranged it."

"Have you met anyone from the Wang family?"

"No."

"Then do you know how much bride price the Wang family is giving?"

Lin Jianguo looked at Liu Cuifang. Liu Cuifang was picking up pickled cabbage, her chopsticks frozen in midair, and her face tightened at once: "Twenty-five yuan! What about it? Think it's too little? The old Zhao family in Houtun only gave eighteen yuan when they married off their daughter, and theirs was a first-marriage girl!"

"A first-marriage girl." Lin Wanyue repeated it, her voice flat as if she were reading a newspaper. "And the one in the Wang family — is his a first marriage?"

Liu Cuifang knocked her chopsticks against the bowl: "What do you mean by that?"

"I hear Wang the Cripple's previous wife has been dead less than a year." Lin Wanyue picked up the toasted-flour porridge and took a sip, and the tip of her tongue shrank back from the scald. "Coal fumes got her. In the twelfth lunar month, the doors and windows were sealed dead tight, the kang was heated hot, and in the night she was overcome by the coal fumes. They only found her the next morning."

The kitchen went quiet for an instant. The awl in Chen Guizhi's hands, stitching the shoe sole, stopped.

Liu Cuifang slammed her chopsticks down on the table with a smack: "Who have you been listening to, babbling nonsense! She died of illness —"

"If she died of illness, why didn't they fetch a doctor in the twelfth lunar month? That barefoot doctor in Houtun is thirty li away, half a day by cart there and back." Lin Wanyue put the bowl down and looked at Liu Cuifang, her gaze not hard, yet somehow impossible to look away from. "Mother, you know better than I do. Over on the Wang family's side, don't you know two other people as well?"

Liu Cuifang's face flushed from red to purple.

Lin Jianguo had not said a word all along. He set the porridge bowl down, rubbed his hands on his knees, then suddenly stood up, went to the kang cabinet, opened the door at the bottom, and pulled out a blue cloth bundle. The bundle opened: inside was a length of cheap cloth, half new, and two pairs of shoe uppers.

"Cuifang," Lin Jianguo said in a muffled voice, "where did this cloth come from?"

"I bought it! So what!"

"Last month when I brought back the work-point book, you took five yuan out of it and said it was to buy salt. We still have half a vat of salt at home."

"Are you checking up on me?"

"I'm not checking up on you." Lin Jianguo set the cloth down on the kang. "I may not go out much, but I'm not blind yet."

He turned around, walked slowly back, and sat down on the chair. His hands rested on the table, all ten fingers thick-knuckled, covered with calluses from splitting firewood.

"Lin Wanyue is my daughter." He said it word by word. "When her mother passed, she held my hand and said, Jianguo, raise our daughter well and find her a good family. I promised her."

Liu Cuifang's face twisted out of shape: "What do you call a good family? What's wrong with Wang the Cripple? He has a house and land —"

"A house and land, his previous wife gone, and he comes with twenty-five yuan to buy my daughter as a replacement wife." Lin Jianguo raised his eyes, their rims red. "Cuifang, I'm not going to quarrel with you. I'll only ask you one thing — on that marriage contract, did you change the groom's name or not?"

The east room was so quiet that you could hear the straw rustling under the kang mat.

Liu Cuifang did not answer, but her two hands clutched the corners of her apron without her noticing. Lin Jianguo waited three seconds, then suddenly reached out, picked up the porridge bowl on the stove top, gulped down the last mouthful, and thumped the bowl down on the table —

"Tell the Wang family: this match is off."

Liu Cuifang shot to her feet: "What did you say?"

"It's off."

"Lin Jianguo, you've turned the sky upside down! The bride price has already been taken! They'll be here at noon to fetch her —"

"Whoever took it gives it back." Lin Jianguo sat unmoving, but his spine was straighter than usual. "If you won't give it back, I'll go to the Wang family and return it myself. If we don't have enough grain, we'll make it up with our cornmeal; if we don't have enough money, I'll go to the company office and sign an IOU to be deducted month by month. I, Lin Jianguo, have kept my back bent for half a lifetime. Today it won't bend."

Chen Guizhi put the shoe sole into the basket and stood up: "Brother Jianguo, that's well said. I'll go tell Old Zhao at the canteen to prepare food for a few extra people at noon today, in case the Wang family comes to argue it out, so there'll be people from our company present."

She started off, then at the door she turned and looked back at Liu Cuifang: "Cuifang, some things look ugly once they're laid out in the open. Think it over yourself."

Liu Cuifang's face went white, then red, her mouth opening and closing, and at last she sat down heavily on the edge of the kang, covered her face, and cried: "What am I doing it all for... I run this whole big household, what am I doing it all for..."

Lin Wanyue stood up and cleared the bowls. She went up to Liu Cuifang, stacked the bowls into the basin, and said in a low voice: "Mother, what you're after is twenty-five yuan, but if you drag yourself down along with it, it won't be worth it."

Liu Cuifang peered at her through her fingers, and her crying caught for a moment.

Lin Wanyue carried the basin toward the kitchen. At the door curtain she stopped, without turning her head.

"Father, if anyone comes in a while, don't rush out. I'll deal with it."

"Can you deal with it?" Lin Jianguo asked.

"If I can't, we'll see then." She lifted the curtain and went out.

Before noon, the sun pushed out from a seam in the clouds, lighting the snow piled in the yard a dazzling white. Lin Wanyue washed the bowls, wiped the stove top clean, untied her apron, smoothed her hair with wet hands, coiled her braid at the back of her head, and pinned it with two black iron hairpins.

Chen Guizhi had not come back yet. Lin Qiuyue slipped out of her own room and stood at the doorway of the east room, her eyes rolling around the yard twice, then suddenly shrank back, her voice coming through from inside the room: "Mother! There's a donkey cart on the dirt road at the west end!"

Lin Wanyue went to the window, dipped her fingertip in saliva, and poked a small hole in the window paper.

On the dirt road west of Third Company, a donkey cart was swaying slowly this way. The driver was a short man, the ear flaps of his padded hat drooping on both sides, and in the cart bed sat a woman in a red padded jacket, clutching a piece of red cloth in her hand.

The bell on the donkey's neck rang out crisp and clear: once, and then again.

Liu Cuifang rushed out of the room, her face unwashed, her hair loose, clinging to the doorframe for a look outside, and her feet came alive again under her: "I told you so! The Wang family is here! Lin Jianguo! Come out! You tell them! You tell them yourself!"

Lin Jianguo came out of the room, his hands with nowhere to go, clutching a tobacco basket with nothing lit.

The donkey cart entered the yard.

The short driver jumped down and lifted a basket covered with a blue cloth out of the cart bed: "Big Brother Lin! Sister-in-law! You're home! These are twenty-five eggs, my brother asked me to bring them along —"

Before the words were finished, at the far end of the dirt road, another sound rose.

Dull, heavy and solid. Not donkey hooves.

Lin Wanyue stood behind the window and saw a military-green truck coming along the dirt road at the west end, snow piled on its canopy, anti-skid chains wrapped around its tires, crunching over the snow-covered road. Behind the truck bed, two people were running to keep up, in cotton military uniforms and leather hats.

The truck stopped outside the yard gate. A man in his twenties climbed down from the cab, his face red with cold, a pistol holster at his waist, trotted into the yard, saluted Lin Jianguo, and in a voice loud enough for the whole yard to hear:

"Excuse me, is this the home of Comrade Lin Jianguo? Battalion Commander Gu Changfeng of the Third Battalion sent me to fetch someone. This is the marriage report approved by the organization —"

The whole yard fell silent.

The Wang family's driver stood with the basket frozen in midair. Liu Cuifang's mouth hung open, and the red cloth of the woman in the red padded jacket dropped onto the donkey cart's wheel. Lin Qiuyue poked half her head out through the crack of the door.

Lin Wanyue lowered her hand. Through the small hole in the window paper came the bright white daylight from outside.

She lowered her head and squeezed the corner of cloth inside her front, where the marriage contract was sewn.

The loud voice outside was still ringing: "Sir! Commander Gu says — today is a good day, and the two families' roads should be walked together!"