Miss Chopsticks (24 page)

Even when she was not with him, Big Ma occupied a lot
of space in Three's head. One day Wang Tong asked her what she was daydreaming about. She was worried that Three had become quieter since her encounter with the worm-wielding thugs. ‘Are you still bothered by that business the other day?' she asked.

‘No, it's nothing like that …' muttered Three, trying to dry up the glasses in front of her as nonchalantly as possible. ‘Only … What is love?'

Wang Tong's lips curved into a smile, but she spoke as if this was the kind of thing they always talked about. ‘Love is being happy when you see a person and sad when you don't. Why? Have you fallen in love with someone and not told me?'

‘No, no …' said Three blushing. ‘Don't worry. When I have, you'll be the first to know, all right?'

In fact, Three longed to tell someone she had fallen in love. She thought of confessing to her sisters, but she was worried that they would start asking her questions she couldn't answer. Even now, she didn't know who Big Ma's family were, or what they did, nor did she fully understand Big Ma's character or why he behaved in certain ways. If her two nosy little sisters started interrogating her, what would she say? The only thing she knew for certain was that this feeling had nothing to do with rutting animals, as she had once thought. Big Ma had not so much as touched the tips of her fingers, but Three already felt that she belonged to him. She had given him her heart. She was sure her mother and father had never experienced anything like this. If her father had, he wouldn't treat her mother like a lump of rock. And how could her mother have felt these things when she was simply ‘taken' from her parents? Three wanted so much to run home and whisper her secret in her mother's ear: your stone daughter has burst into flower!

But it seemed that Three was living an illusion …

One day, she had arranged to meet Six after lunch
outside the bargain warehouse to the east of the Confucius Temple. The plan was to do some shopping there before going on to the Dragon Water-Culture Centre to pick up Five, who wouldn't be free until later. The girls had heard from city people that this was the best time of year to pick up bargains; the same goods would go for several times the price in the month before Spring Festival. They wanted to find some presents to take home when the holiday came. The two sisters were just greeting each other in front of the warehouse when Three spotted Big Ma going in through another entrance. Her heart skipped a beat. There was a girl at his side! For a moment Three couldn't move for shock. Then she started thinking. Perhaps it hadn't been Big Ma after all. Grabbing Six's hand she persuaded her to go straight into the warehouse so that they didn't miss any bargains. She couldn't rest until she had found out whether it really was Big Ma that she had seen.

The warehouse was three storeys high and crammed full of stalls selling pretty, eye-catching things in every imaginable shape and colour. Shoppers had to squeeze through the narrow gaps between stalls, and the sound of haggling was deafening. Men bellowed, women screeched and little children wailed and shrieked. It was as if all of Nanjing's small traders had squashed themselves into the building. Six was thrilled, and immediately headed for the bargain clothing stalls where the prices were slashed through with big red crosses. She was so caught up with trying to decide what to buy for her mother and father, and what her married sister and Four might like, that it was some time before she realised that Three was no longer at her side.

The poor girl was pushing her way through the crowds, her heart crying out to Big Ma. She desperately wanted to find him, but at the same time she was afraid to. Eventually she caught sight of his tall, burly figure standing by a rail of trousers. Sure enough, there was a girl beside him,
laughing and chatting away. One of Big Ma's hands was even resting on her shoulder! In that instant Three felt her blood turn to ice, and a chill creep from her head to her heels. The bright colours of the building faded to grey; the noise and bustle vanished, leaving only an awful stillness. She thought she could feel herself dissolving.

When Six caught up with her sister she barely recognised her. Three, who five minutes before had been vibrant and happy, had suddenly lost all colour. There was not a trace of life on her face, no gleam of humanity in her eyes. She didn't even answer her sister's questions.

Six hastily helped Three outside, sat her down on the warehouse steps, and bought a bottle of iced water to bathe her palms and forehead. After a while, Three heaved a sigh and tears began to trickle down her cheeks. Six asked her what was the matter, but Three would not answer, saying only that she wanted to go home straightaway. Then she walked off without so much as a backward glance. Puzzled and confused, Six went to meet Five, who still couldn't go out by herself, wondering all the while what could have happened to her big sister.

Three went back to her little room and cried bitterly. Why had Big Ma not told her he had a girlfriend? Why couldn't he see what was in her heart? It had never occurred to her that Big Ma would take her out for any other reason than romantic interest. In her village, no man would be seen with a girl unless this was the case.

Suddenly the world of the city, which Three had thought she was beginning to understand, became a harsh and alien place with incomprehensible rules of its own.

Three tossed and turned all night, and the next day she made such a mess of the restaurant's display, breaking the stems of vegetables and squashing the melon, that the cook had to nip out for extra supplies while Wang Tong was looking the other way. It was the time of year when the market was filled with wonderful peaches. Usually Three
adored inventing new ways to hang these fruits on the wall, but today she just couldn't think what to do. She spent the day listlessly watching the customers come and go. That night, and for many more, she soaked her pillow in tears.

For the next two months dark clouds covered Three's sky. She became silent and withdrawn, and had no enthusiasm for her work. If Big Ma came to the restaurant to ask her to go out, she hid in the kitchen and asked the cook to pass on a message that she was busy. On her days off, she stayed in her room and didn't see her sisters.

Wang Tong was worried. When Three had come back early from her day off, she had assumed the sisters had had a row that would blow over. But Three's mood didn't improve for several days so she phoned the Book Taster's Teahouse to speak to Six about it. After hearing from Six that she had no idea what was the matter with her sister, Wang Tong began to think again. Slowly she came to the conclusion that it must have something to do with Big Ma. She asked her husband how he thought she should help Three. ‘Imagine coming to a city like Nanjing when you had never seen a television or a car,' she said to him. ‘Her heart is like a blank sheet of paper, ready to absorb whatever lands there.'

Guan Buyan discussed the matter with his father and brother.

‘Remember the expression “marry the dog and follow the dog, marry the cock and follow the cock”,' said Old Guan. ‘Once a girl marries, she forgets her past and gives everything to her husband. If you really want to help this
little girl, introduce her to a husband. Time will do the rest.'

His brother Guan Buyu agreed. ‘People are always saying that a first love is for ever, but that's nonsense. Find her another young man and she'll be much better.'

And so Buyan, Buyu and several other well-meaning people from under the big willow tried repeatedly to introduce Three to different young men. But it was no use: nobody could be as good as Big Ma and Three didn't want to meet any of them.

Wang Tong was at her wits' end. She couldn't bear to see Three wasting away in front of her, but nor could she think how to help. She was certain she had to find a way to get Three to talk to someone about her pain, but she couldn't persuade her to go out with her sisters. In the end it was a festival that provided her with the opportunity she needed. Three had always felt a responsibility to help her younger sisters understand life in the city, Wang Tong knew this, so she made use of the coming Double Ninth Festival to half coax, half order Three to meet up with Five and Six. ‘How will they know how to celebrate the festival if you don't tell them?' she said encouragingly. ‘Why don't you all go to the Qifangge Snack Bar and have a good chat.'

Five and Six had not seen their sister for almost two months, and were shocked by how much she had changed. Three, who had always been so rosy-cheeked and sturdy, had become almost unrecognisable. Her face was grey and lifeless, her shoulders were hunched, and she had lost so much weight that her bones were clearly visible through her flesh.

‘Whatever's the matter with you?' asked Five. ‘Six said we shouldn't disturb you. She had an idea that you were courting because the cook at your restaurant told her secretly. But how can courting wear a body out like this?'

When Three saw her sisters' concern and pity, she burst
into tears, even though she thought she had wept herself dry. Over a meal of duck-blood soup, tofu stewed with meat, and rice-balls with osmanthus flowers, she told them the whole story. Tears dripped into her food as she talked about how she had thought Big Ma was her boyfriend. Five and Six cried too. They were all so overwrought that they took three hours to finish three tiny bowls of snacks, much to the displeasure of the waiters who were annoyed that three migrant worker girls could hog a profitable table after spending only a few yuan. As for the tears, the waiters weren't particularly surprised: the Double Ninth Festival was when Nanjingers honoured the older generations, and around that time, there was always the odd person weeping into their soup over their dead parents.

Five and Six were at a loss as to how to console their sister. It seemed to them that there was little they could say to make her feel better. So, instead, they tried to make jokes to take her mind off things. The fact that there were so many festivals in the city but no one seemed to know exactly how to celebrate them, made them laugh.

‘All the books about ancient folk customs were burned after 1949,' said Six, wisely, ‘and now there are very few old people who remember them. That's why it's so confusing. Do you remember how Bao Daye in our village used to say that the Double Ninth Festival was about old city people climbing high hills and looking into the distance, hoping for long life, but Uncle Two said everyone in Zhuhai ate rice cakes with red letters on to bring good luck? And here in Nanjing they keep changing their minds. One minute they are buying chrysanthemums, the next they're saying that you need branches of dogwood to “drive off evil”!'

For the next half an hour, Five and Six entertained their sister with extravagant and humorous guesses about what each of the city festivals was supposed to mean, until eventually her gaunt face broke into a faint smile. But
when they parted, they could see that the smile was already fading.

Back at work, Five and Six both reflected on their elder sister's experience. Their reactions were very different. Five was furiously indignant on Three's behalf. To her, the whole thing was cut and dried: Big Ma was a bad man of the sort her mother had always talked about. The kind of man who wanted a foot in two boats or to wangle food out of two families. Five was surprised that Three had put so much trust in him. Surely her older sister had been in the city for long enough to have looked for a man before; so many people liked her, praising her nimble hands and saying she was as quick on the uptake as any city girl. Besides, Nanjing was such a big place, with so many men. Why was she determined to hang herself from this one tree? Their father said that, if a dog had gone hungry for three days, it would abandon its master and go to others for food. It seemed impossible to Five that Three had never thought about a man before Big Ma, or that she could be so foolish as to continue to pine for him now that he had proved himself so faithless.

The way Six saw it, Three was not nearly as ‘citified' as Five thought she was. For all her success at the Happy Fool, Three still had no real knowledge of urban life. If she had, she wouldn't have mistaken Big Ma's friendliness for love. It was clear he had simply been trying to help her get a better paid job. Six remembered conversations with Three where she had talked in confusion about the ‘Three Cs' of the city: cars, computers and credit cards. While Three vaguely understood about cars (although she couldn't think why anyone would buy something that cost so much in taxes, fines and parking fees), she had never got to grips with the idea of computers and credit cards. Six saw that, however long Three stayed in the city, she would never shake off the peasant mentality that had been
drummed into her since birth. Even though she didn't want to repeat the anguish of her parents' generation, she couldn't escape the fact that, for an uneducted country-woman, the goal of life was a husband: a prop to support her, the sun in her sky. The only way a peasant woman could prove her worth was by bearing children and doing housework. So it was that, as soon as Three believed that Big Ma was her own, her virgin heart was lost.

Of course, Six didn't discuss her opinion with Five. If anything, Five was an even more hopeless case. Six still giggled when she thought of the incredible knots Five had tied herself in when trying to explain how businessmen used the conference rooms at the Dragon Water-Culture Centre. ‘They've got these magic rooms,' Five had said. ‘They're full of televisions, “kara”-something machines that can make people sing, and electric brains … Auntie Wang says we're going to open two meeting rooms that can change talk.'

‘Change talk?' Six had asked, intrigued.

‘You know, change foreigners' talk into the words we speak … I think it's called “trans”-something …'

‘Translate,' Six had supplied helpfully.