Under the Hawthorn Tree (10 page)

‘Neither your cousin Fen nor Fang can make shoes. Who knows what they'll do once they are married off.'

Jingqiu comforted her. ‘These days, lots of people don't wear homemade shoes. They'll buy shoes once they're married.'

‘But bought shoes are not nearly as comfortable as home-made ones. I can't get used to those gym shoes. They are so sweaty, and when you take them off they're hot and stinky.' Auntie looked down at Jingqiu's feet and gasped, ‘Oh! Your feet are so small, just like those girls from rich families before the revolution. No girl who works out on the fields can have feet that pretty.'

Jingqiu reddened. These feet must have come from her landowning father. Her father's feet were considered small, whereas her mother's were not, proof that her mother's family were of good working stock, whereas her father's relied on exploiting the masses for a living.

‘They're probably from my father,' she said frankly. ‘My father . . . his family were landowners. When it comes to my thinking, I've drawn a clear line between my father and I, but when it comes to my feet . . .'

‘What's the big deal with being a landowner? You need both good luck and skill in household management to amass land. Those of us without fields, who rent land and pay rent to others, we also have our place. I don't like those people who are jealous of landowners and their money, they're just finding any excuse to denounce people.'

Jingqiu thought she was having hearing problems. Auntie's ancestors were all poor peasants, how could she say such reactionary things? She was sure that Auntie Zhang was testing her, and it was vital that she pass. She didn't dare to take the bait, choosing instead to bury her head in her sewing.

Two nights of toil and Jingqiu finished Lin's shoes. She asked him to try them on. He brought in a basin of water and carefully washed his feet, slipping them humbly into his new shoes. He called to Huan Huan to bring him a piece of paper which he laid out on the floor before taking a few measured steps.

‘Too tight? Too small? Do they pinch?' Jingqiu asked anxiously.

Lin smiled. ‘They're more comfortable than my mother's.'

Auntie Zhang laughed, and chided him playfully, ‘People do say “Find a wife, forget your mother”. But now, you—'

Interrupting, Jingqiu hurried to explain, ‘I made these shoes to thank Lin for getting the walnuts for my mother, there's nothing more to it than that.'

Two days later Old Third arrived with a big bag of rock sugar and gave it to Jingqiu to give to her mother. Jingqiu started with surprise. ‘You . . . how did you know my mother needs this sugar?'

‘You didn't tell me, but did you stop others from telling me?' He looked irked. ‘How come you can tell them, but you can't tell me?'

‘Tell who?'

‘What do you mean, who? Lin told me, that's who, said he could only get hold of the walnuts but not the sugar, and without the sugar the walnuts would be of no use.'

‘Such a big bag of sugar . . . how . . . how much was it?'

‘Such a big basket of walnuts, how much were they?'

‘The walnuts were picked from a tree . . .'

‘Sugar also grows on trees.'

So, he was bantering with her again. She giggled. ‘You're talking rubbish, sugar doesn't grow on trees . . . does it?'

He brightened on seeing her smile. ‘Wait till you earn some money and you can pay me back, fair and square. I'll make a note of it. How does that sound?'

Great, she thought, now I'm in trouble. If Lin and Old Third were working together to help her mother, did that mean she had to marry them both? She could only respond by laughing at herself again: Have either of them asked you to marry them? With a background like yours, it'd be a miracle if anyone ever wanted that from you.

People say ‘once the scar's healed you forget the pain', and of course they're completely right. As the days passed Jingqiu's anxiety abated until she grew bold enough to talk to Old Third again. Auntie and Mr Zhang had left for Auntie's home town and Yumin had taken Huan Huan to Yanjia River to visit her husband, so Jingqiu, Lin and Fen were alone in the house.

After finishing work Old Third would rush over to help make food, preferring to eat with Jingqiu rather than at the camp. One tended the fire while the other fried the vegetables, making an excellent team. Old Third had perfected the art of making crispy rice. First he boiled the rice, and once it was cooked he scooped it out of the pan and put it into a cast iron bowl, sprinkled it with salt and drizzled it with oil, and then tossed the rice over a low heat until it was fragrant and crisp. Jingqiu adored it. She could eat just this for dinner and be satisfied. Indeed her fondness for this dish amazed people – give her the option of fresh white rice or Old Third's crispy rice and she would, without fail, choose the latter. City people were odd.

Fen took the opportunity to bring her boyfriend back for dinner. Jingqiu had heard Auntie say of this young man that he was ‘all face', untrustworthy and a fly-by-night. He didn't do his farming work in the village but was always running around making small business deals. Auntie and Mr Zhang didn't like him and forbade Fen from bringing him to the house. Fen would sneak off to see him, but now her parents weren't at home she made a show of bringing ‘the face' back with her.

Jingqiu thought that ‘the face' was all right. He was tall, knowledgeable, and good to Fen. He also brought Jingqiu some hair bands with flowers on them, which he normally went from house to house selling, so she could put her hair in plaits. Fen held out her arm to show Jingqiu her new watch. ‘Nice, isn't it? He bought it for me. It cost one hundred and twenty yuan.'

One hundred and twenty yuan! That was the equivalent of nearly three months of her mother's wages. Fen refused to wash any vegetables or dishes while wearing it in case it got splashed with water.

As they ate, Old Third used his chopsticks to place food into Jingqiu's bowl, and ‘the face' did the same for Fen. Lin, partnerless, was left to scoop up a bowl of rice, take some vegetables, and disappear off on his own. Once he'd finished he would come back to leave his bowl and then slink off somewhere – no one knew where – returning only to go to bed.

In the evenings Fen and ‘the face' would shut themselves up in the room next door to do goodness knows what. Fen and Fang's rooms were only divided by a wall of about their own height, leaving an opening up to the roof. Needless to say, it was not soundproof. When Jingqiu was in her room, writing, she could hear Fen giggling as if she were being tickled.

Old Third sat in Jingqiu's bedroom helping her with the textbook. Occasionally she would knit while he sat opposite, feeding her the yarn. But sometimes she could see his mind wandering, his eyes still and fixed on her, and in this state he would forget to unravel the wool until she tugged at the other end of it. Pulled awake, his focus would return and he would apologise before letting out a long length of wool.

Jingqiu asked in a low voice, ‘That day, you weren't just being contrary when you said you wanted me to knit you a jumper, were you? How come you haven't bought any wool?'

‘I bought some. I just didn't know if I should bring it over.'

He must have seen how busy I've been these last days, and didn't want to trouble me, she realised. His kindness touched her, but this was a problem; whenever she was affected by someone's kindness she would make promises she shouldn't. ‘Bring the wool over, and once I finish this one I'll start yours.'

The next day Old Third brought the wool in a big bag – there was a lot of it. It was red; not vermilion but more of a rose-red, almost pink, and the same colour as azaleas. This was her favourite kind of red, but very few men wore this colour.

‘It's the same colour as the flowers of the hawthorn tree. Didn't you say you wanted to see them?'

‘Are you going to show me those flowers by wearing this jumper?' she laughed.

He didn't reply, but rather looked down at the collar of her jumper poking up over her cotton padded jacket. He must have bought the wool for me.

‘Promise you won't get angry?' he said. ‘I bought it for you.'

But she was angry. He must have taken a close look at her on that walk over the mountain and noticed how worn out her jumper was; otherwise why would he buy her wool? Her jumper was tight and short, and clung to her body. Her breasts were a bit big, and although she used a vest-like bra to rein them in they still protruded from under her jumper. Neither did her jumper cover her bottom. She had a bump at the front and a bump at the back, and knew herself to be a repulsive shape. Girls at school had a test for determining whether a girl had a good figure. If, while standing up against a wall, she could press her body flat against it, then she had a straight, and so attractive, body shape. Jingqiu had never passed this test. At the front her breasts stuck out too much, and with her back against the wall there were also gaps. Her friends laughed at her, calling her ‘three mile bend'.

Her mother had bought the wool for this jumper when Jingqiu was three or four years old. She didn't know how to knit, so had paid someone else to do it for her, but despite the large quantities of yarn – and due to this person knowingly wasting wool – she had got only two jumpers out of it, one for Jingqiu and one for Jingqiu's brother.

Subsequently, Jingqiu had learned to knit, and unravelled the two jumpers to knit the wool into one. After a few years she unravelled it again, added some cotton and knitted it into another jumper. Another two years passed and it was time to unravel the jumper again and add more wool. It had evolved into an explosion of colours, but as she was such a skilled knitter people thought the patchwork was of her design. However, it was an old jumper, and the wool had already become brittle, snapping easily into lengths. At first she tried twisting the ends together so you couldn't see the breaks, but there were too many to fix – each one was met by another – so she had to knot them together and forget about it. So, from the outside, her jumper was a seamless hotchpotch of abstract colours, the joins unfathomable. The reverse side, however, held a secret; it was covered in blisters and pimples, just like the sheepskin jacket Chairman Mao wore on Jinggang Mountain, its strands of wool curled back to their natural state.

Old Third must have seen these blemishes at some point and pitied me. He wants me to knit myself a new jumper. She was furious. ‘What's wrong with you? What business did you have . . . looking inside my jumper?'

‘The inside of your jumper? What's wrong with the inside of your jumper?'

He looked so innocent that she thought she had mistreated him. Maybe he hadn't seen it after all. They had walked together the whole way and he hadn't had any opportunity to look at the inside of her jumper. Maybe he thought the wool was a nice colour, reminding him of the flowers of the hawthorn tree, and simply bought it for her.

‘Nothing, I was joking.'

He looked relieved. ‘Oh, you're joking. I thought you were angry with me.'

Is he scared of me being angry? This thought puffed her up. I have the power to affect his emotions. He is the son of a cadre, is clever and capable, and looks like a capitalist, but in front of me he is earnest, as fearful as a mouse, and scared of making me angry. She felt like she was floating. She was playing with him, she was both conscious and unconscious of that; his alarm was confirmation of her influence over him. She knew she was being vain, and she did try not to be lured into this bad behaviour.

She wrapped up the wool and gave it back to him. ‘I can't take your wool, how would I explain it to my mother? She'd say I'd stolen it.'

He took it and replied quietly, ‘I hadn't thought about that. Can't you say you bought it yourself?'

‘I don't have one penny to my name, how could I afford that much wool?' She was squaring up to him now, using her economic situation as a weapon, as if to say, my family is so poor, what do you say to that? Do you look down on us? If so, then you'd better forget about it now.

He stood still, his face pained. ‘I hadn't realised. I hadn't realised.'

‘You hadn't noticed? There are lots of things you haven't noticed, your eyesight can't be up to much. But don't worry, I'm telling the truth when I say I'll pay you back the money for the sugar, and the pen. I take temporary work during the summer holidays, and as long as I don't take any breaks I can earn thirty-six yuan a month – it'll only take me that to pay you back.'

‘What kind of temporary work?'

‘You don't even know about that? I work on building sites, or shovelling coal on the docks, or painting in factories. Sometimes I make cardboard boxes – whatever. Why? What else would you call temporary work?' She was boasting now. ‘Not everyone can find temporary work. The reason I can is that the mother of a classmate is the head of a neighbourhood committee. She's in charge of that sort of stuff.'

She continued with a few amusing anecdotes but after a while noticed that Old Third wasn't laughing along with her stories, but instead was staring back at her, upset.

‘Gluing boxes sounds okay,' he said, ‘but don't work on a building site, and especially don't work at the docks, it's dangerous.' His voice was raspy. ‘A young girl like you doesn't have the strength for such work. You could be crushed to death or knocked down by a vehicle, and then what?'

She comforted him, ‘You've never done temporary work, so you think it sounds terrible, but in reality—'

‘I haven't done temporary work, no, but I have seen how the men on the docks shovel coal into steep piles. They don't hold the steering wheel and nearly drive the vehicles into the river. I've also seen how the men at building sites repair walls and tile roofs, with things dropping from ladders. They're all heavy, dangerous, jobs, otherwise they wouldn't give them to temps, the regular workers would do them. How come you don't worry about doing such dangerous work? Your mother must do.'