Chronicle of a Blood Merchant (9 page)

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Xu Yulan spent twenty-one and a half of the thirty
yuan
that she had captured from Xu Sanguan’s outstretched fingers to make new clothes. She made herself a new pair of gray cotton pants and a light blue cotton-padded jacket embroidered with dark blue flowers. Yile, Erle, and Sanle each got a new cotton-padded jacket as well. Xu Sanguan was the only one in the family who didn’t get any new clothes, because every time Xu Yulan thought of the incident with Lin Fenfang, she was too angry.

Soon winter came. When Xu Sanguan saw that Xu Yulan, Yile, Erle, and Sanle all had new padded jackets, he said to Xu Yulan, “If you spend the money I earned selling blood on yourself or on Erle and Sanle, that’s fine with me. But I can’t stand for you to spend it on Yile.”

“Would you feel any better if I spent it on Fatty Lin?”

Xu Sanguan, hurt by this outburst, lowered his head and continued quietly, “Yile’s not my son. I’ve raised him for nine years already, and it looks like there’ll be many more years to come. I’ve already accepted that. And I’m perfectly willing to spend the money I make sweating over at the factory on him. But it just doesn’t feel right to spend any more of my blood money on him.”

Xu Yulan took the remaining eight and a half
yuan,
supplemented the sum with two
yuan
of her own, and used it to make Xu Sanguan a navy blue Mao jacket. She told Xu Sanguan, “This jacket was made with the money you earned selling blood. And I contributed two
yuan
of my own. Do you feel any better now?”

Xu Sanguan remained silent. Xu Yulan had something on him now, and he couldn’t afford to ride as high as he once had. In the past Xu Yulan had taken care of all the household chores while Xu Sanguan worked at the factory. After the affair with Lin Fenfang came out into the open, it was Xu Yulan’s turn to ride high. She took to wearing her finely woven sweater and strolling around with a handful of melon seeds, leisurely ducking in and out of the neighbors’ places for a chat. And once they had gotten started, she and her friends might prattle on for two, even three hours. Xu Sanguan, meanwhile, would be in the kitchen cooking rice and stir-frying some dishes, bathed in sweat. His neighbors would often poke their heads inside the door and, catching sight of Xu Sanguan busy with his cookery, laugh and say:

“Xu Sanguan, cooking again tonight?”

“Xu Sanguan, go a little easier. Chopping vegetables isn’t like chopping firewood, you know.”

“Xu Sanguan, since when did you get become so hard-working?”

Xu Sanguan would say to them, “There’s nothing I can do. Xu Yulan’s got something on me. It’s like the old saying goes: ‘A moment of pleasure leads to a lifetime of regret.’ ”

For her part, Xu Yulan was wont to tell the others, “I think I’ve finally got things straight. It used to be that I was always looking out for my man and doing everything for the sake of the kids. Just as long as they got enough to eat, I was perfectly happy to go hungry. As long as they were comfortable, I was willing to put up with any kind of discomfort. But I’ve finally got things straight. In the future, I’m going to look after myself. If I don’t care about my own welfare, no one else will. You just can’t trust men. Even if they have a beauty at home, they still think they can play around with other women. You can’t count on the kids either.”

Xu Sanguan realized how stupid he had been. The affair itself was one thing, but buying Lin Fenfang a heap of soup bones and yellow beans had been stupid. Even an idiot would have started to suspect something was going on when he found all those things on his wife’s table.

But the more he thought about it, the more he felt that the affair with Lin Fenfang hadn’t done much harm. After all, he hadn’t knocked her up. That was more than he could say for He Xiaoyong and Xu Yulan. They had produced Yile, and he was still responsible for the boy.

The more he thought about it, the angrier he became. So he called Xu Yulan over and told her, “From this day on, I’m not doing the housework anymore.” He said to Xu Yulan, “You did it one time with He Xiaoyong, and I did it once with Lin Fenfang. You and He Xiaoyong ended up with Yile. Did Lin Fenfang and I make a ‘Four-le’? We did not. We’ve both made serious mistakes, but yours was much more serious than mine.”

Xu Yulan burst into howls of protest and jabbed both hands toward his face. “You’re really no better than a beast. I’d already forgotten about your affair with that bitch. Now you insist on reminding me. What did I do in my past life to deserve this? Whatever it was, it’s coming back to haunt me.”

As she shouted, she edged toward her place on the doorstep.

Xu Sanguan rushed to block her way, saying as he held her fast, “Okay, okay, okay then, I’ll never bring it up again, all right?”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Xu Sanguan said to Xu Yulan, “This year is 1958. We’ve had People’s Communes, the Great Leap Forward, Backyard Steel Furnaces, and what else? They took back my grandpa’s and my fourth uncle’s land down in the countryside. From now on it looks like no one will have their own land anymore. All the land belongs to the state. If you want to plant crops, you’ll have to rent the land from them, and when you harvest the crop, you have to give some grain to the state too. The state is just like the landlords before. Of course, you can’t say that the state is a landlord. You should call it the People’s Commune instead. And our silk factory’s started to smelt steel too. We made eight little furnaces. Me and four other people are responsible for looking after one of them. So now I’m not the man who distributes the silkworm cocoons anymore. I’m a steel smelter now. You know why we have to smelt so much steel? Because steel is like grain, grain for the state. It’s like rice, wheat, meat, and fish for the state. That’s why smelting steel is just like planting rice in the paddies.”

Xu Sanguan said to Xu Yulan, “I was out taking a walk today, and I saw lots of people in red armbands going from house to house confiscating people’s woks, and their bowls, and their rice, and all their oil, salt, soy, and vinegar. I’ll bet they’ll show up at our place too in a couple of days. They say no one’s allowed to cook at home anymore. If you want to eat, you have to go to the canteen. You know how many canteens there will be in town? I counted three on the way home. There’s one at the silk factory, one at Heavenrest Temple, and they turned the old Buddhist monastery into a canteen too. All the monks have to wear white hats and aprons, so they look like real chefs now. And then there’s the theater around the block. That’s a canteen now too. You know where the kitchen is? Right on the stage. All the singing clowns from the Yue Opera Company are up onstage rinsing vegetables. I hear the leading man’s the deputy of the canteen, and the guy who always played the villains is the vice deputy.”

Xu Sanguan said to Xu Yulan, “I took you to the canteen at the silk factory the day before yesterday, and we went to Heavenrest Temple canteen yesterday. I’ll take you to the canteen at the theater again to eat today. There’s not enough meat in the dishes at the Heavenrest Temple canteen. The monks who do the cooking all used to be vegetarians, so they don’t use much meat. When we had the green pepper fried pork yesterday, didn’t you hear everyone joking that it was ‘green pepper minus the pork’? Now that we’ve tried three of the canteens, it looks like you and the kids like the one at the theater the best, but I still like the big canteen at the silk factory. The dishes at the theater aren’t bad, but they don’t have big enough portions. Over at the factory they give you more of everything, including meat, and you can eat as much as you want. I didn’t burp once after I ate at Heavenrest Temple canteen, and I didn’t burp after eating at the canteen at the theater either. But when I ate at the silk factory, I was burping all night long. Tomorrow I’ll take you to the big canteen at City Hall. They have the best food in town. That’s what Blacksmith Fang told me. He said the chefs over there are all from the Victory Restaurant, and those chefs definitely know how to cook the best dishes in town. You know what their specialty is? It’s fried pork livers.”

Xu Sanguan said to Xu Yulan, “Let’s not go to the City Hall canteen tomorrow. It’s so exhausting to eat over there. At least a quarter of the people in town go there for dinner. It’s more like getting in a big fight than having a meal. Besides, the kids almost got squashed to death over there, it was so crowded. My undershirt was wet through with sweat. And with so many people farting and stinking up the place, it’s hard to have much of an appetite. Let’s go to the silk factory tomorrow, okay? I know you want to go to the theater, but they’ve already shut down the canteen there, and I hear the one at Heavenrest Temple has been closed for a few days too. But the silk factory’s canteen is still open. But we’d better go early or else there won’t be anything left to eat.”

Xu Sanguan said to Xu Yulan, “They shut down all the canteens in town. Looks like the good times are over. No one’s going to take care of our meals anymore. Does that mean we have to cook for ourselves again? But what are we going to cook?”

Xu Yulan said, “There’s two crocks of rice underneath the bed. When they first came by to take the wok, the rice, the oil, salt, soy, and vinegar, I couldn’t bear to give them those two crocks of rice. That’s the rice I saved over the years by short-changing all of you, so I just couldn’t bear to let them take it away.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Xu Yulan had been married to Xu Sanguan for more than ten years now, and she had spent those years scrimping and saving and carefully calculating just to get by. The two crocks of rice she had under the bed were originally used for ladling; there was a slightly larger crock in the kitchen. Every day when she cooked rice, Xu Yulan removed the wooden lid from the rice crock in the kitchen and ladled just enough for the whole family’s daily consumption into the pot. Then she removed one handful of rice from the pot and placed it in one of the crocks under the bed. As she explained to Xu Sanguan, “None of you would have especially noticed an extra mouthful of rice anyway, and you won’t really miss a mouthful either.”

What this signified was that Xu Sanguan had eaten two less mouthfuls of rice than he was due every day. After Yile, Erle, and Sanle came along, they too were made to miss out on two mouthfuls a day. As for Xu Yulan, she cheated herself of even more rice. The rice that was saved by way of these measures ended up in a small crock underneath the bed. When the first crock was full, she got another empty rice crock and proceeded to fill that one up as well.

But Xu Sanguan disagreed. “It’s not as if we’re planning to open a rice shop or something. What’s the point of keeping so much rice around? If we don’t eat it by the summer, the bugs will get into it.”

Xu Yulan agreed, and she stopped putting away any more rice after she filled up the second crock.

If the rice was kept in storage for too long, the bugs would start to infest the crock. The bugs lived, ate, shat, and slept in the rice, turning grain after grain into powder. Their excrement looked a bit like flour, and it was difficult to tell the two apart— the only difference was that their shit was slightly yellow. As soon as the two crocks were full, then Xu Yulan would dump the contents into the bigger crock in the kitchen.

She would sit on the bed measuring how much rice there had been in the two small crocks and, based on its weight, how much money the rice had been worth. She would proceed to fold an equivalent sum into a neat packet and place it on the bottom of her trunk. This money was not to be spent.

She told Xu Sanguan, “This money was snatched bit by bit from out of your mouths. And you didn’t even notice the difference, did you?” She added, “We can’t use this money for anything ordinary. Something really important has to come up before we can spend it.”

Xu Sanguan took exception to this entire procedure. “This makes about as much sense as taking off your pants to fart. It’s all completely unnecessary.”

Xu Yulan said, “I really can’t agree with you. No one can get through life without ever getting sick or having some kind of disaster happen to them. Everyone has their ups and downs. And when hard times come, it’s better to be prepared than not. Smart folks always prepare some way out of a jam before it happens. And anyway, this is how I save a little money for all of us.”

Xu Yulan would often say, “Hard times are going to come. No one can go through their life without running into hard times once or twice. You just can’t escape.”

When Sanle was eight, Erle was ten, and Yile was eleven, the whole town was flooded. The floodwaters reached one meter at their deepest, and even the shallows came up to the knees. That June Xu Sanguan’s house lay in a pool of water for seven days. The water lapped back and forth across the floor, and when they slept at night, they could hear the sound of the rippling waves.

After the flood came famine. At first Xu Sanguan and Xu Yulan did not realize what was happening. They heard that most of the rice in the countryside was rotting in the paddies. Xu Sanguan thought of his grandpa and his fourth uncle and reassured himself that it was a good thing they were already gone—otherwise, how could they make it through the year? His other three uncles were still alive, but they almost never occurred to him, because they had never been good to him or paid him any mind.

It wasn’t until a constant stream of destitute people begging for food began to arrive in town that Xu Sanguan and Xu Yulan truly understood that famine was at hand. Every morning when they opened the front door, they would see beggars sleeping in the lane in front of their house. There were new faces every day, but they all grew more and more wasted and sallow as time went by.

The rice shop was open on occasion and sometimes closed. Every time it reopened, the price of rice would double or even triple. After a short while the money that used to buy ten pounds of rice would get you only two pounds of sweet potatoes. The silk factory stopped work, because there were no more silkworms. Xu Yulan no longer needed to go fry dough in the morning because there was no flour and no cooking oil. The schools shut down, and most of the shops in town closed their doors. Of the twenty or so restaurants that used to be in operation, only one— the Victory Restaurant—remained open.

Xu Sanguan said to Xu Yulan, “This famine has come at the worst possible time. If it had been a few years back, we would have been able to squeak through just fine. But we were already running low on supplies.

“Think about it. First they took away our wok and bowls, and then the rice, oil, soy, and vinegar. Then they dismantled the stove. I thought we’d be eating at those big canteens for the rest of our lives. I never thought that after only a year we’d be responsible for ourselves again. And it costs money to build another stove. It costs money to buy a new wok, new bowls, new spoons, and new plates again. It costs money to replace the oil, salt, soy, and vinegar. And all of a sudden we’ve had to spend most of that money you had saved, one
fen
at a time, over the years.

“It’s not that I mind spending the money—if we had had a couple of peaceful years, we would have been able to get back to speed after a while. But have we had any peace of mind the last couple years? First it was Yile. Yile’s not even my own son, and that in itself was a real shock. But what was worse was that he got us into so much trouble and I had to give Blacksmith Fang thirty-five
yuan.
It’s already been a tough couple of years, and
now
we’ve got a famine on our hands. Lucky we’ve still got two crocks of rice under the bed.”

Xu Yulan said, “We can’t eat the rice under the bed yet. There’s still some left in the kitchen crock. And we can’t eat plain rice anymore either. I’ve already figured everything out. The famine will last another six months, at least until the new crops start to come up next spring. We only have enough rice for another month, and even if we eat rice gruel instead, we still only have enough for a little more than four months. That leaves more than a month and a half without anything to eat. You can’t go without food for a month and a half. We’re going to have to eat even less in the first four months just to save some food for that last month and a half. And before winter comes, we’d better go out into the fields and gather all the wild vegetables we can find. Once the rice in the kitchen is done, we can fill the crock with wild vegetables, then cover them with salt so that they don’t go bad. They should last at least four or five months. We still have some extra money. I sewed it into the quilt. I never told you before, but I save the money from marketing as well. All told, there’s still nineteen
yuan,
sixty-seven
fen
left. We should take thirteen of that and buy corn. I think we can still get about a hundred pounds for the money. Then we can strip the kernels and grind them into corn flour. That should make about thirty pounds of corn flour. If we add the corn flour to the rice gruel, it’ll get nice and thick, and our stomachs won’t feel quite so empty.”

XU SANGUAN said to his sons, “All we’ve been eating for a month now is corn flour gruel. We’ve had so much of the stuff that you kids have lost your color, and you’re getting skinnier and skinnier, and you don’t have any energy at all. All you know how to say these days is ‘I’m hungry, I’m hungry, I’m hungry.’ It’s a good thing that all you little ones are still alive and well. But everyone in town is in the same boat. Go over to the neighbors’ places or your classmates’ houses, and you’ll see that we’re doing better than most. At least you get a bowl of corn flour gruel every day. You say you’re sick of eating wild vegetables and corn flour gruel? Well, that’s all you’re going to get, because these hard times won’t be over for a long time yet. I know you want to eat some plain rice or some rice gruel without the corn flour, and I’ve talked it over with your mom. We’re going to make you some, but we can’t do it yet.

“For now you’re going to have to keep eating the wild vegetables and the corn flour gruel. You complain that even the corn flour gruel is getting thinner and thinner, and that’s true, because we’re not out of the woods yet, and it might be a long, long time before it’s all over. So all your mom and I can do is protect you little ones and make sure you get through this alive. What they say is true: ‘You have to have a mountain before you can gather some wood.’ That means we have to get through these tough times now, so we’ll live to see better days. So you have to keep on eating corn flour gruel, even if it gets thinner and thinner, even if you say that the gruel’s all gone as soon as you take a piss.

“Which one of you said that? Must have been Yile. I know it was you. Little brat. You’re going on all day long about how hungry you are, but you kids are still small, and you get to eat as much corn flour gruel as I do every day. You go on all day long about how hungry you are, but you know why you’re so hungry? Because you’re out running around all day. As soon as you eat your gruel, you’re running out to play, and when I tell you to come back inside, you never listen. Sanle was even screaming and hollering out in the street today. Little brat. How can you carry on like that in times like these? In times like these you’ve got to speak softly and conserve your energy. Your stomach’s grumbling, you’re running on empty, and you still manage to run and shout and carry on? It’s no goddamn wonder you’re so hungry! You’re digesting all the gruel as soon as you’ve eaten it.

“From today on, Yile, Erle, and yes, you too, Sanle, are going to lie down after you’ve eaten your gruel. No more moving around. As soon as you start to move around too much, you get hungry. So do me a favor and just lie down and be quiet. Your mom and I are going to be lying there with you. I can’t say anymore. I’m so hungry I don’t have the energy to speak. The gruel we had just now is already gone.”

From that day on Xu Sanguan’s family ate corn flour gruel twice a day, once in the morning and once in the evening. The rest of the time they lay on the bed without moving or even speaking. As soon as they moved or started to speak, their stomachs would start to rumble, and the hunger would come. And lying quiet and motionless in bed all day long, they would naturally fall asleep. And so Xu Sanguan’s family began to sleep all day and every day, from morning to evening. And after they awoke for their gruel, they would sleep from the evening until the next morning. They slept until December 7.

On the night of December 7 Xu Yulan cooked an extra bowl of corn flour gruel and made it much thicker than usual. Then she roused Xu Sanguan and their sons from bed and smilingly told them, “We’ll have something good to eat tonight.”

Xu Sanguan, Yile, Erle, and Sanle sat at the table craning their necks to see just what Xu Yulan was going to bring to the table. But what she brought to the table was the same corn flour gruel that they had eaten day after day.

Yile was the first to voice his disappointment. “It’s just the same old corn flour gruel.”

Erle and Sanle, just as disappointed, echoed, “Just the same old gruel.”

Xu Yulan said to them, “Take a closer look. This stuff is a lot thicker than what we ate yesterday or the day before yesterday or any day for a long time now. You’ll know what’s special about it as soon as you take a sip.”

After each of the three sons took a sip, their eyes rolled in their sockets. Something
was
different about the gruel, but they were unable to place what exactly the difference was. Xu Sanguan also took a sip. Xu Yulan asked, “Now do you know what I put in there?”

The three sons shook their heads, picked up their bowls, and began to hurriedly slurp down the gruel.

Xu Sanguan said to them, “You kids have lost your minds. Can’t you tell that something is sweet when you taste it?”

Yile, coming to a sudden realization, cried, “It’s sugar! You put some sugar in the gruel.”

Erle and Sanle nodded enthusiastically as they continued to slurp noisily from their bowls, breaking into happy giggles as they swallowed. Xu Sanguan laughed as he slurped just as noisily and enthusiastically as the children.

Xu Yulan explained to Xu Sanguan, “I took out the sugar that was left over from Spring Festival and made the gruel nice and thick and sticky today. And I made you an extra bowl too. Do you want to know why? Because today’s your birthday.”

Xu Sanguan had already finished his first bowl of gruel. He slapped his head and exclaimed, “Today’s the day my mama gave birth to me!” Then he continued, “So you put some sugar in the gruel and made it thicker than usual and cooked an extra bowl for me, all because it’s my birthday. I get to eat a little more today.”

But before he could reach for the extra bowl, Yile, Erle, and Sanle had extended their empty bowls entreatingly toward him.

“Let’s give the extra bowl to them.” He gestured toward his sons.

“You can’t give it to them. I made it especially for you.”

Xu Sanguan said, “It doesn’t matter who eats it in the end. It’ll turn into shit no matter who eats it. Let the kids shit a little extra. Let’s give it to them.”

Xu Sanguan watched the children lift their bowls to their mouths and suck down the sweetened corn flour gruel. He said to them, “When you’re finished eating, each of you has to wish me a happy birthday with a kowtow.”

As soon as he had said it, though, he began to feel uneasy.
When is this ever going to end? It’s been so hard on the little
brats. They don’t even remember what it’s like to eat sweets, and
when they finally got something sweet, they didn’t even recognize the taste of sugar anymore.