the Li family, about thirty li away.”
“I want to go with you.”
“No, you can’t, darling!”
“Why?” he countered.
“You’ll stay home with daddy. He’ll take good care of you. He’ll sleep with you and
play with you. You just listen to daddy. In three years …”
Before she had finished talking the child sadly interrupted her.
“Daddy will beat me!”
“Daddy will never beat you again.” Her left hand was stroking the scar on the right
side of the boy’s forehead –a reminder of the blow dealt by her husband with the handle of
a hoe three days after he killed the baby girl.
She was about to speak to the boy again when her husband came in. He walked up to
her, and fumbling in his pocket, he said,
“I’ve got seventy dollars from them. They’ll give me the other thirty dollars ten days
after you get there.”
After a short pause, he added, “They’ve promised to take you there in a sedan-chair.”
After another short pause, he continued, “The chair carriers will come to take you
early in the morning as soon as they’ve had breakfast.”
With this he walked out again.
That evening, neither he nor she felt like having supper.
The next day there was a spring drizzle.
The chair carrier arrived at the crack of dawn. The young woman had not slept a wink
during the night. She had spent the time mending Chun Bao’s tattered clothes. Although it
was late spring and summer was near, she took out the boy’s shabby cotton-padded winter
jacket and wanted to give it to her husband, but he was fast asleep. Then she sat down
beside her husband, wishing to have a chat with him. But he slept on and she sat there
silently, waiting for the night to pass. She plucked up enough courage to mutter a few
words into his ear, but even this failed to wake him up. So she lay down too.
As she was about to doze off, Chun Bao woke up. He wanted to get up and pushed his
mother. Dressing the child, she said,
“Darling, you mustn’t cry while I’m away or daddy will beat you. I’ll buy sweets for
you to eat. But you mustn’t cry any more, darling.”
The boy was too young to know what sorrow was, so in a minute he began to sing.
She kissed his cheek and said,
“Stop singing now, you’ll wake up daddy.”
The chair carriers were sitting on the benches in front of the gate, smoking their pipes
and chatting. Soon afterwards, Mrs. Shen arrived from the nearby village where she was
living. She was an old and experienced matchmaker. As soon as she crossed the threshold,
she brushed the raindrops off her clothes, saying to the husband and wife,
“It’s raining, it’s raining. That’s a good omen, it means you will thrive from now on.”
The matchmaker bustled about the house and whispered and hinted to the husband
that she should be rewarded for having so successfully brought about the deal. ④本④作④品④由④④網④友④整④理④上④傳④
“To tell you the truth, for another fifty dollars, the old man could have bought himself
a concubine,” She said.
Then Mrs. Shen turned to the young woman who was sitting still with the child in her
arms, and said loudly,
“The chair carriers have to get there in time for lunch, so you’d better hurry up and
get ready to go.”
The young woman glanced at her and her look seemed to say, “I don’t want to leave!
I’d rather starve here!”
The matchmaker understood and, walking up to her, said smiling,
“You’re just a silly girl. What can the ‘Yellow Fellow’ give you? But over there, the
scholar has plenty of everything. He has more than two hundred mou of land, has own
houses and cattle. His wife is good-tempered and she’s very kind. She never turns anybody
from her door without giving him something to eat. And the scholar is not really old. He
has a white face and no beard. He stoops a little as well-educated men generally do, and he
is quiet gentlemanly. There’s no need for me to tell you more about him. You’ll see him
with your own eyes as soon as you get out of the sedan-chair. You know, as a matchmaker,
I’ve never told a