lie.”
The young woman wiped away her tears and said softly,
“Chun Bao … How can I part from him?”
“Chun Bao will be all right,” said the matchmaker, patting the young woman on the
shoulder and bending over her and the child. “He is already five. There’s a saying, ‘A child
of three can move about free.’ So he can be left alone. It all depends on you. If you have
one or two children over there, everything will be quiet all right.”
The chair bearers outside the gate now started urging the young woman to set out,
murmuring.
“You are really not a bride, why should you cry?”
The matchmaker snatched away Chun Bao from his mother’s arms, saying,
“Let me take care of Chun Bao!”
The little boy began to scream and kick. The matchmaker took him outside. When the
young woman was in the sedan-chair, she said,
“You’d better take the boy in, it’s raining outside.”
Inside the house, resting his head on the palm of his hand, sat the little boy’s father,
motionless and wordless.
The two villages were thirty li apart, but the chair carriers reached their destion
without making a single stop on the way. The young woman’s clothes were wet from the
spring raindrops which had been blown in through the sedan-chair screens. An elderly
woman, of about fifty-five, with a plump face and shrewd eyes came out to greet her.
Realizing immediately that this was the scholar’s wife, the young woman looked at her
bashfully and remained silent. As the scholar’s wife was amiably helping the young
woman to the door, there came out from the house a tall and thin elderly man with a round,
smooth face. Measuring the young woman from head to foot, he smiled and said,
“You have come early. Did you get wet in the rain? “
His wife, completely ignoring what he was saying, asked the young woman,
“Have you left anything in the sedan-chair?”
“No, nothing,” answered the young woman.
Soon they were inside the house. Outside the gate, a number of women from the
neighbourhood had gathered and were peeping in to see what was happening.
Somehow or other, the young woman could not help thinking about her old home and
Chun Bao. As a matter of fact, she might have congratulated herself on the prospects of
spending the next three years here, since both her new home and her temporary husband
seemed pleasant. The scholar was really kind and soft-spoken. His wife appeared
hospitable and talkative. She talked about her thirty years of happy married life with the
scholar. She had given birth to a boy some fifteen years before –a really handsome and
lively child, she said—but he died of smallpox less than ten months after his birth. Since
then, she had never had another child. The elderly woman hinted she had long been urging
her husband to get a concubine but he had always put it off –either because he was too
much in love with his wedded wife or because he couldn’t find a suitable woman for a
concubine. This chatter made the young woman feel sad, delighted and depressed by turns. ^o^^o^網^o^文^o^檔^o^下^o^載^o^與^o^在^o^線^o^閱^o^讀^o^
Finally, the young woman was told what was expected of her. She blushed when the
scholar’s wife said,
“You’ve had three or four children. Of course you know what to do. You know much
more than I do.”
After this, the elderly woman went away.
That evening, the scholar told the young woman a great many things about his family
in an effort to show off and ingratiate himself with her. She was sitting beside a red-
lacquered wooden wardrobe –something she had in her old home. Her dull eyes were
focused upon it when the scholar came over and sat in front of it, asking,
“What’s your name?”
She remained silent and did not smile. Then, rising to her feet, she went towards the
bed. He followed her, his face beaming.
“Don’t be shy. Still thinking about your husband? Ha, ha, I’m your husband now!” he
said softly, touching her arm. “Don’t worry! You’re thinking about your child, aren’t you?
Well …”
He burst out laugh