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“One day the boy goes to the place where his father keeps his money. He takes some cashand hides it in his pocket. Then he goes to where his mother keeps food. He fills a satchelwith as much as he can carry. Then, without a single goodbye, he walks away from hishouse and through the fields. He swims across the river and walks some more.” I thoughtof a faraway place. “He walks all the way to Guilin. You think this journey into themountains was hard? You think living outside in winter is hard? This is nothing. Out on the road, he had no friends, no benefactors, and only the clothes on his back. When he ran out of food and money, he survived by begging.”

The boy colored, not from the heat of the fire but from shame. He must have heard thathis maternal grandparents had been reduced to this life.

“Some people say this is disreputable,” I continued, “but if it is the only way to live, then ittakes great courage.”

From the other side of the fire, the butcher’s mother grunted. “You’re telling the story wrong.”

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I paid no attention. I knew how the story went, but I wanted to give this child somethingto hold on to.

“The boy wandered through the streets of Guilin, looking for people who were dressed asmandarins. He listened to how they spoke and shaped his mouth to make the samesounds come out. He sat outside teahouses and tried to speak to the men who entered.Only when his speech became refined did someone look his way.”

Here I broke with the story. “Boy, there are people who are kind in the world. You maynot believe it, but I have met them. You should always be on the lookout for someone whocan be a benefactor.”

“Like you?” he asked.

His grandmother snorted. Once again, I ignored her.

“This man took the boy in as a servant,” I resumed. “As the boy served him, the benefactortaught him everything he knew. When he could teach no more, he hired a tutor. Aftermany years the boy, now a grown man, took the imperial exam and became a mandarin—only at the lowest level,” I added, believing that such a thing was possible even for SnowFlower’s son.

“The mandarin returned to his home village. The dog before his family home barked threetimes in recognition. Mama and Baba came out of the house. They did not recognize theirson. The second brother came out. He did not recognize his sibling. The sister? She hadmarried out. When he told them who he was, they kowtowed, and very shortly thereafterthey asked him for favors. ‘We need a new well,’ his father said. ‘Can you hire someone todig it for us?’ ‘I have no silk,’ his mother said. ‘Can you buy some for me?’ ‘I have takencare of our parents for many years,’ the younger brother said. ‘Will you pay me for thetime I have spent?’ The mandarin remembered how badly they had treated him. Heclimbed back into his palanquin and went back to Guilin, where he married, had manysons, and lived a very happy life.”

“Waaa! You tell these stories and ruin an already ruined boy’s life?” The old woman spatinto the fire one more time and glared at me. “You give him hope when there is none?Why do you do that?”

I knew the answer, but I would never tell it to that old rat woman. We were not undernormal circumstances, I know, but away from my own family I needed someone to carefor. In my mind, I saw my husband as this boy’s benefactor. Why not? If Snow Flowercould help me when we were girls, couldn’t my family change this boy’s future?

soon animals in the hills around us became scarce, driven from their homes b thepresence of so many people or dead—as so many of us died— from the cruelty

yy of thatwinter. Men—farmers all—weakened. They had brought only what they could carry;when that ran out, they and their families starved. Many husbands asked their wives to go

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back down the mountain for supplies. In our county, as you know, women are not to behurt in wartime, which is why we are often sent to find food, water, or other supplies during upheavals. Harming a woman during hostilities always leads to an escalation offighting, but neither the Taipings nor the soldiers in the Great Hunan Army were from around here. They did not know the ways of the Yao people. Besides, how were we women, weak from hunger and frail on our bound feet, to go down the mountain inwinter and carry back provisions?

So a small band of men set out, treading carefully down the mountain, hoping to find foodand other necessities in the villages we had evacuated. Only a few made it back, and they told of seeing their friends decapitated and the heads mounted on stakes. The new widows, unable to bear the news, committed suicide: throwing their bodies over the cliffthey had worked so hard to climb, swallowing burning embers from the evening fire,cutting their own throats, or slowly starving themselves. Those who didn’t take this pathdishonored themselves even more by seeking new lives with other men around other fires. It seemed that in the mountains some women forgot the rules about widowhood.Even if we are poor, even if we are young, even if we have children, it is better to die,remain true to our husbands, and keep our virtue than to bring shame on their memories.

Separated from my children, I observed Snow Flower’s closely, seeing how they had been influenced by her, learning more about her through them, and—because I missed my own so terribly—comparing mine to hers. In my home, our eldest son had already taken hisrightful place and a bright future stretched before him. In this family, Snow Flower’seldest son had a position even lower than hers. No one loved him. He seemed adrift. Yetto me he was the most like my laotong. He was gentle and delicate. Perhaps this was whyshe had turned away from him with such a hard heart.

My second son was a good and smart boy, but he did not have the inquisitiveness of my first son. I imagined him living with us for his entire life, marrying in a bride, siringchildren, and working for his older brother. Snow Flower’s second son, on the other hand,was the bright light of this family. He had his father’s build, short and stocky, with strong arms and legs. The child never showed fear, never shivered from cold, never whined withhunger. He followed his father like a shadow spirit, even going on hunting expeditions. He must have been a help in some way or else the butcher would not have allowed such athing. When they returned with an animal carcass, the boy sat on his haunches next to hisbaba, learning how to prepare the meat for cooking. This similarity to his father told me a lot about Snow Flower. Her husband may have been crude, stinky, and beneath my oldsame in every way, but the love she showed the boy told me that she also cared very much for her husband. Spring Moon’s face and manner were everything that my daughter’s were not. Jade carried my so-so family’s coarseness in her features, which was why I was so hard on her. Since the moneys made from the salt business would provideher with a generous dowry, she would marry well. I believed Jade would make a goodwife, but Spring Moon would become an extraordinary wife, if she were given the chances I’d been given. All of them made me miss my family.

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I was lonely and scared, but this was softened by the nights with Snow Flower. But how do I tell you this? Even here, even under these circumstances, with so many people about,the butcher wanted to do bed business with my laotong. In the cold and open space rightnext to the fire, they did it under their quilt. The rest of us averted our eyes, but we couldnot close our ears. Thankfully he was quiet, with only the occasional grunt, but a few times I heard sighs of enjoyment—not from the butcher but from my laotong. I did notunderstand this thing. After that business was over, Snow Flower would come to me andwrap her arms around me as we had done as girls. I could smell the sex on her, but withthe freezing temperatures I was grateful for her warmth. Without her body next to mine Iwould have been just another woman who died in the night.

Naturally, with all that bed business, Snow Flower got pregnant again, though I hopedthat between the cold, the hardship, and our lack of nourishment that her monthlybleeding had simply paused as had mine. She did not want to hear that kind of talk.

“I’ve been pregnant before,” she said. “I know the signs.”

“Then I wish for you another son.”

“This time”—her eyes gleamed with a combination of happiness and certainty—“I willhave one.”

“Indeed, sons are always a blessing. You should be proud of your eldest son.”

“Yes,” she responded mildly, then added, “I have watched you two together. You like him.Do you like him enough for him to become your sonin-law?”

I liked the boy, but this proposal was out of the question.

“There can be no man-woman match between our families,” I said. I owed Snow Flower a great deal for what I had become. I wanted to do the same for Spring Moon, but I wouldnever allow my daughter to stoop so low. “A true-heart match between our daughters isfar more important, don’t you agree?”

“Of course you are right,” Snow Flower responded, unaware, I think, of my true feelings.“When we get home we will meet with Auntie Wang as planned. As soon as the girls’ feethave settled into their new shapes, they will go to the Temple of Gupo to sign theircontract, buy a fan to write of their lives together, and eat at the taro stand.”

“You and I should meet in Shexia too. If we are discreet, we can watch them.”

“Do you mean spy on them?” Snow Flower asked, incredulous. When I smiled, shelaughed. “I always thought I was the wicked one, but look who’s scheming now!”

Despite the privations of those weeks and months, our plan for our daughters gave us hope and we tried to remember life’s goodness with each passing day. We celebratedSnow Flower’s younger son’s fifth birthday. He was such a funny little boy and we were第 150 页 共 189 页

entertained watching him with his father. They acted like two pigs together—nosingabout, foraging, jostling their strong bodies against each other, both of them streakedwith dirt and grime, both of them delighting in each other’s company. The older son was content to sit with the women. Because of my interest in the boy, Snow Flower began paying attention to him too. Under her eyes, he smiled readily. In his expression, I saw hismother’s face at that age— sweet, guileless, intelligent. Snow Flower looked back at him—not with mother love exactly, but as though she liked what she saw more than she hadpreviously thought.

One day as I was teaching him a song, she said, “He shouldn’t learn our women’s songs.We learned some poetry as girls—”

“Through your mother—”

“And I’m sure you’ve learned more in your husband’s home.”

“I have.”

We were both excited, rattling off titles of poems we knew.

Snow Flower took her boy’s hand. “Let’s teach him what we can to be an educated man.”

I knew this would not be so very much since we were both illiterate, but that boy was likea dried mushroom dropped into boiling water. He soaked up everything we gave him.Soon he could recite the Tang dynasty poem that Snow Flower and I had loved so well as girls and whole passages from the classical book for boys that I had memorized to helpmy son in his lessons. For the first time, I saw true pride in Snow Flower’s face. The restof the family did not feel the same, but for once Snow Flower did not cower or cede totheir demands that we stop. She had remembered the little girl who used to pull back thecurtain on the palanquin so we could peek out.

Those days—cold and uncomfortable and as filled with fear and hardship as they were— were wonderful in the sense that Snow Flower was happy in a way I had not seen her for many years. Pregnant, without much food, she seemed to glow from inside as though shewere lit by an oil lamp. She enjoyed the company of the three sworn sisters from Jintian and relished not being locked up solely with her mother-in-law. Sitting with those women, Snow Flower sang songs I hadn’t heard for a long time. Out here in the open, away from the confines of her dark and dreary little house, her horse spirit was free.

Then, on a freezing night after we had been up there for ten weeks, Snow Flower’s secondson went to sleep curled by the fire and never again woke up. I don’t know what killedhim—sickness, hunger, or the cold— but in the early morning light we saw that frostcovered his body and his face had gone icy blue. Snow Flower’s keening echoed throughthe hills, but the butcher took it hardest. He held the boy in his arms, tears running down his cheeks, their wetness sending trails through the many weeks of dirt that were ground into his face. He would not be comforted. He would not release the boy. He had no ears第 151 页 共 189 页

for his wife or even his mother. He hid his face in his son’s body, trying to block out theirentreaties. Even when the farmers in our group sat around him, shielding him from our view and comforting him in low whispers, he did not yield. Every once in a while he liftedhis face and cried to the sky, “How could I have lost my precious son?” The butcher’sbrokenhearted question was one that appeared in many nu shu stories and songs. Iglanced at the faces of the other women around the fire and saw their unspoken question: Could a man— this butcher—feel the same despair and sadness that we women feelwhen we lose a child?

He sat that way for two days, while the rest of us sang mourning songs. On the third day,he rose, hugged the child to his chest, and dashed away from our fire, through the clusters of other families, and into the woods that he and his son had ventured into so many times before. He returned two days later, empty-handed. When Snow Flower asked where her son was buried, the butcher turned and hit her with such ferocity that she flew back acouple of meters and landed with a thud onto the hard-packed snow.

He proceeded to beat her so badly that she miscarried in a violent gush of black bloodthat stained the icy slopes throughout our campsite. She was not very far along, so we never found a fetus, but the butcher was convinced that he’d rid the world of another girl.“There is nothing so evil as a woman’s heart,” he recited again and again, as though none of us had heard that saying before. We just kept to our ministrations of Snow Flower— stripping off her pants, melting water to wash them, cleaning her thighs of bloodstains,and taking the stuffing from one of her wedding quilts to stanch the putrid ghastliness that continued to flow from between her legs—and never raised our eyes or voices tohim.

When I look back, I think it was a miracle that Snow Flower survived those last two weeks in the mountains as she passively accepted beating after beating. Her bodyweakened from the loss of blood from the miscarriage. Her body bruised and tore from the daily punishment her husband rained down on her. Why didn’t I stop him? I was LadyLu. I had made him do what I wanted before. Why not this time? Because I was Lady Lu, Icould not do more. He was a physically strong man, who did not shy away from using thatstrength. I was a woman, who, despite my social standing, was alone. I was powerless. He was well aware of that fact, as was I.