Punishment was meted out with the same speed that the incident had been discovered. Wang Lianfang lost both his job and his Party membership. Zhang Weijun took over as branch secretary. Wise decisions across the board. Wang Lianfang met them with silence, and there was nothing members of the Zhang clan could say.
Events followed a logical course, slow when they needed to be and fast when that was required. Wang Lianfang’s family crumbled in a matter of days. On the surface, of course, everything seemed normaclass="underline" the bricks and tiles remained in place, needles and thread stayed by the bed where they belonged. But Yumi knew that her family had unraveled. Happily, Shi Guifang had said nothing about Wang Lianfang’s affairs from the beginning, not a word. Her only reaction was to dissolve into belches. This time, she had lost face as a woman on two levels, so she took to her bed and slept for days. When she finally got up, she was a study in languor, but not the sort of languor that had followed Little Eight’s birth. That had been accompanied by a sense of pride, for it had been her own doing, happily floating with the current. This time she sailed against the tide, and she had to find the strength to deal with it. That would take hard work and perseverance. Now, when she opened her mouth to speak, a foul odor emerged.
Yumi avoided talking to her mother as much as possible, for whatever Shi Guifang said came out like a belch; obviously, the words had steeped inside her for too long. And Yusui turned out to be a huge disappointment. The little whore was old enough to know better. Yusui actually had the nerve to kick a shuttlecock around with Zhang Weijun’s daughter and made matters worse by losing to a girl who was tiny all over: tiny face, tiny nose and eyes, and thin, haughty lips. The Zhangs were shoddy goods, all of them. And the shuttlecock? A bunch of lousy chicken feathers. Yusui was born to betray her family—why else would she let someone like that beat her? Now Yumi saw her sister’s true character.
Nothing escaped Yumi’s eyes, and she staunchly kept her composure. Even if Peng Guoliang never flew a People’s Liberation Army airplane, she would not stoop to Yusui’s level of contempt. If people look down on you, it’s probably your fault. Since Yumi had found the strength to keep Peng Guoliang from breaching that last stronghold, she had to fear no one; as usual, she spent her days strolling around the village with Wang Hongbing in her arms. She behaved no differently now than when Wang Lianfang had been the local Party secretary.
Yumi found all those foul females beneath contempt. Back when her father was sleeping with them, they were blocks of stinky tofu, ripe to have holes punched in them by a chopstick. But now they were acting like proper ladies, like chunks of braised pork.
The rotten piece of goods Qin Hongxia returned to the village with her child after spending two weeks at her parents’ home. With nice rosy cheeks, she looked as if she’d gone home for a postpartum lying-in. To think she had the nerve to come back at all! The river stretched out in front of her, but she lacked the courage to jump in and wouldn’t even fake an attempt for show. She affected a bashful look as she crossed the bridge, as if all the village men wished they could take her for a wife. Some of the women sneaked a look at Yumi when Qin Hongxia reached the foot of the bridge, and Yumi knew that their eyes were on her. How was she going to deal with this? What was she going to say or do to this woman? As Qin Hongxia passed by, Yumi stood up, switched Wang Hongbing from one arm to the other, and went up to her. “Aunty Hongxia,” she said with a smile, “you’re back, I see.” Everyone heard her. In days past, Yumi had always called Qin Hongxia “Sister,” but now it was “Aunty,” a change pregnant with dark hints that made any response all but impossible. At first the gathered women did not realize what was happening, but one look at Qin Hongxia’s face told them what Yumi was up to. She had mischief in mind, but was clever and experienced enough not to give it away. The way Qin Hongxia smiled at Yumi was unbearably awkward. No woman with a sense of self-awareness would have smiled under those circumstances.
Wang Lianfang decided to learn a trade. After all, he had a family of ten to feed, and from now on, at the end of fall, no more perks would come his way. He lacked the constitution to farm alongside the commune members; but mainly it was a matter of face. He had no illusions about himself. He considered the loss of his position as Party secretary an acceptable price to pay for having slept with so many women. But to start hauling manure with men who had been his underlings—or digging ditches, or planting and harvesting—would have been a crippling disgrace. Learning a trade was the way to go. He gave the matter serious thought. Standing in front of his maps of the world and the People’s Republic of China, a cigarette in one hand, the other resting on his hip, he narrowed his choices to: cooper, butcher, shoemaker, bamboo weaver, blacksmith, painter, coppersmith, tinsmith, carpenter, or mason.
Now it was time to synthesize, compare, analyze, study, choose the refined over the coarse, the honest over the fraudulent, examine things inside and out, and study appearance versus essence. Given his age, his strength, and the prestige factor, he settled on painter. He made a list of the qualities of the trade he found appealing.
1. It’s not a very taxing job, certainly one he could manage.
2. It’s relatively easy to master—how hard can slapping on enough reds and greens to cover wood be?
3. Hardly any capital is involved—all you need is a brush. A carpenter, on the other hand, needs a saw, a plane, an axe, a chisel, a hammer, and dozens of different tools.
4. Once he started work, he’d spend his time outside instead of hanging around the village all day. What he didn’t see couldn’t hurt him, and that would improve his mood.
5. Painting is viewed as a respectable profession. For someone with his background, the villagers would look at him with a jaundiced eye if his job was slaughtering pigs. But not painting houses. Some red here, some green there, and from a distance it might look like he was engaged in propaganda work.
Once he’d made up his mind, he couldn’t help feeling that his plans could properly be classified as being in line with the concept of materialism.
Wang Lianfang hadn’t visited Youqing’s wife for many days—not a long time, but dramatic changes in the situation had occurred. One day, after drowning his sorrows from noon until three in the afternoon, he stood up and decided to get a little exercise on Youqing’s wife’s body before leaving home. He could not be sure if he was still welcome in the beds of the other women, but Youqing’s wife was his private plot, a place where he could always enjoy some of her husband’s dumb luck.
Wang opened the door and walked in as Youqing’s wife was snacking on dried radishes, her back to him. She immediately smelled the liquor on his breath. “Fenxiang,” he said in full voice, “you’re all I have.” However bleak that sounded, she could not help but be moved by it; it had a warm quality. “Fenxiang,” he went on, “the next time I come over you can call me painter Wang.”
She turned to face him and saw that he was not only drunk but also apparently in a terrible mood. She wanted to say something to make him feel better. But what? The incident with Qin Hongxia had cut deeply, yet she could not bear to see Lianfang in such a depressed emotional state. She knew what he’d come for and, if she hadn’t been pregnant, would have been happy to oblige. But not this time. No, not this time. With a stern look, she said, “Lianfang, let’s not do it anymore. I think you’d better go.”
He didn’t hear a word she said. Instead, he went into the bedroom, undressed, and climbed into bed. He waited. “Hey!” he shouted impatiently. He waited a while longer. “Hey!”
Not a sound came from outside the room, and so, holding up his trousers, he went to see what was wrong. Youqing’s wife was long gone. This was not how he’d expected things to turn out.