8
FOURTEEN YEARS EARLIER, Yu Zhan’ao, a bedroll over his back, and dressed in clean, freshly starched white pants and jacket, stood in the yard of our home and shouted: ‘Mistress, are you hiring?’
With a hundred thoughts running through her mind, Grandma’s natural instincts deserted her. Her scissors dropped to the kang, and she fell backward onto the brand-new purple comforter.
His nostrils filled with the odour of fresh whitewash and a delicate feminine fragrance, Yu Zhan’ao’s courage mounted. He barged into the room.
‘Mistress, are you hiring?’
Grandma lay face up and blurry-eyed on the comforter.
Yu Zhan’ao threw down his bedroll and slowly approached the kang. At that moment his heart was like a warm pond in which toads frolicked while swifts skimmed the surface. When his dark chin was only about the thickness of a piece of paper from Grandma’s face, she slapped him on his dark, shiny scalp, then sat up quickly, picked up her scissors, and screamed, ‘Who are you? What do you think you’re doing? How dare you barge into a strange woman’s room!’
Startled, he backed up and said, ‘You… you really don’t know me?’
‘How dare you talk like that! I lived a cloistered life at home until my wedding day, less than two weeks ago. How would I know you?’
‘Okay, if that’s the way you want it,’ he said with a smile. ‘I hear you’re shorthanded at the distillery, and I need work to put food in my belly!’
‘All right, as long as you don’t mind hard work. What’s your name? How old are you?’
‘My name’s Yu Zhan’ao. I’m twenty-four.’
‘Take your bedroll outside,’ she said.
Yu Zhan’ao obediently walked outside and waited under a blazing sun. Traces of burned leaves remained in the yard, and he relived the memory of what had happened there recently. He waited for about half an hour, growing more restless by the minute, and was barely able to keep from rushing inside and settling accounts with the woman.
After murdering Shan Tingxiu and his son, he had not run away, but had hidden in the field near the inlet to watch the excitement. Even now he sighed in wonder over Grandma’s amazing performance. She might be young, but she had teeth in her belly and could scheme with the best of them. A woman to be reckoned with, certainly no economy lantern. Maybe she was treating him like this today just in case there were prying eyes and ears. He waited a bit longer, but still she didn’t come out. The yard was silent except for a calling magpie perched on the ridge of the roof. In the grip of anger, he was rushing towards the house, prepared to make a scene, when he heard Grandma’s voice through the window. ‘Report to the eastern compound.’
Realising his mistake in not following the proper etiquette, Yu Zhan’ao let go of his anger and walked over to the eastern compound, where he saw rows of wine vats, piles of sorghum, and a crew of hired hands working inside the steamy distillery. He strode into the tent and asked a worker standing on a high stool feeding sorghum into a bucket above the millstone, ‘Hey, who’s in charge here?’
The man looked at him out of the corner of his eye. When he had fed all the sorghum into the bucket, he jumped down off the stool and backed away from the millstone, holding a sieve in one hand and the stool in the other. Then he gave a shout, and the mule, wearing a black blindfold, began turning the millstone. Its hooves had worn a groove in the ground around the stone. A dull grinding sound emerged as crushed grain poured like raindrops from the space between the stones into a wooden pan below. ‘The foreman’s in the shop,’ the man said, pursing his lips and pointing with his chin to the buildings west of the main gate.
With his bedroll in his hand, Yu Zhan’ao entered through the back door and spotted the familiar figure of an old man sitting behind the counter working his abacus, occasionally taking a sip from a small, dark-green decanter beside it.
‘Foreman,’ Yu Zhan’ao announced, ‘are you hiring?’
Uncle Arhat looked up at Yu Zhan’ao and reflected for a moment. ‘Are you looking for permanent or temporary work?’
‘Whatever you need. I’m interested in working for as long as I can.’
‘If you want to work for a week or so, I can do the hiring. But if you’re interested in a permanent job, the mistress has to approve.’
‘Then you’d better go ask her.’
Yu Zhan’ao walked up and sat on one of the stools as Uncle Arhat lowered the counter bar and walked out the rear door. But he turned and came back in, picked up a crudely made bowl, half-filled it with wine, and set it on the counter. ‘Your mouth must be dry. Have some wine.’
Yu Zhan’ao’s thoughts were on the woman’s remarkable schemes as he drank. ‘The mistress wants to see you,’ Uncle Arhat said when he returned. They went over to the western compound. ‘Wait here,’ Uncle Arhat said.
Grandma walked outside with poise and grace. After grilling Yu Zhan’ao for a while, she waved her hand and said, ‘Take him over there. We’ll try him for a month. His wages start tomorrow.’
So Yu Zhan’ao became a hired hand in the family distillery. With his strength and clever hands, he was an ideal worker, and Uncle Arhat sang his praises to Grandma. At the end of the first month, he summoned him and said, ‘The mistress likes the way you work, so we’ll keep you on.’ He handed him a cloth bundle. ‘She wants you to have these.’
He undid the bundle. Inside was a pair of new cloth shoes. ‘Foreman,’ he said, ‘please tell the mistress that Yu Zhan’ao thanks her for the gift.’
‘You can go,’ said Uncle Arhat. ‘I expect you to work hard.’
‘I will,’ Yu Zhan’ao promised.
Another two weeks passed, and Yu Zhan’ao was finding it harder and harder to control himself. The mistress came to the eastern compound every day to look around, but directed her questions only to Uncle Arhat, paying hardly any attention to the sweaty hired hands. That did not sit well with Yu Zhan’ao.
Back when the distillery was run by Shan Tingxiu and his son, the workers’ meals were prepared and sent over by cafe owners in the village. But after Grandma took charge, she hired a middle-aged woman whom everyone called ‘the woman Liu’, and a teenaged girl named Passion. They lived in the western compound, where they were responsible for all the cooking. Then Grandma increased the number of dogs in the compound from two to five. Now that the western compound was home to three women and five dogs, it became a lively little world of its own. At night the slightest disturbance set off the dogs, and any intruder not bitten to death would surely have the wits frightened out of him.
By the time Yu Zhan’ao had been working the distillery cooker for eight weeks, it was the ninth lunar month, and the sorghum in the fields was good and ripe. Grandma told Uncle Arhat to hire some temporary labourers to clean the yard and open-air bins in preparation for the harvest. They were clear, sunny days with a deep sky. Grandma, dressed in white silk and wearing red satin slippers, carried a willow switch around the yard, with her dogs running on her heels, drawing strange looks from the villagers, although none dared so much as fart in her presence. Yu Zhan’ao approached her several times, but she stayed aloof and wouldn’t bestow a word on him.
One night Yu Zhan’ao drank a little more than usual, and wound up getting slightly drunk. He tossed and turned on the communal kang, but couldn’t fall asleep, as moonlight streamed in through the window in the eastern wall. Two hired hands sat beneath a bean-oil lantern mending their clothes.
Then Old Du took out his stringed instrument and began playing sad tunes, striking resonant chords in the hearts of the listeners. Something was bound to happen. One of the men mending his clothes was so moved by Old Du’s melancholy tunes that his throat began to itch. ‘It’s no fun being alone,’ he sang hoarsely, ‘no fun at all. Tattered clothes never get sewn…’
‘Why not get the mistress to sew them for you?’
‘The mistress? I wonder who will feast on that tender swan.’
‘The old master and his son thought it would be them, and they wound up dead.’
‘I hear she had an affair with Spotted Neck while she was still living at home.’
‘Are you saying Spotted Neck murdered them?’
‘Not so loud. “Words spoken on the road are heard by snakes in the grass!”’
