IBGSW Chapter 171
A Life of Hardship
“What a flake,” Zhao Fusheng said, her face giving nothing away.
The remark struck a chord with Kuai San’s wife, who slapped her thigh. “Isn’t that the truth? But my husband always sticks up for his little brother. He beat me over it once.”
“Maybe he felt for a brother who’d lost his father,” Zhao Fusheng said.
“As if he’s forgotten whose fault it was that Father died!” Kuai San’s wife sneered. Then she caught herself, shut her mouth, and went on in a grumbling tone. “He has pity for his brother and none for his wife. My husband slaughters pigs away from home, and it’s hard work. I scrimp and save for him and never let him lift a finger when he’s back. I do the fields all by myself. And he hit me over Old Five! It wasn’t even my fault, and I had to drag it to Sixth Uncle for judgment.”
“And what did Sixth Uncle say?” Zhao Fusheng already knew the answer, but she asked anyway.
“What could he say? Everybody protects Old Five. Sixth Uncle told us a harmonious home is the foundation of all good things.”
Just thinking about it still made her irritable.
“But Sixth Uncle is a decent man, and fair. He offered to compensate us with a bolt of cloth, told my husband and me to stop fighting and go home and live in peace.”
Zhao Fusheng could see she was quite satisfied with that outcome. But Zhao Fusheng hadn’t come to make her comfortable. She wanted her angrier, because anger loosens the tongue and costs people their caution. Since Kuai San’s wife was furious about the old incident and yet content with Sixth Uncle’s ruling, Zhao Fusheng used that as her way in.
“Did Kuai Wu accept that settlement?”
“Accept it? Like hell he did!”
For some reason, that offhand question set the fire she thought she’d put out blazing again. She could no longer hold it in. “That wretch hasn’t been sober a day in his life. He’s absurd.”
Eldest Sister-in-law was shooting her frantic warning looks, and Kuai Er’s wife was tugging at her sleeve. Kuai San’s wife, blinded by anger, ignored both and shook the hand off. “Does my lord think stealing that cloth was the only ridiculous thing he’s done? He steals wherever he goes. He relieves himself in people’s doorways and gets beaten for it. Sometimes Sixth Uncle has to take money to apologize and buy him back.”
“Our households used to be close. We never locked our doors. Then he came along, and now none of us dares take our eyes off our things in case something goes missing after he passes through.”
Disgusting. Kuai San’s wife never said the word, but her face said it plainly enough.
People speak from the heart when they’re angry. She could have been using anger to cover her true feelings, but Kuai San’s wife had neither the scheming nor the wit for that.
“It isn’t only my house. He’s stolen from Eldest Sister-in-law too, even the bride-price money she was saving for Manyin’s wedding. And at my fourth sister-in-law’s wedding, in all the confusion, he made off with the pair of copper-plated earrings her family gave her as dowry. By the time we found them, he’d swapped them for wine.”
The other women couldn’t stop her. The family’s shame was coming out piece by piece, and they could only nod awkwardly. But as Kuai San’s wife unburdened herself, the others couldn’t hold back either, and they started in on Kuai Wu’s outrages too.
“He drinks outside and sleeps wherever he falls. Sometimes people carry him home in a basket.”
“Everyone in the villages around here knows him. He stinks.”
“And he’s filthy. The month I married in, he came home drunk and went into the wrong house. Didn’t even wash his feet before climbing into my bed. When he woke up he threw up all over it,” Kuai Si’s wife grumbled.
Zhao Fusheng listened patiently to the chorus of complaints, and gradually it brought her where she wanted to be. “Fourth Madam Zhuang had it hard.”
“Yes...” The women sighed. “Poor Fourth Madam Zhuang, to land a man like that.”
“They say a woman’s marriage is her second birth1,” Zhao Fusheng said, tossing out a fresh line. Kuai San’s wife answered at once.
“Who says otherwise? Fourth Madam Zhuang’s first birth already went badly. Those parents of hers...” She curled her lip and looked at Kuai Da’s wife. “My lord mentioned the banquet at Fengmen Village earlier. Who doesn’t know about that?”
“The Zhuangs took their children to sponge off the feast, then blamed their daughter for eating too much and hit her in front of everyone. Eldest Sister-in-law, isn’t that right?”
They’d gone this far, so Kuai Da’s wife stopped holding back and nodded. “Everyone looked down on the couple that day. Anyone could see Fourth Madam hadn’t touched her chopsticks. She was feeding her younger siblings. And her mother went around telling people she was greedy.”
“She isn’t like that at all.”
All the women agreed on Fourth Madam Zhuang’s character.
“Her family was bad, and she didn’t marry well either,” Kuai San’s wife added.
Kuai Er’s wife, who spoke least, jabbed an elbow into her again. It hurt, and the pain brought Kuai San’s wife back to her senses. She realized she’d said too much in her anger. If Kuai San heard of it, there’d be another quarrel at home. Inwardly regretful, she hunted for a way to change the subject.
Zhao Fusheng saw what was going on in her head and asked, “I hear the house behind Kuai Wu’s belongs to Kuai Huaide?”
“Yes, yes.” Kuai San’s wife was eager to get away from her own gossip about Old Five, and she answered warmly. “My lord doesn’t know about Huaide, he...” She deliberately paused.
“I hear he’s never married?” Zhao Fusheng said.
“That’s right. His father died young and the family was poor. My father-in-law helped them a great deal while he was alive, and Huaide’s mother told him on her deathbed to remember the kindness.”
When Zhao Fusheng first arrived, the Kuai wives had resolved to keep their mouths shut and say nothing. Now they couldn’t seem to stop.
“And he did obey. He often does odd jobs for our family, and when he’s lucky in the mountains he shares his mushrooms and wild greens with us. But over time he started favoring Old Five’s household.”
Kuai Si’s wife cut in. “Well, whose fault is it? Old Five’s wife is a temptress.”
Zhao Fusheng pretended she hadn’t caught the insinuation. “I hear the two are about the same age?”
“Huaide’s a bit older,” Kuai San’s wife nodded. “His family couldn’t afford a wife. He’s a good boy, he remembered what his mother said and kept helping his elders. Old Five’s household is the poorest, so he helped them most.”
Zhao Fusheng went straight to the point. “He’s close in age to Fourth Madam Zhuang, and Kuai Wu is a disaster. They say even men and women need to keep their distance. Weren’t they worried about gossip?”
“Of course there was gossip. People laughed at Old Five for being a turtle with a green hat on his head.”2
That confirmed Zhao Fusheng’s earlier guess: Kuai Huaide’s report about Fourth Madam Zhuang and another man had other motives behind it.
“So the two of them really had something going?” she asked directly.
“How could they?” Kuai Da’s wife spoke up, shaking her head. “He’s two generations below her, after all...”
“So they were innocent?” Zhao Fusheng said. She was deliberately painting things in black and white, and it provoked the Kuai wives as expected. Kuai Si’s wife couldn’t help herself. “Well, not that innocent.”
“How so?” Zhao Fusheng put on an interested look.
“The whole village was laughing, and Huaide never made the slightest effort to keep his distance. He went to her house all the time to carry water, and when he chopped firewood in the mountains he took it to her door. Who doesn’t know what he was after?” Kuai San’s wife said, annoyed.
“So Kuai Huaide fell for Fourth Madam Zhuang out of pity, and didn’t even mind the gossip in his eagerness to win her over?” Zhao Fusheng said.
Kuai San’s wife promptly objected. “I don’t think that’s right. If a woman doesn’t lead him on, how would a man dare?”
Zhao Fusheng laughed. “Fourth Madam Zhuang was a daughter-in-law of the Kuai family, your sister-in-law. If her reputation suffered, people would just say the Kuai family’s wives were improper.”
That woke Kuai San’s wife up. She thought it over and explained, “No wife of the Kuai family has ever been improper.”
“Fourth Madam did turn him away, actually,” Kuai Si’s wife said, grasping the point of Zhao Fusheng’s words. “Sometimes Huaide brought firewood and she wouldn’t open the door. Sometimes the two of them met on the road from a distance and she’d always take another path.”
“Right, right. Once I was talking with her at her house, and she heard the neighbor’s door open and jumped up to bolt hers. She was afraid Huaide would come knocking,” Kuai San’s wife confirmed.
Kuai Er’s wife nodded silently. “Fourth Madam wouldn’t fall for Huaide. He’s a younger generation, after all.”
“But maybe he’d been single too long. He wouldn’t leave her alone, and the village talked. When I went to my parents’ home, even the neighbors there had heard and came to ask me about it,” Kuai Da’s wife said, still resentful of the whole affair.
“Isn’t that the truth?” Kuai Si’s wife said. “He ruined our family’s name. Since then I go out of my way to avoid Huaide.”
The more she asked, the more interesting it got. Zhao Fusheng’s eyes were full of amusement.
Kuailiang Village practiced the clan system well, and it had bred a tight sense of family in its people. They closed ranks against outsiders, yet each one kept private desires. To the village, Zhao Fusheng’s party were outsiders, so everyone protected the village. To those with the Kuai surname, Kuai Huaide was one of their own, so the rumors about him and Fourth Madam Zhuang were naturally Fourth Madam’s fault. But from the standpoint of the Kuai daughters-in-law, Kuai Huaide became the outsider, and Fourth Madam Zhuang was one of their own, wife to one of the five Kuai brothers...
Selflessness and selfishness, tolerance and exclusion, and the shifting of loyalties all showed in this short conversation.
“So Kuai Huaide was trying to seduce Fourth Madam Zhuang, and Fourth Madam, afraid of dragging down the Kuai name, wanted nothing to do with him.” Zhao Fusheng deliberately placed Fourth Madam Zhuang in the Kuai wives’ camp. This time they had no objection and nodded together. “That’s how it was.”
Zhao Fusheng felt a sudden rush of emotion. She had only wanted to learn about Fourth Madam Zhuang’s past from the villagers, and she’d needed to circle around with her questions to get even a halfway fair assessment.
“If Kuai Huaide liked her so much and kept hovering around her trying to win her favor, why did he end up reporting her and ruining her to death?” she asked, finally getting to the heart of it.
“What else? Fourth Madam didn’t like him, and she liked that outsider instead,” Kuai San’s wife said.
“A lover scorned, then?” Zhao Fusheng feigned surprise.
“What right did he have to be scorned?” Kuai Si’s wife said contemptuously. “He’s a petty man, that’s all.”
“How do you mean?” Zhao Fusheng asked.
Under her gaze Kuai Si’s wife perked up. “My lord, if you want to please a woman, you have to consider her feelings. Wouldn’t you agree?”
None of this gossip was meant for outsiders, and Fourth Madam Zhuang’s affair wasn’t anything to be proud of. Yet strangely, the more these women talked with Zhao Fusheng, the more it felt like they could tell her anything, and once they’d started they couldn’t stop.
“The whole village was whispering. Nobody could say much to Huaide, so they said things about Fourth Madam behind her back. Is that pleasant to hear?”
Kuai Da’s wife added, “If he really cared for her, shouldn’t he have kept his distance and let her have some peace? Instead he flaunted it, afraid people wouldn’t know about the scandal. No sense of shame at all!”
The other three nodded.
“And whenever Old Five heard himself called a turtle and a cuckold outside, he came home and took it out on Fourth Madam. He beat her until her head was bleeding and she was black and blue, and threw whatever he could pick up. We went to stop him again and again.”
Every time, Kuai Huaide hid in his house without a sound, and afterward found some pretext to quarrel with Old Five.
“One time he used the excuse of collecting a loan and beat Old Five up when he couldn’t pay,” Kuai San’s wife said. “Old Five, drunk, had no restraint. He yelled that the money he’d borrowed was the fee for sleeping with Fourth Madam, and he wasn’t paying it back.”
The women shook their heads and sighed. They had no words for a scandal that absurd and shameful.
“The whole village watching. A disgrace.”
“And a junior hitting an elder? Heaven’s turned upside down,” Kuai Da’s wife said indignantly.
“After a while the village started looking at Old Five’s wife in an improper way, as if she were a loose woman,” Kuai Er’s wife added quietly. She had been silent until now.
Zhao Fusheng felt a pang of pity for Fourth Madam Zhuang, who had survived in such an environment.
“With all that, wouldn’t Fourth Madam Zhuang have avoided Kuai Huaide even more?” she asked, deliberately guessing at the worst. “Maybe he was trying to ruin her reputation so she’d be desperate enough to give up and become his lover?”
“Fourth Madam wasn’t that kind of person,” Kuai Er’s wife said softly.
Zhao Fusheng looked at her. She was about the same age as Kuai Da’s wife and just as careworn. Among the four daughters-in-law, the eldest was steady and decisive, and the others deferred to her. The third was feisty and outgoing and couldn’t take being goaded. The fourth was both docile and timid, with a hidden streak of gossip. Only the second was quiet and extremely careful with her words.
But Zhao Fusheng thought she was the one closest to the truth. People like that say nothing, but when they do speak, it’s true, because they’re afraid of spreading tales and getting caught up in trouble.
“Did she avoid him more?” Zhao Fusheng asked. Kuai Er’s wife nodded. “Of course. But the two houses are neighbors. How could she avoid him?”
“This touched on the reputation of Kuailiang Village. Didn’t Sixth Uncle deal with it?” Zhao Fusheng asked.
“He did,” Kuai Er’s wife said stiffly, nodding. “Sixth Uncle called my husband, Eldest Brother, Third Brother, and Huaide together in private and suggested we all chip in to build Huaide a new house so he could move away.”
Sixth Uncle understood how serious it was. He understood Fourth Madam Zhuang’s position and the root of the trouble. “He said Huaide was grown and a house with no woman wasn’t proper, so he wanted to find him a wife, and had Sixth Aunt help look.”
Zhao Fusheng stared. This old couple truly never learned their lesson.
“Did the match happen?”
Her mouth twitched as she asked.
“Good news stays home and bad news travels a thousand li3. Huaide was tangled up with another man’s wife. What good family would marry their daughter to him?” Kuai San’s wife asked in reply.
“Then how did Fourth Madam Zhuang offend Kuai Huaide later, so that he reported her?”
Zhao Fusheng hadn’t rushed to ask about the affair itself. She worked from small details, lowering the Kuai wives’ guard bit by bit and moving from shallow questions to deep ones.
After all this, the four women’s defenses and limits had been breached again and again. They turned and looked at each other, and Kuai San’s wife suddenly called out, “Second Sister-in-law, why don’t you tell it?”
This woman was interesting. Loyal to her family, devoted to her husband and children, and torn in her view of Fourth Madam Zhuang. This line showed her small calculations. Under Zhao Fusheng’s questioning she’d talked the most, and she probably feared blame from her husband and the elders afterward, so she wanted to drag the others down with her.
Kuai Er’s wife spoke the least of the four. If she told the story of Kuai Huaide and Fourth Madam Zhuang, they’d all be in it together, and nobody could blame anybody for talking too much.
Zhao Fusheng nearly laughed. Kuai San’s wife’s scheme suited her fine. She looked at Kuai Er’s wife. “You can tell it, if you like.”
Kuai Er’s wife started to stand in her nervousness. Zhao Fusheng gestured for her to stay seated. She squirmed awkwardly, her body stiff.
“Where would my lord like me to begin?”
“The affair between Fourth Madam Zhuang and another man was reported by Kuai Huaide to Sixth Uncle. Was that because they live next door and he was the first to find out?”
Zhao Fusheng knew these villagers thought rigidly, and the finer the questions, the less they’d wander off topic. She’d learned that lesson from dealing with Zhuang Laoqi.
“It isn’t only that.” Kuai Er’s wife pressed her hands into her thighs, so nervous the muscles in her cheeks trembled. “Actually, the outsider was lodging at Huaide’s house.”
Nobody had mentioned this detail before. Zhao Fusheng perked up and signaled her to continue.
“I don’t know if my lord knows, our village produces a lot of white perilla4...”
Kuai Er’s wife didn’t seem good at talking to people, and with her nerves she stumbled over her words. She twisted and pointed in one direction. “In the mountains behind us. White perilla, a kind of flower...”
“It’s this big.” She made a bowl-sized circle with her thumbs and fingers. “We dry the blossoms and sell them. They fetch good money, so every year when the time comes we go up the mountain to pick.”
Seeing that Zhao Fusheng didn’t interrupt, she grew bolder and spoke more fluently. “Many outsiders know about our white perilla and travel long distances to buy it. Sometimes they lodge in the village.”
The village had inns and converted guest rooms, but some buyers came from far away from Wan’an County, and the round trip took long enough that they found the inns too expensive. They often struck deals with villagers, paying a fee for room and board to stay in their homes.
“After Huaide’s mother died, he was a bachelor with a poor family. This year in March or April a man surnamed Chen came and lodged with him.”
Kuai Er’s wife’s expression was complicated. “He was over forty, a peddler who traveled the mountains. At first Huaide saw he spoke politely and had no companions or family with him, and the room-and-board fee was good, so he let him stay.”
“Is this the outsider who had the affair with Fourth Madam Zhuang?” Zhao Fusheng asked.
She’d already learned almost every detail of this ghost case, the full course of Kuailiang Village and Fourth Madam Zhuang’s life. But the affair was a taboo in this village. Almost everyone connected to it, directly or indirectly, kept silent about it, and only now did it come out of Kuai Er’s wife’s mouth.
Kuai Er’s wife seemed at a loss. Kuai San’s wife was relieved that such a big secret had come from her second sister-in-law, and nodded. “Yes.”
Once that was admitted, the rest was easier.
With the principle the four sisters-in-law had held to broken, they spoke without worry.
“Did Fourth Madam Zhuang really have something with him?”
Zhao Fusheng sounded doubtful at first. “Didn’t Second Sister-in-law say he was past forty? He’s nearly twenty years older than Fourth Madam Zhuang, old enough to be her father.”
“An old fox, that’s what he was,” Kuai Da’s wife said.
“He knew how to sweet-talk women. He had plenty of tricks,” Kuai Si’s wife added.
“After he moved in, he saw Huaide harassing Fourth Madam once. He pulled him aside and said he shouldn’t behave that way, that he’d stain his elders’ name. They ended up arguing.”
If Huaide hadn’t taken the man’s money, and part of that money hadn’t gone to pay old debts, he’d have thrown the outsider out long ago. But even without throwing him out, the lodger and landlord fell out.
“Huaide wouldn’t give him a pleasant look. The outsider bought his own rice and cooked for himself instead of eating with Huaide. They avoided each other coming and going and never spoke.”
The households were close together. These things could be hidden from outsiders but not from the Kuai sisters-in-law.
“Later, once when Old Five was beating Fourth Madam, the outsider came out to speak up for her and almost came to blows with him,” Kuai San’s wife said.
Kuai Er’s wife nodded and added, “Old Five was being a brute that day, and the outsider’s words shamed him. He snapped back, ‘What, you want to sleep with my wife too?’”
“The man surnamed Chen slapped him so hard he lost a tooth. He fell down howling. Sixth Uncle came to mediate in the end, and the man paid Old Five a few coppers to settle it.”
Zhao Fusheng had heard enough of Kuai Wu’s outrages by now, but even so, she was still speechless at this.
“It sounds like he and Fourth Madam Zhuang had no connection. How did it end up...” She asked half a question on purpose, and Kuai Si’s wife said, “My lord, listen. Anyone with eyes can see it. The outsider spoke up, but Old Five was clearly trying to squeeze him for money. Five whole coppers...” She curled her lip, then shook her head. “Fourth Madam probably heard and felt embarrassed. She knew what Old Five was like, so she wanted to pay the man back out of her own pocket.”
Kuai San’s wife gave a cold laugh. “Back and forth like that, they ended up dealing with each other.”
“Once Old Five’s house ran out of rice. Fourth Madam couldn’t even boil a pot, and her girl...” Kuai Da’s wife’s face went blank. “What was Old Five’s girl called? Man... Man...”
Zhao Fusheng’s pupils contracted. It seemed the Kuai sisters-in-law couldn’t remember the name of Fourth Madam Zhuang’s daughter either.
“Anyway, the girl had nothing to eat, and Fourth Madam didn’t want to borrow grain from us, so she said she was going to pack up and go to her parents’ home.”
Anyone could see she was going to borrow something. Zhao Fusheng remembered what everyone thought of the elder Zhuangs, and shook her head. “She must have come back empty-handed.”
“Yes.” Kuai Da’s wife nodded. “She went with nothing and came back with nothing. Her poor girl cried until her face was wet and was still asleep in her arms when they got back.”
“There were bruises on her face and the corner of her mouth was black and blue. I ran into her at the village entrance, and her smile looked like she was about to cry,” Kuai Si’s wife said.
“She was beaten at her parents’ home?” Zhao Fusheng asked.
Kuai San’s wife nodded. “Her brother and sister-in-law are fierce. When her parents married her into Kuailiang Village, wasn’t it so they could sponge off her later? They never got anything out of it, and whenever she went back, they assumed she’d come to borrow. Those two skinflints, you’d have to scrape oil off a chicken’s foot5 before they’d lend you a grain of millet. Fat chance.”
“She’d borrowed from everyone,” Kuai Da’s wife sighed. “A woman on her own, what could she do? An adult can go a day or two hungry, but a child can’t.”
As the sisters-in-law talked, Zhao Fusheng noticed that Kuai Er’s wife hadn’t joined in but was listening, and her lips moved as if she had something to say.
Zhao Fusheng looked at her. “How was that problem solved afterward? Did Sixth Uncle help out?”
“Sixth Uncle isn’t a money tree,” Kuai San’s wife said.
“I don’t know what happened after that. Anyway, she didn’t borrow from us,” Kuai Si’s wife said, shaking her head.
“It was the outsider, Chen...”
Kuai Er’s wife spoke in a small voice.
“What?”
Kuai Da’s wife started. “Second Sister-in-law, you saw it?”
Kuai Er’s wife nodded silently. “The outsider gave the little girl a flatbread and carried her out for a walk, and calmed her down.”
Of the five Kuai wives, this quiet woman had taken a great deal in with her own eyes. “When Fourth Madam saw her daughter soothed, she looked like she’d collapsed. She sank to the ground watching the outsider carry Ninth Girl away and covered her face and cried for a good while.”
Then she added, “After that, she did some simple handiwork for the outsider to repay his kindness.”
That was how the two came to have dealings, and in time something happened.
