IBGSW Chapter 172
Taking Part
“Second Sister-in-law, you knew all along?”
Kuai San’s wife was stunned and could hardly believe it.
When the news first came out that Fourth Madam Zhuang was carrying on with someone, the whole of Kuailiang Village hadn’t believed it at first.
Kuai Huaide was a scoundrel, a toad who made people sick just looking at him. The village gossip about the two of them had ruined Fourth Madam Zhuang’s name, but the malice in all that talk wasn’t really aimed at her. It was aimed at Kuai Wu.
Lazy, gluttonous, drunk, and always causing trouble, Kuai Wu was despised by everyone in the village.
Kuailiang Village ran on the clan system, and all clan resources were distributed by Sixth Uncle. Every year, when the officials came for the land tax, Kuai Wu never paid a coin. Sixth Uncle decided that each household would chip in a little to cover him.
At first it was tolerable. People held their tongues out of respect for the late Kuai Jumin. But it couldn’t withstand year after year.
Why should everyone slave away while Kuai Wu drank and brawled and the whole village shared his tax burden?
As time passed, resentment toward Kuai Wu grew deep, and discontent with Sixth Uncle slowly took root as well.
Under the calm, unified surface of Kuailiang Village, an undercurrent was building.
The business between Kuai Huaide and Fourth Madam Zhuang became an outlet. Many who’d long been dissatisfied with Kuai Wu used the chance to vent their resentment under cover of laughing at him.
“But in all honesty, nobody thought Fourth Madam would really have an affair. She was gentle by nature, and she couldn’t have done something so shameful.”
Kuai Da’s wife sighed.
“So when the thing with the outsider came out later, everyone at first thought Huaide was making things up.”
Sixth Uncle hadn’t believed it either. He remembered the earlier fuss, had Kuai Huaide tied up, and gave him a good beating. Who knew it would turn out to be true after all?
But was it really true?
Zhao Fusheng already had her answer. Even if Fourth Madam Zhuang had really been involved with someone, it wouldn’t be strange.
She’d been born into misery, never knew love or tenderness from childhood, and married badly. After enduring Kuai Huaide’s pestering, which dragged her name through the mud, her situation got even harder.
The outsider’s appearance was one of the few warm things in her life. It wasn’t hard to imagine she’d waver.
Looking at Kuai Er’s wife’s face, Zhao Fusheng had a feeling this quiet woman knew a great deal of the inside story.
“Did she really have an affair?”
She asked what she already knew, looking at Kuai Er’s wife, who nodded silently.
“It’s true. She and that outsider got together. It didn’t start that way. He’d had a wife in earlier years, but she died young. He raised two sons and a daughter to adulthood alone, and now he peddles goods in the mountains, saving up to find his sons wives. He lives very frugally.”
“Fourth Madam saw his clothes were torn sometimes and mended them for him. She saw that, as a man, he had a hard time doing his own washing, and did his laundry in passing. The outsider told people he’d paid her to do it.”
That way the villagers had nothing to gossip about.
The outsider was older, but he thought carefully. Compared to Kuai Huaide’s rashness and impulsiveness, he won Fourth Madam Zhuang’s heart all the more.
On one side was a cold, drunken, filthy husband who beat her. On the other, a man who had helped her at a critical moment. She couldn’t resist the temptation, took a wrong step, and brought death upon herself.
“Second Sister-in-law...”
Kuai San’s wife was still in shock, unable to accept that her honest second sister-in-law had known such a secret.
“You... you really knew?”
With everything out in the open, there was no point hiding it. Kuai Er’s wife simply nodded.
“I ran into them once, meeting in the mountains.”
Kuai Er’s wife was the kind of person who dropped bombshells.
At her words, not only did Zhao Fusheng fall silent for a moment, the other three Kuai wives gaped at her, speechless.
“They were picking white perilla together. While Fourth Madam worked, the outsider was beside her, helping her tidy up.”
Kuai Er’s wife said it calmly.
Zhao Fusheng suddenly saw her in a new light.
She’d thought this woman cautious, quiet, and honest, and a believer that trouble comes out of the mouth. She’d misjudged. Kuai Er’s wife might be reserved, but she saw many things, and she could keep a secret.
“You...” Kuai Da’s wife stared at her sister-in-law in a daze.
She smiled. “They’d look at each other, then look away, and laugh now and then. One glance and you could tell something was off.”
“Didn’t you scold them, Second Sister-in-law?” Kuai Si’s wife couldn’t believe it either and asked in a low voice.
“Scold them for what?” Kuai Er’s wife suddenly asked back, boldly. “You don’t know what Old Five is like? However much Fourth Madam owed him, she paid it off years ago. And did she owe him anything in the first place?” No one answered.
Kuai Er’s wife twitched the corner of her mouth and sighed.
“What kind of life did Fourth Madam have? From dawn to dusk, all year round, not a moment of rest as long as her eyes were open.”
“She suffered enough. We women need something to hope for in this life.”
She lowered her head, shadow swiftly hiding her face below the brow. All anyone could see was her graying hair and her forehead, aged and lined and unevenly colored, darker in places.
“If she stayed here, it was a dead end. If she left with the outsider, at least she’d have food and could live.” She finished and gave a self-mocking laugh. “And even at worst, it’d still be better than staying with Old Five, wouldn’t it?”
“...”
Kuai Er’s wife’s words were beyond everyone’s expectations.
Zhao Fusheng couldn’t help showing surprise, to say nothing of the Kuai wives.
“Aren’t you afraid Second Brother will beat you to death...?”
Kuai San’s wife stammered, looking at her second sister-in-law as if she’d gone mad.
“Third, didn’t you know all along too?” Kuai Er’s wife raised her head and looked at Kuai San’s wife with a smile.
“What?!”
Now Kuai Da’s wife and Kuai Si’s wife were shocked, too. As if they’d sat on something hard, they sprang to their feet and stared at Kuai San’s wife. “Third, you...”
“I... I didn’t...”
Kuai San’s wife, usually so quick-tongued, visibly panicked.
Her lips went bloodless and her face turned deathly pale. She trembled all over. “T-there’s no such thing...”
“I saw it all.” Kuai Er’s wife, who had seemed timid and meek, was now the calmest of the four. “Walk the night road long enough and you’ll meet a ghost1. Meeting like that, they’d be caught sooner or later. Huaide was watching Fourth Madam closely, and the outsider lived under the same roof as him. They were discreet, but he got suspicious.”
“...”
Kuai San’s wife’s hands began to shake as she listened. She was terrified.
“The night before it all went wrong, the two met under the eaves behind the pen and whispered together.” Kuai Huaide had been watching them for a long time. When he heard the outsider get up in the next room, he followed him out.
One was careful but never imagined the walls had ears. The other was seething and bent on catching them, and kept his footsteps soft.
The one with intent against the one without, and the outsider had no idea Kuai Huaide was behind him.
But the mantis stalks the cicada, unaware of the oriole behind it2.
When Kuai Huaide got up, Kuai San’s wife was also keeping an eye on Fourth Madam Zhuang.
She heard Old Five’s thunderous snoring next door, then Fourth Madam Zhuang quietly opened her door. After some hesitation, she followed Fourth Madam too.
“That night, I got up too.”
Kuai Er’s wife glanced at her sister-in-law and said it lightly.
Kuai San’s wife shuddered all over.
Her mind went back to that night. She’d walked behind Fourth Madam Zhuang, her heart in turmoil.
She pitied Fourth Madam Zhuang’s lot, yet resented her for not holding to better conduct and carrying on with someone. She was afraid others would find out, that the scandal would come to light and Fourth Madam would end up wretched.
In the midst of that unease, she saw Kuai Huaide.
At that moment her blood froze.
On impulse, she suddenly shouted, loud:
“Huaide, what are you doing out there in the middle of the night? Sneaking around like a thief.”
She cursed him loudly, her voice ringing in the night.
As the saying goes, beat the grass and you startle the snake3.
Kuai San’s wife’s shout in the night not only startled Kuai Huaide, who was trying to catch them in the act, it also frightened Zhuang and Chen, who were about to meet. They both ducked back and slipped home.
A crisis disappeared without a trace, and all of it was seen by Kuai Er’s wife, who’d been secretly watching.
“You shouted at Huaide and scared Fourth Madam and the outsider off, so that the matter stayed hidden for the time being.”
Kuai Er’s wife looked at Kuai San’s wife.
“Isn’t that right?”
She’d always seemed gentle and silent, but now she showed a more forceful side.
Kuai San’s wife, normally sharp-tongued and not easy to cross, was cornered by her. Her face went chalk-white and she didn’t dare say a word.
“Third Sister-in-law, you... you...”
Kuai Si’s wife stared wide-eyed at her.
“Is what Second Sister-in-law says true?”
She knew Kuai San’s wife’s character. Fierce and fiery, famous in the village for it. If anyone wronged her or provoked her, she’d grab a knife and make a scene at their door.
But now, pressed by Kuai Er’s wife, she looked weak and didn’t dare speak a word.
That attitude was answer enough.
Kuai Si’s wife was bewildered.
“This... this can’t be...” She kept shaking her head, then turned to her eldest sister-in-law. “The day Fourth Madam got in trouble, Third Sister-in-law slapped her several times, hard enough to split her mouth and make her bleed, and asked why she’d gone and had an affair...”
At that, tears suddenly poured from Kuai San’s wife’s eyes.
“I was scared.”
She sobbed out loud.
“It was Fourth Madam! It was Fourth Madam!” As she cried she pounded her own chest.
Her face tilted up, the veins in her neck bulging, and she wept as if her heart were being torn out.
“I didn’t want her to die. My Mangen was nearly taken by a kidnapper at Wulidian Precinct, and she risked her life to bring my son back.”
“Afterward a chunk of flesh was bitten from the back of her hand and it got wet and festered until the bone almost showed, and she comforted me.”
Kuai San’s wife, who’d seemed so calm just now, finally broke.
“She was in pain for days and couldn’t work, and that heartless dog Old Five beat her for being slow and for the food not tasting good...”
“Mangen is my lifeblood. If my son had been taken, I wouldn’t have wanted to live either. Fourth Madam saved his life, and mine. How could I watch her come to harm?”
“!!!”
“...”
It was shocking.
When Zhao Fusheng first began chatting with these women, she’d had some preconceptions about them based on Fourth Madam Zhuang’s life. Even when Sixth Uncle told her all four of the Kuai wives were filial, simple, and of good character, she hadn’t believed it.
But what Kuai San’s wife had just cried out shook her.
This was the complexity of human nature.
“How interesting,” she murmured to herself, then wore a thoughtful look.
“Third Sister-in-law...” Kuai Si’s wife was frightened by her reaction and called to her helplessly, but Kuai San’s wife could only cry.
It was deep night, and since the incident, Kuailiang Village had fallen into perpetual darkness. Everyone’s mood was low and few people were out. With day and night thrown into disorder, many people probably weren’t asleep, and her loud wailing, and the things she’d cried out, carried real weight. Wasn’t she afraid someone would hear?
Zhao Fusheng frowned.
“Third Sister-in-law, if that’s so, why did you hit Fourth Madam that day?” Kuai Si’s wife asked in confusion. “You hit her so hard and cursed her so viciously. I thought you resented her for sullying our family’s name and shaming our ancestors.”
“I was afraid...”
After her weeping, Kuai San’s wife felt her courage drain away. The realities of rules, status, and the terrifying clan system had become an invisible mountain pressing on her heart.
Her eyes were still red and swollen from crying, but the reckless fury of before had left her face. In its place was a timid look.
“I was afraid people would find out she was having an affair and that I’d been covering for her. My husband would kill me.”
“I didn’t dare side with her, so I hit her, so the others could see...”
She said it guiltily.
“Since we’ve come this far, Eldest Sister-in-law, you may as well put it all on the table too.”
Seeing this, Kuai Er’s wife seemed delighted. She turned to Kuai Da’s wife and caught her off guard with a single line.
“Me... me...?”
“Yes.”
Kuai Er’s wife smiled.
“They’d arranged it. The outsider Chen would leave a day ahead, and Fourth Madam would go the day after.”
Kuai Wu’s house was dirt poor, and Fourth Madam Zhuang had no money at all, not even the fare to cross the river. The outsider had come to Kuailiang Village to buy white perilla, but he’d ended up staying and eating there for a while, and had spent some money helping Fourth Madam buy grain. Now that they were going to elope, he had little money left, and what remained he needed for the road home with Fourth Madam.
So they’d agreed Fourth Madam would lie to the ferryman, say she had business across the river and promise to pay him back when she returned, to owe him for now. In reality the two of them would never be able to pay it back.
“Eldest Sister-in-law, when you heard, you went ahead and found the ferryman and secretly gave him two coppers, asked him to take Fourth Madam across and let her owe the fare, to be paid later.”
Three of the Kuai sisters-in-law had been quietly helping.
Kuai Da’s wife didn’t deny it as she listened.
Things had developed well beyond Zhao Fusheng’s expectations, but when Kuai Da’s wife turned to look at Kuai Si’s wife, she still raised her right eyebrow.
Kuai Da’s wife said, “Fourth, you helped too.”
“Yes.”
Unlike Kuai San’s wife’s frantic denial earlier, Kuai Si’s wife admitted it openly.
