Three Sisters Read online

  After much thought, Yumi decided to write a restrained letter. Following a brief and properly worded introduction, she altered her tone.

  I definitely am no match [for you]. You fly high in the sky and only a fair[y] woman could be a match [for you]. I am not as good as the fair[y] women, nor am I as good-looking.

  Her dignity remained intact, since it was natural for a girl to say she was not as pretty as a fairy. She ended the letter.

  Now I look up into the sky every day and every night. The sky is always the same, with only the sun during the day and only the moon at night.

  At that point the letter took on a sentimental tone. Somehow, an emotional attachment was building inside her, concrete but hard to pinpoint, persistent and tormenting. As she read what she had written, she began to weep silently; she couldn't help it, for she felt deeply aggrieved, since none of this was what she really wanted to say. She desperately wanted to tell Peng how happy she was about the match. How wonderful it would be if someone could say that to him for her, to let him know how she felt. She sealed and posted the letter, though she was careful to give the return address as: "Wang Family Village Elementary School, care of Miss Gao Suqin." Yumi was visibly thinner by the time the letter was on its way.

  With the arrival of his son, Wang Lianfang felt more at ease with himself. Obviously, he would not be touching Guifang again, so all of his pent-up energy could be devoted to Youqing's wife. Wang's extramarital affairs had a long and complicated history that began when Guifang was pregnant with Yumi. Having a pregnant wife is not an easy thing for a man. During the first few weeks of marriage, he and his wife were insatiable and could not wait to turn off the light and jump into bed. But the good times came to an end when she missed her period the second month. She was enormously pleased with herself; lying in bed with her hands clasped over her belly, she announced proudly, "I got pregnant the very first night. It had to be, I just know it. I know I got pregnant our first night."

  Proud, yes, but not so proud that she forgot to announce the implementation of "martial law": "No more, starting today." Wang Lianfang frowned in the dark, for he thought getting married meant that he could enjoy sex anytime he wanted. It had never dawned on him that marriage led only to a pregnant wife. When he laid his hand on her belly, he sighed silently, but then his fingers took over and his hand began to move lower and lower. At the last moment, she clutched his hand and squeezed it viciously, a wanton, audacious gesture that signaled her pride of accomplishment. He had a desperate need, but he found no outlet; it was an irrepressible need that grew more urgent the more he tried to suppress it. That went on for more than a week.

  Wang never imagined that he would have the audacity to do what he did then. At the brigade office one day, he pushed the bookkeeper to the floor, spread her out, and took her. His eyes must have been red from the urgent need that had been building inside him, although his mind was a total blank at the time. He recalled the details only after the fact, when he picked up a copy of Red Flag and was hit by a shuddering fear. How, in the middle of the day, had he suddenly become possessed by that thought? The bookkeeper, more than ten years his senior, belonged to an older generation, and he was expected to call her aunty. When it was over, she got up, wiped herself off with a rag, pulled up her pants, tied the waistband, straightened her hair, brushed herself off front and back, locked the rag in a drawer, and walked out. Wang found her nonchalance perplexing. He worried that she might kill herself because of what he'd done. If she did, he would definitely lose his job as the commune's youngest branch secretary. That night he roamed the village till eleven o'clock, keeping his eyes peeled as he searched every corner, his ears pricked for any unexpected sounds. The next day he went to the brigade office at the crack of dawn, where he checked the rafters. Finding no hanging corpse was not reassuring enough. People began to stream in, and when nine o'clock rolled around, in strolled the bookkeeper, polite and cordial as always. Her eyes were not red and puffy, which put Wang enough at ease that he could pass out cigarettes and engage in casual bantering. After a while, she walked up with an account book and a note beneath her finger that said, "Come outside. I want to talk to you." Since it was a written communication, there was no way to gauge her emotion, and the anxiety that had melted away a short time before came rushing back. His heart was pounding as he watched her walk outside and, looking through the slats in the window, saw her return to her house. Agitated though he was, Wang managed to stay put for ten or fifteen minutes. Then, looking appropriately serious, he took out the Red Flag magazine, rapped the desktop with his finger as a signal for the others to keep at their studies, and walked out the door. He arrived at the bookkeeper's house alone, where his life as a man truly began. He was not quite a man when he walked through the door, and it was she who taught and guided him to the best times of his life. What kind of husband had he been? There was so much to learn. A battle between the two of them began, one that was drawn-out, difficult, and exhausting, a danger-ridden fight to the bitter end. But they ultimately pulled back from the precipice. He matured quickly, and before long she had nothing more to teach him. Then she looked and sounded terrible; he could even hear her insides collapse and break apart.

  Wang Lianfang's major gain during the battle was the honing of his courage. Actually, he had nothing to fear. Not at all. Nothing bad would happen even if the women did not consent. On this point the bookkeeper had voiced criticism: "Don't pull down their pants the moment you see them. That makes them seem unwilling." Shaking that thing between his legs, she examined and criticized it: "You. Don't you know who you are? Even if they're unwilling, they need to know you're the boss. As they say, check the owner before you hit the dog, and if you don't care about the monk, at least give the Buddha some face."

  There were even more gains to be had from the long, complex struggle that allowed him to see something quite meaningful. In no way an ordinary man, Wang knew something meaningful when he saw it and was expert at discovering the meanings inherent in things. Never content to be just a seed spreader, he saw himself as a propagandist as well, a man who wanted the women in the village to know that every bridegroom was overeager, since foreplay had been alien even to him. Those other men were ignorant of the depth and duration of the struggle or, for that matter, the importance of being thorough. Without Wang, all those women would forever be kept in the dark.

  An additional, external factor in the history of Wang's struggle warrants a brief mention. For a decade or so, Shi Guifang never stopped being pregnant, which meant she was regularly off-limits. She would stand under a tree, one hand on the trunk and the other on her belly, and broadcast her dry heaves throughout the village without a trace of self-awareness. After a decade of this disgusting scene, Wang could hardly bear the ugly sight of her and her dry heaves. She sounded so hollow, so devoid of any viewpoint or stance; and she was oblivious of everything else around her. It was the same every time, embodying the formulaic characteristics of a traditional essay, which displeased Wang immensely. Now Guifang's only job was to quickly give him a son. But she couldn't, so what the hell was she dry heaving for? He hated those dry heaves, and the moment he heard one, he'd say, "There she goes again, another report."

  Although he was told "no more" at home, Wang Lianfang did not alter the course of his struggle. And in this regard, Guifang was surprisingly enlightened, unlike many other women, who thought highly of themselves or were simply timid. Wang Yugui's wife was one of those. Wang Lianfang had slept with her only twice, and she was already displaying a degree of timidity. Standing there naked, with tears and snot flowing, she cupped her breasts, which had now been touched by someone other than her husband, and said, "Secretary, you got what you wanted, so save some, leave a little for my husband." He laughed at her strange request. Can something like this actually be saved? Besides, why are you covering your breasts? A woman's bust undergoes several changes: the golden breasts of a maiden, the silver breasts of a wife, and the bitch's teats of a moth
er. So what's she doing cradling those bitch's teats in the crooks of her arms as if they were gold nuggets? That'll never do.

  Pulling a long face, he said, "Fine with me. There are, after all, new brides every year." But this woman became a casualty. Even her husband could not get her to have sex with him, and all he could do was beat her to vent his anger. Late at night she was often heard screaming in bed because of Yugui's fists. Wang Lianfang was finished with her. She'd talked about saving some for Yugui. Apparently she hadn't.

  In more than a decade of dalliances, the Wang Family Village woman who most pleased Wang Lianfang was Youqing's wife. When he wasn't dealing with village class issues, she was the subject of all of his thoughts. For him she was a true bodhisattva. In bed it was as if there were no bones in her limp body, which seemed electrically charged. Yes, indeed, he'd found a true bodhisattva. In the spring of 1971, good news cascaded down on Wang like a sow expelling a litter of piglets: first he was given a son, then Yumi found a future husband, and now he was the beneficiary of the spark plug in Youqing's wife.

  Peng Guoliang's return letter traveled far. First to Wang Family Village Elementary School and then to Gao Suqin before it landed in Yumi's hand. She was washing diapers at the pier nearest the school when it arrived. In the past she had done the washing at the pier near her house, but that had changed, for once a girl has something on her mind, she prefers doing things away from home. With her back bent, she scrubbed the diapers, each of them soft and pale as if they were burdened with worry. As her hands busied themselves with work, Yumi's mind was consumed by Peng's return letter and what it might reveal. She tried to predict what he would say to her, but of course, she couldn't imagine the future. That brought her no small measure of sadness, for in the end, her fate was in the hands of someone whose inclinations remained a mystery.

  And then Gao Suqin came out to wash some clothes. With a wooden bucket on her hip, she negotiated the stone steps, one slow step at a time, looking like someone in possession of rare knowledge. The sight threw Yumi into a minor panic, as if her teacher had a hold over her. But Gao looked down and simply smiled. Yumi sensed what was about to happen, though the smile was only a prelude to silence. So, it appeared, nothing was about to happen after all. What a disappointment. Yumi could only smile back. What else could she do? In fact, Yumi admired and respected Gao Suqin more than anyone she knew. Gao could speak standard Mandarin, and she turned the classroom into a giant radio, reciting lessons from inside and sending standard Chinese words out the window. She could also demonstrate complex math solutions on the blackboard. Yumi once saw her write out a long math problem that included addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division signs, as well as parentheses and brackets. One step at a time, she drew seven or eight equal signs before producing the solution, a zero.

  "Why teach something like that?" Third Aunt commented. "After all that trouble, you're left with nothing, not even a fart."

  "What do you mean nothing?" Yumi replied. "There's a zero, isn't there?"

  "All right then, tell me how much is a zero."

  "Zero is something. It's the solution to a math problem."

  Now Gao was squatting beside Yumi and smiling, which turned the wrinkles in her face to parentheses and brackets. Yumi wondered what she was adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing, and whether the solution might also be a zero.

  Finally Gao Suqin spoke. "Yumi, how can you treat this so calmly?"

  The question nearly sent Yumi's heart up into her throat, but she pretended not to have understood. She swallowed and said, "Treat what?"

  Still smiling, Gao Suqin lifted a piece of laundry out of the water, straightened up, and shook the water off her hands before slipping her thumb and index finger into her pocket to extract something—an envelope. Yumi blanched.

  "Our second child is too young to know that he shouldn't open the letter, but I assure you I didn't read a word of it." She handed Yumi the letter, which had indeed been opened. Too stunned, embarrassed, and outraged to say anything, Yumi rubbed her hands back and forth against her pant legs before taking the letter. Her fingers fluttered as if they had grown feathers. She could barely contain the sense of pleasure that this surprise had brought her, and yet profound disappointment seeped into her bones, for her prized letter had been opened by somebody else.

  Yumi walked up the bank and turned her back to Gao to read the letter twice. Peng Guoliang had called her "Comrade Wang Yumi," a formal and lofty term of which she felt utterly unworthy. No one had ever used such a ceremonial term of address for her, and it gave her an indescribable, almost sacred sense of self-esteem. Her breathing quickened at the sight of the term "Comrade" and her blouse rippled outward with the expansion of her chest. Peng's letter then described his mission in life—to protect the blue skies above the motherland and struggle against all imperialists, revisionists, and reactionaries.

  By this time Yumi was barely able to stand and was on the verge of collapse from sheer joy. The skies had always been too far off to have any consequence in her life, but now things were different, for the skies were tightly bound up with and became part of her. In her mind, the blue sky now stretched far and wide until she merged with it. But the greatest impact on her came from the phrase "struggle against the imperialists, revisionists, and reactionaries," written so casually and yet carrying such bullish force. Those imperialists, revisionists, and reactionaries were not everyday landlords or rich peasants; no, they were too distant, too powerful, and too elevated—visible and yet unfathomable, mysterious and unidentifiable. Just listen to the words—imperialists, revisionists, reactionaries. Without an airplane, you could dine on healthy meals of fish and meat all your life and still not know where to find these imperialists, revisionists, and reactionaries.

  Peng's letter was all but filled with ideals and vows, with determination and hatred, but toward the end, the tone changed and he abruptly asked:

  Are you willing to be with me, hand in hand, in my struggle against the imperialists, revisionists, and reactionaries?

  Yumi felt as if she had been dazed by a silent, staggering blow. Gone was that feeling of sacredness as her romantic feelings began to grow, little by little, then swelling into a surging torrent of emotion. The words "hand in hand" were a club, a rolling pin perhaps, pressing down her passive yet willing body each time she read the letter, flattening her out, causing her to grow increasingly light and thin.

  Her face paled as she leaned against a tree trunk for support, drained of energy and finding it hard to breathe. Peng had finally broached the subject, and now the matter of her marriage was settled. The thought sent tears down her cheeks. With the icy palms of her hands, she brushed the hot tears toward her ears, but her face would not dry; more tears replaced the ones that had just been wiped away—over and over and over. Finally she gave up, crouched down, buried her face in her hands, and abandoned herself to fervent sobs that evoked a sense of joy mixed with uncertainty.

  Gao Suqin, her clothes rinsed, hoisted her bucket onto her hip and moved behind Yumi.

  "Enough, Yumi. Just look at yourself." Then she pointed to the river with her pursed lips. "Look, Yumi, your bucket is floating away."

  Yumi stood up and gazed without actually seeing the bucket that had floated ten or fifteen yards down the river. She stood there, frozen.

  "Go get it," Gao Suqin said. "If you don't hurry, you won't retrieve it even in an airplane." Finally regaining her senses, Yumi ran down the riverbank, chasing the wind and waves.

  News of Yumi's impending marriage had spread through the village by that night and quickly became the sole topic of conversation. Yumi had found an aviator whose job was to fight the imperialists, revisionists, and reactionaries. The villagers had known that a girl like her would land a good husband, but an aviator went beyond their wildest predictions. On that night there was an airplane in the mind of every girl and boy, a palm-size airplane that flickered in the distant sky, dragging a long contrail behind it. This
was an astounding development. Only an airplane can fly in the blue sky, of course. Otherwise, why not try to fly an old sow or an old bull? Neither a sow nor a bull could ever rise up and soar in the clouds and be so far off that it was only the size of a palm. Impossible to imagine. The airplane not only changed Yumi, but it also changed her father. Wang Lianfang had been invested with certain powers, but they were limited to events on terra firma. Now happenings in the sky also fell under his jurisdiction. Wang Lianfang had connections in the commune, in the county government, and now in the sky as well. He was omnipotent.

  As Yumi's man was more than a thousand li away, her romance took on the unusual aura of traversing a thousand mountains and crossing ten thousand streams; this made the relationship especially moving in the eyes of others. The two began a correspondence. Exchanging letters differs from face-to-face meetings, and while it may be exhaustive and precise, it is reminiscent of the old convention that a man and woman should avoid direct contact. And so, via the posting and receiving of letters, their relationship encompassed elegance and refinement. After all, black ink on white paper constituted their courtship, created by various strokes of a pen; and the villagers found that charming. For most of them, Yumi's was a true romance—a model but also impossible to imitate. In a word, her romance was beyond the reach of everyone else.