Chronicle of a Blood Merchant

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

A sweaty, bespectacled man carrying ten pounds of soup bones, five pounds of yellow beans, two pounds of mung beans, and one pound of chrysanthemum flowers appeared at Xu Yulan’s door. She watched as this stranger set his things down on their table, picked up a glass of boiled water that she had left out to cool, and gulped it down.

When he finished drinking, he said to Xu Yulan, “You’re Xu Yulan, I know who you are. You’re the lady everybody calls the Fried Dough Queen. Your man is Xu Sanguan. I know who he is too. Do you know who I am? I’m Lin Fenfang’s man. The Lin Fenfang who works at the silk factory with your husband. They’re on the same shop floor. My woman went to wash clothes by the river and fell and broke her right leg—”

Xu Yulan interrupted, “How did she do that?”

“She slipped on a watermelon rind.” The bespectacled man asked Xu Yulan, “Is Xu Sanguan here?”

“He’s not home,” Xu Yulan said. “He’s still at work over at the factory. Should be back any minute now.” She looked down at the soup bones and beans and everything else on the table. “You’ve never come to visit before, and Xu Sanguan’s never mentioned you to me either. When you came in, I was wondering who you were. So how come you’re giving us so much stuff? There’s barely enough room on the table for it all.”

The bespectacled man said, “I’m not giving you these things. Xu Sanguan gave all these things to my woman, Lin Fenfang.”

Xu Yulan said, “Gave them to your woman? Who’s your woman?”

“I just told you, my woman’s called Lin Fenfang.”

“Oh, I know,” Xu Yulan said. “You mean Fatty Lin over at the silk factory.”

The bespectacled man said nothing more. Instead, he sat down next to the door to quietly wait for Xu Sanguan, as unruffled as a tree on a windless day. Xu Yulan was left to stand by the table, looking down at the soup bones and beans and flowers and feeling increasingly befuddled.

Xu Yulan said, half to the man and half to herself, “Why would Xu Sanguan give all these things to your woman? They almost fill up the whole table. That’s nearly ten pounds of soup bones, four or five pounds of yellow beans, and I’d say there’s at least two pounds of mung beans, and a pound of chrysanthemum flowers too. Why would Xu Sanguan give so much stuff to your woman?”

Suddenly, she understood. “Xu Sanguan must have slept with your wife!”

Xu Yulan began to shout, “Xu Sanguan, you home-wrecker! You’re always so goddamn stingy. Every time I buy a little strip of fabric, it takes you six months to get over the shock. But when it comes to giving gifts to someone else’s wife, then it’s different, then there’s more stuff than we can afford, more than I can count on my fingers.”

Xu Sanguan arrived home from work soon afterward. When he saw the bespectacled man sitting in his doorway and realized that he was Lin Fenfang’s husband, he heard two alarms go off in his head. When he stepped into the house and saw the table laden with things, his head buzzed twice more. When he looked over at Xu Yulan and saw that she was screaming, he thought to himself that he was a dead man.

The bespectacled man stood up from the doorstep, stepped out into the lane, and addressed Xu Sanguan’s neighbors. “Come over here, I have something I want to tell all of you. Come on over. Bring your kids too. Come and listen to what I’m going to tell you.”

The bespectacled man pointed inside at the table and said to Xu Sanguan’s neighbors, “Do you see all those soup bones, yellow beans, and mung beans on the table? There’s a pound of chrysanthemum flowers too, but they’re hidden behind the soup bones. Xu Sanguan gave those things to my woman. My woman’s name is Lin Fenfang. Lots of people in town know who she is, and I bet some of you know her too. I see a few of you are nodding your heads. My woman and your Xu Sanguan both work at the silk factory. They work on the same shop floor. My woman slipped and broke her leg when she was washing clothes by the river. Xu Sanguan came to visit my woman. Now, when other people came by for a visit, they would sit by the bed, make some small talk, and then take their leave. Not your Xu Sanguan. When he came for a bedside visit, he ended up in bed with the patient. That’s right. He raped my woman. Think about it now. A woman with a broken leg—”

Xu Sanguan protested, “But it wasn’t rape at all.”

“That’s exactly what it was.” The bespectacled man stated categorically. “What do you people think? You think she would have had the strength to push him away with a broken leg? The slightest move left her in pain for hours. You think my woman could have pushed him away? This Xu Sanguan — this Xu Sanguan wouldn’t even spare a woman with a broken leg! What do you say to that? Is he any better than a beast?”

The neighbors didn’t bother to answer his query. Instead, they gazed curiously at Xu Sanguan.

Only Xu Yulan emerged to give her assent, grasping hold of Xu Sanguan’s ear with one hand and screaming, “You’re no better than a beast! You’ve ruined me! How can I ever hold my head up again?”

The bespectacled man continued, “After this Xu Sanguan raped my wife, he went out and bought these soup bones and yellow beans for her. And it worked. He got her to shut up about the whole thing. If I hadn’t noticed all these things in the house, I wouldn’t have known someone else had slept with my wife. But when I saw all these things, I knew something was going on. If I hadn’t shouted and pounded on the table, she wouldn’t even have told me what happened.”

At this point in his speech he walked over to the table, picked up the soup bones and yellow beans, and slung them over his back. Then he told Xu Sanguan’s neighbors, “I brought these things over here today for your benefit. I thought I should let you know what kind of man Xu Sanguan really is. In the future, you’d best be on your guard. The man’s a pervert. Whoever has women in the family had better watch out.”

With that, the bespectacled man strode off with the ten pounds of soup bones, five pounds of yellow beans, two pounds of mung beans, and one pound of chrysanthemum flowers on his back.

Xu Yulan, wholly occupied with pulling and scratching at Xu Sanguan’s face as she berated him, failed to notice at first what exactly the bespectacled man was doing. When she finally turned to look, he had vanished, and the tabletop was empty. She immediately gave chase, shouting as she went, “Come back here! How dare you take our things?”

The bespectacled man ignored her shouts and continued down the lane without so much as turning to glance in her direction.

Xu Yulan pointed at his retreating figure and shouted to her neighbors, “I’ve never seen anyone so shameless! He steals your things and still struts away like he’s done you a good turn.”

She continued to curse in the direction of the bespectacled man until he disappeared into the distance. Then she turned and caught sight of Xu Sanguan. As soon as she saw him, she fell heavily on the doorstep and began to cry.

“It’s all over for us. With other folks the old saying holds true: ‘As goes the nation so goes the family.’ But it’s different for us. The country’s just fine, but we’re ruined. First Blacksmith Fang came to take away all our things. Not one month later, and we’ve been betrayed by one of our own. That Xu Sanguan is no better than a beast. Usually, he’s famously stingy! If I buy a yard of fabric, he feels sick to his stomach for a whole month! But as soon as that Fatty Lin comes on the scene, things change. As soon as that bitch shows up, he’s handing out ten pounds of soup bones, four, even five pounds of yellow beans, and no less than two pounds of mung beans! Not to mention the chrysanthemum flowers! I wonder how much all of that stuff cost?”

At this point Xu Yulan appeared to have thought of something else, because she interrupted her harangue to shout toward Xu Sanguan, “You stole my money! You must have stolen the money I hid inside my trunk. I saved that money one or two fen at a time. I worked for ten years to save that money! Ten years of blood, sweat, and tears! And you gave it all away to that fat bitch!”

Xu Yulan darted over to her trunk, opened the lid, and rifled through the contents. Soon she fell silent; she had found her savings intact.

Having securely refastened the lid of the trunk, she looked up to see that Xu Sanguan had closed the front door, shutting the neighbors outside. He smiled ingratiatingly toward her with thirty yuan in his hand, the three ten-yuan notes fanned out from his fingers like a poker hand. Xu Yulan sidled over to where he was standing, took the money from his hand, and asked in a low voice, “Where did this money come from?”

Xu Sanguan also lowered his voice. “I earned it selling blood.”

“You sold blood again?”

Xu Yulan gave a low moan and, after a moment of silence, began to cry. Between her sobs, she said, “Why did I marry you? I’ve suffered and I’ve struggled for ten years now, and I’ve given you three sons. When did you ever sell blood for my sake? I never knew until now what a heartless son of a bitch you are. I can’t believe you sold your blood just to give that fat bitch some soup bones.”

Xu Sanguan tapped her on the shoulder. “Since when have you given me three sons? Is Yile my son? And when I sold blood to pay Blacksmith Fang, who do you think I was doing it for?”

Xu Yulan fell silent. Then she gazed at Xu Sanguan for a moment. “Tell me. What exactly happened between you and that Fatty Lin? Did you really want a woman as fat as all that?”

Xu Sanguan stroked his face thoughtfully. “She broke her leg, so I went to see her. It was just common courtesy.”

“And was it just common courtesy to hop in bed with her? Go on.”

Xu Sanguan said, “I reached out my hand to squeeze her leg and asked her where it hurt.”

“On her thigh? Or her calf?”

“At first it was the calf, but then I somehow got to her thigh.”

“You’re shameless.” Xu Yulan jabbed a finger at his face. “Then what happened? What did you do next?”

“What happened next?” Xu Sanguan hesitated for a moment. “What happened next was I grabbed her tits.”

“Aiya!” Xu Yulan cried out. “You worthless son of a bitch! Since when did you start taking tricks from that bastard He Xiaoyong’s book?”