Under the Hawthorn Tree Read Online Free PDF Page A

you his wife.’
    Jingqiu felt uneasy. She knew she couldn’t repay Lin’s kindness in a way that he might want.
    Fang said, ‘Old Third is also good to you. Mother said that he’s been here replacing your light bulb, saying that the one we had here was too dark and it would be bad for your eyes. He also gave Mum some money and told her it’s for the electricity bill.’
    Jingqiu was overjoyed, but merely replied, ‘That’s only because he’s worried about your eyes, it’s your room after all.’
    â€˜This has been my room for a long time, but has he ever come to change my light bulb before?’
    When Jingqiu next bumped into Old Third she tried to give him some money but he wouldn’t accept it. They argued until Jingqiu gave up. As she was preparing to leave, however, she put a bit of money on the table and left a note, just like the 8th Route Army used to do. No one had ever been so openly attentive to her since she had been burdened by her ‘bad class background’. She felt that she had stolen a new life as Auntie and the rest of the family didn’t know about her background. Just wait until they find out, she thought, they won’t look at me in the same way.
    One morning, Jingqiu got up and went to fold the quilt, only to discover an egg-sized blood-stain on the sheet. Her ‘old friend’ was back. It always made an appearance just before something important was about to happen, and now it was conducting its usual pre-emptive attack. Whenever her class had to go learn industrial production, study agriculture or do their military exercises, her ‘old friend’ would arrive unannounced. Jingqiu rushed to remove the sheet. She wanted to scrub the stain discreetly, but felt embarrassed about washing the sheet in the house. That day it happened to be raining so she had to wait until midday when it finally stopped, in order to go clean the sheet in the river.
    She knew she shouldn’t get into the cold water during a visit from her ‘old friend’ – her mother was always reminding her about this, explaining over and over the dangers. You mustn’t drink cold water, you mustn’t eat cold food, and you mustn’t wash in cold water, otherwise you’ll get toothache, headaches, and muscle aches. But that day she didn’t have a choice. Standing on two large stones in the river she lowered the sheet into the water but it was shallow and as soon as she did so it got muddied by the riverbed. The more she washed the dirtier it became. Just do it, take off your shoes and get into deeper water, she thought.
    As she was taking off her shoes she heard a voice say, ‘You’re here? Lucky I saw you, I was about to go upstream to wash my rubber boots. The mud would have made your sheets dirty.’
    It was Old Third. Ever since she had called him ‘brother’ and been laughed at she didn’t know what to call him, and even had she known what to say it wouldn’t have mattered as she wouldn’t have been able to get the words out anyway. Everything connected to him had become a taboo, and her mouth declined to offend. But to her eyes and ears and heart everything about him was as dear as Mao’s Little Red Book; she wanted to read, and listen, and think about him all day.
    He was still wearing the half-length cotton coat, but on his feet he wore a pair of long rubber boots, slathered in mud. She was diffident; it’s raining so hard today, and here I am washing my sheets, he must be able to guess what’s happened. She feared he might ask, so she turned the thoughts over madly in her head, desperately drafting a lie.
    But he didn’t ask her anything, just said, ‘Let me, I’m wearing rubber boots, I can wade into deeper water.’
    Jingqiu refused, but he had already removed his cotton coat, put it into her hands and grabbed the sheet. She cuddled his jacket close and stood by the bank,