Why am I so unlucky? she asked herself. I’m still young, just twenty-seven, a young widow. From now on, I’ll have to take care of everything inside and outside the house, and have to be both mom and dad to Kai.
As if something tore at her heart, she sobbed again, mumbling to the pillows, “A young widow, a young widow.”
It was getting dark. The smell of fresh corn cakes and fried soy paste began to fill Sea Nest Village. Sheep’s bleating and pigs’ squealing could be heard now and then. Lanlan didn’t cook, but she knew she had to eat so as to nurse the baby. Lying in the dim room, she remembered Ailian, who had been a young widow for only a year and then married another man. But Ailian is a beauty in the village, she said to herself. I can’t compare myself with her.
She heard a creak at the door. “Who is it?” she asked loudly. No sound. It must have been a dog, she thought. Since no food had been left in the outer room, she didn’t bother to get up.
Suddenly the door curtain burst open and a man jumped in. “Keep quiet,” he hissed, waving a long knife.
By instinct she turned to reach for the sleeping baby. “Don’t move!” rasped the man.
She froze, staring at him. He was a small man, bony and pallid. His hair was long and unkempt, and his round eyes were glowing luridly. Though scared, she managed to ask, “What do you want?”
“I want your thighs.” He grinned, revealing two broken teeth. He moved close and ordered, “Take off your pants, and don’t make any noise or I’ll stab you and the little bastard.” He pointed the knife at the baby.
A cramp stiffened her right leg, and she obeyed him, slowly untying her waistband.
“Quick, you bitch!” He stuck the knife into the waist of her pants and ripped it open. His left hand grasped a thick layer of flesh on her belly as his other hand stood the knife on the wooden edge of the bed. Then with both hands he pulled off her pants and briefs and threw them to the earth floor.
She was about to cry, but stopped at the sight of the knife. She was lying on the bed helplessly.
The man unbuckled his pants. “If you make a noise, I’ll stab you through. Got it?”
She nodded, unable to say a word. He smelled of grass and mud; his belly was flat and hairy.
“Look at these thick thighs,” he said, pinching her hip. “I thought I had luck today. Such an ugly thing. What lousy luck! These swollen udders.” He fingered his long mustache. “Well, I guess I have to make do.” He yanked at her breast and pressed his other hand on her shoulder.
With her nipple in his mouth, he began to enter her, moaning lustfully. Anger surged up in her. Slowly her hand moved to the knife, held it, pulled it off, raised it and thrust it into his rib cage. “Oh!” he gasped, and jumped up, tearing the cut open. The knife bounced off and hit the wall with a clang as her hand suddenly felt the warmth of his blood. He staggered away to the door. Then she heard a thump in the outer room.
Kai woke up with a cry. She grabbed the baby and dashed out, shrieking, “Help! Save my life! Help!”
In front of her, ducks and chickens were flapping and whirling. Two young cocks flew up and landed atop the latrine.
The villagers were bewildered by what had happened. Lanlan had run into the street screaming and wailing with the baby in her arms. She was wearing only a shirt, without anything on below her waist. Some men laughed and smacked their lips. Her neighbor Aunt Wang pulled her away to the Wangs’ and gave her a pair of slacks. People went to Lanlan’s house and found a half-naked man, pants around knees, in the outer room. His head was buried in the cornstalks beside the cooking range, while his bare butt pointed towards the ceiling. A few men kicked him, and he slid on his side, no breath left in him. A trail of blood led to the brick bed, on whose glossy surface was a crimson puddle. The big knife lying in a corner looked so expensive that a boy slipped it into his sleeve. The whole house smelled like a fish shop. Obviously, the man and the woman must have been doing it when he was struck down. Perhaps the spirit of the late husband had intervened.
How come on the very day of her husband’s burial another man was found in her home? And both Lanlan and the man were half naked? Did they go to bed together? More confusing, nobody in the village knew the man. Who was he? Why did he choose to go to Lanlan’s house and not another’s? If he was a rapist as Lanlan claimed, how come he knew that no man was in her home today? What was their true relationship? Nobody could tell. It seemed there must have been something between them. This couldn’t be a pure coincidence.
In the production brigade’s office the Party secretary, Chian Heng, and the director, Zhang Gu, were restless. By Lanlan’s appearance and account they were convinced that the dead man had attempted to rape her, though they were uncertain whether her denial of knowing him was true. During their questioning of her, she had never stopped crying and hadn’t been able to describe everything clearly. More disturbing was that the man was killed, so whatever she said became the statement of one party. Nobody could prove the dead man was a rapist.
“Stop worrying about the evidence, Old Chian,” Director Zhang said. “We’ll never have it. The man is already dead. What really matters is who he is.”
“That’s true.”
With a teacup in his hand the director went to a room across the corridor to call the police in Dismount Fort, while Secretary Chian remained in the office rolling a cigarette. In the next room Lanlan began crying again and declared she would kill herself for shame. A few female voices whispered, trying to calm her. Chian sighed and puffed out smoke. He had been a friend of Lanlan’s late husband and knew the couple had gone through a tumultuous marriage, and he had never liked Lanlan since the day she came to the village.
Zhang returned, heaving a sigh. “Any news?” Chian asked.
“Only Shen Li is in town tonight. They’ll come tomorrow morning.”
“Does he know anything about the dead man?”
“He said there was a report on a missing man—Dong Cai’s nephew, a lunatic.”
Chian was shocked, because Dong was the vice-secretary of the commune. “Did he know what the madman looks like?”
“Yes, a small man in corduroy pants.”
“Damn it,” Chian slapped his thigh, “that’s him.”
“We’re in trouble now.”
Chian stood up and went to the next room. Zhang followed him. At the sight of them Lanlan winced and lowered her head. “You know who you killed?” Chian asked her. Without waiting for an answer, he added, “You killed Vice-Secretary Dong’s nephew, a madman. Damn you, such a jinx.”
Lanlan burst into tears again.
“Why did you say that?” asked Aunt Wang, who was Secretary Chian’s mother-in-law’s cousin. “What else could she do? Hothead Chian, what do you want your wife to do if a strange man is on top of her?”
“No matter what, she shouldn’t kill him,” Chian said. “Now he’s dead, she can’t prove her case and she’ll go to jail.” He shook his head.
“Let’s go home. No use arguing with him,” Aunt Wang said, and held Lanlan by the elbow. They stood up and moved to the door, followed by two other women.
After covering the corpse with rice straws in a storeroom inside the office house and assigning three militiamen to stand guard at the door for the night, the secretary and the director left for home. They assured each other that they had better stay off this mess and let the police handle it.
Lanlan and Kai stayed at the Wangs’ that night. The fear and exhaustion upset her breasts, from which no milk came. She used to be proud of the two spurting fountains that had fattened the boy as if blowing up a balloon. Sometimes there had been so much milk in them that her husband had to suck them to relieve her pain, but now Kai, screaming, chewed her dry nipples ferociously with his two teeth. Aunt Wang gave her a large bowl of rice porridge; Lanlan fed the boy with it and ate two sweet potatoes herself.