Chapter 9
The whole country was jubilant at the millennium. Zhou Yue was ten years old that year, and Kang Xingxing was eleven years old.
On New Year's Eve that year, the fireworks shook the earth. Foreigners thought the Chinese were at war. The sound of firecrackers resounding through the sky and the fireworks burning the night sky briefly covered up the Zhou family's endless wails.
That was Zhou Tiancheng's wailing. The pain from lung cancer had worn away his once-arrogant spirit. He lived for a breath, but that spirit was gone. He was no different from an animal. He howled when in pain and rolled around on the bed like a slaughtered pig. Dai Yan tied him to the head of the bed with a sheet, and he cursed her, saying all the nasty things until she left. After the pain subsided, he cried again, lying on the bed and calling Dai Yan all kinds of dirty names, asking her to come in.
At first, Dai Yan went in to see him and serve him, but later, Zhou Yue only saw her mother sitting alone in the dark living room in a daze. In the dim light from the bedroom, she could see the frozen tears on her face. Her hair was disheveled, revealing strands of white at the roots. All the unbearable names you could think of floated out of the bedroom and echoed between the empty walls.
When Zhou Yue was a little older, she also wondered why her father refused to go to the hospital. Aside from the time Kang Xingxing hit Feifei, she remembered her father never going to the hospital. But back then, he was healthy, or at least he looked healthy. He smoked cigarettes without even spitting them out. Later, after seeing more, she realized the cigarettes had gone into his lungs, and they were Black King Kong cigarettes, the kind only a serious smoker would smoke if they thought their life was worthless.
But she didn't even have the chance to ask this most basic question. It seemed as if her mother was always walking in front of her in a hurry with an insulated lunch box. She had to serve Zhou Tiancheng and had no time to cook, so she could only go to the cafeteria to get food. Her high heels clicked, and her long hair danced with her hurried march. The flesh on her elbows, which was black and loose, also danced along with her. She never looked back at her and Kang Xingxing once.
Her parents never understood each other, and she never understood her parents.
Her enviable wealthy childhood was not one of displacement, but no one except Kang Xingxing knew that she had actually been homeless. She couldn't even lie in her mother's arms, feeling the summer breeze and chatting with her mother about her father, and her mother's love and hatred for her father.
In June 2000, Zhou Tiancheng was sent to the hospital, where he spent his last days.
Zhou Tiancheng, the famously handsome man, was now just a skeleton. His pair of drunken peach eyes looked like two bulging eyeballs on a skull, moving as sluggishly and stiffly as an unoiled machine. Three times a day, he had to be stripped clean and tossed around by the cold-faced nurse.
Zhou Yue and Kang Xingxing would go to visit their father after school, three or four times a week, taking the bus with Dai Yan, traveling for a long time through the sun-drenched streets of the northern town.
Zhou Yue leaned against the car window, looking at the warm sunshine outside and the willow trees swaying in the wind. She secretly hoped that the car would never drive away, so that she would always be on the way to visit her father. She missed her father, but was terrified of his sick appearance.
As soon as he saw them coming, his bulging gray eyes glued to Dai Yan's face and followed her wherever she went. Even the slightest movement of her head when she bent down to tuck the hair around her ears was like an invisible thread pulling at his eyes.
Xiao Zhouyue was also afraid of the disinfectant and alcohol that filled her nasal cavity as soon as she entered the hospital, which was as cold as the nurse's eyes.
But after all, Zhou Tiancheng was staying in a spacious single room. She had not seen true suffering at that time. She just felt for the first time the fragility of human beings and the fickleness of fate. The man who was as tall and straight as a towering tree had shrunk into a dry branch in just a few months. He wanted to call her but couldn't make a sound. His dry hands like chicken claws were supported in the air, and he beckoned her over. He touched the newspaper on the bedside with his fingertips and smiled at her, meaning that she should read the newspaper to him.
Zhou Yue's Chinese is ridiculously good, and she attributes this to her amazing memory. Other children forget the text the moment they memorize it, but she can remember it by heart after reading it a few times. She also loves reading, and reads everything from ancient and modern times, both Chinese and foreign. She knows more words than other children of the same age, and reading newspapers is naturally a piece of cake for her.
She approached her father timidly, but dared not move forward when she reached the bedside table. In her memory, her father only had the bitter smell of cigarettes. There was a time when he was used to smoking cigars, which had a fresh scent of cedar.
But he smelled horribly now, like decay.
Zhou Tiancheng was very observant of children's expressions and knew what they were looking at, but he just smiled and pushed the newspaper in front of his daughter across the bedside table. He pointed to the chair in the corner, meaning that she should sit there and read.
But when I really read it to him, he seemed not to be listening. The sunlight from the window shone on his face, as if giving him a little vitality. He raised his neck from the pillow and looked towards the door of the ward.
Zhou Yue glanced at him in between reading the newspaper, then turned back and followed his gaze, only to see a winding wisteria corridor outside the corridor window opposite the ward. A group of patients' families were sitting inside eating boxed lunches. Some were crying while eating, and some looked numb. Dai Yan belonged to the latter, holding the plastic lunch box and shoveling food into her mouth. She had gained weight, and her messy hair covered most of her face. She wore a royal blue short-sleeved shirt and a pair of gray cropped pants. She was squeezed among a group of dusty people and was nothing special.
When she finished eating and came in, Zhou Tiancheng was looking out the window again. She moved a chair to sit beside his bed and silently peeled an apple. Meanwhile, the two children went to the small cubicle in the ward to read or do homework. Only occasionally could Dai Yan whisper, "Eat it. Come on, swallow it with hot water." There was no movement. After a while, her voice returned, "You have to eat it. Apples are good for your bowels. Be good."
But Zhou Yue couldn't concentrate on reading here, and even Kang Xingxing was a little absent-minded. The two little guys would slip to the door after reading for a while, open it and look out quietly.
Normally, Zhou Tiancheng would stare out the window without saying a word, the swaying shadows of the trees swaying on his face, half bright and half dark, his eyes like glass beads covered with dust, and the apple on the table was slowly oxidizing and turning yellow. Dai Yan no longer had the energy to point at his nose and scold him, she just leaned back in her chair and looked out the window with him. From Zhou Yue and the others' perspective, they could see the tip of her nose showing from under her long hair.
They sat like this until the sun set, and the sunset dyed their faces red like blood.
But one day Zhou Tiancheng suddenly spoke, his voice soft and vague, "I just had a dream."
"What dream?"
"I dreamed about my twentieth birthday. That year was truly bizarre. It was the end of October and still incredibly hot, and the sun was blazing." He laughed, swallowed, and paused for a moment before continuing, "Lei Zi and the others took a shortcut to the cinema. That pervert Lei Zi insisted the person ahead was a beautiful woman, and he kept whistling and calling out to her. I went up and kicked her twice. That girl was only a few years old, at most fourteen or fifteen. I'm afraid she'll end up in police custody and get crippled, never to be able to touch a woman again in her lifetime."
"Hehe." Zhou Tiancheng laughed, and then burst into coughing again. Dai Yan didn't say anything, as if she was sleepwalking.
"I don't know what got into that bastard that day. He stuck to me like he was in heat. I didn't expect that little girl to be easy to deal with. She turned around and slapped him in the face. Hahaha, he slapped that bastard Lei Zi like a top. After that, he didn't run away. He stood there like a tiger, looking at us one by one. When he saw me, he pointed at my nose and called me a stinky hooligan."
"Tell me, am I wronged?" Zhou Tiancheng laughed so hard that his eyes couldn't open. "What did I do? You call me a scoundrel."
"But later on, I think it wasn't unfair." He turned and smiled at her, his dry eyes brimming with tears, a glimmer of life returning. "The first time I saw her, I thought, for this girl, I'd rather go to jail and get beaten to a cripple."
He raised his hand with difficulty, but she was just staring out the window in a daze, never lowering her head. His hand lost its strength when it touched the tip of her chin, and brushed against the ends of her hair when it fell, without a trace of wind.
"What are you thinking about?" he asked.
"I've been thinking..." Dai Yan spoke after a while, as if mumbling to herself, "Thinking about the time I spent most of the morning hanging around the drugstore, sweating both hot and cold. My polyester shirt wasn't breathable, so it stuck to my body. I finally dared to go in. Aunt Liang asked me what medicine I wanted to buy and why my face was so pale, wondering if I had heatstroke. She was the first person to talk to me that day, and I burst into tears. I told her I hadn't had my period in a long time, so I was probably pregnant."
"Oh," she lowered her head to look at her plump, round hands. Fat people tend to get darker, and the skin on their knuckles is darker. She laughed as she looked at them. "Why should I tell Aunt Liang about this? We're not related, but my mom and dad died so young, and my aunt doesn't like me. I have no one to talk to."
She raised her head with a calm expression, "When Aunt Liang heard this, she abandoned the shop and dragged me to the hospital, paying for my medical treatment. She even waited with me on a cold iron chair in the hospital. A check revealed it had been three months. If it were another woman, she would have been vomiting profusely. But Yueyue was such a well-behaved child, she didn't bother me at all, as if she was afraid I wouldn't want her anymore."
"Aunt Liang slapped me as soon as she came out of the hospital. She said my mother would have killed me if she had lived. That was a good slap. I wondered why she didn't just beat me to death so I wouldn't have to do it. Other girls are keeping their chastity and waiting to marry into a good family. But who is like me? I gave my body away as a teenager just for the little kindness that man gave me."
She smiled and looked down at Zhou Tiancheng's haggard face. "But this little bit of goodness isn't just mine. It also depends on who's doing it. At that time, he was having a hot affair with Jiang Liru from the petrochemical plant, and I was waiting downstairs at her house. When it got dark, he came over with his arm around Jiang Liru and saw me. He just glanced at me with a playful smile and went into the corridor. If it were any other time, I would have kicked the door long ago, but I don't know what happened that day. I just couldn't move. I stood in the pitch-black corridor listening to them laughing through the door. Every laugh seemed to be laughing at me. Later, I heard her screaming. She screamed for more than half an hour until she was out of breath. Then there was no sound at all, as if she were dead. Then I heard the sound of footsteps in the room. The door opened, and the man leaned against the door with his bare chest, smoking a cigarette, and asked me what was wrong with him with a smile."
"I told him," Dai Yan tilted her head, immersed in memories, "I told him I was pregnant and told him not to worry, I would have the pregnancy removed, but as a father he should know. From now on, we will go our separate ways. Then I left."
"Actually, I already have the medicine. I asked my little sister for it behind Aunt Liang's back. She said it was good and would inject cleanly, but it would hurt, like my internal organs being pulled out. I said I wasn't afraid, and that dying from the pain would be the best."
"I didn't dare go home that day. I went to the women's restroom in our factory. I was afraid I couldn't hold on, so I brought a white towel and waited until everyone got off work before going in. But I hesitated for a second, I swear, just one second," she said, putting her hand on her stomach. "I just felt something furry scratching my stomach."
She leaned back in the chair, arms drooping, her expression helpless and tired. "But the very next second, the door was kicked open. I still remember his behavior. He said, 'If you want to get married, then don't. I'll make the money anyway, so you and your mother won't suffer. But I have one thing in mind: even if we get married, don't try to tie me down!'"
After she finished speaking, her gaze slowly shifted to Zhou Tiancheng's face, and she smiled again, "You said he was so cruel, why isn't he just cruel to the end? Or does he think that all the girls in the world are dogs chasing after him and fawning over him, biting each other for him, and not one less can do that?"
She laughed a few times, then stopped laughing again, looking at the dazzlingly white quilt soaked in disinfectant. "If I had to say what I regret in this life, I actually don't regret being with him. It's natural for a woman to love a man. I only regret one thing."
The sun set, the sky was gray, and her eyes were misty. "But there's nothing I can do. I lost my soul when I saw his eyes. He ran so fast that day, his eyelashes were covered in sweat, and every time he blinked, sweat fell down like tears. He didn't smile anymore. He stood in the women's restroom, holding on to the door with one hand. Our factory guard, Lao Li, banged on his back with his baton, but it didn't move. He just stood there for a while, and then I lowered my head again."
"I only regret one thing in my life, and that's not aborting Yueyue."
"Once a woman has a child, it's like she's dead. There's no escaping it."
The ward was dead silent. In the small cubicle across the door, Kang Xingxing held Zhou Yue's hand tightly. Zhou Yue felt that everything in front of her was particularly bright, so bright that she felt dizzy. Her stomach was churning, and she covered her mouth tightly to prevent herself from vomiting. It was so bright that only a black shadow remained in front of her. When the shadow disappeared, she looked down and saw that she was pinching Kang Xingxing's hand, her nails digging into the back of his chubby little hand, and the blood and flesh were blurred. He didn't move, and kept saying something in her ear over and over again. His voice was very low, coming from far away, but she could hear it clearly. He said: "Yueyue is a treasure, my treasure, my priceless treasure."
Zhou Yue woke up from her bed. The ceiling was still the same, and the white gauze curtains were blown by the wind. The rainy season in Shenzhen continued. The sound of raindrops came through the French windows, lulling her to sleep. She didn't know how long she had slept. She turned over and glanced at the clock on the bedside: 17:45, June 29, 2013. The last time she woke up was on June 26.
Downstairs, I could faintly hear the noise of the kitchen, the hum of the pressure cooker, drowned out by the sound of the rain. After a while, soft footsteps were heard on the stairs, coming from far away and stopping at the door. Two seconds later, there was a gentle knock on the bedroom door, three times, no more, no less.
"Madam, dinner is ready." The voice was soft and graceful, and Jiang Huai was from Ningbo. The nanny and driver in the family were all from Jiangsu and Zhejiang. Cantonese was not heard at home, and Cantonese was more familiar to Zhou Yue.
"I'm not hungry." Zhou Yue sat up with her back to the door, looking at the misty Pengcheng outside the window.
"Please eat a little, ma'am. A healthy child needs nutrition." Her tone was soft, without any pleading or nagging. One could imagine her smiling expression as she nodded at the door.
"……good."
Aunt Xu carefully untied the chains on Zhou Yue's wrists and ankles, let her off the bed, and followed her down the spiral wooden stairs.
There was not a single unnecessary decoration in the living room, with a white dining table, a white sofa, and a white Versace tile floor. It was too high, and everything seemed so far away, making people want to turn into a butterfly and fly down. However, the end of the nylon rope around her waist was in Aunt Xu's hand, and she, the caterpillar, was trapped before she could turn into a butterfly.
It was still the same Huaiyang cuisine, spread from one end of the table to the other, with sponges on the four corners and edges of the table. Zhou Yue only ordered a bowl of lotus seed and lily porridge.
Jiang Huai sometimes comes back to eat, but only sometimes, but every day's dishes are based on his taste.
"Madam, Mr. Jiang called and said he would be home at 7 o'clock."
Aunt Xu emerged silently from behind Zhou Yue, bringing with her the scent of osmanthus.
"knew."
Zhou Yue never knew what Aunt Xu's intention was in reporting Jiang Huai's whereabouts to her. She didn't care and couldn't prepare anything. She had nothing but her voice and body.
My voice is still there now, and when I’m alone, I can sing “The Moon Represents My Heart” to myself and feel happy for a long time.
But a woman who has given birth to a child, no matter how beautiful she is, the cold "little moon" is now just cold and frosty. Naturally, her body is useless. In Jiang Huai's words, it is "like a rag bag". The head of the Jiang Group naturally cannot stay with her as a single woman. It is like the emperor has three thousand concubines, and this villa halfway up the mountain is the cold palace. She is a crazy concubine. Such a metaphor is very appropriate.
"Mr. Jiang said that Madam should try her best to breastfeed." Aunt Xu stood behind her, filled a small bowl of crucian carp soup and placed it next to her, her movements as light as a crane.
Zhou Yue lowered her head and drank the soup, one spoonful at a time. When she was almost done, she said, "Aunt Xu, can you bring Tiantian to me? I haven't seen him in a few days and I miss him a little."
"Oh, okay!" Aunt Xu nodded and bent down, her voice even lower. This was the first time she showed any emotion. Her pace quickened, and her trouser legs made a rubbing sound as she walked deep into the corridor extending from the living room on the first floor.
The baby room was at the end of the corridor. Zhou Yue was very curious about how the child could cry so loudly in such a deep room that the whole villa was shaken.
But now he rarely cries because his mother doesn't hold him, feed him, or walk around the nursery with him to coax him to sleep.
She put down the bowl, stood up, and walked to the clock. No one knew what Jiang Huai was thinking. There was no decoration in the living room, but there was an antique Western clock. She lay on the ground, her left hand was pulled by the nylon rope, and her right hand could just reach under the clock. There was a fruit knife there. She had hidden it when she passed the kitchen last time. Fortunately, it was still there.
She sat back at the dining table and hid the knife in her waistband. Aunt Xu happened to come over with the child and put the child into her arms happily and carefully.
The swaddling clothes were warm and soft, wrapped in several layers, like petals, and the little face exposed inside was the pistil. He was originally asleep, but woke up as soon as he was in her arms. He whimpered and twisted his little body, turned his face around, opened his eyes and looked at her, and her shadow was reflected in his dark pupils.
He looked at her like this for a while, as if it took him some time to recognize her, then he smiled, twisted his body excitedly, his legs kicking in the swaddling clothes, and his little arms, as tender as lotus roots, waved in the air. He grabbed her hair and stuffed it into his mouth, chewing greedily, staring at her face intently.
"Look, Madam, I like you so much every day." Aunt Xu smiled with her eyes curved.
"Have you fed yet?"
"not yet."
"I'm going to the bedroom to nurse."
Zhou Yue sat in the bedroom, holding her child. The rain had stopped, but the sky wasn't completely dark yet. The deep blue sky still offered faint traces of lingering clouds. She swayed gently, humming, "You ask me how deeply I love you, how much I love you... My feelings are true, my love is true, the moon represents my heart..."
When the song ended, there was only soft and rapid breathing in the ears. The child didn't care whose heart the moon represented. He sucked like crazy. The lanugo was wet by sweat and became clumps, sticking to the scalp. He swallowed with gulps, as if he wanted to suck all her blood dry.
"Are you still hungry?" She swayed her body, looked down at him, and whispered softly, "You're not hungry anymore, are you?"
"Don't be angry with Mom." She took out a fruit knife from her waist, which shone coldly in the night. "But a baby without a mom and dad will be very pitiful, really pitiful. So I'm going to send you away first, and then I'll go with your dad. But don't worry, I'll get rid of him soon. Even if I die, I won't go down the same path with him. He's going to Hades' Palace, and I'm going to the Bridge of Sighs. Someone is waiting for me on the bridge."
"He's waited for me for so many years. I dare not make him wait any longer." She raised the blade and pressed it against the child's tender, chubby neck. "But once a woman has a child, she can no longer escape."
Hot tears hit the tip of the knife and hit his little face. He looked at her blankly while sucking his fingers. After a while, he giggled. With his other little hand, he held her cold and trembling fingers, and opened his little mouth to spit out a series of explosive sounds:
"Mom, mom, mom."
The knife fell to the ground with a clang. It was dark and there was only the woman's muffled sobbing in the bedroom. She buried her face in the child's chest, smelling the milk scent on the child, listening to his weak heartbeat, and her heart-wrenching cries were buried in the swaddling clothes.
Until the bedroom door opened and a ray of light tore through the darkness.
"Don't turn on the light." The man didn't turn on the light and walked in silently. There was only a rustling sound. The leather sofa by the window made a sound. He sat down and turned on the green tourmaline table lamp with a click. A soft and warm light came on in the bedroom, reflecting the man's face. He looked to be in his forties, with a thin nose and eyebrows, and slender willow-shaped eyes that smiled into a line. The corners of his eyes were as red as the cinnabar mole between his eyebrows, and his thin lips were raised. He wore a silver-gray shirt and white trousers, and leaned on the sofa with his legs crossed.
"As soon as I walked in, Aunt Xu told me that Madam was feeding Tiantian herself today. I was quite happy, but Madam didn't seem too happy."
He looked down and saw the knife on the ground. He pretended not to see it and looked back at Zhou Yue's face with a smile, waiting for her answer.
She tilted her head and looked at him silently, her tears frozen and her hair stuck to her cold face.
"It's the end of August, your father's memorial day. Do you want to go back?"
silence.
"Oh... look at your mother, she's ignoring me again." He sighed and put on his glasses. He got up from the sofa, bent over and walked to the bed with a smile, opening his arms, "Come, let daddy hold you!" As he said that, he happily took the child from Zhou Yue's arms, lifted him up, put him down, and lifted him up again, making the little guy giggle.
"Your little tummy must be so round from drinking, isn't it?" He walked to the window with the child in his arms, tickled his tummy, kissed him, and whispered in his ear with a smile, "Don't be fooled by your mother. She's planning to send us off!"
Zhou Yue had already been looking out the window, blinking slowly as if she hadn't heard anything.
"Remember this when you grow up," he said, holding the child in his arms, rocking her gently as he walked back to sit on the bed, bringing with him the scent of cigar smoke. He smiled dotingly as he studied her face, close enough for her to see the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes. "The prettier the dog, the harder it is to tame it."
He picked up the iron chain around her neck and held it in his palm, savoring the shimmering luster as if he were admiring a work of art. He suddenly pulled hard and pulled her whole body onto his lap, her face pressed against his ironed snow-white trousers.
"You said you didn't even let your own son go,"
He pressed her head against his lap, rubbing his fingers into her hair, kneading harder and harder, then he lifted her head with his five fingers together, smiling until his eyes were red. "Open your dog eyes and take a good look at how handsome our son is."
He bent his arms around her neck and held her in his embrace. His two bony hands took Tiantian's small hands in his palms and rubbed them open. "Look at these little nails, aren't they funny? I've never seen nails like them. Let me see if you have any."
He opened her palm and pinched her fingertips with great interest, looking at them one by one, "No."
He hugged Zhou Yue and kissed her hard on the face, her eyes sparkling with excitement. "Who does she look like?"
"Hmm? Who does he look like?" He whispered in her ear, "Does anyone in your Zhou family have nails like this?"
Zhou Yue let him grab her hair and shake her body. She had already become an empty shell. She felt wet and itchy on her face, and the water dripped down and landed on his wrinkle-free pants, leaving splashes of water.
She had never looked at the child once. When his eyes just opened, there were only black pupils and he could not see anything. He followed the scent and came to her and lay in her arms. She pushed him down with a dull thud. He was in pain and cried like a kitten, his voice thin and small.
Every day, he sits in his father's arms, curiously watching his father playing with his little hands to show his mother. He finds it fun, so he simply spreads out his chubby little hands, stretches them in front of his mother, clenches and unclenches his fists, clenches and unclenches his fists. His ten fingernails are flat, like coins eaten from the dumpling filling, still dipped in sugar water, and taste sweet.
"You killed Tiantian. How are you going to explain to your dear brother in the afterlife?" He lovingly tucked her wet hair behind her ears, kissed her nose, lips, and neck lovingly, and lifted her open clothes to reveal her body covered with scars.
"Tell me," he laughed breathlessly, "can the crocodiles in my pond at the foot of the mountain taste like those of a father and son?"
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