"This jar is thirty years old," Sister Hong scraped the sides of the jar with a bamboo stick. "Before she died, my mother-in-law said I should heat a piece of hot charcoal inside the jar to remove any moisture."
Zhang Shumin took the red-hot charcoal, placed it in the bottom of the jar, and turned it three times. As smoke rose, she suddenly said, "Hot charcoal removes the fishy smell, just like cleaning a gun."
Sister Hong's bamboo stick stopped in mid-air, and their eyes met in the green smoke, like two knives gently hitting each other.
The base salt should be spread like a thin layer of snow covering a path. Zhang Shumin pinched the coarse salt and sprinkled it on the bottom of the jar. The salt grains that fell through her fingers gathered into neat arcs, each grain evenly spaced.
Sister Hong poured a spoonful of sorghum wine on the salt, and the flame shot up half a foot high, illuminating the light brown mole behind her ear.
"Get rid of bad luck." She said with a smile, and the silver lock shone in the firelight, casting diamond-shaped spots of light.
Arranging vegetables requires "compacting each layer like building a wall." Zhang Shumin first spreads a layer of mustard greens, with the petioles facing outward and the leaves facing inward, forming concentric circles.
"This way the brine seeps in more easily." She pressed her fingertips against the stems, applying just enough pressure to make the leaves dent slightly. "Back in the kitchen, I made pickled cabbage this way, enough to feed the entire company for half a month."
Sister Hong sprinkled chopped wild peppercorns between the layers of vegetables. Her movements suddenly quickened, and the red pepper powder on her fingertips fell on the back of Zhang Shumin's hand, leaving a scratch.
"Press once, lift three times." She demonstrated by pressing the wooden pestle all the way down, then lifting it three inches, repeating this three times. "This will force the air out."
Feng Yulan noticed that each time she lifted the pestle, the height was precise, as if measured with a ruler. Hong Jie, counting the beats beside her, suddenly changed the tune and hummed "Returning from Target Practice," with the last note drawn out.
Halfway through the third layer of vegetables, Zhang Shumin suddenly stopped. She picked up a misshapen leaf from the pile. A hole had been bitten by an insect, shaped like a gun. "Don't keep vegetables with insect holes."
She tossed the leaves into the waste basket, then paused. "But sometimes...incompleteness is also a mark."
Sister Hong lowered her head to pound the vegetables. The wooden pestle hit the wall of the jar with a crisp sound, which scared away the sparrows on the jujube tree.
Mixing the brine is key. Sister Hong poured boiling water into a clay pot and tossed in a handful of Sichuan peppercorns. Amidst the white steam, she suddenly said, "Auntie Wang, do you know what 'salt flower' is?"
Zhang Shumin sprinkled salt into the water, stirring it with chopsticks with the precision of a second hand: "When the salt foam stands upright, the brine is ready."
When pouring brine, it should flow along the wall of the jar. Zhang Shumin held the pot, tilted her wrist 45 degrees, and the amber brine slid into the jar along the wall without stirring up any bubbles.
The jar is sealed with wax-soaked tissue paper. Sister Hong cuts the paper into a square, snipping small slits at each corner, her movements as swift as a silhouette.
"This way the jar mouth can breathe smoothly." She covered the jar with paper, wrapped the hemp rope around the jar mouth three times, and tied a double knot.
The last step was to bury the altar. Sister Hong dug a hole half a person deep in the backyard and covered the bottom with dry straw.
"Bury the jar in a dark, constant-temperature spot." She patted the soil with a shovel and suddenly turned back. "Auntie Wang, do you think this jar of vegetables looks like a coffin?"
Zhang Shumin squatted down to sort the straw. Her fingertips touched a bullet-shaped stone protruding from the grass roots. "The coffin holds the dead, and this jar holds the living."
As dusk settled in, the three of them sat under the eaves, washing their hands. Sister Hong scrubbed her hands with a soapnut, and tiny gold dust floated through the foam—the fluorescent powder used by the Lao Jin Group to mark banknotes.
Feng Yulan looked down at her hands. The palms of her palms were marked with red marks from the salt, but she felt inexplicably at ease.
"The ceremony will begin in seven days." Sister Hong put the tools into the wooden cabinet, revealing half a piece of blue cloth at the bottom of the cabinet. It was the cloth Feng Yulan had seen before. It was the cloth Sister Hong used to wrap the account book. There was an almost invisible blue dot on it, which matched the mark on the banknote under Zhang Shumin's pillow.
The night wind blew through the newly piled earth in the pickle jar, making a slight sound.
Zhang Shumin stood under the jujube tree, the moonlight casting her shadow on the mound.
Feng Yulan knew that buried in that jar of pickles were not only mustard greens and seasonings, but also the secrets of the three women. Like layers of vegetable leaves, they would eventually be soaked in the brine of time and transformed into the bitterest and most deadly truth.
As the night watchman's clappers rang out from afar, Feng Yulan heard the faint sound of bubbles bubbling beneath the earthen mound. It was the fermentation of pickles, and also something growing in the dark.
Sister Hong lit the oil lamp in the kitchen. In the halo of light, her gestures of cutting vegetables suddenly became extremely sharp. As the kitchen knife rose and fell, it actually drew a "combat-style" arc as seen in agent training.
Zhang Shumin turned to look at Feng Yulan, her eyes meaningful from beneath the brim of her hat. "Remember, a true pickling expert can tell the sound of time from the jar."
Feng Yulan nodded, and suddenly realized that what they were burying was not just a jar of pickles, but a time bomb. In the early morning of seven days, when the red cloth covering the jar was removed, the darkest secret of this small town would be revealed.
The stream gurgled in the moonlight, carrying away a few leaves that had fallen from the pickling process.
Feng Yulan touched the brass keychain in her pocket; the butterfly's wings were icy cold. She knew that when the pickle jar was dug out again, everything would be turned upside down—just like Sister Hong said, life needs to be turned over frequently to avoid being burnt.
And their lives have long been marinated into the most complex flavors through countless turns.
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