Chapter 161: Taking Advantage
Because washing that big basin of things would make dinner late, I cut the pound of pork belly and sliced it and fried it directly. I also scooped up half a bowl of oil, then added water and stewed it with the soaked dried vegetables. The aroma of lard filled the air.
After dinner, Lu Dongping turned his back on Wen Wan and was scolded by Zhang Hongying again. She simply told him to be frugal when he had money and not to spend it lavishly all day. He would sell his money as soon as he entered the city. No one in the city was as wasteful as him.
Lu Dongping had long been accustomed to her nagging and completely ignored her.
Zhang Hongying asked again: "What are you going to do with that pot of stuff? The heart and lungs are stewed in one pot, and the intestines can't be smoked now. I don't know how to cook that thing."
Lu Dongping wrung out the towel and wiped his face, then replied, "If you don't know how to do it, don't do it. I'll come back tomorrow afternoon and do it. Just let it soak for now, and it'll get rid of the smell."
Zhang Hongying ignored him: "Okay, you do it, it saves me some trouble." Anyway, even if the family slaughtered a pig, Lu Dongping and Lu Mingjiang would do all the other things, such as stringing the intestines and peeling the pig's head. She was used to being a hands-off boss.
The next afternoon, on his way back, he ran into Liu Dacai again. Lu Dongping stopped and said hello to him: "Liu Bashi, you've been very busy lately!"
Liu Dacai parked the tractor by the roadside, jumped off, took the cigarette he offered, put it behind his ear and said, "Let me tell you something. Just a reminder, those two female educated youth in your team—yes, no, one of them—can be quite talkative."
Lu Dongping looked at him: "What do you mean?"
Liu Dacai chuckled, "That's you, kid. You don't care about your appearance when you go out. You even hold your wife in your arms when you ride a bike. Yesterday, I called a few women from the team who were coming to the city and saw you two. They started talking about it, and then the female educated youth from your team joined in and said that you two lived together before you got married."
After saying that, Liu Dacai looked at him with amusement: "No, is this true? Did you get on the bus first and buy the ticket later? You are quite good!"
"Bullshit, just listen to her bullshit! That time, that idiot from Zhou's family in our team died in the ditch. She didn't dare to go there, so she stayed directly at our house and lived with Chun'e. They moved in after the wedding." Although they were already married, he had to make it clear since it concerned Wen Wan's reputation.
"Which one are you talking about?" The educated youth were not his concern, but if the maggots got to his wife, he really couldn't ignore it.
"The one with the plaid turban and the scarlet dress."
Lu Dongping met two female educated youth from the team yesterday, and he knew which one it was after a little thought.
He handed Liu Dacai another cigarette and said, "Thank you for this!"
Liu Dacai accepted it happily: "What are you thanking me for? I just want to remind you that although you are married, you should be more careful outside and stay close to your family slowly. You know these women are like flies. A little bit of things will become a big deal after they talk about it. Your wife is from the city and is a substitute teacher. Her reputation is still very important. Okay, I'm leaving. I have to go to collect public grain tomorrow." This is the busiest time of the year for him.
Lu Dongping waved his hand, watched him climb onto the tractor, and left first.
Lu Chun'e would finish school around this time, so if she was early, she would be waiting for him at the entrance to the commune. If she didn't come, it meant school hadn't finished yet, so he would go wait at the school entrance. But today, he didn't have to wait. He had told Lu Dongfu in the morning to go with Lu Chun'e in the afternoon, so he had to go back and pack up the pot of things he had bought yesterday.
When he arrived at the edge of the wheat field, he glanced at the people rubbing corn kernels under the shed. They were a group of women from the team, and his mother Zhang Hongying was also there.
After turning a corner and reaching the dam, he arrived in front of the shed. Everyone in the team greeted him. He smiled and responded, then called out, "Comrade Zhang Yun."
Zhang Yun and Xu Wenfang were sitting together at the moment, slacking off. She didn't know how to use an awl and didn't dare to use it. She couldn't poke a hole in the middle of the corn, so she could only pick it out slowly with her fingers. She had been doing this for several days, and her fingers were burning with pain. She couldn't pick out a few seeds in half a day.
Hearing someone shouting, she looked up and saw Lu Dongping, who was also looking at her. Her face turned red and her heart was beating fast.
He put down the corn in his hand, stood up, clapped his hands, dusted off his clothes, and walked a few steps outside: "Secretary Lu, are you looking for me?"
Lu Dongping nodded calmly: "Yes, I'm looking for you."
Everyone who was working stopped to look at him, not knowing what he was doing with the female educated youth, and their ears pricked up, waiting for the next word.
"Secretary Lu, what do you want to talk to me about?"
Lu Dongping smiled and said, "I heard some bad things about my wife today. They said you spread them. I won't repeat what they said. You know what you said yourself. As a female comrade and an intellectual, you should know what you can and cannot say. If I have offended you, you can come straight to me. My wife has a good temper and is polite to everyone, but she has never offended you. Go easy on her!"
Zhang Yun's face turned redder and redder, almost as if it was bleeding. But at this moment, she was embarrassed and humiliated.
"Secretary Lu, you're a cadre. Cadres are supposed to set an example for the people and be truthful. So, tell me what I said about Wen Wan. Did you hear it yourself? Or something? Without investigation, you have no right to speak. Slandering someone is illegal." She'd just said Wen Wan lived with someone before they got married. So what? How was she wrong? Wasn't that true? Everyone in Lujiazui knew about it. What can be done but not said? If she really wanted to be picky, she wouldn't be afraid of that.
Lu Dongping raised an eyebrow. "You're quite good at putting the blame on someone. What did you say yesterday on the tractor? You've forgotten so quickly? Not to mention Comrade Xu Wenfang, who was sitting with you, but the other people on the tractor. Coincidentally, I know them all, and I'm quite familiar with them. Do you want me to call them over to confront you and see if I'm not being truthful and slandering you?"
"I'm a straightforward person. Why should I slander you? Do I like you and want to find an excuse to talk to you? I'm a married man, don't think too much. My wife eats the food of my Lu family and drinks the water carried by me, Lu Dongping. It has nothing to do with anyone else. You guys have nothing to do and can make up stories about whoever you want. It has nothing to do with me, but don't provoke her, otherwise I really won't be polite." After saying that, he turned and left, leaving Zhang Yun standing there with a pale face, being stared at by a group of women.
Lu Dongping couldn't really do anything to a chatty educated youth, except to scare her and warn her. Anyway, in front of so many people, if Zhang Yun still had any sense of shame, she would have tucked her tail between her legs and behaved herself. His goal would have been achieved.
Living together before getting married is not a good thing to say. If others don’t know the actual situation, it will become more and more unpleasant.
When I got home, Wen Wan had already returned and was busy in the house with the door closed as usual.
Lu Dongping didn't bother her. He opened the kitchen door and started to add water to the two pots. He rinsed everything in the basin in the boiling water, then put the two pig's trotters, heart and lungs into the pot and boiled them. In the other pot, he cooked the large intestine and stomach. No matter how clean it was, it still had a smell and couldn't be cooked with other things.
He added two pieces of hard firewood into the stove cavity, and then took the shoulder pole to fetch water. The earliest radishes in the private plot were only as big as eggs, and they would be wasted if they were pulled out. So he collected the radish cocoons and dried vegetables that had been frosted in the previous winter and cooked them together in the heart and lung soup.
As for the pig intestines and stomach, when they are almost cooked, they should be taken out, cut into pieces and slowly roasted in a pot over low heat to roast out the little intestinal fat stuck on the intestines. Then, a bowl of half-dried chilies should be cut and poured into the pot. The smell will fill the whole yard and can be smelled even by Lu Mingjiang's family next door.
Lu Dongping ordered Lu Chun'e: "Go and tell your aunt not to cook dinner tonight and come over to eat."
Lu Chun'e said, "Isn't it a bit late to shout now? Maybe my aunt has already started the fire."
"I greeted him when I was fetching water."
It wasn't a festival, and the family was short of food. Even after Gao Xiulan invited them, she felt embarrassed to drag her family to eat at their place.
Lu Dongping and Lu Chun'e went to call but no one came over, so only Lu Minghai and Lu Dongfu came.
Zhang Hongying took a bowl and scooped up half a bowl of fried pig intestines, then filled a bowl of soup and asked Lu Chun'e and Lu Donglin to bring it over.
When Lu Minghai came over, he also brought a pound of white wine. He smelled it and said, "Hey, this smells good. This is good stuff."
Lu Mingjiang asked him to sit down before saying, "It's a good thing, but it's troublesome. If you don't have the patience, you really can't do it well. Hongying can't do it, but Dongping has been good at it since he was a child. He came back yesterday and spent a long time cleaning it. He must have come back early to do it again today."
Lu Minghai called Lu Dongping: "Come on, let's have a drink together, three of us."
After that, he called Zhang Hongying: "Hongyingzi, come too."
Zhang Hongying waved her hand: "You guys drink, I don't like that. What's the point of drinking when I'm on fire?"
After saying that, he scooped up some soup and put it in Wen Wan's bowl. There were only a few slices of radish cocoons on top, a lump of pig's trotter, and almost half a pig's heart at the bottom.
Wen Wan quickly refused: "Mom, you eat yours, I'll scoop it myself."
"All we scooped out for you were good, not the pig's lung. It's rare that Dongping went to such great lengths. Please eat more. We are probably all benefiting from you."
As soon as this was said, Lu Dongfu and Lu Chun'e all agreed: "Yes, sister-in-law, it's all thanks to you. My brother's cooking skills are good, but he never had the patience to make this for our family before."
The house was filled with the aroma of food and laughter.
After two drinks, Lu Dongping told Lu Minghai and Lu Mingjiang, "I saw Haruki and his girlfriend at the department store today. They were shopping there. They said they've set a date for the wedding on the 8th of this month and asked us to go there early."
Zhang Hongying continued, "The eighth of this month? Isn't that just a few days away? What day is today?"
Lu Chun'e said, "The 6th, the 8th is Wednesday."
Zhang Hongying chuckled twice: "This date is really well-chosen."
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