Chapter 20 Barefoot Doctors' Manual
Aunt Liu, who was dozing off behind the counter, wiped her mouth hastily. When she saw who was coming, she looked a little embarrassed: "What do you want to buy, Yao girl?"
"Aunt, I heard that your family still has the red-headed letterhead from the grain station in 1975?" Xu Yao gently stroked the solidified syrup in the cracks of the counter with her fingertips, but her eyes were fixed on the faded blue curtain behind the shelf.
From the direction where the hunched figure had just disappeared, a faint smell of dry tobacco wafted over.
Aunt Liu slammed the feather duster on the abacus: "Eight hundred years ago..."
"The Sun family hasn't received the money for the corn flour they bought on credit last month, right?" Xu Yao turned to a page in the grain station's record book and pressed her fingertips heavily over the three words "Sun Zhiqiang". "My third sister asked me to tell her yesterday that if you make things difficult for her relatives..."
The curtain suddenly shook violently, and the navy blue trouser legs knocked over the soda bottles piled in the corner.
Xu Yao was quick to catch the fallen glass bottle. There was a half cinnabar fingerprint on the cold bottle - exactly the same as the faded red mark on the canvas bag in the warehouse.
"You damned girl!" The man with a face full of flesh came out from behind the curtain, spitting alcohol on Xu Yao's face, "I've been watching you for three days, do you really think there is no one left in the Sun family?"
His big hands, like a palm-leaf fan, grabbed Xu Yao's pigtails, and the sour smell from the pickle jar mixed with the smell of cheap cigarettes hit his face.
Several women who were sewing shoe soles outside the door hurriedly put away their needlework baskets. The melon seed shells of Villager B were stuck to the ends of Xu Yao's braids that had been torn apart: "If it were you, a girl should be like Third Sister..."
“Let her go.”
The dull sound of the rusty weight hitting the concrete floor startled everyone and made them turn around.
Uncle Zhang, the lame man from the tofu shop, stood outside the door with a jujube wood cane, his eyes reddened by the steam for many years, and a cold light flashed: "Sun Laosi, the other supply and marketing cooperative account book on your waistband, is it the 20 kilograms of soybeans that my third sister bought on credit last month?"
Sun Laosi loosened his grip on Xu Yao, and sweat oozed from his rosacea: "None of your business!"
"On the 23rd day of the twelfth lunar month last year, my third sister came to see me with two bundles of bloody banknotes tied with hemp rope." Uncle Zhang's cane accurately poked the corner of the account book exposed from Sun Laosi's trouser pocket. "She said she wanted to learn the handwriting of Accountant Xu. The steamer on my stove was still hot, but she asked her to hold a knife against her neck and grind ink for half a night."
Xu Yao suddenly remembered the stack of yellowed calligraphy papers in the drawer of her father's desk. There was a suspicious oil stain on the lower right corner of each paper.
At that time, my third sister always liked to lean against the window and eat melon seeds, and the melon seed shells fell on the "Barefoot Doctor's Manual" copied by my father.
"Third sister learns calligraphy quickly." Uncle Zhang's jujube wood cane suddenly lifted the grain station record book in Xu Yao's hand, and his dry branch-like fingers traced across the ink-stained signature somewhere, "But she just can't change the habit of mixing cinnabar into the ink. When she wrote the honor roll for the commune..."
There was a crisp sound of porcelain breaking from deep in the shelf. Xu Yao turned around suddenly and caught a glimpse of half a pair of navy blue trousers flashing behind the blue curtain.
When she bent down to pick up the broken porcelain pieces, her fingertips touched a hard object stained with cinnabar - a half-broken private seal with the remnants of the seal script of "Xu Ji Grain Station" embedded in the groove.
As dusk spread over the old locust tree at the entrance of the village, Xu Yao pressed the grain station record book under the bluestone slab.
The evening breeze lifted the paper pages, and the moonlight fell right on the faded red fingerprint, which gradually overlapped with the cinnabar mark on the canvas bag in the war reserve warehouse to form a complete circle.
The moonlight flowed like a silver stream on the bluestone slabs. Xue Han squatted beside the firewood pile in the backyard of the tofu shop and rubbed the cinnabar particles condensed in the cracks between the bricks with his fingertips.
Amid the steam, his stern profile was warmed by the stove fire, and the half of his private seal in his palm fit perfectly with the broken porcelain pieces brought by Xu Yao.
"My third sister used this to forge the grain station seal."
Xu Yao put the two pieces of broken porcelain together on the stone plate used to grind soybean milk. "Uncle Zhang said that she secretly learned her father's handwriting and always mixed cinnabar into the ink to prevent it from fading."
Xue Han suddenly reached out to push back the hair behind her ears, and his rough fingertips brushed across the collar that was torn by Sun Lao Si. "Does it hurt?" He asked abruptly, but he took out an oil-paper bag from his waist, inside which lay half of a supply and marketing cooperative account book with a red seal. "I found it at the scrap yard this morning when I was tracking down the Sun family's credit records."
On the yellowed paper, the IOU written by my third sister and the handwriting in the grain station record book overlapped in the moonlight.
Xu Yao suddenly discovered that the lower right corner of the word "贰" smudged with ink had a tiny hook - it was exactly the "anti-counterfeiting pen tip" that her father mentioned when he taught her to write.
"We can't go directly to the third sister." Xue Han used the tip of the dagger to pry open the interlayer of the account book, revealing a letter of introduction with the old seal of the commune. "The village chief issued a special poverty certificate to the third sister. They..." The blade suddenly poked at a line of blurred numbers. "Look here. In 1975, the relief grain received by the Sun family was 20 kilograms more than the actual amount."
The steam from the tofu shop suddenly became thicker, and Xu Yao looked at Xue Han's outline blurred by the mist.
In her previous life, she never knew until her death that this neighbor who always repaired the courtyard wall for her late at night could actually see through the layers of disguised accounting traps at a glance.
Before the morning mist dissipated, the rooster of the village chief's house had just crowed for the first time.
Xu Yao stood outside the mottled vermilion lacquered door holding the evidence, and heard the crisp sound of abacus beads coming from the inner room.
Xue Han suddenly held down her hand as she was about to knock on the door, and the sole of his military boots rolled over a half-piece of tobacco that floated out from the gap in the threshold - it was the same brand that his third sister smoked.
"Uncle, look at this..." When Xu Yao spread the evidence on the eight-immortals table, the village chief's hand, which was refilling water in the enamel pot, shook, and the boiling water splashed on the award certificate for advanced workers in 1975.
Xue Han's dagger was nailed to a certain place in the account book: "Before I retired from the army, I was in charge of war rations in the logistics department. This kind of trace of alteration..." The tip of the knife scraped open the yellowed paper, revealing the brand new pen writing underneath, "At least three times."
The village chief paused as he took out his cigarette, and Xue Han had already slapped his discharge certificate on the table.
The bright red stamp reflected the morning light, just enough to illuminate the message and signature from my third sister on the corner of the certificate.
Xu Yao suddenly remembered that when the village chief’s son got married in her previous life, her third sister gave him a pair of gilded mandarin duck pillowcases.
When the sun climbed up the window frame, Xu Yao walked home holding a brown paper bag.
Xue Han walked silently on her left, his military water bottle swaying with his steps. Inside was a meeting notice signed and agreed to by the village chief.
When passing by the old locust tree at the entrance of the village, the sound of a match lighting suddenly came from the shadow of the tree. A few old men smoking dry tobacco were pointing and talking at a newly posted notice on the wall.
Father Xu's cough came through the courtyard wall.
Xu Yao pushed open the door and saw her father using glue to mend the broken old abacus. The beads were scattered on the "Barefoot Doctor's Manual" and pressed down the melon seed shells that her third sister had eaten.
"Yaoyao..." Father Xu's shaking hands could not put the last bead on the abacus. "Back then, my third sister said she wanted to learn to keep accounts, and I taught her to write numbers with hooks..." His cracked nails suddenly dug into his palm, "The 'Wu' on the IOU is actually..."
Xu's mother groped and held her daughter's hand, then put a warm object into her palm.
It was half a box of treasured osmanthus oil, and on the glass bottle there was still the word "Xu" painted in red by my mother when she was young.
While combing her hair, the mother's skinny fingers moved through her hair, re-braiding Sun Laosi's messy pigtails into a tight and shiny one.
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