Chapter 6 Divorce Granted
The old millstone in the threshing ground was still creaking, and Xu Yao walked quickly through the back alley of the supply and marketing cooperative, clutching a faded brown paper envelope.
The ink-stained slogan "Prepare for War and Famine" glowed gray in the twilight. She stared at the incomplete word "famine" and sneered. In her previous life, Sun Zhiqiang used this excuse to give the last half bag of cornmeal in his home to his third sister's family.
"Yao girl!" The village chief's wife poked her head out of the grocery store and stuffed a handful of roasted melon seeds into her pocket. "The old branch secretary asked you to go to the brigade headquarters at noon." On the glass counter stained with soy sauce, a red-headed document was pressing down on half a piece of leftover peach cake.
Xu Yao looked at the clear teeth marks on the peach cake and suddenly remembered the day of her daughter's first birthday party in her previous life.
The third sister came to the banquet wearing new clothes bought by Sun Zhiqiang. She also took a bite of each dessert, saying that she was testing whether it was sweet for her child.
"Thank you, auntie."
She picked up a melon seed and cracked it lightly. The crisp sound of the shell cracking was very similar to the click sound when her daughter's oxygen tube was pulled out in her previous life.
The pinewood door of the brigade headquarters smelled of aged tung oil, and a gust of wind blew through the hall when Xu Yao pushed the door open.
The model worker banner hanging on the wall suddenly fluttered up, revealing moldy paste marks on the back - the same color as the red veil that my third sister wore when she remarried in her previous life.
"The organization has considered this." The village chief fiddled with the beads on the abacus, white mist rising from the tin kettle beside him. "The Sun family kid's work style problems need to be rectified."
As he spoke, he kept staring at the pot of drooping Clivia on the windowsill, which was the "housewarming gift" given by his third sister last year.
Xu Yao's eyes swept across the metal cabinet in the corner, and half a page of pesticide instructions was stuck in the gap of the cabinet door.
The blue-black ink seeped out a blurry skull, which was exactly the same as the pattern on the bottle when the third sister's son poured Dichlorvos into her water cup in her previous life.
There was the sound of rubber-soled cloth shoes rubbing against the bluestone slabs outside the door, and Sun Zhiqiang rushed in wearing a faded work suit, with snot marks on his collar from his third sister's kid. "Uncle, please listen to my explanation!"
The sweat on his forehead rolled down his neck and formed a small puddle at his collarbone. "Widow Wang and I are innocent!"
"The Dacron cloth that Widow Wang just bought last month, was it you who accompanied her to the supply and marketing cooperative?"
Xu Yao slowly unfolded the marriage report. The yellowed pages were still clinging to the remnants of her daughter's first birthday photo from her previous life. "The salesperson remembered clearly that you insisted on buying White Rabbit candy for her child."
The villagers who were watching suddenly burst into laughter.
The tofu beauty swung the gauze she was using to grind soy milk and yelled, "The Sun family kid bought me two kilograms of tofu on credit yesterday, saying it was for my third sister's family to replenish their bodies during the confinement period!"
The crowd was immediately in an uproar, and several young wives pointed at Sun Zhiqiang. When their husbands were working in the fields, they often saw Sun Zhiqiang running to the widows' home at the end of the village.
The village chief coughed loudly, and the abacus beads clattered against the pine table.
"Comrade Sun Zhiqiang has an unruly lifestyle. After research by the organization, it has been decided that..."
His fountain pen dipped in red ink suddenly stopped, and the tip of the pen left a blood-like ink blob on the words "divorce granted".
Xu Yao's nails dug deeply into her palms.
In her previous life, when she was lying on the hospital bed, Sun Zhiqiang used this pen to sign the consent form for giving up treatment.
The ink ball also spread on the paper in the same way, just like the soy sauce stains that the third sister deliberately splashed on her daughter's wedding dress.
"Give it here." She suddenly reached out and took the pen, then signed her name neatly on the certificate.
The residual body heat from the pen made her fingertips tremble. This pen was a reward from the commune when they got engaged. At that time, Sun Zhiqiang said that he would use it to write his work points account for the rest of his life.
A gust of wind suddenly blew through the threshing ground, and the faded model worker banner was completely turned over.
Xu Yao caught a glimpse of the iron nail on the top of the flagpole, which was a strange blue-black color - exactly the same color as the arsenic that her third sister had added to her traditional Chinese medicine in her previous life.
"Go away, go away!" The village chief knocked on the enamel pot to drive away the crowd. There was a layer of tea stains at the bottom of the pot, which fell into the water with the vibration.
When Xu Yao turned around, she caught a glimpse of a dark red thread faintly visible in the twilight among the rotten leaves of the Clivia on the windowsill.
She stepped out of the door holding the materials, and the shadow of the old elm tree happened to be cast on the blue brick wall.
Amid the swaying shadows of the trees, a tall figure swayed against the back wall of the supply and marketing cooperative. The sound of military boots rolling over broken porcelain pieces startled the sparrows on the roof.
Xu Yao squatted down to tie her shoelaces, leaving a fresh shoe print on the wet mud.
There is half a piece of celadon stuck between the shoe patterns, and the glaze color looks very much like the skirt of the Guanyin statue enshrined in the Sun family ancestral hall.
She reached out to pick it up, but instead felt a piece of fruit candy that was still warm from her body temperature - the production date on the cellophane was scratched and blurred, but the pesticide bottle pattern on the edge of the sugar factory's trademark glowed faintly in the setting sun.
When dusk dyed the eaves of the supply and marketing cooperative into rust color, Xu Yao saw Xue Han under the crooked willow tree.
There were fresh mud spots on the man's army green trouser legs, and there was unburned ash between the index and middle fingers of his right hand, as if he had already crushed out his third cigarette on the bluestone slab.
"Done?"
Xue Han raised his hand to brush away the drooping willow branches. There was a fresh scratch on the protrusion of his wrist bone, and the blood had condensed into small dark brown beads.
Xu Yao noticed that the metal flashlight on his waist was covered with a layer of moisture. He must have been looking for her along the river bank for a long time.
Xu Yao slammed the brown paper envelope against the tree trunk, scaring away a few cicadas.
The rough lines of the bark made my palms burn. "Sun Zhiqiang hugged the pot of rotten-rooted Clivia that my third sister gave him and cried like a kid whose rattle was taken away."
Xue Han's Adam's apple rolled twice in the twilight, and he suddenly took out an oil-paper bag from his trouser pocket.
Peeling off the three layers of moisture-proof paper, a piece of egg cake with the red seal of the supply and marketing cooperative printed on it was revealed.
The edges of the cake were slightly burnt, which was exactly the reason why Xu Yao could never get the temperature right when she was squatting over the stove to bake a birthday cake for her daughter in her previous life.
"A gift."
He broke the cake into two halves, and when the crumbs fell on Xu Yao's shoulders, they startled the fragrance of magnolia flowers hidden in the folds of her clothes.
This was the smell of the new Shanghai soap that had arrived at the supply and marketing cooperative this morning. Xu Yao remembered that when Xue Han climbed over the wall to bring her the soap last night, the soles of his military boots were still stained with the unique moss from the cemetery on the back hill.
The moment Xu Yao took a bite of the cake, an electrical noise suddenly sounded from the village radio station.
The loudspeaker hung on the electric pole vibrated twice, and the Third Sister's tearful voice sang from "The Red Lantern"
This was originally Xu Yao's repertoire in the propaganda team, until last month when her third sister "accidentally"
He dropped the scalding enamelware pot on the back of her feet.
Xue Han suddenly reached out to wipe the cake crumbs from the corner of her mouth. When his rough fingertips rubbed across her lower lip, Xu Yao tasted the smell of gun oil remaining on his knuckles.
The scent of this special maintenance oil for Type 74 pistols is exactly the same as the smell that stained her eyelashes red when he carried her out of the fire covered in blood in his previous life.
"Comrade Xu!" Tofu Xishi's little daughter ran over holding a rubber band. The plastic butterfly hairpin on her pigtail was missing a wing. "The postman asked me to bring it to you."
In the child's open palm lay a yellowed envelope, and the date on the postmark was actually tomorrow's.
Xue Han grabbed the corner of the envelope before Xu Yao could.
Through the setting sun, one could see the blue-black ink stains on the back of the letter paper, forming a twisted skull pattern - exactly the same as the corner of the pesticide instruction manual that was torn apart by Xu Yao.
Two blocks of words cut out of newspapers were inserted diagonally in the center of the letter paper, and the edges were stained with the fodder residue unique to the production team's pigpen.
Xu Yao's fingertips stroked the word "proud" and found that the date on this page of "People's Daily" was exactly the headline published on the day when her daughter in the previous life eloped with her third sister's son.
Xue Han suddenly pulled her back two steps.
The spider silk hanging from the willow tree broke with a sound, and something brushed past Xu Yao's ear and made a shallow pit on the bluestone slab.
Looking closely, it turned out to be a hawthorn pill wrapped in sugar, and the outer layer of cellophane was exactly the same as the one she picked up at the entrance of the village committee.
"Go back to the village and check."
Xue Han pressed his thumb on the postmark on the envelope, where there were dots of dark red.
When Xu Yao got closer and smelled the rust, she suddenly remembered that when she passed by the clinic this morning, she saw her third sister lifting up her sleeves to reveal a fresh needle hole.
The village suddenly became eerily quiet in the twilight.
The children who were running wildly in the threshing ground were dragged back into the house by their parents. When a few old ladies who were sewing shoe soles saw them approaching, they hurriedly hid their thimbles in the baskets of twine.
Xu Yao noticed that the curtains in Widow Wang's house moved. The curtain fabric was exactly the Dacron fabric that Sun Zhiqiang bought on credit last month.
When he arrived at the old site of the educated youth center, Xue Han suddenly stopped.
A crooked wedding figure was drawn with chalk on the broken earthen wall, and a hole was gouged out of the red flower on the bride's head, revealing half a piece of tin foil of contraceptive pill hidden inside.
Xu Yao bent down to pick it up, but heard the sound of rubber shoes crushing dead branches behind her.
"Yao girl!"
The village chief's wife came trotting over carrying a bamboo basket. The basket contained some freshly dug wild shepherd's purse with soil from the grave on it.
With a twinkling look in her eyes, she stuffed a handful of fried soybeans into Xu Yao's hand. "The kid from my third sister's family has a rash. The barefoot doctor said it might be...it might be cursed."
Xue Han suddenly grabbed Xu Yao's wrist.
The copper coin tied with a red rope on her wrist was painful. This Qianlong Tongbao coin was taken off the second button of his military uniform this morning.
At that time he said it was an amulet passed down from his ancestors, but he did not mention that the word "殳" engraved on the edge of the copper coin was exactly the surname of his third sister's deceased husband.
The sound of suona suddenly came from the village entrance.
Seven or eight green-headed flies were jumping on the thin-skin coffin carried by the funeral procession.
Xu Yao recognized that the person carrying the coffin was her third sister's cousin. The bandage on that person's left wrist was the labor protection gauze that Sun Zhiqiang had just received yesterday.
When the last ray of daylight was crushed into the western valley, Xu Yao found the second anonymous letter under the threshold of her house.
The letter paper was soaked in kerosene lamp and smoked, revealing a few lines of dark patterns scratched with a sewing needle: [The third brick on the ancestral hall altar].
When Xue Han used a military knife to pry open the cracks between the bricks, he shook off the cracked glaze statue of Guanyin on the altar.
Amid the flying porcelain pieces, Xu Yao saw a piece of fruit hard candy rolling out of Guanyin's palm - the production date on the cellophane was actually the lunar birthday of the day she died in her previous life.
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