Free Old Town by Lin Zhe Page B

discuss things. That was when Daddy couldn’t bear the idea of your getting married and leaving home. Daddy doted on you the most. So why did Ninth Brother marry our Second Sister? It’s a long story. I remember the first time I met him when he appeared on our gate steps. It was like the sun was in my eyes. I secretly hoped that he would become my husband. On the day he and your Second Sister were betrothed, I buried myself in a cotton quilt and cried and cried until my eyes were swollen…
     
    Before our old place was razed flat by the bulldozer, every time I would return to Old Town to see relatives I always got to read the thick stack of letters that Great-Auntie had written. Her characters were packed tightly together, and everything was unpunctuated and without paragraph divisions. At the time when she was learning to read and write, Chinese didn’t have punctuation. Probably I was the only person patient and serious enough to read those letters, for I was born a curious cat.
    So it turned out Granny’s Third Sister hadn’t actually died. I was deeply fascinated by the story that Great-Auntie related.

     
    Grandpa’s Big Sister-in-Law got wind of the “empty coffin” story that blew about Old Town. She also heard the theory of her fellow believers—that the young lady had left for distant places to preach the Word. Although Big Sister-in-Law believed in Jesus the Savior, she also believed that a young lady who flaunted herself in public abandoned decorum by doing so. Inwardly she rejoiced that none of this disgrace touched the Lin family. If Ninth Brother had been betrothed to Third Sister, that empty coffin would have had to be carried out of the Lin home.
    Grandpa’s eldest brother had been an official of the Qing dynasty, as had several generations of family members before him. What we today would call our monthly salary was known then as their monthly “rations.” They had to use a washbowl to hold the heavy, shiny silver yuan pieces. One silver yuan would be enough for a poor family to live on for half a year, so it was obvious how rich the Lins were. After the Revolution and the cutting off of the braid that men wore, Grandpa’s big brother straightway became unemployed and a housebound invalid as well. His two sons idled about the house chanting poetry, painting, and raising songbirds. They were a pair of spoiled playboys who affected the manner of eccentric intellectuals. With a great fortune being thus frittered away, the family’s days went from bad to worse. Big Sister-in-Law let Ah Mu and Ah Hua go. And even when all that remained was a cook, she planned not to use him either. Her two daughters-in-law had come from grand families and didn’t even know how much rice and water went into the boiler. When the Lins’ own girls left in marriage, Big Sister-in-Law could count only on Ninth Brother who was then away studying. If he brought a daughter-in-law into the home, this would help her prop up the tottering House of Lin.
    During his third year’s summer vacation, Ninth Brother received a letter from Eldest Brother and Big Sister-in-Law asking him to come home to get married. Just which girl was being arranged for him wasn’t made clear. But surely it had to be Third Sister Guo. While in Shanghai, Ninth Brother had kept a three-volume diary for her, and even the barest of entries, like “Raining today. All day long bent over my desk studying,” was written with Third Sister in mind. The diary itself was Third Sister. Every day, under the lamp she would quietly listen in on all of Ninth Brother’s subtlest feelings. Unrequited love is a beautiful sign of sincerity. Studying all by himself in a strange place, Ninth Brother was never alone.
    Ninth Brother took the entire surplus of what he could save daily from his scholarship fund and bought presents. Eldest Brother, Big Sister-in-Law, nieces, and nephews—everyone got a “meeting gift.” For Third Sister Guo he bought a jadeite ring,