Mai Sui didn’t budge. She arranged the winter mushrooms along the rim of her basket, letting the best-looking ones show on top, and replied unhurriedly, ”Is this alley written under your name?”
The old woman froze, apparently not expecting this young wife to be so tough. She looked Mai Sui up and down again, snorted through her nose, and said nothing more—but her eyes kept darting toward Mai Sui’s basket.
Mai Sui ignored her, crouching down to arrange the Chinese yams neatly. Winter mushrooms were rare in winter, and good-looking ones even rarer. Her basket had been picked with Mute Granny, the mushrooms evenly sized, and set out, they looked far better than the dried mushrooms at the neighboring stall.
Sure enough, before long someone came over to ask.
“Miss, how much for your winter mushrooms?”
“One yuan a jin.”
“One yuan? That’s enough to buy a whole lot of dried mushrooms!” The woman smacked her lips, crouched down to look them over, but couldn’t bear to leave.
“Dried mushrooms are dried mushrooms, and winter mushrooms are winter mushrooms. You don’t get to eat fresh mushrooms in winter very often. Toss a few into a stew with potatoes and even the broth turns white and rich.” Mai Sui didn’t rush her, just lifted the coarse cloth on the basket a little so passersby could see too.
The woman hesitated for a while, but in the end bought a jin. Then several more people gathered around, clamoring to ask the price. Mai Sui handled them calmly, weighing, taking money, making change—her movements quick and deft.
In less than an hour, half the basket of winter mushrooms was gone.
The old woman selling dried mushrooms nearby looked worse and worse. Her stall hadn’t made a single sale all morning, while a crowd had gathered around Mai Sui’s.
She finally couldn’t hold back and said in a snide tone, “So young, yet instead of staying home, she comes out to steal food from her elders’ mouths.”
Mai Sui didn’t even look up. “Auntie, those dried mushrooms of yours are last year’s old stock, aren’t they? The gills have collapsed, and they’ve got a smell to them. Why don’t you soak a handful and try them?”
The people nearby laughed. One old man shot back directly, “Wang’s wife, your mushrooms were sitting here last year, and they’re still here this year. You’ll be sitting here till the monkeys’ year.”
The old woman’s face went green and white by turns. She turned away and pretended to fiddle with her bags, muttering curses under her breath.
Just as the crowd around Mai Sui’s stall thinned out, she crouched down to restock her goods when she suddenly heard someone beside her speak.
“These winter mushrooms look good. How much?”
She looked up.
Gu Qingye was standing in front of her stall.
He was still carrying that army-green canvas bag, bulging with who knew what. He wore the same expressionless look as always.
“What are you doing here?” Mai Sui stood up. “Weren’t we supposed to meet at the post office?”
“Finished mailing.” He crouched down, picked up a winter mushroom, and turned it over in his hands a couple of times—as if inspecting it, or maybe just searching for something to say. “I stood at the post office entrance for a while. You didn’t come.”
Mai Sui gave him a look. “It’s at most a five-minute walk from the post office to here. How long did you stand there?”
“…Not long.”
He stood beside the stall with no intention of leaving, just planted there—not talking, not helping, like a telephone pole. But the old woman selling dried mushrooms nearby visibly toned it down. The moment she saw Gu Qingye’s build, she didn’t dare make any more snide remarks, and even lowered her voice when she coughed.
“Watch the stall for me.” Mai Sui nudged the basket closer to his legs, stood up, and brushed the dirt off her hands. “I’m going up front to check on the going rate for Chinese yams.”
Gu Qingye glanced down at the woven basket, then looked at her.
In that glance, something flickered past—not reluctance, but more like the novelty of being ordered around by you. He didn’t say a word, just shifted the basket half an inch toward his own feet, then stood there with his hands hanging at the seams of his trousers.
A former soldier, a big man of one meter ninety, standing in the middle of a crowd of aunties and big sisters selling vegetables, guarding half a basket of winter mushrooms.
The vendors nearby stole glances at him. One auntie whispered to her neighbor, “Whose man is that? He looks like he walked straight out of a movie.”
Another curled her lip. “Ex-soldier, obviously. Look at how he stands.”
Mai Sui walked ahead a stretch, made a round of the stalls selling mountain goods, asked the prices, and got a clear picture in her head. She was about to head back when her peripheral vision caught a familiar figure.
At the entrance of the supply and marketing cooperative, Wang Cuijuan had gone in with a flat cloth bag, and came out with the bottom sagging heavy. She clutched the mouth of the bag tightly, walking twice as fast as when she’d gone in, glancing back over her shoulder as she went—the picture of someone with something shameful stuffed in her bag.
Mai Sui stepped half a pace to the side, hiding herself behind an old woman selling frozen pears.
Wang Cuijuan didn’t see her. Hugging the cloth bag, she hurried through the market, heading toward the old poplar tree.
Mai Sui didn’t chase. She knew Wang Cuijuan had bought malted milk, and knew it was meant as a gift for her brothers back at her parents’ home. No rush—let her deliver it first. Once the remittance records and the medicine shop receipts were in hand, they’d settle the accounts, item by item.
She turned to head back.
A few steps in, her feet stopped. She saw her own stall.
More precisely, she saw the man standing in front of it.
An auntie was crouched at the stall picking through the winter mushrooms, turning over the last few in the basket one by one. When she finished, she stood up and clapped her hands. “Only these left? Can’t find a good one among them. How about a discount?”
Gu Qingye gave her a look—not fierce, but without much warmth either. “They’re all the same quality.”
“They don’t look the same to me. This one’s cap is broken.”
“You broke it.”
The auntie choked, awkwardly drawing her hand back. The woman selling dried mushrooms nearby let out a gleeful snort, then quickly swallowed it and pretended to study the sky.
“Then… then how much per catty?” the auntie pressed.
“One yuan.”
“One yuan’s too expensive! Fifty cents?”
“No haggling.”
“How do you not know how to do business, young man?” The auntie planted her hands on her hips. “Other sellers will knock off the odd change, but you…”
“She set the price.” Gu Qingye’s tone was flat. He tilted his chin slightly in the direction Mai Sui had gone, then turned his head, his gaze passing over the crowd and landing squarely on Mai Sui a few steps away. “It can’t be changed.”
The auntie followed his gaze and looked back, saw Mai Sui standing there, rolled her eyes, and turned to leave.
After two steps she glanced back again, probably wondering if the man would call after her—but seeing that Gu Qingye wasn’t even looking at her, she snorted and walked off.
Gu Qingye straightened out the jumbled winter mushrooms, and when he looked up, he saw Mai Sui standing a few steps away, watching him. His hand twitched and drew back from the mushroom basket.
“What are you standing there for?” he said.
“Looking.” Mai Sui came over, crouched down to examine the neatly arranged mushrooms in the basket, then looked up at him. “You chased off a haggler for me.”
Gu Qingye didn’t respond.
“They all look the same—how would you know they all look the same?”
“…They looked about the same to me.”
Mai Sui lowered her head and laughed. “Then I’m not selling them.” She gathered up the basket, pulled a few small bills from her pocket, and held out a fifty-cent note to him. “The rest can go into tonight’s soup. This is for the cooking oil—paying you back.”
Gu Qingye didn’t take it. He looked at the bill, his brow furrowing.
“No need.”
“We agreed. Once the mountain goods sold, I’d pay you back.”
“They didn’t all sell.”
Mai Sui pressed the bill into his hand. “Whatever’s left over, I’ll eat myself. The loan’s settled, both sides clean.”
The bill pressed against his fingers. He didn’t clench his fist, but he didn’t push it back either. As Mai Sui withdrew her hand, her fingertips accidentally brushed across his palm—and his hand suddenly closed tight, the bill clutched into his palm, along with the warmth of where she had just touched him.
“Go wait for me by the old poplar tree first,” Mai Sui said, picking up the woven basket. “I need to stop by the supply cooperative.”
“What for?” he asked, his eyes regaining their usual sharpness as they swept over her face.
Mai Sui paused.
She couldn’t say she was going to check the accounts. The moment those words left her mouth, knowing his temperament, he might storm straight home for a confrontation on the spot. She needed evidence, but she didn’t want to make things hard for him in the village.
She looked up at him, her gaze open and unflinching. “Mute Granny gave us these mushrooms. We can’t just take people’s things for free and sell them. I’m going to see what we can buy her.”
It wasn’t a lie—they really couldn’t take people’s things for nothing.
Gu Qingye gave her a look. “All right.”
With that, he took the woven basket from her hand, carried it himself, and turned to walk toward the old poplar tree.
By the time Mai Sui reached the supply cooperative, Wang Cuijuan was no longer at the counter. Mai Sui pushed the door open, bought a pack of white sugar and a box of matches, and was about to leave when the corner of her eye caught sight of a bamboo basket beside the entrance counter, stacked with several pairs of children’s cotton shoes—black corduroy uppers, layered cloth soles, trimmed with gray rabbit fur at the cuffs.
“How much for a pair of these?”
“Thirty-five cents.”
Mai Sui paid, wrapped them up, and set them with the sugar and matches.
Leaving the supply cooperative, she headed to the lane at the south end, near the agricultural machinery station. The repair stall there didn’t just fix bicycles—several old carts were stacked up too. Master Wu, the repairman, was in his forties, dressed in an oil-stained blue work uniform, crouching on the ground replacing the chain on a big 28-inch bicycle.
Mai Sui pointed at the most run-down old cart. “Master, how much to fix this cart up?”
Master Wu glanced up at her. “You buying or repairing?”
“Buying.”
“Depends on what you want. This beat-up one—the frame’s still good, just needs a new wheel and it’ll work. Twenty yuan. That one over there’s newer, with an iron bed—thirty-five, no haggling.” Master Wu pointed a wrench at the most dilapidated one. “If you can fix it yourself, a wheel alone is eight yuan, and I’ll let the frame go for five—thirteen yuan and it’s yours. But that wheel’s not easy to find. You’ll have to wait.”
Mai Sui crouched down and took a look. The iron frame was welded solid, and though the wooden cart bed looked worn, it wasn’t riddled with wormholes—swap in a new wheel and it would work. She did the math in her head: one yuan and eighty cents spent, leaving one yuan twenty-two cents after buying the thank-you gifts and shoes. She was still far from thirteen yuan; two or three more trips up the mountain should just about cover it.
Mai Sui stood up and brushed the dust off her hands. “All right, keep this one for me, and keep an eye out for a wheel too.”
Master Wu looked her up and down. “You sure? This isn’t buying a hair ribbon—it’s over a dozen yuan. Does your man agree?”
“It’s my own money.”
Master Wu wiped his hands on a rag, pulled a little notebook from his pocket, scrawled a few crooked characters, and considered it recorded.
Leaving the repair stall, Mai Sui headed straight for the post office.
Inside, the post office smelled of paste and old paper. A red slogan reading “Serve the People” hung on the wall. Behind the counter, wooden shelves were divided into slots, stuffed with stacks of letters and newspapers. A middle-aged woman wearing sleeve protectors sat at the counter, head down, clicking away at an abacus.
“Comrade, I’d like to look up some remittance records,” Mai Sui said, walking up to the counter.
The middle-aged woman didn’t even look up. “Whose records?”
“Gu Qingye’s. Sent from the army.”
“And what are you to him?”
“His wife.”
Only then did the middle-aged woman raise her head and give her a once-over. “Remittance records can’t just be checked by anyone. You’ll have to have him come in person.”
Mai Sui didn’t panic. She pulled a neatly folded envelope from her pocket and spread it out on the counter. It was one Gu Qingye had left on the table last night while writing his letter, bearing his unit’s designation. With two fingers she pressed lightly on the edge of the paper and slid it over.
“Sister, my in-laws are both in poor health, on medicine year-round, and the family accounts are a hopeless mess. As the new daughter-in-law, I need to sort out the books. Could you do me a little favor?”
The middle-aged woman looked at the unit designation on the envelope, then glanced up at Mai Sui. Apparently won over by that “new daughter-in-law” line, her expression softened considerably.
“The last three years are all in here. Look for yourself, but don’t take it away.” She pulled a thick ledger from the cabinet behind her, flipped to a page, and set it on the counter.
Mai Sui lowered her head and read through it line by line.
The writing in the ledger was dense, in blue-black ink, blurred in places. Gu Qingye’s remittance records went back eight years—at first just a few yuan a month, later gradually rising to twenty yuan a month over the past three years, without a single missed payment.
In the recipient column, the earliest entries bore red thumbprints, with “signed by Liu Guifang on her behalf” written beside them. Her mother-in-law was illiterate, so the post office staff had signed for her while she pressed her thumbprint. Later the thumbprints disappeared, replaced by a crooked, scrawled signature, its strokes as thick as matchsticks: Wang Cuijuan. And later still, another name appeared: Li Ming’e.
“Sister, could you lend me a pen and tear off a sheet of paper?” She looked up, her tone as gentle as before, but her hands had already flipped the ledger back to the earliest page.
The middle-aged woman fished out a pencil stub and a sheet of letter paper from under the counter and pushed them over.
Mai Sui copied everything down stroke by stroke. When she finished, she folded the paper covered in numbers, tucked it into her pocket, and looked up with the same gentle smile. “Thank you, Sister.”
The middle-aged woman took back the ledger and stared at her blankly. This new daughter-in-law had spent all that time going through the accounts—no crying, no fussing—and once she’d finished copying, she just walked away, just like that?
Mai Sui left the post office and went straight to the pharmacy across the street. An old man sat at the doorway basking in the sun, while inside, a shopkeeper wearing reading glasses was bent over the counter writing out prescriptions.
Mai Sui walked over and tapped on the counter. “Excuse me, sir, I’d like to ask you something. When the old Gu couple come to fill their prescriptions, do they always come to your shop?”
The shopkeeper looked up and adjusted his reading glasses. “The Gu Dashan family? Yes, they come every month.”
“Do the old couple usually come themselves, or does someone from the family come to pick up the medicine?”
“It used to be the old lady herself, but for the past six months or so, it’s been her daughter-in-law coming to fetch it.” The shopkeeper flipped through the prescription book at his hand. “Why do you ask?”
“Nothing much.” Mai Sui smiled, her gaze lingering on the prescription book on the counter for a moment, then lowered her voice. “The tonic my mother-in-law takes for her blood and qi—how much does one dose cost?”
The shopkeeper flipped through the book. “The old lady’s prescription is cheap—eight cents a dose. She fills it every month, never missed once.”
“And if a family member comes to fill it? Is the price the same?”
“Same price. I don’t charge different prices here.” The shopkeeper pushed his reading glasses up the bridge of his nose. “What’s the matter? Did someone overcharge you for medicine?”
“No, it’s just that my mother-in-law’s been doing a bit better lately, and I’d like to fill a few more doses of the same prescription for her. But I’m afraid I might double up with my sister-in-law. Do you write the price on the prescription?”
“I do. Every dose is marked with the price.”
“Then could you copy one out for me with the prices marked? I’ll go home and check so we don’t buy duplicates.”
The shopkeeper casually tore off a sheet of paper, copied down the prescription and unit prices, and handed it to her. “Here you go. It’s not some secret formula anyway.”
Mai Sui thanked him with a smile and walked out of the pharmacy. She folded the paper with the copied prescription and tucked it together with the remittance records.
Medicine that cost eight cents a dose, yet Wang Cuijuan reported it as fifteen cents. And Li Ming’e filled five doses but reported only three. Between the two of them, who knew how much money they’d skimmed from the medicine alone—and that wasn’t even counting the big cut they’d been pocketing from the remittances.