Chronicle of a Blood Merchant by Yu Hua, Andrew F. Jones Page B

time. Instead, she would put all the vegetables in her own basket and then throw the ones she didn’t want back onto the pile. She never selected her produce along with everybody else; she let everyone else go through her leavings. Lin Fenfang often stood next to her. When she knelt down and her clothes pulled flush to her body, she could see that her waist hadn’t thickened at all over the years. Her hands flew nimbly back and forth from the basket to the produce, while her eyes appeared to be gazing at something in the distance.
    Lin Fenfang said to Xu Sanguan, “I know who your woman is. She’s called Xu Yulan. She’s the Fried Dough Queen of Nantang Street. She’s given you three sons, but she’s still as pretty as a young girl. Not like me, always putting on weight. Your woman’s pretty and smart, and she moves quickly. When she goes shopping—well, I’ve never seen such a bossy woman.”
    Xu Sanguan said to Lin Fenfang, “She’s no good. As soon as she gets mad about anything, she sits on the doorstep and cries and carries on, and it’s because of her that I’ve been a cuckold for nine years.”
    Lin Fenfang burst into laughter.
    Xu Sanguan looked toward her and continued, “Now when I think about it, I feel really terrible. If I had married you instead of her back then, then I wouldn’t have been a cuckold. Lin Fenfang, I think you’re better than Xu Yulan in every way. Even your name sounds nicer, and it looks pretty when you write it down. When you talk, it’s always nice and soft. Xu Yulan’s yelling and shouting all day long, and she snores at night too. When you get home after work, you shut the door and keep your business to yourself. All these years I’ve never once heard anything bad about your man, but Xu Yulan, well, if three days go by and she hasn’t gone out to the doorstep to cry and carry on, she starts to feel uncomfortable, just like she hadn’t taken a shit for a week. But the worst of it is that I’ve been a cuckold for nine years, and I didn’t even know it. And if Yile hadn’t started to look like that fucking He Xiaoyong, I would have been in the dark my whole goddamn life.”
    When Lin Fenfang saw that Xu Sanguan had broken into a sweat, she shifted the fan in her hand in his direction. “Your Xu Yulan is prettier than I am.”
    “She isn’t even as pretty as you,” Xu Sanguan said. “You used to be prettier than her.”
    “I used to be good looking, but now I’m fat. Now I can’t compare to Xu Yulan.”
    Xu Sanguan suddenly asked, “If I had asked you to marry me back then, would you have agreed?”
    Lin Fenfang looked over at Xu Sanguan and giggled. “I can’t remember anymore.”
    Xu Sanguan asked, “What do you mean, you can’t remember?”
    Lin Fenfang said, “I really can’t remember. It’s been ten years now.”
    THIS CONVERSATION took place as Lin Fenfang lay on her bed and Xu Sanguan sat on a chair at the foot of the bed. Her bespectacled husband looked down on them from a picture frame on the wall. Lin Fenfang had broken her right leg slipping on the stone steps that led down to the riverbank. She had just put her freshly washed clothes into her basket and stepped up onto the steps when her left foot alighted on a watermelon rind. Before she could even call out, she had tumbled over and broken her right leg.
    When Xu Sanguan pushed his cart onto the factory floor that day and noticed that Lin Fenfang wasn’t there, he stood for a moment next to her spinning machine, then continued on his way around the workshop. After he had made small talk for a few moments with one of the other spinning girls, and she still hadn’t shown up, he thought she must have gone to the bathroom.
    “You think Lin Fenfang fell into the privy or something? How come she’s been gone for so long?”
    The other girls said, “How could Lin Fenfang fall into the privy? She’s too fat. Her backside would never fit. One of
us
maybe, but not her.”
    Xu Sanguan asked,