Chapter 2613: Family Affairs

"Mom, the world has changed—the Australians are here now. I've heard that under their rule, divorce is permitted. We can go to them for justice. Divorce him. Draw a clear line. Whatever consequences follow, let them fall on me." Guan Zongbao steeled himself as he spoke.

The word "divorce" struck Huang Shi like a thunderclap, leaving her mind utterly blank. In her limited experience of the world, it had always been men who divorced wives. She had never heard of a woman being able to divorce her husband.

In those days, "harmonious separation" (Heli) initiated by a woman was not unheard of, but exceedingly rare. Usually it occurred when the husband had fallen into dissolute ways or legal trouble, and the wife's natal family stepped forward on her behalf, forcing the man to release her. Though called "harmonious separation," it was still formally recorded as "casting out the wife."

Huang Shi came from a minor local clan, and her natal family had fallen on hard times—they were in no position to stand up for her. Since childhood, her parents had drilled the "Three Obediences and Four Virtues" into her. The few times she had returned home in tears, saying she could bear the marriage no longer, her mother had counseled her to endure, to live properly, and not to become a laughingstock.

"I haven't wanted to live with him for a long time," Huang Shi said, her voice thick with tears. "Back then, your grandfather arranged my betrothal because he thought the Guan clan was prominent locally, with family business enough that I wouldn't suffer. Looking back now, marrying anyone else would have been better. My mother—your grandmother—taught us sisters from childhood: marry a rooster, follow the rooster; marry a dog, follow the dog. Endure everything. And in the early years, even though he liked carousing with his worthless friends, he treated me well enough. It was only after this strange illness took hold that his temper worsened day by day. When you were little, he still pushed through the pain to raise fish fry..."

Hearing his mother invoke his childhood, a nameless fury kindled in Guan Zongbao's chest. In his memories, this so-called father had spent his healthy years perpetually drunk with scoundrels. There had never been a heart-to-heart between father and son—not once. The man had dallied with women outside the home and threatened to divorce his mother on multiple occasions. It was always his mother, weeping, who had taught young Zongbao to go and plead with Guan Youde—to beg him, for the boy's sake, not to cast her out, to let her raise their son to adulthood. In later years, Guan Youde's constant medicine-taking left him unable to sire more children. Neighbors whispered that it was karmic retribution.

Seeing his mother's hesitation, Guan Zongbao pressed on. "Didn't he say countless times that he wanted to divorce you? Since he has the desire and you have the desire, the matter is half-decided already. A twisted melon is never sweet!"

"If he were a healthy man, I could divorce him with a clear conscience," Huang Shi said. "But look at him now—half-dead. If I leave him, setting aside whether it's even possible, what would people say? Your grandfather and uncle would never be able to hold their heads up again."

"Did we cause him to become this way?" Guan Zongbao demanded. "He did this to himself! He claims every day that he'll be dead by tomorrow, yet today he had enough strength to beat us both. His fists were plenty strong then! He's shown us neither kindness nor justice—why do you still speak for him?"

"Bao'er, I have been true to him in this life. He is the one who owes us." Huang Shi's tears flowed again. "But the person I have failed most... is you. Blame your mother for being useless, for not keeping you in the clan school to pursue a proper degree."

Guan Zongbao had entered the clan school as a young boy, and his teachers all agreed he was promising academic material. At thirteen, the clan had recommended him for the Child Examination (Tongzi Shi). But something had seized Guan Youde—some inexplicable impulse—and he forced the boy to drop out before sitting for the exam, ordering him home to learn a trade and support the family. Guan Zongbao had felt grown by then, ready to shoulder the burden, so he left school and learned to raise fish fry. As family fields were pawned one by one to pay for Guan Youde's treatments, eventually there were no fish fry left to raise either. His mother knew how to rear silkworms and reel silk, so Guan Zongbao pooled her meager remaining savings with what he'd earned from the fish fry and rented some fifteen mu of mulberry garden—partly to supply their own silkworm needs, partly to sell leaves for extra income. He also rented a fish pond and took up the integrated mulberry-dike fish farming practiced by the local commoners.

Fate's cruel joke had transformed Guan Zongbao from a delicate scholar into a farmer toiling under the scorching sun, his hands thick with calluses. He had consoled himself that if the family remained harmonious, they could weather the hardship eventually. But Guan Youde's behavior grew ever more erratic. The man had always loved his drink. After falling ill, he simply added medicine to the mix—jar in one hand, wine bowl in the other. Worse still, in recent years he had taken up smoking with his worthless companions. This pushed the struggling household further into ruin. Guan Zongbao and Huang Shi seethed at it, but Guan Youde insisted that tobacco was a miraculous remedy, that the famous physician Zhang Jiebin had praised it highly. He accused them of wanting him dead sooner by denying him his pipe.

Guan Youde had claimed the moral high ground. Huang Shi and her son could not argue with him; they could only endure. Their forbearance was repaid with escalation. Back when Guan Zongbao was still studying, Guan Youde had managed to drag his ailing body through some work, understanding that money was hard-earned and not to be squandered. But once Guan Zongbao shouldered the family's burdens, neighbors began praising Guan Youde for having such a capable son, saying he deserved to enjoy his blessings after a lifetime of labor. The man took this to heart. Pleading physical discomfort, he abandoned all farm work—even simple household tasks like cooking and laundry. His spending grew increasingly reckless. He had picked up some saying about how the greatest tragedy in life was dying before your money ran out.

Huang Shi worked from dawn until deep into the night. After finishing the silkworm work, she still had to cook and serve him. Guan Youde showed no gratitude; instead, he nitpicked constantly—this dish was flavorless, that one didn't suit his palate. Later, Guan Zongbao learned from neighbors that as far back as when he attended clan school, Guan Youde had regularly beaten and berated Huang Shi, once driving her into the pigsty and barring her from the house. She had never breathed a word of complaint to her son. Through it all, she endured. Guan Zongbao could not fathom how she had survived so many years. He had sworn silently that if he ever gained a foothold in the world, he would take his mother away from that accursed place. That was why he had later built the crude thatched hut on the mulberry dike outside the village.

"Mom, I don't blame you," Guan Zongbao said. "If there's anyone to blame, it's this world."

Thinking of how her precious son had once been a promising young scholar, now reduced to callused hands, and how at fifteen or sixteen—the very age for arranging marriages—he could not even find a matchmaker, with bachelorhood looming if things did not change soon, Huang Shi broke down again. "He never once thought of us," she sobbed. "He doesn't realize that with his half-dead state, even if he behaved himself, no one would marry their daughter into this family to suffer. Yet he makes things worse—showing his son no sympathy, putting on dying airs. Truly, the one eating the filth comes to torment the one who produces it..."

Watching his mother weep like she might dissolve into tears, Guan Zongbao asked painfully, "Mom, I only need one answer from you. Are you still willing to live with him? Make up your mind, and I'll go to the Australians for justice. I heard from folks at market that a team of Australian officials arrived at Jiujiang Great Market yesterday."

Huang Shi hesitated before answering. "The Australians aren't here every day. Even if they ruled in our favor, who would recognize that judgment after they leave? The clan has its own rules. If I want to separate from him, I'll need the clan elders to convene. And regarding his expenses—food, clothing, medicine—the elders would have to set terms. If he continues like this, demanding one tael of silver when he causes trouble today and two taels tomorrow, where will you ever find the money for a bride?"

"Mom, you're confused!" Guan Zongbao said. "Your surname is Huang, not Guan. You married into the Guan family and suffered for years—has a single person in that family ever spoken a word of justice on your behalf? And yet you still hope someone among them will step forward now? If you leave, who will look after this invalid? Do you think anyone wants to spend clan funds filling his bottomless pit? They're all counting on us to clean up after him!"

Huang Shi wavered. "We're just nameless nobodies. They say even an upright official struggles to judge domestic affairs—why would the Australian officials bother with such trivial matters?"

"How will we know unless we try?"

"Then... let's try." Huang Shi wiped the tear stains from her face. Her eyes were already swollen red.

The sky beyond the walls had darkened, but sleep was far from her thoughts. She intended to worry through the night, searching for some way out of this desperate predicament. She told Guan Zongbao to rest first. The current batch of silkworms was nearly at their "Third Sleep" (San Mian), and he would need to rise in the small hours to relieve her at feeding mulberry leaves. They traded shifts this way to keep exhaustion from breaking their bodies.

Raising silkworms is grueling work. Once the eggs hatch into silkworm larvae and "pass the nest," they require daily feeding and waste removal. Raisers typically feed every three hours—eight times per day, around the clock, sleeping and waking by the silkworms' rhythms. Feedings fall at early morning, noon (Wu), Shen hour, You hour, first watch, second watch, after second watch, the start of fourth watch, and fifth watch. Each time, one waits until all the silkworms have awakened before laying down leaves, to prevent uneven development from degrading the batch. Day and night follow the same regimen. As the silkworms grow, their trays must be divided. Waste is cleared twice daily—once at early morning, once at Shen hour. The silkworms are gently rolled by hand and transferred to fresh trays; the droppings are collected to fertilize mulberry dikes and feed pond fish.

The gravest threat is disease. During "Silkworm Sleep," raisers must constantly monitor the creatures' color. In the first and second sleep, when leaf consumption slows, any sign of incomplete molting—commonly called "stricture tail" (Le Wei)—or conditions resembling sand-worm feet, green-body feet, or sand-skin feet during first sleep, requires immediate culling to prevent wasted leaves and labor. There is a disease known as "Black Head," which often strikes after the "Great Sleep" (Da Mian) and before cocooning. By then, remedies come too late; raisers can only hope the silkworms manage to spin. Even if they do cocoon, the silk is thin. In severe cases, they fail entirely, or rot and stink, and must be discarded at once to prevent contagion. Another ailment, "Red Bone," causes the silkworm's entire body to stiffen and die suddenly—though fortunately it does not spread on a large scale. Most maddening of all is an inexplicable disease that shows no early warning signs, striking only at harvest time and catching raisers completely off guard.

(End of Chapter)