Chapter 19: The Late Wedding Night

Madam Lu came to the kitchen at midday with a bundle under her arm.

"My sister has a bad knee," she said.

I looked at the bundle, and at her face, which gave away nothing at all.

"I will be gone two nights," she said. "The wall is thin. The house is not."

"Mother..."

"I did not hear anything last night," said Madam Lu. "I would like to continue not hearing it from a distance."

She set two red candles on the table, the ones from our wedding that had never been lit, and went out of the gate.

I stood with a handful of dough and my whole face burning.

That night I barred the door myself.

I put the bar across with both hands.

The wood dropped into the brackets, and it was the loudest sound I had ever heard.

Chengzhi was standing in the middle of the room.

He had lit the two candles, and the light moved on the wall.

He had washed and combed his hair and put on a clean white inner robe.

He looked very much like a man about to be examined.

"I have read three treatises," he said.

"On what?"

"On this." He swallowed. "None were useful."

I laughed so hard I had to hold the doorframe.

He started laughing too, helplessly, and then I crossed the room and put my hands on either side of his face, and we stopped.

"I don't know what I'm doing either," I said.

"You've kissed me twice."

"I know how to knead dough. That's all I have."

"That will do," he said. "I'm told it's mostly hands."

He kissed me then, and there was nothing nervous in it any more.

His mouth was warm and sure, and I opened for him at once.

When his tongue touched mine I made a sound in my throat, and he went still against me.

"Again," he said, rough.

I did it again on purpose.

He untied my apron first, because I had not taken it off.

He undid my blue jacket, one cloth button at a time, with fingers that trembled and were slow, and let it fall.

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