Madam Cui's Red Cards

At the far end of the old street in Nanhe Town stood a teahouse, and behind it a narrow lane ran out to a small room where Madam Cui lived.

For thirty years Madam Cui had made matches, and in the town no family married off a daughter or took a bride without her mouth having a say. She had but one eye—the left had rotted blind from a sickness years back—and the right shone so bright it seemed to strip a person bare to the bone. The townsfolk feared her a little and trusted her a good deal; of the marriages she arranged, nine in ten held, few split, fewer still came to blows. The young men called her "One-Eye Cui" behind her back, saying that single eye did the work of two.

She kept a rule no other matchmaker could or would copy. When she came calling she never arrived empty-handed: always a packet of osmanthus sweets from the dry-goods shop, pressed into the bride's child's hand to put some life in the room. And she would not announce the bride price at the door. She simply sat and drank tea and watched—watched how the groom's people treated the sedan bearers, how the groom's mother treated the maids, which foot the young man led with when he walked. "The bride price is the face," she said. "The look in the eye is the bottom. The face can be put on for three days. The bottom will not hold even through one meal."

This time the rice merchant, Old Qian, sent the village head to ask Madam Cui to find a wife for his only son, Qian Gui. The Qians were among the first families in Nanhe—a hundred mu of good land, three rice warehouses. But Qian Gui was a well-known scoundrel: cards, brothels, and a ready hand for the servants. Every decent family in town shook their head at his name. Old Qian knew his son's reputation stank, so he promised a fat bride price and slipped her a silver packet besides, begging only that she "smooth over the ugly bits, and keep the unpleasant news to yourself."

Madam Cui went to the Qian house, took the heavy silver, and did not hurry to match anyone. Instead she crouched by the back gate and watched for three days. The first day, Qian Gui kicked over a soup pot because the cook had salted it too much; the scalding broth splashed the cook's shin raw, and Qian Gui laughed with one leg cocked. The second day he rode his donkey down the lane and rolled over a neighbor child's foot; the child wailed, and Qian Gui cursed and whipped the donkey on. The third day Old Qian lost his temper, and Qian Gui stood in the courtyard and, before a dozen servants, spat in his own mother's face. "Old hag," he said, "keep your nose out of my business."

Madam Cui sent the silver back exactly as it came, kept only the osmanthus sweets, and gave them to the blind flower-seller at the lane's mouth.

The bride's family was Mr. Zhou, the schoolteacher at the east end of town. Mr. Zhou was poor; his wife had died young and left him a daughter, Chunxing, sixteen, schooled a few years and hard-tempered enough to argue the weight of meat with the butcher. The Qians had sent several rounds of go-betweens, and Mr. Zhou had refused them all—he had heard the talk, and he could not bear to lose his daughter. The day Madam Cui came, Mr. Zhou was wringing his hands over an unpaid doctor's bill, and when her one eye swept the room his face fell by half, sure she had come for the Qians.

Madam Cui did not say the Qians' name once. She set the sweets on the table and said, "Master Zhou, I have not come for the Qians. I came because I am afraid the Qians' silver will push you into the fire, and Chunxing with you."

She told him everything she had seen those three days, word for word, even the spit in the old lady's face. Then she added, "That beast would spit on his own mother. What mercy would he show a poor father-in-law, a poor wife? No matter how fat the bride price, it cannot outweigh thirty years of Chunxing's tears."

Mr. Zhou gripped his sleeve and said nothing for a long while. He was not blind to it; he was simply frightened poor. Madam Cui read him, did not press, and turned to go. At the threshold she stopped. "I have made matches thirty years," she said, "and I make only the kind that gather good will, never the kind that make a sin. If you take the Qians, my mouth will never pass your door again."

The words were neither soft nor hard, but Mr. Zhou seemed to lose his spine; his shoulders dropped, and after a long moment he nodded.

In the end Madam Cui found Chunxing another match. Afu, a young clerk at the sauce shop west of town—honest, handy, sending his whole wage home each month to feed his blind old mother while he himself ate cold steamed bread. Afu's family was too poor for a bride price, so Madam Cui put up twenty dollars of her own. "Pay me back when times are easy," she said. "Or don't. Just bring this one-eyed old woman a bowl of sauce at the festivals."

Chunxing met Afu once and told her father, "His eyes are clean." Mr. Zhou sighed and gave in.

When the Qians heard Afu's match was made, they were furious and sent men to smash the window of Madam Cui's little room behind the teahouse. She did not hide. She moved a stool to the window and mended her red cards by the moonlight through the broken pane. "Smash away," she said. "When you are done, I am still Madam Cui." Old Qian never quite dared finish the job—Madam Cui's tongue was sharp, and if it really came to a row, Qian Gui's filth would be the talk of the whole town, the rice business' face worse for it, and a mouth the whole town had use for was not one to cross.

The day Chunxing married, there was no sedan. She wore an old red jacket washed pale and walked to the sauce shop herself. Madam Cui did not go to the feast. She stood far off at the lane's mouth and watched the red figure turn the corner, then turned away only after a long time. The wind carried the smell of pickles curing in the lane, and she sniffed, as if she had caught the scent of something sweet.

In her room she kept an old wooden box, and in it a stack of red cards—one kept from every match she made. The cards bore no bride price, only the two names, and on the back a line of what she had seen: "son filial to mother," "wife strong-willed," "father-in-law kind." At the very bottom, the card for Chunxing and Afu, she had written: "Both may be trusted."

The town still came to Madam Cui for matches. The Qians never asked for her again. She did not mind. She sat as ever with her one bright eye, drinking tea, reading faces, saying what she ought. Someone asked her once whether, in thirty years, she had ever made a wrong match. She smacked her lips and narrowed that single eye. "A few wrong ones," she said. "Not many. The wrong ones I remember clearer than anyone, turning the cards at night—and remembering is what keeps me from making them again."