Not long after Shen Yiguang left, someone knocked on the door outside.
Minmin had hardly slept all night.
She had arrogantly thought that since she got some rest in the car, she might have trouble sleeping at night, but it seemed she had overthought it, for Shen Yiguang hadn’t given her a chance to sleep at all.
After a night of tossing and turning, she was drained both physically and mentally and had no energy left to deal with the person outside.
She pulled the blanket over her head, pretending not to hear.
Then came the persistent knocking and calling, "Sister-in-law, sister-in-law..."
Annoyed and knowing she was not a morning person, Minmin sat up abruptly and was about to shout, "Who’s there?" But then she remembered she was in the military region and heaved a big sigh before raising her voice to ask, "What’s the matter?"
"Sister-in-law, I came to ask whether you will make breakfast yourself or go to the canteen?" It sounded like the voice of the Red Army wife from last night.
Minmin held back her irritation and replied, "I’ll go to the canteen later, thank you."
"If you’re going to the canteen, let’s hurry. There are corn cakes today, and they’re quite good. If we’re late, they might all be taken."
Minmin lay back down.
The woman outside was indeed Zhao Hongjun, the wife of the second company’s commander, holding a large white cabbage and standing outside Minmin’s door. She listened intently for a while then whispered to two other military wives nearby, "No sounds yet, I wonder if she’s fallen back to sleep."
One of them was Luo Dahua, the wife of the coordinator, and the other was Gao Hong, wife to the deputy battalion commander. Luo Dahua, squinting her small eyes and flashing a cunning look, gestured for the other two to lean in closer and then whispered, "Do you think it might be because they were too tired last night... I heard they’re newlyweds..." She didn’t finish her sentence but already started chuckling with implication.
The straightforward Gao Hong blushed and shook her head, as if she didn’t want to speculate.
The Red Army wife nudged Luo Dahua with her elbow, "You make such a big deal out of it. Didn’t you go through the same back then?"
Luo Dahua glanced towards the sunrise, shook her head, and said, "No way, back then you had to get up to make breakfast for your man, right? They go out for drills early in the morning; they can’t do that on an empty stomach, can they? I tell you, these young people nowadays." After concluding, she shook her head again.
She straightened up, took a basin of dirty laundry nearby, and planned to go downstairs to wash it in the small courtyard. As she walked, she kept talking, "Sister-in-law, have you met our battalion commander’s wife yet?"
The Red Army wife Zhu Baocun was also getting ready to go down and wash vegetables, she answered, "I’ve met her. She didn’t get back until after 11 last night. I happened to be getting my youngest up to pee, heard some noise, and went out to look. She’s quite a beauty."
The three quickly reached downstairs, where there were two taps, each with a patch of ground next to them. Military wives scattered around the building were washing things. Each floor had two places to get water; not many preferred to wash clothes there, let alone vegetables.
As they put down their things and lined up for water, the Red Army wife started talking about the looks of the new battalion commander’s wife, which many were interested in.
Even the usually reticent Gao Hong asked, "How old does she look?" Most who were privileged to follow their husbands to the military region were of a certain age, and correspondingly, the military wives were also a bit older. The outspoken Luo Dahua was around twenty-seven or twenty-eight, and the Red Army wife was just over thirty. They usually gathered to chat about children, and as a younger wife with no children who also wasn’t good at speaking, Gao Hong often felt left out from the group.
The battalion commander Shen didn’t seem very old either, so his wife must be about her age, right? And since they were newlyweds, they probably didn’t have kids yet. If so, maybe there could be someone more to talk to in the future.
The Red Army wife furrowed her brows in thought, "I think there should be twenty of them, but she doesn’t look it, more like a sixteen or seventeen-year-old girl, with such tender skin, tsk tsk..."
"A young girl?" Luo Dahua said, turning her head in surprise while fetching water in a basin.
But the Red Army wife gave her a nonchalant look, "What’s so surprising about that? Don’t country folks usually speak of marriage at sixteen or seventeen? Look at our Ai Jun’s wife––wasn’t she eighteen when she married Ai Jun? What’s the big deal?" The "Ai Jun’s wife" she spoke of was the Gao Hong standing beside her.
Luo Dahua shook her head with a smile, "Look at me – I meant isn’t she too young for a marriage certificate?"
"I wouldn’t know about that."
So they chatted on from one topic to the next.
"Are you all talking about Camp Commander’s Shen wife? What about her?"
"When did she arrive? Why didn’t I see her? What does she look like?"
"You all live on the first floor, you must have seen her, right? Why didn’t you invite her down for breakfast?"
The other military wives doing laundry gathered around too, each chiming in with questions.
These military wives didn’t have much entertainment usually, and they were almost cut off from the outside world. Chit-chat about household matters could keep them occupied for a while, especially when they could gather together, working and chatting at the same time. They felt satisfied talking their fill, and the work was done well too.
Yang Peimin, still catching up on sleep, was unaware of the conversation about her happening outside.
Without the knocking and shouting from outside, she slept quite soundly.
But the good times didn’t last long, as Shen Yiguang returned and woke her, "Wife, let’s get up and eat something. Don’t go hungry while sleeping. Eat, then we can come back and sleep. Get up."
Yang Peimin stretched a hand out of the blanket waving it in protest.
Shen Yiguang caught her wrist, pale and delicate as jade, while leaning down to whisper in her ear, "Minmin..."
Then, the smell of his sweat filled Yang Peimin’s nostrils, and she couldn’t help but push his face away with her other hand, "Shen Yiguang, don’t you take a shower after training?"
Shen Yiguang chuckled softly, "Awake now, aren’t you? If you’re awake, let’s get up. If we wait any longer, we’ll have nothing left to drink but dishwater."
Yang Peimin reached out her hand for him to pull her up, but her eyes remained closed, "Why don’t you bring it back for me?"
"Do you want others to call you lazy? Having a man come back from training to get your food?" Shen Yiguang tapped her nose; when he came back, he had met a few military wives who all asked about his wife. He knew his wife cared about her image, and if people really talked about her like that, she’d regret it once she found out.
Yang Peimin pinched the muscle on his arm, "Being a wife isn’t easy." Her sigh bore a hint of resignation.
Shen Yiguang had to hold back a laugh.
He brought her a white shirt to wear, asking, "You wore that outfit yesterday. It looked good on you. Wear the same today?"
Yang Peimin nodded, pointing to the yellow little coat, a knit cardigan, "Wear that on top too."