The bamboo pole was as thick as a child’s wrist. Having been left in the sun for a long time, it was a bit stiff. The loft door was small, the stairs narrow, and the loft roof was just roof tiles with no ceiling protection. Dragging the pole straight in would easily knock against the tiles.
If it were daytime, that’d be fine—worst case, just call a roofer to fix a few tiles. But it was almost eleven at night, and the sound of tiles falling would easily wake the neighbors.
She had never been particularly handy since childhood, and growing up didn’t turn her into a supermom who could do everything. She was an ordinary woman; becoming an adult and a mother didn’t automatically make her good at these things.
Xu Huiqing saw him bracing himself on the terrace to climb up again and hurriedly said, “Come in through downstairs. All this jumping around is a bit scary!”
This was the seventh floor! The recessed part in the middle wasn’t connected; there was a gap of over a meter. The building was old, with decades-old moss. If he slipped and fell, Xu Huiqing didn’t think she could afford the consequences, and she didn’t want such an accident.
Zhou Huaijin seemed a bit surprised she said that.
After all, it was late. A grown man entering a woman’s home alone, even if they both lived on the top floor where no one would see and gossip, was still not exactly proper.
But Xu Huiqing quickly ran downstairs and opened the door for Zhou Huaijin.
Inside Xu Huiqing’s home, the lights were bright; a hundred-watt bulb illuminated every detail.
Over a decade of life as a well-off woman in a small city meant she had no habit of saving electricity. The room where Xiaoxi was sleeping had the light off, but the kitchen and living room lights were on, glaringly bright—so bright that he could clearly see the water droplets dripping from the strands of her still-wet hair, which she’d washed but hadn’t dried.
He quickly averted his gaze, looking at the floor, not quite daring to look at her.
Xu Huiqing, however, didn’t notice. Her hair had been towel-dried and then blown a bit with the electric fan; it lay in disarray on her head, clumped in strands, somewhat resembling the messy snakes on the female lead’s head in the movie 《Python Carnival》 she’d seen in a past life.
Zhou Huaijin, eyes lowered, asked her, “Is it okay to come in?”
Xu Huiqing also wanted to finish quickly and get to sleep, so she said, “Little Comrade Zhou, sorry to trouble you.”
Zhou Huaijin quickly strode upstairs.
He was tall. The loft, except for the central area where the bed was, which was a bit over two meters high, had sloping sides only about one meter seventy. Xu Huiqing could stand upright, but he felt very cramped up there. Hunched low, he bent through the loft door, stepped onto the terrace, saw the bamboo pole, and asked her, “What were you planning to do with this pole inside?”
Xu Huiqing also followed him up and stared at the bamboo pole, so long it nearly touched the terrace railing, feeling at a loss.
Earlier in the day, she’d seen kitchen knives and cutting boards in a shop, but at the time, she was holding Xiaoxi in one hand and carrying a kettle, mop, broom, and various other things in the other, so she simply couldn’t manage the knife and board. Plus, she worried about losing track of the child while cleaning, so she hadn’t rushed to buy them. Now she didn’t even have a knife to split the bamboo in half.
“When I bought the mosquito net, I forgot to get the bamboo poles to support it. I wanted to take this down and temporarily prop up the net, then buy proper poles tomorrow.”
In this era, mosquito nets were just nets; they didn’t come with poles.
“Do you know where to buy window screens? I want to get a custom screen; there are too many mosquitoes.” As she asked, she fanned away the mosquitoes attracted by the light with a palm-leaf fan.
A pole this long would be awkward for propping up the net.
Zhou Huaijin, probably used to jumping between terraces since childhood, said, “Wait a minute,” and deftly leaped across to his own terrace. He quickly returned with the electric cutter he’d used earlier to cut tiles, plugged it into an outlet in the loft—acting more at home than Xu Huiqing, the new tenant, who didn’t even know where that outlet was.
Xu Huiqing had no idea where that outlet was and stared, utterly baffled.
After plugging in, Zhou Huaijin held the cutter to the bamboo pole, eyeballed the approximate length, and split it in two right down the middle.
Though the cutter was noisy, it was fast; the bamboo was cut in just a few seconds.
Then he jumped back to his own terrace, pulled out a long-unused clothes-drying pole from below, wiped it thoroughly with a rag, and also cut it in two. After that, he cut grooves into the tops of the bamboo poles, then went back for thin wire, pliers, and a length of rope. Carrying the four roughly one-and-a-half-meter poles, he went down into Xu Huiqing’s loft, down the stairs, and into the kitchen to wash the cut bamboo in the sink and dry them.
It wasn’t that he was overly eager to help a neighbor at this hour.
He had to work in the morning, and if Xu Huiqing kept banging around in the roof loft, he wouldn’t get any sleep.
He and Xu Huiqing lived in the same unit, their terraces right next to each other. Residents in other units might not hear sounds from here clearly, but he could.
In Xu Huiqing’s room, he quickly used the thin wire to tie the four pole sections to three of the bed legs. This really required him to do it; Xu Huiqing couldn’t do it alone. The bed was against the wall, the innermost leg in the corner, and it was a solid wood bed, very heavy—Xu Huiqing couldn’t possibly pull it out by herself.
Xiaoxi was still sleeping peacefully on the bed. He carefully lifted and shifted the bed outward.
The space under the bed had been swept and mopped clean during the day, so no dust was stirred up now.
He shifted it just enough to create a triangular gap of about twenty degrees, stepped one long leg into the gap, bent over, and tied the remaining bamboo pole to the innermost bed leg with wire. Now there were four upright poles at the four corners of the bed.
He shook the poles with his hand, likely deeming them not sturdy enough, so he reinforced with two more rounds of wire on the lower bed legs, tightening with pliers. On the three outer legs, he added two more rounds, attaching to the bed slats as well, until the poles were securely fixed.
He was also particularly careful to place the twisted wire fasteners on the innermost side of the bed legs, so neither Xu Huiqing nor Xiaoxi would scratch their legs in daily life.
As he worked, Xu Huiqing held a flashlight for him, taking it all in, feeling deeply grateful.
Because Xiaoxi was sleeping and the room’s bulb—a newly replaced hundred-watt one—was overly bright, Xu Huiqing didn’t turn on the light.
The room door and the kitchen window were open, and the door in between was also open. The through-draft of the night wind stirred Xu Huiqing’s hair, freshly washed but not too wet yet not dry, carrying the faint fragrance of shampoo that wafted intermittently to Zhou Huaijin’s nose.
Summer was already hot, and with no air conditioner, the only electric fan was blowing on Xiaoxi.
It had to be blowing on her because of the mosquitoes; the fan’s breeze could at least blow some of them away.
Beads of sweat rolled from Zhou Huaijin’s forehead down his neck into his collar, a bit itchy, and even the clean clothes he’d changed into after bathing were soaked through with sweat.
After moving the bed back into place, he wiped the sweat from his forehead with his arm and gathered his things. “I’ve cut grooves into the tops of the poles. Just snap the rope into the grooves and tie the mosquito net to the rope.”
His voice was unexpectedly a bit hoarse, which startled even himself. He quickly covered it up with a cough and then, as if fleeing, opened Xu Huiqing’s front door and went out.
After Zhou Huaijin left, Xu Huiqing took the rope ends of the mosquito net and started tying them to the bamboo poles—easy enough, just the four corners.
She was also exhausted and very sleepy, just wanting to get the net tied, dry her hair, and go to sleep.
Just as she’d tied the four corners and went to the living room to turn off the light, the door was knocked again.
Xu Huiqing softly asked who it was. Outside the door, Zhou Huaijin’s face was burning red. “It’s me.”
Xu Huiqing opened the door a crack and saw him awkwardly standing outside, the opposite door tightly shut.
Holding the pliers and leftover wire, he smiled sheepishly. “I didn’t bring my keys.”
His pajamas had no pockets, and he’d jumped over from the terrace. After rushing out of Xu Huiqing’s home, shutting the door, and standing outside to calm his racing heart, he realized his own front door was shut tight and he couldn’t get back in without his keys.
But since Xu Huiqing’s living room was silent, he guessed she was busy with the mosquito net. The door was iron; knocking softly might not be heard from inside the room, and knocking loudly would disturb the neighbors downstairs. So he just stood there awkwardly, hand raised to knock then pulling back, over and over, not daring to knock. Only when he heard Xu Huiqing come to turn off the living room light did he embarrassedly knock.
Xu Huiqing hurriedly opened the door for him, and only then did he, like a rabbit fleeing with its tail between its legs, take the stairs three at a time, scamper up the narrow wooden staircase into the loft, and swiftly jump back across the terrace, embarrassedly shutting the terrace door behind him.
When Xu Huiqing went upstairs to close the terrace door, she noticed the neighboring light was already off. She thought to herself, Little Comrade Zhou was drenched in sweat—did he just go to sleep without washing up?
She too was sweaty, so she boiled more water and took a quick combat shower.
While the water was heating, her hair was half-dried by the hot air from the fan.
She had thick, coarse black hair, and back when she was younger she’d had long hair that was especially hard to dry. Now she had no sentimental thoughts, just so sleepy she sat in front of the fan, drying her hair and dozing off simultaneously.
She was less than three months postpartum, her body still weak and prone to sweating. If she slept with damp hair, she’d be prone to headaches later. So she kept at it until her hair was completely dry, then lay down beside Xiaoxi and quickly fell asleep.
In the morning, Xiaoxi woke before her.
Xiaoxi had always been an especially well-behaved angel baby. After waking, she didn’t make a fuss. She got up, found her little chamber pot, opened the lid, did her business, put the lid back, and quietly crawled back to her mother’s side. Nestling into her mother’s embrace, she breathed in the familiar comforting scent and unknowingly drifted back to sleep.
Xu Huiqing slept until past eight, the sunlight streaming in through the window, bright as could be!
Her first instinct was to feel for Xiaoxi beside her, to make sure the child was there. Once she confirmed Xiaoxi was sleeping safely next to her, she got up, washed her face, brushed her teeth, boiled water to prepare formula for Xiaoxi, and then woke her to brush teeth, drink milk, and go downstairs for breakfast.
The breakfast shop was on the street Zhou Huaijin had pointed out. The street had several small breakfast stalls. Going past them, you’d reach last night’s night market and the Commodity Wholesale Market under construction.
By the time they finished breakfast, it was past nine, and the sunlight was already scorching. The shops along the street were opening one by one. Xu Huiqing bought a parasol from one shop, carried Xiaoxi in one arm, and walked along the street, looking around the wholesale market under construction.
I wonder if the shop units here have started pre-selling yet!