The Bathing Women (29 page)

Perhaps she had wished to be punished long ago. Let Fang Jing be unfaithful to her, let Fang Jing make no commitment to her, and let Fang Jing tell her about his amorous encounters as much as he wished. She seemed to welcome, to endure all, with the psyche of a masochist. The axe was raised, and she couldn’t wait for it to fall. So, when she suffered the most, she actually felt most at peace. She was receiving her punishment, the long-deserved retribution.

Kindness and forgiveness without a reason don’t exist; that’s for fairy tales. Only a heart hoping for redemption can produce great tolerance of humankind and of the self. When Fang Jing abandoned her, she sat in her office and dropped her tears into the drawer. But on this saddest of occasions, she felt extremely relieved. She didn’t dare admit to her lightness of spirit, or wasn’t aware of it. It was her secret of secrets, in her heart of hearts. Of course, she had to feel sad because sadness was her most reasonable feeling at the time.

A small transition in her life started with the end of the love affair. Fei called her on the day following her return from Beijing. It was a Sunday, so Tiao asked Fei to come to her place. Tiao still lived with her parents in the compound of the Architectural Design Academy. Fei came and the two, feeling how difficult it was to talk in the apartment, went out to walk in the small garden in front of the building. It was already early winter, and the leaves had all fallen from the trees. But the scene didn’t look desolate. On the contrary, it had a sense of brightness and openness.

Fei said, “I think he really still loves you very much.” Abruptly, she decided not to pass along to Tiao Fang Jing’s exact words about how much he loved Tiao.

Tiao looked into Fei’s eyes and said, “Actually, when you went to Beijing, I already knew there was no chance of saving the relationship.”

Fei avoided Tiao’s stare and said, “Then why did you still let me go and talk to him?”

“I didn’t let you go. You wanted to go yourself.”

“Whatever. Say that I chose to go all on my own, but I wanted to do it for you.”

“Not for yourself, at all?”

“If we continue along these lines, things will end up getting ugly,” Fei said.

Tiao said in a very calm tone, “Fei, don’t worry. I don’t want to talk about it at all. Do you know why?”

“Why?”

“Because I know I’ve already freed myself,” Tiao said. “Just a moment ago, when I met your eyes, that all suddenly receded into the past. Do you remember how miserable I looked before you went to Beijing? I wasn’t all right back then. I was still very depressed and fragile, but I tried to put up a tough front, as if I could handle everything on my own. Now I want to tell you that I’m really free. It happened only a moment ago, everything just became the past in an instant. It was really a strange phenomenon, as if there had been a visible, actual gap that lay between those two completely different emotional states of mine, a clear and distinct boundary, cleanly cut with not a strand left to connect the two. Once I passed from that bleak mood and flew across that line—a visible, physically real boundary—I felt grounded and calm. Believe me. Truly, I mean it. Feel my heart.” Tiao took Fei’s hand and placed it on her chest, and Fei felt the pounding of her heart, regular and strong. “Therefore,” Tiao said, “whatever Fang Jing did and wants to do has nothing to do with me anymore. Do you understand, Fei?”

“You don’t hate him at all?”

“That’s the strangest part of it. I don’t hate him at all. Then where did the love come from? It’s even made me doubt my love for him. If I don’t hate him at all, it just proves I never loved him. It’s terrible. What kind of love did I have?” Tiao asked, and then went on to answer herself. She seemed to be opening her heart to Fei, but she would never tell Fei that her calm and freedom might have come precisely out of Fang Jing’s tormenting of her. Were she to be tortured, brutally and thoroughly, then she would no longer owe anyone anything.

Fei handed Tiao the ring that Fang Jing had asked her to bring to Tiao. She said, “Fang Jing guessed you wore size six and I think he was right.” Tiao opened the jewellery box and took out the ring, but didn’t put it on her finger. She played with it for a moment and said, “This toy called a ring sometimes resembles a period, and sometimes a bottomless hole. I think it’d better be a period.” After saying that, she raised her arm and cast it backward over her head.

Fei grabbed Tiao’s shoulder and said, “What are you doing? It’s platinum and ruby and it must have cost him quite a few francs.”

Tiao turned to look in the direction in which the ring flew and said, “I know it’s platinum and ruby. But don’t you know that, in this world, things that can be bought with money are all cheap?”

While they spoke, neither’s eyes left the ring in the air—arcing through the blue; spattering a trail like drops of dazzling blood and falling into the tree, it trembled there.

The ring was caught in the tree.

They’d clearly seen its flight and fall; the way it descended, dropping toward a young London plane tree to dangle finally on one of the branches. From now on, the tree would wear a ring. What else could a tree with a ring be if not a woman? A ring belongs on a tree. Maybe none of us observe the trees in the garden or on the streets carefully enough. Their simple, aloof presence hides many secrets of their own. Serenely, trees wave their arms above, and for them to wear platinum and ruby is completely alien to them. We don’t know how many such rings are caught on the branches of trees, and maybe trees are hands. If the earth is a woman, then all the trees of mountain and plain are her arms and hands. Let the ring remain on the branch, much better there than chafing flesh.

From where they stood on the ground, it seemed that the ring’s flying into the branches of the tree could only have been an accident; to the ring in the air, it had been an invitation, an invitation extended to it in midflight, when it was alone, abandoned, and without a destination.

They looked at the branch from which a tiny light shone. Still holding Tiao’s shoulder, Fei said, “What did you just say?”

“I said in this world, anything that can be bought with money is cheap.”

Fei said, “That’s me. Don’t you know that I’m cheap? If someone pays, I give myself to him. That’s why I felt sorry about that ring, the ruby ring in the tree.”

“But you won’t climb up the tree to get the ring,” Tiao said.

“It would be lousy if someone else got it—you see how calculating I am.”

“It’s unlikely that someone else will find it,” Tiao said. “Nowadays, no one stares at a tree for long.”

“I would,” Fei said. “And when I need money, I’ll definitely come to this tree.”

6

London plane trees seem to grow very well in the city of Fuan. The water and soil here don’t particularly favour them, but as long as the tree takes root, it will grow vigorously, with single-mindedness, and ask for no attention. The young London plane tree with the ring in the Design Academy’s garden soon grew into an adult tree, with a palm-sized leaf covering the ring. The ring must be there still.

Fei did come to the tree, by herself, on several occasions. She thought, a little obsessed with money, that, although she wouldn’t climb up to get the ring, if the branch happened to break and the ring dropped to the ground, she wouldn’t hesitate to pick it up. Often she thought of the tree as having a piece of matter stuck in it called ruby. The oddness of her refusal to consider a tree itself as matter—even the trees growing in the city, lining the pavements and rustling in the wind—struck her. Matter would be those buildings hidden behind the trees, and the electricity poles, vehicles, neon lights, and stainless steel rubbish bins. But trees aren’t matter. She recognized that architecture was matter because of the way all the buildings in the world appeared to resist loneliness, saturated with human will and moulded by human hands, according to artificial design—altogether entangled with the human. Trees, on the other hand, are natural and independent, and grow while quietly connected to the land, inhaling the sunshine. Trees are spirits that are hard to approach; they have compassion for human beings but don’t want to get too involved. Trees are thoughts that are beyond the power of human comprehension.

Fei looked helplessly at the London plane tree in front of her and told herself, You’d better give up on the ring. Do you have nothing to cook in your wok or are you at the point of selling all your possessions to pay for your debts? You’re no longer the old you, the one who tried to bribe the vice director of the foundry with a Shanghai Coral Jewel watch to get a better job.

Master Qi had helped Fei fulfil her dream of working in a state-run factory, but her job was unsatisfactory. Given her background, she was grateful at first for just being able to become a worker. But never had she imagined that the foundry work would be so dirty and exhausting! Naturally, she worried about her face, hands, and skin, which were the only capital she possessed and which she would have to use over and over again. She must tend the meagre advantage she had, which was why she especially dreaded the dirty, heavy work. So she went to see Master Qi again.

On several occasions she’d asked to meet with Master Qi at the riverbank after dinner, but was turned down every time. He was avoiding her, trying to play down what had happened that evening at the riverbank. He had never displayed any signs of that subtle complacency that some men have after possessing women in need, nor did he try to make further advances. He genuinely felt guilty about what had happened. Once he even told Fei seriously, “You can’t behave this way anymore. You should work hard. You’ll have to grow up and live a good life.” Master Qi’s words didn’t seem to strike a chord with Fei. Maybe she wasn’t aware there were decent men like Master Qi in the world. She could only interpret it as Master Qi’s reluctance to help her further, which just strengthened her resolve. She went to the political department to talk to him.

It was in the afternoon, when people were about to leave work. Fei rose from a long nap after her night shift, washed her hair, intentionally leaving it wet, and came to the political department. Her wet hair gave her an excuse not to braid it, and she looked particularly charming with her hair falling down about her shoulders, useful in piquing the male imagination. She entered the political department with her wet hair down, but Master Qi was not there. The only person in the room whom Fei knew was the vice director of the plant, Yu Dasheng. Sometimes he gave speeches when the factory held an all-employee meeting.

Yu Dasheng didn’t recognize Fei. In a state-run factory with more than a thousand employees, it was impossible for a director to know everyone. But Fei certainly caught his eye. She looked like a worker, and she must be one, as she wore the factory uniform, the canvas shirt with the stand-up collar, a clean blue. It wasn’t the uniform that attracted his attention, but probably because she was a female worker arriving at the office during working hours with her hair down. He glanced particularly at her hair, shoulder-length, with water still dripping, and two wet spots on her shoulders like epaulets. He addressed her as if he were the host of the room. “Whom are you looking for?”

She tossed her hair as if in an unconscious gesture and a faint scent of lemon wafted out. She said, “I … I want to talk to you, Director Yu. Is this your office?”

Perhaps she decided to say this the very moment she pushed open the door and saw Yu Dasheng. She had a gift for weighing up a situation in an instant and seizing an opportunity. She acted as if the office she was entering were Yu Dasheng’s and introduced herself. “I’m a worker in the foundry department. I would like to report a situation to you.”

Yu Dasheng said, “This is not my office. I came here to look for someone. You—why don’t you talk to your department director, if you have something to report?”

“You’re the one in whom I have the most confidence. In the whole factory, or even the entire city of Fuan, the person in whom I have the most confidence is you,” Fei said smoothly.

It was flattery, and Yu Dasheng was well aware of it. Still, he couldn’t have been prepared to have a strange, pretty female of such a young age come and flatter him so obviously for no apparent reason. Compared to the women in the factory with whom he usually dealt, Fei was much prettier, and also more educated. She used the word “confidence,” which the workers here seldom used. It was a good word, even though it implied familiarity. But to be trusted by people was a pleasant feeling, so Yu Dasheng told Fei, “In that case, you can come to my office with me. I can listen to your report.”

They went to Yu Dasheng’s office. Yu Dasheng sat behind his desk and Fei chose a seat near the door. Yu Dasheng said, “Okay, what would you like to talk about?”

Fei cleared her throat and said, “It’s like this … Oh, right. I forgot to tell you my name, which is Tang Fei. I always pay very close attention when you give a speech, because you speak Beijing dialect. You’re a Beijinger, right? So am I. I’m pretty sure we’re fellow Beijingers.”

“Yes, I’m a Beijinger,” Yu Dasheng said. “You just said your name was Tang Fei, so your family name is Tang?”

“Yes, my family name is Tang, a very common family name.”

“Can you tell me what you want to report?” Yu Dasheng calmly put the conversation back on track.

Fei said with determination, “It’s actually about my own situation. I want to change jobs. I work in the foundry department … I’m sure you know how dirty and exhausting the job is. The working class shouldn’t be afraid of dirty, hard work, but my skin is allergic. I get an allergic reaction as soon as I walk into the workshop.”

Yu Dasheng gazed at the smooth-skinned girl, with her healthy complexion, and said, “I understand your situation, but I’m afraid I can’t change jobs for you as you ask. There are so many workers in the factory. What would other people say if I go and assign you another job?”

“You probably don’t believe my skin is allergic. Let me show you my arm …” She stood up from her chair and walked quickly to the desk, moving close to Yu Dasheng and rolling up her sleeve for him. On her forearm, along with the visible traces of light purple blood vessels, there were indeed two penny-sized, slightly swollen red ulcers, caused by aspirin. When she’d gone to the factory clinic for these ulcers, the doctor had already told her to stop taking the painkillers because she might be allergic to aspirin. Now she was trying to blame her allergies on the foundry department with the evidence of these few small spots. Shouldn’t she be given a transfer to some other place, when her arm was so badly affected? The foundry department might cause her whole arm to rot off if she stayed there. Emboldened, and with the help of the ulcers on her forearm, she moved even closer to Yu Dasheng. Almost leaning her body against him, and at the same time bending over slightly, she put her afflicted arm on the desk in front of him, her damp hair brushing tantalizingly against his ears. For a few seconds of stillness, she felt the way both she and Yu Dasheng stared at the arm she’d laid on the desk. Concluding that Director Yu had no intention of avoiding her, Fei grew daring now, thinking it was possible for her to seize the chance and sit on his lap, just by pretending to stagger and plunging forward. She put her little trick into practice and sat smoothly onto his lap, only to be picked up immediately. His actions with her could be best described by the phrase “picked up.” Although she was above and he was below, she still had a feeling of being picked up—always embarrassing and undignified to have that done by someone. She didn’t remember how she got picked up, only the result. With one hand gently pushing her elbow, he sent her back to her chair by the door and then returned to his behind the desk. “You are still a child,” he said, deliberately, one word after another.