The Bathing Women (41 page)

There was no way he could make himself stop, and she didn’t let him stop, matching his motion with her own, entirely in rhythm. They moved together perfectly in unison.

He made her feel ecstatic; she couldn’t have imagined that they would be so much in harmony, that it could be so good. She was joyful at how deep he was in her, how he attacked her, tormented her, ravaged her. When he clutched her firm round buttocks and pressed down against her chest, she couldn’t help crying out again. She made him drip with sweat; he made her drip with sweat. Sweat soaked their hair. Still, he couldn’t stop. He lifted the hair from her face, and with a muffled voice muttered hoarsely, “Oh, sweetheart, sweetheart, darling, I want to fuck you to pieces, fuck you to death.” Drops of sweat ran down her face and stung her eyes; sweat ran into his eyes and stung them, too. They couldn’t stop. They rolled from the bed to the floor, as if no space in the world could hold them in their feverish gallop, really it was a kind of gallop, as he grasped her, steered her, heaved her, and she lay under him melded to him as if she had no bones.

They savoured each other and ravaged each other, ravaged each other and savoured each other.

Always they would remember the last moment of their first time, when his movements quickened, doubly fierce, and suddenly, with a leopard’s low growl, he said, “Tiao, Tiao, I can’t hold back any longer,” and then she felt a hot current flow through her whole body and then an awakening of bliss as if she’d been roused from a long deep sleep. She was in bliss. A short while later she lost consciousness. When she awoke, still in her ear was the echo of his low growl, “I can’t hold back any longer.” To the end of her life she would love the sound of his growl, so innocent, so passionate, so intimate. They now were truly lovers, lovers for two lifetimes, three lifetimes.

She awoke, her entire body limp, to a shining light, the lamp that he’d turned on. He was staring at her in the lamplight. He stretched his arms out to her; she rolled her head onto his arm and was wrapped in his embrace, resting her head on his broad shoulder. He said to her that his shoulder and chest had grown just right to cradle her head, a perfect fit, perfectly matched.

The two sweaty bodies stuck to each other. He said, “You are my dear.”

She said, “You are my little dear.”

He said, “You are my dear little sister.”

She said, “You are my dear big brother.”

He said, “You are my little mother.”

She said, “You are my little father.”

He said, “You are my little one.”

She said, “You are my good little child.”

He said, “You are my young wife.”

She said, “You are my older husband.”

He said, “I want to do it again. I want to do it again.” So they started over. He was even more carefully attentive to her. She was even more playful in catering to his needs. So sweetly intimate and close, they were like glue—like paint—on each other, forgetting everything around them, completely in love.

Tiao sighed sadly, wondering why this day had taken so long to arrive. She also sighed that finally it had arrived. All the pleasure and happiness that he gave to her made her cry tears of joy and gratitude. He leaned over to lick the tears, to kiss her moist eyelashes, to say, “My little one, what’s the matter?” In reply, she hugged him tightly around his sturdy waist, as if to embed her arms in his flesh, to be absorbed into his body and never to be stripped away.

One day in late spring, he drove with her to the outskirts of Fuan, a place near the mountains where he’d bought a small plot of land. He told her, “I want to build a house here and furnish it with everything you want.”

“What would that be?”

“A big kitchen,” he said.

“That’s right. Naturally I would like a big kitchen.”

“A large kitchen should be the second thing, though.”

“What should be the first thing, then?”

“The first thing should be a bed with me in it.”

She lowered her head and smiled, and he led her by the hand toward the small plot of land. There was a bare slope, with no crops yet planted, and a half-grown walnut tree stood at the crest of the hill, full of oval green leaves like the huge eyes of Buddha, serene and transcendent, as if keeping vigil. By the roadside they passed some cassia trees and wheat fields and headed up the hill toward the walnut tree, where bunches of snow-white cassia flowers gave off a pure, sweet scent. She wanted him to pick her a strand of the blooms and he picked many for her. Laughing, he watched her cram her mouth, wolfing them down. Chewing on the cassia blooms, she asked him what he was laughing at.

“You must be laughing at how I can’t do anything else—I can hardly breathe—when I eat.”

He said that she looked a little bit like she couldn’t breathe but that wasn’t why he was laughing. “I was laughing at that look of concentration you get on your face. Have you ever eaten green wheat grain?” As he spoke, he bent over and pulled up a handful of the heads of wheat, ground them between his hands, then blew away the chaff, pinched a few seeds, and put them in her mouth. He gathered up what remained in his hand and put them into his own mouth. He chewed and asked, “What flavour do you taste in this wheat?”

She was chewing and had already made a paste of the wheat seeds; a warm, pure, and dark green flavour filled her mouth and slowly passed into her. “It doesn’t have the fragrant sweetness of cassia. It’s more pungent, with much more power—it’s the flavour of sex, the flavour of reproduction, freely vigorous and exuberant, that magnificent instinct that propels life.” She pulled him towards her and quietly said that she wanted wheat, wheat, right now …

They made love beneath that serene walnut tree. She turned toward the sun and he parted her legs. She let the sunlight and his caresses make her sex shine, shocking his eyes and astonishing his heart, so that he would always remember that radiant colour in the sun’s translucent rays.

While he faced the confrontation over the divorce from Wan Meicheng, he continued to see Tiao. Nothing could stop them from meeting. Even a short time without making love was unbearable to them. It would have been a sort of truancy as they earnestly attempted to make up for the emptiness of more than ten years that yawned like a gulf between them … She’d often act a bit spoiled, and badgered him, insisting that he “tell me again when you first fell in love with me.”

“When you were twelve.”

“You loved a twelve-year-old child?”

“I loved you when you were twelve.”

“Why?”

“Because you were ugly.”

“No, I wasn’t ugly.”

“You were ugly, when you were twelve you were a little ugly strange ball.”

“You shouldn’t describe me like that. I wasn’t nearly as ugly as you say.”

“Bystanders have the clearest view. You were ugly. But I was able to see the potential; a twelve-year-old girl who is a flawless beauty will surely grow up to be an ugly woman. She’s reached the heights and it’s all downhill from there.” She said, “I understand what you mean. You loved me because you thought I would develop into a beautiful woman.”

“Don’t be so conceited, you are not a beautiful woman.”

A little unhappily, she said, “Well, then, what am I? What am I?”

He thought for a moment and then said, “You are an eternal woman.” As he said this he came up behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist, kissing her smooth neck. “You are my little woman, my little sweetie!”

In his arms, she beat his chest and said, “You speak absolute foolishness, and how could you tell that as a twelve-year-old girl I would be eternal? You must tell me why you loved me!” She pushed him away as she spoke.

“I loved you because I was a hooligan, okay?”

“I want you to talk nicely to me.”

He said with a sigh, “Because, when you were twelve, your eyes had a strange look of agony, suffering that no one could understand. I didn’t understand why your eyes showed such pain, but I saw it, and it became a long compulsion because it was a challenge to me. I imagined that I would be able to understand your pain. Tiao, this is one of the dreams of my life, to make you happy. I only want you to be happy.”

“I am happy, and only you can make me so happy. When I was twelve years old I was unhappy. There was a letter I wrote, a letter I wrote and posted to my father, dropping it into the postbox by the entrance to our compound. I regretted that later. I wanted to smash the postbox to get it out.” At the beginning of their conversations, she just kept telling him to say why he loved her, a little arrogant, a little flirtatious. After a while, she had to talk about the distant past, about Dr. Tang and Quan, long gone, vanished forever. All of it she willingly poured out to him, even the parts about Fan. Finally, she told of the death of Quan. She spoke about her falling into the manhole. “You know that manhole, the one for wastewater in the road by the entrance to our building.”

He stroked her back, as if soothing a frightened cat. He said, “I know that manhole. All the children in the compound knew how Quan fell into it. But all of that is in the past, in the past. Now we have our new life.” She said that Quan herself walked into the manhole. He said, “That’s right, everyone knows that she walked into it by herself.” She said, “Chen Zai, can you hold me? Hold me!” He held her tightly, and with infinite tenderness kissed his distraught woman. She also kissed him, nervously kissing his brow and biting his ears. She was unable to hold back her agony, showing every sign of desperation. In the end, though she struggled, she was not able to reveal her guilt to Chen Zai and felt deeply ashamed. She seemed to be hearing the three of them, the sisters, scrambling under the sofa in the living room with spirited shrieks. It was at this point, and only then, that she also remembered the night in Austin and the day in San Antonio, the flowers, the river, Mike’s green eyes—galaxies! Galaxies in them! What past does not have some joy in it, what relationships did not have their pleasures? But her love was Chen Zai. She’d run away, fled all the way until she finally found his embrace. Only this great friend could help her clear away what had choked her heart for so long. Why didn’t she speak? Only a short distance to go, and then she could have been completely free.

He was so willing to give her everything, to give her his “wheat,” and more and more eagerly she looked forward to it.

One autumn night, they drove back from Beijing, and as soon as they got into the city, it began to rain heavily. They parked on the street. While the storm washed over the car, they nestled together, quietly watching the lightning out the window, listening to the thunder outside the car. There were no other cars on the street and no people around, as if they were the only ones left in heaven and earth. They had to make love—so joyful to do it in the flashes of lightning and the sounds of thunder. Wildly, he threw her on the seat, and she cried to him, “I want your wheat … I want your wheat.” Sky and ground teetered, and in the midst of her dizziness she felt him grasp her, swing her over on top of him, and she arched herself above him. Then she rode him, as if she were riding a powerfully agile leopard, as if she were riding a handsome white horse. She rode him as if she were flying away from the world of rain, riding high and far.

She trembled with him; she also made the car and the ground tremble together. She never knew she had such passion and strength. She rode him as if she were riding him for all of the days of her life, ecstasy and pain rushing out of her body, purging her of all fear.

Chapter 8

Disgusted

1

Fei didn’t feel well that winter. One day, she came to visit Tiao. As soon as she walked in she rushed directly to the living room and staggered onto the three-seater sofa. She took out a pack of cigarettes and said, “Tiao, bring me an ashtray. I want to smoke.”

Her voice was hoarse, her face dull, and her body seemed especially frail, all of which gave Tiao an ominous feeling. It was the first time that Fei demanded to smoke at Tiao’s place as if by right; she knew that Tiao didn’t allow her guests to smoke in the apartment. But still she insisted rudely, “Did you hear me? Bring me an ashtray.”

Tiao said, “You know I don’t have an ashtray here. Besides, you’d better take a look at yourself before you smoke.”

Fei sneered. “What’s wrong with how I look? But, of course, how can I look better than you? I know you feel wonderful in every way, top to bottom, inside and out. Look at your face, and the shine of your eyes; they’re so dewy that even your eyelashes are wet. Only women who are loved, adored, and cherished by men would look so healthy. Look at your lips, so much thicker and fuller than before. It must be Chen Zai’s kisses that do that? They must feel puffed, swollen, and great, right? … Oh, and your hands. Come over and let me feel your palms—they must be warm. Those who are loved have warm palms. Come here, come here and let me feel them. Why don’t you come over? What are you afraid of? Are you afraid that I’m unclean? Are you afraid that I’m contagious? Why weren’t you afraid of me before? Why weren’t you afraid of me when you wanted to get into the Publishing House and asked me to sell my body to that bastard vice mayor for you? Look at what a nice life you’re living now. And me? I can be summed up like this: no schooling and no skills and living in a drunkard’s haze. What do you think, Tiao? Think I fit the description? The way I used to trade on my beauty before, I take advantage of my illness now. I don’t blame you for being afraid of me. I have had many illnesses. Now let me tell you which ones I like the best, my favourite diseases. What makes me happiest is venereal disease. Look at the latest newspapers, big or small, every ad in every inch of them is filled with lists of venereal diseases, and I’ve had them all. It scared me at first, but not after a while. With so many drugs for treatment—and so many clinics—it seemed like all the clinics in China were kept in business because of it. Also, I wasn’t afraid because I didn’t need to see the doctors secretly; I strutted in to see them. Twice someone phoned while I was getting a nitro drip. I called him back and told him, right in front of the doctors and the patients who were getting nitro drip like me, ‘I can’t do anything right now; I’m getting treatment for my venereal disease.’ I knew both the doctors and patients were pricking up their ears listening to me. Even at a place like this where people couldn’t care less about shame, they were still shocked, exchanging glances about me. I stood out even at that sort of place. I stood out because I wasn’t like them, those people who changed their expressions as soon as they talked about the disease. At the time I had the idea that, because disease had such power over people, I should live like a disease, let me live like a disease … no, maybe that’s not accurate. I should say, I am disease, I am disease!”