The Bathing Women (43 page)

They sat down to eat, and, of course, to drink wine. They drank red wine. Fei, tormented by pain and sweating profusely, got up from her bed, walked over gracefully, and seated herself, her look of misery gone. Her gaze went around to everyone, charming them all; her manner was elegant and appealing. They couldn’t help feeling that the great beauty Fei had returned. She would use red paper to dye their lips and make them look very seductive, and then she would put on a raincoat to perform “Cairo Nights.” Look, she picked up the glass of red wine and drained it in one gulp. Wasn’t it the drunkenness that made her eyes cloudy? This intoxicating dream life of Fei’s! This determined great beauty!

None of them could taste anything out of these special dishes, but they all exaggeratedly nodded their heads to show how they had found their past; from the pork skin aspic, from the fried crystal pork, they had rediscovered their innocent joy. Except their tears didn’t cooperate but fell into their glasses and made the wine salty. They were laughing.

They were laughing.

Two weeks later, Fei died in the hospital. Tiao and Youyou had taken turns staying beside her bed. No one else came to the hospital to visit her, even though she kept glancing toward the door. Where were those men, those men who’d enjoyed her and used her and were also used by her? Towards the end, Fei stopped glancing at the door; she didn’t have the strength anymore—she slipped in and out of a coma.

She had woken up on a sunny afternoon and recognized Tiao by her bedside. She raised her arm and said, “Come close, come close.” She pointed at her lips and said, “Maybe you won’t believe me, Tiao. I’ve had many men but none of them touched my lips. None of them. I didn’t allow them to. Once, a local rich guy, who got rich by dealing cars, treated me to dinner. He suddenly reached his hand over the table, grabbed my neck, and attempted to kiss me. I turned my face away and said, ‘What are you doing?’ He said, ‘What do you think I want to do?’ I said, ‘If you want something, you don’t have to try so hard. We can do it now.’ He gave me a cocky grin and said, ‘I never thought I’d hear you say anything like that so soon. I didn’t expect you to be so straightforward. There are two types of women in my experience—the lowbrow kind and the highbrow kind. The lowbrow let you touch the lower parts of their bodies as soon as you start; and the highbrow only permit you to touch the upper parts. See, I had you in the highbrow category …’ Tiao, come closer, come closer, listen to me. My lips are clean. They’re the only thing on my body that’s respectable. Let me kiss you. Let me kiss you.”

Fei propped herself up stubbornly and held Tiao in her arms, and then with her pale and icy lips kissed Tiao’s left cheek.

Tiao gradually felt a burning sensation on the left side of her face, and believed there must be a clear outline of lips on her cheek. When she went to the funeral home for Fei’s service a few days later, she could feel the lip mark still imprinted on her left cheek. A strange man with grey hair stood in front of the funeral home and stared at Tiao’s face, which embarrassed her. She supposed that he must have seen the imprint on her face, a material presence that had a shape and life and didn’t disappear with the disappearance of Fei. A living thing that Fei had planted on Tiao’s face, it remained and frequently made the left side of Tiao’s face feel swollen. The grey-haired man stared at Tiao’s face and said, “The person you had the funeral for is Fei, right?”

Tiao said, “Who are you?”

The man said, “I’m an old coworker of hers from the factory.” Tiao looked at his clothing carefully; he had on a dark blue khaki cotton jacket with a brown plush collar, out of date but very clean. Tiao said, “Are you Master Qi?”

“My last name is Qi. How did you know?”

“From … before … Fei told me.”

“Are you her family—?”

“No, I’m not her family. I’m her friend.”

“I haven’t seen her for years. What about her family?”

Tiao got a distant look in her eye. “She has no family.”

He said, “Oh.”

He turned to push his bicycle, an old Phoenix Manganese 18 bicycle with rust-stained rims, the former symbol of a family’s prosperity. As she looked at this classic, nicely designed old Phoenix, Tiao’s heart quivered with tenderness, as if she were seeing an old acquaintance who had been out of touch for years, as if she were seeing the living witness to Fei’s story. The stories that Fei told her became so real and definite. She imagined the time Master Qi rode that bike into their campus, locked it in front of the administration building, and how Fei, seeing no one around, pulled the air valves out. Tiao gazed at that phoenix symbol, with its delicate and beautiful design—three tails, gracefully lifted, bright red, golden, and emerald green, all of which would call up good associations for Tiao forever.

Master Qi got on his bicycle and left the funeral home. The back of his figure on the bicycle looked lonely and disciplined, and Tiao had the thought that this old worker with his grey hair might be the only one who had truly loved Fei. She was convinced that he had seen Fei’s lips on her face, and maybe he even imagined that Fei’s lips would open and talk from her left cheek. But this was probably just her fantasy. Tiao thought too much.

3

The sofa was still the same, grey-blue satin brocade, in the same place, soft and clean.

She pricked up her ears to listen while she led him by the hand and walked toward the sofa. It wasn’t important that she was pulling with her hand; the important thing was listening. What she valued at that moment was her ears. The light wasn’t on, so the room was dark. Until, after a while, as they started to get used to it, the darkness didn’t appear so solid; light from the building across shone in through the open curtains of the windows. Stillness was everywhere, and she heard nothing, from either Fei or Quan. The sofa made no sound; the screaming had vanished. In her heart was a deep emptiness, but also a relief that she didn’t want to admit. She missed Fei, but she also felt relieved by her death, as if because of it, from now on, Quan would completely disappear from the sofa; only Fei’s death could guarantee that. The sofa now made no sound; the screaming was gone.

All of a sudden tears poured down her face. She felt a sense of complete relief—as when enormous tension is lifted, as though a free and deep sleep had arrived at last, as deep as could be wished after a hundred years of being deprived of it. Her tears unhurriedly washed away obstacles of all kinds in the depth of her soul, unhurriedly welling into her eyes. Immediately he saw that she was crying—by the sparkle of reflected light from outside—and he kissed her wet face.

He must have thought her crying was caused by great sadness. Sadness would linger for many people after a funeral. He tried to comfort her with his kisses and wanted to turn on the light in the living room, but she didn’t let him. She didn’t allow him to turn on the light, and she didn’t want him to kiss her. She was annoyed now, because when he kissed her face, she felt the pressure on the left side again, which was Fei’s lips. It changed the kissing, making it as if he were kissing Fei, not her—kissing Fei’s lips on her face. So Tiao became the intermediary between Chen Zai and Fei, as though she were intimate with both of them, while they took no notice of her, busy only with their own communication. She was like a bed is to a couple who are engrossed in making love; they can’t do it without the bed, but the bed means nothing to them. The thought upset Tiao very much; she evaded Chen Zai’s lips and made him feel awkward. Then he held her by the waist and told her to lie down in bed. He thought she should rest.

In bed, she held on to his hands. As though prompted, he started to remove her clothes. He took off almost everything, and her arms and legs obeyed and seemed happy to cooperate. She was left wearing only a small pair of underpants, white, the kind with embroidery on the front and lace on the sides. The tiny underwear excited him, aroused him even more than her naked body. His hand touched the crotch of her underwear. The small soft and moist spot there gave him chills. He began to take off her underwear, but she seemed desperate to stop him. She insisted on guiding him into her, partly moving aside her underwear. He felt uncomfortable but it also gave him a new, exciting sensation. He didn’t understand her insistence, as if she were purposely setting up obstacles for both of them. Too smooth is not smooth, just as too much freedom is no freedom at all. But soon he was tired of the novel feeling, because it hurt. He tore off the little thing with a couple of tugs and rammed into her without any interference. She seemed to escape the awkwardness she felt from the left side of her face, and his concentration and devoted energy moved her, also. She was willing to cooperate with his rhythms; she was willing to bring about their happy climax at the same time; she was willing to believe he truly loved her and not something else; she was willing to believe that the past had truly become the past.

But more and more she felt distracted. She was very thirsty, and her face began to feel burning pain again, which distracted her. She knew someone shouldn’t be distracted while making love, and that even a grain-sized pimple could affect one’s mood sometimes. Now the left side of her face hurt, but he didn’t notice anything and just kept banging away. She forgot it was she who had grabbed his hands tightly; she forgot it was she who wanted him to sweep away her uneasiness with his actions. Withdrawing into herself then, she was thinking unreasonably, Why does he have to do this to me right now? When she was thinking like that, she couldn’t go on. She said rudely, “Can we just stop? I want to stop.” She said this and started to push him off. She pushed him off her body, grabbed a bathrobe, and went into the bathroom.

She took a hurried shower and stood in front of the mirror to look at her face. Very clearly, she could see a lipstick print on her left cheek, a pink one with a distinct outline. Anyone who knew Fei would recognize it as her lips. She dipped a towel into the water and rubbed her face, and also used disinfectant soap that she had brought back from abroad to wash her face clean of it, but she failed. She looked at her face in the mirror and thought that she still hadn’t escaped from her past. She needed to talk, and she must talk, no matter what Chen Zai thought of her.

She put her bathrobe back on and came to the doorway, as if she had just come in from outside. She started from the doorway, and skillfully turned on all the lights one by one in order: wall light, ceiling light, mirror light, floor light, big desk light, and small desk light … she left the entire place brightly lit. Then she led Chen Zai to the armchair and sat across from him. She said, “I’m going to tell you something.”

Looking across at her, she seemed uncomfortable, and he said, “Do you have to talk about it tonight?”

“Yes, I have to.”

“Maybe you should go to bed. I know you’re very tired.”

“I don’t want to sleep, and I’m not tired, either. Don’t interrupt me.”

“But your mood is very unstable.”

She smiled gently and said, “I’m very stable. My mood has never been as stable as today. Do you still remember Quan’s death? In our compound, there was a manhole on the small road in front of our building. She was playing, shovelling dirt under a tree that day, and a few old ladies who were sewing
The Selected Works of Chairman Mao
called her from a distance, so she walked towards them. She walked over, walked into the manhole, and died. She was two years old.”

“You’ve spoken about this before. Everyone knows the incident.”

“No, no one knows. You don’t know, either. When she was walking to those old ladies, I was right behind her, ten metres away, or maybe fifteen metres. I saw the manhole, saw the lid was not on for some reason. Both Fan and I saw it. We also saw the old ladies wave at her, and their waving made Quan more eager to get there. I didn’t stop her, didn’t run forward and carry her back. I knew I had enough time, but I didn’t do it. Fan and I just held each other’s hands tightly and watched her throw open her arms and fall into the manhole, as if she were flying. Chen Zai, this is me, this is the true picture of me. Not only didn’t I save her myself, but also I pulled Fan back. I can never forget our holding hands and the pull I gave on Fan’s hand. I had tried to explain that it was because I was paralyzed by fear—people can’t take action when they’re paralyzed by fear—but I knew that I wasn’t. My mind at that moment was as clear as it is now. I didn’t like Quan, and neither did Fan. I understand her dislike for Quan, but I can never reveal to her the reason for mine. I’m a murderer, a criminal who has escaped punishment. I planned never to tell anyone, but I was really tempted to tell you after I fell in love with you, not because I wanted to prove my honesty, but because the more the time passes, the clearer the scene of Quan’s death becomes. I really don’t have a heart so big and powerful that I can hold the painful past secret and secure. It kept disturbing my heart. I need someone to help me, to share it with me, and this person is you. I trust you a thousand times more than I trust myself, but I’m also afraid to lose you. Now that I’m finally confessing, Chen Zai, I’m experiencing the kind of relief a person feels once in a thousand years, no matter what you think of me. Do you understand?”

“Tiao, I also need to tell you something: Fan told me all these things a long time ago. When I listened to her, I didn’t hate her or you. I just pitied her; I was even ashamed to tell you. She was not a murderer, but she’s more pathetic than you are.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because she was trying to prove her own innocence by exposing others. You definitely couldn’t hate her.”

“No, I don’t hate her.”

“Then why did you hate Quan?”

Suddenly she felt ashamed, more ashamed than she was at admitting to murder. But she had already made up her mind to bring everything out into the open, so she said, “Because Quan was the child of Wu and Fei’s uncle.”

“So that’s why Fei also got involved in the incident, right?”

Tiao didn’t understand Chen Zai. “No, Fei just told me of her suspicion.”