The Bathing Women

They began to eat the fish. Wu said, “I’m going to knit a jumper for each of you.” She said it eagerly, as if knitting jumpers were another form of embrace. She couldn’t hug them, so she was going to knit for them. Tiao said, “Knit one for Fan first. Rose is the prettiest colour, isn’t it, Fan?”

Fan said, “Rose is the prettiest colour and it’s the only colour I want.” This loyalty of hers to Tiao, this enthusiastic response, made Tiao feel like it had been a dream whenever she recalled it later. Next, as if to go along with the pleasant atmosphere, Wu talked about her plan to invite a guest over for dinner. She said that during her stay in hospital, she had been really fortunate to have Dr. Tang. So, to express her gratitude, she wanted to invite him over for dinner. She said, “You’re both young and don’t know how hard it is to see a doctor.” If there hadn’t been this Dr. Tang, her life might have been in danger, not to mention the sick leave. She deliberately said the words “sick leave” softly, under her breath, but Tiao still heard her. If there hadn’t been this sick leave, she wouldn’t be able to stay at home for a month. Tiao said she didn’t understand. “Didn’t you get the sick leave because you were sick? Why was it because of the doctor that you got the sick leave?”

Wu said, “Not every patient could get permission to rest. To put it simply, Dr. Tang is important and someone we should thank.”

So they thanked him. It was a Sunday and Wu broke her routine and got up early. She asked Tiao to help her in the kitchen and was busy for almost an entire morning. She hadn’t cooked for a long time and was out of practice, and her sense about salt, sugar, soy sauce, and MSG was off. She was intimidated by the kitchen, the way she was by the Reed River Farm. But as she bustled around, the one tiny advantage of the Reed River Farm occurred to her: they didn’t need to cook there; they ate in the canteen. She made several odd-looking dishes, asking Tiao over and over again where the seasonings were. Spicy soy sauce and fennel—she had completely forgotten where they were. Finally, she planned to make a dessert: grilled miniature snowballs. She mentioned it to Tiao and Tiao said, “That’s my dad’s dish. No one knows how to make it when he’s not home.”

“Why can’t we make it? Aren’t fresh milk, eggs, and sugar all we need?”

“We also need vanilla and citric acid. Without citric acid, milk will stay liquid. It won’t become miniature snowballs.”

Wu looked at Tiao with surprise and asked, “How do you know?”

“I’ve seen Dad make it.”

Wu said, “Find citric acid for me and I’ll make grilled miniature snowballs.”

“We don’t have citric acid.”

Wu believed Tiao, but she had a vague feeling that Tiao wanted to keep the recipe for miniature snowballs to herself.

Later, candied apple was substituted for grilled snowballs. Tiao despised this dish from the bottom of her heart. She had never liked any kind of “candied” dish, thinking it was neither hygienic nor civilized for people to pull out the apples with their chopsticks, trailing syrupy tangled candied strings, and then everyone dipping them into the same bowl of cold water, meanwhile faking the same amazed and satisfied expressions as they ate. Besides, what was so amazing and satisfying about eating sugarcoated apple? Furthermore, when Wu made candied apple, she always overdid the sugar, so there weren’t any sugar strings to be pulled no matter how hard you tried. There were just gooey pieces and chunks that would stick to your teeth and palate. Tiao would keep licking the roof of her mouth with her tongue and sometimes had to put her fingers into her mouth to pry the stuff free. However, it passed as a dessert. With the way Wu cooked, who could blame Tiao for telling her that they didn’t have citric acid?

When the dinner was ready, Wu began changing her clothes, going back and forth between the few outfits she had, whose styles were almost all the same, but in different colours like grey, green, blue, etc. But Wu looked good, her face glowing with excitement. She kept looking at herself in the mirror and also lowered her head and asked Tiao to smell her hair. “Do you think my hair smells of grease? Smell it again. Maybe I should wash my hair.”

Tiao sniffed at Wu’s hair and smelled a little grease smoke, but wasn’t in a hurry to say anything. She asked Wu suddenly, “Is Dr. Tang a man or a woman?” Wu was startled for a moment and then straightened her back, her hair falling over half of her face. She said, “It’s … it’s uncle. You should call him uncle. What’s the matter?” “Nothing,” Tiao said. For some reason she didn’t want to tell Wu that her hair smelled of grease smoke; she didn’t want Wu to wash her hair one more time for this thank-you dinner. She felt Wu had spent too much time preparing for the dinner and was taking it too seriously. She had never seen her mother so serious about anything, including Tiao’s and Fan’s business. Wu ignored Tiao’s reservations and washed her hair once more, as if she’d known that Tiao hadn’t told the truth. Her dark, shiny hair matched her fresh, lustrous face—with the two soft, delicate, faultless eyebrows—it all looked very beautiful to Tiao, but she never said so to Wu.

Dr. Tang arrived, a very reserved man speaking perfect Beijing dialect. He didn’t have his white cap on, so it was the first time that Wu had seen his hair, brownish hair that made his small dark eyes look even darker. They exchanged some courtesies and sat down to dinner. Wu told Tiao and Fan to call him uncle, but Tiao insisted on calling him Dr. Tang and Fan followed her sister’s lead. Fan had a white plastic set of doctor toys, which included a syringe, a stethoscope, and a “kidney tray” for surgery. She showed these toys to Dr. Tang and said with regret that she didn’t have a thermometer, for which she often had to substitute a popsicle stick. If she found someone with a fever, she would give that person a shot. “If you have a fever, you need a shot, right, Dr. Tang?” She repeated the words “have a fever” in a high-pitched voice; for her all illness could be summed up in the words “have a fever.”

Have a fever.

Dr. Tang and Wu talked for a long time after dinner. He handed Wu a hardback copy of The Family Medical Encyclopedia and told her that there was a chapter dedicated to rheumatic heart disease. When Wu took the book from him, she noticed a loose thread on one of the sleeves of his jumper. She thought, why would she be so quick to tell Tiao and Fan that she was going to knit jumpers for them?

She bought a pure light grey woollen yarn and started to knit a jumper, leaning back against her pillow. She usually knitted during the daytime, after Tiao went to school, and also in the evening, after Tiao and Fan fell asleep. That made her look a little underhanded and evasive because she didn’t want her daughters to see her knit this jumper. But in a simple home like theirs, where could she hide it? Tiao eventually found the light grey half-finished item.

She was a little surprised and asked Wu, “This isn’t Fan’s jumper, is it? Didn’t you say that you were going to knit one for Fan?”

Wu grabbed the jumper back. “I did say that I was going to knit one for Fan, but I can knit one for myself first.”

“This is not a woman’s jumper. It’s not for you.” She stood beside Wu’s bed and seemed indignant.

The next day, when Wu unfolded the jumper to continue her work, she found that the sleeve she had almost finished the day before had disappeared.

4

The sleeve had to have been taken apart by Tiao. The knitting needles had vanished, and each row of stitches was undone—Wu had put her heart and soul into those stitches. She was furious, but couldn’t really allow herself to lose her temper. She clutched the unravelled jumper, kept her anger in check, and went to talk things over with Tiao. She thought it might take some effort to get Tiao to confess, and hadn’t expected it to be so easy. Tiao admitted it as soon as Wu asked, as if she were waiting for Wu to question her.

“Was it you who took the jumper apart?”

“It was me.”

“What did I do wrong, to have you unravel my jumper?”

“You said you were going to knit a jumper for Fan but you didn’t keep your promise.”

“Yes, I did say that. It was … I couldn’t find the rose yarn in the shop. I saw this kind, which was nice but more suitable for an adult—”

“What adult? Which adult?” Tiao interrupted Wu.

“Which adult?” Wu repeated Tiao’s question. “Me, for instance. Like me.” She lowered her voice.

“But this is not for you. This is a man’s jumper.” Tiao’s voice remained firm.

“How do you know this is for a man? You don’t even know how to knit.” Wu’s anger flared again.

“Of course I know. I’ve seen you knit before. I’ve seen you knit for Dad. Are you knitting it for Dad?” Tiao looked directly into Wu’s eyes.

“Yes … uh, no.” Wu seemed to be forced into a corner by Tiao. She knew if she continued saying that the jumper was for Yixun, she would look even more stupid than she already did. Maybe Tiao would immediately write to her dad and tell him that Mum was knitting for him. So she admitted that the jumper was for Dr. Tang. It was Dr. Tang who had asked her to knit a jumper for him. Dr. Tang was not married yet and he needed someone to take care of him. So she agreed to knit this for him. She was even going to try to find him a girlfriend … She didn’t know why she was babbling all of this to Tiao.

“Then why did you say you were knitting this for yourself?” Tiao still didn’t let it go.

Wu’s guilt turned into anger. She said, “What do you want? What do you really want from me? Why do you upset me so much? Don’t you know that I’m ill?”

“If you’re ill, then why do you spend so much time knitting?” Tiao didn’t back down.

“I spend so much time knitting because … because I hope to spend more time at home with you. Does my doing this bother you? Look at the other children in the Architectural Design Academy. Don’t they all have to stay home by themselves, pathetically wasting their lives? Not all parents are as lucky as we are: to be able to have one of us at home to take an interest in our children.”

Tiao didn’t say anything more. She was thinking Wu might be right, but mostly her mind was filled with doubt. Wu spoke about “taking an interest” but Tiao didn’t see any of it from her. She was not concerned about the sisters; didn’t notice Fan had lost her front tooth, and didn’t ask once what they had eaten every day in the last half a year. The way Tiao was mistreated for not knowing how to speak the Fuan dialect—Wu had never asked about any of this. So Tiao was more skeptical than trusting. And she didn’t believe that Wu believed her own words, either. Her years of suspicion crystallized into doubt at that moment. This was sad for both mother and daughter, and something that neither seemed to be able to do anything about, which made it feel more cruel to have to accept.

Wu didn’t feel she had won just because Tiao didn’t reply, but she preferred not to think about it any further. She was the kind of person who didn’t like to think deeply, a lifelong escapist. Her mind was not large enough to accommodate either caring for others or self-analysis. She clutched the jumper and returned to bed and to her big crumpled pillow to resume knitting. By the lamplight, she used the bamboo knitting needles to pick up the loose stitches one by one and finished the sleeve and the entire jumper in a single night.

Then she bought some yarn to knit a jumper for Yixun. She changed the colour to a cream. She knitted day and night, her hands flying and her eyes getting bloodshot, as if she wanted to work off her guilt with the unusual knitting as well as ease her nerves. She knitted with great skill and she herself was surprised by the speed: she took only seven days to knit jumpers for two men. Seven days; she had never come close to that mark, not before or afterwards. Whether it was to punish herself for her fall or to ease the way for her to fall further, she didn’t know. She had a feeling that her relationship with Dr. Tang had not yet run its course.

Neither had had their fill of each other. Almost every Sunday, Dr. Tang came to Wu’s house for dinner. When Wu’s month of sick leave was up, he renewed it for another month. If he continued to renew her sick leave without anyone noticing, wouldn’t she be able to stay at home for a long time? This was something she hardly dared to imagine but wished for with all of her heart. When the Cultural Revolution turned violent, she became what was known as a wanderer, and she really wanted to be one. “Wanderers” was the label given to the faction of people who avoided political campaigns and labour reform and refused to take a stand on matters of principle. This group—muddleheaded, backward—couldn’t be brought onto the stage to play their parts in history. If a doctor were found to provide a false certification for a patient, the consequences could be very severe. They wouldn’t merely say he was violating professional ethics, which wouldn’t be a serious enough charge. They would accuse him of undermining the great revolution, that is, being antirevolutionary. And Dr. Tang might very likely get arrested as an antirevolutionary. Dr. Tang was in fact risking his life, for Wu.

Now Dr. Tang wore the jumper Wu knitted for him openly—it fit really well. Wu liked to look at his mouth chewing in the daylight. The way he ate was very elegant; his mouth made small but accurate movements, adeptly dealing with difficult foods like fish heads or spare ribs. It almost looked like he used his mouth as a knife to perform a quiet operation on food. That mouth of his seemed to be of particular use for eating food and keeping silent—when he wasn’t eating, he was very quiet. His words were rare, which seemed to make his mouth even more precious. Wu would try to kiss him when no one was around, but he would pull away. So she let him be. She didn’t have to kiss him. In some respects, she was easily satisfied. She would confine herself to observing that mouth. From her limited experience of men, she believed he was shy. He was an unmarried man.

She kept telling the sisters that she was going to get a girlfriend for Dr. Tang, but that it was really difficult. Dr. Tang came from a politically-tainted family, and was also raising his niece on his own. The niece, whom Wu had met, was an orphan, the child of his older sister. She kept talking about finding a girlfriend but never took action. Tiao had never seen her bring anyone home who looked like a girlfriend type. During this period, Yixun came home for the change of season and stayed for three days—he had only three days’ vacation. He invited Dr. Tang home to drink beer with him. Back then Fuan didn’t have bottled beer, so beer was sold only in restaurants. The restaurant employees would use a rice bowl as a measure, ladle out the beer from a ceramic barrel, and then pour it into the customer’s own container. The beer didn’t have any head and tasted sour and bitter.

The two men drank beer and ate a roast chicken together, one that Yixun had brought back from Reed River Town. Yixun enquired about Wu’s illness, and when he asked about it, Wu remembered she was sick. She had to be sick, with rheumatic heart disease. Yixun asked about all the details thoughtfully, full of concern for Wu and gratitude to Dr. Tang. Dr. Tang said this type of heart disease was the most common in China, making up 40 to 50 percent of the various heart conditions. Most patients were young or middle-aged, ranging from twenty to forty years old, and the majority were women. It was a form of heart disease that was mainly valvular, caused by acute rheumatic fever, usually attacking the bicuspid and aortic valves, causing stenosis or valve insufficiency and blood circulation stasis that would eventually lead to overall heart insufficiency.

Yixun said, “So, do you think Wu’s dizziness has something to do with rheumatic heart disease?”

Dr. Tang said it was possible because a minority of patients might have shortness of breath or faint when the symptoms got worse. As Dr. Tang was talking, he and Wu exchanged a glance, a quick one, barely noticeable. In the face of Yixun’s careful concern, both seemed a little bit ashamed. They hadn’t expected that Yixun would invite Dr. Tang for a beer and have such a friendly conversation with him. It was, of course, the normal attitude of a normal person: Yixun felt indebted to the doctor for his kindness—Wu described in her letter to him how Dr. Tang came to her rescue when she passed out in the clinic and how he managed to get her into the internal medicine ward. When Dr. Tang told Yixun that there usually wasn’t great danger as long as the patient took care to rest and avoided intense physical activity, Yixun felt reassured.

Three days later when Yixun was returning to the farm, Wu packed the cream-coloured jumper she had knitted into his luggage.

Their house went quiet for a few days. Wu lay quietly on the bed, often without moving, as if she were really afraid of intense activity. Tiao felt everything was fine, as if Dr. Tang had never appeared in their house—which was when she realized that she had never liked Dr. Tang, even if he had saved Wu’s life a hundred times over. But the calm lasted only a few days, after which Wu started to get active. Apparently it had become inconvenient for her to invite Dr. Tang home anymore, or she felt embarrassed to invite him over so quickly—so soon after Yixun had been there. She didn’t want the children to notice the obvious contrast; she already felt Tiao’s awkwardness was harder and harder to handle, so she decided to go out.

She must be going either to the hospital or Dr. Tang’s place, Tiao thought. Wu often went out after dark and didn’t come back until very late. Before she left, she always spent a long time in front of the mirror, combing her hair, gazing at her reflection, changing clothes and practicing pleasant expressions, checking both her front view and side view. How wilted and spiritless she appeared when she was tossing around on her pillow, her hair dishevelled and her eyes dull, with drool at the corner of her mouth, thin and silvery, like a snail track. Had Dr. Tang seen her this way? If Dr. Tang saw this side of her, would he still want her to visit him?

But when Wu stood before the mirror and prepared to leave, she seemed to have turned into a completely different person, enthusiastic and energetic, her entire body lit up like a candle. Sometimes she even brought one or two dishes along, food for Dr. Tang. For this reason she had to enter the kitchen, the place she had always hated. Clumsily, she’d make fried eggplant and beef-carrot stew. She would put up with Tiao’s comments, believing Tiao was just being intentionally hurtful. Tiao made a point of saying that Wu’s cooking was bland, that the beef-carrot stew wouldn’t be tasty if she didn’t use curry powder. Wu then humbly asked where the curry powder was, but Tiao declared happily she didn’t have any and they just couldn’t find curry powder in Fuan, that the curry powder they used to have came with them from Beijing. Wu never noticed that Tiao had been removing the seasonings little by little. She hid them so Wu wouldn’t find them and use them, because they had all become too closely associated with Dr. Tang.

When Wu was not home, Tiao flipped through the pages of The Family Medical Encyclopedia that Dr. Tang had given Wu. She turned to the section on rheumatic heart disease, but unfortunately there were too many words she didn’t understand. She looked at pictures of ugly human bodies, one of which was a woman with a curled, upside-down baby in her belly. Tiao wrote a line in pencil in the margin next to the baby, “This is Dr. Tang.” Why would she pick a baby and make it into Dr. Tang? Was it because only a baby like that was less powerful than she was? She then could freely express her contempt for the adult Dr. Tang through this fetus.

Wu still went to see Dr. Tang, carrying her lunch box, offering Dr. Tang the food she cooked, and herself. One evening she left, and didn’t come home the whole night. It was on that night that Fan had a high fever. Having a fever, having a fever. Precisely the words Fan always used when she was playing the doctor-patient game. Her entire body was burning hot, her face all red, and her nostrils flaring. She said she was very thirsty and wanted Tiao to cuddle her. Tiao held her in her arms and let Fan’s fever scald her. She gave Fan water and orange juice, but neither could lower her temperature. Where was Wu? Both of them needed her. When Fan’s fever made her cry, Tiao cried with her. She patted Fan’s back with her small hand and said, “Let me tell you a story. Don’t you love to listen to stories?” But Fan was not interested in stories. She must have felt terrible. She kept coughing and threw up several times. Her coughing and vomiting made her sound both old and young, like an old man trapped in a child’s body. Tiao’s heart was broken into a thousand pieces; Fan’s suffering gripped her with pain. She hated Wu, thinking how she would shout at her when she came home. She held Fan in her arms all night long. Young and small as she was, she took on the responsibility of caring for Fan, who was smaller and weaker than she. She didn’t close her eyes the whole night, washing her face when she felt sleepy. She was determined to wait for Wu to come home with open eyes, letting Wu see for herself that Tiao had been waiting for her all night. At daybreak Wu opened the door and tiptoed in.

A big pillow flew at Wu as a welcome—Tiao had grabbed it from the bed and thrown it at Wu’s face. She didn’t know where she got the nerve for this rude behaviour, which should never be used to deal with adults and parents. But once the pillow was thrown there was no way to take it back. She stared boldly at her mother.

Wu’s mind went blank. Only when Tiao shouted at her that Fan was dying did she come to her senses and rush to Fan. Fan was half conscious with the fever, a pink rash covering her forehead and behind her ears. She probably had the measles.

Fan’s illness worried and frightened Wu. But she had no time for regret right then. She just picked up Fan and hurried out.

“Where are you going?”

“The hospital.”

Tiao asked which hospital, and Wu said People’s Hospital.

“You can’t go to People’s Hospital!” Tiao stamped her feet like a little lunatic.

5

Adults are still adults. Even if you throw pillows at their faces, these somewhat confused people remain in charge. Wu ignored Tiao’s stamping. She put Fan on the crossbar of her bicycle and pedaled directly to People’s Hospital. Tiao followed the bike, running all the way. In the emergency room, while the doctor on duty took Fan’s temperature, Wu went to the internal medicine ward and got Dr. Tang. It was not that she didn’t trust the doctor on duty; she just trusted Dr. Tang more. In this unfamiliar city, when she had trouble, a doctor with whom she had an intimate relationship would naturally become her protector, even though he was not on duty in the emergency room and didn’t know pediatrics. Tiao couldn’t stop Dr. Tang from appearing. She watched Wu and Dr. Tang bustle around Fan and had a feeling she had been deceived. Yes, she had been fooled by this pair of hypocrites, this man and woman. She felt angry and sad. She didn’t know the word “hypocrite” then. She wouldn’t find this word for them until she was an adult looking back. But right then she thought about her dad. She felt very sorry for Yixun. She decided to write him a letter. She wanted him to come and save her, and Fan as well.

Fan had measles.

At home, later that day, Tiao began to write to Yixun behind Wu’s back, using stationery with light green lines. In the upper right corner of the paper was a row of light green printing, the size of sesame seeds: Beijing Bus Company. They’d brought the paper along with them from Beijing when they moved. Tiao had bought it at a stationery store when she was still at Denger Alley Elementary School. At the time she never considered why the paper would have Beijing Bus Company on it. These light green words gave her a feeling that whenever she wrote, a bus would come to pick up the letter and take it far away, to the place where it belonged. Years later, when she worked in the Publishing House and saw all kinds of letters and manuscripts, she recalled her childhood, and the Beijing Bus Company paper she had used to write letters. She understood then it must be the letterhead from the printing house of Beijing Bus Company, but was still puzzled. Why would a bus company own a printing house? And why would its paper flood every major stationery store in Beijing?