Ha Jin - The Crazed

I got up from my bed, dropped my cigarette butt on the concrete floor, and stamped it out. I had quit smoking for two months, but after Mr. Yang collapsed, I had started again. These days I’d smoke almost half a pack a day.

Feeling grimy all over, I picked up my basin and went out to the washroom. The long corridor was dark, reeking of mildew and urine thanks to the toilet at its east end. Mosquitoes and gnats were flickering like crazy. I had nothing on but my green boxers. These dormitory houses were inhabited only by male students except for three or four graduate students’ wives, so most of us would walk naked-backed to the washrooms and even to the bicycle shed outside.

After scrubbing myself with a towel and cold water, I felt refreshed. I sat down at the only desk in our bedroom and began a letter to Meimei. My roommates hadn’t returned yet, so I had some privacy. I wrote:

April 25, 1989

Dear Meimei,

I wasn’t happy today, but your letter came like a breath of fresh air and made this evening different. You are very wise not to join the political activities at your college. Politics is a ground too treacherous for small people like us to tread. It’s as poisonous as acid rain.

These days I have been cramming for the exams. Japanese is debilitating me; however hard I try, my mind cannot get into it. There are so many other things going on here that I can hardly concentrate. But I shall apply myself harder, to conquer Japanese. I understand that this may be the only opportunity for me to join you in Beijing, and that I must cherish it.

I assume that by now you have received my previous letter. Your father is doing poorly, though his condition has stabilized. Don’t worry. There is no need for you to rush back; I am here with him. Good luck with your preparation. I miss you, a lot.

Your hubby-to-be,

Jian

Having sealed the letter, I turned on my Panda transistor radio and listened to the Voice of America. To my astonishment, there came the sound of people singing songs and shouting slogans. The woman reporter announced in slow, simple English that a throng of students from the People’s University were on their way to Tiananmen Square, to join those already there. Through the sputtering static I could hear hundreds of voices shouting in unison, “We shall not return without a full victory!” “Down with corruption!” “It’s everyone’s duty to save the country!” “Give us freedom and democracy!”

To my surprise, Meimei came back the next afternoon, but she could stay only a day because she wouldn’t disrupt her study. For a whole evening she was in the hospital with her father. Her presence pacified him and he stopped talking nonsense. All the sulkiness and the idiot grin had vanished from his face. When she fed him dinner, he didn’t make any noise, but instead opened his mouth compliantly and chewed the steamed apple with relish. The thought occurred to me that if she had been with him all along, his condition might have improved much more.

Although animated, Meimei was tired, her eyes clouded and her hair a bit straggly. The previous night she hadn’t slept, taking the eleven-hour train ride back to Shanning. After dinner, I urged her to go home and have a good sleep, but she wouldn’t leave.

Soon Mr. Yang began to have the fidgets, apparently bothered by something on his back. Meimei inserted her hand underneath his shirt and scratched him a little; still he wouldn’t stop squirming. She unbuttoned his shirt and found a festering boil below his left shoulder blade, about the size of an adzuki bean. She was unhappy about the discovery and said I should have rubbed him with a clean towel at least once every other day. True, I hadn’t done enough to help him with his personal hygiene, not because I was lazy or careless but because I didn’t know what to do. By nature I was an absentminded man and often neglected small things. That might be why people called me “the Poet,” though I had never written a poem. I had wiped Mr. Yang’s face with a warm towel every day and had bathed his varicosed feet once, but had done nothing else. I was sure that Banping didn’t even bother about our teacher’s face. Usually he would just sit in the room reading a book or stand in the corridor chatting with a nurse or a patient. Now I felt ashamed that I hadn’t cared for my teacher the way I should have.

Meimei removed a tiny safety pin from the waist of her pants and pierced the head of her father’s boil to drain the pus. She then wiped the abscessed area for a good while with a cotton ball soaked with alcohol. After that, she went on to squeeze a few pimples on his back. Following her orders, I fetched two thermoses of hot water. Together we took off Mr. Yang’s pajamas and set about scrubbing him with warm towels. Lying facedown, he moaned with pleasure while steam rose from his pinkish flesh.

Done with his back, we turned him over to rub his front. His eyes narrowed as a contented smile emerged on his face.

After we helped him into clean clothes, Meimei began brushing his teeth. He opened his mouth, displaying his diseased gums, which were ulcerated in places and bleeding a little. His tongue was heavily furred. “Good heavens,” Meimei said to me, “what have you been doing these days? You could at least have kept him clean.”

“I’m sorry, nobody told me what to do.”

“This is common sense.”

“Sorry, if only I had known.”

“Every three or four hours we should turn him over, let him lie on his stomach for a while, otherwise he’ll grow bedsores.”

“I’ll remember that.”

“The nurses should be fired.”

“Yes, they haven’t done much to help him either.”

“What do they do when they’re here?”

“They just sit around knitting or thumbing through magazines.”

She brushed his teeth twice, saying his gingivitis was severe. If only there were a way to treat his gum condition. Most dentists in town merely pulled or filled teeth, and few were good at dealing with periodontal disease. As Meimei was busy working on her father, I fetched more water. Together we began washing Mr. Yang’s head over a basin. With both hands I held the nape of his neck, which felt squishy, while Meimei soaped his gray hair. A whiff of decay escaped from his insides, and I turned my face with bated breath. Meimei scooped up water with her palms cupped together and let it fall on his head to rinse the suds away. In no time hundreds of hairs floated in the bluish foam, and the inside of the white basin became ringed with greasy dirt. If only I had washed his hair before Meimei had returned.

After the washing, I shaved him and with a pair of scissors trimmed his mustache and clipped his nose hair. He looked normal now, his face glowing with a reddish sheen.

I took Meimei home after ten o’clock, when the streets were full of people who had just come out of night schools. She sat sideways at the rear of my bicycle, her face pressed against my back and her arm hooked around my waist. The warmth of her body excited me so much that I continually cranked the bell on the handlebar and even ran a red light.

Afraid she might find out that I had started smoking again, I had brushed my teeth and tongue after dinner, using her father’s toothbrush with its flattened bristles, since I didn’t have mine with me. Still, when we were alone in her parents’ apartment and in each other’s arms, she detected tobacco on my breath. “You stink,” she said and sprang to her feet. She moved away and sat down on a chair, leaving me alone on the sofa. Abashed, I looked at her, my face burning.

She began lecturing me, and I listened without talking back. She said, “Your breath makes me sick. How many times did I tell you to quit smoking? Why did you take my words as just a puff of meaningless breath? Look, even your fingers are yellow now. Why can’t you keep your promise? You know tobacco will blacken your lungs and give you tracheitis, but you just smoke to show how cool you are.”