Ha Jin - The Crazed

Never had I imagined that she too had been prying into Mr. Yang’s mind. She might already have drilled, mined, and excavated the whole terrain of his blasted brain. How I hated her! But all I could bring out was “I wish he were dead!”

“How could you say such an awful thing?” Wide-eyed she froze, still holding the tray.

I felt giddy and nauseated. Without another word I snatched up my bag and rushed out the door.

Weiya Su came to see Mr. Yang the next afternoon. He was sleeping when she knocked on the door. I was surprised to see her because she seemed to me a different person now, difficult for me to understand. Her right arm was hooked around something heavy in a white cloth sack, pressed against her flank. She gave me a smile, which was so familiar and so good-natured that it induced me to say, “Come in. Why stand there?” The previous afternoon I had shaved Mr. Yang, washed his hair, and applied some lotion to his hands and cracked lips, so he looked presentable now, though his face was still puffy, like a loaf of stale bread.

“How is he today?” Weiya asked rather timidly.

“He’s okay, very quiet.”

“We shouldn’t wake him up.”

“All right, we won’t.”

To my amazement, she took a watermelon out of the sack, not a large one, but a seven- or eight-pounder. Where on earth did she get this? I asked myself. It was springtime, not the season for watermelons. At this time of the year, most fruit stores in town had only dried and canned fruits for sale except for fresh apricots and overripe plantains. The latter came from the tropical Hainan Island, very expensive.

Weiya noticed the surprise on my face and said of the watermelon, “I bought it at Swans.”

I nodded without speaking. Swans was a supermarket owned by a Hong Kong man who had invested millions of dollars in Shanning City, mainly in restaurants and retail businesses. The supermarket was the first one on the Western model opened here. I had never been there, but heard that it offered many kinds of fresh produce, all at a tripled or quadrupled price. It wasn’t a place where people living on regular wages would go shopping. I was amazed Weiya could be so openhanded; she had only a meager stipend like mine.

She stepped closer to Mr. Yang and bent forward a little to inspect his swollen face, which had lost its energetic features. She went on biting the tip of her tongue and opened her mouth from time to time, as if trying to say something but unable to get it out. Her eyes darkened, their lids flickering. She kept her hands on her sides the whole time, and her fingers twisted in her green sweater. Then her egg-shaped face softened, a smile emerging like a child’s, as if she intended to invoke some response from Mr. Yang, who remained expressionless, still asleep. Noiselessly I slipped out and closed the door behind me. I meant to leave them alone out of respect for their privacy. I had done this without a second thought.

The moment I was in the corridor I regretted having left stealthily, because Weiya might construe my deliberate withdrawal as an insinuation that I knew about their affair. In other words, I had treated her as his mistress rather than his student. I felt stupid, hoping I hadn’t offended her. On the other hand, if I had kept her company, I might have observed her too openly.

I loitered in the hospital building, just to while away an hour. There were so many patients that outside some offices people waited in lines to see doctors. Numerous patients were lying on planks or stretchers on the floor. Nurses in white robes and caps passed by like ghosts, most of them wearing broad gauze masks. A chair with ill-oiled wheels was pushed past, in which sat a disheveled young woman moaning vaguely, her legs encased in plaster. The air stank of a mixture of urine, phenol, and Lysol; there was also a whiff of decaying flesh. At the end of the hall a man was quarreling with a woman doctor, calling her a harridan, while she yelled back at him. Some people gathered there to watch.

By accident I wandered into a dark corridor. As I walked, I heard some women groaning. My eyes were not yet attuned to the dimness when a shriek rang out from somewhere on my right. I stopped to look into a room, which was curtained off.

When my eyes were fully adjusted, I saw a long line of beds set against the wall along the corridor. On them lay about a dozen women in labor, moaning in fear and pain. A few were crying for help. Some were motionless, their swelling bellies uncovered, but none seemed concerned about the presence of the men around them. Since there weren’t enough delivery rooms, it seemed that some of them might have to give birth here. Most of the husbands stood with their backs against the opposite wall, and looked downcast with dull faces. Two were chatting in whispers; one was reading a picture storybook while nibbling the end of his long mustache.

An old nurse in horn-rimmed glasses turned up and stretched out her shriveled arm to bar my way. “What’s your wife’s name, young man?” she asked severely. Her other hand held a glossy purple folder, which must have contained information on the patients.

“I–I don’t have a wife yet,” I fumbled.

“Then why are you here?”

“Just looking around.”

“What? You came to see these women without their pants on? Shameless. Get out of here!”

I flinched. She raised her withered hand and put two fingers against her thumb, as if to pull me away by the nose. I swung around and took flight.

As I was approaching the door through which I had come, from behind suddenly arose the squealing of a baby, mixed with hearty laughter and chattering. “It’s a boy!” cried a man.

Coming out of the maternity ward with a burning face, I saw a large mirror on the wall, beside a white tank of boiled water set on a wooden stand for public use. I stopped to see how I blushed. To my horror, in the defective mirror the right side of my face appeared larger than the left — I had different-sized eyes and ears. Hurriedly I went out of the building and sat down on the concrete steps at its front. A cool breeze wafted, soothing my feverish head a little. In the copper-gray sky a helicopter was flitting away like a giant dragonfly, its rotor ticking faintly. Somewhere a female voice shouted through a bullhorn, “Eradicate corruption!” Then, “Reform to the end!” Students were demonstrating in town again. A brass band started blasting out the Internationale.

When I returned to Mr. Yang’s room, he was sitting on the bed with his legs curled up, his lips wet and glistening. At the sight of me Weiya jumped up from the bedside, stuttering to me as if in self-defense, “He — he woke up himself.”

“Don’t worry. He slept enough.”

My words put her at ease. She asked me with a childlike smile, “He’s better than last week, don’t you think?”

“I think so.”

The amiable look on her face made me relax. Apparently she wasn’t miffed at all. Nothing had changed in her manner except that her eyes were a little brighter. She didn’t seem very upset. She unfolded her pink handkerchief and wiped Mr. Yang’s mouth twice. He smiled serenely.

On the bedside cabinet sat the watermelon, cut in half, and a stainless steel spoon stood in the red pulp. She had fed him! She didn’t even bother to conceal their relationship. I was touched and upset at the same time. A feeling of isolation overcame me, as though she had been the only person I could turn to for a bit of solace, but she too had gone beyond my reach. I had planned to ask her about how she was getting on with Yuman Tan, but now there was no need to be so inquisitive. In her eyes I must be either a lad or a eunuch, never having amounted to a man. I remained silent, feeling hurt.