Ran Chen - A Private Life

From childhood I have always suffered from a kind of unaccountable inner chaos, as if the cells within my body could exist only under a frightening state of total anarchy. So I have always instinctively stayed clear of the kind of order represented by the police. Now, when I saw that the police had arrived, my entire body suddenly became tense.

I heard some of the neighbors secretively discussing how Mr. Ge had fled without leaving a trace after strangling his wife with his belt.

These frightening details stabbed into my brain to explode like great rolls of thunder. I felt dizzy and had to gasp for breath. My fear turned the short path through their front courtyard that I was so familiar with into a black and endless corridor.

It seemed that the air was filled with the smell of rotting flesh, and the withered and bare wisteria in their courtyard suddenly reminded me of my dream.

I began to shake uncontrollably.

When we got home after my injection and picking up my medicine, Mother had to leave for work immediately, so she asked the Widow Ho to come over and look after me.

Looking out the window from my bed, I could see that it was a heavily overcast day. Last night's raging storm had blown itself into a gentle breeze that stirred the bare branches of the date tree so that their shadows flickered against the rice-paper panes in my window. My fever had begun to drop and I felt much better. The hospital procedures in the morning had taken almost two hours, and I was exhausted. Lying on my bed looking out my open window at the low-hanging winter clouds, now shot with the orange glow of the sun, now leaden gray, I fell asleep thinking about the frightening affair with the Ge family in the neighboring courtyard, and didn't wake up until Widow Ho called me at noon.

Feeling my forehead first, then pressing her own against mine to double-check my temperature, she said, "Much better, but you still have a little fever. Sit up and have something to eat. I've made you some shredded mustard root and egg-drop soup with black pepper and sesame oil. Have some while it's hot. It'll make you sweat and drive your fever out."

I said, "I'm not hungry. You eat it."

She said, "Niuniu, be a good girl. Sit up."

As she spoke, she pulled back my quilt and bent over to help me up. Resisting her, I said, "I feel sick, I'm sore all over. I don't want to eat."

By this time, I was almost as tall as she was, and because she had suffered from diabetes for many years and could eat no more than two and a half ounces of grain a day, she was thin and not very strong. If I just lay there not wanting to get up, she couldn't possibly move me.

I said, "You eat. I'll watch you."

"Ai!" she sighed. "I'm not going to eat by myself."

She sat down on the edge of my bed and tucked my quilt in around me again, saying, "You're like a candle. After burning with fever for just one night, you're almost melted away."

Like a sleepy cat sitting on the edge of my quilt, she twisted around so that she could look at me. The whites of her eyes were the limpid pale blue of lake water, and an anxious loneliness lurked in her dark pupils. The loveliness of her eyes was like a virus that made me drug dependent. It was as if some hidden desire flowing in her blood was projected through her eyes.

I pulled up my knees so she could make herself comfy leaning against my legs. Though my legs were soft and weak, the moment she touched them they felt as powerful as wound-up springs, and I rooted them firmly in the bedding so that she could lean against me.

"Well then, I'll just sit here so we can have a chat." She shifted around to get more comfortable, and leaning against my legs, she wrapped an arm around my knees.

I said, "It must hurt when you give yourself injections."

She said, "No. All you have to do is pretend it's nothing and relax. Then you hardly feel a thing. The more tense you are, the more it hurts."

I said, "The nurse who gave me my injection this morning must have been angry at someone, and she took it out on me. You would have thought she was giving an elephant an injection." I pulled my panties down below my hips. It was all hard where she had stuck in the needle and was already turning blue. "Look."

She winced when she saw it, and said, "Don't go to the hospital for the rest of your shots. I'll do them for you. You won't feel a thing."

I said, "You know how to inject penicillin too?"

"They're all the same." While she was talking, she pressed the swelling with her fingers, rubbing it very lightly.

Her fingers were very cool and limber as snakes, as if they had no bones. I could see her long, curved neck above me and the gentle swell of her breasts inside her sweater as she leaned over, pressing her thin body against me. Her body curved in an arc that was as fluid as a beautiful melody. Her face was a bit too pale, but the skin of her entire body bespoke a tender readiness to rush to me at a moment's notice, to watch over me, to protect me, and to drive away any pain or misfortune that threatened me.

All of this made me feel totally at ease, especially her touching me, allowing my senses to run along vague and unexpected paths. I thought of that time many years ago when she wanted me to lie next to her and kiss her breasts, which glistened like the polished jade stones on her pillow, and of the doleful tears that slowly gathered to roll across her cheek and fall. Then, for some reason, an image of the two naked bodies entwined on the military cot in Yi Qiu's inner room flashed briefly through my mind.

Switching my attention, I looked at the door to my room, and I noticed that the December light slanting in through the window was much brighter than it had been in the morning. I could see the dust motes floating in the light.

Purposely switching my train of thought, I asked, "Did Mrs. Ge really die?"

Ho replied, "Yes. Just after six in the morning a man from their courtyard who works an early shift noticed that their front door was wide open. He called a couple of times but there was no reply, so he stuck his head in the door. He thought something must be amiss when he discovered that the bed was unmade and there was nobody home. He stood outside a while, uncertain what to do. He suspected there might have been a burglary, and he was afraid to go into the house. So he called some other people, and the longer they shuffled around outside, the more convinced they became that something was wrong. Mrs. Ge was bedridden. How could it be that her bed was empty? If she had gone to the hospital, surely they would have locked the door? So everyone was certain that something untoward had happened."

"Weren't any of the women home?"

"After a while, some people ventured inside for a look. Only after a thorough search did they discover her, tied up and pushed face down under the bed with a towel jammed in her mouth. Frightened, they rushed from the house and called the police."

"Was she really dead?"

"The police came right away, and they didn't take her away until eleven. She was dead."

"Was it her husband who killed her?"

"It's hard to say what things were like in that family. They spent half their lives quarreling. Stuck together under one roof, these two perfectly normal people gradually became enemies. The bed was about the only place they acted in harmony. Their neighbors all said that they used to spend their life in the bedroom making love at the same time they were making war, but that after Mrs. Ge became ill, the only stage where they had ever acted together in harmony ceased to exist. At last this war without winners is over. It takes more than one cold day to make three feet of ice." Ho sighed and continued, "Although marriage can sometimes be an inexhaustible source of life, it can sometimes also be an inexhaustible source of bitterness. It can be creative, but it can also be destructive."