Xiaobin Xu - Crystal Wedding

She bought bags full of delicacies in the evening food market. He made an effort to stop her but she would not be stopped. She was driven by an odd kind of urge, the urge to be good to his mother. When she actually met his mother, she was taken aback. He was so handsome, she had expected his mother to be equally good-looking. But the old woman was hideous. It was not down to the hospital treatment, she was naturally ill-looking. The oddest thing was that he had told her: ‘I take after my mother.’ Were all Chinese men so tied to their mothers’ apron strings? They did seem to love mothers much more than their wives. As far as heterosexual love went, they seemed to be stuck at the stage of oral fixation and then to go straight from that to premature ageing, so that they were always little old men who never grew up. Poor Chinese women! She thought.

The old woman had endured a double mastectomy and Xiao’ou seemed very distressed. ‘The breasts are so important to a woman,’ he told Tianyi. Something came floating back into Tianyi’s memory, something from far back in the past. Instinctively, she touched her own right breast. It was the slightest of movements, that even the most observant person would not have picked up. Still, she still shot Xiao’ou a wary glance in case he had seen, but he was immersed in his own tragedy and had shut the rest of the world out.

Afterwards, quite suddenly, an impulse came over her. An impulse to unbutton her clothes, take off her top, and show herself to him, show him her splendid breasts, her crowning glory. There were few, if any, Chinese women with breasts like hers, she would say bluntly. Since she was fourteen years old, she only had to walk into the public baths to draw the stares of every woman in there. Her breasts were so dazzlingly white, they might have been crafted from silver, surmounted by nipples like pale pink jewels. They made people wonder about her ethnic origin, because Oriental women certainly did not have breasts like that. White women had breasts that colour but not of such a fine shape, nor did black women or Native Americans. The shape of Tianyi’s breasts was most like those of a woman from South-West Asia or North Africa, small, jutting cones, but the skin colour was different, pink and white. Only a girl who was God’s best beloved could have these most glorious of God’s creations, the most bountiful of God’s gifts.

But she should have remembered that the world abhorred perfection. Those whom God loved could just as easily be abandoned. The instant God had abandoned her, she had been knifed in the breast, and now she bore a scar that would never fade. She wanted to show him her scar.

It happened when she was university and had just split up with her third love, a fellow student called Jianyu. She was looking even more haggard than usual, her eyes dark-ringed, her skin sallow. Her periods, when they came, never seemed to stop, and then one day she found a lump under her armpit. It was hard, and rapidly getting bigger. She was scared and went for a checkup. She saw the head of surgery, a nice old man who kept trying to relax her by making facetious comments. But it only made her more tense, and she kept asking: ‘What’s wrong with me, doctor?’

The doctor said he was admitting her to hospital so that they could examine the lump. The evening she arrived, the door to the ward silently opened, and a tall young doctor came in. ‘Dr Lin,’ the nurse introduced him. ‘You’ll be under his care.’ He was wearing a facemask but she could see a pair of beautiful eyes. She had never seen a man with eyes like that. They were a very unusual colour, blue-grey, distant like moonlight on a mountain crater.

She tensed up immediately. ‘Open your gown,’ he said. His voice had a professional detachment. She quietly untied the tapes and the loose, shapeless gown fell away from her body. He looked dazed.

He bent over and began to examine her. He still had a professional gravity but she could see the flush that rose up his face under the mask. She tried to clear her head and focus on the chakra beneath her navel but it was no use. A surge of heat travelled up her body and she felt her face flame red. Good heavens, she was a grown woman, wasn’t she? How could she be so easily reduced to such embarrassment? The truth was that, although she was twenty-six years old and had had three boyfriends, she was still a virgin, had never been touched by a man! This was the first time it had happened to her. It felt peculiar, yet entirely natural.

The young doctor’s name was Lin Fan. He descended on Tianyi like the Angel Gabriel, giving her a new reason to fantasize, a very good reason. Many years later, she still remembered that instant of crippling embarrassment. She was acutely aware of his experienced fingertips, his quiet muttering. There was the pressure of his fingers on her breast, probing, caressing gently, the strange medical words that he murmured, his way of fending off his own discomfiture. She felt mortified at this man’s hands sliding over her smooth skin, his palms broad and warm, blessedly unsweaty. On the surface they were doctor and patient, interacting in a normal, formal manner. In reality (and there was absolutely no way they could deceive themselves), they were not doctor and patient but a young man and a young woman. Doctor Lin’s first examination exposed something real between them, something they recognized from the word go, and were inescapably drawn into.

The girl in the bed opposite watched them goggle-eyed. She was a sixteen-year-old who had grown up in a Beijing back street, and he was a good-looking man, a fine surgeon too. He was obviously from a good family, and had everything a young man like that should have. That was another attraction. An uneducated young girl was just as skilled as any university graduate at picking a likely prospect. And this girl had really taken a fancy to Doctor Lin.

On the operating table under local anaesthetic, Tianyi was upset and in pain. She cried and cried. Eventually, Doctor Lin himself grew distraught and the attending nurse had to intervene. Tianyi was roundly told off: ‘What on earth is all this fuss about? This is just a minor procedure, what are you crying for? An educated woman like you! Pull yourself together! Doctor Lin is a very kind man. Any other doctor would refuse to operate at all!’ At that point, Doctor Lin stemmed the outburst.

She was wheeled into a single room. Late in the evening, it must have been eight or nine o’clock, she was still crying, or rather the tears were falling silently. Night was falling and a corner of the curtain lifted and fell in the breeze. She was thoroughly chilled from all the crying, and clutched the thin hospital blanket around her, shivering uncontrollably. At that moment, the door opened. Doctor Lin came in, wearing his ordinary clothes. It was his habit to check up on all the patients he had operated on that day, before he went off shift. He saw her reddened eyes, and the bowl of rice porridge sitting untouched on the table and asked: ‘Has no one come to sit with you?’ She shook her head. She felt a great longing for him, though she could not say why, all she could do was cry. His expression, it seemed to her, grew much softer and his eyes filled with pity.

‘Why haven’t you eaten?’

‘I don’t want anything to eat.’

‘So you just want to cry?’

She was a little embarrassed and bit her lip.

‘It was only a minor operation. Is it very painful?’

She hesitated. Then she said in a low voice: ‘It’s not because of the pain …’

‘Then why?’

She said nothing. The tears stubbornly welled up again. He saw patients cry almost every day but for some reason, could not bear her tears. ‘I’ll go and buy you something to eat.’

‘No! …’ She slid out of bed, clutched the hem of his jacket, frantic, swayed and almost overbalanced. The stitches pulled painfully and she cried out in pain. He turned quickly and put his arm around her to steady her. Her whole weight lay against him. He had never felt such a soft body. He, who had always thought of himself as self-possessed, felt consumed by a surge of heat. She was as tense as he was, and for a long, long moment they stood stiffly, silently motionless.