Tie Ning - The Bathing Women

When she came home in the afternoon, Wu had already cooked the dinner. It won’t taste good, Tiao thought, but she ate her fill. She believed Yixun was coming home soon and things would change. Nothing would be a problem. Her change of mood started after dinner. At the time, Fan was lying under the covers of Wu’s big bed with her eyes quietly closed, her fever down and her measles almost gone. Wu was leaning on the side of the bed knitting. This jumper was for Fan. She had followed Tiao’s suggestion and bought the rose-coloured yarn. Keeping vigil over Fan for several days in a row had made her thinner than before; her eyes were red and her hair slightly messy. She knitted with her head lowered for a while, then took a bottle of eyedrops from the nightstand and put a few drops into her eyes. The eyedrops must have burned, and she leaned against the pillow with her eyes closed, bearing it quietly for a while. Some liquid ran out of the corners of her eyes, which Tiao thought was a mixture of tears and eyedrops. She felt that the way Wu leaned on the pillow with her messy hair and teary eyes looked a little awkward and pitiful. How she clutched her knitting needles also touched Tiao with a kind of sadness that she couldn’t explain. The room was quiet and peaceful, as if no stranger had ever entered and nothing had ever happened. In those few seconds, just in a few seconds, everything changed.

Why did she have to write to Yixun? Was everything she put in the letter true? What would happen to her family when her dad came home? Why would she expose Wu? Wasn’t that a word that should be used only for enemies? All of a sudden Tiao felt pressure in her head as if a disaster were approaching — it must feel that way when a disaster approached. With the pressure building in her head, when Wu was not paying attention, she opened the door and sneaked out.

She passed several residential buildings in the Architectural Design Academy, going by the office building near the gate, the one pasted with all kinds of slogans and posters. In the daytime, the wind blew through layer upon layer of posters and tore them to shreds, making the building look like a giant wailing madman. Night silenced the madman and its body only made small monotonous rustlings, a bit lonely but not frightening. As soon as she crossed the pitch-black courtyard and walked out the gate, she saw the postbox, faithfully and steadfastly standing in the shadow of the trees on the pavement. She rushed straight at the letterbox with hands outstretched. She anxiously groped for the mail slot: a narrow slot, which immediately made her realize the pointlessness of her fumbling, since she had no way to slide her hand into it. By the dim streetlight, she could read the two rows of small words below the slot: “collection time, 11 a.m. and 5 p.m.”

Tiao clearly understood those two lines of words, but once again she reached her hands into the slot. She explored the narrow slot with her fingers one after another, hoping that a miracle would happen, that her small fingers could fish out a letter that was already gone. She had sneaked out of the house believing she could get the letter back as long as she found the postbox. Now she realized that this belief of hers was just a pathetic, self-deceiving fantasy. Up and down, she studied the ice-cold cast-iron postbox, taller and bigger than she was. She encircled it with her arms, holding its waist in hopes of pulling it up by the root, or pushing it over and smashing it. She wrestled with it, pleaded with it, and sulked at it; all the while she believed for no reason that as long as she kept working on it she could get that terrible letter back. She didn’t know how long she tortured herself, not stopping until she was utterly exhausted. She then threw herself onto the postbox and beat it wearily with her small fists. This seemingly faithful postbox had refused to serve her. She leaned against the postbox and started to cry, sobbing and beating it, not knowing where to find the letter that had gone. After a while she heard someone speak behind her: “Hey, child, what’s the matter?”

She was frightened and immediately stopped crying, staring alertly at the one who had asked her the question. Although much taller than she was, he was not an adult, but three or four years older than she was, or four or five at the most. He was one of those high school students who, of course, were adults in Tiao’s eyes because they normally treated elementary school students with arrogance, and liked to appear older than they actually were. That was why this boy addressed her as a child.

But there was nothing arrogant about him. His voice was soft and there was real concern in it. He stooped towards Tiao, who was still leaning on the postbox, looked at her, and gently asked again, “Child, what’s the matter?”

Tiao shook her head, saying nothing. Somehow the word “child” calmed her and brought back her tears; a vague feeling of having been wronged filled her heart, as if this “Child, what’s the matter?” were something she had looked forward to hearing for a long time. She was entitled to be addressed that way and asked that question about many, many things. Now a stranger had done it, which made her want to trust him even though she shook her head and didn’t say anything. She said nothing and just wanted to hurry home because she remembered the adults’ warning: Don’t talk to strangers.

He followed her to the gate of the Design Academy and asked, “Do you live in the Design Academy? Then we are in the same complex. I live here, too. I can take you home.” He wanted to walk beside her, but she picked up her pace to get rid of him, as if he were a stalker. Finally, she ran into the building and up the stairs. She heard him calling outside, “I want to tell you my name is Chen Zai and I live in Building Number Two.”

6

Why do I always run into you when I’m at my lowest? Why do I run into you when I don’t want to run into anyone? When I am basking in glory, all decked out, and pleased with myself, you’re never there. That night, when I stood on the pavement hopelessly beating the postbox, I was oblivious to the possibility that someone could see me and I might get arrested. Something like that happened in Fuan later; two bored young men lit a firework, threw it into a postbox, and burned all the letters. They were sent to prison. I heard about it a year later. Luckily, throwing fireworks into a postbox never would have occurred to me; luckily, that incident happened after I tortured the postbox, otherwise I probably would have done the same thing out of frustration. I know it’s a crime, and I must have looked like a criminal at the time; at least I showed criminal passion. It was you who observed the darker side of me, and how long had you been watching? Did you start to spy on me as soon as I walked to the postbox, or did you approach as soon as you saw me? If it’s the former, that would make me very unhappy, because if you’d been watching that long you would have figured out that I wanted to steal letters. That’s the kind of thing others shouldn’t know, that battle I had with myself. Maybe you just accidentally saw me, and that “Child, what’s the matter?” really came out of concern, like that of a close family member. Maybe I should have just howled in front of you and begged you to smash the postbox along with me. But you’re not family. Besides, what’s the use of pounding a postbox? I didn’t realize until later when I was calm that my letter was long gone from the postbox. Ai! You said you lived in the same complex as I did, Building Number 2, three buildings away from us, which made me feel both trusting and uneasy. Trusting because living in the same complex felt like being “comrades in the same trench”—the catchphrase at the time — uneasy because you might see me again, point me out to your classmates or neighbours, and gossip about me, telling them about the show I’d put on that night. Who knows? One day, an afternoon in summer, I was playing rubber-band jump rope in front of the building with the rope of rubber bands strung between two trees and slipped higher and higher; I always liked the game, from primary school right through to middle school — I had just started sixth grade. I’d been easily able to jump to the “middle reach” long before; I hoped I could kick my leg up to the “big reach,” the highest height in the game. How high was the rubber-band rope then? It would have been the distance from my feet to the tips of my middle fingers when I stretched my arms upward over my head. My feet couldn’t reach that high at the time, which I simply couldn’t accept. One classmate of mine who was shorter than I was could jump to the “big reach.” That could only mean that I was awkward, my legs were not sufficiently flexible, and maybe my waist was not supple enough. So, my rubber-band jumping on this summer afternoon was not just self-amusement but a strict training regimen. I hoped to jump to the “big reach” so that I could get back at those who humiliated me by making me the rubber-band-rope holder. I tied the two ends of the rope to a pair of poplar trees and raised the height gradually, one try after another. I jumped very smoothly and finally raised the rope to the “big reach.” I gathered all my strength and kicked my right leg up toward the band, but unfortunately, I did it too violently, lost my balance, and fell to the ground. Maybe because the afternoon was so quiet, I heard the thump of my own fall.