Tie Ning - The Bathing Women

Youyou screamed and Tiao laughed. Smiling, Fei calmly put her clothes back on. Next, she did their makeup for dinner. It was accomplished very simply: the only thing necessary was lipstick. She tore off and moistened a small strip of red paper, telling them to take the paper between their teeth and press down with their lips. The red of the paper was printed on their lips. Their faces immediately radiated seduction. They sat down to dine with red lips, putting on pretentious airs. “I’ll have the Ukraine red cabbage soup,” Tiao said to Youyou. And Youyou, wearing a tall homemade chef’s hat, waited on her attentively. Fei stuck out her little finger and made a special request for Tbilisi pickles. She pinched a cigarette, a real cigarette, between her fingers while she ordered. They ate, drank, and then wanted to hear a story. Their stomachs had been tended, now it was their minds’ turn. The storytelling was usually left up to Tiao.

Tiao looked at Youyou, and then turned to Fei. Ah, what a perfect arrangement, with her in the middle savouring the gourmet food and admiring the lovely chef on her left and the beautiful girl on her right. She was the perfect storyteller. What else did she need? She started to tell a story she had read in Soviet Woman, the issue that had the “Little Basket” recipe.

It was actually a very ordinary story. A girl named Genia is sulking and giving her fiancé, Mischa, a hard time on their outing. For the whole day, Mischa tries all sorts of things to cheer Genia up, but fails. One moment he’s making faces, the next he’s telling stories, and after that he’s singing songs — songs that Genia loves, but still she pouts. So, during their dinner at a small restaurant, Mischa flirts with a girl sitting at the next table, to make Genia jealous. That was all that happened in the story, according to Tiao. She thought the story was boring; she was interested only in the jealousy part. From the story, Tiao got the impression that emotion sometimes had to be indirect: a man loves a woman, but occasionally he has to make the woman he loves jealous by flirting with another woman. If she gets jealous, it proves that she loves and values him. A man has to use this roundabout way, approaching other women, to love the woman he loves. This way of testing the feeling, Mischa’s jealousy method, had a subtle attraction for Tiao. How troublesome and intricate the relationship between men and women could be! But what did jealousy feel like?

It took time and energy to get jealous and to make people jealous. Jealousy, this bitter, delicate, sharp feeling, perhaps had something primitive about it, an antique foolishness; an emotion out of the Era of Steam. Jealousy would have no place in the nineties. There would be no time for anything, no time to laugh or cry, to win or lose at love, no time for heart-to-heart talks, no time to get jealous or to work up the courage to duel. The nineties were an era without rivalry in love. This was what Tiao would believe as an adult. If rivalry in love didn’t exist anymore, who could make you jealous?

But right then, in the seventies, the girls with red-paper-dyed lips still discussed jealousy.

“Would you get jealous, Youyou?”

“Would you get jealous, Tiao?”

“Would you get jealous, Fei?”

Fei said, “I won’t get jealous, but I’ll make others jealous of me.”

5

Fei always seemed different from others, and she was different. When Tiao and Youyou talked about whether they would get jealous or not, Fei was thinking about making others jealous of her; when Tiao and Youyou sighed for lives like those in the movies, Fei told them, “I am a movie.”

I am a movie.

I am a movie. A grand statement that only the bold and lovely could make. Nothing seemed to frighten Fei. Was it true that any woman who’d found love could be as arrogant and spoiled as Fei?

She liked men, and she liked to make men like her. Fifteen-year-old Fei already had a steady boyfriend, an upper-class-man at her school nicknamed Captain Sneakers. The boy had several followers, all of whom shaved their heads and wore white sneakers and the same kind of clothing. They disrupted classes and gave the teachers trouble in school, and outside of school they ran riot, getting involved in gang fights. People called them the White Sneaker Gang.

Captain Sneakers got to know Fei through a sort of abduction. One evening when Fei was on her way home, he and several of his gang members trailed her slowly on their bikes, and she couldn’t get away from them. She pretended to walk calmly, aware of being stalked by these older boys. It was threatening even though they rode their bikes very slowly. Their speed was a warning not to try to escape by running because her legs couldn’t outrun their wheels. So she dismissed the idea of running, and walked even more slowly instead. She glanced at Captain Sneakers out of the corner of her eye, his bald head and his strong body; she could hear his slightly nervous breathing. At school he was a figure of fear for everyone, and girls would lower their heads when they encountered him, as if he might immediately pounce. He had never pounced on any of them, and he actually liked Fei, sincerely. Fei walked slowly, not knowing what would happen but not really afraid; not knowing what would happen but eager for it, whatever it was. His nervous breathing puzzled her a little, her heart telling her that something should perhaps have happened already, but she didn’t know what. They were about to reach People’s Hospital. The streetlights were lit, but the darkness of the shadow-covered pavement seemed only to deepen. The gang members formed a half circle around her on the pavement with their bikes and he said, “Hey, get up behind me on my bike and let me take you somewhere.”

His voice didn’t sound evil or threatening, so she lifted herself onto his bike. The gang spread out in a line across the street and rode crazily as if they were flying. He roared back to Fei on the seat behind him, “Hold on to my waist.” She reached her hands around and held on to his strong waist, feeling flashes of dizziness. It was the first time that she had held a man by the waist, a strange man, which made her seem brash and shameless, and she enjoyed the feeling. The crazy pedaling of the bicycle, the speed and the movement of the cyclist’s waist and legs, all gave her an unexpected joy, a pleasure she’d never known. What would she be doing if she weren’t doing this? She had been bored to death, already bored to death for so long.

The boys rode their bicycles wildly until they got to a grey, bare residential building. The rest of the gang stopped outside, but Captain Sneakers locked his bike and brought Fei upstairs. He opened an apartment door with a key and locked it as soon as they entered, leaving the light off. Then he lunged toward her, grabbing her, forcing her back, step by step — back through a small hallway, past the bathroom and the kitchen, into a room that looked like a bedroom, and into the corner. Her heart beat loudly with a thud, thud, thud, and his breath puffed on her face, exciting her beyond words. She was finding it difficult to breathe, so she opened her mouth, hoping to ease her breathlessness with words. “What do you want to do?” she said.

Suddenly he pressed against her hard with his body, grinding out the words through his teeth: “I want to fuck you. The first fucking time I saw you, I … you knew I wanted it for so long. Tell me, do you want it, too? Tell me you …” He sought out her mouth with his as he spoke, but she twisted and turned her head to avoid him. Even though those hot, naked obscenities of his dizzied her like blows to the head, she resolutely guarded her mouth. No man would ever kiss her mouth, as long as she lived.

He reached out trying to steady her head with his hands, growing more and more determined to kiss her, so she grabbed his wrists and put his hands on her breasts. He stopped trying for her mouth and began to tear at her blouse. Inexperienced with women, trembling, he ripped her blouse. Finally, he touched her warm, small, firm breasts and rubbed them, roughly, making her hiss with pain. Unable to wait any longer, he pulled her to the bed and pushed her down. As he was taking off his clothes, he said, “Don’t worry. Don’t worry. This is my parents’ bed and they’re not home.” After taking off his own clothes, he fumbled in the dark for hers. He was surprised to find she was naked already. When he reached out to her, he touched her smooth, slightly trembling thighs. He didn’t despise her, then or later, for removing her clothes herself. On the contrary, he was grateful. He liked Fei’s directness and honesty, compared to those phony girls who half refused and half went along. Unfortunately, at the age of eighteen, he didn’t know how to show his appreciation.