Tie Ning - The Bathing Women

“I know your name is Tang Fei,” he responded.

“That’s right,” she said. “A lot of people talk behind my back at school.”

He seemed not to want their conversation to go in that direction; he was more interested in talking about things related to his profession. “Have you done any dancing?” he asked. She told him she hadn’t. She’d never danced. She didn’t like dancing and didn’t plan to dance in the future. Confident in the power of her beauty, Fei deliberately put distance between herself and dance. She didn’t need to attract this dancer by pretending she liked dancing, nor did she have to get close to him by saying that she had danced. She was right in front of him, the possessor of a wonderful body without ever needing to dance. But what a goddess she’d have become if she’d received some training. A goddess, really, Fei thought childishly.

He continued, “One of your parents must have been an artist. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have emerged as such — such a beauty. Beauty, do you understand?” She was clearly disturbed at his mention of her parents, but his compliments pleased her, particularly his use of the word “emerged,” which made her heart skip a beat. In her mind “emerged” formed an absolutely beautiful image, like a fresh, early sun rushing up out of the morning rays, a downy new chick pushing out of its egg, meeting the world innocently for the first time, or a lotus flower standing above the filthy mud, distinguished and free. And the images — touching and suggestive — was Fei truly worthy of them? She looked at the dancer and said nothing for some moments. She didn’t want to respond to his comment about her parents, nor did she want to discuss the idea of beauty.

“Anyway,” he went on, “I think with a little bit of training you should be able to dance well.”

“You need to start out the training young if you want to dance. See how old I am. My waist and legs are too stiff now,” Fei protested, turning at the waist as she spoke, and kicking her legs in a deliberately stiff way.

“Not necessarily true,” the dancer said. “You’re probably not seventeen yet, right? I can take some time to look at your waist and legs. How is Sunday? Sunday in your classroom.”

“Just the two of us?” Fei asked.

The dancer said, “Just the two of us.”

Sunday at the appointed time, Fei walked into the classroom, and the dancer was sitting on the lecture desk in front of the blackboard, waiting for her. She liked the way he looked as he sat on the desk with his long, agile legs dangling and arms folded in front of his chest. Her impression of classrooms was that they were always noisy and smelly. She didn’t like being in them and had never remained in an empty one. As she entered today, she felt waves of vague anticipation. She liked the quiet classroom at this moment because the dancer was sitting on the lecture desk and there was no one else seated at the rows of desks.

At the sight of her, he jumped down, slipping off his watch and putting it on the desk. “Come, let’s get started.”

He walked up to her, asking her to lean against a desk in the first row and hold the edge for balance. Then he took hold of her ankle and raised it up, little by little. The leg was not trained, after all, and before he pushed it too high, she said, “No, no, it hurts too much.” So he let her leg drop, but his hand stayed on her ankle. She stood against the desk, and he knelt to caress the ankle, tentatively and gently, but at the same time firmly, showing no intention of letting go. His hand kept moving up, going up her calf, and reaching her thigh. He said, “I’m checking on the proportion of your calf to your thigh. Just right. Just right. And there is also this delicate kneecap.” He held her delicate knee for a while, moved his hand up to touch her waist, and slid it smoothly under her shirt, which had been loosely tucked into a leather belt, pushing directly up to her breasts. She didn’t know at what point she had been laid down on the desk, his head, with its luxuriant hair, bent over her breasts. He leaned down over, greedily sucking and biting her. Then the hand that had risen from her ankle slid down, down to her flat stomach and between her legs. His fingers were as nimble as his dancer’s legs, making her body writhe involuntarily. The writhing invited him to go deeper and deeper. She longed for him to finger her and stab her, stab her moistness and destroy the trembling deep inside her …

Fei fell in love with the dancer, although their first intimacy stopped right at that point. She longed to see him day and night, so he took her home when his wife wasn’t there. He was a married man, and she knew it, but she didn’t want to think about that. She just liked to be with him, and liked to hear him whisper in her ear that she was his tender little cat, meaty little pigeon, shameless little slut … he had plenty of sweet talk, and he also combed and braided her hair, which made her heart swell. No one had braided her hair since her mother died. It was a service that she didn’t expect to receive from such a handsome man. He stood behind her, and as she sat, absorbing his scent through the back of her head, she fantasized sitting like this in a trance and letting him braid her hair for her entire life, not leaving, even when his wife came home. She actually wanted to beg his wife to agree to let the three of them live together.

Later, she got pregnant and wasn’t afraid at all. She naïvely believed, Now that I have your child you have to marry me. Marry me, and let me go away with you, leaving Fuan, leaving all that filthy gossip behind. Because she was with him, she started to pay attention to her reputation, trying to avoid the filthy gossip directed at her. She didn’t really value herself; it was him that she treasured. She wanted to be worthy of him.

When she told him that she was pregnant, he was scared to death. “No, no, no, no …” he said, a series of noes in a single breath. After that he heaved a sigh and pulled her by the hand to make her sit down. He said, “That won’t work. You should know you’re still a child.”

She asked him, “Then why didn’t you think of me as a child when you laid me down on the desk?”

He said, “It’s my fault. It’s all my fault. What made me love you so much? What made you so lovable?”

She said, with tears streaming, “Then why don’t you want me?” He then began to explain how law and marriage work. She had no concept of law; no one had ever spoken to her about law in such a serious way. She only knew if she killed someone she had to pay with her life, and if she owed someone money she had to pay it back, things even an idiot would understand. But she’d never thought about killing someone, nor did she owe anyone money. What did law have to do with her life? Now, as a sixteen-year-old, pregnant with this man’s child, she had to listen to him babble about the law. According to him, they had violated some law, which scared her a little. She said, “Then what should I do?”

“I don’t know,” he said, “but, whatever it is, you’ll have to … have to get rid of the child.” She told him she was afraid to go to the hospital herself and wanted him to accompany her. He said that was impossible. The troupe had just given him an important assignment. He spoke about a faraway place in Sichuan Province. “There’s a famous group of clay sculptures called Rent Collection Yard in Sichuan, have you heard of it? It shows how this big landlord Liu Wencai bullied and oppressed his tenant farmers. Our troupe is planning to base a dance drama around the sculptures. They want to send me to Sichuan to observe and come back and do the choreography. A dance drama out of Rent Collection Yard —think of it, maybe it will cause a big sensation around the country. It isn’t just the usual dance show, but a political mission. Do you understand?” She didn’t know anything about political missions, though she thought she’d heard of Liu Wencai and Rent Collection Yard. But none of that interested her; she just wanted to know when he would be returning. He replied vaguely that it might take some time, anything from ten days to three months. A political mission couldn’t be concerned about time. He then mentioned Liu and Rent Collection Yard over and over like a broken record, as if to make Fei feel that if she needed to resent something, she should resent those two things. These were what took him away from her and prevented him from accompanying her to the hospital.