Tie Ning - The Bathing Women

She lowered her head, no longer speaking. Then he slipped the watch off his wrist and handed it to her and said, “I want to give you this watch as a keepsake. It’s a brand-name watch, a Shanghai Coral Jewel.” He lifted her left hand and put it on her wrist. The men’s watch, with a metal wristband, hung loose and heavy on Fei’s delicate wrist. She remembered how their affair had begun that Sunday in the classroom with his slipping off his watch and walking to the desk. She remembered the way he slipped it off. Now she saw the gesture again and realized their affair would probably end here. She saw the end even though her brain was a little numb. She did not remember afterwards how he gently manoeuvered her out the door, gently but giving her no chance to resist. She remembered only that she opened the door one last time, asking him helplessly, “What should I do?”

He put his shoulder against that half-opened door and said in a lowered voice, “Doesn’t your family live in the hospital? You should ask your uncle to come up with something.”

Fei left his building and went back into the street, walking to the riverbank to sit down. The river wasn’t polluted then, and the slow-moving water didn’t stink as it would later. Although layers of paper, posters, and slogans covered the bridge, the river still flowed in its ancient way. Fei hadn’t felt it was realistic when she saw characters in movies or comic books run to a riverbank when they couldn’t solve their problems. Only now, as she sat down by the river herself, did she find it believable. If the city has a river, people will run to the riverbank when they have something they have to think through. A river is fair and calm. A river never classifies people by their social standing. A river can purify people’s eyes and hearts. Fei sat there thinking for a long time. She thought about many, many things, and finally she remembered the scrap of paper that a boy in her class had put on the back of her chair: “bastard daughter.” She was a bastard daughter herself, and she couldn’t let this life in her belly become another. She didn’t have the right, and she had to get rid of it. She was thinking that maybe the dancer had a point. Why didn’t she ask her uncle for help? She’d almost forgotten that her uncle was a doctor and that she lived right in the hospital.

What time is it? she wondered. She looked at the Coral Jewel man’s watch on her wrist and saw it was pretty late. Because of the watch, she had the luxury of asking herself the time. She took the watch from her wrist, wrapped it in a handkerchief, and put it in her pocket. Even in her saddest moment she never thought of throwing the damn watch into the river. She valued the watch, after all. Back then, a Coral Jewel watch was a considerable piece of property, even to an adult. Her hard thinking by the city moat was over. She’d sorted out her own thoughts carefully and simply. In the end, there were only two actions that summed up her relationship with the dancer. He slipped off his watch the first time and put it on the desk, and he slipped off his watch the second time and put it on her wrist. She smiled to herself ironically, dusted off her behind, and went home.

7

Fei came home with the watch in her pocket. As soon as she walked in the door, she put on a tough expression for the conversation with Dr. Tang. The tough look twisted her face, which was her strategy for hiding her intense fear. She wasn’t sure how her uncle would respond. Maybe he would kick her out.

Dr. Tang was quiet for a long time after hearing what Fei had to tell him. He just stared with his dark bullet eyes at his niece, as if he wanted to read in her face whether she was talking nonsense or telling the truth. Finally, he was sure that she was telling the truth. By nature he was a quiet man and usually didn’t have much to say to her, and now he had even less. He nervously clenched his hands tightly, his knuckles turning white. Fei said, “Uncle, say something.”

“What do you want me to say?” he asked. “Have you ever thought about the difficulties that grown-ups have to deal with?”

Fei shot back at him, “How about you? Have you thought about the difficulties I face?”

“What difficulties do you face?” he said. “I took you from Beijing and offered you a place to live. I gave you food and sent you to school, and I think I’ve done all the things that I should have done for my dead sister. But look at what you’ve done! Do you have any self-respect?”

“No, I don’t,” she said.

“You don’t have self-respect, but I do,” Dr. Tang said. “Don’t you see that I’m still alone because of you? Who would want to marry a man who lives with his niece? Do you understand?”

“I do. That’s why I don’t want to get you into trouble.”

Dr. Tang said, “What do you mean by that?”

“If you help me with this surgery,” she said, “I’ll leave home immediately. I’m about to graduate from high school and I can support myself.”

Dr. Tang said, “What? What did you just say? You want me to do the surgery for you? Me?”

“Yes, aren’t you a doctor?”

“What nonsense are you talking? This is an ob-gyn’s area, not an internist’s. It’s impossible.”

“Why is it impossible?” she persisted.

Dr. Tang said, “If I say it’s impossible, then it’s impossible. I can’t do it.”

“Then I’ll go to an ob-gyn myself,” Fei said, “and I won’t go anywhere else; I’ll just go to the ob-gyn at your hospital—”

Dr. Tang immediately interrupted her. “Shut up, will you? Do you think I will let you do that and publicly shame us? Shame yourself and shame me? Shame our family? Now you must answer a question for me.”

“What question?”

“Who is he?”

Fei didn’t answer.

“Who is he?” Dr. Tang repeated. “You must tell me.”

“What if I don’t tell you?”

“Then I’ll go to your school and find out.”

“Okay, I’ll tell you,” Fei finally said, “but only if you answer a question of mine: Who is my father?”

“Why do you ask me this question now?” said Dr. Tang.

Fei went on, “Both of you, you and Mum, always hid it from me, but I have the right to know. I have even more of a right to know now. Who should be responsible for me, after all? Who else would it be if not my father? Will you tell me who my father is, and where he is?”

“Didn’t we tell you that he was dead?” said Dr. Tang.

“I don’t believe it,” Fei insisted. “What is his name, how did he die, and where did he die? Why do I know nothing about it? And you try to force me to tell you my private business.”

Fei’s mention of her father stopped Dr. Tang from pressing her further, as if the deal had fallen through. He would rather give up on knowing the man who had taken advantage of his niece than tell her about her father. But the real problem hadn’t been solved; the problem was Fei’s surgery, something that Dr. Tang found thorny and irritating, which angered him but about which he could do nothing. He couldn’t come up with a better idea. He stood and paced back and forth in their two-bedroom apartment, subconsciously glancing at the partly filled bookshelf in the corner. Other than a plastic fluorescent portrait of Chairman Mao, which gave off a green glow in the dark, there were only clinical reference books on internal medicine. He didn’t have any ob-gyn books. Fei said, “Uncle, are you going to do the surgery for me or not?”

“No, it isn’t possible,” he said. “I won’t do it. It’s dangerous. It’s your life we’re talking about.”

Fei said, “I’m not afraid.”

Dr. Tang sneered. “Hmmm, I know you’re not afraid. Would you do it if you were afraid?”

Fei sneered back at him, something she probably picked up from a movie. “You’re not afraid, either. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have written a phony sick-leave note.”