Tie Ning - The Bathing Women

Dr. Tang’s expression changed. He walked toward Fei and patted the table gently, “What sick-leave note? What nonsense are you talking?”

Fei said, “You wrote a fake sick-leave note for Tiao’s mother. You and she also … have acted like hooligans. You thought I didn’t know? I’m going to expose you. I’m going to the revolutionary committee of your hospital to expose you.” She stood up as she was talking, and ran to the door like a wild animal. She was afraid she was going to cry if she stayed any longer. She felt very sad for her underhanded behaviour and for bringing up her innocent friend, Tiao, although she did resent Tiao’s mother.

Dr. Tang stopped his niece, saying, “You’re getting hysterical. Don’t be so hysterical!” He grabbed her arms to force her to sit, trying to maintain his adult dignity as much as possible. “Stop your hysteria. I will think about the surgery. Give me some time.”

Dr. Tang racked his brain. He worked in a place where there were countless doctors, but he knew he couldn’t get help from anyone because of the need to protect Fei’s reputation, so he could only rely on himself. He must take the risk. He borrowed a few books to get an idea of the surgery and the instruments he would need. Then, during the day, he inspected an ob-gyn operating room. He decided to jimmy the door open at night to get in, block the window with a blanket to prevent the light from being seen outside, and then perform the surgery in secret. It took him about a week to finish the preparations. He knew he couldn’t delay. The longer he waited, the more dangerous the procedure became.

They did it. To prevent Fei from making noise because of the pain, he gagged her mouth with gauze beforehand.

Dr. Tang, who was no stranger to human organs and had interned in the surgery department as a medical student, was not at all confident about this minor ob-gyn operation. But this was not the only reason that he’d tried so hard to avoid doing this for Fei. Even if he were an ob-gyn doctor, he would have been unwilling to perform such surgery on his niece. He felt that it was cruel, a humiliation that life had dealt him, and that Fei was ridiculing him. He couldn’t imagine having to accept such a reality, but he had to. Fear forced him to accept the situation, and fear also saved him, leaving him no room for delay. Once he stood in front of the operating table, in his terror, Fei became neither a man nor a woman, neither a family member nor a stranger. She was simply not a living person. She was politics, and she was Dr. Tang’s fate. He was not performing a surgery, either; he was praying for fate to help him survive.

Everything was finally completed in a stumbling sort of way. Fei couldn’t help clinging to her uncle, and they embraced, weeping uncontrollably. In the tears, their unspoken trouble and sadness were expressed, and their feelings for each other were reestablished. There was forgiveness in the weeping. Their blood tie — that profound, ancient magic — connected them, body and soul. They were family, no matter how much they had neglected each other.

This would be the only surgery that Dr. Tang would ever perform, an ob-gyn surgery. When he stood at the top of a chimney near the end of his short, unhappy life, the last place he cast his glance at was the window of the ob-gyn operating room at People’s Hospital. He reflected on his own life and felt there were too many areas where he had stinted on his orphaned niece. He had neglected her and resented her, seeing her as the stumbling block of his life. Only in thinking of her as an obstacle did he give her her due. He had risked arrest, dismissal, and prison to save her precious reputation with his mediocre surgical skills.

At the Spring Festival that year, Captain Sneakers returned from the countryside to Fuan for the holidays. Late one night, he and his former gang members broke into one of the apartments in the rows of one-story dorms and gang-raped the head nurse of internal medicine, the female “spy” who scrubbed the rest-room, swept the hallways, and confessed the passwords “Where does the mermaid’s fishing net come from?”

Captain Sneakers had planned to break into Fei’s home to revenge himself on her. He had heard about her affair with the dancer. He took a knife with him, intending to slash her face to get even with her for his humiliation. When he lifted the woman, fast asleep, from the bed, he found he’d picked the wrong person. But he didn’t spare her, the old beauty, the old beauty from the old society. He also let his gang members take turns with her. He held the knife to the old woman’s neck, listening to them panting over her body in the dark. He was thinking that, after all, she wasn’t Fei. If it were Fei, he wouldn’t let them do this to her. He felt, as he listened to their panting, that at least he had a conscience when it came to Fei. Fei, you little piece of damaged goods. He cursed her in his heart. You have this old woman under our bodies to thank. Because of her you get to keep your pretty face. I really want to slash your fucking face …

The head nurse went to hospital security after daybreak to report the attacks on her. But who would pay attention to her? The victim of the rape was not a decent woman. An old female spy got raped. An old female spy who was born to be raped. Who else should be raped if not her?

Where does the mermaid’s fishing net come from?

From the ocean.

1

There is no such thing in the world as a never-ending banquet. The more sumptuous the banquet, the sadder and lonelier the aftermath. Tiao, Fei, and Youyou had had their secret celebrations, with the grilled miniature snowballs, the Ukrainian red cabbage soup, the sporty boating clothes, and the mysterious “Cairo Night,” in which they submerged and isolated themselves. Tiao even believed that she would never have to worry about anything anymore, not school or family. She already had a world of joy. It was Quan who ruined that joy. Quan’s presence was like crows’ wings, whose flapping and flying made her heart feel gloomy and heavy.

Tiao was deeply unhappy about Quan’s birth. To express her unhappiness, she completely ignored her youngest sister and lavished attention on Fan. She loved Fan, and Fan loved her. Fan obeyed her unconditionally in almost everything, and the foundation of their love was indestructible. Even when Fan had barely learned to talk, she would cheer enthusiastically for her sister, Fan’s clumsy tongue spitting out incomprehensible words. When Tiao tried to kill a fly with a fly swatter, no matter whether she hit it or not, killed the fly or not, Fan would simply make the same loud announcements, “Shmashed. Shmashed.” She praised and encouraged her sister, making Tiao believe that even if the world stopped turning and the seas ran dry, she and Fan would still be inseparable.

They had depended on each other when their parents were away at the Reed River Farm. Fan loved to eat apples and beltfish and Tiao would try to buy them for her whenever possible. She knew their money was not enough for both of them to eat these treats every day, so she taught herself to dislike eating apples and beltfish. She would just watch Fan eat. It was fun to watch Fan eat fish because when she finished a piece, she would use the fish skeleton to comb her hair. “This is a comb,” she told Tiao happily. Tiao stopped her even though she liked her cleverness and imagination. She didn’t want Fan to get her hair dirty. She washed Fan’s hair and feet. They washed their feet every night before bed, sitting on small stools, face-to-face, with the washing basin between them. Tiao liked to smell Fan’s toes, fat and slightly sour-smelling. She washed very carefully, reaching in between every one of Fan’s toes. Sometimes she forgot to keep a towel handy, so she used her own trousers instead, letting Fan rub her feet on them. She could have left the basin and got a towel, but she liked to have Fan dry her feet on her trousers.