Tie Ning - The Bathing Women

Then came that day.

It was a Sunday. After breakfast, Wu sat in front of the sewing machine, planning to make a new outfit for Quan, and told Tiao and Fan to take Quan for a walk. As usual, Tiao carried a stool to sit on in front of the building to read a book, and Fan also brought out a little chair. She didn’t read. She knitted woollen socks. Every time Wu made clothes for Quan, she would start to make something for herself as if to tell Wu, You don’t want to take care of me, but I can take care of myself. She was knitting a pair of woollen socks for herself; she was clever that way.

Quan was on the road in front of the building, strolling along her familiar route. She held a toy metal bucket in one hand and a little metal shovel in the other and squatted under a tree, digging up a few shovelfuls of dirt. She put the dirt into the bucket and carried it to another tree. She shuttled between the two trees aimlessly, and once in a while she banged on the bucket with the shovel, trying to get her sisters’ attention. Her big sister buried her face in the book, pretending to hear nothing; her second sister held her finger to her lips and kept saying, “Shh,” to her. Why were they so cold and indifferent to her? What had she done to offend and annoy them? It was a mystery she never understood to the end, to the end.

Several old women who had gathered together to sew The Selected Works of Chairman Mao beckoned to Quan. They were tired of sewing and needed a break, and Quan was a cute living plaything to amuse them. They clapped at Quan from far away and called her darling and honey. She immediately dropped her bucket and shovel with a clatter and staggered toward the women.

She got onto the small road, the one in front of Building Number 6 that people walked on every day. When Tiao noticed that Quan had disappeared from her view, she put down her book and stood up. She didn’t want Quan to get too far and was about to call her back, not out of love but out of a sense of duty. Maybe she could ask Fan to call her back, and if they couldn’t get her back with their voices, they could physically drag her back. Fan stood right beside her. Then they saw something that they had never seen before, and events unfolded quickly. A manhole cover lay in the middle of the road, and Quan was walking toward the open manhole. In fact, she had already reached the edge. Fan must have seen the open hole and Quan at the edge, because she seized Tiao’s hand. It was unclear whether she wanted to grab her sister’s hand and rush to the manhole, or if she was asking her sister for permission to run to the hole.

Tiao and Fan held each other’s hands, and their hands were ice-cold; neither of them moved. They stood ten or fifteen metres away from Quan. Both of them were aware that she was still going forward, until she finally went into the hole. When Quan suddenly spread her arms and dove in as if she were flying, Fan’s hand felt a gentle pull from Tiao’s cold, stiff hand. She would remember this pull of Tiao’s on her hand forever; it was a memory she couldn’t erase all her life, and would become the evidence, illusory and real, by which she would accuse Tiao in the future.

Tiao would also always remember their holding hands that day, as well as her tug on Fan’s hand. The gesture was subtle but definite. Was it to stop Fan, a gesture of control, or a signal that something was coming to an end? Was it satisfaction for a great accomplishment, or a reflex action at the height of fear? Was it a hint at their alliance, or a groan out of the depths of their guilt?

Few things stay in a person’s lifelong memory. Major events are often easy to forget, and it’s those trivial things that can’t be brushed away, as, for example, in such and such a year, in such and such a month, on such and such a day, the tiny tug that someone gave on another’s hand.

2

Quan disappeared from the earth forever. For a long time after her death, Wu interrogated Tiao almost every day. “Didn’t you see that the cover was off the manhole?

“No, I didn’t.”

“Did you hear those old women call Quan over?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Then when did you notice Quan was not in front of you?”

“When I couldn’t see her.”

“Why didn’t you follow her when you saw what was happening?”

“I didn’t see anything, and I didn’t know she was walking towards the hole.”

“You didn’t know there was a manhole there?”

“I knew the manhole was always covered.”

“You didn’t even see it when Quan walked to the edge of the manhole?”

“I didn’t see it.”

“But you should have, because you were her sister.”

“I just didn’t. Fan can tell you.”

Fan quietly came over and Tiao grabbed her hand. She didn’t need to open her mouth. Their hand-holding was the proof of their mutual support, and innocence. The interrogation continued. “Then what did you actually see?”

“I saw a crowd of people surrounding the manhole, and Fan and I ran over.”

“Were they those old women who had called her over?”

“Yes, they were there, and two passersby on their bikes. Later … there was you.”

“Don’t talk nonsense. I know I was there.”

Wu couldn’t go on; tears streamed down and covered her whole face. She then turned from the interrogation of her daughters to people outside the family. She knocked on the neighbours’ doors over and over, and went to the homes of those old women who had witnessed what had happened. She stared at them, her hair dishevelled and her clothes unkempt, forcing them in a hard voice to talk about what had happened that day. She was much harsher to them than to Tiao, unloading on outsiders all her grief at the loss of her beloved daughter and the anger that she couldn’t release at home.

She hated these women, hated them for treating Quan as a plaything because they had no other distractions. If they hadn’t gathered there to sew The Selected Works of Chairman Mao, they wouldn’t have seen Quan. If they hadn’t seen Quan, who at the time was shovelling dirt under a tree, they wouldn’t have called to her, and Quan wouldn’t have walked into the manhole. “Who are you to have called to my daughter like that? Who are you? How irresponsible you are! Do you treat your own grandchildren so recklessly? You didn’t even warn her! You … you …” She was hysterical and even fainted once at one of the old women’s houses. The old woman pressed down on the pressure point under her nose and blew cold water onto her face to wake her up. The neighbours didn’t like to hear those words from her, words that got harder and harder to listen to, but they understood how she felt and didn’t take offence. Besides, those old women did feel guilty about the incident. They hadn’t seen the open manhole in the middle of the road; they saw only the angelic little Quan flap her arms, run toward them, and then disappear suddenly. Not until her sudden disappearance from the earth did they notice that the manhole in her path was open and the cover had been moved to the side. So one of the old women told Wu, “The key issue is not the manhole in the road — the manhole has always been there. The question is who opened the manhole and why the cover was not moved back.”

The old woman’s words echoed Wu’s thoughts. She also believed the key issue was who could have been so evil as to remove the manhole cover. No one in the Design Academy admitted to having opened the manhole. According to the Academy’s revolutionary committee, none of the plumbers had worked on anything involving the manhole or sewage on that Sunday. Maybe it was some bad kid trying to cause trouble. Every complex had them, like the boy who tried to make Fan lick soap. They were children, not even in middle school yet, bent on imitating older hooligans — bad little kids always wanted to be bad big ones. She resented them the way she resented those old women who sewed The Selected Works of Chairman Mao, but where was the proof? If their purpose in lifting the manhole cover was to sell it to the scrap-collecting station for cigarettes, then why hadn’t they taken the cover away? The cover had been left beside the manhole. There was no evidence and nobody came forward to supply any.