Tie Ning - The Bathing Women

“No, no. You’re not making a smacking sound,” Fang Jing said, feeling sorry for her. After all, most Chinese people didn’t know how to eat with their mouths closed, so what? He retreated from his efforts to correct her, saying, “I didn’t mean to offend you. I have a habit: when I’m faced with something or someone beautiful, I want everything about her to be beautiful.”

“You mean chewing only with the mouth closed is considered beautiful?” Fei asked.

“Not beautiful, maybe more … more refined.”

Fei tried to eat with her mouth closed but felt a little awkward, as if the food lost its flavour this way. She watched Fang Jing and saw that he did chew food differently from how she did. Maybe his was the correct way. Their eyes met and they laughed.

After dinner, he took out a deep blue jewellery box from the inside pocket of his suit and said it was a ruby ring that he had bought in Paris. He asked Fei to pass the ring on to Tiao.

He opened the jewellery box and suggested that Fei try it on. He said, “I thought a size six would fit Tiao, so that’s what I got.” Fei put the ring on her ring finger and it felt a little tight. Then it would fit Tiao perfectly, she thought, because Tiao’s fingers were a little thinner than hers. She removed the ring and carefully put it back in the jewellery box.

“What should I say to Tiao?” Fei asked.

“Just tell her it’s a keepsake,” Fang Jing said.

They left Da Sanyuan and the night outside seemed drowned in darkness. They walked to the trolley station and Fang Jing suddenly stopped, standing on the pavement and saying, “Fei, can we part in an unusual way?”

“What way?” Fei asked.

“I think I would consent if you wanted to kiss me.”

“What did you say?” Fei pretended she hadn’t heard properly.

Fang Jing repeated himself. The right corner of Fei’s mouth twitched again unconsciously. Her lips felt swollen, like they were stung by a bee or she had eaten something too spicy. The impression that Fang Jing had made on her from their initial meeting through the dinner was much better than she had expected — his talk in Jing Mountain Park had brought about a strange, and not very respectable, flash of emotion. Even his advice about her chewing had given her the feeling that he was concerned about her. But the way he proposed a farewell kiss brought her back to herself. How conceited and hypocritical! Later, she would wonder what would have happened if he hadn’t said, “I think I would consent if you wanted to kiss me,” but “Can I kiss you?” What would she have done? Maybe she would have broken her rule and let him kiss her — she was no saint. The chance to meet someone like Fang Jing didn’t come along every day. Only once. In her heart, she would have first asked forgiveness of Tiao.

But that was not how Fang Jing had put it.

The cool evening breeze sobered Fei. She suddenly swept aside her nervousness and the sense of inferiority she had experienced in Fang Jing’s company all afternoon; she felt now that she was no less a person than this celebrity in front of her. She stood facing him with her arms crossed and said, “You mean you are willing to grant me a kiss? A kiss, right here on this main street?”

Fang Jing stared at her mouth and said, “I’ve already agreed.”

“But I haven’t agreed,” Fei said. “You think every woman can’t wait to kiss you? Do you want me to thank you for taking advantage of me? You’ve got the wrong person. Isn’t the mouth the path to the heart? Now this mouth of mine is telling you what my heart most wants to say: ‘In your dreams.’” That said, she ran across the street in quick steps, leaving Fang Jing alone in the shadows of the trees on the opposite side.

She sat in the dimly lit, smoke-filled train and felt lucky that Fang Jing’s final proposition had given her a chance, a satisfying chance, to reject and embarrass him. He’d asked for it. In retrospect, she also felt a little panic, she’d come so close — just an inch more and she would have crossed the line and let Tiao down. What kind of person was she? She looked at the dark mass outside and caught sight of her reflection on the window glass, her eye sockets deeply sunken, her face sallow. She suddenly wanted to cry.

5

A well-dressed woman with an elegant gait crossed the main street in downtown Fuan and turned into a quiet alley. She had just been treated to lunch by an author who had published a book with her publishing house. She finished her meal and said goodbye to everyone in her party. Passersby wouldn’t have seen anything unusual about the woman, who strolled at a leisurely pace but who was actually fighting an ongoing battle in her mouth, with the tip of her tongue against her teeth. During lunch, a piece of donkey meat had got stuck in her teeth. Covering her mouth with one hand, she’d wielded a toothpick in the other, but she hadn’t succeeded in dislodging it. There is a saying that goes, “The eyes can’t take a grain of sand.” Actually, a mouth can’t take a grain of sand, either, or a speck of food, or a bit of meat. The foreign thing in the woman’s teeth distracted her, but she managed to appear calm, which was the only way she could behave on the busy street. Tightly, she closed her mouth; fiercely, she used all her strength to lick the crevice with her tongue. Her tongue had already located it but was unable to drag the meat out. Fingerless as the tongue is, all it can do is lick. Her annoyance grew as she licked. It must have been an old donkey, otherwise why was the meat so tough? But why did she have to eat it? Donkey meat is a delicacy of Fuan. Although it’s hardly considered elegant, most Fuaners love it. She loved the meat but not the word “donkey.” Many people avoid saying certain words, and without necessarily having a good reason — she herself didn’t like to say “donkey” because it felt as if she were saying a bad word. Now here she was, troubled by “donkey.” Finally, she turned down a very quiet alley. Looking around and seeing no one, she opened her mouth and inelegantly inserted her hand. Her fingers reached the meat that had been bothering her. With head cocked, and mouth grotesquely gaping, she finally extracted the meat. She felt triumphant. Because her mouth had stayed open for so long, she’d drooled and her jaw felt sore. She wiped away the saliva with a tissue, and to exercise her jaw she loudly smacked her lips. With the help of publicly unacceptable behaviour, she’d finally gotten rid of the “foreign element” in her mouth. Her manners had been truly unrefined, but when she looked around and found the alley still empty, she seemed pleased with herself.

The woman was Tiao.

Who made Tiao a person so generous with life, dutiful to her employer, the publishers, and full of kindness toward her colleagues, and even the unfriendly ones? Who made it possible for her to smile even at people who hurt her? What made her forgiving of Fan’s meanness and tolerant of Fang Jing’s wanton behaviour? Who had such power? Who? Tiao often asked herself these questions. Her heart told her that love and kindness alone wouldn’t have such power. It was Quan.

Quan, who had rushed into the manhole with her little hands waving many, many years ago, had always been the most intimate shadow in Tiao’s heart, her closest companion, who would come at her beckoning but not leave at her dismissal. This little two-year-old beauty turned Tiao into someone furtive, a perennial debtor. Poor and vulnerable. Vulnerable and poor, burdened with a lifelong debt she could never repay, she feared Quan, on whose account she had lost her innocence forever, and she was also grateful to Quan. This dead child terrified and fulfilled her at the same time. She couldn’t possibly have imagined how a dead child would shape a living personality. When people praised her she would lose herself in the momentary intoxication. She almost believed that she was born with such kindness and honesty. How absurd that was! In her heart, she laughed at herself, and speculated maliciously that many excellent people like her, or those who were considered excellent, hid secrets that couldn’t stand the light — were more secretive than ordinary people, she perversely believed. Their values came not from inborn excellence but from their lifelong efforts to annihilate the darkness in their hearts.