Tie Ning - The Bathing Women

Once Chen Zai had told her a story about a worker in the factory in which he used to work. The man lost his father at a young age and his family was very poor. He had to support his mother and two sisters on one salary. But he especially enjoyed helping people, volunteering to fix watches, radios, and bikes for his colleagues, in addition to buying the parts with his own money. Slowly, he became the first person of whom people in need would think. He went to the hospital to take care of the sick for his colleagues and to the train station to pick up people. Later he committed a crime; he strangled his roommate. He committed the murder because the roommate caught him stealing sixty jin of rice coupons from him. It was a period of rationing in China, and almost everything had to be bought with coupons. Rice was precious, so rice coupons seemed more precious than rice. At the time they were not twenty years old yet, an age when their bodies were growing and hunger was a constant sensation for them. His roommate had just brought the sixty- jin coupon, which his parents had saved and given to him, and he happened to come on the worker when he was stealing his rice coupons. Chen Zai said the roommate must have been shocked — not that someone was stealing his rice coupons, but that the thief was someone of whom no one would ever think this, a person known for his good heart and for having done all he could to help people, never turning down any request for assistance. He was shocked, and his shock must have been hard for the worker to take, so he had to destroy the shock in the form of the person. He strangled his roommate. When the news broke, the entire factory was dumbfounded — no one could believe the worker was a killer. When people learned of the motive, they were even more dumbfounded. So he was a thief; a person who helped people all the time could be a thief. Chen Zai said the worker was soon sentenced to death. On the day of the execution, many from the factory went into the street to see him. Back then, convicts condemned to death would be put on display before the execution; they generally didn’t know that they had the right to refuse to participate in the demonstration. Hog-tied, the worker was escorted on a truck that drove around the city, so every passerby could observe him. Chen Zai also saw him on the truck. He said there was no fear in his eyes. Hatred was there instead. At that moment, Chen Zai felt he couldn’t comprehend him. It was unclear whether the man on the truck hated humankind or merely himself. Those who saw him in the street wouldn’t have known what had happened to him, what he was like before, and it would be impossible for them to know later.

Tiao felt a familiarity and an unease when Chen Zai told her this story, particularly when he said the word “killer.” “Killer”—she’d thought about the word hundreds of times, and sensed some connection between herself and the executed worker. Then she desperately tried to absolve herself: the worker killed to eradicate his own dishonour; she “killed” to eradicate the dishonour of her family. The adults in her family created the dishonour and it should have been those adults who eradicated it, but she took on the responsibility. She played the role. When Quan rushed into the manhole with her little arms waving, Tiao pulled on Fan’s hand. The pull was an attempt to stop Fan and therefore an effort to kill Quan. Who was Fang Jing? Wasn’t Fang Jing the first person who emerged to punish her?

Perhaps she had wished to be punished long ago. Let Fang Jing be unfaithful to her, let Fang Jing make no commitment to her, and let Fang Jing tell her about his amorous encounters as much as he wished. She seemed to welcome, to endure all, with the psyche of a masochist. The axe was raised, and she couldn’t wait for it to fall. So, when she suffered the most, she actually felt most at peace. She was receiving her punishment, the long-deserved retribution.

Kindness and forgiveness without a reason don’t exist; that’s for fairy tales. Only a heart hoping for redemption can produce great tolerance of humankind and of the self. When Fang Jing abandoned her, she sat in her office and dropped her tears into the drawer. But on this saddest of occasions, she felt extremely relieved. She didn’t dare admit to her lightness of spirit, or wasn’t aware of it. It was her secret of secrets, in her heart of hearts. Of course, she had to feel sad because sadness was her most reasonable feeling at the time.

A small transition in her life started with the end of the love affair. Fei called her on the day following her return from Beijing. It was a Sunday, so Tiao asked Fei to come to her place. Tiao still lived with her parents in the compound of the Architectural Design Academy. Fei came and the two, feeling how difficult it was to talk in the apartment, went out to walk in the small garden in front of the building. It was already early winter, and the leaves had all fallen from the trees. But the scene didn’t look desolate. On the contrary, it had a sense of brightness and openness.

Fei said, “I think he really still loves you very much.” Abruptly, she decided not to pass along to Tiao Fang Jing’s exact words about how much he loved Tiao.

Tiao looked into Fei’s eyes and said, “Actually, when you went to Beijing, I already knew there was no chance of saving the relationship.”

Fei avoided Tiao’s stare and said, “Then why did you still let me go and talk to him?”

“I didn’t let you go. You wanted to go yourself.”

“Whatever. Say that I chose to go all on my own, but I wanted to do it for you.”

“Not for yourself, at all?”

“If we continue along these lines, things will end up getting ugly,” Fei said.

Tiao said in a very calm tone, “Fei, don’t worry. I don’t want to talk about it at all. Do you know why?”

“Why?”

“Because I know I’ve already freed myself,” Tiao said. “Just a moment ago, when I met your eyes, that all suddenly receded into the past. Do you remember how miserable I looked before you went to Beijing? I wasn’t all right back then. I was still very depressed and fragile, but I tried to put up a tough front, as if I could handle everything on my own. Now I want to tell you that I’m really free. It happened only a moment ago, everything just became the past in an instant. It was really a strange phenomenon, as if there had been a visible, actual gap that lay between those two completely different emotional states of mine, a clear and distinct boundary, cleanly cut with not a strand left to connect the two. Once I passed from that bleak mood and flew across that line — a visible, physically real boundary — I felt grounded and calm. Believe me. Truly, I mean it. Feel my heart.” Tiao took Fei’s hand and placed it on her chest, and Fei felt the pounding of her heart, regular and strong. “Therefore,” Tiao said, “whatever Fang Jing did and wants to do has nothing to do with me anymore. Do you understand, Fei?”

“You don’t hate him at all?”

“That’s the strangest part of it. I don’t hate him at all. Then where did the love come from? It’s even made me doubt my love for him. If I don’t hate him at all, it just proves I never loved him. It’s terrible. What kind of love did I have?” Tiao asked, and then went on to answer herself. She seemed to be opening her heart to Fei, but she would never tell Fei that her calm and freedom might have come precisely out of Fang Jing’s tormenting of her. Were she to be tortured, brutally and thoroughly, then she would no longer owe anyone anything.

Fei handed Tiao the ring that Fang Jing had asked her to bring to Tiao. She said, “Fang Jing guessed you wore size six and I think he was right.” Tiao opened the jewellery box and took out the ring, but didn’t put it on her finger. She played with it for a moment and said, “This toy called a ring sometimes resembles a period, and sometimes a bottomless hole. I think it’d better be a period.” After saying that, she raised her arm and cast it backward over her head.