Tie Ning - The Bathing Women

After having Er Ling, Little Cui stopped forcing Fei to tell him stories — he had become like those characters in Fei’s stories, seeing another woman outside of his marriage, which brought some peaceful life back to his long-withered heart. He didn’t feel sorry for Fei; he merely felt that he could begin to forgive her.

It was Fei who asked for a divorce first. That day, she bought him a bottle of One-Acre Spring, two rabbit ears, and a small piece of donkey sausage, and they sat drinking together, face-to-face. She came straight to the point: “Er Ling is an innocent girl from a decent family. Little Cui, you shouldn’t fool around with her.”

Seeing that Fei knew everything, Little Cui blushed and said, “What do you want? What right do you have to criticize me?”

“Don’t worry. It’s true that I don’t have the right to criticize you, but I have the right to tell you one thing.”

“What is it?”

“We should get a divorce. Er Ling is the girl you should marry.”

Little Cui hadn’t expected Fei to say this, which was exactly what he wanted to say but found it was too hard. She allowed him to preserve his dignity, to keep intact that old image of himself as the man who had cut his index finger and, dripping blood, sworn to marry her. Embarrassed, he gulped a mouthful of alcohol as if to wash out the hidden underside of his heart. He said, “Fei, I actually wasn’t thinking about this, but—”

Fei raised her glass and interrupted him. “There are a lot of ‘actuallys’ in our life, but let’s not talk about it. Let’s drink.” She drained her glass, licked her lower lip, and then clasped her hands. “Let’s go and take care of that tomorrow.” She said this very calmly, and, while Little Cui heard every word, he was much more focused on Fei’s habit of reaching out with her tongue to lick her lower lip. He would have been unable to describe the feeling that this small gesture gave him, but it moved him greatly — how she extended the pink tip of her tongue, just a little, and then quickly, almost more quickly than the eye could follow, licked her slightly trembling lip, like a cat, like a small wounded animal licking its wound out of sight. In the background was their empty home, which had nothing in it except for a bed and a quilt. All the money had disappeared into Little Cui’s bottles of alcohol. Even Fei’s salary had been readily taken by Little Cui as convenient for his use. Fei had never argued with Little Cui about money; she just let him spend it any way he wanted. She herself preferred to wear old clothes, or just uniforms all year long. He looked at Fei in her old uniform, at the sudden flicking of her pink tongue. For a moment his resolution to get a divorce almost wavered. He recalled how her attraction for him began with her mouth, how words were unable to describe the beauty of the corner of her mouth; her mouth made him dizzy. Years of drinking had damaged his memory and he had forgotten many things, but now some of them came back. He remembered Fei had never let him touch her mouth, even after she became his wife. So now he wanted to kiss her. When they’d decided to get a divorce, the beautiful, mysterious Fei from before their marriage started to return to him little by little. He wanted to kiss her, but she pushed his face away with her hand. “Don’t,” she said.

“And this alone I will never figure out,” Little Cui said.

Fei stood up and turned her soft young neck slightly, proudly, and sternly, with an expression that seemed to radiate rejection for a thousand miles, as if she were suddenly transformed from a cheap, discardable woman to some unapproachably beautiful creature. She turned her head and looked away. “I’ll move back to the singles’ dorm tomorrow.”

Little Cui looked at this distant Fei and couldn’t help coming to the conclusion that she was a woman whom he had never known. A woman like her was not someone that a man like him could afford. He was afraid of her, and felt that he should, indeed, marry Er Ling. He felt some inferiority as well as some relief. Inferior and relieved, relieved and inferior, that was the way Little Cui divorced Fei.

Fei started to live the single life again. In those days, she missed the friends of her childhood and teenage years. Tiao and Youyou, who used to envy her working-class life, had both grown up. The time she gave them a tour of the factory, and bought them treats, was long ago. Everything happened so quickly. College-girl Tiao and the would-be tourist guide Youyou both tried to persuade Fei to go to college, but she said with a sneer, “Me? Someone like me?”

Things were changing and Fei, of course, hadn’t resigned herself to loneliness. One of Tiao’s relatives was the principal at an art academy, so Tiao planned to introduce Fei to him, in order to get her some work as a model for the oil-painting students. Fei asked about the pay and Tiao said, “The money you’ll make in two half days, which is six hours, would equal the salary you earn in a month now.”

Fei said excitedly, “Damn! Why would I hesitate?”

“But it’s in the nude. You have to take all your clothes off.”

“I like to be nude. Someone should have painted me nude long ago, don’t you think?”

It was an era during which China had just opened its door to the West. For many people, unfamiliar with the idea of models and alarmed by it, nude modelling fell into the category of the shady and unrespectable. The first generation of models in this new era, even when they lived in big cities and worked for art schools, still modelled without their families’ knowledge. The high salaries they commanded were a happy surprise to them and made them the first group of women in China who could afford furs and luxurious clothes, long before the women who made money in business. Models didn’t risk wearing those clothes at home, concealing their despised profession from parents or boyfriends, along with the considerable money they earned. They often left home in ordinary clothes, changing to expensive fashions to promenade the streets glamorously, smugly enjoying their secret.

But Fei had nothing to fear back then; she was her own family. When she mounted the stage nude in the studio, she knew what to expect from the teachers and students. Not evil looks but appreciation showed in their eyes, along with some repressed excitement. So she simply stopped going to work at the factory. What was so special about being a typist? How much money did a factory director make? Director Yu? No, Bureau Director Yu — he had been promoted to the directorship of the province’s Bureau of Manufacturing. How much could a bureau director make? she thought with contempt. Busy and popular, she was on sick leave all the time. By then she had gained some fame in the art world, and besides universities and colleges, individual painters were also willing to hire her to model at their homes. Young artists often fought over her, which she handled in a simple and straightforward manner by going with whoever gave her the most money. A young painter fresh from some training at the Central Academy of Fine Arts (one of the sort who likes to toss his long hair) paid five times the going rate, and she, of course, immediately went with him. He lived with his parents in their spacious house, and had his own studio. Later, Fei learned that the young painter’s father was the vice mayor of Fuan. The painter told her what pose to take and started to paint, but after just a sketch, he threw away the brush and held his head with his hands. Fei said, “Hey, why have you stopped painting?”

The painter said, “You distract me.”

“I have an idea.”

“What is it?”

“Sleep with me,” Fei said calmly. So the painter slept with Fei and then was able to focus on painting. He even fell in love with Fei.