Tie Ning - The Bathing Women

Fan said, “I didn’t interrupt you and her. I was just encouraging my sister to speak more English. She’d made some progress.”

David sneered. “You were not encouraging her; you were ridiculing her.”

“You don’t even know Chinese. How can you talk such crap?”

“I can understand your tone — it was unfriendly — besides, your voice was so loud. You Chinese people talk loudly.”

“What’s wrong with being loud? Since you know we Chinese talk loudly anyway, then you can’t draw the conclusion that a loud voice means an unfriendly tone.”

“I stand by what I said about your tone a moment ago. I know you.”

“You know me? You could never know me if you tried the rest of your life.”

“Don’t say that. Don’t say the rest of your life.”

“The rest of your life … the rest of your life … the rest of your life.”

David suddenly laughed and said, “Let’s make up.” Maybe he did love Fan; there were simply a lot of things that he didn’t understand about his Chinese wife. For instance, he had no idea why Fan wouldn’t allow him to return to China with her. He hadn’t been back to China for five years. Back then he was an intern in his father’s agency in Beijing and learned a few simple Chinese sentences, of which he could remember only one, “Have some cola.” He genuinely wanted to revisit China and see his wife’s parents and his sister-in-law.

2

Tiao waited for Fan at Beijing International Airport. Not yet the vice director of the Children’s Publishing House, she was the managing editor at the main editorial office. The story of her and Fang Jing had become entirely a thing of the past, which meant a genuine release for her from the misery of that love. She’d needed to rest and to heal, to “recover,” and only complete release could have brought recovery. Maybe all women capable of love have the ability to “recover,” like the range grass, full of exuberant life: “Even the fires that sweep the prairie cannot kill the long grass, / which rises once again in the light winds of spring.”

Tiao recovered.

For those few years of her recovery, she channelled all her energy and intelligence into her work. Focused and clear-thinking, with an inner calm, she succeeded in making substantial profits for the publishing house. Her tears no longer dropped into the desk drawer and her appearance slowly began to improve. Was there still some opportunity lying ahead of her? She seemed to be waiting, with the composure of the experienced and the anticipation of the persistent. Except now, with her understanding that real happiness couldn’t be won by struggle, she no longer had the heart to compete. Sometimes she would think about a girl she had seen in the post office. It was during the National Day break, when she went to the post office bank to withdraw some money. There were a lot of people waiting in line, and she was standing near the end and overheard a girl’s telephone conversation. She didn’t want to admit she was eavesdropping; in fact, at first she was just looking absently at the girl’s back. Judging from her back, the girl on the pay phone seemed to come from the countryside — the way she plaited her hair and stood, the strength in her stance, and the hand that held the phone — all evidence of her country background. She was healthy and a little ungainly, not all that comfortable in her skin. The content of her phone conversation established that she was a student, at college or technical school, which meant she must have got into a school in Fuan through her exam results. Apparently the person she was talking to was male, and Tiao heard the girl ask in country-accented Mandarin, “How many days off does your school give?” The other person answered, and the girl said, “We get three days off, too. I don’t plan to go home, do you?” The other person apparently said no, and the girl said happily, “That’s great. Come to our school and have some fun.” The other person refused, and the girl started to work on him. It was then that Tiao started to pay attention, eavesdropping on the conversation.

To Tiao the girl now seemed more nervous than earlier, with her right arm clenched closer to her body, as if something under her armpit urgently needed to be held in place. She kept feeding coins into the slot to get more minutes, and her back looked quite uncomfortable. She said, “Come on, everyone in our dorm is gone and it’ll be a fun time. What? You need to prepare for the exam? No, no, I want you to come …” While saying this, the girl started to wriggle slightly, which made Tiao a little uneasy but also supported her impression that the person on the other end of the phone was a man. The girl obviously was using an unfamiliar strategy to entice the man, repeating, “No, no, no, just come. There won’t be anyone else in our dorm, no, no …” Now persuasion turned to earnest invitation, to begging, to mumbling, to … to what? In the end she composed herself with some difficulty, trying to adopt a casual tone. “No problem. You don’t have to apologize. I know exams are more important than having fun. Then, let’s plan to meet later. Okay, ‘bye …” But at the same time, Tiao noticed the hand that held the phone trembled, the knuckles pale. When she hung up the phone and rushed out, she was in tears. Tiao’s heart was full of sympathy for this strange girl with her pretence of unconcern. It was a moment that people hardly noticed, the noise and bustle of the post office covering the girl’s embarrassment. Tiao noticed but was unable to show the girl her sympathy, to tell her that she was not the only unhappy person in the world. Her phone call was undoubtedly aggressive, an effort to take over a man’s holidays. As long as the girl assumed an aggressive posture she was doomed to fail. In the past, Tiao had attempted to take over things; all young, energetic people had tried to conquer life, one way or another — it was naïve but not ridiculous.

Fan’s plane arrived. From far away, Tiao immediately singled out her younger sister, whom she hadn’t seen in five years, in the crowd waiting for luggage. Fan was much thinner than before, and with the scarlet wool coat she had on, which almost touched the floor, she appeared taller. She pushed a luggage cart over and they hugged. She didn’t look that well. Tiao had noted long ago that many Chinese from America didn’t look very healthy; their faces seemed to have turned browner among the hordes of white people. Even someone like Fan — who had a nice family and career, an MBA and a job at an international investment company — her privileged life still didn’t nurture her complexion. When she smiled, Tiao noticed the wrinkles around her eyes. She wasn’t quite thirty years old that year.

Compared to her, Tiao, this Chinese woman still a resident of her native land, shone. Fan couldn’t help saying with a sigh, “Older sister, I didn’t expect you to have grown even more … more attractive than before.”

“Do you really think so?” Tiao asked.

“I really think so,” Fan said. They left the terminal, came to the car park, and got into the Peugeot that Tiao had got from the Publishing House. Fan said, “I thought we were going to take the train home, like when I was in college.”

Tiao said, “We don’t have to do that anymore. See, I drove the car here.”

“Is this yours?”

“No, it belongs to the Publishing House.”

“Is the use of the Publishing House’s car part of your perks?”

“Not yet, but for special occasions it’s not a problem.”

“There is nothing like this in America,” Fan said. Tiao couldn’t tell whether Fan was envious or disapproving.

It was a ninety-seven kilometre trip, and they arrived home very quickly. Though it was already late at night, Yixun and Wu were up waiting for them, wide awake. They still lived in the compound of the Architectural Design Academy, but had recently moved to a new apartment — four bedrooms with two living rooms, three times bigger than the one they’d had during the Reed River Farm period, twice as big as the one they’d had before Fan went to America. The difference was obvious, and Fan sensed various changes as soon as she got off the aeroplane. The only thing so far that remained unchanged was the airport itself, dark and crowded, with the customs officials as indifferent as ever. But everything seemed transformed once she was out of the airport and arrived at the house. Her parents and her older sister surrounded her at their brightly lit, warm home, and a familiar aroma of spare-rib soup immediately greeted her. That was the base for the wonton soup that Yixun had prepared especially for her — they all knew wonton soup was her favourite.