Tie Ning - The Bathing Women

Chen Zai reached out and covered Tiao’s mouth with his hand. He said, “But you know I’m not happy.”

Tiao removed his hand and said, “But Wan Meicheng is happy. She has what she wants.”

Chen Zai said, “I haven’t given her what she most wants, though.”

“What is that?”

“A child.”

“So … you can’t?”

“No, I don’t want to. I don’t want to because I always had a vague hope for a different future. I didn’t want to reconcile myself with the life I had, although it wasn’t fair to her. She is about to go crazy because she wants a child so much. But I won’t do it. We had an arrangement before we got married. She agreed not to have a child as long as she could marry me.”

The day was breaking and they couldn’t remain sitting this way and continue talking. Chen Zai would never have been able to leave if they kept talking like that. He got off the bed, splashed cold water on his face, and then left Tiao’s place without saying anything more.

Tiao also needed to go to work. She took a hot shower, washing her breasts carefully, letting the clear water and her hand massage them. She held the showerhead and swept her whole body with it, letting the strong flow spout onto her vagina, which had been so long unstirred.

She set off for the Publishing House energetically. As soon as she entered her office, she got Chen Zai’s phone call. He said, “Tiao, are you listening?”

“Yes, I’m listening.”

“I can’t live without you in my life. I want to marry you.”

5

“Are you ready?” she softly asked from a distance as he lay naked in the dark. She came out of the bathroom, pushing open the door, letting the light stream into the bedroom. Following the path of the light, she moved to the bed. “Are you ready?” she asked softly again when she was next to him, boldly and joyously gazing at his unfamiliar naked body.

He got up suddenly and lifted her trembling body and laid her down on the bed, and in the dim light cradled her face in his hands. He started to kiss her, kissing her hair, kissing her ears, kissing her eyebrows and eyes, kissing her burning cheeks. He kissed her chin, kissed her collarbone, kissed her small, firm breasts. What else did he kiss? He kissed the beautiful curve where her lower back met her pelvis, he kissed her knee — the knee that she had hurt when she fell down jumping rope when she was twelve — kissed her leg, kissed her foot, and bit each one of her toes; he licked the small cold soles of her feet. His kisses stopped her trembling. His kisses made her relax her body and stretch out passionately, and at the same time he slid his head between her legs and put the tip of his tongue for a moment in that most tender and smooth of places. Unable to hold back, she let out a brief, sharp moan, a very particular sort, not human, but the moan of an animal always utterly candid in expressing its pleasure. At that instant, her face had the fierce grimace of someone with ecstasy in reach. It was beauty, beauty of a kind people are unwilling to acknowledge. As she continued moaning, he bore down and forcefully entered her.

She made him ecstatic; he couldn’t have imagined that they would be so much in harmony, that it could be so good. The more he felt in love with her, the deeper he wanted to be inside her; the more he felt the pain of love, the more he attacked her; the crazier he was for her, the more he tormented her; the more he treasured her, the more he wanted to ravage her, to break her apart.

There was no way he could make himself stop, and she didn’t let him stop, matching his motion with her own, entirely in rhythm. They moved together perfectly in unison.

He made her feel ecstatic; she couldn’t have imagined that they would be so much in harmony, that it could be so good. She was joyful at how deep he was in her, how he attacked her, tormented her, ravaged her. When he clutched her firm round buttocks and pressed down against her chest, she couldn’t help crying out again. She made him drip with sweat; he made her drip with sweat. Sweat soaked their hair. Still, he couldn’t stop. He lifted the hair from her face, and with a muffled voice muttered hoarsely, “Oh, sweetheart, sweetheart, darling, I want to fuck you to pieces, fuck you to death.” Drops of sweat ran down her face and stung her eyes; sweat ran into his eyes and stung them, too. They couldn’t stop. They rolled from the bed to the floor, as if no space in the world could hold them in their feverish gallop, really it was a kind of gallop, as he grasped her, steered her, heaved her, and she lay under him melded to him as if she had no bones.

They savoured each other and ravaged each other, ravaged each other and savoured each other.

Always they would remember the last moment of their first time, when his movements quickened, doubly fierce, and suddenly, with a leopard’s low growl, he said, “Tiao, Tiao, I can’t hold back any longer,” and then she felt a hot current flow through her whole body and then an awakening of bliss as if she’d been roused from a long deep sleep. She was in bliss. A short while later she lost consciousness. When she awoke, still in her ear was the echo of his low growl, “I can’t hold back any longer.” To the end of her life she would love the sound of his growl, so innocent, so passionate, so intimate. They now were truly lovers, lovers for two lifetimes, three lifetimes.

She awoke, her entire body limp, to a shining light, the lamp that he’d turned on. He was staring at her in the lamplight. He stretched his arms out to her; she rolled her head onto his arm and was wrapped in his embrace, resting her head on his broad shoulder. He said to her that his shoulder and chest had grown just right to cradle her head, a perfect fit, perfectly matched.

The two sweaty bodies stuck to each other. He said, “You are my dear.”

She said, “You are my little dear.”

He said, “You are my dear little sister.”

She said, “You are my dear big brother.”

He said, “You are my little mother.”

She said, “You are my little father.”

He said, “You are my little one.”

She said, “You are my good little child.”

He said, “You are my young wife.”

She said, “You are my older husband.”

He said, “I want to do it again. I want to do it again.” So they started over. He was even more carefully attentive to her. She was even more playful in catering to his needs. So sweetly intimate and close, they were like glue — like paint — on each other, forgetting everything around them, completely in love.

Tiao sighed sadly, wondering why this day had taken so long to arrive. She also sighed that finally it had arrived. All the pleasure and happiness that he gave to her made her cry tears of joy and gratitude. He leaned over to lick the tears, to kiss her moist eyelashes, to say, “My little one, what’s the matter?” In reply, she hugged him tightly around his sturdy waist, as if to embed her arms in his flesh, to be absorbed into his body and never to be stripped away.

One day in late spring, he drove with her to the outskirts of Fuan, a place near the mountains where he’d bought a small plot of land. He told her, “I want to build a house here and furnish it with everything you want.”

“What would that be?”

“A big kitchen,” he said.

“That’s right. Naturally I would like a big kitchen.”

“A large kitchen should be the second thing, though.”

“What should be the first thing, then?”

“The first thing should be a bed with me in it.”

She lowered her head and smiled, and he led her by the hand toward the small plot of land. There was a bare slope, with no crops yet planted, and a half-grown walnut tree stood at the crest of the hill, full of oval green leaves like the huge eyes of Buddha, serene and transcendent, as if keeping vigil. By the roadside they passed some cassia trees and wheat fields and headed up the hill toward the walnut tree, where bunches of snow-white cassia flowers gave off a pure, sweet scent. She wanted him to pick her a strand of the blooms and he picked many for her. Laughing, he watched her cram her mouth, wolfing them down. Chewing on the cassia blooms, she asked him what he was laughing at.