Tie Ning - The Bathing Women

“You must be laughing at how I can’t do anything else — I can hardly breathe — when I eat.”

He said that she looked a little bit like she couldn’t breathe but that wasn’t why he was laughing. “I was laughing at that look of concentration you get on your face. Have you ever eaten green wheat grain?” As he spoke, he bent over and pulled up a handful of the heads of wheat, ground them between his hands, then blew away the chaff, pinched a few seeds, and put them in her mouth. He gathered up what remained in his hand and put them into his own mouth. He chewed and asked, “What flavour do you taste in this wheat?”

She was chewing and had already made a paste of the wheat seeds; a warm, pure, and dark green flavour filled her mouth and slowly passed into her. “It doesn’t have the fragrant sweetness of cassia. It’s more pungent, with much more power — it’s the flavour of sex, the flavour of reproduction, freely vigorous and exuberant, that magnificent instinct that propels life.” She pulled him towards her and quietly said that she wanted wheat, wheat, right now …

They made love beneath that serene walnut tree. She turned toward the sun and he parted her legs. She let the sunlight and his caresses make her sex shine, shocking his eyes and astonishing his heart, so that he would always remember that radiant colour in the sun’s translucent rays.

While he faced the confrontation over the divorce from Wan Meicheng, he continued to see Tiao. Nothing could stop them from meeting. Even a short time without making love was unbearable to them. It would have been a sort of truancy as they earnestly attempted to make up for the emptiness of more than ten years that yawned like a gulf between them … She’d often act a bit spoiled, and badgered him, insisting that he “tell me again when you first fell in love with me.”

“When you were twelve.”

“You loved a twelve-year-old child?”

“I loved you when you were twelve.”

“Why?”

“Because you were ugly.”

“No, I wasn’t ugly.”

“You were ugly, when you were twelve you were a little ugly strange ball.”

“You shouldn’t describe me like that. I wasn’t nearly as ugly as you say.”

“Bystanders have the clearest view. You were ugly. But I was able to see the potential; a twelve-year-old girl who is a flawless beauty will surely grow up to be an ugly woman. She’s reached the heights and it’s all downhill from there.” She said, “I understand what you mean. You loved me because you thought I would develop into a beautiful woman.”

“Don’t be so conceited, you are not a beautiful woman.”

A little unhappily, she said, “Well, then, what am I? What am I?”

He thought for a moment and then said, “You are an eternal woman.” As he said this he came up behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist, kissing her smooth neck. “You are my little woman, my little sweetie!”

In his arms, she beat his chest and said, “You speak absolute foolishness, and how could you tell that as a twelve-year-old girl I would be eternal? You must tell me why you loved me!” She pushed him away as she spoke.

“I loved you because I was a hooligan, okay?”

“I want you to talk nicely to me.”

He said with a sigh, “Because, when you were twelve, your eyes had a strange look of agony, suffering that no one could understand. I didn’t understand why your eyes showed such pain, but I saw it, and it became a long compulsion because it was a challenge to me. I imagined that I would be able to understand your pain. Tiao, this is one of the dreams of my life, to make you happy. I only want you to be happy.”

“I am happy, and only you can make me so happy. When I was twelve years old I was unhappy. There was a letter I wrote, a letter I wrote and posted to my father, dropping it into the postbox by the entrance to our compound. I regretted that later. I wanted to smash the postbox to get it out.” At the beginning of their conversations, she just kept telling him to say why he loved her, a little arrogant, a little flirtatious. After a while, she had to talk about the distant past, about Dr. Tang and Quan, long gone, vanished forever. All of it she willingly poured out to him, even the parts about Fan. Finally, she told of the death of Quan. She spoke about her falling into the manhole. “You know that manhole, the one for wastewater in the road by the entrance to our building.”

He stroked her back, as if soothing a frightened cat. He said, “I know that manhole. All the children in the compound knew how Quan fell into it. But all of that is in the past, in the past. Now we have our new life.” She said that Quan herself walked into the manhole. He said, “That’s right, everyone knows that she walked into it by herself.” She said, “Chen Zai, can you hold me? Hold me!” He held her tightly, and with infinite tenderness kissed his distraught woman. She also kissed him, nervously kissing his brow and biting his ears. She was unable to hold back her agony, showing every sign of desperation. In the end, though she struggled, she was not able to reveal her guilt to Chen Zai and felt deeply ashamed. She seemed to be hearing the three of them, the sisters, scrambling under the sofa in the living room with spirited shrieks. It was at this point, and only then, that she also remembered the night in Austin and the day in San Antonio, the flowers, the river, Mike’s green eyes — galaxies! Galaxies in them! What past does not have some joy in it, what relationships did not have their pleasures? But her love was Chen Zai. She’d run away, fled all the way until she finally found his embrace. Only this great friend could help her clear away what had choked her heart for so long. Why didn’t she speak? Only a short distance to go, and then she could have been completely free.

He was so willing to give her everything, to give her his “wheat,” and more and more eagerly she looked forward to it.

One autumn night, they drove back from Beijing, and as soon as they got into the city, it began to rain heavily. They parked on the street. While the storm washed over the car, they nestled together, quietly watching the lightning out the window, listening to the thunder outside the car. There were no other cars on the street and no people around, as if they were the only ones left in heaven and earth. They had to make love — so joyful to do it in the flashes of lightning and the sounds of thunder. Wildly, he threw her on the seat, and she cried to him, “I want your wheat … I want your wheat.” Sky and ground teetered, and in the midst of her dizziness she felt him grasp her, swing her over on top of him, and she arched herself above him. Then she rode him, as if she were riding a powerfully agile leopard, as if she were riding a handsome white horse. She rode him as if she were flying away from the world of rain, riding high and far.

She trembled with him; she also made the car and the ground tremble together. She never knew she had such passion and strength. She rode him as if she were riding him for all of the days of her life, ecstasy and pain rushing out of her body, purging her of all fear.

1

Fei didn’t feel well that winter. One day, she came to visit Tiao. As soon as she walked in she rushed directly to the living room and staggered onto the three-seater sofa. She took out a pack of cigarettes and said, “Tiao, bring me an ashtray. I want to smoke.”

Her voice was hoarse, her face dull, and her body seemed especially frail, all of which gave Tiao an ominous feeling. It was the first time that Fei demanded to smoke at Tiao’s place as if by right; she knew that Tiao didn’t allow her guests to smoke in the apartment. But still she insisted rudely, “Did you hear me? Bring me an ashtray.”