Tie Ning - The Bathing Women

“Two days later, I saw Yu Dasheng at his office. I’d never tried so hard to tidy myself up as I did then, putting on makeup, choosing clothes so carefully, and still I was so dissatisfied with my face. I knew this was because I was getting old, and I had lost confidence in my looks. I had dark circles under my lower eyelids, and my index and middle fingers had been stained brown by smoking. When I looked at myself in the mirror, I saw that the skin on my cheeks was already a little sunken. I took turns slapping myself with both hands, to speed up the circulation, to make my cheeks full and rosy again. Wasn’t I crazy? I was simply a crazy woman. I walked into Yu Dasheng’s office in fancy clothes and heavy makeup and immediately felt unsteady on my feet. It seemed to me later that it was because the office was so big. Such a big room was intended to make people feel small — and I felt much smaller than usual. I walked to the office desk he sat behind. Hardly moving, he pointed at a cushioned chair in front of the desk and had me sit down. He said, ‘Fei, we haven’t seen each other for many years. My secretary said you came to me on behalf of your child? How old is your child?’

“I said, ‘It’s like this: She’s not my child. She’s my ex-husband’s niece.’ I tried to explain the situation as briefly as possible because I knew that, as always, he preferred things straight to the point with no small talk. After that, I handed that child’s information to him. I noticed he was particularly interested in my hands. So I got a crazy idea, the habit of many years emerging boldly again. I extended the hand with brown, smoke-stained fingers toward his face, almost touching the tip of his nose. I said, ‘Look at my hand as much as you want. You can even … touch.’ As I said this, I was prepared to be thrown out of his office, as I had been years before, and I wouldn’t have regretted it, even had that happened. But, surprisingly, he reached out to hold it, actually taking up my hand and beginning to study it attentively. For a moment I was moved, because the way he held my hand was not like the flirting between a man and woman. He held my hand in his as if it were scalding hot and fragile. There was nothing sexual in his eyes. On the contrary, the expression in them was distant. He seemed to focus on my hand, but also not to. I can’t explain my feelings at the time: I studied his hand while he studied mine. I noticed something very strange; my hand looked very much like his. I must have lost myself at that moment, because something in the depths of my heart made me want to throw myself into his arms and cry and cry, but not the kind of crying a woman does with a man, but like a child with an adult. Do you understand? Not that he could have known what I had in mind, but he immediately let go of my hand and said, ‘I didn’t know a girl could smoke that much.’

“Everything went back to normal. He kept at an appropriate distance and I didn’t have the nerve to reach out toward the tip of his nose again. Soon he indicated that I should be going, saying, ‘I’ll try my best to help the child. I have a meeting in a moment and you can leave now.’ Apparently he was as good as his word, because Little Cui’s niece was admitted by a university of science and technology. Only, after the meeting, I didn’t get to see Yu Dasheng again. Every time I phoned, his secretary would say that he wasn’t in. I had the sense this vice governor knew everything about me, even my indecency. What right did I have to waste his time? Even though he might be my … he might be my father. Tiao, you will never understand when he took my hand how strong, how irresistible the feeling was.”

“Is this the big thing that you wanted to tell me?” Tiao asked Fei.

“No.” Fei coughed violently. She said to Tiao with an enraged face, “I wanted to tell you that I hate you and I’m disgusted by you, because you’re too healthy and I can’t stand your health.”

Tiao knelt in front of the sofa and wanted to hold Fei’s hands. She said, “You’d get well again, if only you wouldn’t allow yourself to drink and smoke so much.”

Fei threw Tiao’s hand off. “Don’t touch me. Don’t you know I’m contagious? I don’t have venereal disease. Not this time. Venereal disease is nothing! It’s my liver that’s the problem. Liver, liver, liver. It’s liver cancer, late term! Ah, let me live like a disease, let me live like a disease. I am disease. I am disease …”

Tiao’s eyes blurred. It seemed to her that here was a grown version of Quan thrashing her arms and legs. She knelt there, afraid to provoke her further, but she couldn’t stop her, either.

2

“Now you know why I’m talking so much to you. I’m going to die, but I haven’t lived enough,” Fei said bitterly from the sofa.

Tiao took out a blanket and covered Fei. She said, “I’m going to call Chen Zai and ask him to drive over. Let’s go to the hospital now.”

Fei waved her hand and said with a bitter smile, “I just got out of the hospital. I have my diagnosis and I don’t want to go back. Hmm, the doctor didn’t want to tell me in the beginning, asking me to send a family member to him. A family member. Tiao, that’s when I feel the most miserable. What family do I have? Where is my family? I really need one, don’t you think? Even if it’s just to hear a diagnosis of late-term liver cancer.”

Tiao bit her lower lip and almost cried. She said, “It’s my fault, Fei. I haven’t called you for so long. Let’s go to the hospital. Let’s go to the hospital now.”

Fei said, “Don’t cry like a baby. I understand you and am also jealous of you. What woman in love isn’t selfish? Doesn’t everything become secondary compared to Chen Zai? I was really afraid to bother you, which was why I didn’t call. To be honest with you, I even thought about killing myself, jumping from a high building, suffocating myself with gas, or cutting my wrist with a blade … All of it seemed too painful. I just couldn’t do it to myself. Only taking sleeping pills seemed okay, to get sent to another world peacefully, without knowing. I went to two drugstores and bought two bottles of sleeping pills, two hundred pills, which would be enough. I went home, gave myself an herbal bath, put on festive clothes, changed the sheets and pillowcases, and then cleaned the rooms. While I was doing all these chores, I kept thinking about the scenes after my death, thinking about all those men I had been with. Who would feel the saddest after hearing? Who would regret that he hadn’t married me? Who would be sorry for how cruelly he had treated me? How they treated me like I was less than human, like an animal? To put it simply, I hoped my death would send a shock to their hearts for a moment — that it could make some of them feel regret and guilt. For some suicides, the whole purpose is to make the living feel regret and guilt. I was lying on the bed and dumping the two hundred pills onto a piece of white paper and telling myself, ‘I’m going to take the pills. I’m going to take them.’ Then I got obsessed with imagining all kinds of expressions on the faces of those men, as if I were watching a film. I realized later that a person who cares too much what other people would think about her death wouldn’t actually kill herself. The more I looked forward to making others feel guilty, the less I wanted to kill myself. In the end I simply dumped all the sleeping pills in the toilet. My death wouldn’t shake anyone’s soul, so I’m not going to kill myself. I want to live to the last moment of my life. There is only one wish left in my heart: I want to ask you to help me conduct an investigation … help me find out about Yu Dasheng’s past. I know he spent his youth in Beijing. Do you think it’s possible that he’s my father? Ai, besides our hands really looking alike, I have no other evidence. My mother and uncle didn’t leave me any clues.”