Tie Ning - The Bathing Women

Despite deep reservations, Tiao nodded and said, “I’ll try every way I can to help you find out. You can trust me.” Her heart was telling her it was too absurd. Fei missed her father so much that she was already out of her mind. But in a situation like this, she didn’t want to dash Fei’s hopes.

She didn’t expect Fei suddenly to laugh at herself. “Tiao, I’m fine with just having you say that. Do you think I would really expect you to investigate? Who am I? How can I dream of working my way up to attach myself to a governor? Not to mention the fact that he’s not my father. Even if he is, would he admit it to someone like me? Take me home. Call Chen Zai to take me home.”

Next day, Tiao and Youyou, at Fei’s suggestion, went to Fei’s apartment for dinner. She asked Tiao and Youyou to cook, and decided on the menu herself: puffed rice noodles, fried crystal pork, pork skin aspic, muxi pork, and also, for dessert, grilled miniature snowballs. Tiao and Youyou remembered that this had been the menu for their first dinner so many years ago, a banquet that Youyou had spent a large sum of money, fifty-two cents, to put on. Youyou still knew how to make these special dishes. While she and Tiao bustled in the kitchen, Fei also made a request for marinated rabbit head. Tiao remembered that it was the snack that Fei had bought for them on their way back from the film: three cents for a marinated rabbit head, the price of a popsicle, so crunchy and delicious. Tiao asked Chen Zai to go out to buy it. Unfortunately, present-day Fuan didn’t sell that kind of thing anymore, and even Youyou didn’t know how to prepare it.

They sat down to eat, and, of course, to drink wine. They drank red wine. Fei, tormented by pain and sweating profusely, got up from her bed, walked over gracefully, and seated herself, her look of misery gone. Her gaze went around to everyone, charming them all; her manner was elegant and appealing. They couldn’t help feeling that the great beauty Fei had returned. She would use red paper to dye their lips and make them look very seductive, and then she would put on a raincoat to perform “Cairo Nights.” Look, she picked up the glass of red wine and drained it in one gulp. Wasn’t it the drunkenness that made her eyes cloudy? This intoxicating dream life of Fei’s! This determined great beauty!

None of them could taste anything out of these special dishes, but they all exaggeratedly nodded their heads to show how they had found their past; from the pork skin aspic, from the fried crystal pork, they had rediscovered their innocent joy. Except their tears didn’t cooperate but fell into their glasses and made the wine salty. They were laughing.

They were laughing.

Two weeks later, Fei died in the hospital. Tiao and Youyou had taken turns staying beside her bed. No one else came to the hospital to visit her, even though she kept glancing toward the door. Where were those men, those men who’d enjoyed her and used her and were also used by her? Towards the end, Fei stopped glancing at the door; she didn’t have the strength anymore — she slipped in and out of a coma.

She had woken up on a sunny afternoon and recognized Tiao by her bedside. She raised her arm and said, “Come close, come close.” She pointed at her lips and said, “Maybe you won’t believe me, Tiao. I’ve had many men but none of them touched my lips. None of them. I didn’t allow them to. Once, a local rich guy, who got rich by dealing cars, treated me to dinner. He suddenly reached his hand over the table, grabbed my neck, and attempted to kiss me. I turned my face away and said, ‘What are you doing?’ He said, ‘What do you think I want to do?’ I said, ‘If you want something, you don’t have to try so hard. We can do it now.’ He gave me a cocky grin and said, ‘I never thought I’d hear you say anything like that so soon. I didn’t expect you to be so straightforward. There are two types of women in my experience — the lowbrow kind and the highbrow kind. The lowbrow let you touch the lower parts of their bodies as soon as you start; and the highbrow only permit you to touch the upper parts. See, I had you in the highbrow category …’ Tiao, come closer, come closer, listen to me. My lips are clean. They’re the only thing on my body that’s respectable. Let me kiss you. Let me kiss you.”

Fei propped herself up stubbornly and held Tiao in her arms, and then with her pale and icy lips kissed Tiao’s left cheek.

Tiao gradually felt a burning sensation on the left side of her face, and believed there must be a clear outline of lips on her cheek. When she went to the funeral home for Fei’s service a few days later, she could feel the lip mark still imprinted on her left cheek. A strange man with grey hair stood in front of the funeral home and stared at Tiao’s face, which embarrassed her. She supposed that he must have seen the imprint on her face, a material presence that had a shape and life and didn’t disappear with the disappearance of Fei. A living thing that Fei had planted on Tiao’s face, it remained and frequently made the left side of Tiao’s face feel swollen. The grey-haired man stared at Tiao’s face and said, “The person you had the funeral for is Fei, right?”

Tiao said, “Who are you?”

The man said, “I’m an old coworker of hers from the factory.” Tiao looked at his clothing carefully; he had on a dark blue khaki cotton jacket with a brown plush collar, out of date but very clean. Tiao said, “Are you Master Qi?”

“My last name is Qi. How did you know?”

“From … before … Fei told me.”

“Are you her family—?”

“No, I’m not her family. I’m her friend.”

“I haven’t seen her for years. What about her family?”

Tiao got a distant look in her eye. “She has no family.”

He said, “Oh.”

He turned to push his bicycle, an old Phoenix Manganese 18 bicycle with rust-stained rims, the former symbol of a family’s prosperity. As she looked at this classic, nicely designed old Phoenix, Tiao’s heart quivered with tenderness, as if she were seeing an old acquaintance who had been out of touch for years, as if she were seeing the living witness to Fei’s story. The stories that Fei told her became so real and definite. She imagined the time Master Qi rode that bike into their campus, locked it in front of the administration building, and how Fei, seeing no one around, pulled the air valves out. Tiao gazed at that phoenix symbol, with its delicate and beautiful design — three tails, gracefully lifted, bright red, golden, and emerald green, all of which would call up good associations for Tiao forever.

Master Qi got on his bicycle and left the funeral home. The back of his figure on the bicycle looked lonely and disciplined, and Tiao had the thought that this old worker with his grey hair might be the only one who had truly loved Fei. She was convinced that he had seen Fei’s lips on her face, and maybe he even imagined that Fei’s lips would open and talk from her left cheek. But this was probably just her fantasy. Tiao thought too much.

3

The sofa was still the same, grey-blue satin brocade, in the same place, soft and clean.

She pricked up her ears to listen while she led him by the hand and walked toward the sofa. It wasn’t important that she was pulling with her hand; the important thing was listening. What she valued at that moment was her ears. The light wasn’t on, so the room was dark. Until, after a while, as they started to get used to it, the darkness didn’t appear so solid; light from the building across shone in through the open curtains of the windows. Stillness was everywhere, and she heard nothing, from either Fei or Quan. The sofa made no sound; the screaming had vanished. In her heart was a deep emptiness, but also a relief that she didn’t want to admit. She missed Fei, but she also felt relieved by her death, as if because of it, from now on, Quan would completely disappear from the sofa; only Fei’s death could guarantee that. The sofa now made no sound; the screaming was gone.