Tie Ning - The Bathing Women

Tiao’s apartment had a three-seater sofa and two single armchairs. Their covers were satin brocade, a sort of fuzzy blue-grey, like the eyes of some European women, soft and clear. The chairs were arranged in the shape of a flattened U, with the sofa at the base and the armchairs facing each other on two sides.

Tiao’s memory of sofas went back to when she was about three. It was in the early sixties; her home had a pair of old dark red corduroy sofas. The springs were a bit broken, and stuck out of their coir and hemp wrappings, pressing firmly up through a layer of corduroy that was not very thick. The whole sofa had a lumpy look and it creaked when people sat down. Every time Tiao hauled herself onto it, she could feel little fists punching up from underneath her. The broken springs would grind into her delicate knees and sensitive back. But she still liked to climb up on the sofa because compared to the hard-backed little chair that belonged to her, it allowed her to move around freely, leaning this way and that — and being able to move freely this way and that makes for comfort; ever since she was small, Tiao pursued comfort. Later, and for a long time, an object like a sofa was labelled as associated with a certain class. And that class obviously wanted to exert a bad influence on the spirit and body of the people, like a plague or marijuana. Most Chinese people’s behinds had never come into contact with sofas; even soft-cushioned chairs were rare in most homes. By then — probably in the early seventies — Tiao eventually found a pair of down pillows in a home that only had a few hard chairs. The down pillows were from her parents’ beds. When they weren’t home, she dragged the pillows off, reserved one for herself, and gave one to her younger sister Fan. They put the pillows on two hard chairs and settled into them, wriggling on the puffy pillows, pretending they were on sofas. They enjoyed the sheer luxury of reclining on these “sofas,” cracking sunflower seeds or eating a handful of hawthorn berries. Often, when this was going on, Quan would wave her arms anxiously and stumble over in a rush from the other end of the room going, “Ah-ah-ah-ah.”

Quan, the younger sister of Tiao and Fan, would have been two years old then. She would stumble all the way over to her two sisters, obviously wanting to join their “sofa time,” but they planned to ignore her completely. They also looked down on her flaw — Quan couldn’t talk even though she was two; she would probably be a mute. But the mute Quan was a little beauty, the kind everyone loved on sight, and she enjoyed communicating with people very much, allowing adults or almost-adults to take turns holding her. She would toss her natural brown curls, purse her fresh little red lips, and make all kinds of signs — no one knew where she picked up these gestures. When she wanted to flirt, she pressed her tender fingers to her lips and blew you a kiss; when she wanted to show her anger, she waved around her bamboo-shoot little finger in front of your eyes; when she wanted you to leave, she pointed at the sky and then put her hands over her ears as if saying: Oh, it’s getting dark and I have to go to sleep.

Now Quan stood before Tiao and Fan and kept blowing them kisses, which apparently were meant as a plea to let her join them in “sofa time.” She got no response, so she switched her sign, angrily thrusting out her arm and sticking up her little finger to tell them: You two are bad, really bad. You’re just as small as this little finger and I despise you. Still, no one spoke to her, so she started to stamp her feet and beat her chest. This description isn’t the usual dramatic exaggeration — she literally stood there beating her chest and stamping her feet. She clenched her hands and beat the butter-coloured, flower-bordered bib embroidered with two white pigeons, her little fists pounding like raindrops. Meanwhile, she stamped on the concrete floor noisily with her little dumpling feet, in her red leather shoes. Then, with tears and runny nose, she let herself go entirely. She lay on the floor, pumping her strong and fleshy legs vigorously in the air, as if pedaling an invisible flying wheel.

You think throwing a tantrum is going to soften our hearts? You want to blow us kisses — go ahead and blow! You want to hold up your finger at us — go on and hold it up! You want to beat your chest and stamp your feet — do it! You want to lie on the floor and pedal — go pedal! Go ahead and pedal, you!

Through half-closed eyes, Tiao looked at Quan, who was rolling around on the floor. Satisfaction at the venting of her hatred radiated from her heart all over her body. It was a sort of ice-cold excitement, a turbulent calm. Afterwards, she simply closed her eyes, pretending to catnap. Sitting in the chair next to her, Fan imitated her sister’s catnap. Her obedience to her sister was inbred. Besides, she didn’t like Quan, either, whose birth directly shook Fan’s privileged status; she was next in line for Fan’s privileges. Fan was unhappy simply because she was like all world leaders, always watchful for their successors and disgusted by them.

When they awoke from their catnap, Quan was no longer in sight. She disappeared. She died.

The foregoing memory might be true; it could also be one of Tiao’s revisions. If everyone has memories that are more or less personally revised, then the unreliability of the human race wasn’t Tiao’s responsibility alone. The exact date of Quan’s death was six days after that tantrum, but Tiao was always tempted to place her death on the same day that she beat her chest and stamped her feet, as if by doing so she and Fan could be exonerated. It was on that day that Quan had left the world, right at the moment we blinked, as we dozed off into a dream. We didn’t touch her; we didn’t leave the room — the pillows under us could prove it. What happened afterwards? Nothing. No design; no plot; no action. Ah, how weak and helpless I am! What a poisonous snake I am! Tiao chose to believe only what she wanted to believe; what she wasn’t willing to believe, she pretended didn’t exist. But what happened six days later did exist, wrapped up and buried in Tiao’s heart, never to be let go.

Now neither of them sits on the sofa. When Tiao and Fan chat, they always sit separately on those two blue-grey armchairs, face-to-face. More than twenty years have passed and Quan still exists. She sits on that sofa at the centre of that U as if it were custom-made for her. She still has the height of a two-year-old, about sixty centimetres, but the ratio of her head to her body is not a baby’s, which is one to four — that is, the length of the body should equal four heads. The ratio of her head to her body is completely adult, one to seven. This makes her look less like a two-year-old girl and more like a tiny woman. She wears a cream-coloured satin negligee, and sits with one thigh crossed over the other. From time to time she touches her smooth, supple face with one of her fingers. When she stretches out her hand, the bamboo-shoot tip of her little finger curves naturally, like the hand gesture of an opera singer, which makes her look a bit coy. She looks like such a social butterfly! Tiao thinks, not knowing why she would choose such an outdated phrase to describe Quan. But she doesn’t want to use those new, intolerably vulgar words such as “little honey.” Although “social butterfly” also implies ambiguity, seduction, frivolousness, and impurity, the mystery and romance that it conveyed in the past can’t be replaced by any other words. She was low and cynical, but not a simple dependent, stiffly submitting to authority. No one could ever know the deep loneliness behind her pride, radiance, and passion.