The Bathing Women (20 page)

Fei, abandoned by the dancer and having had the abortion, seemed to be especially observant about babies. She also seemed to talk more bluntly than she used to. One day she suddenly said to Tiao, “Whom do you think Quan looks like?” When Tiao made no response, Fei said, “She reminds me very much of my uncle. Hmm, she might be my cousin.”

Fei looked both a little bit angry and sad. Then she gulped, and a kind of miserable look came over her face.

“She reminds me very much of my uncle.” Fei’s words struck Tiao like a blow to the head, dazing her and sharpening her focus at once. She finally was clear about the question she hadn’t dared to ask, and now she had the answer. Wu and Dr. Tang made her sick, and so angry that she wanted to rage and curse at people in the street. The two were unworthy to be the cause of all Tiao’s suffering, the anxiety, and then, finally, the relief, that she had gone through because of that letter that never reached Yixun. They weren’t worth it. They weren’t worth any of it. How frightened she had been that Fei would make her face the secret. But now that it had happened, she realized she had no refuge. She had to take action. So she was determined to act, no matter how vague her idea of what she should do.

As if deliberately conspiring with Tiao, Fan had started to take action of her own. She dug earwax out of Tiao’s ear and put the light yellow slivers into Quan’s milk bottle. Tiao watched all this and said nothing. Everyone knew the folk wisdom: earwax is poison. People turn into mutes if they eat it.

Quan was probably a mute already, and, if not, she would become a mute for certain after eating earwax. Tiao watched Fan shake the milk bottle and said nothing. Saying nothing was silent approval and encouragement. Fan took the milk bottle that contained earwax and orange juice and walked over to Quan. But the plot failed because, for some reason, her grip loosened and the milk bottle dropped to the floor and broke. Tiao was disappointed, and so was Fan. They didn’t discuss their disappointment with each other. Instead, they expressed it by further ignoring Quan. They played the “sofa time” game that Tiao had invented, which was more of a way to enjoy themselves than a game. Every time Wu went out, Tiao would drag two fluffy down pillows from Wu’s big bed and lay them on two hard-backed chairs. Then she and Fan would sit on them. The warm, soft feeling under their bottoms relaxed them, body and mind. They reclined on their homemade “sofas” and cracked seeds—watermelon, pumpkin, and sunflower. They didn’t permit Quan to get near them to take part in their game. Or, to put it another way, they invented it for the very purpose of upsetting Quan. How they loved to see Quan weep because she couldn’t sit on the “sofa.” It would be even better if Wu could see the scene, Tiao thought defiantly. Wu didn’t dare criticize the way she and Fan treated Quan. And the more Wu was afraid, the more Tiao hated her; the more Wu didn’t dare, the more malice Tiao directed at Quan.

Then came that day.

It was a Sunday. After breakfast, Wu sat in front of the sewing machine, planning to make a new outfit for Quan, and told Tiao and Fan to take Quan for a walk. As usual, Tiao carried a stool to sit on in front of the building to read a book, and Fan also brought out a little chair. She didn’t read. She knitted woollen socks. Every time Wu made clothes for Quan, she would start to make something for herself as if to tell Wu, You don’t want to take care of me, but I can take care of myself. She was knitting a pair of woollen socks for herself; she was clever that way.

Quan was on the road in front of the building, strolling along her familiar route. She held a toy metal bucket in one hand and a little metal shovel in the other and squatted under a tree, digging up a few shovelfuls of dirt. She put the dirt into the bucket and carried it to another tree. She shuttled between the two trees aimlessly, and once in a while she banged on the bucket with the shovel, trying to get her sisters’ attention. Her big sister buried her face in the book, pretending to hear nothing; her second sister held her finger to her lips and kept saying, “Shh,” to her. Why were they so cold and indifferent to her? What had she done to offend and annoy them? It was a mystery she never understood to the end, to the end.

Several old women who had gathered together to sew
The Selected Works of Chairman Mao
beckoned to Quan. They were tired of sewing and needed a break, and Quan was a cute living plaything to amuse them. They clapped at Quan from far away and called her darling and honey. She immediately dropped her bucket and shovel with a clatter and staggered toward the women.

She got onto the small road, the one in front of Building Number 6 that people walked on every day. When Tiao noticed that Quan had disappeared from her view, she put down her book and stood up. She didn’t want Quan to get too far and was about to call her back, not out of love but out of a sense of duty. Maybe she could ask Fan to call her back, and if they couldn’t get her back with their voices, they could physically drag her back. Fan stood right beside her. Then they saw something that they had never seen before, and events unfolded quickly. A manhole cover lay in the middle of the road, and Quan was walking toward the open manhole. In fact, she had already reached the edge. Fan must have seen the open hole and Quan at the edge, because she seized Tiao’s hand. It was unclear whether she wanted to grab her sister’s hand and rush to the manhole, or if she was asking her sister for permission to run to the hole.

Tiao and Fan held each other’s hands, and their hands were ice-cold; neither of them moved. They stood ten or fifteen metres away from Quan. Both of them were aware that she was still going forward, until she finally went into the hole. When Quan suddenly spread her arms and dove in as if she were flying, Fan’s hand felt a gentle pull from Tiao’s cold, stiff hand. She would remember this pull of Tiao’s on her hand forever; it was a memory she couldn’t erase all her life, and would become the evidence, illusory and real, by which she would accuse Tiao in the future.

Tiao would also always remember their holding hands that day, as well as her tug on Fan’s hand. The gesture was subtle but definite. Was it to stop Fan, a gesture of control, or a signal that something was coming to an end? Was it satisfaction for a great accomplishment, or a reflex action at the height of fear? Was it a hint at their alliance, or a groan out of the depths of their guilt?

Few things stay in a person’s lifelong memory. Major events are often easy to forget, and it’s those trivial things that can’t be brushed away, as, for example, in such and such a year, in such and such a month, on such and such a day, the tiny tug that someone gave on another’s hand.

2

Quan disappeared from the earth forever. For a long time after her death, Wu interrogated Tiao almost every day. “Didn’t you see that the cover was off the manhole?

“No, I didn’t.”

“Did you hear those old women call Quan over?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Then when did you notice Quan was not in front of you?”

“When I couldn’t see her.”

“Why didn’t you follow her when you saw what was happening?”

“I didn’t see anything, and I didn’t know she was walking towards the hole.”

“You didn’t know there was a manhole there?”

“I knew the manhole was always covered.”

“You didn’t even see it when Quan walked to the edge of the manhole?”

“I didn’t see it.”

“But you should have, because you were her sister.”

“I just didn’t. Fan can tell you.”

Fan quietly came over and Tiao grabbed her hand. She didn’t need to open her mouth. Their hand-holding was the proof of their mutual support, and innocence. The interrogation continued. “Then what did you actually see?”

“I saw a crowd of people surrounding the manhole, and Fan and I ran over.”

“Were they those old women who had called her over?”

“Yes, they were there, and two passersby on their bikes. Later … there was you.”

“Don’t talk nonsense. I know I was there.”

Wu couldn’t go on; tears streamed down and covered her whole face. She then turned from the interrogation of her daughters to people outside the family. She knocked on the neighbours’ doors over and over, and went to the homes of those old women who had witnessed what had happened. She stared at them, her hair dishevelled and her clothes unkempt, forcing them in a hard voice to talk about what had happened that day. She was much harsher to them than to Tiao, unloading on outsiders all her grief at the loss of her beloved daughter and the anger that she couldn’t release at home.

She hated these women, hated them for treating Quan as a plaything because they had no other distractions. If they hadn’t gathered there to sew
The Selected Works of Chairman Mao,
they wouldn’t have seen Quan. If they hadn’t seen Quan, who at the time was shovelling dirt under a tree, they wouldn’t have called to her, and Quan wouldn’t have walked into the manhole. “Who are you to have called to my daughter like that? Who are you? How irresponsible you are! Do you treat your own grandchildren so recklessly? You didn’t even warn her! You … you …” She was hysterical and even fainted once at one of the old women’s houses. The old woman pressed down on the pressure point under her nose and blew cold water onto her face to wake her up. The neighbours didn’t like to hear those words from her, words that got harder and harder to listen to, but they understood how she felt and didn’t take offence. Besides, those old women did feel guilty about the incident. They hadn’t seen the open manhole in the middle of the road; they saw only the angelic little Quan flap her arms, run toward them, and then disappear suddenly. Not until her sudden disappearance from the earth did they notice that the manhole in her path was open and the cover had been moved to the side. So one of the old women told Wu, “The key issue is not the manhole in the road—the manhole has always been there. The question is who opened the manhole and why the cover was not moved back.”

The old woman’s words echoed Wu’s thoughts. She also believed the key issue was who could have been so evil as to remove the manhole cover. No one in the Design Academy admitted to having opened the manhole. According to the Academy’s revolutionary committee, none of the plumbers had worked on anything involving the manhole or sewage on that Sunday. Maybe it was some bad kid trying to cause trouble. Every complex had them, like the boy who tried to make Fan lick soap. They were children, not even in middle school yet, bent on imitating older hooligans—bad little kids always wanted to be bad big ones. She resented them the way she resented those old women who sewed
The Selected Works of Chairman Mao,
but where was the proof? If their purpose in lifting the manhole cover was to sell it to the scrap-collecting station for cigarettes, then why hadn’t they taken the cover away? The cover had been left beside the manhole. There was no evidence and nobody came forward to supply any.

In the quiet depths of the night, Wu often wept in the wide, empty bed, hugging to her the unfinished outfit of Quan’s she’d been working on that day. She would think that perhaps she shouldn’t have given birth to Quan. Why would she have given birth to her? Had she done it as a sort of memento of her relationship with Dr. Tang? Before Quan was born, Dr. Tang didn’t even know the child was his. Wu didn’t tell him, but she was sure the baby was his and she was willing to keep such a child in her life. The child would be a constant reminder of her secrets. She didn’t tell Dr. Tang, because she was afraid he would force her to go to the hospital to have an abortion. She knew intuitively that Dr. Tang didn’t really love her, and that her longing for him outweighed his need for her. The roots of that longing were mysterious to her. It seemed to be longing that drove her sexual desire, but then again laziness brought about her longing in the first place. Laziness allowed her to avoid many responsibilities but also prevented her from planning for the future in her relationship with others. Maybe even her so-called memento came from her laziness—she was too lazy to use birth control. As a married woman, she had such freedom in these matters, unlike an unmarried girl like Fei. While Fei was miserably gagged with gauze in the operating room late at night, Wu could walk into the ob-gyn in broad daylight to give birth to a child who was not her husband’s. How legitimate and righteous marriage was! How secretive and filthy marriage was! She sobbed and thought this might be what people called karma. It was the punishment that God sent her for conducting her life so badly and shirking her responsibilities. She’d decided on her own, and audaciously, to give birth to Quan. She brought Quan into this world recklessly, and did she really think it had been for the child’s benefit? Everything was like a dream, starting with the sick leave and ending with Quan’s disappearance, which should put an end to her relationship with Dr. Tang. Only now did she truly dare to take a close look at her family, to consider her loved ones. She had been afraid of looking at her family, of thinking about them. And always she had been more afraid of her daughter Tiao than of her husband. She was certain that nothing escaped Tiao’s eyes. The child could turn the world upside down when she thought it necessary.

But who could say that Yixun hadn’t picked up the scent of her infidelity? In the last two years, he rarely came home except on holidays and during the change of seasons in spring and autumn. If Tiao and Fan complained, he would just say the farm was busy and it was difficult to get leave. When Wu sent him a telegram informing him of Quan’s birth, he didn’t come back until a week later. Wu had spent a lot of time thinking about this telegram. Her original impulse was not to have Yixun around when she was in labour. It would be too difficult for Yixun and too disrespectful to him. Even though he probably did not know anything, she still didn’t want to take the risk. She would rather have no one close by and simply welcome the baby on her own. It would seem odd, though, to give birth all by herself, like an admission that there was ambiguity and deception involved in having the child, an admission that she lacked the courage to let the baby face the man whom she called husband. She wouldn’t let that happen. Muddling through, if at all possible, was the guiding principle of her life. So she had sent a telegram to the Reed River Farm. She sent the telegram, but he took his time in arriving. His delay was enough to make her wonder, but at the time she didn’t even have the courage to wonder. She just kept moving. When he arrived, she leaned back to the head of the bed and pulled up the quilt that covered her body, and then she picked up a glass from the nightstand and swallowed a few gulps of tea. Moving could relieve nervousness sometimes, so she kept moving. Finally, she reached under the covers for Quan and presented the baby to Yixun, who was standing beside the bed.