The Bathing Women (25 page)

It was indeed an era when celebrities were idolized and talent revered, so much so that all Fang Jing’s capricious and extravagant behaviour was blindly rationalized by Tiao. It truly was blindness, of a new sort, derived from the pursuit of civilization, progress, and openness, that allowed the public to accept martyred celebrities with such enthusiasm. When Tiao, a victim of this blindness, told Fei everything about Fang Jing, Fei just sneered at Tiao’s affair. “Never get involved with a married man!” she warned Tiao from the very beginning.

Never get involved with a married man.

“But he’s no ordinary married man!” Tiao defended herself.

“What’s so unusual about him? Does he have three legs? Who gives him the right to divorce his wife and beg to marry you while he keeps chasing other women nonstop? Who gives him the right?” Fei said in disgust.

Tiao said, “I’m willing to forgive him everything. You don’t know how much he suffered!”

Fei snorted and said, “Don’t give me that crap over the little bit of suffering he’s had to bear. Academically, I’m not as good as you two—I didn’t go to any fucking university—but I despise Fang Jing’s kind, who hold up a high-powered telescope to their suffering. They magnify it infinitely, until society has no room for any other but theirs. Their suffering is everywhere, and everyone owes them, left and right. Don’t others suffer? Are we not supposed to because we’re young? What is suffering? Real suffering can’t be told, unlike in the movies and novels … Don’t you know that if suffering can be put into words, then it’s no deep thing?”

Tiao’s face turned red and she said, “I don’t know, and I don’t want to know, either.”

“Didn’t I just tell you? Why do you still not know? Do you pretend you don’t know, or do you really not know?”

Tiao said, “I know you suffered a lot and you haven’t found love. But I’ve found love, and love can heal suffering. I’ve been trying hard to love—”

Fei interrupted Tiao and said, “What the fuck is love? The most fragile thing in the world. I noticed long ago how you lost your head over ‘love.’ I really hoped you and Fang Jing could eventually marry, but I’m sure that Fang Jing won’t marry you. And if he doesn’t, it’ll be the biggest blessing of your life.”

“Fei, don’t talk to me like that. Don’t say such unlucky things.”

“My God,” Fei said. “My words might be a little unlucky, but think about it, what about Fang Jing was lucky for you? Which of the things he said to you and did to you was lucky? How many men have you known so far? What the fuck do you know about men?”

Fei’s rough talk brought the past back to Tiao. She remembered when Captain Sneakers took Fei away from Youyou’s house, when he slapped Fei, and Tiao questioned him in a shrill voice about why he would hit her, and he said to Tiao in contempt, “You know fucking nothing.”

Their words might be rough, not educated or elegant enough, but only years later did Tiao understand the truth in Fei’s rough words.

2

Generally speaking, truth is hard to take in; at least it’s not pleasing to the ears. But Fei’s true words sank into Tiao’s heart and were hard to dislodge. The harder she tried, the more they would move through her, circulating through the cracks in her soul. Reluctantly, she pretended she was waiting with all her heart for Fang Jing to divorce his wife and marry her, but in the end she had to admit to herself that her hopes for marriage had become increasingly faint.

Fang Jing told her about a recent, unconsummated “amorous encounter” of his with a painter in Guangzhou—he made the confession to get some credit for what he had done, and he really expected Tiao to be proud of him.

He said, “I stayed in the same hotel with the painter. We made each other’s acquaintance at dinner. She recognized me first and immediately introduced herself, adeptly spotting the key that I’d put on the table. She looked at my room number on it and said, ‘We’re actually neighbours!’ She was a big, strong woman with broad shoulders and back, who walked in strides—a bit slovenly and careless in her appearance. After dinner, she came to my room, asked me if I was working on anything new, and also brought me an album of her paintings published in Hong Kong—she’d just had a one-woman show in a gallery there. After a while, she asked me whether I was lonely or not. Before I said anything she said she was lonely. She recently had got divorced because her husband couldn’t stand her using male models, making it a rule that if she had to paint a male nude, he had to be over seventy or under fourteen. For that reason, he often showed up at her studio unannounced to check on her. But the checking hurt no one but himself. He found his wife didn’t really care about his rule; in her studio there were young men in immoral poses. When she got home, he grabbed her by the hair and beat her—he really couldn’t take the fact that there were so many male organs on display in front of his wife. The painter laughed at this point. She smoked, and cigarettes made her voice hoarse.

“She said to me, ‘So, my husband and I just broke up. I feel lonely, but it’s a free sort of loneliness. What about you? The newspapers say you have a happy family. Actually you’re also lonely. And your loneliness is worse than mine, because yours is not free.’

“I responded, ‘How do you know I’m lonely?’ She said that my question was naïve. All highly intelligent people are inherently lonely. She looked at me meaningfully, with either the eyes of a painter studying a model, or those of a woman looking at a man. I wasn’t sure which—maybe both. Whichever it was, her eyes were confident, confident about her charms and my inability to resist them. I didn’t feel nervous with her; this type of woman doesn’t make me nervous. But to be honest with you, I didn’t want to make love to her, not that I looked down on her, but—Tiao—I really thought about you at that moment. I felt I should save myself for you. This I’d told myself thousands of times, although I was often unable to do it—but I did this time. I swear to you I did it for you. Seeing that I didn’t respond to her, she simply stood up, took the pipe from my hand, and put it on the table. Then she took me by the hand and said, ‘Come.’ I didn’t want to, so I picked up my pipe and continued to smoke, puffing jets and billows, as if to use the smoke to shield myself from her attack. Indeed, she did stop, and said with a sigh, ‘I guess you must have someone you love very much.’

“I said, ‘Yes, I do have someone that I love very much.’

“She said, ‘Can you tell me what kind of woman she is?’

“I said, ‘Sorry. I can’t.’

“She said, ‘Why do you make simple things complicated? I don’t want to replace anyone.’

“I just kept saying, ‘I’m sorry, but I can’t.’ Tiao, do you know, when she came near me and took the pipe from my hand, I smelled something in her hair that I simply couldn’t stand? You know how important smell is between men and women. For me, if it isn’t right, there’s no way I can get aroused. I just couldn’t get used to hers, and I couldn’t even exactly describe what it was. In short, something that put off a man like me. The closer she came to me, the more unexcited—even limp—I got, until she left my room. What do you think, Tiao? Don’t I deserve praise? I beg you to congratulate me.”

Fang Jing thought Tiao would be moved by his story and proud of the loyalty shown on that occasion: his rare rejection of another woman, hard for him to believe it himself. He didn’t expect Tiao to fix on the “smell” aspect of his story.

“You claim you saved yourself for me, and then you said when she got near you smelled something in her hair that you couldn’t stand. A woman with the wrong scent simply couldn’t arouse you. So, what if her smell hadn’t put you off but, instead, aroused you when she approached? Would you still have saved yourself for me?”

He said, “You really surprise me. With a devoted heart, I tell you everything about the well-behaved me in Guangzhou, and I expect your encouragement and praise, but listen to you.”

“What do you want me to say, then? You make the basic moral code that a man should follow into a special case, an achievement to brag about, an unusual event that a woman should be thankful for, but even you admit that it was the woman’s smell that turned you off, right?”

“What I did wrong was that I was too truthful with you. I wanted to tell you everything, but instead you have to split hairs with me.”

“It’s not hair-splitting; it’s a fact! I’m never your priority. Your need—your need for the right smell is your priority. You thought I would be grateful to you? If I have to thank someone I should thank that painter with the wrong smell. It’s her smell that propelled you back to me. Isn’t that a fact?”

He said, “Can you just shut up and stop talking about ‘smell’?”

She said, “I’m very sorry, but I’m not the one who brought up ‘smell.’”

He said, “Okay, okay, okay. I mentioned it first, but why can’t you see the side of me that values and loves you? Why have you become so cutting and bitter?”

“Maybe I have got bitter—” Tiao said. Right then Fei’s warnings came to mind, which annoyed her and increased her anger. She was no longer the generous, forgiving Tiao who dreamed of saving Fang Jing. Her sense of her role had changed; she was judging his behaviour as Fang Jing’s would-be wife, and it made her cutting. She’d suddenly woken up to certain aspects of their relationship. The more she wanted to establish her everyday, number-one status in Fang Jing’s heart, the less she could accept his “truthfulness” as if she were a stranger to him. His “truthfulness” seemed like domination, a way to demean her rather than a demonstration of respect and trust for a partner. She told Fang Jing, “Maybe I have become bitter, but it’s hard for me to imagine anyone else accepting your truthfulness without getting bitter. Try and find such a person. Go find her …”

He said, “Why talk this way? Where do you want me to find her? How did you get so fussy?”

She despised the word “fussy,” especially the way Fang Jing labelled her with it. She reacted strongly—with panic—to their mutual criticism. To cover the panic, she tried to show her toughness to Fang Jing. She hated the toughness on her side but felt she had to keep going. She said, “Save your ‘fussy’ for someone else. I’m not the housewife in your family.”

Right then, he stopped talking. She had no choice but to ask him again and again, “What’s wrong? Why don’t you say something? Won’t you tell me what you’re thinking?”

He suddenly gazed at her as coldly as if she were a stranger. “I’m thinking of my daughter. I’m thinking that I’ve paid too little attention to her since meeting you. I’m thinking that maybe it’s time for me to go and see my daughter. I’m not a good father.”

It had the sound of self-criticism, but every word struck Tiao’s head and heart because what Fang Jing said about missing his daughter was merely a way to show Tiao her diminished importance and to express his regret about their relationship. She wanted to save their relationship, but, inexperienced as she was, she didn’t know how. Actually, it was a relationship that was headed nowhere, and Fang Jing had just signalled his withdrawal by accusing Tiao of being bitter and fussy. He was tired. She was also tired. He was tired and wanted to withdraw into his unfree sort of loneliness; she was tired but was still frantically willing to dive into the trap.

He was determined to distance himself from her. He had seen the way she’d matured; no longer the clay that he could mould any way he wanted, she didn’t appreciate his truthfulness and argued with him. She was no longer a kitten or puppy that could only nip, and even when it was very angry, the tiny pain it could cause would only remind you to pet it. She was no longer a kitten or a puppy, but a full-grown animal with fur and claws, everything necessary to cause a big stir. Animals of that size wouldn’t be easily controlled and might even turn on you.

He backed away.

Avoiding her, he didn’t take her phone calls or answer her letters. Because of this, Tiao wasted away day after day. She didn’t dare to look at the photographs of herself at the time, where what was left of her seemed to be two large sunken eyes. She suffered from insomnia, lack of appetite, and her hair withered and dried. She went to work reluctantly, and handled her duties at the Publishing House, but the plan for publishing a series of celebrities’ childhoods had disappeared long ago—without her connection with Fang Jing, how could she have any chance of doing it? When she was with Fang Jing, she turned love into her main concern and her profession into a sideline, and now he’d broken up with her as soon as the thought crossed his mind. She had to come up with a topic to work on while waiting for his reply. She considered doing a series called We Reap What We Sow. When the title occurred to her, she was pleased. But then she immediately associated it with her relationship with Fang Jing, which was certainly a we-reap-what-we-sow relationship. And she felt the name was deadly boring. She rejected it but had no other ideas. As she sat in her office, her brain often went blank for long periods.

Ashamed of herself, she stayed away from Fei. After a while, Fei came to the Publishing House to see her. Nothing escaped Fei; Tiao’s haggard, weakened look told her everything had turned out as she’d predicted; only she hadn’t expected it to happen so fast.

She sat across from Tiao, who pulled open a drawer and lowered her head, searching through it. Finally, she took out a bag of dried fish and tossed it to across the desk to Fei. She smiled at Fei, but the tears streamed down her face. They had already been welling up when she lowered her head to rummage around in the drawer. She’d kept her head down for a long time in order to control her tears, which Fei clearly saw dropping into the drawer. Many years before, in the alley in Fuan after the movie, when Fei told Tiao, “I don’t have a mother,” Fei had smiled this way, tears streaming. It was awkward to face dear friends, wanting to let emotions out and also wanting to keep them in. Fei had to move away. She stood up, walked to the window, and looked out for a while. Then she plopped her bottom down on the sill. Back against the window, she faced Tiao, her legs dangling, took out a cigarette, and lit it.

For a moment Tiao felt she was about to scream. Astonishment held back her tears. The office was on the fifteenth floor. Even though the window was closed and the sill was wide, the way Fei sat touched off an intense feeling of disquiet. Tiao couldn’t tell what was off-kilter: The scene outside was stable, the window frame was upright, then was it Fei? Tiao couldn’t say, but she was in the grip of nightmarish anxiety, unreal and real at the same time, just like the dream she kept having. In her recurrent dream, she had a full bladder and had to go to the bathroom. When she finally found one, and opened her legs to squat down, the pit suddenly collapsed and she was stained with shit all over … She suppressed her scream and waved to Fei to come down.