The Bathing Women (34 page)

Chen Zai had to take her glass from her, saying to Fan, “I’ll empty this glass for your sister. She … she can’t do it.” Fan’s eyes misted over. Everything she didn’t have was here, and the greatest luxury was the mysterious unspoken understanding between this Asian man and woman. She envied this and felt a longing to be with an Asian man. She remembered a college classmate of hers when she was studying in Beijing. They had a crush on each other. A native of the Shandong countryside, he once told Fan about his childhood; his family was poor and he was adopted by his uncle after his parents died. He always remembered how, at his father’s funeral, a family elder patted his head and sighed: “Poor child, you won’t have a good life from now on.” He kept the words in his heart and used them as motivation to study hard and to fight for a good life. Other children often bullied him, and he would be sure to get back at them. His mode of vengeance was unique; he would take a small knife and bring along some Sichuan hot peppercorns to the courtyard of his enemy’s house. If there was no one around, he would use the knife to cut into a poplar tree and bury the hot peppercorns. The next day the poplar tree would begin to die. Those who had bullied him all paid by having their poplar trees killed in this way. Too young to take revenge on people, he got back at their trees instead. Fan thought him unusual but wasn’t altogether sure if embedded Sichuan peppercorns would really kill trees. She asked him where he got the idea, and he said it was from a beggar passing through from the neighbouring town. Fan stared at the poplar trees on campus, sorely tempted to bury some Sichuan peppercorns in one. In the end, she didn’t, hoping to let the story stay a story. The truth of a story is more fascinating than reality, and lends charm to the teller. Fan simply believed that a man should be like her classmate, who had great ideas, ideas out of the ordinary. Only after she met David did the poplar killer fade from her memory. Now she thought about him again. On this quiet night, a night drinking Five Grain Liquor and with Chen Zai and Tiao’s hearts resonating with each other, the man she was thinking about was not David, but her college classmate, maybe because he was Chinese. Fan had never dated a Chinese man.

The three of them spent the night in Villa Number One, with Tiao and Fan sharing a bedroom. Both a little bit drunk, they lay, each in her own bed, carrying on an intermittent conversation. Fan said, “Are you attracted to Chen Zai?”

Tiao said, “Chen Zai is married.”

Fan said, “His being married and your being attracted or not are two completely different matters. Why don’t you answer my question directly?”

“I’m not attracted to him. I’m not attracted to any man right now.”

“You’re lying.”

“No, I’m not.”

Fan asked, “What if I were attracted to Chen Zai?” Tiao said nothing. Fan continued, “Look how scared you are, so scared that you can’t say a word.”

“That’s enough. Stop being foolish.”

Fan sighed. “You’re right not to let yourself be attracted to him. Don’t expect a married man to have any true feelings for you.” Her feelings of superiority surfaced as she said this, and she was about to use herself and David as an example. David had been unattached when they got together. But Tiao didn’t reply. She fell asleep, or pretended to.

They ate, drank, and slept late, and didn’t go back to Fuan until the next afternoon. As soon as they arrived, Wu announced cheerfully that the whole family was going to eat Japanese food that night. Wasn’t Japanese food very expensive in America? She had already called the restaurant and made the reservation. Fan knitted her eyebrows slightly and said, “Does Fuan have a Japanese restaurant?”

Wu said, “Yes, it just opened.” Yixun said its raw ingredients, steak, and fish were all shipped from Kobe to Tianjing first, and then came from Tianjing to Fuan by air. Still feeling troubled, Fan said she had to wait for a while to decide about going out because she thought her stomach hurt a little, after which she went back to her own room and lay in bed. She seemed unhappy, and the fact that Fuan had a Japanese restaurant seemed to make her unhappy.

Wu and Yixun both felt a little disappointed, but still went to her and asked her patiently, “Why would you have an upset stomach? Did you eat anything spoiled at Mei Mountain Villa?”

Fan said, “I don’t know. Maybe.”

Tiao immediately said, “It can’t be. Why is my stomach fine?”

Fan said, “I’m different from you. Don’t you know that I’m not used to the environment here? I had diarrhoea the second day after I came back. “

“If you’d been having stomach problems, then you shouldn’t blame the food in the villa.”

“I wasn’t blaming. I just said maybe.”

“But you implied it.”

Suddenly Fan sat up in the bed and said, “I know what you mean better than you know what’s going on with me. Just because your friends treated me to food, entertainment, a sauna, and a driving tour, should I be spouting thank-yous every minute? Do I have to compliment everything? Why do you need people’s gratitude so much? Why should I thank you? What have you done to make me thank you?”

Disgusted by Fan’s sulky and difficult attitude, Tiao also got angry and said, “Haven’t you just come back from civilized America? How come you haven’t learned the basic civilized act of appreciation for other people’s kindness?”

Fan was now completely enraged by Tiao’s sarcasm, and maybe she welcomed the provocation so that she could let out her irrational anger all at once. Even if Tiao hadn’t supplied a provocation, she would have picked a fight with her. Otherwise, the indignation pent up in her chest would find no outlet and she would have no peace with herself. Now the chance to get her own back had come. She looked at Tiao coldly and said, “Appreciate other people’s kindness? It’s your kindness you want me to appreciate, right? But I’m sorry. I don’t plan to. Because every time we’ve gone out to eat, other people have paid. Taking the sauna and staying in the villa were Chen Zai’s gift. Why would I thank you?”

Yixun broke in, “How unkind of you to say that. To welcome you home, your older sister took several days off work and drove to Beijing herself to pick you up—”

Fan interrupted Yixun. “I was going to mention the car. That’s the Publishing House’s car. What does it show when she drives a government car to take care of personal business? Yes, you all live a pretty comfortable life here, but it’s at the cost of corruption and darkness. You thought I would envy you? And those friends of yours! That shabby restaurant that changes its prices for different customers is simply vulgar. Only in China can that sort of thing happen! And still you people blab about it with such enthusiasm and you …” On and on she poured out the vicious words, in a way that reminded Tiao of street people who stop ranting only long enough to pick up their bowls to eat and then put them down to shout again. Remembering how Fan loved the crispy turnip puffs at Youyou’s Small Stir-Fry and how she asked Tiao to bring some home after the dinner, Tiao was completely baffled by Fan, not knowing where her towering rage came from. Wu also tried to calm Fan. “Stop, now. Get a hot-water bottle to warm your stomach. We’ll still try to go to the Japanese restaurant in the evening.”

Fan immediately directed her anger at Wu. “I really don’t understand why you constantly ask me to go out and eat. Especially you, Mum. Since I was a little girl, how many meals have you cooked? What can you cook? Why don’t I have any idea? Now that I’ve come back from so far away, why can’t I just stay home for a while? Why do I have to sit in restaurants all the time? I’m not going. I’m not going to eat Japanese food tonight. I don’t want to talk about eating every three sentences. I hate it that you Chinese can’t ever forget about eating. Eat, eat, eat. Why do you get so happy about just eating a bit of good food …?”

Having remained silent for a while, Tiao suddenly said with an air of pride, “Let me tell you: I’m exactly that kind of Chinese—I get very happy as soon as I eat something good.”

Fan knew Tiao was trying to make her angry. She couldn’t help wanting to slap her at this display of phony pride.

She hated Tiao.

4

They fought. Fan stayed in China for only a month, and they fought almost from the moment Fan got off the plane to the moment she got back on the plane. Strangely, Fan’s complexion was getting better and better day by day. She also put on weight and got some colour in her face. All this seemed to be the result of the arguments: she felt at ease in her homeland, both physically and mentally. She argued in Chinese and when she was tired or hungry afterwards, she lapped up Chinese porridge and ate Chinese food. At the end of the day, she could sleep without worrying about appearances—she could sleep late in a Chinese way.

In the aftermath of every argument with Tiao, she’d feel refreshed and relieved, which frightened her a little, and made her wonder if she had come back to China to fight with people. No, it wasn’t something she’d intended, but somehow she couldn’t help it.

In between the fights, when she consumed with relish the plain rice porridge, the porridge with red beans or pork, and the preserved eggs that Americans would never touch, when she found her sister Tiao didn’t hate her at all but even tried to please her, she felt a little guilty. Guilt brought temporary peace to their home, as if nothing had happened—as if Fan had never gone abroad and still wore that expression of hers when she’d come home from high school and toss the swollen bulk of her fake-leather backpack onto the desk, sending out a burst of overripe classroom smells. Once, rushing back from a mediocre performance on a college entrance exam, she was like that, lips parched, face pale and dripping hot sweat, saying, “Bad, bad, bad,” in a trembling voice as soon as she entered … Tiao missed that Fan with a helpless face; her nervousness and helplessness were more genuine and convincing than her arrogance and toughness.

When they were calm, they managed some small talk. Fan praised David’s talents and complained about his naïveté. She said once David saw an old baby bottle—and insisted on spending fifteen dollars on it just because it looked like the one he had used when he was little. The old milk bottle could bring him back to the good days of childhood. Fan said, how could an old milk bottle be worth fifteen dollars? But he insisted on buying it anyway. Tiao said, “That makes sense. It’s human nature to want to look back on the past. You two don’t share the same past and he can’t reminisce with you, so he wants to indulge in a little nostalgia through an old milk bottle.” Fan immediately got touchy again. She said, “It’s true that I don’t have that past with David. When he talks about his childhood with his cousins I always shut up. I only have the present. The present. So what?”

Tiao said, “You have a past. Your past is in China. I don’t understand why you have to banish your past, our common past. Those high school classmates of yours—why don’t you have any desire to see them?”

“It’s not that I don’t want to see them now. I never had anything to say to them.”

Tiao said, “One of my high school classmates went to Australia. Every time he came back, he would have a reunion with his classmates. I went to the reunions quite a few times, not what you’d call intellectual but very touching. He’d been in my class since the sixth grade and liked literature—although there was no real literature back then. Once our teacher assigned us to write a composition titled ‘Our Classroom,’ and this classmate wrote, ‘Many of the windowpanes in our room are broken, as if our classroom’s face were smiling.’ His composition was severely criticized by our teacher, who believed he’d insulted our classroom by making the pattern of broken windows into the personification of a smiling face. This classmate explained that that was what he sincerely imagined, and that he didn’t think broken windows would necessarily make a place look desolate and embarrassing; they truly gave him feelings of happiness and freedom because then he could look outside during class without anything blocking his view.” Tiao said many years later his classmates still remembered what he’d written. At the reunion, when someone recited from this old composition—”Many windowpanes in our room are broken, as if our classroom’s face were smiling …”—people smiled, as if they had travelled back in time to become their younger selves.

Fan said, “Are you comparing me to your classmate in Australia? You know how I hate that. I hate it that you always compare me to others. If you go on, you’ll probably give me a series of examples—so and so bought a house for his family when he came back, or so and so got ten of his relatives out of the country after he went abroad … just the sort of thing Mum has been nagging about. This is exactly what I can’t stand—this sick attitude that Chinese people have about going abroad. They believe people go abroad to get rich, that everyone who went abroad should get rich. Why do you put so much pressure on people who have gone abroad? Why do I have to listen to you even about whether or not I should see my high school classmates?”

Tiao said, “You’re being unfair. No one in our family wants you to get rich abroad. We just want you to have a peaceful and happy life. And if you talk nonsense, ignoring the simple truth, then there is a problem with your character.”

Tiao’s stern words overpowered Fan’s bluster a little bit, but then she used Yixun as an example. “And Dad pressured me in other ways. He kept asking me why I didn’t get a PhD degree. It’s my business whether I want to get a PhD or not. I’d like someone to tell me why Dad doesn’t push you to get a PhD. You don’t even have a master’s but you seem successful. How did I become the one who didn’t try hard enough? What kind of person do I have to be to satisfy you all?”

There was an interval of awkward silence.

Tiao said, “You’re too sensitive. Since when have you become so sensitive? Why do you hate life in China so much?”

“I’m disgusted by your fraud and tax evasion—you told me yourself that you never pay taxes for most of your extra income. This is your so-called good life. Do you know that in America you’d go to prison for evading taxes?”

“Yes, I’ve evaded tax, but I think you’re not angry about my tax evasion, but about the fact that you can’t do it yourself.”