Waiting (33 page)

Along with their dysentery, the babies' nightly wakefulness was also cured. Now they would go to sleep early in the evening and remain peaceful until daybreak. Even when they were given the bottle at midnight and when their father changed their diapers, they would make no noise. Their normal sleep made it possible for their parents to spend some time together in the evening. After the babies fell asleep, Lin and Manna often lounged on the sofa, chatting or watching news or a movie on TV. At last they could enjoy a little peace.

One evening in late November there was a featured report on TV entitled "To Get Rich Is Glorious," which showed how some people in the South had responded to the Party's call and grown affluent. A young man had bought dried mushrooms and ginseng roots from Manchuria and sold them in Fujian Province at higher prices, and within five years he owned seven stores in different cities. An engineer had quit his regular job and made a fortune by running two chicken farms, which employed 130 hands. A middle-aged woman had opened a clothing shop just three years ago, but now she had become a local magnate and had hired sixty workers to make fashionable garments in her shop. At the last Spring Festival she donated ten thousand yuan to an elementary school, so she was admitted into the Communist Party and elected a model citizen. Every one of these entrepreneurs became a legendary figure. A few years ago their ways of making money had been illegal, but now the nouveaux riches were held up as examples for the masses to follow.

Manna was grating turnips over a terra-cotta basin, while Lin, never interested in making money, was reading a back issue of
Popular Medicine,
fascinated by an article about a folk way of getting rid of kidney stones. As he was wondering why sesame oil and walnuts were prescribed in the recipe, the woman reporter announced on TV, "Now we have another rich man, from Feidong County, Anhui Province. Comrade Geng Yang."

At the mention of that name, Manna let out a moan and dropped the steel grater into the basin. Lin turned his head and asked, "What's wrong?"

She didn't respond, her eyes riveted on the TV screen. He turned and saw Geng Yang's face growing larger and closer. It was almost the same as eleven years before, sallow and long, only less stern and marked with a few wrinkles. Geng Yang had some gray hair now, but he was bulkier and darker, a picture of health.

The young reporter asked him, "Are you the richest man in Fei-dong County?"

He beamed, licking his upper lip. "Well, I never thought I could get rich. I owe it entirely to our Party's great policy." Behind him a crane was hoisting a load of bricks onto a building under construction. Three clusters of white sparks were radiating from welding torches in the air. Somewhere a steam hammer was clanking rhythmically.

"How much did you make last year?" The woman raised the microphone close to his mouth.

"Twenty thousand yuan."

"Wow, that's about twenty times the amount you pay a worker. How come you made so much?"

His eyes flickered as though fireflies were flitting in his pupils. Manna recognized the same lustful look in those eyes. "Well," he said, "this construction company used to lose money all the time. Three years ago they set up a new policy: Whoever managed this company would get ten percent of its profit; but if the company lost money again, the manager would have to pay three percent of the loss out of his own pocket. Nobody would take the risk of steering such a sinking boat. I was the daredevil that stepped in to try." He tipped his head back and gave a hearty laugh.

"How did you make this company profitable within a year?"

"By strengthening discipline and order, by rewarding and punishing the workers fairly and strictly. Everyone here must do his job efficiently, or else we'll dock a certain amount from his wages. Now the company is organized like an army unit – a battalion, I should say. Each team must carry out its task on time, and I hold its leaders responsible for any delay and sloppy work."

"How about this year? How much profit do you expect to get personally?"

"Probably twenty-three thousand."

"So you're having another banner year?"

"Yes. "

"Thank you, Manager Geng."

As the camera panned away from Geng Yang to a roaring bulldozer on the construction site, Manna burst out sobbing, wiping her cheeks with the sleeve of her shirt. Meanwhile Lin was flabbergasted at Geng Yang's appearance on TV. How could that devil be doing so well? So full of vitality? Enjoying so much fortune and publicity? No wonder Honggan had called him a lucky dog at their wedding last winter.

Lin got to his feet and went over to Manna as she was screaming, " It's unfair, unfair!"

"Shh, don't wake up the babies." He sat down beside her, removed the half-grated turnip from her hand and put it into the basin. He held her hand, lifted it up, and pressed it against his cheek. Her fingers were still wet and flecked with bits of turnip, giving off a pungent smell.

"How come an evil man like him can get rich and famous so easily?" she asked. "The Lord of Heaven has no eyes!"

Lin sighed, shaking his head. "Life's always like this, ridiculous – a monster thrives for a thousand years, while the good suffer and die before their time."

"How I'm scared of him!" she moaned in tears.

He turned and embraced her, whispering, "Don't be scared. He's not here. I won't let him hurt you."

Gently he twisted the tip of her ear to calm her down, as though she were a little girl who had just come in from a pitch-black night. He went on murmuring, "Don't be scared." She put her arms around him and buried her face in his chest.

His words and the warmth of his body invoked in her the old overpowering pain that had arisen from the absence of consolation during the first days after the rape eleven years before, so now she simply couldn't stop crying, holding him tight and whimpering incoherently. Something in her chest snapped as tears flowed out of her eyes. It was so good to have a trustworthy friend in whose arms she could cry without feeling embarrassed, without being afraid of the kind of ridicule unleashed by the hostile world, without worrying about becoming the target of endless gossip and mockery, and without having to say, "Forgive me." For the first time she was weeping with abandon, like a child. Her tears soaked the front of his woolen vest. Her thick hair kept touching his chin. He grew tearful too and stroked the nape of her neck.

From that night on, they slept in the same bed again. Many days in a row Manna had nightmares, which were bizarre and indecipherable. In one of them, she was on her way to a nunnery atop a mountain, carrying the twins on her back. It was a sunny day, the breeze sweet-scented, full of scattered blossoms. As she approached a reservoir, which she had to cross to reach the mountain, an old man in a conical bamboo hat was coming along the rocky dam from the opposite direction. From the distance she couldn't see his face clearly, but his gait was so tottery that he didn't look dangerous. The babies on her back were sleeping, exhausted by the heat, saliva dribbling from the corners of their opened mouths.

As the man was coming closer, suddenly a gust of wind blew his hat off, revealing his face. It was Geng Yang! Manna was too shocked to shout or escape. He rushed over, grabbed her by the scruff of the neck, snatched the twins off her back, and ran away along the dam. She shouted while chasing him, "Give them back to me! Geng Yang, you can do anything to me if you give my babies back! I promise I'll come to you if you let them go." The babies were screaming and kicking their legs.

Without turning his head, Geng Yang swerved and ran down the dam toward a sandy bar, his boots throwing up a thin mist of dust. She was gasping for breath, but went on pursuing him. Then she saw him put the twins each into a giant wooden shoe, which he pushed into the water. A wind came and blew the shoes away toward the center of the vast reservoir. He burst out laughing. "Now you lost your sons. See if you dare to report me again!"

She collapsed on the ground, shouting, "I've never reported you. Please, please, I beg of you, have a heart, bring them back for me!"

"No, they're on their way to see the Dragon Emperor in the Water Palace, ha-ha-ha. "

"Lin! Come and help me!" she called out.

"That chicken can't do a thing," Geng Yang said.

"Lin – come and save our children!" she yelled again. Still Lin was nowhere to be seen.

At this moment Mai Dong, her first love, came out of the osier bushes on the bank and began capering about on the beach. He waved his hands and then clapped them above his head, chanting to her merrily, "You can't have them back! You can't have them back!" He was still in his mid-twenties, wearing the army uniform and a crew cut.

She became murderous and picked up a few large cobblestones and threw them at Geng Yang and Mai Dong with all her might.

"Ouch!" Lin yelled as Manna's fist landed on his forehead. He pulled the lamp cord, and the blinding light woke her up. She kept rubbing her eyes.

"Why hit me like that? Oh, my eyes – " Lin stopped, seeing his wife in tears, her face horror-stricken.

"Sorry, sorry, I was having a terrible dream," she said and turned aside. "I dreamed that we lost our children and couldn't get them back." She began sobbing while her arm covered the sleeping babies.

Lin sighed. "Don't think too much, darling."

"I won't," she said. "You go back to sleep now."

He turned off the light and soon resumed snoring softly. Meanwhile Manna's eyes were wide open, watching the clouds being torn to strips by the bare branches waving outside the window. She was wondering why Lin hadn't appeared in her dream, whereas Mai Dong had turned up and ridiculed her so maliciously. What does this mean? she asked herself. Why didn't Lin come to our rescue? Where was he? Is he really too timid to fight to protect us? Why was Mai Dong as mean as that bastard Geng Yang?

Question after question rose to her mind, but she couldn't answer any of them. Her thoughts were in disorder.

Outside, the moon was pale, wavering beyond the dark treetops. The wind was howling and reminded her of the wolves she had often heard at night when she was a child in the orphanage.

Manna's heart grew weaker, her pulse more irregular and sometimes thready. Severe pains occurred in her chest and left arm, and at nightfall she would feel dizzy and short of breath. Her heart murmur often turned into a gallop rhythm. The results of a new examination shocked Doctor Yao, an expert in cardiopathy. One afternoon, holding Manna's X-ray against a desk lamp in his office, Doctor Yao told Lin, "Medication may not help her anymore. I'm afraid she doesn't have many years left. Heaven knows why her condition has deteriorated so rapidly."

Hearing the prognosis, Lin almost broke into tears. He said in a choked voice, "Why – why did I let this happen? I'm a doctor, why didn't I detect the real condition of her heart?" He covered his face with both hands.

"Lin, don't blame yourself. We all knew she had a heart problem, but we didn't expect infarction would develop so soon. Some of her coronary vessels must have been blocked long ago."

"Oh, I should have known this. I told her not to eat too many eggs, but she wouldn't listen." Lin struck his knee with his fist.

Doctor Yao sighed. "I wish we had diagnosed it."

"So there's no cure?"

"I've heard some experts in Europe can dilate the coronary arteries, but the technology is not available in our country."

"What should I do?"

"Lin, I'm sorry. " Doctor Yao held Lin's upper arm and shook it gently, meaning he had no idea either. "But you must not be too emotional. Cheer up a little – she depends on you." He paused for a moment while Lin rubbed his stomach with the palm of his hand as though assuaging a pain. Doctor Yao went on, "Don't let her do any physical work, don't make her lose her temper, just make life easy for her."

Lin lowered his head and muttered, "I'll try my best."

"If I were you, I wouldn't tell her about her heart condition, just keep her happy."

"I won't let her know, of course."

Despite Lin's effort to guard the secret, word of Manna's illness soon began circulating in the hospital. The rumor went wild and even claimed that she would definitely die within a year. In a few weeks Manna heard about the true condition of her heart, but she took it with surprising serenity, saying to Lin that she knew her life would be over soon. Her words distressed him.

As she got weaker, her temper became worse. She often yelled at Juli and Lin; sometimes she cried for no apparent reason, like a self-willed child.

Lin tried to do as much housework as he could. He washed diapers on weekends when Juli didn't come to work. In midwinter the tap water was ice cold. His hands ached and itched while he scrubbed at the faucet in front of the house. He had never expected that washing laundry would be a part of his married life. Throughout those years before the marriage, he had washed only his socks and underwear since Manna did his laundry for him. Now, a pile of diapers would be waiting for him every weekend. He dared not complain or think too much, for things could be worse. In spite of all the difficulties, they could afford to hire a maid and he didn't have to wash laundry on weekdays.

On Saturday evenings he would carry out to the faucet a load of baby clothes and diapers and a kettle of hot water, which he would pour over two or three fistfuls of soap powder, and then he would soak the laundry in the suds for a moment. Under the mercury street lamp, the water would glisten in the large basin. Through the loudspeaker atop the roof of the medical building, a soft female voice often sang "A Large River Long and Wide" and "The Five-Starred Red Flag Flies High." Lin would set the washboard against the rim of the sink and start scrubbing the laundry piece by piece with a squishing sound. Soon the detergent water lost its suds and turned cold, and he had to blow on his fingers again and again in order to continue. The toughest part was to rinse the soaped, scrubbed laundry, because there was no hot water available after the initial soak and the tap water was so cold it seemed to bite his fingers with teeth. Yet he kept washing quietly and always avoided greeting those who came to fetch water.