The Bathing Women (10 page)

Dr. Tang arrived, a very reserved man speaking perfect Beijing dialect. He didn’t have his white cap on, so it was the first time that Wu had seen his hair, brownish hair that made his small dark eyes look even darker. They exchanged some courtesies and sat down to dinner. Wu told Tiao and Fan to call him uncle, but Tiao insisted on calling him Dr. Tang and Fan followed her sister’s lead. Fan had a white plastic set of doctor toys, which included a syringe, a stethoscope, and a “kidney tray” for surgery. She showed these toys to Dr. Tang and said with regret that she didn’t have a thermometer, for which she often had to substitute a popsicle stick. If she found someone with a fever, she would give that person a shot. “If you have a fever, you need a shot, right, Dr. Tang?” She repeated the words “have a fever” in a high-pitched voice; for her all illness could be summed up in the words “have a fever.”

Have a fever.

Dr. Tang and Wu talked for a long time after dinner. He handed Wu a hardback copy of
The Family Medical Encyclopedia
and told her that there was a chapter dedicated to rheumatic heart disease. When Wu took the book from him, she noticed a loose thread on one of the sleeves of his jumper. She thought, why would she be so quick to tell Tiao and Fan that she was going to knit jumpers for them?

She bought a pure light grey woollen yarn and started to knit a jumper, leaning back against her pillow. She usually knitted during the daytime, after Tiao went to school, and also in the evening, after Tiao and Fan fell asleep. That made her look a little underhanded and evasive because she didn’t want her daughters to see her knit this jumper. But in a simple home like theirs, where could she hide it? Tiao eventually found the light grey half-finished item.

She was a little surprised and asked Wu, “This isn’t Fan’s jumper, is it? Didn’t you say that you were going to knit one for Fan?”

Wu grabbed the jumper back. “I did say that I was going to knit one for Fan, but I can knit one for myself first.”

“This is not a woman’s jumper. It’s not for you.” She stood beside Wu’s bed and seemed indignant.

The next day, when Wu unfolded the jumper to continue her work, she found that the sleeve she had almost finished the day before had disappeared.

4

The sleeve had to have been taken apart by Tiao. The knitting needles had vanished, and each row of stitches was undone—Wu had put her heart and soul into those stitches. She was furious, but couldn’t really allow herself to lose her temper. She clutched the unravelled jumper, kept her anger in check, and went to talk things over with Tiao. She thought it might take some effort to get Tiao to confess, and hadn’t expected it to be so easy. Tiao admitted it as soon as Wu asked, as if she were waiting for Wu to question her.

“Was it you who took the jumper apart?”

“It was me.”

“What did I do wrong, to have you unravel my jumper?”

“You said you were going to knit a jumper for Fan but you didn’t keep your promise.”

“Yes, I did say that. It was … I couldn’t find the rose yarn in the shop. I saw this kind, which was nice but more suitable for an adult—”

“What adult? Which adult?” Tiao interrupted Wu.

“Which adult?” Wu repeated Tiao’s question. “Me, for instance. Like me.” She lowered her voice.

“But this is not for you. This is a man’s jumper.” Tiao’s voice remained firm.

“How do you know this is for a man? You don’t even know how to knit.” Wu’s anger flared again.

“Of course I know. I’ve seen you knit before. I’ve seen you knit for Dad. Are you knitting it for Dad?” Tiao looked directly into Wu’s eyes.

“Yes … uh, no.” Wu seemed to be forced into a corner by Tiao. She knew if she continued saying that the jumper was for Yixun, she would look even more stupid than she already did. Maybe Tiao would immediately write to her dad and tell him that Mum was knitting for him. So she admitted that the jumper was for Dr. Tang. It was Dr. Tang who had asked her to knit a jumper for him. Dr. Tang was not married yet and he needed someone to take care of him. So she agreed to knit this for him. She was even going to try to find him a girlfriend … She didn’t know why she was babbling all of this to Tiao.

“Then why did you say you were knitting this for yourself?” Tiao still didn’t let it go.

Wu’s guilt turned into anger. She said, “What do you want? What do you really want from me? Why do you upset me so much? Don’t you know that I’m ill?”

“If you’re ill, then why do you spend so much time knitting?” Tiao didn’t back down.

“I spend so much time knitting because … because I hope to spend more time at home with you. Does my doing this bother you? Look at the other children in the Architectural Design Academy. Don’t they all have to stay home by themselves, pathetically wasting their lives? Not all parents are as lucky as we are: to be able to have one of us at home to take an interest in our children.”

Tiao didn’t say anything more. She was thinking Wu might be right, but mostly her mind was filled with doubt. Wu spoke about “taking an interest” but Tiao didn’t see any of it from her. She was not concerned about the sisters; didn’t notice Fan had lost her front tooth, and didn’t ask once what they had eaten every day in the last half a year. The way Tiao was mistreated for not knowing how to speak the Fuan dialect—Wu had never asked about any of this. So Tiao was more skeptical than trusting. And she didn’t believe that Wu believed her own words, either. Her years of suspicion crystallized into doubt at that moment. This was sad for both mother and daughter, and something that neither seemed to be able to do anything about, which made it feel more cruel to have to accept.

Wu didn’t feel she had won just because Tiao didn’t reply, but she preferred not to think about it any further. She was the kind of person who didn’t like to think deeply, a lifelong escapist. Her mind was not large enough to accommodate either caring for others or self-analysis. She clutched the jumper and returned to bed and to her big crumpled pillow to resume knitting. By the lamplight, she used the bamboo knitting needles to pick up the loose stitches one by one and finished the sleeve and the entire jumper in a single night.

Then she bought some yarn to knit a jumper for Yixun. She changed the colour to a cream. She knitted day and night, her hands flying and her eyes getting bloodshot, as if she wanted to work off her guilt with the unusual knitting as well as ease her nerves. She knitted with great skill and she herself was surprised by the speed: she took only seven days to knit jumpers for two men. Seven days; she had never come close to that mark, not before or afterwards. Whether it was to punish herself for her fall or to ease the way for her to fall further, she didn’t know. She had a feeling that her relationship with Dr. Tang had not yet run its course.

Neither had had their fill of each other. Almost every Sunday, Dr. Tang came to Wu’s house for dinner. When Wu’s month of sick leave was up, he renewed it for another month. If he continued to renew her sick leave without anyone noticing, wouldn’t she be able to stay at home for a long time? This was something she hardly dared to imagine but wished for with all of her heart. When the Cultural Revolution turned violent, she became what was known as a wanderer, and she really wanted to be one. “Wanderers” was the label given to the faction of people who avoided political campaigns and labour reform and refused to take a stand on matters of principle. This group—muddleheaded, backward—couldn’t be brought onto the stage to play their parts in history. If a doctor were found to provide a false certification for a patient, the consequences could be very severe. They wouldn’t merely say he was violating professional ethics, which wouldn’t be a serious enough charge. They would accuse him of undermining the great revolution, that is, being antirevolutionary. And Dr. Tang might very likely get arrested as an antirevolutionary. Dr. Tang was in fact risking his life, for Wu.

Now Dr. Tang wore the jumper Wu knitted for him openly—it fit really well. Wu liked to look at his mouth chewing in the daylight. The way he ate was very elegant; his mouth made small but accurate movements, adeptly dealing with difficult foods like fish heads or spare ribs. It almost looked like he used his mouth as a knife to perform a quiet operation on food. That mouth of his seemed to be of particular use for eating food and keeping silent—when he wasn’t eating, he was very quiet. His words were rare, which seemed to make his mouth even more precious. Wu would try to kiss him when no one was around, but he would pull away. So she let him be. She didn’t have to kiss him. In some respects, she was easily satisfied. She would confine herself to observing that mouth. From her limited experience of men, she believed he was shy. He was an unmarried man.

She kept telling the sisters that she was going to get a girlfriend for Dr. Tang, but that it was really difficult. Dr. Tang came from a politically-tainted family, and was also raising his niece on his own. The niece, whom Wu had met, was an orphan, the child of his older sister. She kept talking about finding a girlfriend but never took action. Tiao had never seen her bring anyone home who looked like a girlfriend type. During this period, Yixun came home for the change of season and stayed for three days—he had only three days’ vacation. He invited Dr. Tang home to drink beer with him. Back then Fuan didn’t have bottled beer, so beer was sold only in restaurants. The restaurant employees would use a rice bowl as a measure, ladle out the beer from a ceramic barrel, and then pour it into the customer’s own container. The beer didn’t have any head and tasted sour and bitter.

The two men drank beer and ate a roast chicken together, one that Yixun had brought back from Reed River Town. Yixun enquired about Wu’s illness, and when he asked about it, Wu remembered she was sick. She had to be sick, with rheumatic heart disease. Yixun asked about all the details thoughtfully, full of concern for Wu and gratitude to Dr. Tang. Dr. Tang said this type of heart disease was the most common in China, making up 40 to 50 percent of the various heart conditions. Most patients were young or middle-aged, ranging from twenty to forty years old, and the majority were women. It was a form of heart disease that was mainly valvular, caused by acute rheumatic fever, usually attacking the bicuspid and aortic valves, causing stenosis or valve insufficiency and blood circulation stasis that would eventually lead to overall heart insufficiency.

Yixun said, “So, do you think Wu’s dizziness has something to do with rheumatic heart disease?”

Dr. Tang said it was possible because a minority of patients might have shortness of breath or faint when the symptoms got worse. As Dr. Tang was talking, he and Wu exchanged a glance, a quick one, barely noticeable. In the face of Yixun’s careful concern, both seemed a little bit ashamed. They hadn’t expected that Yixun would invite Dr. Tang for a beer and have such a friendly conversation with him. It was, of course, the normal attitude of a normal person: Yixun felt indebted to the doctor for his kindness—Wu described in her letter to him how Dr. Tang came to her rescue when she passed out in the clinic and how he managed to get her into the internal medicine ward. When Dr. Tang told Yixun that there usually wasn’t great danger as long as the patient took care to rest and avoided intense physical activity, Yixun felt reassured.

Three days later when Yixun was returning to the farm, Wu packed the cream-coloured jumper she had knitted into his luggage.

Their house went quiet for a few days. Wu lay quietly on the bed, often without moving, as if she were really afraid of intense activity. Tiao felt everything was fine, as if Dr. Tang had never appeared in their house—which was when she realized that she had never liked Dr. Tang, even if he had saved Wu’s life a hundred times over. But the calm lasted only a few days, after which Wu started to get active. Apparently it had become inconvenient for her to invite Dr. Tang home anymore, or she felt embarrassed to invite him over so quickly—so soon after Yixun had been there. She didn’t want the children to notice the obvious contrast; she already felt Tiao’s awkwardness was harder and harder to handle, so she decided to go out.

She must be going either to the hospital or Dr. Tang’s place, Tiao thought. Wu often went out after dark and didn’t come back until very late. Before she left, she always spent a long time in front of the mirror, combing her hair, gazing at her reflection, changing clothes and practicing pleasant expressions, checking both her front view and side view. How wilted and spiritless she appeared when she was tossing around on her pillow, her hair dishevelled and her eyes dull, with drool at the corner of her mouth, thin and silvery, like a snail track. Had Dr. Tang seen her this way? If Dr. Tang saw this side of her, would he still want her to visit him?

But when Wu stood before the mirror and prepared to leave, she seemed to have turned into a completely different person, enthusiastic and energetic, her entire body lit up like a candle. Sometimes she even brought one or two dishes along, food for Dr. Tang. For this reason she had to enter the kitchen, the place she had always hated. Clumsily, she’d make fried eggplant and beef-carrot stew. She would put up with Tiao’s comments, believing Tiao was just being intentionally hurtful. Tiao made a point of saying that Wu’s cooking was bland, that the beef-carrot stew wouldn’t be tasty if she didn’t use curry powder. Wu then humbly asked where the curry powder was, but Tiao declared happily she didn’t have any and they just couldn’t find curry powder in Fuan, that the curry powder they used to have came with them from Beijing. Wu never noticed that Tiao had been removing the seasonings little by little. She hid them so Wu wouldn’t find them and use them, because they had all become too closely associated with Dr. Tang.

When Wu was not home, Tiao flipped through the pages of
The Family Medical Encyclopedia
that Dr. Tang had given Wu. She turned to the section on rheumatic heart disease, but unfortunately there were too many words she didn’t understand. She looked at pictures of ugly human bodies, one of which was a woman with a curled, upside-down baby in her belly. Tiao wrote a line in pencil in the margin next to the baby, “This is Dr. Tang.” Why would she pick a baby and make it into Dr. Tang? Was it because only a baby like that was less powerful than she was? She then could freely express her contempt for the adult Dr. Tang through this fetus.