The Bathing Women (24 page)

The second one: The girl has been leaning against the head of the bed, viewing herself in the mirror, with a little book in her other hand. On finding the cat, hiding at the foot of the bed, staring at her, she turns the mirror around and forces the cat to examine itself. In this painting, the girl has grown older and there is more of both reserve and wantonness in her expression, though she is clothed in a thin blouse and a pair of long pants. Fully dressed, she holds the mirror and makes the cat, who hunches at the end of the bed, see itself, as if saying, Do you want to watch me? You’d better have a look at yourself.

The third: The girl still leans against the bed; judging from her face she is again older. She wears elaborate, conservative clothing and her face reveals a forcefully controlled anger and willfulness. She thrusts the mirror directly at the cat on the end of the bed, whose entire body is visible, as if saying, Why look at me? Why observe me, you seductive, sinister thing! No longer the naked girl, relaxing, briskly combing her hair, she obviously dominates the scene, in the tight clothing she’d prepared in advance—nervous, combative.

How people fear being watched—spied on—particularly by their own kind who hide in the dark. When humans are subject to the cold scrutiny of a cat, who knows all, is ever-present and often pleased with itself, what an unsettling feeling it must be. People love to gaze at themselves in the mirror, but who ever sees the true self in the mirror? All of us expect to see a beautiful face on that self in the mirror. So, to watch others is to shield the self.

To watch is to shield.

When people are annoyed and shove the mirror into the cat’s face, they want to watch the cat make a fool of itself—and to shield themselves. The coquettishness of the nervous cat, and the insidious psychology that has it always waiting for the chance to rebel, people fear these things, so they thrust the mirror at the cat. To spy, to embarrass others, is the most basic human instinct.

The cat has no mirror to turn on a person; to a person the cat is a mirror. Squinting its seemingly tired eyes in the dark, it quietly snuggles up to people, in surface harmony, but spiritually distant.

Balthus’s work, his relationship with his subjects, which became more chaotic the more he tried to put it in order, his high taste, his emotional but controlled style, all fascinated Tiao. Sometimes she felt she was the cat curling at the end of the bed; sometimes she believed she was the naked, playful young girl, who eventually grew into the fully armed, smouldering young woman: Why do you look at me and why do you observe me? You coquettish, sinister little thing!

All our watching is done to shield ourselves. When will we inspect our own hearts? Almost no one can bear to look closely within. Self-scrutiny leads us into stumbling vertigo, but we must deal with others and have no escape. Others are always our mirrors. The more we fear to look closely at ourselves, the more eager we are to scrutinize them. We comfort our heart’s core with this scrutiny of other people’s flaws.

Chapter 5

The Ring is Caught in the Tree

1

Like many women in love, Tiao was fearful, bold, and incapable of rational thought. Her emotional entanglement with Fang Jing prevented her from seeing herself—or others—clearly. His surprisingly frank “love letters” not only didn’t drive Tiao away but, on the contrary, drew her closer. His repeated tales of dalliances with other women only served to convince her that she was the only woman Fang Jing could trust and that only she had the power to save him. So the mix of Fang Jing’s personality, sincerity plus hooliganism, drove Tiao to distraction. After hearing his story of the tenth woman, she became reckless and crazy, demanding that he have her, as if that would help him cleanse his previous impurity. She was no longer the Tiao of before, who couldn’t even find his lips, whose heart was excited and whose eyes were opened by his love letters. Not wanting things to have the least suggestion of barter, she didn’t even think about marriage. Marriage. That would be his request of her later.

After knowing her for two years, he finally had her.

Her body felt no pleasure but her heart was content, some part of which was vanity, as well as a young woman’s primitive instinct for love, simple and unaffected to the point of silliness.

He finally had her. He was, in every way, satisfied, happy, even delightfully surprised, the biggest surprise of all being something he wouldn’t confide to anyone—he had never told Tiao, either—that she had restored his manhood.

For years Fang Jing had been impotent, which he attributed to the enormous mental and physical suffering he’d endured in the decade of the Cultural Revolution. When he regained freedom and his talents began to be recognized, the most important thing in his life was to find a cure. Big hospitals and small hospitals, folk remedies and secret family potions—he stooped to anything, even visiting those shady little clinics with ambiguous names and clear theme located in backstreets and tucked away in alleys. But none of the treatments worked on Fang Jing. He didn’t understand why life would play such an ironic joke on him, which filled him with hostility and made him curse the overwhelming temptation that came his way.

So he made a point of exaggerating his various relationships with women, intending embellishments and fabrications to carry juicy news of his debaucheries to the world. How he wished he were a real hooligan, or at least a man with hooligan potential.

It was difficult to tell whether his initial approach to Tiao had any clear intent or not, and therefore difficult to say that he had seduced her gradually with his letters. Those letters represented, in part, a test of his own charm as well as his response to the inexplicable impulse of his attraction to this young woman. Later, on the night they said farewell, when she gave him that irrelevant half kiss, his missing her became real hunger and thirst. Hunger and thirst. Yet expressed through avoidance; suddenly he was afraid to see her. He was afraid to smell her breath, to embrace her, to touch her soft hand, or to look into the depths of her large, dark eyes. He was afraid he couldn’t take her, or give himself to her, as a lover; he was afraid to humiliate himself on her body—he didn’t care about other women’s bodies, whom he had experimented on dozens of times already, each more of a failure than the last. He made a fool of himself while feeling superior to those women, an arrogant pretence of superiority he used to cover up his embarrassment and helplessness, which he would rather die than do with Tiao. For a while, he’d put her off stiffly in rough language, even when she took it on herself to come to Beijing and called him. Afterwards he wrote her a passionate letter. He intensified his secret quest for folk cures and “miracle” doctors, and any quack could raise his hopes. Once, late at night, after a visit to an old folk healer, he covered his face and wept in a quiet alley, a grown man crying like a baby, his sobbing enormous and defenceless, like that of a wronged, homeless orphan.

He avoided Tiao and at the same time desperately longed for her. Not until the New Year’s party hosted by the Beijing Film Circle would he encounter her. Certain he would be there, she showed up without warning; she just wanted to see him. Her appearing unexpectedly made him happy as well as nervous. They saw each other but didn’t greet or invite each other to dance. They pretended to concentrate on dancing with others, changing partners frequently until the music died and people began to leave. Tiao went down the street without looking back. She told herself proudly but with anticipation: I won’t look back. I would never look back; never turn my head. But please follow me. Please follow me. I believe you will follow me.

He followed her, and he’d decided to follow her before the party ended. Quietly, he followed her all the way to her hotel, and up to her room. The door gently closed behind them. He locked it firmly and pulled her into an embrace. They both knew what was going to happen. Holding her as she trembled, no longer able to control his desire, he was determined to make love to her, like a gambler desperately betting everything on one last throw of the dice.

It was on this night he discovered she knew nothing about sex. Her ignorance made her doubly precious to him, and also made him want to laugh. He was thinking that it was impossible for him to be embarrassed in front of her because she didn’t even have the most basic means of judgment. Her ignorance and complete obedience touched and pleased him. He had never thought, never imagined, she would be like this; it was impossible for her to look down on him. He suddenly felt relaxed and filled with a strength he didn’t recall—empowered by calm, long absent, appearing in a flash with his happiness and ease. Despite the pressure in his head and with temples throbbing, he went forward, not caring, or else daring to enjoy the happiness, though still afraid that happiness might lead to a carelessness that would ruin his long-awaited recovery, the priceless and joyful recovery.

He finally succeeded. His eyes brimmed with tears and his heart overflowed with a gratitude to Tiao that words couldn’t describe; he had never loved Tiao as he did right now. Also, he also loved and valued himself more than ever. Afraid the recovery might disappear, he insisted unreasonably that Tiao concoct all kinds of excuses to stay in Beijing day after day, wanting to be with her every minute, day and night. He wouldn’t have admitted to experimenting with himself, but their bodies together over and over finally convinced him that his success wasn’t the one-night bloom of a moonflower, but that he would be a real man forever, feet firmly on the ground, able to shoulder the world.

Tiao woke up one morning to find Fang Jing kneeling beside her bed and gazing at her, and then she heard him say, “I want to ask you something: Marry me. I want you to marry me.”

These were the longed-for words that she never expected to hear. Overjoyed as she was, a voice from her heart had already begun warning her: maybe this wasn’t right. Later, from deep within, that warning voice would continue, but she ignored it—and when her actions conflicted with the warnings of her inner voice, she trusted her actions. Even when Fang Jing in ecstasy forgot himself and shouted out wildly, “I want to fuck every woman in the world,” she still failed to grasp the insult to her in the words. She preferred to credit Fang Jing’s truthfulness: this must be the secret desire of many men. Who else would blurt out the truth the way Fang Jing did?

Once they took the bus to the zoo. Tiao casually tossed away their used bus tickets when they got off, but Fang Jing immediately picked them up. “From now on, don’t throw away these tickets. I want to take them back and get reimbursed. Hmm, I’d even claim reimbursement for a five-cent ticket—not that I need money, but because of how much they owe me.” He cast his gaze into the distance, and the expression in his eyes was cold and faintly indignant. His eyes and words chilled and surprised Tiao, and she felt there was hatred inside him, but to whom did “they” refer? Unable or unwilling to make the connection between Fang Jing’s “getting reimbursement” and his “I want to fuck all the women in the world,” she was just a confused girl in love who rejected logic. Only many years later, in retrospect, would she recognize the common thread in his two desires. He was a middle-aged man who had suffered greatly. Once free of suffering, he couldn’t help demanding compensation—urgently, madly—from the entire society, the human component, all the men and women. Time flows on like water and he knew more and more clearly that he was no rival for time.

Tiao had no concept of that kind of demand for compensation. Was it because she was still young? Youth is capital. It was because of that perishable capital that Fang Jing was jealous of her even when he loved her the most. Her dewy fullness, her lack of romantic experience, and even her ignorance of her own value made him groan with jealousy. Ah, all this proved that she still had plenty of time to gallop through the broad world as she pleased, but for him a faint, strange voice resonated constantly in his ear, telling him he was getting old.

This alone provided him ample reason to make demands on the world, and it formed the psychological basis of his misuse of his status, talent, and gender to manipulate society and people. It made him treat Tiao capriciously, sometimes even harshly. Once he said to her suddenly, “I don’t think I can marry you. Our age difference is too great, and sooner or later you’ll get tired of me. I would always worry about someone taking you away from me. Do you know worrying will make me age faster?”

Tiao swore to him, “I’m not afraid of your getting old. I want to get old with you. No matter how old you are, I’ll be with you to take care of you. I want to take care of you.” Not only didn’t her words move Fang Jing, but they made him fly into a rage. “I don’t want you to take care of me. I don’t want you to see a mouthful of my dentures and the fungal nails on my feet. You’ve seen them, right? Tell me you’ve seen them, and they disgust you, don’t they?”

Even when preparing to divorce his wife and marry Tiao, he was still chasing women indiscriminately or being chased by those women who pursue celebrities. He couldn’t explain himself: it seemed as though the more he loved Tiao, the more he felt compelled to be with other women, as if by continually abusing others and himself he’d prove his youthfulness, charm, and value. Then he would be worthy of Tiao, for how could a man who proved so attractive not be worthy of Tiao? This was Fang Jing’s logic. He couldn’t extricate himself from it because he was so obsessed with the years of his youth that were gone forever.