The Bathing Women (44 page)

Chen Zai said, “I also remember something from long ago. It was in the same year, the night before Quan’s death, my mother had a heart attack and I took her to the hospital and then came back to fetch a basin and thermos. When I entered the front gate on my bicycle, I saw someone riding a bicycle in front of me who looked very much like Fei. It was pretty late by then, almost twelve. I wondered why Fei had come at that hour. She could only be there to see you, but why so late? Had anything happened to your family? My concern for you made me curious, so I followed her in secret and, sure enough, she stopped in front of your building. I didn’t want her to see me, so I pushed my bicycle to the side of the road, in behind a row of hollies. She didn’t lock her bicycle and go upstairs. Hesitating for a while, she held her bicycle and then turned back to the small road. Next, she stopped at a particular spot. Now she had me really curious, so I left my bicycle leaning against the hollies and worked my way closer to her. Finally, I saw what she was doing: she stood by the manhole and looked at it blankly. She stared for a while and then looked around. When she saw no one, she pulled out an iron hook from her bicycle, the kind we used to pick up the lid of the stove. She grabbed the iron hook and started to pry up the manhole cover. She panted and huffed quite a bit and finally opened the cover. Then she strained to push it aside and revealed the dark hole. I was hoping that she was not trying to jump into the hole to kill herself, but I dismissed the idea immediately. Manholes are very shallow and that fall couldn’t kill her. Maybe she was looking for something, something she had lost in the hole. Before I could give it any more thought, she had already got on her bicycle and ridden away. It looked as though she were just leaving temporarily to get some tools or find a helper. After she was completely out of sight, I walked over to the manhole. The hole was a bit smelly, and the cover was moved aside, only touching the edge of the manhole. The iron hook was gone, too. I didn’t understand what was going on, but I had no time to figure it out. My mother was still in the hospital. So I went home, got money, basin, and thermos, and rode back to the hospital. I stayed at the hospital to keep my mother company for the night. When I went home the next day at noon, I heard that a child had fallen into the manhole. I immediately thought about Fei, who hadn’t opened the manhole to search for anything. Her purpose was to open the manhole. At the time, I didn’t know her name was Fei, only that she was your best friend; you see how I was back then. I remembered all your girlfriends just because I liked you. Many, many years later, when we grew up and you introduced Fei to me, I still believed without a doubt that she was the one who opened the manhole. It was always a mystery to me. I didn’t understand why your good friend would open the manhole and let your sister fall into it. Now that I know why, I feel guilty beyond words: because I was the only one who saw the cover was off, but I didn’t put it back …”

Tiao seemed to understand everything. She was willing to trust Chen Zai’s memory, even though Fei had already died and nothing could be confirmed. Maybe it was because there was no proof that everything could appear so clear. Maybe Fei wanted to tell her this in the last moments of her life, but the cancer took away her courage. So she could only leave her confessing lips on Tiao’s face.

“I feel lucky that I can tell everything to you,” Tiao said.

“I also feel lucky that I could tell everything to you.”

“You want to say that it’s not only my responsibility.”

“Yes, it’s three people’s business.”

“But you’re innocent.”

“No, one can’t be innocent if he feels guilty.”

“My courage came too late.”

“But you have more courage than I do. There seems to be a disagreement between you and me. If you hadn’t opened your mouth, I wouldn’t have had the courage to talk about that night.”

She arose from the sofa and walked to Chen Zai. She knelt and buried her head in his lap and said, “I love you, Chen Zai.”

He picked her up and sat her on his lap. “I love you, Tiao.”

“I love you. Nothing can stop me from loving you.”

“I love you. Nothing can stop me from loving you, either.”

They held each other and fell asleep. Next morning, when she went to take a shower in the bathroom and looked at her face in the mirror, to her surprise she found the pink lipstick print was gone. Her cheek was smooth and clean.

The shower last night was as unreal as a dream, and was also so real that it didn’t feel like a dream.

4

It wasn’t too difficult for Tiao to get to know Vice Governor Yu Dasheng, but she didn’t want to do it artificially, as most people did when they needed to ask a favour from a governor, through connections or networking. Most of the time people would get stuck with the secretary, sometimes not even with the main secretary, but some secretary on duty who would get rid of them easily. Tiao didn’t have any favour to ask, so she didn’t have to use that approach. She just wanted to talk with Yu Dasheng about Fei. It was Fei’s final wish and she’d made a promise to her, even though she thought it was absurd.

So she felt it was even more urgent to get to know him naturally.

She was looking for an opportunity, and then the opportunity came to her. One day the Publishing House received a notice informing them that Vice Governor Yu Dasheng was going to accompany a visiting group from Seoul on a tour of Fuan Children’s Publishing House. In addition to making arrangements for the reception at the Publishing House, Tiao also rearranged her office in a special way. She found a picture of her and Fei at home, taken a few years earlier by Chen Zai. In the picture, Fei had on a loose black pullover, with her hair cascading like a waterfall. Her expression was a bit flirtatious, but charming. Tiao sat with her, shoulder to shoulder, and looked very serious. She framed the picture and deliberately placed it on the most visible spot of her desk. She was thinking she would definitely try to get Governor Yu and his guests to her office.

The visitors came, and after a brief colloquium and a book-giving ceremony from the Publishing House, Tiao proposed that they could take a look at the editors’ working environment. The director’s office was the closest to the conference room, and next was the vice director’s office.

With things arranged this way, Yu Dasheng finally walked into Tiao’s office. He caught sight of the framed picture as soon as he stepped in. Tiao felt that Yu Dasheng was paying attention to the framed picture, and she must seize the moment while he was staring at it to strike up a conversation. She said, “Governor Yu, you must know the person in this picture.”

Yu Dasheng hesitated for a moment, a very small moment of hesitation that normally would have gone unnoticed, and then said, “Yes, yes, I know her. She looks like a worker in a factory where I used to work. Her name is …” He looked like he was trying very hard to recall her name.

“Fei.”

“Yes, Fei,” he said, no longer looking at the framed picture. He commented on how modern and pretty the office equipment looked and then left. Tiao followed him into the hallway and then took her chance to say, “Governor Yu, Fei is my friend. I need to talk about her with you.”

Yu Dasheng seemed alarmed and asked, “Talk to me?”

Tiao said, “Yes, you’re her old leader anyway.”

Yu Dasheng hesitated again, another small hesitation, and said, “Okay.”

He made an appointment with her.

He sat behind his huge office desk and looked at her, and she sat in the soft guest chair looking at him. He was probably about sixty years old, his hair had turned grey, but his back was still straight. She liked men and women who didn’t dye their hair, feeling they always looked younger than those who had fake black hair. A few minutes ago, on her way to the provincial government’s office building, she suddenly had an urge to turn back, like the time she was to meet Mike at the Austin airport. She had these urges when a decision had been made but not put into action yet. Suddenly she doubted that the meeting made any sense. Did she want to force him to admit that he was Fei’s father? That was too ridiculous. How could she take Fei’s sickbed ravings seriously? She was still thinking about turning back after she entered the lift of the governor’s office building. She stared at the second button of the shirt of a male employee, who entered the lift at the same time as she did. She was thinking that if this fellow got off before she did, then she would leave with him and not see Yu Dasheng; if he got off after her, then she had no choice but to see Yu Dasheng. As it turned out, he pressed the button for seven and she needed to go to level three, so she got off at the third floor.

There was an awkward silence between them at first, then Tiao glanced at the brown paper bag by her feet and remembered she had brought books for the governor. She took out a set of Children’s English, finely printed with a fragrant smell, and said, “This is a series of fun English-learning books that our publishing house brought out in cooperation with a Canadian publisher. Governor, maybe your grandchildren will like them—you must have a grandson or granddaughter, right?”

The atmosphere was softened—words like “grandson” and “granddaughter” could ease all kinds of tension. Yu Dasheng said, “I have a granddaughter. I’ll give this set of books to her.”

Tiao said, “When Fei and I were little, we were not lucky enough to have so many pretty books. Back then there were a few old back issues of
Soviet Woman
in our house, which Fei and I read over and over again. We read all the fashion articles, recipes, and stories in them.”

Yu Dasheng became attentive. He said, “Oh? How old were you?”

Tiao said, “I was thirteen, and Fei was sixteen. We also passed around some Soviet spy stories to read then, such as
Red Safe, Amber Necklace
—”

Yu Dasheng interrupted Tiao. “These stories were around even when I was young.”

Tiao said, “Oh, then you’ll recognize this story if I tell you the details. It’s about a man and a woman who live in the same courtyard but are never seen talking to each other. They appear to be strangers even though they have been neighbours for many years. The ending is something quite unusual. The police solve a spy case, and the spy is the man in the courtyard. And his assistant is the woman who lives next door but apparently has never talked to him. How did they manage to work together? It turns out the woman’s wardrobe against the wall is a secret door to her male neighbour. Every night, as long as she gets into the wardrobe she can go to the male spy’s place. Do you remember this detail, Governor Yu? Both Fei and I got really frightened. It was exciting and scary at the same time. Ever since I read those stories, I got suspicious even about our wardrobe, always thinking there was a secret door in it. I was afraid to leave these sorts of books by my pillow at night. I had to toss them far away because I was so afraid the spies in the book would jump out and choke me to death. One day, Fei borrowed my
Red Safe.
Next day she told me that she had thrown my book away. She said it was too dark when she was on her way home. She mumbled to herself as she was walking. The book in her backpack seemed like a spy who was trailing her, and the leaves underneath crunched as she went along. Finally she couldn’t take it anymore. So she took out the book, threw it into the darkness, and then started to run. After that she asked me, ‘Hey, Tiao, do you have other books like it? Lend me another.’ You see how we were back then, scared but still wanting to read—the more scared we were, the more we wanted to read. Later we read much less. After Fei became a worker, she probably didn’t read those kinds of books anymore.”

“Has your friendship lasted to this day?”

“You can say that. We all admired her when we were little. She was a beauty. She had been a beauty since she was little. Don’t you think so?”

Yu Dasheng made no comment about this. Tiao started to relax and decided to lead the conversation to Tang Jingjing. She said, “Fei was a beauty because her mother, Teacher Tang, was also very beautiful.”

Yu Dasheng took a careful look at Tiao. His body, which had been leaning back in his leather swivel chair, almost imperceptibly leaned forward. He said, “Her mother, Tang Jingjing, do you also know her?”

Tiao said, “I was still living in Beijing when I was in the first grade. Teacher Tang was a maths teacher for the higher grades. I saw her stand on a stage being denounced by people, with a sign hanging in front of her chest. The sign read ‘I’m … I’m …’”

“I’m what?”

“The sign read ‘I’m a female hooligan.’ They asked her to lower her head and she refused, so they made her eat shit and she did.”

“You meant she ate … ate shit?”

“Yes, she ate it, because if she hadn’t they would have brought her daughter, Fei, to the stage to be put on display. I knew only after I grew up that Fei was her illegitimate daughter. Fei is a child without a father.”

Yu Dasheng held his interlocked hands in front of his chest. Tiao looked at his hands and tried to judge with as little emotion as possible: the pair of hands did look like Fei’s. Maybe it was just a coincidence. But because she had a strong desire to probe Yu Dasheng, she would rather everything was true. She stared at that pair of hands that seemed to be suffering and said, “Later, Teacher Tang died.”

“Yes, she died in a very miserable way.”

“Did you know her?”

Yu Dasheng said, “No, I didn’t know her—Teacher Tang. I had left Beijing by that time.”

Tiao said, “You mean if you hadn’t left Beijing, you might have known Teacher Tang?”

Yu Dasheng said, “No, maybe I misspoke, because one Beijinger doesn’t necessarily know another Beijinger.”

Tiao said, “I agree. For instance, a Beijinger like you and a Beijinger like me have been living in Fuan for so many years, but haven’t we only just got to know each other?”

Yu Dasheng laughed quietly.

“But Fei didn’t think so. She believed that in the ocean of people, the ones that are meant to meet will meet eventually, such as family members, or a father, for example. For a while, she was convinced that her father lived right in Beijing—”