The Bathing Women (48 page)

“I couldn’t take it anymore and kissed him desperately. He began to kiss me back. That day he didn’t go to work. He stayed home all day to keep me company. He was so gentle to me, and he cried on the wedding night. He howled. Do you know, Tiao, I’d never seen a man weep like that. I was awestruck by it, caught midway between joy and panic. I knew he was crying for you, and his crying made me feel at the very moment I had him, I’d also lost him forever.

“At the very moment I had him, I also lost him forever.”

Wan Meicheng was finished talking, or maybe she just stopped temporarily. “Would you like some water?” Tiao asked.

Wan Meicheng shook her head and said, “You’re crying, but I don’t want your tears. I don’t know why I would say these things—this isn’t what I wanted most to say today.”

“I think I could listen to you all day.”

“I wouldn’t want to disrupt your work in the office. If you like, we can make an appointment to meet. I’ll get your phone number and you can take mine.”

“Yes, you can have my number and give me yours, too.”

3

They began meeting when Chen Zai was not in Fuan. The first time it was Wan Meicheng who called, and Tiao played a passive role. She felt she should, that she couldn’t initiate anything with Wan Meicheng, who was the “victim,” although Tiao already felt so curious about her.

They met at Yunxiang Square. First they talked about the square that Yixun had described as representing unrivalled ugliness, and both actually liked Chen Zai’s “flat-face” building very much. Then they went to the café in the “flat face.” Tiao ordered a cup of La Taza coffee and Wan Meicheng a cup of Irish coffee. Wan Meicheng sipped the coffee and said, “I’d never drunk coffee before I married Chen Zai. My stomach would hurt as soon as I drank it. But because Chen Zai liked it, I felt obliged to drink it as well. Sometimes he worked very late, and I would stay up and keep him company by drinking coffee with him. He didn’t notice at all that I didn’t like coffee. I forced myself to put up with the pain so he wouldn’t find out. I was so afraid that he didn’t like me and I wanted to mould myself to him in everything. Strangely, I actually got used to coffee and my stomach stopped hurting, which gave me some confidence. I came to believe that as long as I was determined to learn something, I would succeed, just as I learned from you.”

“Learned from me?”

“Yes, learned from you. Imitated you.”

“Imitated me?”

“Chen Zai never told me who the woman he loved was, but I instinctively knew it was you. The first time I saw you was when you went to Chen Zai’s parents’ place. I remember clearly it was a Sunday. We originally planned to go together, but something came up and Chen Zai couldn’t travel along with me, so I went ahead by myself first. Whenever I went to Chen Zai’s parents’ home, I liked to stand on their balcony for a while, from where I could see the small garden in the Architectural Design Academy. My deep secret was that I hoped to see you from there. I knew you and Chen Zai had lived in the same compound and your parents still lived in the Architectural Design Academy. Did you go home to visit your parents? I so looked forward to seeing you—the one I most feared. I imagined what you looked like thousands of times, sometimes as very ugly, and other times as very beautiful. Then that Sunday I stood on the balcony to look into the small garden, wondering if there were any stories of you and Chen Zai that took place there. It was a very simple garden with a London plane tree, a green fence, grass, and some hardy rosebushes. Unlike the flowers and grass in a park, these weren’t purposely set there to try to attract the attention of visitors. I stood on the balcony and imagined that you would walk out of there. Then I saw Chen Zai’s car. He parked in front of the building, got out, and ran around to open the door. In the blink of an eye, I hid myself behind the large, wide cinnamon tree on the balcony. Just in that split second I had a feeling that he was opening the door for you. Sure enough, you got out of the car. The two of you stood by the car and talked for a while, and then you walked further into the compound along the small road. Chen Zai’s mother heard the car and also came to the balcony. I asked her who the person was that had just been talking to Chen Zai. She said, ‘That is Tiao, Yin Xiaotiao. Her family lives in the same compound as we do.’

“Sure enough, that woman was you, Tiao. For a long time the name ‘Tiao’ had frightened me, made me feel uncomfortable and tense. When you first appeared that Sunday, I felt a pang of emptiness and unease. From my momentary glimpse of you, as I hid behind the cinnamon tree, I remember your hairstyle, clothes, and shoes. I had imagined you as someone very avant-garde, with short hair like a boy’s. But you wore your hair gathered up and used a hairpin to fix it into a tidy ponytail, casual and unusual. Your smooth forehead and graceful walk also left a deep impression on me, making me both envious and ill at ease. I even remembered you held a light, soft straw hat in your hand, decorated with a linen ribbon that had Persian chrysanthemum patterns. Ah, crowned with Persian chrysanthemums, I thought. I had no idea why such a poetic description would pop into my mind just when I was at my lowest: crowned with Persian chrysanthemums.

“Anyway, you were crowned with Persian chrysanthemums. Do you remember having that straw hat?” Wan Meicheng said, and scooted the chair under her bottom so she could be closer to Tiao. Tiao could see her nostrils flaring, which made her seem like some harmless small creature with a keen sense of smell. She was sniffing Tiao, or maybe she wasn’t sniffing Tiao but trying to sniff out Chen Zai through Tiao. She was driven to get close to Tiao, and the closer she was to her, the closer she was to Chen Zai. Maybe her nostrils were not flaring, and it was just Tiao’s imagination. Still, she believed Wan Meicheng’s eagerness to be around her was because of her yearning to be around Chen Zai, exactly as she’d said at their first meeting. It made Tiao feel a little insecure, and yet she was also drawn to Wan Meicheng. Wan Meicheng hadn’t come to condemn her and provoke her; their meeting felt more like a heart-to-heart talk, with frankness and compliments enhancing each other. Wan Meicheng was either very sincere or very crafty, but one thing Tiao was sure of was that she wasn’t threatening. What had she asked her? Oh, she’d asked if Tiao remembered that she used to have a straw hat.

Tiao said, “I did have a straw hat like that. Linen ribbon printed with Persian chrysanthemums. I don’t know if you like Persian chrysanthemums, but I do. The first time I saw some was at the Martyrs’ Cemetery at Fuan when I was still in elementary school. On Tomb-Sweeping Day each year, our school would organize us to sweep the Martyrs’ Cemetery. We carried homemade wreaths, walked a long way, breathing the dust all the way to the Martyrs’ Cemetery located in the outskirts of the city, and dedicated the wreaths to the martyrs. Then we would listen to the guide talk about the heroic deeds of those martyrs in the tombs.

“I remember once a young woman guide took us to a white marble tomb where a heroine of the war against Japan was buried. Betrayed by a collaborator, she was captured by the Japanese. They scooped out her breasts, and, to stop her angry curses, cut out her tongue as well. The guide was very young and looked almost like a middle school student. To this day I still remember how round her face was, and that round face didn’t match the somber atmosphere there. She started her introduction. ‘Students …’ she said. ‘Students …’ she said again, and then she began to laugh. It was shocking that she could laugh on such a solemn occasion. She laughed very hard, the kind of laughter that sounded almost like crying, her voice getting higher and higher and her shoulders shaking. She couldn’t control herself. Neither my classmates nor I laughed, and our teachers didn’t, either. We had been taught long before that laughter was forbidden in the Martyrs’ Cemetery. We were all very disciplined in this regard, and some in the class would even arrange their sad expressions in advance. Everyone was frightened by her laughter, seized by a feeling of impending disaster. Our teacher found the director of the cemetery, who took the guide, still in the grip of hysterical laughter, away.

“Later, we heard from our teacher that the guide had been charged with antirevolutionary activity and sentenced to prison. How dare she laugh in front of the martyr’s tomb? When I thought back on the incident as an adult, I supposed her mind must have been in a highly nervous state. She must have taken her job so seriously and wanted to do it so well that she began to laugh right at the most inappropriate moment. Just as in school: The more we told ourselves not to make mistakes in our presentations, the more likely it was that we would say something wrong. We were afraid we might even shout out antirevolutionary slogans at critical moments. Another guide, an old man, took over. Standing at the heroine’s tomb, we listened to the touching story of the martyr. It was at that moment I noticed several Persian chrysanthemums in front of the tomb, but they were not real, since they don’t bloom in April. Who dedicated these flowers to the war heroine, and why choose Persian chrysanthemums? Was it because the martyr had liked the flower when she was alive? I liked them, too, with their long stems and simple petals. Later, when I saw real Persian chrysanthemums on some old obscure graves in the west mountain area of Fuan, I also liked their frail but independent posture. I thought about the heroine in the Martyrs’ Cemetery, whom I always confused with the girl guide with the round face. Because the two were mixed up in my mind, sometimes I would imagine that the round-faced guide was the war heroine who had leaped out of the tomb, leaped out and laughed, with slender Persian chrysanthemums growing on her head. I liked the straw hat I used to have. Do you know what it felt like when you wore it? I felt I was gliding over the ground like someone from the tomb, soundless, invisible to people except for the fully blooming Persian chrysanthemums. You said it so well, crowned with Persian chrysanthemums. Tell me, doesn’t every one of us have a day when we are crowned with Persian chrysanthemums? When we are crowned with Persian chrysanthemums, do we still merely walk? What do you think?”

Wan Meicheng listened to Tiao talk about Persian chrysanthemums with fascination. It was the first time that Tiao had spoken about herself and her childhood, which Wan Meicheng took as a friendly gesture. She didn’t mean to express hostility to Tiao in any way. When crowned with Persian chrysanthemums, did we still merely walk? Wan Meicheng didn’t know and had never thought about it. She said, “I don’t know, but on that Sunday, when I saw you were crowned with Persian chrysanthemums, I was determined to buy the same straw hat.

“Chen Zai came upstairs and I returned to the room from the balcony. I said nothing about you, and neither did he. We drove home in the evening and I sat in the place where you had sat. Your breath and scent still seemed to linger in the air. I simply closed my eyes and said nothing. Chen Zai asked me if I was ill and I said no. We got home, took a shower, went to bed, and made love. He was very aggressive, unusually aggressive. Everything seemed different from before, and I even started to imagine he was about to give me a child. Please give me a child. Oh, please let me conceive a child! I tried especially hard to please him to get him to do what I wanted. Both of us said embarrassing things that we normally wouldn’t say. When I got very excited and was about to come, he suddenly called, ‘Tiao, Tiao—’”

Tiao interrupted Wan Meicheng and said, “Please don’t go on.”

Wan Meicheng said, “Don’t interrupt me. I have to get this out. He called out ‘Tiao, Tiao,’ which saddened me to the point of desperation. But do you know what? I murmured back to him anyway. It wasn’t that I was utterly without pride; I still had the delusion that if he really thought I was you at that moment, maybe he would let me have his child … But I failed again. He realized his slip of the tongue and was embarrassed about it. My biggest achievement that night was that I confirmed you were the lover in his heart, you, crowned with Persian chrysanthemums.

“I sat in front of the mirror and looked at my face; I pulled the fringe off my forehead and to the back. I wanted to change my hairstyle. I wanted to cut my shoulder-length hair and expose the nape of my neck. Tiao, you were my archenemy, but how I wanted to become you. One day I put on the same kind of straw hat, the exact same skirt you had worn on that Sunday, and sat in the room waiting for Chen Zai to come home. He was truly stunned when he came back, and then said, ‘What is this all about?’ That’s what I wanted to tell you, Tiao. I’m a complete failure. How is it possible for me to really become you? You ruined my life, after all. But I want you to know that I don’t hate you now, because I love Chen Zai, and if I love him, I should love whom he loves—which is a very difficult task. But if I can do it, then I’m a winner. I am trying to get close to you. Please let me.”

Chen Zai’s return interrupted their meetings. Excitedly, he told Tiao that he had ordered a set of Swedish kitchen appliances, very practical, the dishwasher came with a garbage disposal, and Tiao was going to love it. He kissed her and asked how things were at home and was there any news? Tiao said everything was fine and nothing had happened. She twined her arms around Chen Zai’s neck and draped herself against his body, listening, mesmerized, to his quickening breath, and she concealed her meetings with Wan Meicheng.

She found indescribable excitement in her secret. She was not sure what to do yet, but Wan Meicheng’s unexpected frankness and sincerity attracted her.

That summer, Tiao called Wan Meicheng behind Chen Zai’s back. This time she initiated the appointment. She invited Wan Meicheng to meet at Youyou’s Small Stir-Fry so that she could treat her to a meal there. She didn’t know whether she wanted to use the occasion to seduce Wan Meicheng into more talk about her past with Chen Zai, to show her sincere gratitude to Wan Meicheng for her openness, or to hope that everything would stop right there. Even though neither had any ill intentions, there seemed to be the threat of turmoil beneath the surface.

Wan Meicheng came to Youyou’s Small Stir-Fry as they agreed, and Tiao watched her as she crossed the street. She wore the straw hat with Persian chrysanthemums and had on a white skirt like the one Tiao used to have. All this made Tiao feel as if she had another self. Didn’t Wan Meicheng and she look a little like each other? She remembered reading somewhere that if a man had been married twice, his two wives, no matter how different from each other they looked, must have some similarities that ordinary people couldn’t discern.