Читать книгу The Bathing Women - Tie Ning - Страница 16

How nice it was to lie, with her head and neck buried in a big fluffy feather pillow, her dishevelled short hair down over her forehead! No one on the Reed River Farm could reach her. She slipped her hands under the quilt, too; she didn’t want to stuff her hands into the rough cloth gloves anymore or stand in front of the stacks of bricks, inhaling the never-ending red powder.

Wu woke to find herself in her own home, lying on her own big bed, and resting her head on her own pillow—this pillow, this pillow of hers. She couldn’t help swivelling her head a few times, languidly and with some coy playfulness. She rubbed the snow-white pillow with the back of her head, playing with the real pillow that she had missed so much. She remembered her laziness as a small child. Every morning, when it was time to get up, Nanny Tian had to stand by that little steel-springed bed of hers and try again and again to wake her. She was like that in those days, rubbing the back of her head against the pillow until her hair was a mess. Meanwhile, she’d kick her legs and feet under the quilt and turn her head to the side, pretending to sleep on. Nanny Tian didn’t give up, but kept calling her from beside her bed.

Wu then would pry open her eyes and ask Nanny Tian to make faces for her, to do cats and dogs and copy the way the mynah bird spoke. Nanny Tian first undid her apron, folded it into a triangle, and tied it onto her head to play the wolf grandmother in “Little Red Riding Hood”; then she tensed her voice to imitate the cat; leaving the best for last, she imitated the mynah: “Nanny Tian, get the meal ready; Nanny Tian, get the meal ready.” Nanny Tian smacked her thick lips and held her neck stiffly to mimic the bird, which made Wu laugh heartily. Nanny Tian did such a good impression of the mynah, which was kept in the kitchen as company for her. Wu loved to get into the kitchen whenever she had the chance. Her favourite thing was listening to that mynah talk, but she knew, whether it was the mynah imitating Nanny Tian or Nanny Tian imitating the mynah, both would deliver a great performance. Even when she went away to the university, she couldn’t help wanting to bring Nanny Tian along, though not for waking her up in the morning, of course. But it seemed to have become a habit to listen to Nanny Tian nag at her every morning, a part of Wu’s peaceful, languid sleep.

Wu rubbed the snow-white pillow with the back of her head; she could finally snuggle into her pillow again. The farm approved her return to Fuan for a week to treat her mysterious dizziness. She was overjoyed, and Yixun was also happy for her, making a special trip to town to buy a pair of roast chickens for her to bring back to the children. Although Tiao always said, “We’re doing fine,” in her letters, Yixun still felt it wasn’t a good idea to leave two children alone at home. It was simply not a good idea. “It would be great if you could stay home longer,” he told Wu. He didn’t expect his words to become the main excuse for Wu to stay on in Fuan. “Isn’t this what you were wishing for, too? Didn’t you want me to stay at home?” Later, she would say this to him in a loud voice, but with some guilty feelings.

A week was so precious to Wu that she first buried herself in the pillow and slept for three days. It was the sleep of oblivion, a three-days-without-leaving-the-bed sleep, a making-up-for-half-a-year’s-lost-sleep-in-one sleep. She opened her eyes only when she was thirsty or hungry, having Tiao bring water and food to her bed. After she finished eating and drinking she dropped her head and fell back asleep, snoring gently. It was Tiao who discovered that her mother snored. She believed her mother must have picked up the habit at the Reed River Farm.

At last she opened her eyes. After getting up and doing some stretches to loosen her muscles, she felt wide awake. Her limbs felt strong, and her insides felt clean and clear, ready to be filled with food. Where was her dizziness? Just as she started to feel lucky that she was no longer dizzy, a fit of panic gripped her: When will the dizziness come back? If she was no longer dizzy, how could she get a diagnosis from the hospital? And she must get that diagnosis. The whole purpose for the week of sick leave was for her to go to the hospital and get a diagnosis. When she returned to the farm, she would have to submit a diagnosis from the hospital.

She sat on the side of her bed trying very hard to locate the dizziness in her. Fan, nesting by her legs, grabbed her pants with one hand and asked: Mum, are you still dizzy? Then Wu really did feel a little dizzy—if even Fan knew about her dizziness, how could she not be dizzy? She tried to make herself dizzy and took a bus to People’s Hospital.

The hallway of the clinic at People’s Hospital was noisy chaos. A draft of chokingly sweet fish smell, mixed with the unhealthy breath of the waiting patients, made Wu almost leave a few times. Finally the registrar nurse called out her number. Just as she sat down in front of the doctor, an old fellow from the countryside squeezed in, saying, “Doctor, you can’t fool us country folk. I walked over a hundred li to come to your hospital, and you give me a ten-cent prescription? Can ten cents treat an illness? You people tell me, isn’t this a con?” He yammered on, pestering the doctor for a more expensive medicine, demanding and pleading until the doctor had no choice but to rewrite his prescription.

“Next, please. Name?” the doctor said without raising his head. Wu gave her name and the doctor lifted his head, taking a look at Wu and then listening to her complaint. She didn’t know why, but she felt a little nervous, and gave the account of her symptoms in a dry and hesitant way. She seemed to have some difficulty meeting the doctor’s direct gaze, although she knew it was just his professional manner. He was a man of about her age, with a clean, long, thin face under a clean white cap. His eyes were small and very dark, and when he stared at her with his small, dark eyes, they seemed to be bouncing over her face like lead shot. Like most doctors, he made no small talk. He listened to Wu’s heartbeat, ordered several laboratory tests for her, routine tests like blood sugar and fat levels, ECG, etc., and he also asked her to get an X-ray of her neck at the radiology department.

Some test results came back the same day and some wouldn’t be ready until the next. So, the following day, Wu returned to People’s Hospital. She registered at internal medicine first, collected all the test results, and then waited quietly to see Dr. Tang—she had learned from the forms that the doctor’s family name was Tang.

When she sat across from him again, she immediately sensed on her face the bouncing of his lead-shot eyes. She handed her test reports to him; he buried himself in them for a while, then looked up and said, “You can set your mind at ease. You’re very healthy. There is nothing wrong with you. I thought you might have cervical vertebra disease or a heart problem, but I can assure you now that there is nothing wrong with you.”

What was he talking about? she thought. Was he saying that she wasn’t sick at all? If she wasn’t sick, why would she come to the hospital? If she wasn’t sick, how was it possible for her to leave the Reed River Farm? That’s right, leave the Reed River Farm. Just then Wu at last completely understood her heart’s desire: to leave the Reed River Farm. She really didn’t want to go back to that place, so she had to be sick, and it was impossible that she was not sick.

“It’s impossible,” she said, and stood up, forgetting herself a little.

Gesturing for her to sit down, he asked, somewhat puzzled, “Why don’t you want yourself to be healthy?”

“Because I’m not healthy. I’m sick.” She sat down, but insisted on her opinion.

“The problem is that you’re not sick.” He took another look through the stack of test results, along with the ECG report and neck X-rays. “Your symptoms might be mental in origin, caused by excessive nervousness.”

“I’m not nervous and I was never nervous.” Wu contradicted Dr. Tang again.

“But your current state is a manifestation of nervousness,” Dr. Tang said.

She then told Dr. Tang again that it was not nervousness but some disease. “It is really a disease.” She realized she had already begun to act a little irrationally. Her confrontation with the doctor not only didn’t convince the doctor, it didn’t convince her, either.

Dr. Tang gave a helpless smile. “Certainly, mental nervousness can be an illness, a condition. But as a doctor of internal medicine, I have no authority to give a diagnosis in this matter. I can only … I can only …”

His conclusion brought her up from the chair again. She began to ramble and repeat herself like a gabby old woman. “I’m not only sick, I also have two children. They’re so small. My husband and I both work on the farm and can’t take care of them at all. You know the Reed River Farm, quite far away from Fuan. Ordinarily we can’t come back. My two daughters, they … they … because …” At this point she suddenly leaned her face in to Dr. Tang’s and lowered her voice, desperately whispering, “You can’t … you can’t …” The next thing she felt was the spinning of the sky and earth. Her dizziness came to her rescue just in time and she lost consciousness.

She was hospitalized in the internal medicine ward and Dr. Tang was the physician in charge.

The first thing that came to her mind after she woke was actually Dr. Tang’s small, dark eyes. She also remembered her whispered pleading before she fainted—it was a sort of pleading, and how could she have spoken in that whispering voice to a strange man? She could explain it as her fear of being overheard by others in the clinic, but then, wasn’t she afraid this strange man would throw a woman who tried to fake an illness out of the hospital, or report her to her work unit? Then, during the Cultural Revolution, doctors also basically took on the responsibility of monitoring patients’ thoughts and consciousness. She was afraid, but maybe she was willing to risk her life to win over with whispers this man who controlled her fate. Her dizziness had rescued her in the end. Coming from a woman who might faint at any time, no matter how pitiful and helpless compared to an earthshaking howl, those eerie, frail whispers still hinted at things, either serious or playful, and offered vague temptations. Maybe she hadn’t at all meant to stir up hints of temptation around her, but it was the hints of temptation that stirred her.

As she lay on the white bed of the internal medicine ward, her body never felt healthier. She told Tiao and Fan later that she was so healthy because of the superb nutrition she received as a child: fish oil, calcium, vitamins … the fish oil was imported from Germany and her grandmother forced her to pinch her nose and take it. Tiao looked at her face carefully and asked, Why are you still dizzy, then?

Lying on the white bed of the internal medicine ward, she also had a feeling that she had been adopted—Dr. Tang adopted her, keeping her far away from the Reed River Farm, far away from the brick factory, and far from the revolution. Revolution, that was her required course of study at the farm every day. Chairman Mao’s quotations about revolution were to be memorized every day; they were also made into songs, which Wu had already learned by heart and could sing from start to finish: “A revolution is not inviting friends to dine, not writing, not painting, or needlepoint; never so refined, so calm and polite, so mild and moderate, well-mannered and generous. A revolution is an uprising, violence with which one class overthrows another.”

Revolution is violence. Violence. Wu temporarily left the violence far behind. She longed to see the concentrated, calm dark eyes of Dr. Tang; she longed to have him extend the cold little stethoscope to her chest …

One night when he was on duty, she felt the dizziness again and rang the bell. So he came to her room, where Wu was the only resident for the time being, though there were four beds. She never asked Dr. Tang later whether he made the arrangements deliberately or it just happened that there were no other patients. It was late at night then. He turned on the light and leaned over to ask her what was wrong and where she felt the discomfort. She saw that pair of small dark eyes again. She turned her head to the side and closed her eyes, saying it was her heart that pained her. He took out his stethoscope—she could sense that he had taken it out. He extended it toward her and when that ice-cold thing touched her flesh and pressed down over her heart, she reached up her hand and pressed down on his hand—the hand that held the stethoscope—and then she turned off the light.

In the dark they remained locked like this for a long time, as if their breathing had also stopped. That hand of his, pressed down by hers, remained motionless, although he suspected motionlessness was not what she had in mind for him. She didn’t move, either, only the heart beneath their overlapped hands raced wildly. They remained motionless, as if each was feeling out the other: Is he going to call a nurse? Is she suddenly going to scream? They grappled and stalled, as if each were waiting for the other to make the first move, whether it was to attack or to surrender.

Her palm began to sweat, and the sweat of her palm wet the back of his hand. Her body started to heave in the dark because a hot current was surging and circulating in her lower belly, burning down right between her legs. She began to repeat to him the whispers of the other day in the clinic. Her voice grew quieter and more indistinct, accompanied by wild panting. The panting clearly had some elements of performance about it and was also mixed with some reluctant sighing. She repeated her whispers: “You can’t … you can’t … you can’t …” He didn’t know if she was saying that he couldn’t withdraw his hand or that he couldn’t go further. But just then he pulled his stethoscope free, tossed it aside, and put his hands on her breasts, calmly and with resolve.

When he pressed his long, lean body on her ample body, she suddenly felt an unprecedented sense of liberation. Yes, liberation, and she didn’t feel guilty at all. Only then was she convinced that she would truly be adopted by Dr. Tang. The floodgate to her pure desire was thrown open. She clutched his waist with her hands, and she coiled her legs high, hooking her feet tightly around his hips. She didn’t stop and didn’t allow him to stop. Still in motion, she took a pillow and put it under her hips. She wanted him to go deeper and deeper. Until maybe it wasn’t about going deeper anymore; it was about going through her entire body, to pierce her body entirely.