Waiting. Part 15

At the hospital, nurses, doctors, officers, and their wives were all amazed to see Shuyu totter about with bound feet, which only a woman of over seventy should have. She always walked alone, since Lin wouldn't be with her in the presence of others. Whenever she crossed the square before the medical building, young nurses would gather at the windows to watch her. They had heard that a woman with bound feet usually had thick thighs and full b.u.t.tocks, but Shuyu's legs were so thin that she didn't seem to have any hips.

A few days after she arrived, a pain developed in her lower back. It troubled her a lot, and she couldn't sit on a chair for longer than half an hour. It also hurt her whenever she coughed or sneezed. Lin talked to Doctor Ning about Shuyu's symptom and then told his wife to go see the doctor. She went to the office the next morning; the diagnosis was sciatica, at its early stage. She needed electrotherapy.

So she began to receive the treatment. The nurses were exceptionally kind to her, knowing Lin was going to divorce her soon. After the diathermic light was set, they would chitchat with her. Lying facedown on a leather couch, Shuyu would answer their questions without looking up at them. She liked the lysol smell in the air, which somehow reminded her of fresh almonds. She had never been in a room so clean, with cream-colored walls and suns.h.i.+ne streaming in through the windows and falling on the gla.s.s-topped tables and the red wooden floors. There was not a speck of dust anywhere. Outside, cicadas buzzed softly in the treetops; even sparrows here didn't chirp furiously like those back home. How come all the animals and people seemed much tamer in the army?

In the beginning, she was rather embarra.s.sed to loosen her pants and move them down below the small of her back, and the infrared heat on her skin frightened her a little, but soon she felt at ease, realizing the lamp wouldn't burn her. She enjoyed lying on the clean sheet and having her lower back soothed by the heat. A sky-blue screen s.h.i.+elded her from people pa.s.sing by. When n.o.body was around, she would close her eyes and let her mind wander back to the countryside, where it was time to harvest garlic and crab apples and to sow winter vegetables-turnips, cabbages, carrots, rutabagas. She was amazed that people in the city could have so many comforts, and that the young nurses always worked indoors, well sheltered from wind and rain. They were never in a hurry to finish work. What a wonderful life the girls had here. They all looked nice in their white caps and robes, though some were sickly pale. When they gave her an injection, they would ma.s.sage her backside for a few seconds; then with a gentle slap they plunged the needle in. They would ask her whether it hurt while their pinkies kept caressing her skin near the needle. The tickle made her want to laugh.

A nurse once asked her if Lin had bullied her. Shuyu said, "No, he's a kind man, always good to me."

"Does he buy you enough food to eat?" another nurse put in. She was holding a syringe, its needle connected to a phial filled with pinkish powder.

Shuyu replied, "Yeah, always white steamed bread, or sugar buns, or twisted rolls. I eat meat or fish every day. Here every day's like a holiday. Only it's too hot at noon."

The nurses looked at each other. One giggled, then a few followed suit. "What does he eat?" asked the nurse holding the syringe.

"I don't know. We don't eat together. He brings everything back for me."

"He's a good provider, eh?"

"Yeah, he is."

They all t.i.ttered. They were somewhat puzzled by Shuyu's words. Even though Lin held a rank equal to a battalion commander, his wheat coupons couldn't exceed twelve pounds a month. How could he feed his wife with such fine foods the whole time? Where had he gotten all the coupons? From Manna? It was unlikely, because she had overtly declared she would have nothing to do with Shuyu. What did Lin eat then? Did he eat corn flour and sorghum himself? What a weird man. He must have saved a lot of wheat coupons for Shuyu's visit. It seemed he still had some affection for his wife, or he wouldn't have treated her so well.

Shuyu liked the nurses. Yet however hard they begged her, she would not take off her small shoes, of which they often sang praises. They were all eager to see her feet.

One day, after the treatment, Nurse Li, a bony girl from Hangzhou who had never seen a bound foot, said she would give Shuyu a yuan if she showed them her feet. Shuyu said, "No, can't do that."

"Why? One yuan just for a look. How come your feet are so expensive?"

"You know, girls, only my man's allowed to see them."

"Why?"

"That's the rule."

"Show us just once, please," a tall nurse begged with a suave smile. "We won't tell others about it."

"No, I won't do that. You know, take off your shoes and socks is like open your pants."

"Why?" the tall woman exclaimed.

" 'Cause you bound your feet only for your future husband, not for other men, to make your feet more precious to your man. By the way, do you know what this was called in the old days?" She patted her left foot, whose instep bulged like a tiny knoll.

They all shook their heads. She continued, "It's called Golden Lotus, like a treasure."

They looked at her with amazement, winking at one another. Nurse Ma asked, "Wasn't it painful to have your feet bound?"

"Of course it hurt. Don't tell me about pain. I started to bind my feet when I was seven. My heavens, for two years I'd weep in pain every night. In the summer my toes swelled up, filled with pus, and the flesh rotted, but I dared not loosen the binding. My mother'd whack me with a big bamboo slat if she found me doing that. Whenever I ate fish, the pus in my heels dripped out. There's the saying goes, 'Every pair of lotus feet come from a bucket of tears.'"

"Why did you bind them then?" a ruddy-cheeked girl asked.

"Mother said it's my second chance to marry good, 'cause my face ugly. You know, men are crazy about lotus feet in those days. The smaller your feet are, the better looking you are to them."

"How about Doctor Kong?" Nurse Li asked earnestly. "Does he like your small feet?"

The question puzzled Shuyu, and she mumbled, "I don't know. He never saw them."

The girls looked at one another, simpering, their eyes full of amus.e.m.e.nt. One of them sneezed loudly, and they all laughed.

Because the divorce wouldn't fail this time, Lin had been trying to have Shuyu's rural residential status changed to urban. The army would sponsor such a change only if the officer had served longer than fifteen years or held a rank higher than a battalion commander. Lin was qualified, having been in the service for twenty-one years; so the office in charge of this matter was cooperative. He wanted Shuyu to have a residency card, which would enable her to live in any city legally. Besides, their daughter Hua needed such a certificate as well; according to the law, she would follow her mother and automatically become a city dweller if Shuyu's residential status was changed. With such a card in hand, Hua would have a better chance for employment in Muji. Since she couldn't go to college now, this was her only chance to leave the countryside.

By no means could Lin make Shuyu understand the necessity and complexity of the process, but she complied with whatever he said. If he told her, "Don't fetch hot water-I'll do that," she would never take either of the thermos bottles out of the room. If he handed her some pills and said, "Take these, good for you," she would swallow them without thinking twice. To her, his words were like orders, which she couldn't imagine would do her any harm.

One morning he gave her a one-yuan note and told her to have her hair cut at the barbershop, which was behind the hospital's tofu mill and was run by three officers' wives. The moment he left for work, she set off for the shop.

Unlike back home where Hua would cut her hair with a long comb and scissors, here a haircut cost thirty fen. When a plump young woman in the shop told her the price, Shuyu felt uneasy, as though they were overcharging her. She had never spent money so lavishly; for thirty fen she could buy half a cake of Glossy soap, which would last at least two weeks. Nevertheless, she agreed and sat down on a leather chair.

A large kettle began whining from the coal stove outside the door. The middle-aged woman with bobbed hair went out, removed the seething water, and banked the fire with three shovels of anthracite mixed with yellow mud. Then with a poker she drilled a hole through the wet coal. She came back into the room, threw a white sheet over Shuyu, and fastened its ends at the nape of her neck with a wooden clothespin.

"What hairstyle do you want, sister?" she asked Shuyu, raising a red plastic comb.

"I don't know."

Two male customers laughed, sitting on the other adjustable chairs.

"How about a crew cut like mine? It feels cool in the heat," said one of them, who was the swineherd, the most famous man in the hospital. He had raised a pig weighing over twelve hundred pounds; several major newspapers had reported his accomplishment. Children called him Pigman.

"Come on," the woman said to Shuyu, "it's your hair. You must tell me how to cut it."

"Well, how about like yours?" She pointed at the hairdresser's bobbed hair.

The plump young woman chimed in, "She'll look nice with that."

"Are you sure you want my kind of hairdo?" the middle-aged woman asked Shuyu. "You'll lose your bun."

"Sure, cut it as much as you can." She wanted her hair to be short, so that she wouldn't have to come to the barbershop too often and waste money.

The woman untied her bun and began combing the tangled hair while Shuyu sucked her lips noisily. The initial strokes of the comb pulled her scalp and hurt her a little, but in a moment she got used to it. She began to wonder how come the hairdresser could click the scissors so rhythmically, without stopping. In the right corner of the room a tailless cat was sleeping, now and then stretching out its limbs; its ear went on twitching to shake off flies. Shuyu was impressed by the bowl of sorghum porridge near the door. City people were so rich, feeding a cat like a human. No mice could live in this room with a cement floor, why did they need to keep a cat?

While tr.i.m.m.i.n.g the ends of her hair, the woman asked Shuyu, "Is Lin Kong good to you?"

"Yeah."

"Do you two live in the same room?"

"Yeah."

"How do you sleep?"

"What you mean?"

"Do you and Lin Kong sleep in the same bed?" The hairdresser smiled, while the two younger women stopped their scissors and clippers.

"No, he sleeps in his bed and me in my own bed."

"Do you know he's going to divorce you?"

"Yeah."

"Do you want a divorce?"

"I don't know."

"Tell you what, climb into his bed when he's sleeping at night."

"No, I won't do that."

Everyone laughed. Shuyu looked at them with confused eyes.

The haircut made her look almost ten years younger. Her face appeared egg-shaped now, and her eyebrows seemed like two tiny crescents.

The hairdresser poured some hot water from the kettle into a bronze bucket hanging on the wall and added three scoops of cold water. Then she had Shuyu sit over the sink and put her head under a rubber hose attached to the bucket. While soaping Shuyu's hair, she said to her again, "Don't be a fool, sister. Sneak into Lin Kong's bed at night. If you do that, he can't divorce you anymore."

"I won't do that."

They laughed again.

"Oh my eyes," Shuyu cried, "stinging from the soap."

"Keep them shut. I'll be done in a second." The woman let the remaining water run over her head, then wiped her eyes and face with a dry towel, which smelled clean and delicious, still warm with sunlight.

"How are your eyes now?"

"They're okay."

Shuyu returned to the barber chair. The woman combed her hair to one side and praised its fine texture. She even applied a few drops of sweetish perfume to the hair.

When Shuyu took out the one-yuan note, the woman said, "No, elder sister, you don't pay for the first visit. You pay next time, all right?"

Shuyu thanked her and put the money back into her pocket. The woman raised the comb to put a lock of hair behind Shuyu's ear, saying, "You know, you look good in this hairdo. From now on you should keep your hair like this." She turned aside and held up an oval mirror. "Now, how is that? Good?"

Shuyu smiled and nodded.

Thanking the woman again, she rose from the chair and limped out of the shop. Her hips hurt a little from the half-hour in the barber chair.

When Shuyu was out of hearing, the people in the shop began talking about her. They all agreed she actually was not bad-looking, but she didn't know how to dress and make up. The cut of her dark-blue jacket was suitable for a woman of over sixty, with a slanting line of cloth-knots on the front instead of real b.u.t.tons. If she hadn't worn the puttees, which made her trousers look like a pair of pantaloons, her bound feet would not have attracted so much attention. Probably womenfolk in the countryside had different taste in clothing. Another cause of her unusual looks might have been that she had worked too hard and burned herself out. They had noticed cracks on the backs of her hands and a few tineal patches on her swarthy face.

Gradually their topic s.h.i.+fted to the marriage. How could she survive by herself if Lin Kong divorced her? What a heartless man he was. Shouldn't the Political Department protect the poor woman by ending the relations.h.i.+p between Lin Kong and Manna Wu? This was a new society, in which n.o.body should found his happiness on another person's suffering. Besides, a married man ought to be duty-bound and must not be allowed to do whatever he wanted, or else families would break up and society would be in chaos.

By the next day Shuyu's answer-"I won't do that"-had become a catchphrase among the hospital's staff. When turning someone down, young nurses would utter that sentence jokingly, stressing every word and giving a long lilt to the final "that." Laughter would follow.

Under cover of darkness, a few curious young officers even went to the long dormitory house in which Lin had been a.s.signed a room recently. They stayed outside at the window and the door, eager to find out whether the couple slept in the same bed. They stuck their ears to the keyhole and to the window screen, but the room was as quiet as if it were uninhabited. Three nights in a row they heard nothing except for a cough made by Lin. One of the men sprained his ankle on the granite doorsteps, having trodden on a sleeping toad; another had his eye whipped by a twig in front of the house. So they gave up and admitted the couple had done nothing unusual.

Word spread-"They don't do that."

2.

Lin and Shuyu were sitting at the dining table, on which was a white enamel plate containing a melon, cut in half and with its seeds removed. They were having a talk because their court appearance was scheduled for the next morning. The room looked brighter after all the propaganda posters left by the former residents had been removed from the whitewashed walls. The buzzing of the fluorescent lights again drew Shuyu's attention. She raised her head to see whether a mosquito was in the air. Outside, in the cypress bushes below the window, an oriole was warbling now and then. The fragrance of early chrysanthemums wafted up from the roadside, where the long flowerbed was mulched with pulverized horse dung.

"Shuyu, have you ever thought about what Hua should do in the future?" Lin asked.

"No. I guess she can work at Bensheng's store. He's good to her and pays her well. He bought her a hooded overcoat last winter."

"No, no, she shouldn't remain in the countryside. I want to get her a job here. She's our only child and should live close to us in the city, don't you think?"

She made no answer.

He went on, "Tomorrow when the judge asks what you want from me, say you want me to find a good job for Hua, all right?"

"Why you want me to do that? I never wanted anything from you."

"Look, I've been in the service for over twenty years. According to the rule, the army should take care of our child. Trust me, they'll find her a job. This is her only chance. Please tell the judge you want that, all right?"

"Okay, I'll do that."

He took a bite of the melon in his hand. "Try this. It's very sweet," he said, pointing at the other half.

She didn't touch it, saving it for him.

Early the next morning, Lin went to fetch breakfast for Shuyu and himself. Hundreds of people were eating in the mess hall. From inside the kitchen came the brisk clank of a shovel stir-frying something in a cauldron. The air smelled of sauteed scallions and celery. Manna turned up with a lunch tin in her hand. Coming up to Lin, she tried to smile, but the effort distorted her face, two wrinkles bracketing her nose and mouth. Her eyes were s.h.i.+ning, glancing left and right; apparently she was uneasy about meeting him in this place. He noticed a flicker of resentment pa.s.s over her face, probably because he had not seen her for several days.

She said to him, "Don't talk too much in court, all right? And don't argue with the judge." She bit her lower lip.

"I know. There's no need to worry. I talked to Shuyu yesterday evening. She agreed to stick to her word this time. It's final."

"I hope so," she muttered. "Good luck."

She walked away, not daring to talk with him longer than necessary in the presence of so many people, some of whom had already begun darting glances in their direction. Since Shuyu's arrival, Manna had kept a low profile. She avoided meeting others, not going anywhere unless she had to, and wouldn't even eat lunch in the mess hall. As a result she looked anemic.

Lin brought back to the dormitory four steamed buns, half a pot of rice porridge, and a tiny cake of fermented bean curd. For the first time since she had come, he and his wife ate together.

While eating he had a strange realization. These days he had seldom met Manna, as though she were gone on vacation somewhere. He had stopped walking with her in the evening for fear that people would gossip about them and exert pressure on the leaders to stop the divorce. Somehow this temporary separation from Manna didn't bother him at all, just as sleeping in the same room with Shuyu did not discomfort him either. To tell the truth, he didn't miss Manna, though he felt sorry for her. Is this what love is like? he asked himself. No wonder people say marriage is the death of love. The closer we are to getting married, the less attached I feel to her. Does this mean I don't love her anymore? Don't be a fool. She and I have waited for each other so many years. Now it's time to be united. Yes, true lovers don't have to stay together looking at each other all the time; they look and move in the same direction. Who said that? It must have been a foreign monk. How about Manna, what does she think of my staying with Shuyu in this room? Is she irritated by it? She must be. Does she miss me?