The Bathing Women. Tie Ning

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 СКАЧАТЬ