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.
3
The night arrived like this: right in the middle of her boredom and brazen anticipation. She inhaled the smell of the laundry room from the pillow, along with the special smell of disinfectant from the hospital ward … laundry room and disinfectant. A healthy woman is put into an isolated room and the mixture of these two smells produces a crazy arousal in parts of her body.
At this time, in this moment, Wu was suppressing her excitement, waiting in the dark. The night before, as he was leaving her room, Dr. Tang told her that maybe she should have rheumatic heart disease. He would provide her certification of the diagnosis and a note for sick leave, a note that would allow her to rest for a month, which was the longest time that a physician in charge at People’s Hospital could prescribe. She didn’t want to concentrate on the thought that this was what she was waiting for, this note that would allow her to stay at Fuan and at home; that would make her seem degraded. The implication of exchange was all too obvious. She preferred to think she was waiting for the fulfillment of her sexual desire. She had experienced a feeling with him that she had never felt before. It seemed to be a kind of pleasure brought on by a nervousness and secrecy, and also a kind of submission to fate as thorough as if she were falling into an abyss.
He arrived, and when he put the note into her hand, she turned off the light again. This time she had the urge to caress him; it might be the female’s most primitive physical expression of gratitude. She stroked his hair and his face, which she was not really familiar with; she lay down on him and looked for his lips. She hadn’t touched his lips and he hadn’t touched hers, either. She discovered he didn’t like her to get near his face. When her hair brushed the corner of his mouth, he reached out his hands to hold her head, as if to avoid her. He held her head and pushed it all the way down, down. Her head, mouth, and face slipped further and further down, over his chest and stomach, then to that thicket of thorns, dense and a little scratchy. She didn’t remember when he left the room. When she calmed down and was about to wipe her body, she noticed that she was still clutching the sick leave note.
She left the hospital and returned home. She announced to the sisters that she could stay at home for a month, a month. After she said that, she lay back on her bed. She remembered she had rheumatic heart disease, so she needed to lie in bed. She leaned back against that big wide feather pillow and wrote separate letters to Yixun and to the farm leader, enclosing the certificate of diagnosis and the sick leave note. She asked Tiao to go out to post the letters for her. Tiao held the letters and asked her, “Mum, what do you want to eat?”
What do I want to eat? Wu listened to Tiao’s question and looked at her eleven-year-old daughter. The question obviously showed her daughter’s concern for her, and it was unusual for a girl at such a young age to know how to take care of people, but the closeness between mother and daughter also seemed to be missing. Tiao never played cute with her, nor did she ever throw tantrums. And Wu never knew what was in Tiao’s small head. Fan, who had just turned six, seemed to be under her older sister’s influence. She stood next to Tiao and asked Wu in an adult way, “Mum, what do you want to eat?” As if she could cook anything her mum wanted to eat. Looking at her daughters, for a moment Wu felt like she had become a guest in the house, and the two sisters were the hosts. But she still gave serious thought to what she wanted to eat. She said, “Mum wants to eat fish.”
Tiao posted the letter at the post office, then went to the grocery store and bought a big live carp. The grocer tied the fish’s mouth shut