Waiting (6 page)

Once outside, he overheard the old woman say, "Good for you, girls. Such a nice man, isn't he? I wish I had blisters too." Laughter rang inside the house.

One of the nurses began singing an opera song:

Lin turned around in the snow, gazing back at the low farmhouse for a long time. Its windows were bronze with the light of oil lamps. If only he could have eaten dinner with the nurses in there. He wouldn't mind walking twenty miles just for that. He wondered whether he had visited them for some unconscious reason other than to deliver the dinner. Then a strange vision came to his mind. He saw himself sitting at the head of a long dining table and eating with all seven young women and the old woman too. No, the old woman turned out to be his wife Shuyu, who was busy passing around a basket of fresh steamed bread. As they were eating, the women were smiling and chattering intimately. Apparently they all enjoyed themselves as his wives living under the same roof. He remembered that in the Old China some rich men had several wives. How lucky those landowners and capitalists must have been, wallowing in polygamous bliss. A scream of the wind brought him back to the snowfield. He shook his head and the vision disappeared. "You're sick," he said to himself. He felt slightly disgusted by his envying those reactionary men, who ought to be condemned as social parasites. Yet the feel of Manna's foot, which seemed to have penetrated his skin, was still lingering and expanding in his palms and fingers. He turned and made his way to his men's billet. His gait was no longer as steady as it had been an hour ago.

Manna couldn't walk the next day. Lin arranged to have her taken by a horse cart, which hauled utensils and provisions, running ahead of the troops. He gave her both his and Haiyan's sheepskin greatcoats, which she wrapped around her legs, so that they wouldn't have to carry them. She traveled in the cart for two full days; then the troops stopped at a commune town for a week. That gave enough time for her feet to heal.

During the remaining days of the training, Lin carried her medical box most of the time. Whenever she thanked him, he would say, "Don't mention it. It's my job."

After the troops had returned to Muji, Manna's gratitude to Lin gradually turned into intense curiosity. At work she often stopped by his office to say a word with him. At night, after taps was sounded, she would remain awake thinking about this odd man. Questions rose in her mind one after another. Does he love his wife? What does she look like? Is she really eight years older than he? Why is he so quiet, so kindhearted? Has he ever been angry with anyone? He seems to have no temper.

Silly girl, why do you always wonder about him? He's a good man, all right, but he's already married. Don't be a fool. He's not there for you.

What if he doesn't love his wife and wants to leave her? If so, would you go with him? Stop fantasizing and get some sleep.

Would you marry him?

Hard as she tried, she couldn't stifle the thought of him. Night after night, similar questions kept her awake until the small hours. At times she felt as though his hands still held and touched her right heel; so sensitive and so gentle were his fingers. Her feet couldn't help rubbing each other under the quilt, and she even massaged them now and then. Her heart brimmed with emotions.

From Haiyan she learned that Lin's wife had given birth to a baby girl. This information upset her, because he was bound to his family more than she had thought. Probably you'd better distance yourself from him, she kept reminding herself. You're heading for trouble. No matter what the outcome is, people will blame you. A third party is like a semi-criminal.

Despite all her reasoning, she couldn't help glancing at Lin whenever she caught sight of him. She began to feel as though she were living in a trance.

One evening in June, Manna went to the guinea pigs' house to see a newborn litter. Afterward she returned to her dormitory alone. On the way she saw a man and a woman strolling by the aspen grove west of the mess hall. From the distance she couldn't tell who they were, though from behind the man looked like Lin. The dusk was balmy after a whole day of drizzling, and the trees seemed like a dark fence, against which the two figures in white shirts were moving west.

Manna was eager to find out who they were. There was a footpath going diagonally through the rows of young aspens. Without thinking twice, she turned into the grove so that she might see the man and woman clearly at the other end. As she walked along the path, her heart began galloping. Around her water was dripping pita-pat from the broad leaves as if a rain were starting. The indigo sky was drilled with stars.

A shadow appeared ahead of her and paused in the middle of the path. It was a dog. Manna stopped and couldn't tell whether it was the one raised by the cooks or a homeless dog going to the kitchen to steal food. The pair of greenish eyes looking in her direction sent an icy shiver down her back, as she remembered that a boy had been attacked by a rabid dog near the grove a few weeks before. She knew that if she turned back, the dog would chase and snap at her, so she stood still. Then she saw a leafy branch lying nearby, and she picked it up, waving it at the animal menacingly. The dog went on watching her for a while, then skulked away with its nose touching the ground repeatedly.

When Manna reached the far side of the grove, she heard a female voice say, "So he lost the book? I can't believe it." She recognized the voice, which belonged to Pingping Ma, the young woman in charge of the hospital's library.

"Next time I'd better ask him for security," Lin said in a joking tone.

They both laughed. Manna was observing them from behind a few thin aspens. Lin looked very happy. They stopped under a street lamp, saying something Manna couldn't quite hear. Beyond them spread a small pond of rainwater shimmering in the moonlight, from which toads were croaking. Pingping Ma bent down, picked up a stone, and threw it underarm into the pond, the flat stone skipping away on the surface of the water and sending up tiny flashes.

"I made three, " she cried in a silvery voice. The stone had silenced the toads for a few seconds, then one of them resumed croaking hesitantly.

"I used to be good at playing ducks and drakes," Lin said. He flung a stone too.

"Wow, five!" the woman said.

They turned around to look for flat stones, but couldn't find a good one. Neither of them made more than three skips in the following attempts thanks to the lumpy stones they had to use. But they obviously enjoyed themselves.

Manna dared not stay too long, because the footpath was often used by others and she was afraid someone might run into her. Also, the dog might appear again. She hurried back, carrying the branch on her shoulder and feeling something pulling her guts. She began to swallow hard as a thirst raged in her mouth. Her sneakers and the bottoms of her trouser legs were soaked through when she reached her dormitory.

That night she stayed awake for hours, thinking about the scene she had just witnessed. What was the true relationship between Lin Kong and Pingping Ma? Were they lovers? They might have been, or they wouldn't have skipped stones together so happily, like small children. No, that was unlikely because Pingping Ma was at least ten years younger than Lin. Besides, she was merely an enlisted soldier, not allowed to have a boyfriend. But she wouldn't give a damn about the rule, would she? No, she wouldn't; otherwise she would not have dated a married man. Was Lin really attracted to her? Probably not. Her face was bumpy and ugly like a pumpkin, and she had gapped teeth. Still, Lin seemed to enjoy being with her very much. He had never looked that natural with others. Again in her mind's eye Manna saw him standing by the pond with arms akimbo as he watched that woman skipping the stones.

The more Manna thought, the more agitated she became. What troubled her the most was that Pingping Ma's father was a vice-commander of the Thirty-ninth Army in Liaoning Province. With such a powerful family background, even a pig could appear attractive in some men's eyes. Was Lin such a snob too?

That thought made Manna more wretched as she remembered the deaths of her parents. Had they been alive, they could have been ranking officials as well. Her aunt had told her that when her father was killed in the traffic accident, he had been an eminent journalist for a large newspaper. For a thirty-one-year-old man, that was remarkable. Her mother had been a college graduate, specializing in French; with that kind of education she could surely have made a lot of progress in her career.

Then another troublesome thought came to Manna's mind. Pingping Ma was well read in classics and worked as the only librarian in the hospital. It was said that she often told legendary tales to her roommates, who would treat her to haw jelly and sodas to keep stories rolling out from her tongue. This might have been what made her attractive to Lin. To some extent they matched each other; both were bookworms. No doubt they would continue to spend time together chatting about books.

What should Manna do? Let that girl take him away? No, she had to do something.

Lin had been considerate to Manna, especially after he came to know she had grown up in an orphanage in Tsingtao City. During her first two annual leaves, she had stayed at the hospital, having no place to go. She had neither siblings nor relatives, except for a distant aunt whom she had never felt close to. Lin often advised her to rejoin the volleyball team or take part in the hospital's propaganda and performing arts club, but she said she was too old for them. Instead, she would declare to him half jokingly that she wanted to go into a nunnery. If only she had known of a convent that was still open and would recruit nuns. In reality the Red Guards were smashing temples and abbeys throughout the country, and monks and nuns had been either sent back home or banished far away, so that they could make an honest living like the masses.

Recently Lin was aware of Manna's glances and tried to avoid them. He was unsure whether he was really attracted to her. Since the previous summer when Mai Dong broke the engagement, she had changed a lot. Her face was no longer that youthful. Thin rings appeared around her eyes when she smiled, and her complexion had grown pasty and less firm. He felt bad for her, realizing that a young woman could lose her looks so easily and that however little the loss was, it was always irretrievable. He wanted to be kind to her, but sometimes her smiles and her expressive eyes, which seemed eager to draw him to her, disturbed him.

By the summer of 1967 he had been married for almost four years, and his daughter was ten months old. Whenever he saw a couple walk hand in hand on the street, he couldn't refrain from looking at them furtively and wishing he were able to do the same. As a married man, why did he have to live like a widower? Why couldn't he enjoy the warmth of a family? If only he hadn't agreed to let his parents choose a bride for him. If only his wife were pretty and her feet had not been bound. Or if only she and he had been a generation older, so that people in the city wouldn't laugh at her small feet.

But he was by no means miserable, and his envy for men with presentable wives was always momentary. He held no grudge against Shuyu, who had attended his mother diligently until the old woman died; now she was caring for his bedridden father and their baby. On the whole Lin was content to work in the hospital. He earned enough, more than most of the doctors did because he held a medical school diploma. His life had been simple and peaceful, until one day Manna changed it.

On his desk in the office she left an envelope. It contained an opera ticket and a note in her round handwriting, which said: "This is for
The Navy Battle of 1894
at 8:00 p.m. I hope you will go and enjoy it." He had seen the movie and knew the entire story, so he wondered whether he should return the ticket to her. On second thought he decided to go, because he had nothing else to do that evening and the opera was performed by a well-known troupe from Changchun City. Besides, the seat was good, close to the front.

The hospital's theater was at the southeastern corner of the compound. When Lin arrived, he was surprised to find Manna sitting in the fifth row too, right next to his seat. He hesitated for a second, then went up to her. The moment he sat down, people began throwing glances in his direction. Some of the audience were waving fans and a few were cracking sunflower seeds. Children were chasing one another in the front and through the aisles, holding slingshots, wooden pistols and swords, all of them wearing army caps and Chairman Mao buttons on their chests and a few with canvas belts around their waists. Through the loudspeaker a man was urging people to stub out cigarettes, explaining that smoke would blur the captions projected on the white wall on the right of the stage. A few nurses from the Department of Infectious Diseases were searching about for their patients, who were not allowed to mix with others at such a public place.

Lin was worried, wondering why Manna was so indiscreet, but she didn't seem to care about others' eyes and even stretched out her hand to him, half a dozen candies in her palm. He was nervous but picked one, peeled off the wrapper, and put it into his mouth. It was an orange drop. She smiled, and he felt she looked rather sweet. City girls, they're so bold, he said to himself.

A female announcer came out from behind the curtain and in a melodious voice gave a brief introduction to the historical background of the story. Then the curtain went up. Two actors in golden official robes and black caps with long trembling ears stepped onto the stage, sidling around in their white-soled platform shoes. They were singing to each other about the Japanese inroads on the Korean Peninsula.

One of them sang in a high falsetto: