by Frank Wynne
But your face is so natural.
He said.
When Xia said that, I knew that it was a bad omen for the emotional road he and I were taking; but at that moment he was so happy—happy because I was a woman who didn’t use makeup on herself. Yet my heart was filled with sadness.
I don’t know who will someday be applying makeup to my face—will it be Aunt Yifen? Aunt Yifen and I have one hope in common: that in our lifetimes we will never have to make up the face of a loved one. I don’t know why, after the appearance of this unlucky omen, I continued going on the pleasure excursions with Xia, but maybe, since I’m only human, I lack self-control and merely go where Fate takes me, one ordained step after another. I have no logical explanation for my behavior, and I think that this might just be what humans are all about: much of our behavior is inexplicable, even to ourselves.
Can I come and see you work?
Xia asked.
That shouldn’t be a problem.
I said.
Will they mind?
He asked.
I don’t imagine any of them will.
I said.
The reason Xia asked if he could see how I worked was that every Sunday morning I have to go to my workplace, and on those days he never has anything else to do. He offered to walk me to work, and since he’d be there already, he might as well hang around and take a look. He said he wanted to look at the brides-to-be and their maids of honor and all the hustle and bustle; he also wanted to watch me as I made the pretty ones prettier or the unattractive ones plain. I agreed without a second’s thought. I knew that Fate had already led me up to the starting line and what was about to happen was a foregone conclusion. So here I am, sitting in a small coffee shop waiting for Xia, and from here we’ll go together to my workplace. As soon as we get there he’ll understand everything. Xia will know then that the perfume he thought I was wearing for him actually serves to mask the smell of formaldehyde on my body. He’ll also know then that the reason I wear white so often is not a conscious effort to produce an appearance of purity but merely as a convenience in going to and coming from work. The strange medicinal odor that clings to my body has already penetrated my bones, and all of my attempts to wash it off have failed. Eventually, I gave up trying and even got to the point where I no longer even notice the smell. Xia knows nothing of all this, and he even once commented to me: That’s a very unusual perfume you wear. But everything will soon become crystal clear. I’ve always been a technician who can fashion elegant hairdos and tie a bow tie with the very best. But so what? Look at these hands of mine; how many haircuts and trims have they completed on people who could no longer speak, and how many bow ties have they tied around the necks of totally solemn people? Would Xia allow me to cut his hair with them? Would he allow me to tie his tie carefully for him? In the eyes of others, these soft, warm hands have become cold; in the eyes of others, these hands, which were made to cradle a newborn infant, have already become the hands for touching the white bones of skeletons.
There may have been many reasons why Aunt Yifen passed her skills on to me and they can be clearly perceived through her normal daily remarks. Sure, with these skills, no one would ever have to worry about being out of work and would be assured of a good living. So how can a woman like me, with little schooling and not much knowledge, compete with others in this greed-consumed, dog-eat-dog world? Aunt Yifen was willing to pass the consummate knowledge of this life work on to me solely because I was her niece. She had never let anyone watch her when she was working until the day she took me on as her apprentice, when she kept me by her side instructing me in every detail, until I lost my fear of being alone with the cold, naked corpses. I even learned how to sew up the sundered bodies and split skulls as though they were nothing more than theatrical costumes. I lost my parents when I was very young and was reared by Aunt Yifen. The strange thing is that I began to resemble her more and more, even becoming as taciturn as she, as pale of hand and face as she, and as slow in my movements as she. There were times when I couldn’t shake my doubts that instead of being me, I had become another Aunt Yifen; the two of us were, in fact, one person—I had become a continuation of Aunt Yifen.
From today on, you’ll not have to worry about your livelihood.
Aunt Yifen had said.
And you’ll never have to rely upon anyone else to get through life, like other women do.
She had said.
I really didn’t understand what she had meant by that. I couldn’t figure out why I wouldn’t have to worry about my livelihood if I learned what she had to teach me, or why I wouldn’t have to rely upon anyone else to get through life, like other women do. Was it possible that no other profession in the world could free me from worrying about my livelihood or let me avoid having to rely upon others to get through life? But I was only a woman with little knowledge, so of course I would not be able to compete with other women. Therefore, it was strictly for my own good that Aunt Yifen had taken such pains to pass her special skills on to me. Actually, there is not a single person in this city who doesn’t need help from someone in our profession. No matter who they are—rich or poor, high or low—once Fate has brought them to us, we are their final consolation; it is we who will give them a calm, good-natured appearance and make them seem incomparably gentle. Both Aunt Yifen and I have our individual hopes, but in addition to these, we share the common hope that in our lifetimes we will never have to make up the face of a loved one. That’s why I was so sorrowful last week: I had a nagging feeling that something terrible had happened, and that it had happened to my own younger brother. From what I heard, my younger brother had met a young woman whose appearance and temperament made her the envy of all, a woman of talent and beauty. They were so happy together, and to me it was a stroke of joyous good fortune. But the happiness was all too short-lived, for I soon learned that—for no apparent reason—that delightful young woman had married a man she didn’t love. Why is it that two people who are in love cannot marry but wind up spending the rest of their lives as the bitter victims of unrequited love? My younger brother changed into a different person; he even said to me: I don’t want to live anymore. I didn’t know what to do. Would I someday be making up the face of my own younger brother?
I don’t want to live anymore.
My younger brother had said.
I couldn’t understand how things could have reached that stage. Neither could my younger brother. If she had merely said: I don’t like you anymore. He would have had nothing more to say. But the two of them were clearly in love. It was not to pay a debt of gratitude, nor was it due to economic hardships, so could it be that in this modern, civilized society of ours there are still parents who arrange their daughters’ marriages? A lifetime covers many long years; why must one bow to Fate? Ai, I only hope that during my lifetime I will never have to make up the face of a loved one. But who can say for sure? When Aunt Yifen formally took me on as an apprentice and began passing her consummate skills on to me, she said: You must follow my wishes in one respect before I will take you on as my apprentice. I didn’t know why she was being so solemn about it. But she continued with extreme seriousness: When it is my turn to lie down, you must personally make up my face; you are not to permit any stranger to so much as touch my body. I didn’t feel that this would present any problems, but I was surprised by her inflexibility in the matter. Take me, for example: when it is my turn to lie down, what will the body I leave behind have to do with me? But that was Aunt Yifen’s one and only personal wish, and it is up to me to help her fulfill it, if I am still around when that day comes. On this long road of life, Aunt Yifen and I are alike in that we harbor no grandiose wishes; Aunt Yifen hopes that I will be her cosmetician, and I only hope to use my talents to create the “most perfectly serene cadaver,” one that will be gentler and calmer than all others, just as though death were truly the most beautiful sleep of all. Actually, even if I am successful, it will be nothing more than a game to kill a
little time amid the boredom of life; isn’t the entirety of human existence meaningless anyway? All my efforts constitute nothing more than an exercise in futility; if I someday manage to create the “most perfectly serene cadaver,” will I gain any rewards from it? The dead know nothing, and my efforts will surely go unnoticed by the family of the deceased. Clearly, I will not hold an exhibition to display to the public my cosmetic skills and innovations. Even less likely is the prospect that anyone will debate, compare, analyze, or hold a forum to discuss my cosmetic job on the deceased; and even if they did, so what? It would cause as much of a stir as the buzzing of insects. My work is purely and simply a game played for the benefit of myself in my workroom. Why then have I bothered to form this hope in the first place? More than likely to provide a stimulus for me to go on working, because mine is a lonely profession: no peers, no audience, and, naturally, no applause. When I’m working, I can only hear the faint sound of my own breathing; in a room filled with supine bodies—male and female—I alone am breathing softly. It’s gotten to the point where I imagine I can hear the sounds of my own heart grieving and sighing, and when the hearts of others cease producing sounds of lament, the sounds of my own heart intensify.
Yesterday I decided to do the cosmetic work on a young couple who had died in a love-inspired suicide pact, and as I gazed into the sleeping face of the young man, I realized that this was my chance to create the “most perfectly serene cadaver.” His eyes were closed, his lips were pressed lightly together, and there was a pale scar on his left temple. He truly looked as though he were only sleeping very peacefully. In all my years of working on thousands of faces, many of which had fretful, distressed looks on them, the majority appearing quite hideous, I had done what I felt was most appropriate to improve their looks, using needle and thread or makeup to give them an appearance of unlimited gentleness. But words cannot describe the peaceful look on the face of the boy I saw yesterday, and I wondered if his suicide should be viewed as an act of joy. But then I felt that I was being deceived by appearances, and I believed instead that his had been an act of extreme weakness; I knew that, considering my position, I should have nothing to do with anyone who lacked the courage to resist the forces of Fate. So not only did I abandon all thoughts of using him to create the “most perfectly serene cadaver,” I refused to even work on him, turning both him and the girl who had joined him in stupidly resigning themselves to Fate’s whims over to Aunt Yifen to let her carefully repair the cheeks that had been scalded by the force of the powerful poison they had ingested.
Everyone is familiar with Aunt Yifen’s past, because there are some around who personally witnessed it. Aunt Yifen was still young at the time, and she not only liked to sing as she worked but she talked to the cadavers who lay in front of her, as though they were her friends. It wasn’t until later that she became so uncommunicative. Aunt Yifen was in the habit of telling her sleeping friends everything that was in her head—she never kept a diary—letting her monologues stand as a daily record of her life. The people who slept in her presence were mankind’s finest audience: they listened to her voluble outpourings for the longest time, yet her secrets were always completely safe with them. She told them how she had met a young man and how they had shared the happiness of all young lovers whenever they were together, even though there were times when they had occasional ups and downs. In those days Aunt Yifen went to a school of cosmetics once a week, rain or shine, fifty weeks a year, to learn new techniques, until she had mastered all that the instructors could teach her. But even when the school informed her that there was nothing left for her to study, she persisted in asking if there weren’t some new techniques that they could pass on to her. Her interest in cosmetology was that keen, almost as though it were inborn, and her friends were sure that someday she would open a grand salon somewhere. But no, she merely applied this knowledge of hers to the bodies of the people who slept in front of her. Her young lover knew nothing of any of this, for he was convinced that physical beauty was a natural desire of all girls, and that this particular one was simply fonder of cosmetics than most. That is, until that fateful day when she brought him along and showed him where she worked, pointing out the bodies that lay in the room and telling him that although hers was a lonely profession, in a place like this, one encountered no worldly bickerings, and that no petty jealousies, hatreds, or disputes over personal fame or gain existed; when these people entered the world of darkness, peace and gentleness settled over each and every one of them. He was shocked beyond belief; never in his wildest dreams had he thought that she could be a woman like this, one engaged in this sort of occupation. He had loved her, had been willing to do anything for her, vowing that he would never leave her, no matter what, and that they would grow old together, their mutual love enduring until death. But his courage failed him, his nerve abandoned him there among the bodies of people who could no longer speak and who had lost the ability to breathe. He let out a loud yell, turned on his heel and ran, flinging open every door that stood in his way. Many people saw him in a state of complete shock as he fled down the street. Aunt Yifen never saw him again. People sometimes overheard her talking to her silent friends in her workroom: Didn’t he say he loved me? Didn’t he say he would never leave me? What was it that suddenly frightened him so? Later on, Aunt Yifen grew more and more uncommunicative. Maybe she had already said everything she wanted to say, or maybe since her silent friends already knew all about her, there was no need to say anything more—there truly are many things that never need to be spoken. When Aunt Yifen was teaching me her consummate skills, she told me what had happened. It was I whom she had chosen as her apprentice, not my younger brother, and although there were other factors involved, the major reason had been that I was not a timid person.
Are you afraid?
She asked.
Not at all.
I said.
Are you timid?
She asked.
Not at all.
I said.
Aunt Yifen selected me as her successor because I was not afraid. She had a premonition that my fate would be the same as hers, and neither of us could explain how we grew to be so much alike, although it may have had its origins in the fact that neither of us was afraid. There was no fear in either one of us. When Aunt Yifen was telling me about what had happened to her, she said: I will always believe that there have to be others somewhere who are like us, people who are unafraid. This was before she had become so uncommunicative; she told me to stand by her side and watch how she reddened lips that had already become rigid, and how she worked gently on a pair of long-staring eyes until she had coaxed them into restful sleep. At that time she still talked now and then to her sleeping friends: And you, why were you afraid? Why do people who are falling in love have so little faith in love? Why do they not have courage in their love? Among Aunt Yifen’s sleeping friends were many who had been timid and cowardly, and they were even quieter than the others. She knew certain things about her sleeping friends, and sometimes, as she powdered the face of a girl with bangs on her forehead, she would say to me: Ai! Ai! What a weak girl she was. She gave up the man she loved just so she could be considered a filial daughter. Aunt Yifen knew that this girl over here had placed herself into Fate’s hands, of her own accord, out of a sense of gratitude, while that one over there had done the same by meekly accepting her lot. She talked about them not as though they had been living, feeling, thinking human beings, but merely pieces of merchandise.
What a horrible job!
My friends said.
Making up the faces of dead people! My God!
My friends said.
I wasn’t the least bit afraid, but my friends were. They disliked my eyes because I often used them to look into the eyes of the dead, and they disliked my hands because I often used them to touch the hands of the dead. At first it was just dislike, but it gradually evolved into fear, pure and simple; not only that, the dislike and fear that at first involved only
my eyes and hands later on included everything about me. I watched every one of them drift away from me, like wild animals before a forest fire or farmers before a swarm of locusts. Why are you afraid? I asked them. It’s a job that someone has to do. Is it that I’m not good enough at what I do, or that I’m not professional enough? But I gradually grew to accept my situation—I got used to being lonely. So many people search for jobs that promise sweetness and warmth, wanting their lives to be filled with flowers and stars. But how does a life of flowers and stars give one the chance to take firm strides in life? I have virtually no friends left today; a touch of my hands reminds them of a deep and distant land of ice and cold, while a look into my eyes produces innumerable images of silent floating spirits, and so they have become afraid. There is nothing that can make them look back, not even the possibility that there is warmth in my hands, that my eyes can shed tears, or that I am warmhearted. And so I began to be more and more like Aunt Yifen, my only remaining friends being the bodies of the deceased lying in front of me. I surprised myself by breaking the silence around me as I said to them: Have I told you that tomorrow I’m going to bring someone named Xia here to meet you? He asked me if you would object, and I told him you wouldn’t. Was I right in saying that? So tomorrow Xia will be here, and I think I know how it’s all going to end, because my fate and Aunt Yifen’s are one and the same. I expect to see Xia as his very soul will take wing the moment he steps foot in here. Ai! We cause each other’s souls to take wing, but in different ways. I will not be startled by what happens, because the outcome has already been made clear to me by a variety of omens. Xia once said to me: Your face is so natural. Yes, my face is natural, and a natural face lacks the power to remove someone else’s fear of things.
