Massage

by Bi Feiyu

  Why? Because there was something peculiar, sort of funny, about the way he spoke. His northern Jiangsu accent had a noticeable trait – there was no distinction between ‘h’ and ‘f ’, or, to be more precise, it transposed h and f. So ‘fare’ became ‘hare’, ‘hat’ became ‘fat’. People parroted him, including the girl at the front desk, who sometimes had fun with his accent. ‘Little Xu, you have a hare on bed number nine.’

  The mockery angered Tailai; an accent is nothing but a man’s identity. Being blind didn’t bother him much, since all the therapists were blind; what mattered most was his rural background, an illness without a cure. No matter how hard he worked to better himself, how much he wanted to ‘take fate by the throat’, he’d still be a heavily accented man from the countryside. By imitating his speech, they might as well be pointing at him and calling him country bumpkin.

  He was upset, all right, though he dared not antagonise the girl at the front desk, but she was the only one. With his blind co-workers he displayed a desire for revenge and would, if necessary, let his fists do the talking – not because he was brave, but because he was a coward. His cowardly nature forced him to put up with others’ taunts, even when they became unbearable, until he could take it no longer and he fought back. He was oblivious to how unreasonable his behaviour was, that is, making a big deal out of something so trivial. Yet, what can a decent person do other than be unreasonable at times?

  His fists took care of the problem, and no one would mock him again. He could finally hold his head high, but seen in retrospect, this victory was premature, for just about everyone began to ignore him. Even that is an understatement, for they virtually shunned him. A proud person, he pretended not to care. So what if you ignore me? You think I want to be among you? He began to shut himself in, putting on arrogant airs. But no matter how much he pretended not to care, he had to be frank with himself, for one thing was clear: he could be haughty if he wanted, but he’d have to bear the consequence of gloom alone, which is what he did. That went on day after day; gloom had its price, like interest that kept compounding, plunging him further and further into his glum state.

  In his dejected state of mind, he took notice of Xiao Mei, a girl from the Shaanxi countryside, not because she had any special qualities, but because she never shied from speaking in her hometown dialect; she was comfortable and unabashed, showing no sign of wanting to use Putonghua. It quickly became clear to him how nice the Shaanxi dialect sounded. With so many level tones, it seemed flat and plain, but an emphasis was often placed somewhere in a phrase before falling to a final flat note that was then drawn out, like singing. Her accent was thicker than his, but Xiao Mei didn’t care, was seemingly unaware of it. She talked in such a natural way that, after a while, a listener might even begin to see problems in Putonghua, and prefer that everyone talked like her, with a thick Shaanxi accent. By comparison, the northern Jiangsu accent was terrible, with too many glottal stops and falling tones on vowels for no particular reason. It was abrupt, heavy, stubborn even, as if disappearing into a void. He was ashamed of his own accent. What had he done to deserve that? He would not have minded his rural background if he’d been speaking the Shaanxi dialect.

  Then something unexpected happened. One night Tailai and Xiao Mei showed up in the washroom at the same time. They were standing by the sink, where she was washing a pair of socks, when she asked him a mortal question. ‘How come you never talk?’ He blinked a couple of times but didn’t answer her. She repeated the question, convinced that he hadn’t heard it the first time. This time he answered, in an unfriendly tone.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Nothing. I just want to hear you talk.’

  ‘What do you want to hear?’

  ‘Nothing in particular. I just want to hear you talk.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘It has a nice sound.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Your hometown dialect has a really nice sound.’

  That came as a shock, and it took him a while to figure out what she meant. Their rice smells better than yours, is what it was. His accent was his sore spot, the cause of his low self-esteem, but it turned into something good in her ear. He didn’t believe her, but he had to. She sounded so truthful, not to mention envious and full of admiration.

  Tailai’s confidence grew in front of Xiao Mei. He began to talk. Self-assurance in speech is intriguing: when you feel confident speaking with a person, something other than confidence can begin to grow, turning it supple, capable of drawing people close to you. Their relationship matured; they talked to one another in their own accents. The more they talked, the more they had to say to one another, until finally they became an item.

  The relationship lasted less than ten months. On a Sunday in September, her father called her from Shanghai, asking her to please come home right away to get married. He made it clear that the man had a mental disability. Her father was not an unreasonable man and dealt with her honestly; he didn’t dare deceive his own daughter. He didn’t dare force her; he talked it over with her, as a request. He told her all about the deal he’d made, concluding with a guarantee that once it was done, everyone in the family would benefit.

  ‘Come home, my girl.’

  She left without giving anything away beforehand. After booking a room in a nearby hotel, she called Tailai to sneak in to her room. When he woke up the next morning he learned of her departure from a letter she’d left him. Touching it with the tips of his fingers, he felt every vowel and every consonant as if it were her skin, or her pores. In the letter she told him everything, ending with, ‘You must remember one thing, Brother Tailai. I’m yours and you are mine.’ He lost count of how many times he read the letter, finally putting it in his lap to stroke it as he broke into song, softly for the first few lines, but then raising his voice and singing so loudly that hotel security escorted him out of the hotel and sent him back to the tuina centre, where he continued to sing for a day and a half, as if possessed. At first his co-workers felt sorry for him; later, to their sympathy was added surprise. Where had he learned all those songs? He’d begun with tunes from the late 1980s and on into the early twenty-first century, with a mixture of styles and singing methods. What really surprised them was that he had such a good voice and was a different person when he sang, unrestrained, capable of cries of bitter anguish. What most amazed them was that when he sang he was able to differentiate all the ‘f ’s and ‘h’s and ‘n’s and ‘l’s as well as z, c and s in Putonghua, which he confused when he was talking. Lying on his bunk, he sang, refusing to eat or drink, no matter how his co-workers tried to talk him around:

  I’ve never been cold

  You’re always saying softly

  You always silently bear with

  And now for some reason

  Am I the one you love most? because you’re by my side

  I’m here on dark nights

  me like this, without complaint

  you no longer look at me

  Why aren’t you saying anything?

  Days and nights alternate without exchanging places

  Unable to imagine what the other’s world is like

  We still insist on staying where we are and waiting

  Turning each other into two worlds

  You’ll never understand my sorrows

  Just as daytime doesn’t understand the darkness of the night

  Jiumei, Jiumei, pretty little sister

  Jiumei, Jiumei, like a bright red flower bud

  Jiumei, Jiumei, lovely little sister

  Jiumei, Jiumei, the one in my heart

  I gave you my true love

  If I could be with you for one day

  I wouldn’t miss anything in this world

  For even the ocean’s edge and

  heaven’s end will change I’ve never regretted it

  Where are you at this moment

  How can I get in touch with you

  If my love recei
ves no response I want to tell you something

  I’ve never said before

  to be by your side again

  what does the world have to do

  with me?

  In the wind is a cloud made of rain

  The cloud is heartbroken

  in the wind

  I live on the hills of yellow earth

  Be they from the northwest

  or from the southeast

  They are all songs from me

  My songs A cloud made of rain

  Who knows where

  the wind will send it?

  Gusts of wind blow over the hills

  I told you I waited for a long time

  I want to take your hands

  Your hands are trembling

  Could you be telling me I told you my last request

  you will leave with me now

  your tears are streaming down

  you love me for having nothing

  at all

  You will leave with me now.

  He sang until he lost his voice, until only a wheezing sound was audible. Just when everyone thought something terrible was about to happen, instead of taking his own life, he calmly got out of bed and, with no one urging him to eat, he ate, and with no one urging him to drink, he drank; once he’d eaten and drunk his fill, he went to work, as if nothing had happened.

  Jin Yan was still in Dalian at the time. How far is that from Shanghai? At least two thousand kilometres, worlds apart. But, really, what are two thousand kilometres in the age of mobile phones? Nothing at all. A hometown friend relayed the news about Tailai to Jin Yan soon after it happened, but one mobile phone exchange after another had introduced changes. The story had been embellished repeatedly and expansively, running wild and surging, endowed with the temperament of each narrator and instilled with the explosive power of a love story. It was complete but splintered, violent yet dreary. Xu Tailai and Xiao Mei’s story spread like a massive whirlwind in the closed-off space of the blind. After hearing it, Jin Yan shut her mobile phone and was touched by love before she even had a chance to wipe away her tears. With a metaphorical ‘thud’, she fell fast, instantly becoming a woman in love. The object of her affection was the male lead in the story she’d just heard, Xu Tailai.

  A week later, she quit her job in Dalian and arrived in Shanghai on the frenzied wheels of a train. It was just a job, which meant little to Jin Yan; as a tuina therapist, her fingers were her ticket from one job to the next. But love was different; love occurred only at this moment. And, of course, it occurred at this place. If she failed to grasp it here and now, it was gone forever. Jin Yan was a pessimist, a blind woman whose pessimism was too deep to fathom. She had a clear sense of what her life entailed, and knew that she could not expect much from this world. Calmed by her pessimism, deep down she was carefree; she wanted little and could give up anything. All she really wanted was love, and as long as she did not go hungry, she would be content. When love came along, she would welcome it the way a rose opens its petals and spreads its scent. She was ready to spend the rest of her life preparing for love, for the chance to become a bride; she was betting everything on love, laying it all out there without a qualm.

  But she was too late. A week before she arrived in Shanghai, Tailai left without saying goodbye. He disappeared like the heroes of legends who vanish predictably in the last line of the story. He vanished into a distant place, without a trace. She tried his mobile phone but received the expected recording: ‘The number you dialled is no longer in service.’ She was not upset. No longer in service may not have been the best news, but it wasn’t the worst either. The recording signalled that the story she’d heard was true and that Xu Tailai was a real person. He wasn’t here, so he must be out there, and his mobile phone was no longer in service. So what? His phone service had been disconnected, but her love was full steam ahead.

  From the beginning, Jin Yan’s romance existed in halves: half real and half illusory; half earthbound and half up in the sky; half known and half waiting to be known; half here and half there; half assured and half anticipated. A captivating mix. A tortuous reality. But being tortuous merely made it even more captivating, tinged with dreamlike, distant qualities.

  Where was he? She had no idea.

  But then came the bad, all but fatal news. Her mobile phone told her that his phone was not just no longer in service, but that the number she dialled could not be completed.

  Instead of sadness, Jin Yan thought she heard singing, all kinds of singing, like falling rain, like whirling snow, tunes from the late 1980s and on into the early twenty-first century, with a mixture of styles and singing methods. It surrounded her like a mist; her heart sang silently but with abandon.

  How could he, Tailai, a man who had lost his beloved, a man destined to start a romance with Jin Yan in an imaginary place, know that he could be in love again? Xu Tailai was his name. Jin Yan’s heart was expansive, open and vast. A broad sea has room for leaping fish, a high sky can hold soaring birds. But the world was filled with fish unrelated to her and birds with whom she had no connection. Tailai had been mercilessly swallowed up by the vast ocean and the spacious sky. Where was he? Where?

  Jin Yan decided to stay in Shanghai, where she languished. It was like a dream. She stayed on at the tuina centre where he had once worked, sad but not despairing. This was, after all, the place where he had lived and worked. She was convinced that this was no blind adventure. She understood the world of the blind; it might appear big, but in practical terms, it is small, very small. And all blind people share a fatal trait – nostalgia. He had friends in Shanghai, and one of these days he’d phone. All she needed to do was wait, like the farmer waiting for another rabbit to run headlong into a stump. No one knew how her heart beat, no one but her. Other people’s hearts beat like a rabbit’s; hers beat like that of a tortoise. A tortoise would surely be able to wait under a tree for its rabbit to show up. She firmly believed that every heartbeat of a woman in love was precious; every one of those heartbeats brought her closer, a little closer, closer still to the one she loved. Unable to see, yet she had filled her eyes with images of his receding figure, one upon another, like a wild profusion of vegetation. Jin Yan was in love, and that love encompassed only one person. A one-person love is the most poignant love. A one-person love is true love. I’ve come, my dear, I’m right here.

  She gave herself a timeline; she was willing to wait about a year. Time can pass fast if you have a goal. Waiting can be torture, but can also be infused with happiness. With the passing of every day and every hour, you are closer to your goal if you make the best of it. Every moment is precious as long as the goal draws nearer.

  It turned out she didn’t have to wait a year. Fate is unpredictable. After five months in Shanghai, she heard fate’s alluring laughter. One evening after their night shift, some of the guys came over to the women’s dorm, where they talked and cracked melon seeds, littering the floor with the shells. It was past one o’clock in the morning when the talk turned to Tailai, which plunged the room into momentary silence.

  Then a ‘rabbit’ sitting by the door spoke up evenly. ‘He’s doing quite well. In Nanjing.’

  A hush settled over the room.

  ‘Who are you talking about?’ Cocking her head, Jin Yan turned to the speaker. ‘Who’s doing well?’

  ‘Ai!’ the rabbit sighed. ‘A funny fellow called Xu Tailai. You don’t know him.’

  Though she tried to maintain control, Jin Yan’s voice quivered as she asked, ‘Do you have his mobile number?’

  ‘Sure,’ said the rabbit. ‘He called me around noon two days ago.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ Her question made little sense.

  Putting a melon seed between his teeth, the rabbit spread his lips, but no sound emerged. Jin Yan’s question puzzled him. ‘But you don’t know him.’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I owe him a debt.’

  Nanjing.
Ah, Nanjing. When she was still in Dalian, Nanjing had been such a faraway place, like a clue hidden within a riddle. Now, it was so much closer, right there next to Shanghai. She was suddenly apprehensive, experiencing a fear similar to the unsettling feeling a traveller gets when he is nearly home. But she had no time for her fears; her heart was like a bullet that, after being aimed at the target for five months, left the barrel when she pulled the imaginary trigger. At three twenty-seven the following afternoon, after a train ride that took more than two hours, plus a little under half an hour in a taxi, she was deposited at the Sha Zongqi tuina centre.

  She pushed open the glass door and walked in gracefully. She asked for a tuina massage with Xu Tailai. The girl at the front desk told her that Xu Daifu had a client. How about someone else?

  ‘I’ll wait,’ she told the girl calmly.

  ‘I’ll wait.’ She had been waiting for Tailai so long, what difference would it make to wait a little longer? What had the waiting in the past been like? Fruitless, unrealistic and foolish, accompanied only by her one-person love. It had been a torment. But everything was different now. The wait in the past and the wait now were similarly real and actual, but she was in love with this wait. She wanted to focus on this wait and enjoy it.

  ‘May I have a glass of water, please?’

  When she looked back later, she could not believe her own calm composure. How could she have been so relaxed and unruffled? How had she done that? It was so unlike her. She was amazed by the evenness in her heart, like a pond of still water, which convinced her that there was a karmic connection between her and Tailai. After a divergent and complex cycle of rebirth, she and he met up once again. That was all.