Massage

by Bi Feiyu

  Sha and Zhang shared the same dorm room, on opposite upper bunks. They did not talk much at first, something that changed only when they shared the same fate – the men on their lower bunks found girlfriends at almost the same time.

  Finding girlfriends was, of course, a good thing, but none of their business. At least not until the men shocked them by having their girlfriends stay overnight. The men tacked up pieces of cloth around their beds, covering all three sides to create a private space. To be fair, the couples practised restraint and self-control inside the closed space, not making any improper or unseemly noise at night. It was hard, to be sure, but they managed. What the couples overlooked was that they could only control the sounds they made, but not the movements of their bodies; the bed rocked as they moved. When their beds rocked, so did Sha’s and Zhang’s, more, in fact, than the lower bunks. Sha Fuming and Zhang Zongqi rocked rhythmically, soundlessly, evenly and pointlessly, but with significant consequences. They could only lie there, pretending to sleep while they were consumed by flames of desire.

  And that was how Sha Fuming and Zhang Zongqi became friends, through commiseration and private curses. They were fellow sufferers, not of an illness, but of maleness. This punishment was not something everyone could endure. Others might not understand, but they did. They shared the same feeling, the same pain, the same resentment, the same torment, the same dejection and the same self-mockery. They could only comfort one another, and from that they found they embraced the same aspiration – to have one’s own room. How would they do that? The one and only answer was: be their own boss.

  By all accounts, they were comrades in suffering. Had they not braved countless dangers by surviving a sea of fire together? This was no exaggeration. They hated the life of a migrant worker with all their being; put differently, they were dying to be a boss. With that shared and eager wish, they decided to pool their money and became bosses ahead of schedule. ‘We’ll split down the middle,’ Sha had said. ‘I have a name ready. We’ll call it the Sha Zongqi tuina centre.’ The rent for a storefront in Shanghai was beyond their means. What to do? Go back to Nanjing – no matter where you are you can open a business.

  Sha was decisive about taking Zhang to Nanjing. Why? The explanation was simple: Nanjing, Sha’s stomping ground, was more or less his hometown, while Zhang had no prior connection to the city, since he had come from a small town in central China. They could not possibly open a tuina centre in a remote town.

  The opening of the Sha Zongqi tuina centre was a landmark event, not because they had finally become bosses, not that. It was a landmark because it transformed two unrelated migrant workers into good friends who had shared peaks and valleys. The beginning of their friendship was also its high point. Deep down, however, neither of them was happy with the arrangement. Sha, of course, had wanted to open a Sha Fuming tuina centre and Zhang would have preferred a Zhang Zongqi tuina centre. But they were friends who had been through hardships, friends till death, so how could Sha Fuming or Zhang Zongqi be better than Sha Zongqi? Sha Fuming was Sha Fuming, with his own parents; Zhang Zongqi was Zhang Zongqi and had his own parents. But Sha Zongqi was different; Sha Zongqi had no parents. He had Sha Fuming and Zhang Zongqi as his fathers. They did not merely become a boss; in fact they became one person – enterprising, hardworking and courteous, who would do anything to sustain their friendship. They were touched by their friendship and by their magnanimity; having one true lifelong friend was enough, so they treated each other like a brother.

  Strictly speaking, there was never any discord between Sha and Zhang. Of course, that was not really the case, since disagreements did crop up once they became bosses, but they were minor, trivial, not serious enough to be called discord. One principle they held in common was to never bring up something that bothered them, no matter what happened; the person who did that would appear petty. They were like brothers, and troubles would blow over as long as they were willing to compromise. Discord was inevitable, since it was two men running a business with employees. If discord was on the horizon, everything was fine so long as they each kept quiet and acted in a broad-minded, magnanimous manner.

  And yet, not voicing displeasure did not mean it wasn’t felt. Sha was unhappy with Zhang because he played no role in running the business; he never offended anyone and brought in more money. And he was sharp as a tack. Zhang was unhappy for the opposite reason; he had also put up eighty thousand yuan and, being one of the bosses, was busy day in and day out, but in the end, the centre appeared to be Sha Fuming’s; he seemed to be sole owner of the place, barking orders all day long. And he was as vain as a peacock.

  Sha Fuming was a vain man who placed a great deal of emphasis on the status of a boss, though money was important to him too. Money meant a lot to Zhang, but deep down he also took the role of a boss seriously. The partnership meant that each only got half of what he wanted, which was cause for dissatisfaction. Time really cannot take care of everything. As time went on, resentment began to accumulate. By itself resentment is no big deal; accumulation is the problem. Accumulated resentment is a wing, and a wing can do only one thing – spread out and flap its way into the darkness.

  However, friendship still mattered, so the two bosses bore their resentment privately when they were together, striving to appear unconcerned, that there was nothing wrong. It was a sort of diligence, prolonged and difficult, also useless and laughable. In retrospect, the worst thing they could have done to their friendship was to be diligent, for it was like slow-acting poison. Everything went well each and every day; nothing was out of kilter. What could be detrimental was the unexpected. With the advent of the unexpected, the slow poison would be given its opportunity to take effect; the resultant animosity towards one another would shock not only the others, but themselves as well. How much better it would have been if they’d quarrelled from time to time.

  Yet this was not the fatal blow; the critical factor was that they were both blind, and as bosses they had daily dealings with both the sighted and unsighted at the centre. The blind have their own approach to interpersonal relationships, a unique and reliable method that works for them; trouble crops up when the sighted enter the mix. No matter how one looks at it, the blind are vulnerable; they lack confidence in how they interact with others. When dealing with the sighted, they adopt their ways, for the simple reason that they cannot see. ‘Truth’ and ‘facts’ are not on their side, so they must judge and act by relying on the eyes of the sighted. In the end, without knowing it, the blind follow the sighted in their social interactions. They are unaware that their judgements are the judgements of others, and yet they have their doubts. That in turn makes it necessary for them to face two different worlds, which leads to a serious predicament. What do they do? They know what to do. Armed with self-esteem and resolve, they divide their inner world into two, one half believing and the other half doubting.

  This was precisely the scientific attitude, half believing and half doubting, that Sha and Zhang adopted to deal with the centre. In the strictest sense, there has never been an independent world for the blind that is completely separate from that of the sighted, as the pervasive gaze of the sighted forever sparkles in the world of the blind. The gaze is sharp, hard, omnipresent, eerie and demonic, so when the blind enter mainstream society, they are constantly tripped up by two stumbling blocks – their experience and the eyes of the sighted. They trudge along with great difficulty, like groping rocks to cross a river.

  Hence, in a way, Sha Fuming was trustworthy and so was Zhang Zongqi; the only suspicious one was Sha Zongqi.

  It was past two in the morning when Sha came back to the dorm from the teahouse. He was the second to return. They had left together but had come back separately: to employees lying awake, the two sets of footsteps implied a problem, a big problem. Zhang was already online, his fingers banging on the keyboard. He sometimes went overboard, staying online till after three in the morning. Computers for the blind incorporate special software
that, simply put, transforms data into sounds, which means they act as sound systems. You there, Zhang Zongqi, by keeping the sound on, you disturb all the other workers, who don’t want to hurt your feelings by saying so.

  As soon as Sha Fuming was back in the dorm, he went into the toilet, where he heard someone cough. It was Wang Daifu. The silence, followed by rapid breathing, sounded suspicious. He wasn’t masturbating, was he? Sha thought he ought to turn and go back out, but that might seem odd. No, he couldn’t be. Sha turned his head in Wang’s direction and said softly, ‘Is there something wrong, Old Wang?’

  ‘It’s nothing,’ Wang replied unconvincingly.

  So Sha decided to wait, which he did for a while before asking, ‘Is there a problem?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then what are you doing in there?’

  ‘I’m almost done,’ Wang Daifu replied. ‘I’m all right, there’s nothing wrong.’

  That only intensified Sha’s suspicion. What exactly is he doing in there? He frowned. ‘What do you mean, you’re almost done?’

  ‘It’s nothing,’ Wang replied with a laugh.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Xiao Ma

  SEX CAN BE addictive, particularly in one’s youth. It took only one visit for Xiao Ma to crave more, though he could not recall the details of his first time, as if he hadn’t done it. The only thing he remembered of the experience was the hurry-scurry, but the outcome was mind-blowing. When he returned to the tuina centre, he felt he had been emptied out, with total relaxation washing over his body and mind. He was so comfortable and calm he wanted nothing, desired nothing. Nothing that wonderful had ever happened to him before. The beauty of sex was in more than the act itself; it lingered long after. Xiao Ma enjoyed a soothing sensation from head to toe; what he had ejaculated was not merely selfish and pitiable semen, but all his agitation and worries.

  Totally ignorant of sex, Ma treated his hurry-scurry movements as successful surgery that cured his illness and brought him peace. But the day was barely over before the severity of his situation reared its ugly head; he was dejected to discover that everything he had done the day before was in vain. All his problems returned, with double the intensity. A blind, saturating and evil force that had nothing to do with bones or muscles reappeared inside him, one capable of attacking at random and sweeping over him. It was secretive, violent and impossible to defend against. He fended it off with self-restraint, but evil forces always seem to prevail, and some things are harder than others to endure. When he realised that he could no longer hold it off, his only course of action was compromise; he groped his way back to the hair salon.

  His body was not a body but an alarm clock whose inside was equipped with an enormous, taut winding mechanism; time was a vicious hand that, little by little, wound his body after it was completely relaxed, and only the hurry-scurry movements could loosen up his body with a tick-tock tick-tock.

  Maybe it wasn’t a winding mechanism, but a living object. It was a python, a snake with a coiled body. When it constricted, it stuck out its forked tongue to lick him here and there, creating both a fatal temptation and lively energy, while secreting an eerie force. His body was bewitched, stirring up howling winds and surging waves.

  In a semi-dazed state, Xiao Ma entered the hair salon again and again. No longer engaged only in a hurry-scurry, he became increasingly sure of himself, slowly turning his attention from himself to Xiaoman. Through his palms and his fingers, an amazing secret revealed itself to Ma, who finally understood what people meant when they said a girl had all she should have and nothing she should not, a comment used to express admiration for a woman. Sao-zi was one of the women who enjoyed this great honour. With concentration in his hands, his fingers opened up, like seeing eyes, to focus their gaze on ‘Sao-zi’s’ arms, her hands, her hair, her neck, her waist, her chest, her hips, her buttocks, her legs. He could even see her scent, an embracing, encompassing smell; he could also see her breath, uniquely special breath that seemed not to exist at times and was all powerful at others. She was ‘Sao-zi’.

  Put at ease by ‘Sao-zi’, Xiao Ma no longer had to hurry-scurry. He wanted no one but her.

  The girls at the hair salon quickly noticed something interesting: the handsome young blind man had his ‘eyes’ on Xiaoman. They began to tease him; when he came in, they’d tell him she was busy with a client. How about a different girl? We’re all the same. With a stern look, Xiao Ma would sit down and say earnestly, ‘I’ll wait.’

  Noticing his single-minded focus on her, Xiaoman was enormously pleased. She was a plain-looking girl, not pretty at all, and that was a fatal flaw for a working girl. Proud and ambitious, she had started out big, venturing into a large establishment with a good working environment and higher pay, a preferred location for everyone. But she did not do as well as other girls, which is highly embarrassing for people in their line of work. Not making enough money was a minor issue compared to the awkwardness she felt, which got so bad she came to work at the hair salon. The salon was a boring place whose clients, unlike the larger establishment, were mostly working-class men with no romantic appeal or stories, nothing but good bodies. Xiaoman was fond of romantic stories, whether the men were sincere or not, whether they really liked her or didn’t, even if they were simply pretending. She liked it all. She was, after all, a woman, and women like hearing stories, no matter what the men actually say or do. Making money while listening to the men’s stories was an attraction that kept this line of work in existence.

  There were no stories to hear in the hair salon, but she couldn’t quit; it was the only kind of work she could do. So, just keep on doing it. Keep at it.

  While she didn’t expect stories, she did get plenty of face from Xiao Ma by his asking only for her each time, something all the other girls noticed. But then she got her stories, after all, from his gaze, in the way he looked at her. She was all too familiar with men’s gazes, which were bright and spirited before they climbed on. Their eyes were filled with an invincible power, energy and strength, but their talk could be nauseating. Of course this was all before the event. What she feared most was the gaze when it was over. The man would close his eyes, and when he opened them again, he would have been replaced by another man with a clouded gaze, deflated, forlorn and dejected. It was like a used condom, wrinkled, displaying a sloppy, disconsolate air. So she avoided their eyes afterwards, disgusted by every single deflated man, who looked lost, scattered like the yolk of a broken egg.

  But not Xiao Ma, who proceeded with caution at first, but was attentive afterwards. He stared at her with his lustreless eyes. He watched her, observed her, studied her, gazed at her, looked down on her. He groped her with his fingers, and wherever his fingers touched, he stared, watched, observed, studied, gazed and looked down on her. A surprising situation developed the first time he touched her eye sockets, for she was looking back at him; his non-existent gaze was penetrating, moist, bright and clear, like that of an innocent child, unguarded, guileless, giving everything away. He stared like that for a long time; his pupils trembled nearly imperceptibly, but he was trying very hard to keep them from moving.

  She was frightened the first time she looked back at him, gripped by an unspeakable terror. Was that non-existent, penetrating and bright gaze really a gaze? She wasn’t sure. If it was, she wished it was not; but if it was not, then she wished it were. Were they looking into each other’s eyes? How and with what? And what did they see in each other’s eyes? Flustered by an unknown anxiety, she avoided his gaze, but when she looked back, it was still there, taking her in with earnestness and sincerity.

  She did not know what to do about his gaze. Xiaoman, the working girl, loved stories. She loved them because they were made up, but interesting and fun, like playing house. But she was frightened by a story to which devotion and sincerity are added. Everyone in the world knows that a whore is ‘a heartless woman’, which is the way it should be. How could a whore have a heart, when the men are heartless,
no matter how sincere she is? No, a professional whore must be heartless, and nothing else.

  Women like Xiaoman sell their bodies, or as they say in Nanjing, earn bitter money. People in Nanjing never say ‘make money’, for to them this profession requires tough, bitter effort; hence, earning bitter money. But not working girls, who have a more graphic, more vivid description for their kind of work: ‘screw money’. Xiaoman had no idea which of her sisters invented the term, but it made her laugh whenever she thought about it. It’s true, isn’t it? Aren’t we screwing for money? If so, then it doesn’t concern the eyes, since we don’t need to aim; we can do a much better job with our eyes shut.

  But Xiao Ma liked to use his eyes, which she noticed were good-looking, nicely outlined, with a pleasant gaze. How can a man have such a clean, pure gaze? She’d never seen that before. What does he ‘see’ anyway?

  He did not just look; he also sniffed. Finally utilising his nose, he began to search her body. It was a peculiar kind of sniffing, more like taking deep breaths, as if trying to suck secrets from her body into his internal organs. What secret did her body harbour? None. So his look of concentration turned greedy, as he devoted all his effort and focused all his attention on her. And when he did that, he seemed like an orphan boy, slightly naughty, somewhat ill-treated, but innocent. One time she reached out to touch his cheek, totally unaware that she, not he, was the one who was staring hard, her gaze seemingly boring into his pupils. Xiaoman should not have stared at him like that. But she was a woman who shared the common feminine problem of having a soft spot. A woman’s gaze lacks stamina and becomes weak after a while, which in Xiaoman’s case, softened something in her heart and lifted her chest slightly. Oh, no. What’s happening?