by Sheng Keyi
‘Oh, don’t talk about her. I don’t know anything about what’s happened to her since she left!’ Xiaohong pulled over a stool and sat down at a little bit of a distance from the specimen cups.
‘You should get checked out and see if she passed her STD to you.’ Though joking, Youqing spoke in earnest tones, sounding a bit harsh. Her attitude toward Xiaohong was different from others. She was arrogant, perhaps because her father worked in the Environmental Protection Bureau.
‘Give us a urine sample and we’ll take it to the lab for tests.’ Xiaoqiao’s interest was piqued.
‘Wow, you guys! I bet every time I leave here you sterilise the stool I sat on, right?’ Xiaohong went and touched Xiaoqiao’s face when she had said this, shouting, ‘Let me give it to you, then!’
Jianguo laughed the whole time. Having nothing better to do, he plucked at the few scraggly whiskers forming a sparse goatee on his chin. His eyes distractedly fell on Xiaohong’s face, as if he were pondering some philosophical proposition.
Xiaohong, of course, did not give them any samples. She had already disposed of everything Ah Yue had used, even the wash basin. Xiaohong said nothing about the clothes and money Ah Yue had taken. She didn’t need anyone’s sympathy, and she certainly didn’t want to hear people say things like, ‘You Hunan people.’
The consultation room in the obstetrics and gynaecology clinic was perfect for an afternoon nap. The examination table was soft, the air conditioning was cool and when the curtains were pulled, it was as good as sleeping at night. Lying in the dark, questions surrounding Jianguo’s prosthetic leg would often blow into Xiaohong’s mind.
The coolness of the room especially suited the fleshy form of Chen Fangyuan, who made quite a racket with her snoring. She had a daughter in one of the top secondary schools in the city and her husband was a chief of something-or-other at the Public Security Bureau. She seemed to have no regrets in life and always had energy to spare when it came to helping others. She practically flew through the corridors as she walked, as if she were forever about some business of earth-shattering importance. Dr Chen was always very friendly to Xiaohong, perhaps because of her connection to the hospital chairman, perhaps because she was temporary and posed no threat to her colleagues. Or maybe it was simply because of Xiaohong’s small stature and straightforward temperament. For whatever reason, Dr Chen was particularly fond of Xiaohong.
‘Xiaohong, my girl, He Jianguo hasn’t always been a technician. He used to be a driver. After he broke his leg, he became a lab tech,’ Dr Chen said, lying flat on the bed. Her body filled the exam table. She turned her head to face Xiaohong, an ultrasound scanner between them. She stretched her muscles as she spoke. Seeing Xiaohong’s interest, she went on about the Jianguo affair, how he had fallen from the fourth floor and broken his leg, leaving him unable to drive. ‘And that’s how come he’s stuck in the lab. Basically, you’ve got to take care of yourself!’
As she talked on, Xiaohong grew drowsier, only grunting in reply. She gradually realised that Dr Chen’s greatest hobby was gossip. Every afternoon, the doctor just had to tell her stories, as if it were another meal to be digested, slowly torturing everyone’s ears. Sometimes it was all nonsense, but sometimes she really had a scoop. For instance, she told them how Youqing had stopped menstruating for two years and had gone to all sorts of doctors for medication. When this news came out, everyone was dumbfounded. Youqing’s boyfriend was a decent sort of guy but, significantly, he was not exactly stable. Since he was doing contract work, he could not quite settle down and that created a fair bit of uncertainty from one day to the next.
‘None of you have met him. Because of Youqing’s physiological problems, the guy seems to have backed off several times. No one knows why they haven’t separated yet. But I guess he’s a smart fellow. He saw her father’s position and saw a way to transfer to the city.’ Dr Chen proposed this theory, making things really lively.
Xiaohong listened and observed, and tried to imagine what Dr Chen would look like making love to a man. She was at that thirsty age. The way she looked, certainly no other man would have any interest in her. Only her husband would be dutiful enough to be with her until the end. So did that mean she had no interest in being with other women’s men? That was a question Xiaohong did not care to ask. With that question, she dozed off.
V
What a let-down! For some time, Liao Zhenghu had been storing up his energies until he could see Xiaohong. But when the time came, all of the passion he had hoped to offer to her in a prolonged outpouring came out in a single shot. The poor fellow just couldn’t contain himself, which was beyond even his own imaginings. The frustration was indescribable. The worst of it was that he was not even sure that his quick ejaculation hadn’t found its way into Xiaohong.
‘Think! Think carefully!’ Xiaohong was frantic.
‘Well, what about you? Do you feel like it’s OK?’ Liao retorted.
‘Feel? I didn’t have time to feel anything! If it’s going to always be like that, what’s the point? Might as well just masturbate.’ Xiaohong was unusually agitated. Liao wanted to offer her some comfort but she left him grasping at an empty space on the bed as she got up and went into the washroom to take remedial action.
Liao rolled over to her half of the bed, feeling depressed. He thought back over everything carefully, trying to figure out why he had made such a quick, clean end of the matter.
When Xiaohong had spent five minutes squatting over the toilet, she came back to lie on the bed. Liao suddenly found an answer. He passionately reached for Xiaohong and said with feeling, ‘I love you!’
Xiaohong shuddered. What a fresh phrase! It was the first time she had ever heard it.
‘What did you say, Ah Sir?’ she asked, giggling.
‘I said I love you, Qian Xiaohong.’ Liao looked at the ceiling as he spoke. It was very white and there was a stain where it had apparently flooded before. It looked like a map.
Liao sat up. He glanced around Xiaohong’s one-room, one-bath quarters, the powdery white walls bare of decoration. It was empty and pale. The bed squeaked. The desk wobbled. It was a second-hand piece discarded from the hospital after who knew how many years of use. The simple wardrobe bulged, tilting to one side under its overwhelming load. The fat magnolia leaves outside the window were turning black. Lazy and heavy, they swayed in the breeze.
‘What are you sitting there for?’ Xiaohong swatted him on the thigh. It wasn’t that she hadn’t understood what he had said, it was just that she wasn’t sure whether what he had spoken of actually existed or whether he had just said it on impulse. There was no reason for him to really love a girl who had worked in a salon and a hotel, nor was there a reason for any man to. Liao had spoken out of a moment of compassion, wanting to make himself look good.
‘Are you going to hate me if I don’t marry you?’ Liao seemed poised for a long conversation.
‘Why would I hate you? The thought hadn’t crossed my mind.’
‘Then don’t you feel like you’re losing out?’
‘Losing out? I never thought of it like that. It’s not like you forced me.’
‘You’re a girl. It’s always to your disadvantage if someone does you.’
‘If I remember correctly, I’ve always been the one on top.’
‘But it’s still me doing you. I just did it more pleasantly.’
‘It pleased me too. I didn’t do it as a service to you.’
‘You did it to serve desire.’
‘You could say that. We were satisfying our bodies.’
‘Of course, I’ll cherish the person who fulfils my desires. That’s the essence of all affection.’
‘Prostitutes and rape victims lose out in the sex act. I’m not a prostitute. You’re not my customer and you didn’t rape me. I don’t see how you can say I lost out, especially not if I enjoyed it as much as you did.’
‘If all women thought like this, wouldn’t the world be a mess? All hell would break l
oose.’
Logically, Xiaohong was the ideal partner for anyone to get along with, since she had no ideological baggage. But Liao felt awkward and this affected his thinking.
‘It would be more balanced. Otherwise, it’s only women’s worlds that are a mess. Like my sister with her loyalty to her husband. Though I guess her world has some sort of blind order.’ Xiaohong’s voice grew husky.
‘What have you been reading? Where’d you pick up this way of thinking? Why do I find that I can’t keep up with you?’
‘I’m still talking about the question of whether or not I’m losing out.’
‘Alright, alright. Let’s not talk about losing out. Anyway…’
‘Anyway, you’re a good guy. I know.’
Liao was afraid Xiaohong hadn’t got it. Despite her ideological work, he’d never imagined she’d start lecturing him. In all honesty, he thought that being involved with a girl like Xiaohong would save some trouble. He never actually thought about marrying a working-class girl. For her, it was a constant struggle for employment, for permits, for diplomas. Now he finds out she didn’t think she was losing out. It must be because she thought he at least had real feelings for her. As soon as she realised he was just having his fun with her, the feeling of loss would come.
But what about him? Why was he so obsessed with her? That was the real question and Liao was constantly seeking an answer to it.
VI
People perpetually surrounded by sickness and suffering appreciate life and health more. And so hospital employees, forever hearing the moans and groans of worry and anxiety, often become philosophical seeing so much fear and despair. Though the younger employees are already like that, it is particularly obvious in the older doctors, showing up in their speech and behaviour and their general take on life. It’s as if the hospital becomes their whole world.
As for that young, energetic guy Xia Jifeng, though he was not a doctor, Xiaohong felt he should go out and see the wide world and not just sit around in the hospital flirting with the nurses, as satisfied as if he had personally done every one of them.
Xiaohong’s and Xia’s desks were next to each other. When they were both in the office, it was like they were in a café having a drink. The air conditioner constantly buzzed, steady as the heartbeat of someone at rest.
‘There’s going to be a big campaign in a few days. We need to come up with a float and a dozen or so brochures. We’ll need to work overtime to get the content for the brochures ready. You need to find some information quickly and pull together our best stuff. And make sure to cover all aspects.’
Xia stood in front of the desk as he said the first part and by the time he had finished talking, he had walked into the corridor. Over the previous few days, he had seemed to be avoiding sitting down facing Xiaohong. This clever disguise actually unintentionally revealed his carefully hidden secret. Xiaohong sometimes pressed her chest against the edge of the desk, and in that posture chatted casually with him. Xia felt he, like the desk, had to endure certain pressures to which Xiaohong subjected him.
Xiaohong drank some water, her mind a little unsettled. This sort of campaign was nothing, really. It was ridiculous the way they drove along the bustling streets, stopping in the corner of some square, piling their belongings up like wandering hawkers setting up shop. All those public education brochures, who would stop and read them? Anyone who spent ten minutes doing so had to have thick skin. Who would want to have others suspect they had some illness, especially an incurable disease? Everyone likes to put on a front of health and happiness, mocking things like impotence, premature ejaculation, prostatitis, vaginal discomfort or gonorrhoea. Only stealthily, under the cover of darkness, would they enter a hospital for a check-up.
The women and children’s hospital had a private clinic for men. Every night after ten, male patients, pale as ghosts, came in and out. Even for a normal procedure like circumcision, they would only have it carried out at night. They were the sort of people she saw on the streets, each one cockier than the next and each one more normal than the next. Xiaohong would see those high and mighty fellows and she would have to wonder about their physical condition. Sometimes it made her laugh, as if she had access to all the secrets of another person. But beyond all doubt, if the upper body was not stable, then everything below the waist would be a secondary concern. Those problems were less obvious.
In the evening, the sunlight gave way to the fluorescent bulbs. Xiaohong flipped through a medical book, selecting the useful information. She skipped here and there, her mind suddenly full of reproduction, diseases and sexuality. The edginess inside her intensified. When she couldn’t stand it any longer, she went to the dining hall for dinner, then paced around the hospital lawn a few times. At the corner of the yard, she saw Youqing and Xia in conversation in a small pavilion about four or five feet away. When Xiaohong approached, Youqing turned her lab coat clad rump toward them and walked away. Xiaohong noticed that she was very short, maybe even shorter than herself.
‘You had dinner yet? The pork rib stew is pretty good today,’ Xia said, making conversation.
‘Why are you eating in the canteen?’ As soon as she said it, she regretted asking. She just remembered Xia was divorced.
‘How’s the preparation of the materials going? Try to keep ahead of schedule, so you can have a bit of leeway in case you need it,’ he said as they walked back to the office. Xiaohong walked behind him, giving her about ten seconds to quietly look him over. Stung by his indifferent, businesslike attitude, she thought back over his expression when he had first started speaking, trying to find any chink in the face’s armour, but his expression was forever ambiguous.
‘I’m a bit scared working overtime in the hospital. The day before yesterday, someone in the maternity ward died and it was like there was constant crying. Then, last night, it was weird. One of the duty nurses was stuck in the elevator. She was trapped there in the dark for over an hour.’ Whether the fear was real or feigned, Xiaohong herself could not actually tell. Whichever way, she faced Xia and spoke to him in this pitiful way.
‘The lift is old. It’s got nothing to do with the death. Don’t be so superstitious.’ In the empty campaign work room on the sixth floor, Xia’s shadow seemed to dangle on the wall. As he spoke, he selected a few suitable signboards. He rapped on the boards with his knuckles.
Xiaohong flipped casually through the propaganda posters, attaching each one to a board with thumb tacks.
‘This is the good life—, ouch!’ Xiaohong had pricked her fingertip. She shook her hand, a little angry.
‘You’ve got two options. You can use the hammer or you can wait for me to come and push it in. You do something else.’ He was attaching another poster to the board.
Finally unable to stand it anymore, she plopped down on the campaign room table, one leg resting on the floor while the other dangled in the air. ‘You seem to have some objection to me. Did I do something to offend you, Xia? It seems like you can’t even bear to look at me!’
Xia, bending over his work, turned and caught sight of the open gap at the front of her skirt between her thighs. A wave of heat coloured his forehead and he buried himself deeper in his work.
‘Go on, say it. I’m careless. You tell me what you think and I’ll examine myself, alright?’ Xiaohong said sincerely. She had worn a very short and very tight skirt today. She wasn’t a doctor so dressed a little more freely. She hoped he would look up and then he would certainly be done for.
He continued to keep his head bent over his work. It was as if he would spend a lifetime like that, never looking up.
Whack! The lights went out. The streetlights outside the window were bright, the words Royal Hotel flashed through them, flickering on and off. The night’s lights cast a glow of indeterminate hue over the work room.
‘Eh? What’s this? There’s power upstairs and downstairs.’ Xia searched for the light switch and found Xiaohong standing devilishly beside it.
‘
The fuse has gone.’
‘I’ll have a look.’
‘Even if you have a look, it’s still gone.’
‘Even if it’s gone, I’ll still have a look.’
‘Then have a look.’
‘I don’t want to have a look.’
Xia had fallen into the trap.
Finally displaying the strength reflected in those muscles, he forcefully squeezed Xiaohong’s big breasts. He plonked her onto the table and there atop the family planning, reproductive health and STD propaganda posters, he could resist no longer. He resolutely ravaged this demon that had provoked him. Using his own bodily fluids as glue, he stuck the posters to the board, nailing them down so hard no wind would blow them away. Soon, they would make a brilliant display in the streets.
VII
A new fellow named Xiao Yuan came to work in the administration office at the hospital, acting like a big shot. It turned out he was Youqing’s boyfriend. He had been employed before HR had assigned him a post, since they had not yet shuffled things round to accommodate him. It was all a game of musical chairs, really. Clearly, since Youqing’s father, the bureaucrat, had taken in Mr Liao’s son, Mr Liao had had to take on Youqing’s boyfriend, so as not to owe any favours or be indebted in any way. It evened the score and everyone was happy. It was an excellent idea, but no one could say for sure who had thought of it.
Of course, the suggestion almost certainly had come from Youqing. Only she was smooth enough to think of a solution that was so mutually beneficial to both parties. And in discussing the business with Mr Liao, only if she personally came up with the solution would there be any results. Most people, no matter how hard they worked, could not get things done, but some people needed only play their little games and everything was settled. In the course of a single meal, she could secure jobs for two people and get another promoted.
