by Ha Jin
Two days later, the hospital’s Political Department ordered all the staff to hand in their books that contained bourgeois ideology and sentiments, particularly those by foreign authors. Lin told Manna that he had turned in a dozen books, most of which had been extra copies. She was surprised that the leaders didn’t demand that he surrender all his novels. It seemed that he must have known about the imminent orders, or else he wouldn’t have asked her to help him jacket the books in a hurry and closed his library right before the confiscation. Why should he run the risk of keeping them? He could be publicly denounced for doing that. Everybody knew Lin owned many foreign novels; why didn’t the leaders have them confiscated? She dared not ask Lin, but she stopped borrowing books from him.
3
In the winter of 1966 the hospital undertook camp-and-field training. For some reason a top general in Northeastern Military Command had issued orders in October that all the army had to be able to operate without modern vehicles, which not only were unreliable but also could soften the troops. The orders said, “We must carry on the spirit of the Long March and restore the tradition of horses and mules.”
For a month, a third of the hospital’s staff would march four hundred miles through the countryside and camp at villages and small towns. Along the way they would practice treating the wounded and rescuing the dying from the battlefield. Both Lin and Manna joined the training. He was appointed the head of a medical team, which consisted of twenty-eight people. For the first time in his life he became a leader, so he worked conscientiously.
The march went well for the first few days, since the roads were flat and the troops fresh. But it got tougher and tougher as they approached a mountainous area where snow often left no trace of a road. Many of the men and women began to hobble, which often drew the attention of civilians, who would watch them with excitement. Sometimes when the troops entered a town, even the spectators’ sincere applause sounded derisive to the limpers and made them hang their heads. As men and women were equal, all the female nurses had to trudge along in the same way as the men did, though they didn’t shoulder a rifle and at times were allowed to carry lighter pieces of equipment.
One windless day they marched through a forest toward a village in the north. They walked for a whole day with only a lunch break. By seven o’clock they had covered twenty-eight miles, hungry and exhausted, but five miles still lay ahead. Then came the orders that they had to reach the village within an hour—“before the battle gets under way,” as they were told. Instantly a forced march started, the troops running at full speed.
Manna’s feet were severely blistered from bearing a stretcher for six hours. The “wounded soldier” had been a side of pork weighing a hundred and twenty pounds. So now she could barely walk. Lin took the medical box off her shoulder and slipped its strap over his head, carrying it for her. Then two soldiers held her upper arms and pulled her along to keep up with the troops.
Their big-toed boots were throwing up puffs of snow, and now and then a voice commanded loudly, “Close up!” or “Don’t take off your hat!” In the sky ahead the Big Dipper was dancing zigzag as though the earth were turning upside down. Flocks of crows took off from the trees, flapping away in every direction and cawing like starved ghosts. Time and again a mug or a canteen dropped on the ice with a sharp clank. Suddenly a tall man fell; the seventy-pound transmitter he carried on his back hit the stump of a felled tree. The frightened Jin Tian, who was in charge of communications, helped him up while saying through his teeth, “Damn! If the machine’s broken, you’ll go back to your home village and eat sweet potatoes the rest of your life!”
All the way Manna was groaning to the men who were hauling her, “Let go of me . . . Oh so tired. Please let me die here, in the snow . . .” But they dragged her along. The orders allowed nobody to be left behind.
Fifty-six minutes later they arrived at the village, which consisted of about eighty households. Lin Kong’s team was billeted in three farmhouses—the two larger ones were for the doctors and soldiers, the smaller one for the seven women nurses.
In the pale moonlight, smoke and sparks were spouting out from two chimneys atop the production brigade’s office house. The mess squad was busy cooking in there, burning cornstalks and brushwood. Two cleavers were chopping cabbages rhythmically while the cooks were making a soup and baking wheaten cakes. From time to time they larded the field cauldrons with two thick pieces of pork skin. In the yard the horses were drinking warm water and munching fodder, their backs and flanks still steaming with sweat. The mess officer had gone out to look for a stable for the horses, but he hadn’t returned yet.
After Lin’s men had settled in, Lin went to the “kitchen” with an orderly to fetch dinner. In there he didn’t see any of the nurses of his team. It occurred to him that they must have been too exhausted to come. So he let the baby-faced orderly take the wheaten cakes and the cabbage and pork soup back to the men, while he borrowed an aluminum pot from the cooks and carried some soup and a bag of cakes to the nurses.
The wind was rising, and wisps of steam were blown up from the pot, swirling about Lin’s chest. Dogs barked at the sentries, who were patrolling the village, toting flashlights and submachine guns. Stars glittered like brass nuggets above the pine woods that were swaying wave after wave in the south. On arrival at the farmhouse, Lin found Manna Wu and Haiyan Niu bathing their feet in a large wooden bowl. An old woman with a weather-beaten face was heating more water in an iron bucket for the other nurses. “Why don’t you go fetch dinner?” he asked them.
“We’re still drenched in sweat,” Nurse Shen answered.
“I’m dog tired,” said Manna, whose feet rubbed each other in the warm water with tiny squeaks.
“No matter what, you have to eat,” Lin said. “Otherwise how could you walk tomorrow?” He put the soup and the bag of wheaten cakes on a nail-studded chest of drawers. “All right, eat dinner and have a good sleep. We’ll have a long way to go tomorrow.”
“Doctor Kong, I—I can’t walk anymore,” Manna said almost in tears, pointing to her feet.
“I can’t walk either,” the large-eyed Haiyan broke in. “I have blisters too.”
“Let me have a look,” he said.
The old woman moved an oil lamp closer. Lin squatted down to examine the two pairs of feet resting on the edge of the wooden bowl. Haiyan’s feet had three small blisters, one on the ball of her right foot and two on her left heel; but Manna’s soles were bloated with blisters that were shiny like tiny balloons. With his forefinger he pressed the red skin around the largest blister, and Manna let out a moan.
“The blisters must be drained,” he said to the nurses standing by. “Do you know how to do it?”
“No.” They all shook their heads.
Lin sighed, but to their amazement, he rolled up his sleeves and said, “Manna, I need two or three hairs from you, long ones.”
“All right,” she replied.
He turned to the old woman. “Do you have a needle, Granny?”
“Sure.” She went out of the room and called to her daughter-in-law, who was at the other end of the house. “Hey, Rong, bring me some needles.”
“Here you are,” said Manna, handing Lin a few hairs, each about a foot long. He picked one and put the rest on his knee.
A thirtyish woman stepped in, carrying a large gourd ladle filled with scraps of cloth, balls of white, blue, and black threads, and a small silk pincushion. She said, “I’ve all the needles here, Mama. What kind you need?”
“A small one will do,” Lin put in.
A two-inch needle was placed in his hand. He threaded it with a hair, then said to Manna, “Don’t be scared. It won’t hurt much.”
She nodded. Lin cleaned his hands and the needle with a few cotton balls soaked with alcohol. Then with another cotton ball held with tweezers he wiped the largest blister on Manna’s right heel. After patting it gently with his fingertip for a few seconds, he pierced it through. “Ow!” she
cried and shut her eyes tight. At once her heel was covered with warm liquid flowing out of the punctured skin.
Lin cut the hair with scissors and left a piece of it inside the blister. “Let the hair stay. It will keep the holes open so the water drains,” he said to the nurses gathering around to look.
“Boy, tut-tut-tut,” the old woman said, “who’d think you get rid of a blister like this.” She shook her wrinkled face, one of her white eyebrows twitching.
Lin went on to pierce and drain the rest of the blisters on Manna’s right sole, while the other young women were working on Haiyan’s feet and Manna’s left foot. The old woman climbed onto the heated brick bed. One by one she turned the seven wet fur hats inside out and placed them at the warmer end of the bed to dry.
When he had finished treating Manna’s blisters, Lin washed his hands in a basin, saying to Haiyan, “Don’t worry, you should be able to walk tomorrow, but I’m not sure about Manna. It may take a few days for her feet to heal.”
At those words, a shadow flitted across Haiyan’s face. The other nurses thanked Lin for showing them how to treat blisters and for the dinner he had brought them. “Eat and rest well,” he said. “Don’t forget to return the pot to the mess squad tomorrow morning.”
“We won’t,” said one of them.
“Doctor Kong, why don’t you eat with us?” Nurse Shen asked.
“Yes, eat with us,” a few voices said in unison.
“Well, I ate already.”
That was a fib, although he felt a sudden warm thrill rising in his chest. Something soft was filling his throat. He was surprised by the invitation and afraid that if he stayed with the nurses for dinner, people would gossip about him and the leaders might criticize him as well. He forced himself to say, “Good night, everybody. Good night, Granny.” He raised the thick door curtain made of gunnysacks and went out.
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:
The wide lake sways wave after wave.
On the other shore lies our hometown.
In the morning we paddle out
To cast nets, and return at night,
Our boats loaded with fish . . .
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.”
4
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 pit-a-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 vicecommander 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?
