7

For over a year Manna wanted to see what Shuyu looked like, but Lin wouldn't give her a chance. Whenever she asked him to show her a photograph of his wife, he would say he didn't have one. Manna was sure he did. In secret she had once searched through the drawers in his desk when she was helping clean the windowpanes of the office he shared with another doctor, but she had found no photograph in them. Her roommates often asked her about Lin's wife, and she felt embarrassed that she could tell them nothing. Without fail they would warn her that Lin might be of two minds about their relationship. So she should be more careful.

At the hospital's annual sports meet in the early fall of 1968, Manna won a third prize for table tennis. She was awarded a perfumed soap wrapped in a white towel. To please her more, that afternoon, in Lin's dormitory, he asked her to make a wish.

"My only wish is to see Shuyu's majestic face," she said, rolling her eyes, which lit up with excitement.

Since his roommates were not in, he picked up his dictionary, Forest of Words , took a photograph out of the vellum cover, and handed it to her. It was a new one, black-and-white and four by three inches.

Looking at it, Manna couldn't help tittering. Both Shuyu and Hua were in the photograph. The baby girl, in checkered overalls, stood on the ground with her knees bent, like a dog rising on its hind legs. Her hands were reaching out for the bench on which her mother sat. Shuyu was closer to the camera than Hua, her face gaunt and her forehead grooved by wavy creases. Her flabby mouth spread sideways as though she were about to cry. A small fishtail of wrinkles gathered at the end of her right eye, which was half closed. More surprising, she was dressed like an old woman: a short gown like a dark iron barrel encased her sloping shoulders and short upper body; her thighs were thin, both shanks wrapped in puttees; on the ground her feet were splayed in black shoes like a pair of mice. A fierce-looking goose was flapping its wings on Shuyu's left. In the background were water vats, the thatched adobe house, and half an elm crown over the roof.

"Heavens, oh her tiny feet!" Manna cried. Lin stood up as she went on, "Isn't she your mother?" She broke into laughter, bending forward.

His eyes flashed behind the lenses of his glasses. He picked up his cap and left the bedroom without a word.

"Hey, Lin, come back. I didn't mean to hurt your feelings."

She followed him out, but he didn't turn his head. He was heading toward the back gate of the hospital grounds.

Beyond the wall of the compound stretched an orchard, which had been planted four years before by the local commune members and was now in fruit, the apple-pear trees standing row after row all over the hillside. Hurriedly Lin walked out of the back gate and disappeared in the orchard.

That was the only time Manna saw him in a huff, but he returned to normal the next day. When she again apologized, he told her to forget about it.

The photograph was a great relief to her, because it convinced her that Lin and his wife didn't make a good match, and that sooner or later he would leave Shuyu. At last she had hopes of marrying him one day.

Despite her roommates' plying her with questions, Manna wouldn't reveal anything to them about Shuyu. She still claimed she knew nothing about the country woman. But a month later, unable to contain her excitement, she told her friend Haiyan Niu about the photograph.

They were both on the second shift, which was from 7:00 p.m. to 3:00 a.m. At night when the patients in the ward were asleep, the two nurses had little to do except distribute some medicine in the wee hours and take a few patients' temperatures, so they would chat. Haiyan was pretty and pert, always smiling with neat teeth and often surrounded by young men. She had grown up in Muji City, though she had been born in Harbin. Her paternal grandfather had been a well-known capitalist, but she hadn't suffered much from her family background, because the old man had donated a huge sum of money to the Communist government for a MIG-15 so as to fight the United States in the Korean War. The donation bankrupted his businesses – an oil mill and a tannery – but his family was classified as Open-Minded Gentry, so that later his descendants miraculously remained untouched during political struggles. And his granddaughter Haiyan had even joined the army. In her there was a kind of wildness, which Manna very much admired, and which was probably a residue of the frontier spirit that still possessed some Northeasterners. Sometimes Haiyan reminded Manna of a sleek leopard.

"If I were you, I'd go to bed with Lin Kong," Haiyan said to her one night, her hands crocheting a woolen shawl.

"What? Girl, you're crazy," said Manna. With a pair of large tweezers she was taking some sterilized syringes and needles out of a stainless steel pot that had boiled for half an hour on the electric stove.

Haiyan was working loop after loop of the cream-colored wool. Without raising her head she said, "No, I'm not crazy. You have to find a way to develop your relationship with him, don't you?"

"Well, I'm afraid that might scare him away."

They both laughed, and Manna sneezed. It had grown humid in the office; tiny dewdrops appeared on the metal lid of the trash bin standing by the desk. Haiyan put down the crochet work on her lap and said, "Listen, elder sister, once you've done it with him, he won't abandon you. If he really loves you, if he's a man with a heart, he'll follow you wherever you go. If he doesn't, he isn't the man you want, is he?"

"You think like a little girl. No love is so romantic."

"Don't give me that. What do you know about love?"

"All right, you know everything."

"Of course I know."

"Tell me, how many men have you known?" Manna winked at her. She always doubted if Haiyan was still a virgin. Rumor had it that Haiyan had gone to bed with Vice-Director Chiu of the hospital. That must have been true; otherwise she would have been discharged long ago. Unlike Manna, she had never gone to a nursing school.

"A thousand," Haiyan said teasingly. "The more the better, don't you think?"

"Yes," Manna said matter-of-factly.

They laughed again. Haiyan flung back her braid, whose end was tied with an orange string. Her toe kept tapping the red floor.

Manna had never thought of sleeping with Lin. The fear of being expelled from the army prevented her from conceiving such an idea; she didn't even have a hometown to return to. Furthermore, she was uncertain whether he would continue to love her if she was discharged and banished to a remote place. Even though he wanted to, love would be impossible under such circumstances, because he might be sent back to his home village and they would have to remain apart. Yet Haiyan's suggestion pointed out a possibility. Manna was almost twenty-nine; why should she remain an old maid forever? Once she and Lin made love, he might go about divorcing his wife. For better or worse, she shouldn't just sit and wait without doing anything, or there would be no end to this ambiguous affair. Recently people in the hospital had begun to treat her like Lin's fiancee; young officers would avoid talking with her for longer than a few minutes. She resented this situation, which she was determined to change.

So she decided to act. The next night, after they had distributed medicine to the patients, she said to Haiyan, "Can I ask you a favor?"

Her earnest tone of voice surprised her friend. "Of course, anything you think I can do for you," Haiyan said.

"Do you know some quiet place in town?"

"What do you mean some quiet place?" Haiyan's large eyes sparkled.

"I mean where you can…"

"Oh I see, a place where you and he can have a good time together?"