I am a young woman whose job is very mechanical, as mechanical as the hands of timepieces, always making circular motions with the same radius and in the same direction; as mechanical as a fatigued truck traveling invariably down a fixed route. Usually when I am reading the study materials delivered by my work unit, especially articles about the new trends in struggles, I can never remember whether Iraq annexed Kuwait or the other way around or if the Scud stopped the Patriot or vice versa, even if I read the same news item ten times. But I am able to commit to memory all the typos in the articles. For instance, in the lower-right corner at the end of a line, I will easily spot an apostrophe that should be a comma, and so forth. That's what comes of being a proofreader.
This simple work keeps my chaotic mind from making many mistakes, I am glad to say, since I am a daydreamer who finds it hard to play by the rules. Let's say, for example, that the fainthearted son of a cold-blooded murderer accidentally kills someone. When the death sentence falls upon the frightened son, the father, who has always been able to escape the net of justice, mysteriously takes his son's place at the execution ground. This act must be regarded as a mockery of the law, but I will be moved by the loving sacrifice of a brutish father who kills without compunction, until my face is bathed in tears; I will even hold him in some regard.
When I see an accomplished surgeon refuse to treat a class enemy's vvife who is in great pain and in need of help, I am disgusted. My problematic views and a tendency toward aberrant thinking are enough to deprive me of the chance to become a doctor or lawyer.
They say that to be a writer, you must follow even more rules. I know only too well that my deviant thinking and convoluted logic keep me at odds with those rules. Fortunately, I am aware of these flaws and have never expected or hoped to become much of anything.
Yet there may be another possibility. You might happen to share my way of thinking, which means you could interpret my un-orthodoxy as a rule in its own right. Anything is possible.
Dentists always fire Miss Dai Er's imagination. The fantasy begins when she approaches the dentist's office and hears the whir of the drill. As she enters, the sound courses through every nerve in her body. At the same time, in the space taken in by her gaze, countless teeth dance and fly around her like snowflakes. Whirling and spinning, they send forth the delicate fragrance of falling pear blossoms.
At this moment, Miss Dai Er is fantasizing as she sits in dental chair 103, assigned to Dr. Kong Sen, in Hospital 103. Dai Er, twenty-two, possesses a nearly pathological tenderness, charm, and melancholy. A painfully impacted wisdom tooth has brought her here. She looks around carefully: there is a spittoon and a cup on the left armrest; above it are a gadget on an adjustable arm and a small electric fan; directly overhead is a large lamp, like a golden sunflower whose petals move around the patient's mouth; alongside the right armrest is a swivel chair with wheels, on which the young dentist is currently sitting.
He is a reticent young man, tall but stocky and sedate, with focused yet limpid eyes. (Miss Dai Er will never forget his eyes. In the future, she will spot him amid a sea of people by his eyes alone.) His nose and mouth are obscured by a snow-white gauze mask, and it is this hidden part that bestows upon him a space open to imagination and a mysterious, fathomless aura.
Once you lean back in the chair and the lamp lights up the area around your lips, you clench your fists nervously and lay them in your lap. The young dentist presses up close to your face from the right. You open your mouth wide and let him work on your teeth with probes, forceps, and scalpel. His large, strong fingers move ceaselessly in the cramped space of your mouth. Because of the narrowness of the oral cavity, there is tremendous cohesive force as he pulls your tooth. He exerts all his strength, and you exert all yours. If you are a young woman like Miss Dai Er and have a vivid imagination, it will be easy to associate this with another activity.
Dr. Kong Sen leans over to a patient in the chair beside Dai Er to give the gray-haired woman a shot of Novocain in her upper jaw. Then he turns back to Miss Dai Er.
He asks, "Any physical problems?" His voice is low and deep, as if sealed in an underground tunnel.
"No," she says.
"Heart trouble?"
"No."
"High blood pressure?"
"No."
"OK, let's begin."
His comments are terse and precise. She gains a dialectical fascination from such an either-or dialogue.
He turns to get the Novocain. To Dai Er, the ailments he has mentioned pertain to old folks, not to her. But knowing that the questions are routine, she smiles her gratitude to him.
He has fetched the syringe filled with Novocain, the needle pointing upward. He lightly pushes the injector, and tiny droplets spurt from the tip of the needle. The spray fans out in an exaggerated arc; white mist, curling upward, drifts out of the room and into the corridor, then slowly descends the staircase. It glides over twenty-eight stairs, passing through more than a decade, and on toward the internal medicine ward. There Miss Dai Er was barely seven and a half years old.
Dai Er, front teeth missing and two terrified eyes staring out at a white world, was a weak, sickly child. She had just come out of a fever-induced coma caused by meningitis.
"Do you recognize Mommy?" A young woman about the same age as the present Miss Dai Er sat beside her seven-and-a-half-year-old daughter, expecting a response as if awaiting a fateful verdict.
"Do you recognize Mommy? Where is Mommy?" the young woman repeated.
Dai Er struggled to open her eyes, which seemed dried out and enlarged by the debilitating illness; she searched the confines of the room. The walls were white; a hovering sound was white; a smile at the upturned corners of the mouth behind the sound was white. Over there stood a large man holding a hypodermic syringe in his right hand; the needle was pointing upward, like a bleak wilderness, awaiting the passage of humans. Long and hollow, it would enter her buttock. He may have been smiling at his young patient, but his expression was changed into cold indifference by the gauze mask.
"Can you recognize Mommy? You see, Mommy is smiling at you!"
Dai Er remained motionless as her eyes followed the movements of the needle. Concentrating all the strength in her little body in her eyes, she was trying to ward off the approaching instrument.
"Mommy is right here, don't you recognize me?" The young woman was losing her composure.
The needle kept coming, with its cold glint and tiny shriek.
"Mommy, I don't want a shot." Dai Er sat up suddenly and draped her arms around her mother's neck. "Mommy, I don't want a shot," Dai Er cried loudly.
The young woman burst out crying, her sobs punctuated by laughter: "My baby's alive again. She's not a mindless vegetable, she's alive again…"
The white uniform and the needle had moved up next to little Dai Er.
"Put her down, and leave us alone, please. It's time for her injection," the mouth above the white uniform said. The huge hypodermic in his hand was cold and hard, like a pistol.
To Dai Er's chagrin, the young woman put her down, shedding tears of happiness, and left the room.
She knew that her mother, too, was afraid of the man. Her leaving was testimony to this. She could not protect Dai Er. Now Dai Er was alone. She stopped crying, for she knew she had to face the cold needle by herself.
"Lie on your stomach, and pull down your pants."
It was useless to resist. Even Mommy obeyed him. She rolled over obediently and pulled down her pants.
For two whole months, the seven-and-a-half-year-old Dai Er experienced the world through the unvarying command of "Lie on your stomach, and pull down your pants." She learned that no one else could take that resonating needle for her. Everyone had his own needle to face.
The long needle entered her buttock and stabbed at her heart. She grew up with that needle.
The dental office resounds with the provocative screeches of teeth being drilled and scraped. They grate on Miss Dai Er's nerves and make her shudder.
The stocky, young dentist approaches her, holding a hypodermic syringe.
"No!" Miss Dai Er's scream disturbs the rigid operating protocols of the dental office.
That I actually met him was certainly the will of heaven. It happened five years ago. One day at dusk when the feeble face of evening had already faded, night's curtain fell in a rush, allowing no explanation. At that time, my persistent nostalgia invariably led me from a stage pieced together by historical fragments to a theater displaying the passage of time. On that day, I walked alone into a grand theater decorated with a mix of luxurious splendor and religious decline. It was at the entrance where I ran into him; to be precise, at first I was captivated by the eyes of a handsome, bright young man, and then I recognized him by his voice.
"Is it really you?"
I collected myself and looked at him, able to identify the focused yet limpid eyes. The space beneath the eyes, however, appeared only in my imagination; except that in my imagination, the chin had been broad, with sharp edges and corners, whereas the one before me was steep yet smooth. The Grecian nose was just as I had imagined, belonging to the right person.
"Yes, it's me. I know you… part of you, anyway." To be acquainted with a handsome man in this way-how could I help but smile?
He was smiling, too. He stroked his chin with his right hand, and the large palm slid along with a lively whistle. Neither of us mentioned the event we had experienced together.
"Are you… alone?" He asked.
"Yes."
"If you don't mind, I happen to have two tickets."
"I've got one." I showed him the ticket in my hand.
"But mine are in the front row."
"Um… aren't you going to wait for her any longer?"
"Who?"
"Um…" I turned and looked around.
He took my arm gently before I turned back around. "I'm waiting for a girl just like you."
I smiled and shook my head but followed him nevertheless.
The heavy curtains opened, the lights dimmed, and all was quiet. I've always thought that the biggest difference between an office and a theater is that an office is a stage and that even if you don't like to perform, you must play a role regardless of how unimportant it is. There is no escape. Even though your office is tranquil as still water and only one or two people-actors-are around you, you are still unable to indulge in your inner world: your facial expression will betray you. The office is a stage, an outer life, an unclosed space. In a cinema or a theater, however, once the lights are turned off and the darkness spreads around you, you are swallowed up by a vast emptiness. Although in the darkness, countless heads are hidden and the air is filled with whispers like a tired night wind quietly perched in a vast forest, you gain a peaceful space where your heart is able to wander freely. You watch a miniature world and telescoped time on the stage; your pearllike tears flow, you giggle, you can't help yourself, you let yourself go.
That day's play was about love, and the actors performed with wild intoxication. A man poured out his heart to a woman as beautifully as if he were lying, and a woman lied to another woman as beautifully as if she were telling the truth. I was totally immersed in the story and the passion on stage. When the curtains closed and the lights came on, I was dragged back to the theater from somewhere within my heart by the noise of movement around me, and once again I saw his focused yet limpid eyes.
I said thanks.
He also said thanks.
We walked out together. We made our slow way through the excited crowd, his arm shielding my back to protect me from being jostled. From time to time, his arm was pushed up against my back or waist by the crowd, and to me it felt like a gentle, comforting caress. When we reached the exit, he helped me with my coat. This act, subtle and natural, made my coat warmer and more velvety.
To get from the theater to the bus stop, we needed to pass down a narrow lane with buildings on both sides. I had already thought about the hidden dangers in the cramped space on the way to the theater, but since it had not yet been entirely dark, the imagined danger had been no more than a fleeting concern. Now the darkness was thick as ink as we left the theater, and the moon, like an eroded boulder, showed only a tiny sliver. Completely caught up in the dangers of the long, narrow, dark passage, I asked him to stand at this end of the lane and wait until I ran to the other end and said good-bye to him.
He laughed. "Why so complicated? I'll go with you."
"No."
"I don't mind. Really."
"There's no need. I… really no need…"
"But why?"
"I'm just afraid… suddenly somebody might…"
"Oh! Including me?"
"Um…"
"You really are a little girl. You need me, but you're also afraid of me. OK, you go first, then shout, and I'll come over and see you home."
I accepted happily.
I ran the whole way without taking a single breath, as if it were a hundred-meter dash. His eyes and silhouette remained behind me, exactly where I'd left them. As soon as I reached the other end, I shouted, "I made it."
And from the other end, his footsteps sounded.
When we were together again, he earnestly guaranteed my safety. I felt I could trust him. This trust originated from a shared memory, which I cannot reveal here.
As we walked, reluctantly we recalled that event. I told him how impressed I had been by his eyes and by his voice-the low, gentle voice of a cello filtering out from behind closed doors and windows. Unexpectedly, every detail of the event, including my manner and behavior, remained fresh in his memory.
"I knew then that you'd never return," he said.
Walking slowly along the deserted night street, we talked about things far and near, including the romantic play we had just seen. I said I didn't agree with one of the leading man's lines. The "rib theory" is ridiculous, I said. However intimate the original Adam and Eve or their future replacements might have been, they each had their own heads, their own thoughts, and their own spirits. Women were independent.
He agreed.
"Maybe that's why I have no religious beliefs," I said. Five years ago, I talked about love as earnestly as I did about death.
We parted a short distance from my house.
He stroked my hair gently and said, "You talk like an adult." He emphasized the word like, implying that I was really only a little girl.
"There's no contradiction." I ignored his implication.
"Contradictions are beautiful. You're a contradictory girl."
His silver-gray raincoat softly flapped against my body, and I felt a sort of moist tenderness. He leaned toward me slightly, but that's as far as it went.
The moon was full, and the pale yellow streetlamps shimmered at the tips of our shadows. Feeling his breath caressing my cheek, I lowered my head, not knowing what to do.
I freed myself from the embrace of his flapping raincoat and said, "Don't."
"Don't be nervous. I just want to hear your story."
I looked into his face; I felt safe and relaxed.
Miss Dai Er is sitting in the dental chair of Dr. Kong Sen, her head tilted slightly backward, her left leg stretched out straight, her right knee bent inward and tucked under her left calf. Her hands lie stiffly on her flat abdomen. A slight tremble causes her shapely breasts to jiggle like a pair of startled little heads. The young dentist is gazing absorbedly at the nervous body of the young woman, who seems solitary and helpless under the strong light of the lamp.
Watching the approaching Dr. Kong Sen, who is holding a full hypodermic, Miss Dai Er is in a great panic. She opens her mouth wide, and the brutal syringe, which is about to stab her upper jaw, makes her pale and sends her out of control.
"No! No!" she screams.
The young dentist puts down the syringe and says indifferently, seemingly devoid of sympathy, "If you don't feel comfortable, we don't have to do it now."
Dai Er's face is cold; the corners of her mouth and the tip of her nose twitch uncontrollably, making it impossible for her to open her eyes. Her mind is a blank; her body, enfolded in leaden clouds, is spinning upward and upward…
One dense, heavy cloud followed another, as though the sky were covered by the dark-gray wings of a multitude of birds. The air was damp. The huge birds, hovering in the universe like fine steeds, swooned earthward. Their feathers were shot down one by one by peals of thunder and thudding raindrops, and the dark-grayness fell at a leisurely pace to stick on the window. On that rainy day in that damp and gloomy room, what the seven-and-a-half-year-old little Dai Er saw was as tangled as matted hair. In the dim light, little Dai Er was shocked to see a huge hypodermic, growing in the body of a man, pointing right at her face. The scene has remained in a secret place of her memory; on all rainy days, a dark mass of birds always swoons…
There is a commotion in the dentist's office. Beyond the window, it sounds like rain, and a dark-green mildewy smell rises into the sky. She feels her chair being tipped backward by someone, forcing her head down.
"It's all right. Nothing serious. Just a case of nerves." She hears the young Dr. Kong Sen's voice.
Following the brief commotion, she senses that the blurred white shadows around her have dispersed and that the office has resumed its normal order.
Miss Dai Er feels the pressure of the young dentist's fingers on her cheek, and her twitching facial muscles gradually relax. It is raining outside, the watery threads flowing softly down the win-dowpanes, as if stroking her cheek. With a white towel, the young dentist is wiping away the cold sweat on her face. Vaguely, she sees a patch of white like a junk sailing into view from the far edge of the sky. The junk now hangs at the window, peering inside and questioning the dim light. She breathes hard, feeling her lungs being tinted a dirty yellow, bit by bit, by the fouled air in the room. She gazes at the white junk as a thousand thoughts swirl through her mind. Making an effort with her arms and both eyes, she strains to grasp the fleeting white.
Miss Dai Er opens her eyes and takes a deep breath, recovering gradually.
"Feeling better?" asks the dentist.
Dai Er sits up with difficulty, "I… I'm fine."
The young dentist smiles. (Dai Er can only imagine his smile since all his expressions are hidden by the gauze mask.) "Did you faint because of the needle?" he asks.
"No. Not exactly. The hypodermic… makes me think of something else."
"This is not a good day for you. Why don't you come back in a couple of days, when you feel better?"
Ashamed and remorseful, Miss Dai Er steps down from the dentist's chair on rubbery legs. She knows she will never come back here. She looks at the young dentist, who has touched her cheek and whose limpid eyes have already been carved in her mind; the feeling of profound loss is so dominant that she doesn't even say good-bye to this young dentist who has fired her imagination and made her want to stay longer with him. She leaves amid the gloom of disappointment.
Winter is a serene old man walking calmly out of an ardent summer, out of the bigoted, romantic, and dangerous air of the tropics, then gradually quieting down. I like summer, but my love sprouts in a winter setting. Of course, this may be seen as the nature I have bestowed upon this love.
Before I ran into him again, my winter had been long and desolate; the icy north wind whizzing past my window was like a shad-owless, invisible man panting as he runs. A bald-pated, commodious sky greeted my window. I sat facing the window in my warm room with a book of some sort in my hands and the sunshine more trustworthy than any of my imagined lovers. Creeping languidly all over my body, the sunshine alone stayed to embrace me during the chilled months and years, soothingly melting the pent-up sorrow and despair in my heart and restoring a sense of composure.
During this winter, my trust in him gradually increased until it was second only to my trust in the sunshine.
After he burst into my life, I felt as if I were living in a world of unreality. My body was but a stationary launching pad for thoughts. Most of the time, I was unable to keep my gushing thoughts from wandering all over the place like a cloud, like a mist. I frequently pinched my cheeks in the hope that the real sense of touching would somehow make me more real.
We started dating regularly. I believed I liked and trusted this man. He steadfastly avoided mentioning the incident at our first meeting, when my loss of control had impressed us both so deeply.
We went out every night. During those years, my sole amusement had been walking. So we walked along Jianguomen Avenue for hours, taking in the sights, a refreshing breeze kissing our faces and colored lights glittering all around. This man, born in the year of the male horse (he always added the male gender to the animal representing his birth year), had the tall, powerful physique of a stallion. I hung on to his left arm as we walked leisurely. Actually, only he was walking, propelling both of us forward. Like the earth itself, he bore my all.
Finally one day, he asked me, "Why didn't you come back after you left that day?" I knew he meant our first meeting. "If I hadn't bumped into you at the theater, I'm afraid you might have disappeared forever. I hate to even think about it-I might have lost a whole world."
I was suddenly quite moved.
There in the middle of the brightly lit street, we kissed. My heart emptied, my limbs turned weak. For a timid young girl tasting a man for the first time, this act was indeed soul shattering. I found myself longing desperately for his body; the strange fear hidden within me gradually dispersed.
He drew me into the shadow of some roadside trees. And there in the leafy mosaic of moonlight, we kissed and fondled each other for a long time. Making an effort to contain his excitement, he unbuttoned a young woman's blouse for the first time in his life, as nervous as a boy who has just learned how to unbutton his clothes being told by his teacher to take his shirt off. Also for the first time he roamed a woman's body with his eyes. We held each other tightly; a young man and a young woman new to the clouds and rains of sex were sent into ecstasy. I felt drained, nothing but a hollow container. The top of my head felt cold and numb, my body became a vast wasteland; a sort of void, the likes of which I had never experienced before, spread unhindered, as if the surrounding area were full of stony peaks and swimming fish.
I do not intend to describe our love here because I simply don't know whether or not it can be called love. Today, five years later, I'm still unable to judge accurately my feelings at that time, since I have never known all the implications of love.
I remember how, when I was burning to take his body into mine, I stopped suddenly, clung to his waist without moving, and sobbed softly, tears glistening in my eyes. I said, "I don't want to see it, don't want to-"
"What's the matter?"
"I just don't want to see it."
"What's wrong? Why?"
I could answer only with low sobs and tears like pearls.
He stopped and caressed my face. The repression concealed in my body for years was like a fish bone lodged in my throat. At last, I plucked up the courage to remove whatever it was from the bottom of my heart and hand it timidly to this man. In a low voice, I implored him to share my burden, for only he could shoulder my fears.
I gave myself over to the protection of his arms and his profession. I had never felt so relaxed because I had never lost control in anyone's arms before. One by one, my sobs transported me to a joyful realm I'd never known existed. But I had never felt so burdened either: I had to face the blurred past of my childhood again in order to share it with him.
Finally, Miss Dai Er called the young dentist one rainy afternoon. She said she had to see him.
The rain had stopped by the time they strolled through the hospital district, with its verdant trees and rain-soaked leaves. The sun was out, and the sky appeared a fresh, tender pink that dripped down onto the steamy lawn. Old people talked to themselves as they sat idly on park benches, nodding off from time to time. The young Dr. Kong Sen smelled of disinfectant, which made Miss Dai Er feel like a patient.
"So, you've come…" he said. "Are your gums inflamed again?"
At first, Miss Dai Er held her tongue, but then she started talking about something totally unrelated. She talked on and on, delighted to be able to unburden herself of her past.
Miss Dai Er said that in her childhood she had a friend, an architect, a gaunt, weary, middle-aged man who was her only friend. He lived next door to her. At that time, children's toys consisted of sand, cobblestones, and water. Things like building blocks and simple rubber, nonelectric toys were luxuries. Day in and day out, little Dai Er was immersed in the joy of playing in the sand. She dug countless small holes around herself and put a blown-up paper ball into each of the holes (she called the balls mines), then crisscrossed two or three twigs over the holes, covered them with paper, and buried the whole thing with sand. When that was done, Dai Er stood there surveying the area like a general devising strategies in a command tent, while arrayed around her were hidden accomplishments. Closing her eyes, she spun around several times, then walked out of the minefield in the grip of excitement. This was a game she had learned and adapted from the movie Mine Warfare, and she was absorbed in it for a long time.
The grown-up Miss Dai Er recalled her childhood game whether at the office or out among the crowds, and only now realized how her present life resembled that game.
Little Dai Er spent a great deal of time with her architect friend, a reticent man who grew lively only when he played symbolic games (the term symbolic was a modifier the grown-up Dai Er bestowed upon the word game). He taught little Dai Er some games she'd never dreamed of; for example, he taught her how to build high towers by mixing crushed stones with mud. He built them high enough for the child Dai Er to think them truly lofty. They were always in danger of collapsing with a loud crash: a strong wind could blow them down. And as they stood there, lofty and tottering, the architect would lead Dai Er in squeals of delight.
They also played faucet. At the southwest corner of the yard was a long trough with three faucets. The architect often turned them all on at the same time, releasing three powerful streams of water, which nearly drove him wild. He would howl excitedly; the sounds reverberating through the deserted yard sounded especially horrible, both thrilling and frightening little Dai Er.
He was an excellent architect, whose certificates of merit covered a wall in his home. But his wife was never proud of that. In Dai Er's memory, these neighbors, her only neighbors, quarreled constantly. When little Dai Er asked her parents why that was, they became evasive, avoiding the important and dwelling on the trivial; or they equivocated, saying that Uncle was busy with his work in architecture and didn't have time to take care of the family and so Auntie was unhappy with him. Children wouldn't understand and shouldn't ask so many questions. Dai Er was never satisfied with this answer. She constantly sought an opportunity to ask her architect friend-until one rainy day, when the event that Dai Er would remember all her life happened. After telling her mother tearfully that the architect had exposed himself in front of her, they were not friends anymore.
Now that she is grown up, little by little Miss Dai Er has come to understand the connection between his frenzied need to work and play and the loss of his manhood-a compensation for failure.
Finally one day, a white ambulance, its siren blaring, took the architect away from the yard where little Dai Er played her games. They said he was taken to the asylum in the northern part of the city. They also said that after pacing up and down a gloomy, re-mote, and shaded pathway for a long time, he did to a young female passerby what he had done to little Dai Er on that rainy day.
When Dai Er was in elementary school, she experienced a fire. At first, people were driven out of their homes by a strong, scorching odor and the acrid, choking smell of smoke; then they saw the architect's windows being lapped by countless bright-red dog tongues. Bit by bit, those hissing dog tongues merged into a wall of hot flames. On that afternoon, after being suspended from his duties, the architect had locked himself in his room, where he set a fire amid the suffocating smell of gasoline that brought an end to his vexations, regrets, and powerless desires. The billowing smoke and crackling flames enveloped the quiet yard, the twisting alley, and Miss Dai Er's serpentine childhood, which was lost in the hidden recesses of that alley.
The young dentist laid a hand heavily on Miss Dai Er's shoulder, as though to keep her from being carried away by the billowing smoke in her memory. That was the arm for which Miss Dai Er had long been yearning. She had been waiting for just such an arm to rescue her from her memories. For the first time in her life, she became a patient, giving herself up weakly to the arm that had rooted out so many decayed teeth. The arm itself was the warmest and safest bedside practitioner, the most accurate psychoanalyst.
One breezy, sunny morning a few months after I moved in with him, we cut through the busy district of town, then crossed a vacant lot and a yard piled high with rusty metal, rotting wood, and crumbling bricks. I had always felt a strange affection and melancholy toward all those relics; the desolation never failed to spark feelings of nostalgia: maybe that junkyard held my childhood and early youth. We stood silently for a while, then walked toward a small hut-for years, it had been regarded as the cradle of love as well as the source of the graveyard; people said it was a stage that accommodated both comedies and tragedies. I was incapable of naming this place, just as today I am incapable of naming my love of that time.
A warmhearted young man received us, one who habitually punctuated his speech with fuck (used in place of commas, this word evinced neither joy nor anger). From this small hut, we obtained a red certificate that read
Registration No. 13
Dai Er (Female), 23
Kong Sen (Male), 26
Wed of their own free will.
Investigation confirms that their marriage conforms to the marriage laws of the State.
We each kept a copy, knowing that the paper was thick as sheet metal and thin as a cicada's wing.
On an afternoon after her marriage, Miss Dai Er finally shows up again at dental chair 103 in Hospital 103. She looks especially beautiful, her face radiant with softness and charm. The panicky eyes exist no more; now her gaze has a dazzling fascination, like a shining constellation.
Sitting peacefully and confidently in the chair, she says to the young dentist beside her, like a mistress commanding her attendant: "Let's begin."
In his right hand, the young dentist holds a full syringe, the needle pointing straight up as if it were a loaded pistol ready to fire. He waves it in front of Miss Dai Er and asks, "Are you sure?"
Dai Er smiles. "I'm sure."
She opens her mouth wide, calmly accepting the highly symbolic hypodermic as it stabs her soft palate. Following a momentary sting, her mouth is suffused with a warm, sweet numbness. Sunshine enters her mouth, penetrates her jaw, permeates her tongue; it dances trippingly and sings gracefully in her mouth. A pink smile spills out over her lips.
The young Dr. Kong Sen bends over her, and even though the white gauze mask hides his lips, Dai Er can still feel the hot breath greeting her. The dentist holds forceps or scalpel in his right hand, and with his left arm he presses against her chest for support. This weight stirs her imagination wonderfully. The young dentist deftly extracts two impacted wisdom teeth from Miss Dai Er's mouth, one from each side. When they work together like that, Miss Dai Er feels no pain. She cooperates obediently and meekly. They seem to be hovering together, distantly light as a feather, the sky covered with their rainbow arcs. This intimate cooperation and harmony resurrects the memory of sharing her husband's bed on their wedding night.
When the young Dr. Kong Sen noisily drops the two bloody wisdom teeth onto the milky tray, the secret anguish deeply buried in Miss Dai Er's remote past is finally uprooted.
Translated By Shelley Wing Chan