Waiting

"I never meant to tell on Ma

"I understand," he said damply.

"You know how I hate that ass of a husband. I almost cracked his skull with a broomstick when I found out what he had done to Ma

"I believe you, but it's too late."

"Oh, how can I make it up to Ma

"I don't see there's a way now."

"Can you tell her I am very, very sorry?"

"I can do that."

He smelled a soapy odor exuding from Haiyan. After she left, he wondered if she had just washed diapers before coming to his office.

Though he passed Haiyan's explanation and apology on to Ma

At last it was clear that she had no choice but to wait for Lin wholeheartedly, as though the two of them had been predestined to be inseparable.

Thus continued their long "courtship," which gradually became steady and uneventful during the following years. Summer after summer, Lin and Shuyu went to the divorce court in Wujia Town and returned home as man and wife. Year after year, he and Ma

During these years, most of Lin's and Ma

Finally, in i984, Lin asked Shuyu to come to the hospital. This time he would take her to People's Court in Muji City. After eighteen years' separation, he was going to divorce her, with or without her consent.

PART 3

1

Bensheng accompanied his sister Shuyu to the army hospital in July i984, but he stayed only a day, having to return home to attend to his business. The year before, the commune had been disbanded and he had opened a small grocery in a neighboring village, mainly selling candies, liquor, cigarettes, soy sauce, vinegar, and spiced pumpkin seeds. During his absence, Hua was taking care of the store, but he couldn't set his mind at rest and was unwilling to be away for long. Hua hadn't passed the entrance exams the previous summer, and fortunately she could work for her uncle instead of going to the fields.

At the hospital, nurses, doctors, officers, and their wives were all amazed to see Shuyu totter about with bound feet, which only a woman of over seventy should have. She always walked alone, since Lin wouldn't be with her in the presence of others. Whenever she crossed the square before the medical building, young nurses would gather at the windows to watch her. They had heard that a woman with bound feet usually had thick thighs and full buttocks, but Shuyu's legs were so thin that she didn't seem to have any hips.

A few days after she arrived, a pain developed in her lower back. It troubled her a lot, and she couldn't sit on a chair for longer than half an hour. It also hurt her whenever she coughed or sneezed. Lin talked to Doctor Ning about Shuyu's symptom and then told his wife to go see the doctor. She went to the office the next morning; the diagnosis was sciatica, at its early stage. She needed electrotherapy.

So she began to receive the treatment. The nurses were exceptionally kind to her, knowing Lin was going to divorce her soon. After the diathermic light was set, they would chitchat with her. Lying facedown on a leather couch, Shuyu would answer their questions without looking up at them. She liked the lysol smell in the air, which somehow reminded her of fresh almonds. She had never been in a room so clean, with cream-colored walls and sunshine streaming in through the windows and falling on the glass-topped tables and the red wooden floors. There was not a speck of dust anywhere. Outside, cicadas buzzed softly in the treetops; even sparrows here didn't chirp furiously like those back home. How come all the animals and people seemed much tamer in the army?

In the begi

A nurse once asked her if Lin had bullied her. Shuyu said, "No, he's a kind man, always good to me."

"Does he buy you enough food to eat?" another nurse put in. She was holding a syringe, its needle co