Waiting

In two months he began to have a numb pain in the small of his back, and a soreness was developing in his right sole. He knew that too much sex might have hurt his kidneys, but he wouldn't shun it, feeling obligated to satisfy her in any way she wanted, because she had waited so many years for him. A large dose of vitamin Bi was injected into his foot, around the sore spot, to soothe the nerves. It alleviated the pain to some extent.

His colleagues noticed he had grown thi

Lin sighed, not knowing how to reply. He went on writing the phrase " Warmly Welcome" with a brush on a large sheet of paper. They were making posters for a general's visit to the hospital. Lin was among the few skilled with the writing brush, so he had been assigned to the work.

Shiding Mu nudged him and went on, "Already tired out, eh? This is just the first step of a thousand-mile march." He gave a long laugh, which was so loud that it set the pane on a cabinet door rattling for a few seconds.

"Stop it!" Lin snapped.

But they wouldn't leave him alone. A junior officer chimed in, "Lin, by next summer, you'll be a skeleton if you go on like this. You must slow down."

Another man said to Lin with a wink, "You know, lust is the worm that sucks up your marrow."

Then a clerk in round-rimmed glasses dipped a small broom into a bucket, stirring the hot paste made of wheat flour, and recited loudly these lines from an ancient lyric:

They laughed out loud, then continued to talk about women. No wonder the saying went: "At thirty she is like a wolf; at forty a tiger." An old maid must be a wolf as well as a tiger, so only a young lion should engage her in battle. From the outset Lin should have known he was no match and should have set up a few rules with her. The office echoed with chortles. Their jokes made time pass so fast and the work so delightful.

Though he didn't show his anger, Lin was exasperated at heart. He told himself he had to do something to stop people from talking like this.

At home he looked at himself in the full-length mirror on the wardrobe, which was the only piece of furniture he had bought for the wedding. Indeed his eyes had sunk deeper and seemed larger. His face was pallid, and more white hair appeared at his temples and crown. The gray strands gave him a sense of finality. At medical school twenty-five years before, he had grown some white hair, which later turned black again. Now there was no hope of reversing the gray.

One day he and Ma

That evening he said to his wife, "Sweetheart, we can't continue like this. We're no longer young. People have been talking about us."

"I know it's bad," Ma

"We should save some energy for work."

"In fact, I don't feel well these days. I had my blood pressure checked this afternoon. It was high."

"How high?"

"One hundred fifty-two over ninety-seven."

"That's awful. We shouldn't have sex so often."

"Maybe we shouldn't." She sighed.

They agreed to protect their health from then on. That night they slept peacefully for the first time.

6

"It's like a cinerary casket," Lin muttered to himself. He referred to a small sandalwood box underneath Ma

One evening he asked her in a joking tone, "What are you hiding from me in the box?"

"What are you talking about?"

"The sandalwood box in the wardrobe."

"Oh, nothing's in it. Why are you so curious?" She smiled.

"Can I see what's inside?"

"Uh-uh, unless you promise me something."

"What?"

"Promise you won't laugh at me."

"Of course I won't."

"Promise that from now on you'll tell me all your secrets."

"Sure, I won't hide anything from you."

"Okay, then I'll let you see."

She got up from the bed, went over to the wardrobe, and took out the box. Removing the padlock, she opened the lid, whose underside was pasted over with soda labels. A roll of cream-colored sponge puffed out, atop the other contents. She took the roll out and unfolded it on the bed, displaying about two dozen Chairman Mao buttons, all fastened to the sponge. Most of them were made of aluminum and a few of porcelain. Their convex surfaces glimmered. On one button, the Chairman in an army uniform was wav ing his cap, apparently to the people on parade in Tiananmen Square. On another, he was smoking a cigar, his other hand holding a straw hat, while talking with some peasants in his hometown in Hunan Province.

"Wow, I never thought you loved Chairman Mao so much," Lin said with a smile. "Where did you get so many of these?"

"I collected them."

"Out of your love for Chairman Mao?"

"I don't know. They look gorgeous, don't they?"

He was puzzled by her admiration. He realized that someday these trinkets might become valuable indeed, as reminders of the mad times and the wasted, lost lives in the revolution. They would become relics of history. But for her, they didn't seem to possess any historical value at all. Then it dawned on him that she must have kept these buttons as a kind of treasure. She must have collected them as the only beautiful things she could own, like jewelry.

As he was thinking, a miserable feeling came over him. He didn't know how to articulate his thoughts without hurting her feelings, so he kept silent.

He glanced at the box, in which there were about two dozen letters held together by a blue rubber band. "What are those?" he asked.

"Just some old letters from Mai Dong. " She seemed to keep her head low, avoiding his eyes.

"Can I see them?"

"Why are you so inquisitive today?"

"If it bothers you, I don't have to see them."

"There's no secret in them. If you want, you can read them. But don't do that in front of me."

"All right, I won't."

"I won't lock the box then."

"Sure, I' ll read them and see what a romantic girl you were. "

In his heart he was eager to go through the letters, though he didn't show his eagerness. Never had he seen a love letter except in novels; never had he written one himself. Now he could see a real love letter.

The next afternoon, he came home an hour early and took out the sandalwood box to read the letters. Many of them smelled fusty; they were already yellowish, and some words were too fuzzy to be legible, owing to damp. Mai Dong's writing wasn't extraordinary by any means; some of the letters were mere records of his daily activities – what he had eaten for lunch, what movie he had seen the night before, what friends he had met. But occasionally a phrase or a sentence would glow with the genuine feelings of a young man desperately in love. At one place he wrote, "Ma