Waiting

Many officers' wives came to see the twins, who looked identical to them. The visitors kept asking Lin and Ma

The visitors brought along eggs, brown sugar, dried dates, and millet, saying these things could enrich Ma

The visitors all congratulated the couple on having two sons. "You landed two birds with a single bullet," one would say. And another, "What a lucky man!" In everybody's eyes Lin was extraordinarily fortunate, because since the 1970s a rule had allowed no couple to have more than one child. But Lin now had two sons and also a grown daughter. His old roommate Jin Tian was upset when he heard Lin had two boys, because his wife had borne him only a girl. He suggested that Lin do something to celebrate this great fortune, either throw a party or distribute some candies and cigarettes. But Lin was too exhausted to think about that.

Though she managed to eat six or seven eggs a day, Ma

Soon neither of the twins wanted to be left in bed for a minute; the moment Lin put down the calmed one to pick up the screaming one, the babies would join forces crying loudly. So Ma

In the meantime, the boys were growing rapidly, each having gained two inches and six pounds in two months. River was now slightly bigger than his younger brother Lake.

One morning Juli pushed the baby carriage out of the hospital to watch a column of police trucks parading criminals through the streets. Two drug dealers had been sentenced to death and a rapist to life. Each of the criminals carried above his head a wooden placard whose base was tied to his back. A young woman was also among them; she, who had once been a teacher in a kindergarten, had locked a naughty boy in a basement to teach him a lesson, but she had forgotten to release him. The child had starved to death, and she was going to serve fourteen years in prison.

When the twins returned home, their faces became bluish. Ma

Their father took them to Doctor Min, a young pediatrician who had just graduated from the Second Military Medical University. The diagnosis was dysentery. Like deflated balloons, the twins seemed to have withered all of a sudden, their heads drooping and their eyes lusterless, both whimpering a little and breathing heavily. Juli was scared, declaring tearfully that she hadn't fed them anything unclean. Neither Ma

To prevent dehydration, the twins had to be given an intravenous drip of glucose and salt water without delay. The nurses went about working on Lake and River at the same time, but the babies' blood vessels were hardly visible and were so thin that the nurses tried several times unsuccessfully to lodge a needle into them. The twins were screaming hoarsely. To Lin, his sons' arms looked almost transparent, so he was impatient with the nurses who couldn't find their blood vessels. Yet he dared not try to do it himself; neither could he watch for long the needles probing beneath his sons' tender skin. They made his heart twinge and his chest contract. For the first time in his life he was experiencing this kind of paternal suffering, which caused him to tremble a little. He realized that he did love the babies, his nose twitching and tears welling up in his eyes. If only he could substitute for them!

Doctor Min prescribed coptis powder, which is said to be the bitterest thing on earth and which the babies had to take three times a day. No matter how much sugar the parents mixed with the yellow powder, the twins would cry hard when forced to swallow the medicine. The parents and the maid worked as a team, one holding River, another pinching his nose shut and prying open his mouth with a spoon, and the third thrusting the spoonful of coptis powder mixed with sugar into his mouth, then washing it down with warm water. Done with River, they went on to Lake, who had been bawling furiously.

A week later the dysentery still persisted; every day each of the babies would relieve his bowels six or seven times. Juli had to take them to the medical building for the drips every afternoon. Their parents were desperate.

Hua came on Sunday morning. At the sight of her stricken half brothers she couldn't stop her tears. She reminded her father that purslane might help, since in their home village people always used this herb to treat loose bowels. Lin remembered that several years ago when he visited a clinic in the countryside, he had seen barefoot doctors cook purslane stew in a cauldron. The villagers who suffered from diarrhea or dysentery would go to the front yard of the clinic and eat a bowl of the stew. At most it took three bowls to cure the illness. But now it was wintertime; where on earth could he find purslane?

Nevertheless, he bicycled downtown right away, believing some medicinal herb stores might have dried purslane. He went to every one of them in Muji, but was told that this was an item that no herb store would carry.

"Why not?" he asked.

"It's a tradition, I don't know why not. Perhaps because it's just a vegetable," a beardless old clerk told him.

The babies were getting weaker and weaker. Apparently the cop-tis powder didn't work. As a last resort, Doctor Min decided to give them enemas, to wash their bowels with coptis solution directly. This treatment turned out to be very effective. Within three days, new tests showed that the bacteria had disappeared from the babies' intestines. Yet the symptom did not diminish; the twins continued to have loose bowels. In addition, they wouldn't pass water: their urine was excreted through their anuses.

Doctor Min was totally bewildered by this case. After two days' thinking she decided that though the dysentery had been cured, the twins still suffered from a nervous disorder that was impossible for her to treat. She said to the nurses, "I'm afraid we have to let nature take its own course."