They watched the rough-cuts and she made some general comments, then stood up. To her surprise, the others were all on their feet too: ‘We’d better be off.’ Xiao’ou raised no objections and they left. All of a sudden, quiet descended on the room. She looked at Xiao’ou and found he was looking at her too, with an expression of tenderness. The warmth of his gaze startled her and she averted her gaze. But her heart dissolved, like a cloud that at the slightest touch would seep moisture.
‘Come on, let’s go and eat, there are some good places around here,’ he muttered, looking at the floor. She followed him out of the hotel and, as a sudden breeze caught her in the face, she felt filled with warmth. They walked along, side by side, getting closer until she felt an arm drape itself gently around her neck. They huddled close together against the evening wind. She felt that the journey to the restaurant was all too short.
He ordered masses of food but did not touch it. She, on the other hand, tucked in while he sat and chatted idly. He talked of his family and childhood, telling her that he had been a wild child, and did not get any schooling. ‘But you’d never guess,’ she put in. He carried on as if he had not heard, telling her how much he had missed a mother’s love, how all neglected children were troubled adults. ‘What did your mother do?’ she asked, feeling she could ask that now that they were growing closer. He said his parents had been in the Ministry of Defence. He mentioned their names, and she nearly jumped out of her skin.
‘But don’t get the wrong idea,’ he said. ‘I’ve made my own way in life. Have you had enough to eat?’ He only picked up his chopsticks once she had set down hers. How strange, she thought, but that was how it was every time they ate together. He simply refused to start until she had finished her meal. It was very puzzling. ‘Let’s eat together,’ she urged him. ‘It’s delicious.’ But he would not budge. ‘My parents are workaholics. My mother hasn’t given up work even now she’s got cancer, she …’ ‘Your mother’s got cancer?’ she exclaimed. ‘Yes, breast cancer, she’s been admitted to Hospital Number 304 for treatment.’ ‘304? Isn’t that the one near here? Then why don’t we go and see her?’ ‘Fine, we’ll go when we’ve had dinner.’ His expression never varied, she thought, and wondered if he would be as impassive if the house caught fire.
She bought bags full of delicacies in the evening food market. He made an effort to stop her but she would not be stopped. She was driven by an odd kind of urge, the urge to be good to his mother. When she actually met his mother, she was taken aback. He was so handsome, she had expected his mother to be equally good-looking. But the old woman was hideous. It was not down to the hospital treatment, she was naturally ill-looking. The oddest thing was that he had told her: ‘I take after my mother.’ Were all Chinese men so tied to their mothers’ apron strings? They did seem to love mothers much more than their wives. As far as heterosexual love went, they seemed to be stuck at the stage of oral fixation and then to go straight from that to premature ageing, so that they were always little old men who never grew up. Poor Chinese women! She thought.
The old woman had endured a double mastectomy and Xiao’ou seemed very distressed. ‘The breasts are so important to a woman,’ he told Tianyi. Something came floating back into Tianyi’s memory, something from far back in the past. Instinctively, she touched her own right breast. It was the slightest of movements, that even the most observant person would not have picked up. Still, she still shot Xiao’ou a wary glance in case he had seen, but he was immersed in his own tragedy and had shut the rest of the world out.
Afterwards, quite suddenly, an impulse came over her. An impulse to unbutton her clothes, take off her top, and show herself to him, show him her splendid breasts, her crowning glory. There were few, if any, Chinese women with breasts like hers, she would say bluntly. Since she was fourteen years old, she only had to walk into the public baths to draw the stares of every woman in there. Her breasts were so dazzlingly white, they might have been crafted from silver, surmounted by nipples like pale pink jewels. They made people wonder about her ethnic origin, because Oriental women certainly did not have breasts like that. White women had breasts that colour but not of such a fine shape, nor did black women or Native Americans. The shape of Tianyi’s breasts was most like those of a woman from South-West Asia or North Africa, small, jutting cones, but the skin colour was different, pink and white. Only a girl who was God’s best beloved could have these most glorious of God’s creations, the most bountiful of God’s gifts.
But she should have remembered that the world abhorred perfection. Those whom God loved could just as easily be abandoned. The instant God had abandoned her, she had been knifed in the breast, and now she bore a scar that would never fade. She wanted to show him her scar.
It happened when she was university and had just split up with her third love, a fellow student called Jianyu. She was looking even more haggard than usual, her eyes dark-ringed, her skin sallow. Her periods, when they came, never seemed to stop, and then one day she found a lump under her armpit. It was hard, and rapidly getting bigger. She was scared and went for a checkup. She saw the head of surgery, a nice old man who kept trying to relax her by making facetious comments. But it only made her more tense, and she kept asking: ‘What’s wrong with me, doctor?’
The doctor said he was admitting her to hospital so that they could examine the lump. The evening she arrived, the door to the ward silently opened, and a tall young doctor came in. ‘Dr Lin,’ the nurse introduced him. ‘You’ll be under his care.’ He was wearing a facemask but she could see a pair of beautiful eyes. She had never seen a man with eyes like that. They were a very unusual colour, blue-grey, distant like moonlight on a mountain crater.
She tensed up immediately. ‘Open your gown,’ he said. His voice had a professional detachment. She quietly untied the tapes and the loose, shapeless gown fell away from her body. He looked dazed.
He bent over and began to examine her. He still had a professional gravity but she could see the flush that rose up his face under the mask. She tried to clear her head and focus on the chakra beneath her navel but it was no use. A surge of heat travelled up her body and she felt her face flame red. Good heavens, she was a grown woman, wasn’t she? How could she be so easily reduced to such embarrassment? The truth was that, although she was twenty-six years old and had had three boyfriends, she was still a virgin, had never been touched by a man! This was the first time it had happened to her. It felt peculiar, yet entirely natural.
The young doctor’s name was Lin Fan. He descended on Tianyi like the Angel Gabriel, giving her a new reason to fantasize, a very good reason. Many years later, she still remembered that instant of crippling embarrassment. She was acutely aware of his experienced fingertips, his quiet muttering. There was the pressure of his fingers on her breast, probing, caressing gently, the strange medical words that he murmured, his way of fending off his own discomfiture. She felt mortified at this man’s hands sliding over her smooth skin, his palms broad and warm, blessedly unsweaty. On the surface they were doctor and patient, interacting in a normal, formal manner. In reality (and there was absolutely no way they could deceive themselves), they were not doctor and patient but a young man and a young woman. Doctor Lin’s first examination exposed something real between them, something they recognized from the word go, and were inescapably drawn into.