The Bathing Women by Tie Ning Read Free Book Online Page A

utmost power, the power of “not daring.”
There was nothing that I didn’t dare to do to so and so. I stopped her when she rushed to take off her clothes. I told her to kiss me and she did as I said. She pressed against my body and wrapped her arms around my neck, kissing me for a long time, often asking, “Is that enough, is that enough?” She kissed me deeply and thoroughly, her tongue going almost everywhere she could reach in my mouth, and yet she seemed distracted. I closed my eyes and imagined it was you, your lips and your passionate kisses. But it didn’t work. The more she kissed me, the more I felt it was not you. And she apparently grew impatient—it was precisely because she became impatient that I insisted on having her continue to kiss me. I held her around the waist with my hands, not allowing her to move. We two looked like we were struggling with one another. Later, everything finally went in a different direction because she snuck her hand from my neck and started to touch and fondle me. She was nervous and I could understand her nervousness. She didn’t know why I wanted her only for kissing; she must have thought it wasn’t sufficient, that the kissing alone was not going to satisfy my desire and therefore her desire was even less likely to be satisfied.
She fondled me anxiously as if to say, even though my kisses didn’t seem to satisfy you, there is something more that I’m willing to give you … we started to make love, but you were everywhere before my eyes—I’m so obscene, but I beg you not to throw away the letter. In the end I felt horrible. On the one hand I imagined it was you who lay under me, my beloved, but when I did, the guilt I felt was so strong that it kept me from achieving the pleasure I could have had. The guilt was so strong that I couldn’t tell who exactly lay under my body then or exactly what I was doing after all. Eventually I had to use my hand to … I could only get release with my own hand.
I’m willing to let you curse me ten thousand times. Only when you curse me does my empty soul find a peaceful place to go. Where can my soul rest safely? Maybe I demand too much. Why, when I kept getting those prizes I dreamed of—success, fame, national and international awards, family, children, admiration, beautiful women, money, etc.—and the rest … —did my anxiety only deepen?
I had a woman before I was married. She was a one-legged woman, fifteen years older than I was. She was a sadist. I took up with her because even though I was the lowest of the low I still needed women. Or you could say she took up with me. But I never guessed that she didn’t want me for the needs that a man could satisfy. She had only one leg but her physical strength was matchless. I certainly couldn’t match her, with that body of mine weakened by years of hard labour and starvation. She often tied me up late at night and pricked my arms and thighs with an awl, not deep, just enough to make me bleed. What shocked me even more was the time she lifted up the blanket when I was dead asleep, and began frantically plucking my pubic hair … she was crazy. She must have been crazy. But I didn’t go crazy and I think it must have had something to do with the mountains I saw every time I went out. When I stepped out of the low, small mud hut and saw the silent mountains, unchanged for more than ten thousand years, when I saw the chickens running helter-skelter in the yard and dung steaming on the dirt road, the desire to live surged in me. I developed a talent: even when she tortured me until my body was bloodstained and black and blue all over, as soon as she stopped, I could fall back asleep immediately, and without having a nightmare. But today, I have to ask myself again and again: What do you want in the end, what do you want after all?
I don’t want to pollute your eyes with the above words, but I can only ease my heart by writing to you. I have such desire to be with you, so much so