"Well, I've never thought of that." He sounded quite innocent.

She went into the bedroom, burying her face in a pillow stuffed with duck down. He sat smoking for a while. Then he wiped clean the dining table and did the dishes. Without a word he left for work.

For a whole afternoon Manna was fidgety, unsure whether Lin would come home for dinner and whether he would continue to go out in the evening. She even blamed herself. Maybe she shouldn't have blown up like that. He must think of her as a jealous shrew now. Had he really changed his heart about her? Probably he had become so tired of her that he had begun running after another woman. No, he couldn't be so heartless. Then what did he really want?

The more she thought, the more agitated she became. Yet deep down, she felt she was not wrong.

She made wontons for dinner, hoping he would come home on time. She boiled a pot of water and waited for him. Lin returned at six sharp as usual. How relieved she was at the sight of him; without delay she dropped the pork wontons into the boiling water.

As the pot was seething, she shredded two sheets of dried laver, cut a tiny bunch of cilantro, and put them into a large tureen. Meanwhile Lin placed spoons, bowls, and cups of soy sauce and vinegar on the dining table, saying she should have waited for him so that he could prepare the stuffing and help her make wonton wrappers.

"I didn't know when you'd be back," she told him, although that was only partially true. She had worried that he might not come home for dinner at all.

When the wontons were cooked, she poured them, together with the water, into the tureen, then dropped in a spoonful of chili oil and stirred the soup counterclockwise for a moment with a stainless steel ladle.

Dinner was ready. Lin carried the tureen to the dining room, which was also their living room.

While eating, Lin said he had seen Ran Su in the afternoon. Actually they had talked for a long time about women. "It was a nice chat," he told her.

"Who did you talk about?"

"Just women in general."

"So he thinks I'm out of my mind?"

"Oh no, he said I was in the wrong and I didn't understand you."

"What did he say exactly?"

"He said a woman couldn't live long without attention and love."

She t.i.ttered, amused that the commissar could talk that way. No wonder he was so patient with his crazy wife. She said, "That's not true. How about nuns?"

"Well," Lin paused, then went on, "they have the attention of monks, don't they?"

They both laughed.

"Manna," he said, "if I had known you'd feel so strongly about my teaching the cla.s.s, I'd never have agreed to do it."

Seeing the honest look on his face, Manna smiled and told him never to make such a decision on his own. They should always discuss it first. "A married couple must work like a team," she said.

From that day on, he would stay home in the evening to prepare the lessons. Because the cla.s.s was already in motion, it was impossible to change and he had to go to teach it twice a week. Though Manna was glad about the reconciliation, the two lonely evenings each week still irritated her. Sometimes she felt depressed when he wasn't home, and she couldn't help imagining how to give him a piece of her mind.

8.

As her belly bulged out in the summer, Manna grew more grumpy. She resented Lin's absence from home two evenings a week. She knew the cla.s.s would be over soon, but she couldn't help herself, treating him as though he were having an affair. Her peevish face often reminded Lin of what she had said the day after their wedding, "I wish you were paralyzed in bed, so you'd stay with me all the time."

Is this love? he would wonder. Probably she loves me too much.

One late afternoon in August, Manna returned from the grocery store with four cakes of warm tofu in a yellow plastic pail. Putting it down on the kitchen range, she said to Lin, "Something is wrong with me." Hurriedly she went into the bedroom, and he followed her in.

She looked down at the crotch of her baggy pants and found a wet patch. "Oh, I must've broken my water."

"Really?" He was alarmed. The pregnancy had not reached the ninth month yet.

"Quick, let's go to the medical building," she said.

"Don't panic. It may be too early and could be false labor."

"Let's go. I'm sure it's time."

"Can you walk?"

"Yes."

Together they set out on their way, he supporting her by the arm. The sun was setting, but the heat was still springing up from the asphalt road, which felt soft under their feet. A few lines of green and white clothes were swaying languidly among the thick aspens behind a dormitory house. A large gra.s.shopper whooshed away from the roadside, flashing the pinkish lining of its wings, then b.u.mped into a cotton quilt hanging on a clothesline and fell to the ground. The leaves of some trees on the roadside were shriveled and darkened with aphids because it hadn't rained for a whole month. Here and there caterpillars' droppings were scattered on the ground. Lin was paying close attention to the road so as to avoid places where Manna might make a false step; at the same time he grew more apprehensive, thinking of the baby that would be premature.

When they arrived at the building, Manna was rushed into a small room on the third floor, in which an examination table, upholstered with sponge rubber and shiny leather, served as a birth bed. Nurse Yu spread a sterile cloth on the table and helped Manna climb onto it. A few minutes later Manna's contractions started and she groaned.

Nurse Yu ran out to send for Haiyan, the only obstetrician in the hospital, who had left for home. At the entrance of the building she b.u.mped into her friend Snow Goose, who agreed to come up and help.

In the room upstairs Manna groaned again, clutching Lin's arm.

"You'll be all right, dear," he said.

"Oh, my kidneys!" She was panting and rubbing her back with her free hand.

"It can't be your kidneys, Manna," he said as though examining a regular patient. "The pain must radiate from your pelvis."

"Help me! Don't just talk!"

He was baffled for a moment; then he pressed his palm on the small of her back and began ma.s.saging her. Meanwhile she was moaning and sweating. He had no idea what else he should do to alleviate her pain. He tried to recall the contents of a textbook on childbirth he had studied two decades before, but he couldn't remember anything.

Haiyan didn't arrive until an hour later. She looked calm and apologized for being delayed by traffic. After examining Manna briefly, she told Nurse Yu to test the patient's blood pressure and then shave her. Next she ordered Snow Goose, "Flick on the fans and boil some water." Then, turning to Lin, she said, "Her cervix is only three centimeters open. It will take a while." Putting her palm on the patient's forehead, she said, "Everything will be all right, Manna."

Lin drew Haiyan aside and whispered, "Do you think she can survive this? You know her heart isn't very strong."

"So far she's doing fine. Don't worry. The baby is coming and it's too late to think about anything else. But I'll keep that in mind."

She moved back to the table and said, "Manna, I'm going to give you an oxytocin drip, all right?"

"Yes, do it. Let me get through this quickly."

"Can I do something?" Lin asked Haiyan.

"Did you have dinner?"

"No."

"Go eat and come back as soon as you can. This may take a whole night. We'll need you to be around."

"How about you? Did you eat?"

"Yes."

He was impressed by Haiyan's composure. He left the room while his wife was groaning and rubbing her back with both hands.

In the mess hall Lin bought a spinach soup and two buns stuffed with pork and cabbage, which he began to eat without appet.i.te. He couldn't tell whether he was happy about the baby, whose arrival took him by surprise. He belched, and his mouth was filled with acid gastric juice, which almost made him vomit. He rested his head for a moment on his fist placed on the edge of the tabletop. Fortunately n.o.body was nearby; around him were stools turned upside down on the tables.

Outside, pigs began oinking from their sties behind the kitchen as the swineherd knocked the side of a trough with an iron scoop. A group of nurses and orderlies came in, gathered around two tables at the other end of the hall, and began stringing green beans.

Lin let out a sigh. His heartburn prevented him from finishing dinner. In the air lingered a stench, coming from the hogwash vat by the long sink. He got up and went across to dump the soup into the vat. After washing his bowls and spoon, he gargled twice, then put the dinner set into his bag made of a striped towel and hung it on the wall, among the bags of his comrades. At the other end of the hall the young women were chatting and humming a movie song. A puppy was whimpering, leashed to a leg of a table.

When Lin came back to the medical building, his wife's groaning had turned into screaming. Haiyan told him that the baby seemed to be coming sooner than she had thought. In fact Manna was in transition. Lin wet a towel and wiped the sweat and tears off her face. Her eyes were flashing and her cheeks crimson.

"I can't stand this anymore! No more!" she cried. The corners of her mouth stretched sideways.

"Manna," he said, "it will be over soon. Haiyan will make sure that-"

"Oh, why did you do this to me?" she shouted.

He was taken aback, but managed to say, "Manna, don't you want the baby?"

"d.a.m.n you! You don't know how this hurts. Oh, you've all abused me!"

"Please, don't yell. Others in the building can hear you."

"Don't tell me what to do, d.a.m.n you!"

"Come on, I didn't mean-"

"I hate you!" she screamed. "I hate you all."

"Please, you'll disturb-"

"Miser! Too late. Oh, help me!"

"Okay, you yell as you like."

"Miser! Miser!"

He was bewildered, wondering why she suddenly called him that. She seemed angry at Haiyan too; that must have been why she said they had all abused her. Then the thought came to him that by "miser" she must have been referring to the two thousand yuan they had talked about paying to Bensheng to get his support a decade before. She must have thought that if they had married ten years earlier it would have been easier for her to give birth to the baby. This realization stunned him, because he hadn't known she had harbored her deep resentment all these years. He turned to the door, telling Snow Goose that he was going to the bathroom.

Once alone in a toilet stall, he tried to sort out his thoughts. Manna must have hoped he would spend two thousand yuan to buy off Bensheng at that time, though she had never made her wish explicit to him. He remembered clearly that she refused to share such a cost. Then why did she call him "miser"? He felt something clutching his lungs, and a pain gnawed him in the chest. Had he had that much money, he would certainly have brought about the divorce sooner. He had told her that he only had six hundred yuan in the bank, and she wouldn't even reveal to him how much she had saved. She must have thought he was a rich man and could easily afford two thousand yuan. After so many years, how come she still didn't believe him? Why on earth had she always kept her secrets from him, never allowing him to see her bankbook?

In his mind a voice replied, Because money's more precious and more effective than love. If you had spent the money, everything would have worked out all right and you could have enjoyed a happy marriage.

No, it wasn't that simple, Lin retorted.

It was simple and clear like a bug on a bald head, the voice went on. Say you had owned ten thousand yuan and spent one-fifth of it on your brother-in-law, counting that as a loss. Then you could have married Manna a decade ago. If so, she would have had no difficulty in giving birth to a baby and wouldn't have harbored a grievance against you. You see, isn't money more powerful than love?

That's not true, Lin countered. We needed no money to help us fall in love, just as we need no money to consummate our marriage.

Really? Then why did you spend eleven hundred yuan for the wedding? Why have you two kept separate bank accounts?

Lin was at a loss for an answer, but he suppressed that cold voice. For a long while he remained in the bathroom, which was the only quiet place where he could be un.o.bserved. Now he was sitting on the windowsill with his back against the wall, absentmindedly watching the backyard. It was already dark; beyond the screen mosquitoes were humming and fireflies were drawing little arcs. From a dormitory house a harmonica was shrieking out "The Internationale" disjointedly. A truck driver was burning oily rags at the corner of the garage, a bucket of water standing by him. Far away on the hill a cl.u.s.ter of gas lamps were flickering in a temporary apiary. Some beekeepers were still busy collecting honey over there despite the nightfall.

Somehow Lin's right eye began smarting, as though a foreign object had entered it. He removed his gla.s.ses and rubbed his eye with his fingertip. But the more he rubbed it, the more it hurt. He stood up, went to the sink, and put his head sideways beneath the spout so that the stream could rinse his eye. The cold water, falling over his cheeks and forehead, refreshed him.

No sooner had he turned off the faucet than a piercing scream came from Manna, which reminded him that he must have stayed in the bathroom at least half an hour and that it was time to go back. He wiped his face with his handkerchief, put on his gla.s.ses, and hurried out.

As he entered the delivery room again, his wife was wailing, "Oh! I hate you ... Too late ... So many years ... I'm dying, too old for this baby."

"Manna, I'm sorry," he said. "Don't bring up old scores, okay? Concentrate on-"

"All right, no cervix left." Haiyan waved to Nurse Yu and Snow Goose to come closer and help. "Manna, let's push. Take a deep breath. Ready?"

She nodded.

Haiyan counted, "One ... two ... go." go."

She pushed, her face purple and swollen. Lin noticed that Haiyan's face was puffy, as red as a boiled crab.

The second Manna exhaled, she yelled at him again, "d.a.m.n you, it's too late. Rice Bag ... Chicken Heart!"

"Please don't be so nasty," he begged.

"Ah, I'm dying. d.a.m.n your mother!"

Snow Goose turned aside and t.i.ttered, but she stopped at Manna's stare. Ashamed, Lin let go of his wife's shoulder and made for the door again. Haiyan grasped his arm and whispered, "Lin, you should stay."

"I-I can't."

"It's common for a woman in labor to go berserk. She called me names too. But we shouldn't mind. You know, this makes her feel better. You mustn't take her words to heart. She's frightened and needs you to be with her."

He shook his head and went out without another word.

Manna yelled after him, "Go to h.e.l.l, coward! I don't want to see your face before I die."

Haiyan returned to the birth bed and said, "Come on, let's push again."

"No, I can't," Manna cried. "Cut me open, Haiyan. I beg of you. Please give me ... a cesarean."