Massage

by Bi Feiyu

  Fish thronged towards him at that moment. A school of fish. A dark mass. Tens of thousands of them. Every one was the same colour, the same length, the same size. Xiao Ma was surprised to see that he was no longer a moth, but a fish. He was just another fish, the same colour, the same size. It was a frightening discovery, for he was unsure which one was him. A vast ocean, filled with fish, one fish among many. Would she still be able to recognise him? Xiao Ma struggled to swim to the surface, used every ounce of strength to leap out of the water. He struggled in vain. His leaps were ineffectual, and each time he fell back in. He made no sound, created not even a spray of water.

  For the sake of self-confirmation, he wanted to detach himself from the school, but he lacked the nerve. Away from it, he’d have to face the boundless ocean alone. He could not do that. To be apart from the school meant living with unbearable loneliness. He could not do that. Should he leave or not? He wavered and eventually ended up in despair. He was near death, hanging on for dear life. Sensing that he was losing the last bit of strength, Xiao Ma turned over, exposing his white underbelly. He was fated to end up as a carcass carried by the tides.

  A dolphin appeared at that moment, a smooth, silky creature with clean, graceful lines. It swam over, undulating to propel itself forwards and shouting at the school of fish, ‘Xiao Ma, it’s me, Sao-zi.’ This rousing shout energised Xiao Ma, and he swam up to her. ‘Sao-zi, it’s me, Xiao Ma.’ She stopped and looked at him, suspicion hidden in her shiny, round eyes. She did not believe that the creature in front of her was Xiao Ma. If he was, then wouldn’t every creature in the ocean be a Xiao Ma? Panicked, he rolled over and said, ‘Look, Sao-zi, there’s a large scar on my neck.’ She saw it, she saw the scar. Xiao Ma would never have been able to prove his identity by his face; it took a hideous scar to reunite them. Such a sad truth. But they were not sad. They were excited, virtually transcended, and they wanted to embrace. But they had no arms and no hands. All they could do was look at each other and cry, sending enormous drops of water down their faces. Their teardrops were air bubbles, popping up towards a distant sky.

  ‘I’ve never cried like this,’ she said. ‘You’re horrible, Xiao Ma.’

  He sat in the lounge, immersed in his endless daydreams. In them, Sao-zi had him in her grasp. Though she was still quiet, she had been a butterfly, a fish, a ray of light, a whiff of fragrance, a dewdrop on a flower petal, a cloud on a mountaintop. Beyond that, she was a snake, slithering at his feet before coiling up his body all the way to the top of his head. He stood up silently, encircled by a snake. Out of nothing, he had become a lounge ornament.

  But Sao-zi could not be always seated while in the lounge. She had to get up and walk around, and when she did, he recognised the sound as soon as she took the first step, however tiny, and magnified it to a startling degree. Her footsteps were characterised by one foot always slightly louder than the other. She became a horse. When she appeared as a horse, the lounge livened up, instantly turning into a prairie with lush grass and sweet water, all prepared for her.

  Xiao Ma held stubbornly to the belief that she was a chestnut horse. He once overheard clients saying that her hair had been dyed a typical chestnut colour. Now her mane and tail were a chestnut colour. As she galloped along, her long mane rippled like waves in the wind, as did her slender tail. Xiao Ma had seen an actual horse when he was eight years old, and had been deeply impressed by its long eyelashes. The animal’s moist eyes were bright and clear, surrounded by lashes to form an irregular ellipsis. Captivating. So filled with emotion they reflected mountains in the distance. Glancing at him with her rounded moist eyes, Sao-zi whinnied indulgently before taking off, with him close behind, but off to the side. Galloping together, they stirred up wind that rushed into his eyes and formed an undetectable arc; it glided over his cornea, so cool, so melodious. Her eyes must have felt the wind also, for her happy hooves nearly lifted her off the ground.

  ‘Xiao Ma,’ she said. ‘You’re a horse, and not just by name.’

  It was an extraordinary phrase, seemingly commonplace yet open to interpretation. Pounding the ground with his indulgent hooves, he climbed a hill with her, where a broad golden pasture spread out below when they reached the highest point. The pasture was in fact an enormous basin, emerald green in some places and golden yellow in others, overlaid with the cloud shadows. As the shadows drifted, the pasture began to move and spin on its own, centring on the chestnut mare – Sao-zi. Oblivious, she reared up, whinnied, and snorted. When she did that, her tail flew up to form countless chestnut lines under the setting sun, thousands upon thousands of hair strands spreading in all directions, graceful and alluring. Those transparent strands emitted a burning bright light, like cold flames, burning and defying all logic. He nudged her with his nose, she brushed his face with the flames, their intoxicating fragrance entering his nostrils. Then she turned around, her back to the golden pasture, and rested her neck on his back. She had an unusual neck, warm, smooth and unimaginably soft. Motionless, he focused on experiencing the startling sensation, until finally he turned around and laid his neck across her back. She was drenched in sweat, her muscles twitched. A wind blew over, bringing her body closer to his, until they were pressed together, enmeshed in each other’s body heat and breathing together. They gazed at each other with the near eye. She did not know that the golden pasture and his head were reflected in her sparkling eye, his head curved to form an arc parallel with hers.

  She blinked. At that moment her lashes combined to make it a beautiful action. Closing, then snapping open. Moved by the snapping sound, he rubbed his neck against her. Maybe as repayment, a reprimand, or a sign of intimacy, she rubbed her neck against him, so enthralling him that he felt he could bathe half of his face in her breath forever, till death.

  A herdsman strode up, carrying a saddle over his shoulder. As if he didn’t even see Xiao Ma, he walked up to Sao-zi and threw the saddle over her.

  ‘Take that away,’ Xiao Ma shouted. ‘Don’t touch her.’

  ‘Giddy —’ the herdsman said, patting her on the neck as he climbed into the saddle – ‘up.’

  The herdsman rode off, Sao-zi as his mount, his retreating back jolting between heaven and earth. Xiao Ma started to race after them but had barely taken a few steps before sensing that something was wrong. He turned and discovered to his horror that his body had disintegrated, littering the ground with screws, gears, an hour hand, a minute hand and a second hand. He was not a horse; he was an old alarm clock in desperate need of repair. His earlier gallop had caused the disintegration of his body. Now he could hear her hooves hitting the ground – tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock. Eyes shut, Xiao Ma continued letting his mind roam the wide open spaces until the quiet in the lobby was shattered by Gao Wei’s announcement.

  ‘Wang Daifu, Kong Daifu, Xiao Ma, you’re up.’

  Xiao Ma stirred. He awoke not from silence, but from the silence within the silence. He stood up. Sao-zi stood up as well. She yawned grandly and stretched lazily. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘time to go back to work. I’m sleepy.’

  Three clients came in together, and, as luck would have it, Wang Daifu, Xiao Kong and Xiao Ma were up at the same time. Xiao Ma did not want to do it, but he had no choice. When you work for someone, you can’t do only what you want.

  The clients, obviously friends, asked for a room for three. Xiao Ma was on the inside, with Sao-zi in the middle and Wang Daifu by the door, all squeezed into one room. Xiao Ma was not alone in feeling awkward; the others were too, which produced silence. It was noon, which, like night-time, was perfectly suited for sleeping – peaceful, quiet. Within three or four minutes the clients drifted off to sleep. Wang’s client slept so deeply he was snoring loudly.

  Once the snores rose from one end, Xiao Ma’s client, not to be outdone, joined in from the other end, interestingly a half beat behind. First one, then the other, back and forth. They were such good friends they even corresponded when they snored, like performing a vocal round. What
started out as 4/4 rhythm turned into something akin to a march. To the trained ear, it sounded hurried, for no apparent reason, as if sleep were busy work. How interesting. ‘Isn’t that nice?’ Xiao Kong said with a laugh. ‘I’ll be the conductor and you two sing. We’ll be a great team.’

  She gave little thought to what she was saying, but sometimes that’s how it is – speech is always linked to circumstance. You can say something, and if that occurs under a certain set of circumstances, it takes on special significance and must not be overanalysed, for that can cause it to take on additional meaning; the more thought, the more meaningful everything becomes.

  What had she meant by ‘I’ll be the conductor and you two sing’? Wang Daifu wondered. So did Xiao Ma. Wang’s mind began to wander. So did Xiao Ma’s.

  The room was quiet except for the clients’ snores, but it did not stay that way for long. Wang Daifu and Xiao Kong struck up a conversation, starting with him. The talk focused on the food they’d been given recently. She said it was getting worse, that was clear, but he didn’t pick up the thread, not wanting to let it go too far. If their complaints reached Jin da-jie, the cook, a woman with a sharp tongue, it could present a problem. Wang Daifu changed the subject and began reminiscing about Shenzhen. The food was better in Shenzhen, he said. Xiao Kong agreed. So they looked back on Shenzhen’s seafood and soups.

  Because the clients were napping, the therapists kept their voices low, a relaxed conversation that avoided any talk dealing with feelings. A simple conversation, back and forth, which took on domestic airs, like a married couple talking in their bedroom or kitchen, as if Xiao Ma were not there. But he was there, and he heard every word. From where he stood, he felt they’d moved beyond idle chatting and into flirting. He’d never been to Shenzhen, and even if he had, he’d best keep quiet. All he could do was to enter his silence within a silence. His internal emotional engine went into overdrive; he was somewhat envious and somewhat sad; but mostly he was jealous.

  And yet Sao-zi was, after all, Sao-zi, so she found something to say to him every few minutes, which calmed him considerably. Say what you will, Xiao Ma meant something to her. He continued feeling envious, sad and jealous, but now to that was added a bit of consolation.

  In any case, it was a long hour for the three of them; uneventful, yet it couldn’t end soon enough. Luckily, Xiao Ma’s client woke up first, and breathed a long sigh of relief, which woke up the other two and restored a sense of normality to the room, no longer the kitchen or bedroom of a married couple. The still sleepy clients talked among themselves about their nap, agreeing that it had been a terrific noontime experience and that they had made a great, glorious and accurate choice by coming here for tuina.

  Gao Wei came in and whispered something to Wang. One of his VIP clients was waiting in room four, where the massage bed was ready. ‘Got it,’ Wang said, as he massaged his client’s thighs before uttering a few polite parting comments and leaving. While the clients were looking for their shoes, Xiao Kong took out her Shenzhen phone so she could call her father after the clients left. Xiao Ma could tell she was in no hurry to leave. Xiao Kong could not know that time and his heart were ticking away.

  Finally, the clients left. Xiao Ma walked to the door and listened for sounds in the hallway; all was quiet. He locked the door and called out softly – ‘Sao-zi.’ Obviously, he had something to say, so she put the phone back in her pocket and turned to face him. He didn’t know what he wanted to say, and noticed the smell of her hair, which was right in front of him; the scent was calming yet vigorous. He lowered his head and rashly took a deep, very deep, breath.

  ‘Sao-zi.’

  That deep breath had brought him a carefree sense of happiness. Its effect far surpassed any smell he could detect. ‘Sao-zi.’ He wrapped his arms around her and held her tight, sniffing the air above her head.

  Stunned and confused, she felt like shouting, but stopped herself at the last second. She struggled and squirmed and said, her voice soft but her tone incomparably severe, ‘Let me go. If you don’t, I’ll call Wang da-ge.’

  Chapter Nine

  Jin Yan

  FINALLY XU TAILAI began to talk, and everything got easier after that. Jin Yan launched her emotional assault, a unique one that started from the outside, levelling everything around him like a mopping-up operation. What did that mean anyway? It meant that by the time he sensed her feelings for him, everyone in the centre already knew that she was pursuing him.

  She did two things. One, she sat next to him during mealtime, and two, she held his hand on the way home after work. These were common actions among the blind and generally devoid of any special implications, especially the hand holding. The blind therapists normally left work in threes and fours, hand in hand and led by a sighted individual. But Jin Yan, being Jin Yan, did things her own way.

  No one in the centre, it’s safe to say, was prepared for Jin Yan and Xu Tailai’s romance. For one thing, people usually had a sense of which man would be pursuing which woman and vice versa. Put simply, they must come across as a good match, an abstract concept that’s hard to describe and yet, when it comes to an actual couple and becomes a fait accompli, the notion of compatibility becomes concrete and easy to define. No matter how one looks at it, no one would say that Lin Daiyu, the frail girl from Dream of the Red Chamber, and Lu Zhishen, the rowdy monk from The Water Margin, were a good match. Xu Tailai and Jin Yan were not a good match either, which was why no one had given their romance a thought.

  Jin Yan made a flamboyant move one day when Jin da-jie came in at noon, a signal that lunch was ready. A sighted person, da-jie was the centre’s full-time cook, a woman known for her punctuality. She arrived at precisely twelve noon, like clockwork. Earnest and polite, she put rice bowls in the hands of the therapists, who immediately began to wolf down the food, a typical trait of youngsters, male or female, who ate like there was no tomorrow. But not Jin Yan on that day. Setting her bowl down, she took a sip of water.

  ‘Dig in, Jin Yan,’ da-jie said, ‘the food’s pretty good today.’

  ‘I’m not in a hurry,’ Jin Yan responded calmly. ‘I’m waiting for Tailai so we can eat together.’

  At that moment Tailai was working on a VIP client who had sprained an ankle and required an additional thirty minutes of therapy. Jin Yan’s reply reminded everyone of something from the day before, when she had walked up to Tailai. ‘May I sit next to you, Tailai?’ she’d asked gracefully, though everyone thought she was just being witty and gave it no more thought. Du Hong had got up and given her seat to Jin Yan. Tailai is no Beckham, so be my guest and sit there as long as you like.

  But everyone went silent the next day when she said she was waiting for him so they could eat together. So understated, though at heart a clarion call. She’s only been here a few days, they were thinking. Isn’t she moving a bit too fast? And on Xu Tailai, no less.

  It couldn’t be. It must be a mistake.

  It was no mistake. Jin Yan had her eye set on Tailai; it was not yet clear if she was in love with him, but she’d certainly made it appear so. She was very nice to him, more than nice, and different from how co-workers treated one another. When he finished with his client, she told him to wash his hands. When he’d finished that, they sat down to eat together. She kept urging him, ‘Slow down.’ She put some of her own food into his bowl. Meanwhile, she chattered away. This was not the way of a co-worker. The lounge felt uncomfortably quiet to Tailai, who tried to refuse her gestures. She laid down her bowl, nudged him, and said, ‘Men have to eat more. Understand?’ He was so embarrassed all he could do was shovel rice into his mouth, forgetting even to chew; his cheeks puffed up. Doesn’t she know where we are? It’s the lounge, everyone is here. But that sort of expansiveness was typical of Jin Yan; the more people who were around, the more she acted as if no one else mattered.

  As she ate and talked, Jin Yan laughed softly once or twice, giving the impression of an intimacy only lovers could share. The others in the l
ounge found it hard to talk too loudly under these circumstances, and the place quieted down, except for the synchronised sounds of Jin Yan and Tailai eating, like a married couple. Everyone else ate silently, but their inner feelings were anything but simple. Who is Xu Tailai? Who is he anyway? Why would a new arrival, a pretty girl, fall for him, and no one else? And why is he pretending not to be interested? Who believes that?

  Jin Yan acted boldly and expansively when she and Tailai were eating, but she was a different person on the way back to the dorm late at night. Seemingly helpless and timid, she stuck close to Tailai, insisting on taking his hand, and no one else’s.

  All was quiet on the late-night streets, where there were no more noisy pedestrians or streams of vehicles, and suddenly the streets seemed deserted. They appeared wider, a carefree world for the blind, though it was also a lonely world; the blind walked in groups but were alone. Jin Yan liked the solitude. Walking down the left side of the street, they whispered and shared laughs; it was an endlessly intoxicating moment for her, when the world seemed to belong to her and Tailai alone. It was like a desert.

  I’m a wolf from the north

  Loping through boundless wind and rain

  The shrill north wind blows over

  Drifting yellow sand sweeps by

  What could be better than this? Nothing. Just imagine a girl holding the hand of a young man as they walk down a deserted street late at night, or perhaps a desolate wilderness; they walk on, obliged not to turn back. Pleasantly sombre.