"What should I do?"
"Lin, I'm sorry. " Doctor Yao held Lin's upper arm and shook it gently, meaning he had no idea either. "But you must not be too emotional. Cheer up a little – she depends on you." He paused for a moment while Lin rubbed his stomach with the palm of his hand as though assuaging a pain. Doctor Yao went on, "Don't let her do any physical work, don't make her lose her temper, just make life easy for her."
Lin lowered his head and muttered, "I'll try my best."
"If I were you, I wouldn't tell her about her heart condition, just keep her happy."
"I won't let her know, of course."
Despite Lin's effort to guard the secret, word of Manna's illness soon began circulating in the hospital. The rumor went wild and even claimed that she would definitely die within a year. In a few weeks Manna heard about the true condition of her heart, but she took it with surprising serenity, saying to Lin that she knew her life would be over soon. Her words distressed him.
As she got weaker, her temper became worse. She often yelled at Juli and Lin; sometimes she cried for no apparent reason, like a self-willed child.
Lin tried to do as much housework as he could. He washed diapers on weekends when Juli didn't come to work. In midwinter the tap water was ice cold. His hands ached and itched while he scrubbed at the faucet in front of the house. He had never expected that washing laundry would be a part of his married life. Throughout those years before the marriage, he had washed only his socks and underwear since Manna did his laundry for him. Now, a pile of diapers would be waiting for him every weekend. He dared not complain or think too much, for things could be worse. In spite of all the difficulties, they could afford to hire a maid and he didn't have to wash laundry on weekdays.
On Saturday evenings he would carry out to the faucet a load of baby clothes and diapers and a kettle of hot water, which he would pour over two or three fistfuls of soap powder, and then he would soak the laundry in the suds for a moment. Under the mercury street lamp, the water would glisten in the large basin. Through the loudspeaker atop the roof of the medical building, a soft female voice often sang "A Large River Long and Wide" and "The Five-Starred Red Flag Flies High." Lin would set the washboard against the rim of the sink and start scrubbing the laundry piece by piece with a squishing sound. Soon the detergent water lost its suds and turned cold, and he had to blow on his fingers again and again in order to continue. The toughest part was to rinse the soaped, scrubbed laundry, because there was no hot water available after the initial soak and the tap water was so cold it seemed to bite his fingers with teeth. Yet he kept washing quietly and always avoided greeting those who came to fetch water.
People noticed that Lin's face had grown bony, his cheeks more prominent now. His trousers became baggy on him. Commissar Su's wife would tell her neighbors, "Lin Kong has lost his hips. It's heaven's retribution, serves him right. See who dares to abandon his wife again." Whenever she saw Lin, she would glower at him, spit to the ground, and stamp her feet. He ignored her as though he hadn't heard or seen her. But unlike the crazy woman, his colleagues had stopped joking about him; instead they would shake their heads behind his back.
He was grateful that Hua often came on weekends. She sometimes helped him with the laundry and looked after the babies. She liked feeding them with only one nursing bottle, which made them compete to suck it and crow with pleasure. They would laugh and put out their fat little hands whenever she teased them, calling them "my little precious" while pressing her chin against their chests. She had made them each a bunny hat with frills. By now Manna had become friendly to Hua and had even bought her a pink cardigan. She once told Lin that if only she could have had a daughter like Hua.
After a long sick leave, Manna returned to the Medical Ward. She could work only half a day, but she was paid a full salary. She spent afternoons at home.
One Sunday morning in January, Lin was cooking rice for lunch. While the pot was boiling, he set out for the mess hall to buy a dish. The previous evening, he had seen a notice on the small blackboard at the entrance to the kitchen, saying there would be beef and fried potato for lunch, seventy fen a helping. On his way there he ran into Commissar Su. They talked for a while about initiating a crash program for training paramedics from the local counties the next spring. The prefecture's Department of Public Health had just asked the army hospital for help and was willing to finance the program. This meant the hospital's staff would receive a larger bonus at the end of next year.
Because of the talk, Lin forgot the rice boiling at home. When he got back with a bowl of potato and beef, the kitchen was white with smoke. He rushed to the cooking range, put the bowl down, and removed the pot. The second he opened the lid a wave of steam clouded his glasses and made him unable to see anything. After wiping the lenses with the end of his jacket and putting the glasses back on, he saw that the rice was already burned through. He picked up an iron scoop and was about to put a little water into the pot when Manna came into the kitchen, coughing and buttoning her jacket. "Put a scallion into the pot, quick!" she shouted.
Lin planted a scallion stalk into the rice to get rid of the burned smell, but it was too late, a good part of the rice was already brown. He pushed the transom open to let the smoke out.
Suddenly Manna yelled at him, "Why did you leave while the rice pot was boiling? You can't even cook such a simple thing, idiot."
"I – I went to buy a dish. You were home, why couldn't you keep an eye on it?"
"You didn't tell me, did you? Besides, I'm too sick to cook. Don't you know that?" With her fingertips holding the cuff of her sleeve, she swept the pot and the bowl off the cooking range; they crashed to the cement floor; beef and potato cubes and smoking rice were scattered about. The aluminum lid of the pot rolled away and hit the threshold, where it came to rest, leaning upright against two bricks piled together as a doorstop.
"Even pigs won't touch this," she added.
From inside the bedroom Lake broke out crying, then screamed at the top of his lungs. A few seconds later River started bawling too. Manna hurried back in to calm them. Without tending to the stove or cleaning up, Lin turned and stormed out. His green mittens, connected by a string, flapped wildly beside his flanks as he strode away. "I hate her! I hate her!" he said to himself.
He went to the hill behind the hospital grounds. It was a cold day. The orchard on the slope was deserted, the apple-pear trees thick and bulky, their frosty branches sprawling and looking feathery. For a while he couldn't think of anything, his skull numb and his temples tight. He climbed toward the hilltop, which was covered by snow except for two clusters of brownish rocks. Beyond the hill, on the riverbank, there was a village that had a deer farm and a boat house, which Lin for some reason wanted to watch from the crown of the hill. The scent of winter was clean and intense. It was windless, and the sun was glinting on the boulders here and there and on the tree trunks crusted with ice. In the distance a flock of rooks were circling and cawing hungrily.
As Lin calmed down, a voice rose in his head and said, Do you really hate her?
He made no reply.
The voice continued, You asked for this mess. Why did you marry her?
I love her, he answered.
You married her for love? You really loved her?
He thought a while, then managed to answer, I think so. We waited eighteen years for each other, didn't we? Doesn't such a long time prove we love each other?
No, time may prove nothing. Actually you never loved her. You just had a crush on her, which you didn't get a chance to outgrow or to develop into love.
What? A crush! He was taken aback and paused in his tracks. His sinuses became congested.