Read Online The Crazed by Ha Jin - Free Book Online

and found a festering boil below his left shoulder blade, about the size of an adzuki bean. She was unhappy about the discovery and said I should have rubbed him with a clean towel at least once every other day. True, I hadn’t done enough to help him with his personal hygiene, not because I was lazy or careless but because I didn’t know what to do. By nature I was an absentminded man and often neglected small things. That might be why people called me “the Poet,” though I had never written a poem. I had wiped Mr. Yang’s face with a warm towel every day and had bathed his varicosed feet once, but had done nothing else. I was sure that Banping didn’t even bother about our teacher’s face. Usually he would just sit in the room reading a book or stand in the corridor chatting with a nurse or a patient. Now I felt ashamed that I hadn’t cared for my teacher the way I should have.
    Meimei removed a tiny safety pin from the waist of her pants and pierced the head of her father’s boil to drain the pus. She then wiped the abscessed area for a good while with a cotton ball soaked with alcohol. After that, she went on to squeeze a few pimples on his back. Following her orders, I fetched two thermoses of hot water. Together we took off Mr. Yang’s pajamas and set about scrubbing him with warm towels. Lying facedown, he moaned with pleasure while steam rose from his pinkish flesh.
    Done with his back, we turned him over to rub his front. His eyes narrowed as a contented smile emerged on his face.
    After we helped him into clean clothes, Meimei began brushing his teeth. He opened his mouth, displaying his diseased gums, which were ulcerated in places and bleeding a little. His tongue was heavily furred. “Good heavens,” Meimei said to me, “what have you been doing these days? You could at least have kept him clean.”
    “I’m sorry, nobody told me what to do.”
    “This is common sense.”
    “Sorry, if only I had known.”
    “Every three or four hours we should turn him over, let him lie on his stomach for a while, otherwise he’ll grow bedsores.”
    “I’ll remember that.”
    “The nurses should be fired.”
    “Yes, they haven’t done much to help him either.”
    “What do they do when they’re here?”
    “They just sit around knitting or thumbing through magazines.”
    She brushed his teeth twice, saying his gingivitis was severe. If only there were a way to treat his gum condition. Most dentists in town merely pulled or filled teeth, and few were good at dealing with periodontal disease. As Meimei was busy working on her father, I fetched more water. Together we began washing Mr. Yang’s head over a basin. With both hands I held the nape of his neck, which felt squishy, while Meimei soaped his gray hair. A whiff of decay escaped from his insides, and I turned my face with bated breath. Meimei scooped up water with her palms cupped together and let it fall on his head to rinse the suds away. In no time hundreds of hairs floated in the bluish foam, and the inside of the white basin became ringed with greasy dirt. If only I had washed his hair before Meimei had returned.
    After the washing, I shaved him and with a pair of scissors trimmed his mustache and clipped his nose hair. He looked normal now, his face glowing with a reddish sheen.
    I took Meimei home after ten o’clock, when the streets were full of people who had just come out of night schools. She sat sideways at the rear of my bicycle, her face pressed against my back and her arm hooked around my waist. The warmth of her body excited me so much that I continually cranked the bell on the handlebar and even ran a red light.
    Afraid she might find out that I had started smoking again, I had brushed my teeth and tongue after dinner, using her father’s toothbrush with its flattened bristles, since I didn’t have mine with me. Still, when we were alone in her parents’ apartment and in each other’s arms, she detected tobacco on my breath.