女医杂言

Eleventh of August, 2036, ten at night, Turpan. The yard covered in reed mats, one against the next, from the front-room door to house three's door. On them this afternoon's cut bunches, not touching, a fist's width apart. No lights but the bulb at the front door throwing a yellow patch. Alim's mother crouched among the mats, a cloth in her hand, walking slowly between the bunches, crouching, looking, touching, rising again. I watched a long time. Eight years in this yard. I once wrote a card: before hanging, spread the bunches in the shade overnight. Abdurehman said it. Last March I learned she has done it every year since 2004. I asked her the last year she did it — "last year, every year" — and left. How it's done, what she does on the mats at night, I never asked. Because it's done at night, and I have always come by day. Late July Alim phoned: she's done the spreading every year; nobody's asked her; I want to see whether what she chooses matches what I choose. Alim's own string was chosen yesterday, by his father's method — cupboard half, frame half, four years of feel — and left unhung in the front room. "When my mother has chosen, both go up together."

Tan Yunxian came in the night. After eleven, the yard cooling; she walked out of the dark past the gate: fifty or so, small, in plain clothes, hair pinned tight, carrying a little wooden case with a brass clasp. She did not come to me. She walked lightly along the edge of the mats and crouched a little way from Alim's mother and looked at the bunches as she did, a long time. Then, beside me on the step: "What these bunches look like at night, the daytime people have never seen."

From the case: small porcelain bottles, a roll of needles, a thin book. As a child I learned from my grandmother. She treated mostly women; her prescriptions and cases came from a lifetime among women. The physicians outside didn't know her. In those days women couldn't speak of some illnesses to a male doctor, nor could he ask; so they came to her, and later to me. Those illnesses and treatments lived their whole life in the inner rooms. The men who wrote medical books never entered those rooms. It isn't that the remedies didn't work. Nobody went in to ask. I haven't gone in to ask either. You come to this yard by day. By day the men hang the strings, take them down, and argue price with the buyers. What happens on these mats at night is hers. The line you wrote — spread overnight — her husband said it. The one who said it didn't do it; the one who did it didn't say it. And, and I picked up the pen: a job done only at night, the people who keep the daytime books will always believe does not exist.

At midnight she stood and pressed her back. What do you look at on the mats at night? She looked at me as if nobody had ever asked. "Which bunches sweat. Cut bunches, as the night cools, some give off a film of damp — on the stalk, where the grapes touch — you can feel it wet. That's the water inside going out. Some give off a lot, some a little. Before dawn some have dried, some are still wet. Still wet before dawn: hung up, they spoil easily — the bottom grapes soften first, mould first. Dry before dawn: those hang steadiest." Night sweat; dry or not before dawn. Have you told Uncle Abdurehman? She smiled: "He sleeps by day, I spread by night. He never asked; I never said." And: "The years he hung them well, I had chosen them at night first." I stood by the mats and couldn't move. The strings his whole family took as the ruler; the feel I went to ask about again and again for eight years — half of it had been chosen first, at night, on these mats, by this woman. Tan: my grandmother taught me through the people she had treated. When I wrote my book I recorded each patient — whose household, how old, how she fell ill, how she was treated. Whose household — not whose wife. Five times into the book: when the one who did it has a name, write her name, not whose woman she is. — M.

Memo to file. Turpan, 11–20 August 2036. The unsampled shift. A second reference string, chosen by the person who did the night work — and her name.

1. What I had. A card from years ago: spread overnight before hanging (Abdurehman). Last year: she does it, every year, since 2004. What I never had: how, and what she looks for — because it happens at night and I have only ever come by day.

2. What she looks for. Night sweat: as the cut bunches cool, some give off damp at the stalk and where grapes touch — water leaving. Still wet before dawn → spoils easily when hung (bottom grapes soften and mould first). Dry before dawn → hangs steadiest. "He sleeps by day, I spread by night. He never asked; I never said." "The years he hung them well, I had chosen them at night first."

2a. Where she learned it. From her mother, in another township that also hangs grapes: "Cut bunches cry at night. When they've cried dry, they can be hung. The ones that can't cry dry go on crying on the frame, and spoil." The physician: "That's how women pass things to women. The books don't write it; written, people call it nonsense." She feels for damp with the back of the hand — the palm is already damp — and sticks a twig beside the wettest bunches to watch them through the small hours. "Ask me and I may not be able to say it. The hand knows; the mouth doesn't." The physician, noticing how she pressed her back at midnight: thirty years crouching on these mats; every hour, stand, walk, lean back. The narrow camp bed by the door, where she lies down between rounds, five or six times a night: "That's a watch bed." — like the folding bed in the Luochuan cold store that Qiang Lei slept on a hundred and sixteen nights and never entered in the ledger. The watch bed never goes in the books.

3. The consequence for eight years of notes. The house-three strings that served the family as its standard — and whose "feel" I kept going to measure — were, in part, pre-selected at night by someone I never recorded. The precedent: a Ming woman physician who learned from her grandmother and treated women whose illnesses never reached male physicians' books — not because the remedies failed, but because nobody went into those rooms to ask. A job done only at night is invisible to the people who keep the daytime books.

4. Her name. Eight years of "auntie," "Alim's mother," "Abdurehman's wife." Asked tonight: Aynur. "Married in forty years ago; in this yard only her husband called her by name. He can't speak now."

5. The second string. Before dawn on the 12th she chose one: "This one didn't sweat all night." Alim's (chosen by his father's method): larger grapes, more even colour. Hers: smaller grapes, thin stalk, no trace of damp. "Different." He didn't say which was right. "Both go up." His on the old left nail; hers on the right-hand nail, empty eight months — meant for "next year's new string," and the first string it carries is not his. Tags: 2036, house three, chosen by Alim, by my father's string / 2036, house three, chosen by Aynur; no sweat all night. Both halved and sealed; the cupboard now holds five bags side by side.

6. The father. Wheeled to the frame at ten, he looked left, then right, a long time; then turned and looked for someone. Aynur in the doorway with a cloth. He lifted his left hand towards her, once. She didn't go to him; she folded the cloth and went inside, pressing it to her eyes as she went. Alim: "He knows which one my mother chose. When he looked at the right one, he didn't look at the tag."

6a. The rule card, and a mark. On the cupboard door beside change and this bag we will not touch: "House three, two strings a year — one chosen by day, one by night. Both keep a cupboard half; both weighed on 10 March. Decided by Alim, 12 August 2036." He handed his mother the pen; she drew a small circle. "My mother says the circle is the mat." Alim, writing her tag, had to ask how her name is spelled — "all these years writing, and the first time I've written my mother's name." And at lunch, Aynur: "His string is good too; big ones look good and sell well. Mine keeps." — one looks good, one keeps. His father used to call her name from house three's door at dusk, the only one in the yard who did; since he fell, that call is gone. Guli, by phone: "Eight years of customers' words and never my mother's. As a child I'd wake and see a shadow walking outside the window. I thought she couldn't sleep." Nor did I ever ask what my own mother did after I was asleep.

7. Line 110. Under line 109 (those who did it, whom the recorder didn't ask): "Aynur, Turpan, since 2004. Thirty-odd years spreading the bunches at night, watching which sweat; the years Abdurehman hung well, she had chosen them first." In the book: one has walked out of the nameless line today. I recorded eight years of every man's hands in this yard; the hands that work it at night, I learned their name today. The physician, leaving: "This time, what you wrote is what you saw."

7a. Counting the list. One hundred and ten lines; fourteen women. Pencilled at the bottom: this is a daytime list.

8. Next. Eli, 20 August: from 1 September he returns to the Aksu chair. "Grandpa Luo isn't coming to stand this year. There's a new man, twenty-two, Liu's nephew; Liu has put him behind me. I'm nineteen. I don't know how to teach anyone."

"A job done only at night, the people who keep the daytime books will always believe does not exist."
A Ming physician from Wuxi learned medicine from her grandmother and practised for decades, mostly among women whose illnesses, in the customs of the time, were hard to describe to male doctors. At fifty she published thirty-one of her cases, each naming the patient's household, her age, the cause and the treatment, and insisting that everything recorded came from her own hands and nothing from hearsay. Her grandmother's knowledge would otherwise have lived and died in the inner rooms, invisible to the men who wrote the medical canon.
Every organisation has an unsampled shift. Some essential part of the work happens when the people who document, audit and design processes are not there: at night, at weekends, in the back room, at home. The official procedure records what was described to the daytime observer, usually by the person with the recognised role, who is not always the person doing the work.
In this chapter, a family's reference standard, the string of raisins its members have learned to judge against, turns out to have been pre-selected for decades, at night, by the grower's wife, using a criterion no one ever wrote down: which bunches sweat moisture as the night cools, and which are dry before dawn.
The remedy is simple and uncomfortable. Go at the hour the work is done. Ask the person doing it. And when you record what she knows, record her name, not her relation to someone else.
When the one who did it has a name, write her name.