Waiting Read Online Free PDF

between Lin and Manna. He had been a teacher but without any airs, unlike most of the other instructors. For that she had respected him more. Now as they worked in the same department, she gradually grew attached to this tall, quiet man, who always spoke amiably to everybody. When others talked with him, he would listen patiently and give weight to their ideas. Different from most young officers, he seemed very mature for his age, which was thirty. His glasses made him look urbane and knowledgeable. People liked him, calling him Scholar or Bookworm, and every year he had been elected a model officer.
    When Manna told Lin that Mai Dong had broken their engagement, he said, "Forget him and take good care of yourself. You'll find a better man."
    She was grateful for his kind words. She was certain that unlike others, he would not gossip about her misfortune behind her back.
    One day in the summer, she stopped by his dormitory to deliver the journal Studies in Military Medical Science and some pills for his arthritis. Lin was alone in the bedroom he shared with two other doctors. Manna noticed a tall wooden bookcase beyond the head of his bed, against the wall. On the shelves were about two hundred books. Most of the titles were unfamiliar to her – Song of Youth, Cement, The History of International Communism, War and Peace, The Guerrilla Detachment on the Railroad, White Nights, Lenin: World s First Nuclear-Powered Ice-Breaker, and so forth. On the bottom shelf there were several medical textbooks in Russian. That impressed her greatly, since she had never met a person who could read a book written in a foreign language.
    By contrast, Lin's two roommates, as though illiterate, owned no books. On one of their bedside desks, a brass artillery shell, a foot in length and four inches in diameter, stood beside a lamp, which was made of conch shells glued together. Yet they both had flowered quilts and pillows, whereas Lin's bedding was in plain white and green – a standard army set. His mosquito net was yellowish, its bottom edge frayed. It reminded Manna of a whisper among the nurses that Lin was so tightfisted he would never buy an expensive dish. She didn't know whether that was true, but she had noticed that unlike other men who would bolt down their meals, Lin often ate in a fussy manner like a woman doing needlework.
    To her surprise, Lin bent down and pulled a washbasin out from under his roommate Ming Chen's bed, saying, "We have some fruit here. " In the basin were about twenty brown apple-pears, which the three doctors had bought together the day before.
    "Oh, don't treat me like a guest," she said.
    "No. You're lucky today. If you come tomorrow, they'll all be gone." He picked up a large pear and with his foot pushed the basin back under the bed. The metallic rasp on the cement floor grated on her a little. "I'll be back in a second," he said and went out to wash the pear.
    She picked up a book from his bed, which was written by Stalin, entitled The Problems of Leninism. Opening it, she found a woodcut bookplate on its inside front cover. At the bottom of the plate was a foreign word, EX-LIBRIS, above which was an engraving of a thatched cottage, partly surrounded by a railing and shaded by two trees with luxuriant crowns, five birds soaring in the distance by the peak of a hill, and the setting sun casting down its last rays. For a moment Manna was fascinated by the tranquil scene in the bookplate.
    When Lin came back she asked him, "What does this mean?" She pointed at the foreign word.
    "It's Latin, meaning 'from my collection.''' He handed her the pear. She noticed he had long-boned hands, the fingers lean and apparently dexterous. He should be a surgeon instead of a physician, she thought.
    "May I look at some of your books?" she asked.
    "Of course, you're welcome."
    She took a bite of the pear, which was juicy and fragrant and reminded her of a banana she had eaten many years ago. She began flicking through