Peeta
The days and nights pass, punctuated primarily by visits from Cai. I usually wake up alone, but on one morning when the rain is pounding against the stones that shelter me I feel her sleeve graze my cheek as I'm opening my eyes. Cai's putting fresh water in the small clay pitcher she always leaves sitting beside me. Even though sleeping on the hard stone floor makes my neck stiff I turn to her as she sits down beside me. emboldened by my somnolent state, I reach up and touch her arm. My eyes start to close but when I see the corners of her mouth turn up just a little I force them back open to watch the tentative smile unfold across her face. She is better for me than any medicine could be.
She settles beside me as if she's going to stay for a while. Grasping the bottom hem of her top between her thumb and fingers, she nervously runs her hand along it. The blue thread she touches is darker than the fabric that makes up the garment. I sense that she wants to say something, but she doesn't. Even in hesitation Cai looks beautiful, maybe more beautiful. I imagine her bringing that hesitation into shy caresses and soft kisses…into lying next to me and then slowly inching her way towards me to make greater physical contact. I look away, trying to hide the flush that I can feel spreading across my cheeks.
Stop, I tell myself. She doesn't want that with you. She wants it with Gao, if she wants it at all.
Cai lays her hand on my shoulder, which only serves to fuel my fantasies. Presumably she's trying to regain my attention because she believes she's lost it. Nothing could be further from the truth.
I turn to see Cai point at my leg.
"Oh," I say, "I can do it."
She narrows her dark eyes in concern.
"I can," I tell her.
"No," she tells me and then continues explaining why I shouldn't change the dressing myself in Chinese that I can barely understand. I'm too busy watching her lips move to understand. They move so fast when she speaks. I want reach up to touch them with my fingers and make them stop moving.
In the end Cai crawls to the very front of the cave near its opening. I assume that she must have just explained to me how she would give me some privacy to dress the wound alone. Carefully I slip my pants down and manage to remove the cloth they've wrapped around my injured leg, but I'm not coordinated enough in such an awkward position to clean the wound and re-wrap it. Defeated, I cover up with the blanket and call to Cai.
She crawls over then clears her throat as she gently goes about the business of re-dressing the uncovered wound. She doesn't have to look away this time. When she's finished she looks up at my face, sympathy apparent as she presses her lips together and softens her eyes.
She feels sorry for me. The last thing a man wants a woman he finds attractive to feel for him is pity.
I thank her in an embarrassed whisper while quickly covering my injured leg up with the blanket just as the rest of me is covered. Being partially undressed in front of her for even the most practical of reasons bothers me, making my thoughts wander to where I would prefer they not go at the moment.
Thinking about women is natural, and my father taught me that it's how I respond to those thoughts that matters. He even said some responses can seem a bit out of a person's control. I know which ones he means. I also know I'm going to be thinking about Cai all day now. I'm used to Delly being so far away. Even before the war I was away at school much of the time. Cai's daily presence and the familiarity of our interactions makes this experience so different.
"Your leg looks better," she tells me.
Trying to plan a discreet way to pull up my uniform pants, I reposition the blanket. I feel so vulnerable, yet that vulnerability brings a strange sense of longing along with its terror. I grab hold of the blanket where it rests at my chest and hold it tight.
"Maybe," I say.
"No, it does," she reassures me. Her voice blends with the sound of the steadily falling rain.
Tilting her head a little she asks me, "Peeta, what's it like to fly a plane?" I suspect she just wants to get my mind off my current problems, but I'm grateful for the distraction.
"Cold," I answer.
Cai drops her head a little, a small giggle escaping her lips. "I hadn't thought about that," she says, "but I've always wondered what the clouds feel like to touch."
In the middle of the brutal world all around us Cai has such an unmistakable innocence. Not naivety. Just innocence. I remember looking up "clouds" in an encyclopedia to try to find out why they were white and what held them together when I was about ten. I wonder if Cai has thought of those questions as well, or if she is only interested in how they feel.
"Clouds feel like nothing, but they look very pretty close up," I tell her. "It's a shame they aren't soft…like…" I want to say, "pillows" but can't think of the word. "Soft." I repeat.
I twist my neck to try to catch Cai's gaze because she's keeping her eyes cast downwards for some reason. She won't let me look at her, instead she reaches for some food she's brought me.
"How did you end up flying instead of doing something else in the war?" She asks.
"I volunteered."
She nods.
"For honor, then?" She asks.
"I think I just wanted to fly," I confess. "It sounded exciting to see the world from the sky."
"It's good to be a pilot, Peeta."
"…unless your plane catches fire and crashes."
"Well, that's certainly not good," she says, and I notice how easy it's become for me to talk to her.
"I wasn't flying our plane, you know. I was the one trying to make sure we flew to the right place. My friend was the pilot. His name was John."
Cai brings the dish of rice closer to me and offers me a pair of chopsticks.
"Do you miss him?" she asks.
"Very much," I tell her. "He's one of the best friends I've ever had."
I imagine how John would have elbowed me and said, "You're so smitten with that girl. Kiss her already."
Of course, she's Chinese. I'm not. Plus, I'm engaged. Technically, so is she. Something tells me Gao would not take kindly to me kissing Cai. Cai might be highly offended or even see such a gesture as some kind of assault. I have little idea of what the social norms here are, but I can't help but think of my lips meeting Cai's again. This time it would be a true kiss, passionate and long.
"What's wrong?" Cai asks. "You look upset."
I raise up on my elbows and then press my hands and arms against the floor to try to sit up to eat. After briefly considering one swift movement upwards, I instead choose to gradually shift my hips until I'm sitting. Soon I'm grimacing from the pain of the increased movement. Sometimes I wonder if the pain will ever stop. I'm grateful to be alive, but having nothing to help relieve this amount of pain for so long is so exhausting. It tends to build to a crescendo when I move, then gradually grow less intense when I'm still. But the dull, throbbing ache never stops.
My grandfather would never allow this in a patient. He'd have said the pain was an impediment to healing and insisted on morphine. For a doctor who saw so much suffering, he certainly hated it. In her moments of deepest grief my mother would scream that my grandfather had killed my brother by trying to make sure he wasn't in pain, by insisting on too much morphine when my brother was so ill. Grandfather heard her once, got teary eyed, and went home.
I told him later, "mother didn't mean it."
But he said, "never you mind about that, Peter. Your mother needs somebody to blame. Better that she blame me than God."
"But she's wrong," I argued.
"It won't do any good to point that out," he said.
I bend my uninjured leg as the pain builds, scooting back and hoping for a better position. Nothing helps. Finally, I press my forehead against my raised knee.
Why won't it stop?
Cai touches my shoulder, and I'm immediately distracted by that same electric feeling of warmth she's ignited before.
"I'm not upset," I breathe out, my forehead pressing still harder against my knee. "Just thinking. Why don't you tell me a story," I suggest. "Something about your farm or your family. Something good."
"You care about our farm?"
"Yes," I manage to tell her through clinched teeth. My hands wrap protectively around either side of my face to hide my expression.
It's never going to stop.
"We have rice and some vegetables," Cai says with more than a hint of pride. "We take a little to market, but we have to give most of it to our landlord. We eat the rest. It's not much."
"Is it enough?" I ask, realizing the opportunity to ask an important question. They are all so thin and seem to eat so little that I'm not sure how they survive.
She doesn't answer, so I move my hand away from my face enough to glance over at her.
Her eyes drift to the side, then down.
"Some years we worry that it won't be," she admits.
I get the impression that the fears go much deeper than that.
"But we are respected by the landlord. We do our work well. Once we even tricked him. That's how we got our water buffalo. So the landlord believes we are clever."
"Tricked him?" I ask, the pain slowly becoming more manageable now.
"Well, he made a risky bet. Our landlord loves to gamble. He owned a particularly stubborn water buffalo. Nobody could get this water buffalo to work a field properly or do much of anything else, but Min has a way with animals. The landlord didn't know Min well. He laughed at the idea of a little girl handling such a stubborn animal when Gao mentioned that maybe she could help. So Gao bet with the landlord that if Min lead the water buffalo all the way across his property, she should be allowed to keep the animal."
"And what would the landlord have gotten if Min couldn't lead the water buffalo that far?"
"Min would have become a house servant in the landlord's house," Cai says matter-of-factly.
My heart sinks at the very thought of Min being separated from Cai. Surprised, I ask, "and you weren't afraid of that happening?"
"Oh, no. I was afraid," Cai says. "We were all afraid, but we knew Min probably wouldn't starve as a house servant. She might have with us. Without the bet then maybe all of us would have."
What terrible choices.
"In the end the bet was worth it," Cai explains. "Min lead the water buffalo across the landlord's property beautifully. He was grateful the stubborn beast would be working a field he owned instead of lazily grazing all day. Min was beside herself with happiness, and we could work the farm more efficiently with the water buffalo than without it. We never told Min about the risk of having to leave home to be a house servant. There are some things you just don't tell children."
I nod in agreement, glad that Min still doesn't know the whole truth.
"Peeta, there's a pond not far from here. My mother thinks it would be a good idea for you to get in the water to strengthen your leg once the wound is healed. Do you swim?"
I hesitate, unable to grasp all that she's implying.
"If not, I can teach you to swim," she adds.
Stunned that she would be the one to teach me I stammer a positive response. Then my mind starts humming, set off in a million directions.
She thinks I'll live long enough to learn to swim. She thinks I can leave this cave at some point. She thinks I'll heal.