by Mo Yan
Sima Liang and I were nearly face-to-face. Should I continue with the mental case act or should I let him see me clearheaded? After a separation of nearly forty years, seeing me as a mental case would be hard for him to take, and I decided that my childhood friend deserved to see me as a normal, intelligent human being. “Sima Liang!” “Little Uncle!” We embraced. His cologne made my head swim. After stepping back, I gazed into his shifty eyes. He sighed, like a man of great wisdom, and I spotted the marks of my tears and snivel on the shoulder of his neatly pressed suit. Then I saw Lu Shengli thrust out her arm as if she wanted to shake my hand; but the minute I stuck mine out, she pulled hers back, which both embarrassed and enraged me. Shit, Lu Shengli, you’ve forgotten your past, you’ve forgotten history! And forgetting history means betrayal. You’ve betrayed the Shangguan family, and a representative of — who can I represent? No one, I guess, not even myself. “How have you been, Little Uncle? The first thing I did after I arrived is ask around about you and Granny.” Like hell! Lu Shengli, you inherited the wild imagination of Shangguan Pandi, who once ran the Flood Dragon River Farm’s livestock section, but you didn’t inherit her sincerity and openness. The Eurasian woman who came with Sima Liang walked up to shake my hand. I had to hand it to Sima Liang, the way he returned with this mixed-blood woman, who looked like the actress in the movie Babbitt had shown years before, on his arm, to bring glory to his ancestors. Apparently not affected by the cold, the woman was wearing a thin dress and thrusting her breasts out toward me. “How are you?” she said in halting Chinese. “I never imagined that our Little Uncle would wind up like this,” Lu Shengli said sadly. But Sima Liang just laughed. “Leave everything to me,” he said. “I’ll make sure this problem goes away. Madam Mayor, I am building the city’s most spectacular hotel, right downtown. I’ll put in a hundred million. I’ll also put up the money to preserve the pagoda. As for Parrot Han’s bird sanctuary, I’m waiting for a report now to see whether or not I’ll invest in that as well. You are the true descendant of the Shangguan family, and you have my complete support as mayor. But I hope I never again see Grandma tied up like that.” “You have my word,” Lu Shengli said. “Every courtesy will be extended to her and to the rest of her family from now on.”
The contract-signing ceremony for a joint venture hotel between the Dalan Municipal Government and the tycoon Sima Liang was held in the Osmanthus Mansions conference room. After the signing, I followed him up to the Presidential Suite. I could see my reflection on the mirrorlike floor. Hanging on the wall was a lamp in the shape of a naked woman carrying a water jug on her head, her nipples like ripe cherries. “Little Uncle,” Sima Liang said with a laugh, “you don’t need to look at that. I’ll show you the real thing in a minute.” He turned and shouted, “Manli!” The mixed-blood woman came into the room. “I’d like you to give my Little Uncle a bath and get him into some new clothes.” “No, Liang,” I objected, “no.” “Little Uncle,” he said, “we are like brothers. Whatever comes, good or bad, we share and share alike. Whatever you desire — food, clothing, entertainment — all you have to do is tell me. If you hold back out of a false sense of politeness, it’s the same as slapping me in the face.”
Manli led me into the bathroom. She was wearing a short dress with spaghetti straps. With a seductive smile, she said in terrible Chinese, “Whatever you want, Little Uncle, I’m here to provide. Mr. Sima’s orders.” With that, she began peeling off my clothes, just as single-breasted Old Jin had done years before. I sputtered feeble objections, but wound up letting her have her way. My tattered clothes wound up in a black plastic bag; once I was undressed, I covered my nakedness with my hands. She pointed to the tub. “Please,” she said.
As I sat in the tub, she turned on the faucets, which sent sprays of hot water from openings all around the tub, gently massaging me as layers of filth were washed away. Meanwhile, Manli, who had put on a shower cap and shed her dress, stood there, her nude figure right in front of my eyes, but only for a moment, before climbing into the tub and straddling me. She began to rub and knead me all over, turning me this way and that, until I finally screwed up the courage to wrap my lips around one of her nipples. She made a clucking sound, then stopped. Another outbursts of clucks, then she stopped again. She sounded like a motor that won’t start. It had taken her only a minute to discover my weakness, and her breasts quickly sagged in dejection. The excitement gone, she scrubbed me front and back, then combed my hair and draped a fluffy bathrobe around me.
8
“So, what do you say, Little Uncle?” Sima Liang was sitting on a leather sofa, a cigar from the Philippine island of Luzon in his hand and a smile on his lips. “How do you feel?” “I feel wonderful,” I said gratefully. “Better than I’ve ever felt before.” “Your day of salvation has come, thanks to me,” he said. “Now, get dressed. There’s something I want to show you.”
We rode to the commercial center of Dalan in a stretch limo, which pulled up in front of a newly decorated lingerie shop. A crowd had gathered around the Cadillac, as if it were a rare dragon boat, by the time we’d stepped out and walked up to a gigantic shop window filled with mannequins. Above the door, the shop’s name — Beautify You Lingerie — was written in a florid script; beneath that, the shop’s motto: Distinctive Fashions in Ladies’ Undergarments. “Well?” Sima Liang asked me. “It’s wonderful!” I said excitedly. “That’s good, because you’re going to run this shop.” What a shock! “I can’t handle anything like this,” I protested. Sima Liang smiled. “You’re an expert in women’s breasts, so who could possibly be more qualified than you at selling brassieres?”
Sima led me through the silent automatic door into the spacious shop, where decorating work was still going on. All four walls were mirrored from one end to the other; the ceiling was a metal material that also reflected images. The foreman of the cleanup crew rushed up and bowed to us. “Now’s the time to make any changes you might have in mind, Little Uncle,” Sima said. “I don’t much care for the name ‘Beautify You,’ ” I said. “You’re the expert. What would you like to call it?” “Unicorn,” I said without a moment’s hesitation. “Unicorn: The World in Bras.” After a momentary pause, Sima laughed and said, “But they always come in pairs!” “Unicorn,” I repeated. “I like it.” “You’re the boss,” Sima said, “and what you say goes.” He turned to the foreman. “Have a new sign made right away. Beautify You has now become Unicorn. Hm, Unicorn, Unicorn. Not bad. It’s distinctive. See, Little Uncle, I said you were the man for the job. If you held a gun to my head, I couldn’t have come up with a more stylish name than that for this shop.”
“Women won’t let you fondle their breasts just because you feel like it,” the head of the Municipal Broadcasting and Television Bureau said as he stirred his Nescafé coffee with a tiny silver spoon. His gray hair, proof of a long, hard life, was combed back neatly. His face was dark, but not dirty; his teeth were yellow, but brushed; his fingers were stained yellow, but the skin was soft. He lit an expensive China-brand cigarette and looked at me out of the corner of his eye. “Are you of the opinion,” he asked, “that you can do whatever you want so long as you have the backing of a rich businessman like Sima Liang?”
“No, of course not.” Somehow I managed to keep my anger in check and appear as respectful as possible. “Bureau Chief,” I said to this man who had made such a name for himself during the Cultural Revolution and was still as powerful as ever, “whatever it is you want to say to me, please just say it.”
“Heh-heh,” he sneered. “This son of Sima Ku — a counterrevolutionary with the blood of Northeast Gaomi’s villagers on his hands — has become Dalan’s most honored guest on the basis of a few measly coins he’s put together. Like they say, ‘If you’ve got money, you can get the devil to turn the millstone!’ Shangguan Jintong, what were you before this? A necrophiliac and a mental patient. Now you’re a CEO!” Class hatred turned the eyes of this man they called the Unicorn bright red. He squeezed his cigarett
e so hard liquefied tar oozed out. “But I didn’t come here today to dispense revolutionary propaganda,” he said grimly. “I’m here in the cause of fame and wealth.”
I listened without interrupting. What difference could it make to Shangguan Jintong, who had suffered abuse all his life? “You know,” he said, “and you won’t ever forget, that time when you and your mother were paraded through the Dalan marketplace, how I suffered in the name of revolution. That’s right, I still recall what it felt like to be slapped by you. Well, I created the Unicorn Struggle Team and had my own program, called The Unicorn, over the Revolutionary Committee PA system, which I utilized to air a number of instructive broadcasts regarding the Cultural Revolution. Anyone around the age of fifty knows who Unicorn was. In the thirty years since, I’ve consistently used the pen name Unicorn, publishing eighty-eight celebrated articles in national magazines and newspapers. The people associate the name Unicorn with me. But now you’ve linked my name with women’s undergarments. You and Sima Liang are so wildly ambitious, you don’t care who you hurt. What you’re doing is nothing short of insane class vengeance and a brazen defamation of my good name. I am going to expose you in print and take you to court, a double-barreled attack using the weapons of public opinion and the law. It’s a fight to the death.”
“Be my guest.”
“Shangguan Jintong, don’t assume that just because Lu Shengli is mayor, you have nothing to fear. My brother-in-law is a vice minister in the provincial Party Committee, a higher rank than mayor. Besides, I know all about her checkered past, and it would not take much for Unicorn to pull her down off her pedestal.”
“Go right ahead. I have nothing to do with her.”
“Naturally,” he went on, “Unicorn has only the best of intentions, and you and I are, after all, fellow residents of Dalan. All I’m asking is that you do right by me.”
“Please, get to the point, revered Bureau Chief.”
“What I mean to say is, I think we can settle this privately.”
“How much?”
He extended three fingers. “I’m not interested in extorting money, so let’s keep it at thirty thousand. That’s peanuts for someone like Sima Liang. I’d also like you to get Mayor Lu Shengli to appoint me as deputy chairman of the Standing Committee of the Municipal Board. If not, there’ll be hell to pay.”
I felt cold all over. “Bureau Chief,” I said as I got to my feet, “you’ll have to talk to Sima Liang about the financial arrangements. The lingerie shop has just opened and we haven’t earned a cent yet. And since I’m ignorant where official matters are concerned, there’s nothing I can say to Lu Shengli.”
“Shit, so that’s his game, is it?” Sima Liang said with a smile. “He didn’t even check around to see what Sima Liang is all about! I’ll take care of that bastard, Little Uncle. I’ll see that he winds up swallowing his own teeth. He thinks he knows a thing or two about blackmail, how to fleece the well-to-do, does he? Well, our ‘Unicorn’ has met his master this time around!”
A few days later, Sima Liang came to me. “You’re in business, Little Uncle. Now, let’s see what you can do. I’ve already taken care of that chump Unicorn. Don’t ask how. He won’t cause any trouble from now on. It’s the dictatorship of the propertied class where he’s concerned. So go have a good time and make yourself proud. Don’t worry about whether you make or lose money in the process. It’s time for the Shangguan family to make a real splash. As long as I’ve got money, you’ve got money. So go for it! Money stinks, it’s nothing but dog shit! I’ve already made arrangements for someone to deliver everything Grandma will need on a regular basis. Now I have to go away on an important business trip and won’t be back for a year or so. I’ll put in a telephone for you. That way I can call if anything comes up. Please don’t ask where I’m going or where I’ve been.”
Business was booming at Unicorn: The World in Bras. The city was expanding rapidly, and another bridge was built over the Flood Dragon River. Where the Flood Dragon River Farm once stood was now home to a pair of large cotton mills, a chemical fiber factory, and a synthetic fiber factory; the area was now a celebrated textile district.
9
On the night of March 7, 1991, as a light rain fell outside, Shangguan Jintong, CEO of Unicorn: The World in Bras, was in a highly emotional state; thoughts thronged his mind as he paced the floor in the shop happily after the lights had been turned off for the night. Upstairs, the salesgirls were giggling. The money was rolling in. Finding himself understaffed, he’d advertised on TV; the following day, more than two hundred young women showed up to apply for jobs. Still excited, he rested his head against the shop window to watch the goings-on outside, also to clear his head and settle down. Shops on both sides of the street had closed for the day, their neon signs flashing in the drizzle. The number 8 bus, a newly established route, shuttled back and forth between Sandy Ridge and Eight-Sided Well.
While Jintong was standing there, a bus pulled up and stopped under the parasol tree in front of the Hundred Bird Restaurant. A young woman stepped down onto the curb, looking slightly lost for a moment. But then she spotted Unicorn: The World in Bras, and walked across the street, where Jintong waited in the darkened interior. She was wearing a raincoat the color of a duck’s egg, but was bareheaded. Her hair, which was nearly blue, was combed straight back to reveal a broad, shiny forehead. Her pale face seemed shrouded in the gloomy mist, and Jintong concluded that she was a recently widowed woman. He was, as he later learned, right on target. For some reason, the woman’s approach threw fear into him; he had the strange feeling that the gloom she exuded had penetrated the thick display window and was spreading throughout the shop. Before even reaching the place, she’d turned it into a mourning hall. Jintong felt like hiding, but it was too late — he was like an insect paralyzed by the stare of a predatory toad. This woman in the raincoat had just that sort of penetrating stare. Undeniably, they were beautiful eyes, beautiful but frightening. She stopped directly in front of Jintong. He was in a dark place and she was in the light, which meant she should not have been able to see him standing there in front of a stainless steel display rack; but she obviously could, and she obviously knew who he was. Her aim was clear. All that looking around as if lost while she stood beneath the parasol tree a moment before had only been an act, intended to confuse him. Later on she would say that God had led her straight to him, but he didn’t believe her, figuring it was all part of a planned scheme, especially after learning that the woman was the widowed eldest daughter of the Broadcasting Bureau chief, Unicorn, who, he was convinced, was behind it all.
Like lovers meeting, she stood before him, separated only by a pane of glass with teary raindrops slipping down one side. She smiled, revealing a pair of dimples that had aged into wrinkles. Even through the glass, he could smell her sour widow’s breath, which sent waves of sympathy crashing into his heart. Jintong gazed upon the woman as if she were a long-lost friend, and tears gushed from his eyes; even more tears gushed from her eyes, soaking her pale cheeks. He could think of no reason not to open the door, so he did. As the rain suddenly fell harder, and as the smell of cold, moist air and muddy soil poured into the shop, she threw herself into his arms as if it were the only natural thing to do. Her lips sought out his; his hands slipped under her raincoat, and he grasped her bra, which felt as if it was made of construction paper. The smell of cold earth in her hair and on her collar snapped him out of his trance, and he quickly jerked his hands away, wishing he’d never let them stray in the first place. But, like the turtle that’s swallowed the golden hook, he wished in vain.
He could think of no reason not to take her into his private room.
He locked the door behind him, but, finding that somehow inappropriate, quickly rushed back and unlocked it before pouring her a glass of water and offering her a seat. She preferred to stand, and he rubbed his hands nervously. How he loathed himself, both for his provocative action and for his bad behavior. If he could have absolved
himself from sin and gone back a half hour in time by cutting off a finger, he’d have done it without a moment’s hesitation. But that was not possible; even a missing finger would not bring him absolution. The woman he’d kissed and fondled was standing in his private room covering her face with her hands and sobbing, tears oozing from between her fingers and dripping onto her raincoat. Not content to stifle her sobs, she was nearly bawling, her shoulders heaving. Jintong forced himself to contain his disgust toward this woman, who carried the smell of a cave animal, and led her over to a red Italian leather swivel chair. But she’d barely sat down before he jerked her back to her feet and helped her out of her wet raincoat, soaked from a mixture of rain, sweat, snivel, and tears. That is when he discovered that she was a truly ugly woman: pushed-in nose, protruding lips, and pointy chin — the face of a weasel. So how had she seemed so appealing standing in front of the display window? Somebody is out to trick me, but who? But the real surprise still awaited him; for the minute he removed her raincoat, he nearly cried out in alarm. All this woman, whose skin was covered with dark moles, was wearing was a Unicorn: The World in Bras blue brassiere with the price tag still attached. Seemingly embarrassed, she covered her face. Flustered, Jintong rushed to cover her with the raincoat in his hands, but she shrugged it off. So he locked the door, pulled down the curtains, and made her a cup of instant coffee. “Young woman,” he said, “I deserve nothing less than death. Please don’t cry. There’s nothing that bothers me more than a woman crying. If you’ll stop crying, you can drag me to the police station tomorrow morning, or you can slap me sixty-three times, or I’ll get down on my knees and bang my head on the floor sixty-three times … if you so much as sniffle, I’m overcome with guilt, so I beg you … beg you …” He took out a handkerchief and dried her face, which she permitted, raising her head like a little bird. Play the role, Shangguan Jintong, he was thinking, play it to the hilt. You’re like a pig that remembers the food but not the beatings, so do what you must to get her away from here. Then you can go to the nearest temple, light incense, and give thanks to the Bodhisattva. The last thing you want is to spend another fifteen years in a labor reform camp.