Brothers

by Yu Hua

  Like Lin Hong, Baldy Li read Song Gang's letter over and over again, and each time he finished, he would slap his own face and cry out in anguish. Since Song Gangs death, Baldy Li had become a different person. He no longer went to work and instead spent the entire day sitting silently in his mansion. Deputy Liu was the only person permitted to enter. As Liu reported the company's operations Badly Li would stare at him like a kindergartner staring at his teacher, and when Liu finished his report and stood waiting for his instructions, Baldy Li would look out the window and say with a sigh, "Its almost dark."

  After a while Deputy Liu would have no choice but to prompt Baldy Li, "Boss Li, it is your intention that I …"

  Baldy Li would turn around and pathetically say to Deputy Liu, "I am now an orphan."

  As Lin Hong was sorting through Song Gangs remains, she discovered two things she needed to give Baldy Li: the family portrait and Baldy Li's appointment letter as factory director, which Song Gang had carefully copied out by hand. She placed the documents into two envelopes and asked Deputy Liu to deliver them. As Baldy Li accepted the envelopes from Deputy Liu the family portrait slipped out and fell to the floor. Baldy Li knelt down and picked it up, then walked toward his desk carrying the photograph and the other envelope. After sitting down, he opened a drawer and started rustling through it, eventually finding another family portrait. He looked at the two photographs, then carefully placed them together in the drawer. As he walked back to Deputy Liu he opened the other envelope and saw the appointment letter that Baldy Li had copied out by hand. He stopped walking and stared in confusion at the words on the page, and when he saw the seal that Song Gang had drawn with red ink, Baldy Li finally realized what it was. His body started to sway, and he collapsed to the floor.

  Baldy Li didn't leave his mansion until the day they cremated Song Gang's remains. When he left, he didn't want his BMW or his Mercedes but walked alone, teary-eyed, to the crematorium. As Song Gang was being inserted into the furnace Lin Hong didn't cry but Baldy Li wept silently. Then, Baldy Li, tears streaming down his face, walked out of the crematorium. The black BMW and white Mercedes followed him slowly, but he flew into a rage and told both cars to get out of his sight. Then he wiped his tears and continued walking on alone. The onlookers were astounded, saying, "Who knew that Baldy Li was such a sentimental heroine under all that bluster?"

  Baldy Li did not return to the office but, rather, went to the Good Works Factory—now his Liu Town Economic Research Business Corporation. The appointment letter Song Gang had meticulously copied out brought back many memories for Baldy Li. He hadn't seen his fourteen loyal minions for years, and now he missed them terribly.

  When Baldy Li suddenly showed up, he startled the two cripples, who were still playing chess and cursing each other. They immediately cried out, "Director Li!" and excitedly ran over, one of them tumbling to the ground and the other slamming into the door frame. Baldy Li treated them as if they were his own sons, helping the one who had fallen down get back to his feet and massaging the head of the one who had run into the door frame. Then he took both cripples by the hand and walked toward his other twelve loyal minions. The cripples cried out excitedly, "Director Li has come! Director Li has come!"

  The three idiots and four blind men heard this, but the five deaf men couldn't hear anything. The four blind men reacted faster than the three idiots, and they hurried outside, tapping the ground with their canes. Only one, however, succeeded in getting out, while the other three all ended up jammed in the doorway, none of them willing to give way for anyone else. They kept shouting, "Director Li!" and their eyes narrowed to mere slits, making their mouths seem obscenely large. The three idiots also reacted, and simultaneously rushed toward the door. When they saw Baldy Li, they all shouted "Director Li!" but the doorway was already blocked by the three blind men. The three idiots nevertheless crowded forward at the same time, pushing the three blind men in front of them to the ground. Again, it was Baldy Li who picked each of them up, after which the crippled, idiot, and blind loyal minions delightedly crowded around him as he walked into the meeting hall. The five deaf men sitting in the meeting hall finally realized what the excitement was about, and each of them leapt up from their chairs. The two deaf men who were able to speak also called out "Director Li!" while the three deaf-mutes opened and closed their mouths. Baldy Li stood among them and heard one "Director Li!" after another. After he felt he had heard enough, he gestured toward the seats and invited them to sit down. After the fourteen loyal minions sat, they started twittering away, until one of the crippled men called out and asked them to be quiet. The other cripple, meanwhile, faced the five deaf men and repeatedly opened and closed his mouth. In this way, the meeting hall immediately quieted down, and the former crippled factory director told the other thirteen loyal minions, "Let us welcome Director Li, who has come to speak to us."

  The fourteen loyal minions all applauded, but when Baldy Li gestured, they immediately stopped. Baldy Li looked at each of his followers and sighed. "You have all aged," he said. "I too have aged."

  When the three idiots heard Baldy Li say this, they immediately applauded, afraid of being beaten to the punch. The five deaf men didn't know what Baldy Li had said, but when the idiots started clapping, they quickly joined in. The four blind men then blindly joined in the excitement and started applauding as well. The two cripples felt that it was somewhat inappropriate to applaud what Baldy Li had said, but since everyone else was already doing so, they had no choice but to join in. Baldy Li again gestured for them to be quiet and said, "It is not appropriate to applaud what I just said."

  The two cripples immediately stopped applauding, as did the four blind men. The five observant deaf men followed suit. The three idiots continued applauding, but when they saw that everyone else had ceased, they lost confidence and stopped as well. Baldy Li looked up at the conference room, then out the window at the trees, and sighed repeatedly. His loyal minions all grew somber. Then Baldy Li emotionally recalled the first time he came to the Good Works Factory, more than twenty years earlier. As he was speaking he pulled Song Gangs copy of his appointment letter out of his breast pocket, opened it up, and read it out loud. When he was finished, he lifted it up for the fourteen loyal minions to see, and as they gazed up at it he laughed bitterly, saying, "This is a handwritten copy. The original is in a file at the county's Civil Affairs Bureau. The seal on the front used to be red but now has turned yellow. Song Gang copied this out by hand, and he drew the seal by hand as well. He carefully kept it all this time because he was happy for me. He even knitted me a Great Prospects Ship sweater…"

  Baldy Li became so choked up he couldn't continue. The two cripples and four blind men waited anxiously, while the three idiots, not understanding what was going on, saw that Baldy Li had stopped talking and immediately burst into applause. The five deaf men were more careful this time, noticing Baldy Li's heartbroken expression. The two cripples whispered to the three enthusiastically applauding idiots, "It's not appropriate to applaud."

  The idiots looked around and, feeling that the situation had become awkward, stopped applauding. At this point Baldy Li, with an anguished look on his face, began to relate his and Song Gang's history together. When he described Song Fanping's tragic death in front of the bus depot and how he and Song Gang were later left all alone, he found himself unable to continue. The two cripples wiped away their tears, and the four blind men gripped their canes, tears flowing from their sightless eyes. When the five deaf men saw Baldy so miserable, his sorrow was transmitted from their eyes to their hearts, and they too began to cry as sorrowfully as the two cripples. The three idiots, seeing the great Director Li looking so devastated and their workmates sobbing as if their hearts were breaking, also began bawling thunderously, quickly drowning out the sound of their workmates’ sobs.

  For the next ten days Baldy Li came every day to the so-called Liu Town Economics Research Business Corporation, recounting over and over stories from t
he past. Baldy Li himself no longer wept, but his tragic stories caused tears to stream down the faces of his loyal minions. The sorrow of the handicapped workers was a source of great consolation for Baldy Li, as if his own sorrow had somehow been transmitted to them. While recounting his stories of the past, Baldy Li told the workers not to be upset, but the more he tried to reassure them, the more upset they became and the harder they cried. Baldy Li felt that, in all the world, only his fourteen loyal minions were able to share in the sorrow and misery that he felt.

  At last Baldy Li returned to work in order to make good on Song Gangs last request. Baldy Li asked Deputy Liu to call his business partners and all the other rich people he knew and invite them to attend a three-day tofu banquet in the restaurant he had founded. After Liu drew up a list of invitees, he spent a day on the phone, telling everyone that Baldy Li's brother, Song Gang, had died and inviting them to commemorate him by attending a tofu banquet in his honor. After a day of nonstop calling, Deputy Liu lost his voice, but he nevertheless managed to invite Baldy Li's business associates throughout China, together with all the important people from the city and province, but no one who was poor or unknown.

  Baldy Li's tofu banquet began with breakfast and continued through lunch and dinner. Some guests had sat in an airplane for several hours, then spent another couple of hours on the bus, in order to arrive that evening; therefore Baldy Li extended the banquet late into the night. At Song Gang's cremation Baldy Li and Lin Hong had seen each other once again, but they simply looked past each other as if they were strangers. Both wore mourning shrouds of white hemp and black armbands as they stood in the doorway of the restaurant for three days. Each of the VIPs who attended gave Lin Hong a thick envelope containing anywhere from several thousand to tens of thousands of yuan. The people at the bank saw Lin Hong come by every day to make a deposit, and each time she would arrive carrying a huge sack of bills. In three days she received more than one hundred envelopes, and people estimated that she had received several million yuan. It was said that her fingers had gotten shredded, her wrists cramped, and her eyes bloodshot from counting so much money.

  After the conclusion of the tofu banquet, Baldy Li said to Lin Hong, "Song Gang asked that I make sure you are well taken care of. What else would you like me to do?"

  Lin Hong said, "This is enough."

  EPILOGUE

  THREE YEARS ELAPSED, during which time some people died and others were born. Old Scissors Guan departed from the world, as did Tailor Zhang, but during those same three years three infants named Guan and nine infants named Zhang arrived. Day in and day out, Liu Town was constantly replenishing itself.

  No one knew the impact that Song Gangs death had had on Lin Hongs heart; they knew only that she had quit her job at the knitting factory and moved out of the building where they had lived together. She used the money from the tofu banquet to buy a new apartment, then stayed there by herself, living in complete seclusion for half a year. The people of Liu Town rarely saw her, and when they did, she would always have a cold expression—everyone called it a widows expression. There were just a handful of observant people who noticed her gradual transformation, and they pointed out that her clothing was becoming increasingly fashionable. After her old place had been vacant for half a year, she started to appear in public more and more frequently, thereby bringing to an end her period of isolation. She renovated her old place and made it into a beauty salon, then became the salons proprietor. From then on, music emanated from the salon, a neon sign flickered overhead, and business boomed. When the men of Liu arrived at her beauty salon, they wouldn't use the rustic phrase cut their hair but, rather, would speak more fashionably of styling their hair. Even those who were always cursing like sailors wouldn't say cut their hair but rather, style their fucking hair.

  During this period, Wanderless Zhou in the snack shop across the street continued to proclaim that within three years’ time he would open one hundred Wanderless Zhou chain stores throughout China. But after repeating this boast for three straight years, not only did he not open a single store outside of Liu Town; he didn't even make any progress on the two proposed stores within Liu Town itself. Wanderless Zhou continued to boast wildly that he would make the price of McDonald's stock drop by half. Missy Su had grown accustomed to his boasts and knew that if he didn't boast during the day and watch his Korean soaps at night, he would be reduced to a state worse than death. Consequently, she had long since lost the capacity of being embarrassed for him.

  Wanderless Zhou's Snack Shop continued on as before, but Lin Hongs beauty salon was quietly changing. At first there were three male hair stylists and three female hair washers. Within a year, one girl after another began to arrive from all over. Regardless of whether they were tall or short, fat or thin, pretty or homely, they all nevertheless wore the same décolleté tops and superminiskirts. There were twenty-three of them in all, and after they arrived in Liu Town, they moved into the same six-story building. One after another, the families originally living in the building moved out, and Poet Zhao moved out with them. Then Lin Hong rented each of the one-bedroom apartments and, after renovating them, housed two girls in each apartment, whereupon the entire building rang out with accents and dialects from throughout China.

  These girls would sleep peacefully during the day but then become active each night, when these twenty-three heavily made-up and gaudily attired girls would crowd into the beauty salon, brightly soliciting customers like twenty-three red lanterns at New Years. The men would stand outside and furtively peer in as the girls would glance seductively back out at them. Then the beauty salon began to resemble a black market, abuzz with the sounds of people bargaining. The men would speak carefully, as if they were buying drugs, while the girls would speak boldly, as though they were selling cosmetics. After finding a girl and agreeing on a price, the men and their chosen girls would walk up the stairs, bantering lewdly. After entering a room, they would produce all kinds of sounds imaginable, transforming the six-floor building into a virtual zoo, a veritable encyclopedia of men and women's lovemaking noises.

  Everyone in Liu Town referred to the building as the town's red-light district, and since Wanderless Zhou's Snack Shop was directly across the street, his business also increased impressively. In the past, the snack shop would close its doors at eleven each night, but now it stayed open twenty-four hours a day. From one till four or five o'clock each morning, the constant stream of men and young women emerging from the building would pour across the street and into the snack shop, where they would sit and suck down their straw-embedded mini-buns.

  Was there anyone in Liu Town who could have accurately predicted Lin Hongs life trajectory? Beginning as a pure and easily embarrassed young girl, she was transformed into a sweet young woman in love, a virtuous wife completely devoted to Song Gang, a crazy lover who made crazy love to Baldy Li for three months, a solitary widow, an expressionless single woman living in complete isolation, a beauty salon proprietess, and finally this business-minded madam who always had a smile for her clients. After those heavily made-up young women started appearing in Liu, Lin Hong became smoother and warmer in her social interactions. The young women didn't call her Lin Hong but, rather, Madam Lin, and gradually the people of Liu started calling her that as well. Lin Hong became a Janus-like figure: Whenever a prospective customer walked in the door, she would break out into a radiant smile and speak to him sweetly, yet when she ran into a man unrelated to her business, she would look at him with eyes as cold as ice.

  Although, by that time, Madam Lin's eyes and forehead were full of wrinkles, she was nevertheless very fashionable and wore tight-fitting black clothes, showing off her curvy breasts and buttocks. She always carried a cell phone, grasping it tightly as though it were a strand of gold. Her cell rang throughout the day and night, and she would smile into it, addressing people as Bureau Director, Manager, and Brother, then saying, "A few older ones have left, and some new ones have arrived, each of whom
is young and pretty."

  If she then said, "I'll send one over for you to take a look," that meant that the person on the other end of the line was a VIP customer— either a powerful provincial official or a rich provincial businessman. If it was a working stiff who had called, however, she would still smile, but in a very different tone of voice would simply say "Our girls are all very pretty."

  BLACKSMITH TONG was one of Madam Lin's VIP customers. He was now more than sixty years old, and his wife a year older than he. Tong had opened three stores of his supermarket chain. Everyone addressed him as Boss Tong, but he wouldn't let his workers call him this, insisting that they continue calling him Blacksmith Tong, since he thought that sounded more vigorous.