by Jack Livings
“What a comfort,” Ning said. His phone was ringing but he ignored it. With some effort, like a man feeling his way through a blacked-out room, he located the story on the Youth Daily’s site and printed it before turning his attention to his neighbor. “To think. All these years without you. It’s a miracle I’ve been able to find my own dick without your sage counsel.” The reporter shrugged and rolled back into his cube, unfazed. It was perhaps the least offensive thing Ning had said to him all week.
Ning didn’t much care about good stories anymore, not his own or anyone else’s, and he’d given this one about as much thought as he would have the purchase of an umbrella during a downpour. It was about a security guard who’d acted courageously and had been stabbed nearly to death. The doctors had sewn him up, and he was on the mend, but because he’d refused to tell a white lie that would have harmed no one, his case was tangled in red tape and the hospital was refusing to discharge him. Ning had visited the guard, and as he’d listened to his story, he’d felt himself leaning in at one point, eager to hear more, but he’d lost interest again almost as soon as he’d left the hospital. Instead of filing the story, he’d burned the rest of the week doing research on thoracoabdominal penetrating injuries, and now he was going to hear about it.
Sure enough, before Ning had even had time to finish reading the story, the chief’s assistant arrived at his desk. Her blue cotton dress had red flowers printed on it, and atop that she wore an apple-green sweater buttoned up to the neck.
“Mercy,” he said. “Is it mating season for your species?”
“Don’t start with me, old man,” she said.
“So you’ve come down from your lofty perch just to subject me to this thing,” Ning said, pointing to her outfit. “I’m nearly blind as it is.”
“You don’t think I called first?” She had the face of a middle schooler, and though she claimed to be twenty-five and a college graduate, Ning had his suspicions. She was someone’s niece, or her father was in real estate.
“I didn’t hear it,” he said, his chair creaking as he leaned back.
“You didn’t hear it,” she said.
“Who can hear anything in here?” he said, waving a hand at Li Pai’s table.
“If you read your e-mail—” she said.
“I don’t read e-mail.”
“Of course you don’t,” she said. “How inconsiderate of the rest of the company to communicate in such a manner. I’ll draft a memo immediately and have a copyboy rush it down. Shall I have the little urchin rinse your inkpot and wash your brushes while he’s at it? Ning Wang’s wish is our command.”
“Tell me,” he said, “how exactly did you avoid becoming an infanticide statistic?”
She flashed her eyeteeth. “Please, at your convenience, grace us with your presence. I’m sure the chief will be happy to wait,” she said, and walked away, her dress cutting around her legs.
“I’m sure he will,” Ning yelled after her. He put up his feet to make clear that he didn’t take orders from anyone, least of all her, and began to read slowly through the Youth Daily story. He paused every so often to laugh derisively, loud enough so that the reporters near him could hear, and when he finished, he made a show of dawdling around his desk before sauntering out to the elevators for the ride up to the eleventh floor.
“Well, I’m here,” he announced when he arrived outside the chief’s office.
“He’ll be overjoyed,” the chief’s assistant said, picking up the phone to buzz the chief. She waved Ning in. “Always a pleasure!” she called after him.
Inside, the chief motioned for him to sit. “Took you long enough.”
“She’s as unpleasant as she is ugly,” Ning said, gesturing through the glass. “You really ought to kick her down to production. She makes me go soft every time I lay eyes on her.”
The chief didn’t answer. He was scribbling on a layout for a weekend insert, and Ning waited without saying anything else. When he saw the thick red pencil stop moving, he went on the offensive.
“I know why I’m here, and let me just go on the record as saying that it’s a hack job,” Ning said. “You know it, and I know it. This kid who filed it—I saw him at the hospital. Probably followed me there.”
The chief stared at him.
“Second of all, this is exactly why I don’t file to the Web. It’s nothing but garbage like this. I’ve seen better stories in school papers. I bet you haven’t had a chance to read the whole thing, have you? I have a printout right here,” Ning said, holding up the story. “This thing’s got so many holes, you can hear the wind whistling through it. Really, it pains me to read it,” he said, before doing just that, aloud and in its entirety. The chief reshuffled the layouts on his desk and went at a new one with his grease pencil. Ning read, pausing every so often to affirm his amazement at the reporter’s incompetence. He punctuated the end of the story with a hearty guffaw.
“You done?” the chief said.
“Just give me the afternoon and I’ll have a draft for you. For the sake of our readership,” Ning said. “For the sake of the historical record!”
“Since when have you cared about either of those things?” the chief said.
“The kid missed the whole point of the story,” Ning said, rattling the paper. “Why do you think I’ve been tied up with it all week? It would take anyone else two weeks to do what I can give you by tonight.”
“Is that so?” the chief said. He put down his pencil and pushed his glasses up to his forehead, where they sat atop his white brows like a second set of eyes. The skin on his big bald skull was as rumpled as a plowed field.
“I’ve been doing some thinking,” the chief said. “Li Pai’s last day and all. You’ve been on my mind, I’m sorry to report.”
“That can’t have been a pleasant experience,” Ning said.
The chief snorted. “I don’t spend a lot of time pondering the vagaries of the human condition, but I’ve made an exception in your case,” he said. “I’m of limited intelligence, but I’ve given it my best effort, and I’ve come up with a theory. You used to be a bull with sharp horns. But, now—” The chief made a puffing sound, his fingers releasing chaff into the wind.
Ning jumped in. “Youth Daily’s constantly doing things like this. Those goat fuckers. We’d never go with something this weak,” he said, shaking the printout. “You’ll see what I’m talking about if you read my file.”
“Where is it?”
“I can have it on your desk in a couple of hours. Maybe three.”
The chief’s expression softened just enough to change the air in the room.
“What?” Ning said.
The chief studied the dark ravines below Ning’s eyes. With age, Ning’s eyebrows had all but disappeared, his cheeks had sunk, and he wore a permanently severe, gaunt expression, ever squinting into a fire only he could see. At this moment his lips were pursed with impatience, as though he were dealing with a recalcitrant child. Not so long ago, the chief would have told Ning to get out of his office and file the story, but now he had his own job to worry about. The time had come.
On his best days, Ning was petulant, ill-tempered. His presence soured the mood in the newsroom, and he’d gotten worse in the weeks leading up to Li Pai’s retirement. The chief had been under assault from the desk editors, who’d banded together in a campaign to get rid of Ning. He told them he’d take it under advisement, but he really had no choice. If he didn’t act, they’d go over his head, and for good measure they’d see that he got tossed out on the street with Ning.
The chief was seventy-one, and he harbored few illusions about his own character. He didn’t deny his moral failings, but this one, this long-standing weakness when it came to Ning, was unpardonable. When he was covering the American War in Vietnam he had seen the same lazy sentimentalism in officers who got enlisted men killed by allowing them to talk their way into stupid, heroic-sounding missions. The heart had to be kept out of the command chain. Yet he’
d utterly failed to obey that dictum, keeping Ning on purely out of loyalty, payment in return for years of service. That he hadn’t been able to discard Ning as he would have a broken car part troubled him. He preferred to think that he was coldly pragmatic, if not ruthless, when it came to assessing the utility of his reporters.
“Do you want to hear my theory now? You lost your will after Li Pai’s book came out. That’s my theory,” the chief said.
“You might have something there, Chief,” Ning said.
“You thought you deserved more than a footnote.”
“That’s possible.”
“Well, I’m sorry,” the chief said.
“What for? You didn’t write it.”
The chief laid his hands on the desk in front of him. “I’m afraid you’re done here,” he said.
“That’s a mistake, Chief. Story’s got legs.”
“You’re terminated, Ning.”
“How’s that?”
“Effective today, you’re no longer employed at the Guangzhou Post,” the chief said.
“Because of this?” Ning shrieked, holding up the story. On the other side of the door, the chief’s assistant looked up from her screen.
“Because I’ve got fifty kids down there, each one of whom files ten stories a day. Remember how that works? Report it, bang it out, next story! A guy jumps off a bridge, they’re not at their desks pondering the ethical implications of suicide. They’re bribing the cops so they can get a look at the corpse! Just like you used to do. For all your deep thinking, you haven’t filed anything worth reading in years.” The chief didn’t mind repaying Ning for all the grief he had caused. Loyalty be damned.
Ning’s mouth fell open. He knew he looked like a cliché, his hands lying in his lap like a couple of dead fish, unable to come back with something that would level the chief, or at least wipe that placid, self-satisfied look off his face. In an attempt to get ahold of himself, he fixed his eye on a photograph behind the chief’s head, a black-and-white of a PLA artillery crew posing in front of a Type 65 antiaircraft cannon. He’d seen it hundreds of times before, but instead of providing him a lifeline to all those nights he’d waited in that chair while the chief reviewed his copy, he felt as lonely and insignificant as a child who first realizes that, in his absence, his parents laugh and eat and sleep as restfully as ever. The walls of their house do not collapse. The paper without him would go on exactly as it had before. A rasping sound came from Ning’s throat.
It wasn’t fair. During those nomadic years after Reform and Opening, when the chief had hopped from paper to paper, Ning had followed him like a pack mule, and he’d never said no to an assignment. He’d nearly frozen to death chasing the Panchen Lama on his exodus across the mountains of Nepal. He’d roasted in the sun for weeks at Lop Nur waiting for a subterranean nuclear test. He could have stayed in the newsroom, pulled the Xinhua file off the telex and punched up the copy, but he’d insisted on being there in person to feel the ground tremble. It mattered to him to witness the story. What had all that come to?
It’s come to exactly what you always knew it would, he told himself. You’ve served your purpose and now you’re off to the slaughter.
It took an effort of will for the chief to keep from diverting his eyes. He forced himself to suffer this reminder of what happened when he got lazy. Keeping a reporter on past his prime didn’t do anyone any good, least of all the reporter. If he’d cut him loose five years earlier, on nothing more than reputation Ning could have landed at another paper. A new start might have energized him. But now he was finished, worn bald as an old tire.
The chief tapped his foot once against the concrete floor to signal that their silent communion had come to an end.
“If you’ve got anything to say, say it.”
Ning had sunk deep into his chair. He shook his head.
“Well, that’s a first,” the chief said. “Listen to me. I haven’t put this through official channels, so we can handle it properly, like gentlemen. Submit an official resignation letter to Personnel and you’ll keep your pension. If I have to fire you, no pension. Got it?”
“I’m lucky to have you looking out for me.”
The chief didn’t respond.
“Why would I resign?” Ning said.
The chief pinched the bridge of his nose. “How about in solidarity with Li Pai?”
“In solidarity with Li Pai,” Ning said.
“Yes.”
“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”
“Your choice,” the chief said. “How’s the speech coming?”
“You can’t be serious,” Ning said.
“You should add a bit about yourself. Put in something about how brothers always go down together. Allow yourself to save face. Do you hear me? Don’t turn yourself into a flaming monk.”
“It’s not enough to get rid of me, you’re going to put me on parade so everyone can see.”
“This isn’t a punishment. You’ve been with him since People’s Daily. No one knows him better.”
“I hardly know him at all.”
“Don’t give me that. You’ll do it, and maybe he’ll return the favor. You could benefit from a little character rehabilitation. Maybe he’ll write you a recommendation letter, too.”
“You’re a son of a bitch,” Ning said.
“We’ll all lift a glass to you at the Green Room,” the chief said. “I’m sure Li Pai won’t mind sharing the spotlight.”
“That’ll be the day,” Ning said. The chief held out his hand, but Ning didn’t take it. He went out to the waiting area, pulling the chief’s heavy door closed behind him with a sharp click. His lip curled at the sight of the assistant. Repulsive, the way she sat, her dainty arms poised over her keyboard like an insect worrying over the thorax of its prey. From day one he’d disliked this country girl with the erect posture and sharp tongue, and he was relieved to discover that he hadn’t, due to his own misfortune, suddenly been visited by a newfound spirit of tolerance.
“What?” she said, her fingers still clacking at the keys.
Ning put his head down and walked out to the elevator bay.
“That’s the smartest thing you’ve ever said,” she called after him.
Back at his desk, he began to work up his resignation letter. Keep it simple, he told himself, but an hour later he had only just begun to air his grievances. He worked on it through the afternoon, and when he was satisfied that he’d communicated his opinions on the matters of the paper’s shortsighted appetite for gossip over real news, incestuous hiring practices, inability to recognize and promote talent, and reliance on the fame of its half-wit columnists, he signed it with a flourish and took it to Personnel. From there, he left the building, took a bus across town, and drank at a bar until nightfall, to no benefit other than a slothful heaviness in his legs. When he returned, it was to an almost empty newsroom.
A few stragglers were gathering up Li Pai’s gifts and stuffing them into plastic garbage bags, which they threw over their shoulders for the trip to the party at the Green Room. A corner of the red farewell banner had peeled off the wall. One of the young men deftly reached up and with a flick of his wrist yanked the entire thing down. He crumpled the heavy paper into a huge ball before jamming it into a gray trash bin full of beer bottles. Li Pai waved on his coterie and stopped at Ning’s desk.
Li Pai was as stooped as an old scholar, his posture the apostrophe’s hook and bell. His eyes were pricks of black suspended in rheum, magnified by the thick lenses of his stylish tortoiseshell glasses. Time had worn them both down, but Ning had no sympathy for his colleague’s fragility, and he’d lost his appetite for the wandering conversations that inevitably became lectures on Li Pai’s singular experience of the world. He couldn’t remember when he’d finally stopped admiring Li Pai and had given himself over to jealousy, a soothing contempt for everything Li Pai represented: self-promotion, egotism, shallowness.
“That sums it up, no?” Li Pai sa
id, pointing at the trash bin where the banner was crackling as it unwound itself. When Ning didn’t answer, he said, “To the bar?”
Ning made a pained face. “Unavoidably detained,” he said. “I’ll be there when I can.”
Li Pai nodded gravely and gave Ning a pat on the back. “Hang in there,” he said, lingering. “You’ll find something else.”
“Ah,” Ning said. “Word’s out.”
“I hope it’s not a show of solidarity,” Li Pai said.
Ning looked at him suspiciously. “Nothing like that.”
“I could find something for you at Beida. They’ve asked me to lecture in the School of Communications.”
“I think I’d rather not,” Ning said.
“Well, it’s a sad day for journalism. You and I are the last of a breed.”
“Maybe not such a sad day,” Ning said. He’d never considered Li Pai much of a reporter, and he didn’t appreciate the comparison. In his columns Li Pai had proved himself to be a writer whose self-regard far outweighed his concern for the subjects he addressed. He wrote about poverty and corruption only to make it appear that he was a friend of man, a compassionate soul with a tearstained handkerchief in his breast pocket. Ning had found it impossible to read him any longer after Li Pai held a contest inviting readers to spend a week shadowing him at the paper and three hundred thousand people had written essays explaining why they most deserved the honor.
“You’re not resigning because of what happened with your story? There’s no point in falling on your sword over a little thing like that,” Li Pai said in an avuncular tone that caused Ning to clench his fist underneath the desk.
Ning shook his head. “It’s time to move on. Simple as that.”
“I see,” Li Pai said thoughtfully. He waited for Ning to elaborate, and when he didn’t, Li Pai leaned in close, as if to speak in confidence, and said, “I heard the desk editors were after your hide. You know the chief’s lost all his leverage. There’s nothing he could have done.”