by Jack Livings
“Where are you?”
“Noodle shop,” Yang said.
“You sound funny,” Gong said.
Yang knew the construction workers were listening. “On my way,” he said, and hung up. Then, as a precaution, he turned the phone off.
The TV droned on over the slurping of noodles. Back in the kitchen, the cook was whipping a rope of dough through the air, strands multiplying as he strung the noodles like yarn on his fingers, then a twist and smack against the counter and into the boil. The cook’s arms were loose, extensions of the noodles themselves, and he proceeded through the operation with so little attention to what he was doing that Yang felt no shame in staring. There was an automatic quality to his movements, the thoughtless perfection of repetitive motion, the perfect state, Yang thought, of doing without thinking. All his life, thinking had gotten him in trouble. When he’d acted on impulse, he’d always been rewarded.
He hadn’t noticed that one of the construction workers was standing next to him.
“This is sick stuff, eh?” the man said, pointing at the television.
“Yeah,” Yang said, still watching the cook.
“I’d have expected better from Yao Ming. But he probably eats white bread and speaks English at home,” the man said.
Yang nodded absently. “Now,” he ventured slowly, “what is it that Yao’s done?” he said, only just then turning to see that the basketball star was on-screen.
“Cheap bastard’s only pledged five hundred thousand yuan to the relief effort.”
“I see,” Yang said.
“He’s going to miss five hundred thou like I’d miss a fen.”
“True,” Yang said. “He’s in a hard position.”
The man cocked his head and took in Yang’s clothes and shoes. “I don’t see what’s so hard about it,” he said. “But I guess you guys have got to stick together.”
“I haven’t played ball in years,” Yang said, but the construction worker didn’t laugh. He hadn’t meant to defend Yao, but Yang suddenly felt that he’d rather be misunderstood. “What a man does with his money is his own business,” Yang said.
“How much have you given?” the man said.
Yang looked back at him blankly. He presented both arms and pulled up his sleeves.
“Blood?” His mates turned around and Yang was aware of their eyes on him.
“You look like you might be good for five hundred thousand,” one of them said.
“I’ve already made my donation,” Yang said, moving toward the door. “I’ve done my part.”
“Keep walking, asshole,” someone shouted as he hustled out the door. “Say hi to Yao Ming for us.”
Yang walked back to the post office and donated another two thousand yuan.
Then he caught the 451 bus to the industrial park in Fengtai District, where his factory was located.
His partner, Rabbit, a middle-aged number cruncher whose round black glasses would have been more at home on a French painter, met him at the industrial park gate. Rabbit seemed always to be bathed in light sweat, no matter the temperature, which made customers nervous, but he was good under pressure and had an elephant’s memory. His hair was neatly combed in the front but in back looked slept-on. Every day he wore the same brown tie that, with the perennial bags beneath his eyes, gave him the harried air of a salaryman who’d barely survived his latest bender. Yang and Rabbit had known each other since childhood and Yang recognized that it was all a ruse, Rabbit’s mannered fumbling, the rumpled bedsheets he called clothes. Rabbit was a hard, calculating man. He’d worked the same fields as Yang in the days when school had consisted of memorizing passages of revolutionary poetry. In another life, he’d have become a professor of mathematics, but history had conspired against him. Yang understood the machines and tended to customers and Rabbit kept the books and dealt with the men on the floor. He had the common touch.
“What’s the good word?” Yang said.
“Come on, come on,” Rabbit said, holding Yang’s arm as they walked toward the factory. “You picked the wrong day to leave for lunch, pal. You should have seen this place. The lights were swaying like a fat lady’s tits. I can’t believe you weren’t here. Sounded like a tank battalion rolling through the place. The boys were scared to death. Zone Chief Zhou’s been calling for you.”
“What’s he want?”
“Donations. The zone committee’s hitting up the workers when they leave at the end of shift, and the workers’ union has a separate donation drive. These guys’ danweis are pushing for donations, and their kids all came home from school yesterday asking for money. It’s chaos in there. There was a fistfight in the locker room this morning—one of the Huis said that he’d donate five kuai but no more because none of his people lived in Sichuan, and Brother Chu—you know Chu Pi, from Baiduizi—he slams this Hui against a locker and next thing you know, Brother Chu has a broken nose and half the room’s standing on top of the Hui. This isn’t good. We’re going to end up all over the papers.”
“Idiots,” Yang said, quickening his pace. “I thought Chu Pi had some sense.”
“He claims it was his patriotic duty,” Rabbit said. “Meanwhile, we’re losing ten thousand an hour while they’re standing around waving their dicks at each other.” Rabbit pushed through a pair of heavy fire doors and looked over at Yang. “You hear about Yao Ming?” he said, a wry grin on his face.
“I heard,” Yang said.
“Cheap bastard,” Rabbit muttered as he pushed through another pair of doors and they hustled past the men’s toilets and the men’s locker room, through another pair of fire doors that opened to the factory floor. The space was heavy with silence. Lit like a subway car and as long as a soccer field, the factory floor usually vibrated slightly. Searing noise forced everyone to wear ear protection, but without the mechanical thrum that marked time twenty-four hours a day at full production, the workers’ voices rose and fell like winking stars in the black sky.
Yang and Rabbit climbed the metal stairs to the platform outside their office. Yang rapped his knuckles against the metal railing until the workers milling around below turned their faces upward, most squinting as if looking into the sun. A couple of the guys took off their hard hats.
“Where’s Brother Chu Pi?” Yang shouted, surveying the crowd.
“At the hospital,” someone shouted back.
Yang nodded. “Gentlemen,” he began. He had no idea what he was going to say to still the men’s spirits. This made about as much sense as trying to talk away the rain. Yang heard the purring of an air compressor and, somewhere in the thermoforming area, the tinging of cooling metal. He cleared his throat and began again. “Gentlemen, our country is suffering. We are lucky to have been spared—” He stopped, aware that among his men there would be those with relatives in the South. “Those of you who are concerned for your families—I am concerned for your families, too. Don’t ignore the fact that our factory is still standing and we have our lives. We can help best by keeping production high.”
Some of the men clapped weakly.
“That is the best thing for China. Maintain production,” Yang said, drawing out the words.
“Why?” came a voice from the back.
“Isn’t it obvious?” Yang said. But it wasn’t obvious even to him, and at that moment he caught a whiff of his own woolly sweat wafting up, and found himself considering a wild notion: he should bus the entire workforce to Sichuan to aid in the recovery effort. But by the time they got there, the men would have been drunk for two days. They’d have beaten each other to a pulp and would get off the bus in worse shape than the quake survivors. “If we fight about small things,” he shouted, “we miss opportunities to help. This is not about fighting. This is about helping.”
Rabbit pushed his glasses up onto his nose, leaned over the railing, and shouted, “And you’re all going to help run this factory out of business if you don’t get your lazy asses back to work, and then where will you be?”
A wave of laughter went up from the men. Rabbit had a way with them. A balled-up rag flew out of the crowd. Rabbit snatched it from the air and dramatically shook his fist at the men. “Get back to work before we call in the riot police on you assholes,” he said.
“What are you going to do to aid the victims?” someone shouted.
“We’re doing plenty,” Rabbit shouted back.
“This isn’t funny! We’re making personal donations,” the worker shouted, “so where’s yours?”
Another man said, “My wife’s factory is covering her personal donations!”
Rabbit looked at Yang, who smirked at the man’s obvious lie.
“We should be compensated for our donations!” another man shouted.
Yang held up his hand. The men quieted down. The year before, the factory had sent one hundred thousand yuan to the Yunnan quake relief effort, and one hundred thousand to flood relief the year before that. But this one felt different. Yang had to find the right balance: a donation large enough to calm the men, but not so large as to make it look like he had money to burn. The men complained endlessly about their wages and suspected that untold riches were piling up in vaults beneath the factory, money withheld from them expressly to scuttle their chances for advancement in the world. What if he fired them all on the spot, sold the factory to the highest bidder, and settled into a quiet life of mahjong and cold beer? And why was it his duty to compensate the men for their donations? It was the damned ingratitude that got him. How dare they hold his feet to the fire.
“Beijing Number Seven Peony Metal Fabrication, Limited, will match the donations of any and all employees,” Yang said slowly, his eyes searching for any man willing to return his gaze, “and above that amount will donate three hundred thousand yuan to the relief effort.”
That ought to shut them up, he thought. People think only of themselves, even when they believe they’re helping others. It’s every man for himself. Then he heard the applause. The men’s faces, turned up to him like a band of starving children he’d fed from his own kitchen. Some were waving their hard hats. Amazing, he thought. But by tomorrow they’ll have found a reason to turn against me. Three hundred thousand won’t be enough. He turned abruptly and went into the office, the men’s cheers still audible after he’d closed the door, like an ax chopping at him, breaking him up into pieces they’d throw on a fire to warm their rough hands. He fell into his leather chair and closed his eyes.
That was how Rabbit found him when he returned to the office after laying some more brotherly abuse on the men.
“Finally, you’ve died from stress,” Rabbit said. “Now your daughter’s treasures will be mine.”
“Soon enough,” Yang said without opening his eyes. “I’m down two pints to the relief effort.”
“What a patriot. Hope you got a certificate.”
Yang opened his eyes a touch, but Rabbit had concerned himself with a towering sheaf of invoices, his fingers playing up and down the jagged ridge of paper.
“What word from the proletariat?” Yang said. The factory was coming back to life, the floor beneath his feet beginning to thrum.
Rabbit didn’t respond immediately. The office was arranged so that he sat with his back to Yang. It wasn’t spacious, but was large enough for their two desks, both heavy wooden Qing Dynasty knockoffs, their chrome-and-mesh swivel chairs, several banks of file cabinets, and three boxy modular chairs for visitors. A small refrigerator stocked with kimchi and beer hummed against the wall.
Rabbit’s fingers hovered at a corner of paper protruding from the stack before pincering an invoice, which he held close to his face, his upper lip retracted from his incisors as he peered over the top of his glasses. “It’s fine,” Rabbit said. “You know how the guys get. They say they’re worried about their relatives, but mostly they’re worried about their own skins, and they just want to get on with it.”
Yang sighed and closed his eyes again. “Three hundred thousand,” he said.
“It’s enough. You’re still a rich man no matter how much you give away,” Rabbit said. He quickly added, “But no one thinks you’re holding out.”
“The men know I’m not a public speaker,” Yang said.
“Don’t worry about it. The rich always have trouble communicating with the poor,” Rabbit said, dropping the page to his desk, satisfied with his inspection.
“I’m not the only rich one around here,” Yang said.
“Noted,” Rabbit said. “The difference is, I’m not the president of Beijing Number Seven Peony Metal Fabrication.”
“So?” Yang said.
“You’re not one of the boys anymore. You’re tall, rich, and handsome.”
“I’m supposed to apologize for being rich? I’m supposed to live in a shack and eat fried rice?” Yang said.
“No,” Rabbit said. “But stop pretending you do. You’re the big frog in this pond. You have to watch over the little frogs.” Rabbit fixed his eyes on his friend. “You should have been here yesterday. You know what it sounded like? The cargo bay of a ship in a storm, creaking and groaning and everything sliding around. But the men, silent as a tomb. They were petrified, and where were you? They’re your responsibility, for better or worse. That’s how it is. You were absent in their time of need. You abandoned your children in their darkest hour.”
Yang picked at the button of his shirt and didn’t respond.
Rabbit searched Yang’s face, but, finding only the same pair of sad black eyes he’d known for forty years, he nodded and went back to his paperwork.
For the rest of the week, Yang came to work and sat in his chair. The zone chief called five, six times a day, but Yang declined to answer. At first Rabbit managed to placate the zone chief, but eventually the chief refused to speak to him. It had gotten personal. Day after day, there Yang sat, placid as a frog in the mud. Maybe it was a calculated act of rebellion, but Rabbit couldn’t understand for the life of him what his partner stood to gain by antagonizing the chief. The chief could make real trouble for them. Rabbit’s own patience was wearing thin. He had enough problems trying to keep the men on the floor organized without having to play nursemaid to Yang.
During this time of silence, Yang came to understand the crisis in his own way: The workers would be satisfied by nothing less than strips of flesh from his back. The country would take nothing less than everything he had. Zone Chief Zhou was now leaving messages at all hours on his cell phone. He was cursing Yang in new and creative ways, threatening to shut the factory down. Yang smiled as he listened to a message from the chief degrading his mother.
Eventually, Rabbit lost it. “Did you have a stroke? Have you gone nuts?” he shouted at Yang.
Nothing.
“I’m calling a psychologist if you don’t pull it together!” Rabbit yelled.
Yang smiled.
“I’m serious, you asshole!”
At home it wasn’t much better. The first night Gong had paced around her husband, consoled him. The next night she screamed at him. Then she sat across from him, gnawing at her lip.
“You’re under a lot of pressure,” she said. “I understand. But that doesn’t mean you have to act like a mental patient. You can’t just hole up like this. Rabbit’s told me what’s going on. I don’t want to wind up living on the street. I won’t.” She waited for a glimmer of recognition, a sign of concern. He gave her nothing. “You call back the zone chief and you do what he wants,” she said. “You do exactly what he tells you to do. Why, on top of everything else, are you trying to bring the government down on our heads?”
She tilted her chin at him, waiting for an answer. When none came, she answered for him. “You are. You’re trying to ruin us.”
Yang got up and turned on the TV.
“You think this is a good example for Little Li?” she said. His smile cracked just a hair. Gong threw up her hands and left the room.
The news from near the epicenter of the earthquake in Beichuan County, deep in the Longme
n Mountains, was horrific. Seven thousand dead in the town of Yingxiu, population nine thousand. In Dujiangyan, southeast of the epicenter, fifty children would be entombed in the rubble for weeks before workers could exhume them. Their parents encamped atop the concrete slabs, fighting with police to watch over the bodies of their children, singing them songs at dusk, telling stories to the rubble. Some had already been imprisoned for their defiance. Starving dogs and cats wandered over the wreckage, nosing into the rubble until rescue workers ran them off. Hundred-foot lengths of asphalt road had sheared off mountainsides and slid into valleys, sweeping away hamlets with no more pause than a drop of water rolling down a windowpane.
Yang considered the loneliness of dying beneath a slab of concrete, in the dark, mouth caked with dust and stone. He’d tried to be good, to do his duty, but what had he changed?
Newscasters sobbed as they reported on missing children reunited with their parents. Yet that was not what his countrymen concerned themselves with. The day after the quake, he saw in the United Daily News the total amount of donations by the ten richest people in China. In one day, 32.5 million yuan. And still, public outrage swelled. It was as though the benefactors had shat on the victims’ graves. No donation was enough.
Chief Zhou had ordered a massive sign erected outside the zone gates listing, by order of size of donation, the twenty-seven companies located within. The names were in blocky script on a grid, framed on either side by cascading yellow and red bunting, the board rising to a height of two stories above the sidewalk. Included was each company’s phone number and the exact amount, to the fen, donated to the earthquake victims. Passersby stood in front of the sign and dialed the listed companies, yelling indignantly at whoever picked up. If they couldn’t get through, they pinned angry notes to a smaller comment board on the opposite side of the gate. The first-place company got as many calls as the last-place company, Yang’s Beijing Number Seven Peony Metal Fabrication.
In the end it was the office secretary, a young cousin of Rabbit’s, who ripped the phone cord from the wall and refused to answer any more calls until something was done. Rabbit went to Yang.