by Sheng Keyi
The workers’ quarters were situated in a low, humid building, accommodating three or four people to a room. Inside each room was a basin, a big window, and a smattering of colourful plastic bags. Li Mazi, being a manager, had a private room equipped with a bed and a desk, leaving a narrow space in which a person could walk from one end of the room to the other.
‘Li, I asked the canteen to cook up something a little extra, seeing as you’ve travelled so far. Not an easy trip.’ Xiaohong and Sijiang just wanted to flop on the crowded bed, but were prevented by Mr Zhuang’s intrusion.
‘Thanks a lot, Mr Zhuang. We’ve given you a lot of trouble,’ Xiaohong said.
‘Mr Zhuang is a good man. You’ll see that all the more as you get to know him,’ Li Mazi said, obviously trying to gain a few brownie points with the boss. Mr Zhuang laughed and made a little small talk.
Before turning to leave, he added, ‘If there’s anything you need, just ask Li Mazi. Or you can come and find me, if you like.’ The girls nodded in unison, then gave a slight bow as the boss left the room.
Li Mazi laughed and said, ‘The boss is always like that. No male visitors can stay overnight, but then he’s so friendly towards any female guests. Everyone knows it. That’s the advantage of your sex.’
‘Advantage? What a load of crap. He’s just horny and has got his big eyes on us. You really think he’ll be able to restrain himself for long?’ Xiaohong turned slowly round and round, looking about the room.
‘Just so you know, Xiaohong, if you offend him, I lose my livelihood.’
‘Hmph. So Sijiang, I guess it’s up to you to hook up with him then.’ Xiaohong took a gulp of water. Sijiang, thinking her friend really did mean her to sleep with Mr Zhuang, turned bright red and squirmed visibly.
Li Mazi’s bed was as hard as a rock. After they’d had something to eat and taken a short nap, the girls got up and found themselves aching all over.
‘You sleep alright?’ Li Mazi asked, coming into the room with a pleased look on his face.
‘Alright? You must be kidding! I’m sore from head to toe.’ Xiaohong retorted, stretching her sore muscles. ‘The boss give you a raise or something? What’re you so happy about?’
‘I don’t know whether it’s good or bad, but it looks like we’re all in this together, so we’ll have to see what we can do to pull through it. Mr Zhuang knows this guy who owns a hair salon. He’s not really looking for workers, but he can arrange for one of you to work for him. There’s this one thing, though. He wanted me to ask…’
‘Well? Ask what?’
‘…whether you two are virgins?’
‘Virgins? What’s that got to do with anything?’
‘Xiaohong, you don’t understand how things are. A lot of farmers around here are rich and they have certain tastes. If a guy can get a virgin and, you know, deflower her, he’ll pay a whole whack for it.’
‘Li Mazi, what the hell have you got us into? We didn’t come all the way here to be prostitutes!’ Xiaohong shook, her breasts standing up in rage. Sijiang held her back.
‘Settle down, Xiaohong. It’s not like anyone’s gonna rape you. It’s up to you whether or not you do it,’ Li Mazi said, trying to placate her.
‘Anyway, your bed strong enough for three people?’ Xiaohong asked Li Mazi, a bit on edge. ‘We’d look pretty ridiculous if it collapsed in the middle of the night.’
Lifting the sheet, he said, ‘See for yourself.’
‘God! Bricks! No wonder it’s so hard. I guess if anyone tries to attack us during the night, we won’t have any problems defending ourselves,’ Xiaohong said with a snigger.
‘Who’s going to attack us in our sleep?’ As soon as the words were out of her mouth, Sijiang blushed at her gullibility. She said to Xiaohong, ‘You sleep in the middle. I’ll squeeze over against the wall. OK? Alright, then. That’s settled.’
‘And you,’ Xiaohong turned to Li Mazi and said sharply, ‘you better keep to your side of the bed and keep still.’
‘I won’t even breathe. Good thing it’s still cool. If it were June, we’d melt.’
Xiaohong crawled under the blanket and lay on her back. Li Mazi dozed off, leaving a gap between himself and Xiaohong. She felt cramped in the tight space. Wanting to turn to lie on her side, she considered whether she’d prefer her oversized breasts to face Li Mazi’s smelly feet or Sijiang’s back. She settled on the warmth of the other girl’s back. She spent the whole night drowning in a concoction of Sijiang’s body odour and Li Mazi’s own indescribable flavour.
The next morning, Mr Zhuang offered to arrange for one of the girls to go to work in the salon. Sijiang didn’t want to go, nor did she want Xiaohong to leave her alone. No matter what, she said, they had to stick together. Since Mr Zhuang’s offer was not going to work, they decided to manage their own job search, so off they went into town.
‘Hey Sijiang, you hear this chatter around us? Sounds funny, doesn’t it?’
‘I don’t understand a word of it.’
‘Then we learn! There’s nothing that can’t be learned.’
The two girls, hand-in-hand, walked into the Magang Market and tried their best to twist their tongues enough to make themselves understood by the locals. ‘Excuse me. Are you looking for shampoo girls?’
‘You got any experience?’
‘Yes.’
‘You got a temporary residence card? No? Let me see your ID card, then.’
‘ID card?’
‘Yeah.’
‘We don’t have any ID cards.’
‘Maybe a family planning card, then?’
‘Nope. We just got here.’
‘Not licensed to work around here? You better watch yourselves, then, if they come checking for papers. If you get picked up, you’ll be spending some time in the slammer!’
IV
‘Mr Zhuang’s invited you both to karaoke tonight,’ Li Mazi said excitedly, his eyes lowered in an obscure expression.
‘Carry-o-pee? What in the world is that? Never heard of it,’ Xiaohong said.
‘Yeah. Carry what? And aren’t you coming with us?’ Sijiang had always enjoyed gatherings with large groups.
‘It’s just singing. Kind of like a talent show. You know, holding a microphone while you sing your heart out.’
‘Li Mazi, I doubt it’s so simple. I think what Mr Zhuang really wants is a chance to get his hands on Sijiang.’
‘Me? Hardly. It’s your boobs the boss is always staring at, you know.’
‘You both have plenty of assets to your credit. Anyway, it’s on a boat. There’ll be lots of food, lots of drinking and lots of singing. Whatever you do, just don’t provoke him. Oh, I almost forgot. You find any job leads?’
Xiaohong answered, ‘We need a bit of help before we can do anything. We’ve got to get temporary residence cards.’
‘Hmm. We’ll need to ask Mr Zhuang. Tonight while you’re singing, when he gets a little tipsy, that’s the time to ask him about it. Make sure you do it then.’
‘Alright, I’ll try. What a hassle!’
On Li Mazi’s advice, the two girls dressed in their best clothes and put on some makeup, and then went to join in the karaoke session, carrying themselves uneasily. Sijiang was especially nervous. She was holding a scarf in her hands, constantly twisting it into knots then unwinding it again.
‘You two beautiful young ladies are here!’ Mr Zhuang’s smile was as shady as the dim lights inside the private karaoke room that he had reserved.
‘Let me introduce you. This here is the mayor. He takes care of a lot of business for me,’ Mr Zhuang went on, enraptured.
A man in his fifties, looking like a humble farmer, was sitting on the sofa. His face was as dark as a well worn wok. He smiled woodenly at the girls, without quite daring to look them in the eye. He kept his head hunched down close to his chest, enveloped in a thick cloud of cigarette smoke.
Xiaohong thought to herself, If this mayor is so capable when it comes to taking care of Mr
Zhuang’s business, surely he’s up to securing a couple of temporary residence cards. Sitting down close to the man, she made sure to keep his wine glass full and his cigarette lit for the rest of the evening. The mayor focused on drinking and smoking, not uttering a word.
‘Here, have a little more,’ Mr Zhuang said to Sijiang as they were finishing their supper, having showered his most gallant attentions on her throughout the meal.
‘I’ve already had plenty to eat, and don’t think I could hold another drink,’ said Xiaohong, answering for her friend before turning to the mayor. ‘How about we sing a duet?’ He nodded and they left the table to sit on the sofa. The waitress turned on the speakers, which emitted a deafening sound as the TV screen displayed a bikini-clad girl running across a sandy beach. Mr Zhuang shifted in his chair, his thigh pressing up against Sijiang. In a panic, she tried desperately to respond appropriately to his attentions, as she looked for a way to wriggle away from his looming form.
‘Mr Zhuang, why don’t you two join us over here?’ Xiaohong called out, offering her friend an escape route.
‘You sing first. Go ahead.’ Mr Zhuang turned towards her, his face as red as the Taoist deity Lord Guan’s.
The mayor was some singer. Throughout his soul-stirring rendition of a classic pop song, he strained breathlessly as his voice cracked trying to reach the high notes. His off-key tune was a perfect match for his lack of rhythm. He belted out the whole song practically all in one breath, except for the notes he missed out, which was about one out of every five.
‘That was touching,’ Xiaohong said, applauding. She poured him some tea and lit a cigarette for him. After a moment, Mr Zhuang and Sijiang came over to sit with them on the sofa. Xiaohong felt that the way had been paved, and the time was ripe for her to approach the mayor. When Mr Zhuang started to sing an old favourite, she made her move.
‘Wow! Mr Zhuang is a good singer. Mr Mayor, you two must practise singing all the time.’ She bawled into the mayor’s ear loud enough to be heard over the music’s blare.
The mayor nodded and said, ‘The boss does sing well.’
Xiaohong thought, Well, at least he doesn’t have any delusions about his own abilities. She continued to blindly heap praise on the two men, buying a little more time.
The mayor then pointed at Xiaohong and said, ‘Big waves.’
Confused, she asked, ‘What waves?’
‘These. Your boobs,’ he said, rubbing his hands along his own chest. ‘Anyone ever surf those waves?’
In the Hunan dialect, waving meant kissing, but what was kissing to a letch like the mayor? Hoping to learn something from the man, she put on a coquettish smile and said, ‘I wouldn’t know anything about that.’
‘Well, your waves are big, so I’m sure someone’s surfed them,’ he said, sounding like a farmer discussing something as innocuous as his crops.
It crossed Xiaohong’s mind that this was a whole new style of discourse for her. She hadn’t been careful, and things had gotten out of hand before she even had a chance to bring up her own business. Once the talk turned toward her bust, it was hard to do an about face. Anxiously, she said, ‘Mr Mayor, I just arrived here and I’ve got a little problem. I wonder if you might be able to help.’
‘People come every day, and every day people leave. It’s a very mobile population,’ he said, his speech a little slurred. He wore an expression as enigmatic as Buddha’s.
‘I heard they check papers here?’
‘Sometimes they check, sometimes they don’t.’
‘Mr Mayor, can you help us get temporary residence cards?’
‘Are you a virgin?’
‘Who? Me?’ Xiaohong gasped in astonishment.
‘I only help virgins.’
V
Li Mazi lounged, legs splayed and eyes roving over his magazine. His briefs swayed in the breeze from the window where he had hung them up to dry, drawing the eye to a large hole in the crotch. Seeing Sijiang enter the room, he sat up hastily.
‘Ah, your cheeks are all rosy. You have a good time?’
Looking like she’d been caught with her hand in the cookie jar, she kept her gaze turned toward his legs.
‘I thought you’d be back late,’ Li Mazi smiled sheepishly.
‘So, everything arranged, Xiaohong?’ he asked, turning away from Sijiang.
‘Arranged my arse. That fat fucking pig,’ she said in a choked tone.
‘Hey, not so loud. What did the boss have to say?’
‘I spoke to the mayor directly.’
‘Now you’ve done it. Look, I know Mr Zhuang is a randy old guy, but he’s not all bad.’ Li Mazi flung the magazine away from him, feeling a twinge of pity for the two girls.
‘A stream’s twists and turns all eventually lead to the sea, and Mr Zhuang is just one twist in the stream,’ said Xiaohong. ‘I thought we could take a shortcut and get right to the ocean. How was I to know the bloody mayor only cared about popping a girl’s cherry? Even if I were a virgin, I would never take this route to get what I want. And to think, I wasted some of my best moves on him tonight.’
‘But, Xiaohong, if the mayor said he won’t help you, there’s no point going to Mr Zhuang now,’ Li Mazi said, shaking his head.
Sijiang’s face was flushed and her eyes glassy with the after-effects of alcohol. She had been fidgeting ever since she came through the door. She stood, she sat, she stood, and then she sat again.
‘Relax. Why don’t we sleep on it and we’ll figure something out in the morning,’ Li Mazi said.
Sijiang had caught the term ‘slammer’ earlier in the day and was worried that they were in real trouble. She couldn’t have been more startled if she’d heard the word ‘brothel’.
‘Something on your mind, Sijiang?’ Xiaohong asked.
‘I… I,’ stammered Sijiang, her watery eyes shot back and forth between Xiaohong and Li Mazi. She grew even redder.
‘Never mind. Don’t worry,’ said Xiaohong. ‘You stay here for a couple more days, and I’ll go out and see what I can do. If I don’t come back, then you’ll know something’s happened. We didn’t travel all this way just to run into a dead end now. If we find that we really have reached the end of the line here, then I guess we’ll just say we’ve had our fun, and it’s run its course.’ Xiaohong was determined to finish what she had begun.
‘But Xiaohong, you don’t understand. That Mr Zhuang, he kept grabbing my hand. I barely managed to fend him off.’
‘OK, so let him feel you up, then. Who knows, maybe if he gets off on it, he’ll help us with our problem after all. It’s not like you’re a virgin. Surely your hand’s seen worse action than that.’
‘Xiaohong, I… I am a virgin.’
‘What the hell? That night, didn’t you say…?’
‘I lied. I was afraid you’d laugh at me, being so green at this age.’
Xiaohong replied, ‘Sijiang, that’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.’
‘Honghong, I’m thinking I’ll get the mayor’s help with our temporary residence cards,’ Sijiang finally blurted out the idea she’d been mulling over.
‘Huh? You? Do it with that fat pig? You might as well do Li Mazi!’
Li Mazi spluttered, surprised and a little hurt. Impulsively, he said, ‘Xiaohong, why don’t you play the hooker then? I’m sure you could bring in a whole truckload of such ‘fat pigs’!’
The argument continued heatedly, but no resolution was found. Xiaohong had spoken thoughtlessly and didn’t realise she had hit a nerve with the other two. Li Mazi’s kindness towards Li Sijiang had planted a seed of affection inside her, and she’d quietly nurtured it ever since.
‘There’s no bridge that can’t be crossed.’ And with that, Xiaohong flopped onto the bed, bum out and face to the wall, and fell straight to sleep. Sijiang looked at Li Mazi. Li Mazi looked at Sijiang. Then they both looked at the empty half of the bed beside them. Sijiang’s apple-shaped face turned pink from ear to ear, and then proceeded to run thr
ough all the shades of red. The thoughts that raced through her mind were evident in the change from one hue to another. Li Mazi could see that she was touched by his attentions, but he felt things were moving a little too fast. He didn’t grab her hand and pull her to the bed, feeling such a crass act would be incompatible with the fondness shared between them. Li Mazi had originally brought the two girls with him in order to please Mr Zhuang, thinking that if one of them became his boss’s little secret, his own position would be secure, at least for a time. He had a further plan, which involved him starting at Mr Zhuang’s toy factory, where he would become the manager of a couple of hundred female employees. He’d be perfect for the job, he thought, keeping tabs on all those beautiful girls. He’d be the envy of everyone he knew. He had hand-picked Xiaohong upon seeing her coquettish charms, never suspecting she had such a hot-blooded, independent streak in her. She was quite a handful, and Sijiang was clearly under her thumb. He was sure the loss of Sijiang’s virginity would have to get Xiaohong’s stamp of approval before it could get her own thumbs up.
So, dare he make a move? It’d be a whole lot easier when the pair had both run out of money. Problem was he had no idea how much money Xiaohong had brought with her. He picked up the tattered magazine and flipped through the pages. Sijiang lounged on the bed, her posture clearly indicating that she was not really asleep. There was no evidence of that lack of self-consciousness that marks the face of one in a deep slumber. She was vigilant – looking not the least bit like the girl who had slept like the dead on the train just a few days earlier.
Xiaohong woke up in the middle of the night, noting that the gap beside her had grown. She felt movement under the quilt, eager and intense. She immediately knew what was up. Shit! That Li Mazi! Give him the slightest advantage and here he starts in on Sijiang. It’s always the innocent-looking ones you have to worry most about. She felt torn between fury and discomfort. Needing to pee, she wanted to head to the washroom. On the other hand, she didn’t dare move until all was quiet. Finally she turned, heaving her two mounds out of the bed. After relieving herself, she returned to the bed. She didn’t sleep a wink for the rest of the night.