I hung up feeling great. On second thoughts, however, I decided not to let Fatty Dong off so cheaply. The fine for visiting a prostitute was a few thousand yuan, which was nothing to him. I needed to be more ruthless: if you don’t beat a snake to death you’ll be bitten by it. After some thought, I decided to call my brother-in-law. He edited the gossip section of a tabloid newspaper and every day he published ridiculous news about things like a double-headed snake found somewhere or a rooster that had just laid a double-yolk egg. I called him Na Wuo, after a loveable idiot character in a sitcom played by actor Feng Gong. My brother-in-law was easy-going and would usually smile at my banter, saying, ‘You’re always criticising me, but you never give me any stories.’
My brother-in-law had probably been asleep and sounded irritable when he answered the phone. I got straight to the point.
‘I’ve got a scoop for you. A drug dealer out whoring and the cops turning out in force to arrest him.’
He sounded interested and so I gave him the details and he said he’d send a reporter to investigate the story.
‘You’ll have to hurry,’ I said, ‘or the guy’ll be nabbed by the cops.’
He said ‘OK’.
Just as he was about to hang up, I muttered hesitantly, ‘Brother-in-law …’
‘What?’ he said.
I thought for a moment, then decided to go for it.
‘You have to publish this guy’s photo in the paper.’
There was a moment’s silence. ‘Is he your enemy?’ he asked.
‘Yeah. And if you don’t help me, then I’m done for.’
After the call with my brother-in-law, I hailed a taxi on the street and said to the driver, ‘Take me to Chengdu.’
He asked how much I’d pay. I told him 200 yuan then got into the car. After that I made an anonymous phone call to Fatty Dong’s home number.
‘Dong Guang is whoring in Longtan,’ I told his wife.
CHAPTER TWELVE
A few years ago, Zhao Yue and I had gone to Emei Mountain12 where we came across a stinky fortune-telling Taoist at Fuhu Temple. The guy smelt as if he’d just crawled out of a sewer. Zhao Yue was usually a big fan of sanitation, but that day she insisted we should let him tell our fortune. After talking some bullshit he told us that we would break up because we’d been enemies in a previous life. Zhao Yue appeared to believe him and turned pale, asking if there was any way we could avoid this fate. As he rubbed his greasy grey goatee, there was an evil look in his eyes. He said he’d help us if we paid him 200 yuan and against my strong opposition Zhao Yue handed over 200 yuan from her bag. That was half her basic monthly salary and I was furious. The Taoist gave her a black piss-pot-like jar, saying it was a saint’s jar that could drive away ghosts and repel demons. Sneering, I asked if it had once contained the piss of Laozi, creator of the world. My blasphemy earned me a kick from Zhao Yue.
On our way back to Chengdu Zhao Yue acquired a new nickname from me: Pisspot Master. I joked that she belonged to the third generation of the Emei school but she stared tearfully out the window. When I asked what was wrong, she said something that moved me deeply.
‘It doesn’t matter if the jar has magic powers or not, Chen Zhong. You know that what I want isn’t this jar but your heart.’
I patted her hand and reassured her. ‘Don’t worry, my heart is in this jar.’
For about a year after that she bowed and muttered to that pot every two weeks. I mocked her superstition and got glares and punches in reply. Finally I couldn’t put up with it any longer and ‘accidentally’ dropped the jar. Zhao Yue cried and claimed I’d broken it on purpose. From then on, she brought it up every time we quarrelled.
As I climbed our stairwell that night, I was thinking that even if that jar hadn’t been broken, there was no way for any of us to avoid fate. Certainly, when it came to the crunch moments, fate seldom listened to me. This situation reminded me of ‘Zhao’s Family Rules’, drawn up by Zhao Yue shortly after we got married, namely: ‘Tiny things can’t be decided by Zhao Yue, while big things can’t be decided by Chen Zhong.’
According to Zhao Yue’s guidelines, only the first three reports on the evening national news counted as ‘big things’. In those early days she’d read out her rules every night at bedtime, and then jump into my arms, laughing just like a kid. When did we forget those rules? At what point had our life together lost its hope and laughter?
The TV was on but the screen was a snowstorm and a harsh sound came out of the speakers. I was irritated: why hadn’t she turned the TV off? I did a tour of the whole apartment and found the lights on in every room but nobody there. Where was she?
The balcony door was wide open and I shivered as I felt the cold wind from outside. Looking down, I saw only the endless night. All the hairs on my body stood on end at a suddent thought: had Zhao Yue jumped?
In our last year of university, there’d been an aura of death hanging over our group. First Zhang Jun from Qiqihaer who lived in the dorm opposite died of lymph cancer. When his girlfriend came to collect his stuff she cried until she collapsed. Then, one beautiful spring night, Qi Yan, a talented girl, jumped from the sixteenth floor of the teaching building. Qi Yan was idolised by most of the guys in our dorm. She looked like the film star Rosamund Kwan and was good at singing, playing the piano and hosting parties. It was a true pleasure dancing with her. The day before her body smashed bloodily to the ground, she sat with us in the canteen, picking the slices of greasy fatty meat from her meal and dumping them on the table. When I said it was a waste, Qi Yan glared at me and said, ‘If you want to eat them, just take them.’
There was a retort on my lips, but Zhao Yue stepped heavily on my foot so I shut up at once. The next day Qi Yan killed herself: she was three months pregnant, it was said.
During our last month at university, we all felt that our lives were like dreams. Alcohol, mahjong or tears — the empty days flashed by. Li Liang wrote a poem:
You are atoms
Your smile illuminating dawn’s feast
What God owes you
is recorded
What you owe God
must be paid back soon.
I understood that somehow we’d started to believe that nothing in the rest of our lives mattered. The main task of life was to be happy. God would break that jar at the moment of truth, and we would not care if the final scene was happy or sad.
Now I was worried. When I called Zhao Yue’s cellphone, it rang forlornly beside her pillow. Her bag was there too, and her lipstick lay on the dresser, reminding me of her red lips that had kissed me many times. It started drizzling outside and I felt like I had tumbled into an abyss.
Finally I took a torch downstairs, fully prepared to find her corpse. As I passed the apartment building entrance, I sensed something skulking in the dark. My scalp was prickling, but I mustered up the courage to check it out. In the circle of light from my torch, my Zhao Yue, sat propped against the wall. Her eyes swum with tears and there was a bottle of spirits beside her.
I dropped the electric torch and hugged her. I thought you’d died!
Zhao Yue wept; she had a strong alcoholic aroma. The torch rolled crazily on the ground, illluminating raindrops.
I took Zhao Yue upstairs and washed her hands and feet, put a hot towel on her forehead, then watched her fall deep into sleep. The rain stopped and there was a sweet smell of flowers. The smell was fucking good, I thought. Dawn was about to break, and on this sleepless morning I watched the sky gradually turn pale. Zhao Yue still loved me; everything was cool.
It was the first of May — the day my best friend got married; the day I went whoring; the day my enemy’s luck ran out. It was the day my wife got drunk and cried, the day I thought she’d killed herself. Now, at dawn, a white fog hung over the city, making it look surreal.
I boiled some porridge and smoked a cigarette, smirking.
But you never know what’s going to happen next. At 7:50 a.m. my mother called and said, Come
home now. Your father is dying.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Whenever I returned to Chengdu during my student days, Father met me at the railway station. He wasn’t one for talking much. When he saw me he’d just smile and say, ‘How did you let your hair get so long? It’s a mess.’
I protested that I wasn’t a child who couldn’t find his way home, and he didn’t have to pick me up at all. The real reason I hated him coming was that he always used my nickname, Baby Rabbit, in front of Li Liang and others. This was excrutiatingly embarrassing. Once, after we’d just dropped off Li Liang, I howled at my father, ‘Baby Rabbit! Remember, my name is Chen Zhong. Chen Zhong!’
He stared at me with a hurt and bemused expression, then lowered his head and didn’t say anything.
My father had a deformed right foot, which manifested itself as a limp while walking. This was another reason why I never wanted him to visit me at the university. In my second year, he went to the coastal resort of Beidaihe to convalesce and on his way through, he stopped by our campus. He showed up just as I’d gone to bed after playing mahjong right through the night. As soon as I saw him I felt aggrieved, fearing that yet again he’d embarrass me. Sure enough when my father came in he acted up, handing round cigarettes, and calling Bighead Wang ‘comrade’. I was so mortified that I almost forcibly dragged him away, and I didn’t even invite him to stay for a meal. My father left feeling emotionally bruised, and when he got to Beidaihe he called to remind me to ‘live a more regular life’.
Lurking in the corridor at the hospital, I felt sad as I thought of my father back then waiting for me at the train station. Zhao Yue was quietly comforting my mother. The old woman had been crying since morning, when she’d found my father collapsed in the bathroom. All the way to the hospital she’d sobbed until her eyes were red. I suddenly wondered whether, when it came down to it, there would be anyone to cry for me in the way my mother was for my father.
My brother-in-law called. He said that he and my sister were on their way. He added: ‘I’ve done what you asked me to do. Buy a paper.’
I bought one from the kiosk downstairs. Fatty Dong looked ridiculous in the newspaper photograph. His mouth was half open and his hands were raised high. He looked like a defeated nationalist general who’d decided to go over to the other side. The only disappointment was that his eyes were blocked out so you couldn’t clearly see his expression. My brother-in-law had gone to town, putting the story on the front page under the headline: Immoral Couple Apprehended, Huge Commotion. I read the colourful article right through. It said that once Fatty Dong realised there was something wrong he’d leapt from the second-floor window in a vain attempt to get away and was seized at once by cops waiting in ambush. Below the article was a 600-word editorial written by my brother-in-law with the headline A Technical Analysis of Whoring. It said: Given the current policy of cracking down on prostitution those who won’t give it up had better practise kung fu. Otherwise it will be hard for them to avoid capture.
I was esctatic that Fatty Dong’s day of reckoning had come. But when I went back to the emergency room and saw my mother crying, my pain returned.
My mother had given birth to two sons but my elder brother died of pulmonary tuberculosis at the age of three. When I arrived she was afraid that I would fail to reach manhood too. Her solution was to give me a childhood name that wouldn’t attract fate’s attention: Baby Rabbit. She also fed me every kind of pill. I reckoned that if my stomach had had the ability to store them, by now I’d have more than enough to open a drug store. My fourth grade primary school teachers were rather alarmed by an essay I wrote entitled ‘A Small Matter’ which related an incident in which my mother gave me an injection in my butt without even knowing what was wrong with me.
Zhao Yue was comforting my mother in a soft voice while holding my hand. Warmth passed from her smooth, warm skin into my hand, and from there to my heart.
A pretty nurse approached and asked whether we were Chen Zhenyuan’s family. Standing up nervously, I asked how my father was. She smiled and said, ‘Don’t worry, there’s nothing seriously wrong with your father. You can go and complete the hospital registration process.’
I was overjoyed and couldn’t help telling my mother: I knew the old man would be okay. It was just you making a big fuss.
The old lady slowly smiled, as if she was just waking from a dream.
There was a problem: I wasn’t carrying enough cash. I’d set out with 1,200 yuan on me, and after the taxi, registration and emergency treatment fees we were 500 yuan short. Zhao Yue searched her pockets but only found 300, and so I called Li Liang on his mobile.
‘If I may disturb the groom for a moment, I’d like to borrow some money from you,’ I told him.
A while later Li Liang arrived, appearing slightly breathless and carrying all manner of health food packages for my dad. When we’d completed the hospital registration formalities, Li Liang and I went outside for a smoke. Fixing me with a serious look, he said he’d like to apologise on Ye Mei’s behalf for the wine-throwing episode at the wedding yesterday.
‘You soft bastard, there’s no need to say that,’ I replied. ‘We’re friends, aren’t we?’
Deep down though, I was afraid that what had happened between Ye Mei and myself would be impossible to keep hidden from him. I felt ashamed.
At university, our chauvinistic dormitory gang frequently discussed one question: what would we do if we discovered after marriage that our wives weren’t virgins?
Bighead Wang was the most militant. He maintained that second-hand goods were only fit to be used once; after that they should be thrown out. But I was sceptical because at the time of their marriage Wang’s wife, whose name was Zhang Lan Lan, had well-developed breasts and an air of sexual experience. Bighead had always kept quiet on the subject.
For his part, Li Liang said he didn’t care about a woman’s hymen. Even if she comes from a whorehouse I can accept her.
They asked me for my opinion and unexpectedly it seemed they had touched a nerve. ‘You farts, let me sleep,’ I said and snapped off the light. Lying under the sheets I felt wronged, as I thought about Zhao Yue’s background and suspected I’d suffered a big loss. How naive and confused I was.
I sensed that Li Liang was hard on the outside but vulnerable inside. Even though he said he wouldn’t care if his wife had slept around, I believed he definitely would. When he was dating Mount Tai, he went crazy when Mount Tai’s ex-boyfriend called her. On hearing his voice her eyes had started to well with tears. Li Liang told me about it outside the laundry one day and his expression was unusually savage. My impression was that if Li Liang had martial arts skills, that guy would definitely have been bleeding from every orifice.
I felt bad about what had happened in Leshan. Thinking about it even made me start to hate myself a little. The restaurant-owner’s wife I’d slept with a few times once told me, ‘Your brain answers to your dick.’ She had me about right. Once Ye Mei removed her trousers, I didn’t twice about her being Li Liang’s fiancée. I just gazed longingly at her snowy white soft body.
After his operation Father felt low. We took it in turns to keep him company at the hospital, and the May holiday slipped by without us realising. The old man wasn’t talkative, but I knew that in his reticent smile was a strength I could rely on
One night as I was leaving the hospital, I saw Zhou Yan from work walk past with a handsome guy on her arm. They were chatting away happily. I called her name and she turned her head and asked coldly what I wanted. I said I was sorry for what had happened with Fatty Dong and that it hadn’t been deliberate. The handsome guy’s ears pricked up, like a donkey that’s been flogged.
Zhou Yan really seemed to hate me. ‘It doesn’t matter whether it was intentional or not,’ she said. ‘Anyway, I now know what a dickhead you are.’ And she walked away.
I ran after her. ‘Zhou Yan, Zhou Yan, let me explain.’
Her donkey boyfriend turned and shoved me: ‘
What do you want?’
Although angry, I stopped chasing them. I felt a real sense of loss and thought, if this had happened a few years ago, I would have given him a good beating. I was more mature now!
Ah, back in the old days, I was pretty hard. There was a guy in our courtyard called Lang Four, and he was the meanest fighter around. During my second-grade year he and two other guys beat this vegetable stall vendor to death and then fled to the north-east. When he returned three years later his infamy spread even further. It was said that he’d slept with every attractive girl in our neighbourhood. My adolescent self admired him immensely. I sought every opportunity to hang out with him at his home or on the street, feeling very tough.
Once, two hooligans were hassling some female classmates on the way to school. When I tried to defend the girls I found the guys attacking them were much stronger than me so I ran to find Fourth Brother.
‘Brother, there are some guys bullying me,’ I told him.
Fourth Brother turned up with a kitchen knife. As soon as I saw him, I felt that I was on the winning side, and with a single punch, I hit one of the thugs in the face and drew blood. This story was recounted admiringly by my classmates for some time. From my point of view it didn’t work out as well as I’d hoped though, because one of the girls I’d saved, the one I’d liked, became yet another of Fourth Brother’s conquests. My heart was broken for the first time the day I went over to his place after class and saw her luscious legs spread over his sofa.
Leave Me Alone Page 7