Fourth Brother made amends, however, by arranging a ‘coming of age’ ceremony for me at the end of my second year at high school. He called Pang Yuyan over and said, ‘Little Rabbit is still a boy. Today you can help him become a man.’
Pang Yuyan obligingly stripped. A little while later I came out of the room highly embarrassed and told Fourth Brother, ‘Fuck this — Pang Yuyan has B.O.!’
Today, Lang Four has an internet café on Yinsi Street and a shrewish wife. One day when I dropped by he said, ‘You can go online. I won’t charge you.’
I’d hardly sat down when his wife started making a fuss about it. Her squawking disturbed the whole room. Lang Four looked embarrassed, so I smiled at him and left quickly. I spent a while looking at the bustling scene of New Times Square, where, fourteen years before, there was a vegetable market where this honest and straightforward small-business owner had killed a man.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Our company insisted that ‘virtue resides at the top’. You could be an ass, but so long as you didn’t steal from the company or have a messy personal life you had your chance of becoming a manager. Fatty Dong spouted this nonsense at every opportunity. His belief was that because he had become a boss he was highly virtuous. Shortly before the Mayday holiday, he convened a company meeting, the whole purpose of which was to attack me.
Fatty Dong gave me a condescending look and said, ‘If a person lacks responsibility towards his family, how can we hope he will act responsibly at work?’
I was equally rude. Taking his cue, I said I agreed with Boss Dong’s view but called for consistency. ‘Colleagues should not have different rules for those at the top and those lower down.’
Liu Three looked ready to chip in, but after a savage glare from me he shut up in a hurry.
At work, I already had a reputation for womanising. Once again I had Fatty Dong to thank for this. Last year the deputy chair of the board had come to Chengdu. He’d sought me out and warned me to pay close attention to my lifestyle if I wanted to advance in the company.
‘Be a good, responsible man,’ he said.
I was annoyed. I haven’t seduced your wife or daughter, I thought. Who’s been bad mouthing me?
Naturally it was Fatty Dong who’d prescribed me this bitter medicine. After this incident, I gave up any thoughts of becoming General Manager. My only hope was to get through the next two years without rocking the boat, resolve my debt problem, and then find an opportunity to quit. My dream would be to open a car repair place. Get Li Liang to invest, and then lure master mechanic Li to join me. I was sure we’d make money. Thinking about it made me sad though, because when I was younger my aspirations were much grander. I’d wanted to be a great expert at something, or else a crimeland boss. Now the extent of my ambitions was to be some kind of small business manager. The water level of my life was sinking lower and lower, and it seemed nothing would be as great as I’d hoped it would.
Fatty Dong’s composure at this time was impressive. Whether conducting meetings, talking to colleagues, or processing documents, there was barely a chink in his self-control. When the pre-holiday meeting broke up, however, he tilted his head and watched me slyly for ages, giving me the creeps. This guy wasn’t stupid; he’d have a good idea about who’d set him up.
I couldn’t detect any definite sign that trouble was coming, but I was still quick to set my plans in motion. I’d already faxed Head Office the report about Fatty Dong going whoring and leaping out the window. Boss Dong, stripped of his sanctimonious outer packaging, was more degenerate than me. I was confident that this framer of others wouldn’t be General Manager for much longer. ‘Virtuous people at the top’ — well, he’d said it.
The first day back after the holiday I was constantly busy making calls and signing documents. Liu Three’s treachery didn’t bother me. He wouldn’t be able to usurp me because I had close relations with all our clients.
Our longstanding Neijiang sales agent was holding on to a 4 million advance that he should have returned. Although Liu Three had been working on it for over a month he hadn’t got a damn bit of it back yet. Gloomily he had to come to find me and confess failure.
‘Haven’t you already outgrown me?’ I said. ‘Why don’t you tell Boss Dong? Why come to me?’
Liu’s face was pale but he said, ‘You’re the sales team manager. This is your responsibility.’
I sneered and then picked up the telephone and called the sales agent.
‘Screw you, Wang Yu. If you don’t give back the money be careful I don’t get you chopped.’
Wang Yu derided me in turn. ‘You bastard, I knew you wanted money from me,’ he said.
He said he’d recently taken up with a young bar singer. She was beautiful, sang sweetly and had great sexual technique, especially anal. This guy was a rascal. As soon as there was any serious business at hand, he started filling the sky with diversionary nonsense.
‘Shut up and give us the money,’ I said.
Wang Yu stopped fooling around. ‘I’ll give you the first two million this afternoon, but you’ll have to wait a few days for the rest.’
I looked at Liu Three then deliberately raised my voice. ‘If I don’t see all the money by tomorrow, I’ll turn your son into dog meat dumplings.’
I’d met a girl like Wang Yu’s singer myself, at the Glasshouse bar. Her family name was Zhang, but she used the coquettish stage name Gentle Flower. Before she sang she would warble the following self-introduction: ‘Gentle Flower performs a few songs for you’.
Her voice wasn’t bad though, and she was a natural performer with stage presence, graceful movements and long hair. She had an air of refined classical beauty — full of sex appeal.
At one time I was going to see her show nearly every day. To declare my intentions I sent her a 480 bunch of roses and an 1,888 yuan bottle of Hennessy XO. My approaches had the desired effect and she soon let me have my way with her in the back of the company’s beaten-up old Santana.
Afterwards, I felt as if I’d lost something. I told Li Liang, ‘Once you remove her clothes, this goddess is really just flesh.’
‘You expect too much from life,’ Li Liang replied.
That day Zhou Yan didn’t show up for work, so I had to supervise the car repair business myself. What with ordering new fitting machine parts right through to paying the cleaners’ salaries, I signed a huge pile of papers. Zhou Yan was very efficient at her job. In the past two years I’d rarely had to worry about the car factory. The business had grown steadily, but her salary was still only 2,200 or so, just half of Liu Three’s. I decided to lower disloyal Liu Three’s salary and give Zhou Yan at least 3,000. That day when I saw her with donkey man they seemed close, so I guessed they were in a relationship. To use one of Bighead’s phrases, it was ‘a big pile of cowshit in a vase’. When I thought of Zhou Yan sleeping with that guy, I had this feeling of loss like I’d mislaid my wallet.
The Monday meeting started at 4 pm. I checked my watch constantly, wishing that Fatty Dong was dead. The scandalous news about his arrest was out. I didn’t see how he could have the face now to sit on that platform talking about his dog shit morals. But at the meeting, Boss Dong made a brilliant tactical move: he didn’t talk about his professional ethics or company loyalty. Instead, when he opened his mouth, he criticised himself. He said he’d let himself down, disappointed everyone’s trust in him and caused the Sichuan branch to lose face. Because of this, he’d no wish to continue serving as General Manager.
‘I’ve already handed in my resignation to Head Office,’ he said. ‘I just hope I can continue to serve the company in some lowly capacity.’
He became emotional, crying actual tears, so that those who weren’t familiar with the real situation presumably felt sympathy for him. I smiled coldly, thinking that the guy really knew how to put on a performance. It was a tragic waste that he hadn’t gone for a career in acting.
It was sheer genius. On the one hand he was admitting fault; o
n the other he was demonstrating his devotion to the company. As I studied his fat face, I was torn between exasperation and admiration. Head Office wouldn’t be too hard on him, I guessed. At most they’d impose some kind of symbolic penalty.
When we first started at the company, I’d actually liked Fatty Dong. A chubby guy, he seemed like one of those straightforward, good-natured types. In our first year, we often went drinking together. When he got married I gave him 200 yuan in a red envelope — a serious gift at that time. Our feud didn’t start until he became head of the administration department. Back then I was still an ordinary member of the sales team. After Fatty got promoted he overnight became very grand, speaking with unbearable pomposity. Once, I idly picked up a document on his desk and he acted as if he’d caught a thief, and covered it up saying, ‘This isn’t for your eyes.’ I went off in a huff, resenting his arrogance. After that, he and I never saw eye to eye. Before long I too started to get promoted, from supervisor to manager; for a time I was actually in a position one grade higher than Fatty. Sick with jealousy, Fatty Dong badmouthed me, both openly and behind my back. I was pretty rude as well. During meetings I’d attack by innuendo: hinting at his hypocrisy, the way he had one image in public and another in private. After our first few bouts we each suffered injuries, but the fires of war continued to burn. Now that he was General Manager, they blazed white hot.
After work I visited my father at the hospital. My mother was supporting him as he took a walk around the ward. I admired their relationship and wondered whether, thirty years from now, Zhao Yue and I would be that close.
During the time my dad was in hospital our lives were so busy that Zhao Yue and I didn’t even have time to argue. There was a kind of artificial respect and politeness between us, like you have with a guest. But that telephone call I’d made to Zhao Yue’s lover still cut my heart like a knife; the pain penetrated all our embraces, kisses and kind words. My senior high school physics teacher had introduced me to the concept of entropy, and I thought now that all life was on an inevitable slide towards decay. Everything slowly fragmented and nothing stayed perfect.
I withdrew 2,000 with my card to pay back Li Liang. Actually I’d borrowed at least 10,000 or 20,000 from him at the mahjong table and so paying back this much was just a gesture. However, I was aware that at some critical time in the future, Li Liang might be the only person who could lend me money.
Li Liang was playing mahjong again, Ye Mei sat opposite, and on either side of him were two men I didn’t know. The scene was much the same as that time the month before when I’d gone round. Sometimes life showed its bittersweet nature by taking you full circle. It was as if the last month had been a dream. The CD player was even playing ‘Scarborough Fair’. This time, however, Li Liang was cleaning up at the table.
On seeing me, Ye Mei’s face slowly reddened. I couldn’t tell whether Li Liang had noticed.
When I produced with a flourish the money for Li Liang, he gave me a kick and said, ‘That was a gift to your folks.’
Embarrassed, I put the money back in my pocket. Ye Mei gave me a mean look, and I blushed, wishing a crack in the earth would swallow me up.
Li Liang asked whether I’d heard what had happened to Big Brother. I asked what he meant, and Li Liang covered his tiles and looked at me, before saying slowly, Big Brother was murdered two days ago, in Shenyang… some young thug.’
I just gaped at him.
Our former classmate Big Brother’s real name was Tong Qinwei. He was one metre eighty-five, a true north-easterner. After graduation he returned to his hometown but things didn’t go so well for him there. First he was fired from his job, then he got divorced, and after that he seemed to lose his way. A few years ago, he visited us in Chengdu. As soon as he arrived he started to complain about life, his face full of deeply felt injustice. In the four years since we’d last seen him he’d even got some white hairs and it was painful to look at him. When he left, Li Liang, Bighead and I pooled together to give him 10,000 yuan. Big Brother was so moved by this that his lip started to tremble. Later though, we heard that he went everywhere looking for old classmates to borrow money from; when he got the money, he spent it on women. Another classmate, Chen Chao called especially to warn me: ‘For god’s sake, don’t give him any money. He’s a completely different person these days.’
Big Brother was acknowledged by our crowd to be the one who most valued personal loyalty. If there was ever any fighting to be done, you only had to mention it to him and he’d charge in to protect you. Apart from drinking, his favourite pastime was girls; most of Chen Chao’s sex knowledge had been acquired from Big Brother.
One night in our dorm, Li Liang was reading aloud Shi Ting’s poem ‘Goddess Peak’: The view from a mountain peak for one thousand years can’t compare to crying on a lover’s shoulder for one night.
Big Brother had shaken his head and muttered darkly, ‘No good. If it were me, I’d change it to ‘Wanking for one thousand years can’t compare to one night of rogering.’ From then on we called him the ‘Rogering Monk’.
Li Liang sighed. ‘Now I’m really starting to believe in fate,’ he said. ‘I never thought Big Brother would die this way.’
I didn’t say anything, but I was remembering Big Brother carting me crazily around the campus on a pushbike, telling me: ‘If only a girl would sleep with me, I could devote my whole life to her.’
Eight years later, he was dust.
This thought was mightily depressing. After dinner, Zhao Yue asked me to clean the plates but I pretended not to hear. A clearly upset Zhao Yue went to clean the plates herself.
When I heard the sound of something breaking I snapped, ‘If you don’t want to clean them, just leave them. You don’t need to show your bad mood at every opportunity.’
Zhao Yue laughed frostily. ‘Who’s in a bad mood? From the moment I got home you’ve been cold and distant. If there’s something you’re not happy about why don’t you just say so?’
‘What do I have to be unhappy about?’ I asked her. ‘I don’t have any lover disturbing me at three in the morning.’
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The day Father got out of hospital was the happiest our family had known for months. I drove him home in the company Santana. Mother had prepared a full table of food, and we opened a bottle of bamboo leaf wine that we’d saved for over ten years. My brother-in-law had obtained two cartons of Zhonghua cigarettes as a bribe from a visiting work unit, and he presented one to his father-in-law. The other he gave to me, his wife’s younger brother. Meanwhile, my six-year-old nephew was running wild in the kitchen. It was said that the kid already had a girlfriend at kindergarten, and that his talents in this area exceeded mine. My sister and Zhao Yue were also in the kitchen, preparing a fish; I couldn’t hear what they were talking about.
Over dinner, my sister’s husband told us about a recent suicide case in the suburbs. A laid-off worker called Lou, who ran a small stall in the night market, suffered a random city inspection. Some of his basins and jars were confiscated. Lou and a few of the other traders protested. Hoping to get their goods back, they followed the city inspector’s car a couple of kilometres, but without any success. In a burst of fury Lou threw stones and bricks at the official’s car. What they hadn’t foreseen was that while the official escaped unscathed, a young man passing by received a fatal blow. After running home, the more Lou thought about the situation the more frightened he became. He and his wife cried on each other’s shoulders and he said, ‘Let’s end it all.’ His wife agreed there was really no point in living and the two tearfully fed their child rat poison, then closed the windows and turned on the gas. The whole family was dead.
This story really brought the mood down. My brother-in-law added melodramatically: ‘These are dark times. No one can predict what tomorrow will bring. Everything is false; only money is real.’
As soon as he mentioned money, I felt queasy. Yesterday, at my request the accountant had printed out my de
bts statement. When I took a look at it, my head started spinning. There was a total debt of 280,400 against my name. Most of it was business loans: borrowing 10,000 and returning 6,000, with the remainder accumulating as debt. The accountant had hinted that there was a big audit coming up next month, and that if I didn’t return the money by then I’d suffer disciplinary action. When I heard this, I broke out in a cold sweat. I began to wonder whether the accountant could have got the numbers wrong. I went over it again and again in my mind, but the more I tried to work it out the more confused I became. I couldn’t remember how I’d spent all that money but I guessed that if I hadn’t lost it at the mahjong table, I’d spent it on women. Bighead often said that I only went to work for the sake of the lower half of my body.
After his recent scandal, Fatty Dong was keeping a low profile. Each day he sat quietly in the office, and when walking he no longer deliberately thrust out his stomach. Head Office hadn’t made a decision yet on how to handle the prostitute issue. This was typical of them. No matter how pressing the issue, they still had to have a meeting and discuss all the permutations with frightening inefficiency. Last year the sales department applied for a new computer with a price tag of less than 5,000 yuan. I waited for over two months while the report bounced from desk to desk, eventually collecting around fifteen signatures. I thought that if Fatty Dong’s whoring had resulted in a child, the decision on how to deal with him would have taken forever.
Recently, the jerk seemed to have become friendlier. There was some bowing and scraping, and he even offered me cigarettes a few times. The previous Saturday when I’d gone in to prepare our advance orders for the month, I met him in the lift. He said that once again he’d recommended me to be Chengdu branch General Manager.
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