Immediately after the divorce, I’d told my mother that Zhao Yue was just temporarily taking care of my share of these possessions.
‘Whether now or later, it’s still mine,’ I said.
After this recent incident though, she pressed me to settle things.
‘If you’re embarrassed to talk to her about it, then I will,’ she said.
I was suddenly tired of this and fixed my mother with a glare. ‘Don’t stir, OK? It’s hardly very much.’
My throat choked up.
‘What money does Zhao Yue have?’
Zhao Yue was hard up all through university. At that time my monthly living expenses were around 400 yuan, while she just had 150. With the university’s monthly subsidy of 49 yuan 5 mao, she just about scraped by. Later, she told me sadly that when she saw her classmates buying clothes she would hide inside her mosquito net. When I heard this I felt very sorry for her. At the end of our final year of university, I spent 300 yuan on a grey suit for her. Zhao Yue was so moved that she gripped my hand hard. It was springtime. The oriental cherry tree was in full bloom, and Zhao Yue and I embraced in the grove behind the campus auditorium, full of confidence about life. But seven years later that grey suit was rags, just like the passionate feelings we’d once shared.
My mother set me up with a total of four dates. Each had very distinct peculiarities. The first had the figure of a weight-lifter. I drank tea with her for a while, then made the excuse that something had come up at work. My mother asked how it went.
‘There’s no way I could ever fight with her,’ I explained. ‘Just imagine your son getting beaten up every day.’
The second was better-looking, but caked in make-up. Her hair was like a helmet. Straightaway she asked whether I had a house, or a car. I replied that I had a bike and I’d had to borrow money to buy it, and her face froze over.
Each time I went for one of these ‘interviews’, my mother urged me to describe myself as ‘briefly married’. The implication was that my marriage hadn’t made any lasting impression on me. I wondered gloomily what the final significance of those three years would turn out to be: a joke, a game, or a wound that would never heal? After going through all that, would I ever dare to go back for a second try?
Li Liang said that marriage and prostitution were the same thing, the only difference being that one was wholesale and the other was retail. That made me feel even more depressed.
That night at Zero Point the three of us consumed twentythree bottles of San Miguel beer. Some time after midnight Li Liang summoned this heart-stoppingly beautiful young girl who was studying tourism. Li Liang embraced her openly.
‘She’s very uninhibited’ he said. ‘Life is for happiness, you don’t have to get hung-up on principles.’ He kissed her face. ‘Am I right?’
The girl nodded shyly.
Glass in hand, I looked at the dance floor’s sparkling lights. A long-haired, handsome dude was crooning softly:
Come closer,
This bunch of flowers is fading.
Come closer,
My eyes are full of tears.
I considered my friend Li Liang. His eyes shone as brightly as ten years ago, but his face now had a coldness to it. Leaning back drunkenly in my chair, I asked myself: where is the future we hoped for?
If you study things too sharply.,
They’ll burn your eyes.
— Li Liang, ‘Paradise’.
Li Liang and Ye Mei were definitely splitting up. As he told me about it, he fixed me with a contemptuous stare.
Bighead Wang said hurriedly, ‘Drink, drink. Tonight no one is allowed to talk about anything bad. I won’t allow it.’
I’d always dismissed Bighead as a non-entity. The strange thing was though, in all these years nothing bad had ever really happened to him. He’d never taken a wrong turn in life. Aside from pure luck, he must possess some life wisdom.
Li Liang said he was Monkey King dressed up as Pig. Bighead Wang looked embarrassed by this.
‘I’m not like you,’ he said, ‘I don’t set my sights too high. As long as I have something to drink during the day and someone to grope at night then I’m happy.’
I’d heard that he was pushing hard for another promotion to procurement manager — a famously lucrative post.
Li Liang said enviously, ‘It’s easier for you to make money than me. There’s no risk and you don’t even have to use your brain.’
Bighead Wang pretended to be offended. ‘I’m a public servant. It doesn’t matter what hospitality I accept, but I daren’t go on the take.’
I interrupted him bad-temperedly. ‘Well, that 300,000 you used to buy a house didn’t fall from heaven.’
Li Liang backed me up. ‘Are you saying the five-grain wine in your house was just pissed out by you?’
After delivering his punishment that night at the Kaisa Hotel, Li Liang had smiled at me. In the dim lamplight I couldn’t be sure what kind of smile it was. I’d called him numerous times since then, wanting to ask for his forgiveness, implore his pardon. I thought there were very few important things in this world, one of which was Li Liang’s friendship. But each time he hung up without listening to me.
On my desk was a photo of our dormitory gang: Li Liang had his arm around my shoulder, and I was pinching Bighead Wang’s cheek. Chen Chao stood to the side. Big Brother, who then had a bull-like physique but was now dead, was savouring a cigarette. Eight years on I could still hear Li Liang’s voice saying, ‘From now on we should share our joys and sorrows, face difficulties together.’
Big Brother chipped in: ‘Screw girls together.’
Everyone laughed.
Eight years on… I stared at the photo with something like awe. I’d never believed in fate, but at that moment I found myself wondering who had changed the youthful lives in that photo. Who was it who had divided us onto the two banks of life and death? Or, to put it another way — seeing as my crotch still slightly ached — who’d let Li Liang kick me in the balls?
I often asked myself, if Li Liang didn’t have so much money would I respect him so much? Really, I didn’t have a clue.
That evening we drank too much. Hardly able to stand, I staggered to the restroom, where I clung to the basin like a beached fish struggling for its last gasp of water. The attendant put a hot towel on my neck and massaged my shoulders. Suddenly I remembered the days when I’d lie on the sofa and let Zhao Yue pull my ears.
Back at the table I defiantly downed another bottle, then stood up and declared that I wanted to go and see Zhao Yue. Bighead Wang pushed me down into the chair. He said: ‘Fuck you, have a little sense, OK.’
My lips trembled and the alcohol rushed to my head again. I felt humiliated. Li Liang was just as drunk as I was. He sat there with a stupid smile on his face, but then seeing the expression on mine he laughed so much that he fell to the floor. His alluring companion made an effort to help him up, but he pushed her away.
‘Go, go with my older brother,’ he said. ‘He’s in your care.’
The girl looked hurt and Li Liang grinned. Then he came out with something even more poisonous.
‘Don’t play the innocent. If I gave you 10,000, are you saying you wouldn’t do it?’
The music that night at Zero Point was loud, the lights blinding. On the second floor, one man was crying — Chen Zhong. Another laughed — his rival in love, his friend. Outside, Chengdu was like a crematorium: once in a while there were flickers of starlight, the phosphorescence of those smiling and crying people slowly moving towards the vault of death, like ants on their way to the grave.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The big boss of our company fancied himself as a poet. Every year on 8 July they held a Company Day Festival, and a few idiots stood on the podium reading his doggerel with great emotion. All that ‘Ah! Great River: ah! Yellow River’ shit — enough to make people cringe. When I saw the volume of Festival Poems that Head Office circulated each year, I couldn’t help laughing. Former G
eneral Manager Sun took me to task for this: ‘Chen Zhong you should watch your attitude. After all, when all is said and done he pays your bills. How about showing a little more respect?’
I’d adopted an expression of deep solemnity, as if I was at a funeral.
This particular boss was widely regarded as brilliant. Company managers at all levels professed admiration for him. One edition of the Festival Poems included a photo of the guy. He seemed about the same age as me, with piercing eyes. Some calligraphy hung in his office: Raising a person is like raising an eagle. This meant that a boss must keep staff at the right level of hunger. If an eagle was too well fed, then it would fly away. If starved, then it might bite its owner. I didn’t know how other colleagues felt about our company’s HR policy, but I was certainly disappointed to read this.
On Monday afternoon I received a call from the big boss’s secretary at Head Office. She said the big boss was coming to Chengdu on Wednesday and had scheduled one hour to talk to me. I was to go to the Holiday Inn to pay my respects. When I heard this, I was excited; it seemed I hadn’t written that report on my work for nothing.
As soon as I’d finished talking to the big boss’s secretary, Boss Liu from the HR department called my mobile. He advised me to watch details such as wearing a tie, and not eating onion, garlic or smelly tofu beforehand. I thanked him for his kindness and couldn’t help feel that my luck had changed; it was as if the immortals were protecting me.
Boss Liu revealed that after the big boss had finished reading my work report, he’d written the following comment: A person of ability is hard to come by, we should strengthen his wings. Apparently this legendary boss wasn’t so dumb after all.
During my conversation with Boss Liu, Fatty Dong was eavesdropping outside my door. When I looked through the glazed door panel and saw his fat sillhouette wriggling around, I bared my teeth: ‘Die, Fatty. The time for your reckoning will soon be here.’
Boss Liu from HR was a legend in our company, a survivor who’d been promoted and demoted several times. Once he’d been demoted from director of sales to a clerk with a monthly basic salary of just 90 yuan, but he survived it. Trial by adversity was our company culture: knock someone down, then see what they were made of. If they could bounce back, they were talented, but if they sank quickly, they were a waste of space.
Fatty Dong was still being watched closely by his ugly wife. She would check up on him a couple of times a day, then after work he apparently had to report home at a given hour; he was forbidden to take part in any business entertainment.
A few days before, Old Lai, a client from Chongqing, had come to Chengdu on a business trip. Old Lai was one of our biggest clients and his business was worth more than 10 million a year. Although he said his visit to Chengdu was a business trip, it was actually just an excuse for a pleasure cruise of eating, drinking, women and music. As he put it, he wanted to ‘experience some local culture’. I gave him the use of a company car, arranged for him to stay at the Jinjiang Hotel and escorted him twice to eat at the Gingko and Peony Pavilion. Each time cost more than 3,000 yuan, but it could all be claimed back on expenses.
On the final night, Old Lai returned the hospitality and said that I should invite Boss Dong as well. When I gave Fatty a call, he wheezed that his wife wouldn’t let him, This amused the client and he said Fatty Dong was a potato head. I wasn’t quite sure what he meant by that.
Fatty Dong was very likely still suffering physical retribution for his misdemeanours. The previous few days had been unbearably hot, but he continued to wear long-sleeved shirts and he moved very gingerly. I quipped to Zhou Weidong: ‘Behind every fat face is a bloody arse.’ He laughed so much his false tooth almost fell out.
On the first of June, Children’s Day, the company arranged for all the workers in the company to go to One Hundred Flowers Park to play mahjong. Zhou Weidong and I sat at the same table. We’d just started playing when I got a full flush. In the moment of relative hush which followed my exultant cheer, I heard Fatty Dong’s voice at the next table: ‘Damn it, reporting me to the police and telling my wife. That’s too poisonous.’
I looked across and saw both him and Liu Three staring at me murderously.
Once things had quietened down after the prostitute incident, Fatty Dong started to look for opportunities to take a shot at me. The previous Friday, just before clock-off time, the accountant furtively slipped me a report. She said that Fatty Dong had made her write it, and they’d already faxed it to Head Office’s finance department.
I looked at the report and started sweating. Bloody Fatty Dong had astutely found the most sensitive spot to stick in the knife: the subject of the report was ‘Concerning Chen Zhong’s Excessive Debt Problem Settlement Method’. One of its headings was: Legal Recourse. I roundly cursed all his family members, young and old. Suddenly there were stormclouds overhead again and my insides were burning.
The big boss looked rather coquettish in a checked open-necked shirt. He wore slippers as he paced the room, his hands held behind his back. There was a faint scent of perfume on this guy and I suspected he might have recently broken some of the People’s Republic of China’s laws.
The boss quizzed me about the current market situation, the company’s management problems and Fatty Dong’s leadership qualities. Having prepared thoroughly for this, I talked non-stop for over an hour. The boss listened and occasionally interjected a few comments. At the end of the interview, he asked me: ‘Are you willing to work at Head Office?’
I realised that if I went to Head Office, that might be the final end for Zhao Yue and me.
The 15th of July was the one-month anniversary of our divorce. I hurried straight back to the apartment after work and opened the door with the key that I’d secretly kept. I crept in furtively: Zhao Yue wasn’t back from work yet, but the room was full of familiar things. The gleaming tiles illuminated my sallow face. Her underwear was drying on the balcony; when I held it up to my nose and sniffed, it had a faint but familiar fragrance. There was a half-eaten fish in the fridge. I used my fingers to pick off a piece but found it slightly bland. Whenever I ate Zhao Yue’s food, I had to add some sauce or vinegar, and I’d often lectured her with the cautionary tale of the white feather girl. ‘If you don’t eat enough salt your pubes will turn white,’ I’d tell her, and then she’d hit me.
I sat on the sofa and browsed a photo album. All the pictures with me in them had been removed; there were just a few left of Zhao Yue by herself. My hands trembled with a strange reverence as I hugged the pillow I’d once slept on. By half seven, Zhao Yue still hadn’t returned. I called and reminded her that today was the anniversary of our divorce.
‘I’ll treat you to dinner,’ I said.
She said she was eating right now. ‘Join me,’ she said. ‘I’ll introduce you to a friend.’
‘Is it your boyfriend?’ I asked.
She laughed, but wouldn’t deny it.
My temper flared, and I said, ‘Where are you? I’ll come at once.’
They were at that newly opened Chongqing Hotpot Restaurant at Nijia Bridge; there was a hubbub of voices inside, and the heat and fumes were overwhelming. Two guys at the next table had their sleeves rolled up exposing fatty flesh like a pig’s arse.
Zhao Yue did the introductions: ‘Yang Tao, Chen Zhong.’
Her friend had a slightly superior expression. I gave the guy a sly look; on such a hot day he was still wearing a tie. Frowning, I said to Zhao Yue, ‘Why did you choose a lousy place like this? It’s stifling.’
The guy’s neck stiffened.
Zhao Yue poured me a glass of wine. ‘Mind your own business,’ she said. ‘This was my choice.’
Feeling depressed, I took a swig from my glass. After a while, I said to Yang Tao, ‘Do you have a business card?’
I was thinking that if he turned out to be the guy on the telephone, I would have to kill him.
He acted all prickly, saying that he never used business cards. ‘If you
want to remember someone’s name, you don’t need a card. If you don’t want to remember, then it doesn’t make any difference.’
I said to Zhao Yue, ‘Don’t you think the food here is a bit peppery?’ And then I spat on the floor.
Yang Tao’s face froze.
He pulled out a Red Pagoda cigarette and I produced a Marlboro. He wore a domestic Peng brand shirt, I wore Hugo Boss. His phone was the Motorola 7689, mine was the V8088+. At his side was a darkish canvas bag. Mine was a genuine Dunhill, which even discounted had cost more than 3,000 yuan. From where I sat, the top of his head was just on my line of sight, so I estimated he must be at least three inches shorter than me. After I’d finished analysing him, my anger became even more intense.
I presented Zhao Yue with a caring expression and asked her how she’d been recently.
She said, ‘The same as always, how else?’
I bragged that I was about to be promoted to CEO. ‘You won’t need to ride a bicycle,’ I told her. ‘I’ll pick you up every day in my Honda Accord.’
Zhao Yue seemed very happy. ‘I just knew you’d be a success,’ she said.
‘Come on. Cheers.’
She leaned over and we clinked glasses. Meanwhile Yang Tao appeared to be fixated on the goose intestines in the hotpot. The chopsticks in his hand trembled violently.
Zhao Yue said that Yang Tao was the CEO of some obscure company or other. A ‘small boss’.
I said, ‘I’ve met many bosses, but never such a “small boss” before.’ She gave me a hard look. ‘That’s a funny way to talk.’
I quickly apologised.
‘Wife, forgive me. From now on I will wash the dishes every day.’
I’d often said these words to her after an argument. Zhao Yue laughed but then made a serious face and told me: ‘Who’s your wife? Watch what you’re saying.’
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