I smiled, then smirked at Yang Tao, thinking, you just don’t have what it takes to compete with me.
When we’d nearly finished eating, I called the waitress for the bill. Yang Tao at once produced a wad of hundreds from his canvas bag.
‘I’m getting this,’ he said. ‘No discussion, OK.’
I sneered. ‘You don’t need to pull out so much money and shock people. It’s cheap here, right? We can each pay our share.’
Zhao Yue tried to smooth things over, but the guy was finally losing it.
‘Say what you like, I’m a CEO; I’m a bit better off than you two.’
‘I’ve never had much money myself,’ I replied, ‘but each month the value of the goods passing through my hands is around twenty million.’
Despite this satirical joust, I still felt I hadn’t wounded him enough, and so I said: ‘Only assholes try to impress people with money.’
I grabbed his hand to immobilise it, then took 200 yuan from my wallet and gave it to the waitress. Perhaps I used more force than I’d realised. Yang Tao struggled free. ‘You bastard,’ he said.
I took exception to that and kicked him to the ground, where I tried to strangle him with his tie. For good measure, I punched him on the bridge of his nose and said: ‘Do you still want to fuck with me?’
People crowded round. Yang Tao lay on the ground. His bloody nose was the colour of red pepper oil, but his mouth still cursed me. I hadn’t worked off all my anger so I aimed another punch at the left side of his face.
‘Screw you!’
Whenever Zhao Yue witnessed violence, she’d freeze. She reacted that way when that group of hooligans attacked her, and it was the same now as I beat up Yang Tao. She sat there, mouth open but unable to speak. I threw Yang Tao aside with a sickening thud and went to get my bag. I said triumphantly to Zhao Yue, ‘Come on. Let’s go home.’
At this Zhao Yue finally revived. She unfroze her body and bent down to Yang Tao, giving him napkins to wipe his face. As she helped him, she was crying. I was mad with jealousy, furious that I couldn’t rip Yang Tao to pieces.
‘He insulted me first!’ I protested.
Zhao Yue suddenly slapped me hard on the face. I just gaped at her. She stood in the middle of the crowd that had gathered around us, her long hair waving, her lovely eyes full of tears.
‘Get out of here,’ she said. ‘Just fuck off.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Lengjia Temple Middle School hadn’t changed much over the years. The potholed road was lined by short, dilapidated buildings. Exhausted, I slowly made my way up to the school. The night was pitch black, and my mates had gone home. A dim light glimmered at the top of the main building. I was filled with pleasurable melancholy, as if I’d just lost something important but sensed it was still close by. Someone was approaching pushing a bicycle and as it got closer I strangely noticed a big lump of pork tied to it. I leapt aside into a clump of trees to let the bicycle pass.
A sudden powerful force made me lose my balance. Something grabbed my foot and pulled me to the ground. I tried to cry out, but couldn’t. Although I wanted to resist, I couldn’t move even my little finger. My body was powerless, only my eyes could move.
‘Let me go!’ I implored. ‘I haven’t done anything wrong.’
The force dissolved with a blare of sound, then right in front of me I saw a pile of fresh black shit. A dog, half the height of a man, was eyeing my throat hungrily…
‘Rabbit, Rabbit, what’s up?’
My father was battering the bedroom door.
Suddenly I was awake, sweating. My heart was thumping. After I’d composed myself a little, I managed to say, ‘Everything’s fine. I just had a dream. You go back to bed.’
The old man didn’t do what I suggested, but clattered about in his sandals outside my door. Then he said, ‘You were crying very loudly. Is there really nothing wrong?’
Touched by his concern, I opened the door and let him in. We smoked cigarettes together in silence. Outside, dawn was breaking; from far away came the sound of the water-sprinkler car’s bell.
When my father had finished his cigarette, he patted my shoulder and said, ‘Sleep. Don’t let your imagination run away with you. Tomorrow you still have to go to work.’
That first month or so after my divorce, I did hours of overtime almost every day. Not only was I trying to win a promotion, I was deliberately losing myself in work. My approaches to several big companies proved fruitful and we signed a number of contracts. I estimated that this month the repair centre’s service revenues would be up by about twenty per cent. The petrol situation had also taken a turn for the better; our adverts from the previous month had paid off, and sales had almost returned to the same level as the same period the previous year.
My brother-in-law had a friend who worked on the Chengyu expressway and through him I got thirty free advertisement spots. I gave him 2,000 yuan in a red envelope, then got 23,000 from the company — a profit of over 20,000. Suddenly my wallet was full again. With all my achievements, Fatty Dong didn’t dare to fart in my direction; the best he could do was write that report on my debt problem.
One day, Zhou Weidong told me that the office’s Little Wang had created a case file on me. This concerned me a little. I called Boss Liu and honestly admitted my error, saying that I was willing to accept the company’s disciplinary action.
‘It’s good that you have this attitude,’ he said, and told me to keep working hard and not to worry. He promised to talk to the accounts department. A few days later, a ruling on my debt problem came down, suggesting that the Sichuan branch ‘use its discretion’. The ruling proposed two methods of resolution: one was to repay the debt in instalments; the second was to deduct fifty per cent of my salary each month until everything had been repaid. At once I felt the weight of anxiety lift. I grinned and I thought Die, Fatty! Let’s see what tricks you have up your sleeve now.
At the end of July he wanted to promote Liu Three to be deputy sales manager, but I adamantly refused. Secretly I encouraged several of our clients to report that Liu Three had no ability. The odds were stacked against him because I’d cultivated those guys for a long time with drinks and money. They’d do what I asked. Sure enough this tactic proved very effective and after this people paid even less attention to stinking Liu Three. Without my approval, no one would listen to him.
I had this strange sensation that I was going over to the dark side. When I thought back to the fight in the restaurant I was still angry. Because of bloody Yang Tao, Zhao Yue hated me, and had even slapped me in front of a crowd. All those years I’d never once lifted a finger to her, but now she slapped me. That slap on the face had cooled my heart right down. It made me realise that all relationships were essentially the same. What the hell was love between man and wife? What was growing old together? The truth was nothing more than a load of dog shit. Divorce, the end of life? What a joke.
It was Zhao Yue’s birthday, the 26th of July. Each year I bought her a big bunch of roses. This year, however, I could economise. I guessed Zhao Yue wasn’t short of people to buy her flowers, in particular that cheap low-life Yang Tao. When Zhao Yue got his flowers, I imagined she’d have a cheap smile as well, superficial as hell. This image depressed me, and so I gave Bighead Wang a call.
‘Does the station chief have time for a drink?’ I asked.
He blew his police whistle into the phone and came straightaway. He had a lot of power now; all the procurement for the precinct was managed by him. There was a rumour he was considering ordering twenty VW Passats and was asking everywhere about prices.
‘I might be able to help,’ I told him. ‘It just depends if you have the guts.’
This guy loved money more than life. Last time, when I got those government car plates for him, he’d sold them on and made more than 2,000. When he saw me afterwards he didn’t give me anything. Now he said that my proposal would be difficult for him.
‘I’ve only just been promote
d so I should play it straight for a few years.’
‘You bastard!’ I said. ‘Don’t play the bureaucrat with me. After doing this you’ll have at least 10,000 profit. Do we have a deal?’
‘What price?’
I told him he would be happy with it. I had the car business pretty well figured. My sister ran a stall in the Qingyang automobile showroom. Every day she went to work on people’s brains with her sales patter: Want a car or not? Lowest prices in all Chengdu.
‘She knows the trade inside out,’ I told Bighead. ‘How to make money from cars, how to make money from car plates, how to make money from insurance. In the past, when business was good, she’d easily make more than 10,000 profit a month. In the last two years, however, things haven’t been so hot: my sister often moans that selling cars isn’t as good as selling tofu.’
Bighead was interested. ‘Well, what are we waiting for?’ he said. ‘Let’s agree to that. Of course, we won’t let your sister help us for nothing.’
I drained my glass, thinking, You bastard. I just knew you couldn’t resist the sugar-coated bullet. Of course we won’t let her help for nothing. Do you think I’m that model soldier, Lei Feng?
I’d often thought that in many ways Fatty Dong and Bighead Wang could have been brothers. Their physical appearance, way of talking and body language were very similar. What was more, they were both mean. Li Liang said that Bighead had cupboards full of five-grain alcohol at home but he never opened them when we were round. Apparently Bighead’s father had opened a liquor store by the banks of the Funan River, selling top-quality booze and cigarettes. It seemed likely that most of his supply came from Station Chief Wang’s stockpile of corrupt gains.
Li Liang and I agreed however that Bighead had changed for the better in the last few years. If you needed it, he would help with anything — except money. In the time I’d been a manager, I’d helped him get car plates and petrol coupons and got his car fixed, basically all for free. He’d made at least 20 or 30,000 out of this, but he wasn’t at all grateful. Last time we played mahjong at his house, I was cleaned out and asked to borrow a few hundred yuan. He was very grudging.
The bar was buzzing as a group of gorgeous girls squeezed past us. Their fragrant flesh assailed my nostrils but their eyes seemed vacant. They were certainly professionals, but one of them looked a lot like Zhao Yue from behind. I frowningly reflected that right now she was probably enjoying another candlelit dinner, smiling at god knows who. Whoever he was, I longed to kick him. I lit a cigarette, thinking, From now on, I don’t have any ties to anyone. Except for Ma and Pa, my only family is money.
My parents’ hearts had been broken by the calamity I’d suffered. They tried to hide it with angelic smiles whenever they saw me, which made me thoroughly depressed. Secretly I’d rented a place in the Xiyan district, and I planned to move there at the weekend and escape them.
Meanwhile, I’d discovered that my first ever conquest — that girl Pang Yuyan — was now by appearances an uncouth hussy. The previous Tuesday I’d gone to Scholar’s Cap Street to collect a spare part for the repair factory. In the distance, I saw a crowd gathering. A woman was verbally assaulting some guy, describing his mother’s genitalia with a level of detail which made me uncomfortable. When I’d concluded my business and came out again, the fat woman was still cursing the guy, now casting doubt on his parentage, with plenty of colourful imagery about about how his mother had copulated with all kinds of birds and beasts. I thought it was a real waste that this woman had never become a film director. Moving closer, I gave her an appreciative smile and then we were both struck dumb. Ten years suddenly rolled back as I had a vision of her leaning against an electricity pylon eating watermelon seeds with a big bad smile. I saw her lying stark naked on Lang Four’s bed, giving me my first ever physiognomy class step by step. I saw her running away from a beating by her old man; hiding behind the rubbish bins in the backyard.
‘Is it really you?’ I exclaimed.
Pang Yuyan blushed and in the twinkling of an eye she fled through the wall of people and disappeared, just like twenty years ago when dressed in all her finery she’d burst from the room where I’d had my sexual initiation and giggled to Lang Four, ‘Baby Rabbit is really a tender chicken.’ After that she’d ran off embarrassed, leaving me not knowing whether to laugh or cry.
That afternoon, bathed in the bright sunlight of Chengdu, I asked myself bemusedly who it was who had been witness to this key moment of my youth. Was it the slim vivacious girl or this foul-mouthed harridan?
Bighead Wang supposed that I was thinking of Zhao Yue. His face disdainful, he said, ‘How come you’re acting like a young girl? Divorced is divorced. Start looking for someone else!’
‘Fuck off. Just drink and shut up,’ I replied.
Bighead Wang drained his glass in one gulp, then seemed to remember something he wanted to ask me.
‘Did you know that Li Liang…’ he started. But then the girls came squeezing past us again and Bighead Wang immediately stopped talking and stared at them instead. One girl pressed her chest against me as she nudged past, and it was soft with a warm fragrance.
After they’d gone, I said bad-temperedly, ‘Li Liang what? Hurry up and tell me.’
He ordered another beer, then said softly, ‘Did you know that Li Liang is on smack?’
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
In our final term at university, our campus was seized with a fin de siècle craziness. Sweethearts faced with approaching separation smiled like spring flowers or cried like rain. No one was willing to let these final moments slip away as they worked out their final passions on their lovers’ bodies. The woods around our campus were strewn with condoms. Everyone’s directions had been set; the future wound away into the distance; happy expressions concealed our anxiety. Bighead Wang spent all his days sunk in drink, while Big Brother rode his bicycle into town each afternoon to watch porn films.
We neglected Li Liang though. After his third unsuccessful relationship he’d become unusually dejected and had even given up studying. Every day he played mahjong, his hair dishevelled, his face unwashed, squandering his allowance, running up debts. Several times I tried to give him advice, but he was very negative and wouldn’t listen.
‘Fuck it, why can’t you change the subject?’ he’d say.
One night, after lights out, Big Brother was providing his customary blow-by-blow account of the porn movies he’d seen that day. Our minds exploded as he vividly described luscious girls in every kind of position, doing oral, anal, etc. After a while, Chen Chao couldn’t control himself any longer. With a loud cry he leapt from his bed, grabbed a bucket and hurried to the wash room to douse himself in cold water. Two minutes later he was back.
‘Chen Zhong, come quick. Li Liang…’ he called from the doorway.
We were one month from graduation. Qi Yan was already dead; we’d helplessly watched her life drain away. Number Six dorm’s Zhang Jun had long since become dust, the moonlight coldly illuminating his empty bed. As I raced along the long, gloomy corridor, I had a bad feeling about this, and then I found Li Liang slumped against the cistern, not moving. His head lolled on his chest. His toothbrush and soap had fallen to the ground and the tap was still running.
‘Li Liang, what’s up?’ I said.
He didn’t move. Chen Chao checked his breathing, then said with an ashen face, ‘Holy shit! Li Liang is dead.’
I hauled Li Liang up by his hands and feet and started dragging him. I was shitting myself because the body in my arms had no warmth, none. His limbs were rigid, there was no heartbeat and no sign of breathing.
With great difficulty we got him back to the dorm, where we tried to revive him. Big Brother helped me heave Li Liang onto the bed and we looked at each other in panic.
That was the first time. Later, at a small restaurant outside the school, Li Liang passed out again; from that day on I had an intuition that Li Liang would die alone.
I hadn’t been to his house f
or ages. People were hypocrites, I thought: while the illusion was convenient they could be friends, but once reality surfaced they would fight tooth and claw. ‘Undying love’ between a man and woman sounded great; so did ‘eternal friendship’; but who knew what the person in your arms was really thinking when they were making those pledges of friendship or love?
Bighead said that he’d seen Li Liang shoot up.
‘His arm is covered in track marks. It’s terrifying.’
He furrowed his brow. I was devastated, and furious with Bighead Wang for not telling me sooner. He said Li Liang wouldn’t let him.
‘You shouldn’t get involved,’ he added. ‘Li Liang himself said it’s the only pleasure he has left.’
Bighead was emotional and he hurled his beer glass to the floor. People at the surrounding tables stared at us alarmed.
‘Fuck you! What are you looking at?’ Bighead yelled.
When Li Liang wasn’t in the grip of his addiction, he appeared the same as usual. He listened to music, read books and studied the futures market on the internet.
‘Give it up,’ I told him. ‘Sleeping with whores or gambling aren’t such a big deal, but once you get involved with drugs, there’s no way back.’
He hit a key to change the screensaver on his computer, then said, ‘You know why Ye Mei slept with you?’
I lowered my head. ‘I did wrong. Don’t bring it up again.’
He swung round to face me.
‘It’s not all your fault,’ he said. ‘You see, I can’t get it up.’
Although I had suspected it, for ages I couldn’t say anything.
He turned back to his computer, saying calmly, ‘I’ve had this problem for more than ten years; it’s ok. Yesterday I called Chen Chao and told him straight out: my little brother is on strike.’
Leave Me Alone Page 13