Four weeks later, I received a memo from my finance manager notifying me that my wife had transferred ¥300,000—the maximum amount she could authorize by herself—from the company account. She was acting fast, and I knew I had to do the same. When I got home that evening, I told her we weren’t putting off the divorce any longer and that I was filing the paperwork the following day. After the inevitable fight that ensued, I sat up in bed reading the paper while she combed her hair at her vanity table.
“Handong,” she started, “are you doing this because of a man named Lan Yu?” Her back was to me. I looked up and our eyes met in the mirror.
“What are you talking about?” I scoffed.
“Humph!” she grunted, shifting in her seat so I could no longer see her face in the mirror. “Ever since we started dating I’ve always known I had a rival, but never in a million years would I have imagined it was a man! How did I end up in this ridiculous position?” She was talking more to herself than to me.
Lin Ping put her hairbrush down and turned to face me. “Look,” she said. “I care for you, okay? I don’t mind that you have this . . . this . . . psychological disorder. I can forgive all that, and I’ll do whatever I can to help you get over it. But to think that you actually want to divorce me!”
That was too much. “Save your speeches,” I said. “Since when have you been so selfless? If you don’t ‘mind’ this, it’s because what you do ‘mind’ is my money. If I was some penniless bastard, you’d be out of here in a second!”
“Money!” she screamed, standing up from the table. “Everything is money to you! You think the whole goddamn world is after your money. So I’ve taken your money, but other than that, what else have you given me? What have you ever given to me as a man, as a husband? I’ve given you every ounce of love that I can, and that’s all I ask in return. Can you give me that for once in your life? Can you?” Lin Ping seethed with anger. It was the first time I had ever seen her lose control in front of me.
“When have you ever cared about me or what I want?” she continued, tears streaming down her cheeks. “You can’t even do the simplest things for me! When I asked you to go down south to visit my family with me, you said you didn’t want to go because you weren’t used to the weather. The weather! When we got married and my parents came all this way for the wedding, all I asked you to do was take one day of your precious time to show them around Beijing, and you wouldn’t even make time for that! But me with your mom? I go to her house every weekend, I sit and talk with her, I take her out shopping . . .” She covered her face with her hands and sobbed.
“I love you, Handong,” she said, gaining composure and staring at me defiantly. “No matter how many times you break my heart, I just keep hoping that a woman’s love—my love—can move you, make you feel something, anything. But you? What sense of responsibility do you have to me, to this family? Everything you want me to do, I do. I go out with you and your associates to your stupid social events. Do you think I actually enjoy them? I don’t want your money, Handong, but what else is there for me to take from you? You don’t even act like a normal man when it comes to our sex life! All I ask of you is to be a husband—nothing more, nothing less.”
She broke down crying again. It was ages before she finally stopped. “Handong,” she continued weakly, “if you would just love me, I wouldn’t care how poor you were. I’d stay with you forever.”
“But some of the things you’ve done have gone too far,” I said somberly.
“So you admit it,” she scoffed. “You hate me because of the fax. Well, that’s nothing. You know what your mom wanted to do? She wanted your sister to go over to the Public Security office to have that little piece of shit arrested. Aidong was so angry she just about did it, too.” Lin Ping’s eyes burned into me. I looked away.
“How do you even have the nerve to sit here like this?” she continued. “If you’re so convinced you’ve got justice on your side, why don’t you look your mom in the eye and admit it? Why don’t you confront her about the fax? Why don’t you tell her and Aidong off for what they’ve done?”
“But it was your fault for telling Ma to begin with!” I yelled. “If you hadn’t told her, she never would have known.”
“Handong!” she screamed. “If you don’t want to get caught doing something, then don’t do it! I mean, how long did you think you could hide this? If you knew what you were doing was wrong, then why are we to blame for trying to help you?”
I had nothing more to say. There was nothing inside me but rage.
“I have done no wrong,” Lin Ping said, raising her chin righteously. “As your wife, I will do whatever it takes to protect my husband and family.”
That was more than I could take. “What you did could make a man take his own life!” I screamed. “Don’t you fucking get it?”
“Oh, don’t make me sick!” she jeered. “What man? A grown man coming after you like that for absolutely no good reason—what kind of man would do that? Besides, people like that? What difference does it make if there’s one less of them in the world?”
I wanted to smash her pretty face in, but didn’t. I had never hit a woman before and wasn’t about to start.
“Shut up. Just shut up. You got your ¥300,000. I’ll give you two hundred more and it’ll all be over.”
Lin Ping turned to face me with a sudden steadiness in her voice. “And you’re not afraid I’m going to tell people?”
I looked at her with daggers. “Do not underestimate me,” I said icily. “Try it and you’ll see who gets ruined in the end.” I stormed out of the bedroom, slamming the door behind me to go sleep on the couch.
A long period of silence ensued on the other side of the bedroom door, then more crying. Finally, Lin Ping rushed out of the bedroom and into the living room.
“A million!” she screamed. “That’s not too much for you!” She returned to the bedroom and slammed the door shut.
Thus went my first, short-lived marriage—down in flames. But just as Lan Yu had said: Where there’s a loss, there’s always a gain. Going through a charade of a marriage followed by a very real divorce made me confront something I’d never been able to, but which I had known all along. I finally admitted to myself that I was gay.
The news of my divorce shocked everyone I knew, but apart from Liu Zheng not a single person tried to talk me out of it. Not even my mother made any effort to interfere with my decision. Still, I could tell from the way she looked at me that she was in deep distress about recent events. “Further down the road,” she assured me, “you’ll find a more suitable woman.” But I knew that no such woman existed.
A few months before the divorce, there was another guy I’d begun sleeping with. He had a different alma mater from me—I can’t remember what it was—but he, too, had been a Chinese lit major. He now worked as a newspaper editor. He liked to tease me by saying I had somehow managed to graduate from one of China’s top universities without actually learning anything. He was short, but very cute—one of those “cool” types who wore contact lenses because he didn’t want to mar his handsome face with glasses. Four years younger than me, he seemed the perfect match in every way. We only got together a few times, but even in those fleeting moments we always had a great deal in common and never ran out of things to talk about. And yet, despite the mutual attraction, I always kept a certain distance. I wasn’t ready for something new, and my emotions were too vulnerable from the chaos in my life. I told him a little bit about my relationship with Lan Yu. His advice? Let it go and move on.
The truth is, that guy was my only confidant, the one person in my life who knew anything about what I was going through. I knew he wanted to take things further after my divorce, but I told him there was an emptiness where my heart had been, an emptiness that wasn’t going away and which nobody could fill. He was disappointed, angry even, but he finally said he understood. Eventually, we broke up, and I never made an effort to find another friend. The loneliness I felt dur
ing the final months of my marriage was at times unbearable, but isolating myself both emotionally and sexually was the path I chose.
At that juncture, my way of dealing with the pressures of life was to throw myself into work. If I was honest with myself, I had to admit my involvement in the joint-venture cosmetics factory wasn’t working out. Operations management simply wasn’t my strong point. I decided to let the factory go and focus on my real calling: trade and commerce. By chance, I stumbled across an excellent investment opportunity, but it was one that required a massive investment of capital. I began poking around to raise funds.
I became a drifter after the divorce, sleeping some nights at my mother’s, other nights at my office, at Ephemeros, or at the long-term rental at Country Brothers. Most often, however, I slept at Tivoli. Legally speaking, it was no longer mine, but it was where my heart dwelled. It was Lan Yu’s. It reminded me of him. Though I was unable to find him, I refused to believe he was truly gone, and each night before bed I looked toward the front door hoping that one day I would see him step over the threshold. I was waiting for a miracle.
Twenty-Three
Ever since I was a kid I had always hated Beijing’s sweltering summers. Nature didn’t care much what I thought, though, and the hot months were invariably the longest period of the year. By the time the summer after my divorce rolled around, Lan Yu and I had been apart for a year and nine months. It had been a late autumn day when I turned to look at him one last time before walking out the door, when I saw him sitting on the arm of the couch, eyes fixed on me but communicating nothing, and that strange, elusive smile dancing softly on his lips. How many late autumns would pass before I saw him again?
One afternoon, a friend of mine, a real estate developer, asked me to come to a construction industry expo. Held in the first week of June, it took place just days before the four-year anniversary of the events that had taken place at Tian’anmen Square. I wasn’t especially interested in the business scheme my buddy wanted me to dive into, and I was also afraid that a construction industry event would remind me of Lan Yu, but I agreed to go because I didn’t want to cause a friend to lose face. When the event was over and I had fulfilled my duty, I stuck around for a while to check out the many displays dotting the floor of the exposition space. It was a mammoth event, and I was awestruck by the seemingly endless number of foreign and joint-venture enterprises that participated. I was no authority on the construction industry, but I had to admit the vendor displays were impressive to look at.
Scanning the room as if I’d been at a cocktail party, my gaze was suddenly detained by three men, a triptych of business suits standing before a vendor display. The one on the right was a foreigner—a white guy—and the other two looked Chinese. I couldn’t see the one in the middle because his back was to me, but the one on the left was short, frumpy, middle-aged, and balding. When the one in the middle turned around slightly, my eyes nearly popped out of my head. Yes, it was Lan Yu! I was sure it was him! My heart leaped in my chest and for a moment it became difficult to breathe.
His dark blue suit hugged his tall, virile body. His hair, cropped short, looked nothing like the long, boyish haircut he used to have. He had lost some of the youthful innocence that once surrounded him like a halo, but the masculine allure he now exuded more than made up for it.
The three men were speaking, but I couldn’t tell what language. I supposed it was English because the foreigner was not likely to speak Chinese. Lan Yu listened intently as the white guy spoke, and then turned to the middle-aged one. Was he interpreting? I was too far away to see my former lover’s face clearly, let alone hear what he was saying. The only thing I knew was that nearly two years had passed and this charming man was just as gorgeous, radiant, and beautiful as ever. The only difference was that now his beauty was inflected by the relaxed charisma and distilled confidence of a grown man.
I moved closer to them, then lingered behind a display column so they wouldn’t see me. The foreigner and the middle-aged guy left, leaving Lan Yu by himself. He went back to the display area of what must have been the company he worked for and stood behind a wooden podium. He took a sip of water from a plastic bottle he pulled out from inside the podium, then exchanged a few words with a Chinese girl—a coworker, I guessed—who stood beside him. He must have said something amusing because she gripped the podium with one hand and covered her mouth with the other to suppress her laughter. She recovered quickly from the joke, but her eyes lingered on Lan Yu’s face for some time afterward. Did she have feelings for him? She picked up a folder and began to leaf through some documents.
Watching them from behind the faux-marble column, I recalled that Lan Yu had never been especially adept at interacting with girls. And yet, at that moment he looked so calm, so natural. I took it as sign of how much he had matured in the last twenty-one months, but I also wondered if perhaps, just maybe, he had developed an interest in girls. No sooner had the thought entered my mind than I dismissed it. Lan Yu knew who he was. We both knew.
A few minutes passed and the older guy came back. He waved his hands in the air authoritatively, then patted Lan Yu on the back. The way he touched Lan Yu somehow bothered me, as if he were encroaching on something that was mine. But before I had time to dwell on the injury, the two of them packed up their things and said goodbye to the girl, who stood there smiling as they walked off. Lan Yu was coming toward me. I stepped out from behind the column and our eyes met.
We froze. In some ways, nothing about him had changed: he was just as beautiful as he’d always been. He stared at me in surprise, but this was quickly replaced by something else—what was it? A combination of pain and sadness—perhaps hatred, too. But in a flash this enigmatic expression was replaced by a vacant, emotionless look, a kind of nothingness. Finally, Lan Yu turned his eyes away from me and faced the middle-aged guy as if he hadn’t seen me at all.
With no idea what to do, I remained rooted to the spot like an idiot. I needed time to pull myself together and figure out what to do. And yet there was no time. Here was the moment for which I’d waited for ages, but it wasn’t going to wait around for me to seize it. After all the days and nights of longing, was I just going to let him go? I had to think fast.
I ran out of the building and into the parking lot, where I stuffed a handful of cash into my driver’s hand and told him to take a cab back to the office. I sat behind the wheel, locking my eyes to the front of the building while waiting for Lan Yu and the other man to come outside. When they did, they got into an upscale Japanese car, black with tinted windows, and drove off. I followed, my mind a whirl of confusion. Where were they going? At first I had thought the middle-aged guy was Chinese, but now, looking at him more closely, I wasn’t so sure. He looks like a fucking Jap! I thought angrily. What exactly was their relationship?
I followed them at a distance for twenty minutes before they stopped in front of Skytalk, a massive business complex housing a number of offices, mostly foreign companies doing business in China. Lowering myself in the driver’s seat so as not to be spotted, I watched with anguished expectation as Lan Yu and the other man entered the building. By this time I no longer cared whether or not they were lovers. My only concern was not to lose track of Lan Yu’s whereabouts. Besides, I told myself, this was a commercial space: the middle-aged guy was probably Lan Yu’s boss. Once they were out of sight, I sat up straight in my seat, wondering how long I would have to wait for them to come back out.
At five o’clock, a flood of office workers began exiting the building. Beijing had no shortage of beautiful young women and men, and seeing so many of them concentrated in one place was quite a sight. Carefully, I examined each guy coming out of the building, but Lan Yu was nowhere to be seen. By the time he finally came into view, the hands of the clock had nearly crept to six. I was surprised to see that he had changed out of his suit and into a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. He was empty-handed—no bag, nothing—and was evidently in a rush as he walked hurriedly
down the street. I trailed behind him in the car at a safe distance, thinking it was a good thing I was driving the black company Audi, which I knew he wouldn’t recognize. He walked a few blocks, then came to a standstill at a bus stop: route 011. There he stood among the crowd of people staring vacantly into the distance, breaking his trancelike gaze only to look down at his watch now and then, apparently worried he was going to be late for something.
I watched him clandestinely from the car, my heart a jumbled mess of conflicting emotions—even I didn’t know which one I felt the most. There he was, an ordinary kid who had tasted a lifestyle normally reserved for the Chinese elite. Through me, he had gained access to wealth and splendor beyond anything he could have imagined. He had a house, a car, and all the other things I’d left him with when our relationship had ended. And yet, at the end of the day, there he was standing at a bus stop, perfectly happy to—no, determined to—leave those things behind. It was as if he knew that the best way to get back at me for deserting him was to throw it all back in my face. He and he alone had the power to deprive me of the peace of mind I would have gained by seeing him accept all that I had given. I watched him standing there at the bus stop, an ordinary kid who’d come to Beijing like all the others. And yet, nothing about him was ordinary.
When the bus came, Lan Yu hopped on and I continued to follow. Half an hour later, he dismounted in front of a small residential complex—called Gala, I learned from the sign out front. When Lan Yu reached the main entrance, he paused to buy a few items from a vendor who had set up shop near the gate, as a steady stream of bicycles and pedestrians flowed past. He paid the vendor and I trailed behind him, still in my car, so that I could see which building he lived in. Straining my eyes, I peered through the tinted windshield, which suddenly seemed so dark that the world may as well have been steeped in tea. Eventually, I was able to read the number on the building: four.
Beijing Comrades Page 22