Leave Me Alone (2 page)

CHAPTER TWO

The Chengdu I knew was like a chaotic courtyard with hundreds of different families. When I was in junior high I lived on Jinsi Street, just a hundred metres away from the fragrant incense of Wenshu temple. I used to go there with my parents to burn joss sticks and drink tea with friends and strangers alike – whole afternoons would drift past. Now that my parents were old and I was grown up, Chengdu life was so dull that any novel I read, any drama I saw on TV seemed completely fantastical.

I was knackered after seeing Ye Mei home, with a damp patch on my pants – clearly I hadn’t cleaned up all that well in the dark. Worse still, Ye Mei didn’t seem to think much of my performance, coming over all cold when she got out of the car. I drove to the underground parking lot at Vancouver Square, wound back the seat and crashed out right there in the car.

When I woke up my back was killing me. I looked at the clock – nearly eleven. Some guy was knocking at my window and asking if I had any petrol. I got out and gave him a can of petrol from the boot – these were cans I’d got from the company, so there were at least a dozen in the back of Li Liang’s Audi.

Our company was owned by a family of once-mighty government officials. The big boss had loads of connections with state-owned enterprises. We sold car parts and petrol and also ran garages in several cities. Business was hot, and in less than 10 years he’d made several million.

It was all pretty depressing. Over the last few years I’d made a good 100 million in sales and 20 million in net profits for the company. Fatty Dong had done nothing but suck up, but he’d managed to become my boss.

The sun was shining on Chengdu, though like most creatures of the night I tended to avoid the sun. According to an article in the Sichuan Legal News ‘dark things can never bear the light’. I was well on the way to becoming a dark thing myself, even though I had been an idealistic student just a couple of years before.

A Mavis Hee song was playing on the radio:

I thought of Zhao Yue and felt guilty, so I went to the People’s Department Store to buy her a German-engineered
bra that cost more than 700 yuan. She’d been saying she wasn’t getting much exercise and worrying her breasts were starting to sag. I wasn’t taking good care of her. When I looked at the clothes I was wearing – all designer stuff she’d paid for – I felt even worse about what I’d been up to the night before.

Zhao Yue was sat on the couch at home in a T-shirt watching TV. She acted as if she hadn’t seen me, and so throwing down the bra without giving it to her, I went into the bathroom and took a cold shower. Afterwards I emerged to find her already in bed, facing the wall. When I got in and hugged her, I didn’t get any response, and so I drifted off to sleep.

Confused with the conversation of a dream I heard her muttering on the phone.

‘Can’t talk now, my husband is home. Call me some other time.’

Opening my eyes, I asked, ‘You’ve got a lover now?’

She nodded.

‘Congratulations,’ I said. ‘Your life is really on the up.’ She smiled, and nodded. ‘I’ve always tried to better myself.’

‘What does the guy do?’ I asked.

‘He’s an entrepreneur.’

I sat up. ‘Let’s make a deal. When you’ve cheated him out of his money, give me half.’

Zhao Yue had been in the year below me at university, one of the three most beautiful girls in her class. Our campus had a problem with townies breaking in, and one time a gang
caught Zhao Yue and her then boyfriend making out in the woods. Her ungallant lover ran away before he’d even pulled up his trousers and it was said that when he got to the dorm the condom fell out of the leg of his pants. Zhao Yue was screaming and railing at her attackers when Bighead Wang and I literally stumbled across them on our way home after a drinking session, and we fought those thugs to protect Zhao Yue’s honour My belief was that any man’s heroic instincts would have been aroused seeing Zhao Yue wearing just a shirt with her panties round her knees. Bighead colourfully speculated afterwards that Zhao Yue and her boyfriend were expert at doing it from behind — the college slang for this was ‘getting fire from the mountains’. If Zhao Yue wasn’t my wife, I’d be happier to dwell on this image but even now, Zhao Yue tried to avoid Bighead.

Zhao Yue didn’t deserve the reputation she acquired as a result of that incident. She’d only had a couple of college boyfriends and on getting to know her, I’d found her to be quite shy and refined. She was gentle, sweet and loyal to me. But due to my perverse mind, whenever I thought about the condom falling out of her abscondent lover’s trousers that day, I felt depressed. Life: you just needed to see a few things clearly. You didn’t need to look into all the particulars, otherwise it became meaningless. For example, Fatty Dong had a friend who’d opened a wife-swapping club called the Same Music Private Members Club, where everyone fucked other people’s spouses and saw their own spouses being fucked by others. I didn’t believe Fatty however that ninety per cent of couples divorced straight after leaving the club.

Although she had done nothing to be ashamed of, because of her conservative upbringing in a poor village, Zhao Yue couldn’t be candid about sexual matters. She’d always maintained that the incident in the woods was her first time, and insisted that it hadn’t entered fully. When you’re on someone’s side and they won’t admit the truth, it’s frustrating. In response I’d decided on the following strategy: to sympathise, educate, and then help Zhao Yue to understand the realities of intercourse.

No matter if it’s the first time, or the hundredth time, it’s the same thing, I told her. You know numbers aren’t important. Whether it enters completely or just halfway, it’s still sex.

Sociologists seem rarely to have researched the psychology of a husband being willingly betrayed. I often wondered whether my own many affairs came from a subconscious desire for revenge for that image of Zhao Yue that Bighead had luridly embellished for my imagination. But there was nothing to take revenge for because I’d had several women before Zhao Yue. That PE teacher was one of them. Even after I was going out with Zhao Yue, the teacher and I once had an extra-curricular workout on a weights machine after a PE class.

Anyway, I didn’t believe Zhao Yue’s claim that she had a lover. Women always try to get attention by playing mind games, and so I wasn’t bothered about her imaginary entrepreneur. Zhao Yue later said she would introduce him to me. I said if she dared I would beat the crap out of him.

CHAPTER THREE

After our General Manager was fired, Head Office sent in a team to do an audit. At the same time they carried out a bit of ‘propaganda work’. They called us to a meeting — more than two hundred people crammed into an stuffy room. A stupid prick droned on for ages. He urged us to be loyal to the company, to give more and demand less, to work but not complain. He even came out with a saying from the classics:
Diligent in our duty; indifferent towards individual profit.

I thought, mate, we’re all wage-slaves; is there any need for such bullshit? Then I heard him mention my name.

‘Manager Chen is the backbone of the Chengdu branch,’ he said. ‘In the last few years he has made a big contribution. He’s not afraid to take responsibility. All we need is for everyone to follow Manager Chen’s lead and our company will achieve great things.’

I had an ominous hunch that this was Fatty Dong’s trickery.

That prat had naturally rushed to sit at the front with the eunuch from Head Office. He looked like an attentive grandson with his notebook spread on his knee, his fat face one big smile. When the time came to make his own report, he gave me another subtle jab in passing: ‘Manager Chen, your skills are great, but you’re not such a good team player.’ I looked at him: the arsehole was wearing an elegant pair of braces, and was bent over writing something in his notebook. I cursed him silently: Are those farts really worth writing down?

After the meeting was finally done, Fatty Dong invited me to his office and set to work on me. He said that he’d never expected to be appointed General Manager and had protested several times that he wasn’t worthy. Apparently he’d recommended me for the position but the company had said that although I had ability, I wasn’t ready. ‘You still need more experience,’ he told me portentously.

Spare me the bullshit, I thought.

When Fatty had finished his spiel, he pretended he wanted to be friends. ‘I know you,’ he said. ‘You hadn’t even thought about the General Manager position.’

‘That’s way beyond someone ignorant like me,’ I agreed. ‘What I need, Boss Dong, is a man of experience like you to be my mentor.’

Fatty Dong smiled magnificently, and I seized the opportunity.

‘Could you ask Head Office whether there’s any chance of a raise? I’m saving for a house and money is tight. Also, our
sales department always exceeds its targets, so I don’t see why we should get less than admin staff.’

His fat smile melted like an ice-cream on the beach.

I called the sales team together and punched the air aggressively.

‘Brothers, good news! I’ve already applied to get everyone a raise. Damn you, Liu Three, if you’re handing round the cigarettes, give me one!’

Liu Three laughed as he tossed me a Red Pagoda cigarette, then Zhou Weidong bent his head and lit it for me.

‘Boss Dong opposed the increase,’ I explained. ‘He made me beg three times before he finally agreed to take this to Head Office. Let’s all keep a close eye on Boss Dong.’ I gave those two words ‘Boss Dong’ a mean bite. Secretly I was thinking: Fatty Dong, there’s no way I can make this team of more than a hundred people like you. Getting them to detest you though would be just too easy.

For so many people to get a salary increase at the same time would mean at least a twenty per cent increase in the Chengdu branch’s operating costs. If Fatty dared to make this request to Head Office and he wasn’t rebuffed then I’d get the credit. But if he didn’t even dare to ask, then how could he manage the sales department?

The meeting room was thick with cigarette smoke as the news of a possible raise elated everyone. The steam repair department chief, Zhou Yan, one of the few women in our
sales team, called out, Big Brother, if they really increase our salaries we’ll all chip in to get you a mistress.

Liu Three said, ‘If you’re thinking about being Big Brother’s mistress, then just come out and say so, no need to be coy. It can be arranged.’ He grinned at me.

My flunkies all laughed and Zhou Yan gave me a look, her face as red as paint. Actually I’d sensed all along that she had some kind of crush on me, but according to common sense values a rabbit doesn’t eat the grass near its own burrow. How could I have the face to give someone instructions by day and then at night stretch out my hand to take off her skirt?

During lunch in a local noodle joint, my other university friend Bighead Wang called my cellphone and asked whether my company could get hold of government car plates. I said that it all depended who they were for.

‘Just get them,’ Bighead said. ‘It’s me that wants them.’

‘OK, let’s call Li Liang and go to Old Mother’s Hotpot restaurant for a few beers,’ I said. ‘We can talk about it then.’

After graduation, Bighead Wang had joined the cops. From day one, he’d insisted that he didn’t want a desk job, he wanted to be on the beat. Li Liang and I both questioned his sanity. On the contrary, he replied, we were both dickheads, and then he gave the first exposition of his now famous ‘rights’ theory.

‘Cops on the beat have the right to be corrupt, but pen-pushers can only wag their tails obediently,’ he told us. He went on: ‘An inside section chief makes around 1000 yuan a
month, whereas I hear that a cop on the beat can get several thousand in bribes. You tell me which type of public servant is more valued?’

This foresight demonstrated Bighead’s genius because five years later he was already the head of a busy downtown precinct. He had a car and a house, and he weighed about 20 kilos more than at the time of graduation. I often taunted him that if he were a pig, twenty kilos would be enough to feed a family for a whole month.

After work I drove my company Santana downtown to Old Mother’s hotpot restaurant, where I found Bighead established in a booth and hitting on a young waitress. Bighead laughably fancied himself as the literary type, just because he’d collected loads of books, mostly European and American. He bragged that he never forgot anything he read, and was always ready to give people his take on Duras’s
The Lovers
, as well as Jules Verne’s
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.
When I arrived, the guy was quoting a proverb from the classics:
Husband and wife were two birds in a forest, but when disaster came they both flew away. While you’re alive she’ll be loving, but when you’re dead she’ll leave with the others.

I drank my tea and then said, ‘It works better as
While you’re alive she’ll screw you every day, when you die she’ll screw other people.’

The red-faced waitress beat a hasty retreat. I said to Bighead, ‘Yet again you’re scheming to ruin a girl from a good family.’

Bighead patted his fat gut and told me that recently he’d seen Zhao Yue being intimate with some stud. ‘Now who is green with envy?’ he asked, looking at me closely with a strange expression in his eyes.

A few days after we had rescued Zhao Yue from the gang in the woods, she had unexpectedly appeared in our dorm — dressed plainly without makeup — and said she wanted to treat us to a meal. That day she kept her head lowered the whole time and hardly spoke.

‘You’re being very quiet,’ I said to her, trying to cheer her up. ‘You’re putting us off our beer.’

Zhao Yue, her eyes finally brimming with tears, just wanted to say one thing: ‘I won’t forget what you did, but if anyone finds out what happened, I will have to kill myself immediately.’

Bighead Wang and I swore that we would never talk about it. On the road back to the dormitory, Bighead said something that moved me: ‘Zhao Yue really is a sad creature.’

‘Too right,’ I agreed, and even now, thinking about her tear-filled eyes I felt a little pained.

Li Liang sent the restaurant door flying open. As he strode in he was making frantic hand gestures while yelling into his phone, ‘Quick, buy as many as you can.’

To our amusement, we saw that he was wearing a neatly pressed business suit and his glossy hair was in a centre part.

Bighead said, ‘The son of a bitch looks like a duck.’

Li Liang told us that the outfit was to impress his
mother-in-law. That very afternoon he’d visited his girlfriend’s family to set the date: they were getting married on 1 May.

Surprised, I asked him which family’s daughter had unluckily fallen into his evil hands.

He said, ‘You know her. Ye Mei.’

My heart missed a beat and then I said, ‘Fuck me.’

Of course, I wondered whether or not I should tell him what had happened that night I’d driven Ye Mei home.

After toasting Li Liang with shots, I bought a round of beers. Li Liang’s expression was deliriously happy. He said that they planned to buy a villa by the banks of the Funan River. ‘We’ll live upstairs, and downstairs will be our mahjong parlour and games room.’

I said, ‘After you get married will you join the wife-swapping club?’

He shook his head, looking slightly wistful, but then conceded, ‘If you bring Zhao Yue along, I’ll swap with you.’

I’d told Li Liang a few weeks ago about the wife swapping club run by Fatty Dong’s friend. Li Liang had moaned in admiration and, his mouth watering, he’d said that if he had a wife he would definitely take her there. Later though, Fatty Dong had warned me that his friend had links with both cops and gangs so we’d better stay away from the club.