Authors: Murong Xuecun
Leave Me Alone (4 page)
Li Liang decided he would hold his wedding party at the Minshan Hotel and he asked me to arrange the banquet and the cars. When I wanted to know what his budget was, he started bragging.
‘Fifty tables, each table 2000 yuan. At least twenty cars, nothing lower than a Lexus.’
‘Such a big spender,’ I said. ‘Have you got money to burn?’
He laughed pointedly. ‘I have to have a big wedding to make everyone jealous.’
Li Liang always chose his words carefully, so this comment wasn’t necessarily throw-away vulgarity.
Not for the first time, I couldn’t help wondering whether he knew what had happened between Ye Mei and me. The day of the abortion he’d called me and when I asked him
where he was he said he was driving with Ye Mei. Like an idiot I almost blurted out that he was lying. I was thinking, you big fibber, Ye Mei is in the hospital right now. Li Liang had giggled, then hung up.
After the abortion, I’d told Ye Mei about this and she said, ‘Li Liang may be weird, but you’re a dickhead.’
That evening Ye Mei had been unbridled and crazy. Strong wind and rain buffeted the window. Ye Mei’s wild hair was all across my body while her hands tore roughly at my own hair.
‘Can’t this be gentle?’ I asked.
She gnashed her teeth and snarled, ‘No way.’
I’d never imagined this girl’s body could contain such power. She was like a female wolf whose cub has been killed, snapping at my body a bite at a time. It scared the hell out of me.
As she came, Ye Mei lay on top of me and cried. Her hair was soft and her skin was slippery. Her tears dripped one at a time onto my face; cold, bitter and astringent, making me remember things past. I was full of guilt and pity, and a kind of inexpressible tenderness. I lay there until she’d pressed all the air out of me, then I patted her arse and asked her to get up. Ye Mei rose obediently from the bed, dressed herself and gave the mirror a silent, beautiful smile. Then she pushed open the door and left without saying a word.
On the road back to Chengdu the next day after her abortion, I stopped the car and bought Ye Mei a pair of farm chickens. I told her that she should feed them well. She seemed moved. Recently, I thought I’d started to learn how to be considerate to others, perhaps because I was getting
older. While Richard Clayderman played on the car stereo, Ye Mei slept deeply like a child.
It was already after six when I reached our home. I said to Zhao Yue, ‘What’s the name of that hotpot place you mentioned? Let’s go together this evening.’
Zhao Yue looked surprised. ‘Don’t you need to entertain clients tonight?’
‘No more entertaining’ I said. ‘Tonight I want to devote myself to my wife.’
She laughed. ‘Too bad that I have to go to a dinner party.’ And, snatching her leather handbag she clattered off down the stairs in black high heels.
Thus abandoned, I became first bored, then unbearably depressed. I had this nagging feeling that I had been snubbed. Soon I’d got through all the beer in the house and almost worn out the TV remote control. Slightly deranged, I called Zhao Yue and demanded to know what time she’d be back.
‘Don’t wait up,’ she said, ‘I want to stay a bit longer.’
Hearing this I felt angry and I then called Li Liang to demand that he come to Dong Dong disco with me.
‘You loser, don’t you have anything better to do?’ he said. Then I heard him saying to someone else: ‘Son of a bitch wants to go to Dong Dong disco.’
Of course, he had to be talking to Ye Mei.
Dong Dong disco is one of Chengdu’s most famous places. Originally it was a civil air defence shelter. After Chengdu
opened up to the outside world, one part of the shelter became an underground market, while another part now housed several hostess bars. They claimed to be discos but I’d never actually seen people dancing there. Men went there to hold a girl close and let their hands and their minds roam. At the end of a song they’d hand over a 10 yuan tip and consider the transaction over.
I’d just walked into the disco when this tall girl I’d encountered there before embraced me and said that she hadn’t seen me for a long time. I patted her butt and told her that I wasn’t dancing today, just looking. Immediately she turned and threw her arms around some fat guy instead. The two seemed to be stuck to each other like glue as the girl swayed and rubbed her hips rhythmically against Fatty’s crotch. Fatty slobbered and his two pig’s trotters went groping up and down her body. The girl smiled at me with a ‘Look what you’re missing out on’ look. Suddenly I remembered the huge black mole on her back. It was definitely enough to make a man soft.
At that moment all the lights went out and the disco was full of ghostly shadows. My eyes couldn’t get used to it. I staggered around until someone gently pulled at my sleeve, asking me to sit down. I sat, and in the gloom a face gradually became clear to me. My breadstick lover was smiling at me.
After graduation, Li Liang lived at my house for a fortnight, then rented his own place in Luoguo Alley. By then I was depressed at home and so I moved in with him. At the mouth of the alley was a snack restaurant. It was there
that I first encountered my breadstick lover. She had only recently moved to Chengdu from her village. She wore old, faded clothes, and even in July she kept her buttons tightly fastened as she toiled over the fried breadsticks in their seething pots.
‘Aren’t you hot?’ I asked her.
Her face turned red, which made me think of a girl on our class’s study committee, Ning Dongdong … The night before our graduation ceremony, Ning Dongdong and I enjoyed a long kiss behind the rockery. As I quietly unfastened her bra, Ning Dongdong moaned with pleasurable anticipation. Just as I was ready to progress to third base however, she regained her senses, said ‘I can’t’ three times and fled to her dormitory. This was my third greatest regret of my university career — the second was failing the fourth-level examination three times (the most unlucky time being short half a point); the first was getting busted the time I rented a screening room to show porn films. My dreams of riches were shattered.
It appeared that my breadstick lover was interested in me from the very beginning. The breadsticks she chose for me were always large and juicy, which made Li Liang insanely jealous. Behind Li Liang’s back, I went to flirt with her a few times. She usually laughed at my teasing, but didn’t succumb to it either, which fascinated me. Then the day came when she asked whether I could help her find a place to live. I was delighted and told her that she could stay with me. On the day she moved into my house, I all but forced myself on her. She didn’t call out or shout, just struggled incessantly, grabbing at me so my whole body was mauled. After I’d finished,
I was suddenly afraid and said dejectedly, ‘You should report this.’
She didn’t reply at first, but after a while took my hand and said, ‘Let’s do it again, but please be gentle.’
After that my breadstick lover lived with me for three months. Every day she would wash my clothes, make food, and tidy and clean the room. When she saw me walk in the door, her face would light up: that expression is vividly clear in my memory. Day after day I would go to work, go home, watch TV and make love to my breadstick. Later, I thought it was probably the closest I’d come to real happiness in my whole life. Once, because she’d eaten a clove of garlic, I swore at her and made her cry. That is the strongest memory I have from that time.
When Zhao Yue emailed to say she was ready to come to Chengdu, I told my breadstick lover, ‘My girlfriend is coming — we have to split up now.’
She froze with terror. Tears flowed down her face.
‘It’s no good being sad,’ I told her.
She didn’t say a word, just cried soundlessly all night. I couldn’t get her to stop and to be honest it made me very sad too. When the sky was nearly light she wiped her tears away, kissed my face and said, ‘Chen Zhong, give me a little money. I’m pregnant, I need to go to the hospital…’
I admit that I’m not a decent guy; I was just interested in her body. After she moved out, she called me a few times. Because I was afraid Zhao Yue would start to wonder, whenever I noticed it was her I just hung up. I’d never imagined I’d meet her again one day in a place like this.
‘Do you want to dance?’ she said. ‘I won’t ask you for money.’
My heart suddenly filled with sorrow. All around in the dark I saw men and women pressed tightly together, using every revolting posture you could think of to rub against each other. Turning my head, I looked at this once so simple girl. What did she feel when these men groped her? Did she think of me?
‘Why are you here?’ I asked.
She lowered her head. ‘Do you really need to ask?’
‘Don’t you want to go home?’
On the day we split up, I’d asked her what she would do in the future. She said that she would go back to her village and never leave again.
The disco was filling up with people. A few men made advances, but she rejected them. Leaning against my shoulder, she sighed and said, ‘I don’t want to go back to the village. I can’t take the suffering. It’s hard to be a peasant now.’
Her hand felt unfamiliarly soft and smooth. I remembered that when I first knew my breadstick lover her hands were still hard, rough to the touch. What was it that had brought this simple unaffected young woman to a place like this? In that dirty subterranean disco, I thought, was it me? Was it the city? Or was it just life?
When the disco hall began to empty, I gave her 1000 yuan. She refused emotionally. I said, ‘OK, let me drive you home.’
She laughed. ‘No need. I live with my boyfriend so it’s not that convenient.’
I asked her what her boyfriend did.
‘He works on a construction site.’
After a pause, she seemed to read the question in my heart. ‘He knows where I am…’
I got in the taxi, and then heard her call my name. I turned my head to see a glimmer of tears in her eyes. She leaned down to the window and said brokenly, ‘If you ever think of me, text me. OK?’
In our regular Monday morning managers’ meeting, Fatty Dong went on this riff about ‘professionalism’. ‘Dress professionally, speak professionally, adopt a professional mentality,’ he said. As he worked himself into a rhetorical frenzy he almost seemed to dance; his trotters skipped, his lardy body quivered.
I was sat beside him wondering why as soon as someone was made an executive they became so hypocritical. A few months before, Fatty and I had entertained clients in a nightclub and he’d called in a few girls. His expression after the girls arrived had been terrifying, and I suddenly understood the true meaning of the word ‘ravage’. His girl started off smiling but soon was obviously trying to evade him, then she openly pushed him away. Finally she gave this terrifying cry. As well as molesting his own girl, he also subjected mine to
verbal harassment, asking everyone whether her breasts were genuine or fake, what colour underwear was she wearing? — he wanted to inspect. When his girl finally decided she’d had enough and asked for her fee, the jerk summoned her into the corridor and haggled over the price.
‘You’re not just doing this for the money,’ he told her. ‘We were getting on well.’
A moment later, we heard him say righteously, ‘How can you say that? You’re depraved! Here’s 100 yuan, do you want it or not? Hey, get your hands off my wallet!’
At this point, our client, Zhou Dajiang, could take no more. Opening his wallet, he said, ‘Miss, please give back the 100 yuan. Please accept this money.’
Fatty Dong didn’t see this intervention as shameful, he saw it as an honour. The next day he told me proudly, ‘When you go out it’s best to spend as little money as you can and scrounge off others as much as possible. Chen Zhong, you can learn a lot from me.’
I replied, ‘You are too wise for me.’ What I was really thinking though was something quite different.
The day after our visit to the club Zhou Dajiang called me and really laid into Fatty Dong: ‘I’ve never seen such scum.’
Zhou Dajiang is a north-easterner and his manner is very frank and open.
At the Monday meeting, once Fatty Dong had finished blustering, he waved his hand imperiously and asked me, ‘Manager Chen, is there anything you would like to say?’
I thought, yes, I’ll say a few words. I stood up and cleared
my throat, then said that Boss Dong’s suggestions were right on the mark.
‘The question of professionalism is basically about doing your job right,’ I continued. ‘Professional dress and professional language are external factors, but the most important thing is your achievements. If you can’t meet your targets (here I looked meaningfully at the sales team) it doesn’t matter if you wear smart suits every day, you’re still unprofessional.’
When I looked at Fatty Dong, I saw with satisfaction that his face had turned as purple as a rotten eggplant.
The reckoning was swift — at the end of the day, our accountant came looking for me. He said there was a problem with the expenses form I’d submitted the previous week for a large promotion with some petrol stations. Because there was no confirmation letter from the stations, they were unable to pay up.
This promotion was one I’d arranged jointly with Sichuan petrol companies: if you spent more than 500 yuan at one of their outlets, your car could get a free check-up at one of our repair centres. The check-up was paid for by the petrol stations. In one month we’d made more than 200,000 from repair work alone. Decent business. The expenses form I’d put in was for 18,000 yuan, around 3,000 of which was padding. You see, just like a melancholy song I once heard in a bar:
My effort is large, my reward is small, every day I struggle for a little profit, buying and selling.
The world is unfair. Only a small part of the fruits of your talent comes to you. Most of it goes to that boss you hardly ever see. So I often dredged for a few perks from my business, because I believed that moral behaviour was only possible when one had no anxiety about money. For example, if Li Liang were to do my job there was no way he’d be as devious as me.
Glaring at the accountant, I explained that the petrol stations all belonged to the Sichuan People’s Petrol Company. Who was I supposed to get to confirm my expenses?
The accountant seemed sympathetic but said this was Fatty Dong’s initiative. ‘You should discuss it with Boss Dong.’
I barged into Fatty Dong’s office and slapped the expense report down on the table.
‘Boss Dong, what the hell is this about?’ I demanded. ‘Are you going to let people do their job or not?’
Fatty Dong spoke in the manner of an executive. ‘Chen Zhong, don’t get excited. I’ve done everything by the company regulations.’
‘Please be clear,’ I said. ‘Just say whether or not you want to do this promotion. If you don’t want to do it any more, I’ll call up the Sichuan Petrol Company.’
Fatty Dong hesitated before angrily signing the expenses form.
After I’d got the money from accounts I called Zhao Yue and told her I’d treat her to dinner at the Jinjiang Hotel but she
sounded less than enthusiastic. Zhao Yue was always very frugal. If we spent more than 100 yuan she felt bad. Once I splashed out 700 yuan on some perfume for her, but she was reluctant to wear it. When we were getting on well, I’d tease her: ‘You belong to the white-collar class, so how come you’re like a little match girl?’
She usually laughed and said, ‘Me, white collar? At most I’m the spouse of a white-collar worker.’
After work I visited the flower shop downstairs and bought a 268 yuan bunch of red roses. The salesgirl grinned widely at the thought of her commission. On the card I wrote:
Wife, if you fatten up a bit you would be even better looking, so eat up!
The girl gave me an even more simpering smile.
I said, ‘Am I good to my wife?’
‘It’s touching,’ she said. ‘In the future, if I get married I will look for a husband like you.’
Her words left me empty.
With the flowers I still felt I cut a dashing figure as I marched into the Jinjiang Hotel. People stared at me. I commandeered a two-person table just near the window, then sent Zhao Yue a text:
Husband’s already here, come and eat.
These words had a special meaning in our secret sex language. There were many ways for us to ‘eat’: missionary, cowgirl, doggy. I imagined her naughty smile when she saw the message, and felt myself swell with lust. Weeks ago, Zhou Dajiang had given me two Viagra pills and I wondered whether tonight might be the time to try them.
You get superior service in five-star hotels. In less than one
hour my tea was refilled four times. I eventually got impatient and called Zhao Yue to ask her where she was.
She sounded evasive. ‘I’ve got something on actually, I can’t come. You go ahead and eat.’
My heart sunk. ‘Hadn’t we agreed to go out tonight?’
Zhao Yue apologised like a diplomat: ‘I’ve really got something on so I can’t come. Next time!’
‘How come you’re so busy?’ I complained. ‘What is so important?’
Zhao Yue already sounded less apologetic. ‘What’s the big deal? It’s just us, right. So what if I can’t come?’ And she ended the call.
I almost exploded with anger. ‘Screw her!’ I said, flinging my phone to the ground. The young waitress picked it up and said, ‘Sir, you dropped your phone.’ Looking at her concerned expression, I thought, If only Zhao Yue was so sweet and considerate. I removed the card from the flowers and tore it up, thinking, you go ahead and eat. Eat your fill. Then I strode towards the door.
The waitress called after me: ‘Sir, your flowers.’
I turned with a smile and said, ‘They’re for you,’ then paused for a moment to enjoy her stunned expression.