Beijing Comrades (27 page)

Thirty-One

Living with Lan Yu in his little apartment at Gala represented a strange reversal of the dynamic we had shared for most of our relationship. In the past, he had always been financially dependent on me. But now, except for when we went out to eat, Lan Yu covered nearly all our expenses. Money became a taboo subject for us, the proverbial elephant in the room. It was an awkward arrangement for both of us, but this was how it had to be. It often occurs to me today that we could have been much happier if our relationship had not been so intimately tied up from the start with that peculiar thing called money.

One evening, when we were staying in for dinner—we had both started learning some basic cooking at that point—Lan Yu told me his landlord wasn't going to continue renting to him the following year.

“Is he raising the rent?” I asked.

“No,” he replied. “He says the guy in the other bedroom is coming back.”

I wanted to be optimistic for him. “That's okay! We'll just look for a new place for you.”

“Apartments are hard to come by these days,” Lan Yu replied. He was standing over the burner in the kitchen making a dish of egg fried rice. It reminded me of the joke I'd made so long ago about using his sweat as cooking salt. That was only the second time we had met.

I took a deep breath. I was about to say something I'd been thinking of for a while. “What about us going back to Tivoli together?”

He lifted the wok by its handle and shook it, but didn't say a word. I tried looking busy by grabbing something from the refrigerator, but my real objective was to catch a glimpse of his expression from the corner of my eye. I recalled that grotesque day a year earlier when I threw him out of the car for accusing me of trying to buy his love with a house.

“Listen,” I continued. “If you really don't care about that house, is it okay with you if I sell it? I mean, god knows I could use the cash right now.” Lan Yu stared down at the wok. Still he said nothing.

A few moments later, he switched the burner off and faced me. “I sold it,” he said flatly.

“What?” I shrieked. I was speechless.

Lan Yu smiled and turned back to his cooking. “You said you were giving it to me, didn't you? Have you changed your mind?”

“No, it's just—I mean, when did you sell it?
How
did you sell it? To whom? And for how much?” I had a million questions.

“I sold it to some real estate guy from Shenzhen,” he said. “Three hundred eighty thousand US dollars.” I was floored.

“Listen, Handong.” He crossed the kitchen to where I was standing and wrapped his arms around my neck, then kissed my nose. “You're the one who told me to sell it if I didn't want it. You see? I
do
listen to you.”

“And I guess this means you really love me, too,” I said sardonically.

“Correct!” He smiled, pressing his lips to mine and running his hand under my shirt to gently rub my stomach.

I could tell from the way Lan Yu kissed me that he wanted a quickie before we sat down for his fried rice. I wasn't in the mood. I was still thinking about the $380,000 he'd acquired from selling the house. I didn't ask him what he had done with the money, but there was so much mystery surrounding the sale that it was bound to stay on my mind for a while.

Money! Lin Ping had said it: I placed too much value on money. The truth was, I had mixed feelings about Lan Yu selling the house, and couldn't make heads or tails of what it meant. On the one hand, it was gratifying to know he had truly accepted something from me. But on the other hand, I couldn't help but wonder: Did selling Tivoli mean he had forgiven my mistakes, or that he no longer loved me? I couldn't say for sure, but I did know that he had finally taken something from me, and this, I felt, made us even. No longer did I have to tiptoe around him because of the many blunders I had made. At last, the guilt could go away.

Thirty-Two

One evening in late September when Lan Yu and I were at home having dinner, I asked him if he wanted to go to Mount Wutai for a couple of nights over National Day. I wasn't a Buddhist, but I liked the idea of getting out of town to decompress after the spate of bad luck I'd been having. The sacred Buddhist mountain area was about four hundred kilometers from Beijing.

“I was just meaning to talk to you about that,” Lan Yu said as he took a bite of the braised pork belly we had managed to conjure up. “I'm going to go visit my dad.” There was excitement in his voice.

“What?” I asked in surprise. “Why? You haven't been back to Xinjiang in years!”

“I know,” he replied. “Not once since coming to Beijing. But I should at least go for a visit, right?”

“Well, if you ask me, I don't see why you
should
do anything. And besides, what's the point? You've been away, what—seven years now? In all this time your dad hasn't so much as returned a phone call from you. What kind of father is that?”

“I know, but the poor old guy doesn't even have time to take care of himself, let alone worry about me.” Lan Yu stood up and went to the kitchen to refill the rice bowl.

“Okay, but then why waste your time worrying about him?”

Lan Yu didn't answer. He was standing in the kitchen so it was possible he hadn't heard me, but I couldn't be sure. So I kept talking. “You really are incapable of holding a grudge, aren't you?”

“Ha!” he laughed as he returned to the table and sat down. “If I was the kind of person who held grudges, I would have dumped you long ago!” The words stung. His comment made me lose my appetite, but I didn't want to show it.

“Anyway,” he continued, “they called me yesterday to say he just went into the hospital. He has an intestinal sarcoma and they have to perform the surgery right away. What can I do? He's my dad!” Lan Yu gave a bighearted smile.

“And you, my boy, are a dutiful son,” I said with just a bit of humor. “How are you getting there, anyway?”

“Train, of course.”

“Lan Yu!” I said. “You make decent money now. Why don't you fly? It takes over two days by train. Flying only takes a few hours!”

“I may not be a student anymore, but I'm not exactly rich either,” he said, taking a swig of beer. I lit a smoke and stared at him from across the table, telling myself not to debate him on the issue. The only thing I couldn't understand was why he still hadn't told me what he had done with the money he made from selling Tivoli. And yet, I was resolved not to ask. It was up to him to tell me or not.

The following morning, I took Lan Yu to Beijing Railway Station, where he hopped on a long-distance train to the far West
to go see his father. At first, I was disappointed we wouldn't be going to Mount Wutai together. At the same time, though, I didn't mind having a few days to unwind at my mother's house. I wasn't especially fond of Lan Yu's place and only slept there to be with him. He knew that.

Since my release from jail, my mother hadn't said a word about my personal life. Whatever she may have thought on the inside, she was clearly doing her best to avoid the subject. That's why I was a little surprised when, on the third day of my visit, she asked me in a somewhat offhanded manner if I was planning on moving back in with her for good.

“No,” I said. “Just visiting.”

“Are you living at a place called Gala now?”

“Huh?” I was stunned—how did she know? Sharing any details about my life with Lan Yu was out of the question, so I just grunted a muffled “uh-huh.”

“I see,” she said. “All right then.” All right then? What does that mean? Was this her way of giving tacit approval? What was going on in her mind?

A few days later I discovered just how fragile my mother's emotional state was. My sisters had come home for the family gathering our mother planned each year, their husbands in tow with big crates of fruit and kids with lollipops in their mouths. It was a festive day, but the difficulties of recent months also left me drifting with a malaise that followed me wherever I went. Equally frustrating, Jingdong's seven-year-old boy darted around the house, jumping on anything with a flat surface, and Aidong's baby girl cried for hours, making it impossible for me to get the peace and quiet I'd been craving. Still, there was something about having three generations under one roof that brought me joy.

As all this pandemonium was going on, my mother
abruptly burst into tears. It came out of nowhere, an explosion of emotion, leaving my sisters no choice but to take her into the kitchen to console her while their husbands remained in the living room with kids in their laps and puzzled looks on their faces. When the commotion was over and things had settled down, I pulled my sisters aside and asked them why mom was crying.

“Why do you
think
she's crying, Handong?” they snapped in unison.

The episode made me think about everything that had happened. The fax. The divorce. Prison. How much sadness and heartbreak had I made my mother endure? Had I been a selfish son? And if so, was there anything I could do to make up for it? The questions churned in my head, but I didn't have any answers.

A week later, Lan Yu returned to Beijing. He had already told me on the phone that his father's operation had gone well, adding that, although they were still waiting for a few tests, the doctor said things were looking good. Just before hanging up, I had asked him if he wanted me to pick him up at the railway station.

“If I had a magic button, I'd push it so I could you see right now!” he had replied. That made me smile.

Lan Yu's beaming face peered out from an open window as the train pulled into the station. “Handong!” he called, reaching out an arm and waving. When the train stopped, he jumped out of the carriage door and we practically hugged each other right then and there on the platform. I wouldn't have even cared if we got strange looks from the people in the station, so intoxicated was I by the warm, embracing love he radiated. But despite all this excitement, we didn't say much as we exited the station and hailed a cab.

“You must be exhausted,” I said, squeezing his knee in the back of the cab and looking at him with rapt attention. I wanted to show him that I was interested in how his trip had gone.

“Oh man,” he sighed, gently resting his hand on mine. “Am I glad not to be in a hospital! When I got off the bus in my hometown after transferring at Ürümqi, I went straight to the clinic where my dad was. I didn't even go to the house the whole time I was there. I just sat by his sickbed twenty-four hours a day. I even ate and slept there!”

“How did it go with her? I mean, with your dad's wife?” I asked.

“You won't believe this, but the day I got there, my ten-year-old half sister got sick—acute appendicitis—and had to go to the hospital. So my dad's wife drove her there.”

“Wow, weird coincidence!” I squeezed his hand, and my eyes settled unconsciously on the taxi driver's ID perched on the dashboard.
Wu Meimei.
Female taxi drivers were rare in those days.

“I know!” Lan Yu sighed. “You know, for the first time since that woman entered our lives, I actually felt a bit sorry for her. I mean, you should have seen her, running back and forth between the pediatrics department and my dad's hospital room. When I left, she wouldn't stop thanking me for being there.”

I put a sour look on my face. “Saying one nice thing to you doesn't change all the horrible things she's done in the past.”

Lan Yu let go of my hand and looked out the window. “I suppose I'm just not as heartless as you are.” I sighed, turning my head to look out my own window. Had I really not changed at all since the day he'd met me?

When we entered the apartment, Lan Yu flung his bag on the floor and jumped right on top of the bed. “Home!” he
shouted, looking at me with a smile. “And look at this: a cute-as-hell guy right here waiting for me!”

“Ah-ha!” I said, pouncing on top of him. “You see how lucky you are?” We rolled around in each other's arms, kissing and chatting vivaciously about everything that had transpired in the previous week.

Before long, though, Lan Yu fell quiet. He looked up at the ceiling with a kind of meditative calm, seemingly lost in thought about his visit with his father.

“It's nice to have a home,” he finally said, wistfully. “You know, this whole time in Beijing I always thought my real home was at my dad's house. But now I know it's been here all along.”

I smiled and joked with him. “I think you've been lying to me this whole time. I bet you don't even really have a dad over there!”

Lan Yu offered me his gentle smile, the one I knew so well. It was the one that told me he'd humor me, but that he himself wasn't in the mood to joke around.

“You know,” he continued, a distant look on his face, “my dad actually reached out from the bed to hug me. Then he started crying. He didn't even do that when my mom died!”

Lan Yu pulled his eyes away from the ceiling and looked at me. “You know what else? He apologized to me. He said he knew he hurt me. You know what I told him, though? I told him the only one who deserves an apology is my mom, because she was the one he hurt the most. He didn't have much to say to that.” Lan Yu paused and a wave of sadness poured over him. “Why won't he own up to what he did?”

“Because he doesn't think he owes her anything,” I said. “How can you even think of him as family, Lan Yu? It doesn't make sense.”

“I know, you're right,” he said. “Well, it doesn't matter
now. I don't have a family anymore.” He paused. “You're my family now.”

I couldn't tell if he was joking or serious. Gently, I kissed his lips, then turned him around so I could hold him from behind. Squeezing him tightly I whispered in his ear, “If I'm your family now, then you'd better be a good boy and stay with me. Don't go flying away all the time!”

“Hey, watch it now,” he laughed, struggling to pull himself out of my arms. “I think I'm the one who's supposed to be saying that to
you
!” He freed himself from my embrace, then pinned my arms to the bed and kissed my neck. There was more that I wanted to say—so much more. But by then he was already attacking me with kisses and, before long, unzipping the fly of my trousers.

In the early years of our relationship, the sparks between Lan Yu and me when we saw each other after one of my business trips were like those of a newlywed couple on their honeymoon. That's how I felt when he returned to Beijing after his visit to Xinjiang Province. Had we really returned to the romantic excitement of a blossoming love, or was I just moved by his saying that I was his only real family? It didn't matter. All that mattered was that there was something about him that still ignited my desire.

Frantically, we rolled on the bed—so frantically that we nearly fell to the floor. That gave me an idea. Taking Lan Yu by the hand, I got off the bed and pulled him with me. We were standing face-to-face now. I kissed him, then used my hand to push his head downward. He lowered himself to his knees and blew me for a few minutes. Then, joining him on the floor, I pushed his face up against the side of the mattress. In all our time together we had never had sex this way. I lifted my cock to enter him.

Lan Yu looked back at me mournfully and motioned toward
the bed as if trying to tell me he wanted to get back on it. But I held him in place. “Don't move,” I said. That's how I wanted to come. And I'd make Lan Yu come that way, too.

I wanted Lan Yu to know the nostalgia I felt. Nostalgia for the way things used to be, the way he used to be. Before everything changed, he was attentive, deferential: I always looked good in his eyes. As we made love that evening, I imagined that the man I was kissing, touching, holding, making love to, was the Lan Yu I had loved in the past, the Lan Yu I would never let go of again.

I wanted him to know these things. But the words wouldn't come out.