Big Breasts and Wide Hips (82 page)

Two days later, Old Jin introduced her new general manager, Shangguan Jintong, to the workers. He was dressed in a tailored Italian suit, with a Lacrosse silk tie and a camel-colored serge overcoat. The outfit was topped by a French beret, worn at a rakish angle. He stood with his hands on his hips, like a rooster that's just hopped off of a hen's back — weary yet haughty, as he faced the motley crowd of workers in Old Jin's network. He made a brief speech, both the words and manner styled after the way the guards at the labor reform camp had reprimanded the inmates. He saw a mixture of envy and hatred in their eyes.

With Old Jin as his guide, Jintong traveled to every corner of Dalan, where he was introduced to people who had dealings — direct and indirect — with the recycling station and the various sales outlets. He took up smoking foreign cigarettes and drank foreign liquor, learned the ins and outs of mah-jongg, and mastered the arts of playing host, passing out bribes, and evading taxes; once he even took the delicate hand of a young waitress in the Gathering Dragons Guesthouse restaurant in front of a dozen or more guests; flustered, she dropped the glass she was holding, smashing it to pieces. He took out a wad of bills and stuffed them into the pocket of her white uniform. “A little something for you,” he said. She thanked him in a flirtatious voice.

Every night, like a farmer who never tires, he cultivated Old Jin's fertile soil. His inexperience and clumsiness brought her special pleasure and a new kind of excitement; her shouts often woke the fatigued workers as they slept in their shacks.

One evening, a one-eyed old man strolled into Old Jin's bedroom, his head cocked. Jintong shuddered when he saw him and pushed Old Jin to the side of the bed before scrambling to cover himself with the blanket. He recognized the man at once: it was Fang Jin, at one time in charge of the People's Commune production brigade, Old Jin's legal husband.

Old Jin sat there with her legs crossed. “Didn't I just give you a thousand yuan?” she asked, a sharp edge to her voice.

Fang Jin sat down on the Italian leather sofa in front of the bed, where he had a coughing fit and spat a gob of phlegm onto the beautiful Persian rug at his feet. The glare of hatred in his good eye was hot enough to light a cigarette. “I didn't come for money this time,” he said.

“Then what do you want?” she asked irately.

“Your lives!” Fang Jin pulled a knife out from under his jacket, jumped up from the sofa with an agility that belied his age, and threw himself onto the bed.

With a shriek of horror, Jintong rolled to the far edge of the bed and wrapped the blanket around him. He was too petrified to move after that. He then watched in terror as the cold gleam of Fang Jin's knife pressed toward his chest.

Like a fish flopping on the ground, Old Jin placed herself between Fang Jin and Jintong, so that the tip of the knife was aimed at her chest. “If you're not the illegitimate child of a first wife, you'll stab me first!” she said coldly.

Grinding his teeth, Fang Jin said, “You whore, you stinking whore …” Despite the savagery of his words, the hand holding the knife began to tremble.

“I'm no whore,” Old Jin said. “Sex is how a whore earns her living. But me, I actually pay for it. I'm a rich woman who's opened a brothel for her own pleasure!”

Fang Jin's gaunt face twitched like waves on the ocean. Beads of snot hung from the sparse ratlike whiskers on his chin. “I'll kill you!” he said shrilly as he thrust his knife at Old Jin's breast. But she spun out of the way, and the knife stuck into the bed.

With a single kick, she knocked Fang off of the bed. After whipping off her martial arts belt, slipping out of her short robe, taking off her canvas bra, and kicking off her shoes, she slapped her belly wantonly, the hollow sound nearly frightening Jintong out of his skin. “You old coffin shell,” she shouted. “Can you do it? Climb on up if you can. If not, get the fuck out of here!”

Fang Jin was sobbing like a baby by the time he rose to a stooped position. With his eyes on Old Jin's jiggling pale flesh, he pounded himself on the chest and wailed in agony, “Whore, you whore, one of these days I'm going to kill you both …” Fang Jin ran away.

Peace returned to the room. The roar of a power saw came from the carpentry shop, merging with the whistle of a train entering the station. At that moment, Jintong heard the dreary sound of the wind whistling through the empty liquor bottles at home. Old Jin sprawled in front of him, and he saw her single breast splayed in all its ugliness across her chest, the dark nipple looking like a dried sea cucumber.

She gave him an icy stare. “Can you do it like this?” she said. “No, you can't, I know that. Shangguan Jintong, you're dog shit that won't stick to a wall, you're a dead cat that can't climb a tree. I want you to get your balls out of here, just like Fang Jin!”

Except for the fact that her head was on the small side, Parrot Han's wife, Ceng Lianlian, was actually quite a stunning woman, especially her figure. She had long legs, nicely rounded hips, a soft, narrow waist, slender shoulders, full breasts, and a long, straight neck — from the neck down there was absolutely nothing to complain about, since she'd inherited it all from her water-snake mother. Thoughts of her mother reminded Jintong of that stormy night in the mill years earlier, back during the civil war. Her head, small and flat as the blade of a shovel, had swayed in the early-morning rain and mist, and she truly looked to be three parts human and seven parts snake.

After Old Jin fired him, Jintong wandered the streets and lanes of the increasingly prosperous Dalan City. He didn't have the nerve to go home to see his mother. He'd sent her his severance pay, even though he'd spent nearly as much time lined up at the post office to wire the money as it would have taken to go over to the pagoda, and even though she'd have to go to the same post office to get the money, and even though the clerk there would be puzzled by his action, that's how he did it.

When his steps took him to the Sandy Ridge district, he discovered that the Cultural Bureau office had set up two monuments on the ridge. One commemorated the seventy-seven martyrs who had been buried alive by the Landlord Restitution Corps, the other commemorated the courageous fight against the German imperialists by Shangguan Dou and Sima Daya, who had given their lives in the cause nearly a century before. The text, in virtually incomprehensible classical prose, made Jintong's head swim and his eyes glaze over. A group of boys and girls — college students, by the look of them — was gathered around the monuments, discussing them animatedly before huddling together for group photos. The girl with the camera was wearing skintight blue-gray pants, the flared bottoms covered with white sand, and uneven rips at the knees, under an incredibly bulky yellow turtle-neck sweater that hung from her armpits like the sagging neck of a cow. A heavy Chairman Mao pin was pinned to her chest, and a camera vest with pockets of all sizes was draped casually over her sweater. She was bent at the waist, raising her backside in the air like a horse doing its business. “Okay!” she said. “Don't move. I said don't move!” Then she began looking for someone to take their picture. Her gaze fell on Jintong, who was still wearing the outfit Old Jin had given him. The girl said something in a foreign language, which he didn't understand. But he sensed at once that she'd mistaken him for a foreigner. “Say, girl, if you speak to me in Chinese, I'll understand you!” She gulped, probably surprised by his heavy local accent. For someone from a distant land to come to China and actually learn the Northeast Gaomi dialect was really something! is what he assumed she was thinking, and even he heaved a sigh. How wonderful it would be if a real foreigner could speak like someone from Northeast Gaomi. But, of course, there was such a person — the sixth son-in-law of the Shangguan family, Babbitt. Not to mention Pastor Malory, who had spoken better Chinese than Babbitt. “Sir,” the girl said with a smile, “would you mind taking our picture?” Infected by her vitality, Jintong forgot for the moment his current situation, shrugged his shoulders, and made a face the way he'd seen foreigners do in the movies. He was quite convincing. Taking the camera from her and watching as she showed him which button to push, he said Okay, followed by a few comments in Russian. That produced the desired effect; the girl stared at him with obvious interest, before turning and running over to the monuments, where she leaned on her friends' shoulders. He looked into the viewer like an executioner, cutting all the girl's friends out of the shot and zeroing in on her.
Click.
He pressed the button. “Okay,” he said. A moment later he was standing alone in front of the monuments, watching the youngsters as they walked off. An aura of youth lingered in the air, and he breathed in it greedily. He had a bitter taste in his mouth, as if he'd just eaten an overripe persimmon, a stiff tongue, and a bellyful of disapproval.

Resting his hand on the monument, he was hopelessly mired in fanciful thoughts, and if his nephew's wife, Geng Lianlian, hadn't come to his rescue, he might have withered right there on the marble monument like a dead bird. She rode up from town on a green sidecar motorcycle. Jintong had no idea why she stopped by the monuments, but he gazed appreciatively at her lovely figure. “Are you my uncle, Shangguan Jintong?” she asked.

He blushed in acknowledgment.

“I'm Geng Lianlian, the wife of Parrot Han,” she said. “I know he's had nothing but terrible things to say about me, as if I were some kind of female tiger.”

Jintong nodded ambiguously.

“I hear Old Jin showed you the door,” she said. “That's no big deal, since I've come to hire you for our Eastern Bird Sanctuary. I'm sure you'll be satisfied with your duties, salary, and benefits, so you needn't even ask.”

“I'm worthless, I can't do anything.”

She smiled. “We'll give you something you
can
do,” she said, taking him by the hand before he could respond with more self-deprecating comments. “Come with me,” she said. “I've spent a good part of the day running all over town looking for you.”

She seated Jintong in the sidecar along with a giant macaw tethered by a chain. It gave him a mean look and screeched. Lianlian reached over and tapped the bird before undoing the chain. “Old Yellow,” she said, “fly back and notify the manager that Uncle's on his way.”

The bird hopped awkwardly onto the edge of the sidecar and from there down to the sandy ground. Like a child learning to walk, it stumbled forward a few paces, spread its stiff wings, and rose into the air. After climbing thirty or forty feet, it wheeled and buzzed the motorcycle. “Old Yellow,” Lianlian said, looking up at the circling bird, “go on now. No more funny stuff. I'll give you some pistachios when I get home.” With a cry of delight, the parrot skimmed the treetops and flew off to the south.

Lianlian stepped down on the starter, then climbed onto the motorcycle, twisted the handlebar, and careened off down the street, the wind billowing her hair — his too. They sped down a newly paved road, quickly reaching a marshy area, where the Eastern Bird Sanctuary occupied a fenced-in area of at least two hundred acres. The garish entrance gate, which looked like a memorial arch, was guarded by two watchmen with Sam Browne belts across their chests and toy pistols on their hips. They saluted Lianlian as she drove past.

Just inside the gate was a man-made mountain of stones from Taihu, fronted by a pond with a fountain that was surrounded by cranes that looked real, but weren't. The macaw that had flown back ahead of them was resting alongside the pond. When it saw Lianlian, it fell in behind her, hopping awkwardly.

Parrot Han, made up like a circus clown and wearing white gloves, ran out from a little building with beaded curtains over the door. “Well, Uncle, we finally got you to come. I always said that as soon as things picked up around here I'd start paying back my debts.” He waved a glittering silver baton as he spoke. “Heaven and earth may be vast, but not as vast as Grandma's kindness. And so, the first debt I owe is to her. Sending her a sack filled with meat wouldn't please her, nor would the gift of a gold cane. Finding work for her son, on the other hand, would please her no end.”

“Okay, that's enough,” Lianlian said, like a supervisor speaking to a subordinate. “Have you got the mynah bird trained? You swore you could do it.”

“Don't you worry, my dear wife!” Parrot acted the part of a clown, bowing deeply. “It'll be able to sing ten songs, you've got my word on that.”

“Uncle,” Lianlian said turning back to Jintong, “we can talk about your new job, but first let me show you around.”

As the new director of public relations for the Eastern Bird Sanctuary, Jintong was sent by Lianlian to a spa for ten days, where he was tended to by a Thai masseuse. Then he went to a beauty salon for ten facials. He emerged totally rejuvenated, a new man. Lianlian spared no expense, dressing him in the latest fashions, drenching him in Chanel cologne, and assigning a young woman to attend to his daily needs. All these extravagances made Jintong uneasy. Rather than give him any concrete job, Lianlian concentrated on filling his head with bird knowledge and taking him through blueprints for the sanctuary expansion plans. By the time they finished, he was convinced that the future of the Eastern Bird Sanctuary was in fact the future of the city of Dalan.

One night, when all was quiet, sleep eluded Jintong as he tossed and turned on his springy Simmons mattress. As he took stock of his life up that point, he realized that the life he was enjoying at the bird sanctuary was nothing short of a miracle. Exactly what does this small-headed woman have in mind for me? Rubbing his chest and underarms, now nicely fleshed out, he finally fell asleep, and almost immediately dreamed that peacock feathers had grown on his body. Fanning his tail feathers, like a gorgeous wall, he saw thousands of little dancing spots. All of a sudden, Geng Lianlian and several mean-looking women came up and began pulling out the tail feathers to give as gifts to rich and powerful friends. He complained to them in peacock-talk. Uncle, Lianlian said, if you won't let me pluck your feathers, what good are you to me? She grabbed a handful of his colorful tail feathers and pulled — Jintong shrieked, and woke himself up. His face was covered with a cold sweat, and he immediately noticed a dull pain in his rear. There was no more sleep for him that night. As he listened to birds fighting off in the marshland, he reflected upon his dream, trying to analyze just what it meant, a trick he'd learned back in the labor reform camp.