Brothers (59 page)

B
Y THIS POINT,
Baldy Li had accumulated a small mountain of scrap in front of the entranceway to the government building. He had also adjusted the style of his sit-in, sitting cross-legged in the center of the courtyard only during peak periods, when people were coming to and from work. The rest of the time, Baldy Li could be found bent over, tirelessly sorting through the scrap, his butt lifted up above his head. He painstakingly made his way through it several times and then back again, as though he were panning for gold. But when he heard the bell announcing the end of the workday, he dashed back to the entranceway and, with a heroic air, once again assumed his solitary post. Spotting him as they filed out, the government workers chuckled and said that Baldy Li sitting there looked even more self-important than the county governor when presenting a report at a countywide meeting. Baldy Li was quite satisfied with this assessment and lauded the workers as they passed, "Well said!"

He hadn't seen Song Gang in more than a month. When Song Gang once again rode his Eternity bicycle past the entranceway, Baldy Li ignored the fact that he was in the middle of a sit-in and sprang up and waved both hands, shouting, "Song Gang, Song Gang!"

Song Gang pretended he hadn't heard him, but it seemed as if each of Baldy Li's cries was a hand tugging him back, preventing him from pedaling away. After a brief hesitation, he turned around and slowly rode toward Baldy Li. Song Gang was very nervous and didn't know whether he should tell Baldy Li that he didn't have a single cent in his pocket. Baldy Li excitedly greeted him, pulled Song Gang down from his bicycle, and announced mysteriously, "Song Gang, I've struck it rich!"

Baldy Li took an old watch from his pocket, and with his other hand he tapped Song Gang on the head, asking him to inspect the watch carefully. Baldy Li said excitedly, "Do you see the foreign words on the front? This is a foreign watch, and the time it keeps is not Beijing time but, rather, Greenwich Mean Time. I found it among these scraps."

Song Gang couldn't see the watch hands and asked, "Why doesn't it have any hands?"

"I'll attach three pieces of wire to serve as hands," Baldy Li said. "I just need to spend a little bit of money repairing it, and then the Greenwich Mean Time will run smoothly!"

Then Baldy Li placed the foreign watch in Song Gang's pocket, saying magnanimously, "It's for you."

Song Gang hadn't expected that Baldy Li would give him something that he, Baldy Li, prized so much. He embarrassedly took the watch out and handed it back, saying, "You keep it."

"No, you take it," Baldy Li insisted. "I found this watch ten days ago and have been waiting for you to come by ever since so I could give it to you. Where did you disappear to this past month?"

Song Gang blushed bright red and didn't know how to respond. Thinking that he was still worried about accepting the watch, Baldy Li placed it directly into Song Gang's pocket and said, "Since you take Lin Hong to and from work every day, you need a watch. I don't need one. When the sun rises in the morning, I come here to do my sit-in, and when it sets, I return home to sleep."

With this, Baldy Li lifted his head and looked around for the setting sun, ultimately pointing at it through the tree leaves, and proclaimed,
"That
is my watch." Noticing Song Gang's confusion, he added, "Not the tree, the
sun."

Song Gang laughed, and Baldy Li said, "Don't laugh. Go quickly, Lin Hong is waiting for you."

Song Gang mounted the bicycle, and, with his feet still on the ground, he turned and asked Baldy Li, "Have you been all right this past month?"

"Great!" Baldy Li urged Song Gang forward. "Go quickly."

Song Gang asked again, "Have you been eating well?"

"What have I eaten?" Baldy Li squinted his eyes as he pondered. Then he shook his head and said, "I can't remember. At any rate, I didn't starve to death."

Song Gang wanted to say more, but Baldy Li impatiently shooed him on his way. "Song Gang, you are simply too much like an old lady."

Saying this, he began to push Song Gang from behind, pushing him five or six yards until Song Gang finally began pedaling on his own accord. Baldy Li watched as Song Gang rode away, then walked back to the middle of the gate. Just as he was sitting down, however, he remembered
that all the county government workers had already gone home. Somewhat at a loss, Baldy Li cursed, "Damn it."

After Song Gang picked up Lin Hong and took her home, he hesitated a long time, but in the end he decided not to take out the watch Baldy Li had given him, preferring to tell her about it later. He didn't have money or grain coupons in his pocket, but he still had his lunch. He and Lin Hong would always make a little extra at dinnertime and put the leftovers in a couple of containers to serve as their lunch the next day. During the period Song Gang was avoiding Baldy Li, he would only occasionally wonder how Baldy Li was doing. But once he saw Baldy Li again, he couldn't help thinking of his brother all the time. Song Gang was quite moved at the thought of Baldy Li treasuring this handless foreign watch and holding on to it ten full days just to give it to him. At lunchtime the next day, Song Gang remembered Baldy Li and therefore biked over to the government building with his lunch box. Baldy Li was in the process of rummaging through the scrap heap and consequently didn't notice when Song Gang rode up behind him. Song Gang rang his bicycle bell, causing Baldy Li to jump with surprise and turn around. When he saw the lunch box Song Gang was holding in his hand, Baldy Li smiled and said, "Song Gang, you knew I was hungry!"

Baldy Li took the lunch box Song Gang was handing him and hurriedly opened it, and he saw that the food inside hadn't even been touched. He paused and asked, "Song Gang, you haven't eaten any?"

Song Gang smiled. "You go ahead. I'm not hungry."

"No." Baldy Li handed the lunch box back to Song Gang. "Let's eat together."

Baldy Li got a pile of old newspapers from the scrap heap and spread them out for Song Gang to sit on while he plopped himself down directly on the ground. The brothers sat side by side in front of the scrap heap. Baldy Li once again took the lunch box Song Gang was holding and used a chopstick to draw a trench down the middle, telling Song Gang, "This line is the thirty-eighth parallel: To the north is North Korea, and to the south is South Korea."

He stuffed the lunch box into Song Gang's hands, saying, "You go first."

Song Gang pushed it back, replying, "No, you go first."

"If I ask you to go first, you should go first," Baldy Li said, annoyed.

Song Gang didn't push the lunch box back again but, rather, started
to eat. Baldy Li leaned over and peered into the box, saying, "You are eating your way into South Korean territory."

Song Gang chuckled. He was a slow and meticulous eater, and Baldy Li started to salivate waiting for him to finish. Hearing Baldy Li swallowing his saliva, Song Gang stopped and handed the box to Baldy Li. "You eat now."

"You go ahead and finish," said Baldy Li, pushing the box back. "But could you hurry it up? You even eat like an old woman."

Song Gang hurriedly stuffed the rest of the food into his mouth, Baldy Li then took the lunch box and inhaled his half of the food. He was finished before Song Gang had a chance to gulp down the food still in his mouth. Baldy Li affectionately patted him on the back, helping him to swallow. When he was finally done, Song Gang wiped his mouth and then wiped the tears from his eyes, suddenly remembering his conversation with Li Lan right before she died.

When he noticed Song Gang crying, Baldy Li was startled and asked, "Song Gang, what's wrong?"

Song Gang said, "I just remembered Mother…"

Baldy Li froze as Song Gang continued, "She was concerned about you and asked that I look after you. I promised her that, even if I had only a single bowl of rice left, I would give it to you. She shook her head and said if there was only one bowl of rice left, we should share it."

Song Gang pointed to the empty bowl on the ground and said, "And that's what we're doing."

The brothers both returned to that earlier, painful period. Sitting in front of the mountain of scraps, they wiped away their tears and recalled how, as children, they had walked hand in hand down from the bridge in front of the bus depot, where they found Song Fanping lying dead on that hot summer day; and how they had stood hand in hand in the exit of the bus depot until nightfall, waiting for Li Lan to return from Shanghai. The final scene was of the two brothers pulling a cart with Li Lan's coffin to the countryside, returning their mother to their father.

Then Baldy Li wiped away his tears and told Song Gang, "Our childhood was simply too bitter."

Song Gang also wiped away his tears, nodded, and said, "We were bullied by everyone."

"Now things are better." Baldy Li laughed. "Now no one dares bully us."

"No, they're still not better," Song Gang replied.

"How are things not better?" Baldy Li asked, turning around to look at Song Gang. "You are married to Lin Hong, isn't that good? You can't recognize good fortune because you are living in it."

"I was speaking of you," Song Gang said.

"What about me?" Baldy Li looked back at his mountain of scraps. "I'm not doing badly."

"Not badly? You don't even have a job."

"Who says I don't have a job? Sitting here in protest
is
my job."

Song Gang shook his head and asked anxiously, "What will you do afterward?"

"Don't worry," Baldy Li replied. "Things will naturally work themselves out."

Song Gang still shook his head. "I'm worried sick about you."

"What are you worried about? I'm the one doing the pissing, and I'm not worried. Why should you worry if you are only the one carrying the chamber pot?"

Song Gang sighed and didn't say anything more. Baldy Li excitedly asked him about the foreign watch, whether Song Gang had gotten it fixed yet or not. Song Gang abruptly picked up the lunch box from the ground, stood up, and announced that he had to go back to the factory. He then mounted his bicycle and rode away, holding his lunch box in one hand. Baldy Li watched him ride away, shouting out, "Song Gang, you can even ride a bicycle with one hand?"

Song Gang glanced back and laughed. "What's so great about that? I can ride with no hands."

He extended his arms, as if he were soaring through the air. Astounded, Baldy Li ran after him, shouting, "Song Gang, you're really amazing!"

For the next month, every day at noon Song Gang would take his lunch box to Baldy Li and the two of them would sit in front of the pile of scraps, chatting and laughing as they divided and ate the food. Song Gang didn't dare let Lin Hong know about these rendezvous, so though he was famished every night, he was always careful not to rouse her suspicions by eating more than usual, even to the point of eating less than he normally would. Lin Hong noticed that Song Gang
seemed to have lost his appetite and asked anxiously whether he had been feeling all right. He stammered that it was true he had lost his appetite, but that he hadn't lost his vigor. He reassured her that he was perfectly fine.

In a small town there are no secrets, and about a month later Lin Hong finally learned what was going on. It was a coworker at the knitting factory who told her. The previous day the coworker had taken the day off and around noon happened to pass in front of the front gate of the government building, where she saw Song Gang and Baldy Li sitting together on the ground and sharing the food in Song Gangs lunch box. The next day the coworker giggled as she told Lin Hong about how those two brothers, eating there together, looked even more affectionate than a married couple. At that point Lin Hong was sitting in the workshop doorway eating her lunch. Hearing her coworker's description, she immediately put down her lunch box and stormed out of the factory.

By the time she arrived at the government building, the brothers had finished eating and were sitting there chatting and laughing, with Baldy Li loudly recounting some story or other. Her face ashen, Lin Hong walked up to them. When Baldy Li spotted her, he scrambled up and warmly called out, "Lin Hong, you've come."

Song Gang, meanwhile, had turned pale, and Lin Hong looked at him coldly, then turned and walked away. Baldy Li had just retrieved a pile of newspapers from the scrap heap and was about to invite Lin Hong to sit down when he noticed that she had already left. He said disappointedly, "You came all the way over here. Why don't you at least sit down and join us for a while?"

Song Gang stood there, not knowing what to do. He watched Lin Hong walk away until finally it occurred to him to run after her. He therefore jumped onto his bicycle and sped after her. Lin Hong was walking forward in a dignified manner, and when she heard Song Gang ride up beside her, suggesting quietly that she sit behind him, she pretended not to have heard him and acted as though no one were there. She walked away with her head held high, staring straight ahead. Song Gang didn't dare say anything else; instead he jumped off his bicycle and followed silently behind her. They acted like two complete strangers, walking silently down the main street of Liu. Many townspeople saw them and stopped to watch curiously, recognizing that something had happened between them. Someone called out Lin
Hongs name, but she made no response. Someone else called out to Song Gang, who also didn't answer, though he did nod and smile. His smile, however, was forced, and Poet Zhao, who happened to be on the street and was the kind of person who could always make a mountain out of a molehill, pointed to him and told everyone, "Do you see that? That is a bitter smile."

Song Gang pushed his bicycle as he followed Lin Hong all the way to the entrance of the knitting factory. She didn't glance back at him the entire way, and even when she walked into the factory, she didn't turn to look at him. Sensing that Song Gang was still standing there, she slowed down a little, and suddenly her heart softened. Though she wanted to turn and look at him, she restrained herself and continued forward into the factory workshop.