Brothers (88 page)

After Deputy Liu helped close the door, the white BMW drove away, with the black Mercedes following behind. Deputy Liu's underling rolled the red carpet back up and once again loaded it onto his shoulder, then followed Deputy Liu as he began to walk away. One of the bystanders asked, "After Lin Hong unveils the portrait, will she spend the night with Baldy Li?"

Deputy Liu answered without turning around, "No comment."

CHAPTER 69

T
HE WHITE BMW
and the black Mercedes slowly drove through Liu. When the sun was about to set, the BMW stopped at a curve in the road and Baldy Li announced, "It has gotten dark," then opened the door and pulled Lin Hong out of the white BMW. The instant night fell he pulled her into the black Mercedes, blending into the night. Lin Hong was grasping her rose, still so completely bewildered by what had just transpired that she didn't even realize they had switched cars. Baldy Li just gazed at her with a chivalrous smile on his face.

When the black Mercedes drove up to the entrance to Baldy Li's company, he leapt out and opened the door for Lin Hong, then gallantly led her into his brightly illuminated office. Baldy Li took Lin Hong by the hand, led her over to the couch and, gazing at her tenderly, said, "I've been waiting for this day for twenty years."

Lin Hong stared at him, perplexed, and laughed noncommittally Baldy Li took the rose she was holding and tossed it onto the coffee table, then reached out and began caressing her face. Lin Hong began to tremble as Baldy Li's hands slid down to her shoulders, from her shoulders on down her arms, and finally to her hands, waiting patiently for her to stop trembling. He felt that he had a million things to tell her but didn't know where to begin. He shook his head, and said unhappily, "Lin Hong, please understand…"

Lin Hong looked at him in confusion, not knowing what she was supposed to understand. Baldy Li said pathetically, "I have forgotten how to court someone. I hope you'll understand…"

"Understand what?" Lin Hong asked quietly.

"Fuck," Baldy Li cursed. "I don't know how to talk about love. I only know how to make love."

Then he became a bandit. As Lin Hong stared at him in bewilderment, not having the slightest idea what he was talking about, he grabbed her and stuck his hand into her underpants. He did this lightning-fast, and by the time she realized what had happened, she was already pinned down on the couch with her pants pulled down to
her knees. She grabbed her pants with both hands and cried out, "Stop, stop! Stop doing that!"

Baldy Li, however, was like a wild animal. Within two minutes he had stripped her naked, and within another minute he had stripped off his own clothes. Lin Hong fought him off with all her strength, while imploringly crying out her husbands name, "Song Gang, Song Gang …"

Baldy Li pinned Lin Hong down on the sofa, held her hands and feet down with his, and shouted, "Song Gang, forgive me!"

Baldy Li then entered her. Since Song Gang had been ill so long, it had been several years since a man had touched her like this, and while she cried out in terror, the subsequent pleasurable sensation almost made her pass out. As Baldy Li began to thrust she started to cry out again. Not having done this kind of thing for such a long time, she was like a piece of dry kindling exposed to a flame. She cried out, but it was unclear whether it was from shame or pleasure. After more than ten minutes, her cries became moans. As Baldy Li happily carried on she lost track of time, fully absorbed with her body's rapid contractions. Baldy Li and Lin Hong did it for more than an hour, during which time Lin Hong experienced countless orgasms—even having three in a row, each one following on the heels of the previous one, making her body tremble like the engines of Baldy Li's BMW and Mercedes and making her cry out like the cars’ horns.

When they were done, Lin Hong lay exhausted on the couch with Baldy Li on top of her, panting heavily. She remembered how she and Song Gang had never lasted more than two minutes. Even when Song Gang was healthy they would do it very perfunctorily, and after he became ill he could not manage even that. Lin Hong caressed Baldy Li's body, thinking,
So this is what a real man is like.

After lying on top of her for a few minutes, Baldy Li excitedly jumped up and ran into the bathroom to rinse himself off. After he had dressed, he saw that Lin Hong had draped her clothing over her naked body. He told her to go rinse herself as well, but she merely lay on the couch, exhaustedly shaking her head and unwilling to move.

Baldy Li didn't say anything else to her but sat down at his desk and started making business calls. Lin Hong lay there, delirious—her mind in a tumult, like a boat buffeted by the waves—thinking back over what had just happened. It had all been very sudden, like a flash of lightning, starting abruptly, and concluding equally abruptly. Then in a flash of
sudden clarity she realized that she was lying naked on Baldy Li's couch. Using her clothing to cover her herself, she got up and walked unsteadily to the bathroom to wash up. As she dressed she gradually revived. When she looked at herself in the mirror, she immediately blushed with embarrassment. She couldn't quite muster the courage to leave the bathroom because she didn't know how she would face Baldy Li when she did.

After Baldy Li finished his phone calls, he pushed open the bathroom door, and, announcing loudly that he was hungry, he reached in and pulled Lin Hong out into the office. Lin Hong confusedly followed Baldy Li into the Mercedes—both having completely forgotten about the unveiling ceremony—and they proceeded to a private room of a restaurant owned by Baldy Li's company. For the first time in her life Lin Hong ate abalone and shark fin. She had heard of these delicacies but knew that her annual salary at the knitting factory was enough for only a couple of servings, and therefore she had never tasted them.

Lin Hong assumed that after dinner she would be allowed to return home. What she didn't realize was that the evening had just begun. After eating, Baldy Li remained excited and proceeded to take her to a nightclub also owned by his company. She sat bewildered in a private karaoke room as Baldy Li sang her three love songs. He then asked Lin Hong to also sing a song, but she said she didn't know how. Baldy Li then pushed her down onto the couch and started to remove her pants. She struggled to pull them back up and cried out, "Don't! Don't do that!"

Baldy Li repeatedly nodded his head and said, "Just take off your trousers," then proceeded to remove them. This time she didn't cry out Song Gang's name. She lay on the couch, hugging Baldy Li while he jerked up and down on her body as though he were being shocked, continuing in this way for an hour. Lin Hong felt another orgasm coming on. This time she didn't have three in a row but only one. Then, with weak knees, she followed Baldy Li out of the nightclub and confusedly went home with him.

The two lay in bed and watched a Hong Kong movie. By this point it was three in the morning, and Lin Hong, who was accustomed to going to bed early, was so tired that she could barely keep her eyes open. When Baldy Li rolled over and again began making love to her, she no longer struggled to push him away but quietly acceded. This time she didn't have an orgasm, but she still got excited, though toward the end
her vagina started to hurt. Baldy Li finally finished an hour later, whereupon Lin Hong fell sound asleep.

She had slept for only two hours when Baldy Li woke her up. It had occurred to him that they had never unveiled his portrait, so she had to get up and follow him unsteadily to his office. By the time they got there she had managed to wake up somewhat and noticed how dignified the office was. She walked over to the enormous portrait so big that it covered virtually the entire wall. Pulling away the satin drape that was covering it, she saw that the figure of Baldy Li was so immense that he resembled Atlas, wearing fancy dress clothes and smiling. Lin Hong looked at the image, then back at Baldy Li, and was about to remark that the portrait really looked like him when Baldy Li abruptly pushed her down and took her again on the red velvet cloth lying on the floor. This was the fourth time in ten hours that they had made love. This time, however, Lin Hong didn't feel anything other than excruciating pain, as though he were whipping her genitals. As she gritted her teeth Baldy Li thought that her cries of pain were moans of ecstasy. More than an hour later, when it seemed as if he had no intention of stopping, Lin Hong couldn't help but sigh. When Baldy Li asked why she was sighing, she confessed that she was in agony. He immediately stopped and, inspecting her genitals, discovered that they were red and swollen. He chastised her for not saying something sooner, saying that if he had known she was in pain, he would certainly not have continued. Even if he had been about to establish a Guinness World Record, he would still not have continued. Then he wrapped himself and Lin Hong in the red satin cloth, saying that they would stop and sleep for a while. They slept there on the floor until noon, when Deputy Liu came knocking on the door.

Baldy Li cried out, "Who is it? What do you want?"

Terrified, Deputy Liu said he didn't want anything in particular, just that he was worried because he hadn't seen Boss Li all morning. Baldy Li grunted and said, "I'm fine. I'm still sleeping with Lin Hong."

When Lin Hong finally emerged from Baldy Li's office soon after, Baldy Li wanted her to go home in his white BMW. Lin Hong, however, declined, afraid that would attract more attention and make her a laughingstock in the community. She said that she would walk home instead. She slowly trudged home, her genitals throbbing with every step. Lin Hong finally believed the rumors that Baldy Li was a beast of a man and that every woman left his bed more dead than alive.

When she finally got home, several neighbors looked at her curiously, but she pretended not to notice as she proceeded into the house and shut the door. She lay in bed fully clothed; by evening she still had not gotten up. Her thoughts in a jumble, she spent a long time thinking back over the events of the night before, with every detail appearing clearly in her mind s eye. She also recalled her twenty years living with Song Gang, as well as Song Gangs departure more than a year earlier. After he left she felt that their shared experiences became more and more distant, whereas her memories of her night with Baldy Li were indelibly printed on her brain. At the thought of Song Gang, Lin Hong began to cry, but she understood that, after having spent the night with Baldy Li, she was now entangled with him, regardless of how guilty and humiliated she felt.

News of the scandal involving Baldy Li and Lin Hong circulated throughout the town. From Baldy Li's appearance in court, followed by the Virgin Beauty Competition, the Russian painters arrival, and Lin Hongs unveiling of the portrait, Baldy Li had provided the townspeople with four consecutive surprises, making every day seem as fresh as the morning sun. Even in their wildest dreams, the people of Liu had never imagined that the host of Baldy Li's portrait unveiling ceremony would be not the secretary-general of the United Nations, but, rather, Liu Town's own homegrown beauty, Lin Hong. Everyone was shocked—this was truly an unexpected development. Then they remembered how Baldy Li, in a fit of anger, had gone to the hospital and had a vasectomy thereby cutting off the possibility of having descendants—and hadn't that been done for the sake of this very same Lin Hong? What did it matter that the portrait unveiling ceremony hadn't turned out as expected? The truth is, Baldy Li had gotten what he had wanted from the very start: He had succeeded in bedding her. His lightning-fast seduction of Lin Hong was just as he always said: One should get up right from wherever one has fallen down—that is the only way to succeed. When everyone thought of it this way, the entire situation began to make perfect sense. They concluded, "This was unexpected yet perfectly understandable."

CHAPTER 70

B
ALDY LI
let Lin Hong rest for four days, but by the third night her body had become excited again. She tossed and turned, yearning for Baldy Li to come and press his body down on hers. Her desire had lain dormant for the entire two decades of her marriage to Song Gang, and now that it had suddenly been roused by Baldy Li at the age of forty, it started to surge. For the first time in her life, she discovered her body and the fact that she had a strong libido. On the fourth night, when Baldy Li's black Mercedes drove up to her door, her entire body started to tremble as soon as she heard the honking of the horn. She walked out the front door with quivering legs and climbed into the car.

In the days that followed, Baldy Li's Mercedes and BMW shuttled Lin Hong back and forth every day. Sometimes the BMW would come in the middle of the day, and sometimes it would be the Mercedes in the middle of the night. Baldy Li had countless affairs to attend to and therefore didn't always have free time. When he was free, however, he would sleep with Lin Hong. She was no longer bashful, and whenever she hugged Baldy Li, it seemed as if she wanted to suffocate him. She would even undress him. Baldy Li had never expected that Lin Hong would be so passionate, and he remarked in surprise, "Fuck, you're even hornier than I am."

Lin Hong had learned her lesson that first night and knew that she couldn't endure Baldy Li's lovemaking three or four times in a row. Therefore, she made a pact with him that they would not have sex more than twice in any twenty-four-hour period—and ideally no more than once. Lin Hong then said something that made Baldy Li burst out laughing: "Let me live a few more years."

For the next three months Lin Hong made love to Baldy Li virtually every day—in his bed, on the couch in his office, in the private room of the restaurant, and in the private room of the nightclub. In the Mercedes one night Baldy Li suddenly became aroused and wanted neither to go home and do it in bed nor to go to his office and do it on the couch but, rather, to do it right there in the car. He asked the driver to
go to the restroom and stay there for an hour and a half, regardless of whether or not he needed to piss or shit. Then Baldy Li and Lin Hong intertwined their limbs in the back of the car and moaned and cried as they got it on for more than an hour.