Diary of a Naked Official (11 page)

One thing I must record here briefly as it's left an indelible impression upon me. Ya, an old friend, now an interpreter and migration agent, took me to see a court case in the local magistrates' court. In the couple of hours we spent there, I witnessed a magnificent example of the future for the whole world: about fifty couples had their divorce applications considered and their divorce dissolved, each case lasting no more than ten minutes, perhaps shorter. I can tell from what I heard that none of the marriages, between people from all over the world, lasted more than a few years, the longest being nine years. The words that got repeated by the judge, a fierce-looking woman of Caucasian origin, were Decree Nisi. I put myself in her position and imagined that I repeated those words day in and day out, dealing with divorces that were so easy to obtain, just twelve months of separation. But the thought was unbearable. And I found myself thinking to myself: In the future, the second a man makes physical inroads into a woman it
could be considered their moment of marriage and once he backs out they are declared decree nisi. Goodbye, the white Australian decree nisi woman. When I shared this with a friend on my return to China, he immediately posted it on Weibo, saying, If you want to divorce, go to Australia.

As soon as I came back, I went to Ten Thousand Wind Emotions, a joint where Hollowroot works the nights. I thought to ring her but found that she had switched her mobile phone off. Bad, she's seeing someone else. Then I rang the front counter and was told she would expect me in one hour. I excused myself by telling W that I had to meet an author tonight to discuss the possible publication of a book, and went out to hail a taxi. When I arrived, I decided to take a shower and have my feet manicured. The young man who handed me a towel and a key with a number plate had a knowing smile on his face but he was discreet enough not to ask any questions except a ‘Haven't seen you for quite some time'. I could hear the unasked question: Where have you been? But I simply said: Busy, without so much as a glance at him.

After I showered, I went to the toilet to piss but the tap was so stubborn. If you pressed it, it wouldn't go, so I pressed hard when the water burst out in a spurt, mixed with my piss, spraying my legs with it. Cursing under my breath, I had to shower again.

As it was still early before H finished, I went to one of the sofas in a darkened hall and sat down. I could see a number of sofas occupied but could not make out their faces, the lights so dimmed as to leave everything in dark profiles. Hope they couldn't make out my face, either, I thought to myself, and felt safe. At that moment, a man in white emerged from the semi-darkness, saying, ‘Would you like me to do your feet?' I recognized that he was the old master from the North. ‘Yes, please,' I said as I reclined further in the large sofa, my feet extended and raised a little for him to slide in a cushion between them and the stool underneath. He was originally from the North, a place of thousands of miles of ice and snow in winter, with no reputation for foot manicure. He said he had learnt the trade from a master in Yangzhou and had been practising it for over twenty years. After that, I let the man do my feet, roaming from one toe to another, with very nimble and gentle fingers that trimmed my toenails as no one had done before. By the end of the process I had almost fallen into a sleep, all my fears gone that he might cause pain by cutting the nail too deep or even chip a piece of skin or flesh off my toes, when he said ‘It's done.' It was not till then that he made a remark that intrigued me; he said: Your toe shows you are non-Han.

Then he revealed that the simplest and most effective way of telling a Han from a non-Han is to see if his little toe is split in the middle. If it is, he is Han and if it is not he is a non-Han. When finally H turned up, after her other client, I told her that and asked her to remove her high-heeled shoes for me to have a look at the toes but she refused, saying that her feet were not very good-looking. I did not insist because I wanted to get on top of her and make love to her straight away. I spread her open to as far as my arms could go and entered her as my tongue also entered her mouth but it refused my tongue as she received me below, her head turned away from me. It was not till that moment that I realized, perhaps for the hundredth time, that if there is any fine difference between love and sex it lies between the first mouth and the second mouth. A woman in love with you will want both, for as much depth and heat as possible, but a woman in sex with you will only open one, the one below, to perform the function of a fee-charging pump until you run dry. Mouth, when coupled with mouth, is life-giving, and love-giving, just as if one is administering artificial respiration, whereas cunt coupled with dick, with the minuscule separation of a condom, is nothing more than the insertion of a card into an ATM till the money is taken, with the inconvenience of having to wipe the dick clean and
trash the smelly semen, no longer a life force to reckon with but an instantly trashable substance, and source of suppressed anxiety and ennui.

4/8

B rejected my recommendations for a number of award-winning Australian books that I had brought back for possible translation and publication although he was quite diplomatic, saying that publishing history in China had proven that there was really nothing much in it, with each title selling for a maximum of 5000 copies, even with subsidies, unless, he stressed the word ‘unless', I could succeed in getting the funding. In one go, Australian books were reduced to the category of self-publishing. I wouldn't be bothered, as our attempts at filling the forbiddingly difficult and complex application forms in the past showed that it would be a waste of time. One would rather go for American books, or, as B put it: Even South Korean books are easier to handle; they sell well and you get subsidies from them without going through all those fucking forms. They come to you and offer you the dollar as long as you are interested in publishing them in translation.

Afterwards, I checked porn. I now do that even in my office. After I rearranged my desk in such a way that I faced the door with my back towards the window, I can safely check stuff without being always on the alert, always ready to minimize the page by going to the sign ‘x' at the top right-hand corner. It was a bit weird but I got a hard-on when I got into this site and saw a beautifully made-up woman with an erect penis, sucked in the blooming two-petal flower of a man's mouth. I was so fascinated by the penis-woman's eyes in deep blue shadows and her – or should I call her him – that I started stroking my own penis. Then, when I pulled my hand out, I could smell something meaty on the O of my fingers. This proliferation and pluralization of sex certainly says something about today's world. I was made uncomfortable by the thought that he or she might have difficulty pushing his or her shit the next day if he or she allows her own anus to be a passageway for another man's entry or entries, something our scatologists may do well to manage in future.

That reminded me of my own entry via anus with J Ro, my Japan Rose, who, with her period coming, wouldn't allow me to enter via the front door although she said: You can try it if you like, meaning the back door. It was in that tiny bedroom-kitchen-and-toilet-in-one apartment, as tiny as her cunt, that we made it,
where I just couldn't make the entry because it was so tight. I put a bit of phlegm on my member and eased the entry. At first she cried in pain. Then, as I attacked her with more vehemence, she cried in pleasure, mixed with pain, saying it was so good. With no more than ten powerful thrusts, I arrived at my small death, chucking all there was inside my scrotum into her back door. It was such a delirium of experience but I have never tried this on any other women because I loved no other woman to that degree.

I don't think of J Ro often these days after her tragic death in a car accident, a car that I had bought for her because of her insistence on it, unable to resist the temptation. To remember once making love with a woman prior to her death is akin to that of making love to death, or almost.

5/8

Having dinner with B and his girlfriend – I was only guessing it was his girlfriend and, in fact, everybody said it was – I realized how little there was of any sign that suggested that they had had a fling. They sat there, chatting and laughing. One can't imagine how B could
have been drawn to such a gross specimen: Fat, unsightly, even uncanny. Perhaps her attraction comes from her being the CEO of a retail company but I couldn't give a damn. It's rather the balance of things that has brought them together: One handsome male face matched with a less than pretty female face. I kept wishing that Reh was by my side and, while these two were engaged in little jokes and intimate anecdotes, I found my mobile and started sending an smn to her: How u going?

I received an almost instant response, with ‘Good and u?'

Thus started our lunchtime flirting till B's voice near my ear said: Boy, you can really be busy!

That's right, I thought to myself:
B B
-sy, and heard myself saying: No, no, not really, as I waited for my erection to subside.

Looks are not Reh's only strength, she is also a happy person. Wherever she is there is delightful laughter, one that is not forced but natural. I think B is right in saying that there is no point recruiting a tough woman who looks grim, smiles little and works like a cow. ‘You've got to have someone who fills the place with laughter, delight and great looks so that work is a pleasure rather than a pain,' said he. I couldn't agree more. Reh was a direct result of that recruitment policy, not without my backing.

6/8

This book is scary to read, that I bought at Chek Lap Kok in Hong Kong and managed to smuggle in. The stories are nothing short of what the Marquis de Sade wants to teach and preach about ‘irreligion, impiety, inhumanity, libertinage', but they are more and different, in that the sin-saturated are the Party members who, in losing their second heads – their cocks or pricks or penises or members – in the engagement with cunts, end up losing their heads and, eventually, missing their heads, getting beheaded with a shot in the back on the public execution ground. One guy, by the name of Li, was a Party secretary of a city in Guangxi province, who had many and varied affairs with women of lowly background. This girl of 18 asked him for 200,000 yuan to fund her small retail business in garments and disappeared with the 100,000 that he had managed to give her, prompting him to make a remark that goes: But she hasn't let me fuck her a sufficient number of times to deserve that amount. Shortly after, he got to know another 18-year-old in a hotel and soon made her his nth mistress, installing her in a secret mansion, in the hope that she might bear him a son because his own wife had only given him a daughter. When the baby was born, he was so disappointed that he said: It's another
one of those without a handle! The guy was executed a few years after that.

I just had to laugh at such absurdities but, at the same time, I was alarmed. Surely, he was executed for embezzlement-related charges, as he had stolen a total amount of 16 million yuan, but everything is interrelated. Power leads to opportunities for making money and money leads to women who generate a need for more money that he has to make by abusing his power. The stupidity of this guy lies in the fact that he, of a lowly background himself, had no vision. The vast Chinese diaspora overseas may have never entered his mind, being too besotted with his crowds of women. Very shortly, I'll have my wife go to Australia with our daughter and, by then, I shall become solitary again, a happy bachelor, having the time of my life. Besides, why would I want a baby boy born to me that adds to my burden of earthly concerns? I don't need a womb to perpetuate my name; I only need a vagina to prolong my pleasures but it has to be varied enough to survive the boredom.

Meanwhile, I have to say no to another manuscript that I got whilst in Australia. The guy was a poet I have never heard of but he wrote a book of poetry in Chinese, full of long sequences. As soon as I read them, I decided to reject them. They may have relevance, reminding us of the bad old days but it is not possible to allow them to see the light of day in this part of the world. One of
these, titled,
A List of Famous Suicides in Contemporary China
, gives details of where, when and how people committed suicide, mostly well-known artists and writers who killed themselves during the Cultural Revolution, compressing tragedy after tragedy into a few pages charged with a turbulence of feelings if you can bear to read it through; it's like reading a gravestone carved with the names of the dead. Another long poem, titled,
The File on the Corrupt Officials in China
, is a list of all the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) members in high positions who were executed as a result of the various crimes they had committed over the years, with their CCP membership highlighted in red. Even though I am not a Member, I know well such poems will never be allowed into print as long as the Party is in power. I am not prepared to do the stupid thing by following some Western ideologies or slogans. I have my own life to live. At best, the West is an inevitable place, a political and economic haven, to escape to from China and, at worst, it is an excuse for whatever that can't be done over here.

Before I sent off my rejection letter, I went through the second poem again and found the following:

Du Jiansheng, a Chinese Communist Party Member

together with his mistress, directed the biggest case of
financial fraud and

embezzlement in Guizhou since the founding of the Republic

Du Jiansheng, a Chinese Communist Party Member

consecutively kept over ten mistresses

and to please them

he played ducks and drakes with his money

parting with diamond rings as soon as he bought them

for tens of thousands of dollars