Leave Me Alone (10 page)

I’d hardly sat down when his wife started making a fuss about it. Her squawking disturbed the whole room. Lang Four looked embarrassed, so I smiled at him and left quickly. I spent a while looking at the bustling scene of New Times Square, where, fourteen years before, there was a vegetable market where this honest and straightforward small-business owner had killed a man.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Our company insisted that ‘virtue resides at the top’. You could be an ass, but so long as you didn’t steal from the company or have a messy personal life you had your chance of becoming a manager. Fatty Dong spouted this nonsense at every opportunity. His belief was that because he had become a boss he was highly virtuous. Shortly before the Mayday holiday, he convened a company meeting, the whole purpose of which was to attack me.

Fatty Dong gave me a condescending look and said, ‘If a person lacks responsibility towards his family, how can we hope he will act responsibly at work?’

I was equally rude. Taking his cue, I said I agreed with Boss Dong’s view but called for consistency. ‘Colleagues should not have different rules for those at the top and those lower down.’

Liu Three looked ready to chip in, but after a savage glare from me he shut up in a hurry.

At work, I already had a reputation for womanising. Once again I had Fatty Dong to thank for this. Last year the deputy chair of the board had come to Chengdu. He’d sought me out and warned me to pay close attention to my lifestyle if I wanted to advance in the company.

‘Be a good, responsible man,’ he said.

I was annoyed. I haven’t seduced your wife or daughter, I thought. Who’s been bad mouthing me?

Naturally it was Fatty Dong who’d prescribed me this bitter medicine. After this incident, I gave up any thoughts of becoming General Manager. My only hope was to get through the next two years without rocking the boat, resolve my debt problem, and then find an opportunity to quit. My dream would be to open a car repair place. Get Li Liang to invest, and then lure master mechanic Li to join me. I was sure we’d make money. Thinking about it made me sad though, because when I was younger my aspirations were much grander. I’d wanted to be a great expert at something, or else a crimeland boss. Now the extent of my ambitions was to be some kind of small business manager. The water level of my life was sinking lower and lower, and it seemed nothing would be as great as I’d hoped it would.

Fatty Dong’s composure at this time was impressive. Whether conducting meetings, talking to colleagues, or processing documents, there was barely a chink in his self-control. When the pre-holiday meeting broke up, however, he tilted his head and watched me slyly for ages, giving me
the creeps. This guy wasn’t stupid; he’d have a good idea about who’d set him up.

I couldn’t detect any definite sign that trouble was coming, but I was still quick to set my plans in motion. I’d already faxed Head Office the report about Fatty Dong going whoring and leaping out the window. Boss Dong, stripped of his sanctimonious outer packaging, was more degenerate than me. I was confident that this framer of others wouldn’t be General Manager for much longer. ‘Virtuous people at the top’ — well, he’d said it.

The first day back after the holiday I was constantly busy making calls and signing documents. Liu Three’s treachery didn’t bother me. He wouldn’t be able to usurp me because I had close relations with all our clients.

Our longstanding Neijiang sales agent was holding on to a 4 million advance that he should have returned. Although Liu Three had been working on it for over a month he hadn’t got a damn bit of it back yet. Gloomily he had to come to find me and confess failure.

‘Haven’t you already outgrown me?’ I said. ‘Why don’t you tell Boss Dong? Why come to me?’

Liu’s face was pale but he said, ‘You’re the sales team manager. This is your responsibility.’

I sneered and then picked up the telephone and called the sales agent.

‘Screw you, Wang Yu. If you don’t give back the money be careful I don’t get you chopped.’

Wang Yu derided me in turn. ‘You bastard, I knew you wanted money from me,’ he said.

He said he’d recently taken up with a young bar singer. She was beautiful, sang sweetly and had great sexual technique, especially anal. This guy was a rascal. As soon as there was any serious business at hand, he started filling the sky with diversionary nonsense.

‘Shut up and give us the money,’ I said.

Wang Yu stopped fooling around. ‘I’ll give you the first two million this afternoon, but you’ll have to wait a few days for the rest.’

I looked at Liu Three then deliberately raised my voice. ‘If I don’t see all the money by tomorrow, I’ll turn your son into dog meat dumplings.’

I’d met a girl like Wang Yu’s singer myself, at the Glasshouse bar. Her family name was Zhang, but she used the coquettish stage name Gentle Flower. Before she sang she would warble the following self-introduction: ‘Gentle Flower performs a few songs for you’.

Her voice wasn’t bad though, and she was a natural performer with stage presence, graceful movements and long hair. She had an air of refined classical beauty — full of sex appeal.

At one time I was going to see her show nearly every day. To declare my intentions I sent her a 480 bunch of roses and an 1,888 yuan bottle of Hennessy XO. My approaches had the desired effect and she soon let me have my way with her in the back of the company’s beaten-up old Santana.

Afterwards, I felt as if I’d lost something. I told Li Liang,
‘Once you remove her clothes, this goddess is really just flesh.’

‘You expect too much from life,’ Li Liang replied.

That day Zhou Yan didn’t show up for work, so I had to supervise the car repair business myself. What with ordering new fitting machine parts right through to paying the cleaners’ salaries, I signed a huge pile of papers. Zhou Yan was very efficient at her job. In the past two years I’d rarely had to worry about the car factory. The business had grown steadily, but her salary was still only 2,200 or so, just half of Liu Three’s. I decided to lower disloyal Liu Three’s salary and give Zhou Yan at least 3,000. That day when I saw her with donkey man they seemed close, so I guessed they were in a relationship. To use one of Bighead’s phrases, it was
‘a big pile of cowshit in a vase’.
When I thought of Zhou Yan sleeping with that guy, I had this feeling of loss like I’d mislaid my wallet.

The Monday meeting started at 4 pm. I checked my watch constantly, wishing that Fatty Dong was dead. The scandalous news about his arrest was out. I didn’t see how he could have the face now to sit on that platform talking about his dog shit morals. But at the meeting, Boss Dong made a brilliant tactical move: he didn’t talk about his professional ethics or company loyalty. Instead, when he opened his mouth, he criticised himself. He said he’d let himself down, disappointed everyone’s trust in him and caused the Sichuan branch to lose face. Because of this, he’d no wish to continue serving as General Manager.

‘I’ve already handed in my resignation to Head Office,’ he said. ‘I just hope I can continue to serve the company in some lowly capacity.’

He became emotional, crying actual tears, so that those who weren’t familiar with the real situation presumably felt sympathy for him. I smiled coldly, thinking that the guy really knew how to put on a performance. It was a tragic waste that he hadn’t gone for a career in acting.

It was sheer genius. On the one hand he was admitting fault; on the other he was demonstrating his devotion to the company. As I studied his fat face, I was torn between exasperation and admiration. Head Office wouldn’t be too hard on him, I guessed. At most they’d impose some kind of symbolic penalty.

When we first started at the company, I’d actually liked Fatty Dong. A chubby guy, he seemed like one of those straightforward, good-natured types. In our first year, we often went drinking together. When he got married I gave him 200 yuan in a red envelope — a serious gift at that time. Our feud didn’t start until he became head of the administration department. Back then I was still an ordinary member of the sales team. After Fatty got promoted he overnight became very grand, speaking with unbearable pomposity. Once, I idly picked up a document on his desk and he acted as if he’d caught a thief, and covered it up saying, ‘This isn’t for your eyes.’ I went off in a huff, resenting his arrogance. After that, he and I never saw eye to eye. Before long I too started to get promoted, from supervisor to manager; for a time I was actually in a position one grade higher than Fatty. Sick
with jealousy, Fatty Dong badmouthed me, both openly and behind my back. I was pretty rude as well. During meetings I’d attack by innuendo: hinting at his hypocrisy, the way he had one image in public and another in private. After our first few bouts we each suffered injuries, but the fires of war continued to burn. Now that he was General Manager, they blazed white hot.

After work I visited my father at the hospital. My mother was supporting him as he took a walk around the ward. I admired their relationship and wondered whether, thirty years from now, Zhao Yue and I would be that close.

During the time my dad was in hospital our lives were so busy that Zhao Yue and I didn’t even have time to argue. There was a kind of artificial respect and politeness between us, like you have with a guest. But that telephone call I’d made to Zhao Yue’s lover still cut my heart like a knife; the pain penetrated all our embraces, kisses and kind words. My senior high school physics teacher had introduced me to the concept of entropy, and I thought now that all life was on an inevitable slide towards decay. Everything slowly fragmented and nothing stayed perfect.