Leave Me Alone (18 page)

‘Wife, forgive me. From now on I will wash the dishes every day.’

I’d often said these words to her after an argument. Zhao Yue laughed but then made a serious face and told me: ‘Who’s your wife? Watch what you’re saying.’

I smiled, then smirked at Yang Tao, thinking, you just don’t have what it takes to compete with me.

When we’d nearly finished eating, I called the waitress for the bill. Yang Tao at once produced a wad of hundreds from his canvas bag.

‘I’m getting this,’ he said. ‘No discussion, OK.’

I sneered. ‘You don’t need to pull out so much money and shock people. It’s cheap here, right? We can each pay our share.’

Zhao Yue tried to smooth things over, but the guy was finally losing it.

‘Say what you like, I’m a CEO; I’m a bit better off than you two.’

‘I’ve never had much money myself,’ I replied, ‘but each month the value of the goods passing through my hands is around twenty million.’

Despite this satirical joust, I still felt I hadn’t wounded him enough, and so I said: ‘Only assholes try to impress people with money.’

I grabbed his hand to immobilise it, then took 200 yuan from my wallet and gave it to the waitress. Perhaps I used more force than I’d realised. Yang Tao struggled free. ‘You bastard,’ he said.

I took exception to that and kicked him to the ground, where I tried to strangle him with his tie. For good measure, I punched him on the bridge of his nose and said: ‘Do you still want to fuck with me?’

People crowded round. Yang Tao lay on the ground. His bloody nose was the colour of red pepper oil, but his mouth still cursed me. I hadn’t worked off all my anger so I aimed another punch at the left side of his face.

‘Screw you!’

Whenever Zhao Yue witnessed violence, she’d freeze. She reacted that way when that group of hooligans attacked her, and it was the same now as I beat up Yang Tao. She sat there, mouth open but unable to speak. I threw Yang Tao aside with a sickening thud and went to get my bag. I said triumphantly to Zhao Yue, ‘Come on. Let’s go home.’

At this Zhao Yue finally revived. She unfroze her body and bent down to Yang Tao, giving him napkins to wipe his face. As she helped him, she was crying. I was mad with jealousy, furious that I couldn’t rip Yang Tao to pieces.

‘He insulted me first!’ I protested.

Zhao Yue suddenly slapped me hard on the face. I just gaped at her. She stood in the middle of the crowd that had gathered around us, her long hair waving, her lovely eyes full of tears.

‘Get out of here,’ she said. ‘Just fuck off.’

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Lengjia Temple Middle School hadn’t changed much over the years. The potholed road was lined by short, dilapidated buildings. Exhausted, I slowly made my way up to the school. The night was pitch black, and my mates had gone home. A dim light glimmered at the top of the main building. I was filled with pleasurable melancholy, as if I’d just lost something important but sensed it was still close by. Someone was approaching pushing a bicycle and as it got closer I strangely noticed a big lump of pork tied to it. I leapt aside into a clump of trees to let the bicycle pass.

A sudden powerful force made me lose my balance. Something grabbed my foot and pulled me to the ground. I tried to cry out, but couldn’t. Although I wanted to resist, I couldn’t move even my little finger. My body was powerless, only my eyes could move.

‘Let me go!’ I implored. ‘I haven’t done anything wrong.’

The force dissolved with a blare of sound, then right in front of me I saw a pile of fresh black shit. A dog, half the height of a man, was eyeing my throat hungrily…

‘Rabbit, Rabbit, what’s up?’

My father was battering the bedroom door.

Suddenly I was awake, sweating. My heart was thumping. After I’d composed myself a little, I managed to say, ‘Everything’s fine. I just had a dream. You go back to bed.’

The old man didn’t do what I suggested, but clattered about in his sandals outside my door. Then he said, ‘You were crying very loudly. Is there really nothing wrong?’

Touched by his concern, I opened the door and let him in. We smoked cigarettes together in silence. Outside, dawn was breaking; from far away came the sound of the water-sprinkler car’s bell.

When my father had finished his cigarette, he patted my shoulder and said, ‘Sleep. Don’t let your imagination run away with you. Tomorrow you still have to go to work.’

That first month or so after my divorce, I did hours of overtime almost every day. Not only was I trying to win a promotion, I was deliberately losing myself in work. My approaches to several big companies proved fruitful and we signed a number of contracts. I estimated that this month the repair centre’s service revenues would be up by about
twenty per cent. The petrol situation had also taken a turn for the better; our adverts from the previous month had paid off, and sales had almost returned to the same level as the same period the previous year.

My brother-in-law had a friend who worked on the Chengyu expressway and through him I got thirty free advertisement spots. I gave him 2,000 yuan in a red envelope, then got 23,000 from the company — a profit of over 20,000. Suddenly my wallet was full again. With all my achievements, Fatty Dong didn’t dare to fart in my direction; the best he could do was write that report on my debt problem.

One day, Zhou Weidong told me that the office’s Little Wang had created a case file on me. This concerned me a little. I called Boss Liu and honestly admitted my error, saying that I was willing to accept the company’s disciplinary action.

‘It’s good that you have this attitude,’ he said, and told me to keep working hard and not to worry. He promised to talk to the accounts department. A few days later, a ruling on my debt problem came down, suggesting that the Sichuan branch ‘use its discretion’. The ruling proposed two methods of resolution: one was to repay the debt in instalments; the second was to deduct fifty per cent of my salary each month until everything had been repaid. At once I felt the weight of anxiety lift. I grinned and I thought Die, Fatty! Let’s see what tricks you have up your sleeve now.

At the end of July he wanted to promote Liu Three to be deputy sales manager, but I adamantly refused. Secretly
I encouraged several of our clients to report that Liu Three had no ability. The odds were stacked against him because I’d cultivated those guys for a long time with drinks and money. They’d do what I asked. Sure enough this tactic proved very effective and after this people paid even less attention to stinking Liu Three. Without my approval, no one would listen to him.

I had this strange sensation that I was going over to the dark side. When I thought back to the fight in the restaurant I was still angry. Because of bloody Yang Tao, Zhao Yue hated me, and had even slapped me in front of a crowd. All those years I’d never once lifted a finger to her, but now she slapped me. That slap on the face had cooled my heart right down. It made me realise that all relationships were essentially the same. What the hell was love between man and wife? What was growing old together? The truth was nothing more than a load of dog shit. Divorce, the end of life? What a joke.

It was Zhao Yue’s birthday, the 26th of July. Each year I bought her a big bunch of roses. This year, however, I could economise. I guessed Zhao Yue wasn’t short of people to buy her flowers, in particular that cheap low-life Yang Tao. When Zhao Yue got his flowers, I imagined she’d have a cheap smile as well, superficial as hell. This image depressed me, and so I gave Bighead Wang a call.

‘Does the station chief have time for a drink?’ I asked.

He blew his police whistle into the phone and came
straightaway. He had a lot of power now; all the procurement for the precinct was managed by him. There was a rumour he was considering ordering twenty VW Passats and was asking everywhere about prices.

‘I might be able to help,’ I told him. ‘It just depends if you have the guts.’

This guy loved money more than life. Last time, when I got those government car plates for him, he’d sold them on and made more than 2,000. When he saw me afterwards he didn’t give me anything. Now he said that my proposal would be difficult for him.

‘I’ve only just been promoted so I should play it straight for a few years.’

‘You bastard!’ I said. ‘Don’t play the bureaucrat with me. After doing this you’ll have at least 10,000 profit. Do we have a deal?’

‘What price?’

I told him he would be happy with it. I had the car business pretty well figured. My sister ran a stall in the Qingyang automobile showroom. Every day she went to work on people’s brains with her sales patter:
Want a car or not? Lowest prices in all Chengdu.

‘She knows the trade inside out,’ I told Bighead. ‘How to make money from cars, how to make money from car plates, how to make money from insurance. In the past, when business was good, she’d easily make more than 10,000 profit a month. In the last two years, however, things haven’t been so hot: my sister often moans that selling cars isn’t as good as selling tofu.’

Bighead was interested. ‘Well, what are we waiting for?’ he said. ‘Let’s agree to that. Of course, we won’t let your sister help us for nothing.’

I drained my glass, thinking, You bastard. I just knew you couldn’t resist the sugar-coated bullet. Of course we won’t let her help for nothing. Do you think I’m that model soldier, Lei Feng?

I’d often thought that in many ways Fatty Dong and Bighead Wang could have been brothers. Their physical appearance, way of talking and body language were very similar. What was more, they were both mean. Li Liang said that Bighead had cupboards full of five-grain alcohol at home but he never opened them when we were round. Apparently Bighead’s father had opened a liquor store by the banks of the Funan River, selling top-quality booze and cigarettes. It seemed likely that most of his supply came from Station Chief Wang’s stockpile of corrupt gains.

Li Liang and I agreed however that Bighead had changed for the better in the last few years. If you needed it, he would help with anything — except money. In the time I’d been a manager, I’d helped him get car plates and petrol coupons and got his car fixed, basically all for free. He’d made at least 20 or 30,000 out of this, but he wasn’t at all grateful. Last time we played mahjong at his house, I was cleaned out and asked to borrow a few hundred yuan. He was very grudging.

The bar was buzzing as a group of gorgeous girls squeezed past us. Their fragrant flesh assailed my nostrils but their
eyes seemed vacant. They were certainly professionals, but one of them looked a lot like Zhao Yue from behind. I frowningly reflected that right now she was probably enjoying another candlelit dinner, smiling at god knows who. Whoever he was, I longed to kick him. I lit a cigarette, thinking, From now on, I don’t have any ties to anyone. Except for Ma and Pa, my only family is money.

My parents’ hearts had been broken by the calamity I’d suffered. They tried to hide it with angelic smiles whenever they saw me, which made me thoroughly depressed. Secretly I’d rented a place in the Xiyan district, and I planned to move there at the weekend and escape them.

Meanwhile, I’d discovered that my first ever conquest — that girl Pang Yuyan — was now by appearances an uncouth hussy. The previous Tuesday I’d gone to Scholar’s Cap Street to collect a spare part for the repair factory. In the distance, I saw a crowd gathering. A woman was verbally assaulting some guy, describing his mother’s genitalia with a level of detail which made me uncomfortable. When I’d concluded my business and came out again, the fat woman was still cursing the guy, now casting doubt on his parentage, with plenty of colourful imagery about about how his mother had copulated with all kinds of birds and beasts. I thought it was a real waste that this woman had never become a film director. Moving closer, I gave her an appreciative smile and then we were both struck dumb. Ten years suddenly rolled back as I had a vision of her leaning against an electricity pylon eating watermelon seeds with a big bad smile. I saw her lying stark naked on Lang Four’s bed, giving me my first
ever physiognomy class step by step. I saw her running away from a beating by her old man; hiding behind the rubbish bins in the backyard.