Leave Me Alone (21 page)

After a pause, he looked at me intently and then said, ‘Do you know why I’ve never liked Zhao Yue?’

Why?

He raised his voice and said, ‘Since you two are divorced, I may as well tell you. I once caught her doing it with another man.’

My jaw dropped but no words would come out.

Bighead tossed away his cigarette and added, ‘She said that if I didn’t tell you, I could do anything I liked with her.’

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

I called Zhao Yue to tell her I was leaving for Shanghai. There was what I interpreted as stunned silence, as if she didn’t know what to say. Finally she said: ‘So when are you coming back?’

She definitely sounded upset. My heart skipped a beat as I remembered how at her graduation she’d embraced me and said, ‘Even if you don’t love me, I still want to go to Chengdu and be with you!’

For a brief moment I felt like abandoning my plan — but then I remembered Bighead’s words and my heart became as hard as a stone.

‘What’s left in Chengdu for me?’ I said. ‘When I go, I don’t plan to return.’

It sounded like Zhao Yue was crying. Softly putting down the receiver, I studied the cruel smile on my face in the bedroom mirror.

Bighead Wang had said that the guy was Yang Tao. The incident had occurred a few months back, while I’d been doing company training in Nanjing. Bighead said they didn’t have a stitch on, and hadn’t even locked the door. Zhao Yue had remained calm, whereas Yang Tao appeared paralysed by shock. Bighead said he’d wanted to kill Yang Tao, but a completely naked Zhao Yue had blocked him, not letting him land a blow. According to Bighead, Zhao Yue hadn’t seemed embarrassed at all. Apparently Zhao Yue went looking for Bighead afterwards, and tearfully promised that she’d never do it again and would be faithful to me from now on. Bighead said that any time he mentioned Zhao Yue I got mad, so he didn’t dare tell me.

He kept his head down. Meanwhile, my body was shaking, my mind racing. Finally I lunged at Bighead and pushed him to the ground like a piece of meat. My eyes were red. Punching his nose, I told him, ‘How could you not tell me? If I ever consider you as a friend again I’m not a human being!’

That evening I started to plan my revenge. Deceit was like a sheathed knife: when the truth came out, it hurt people. I had to make Zhao Yue pay a proper price, pay for everything. Otherwise, I thought, what’s the point of me still being alive?

I had 60,000 or so in savings; the 50,000 Old Lai in Chonqing had promised me hadn’t trickled into my account yet. But there was enough money to pay for a hit on Yang Tao. In high school I had a classmate called Liang Dagang who’d done a few years in the army. Afterwards, he worked as a bodyguard for a pawnbroker and car racketeer dealing mostly in stolen goods; around half of the stolen cars in Chengdu
passed through his hands. Liang Dagang opened his own company last year, to collect debts on people’s behalf. It was said that he already had one death on his conscience. I’d bumped into him recently in Ran Fang Street and he said he wanted to underwrite all our company’s debts — to give us protection in the case of any legal difficulties.

He let his jacket fall open slightly and at his waist I glimpsed the muted glint of a gun.

I’d told Zhao Yue that I was off in a fortnight and if I wasn’t wrong, she’d be worrying now about our property. After our divorce we’d agreed that the apartment would go to her but all the contracts were in my name. Zhao Yue was one for details: there was no way she’d let me leave with things still like that. Her apparently emotional reaction to the news of my move was definitely fake, and I vowed to myself that from now on I’d never believe her tears. My guess was that she’d be concerned that I was planning to go back on my word and try to take the apartment.

Shortly before our wedding, we’d argued about a prenuptial agreement; everything had gone smoothly until then. We’d just been to the Golden Bull hospital for our medical inspections. Zhao Yue’s face was red as she told me the doctor had prodded her until she nearly wet herself. I guffawed, which made her more embarrassed, so I consoled her by saying, ‘This is a good thing. No one wants us to suffer mechanical failure in the middle of production.’ And I made a gesture to show that I didn’t mind displaying my equipment in front of the doctor.

She hit me, laughing. ‘You’re a complete bastard.’

It seemed that marriage required a lot of specialist training. At the marriage preparation class later that day, I whispered to her, ‘We should do a pre-nup. How about it?’

She didn’t like the idea. ‘We haven’t even got married yet and you’re already thinking of throwing me over,’ she said.

‘You really are a peasant,’ I told her. ‘What does this have to do with divorcing or not? Modern people need to think modern.’

In spite of everyone else looking at us, Zhao Yue stormed out in a huff. ‘Yes, I’m a peasant, so what? If there’s anyone willing to sign a pre-nup with you, go and find her!’

My first instinct was to stay put, but I forced myself to follow her. She went on at me for ages, furious, wounded and hurt, and I only saved the situation by reciting a parody of Xin Qiji’s poem:

Zhao Yue smiled through her tears. ‘If Xin Qiji knew that you’d done such stupid things with his poem, he’d be the one that was mad with you.’

Then she told me seriously, ‘I refuse to go to lawyers. I agreed to be married to you for our whole lives.’

My heart ached exquisitely as I embraced her thin waist.

A monk at Wenshu Temple had once said to me: ‘See through things; everything is false!’ Now I realised how stupid I was. Who made me so lacking in intelligence?

It was Zhao Yue who requested a meeting. After work, I drove straight to the Fragrant Hotpot Restaurant in Xiyan district. Five months before I’d refused to go there when Zhao Yue asked me. Now it was too late, too late for everything.

‘If I hadn’t turned you down that day, do you think we’d still be together now?’ I asked in a sentimental voice.

Zhao Yue’s head dropped. ‘Is there any point in asking that now?’

Her mouth trembled. It seemed she wanted to cry again.

I’d rehearsed my lines. Zhao Yue couldn’t cope with other people’s emotions. When we watched
Titanic
, long before anyone else she’d started to cry as though she was dying. That was my first strategic objective tonight: to get her emotional. I drank beer and looked fondly at her. Actually my heart was becoming hard like metal.

‘Now that I’m moving to Shanghai I don’t know when I’ll be back,’ I told her. ‘Perhaps I won’t even be able to return for your and Yang Tao’s wedding.’

Zhao Yue kept up her pretense. ‘Yang Tao and I are just friends. Who says I’m going to marry him?’

I managed to feign a happy expression.

‘You mean I still have a chance?’

‘You’re going to Shanghai,’ she said. ‘How can you take care of me?’

Now we’d got to the critical topic and I fixed her with a sorrowful look.

‘I’ll always wait for you,’ I said. ‘It doesn’t matter where you are, whether or not you’re married, I’ll wait. I’ll use the rest of my life to make up for my mistake.’

My tone was as respectful as at a funeral. Zhao Yue’s eyes gradually filled with tears.

Buttering people up was always one of my greatest weapons in seducing women. At school when I was chasing the school beauty, Cheng Jiao, many of my competitors were taller, more handsome and richer than me. In the end though, I won her. The first time I got her clothes off, my bedroom skills were still raw and she had to show me the ropes, sighing, ‘I’ve been deceived by your fearless mouth.’

Zhao Yue was shallower than Cheng Jiao, I thought, because she didn’t know who she had feelings for. It was easy to move her. All the same, I felt a pang as I realised how well I knew her.

The restaurant’s staff were very efficient. At precisely seven thirty they played Zhang Ai Jia’s ‘The Price of Love’:

This was our song. At our first New Year’s party, I’d worn a black suit and Zhao Yue a white skirt and red top. We linked hands and passionately led the singing, to the approval of
everyone there. When Zhao Yue heard the song, her lips trembled. I looked straight into her eyes and sang softly:
That deep love always in my heart, even though you have gone.

I held her hand and said I didn’t know when I’d get another chance to sing the song with her. Zhao Yue was in tears and her chopsticks fell to the table.

I shook my head and said that my biggest regret in life was letting her go. ‘You gave me your best few years,’ I told her, ‘but I let you down. I didn’t even buy you any decent clothes.’

Zhao Yue threw herself into my arms. People looked at us. I cradled Zhao Yue’s head to my chest and waved at them, smiling.

When we’d finished eating Zhao Yue’s eyes were still tearful. I felt myself soften a bit and asked her: ‘Do you think we can get back together? Be like before?’

Zhao Yue said there was no way she could forget the scene in our apartment that day. ‘You hurt me too much!’

I thought gloomily that I’d given her a chance but she hadn’t taken it.

My plan was to suggest to Zhao Yue that we spend the night together. I was about to leave Chengdu and it could be the last time we were together. It was also the seventh anniversary of our first kiss in that campus grove. We’d told each other how we felt. The moonlight was very strong, making her body smooth and clear as jade. ‘My Zhao Yue really is as beautiful as a goddess,’ I’d said.

She’d poured herself shyly into my embrace, wrapped her arms around me so tightly I could hardly breathe. Each year we’d celebrated that day and Zhao Yue said that it was more
important than our wedding. Marriage was just a form, but love, that was happiness. In two days time it would be exactly seven years. That was 2,555 days and nights. Fuck, even I felt emotional.

To begin with Zhao Yue said no to my suggestion of a last night together, but when she saw my tears — although no doubt the apartment crossed her mind as well — she finally agreed.

The Golden Bay Hotel was a place where our company often put up clients and I’d already arranged everything. When we went into the room I let down her hair, and caressed and stroked it as I’d done many times before. Zhao Yue nestled in my arms, a little shy. When all her clothes were off, I kissed her.

‘It’s been months since I kissed you,’ I said with deep regret.

Zhao Yue looked at me sadly and her expression triggered a lot of memories in me. In the winter vacation of our third college year, she’d seen me off at the railway station. After my graduation she came again to the station to see me off and embraced me, crying so loudly the rail staff didn’t know where to look. On the day of our divorce, before we set out from home she straightened my tie and told me to take care.

Suddenly I thought I couldn’t go through with this. A voice inside me was saying,
Everyone makes mistakes. Forgive her.

Very seriously I asked her, ‘Can you tell me about you and Yang Tao?’

She sat up angrily, and said she was leaving.

‘There’s really nothing between us, nothing at all. Do you think everyone is like you?’