Leave Me Alone (22 page)

I shut my eyes, then I sighed and said that I was in the wrong.

‘I shouldn’t bring that up right now.’

I pulled her to me.

There was a knock at the door. Zhao Yue nudged me anxiously and said, ‘There’s someone outside.’

Caressing her face I said, ‘So? What are you afraid of? I’m here.’

She appeared nervous and told me to go and look.

‘We’re not husband and wife any more,’ she said.

I smiled. ‘OK, whatever you say.’

Zhao Yue gave me a grateful smile, which was repaid with an equally charming look. Zipping up, I went and opened the door.

Yang Tao stood there in a red T-shirt. He looked outraged.
I patted his shoulder, buckled my belt and said, ‘Go in. Your girlfriend is naked and waiting for you.’

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

The skin on my hands peeled every autumn. Western doctors blamed a vitamin deficiency, and Chinese doctors said that it was too much heat in my blood. Zhao Yue claimed that I had been a snake in my past life. Had I watched this passing scene from a remote cave in the mountains? Love and hate, sorrow and happiness. Would this life that for Buddhists was a compound of hundreds of accumulated lives be like the skin on my hands, flaking away bit by bit in the cold autumn?

This autumn in Chengdu was little different from the autumns of past years. Yellow leaves were everywhere; the wind blew sand into eyes. Each night there were deaths, and those keeping vigil over the bodies played mahjong, their faces alive with pleasure. Babies were born, their umbilical cords cut and their fates set. Li Liang said,
‘Believe it. Life’s a joke played on us by God.’

I was laughing like a movie villain as I left the Golden Bay Hotel. The girl on reception said goodbye and I gave her a graceful half bow.

‘Thanks for making that call,’ I said.

Zhao Yue should be feeling humiliated. I wondered whether Yang Tao would just climb on her and carry on where I’d left off: the stove was hot and so Zhao Yue shouldn’t mind frying one more dish. And I thought that a guy who’d stepped into someone else’s shoes wouldn’t say no to sloppy seconds. The only pity was that I’d had to pay the 300 yuan room fee in advance. I reminded myself to get a receipt and claim expenses.

The two of us had settled our accounts; we were even. This evening, that woman called Zhao Yue was struck from my ledger. We’d spent seven years establishing the truth that love was no more than a by-product of sexual excitement. Or to put it more simply: in this world there was no such thing as love. Deceit and betrayal ruled.

I jumped in the car and sped off. Suddenly a taxi screeched to a halt by my side. The driver stuck out his head and cursed me furiously.

‘You want to die! Blockhead, can’t you drive a car?’

I apologised, but his anger didn’t abate and he went on cursing. I smiled, thinking that this was what came of seeking forgiveness. If I’d got out and smacked him in the face, the son of a bitch wouldn’t even have dared to say anything.

After drinking so much, my bladder was swollen. I stopped my car on the second ring-road and undid my fly. In the
dusky lamplight, the patch of grass appeared withered. When were my green years? Thanks to the bounty of my piss, this grass should grow well next year, but where would I find nourishment?

A long-distance bus whistled past, a row of faces glued to the window watching as I let forth a torrent. Just as I was losing all inhibition, I heard a woman call out, ‘You’re shameless, pissing in the street.’

I quickly put away the instrument of my disgrace and then when I turned around, I saw a shadow approaching.

I truly believe that in this world there are no truly honourable people. Given the right combination of time, place and person, anyone will cheat — even an impotent guy or a frigid woman — if they think they could get away with it.

Zhao Yue had disputed this, but with one sentence I’d forced her into a corner. ‘If you and Louis Koo were alone in a room and he wanted you, would you resist or not?’

Hong Kong film star Louis Koo was her idol. Zhao Yue tried to avoid answering, but finally was only able to protest that there was no way such a situation would ever occur. I’d dropped the subject, thinking that this basically said it all about so-called true love.

Approaching me through the dark was a woman of about twenty-six or twenty-seven. Her face was made up like a fried breadcake. She was wearing shorts and a skimpy top which revealed her belly button. Just from one glance I could tell she was a hooker. I strated to get in the car, but she stopped me.

‘Hey, handsome, give me a bit of business. One hundred yuan will do.’

I was about to tell her to scram, when suddenly I had a thought.

‘Will you do it with your mouth?’

She shot a disdainful look in the direction of what I’d just put away and spat on the ground. ‘With the mouth it will be 500.’

Sneering, I shut the car door and started the engine. The desperate girl threw herself against the window.

‘Four hundred! Three hundred!’

Zhou Weidong always eulogised about what was still referred to in local slang as a Lewinsky. Once he told me he wanted to open a club on the river called the White House Kiss. When I told Zhao Yue about this, she muttered, ‘That Zhou Weidong really is an animal.’

I’d immediately drawn a line between Zhou Weidong and myself, saying, ‘Exactly. He’s undermining conjugal love between a man and wife, it’s degrading. Of course, in our case…’

Zhao Yue gave me a penetrating look. ‘I know what your dirty idea is. Forget it.’

At that moment I felt like a mouse in a trap.

The lights of a stream of cars approached and then faded into the night. The night market had already shut down; the vendors had put away their pots, pans, dippers and basins. Their faces etched with hardship and loss, they were heading back to their homes. Every night people on the street thought about going home, but who waited for me? Who was missing me?

The girl practised her oral kung fu on me, her long hair floating over my waist. All that was solid melted and, as the world soundlessly collapsed, and was remade memories rolled over me.

That autumn on Mount Emei, I’d wrapped an overcoat around Zhao Yue’s body but she’d continued to shiver, her teeth chattering like a horse’s hooves on flagstones.

‘Twenty years on, if we come here again we can’t go back on our promise,’ she said.

‘By that time you’ll be an old woman,’ I replied. ‘I’ll want a younger girlfriend.’

Zhao Yue had kicked me, hit my chest with her fist and chased me furiously. Finally I embraced her. She struggled but couldn’t get free and all at once calmed down. After I kissed her gently, we turned our heads and saw a vast expanse of white clouds. A red sun slowly rose, bringing the day, illuminating our bodies with a golden glow.

Two years later, when we departed from the North-East after visiting her parents, Zhao Yue and her mother wept on each other’s shoulders at the train station. My mother-in-law took my hand and said, ‘Chen Zhong, Zhao Yue hasn’t had many good times. You should treat her well.’

Zhao Yue sobbed so much she nearly put her back out. I put my arm around her shoulders and promised her mother, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll be good to her.’

As the train went through the Shanhaiguan pass, Zhao Yue asked, ‘Did you mean what you said?’

I was eating instant noodles and answered indistinctly with my mouth full. ‘If I cheat on you, I am a dog.’

She smiled like a flower blossoming.

That mouth-artist had gone but I had started to doubt my memories: those fragments — true or false? In this city tomb, who could serve as a reliable witness to my youth? Li Liang once said, ‘You can live for many people, but you can only die for one.’ But this night, who was I living for? Who could I die for? I zipped up and crawled back into the front seat. Starting the car, I spun the steering wheel and did a U-turn. The car door scraped against a tree with a soul-piercing sound.

Zhao Yue’s boyfriend before me was called Ren Li Hua — a name that made it hard to guess whether its owner was a man or a woman. After that incident in the woods when he ran off, Zhao Yue never spoke about him, no matter what. She refused to divulge any details of their relationship.

‘I’ve seen him anyway,’ I said. ‘What’s left to be embarrassed about?’

Even as I spoke, I was unsure what I actually wanted to know, but the more she refused to tell me, the more I felt there was something wrong. We had a massive argument. At one point I said nastily, ‘You checked to see that Ren Li Hua’s cock wasn’t up to much before you came looking for me!’

She grabbed a knife from the kitchen and brandished it, saying she wanted to stab me. I made her hand it over but
tears still streamed down her face as she screamed, ‘Chen Zhong, you have lost all goodness. You’ll come to a bad end.’

There was a lot of stuff about Zhao Yue that I supposed I’d never know now. It was rumoured at university that she’d attempted to commit suicide because of what happened in the woods. I asked her a few times, but she always denied it, and if I pressed her she got tetchy. One Christmas Eve, however, we were embracing tenderly, with her face pressed to my chest.

‘I’ll never commit suicide for another person,’ she said. ‘If I die, I want to die for you.’

Immediately after she said that, the Christmas bells started in the distance and we heard thunderous cheers from the bar downstairs.

I was suddenly full of dread: surely Zhao Yue wouldn’t commit suicide?

A taxi drove by. The road light at my side winked twice and then, without a sound, it went out. My mind threw up this thought: a person’s death was like a light going out! My brain felt as if it’d been struck by lightning. Dancing spots before my eyes that gradually formed into Zhao Yue’s face.