Leave Me Alone (28 page)

Back then we were all quite innocent. No one questioned the cause of this disaster. It wasn’t until three years later, when my old girlfriend Black Peony got married, that I suddenly saw the light.

When I first started getting serious with Zhao Yue, I was still with Black Peony. My behaviour of having a foot in two boats made her angry. She was one of those girls who is
outwardly coarse but inwardly refined. When she took off her clothes, her body was very hairy. One night just before lights out, she called me downstairs and said fiercely, ‘Do you want me or her?’

I prevaricated for ages before finally finding some moral courage. ‘I have the stronger feeling for Zhao Yue,’ I told her.

Black Peony made a massive fist. It seemed inevitable that she was going to hit me and I shut my eyes, preparing for her thunderbolt. Luckily for my face, nothing happened: when I opened my eyes again, I saw that she was going back upstairs, her shoulders rising and falling in the moonlight.

Anyway, her groom, a big manly Inner Mongolian guy from the PE department called Yao Zhiqiang, had been in the screening room that night. He was one of just two people who didn’t get dragged off to the security office.

Plant melons and you get melons; plant beans and you get beans. A Buddhist monk once said: Misfortune and disaster have no roots. Everything is brought on by yourself. The mountains before you were created by your eyes.

Standing on the concourse of busy West Station, I thought: you, Chen Zhong, what have you made for yourself?

This Chengdu, as familiar as my own palm, was a place of danger, turbulence and uncertainty. Walls and buildings were always being demolished, holes being dug and roads being repaired. There were always vendors and hustlers who would grab your sleeve and harass you.

Carrying one insubstantial paper bag, I squeezed my way through the crowds. My soul felt as worn as the pattern on the sole of an old shoe. In the bag were personal items from the
office: a few books (sales and marketing), some certificates of achievement, plus photos I’d never dared to let Zhao Yue see — me and my breadstick lover, me and Zhou Yan, me with Miss Sichuan. I’d lived like a cicada that didn’t know autumn was coming, spending my reserves of happiness. I’d made millions for the company over the past few years. All I had for myself was this small bag.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

Actually, there was 58,000 in my account. Everything the old man owned wouldn’t be worth more than that. My sister had money until recently, but in August she’d bought an apartment. What she had left wasn’t even enough for redecorating. Whenever I thought about money I had to fight an urge to bang my head against a brick wall. My insides hurt. There was no taste to my food, and when I slept I had nightmares. My urine was as yellow as freshly squeezed orange juice. One morning when I woke up I discovered a big blister in my mouth; it burst while I was brushing my teeth, and it was so painful that I couldn’t stop jumping around.

Head Office’s lawyer had arrived in Chengdu: the day before he’d called me to say that Boss Liu’s instructions were to spare no effort to get all the money back.

‘Even if you run, your guarantor won’t be able to,’ he told me.

As I listened to him, I felt as if I’d ground my teeth down to the roots. I was desperate to reach a fist down the telephone and grab him by the throat. The guarantor he was referring to was none other than my dad. When I first joined the company, he’d signed a ‘guarantor contract’ vouching for my character and guaranteeing to reimburse any economic losses I may cause the company.

My brother-in-law said this was punishing someone else for another’s misdeeds. The old man still didn’t know what had happened.

After I’d finished talking to the lawyer, I went to my parents’ house. As soon as I got in the door, I saw those two oldies squatting inside my room repairing my bed. My mother was still urging me to move home again.

‘Look, you’ve lost weight. Of course, away from home you don’t get enough hot food.’

On the way there, I’d decided to come clean with them. But faced with this scene, I just couldn’t find the words. While we were eating, Dad asked me how things were going at work. Although I nearly dropped my chopsticks, somehow I managed to say, ‘Fine, just fine.’ Inside, such was my shame that I felt like leaping right out the window.

I discussed the situation with Zhou Weidong and he comforted me, and said that the company was making an empty show of strength.

‘At most this is a civil court matter. They can’t off-load any legal responsibility onto you. What the hell are you afraid of?’

But I was pessimistic because I’d seen how Bighead Wang handled such cases. The former boss of Yingdao company
had been completely done over just because he’d imported a few cartons of fake cigarettes. He’d been fined, beaten, and had eventually lost his family fortune.

‘Once you’re in the detention centre, forget guilt or innocence,’ Bighead Wang told me. ‘There’s just good luck or bad luck. There’s never any chance to speak in your own defence.’

It was impossible to deny my debt. Anyway, if the company really wanted to finish me, they just had to give a few thousand to the cops. I wouldn’t even know how I’d died.

There’d been no contact between Bighead and me since the Li Liang incident. I supposed he’d understood that unless he came up with an explanation then neither I nor Li Liang wanted his friendship: there was no need to spell it out.

Li Liang found it difficult to trust people, including me, his best friend. We’d known each other for ten years, but now I felt estranged from him, and this suggested to me that I’d never really entered his life, his heart.

Ever since he found out about the fling with Ye Mei, his attitude towards me had been weird, as he was neither friendly nor completely aloof. Recently I’d got my mum to make a pot of Angelica Chicken, which I’d then taken to him in a heat-preserving container. When I said I wanted him to get better, he looked touched. But a few days later I went to his house again and found the container in a corner of the kitchen. It hadn’t been opened. When I discovered that the expression of my goodwill was growing green mould, I asked him why he
hadn’t eaten it, but as soon as the words were out of my mouth I regretted it. The meaning of the unopened container was perfectly clear: Li Liang wasn’t ready to accept any kindness from me. This attitude made me both indignant and sad.

I didn’t know how he’d react if I asked to borrow money from him but for my part, I’d rather go to jail than be humiliated by Li Liang’s refusal. At least that way I’d still be something of a man. I wouldn’t have completely sold out our youthful principles.

In our second year at university, the literature society paper
Maybe
started up. It instantly made waves on our campus. Li Liang published an article in it in which he wrote:
We won’t sink into degradation. We choose two kinds of death: brilliant or heroic.
This sentiment sparked an all-night debate, and was judged by Big Brother to be ‘7.8 fucking brilliant on the Richter scale.’

My lack of funds had made me unhinged. When I went home, I noticed a black Honda parked outside my place. The back window wasn’t fully closed, there was a two-inch gap. It was two in the morning. The street was quiet, deserted. I looked left and right, my heart nearly jumping out of my throat. In my paranoid state, my first thought was that someone was following me.

Regaining some sense, I thought about stealing the car. In the space of a minute I must have asked myself at least twenty times: should I or shouldn’t I? Master Li of the repair factory had studied this kind of car and I’d learnt a few things from him. With a long bit of wire you could prise the door open. Selling it on would be easy. I just had to give it to Liang
Dagang. It should fetch at least 80,000. As I was engaged in this mental struggle, I heard this old guy on night duty cough as he approached. At once I felt shaken by the reality of what I was doing. Sweat dripped down my forehead and my heart banged crazily. I’d fucking nearly become … a criminal.

Actually I’d already considered numerous illegal ways to get the money. Rob a bank, break into a gold shop. Highway robbery. Or sneak back to the company and start a fire, burn all the accounts. At my most extreme I thought of buying a pig knife and killing Fatty Dong, Liu Three and Boss Liu, then fleeing to the end of the earth. When I was calmer though, I knew these methods were all useless because I knew myself: I’d never had the resolution needed to be a murderer. Could I really buy a knife and go to work on such a spectacular scale? No. On this point, Li Liang’s appraisal of me had been correct. He’d said that if you loved money then money became your prison, and if you loved sex then your prison was sex.

‘If you love yourself, then you are your own prison,’ he concluded.

The ten days were up quickly. At eight in the morning, the lawyer called to say he was generously giving me a four-hour extension.

‘If you haven’t returned the money by noon, prepare to receive a summons.’

Feigning confidence, I blustered, ‘I’ve got an interview this morning. If you want to go to the court, you can go now.’

On reflection I hadn’t had enough fun, and so I added:

‘You don’t have to wait for me.’

And I slammed down the phone with no idea why I felt so wildly delighted.

There was no turning back now. As a last resort, I would suffer a tongue-lashing from the old man; if I could bear that then he would sort this out somehow. And if things really got bad I could obtain a false passport and flee to a new city, muddle along there for a while, then return and live quietly. Anyway, I couldn’t really care less where I went. There was nothing here I was reluctant to leave.

Strangely, the night before I’d dreamed of Zhao Yue: we were back in our university days, by the telephone kiosk outside the university gate.

‘Here, I have a little money,’ she said, concerned. ‘Why don’t you take it?’

These were the same words she’d said to me after the porn film episode had consumed all my savings. In my dream, however, I had this vague feeling that something was wrong. I smiled at her and said, ‘I’m General Manager now, I have money. Keep your money to buy clothes.’

Suddenly, the scene changed and we were on a balcony of the Golden Bay Hotel. Zhao Yue was naked. She was weeping as she said to me, ‘Chen Zhong, you’ve lost your conscience. You’ve lost your conscience.’

Then, like a crazy person, she pushed me, catching me off balance so that I toppled off the balcony, still reprimanding her. ‘You’re always so damn moralistic. If we don’t argue, your day isn’t complete.’

That night the moonlight was like water, dripping coldly into people’s eyes. A few late-to-bed sparrows were roused by the lunar brightness and flapped away. Inside a red apartment building in Chengdu’s Xiyan district, a man suddenly kicked over his chair and tugged at his own hair like he was crazy. Sky-blue moon-rays floated across his distorted face.

My interview was with a sports equipment company located near the US consulate. They needed a sales director. Maybe because I hadn’t slept well, I answered the boss’s questions incoherently. It was quite embarrassing and I soon got the impression that he wasn’t impressed with me. Finally, when I told him I wanted at least 5,000 a month, he lost all interest. Ending our conversation, he chased me away.

After that disaster, I walked around what was one of Chengdu’s wealthiest neighbourhoods. This was where lucky thieves and successful bandits congregated. After making their fortunes by force, trickery, cheating and swindling, they bought flash cars, lived in fine houses and had beautiful women on their arms. There was a name for these types: ‘noble people’. Not far away, a bar had opened which was frequented by rich women with fading looks and boring sex lives. They would go there to find youthful flesh. A few years ago, I’d taken Zhao Yue there and encouraged her to choose one of the handsome guys sitting at the bar. Zhao Yue had laughed and said: ‘Isn’t my husband enough for me? What do I need them for?’

Wandering aimlessly, I realised my mouth was foul
enough to poison a fly, and so I bought some spearmint gum at a small roadside shop. Chewing slowly, preoccupied, I made my way towards the street corner. There was a Trust-Mart supermarket on this block and I casually glanced inside. Suddenly my jaw trembled and I froze to the spot, as if I was being electrocuted. Through a crowd of people I saw my lovely wife, Zhao Yue, carrying a diverse assortment of bags, her long hair swinging as she approached me with a smile.