Leave Me Alone (31 page)

Liu said, ‘We’re heading there when we’ve finished these drinks. If you want, we can go together.’

I hesitated. The guys with him stared at me. They were all repulsively ugly and didn’t look like good guys. Ever since I was small, my dad had told me: ‘Don’t be afraid of fighting the wrong person; be afraid of making friends with the wrong person.’

In truth, I was a bit nervous about hanging out with them.

Beer really does bad things to you: although I had drunk just five bottles, I’d been to the toilet three times. In these last two years drink had ruined my health, and my kidneys were nearly done for. Thinking of the glory of my ‘six-times-a-night’ prime, I couldn’t help feeling depressed at my decline.

Li Liang was still sat at our table, whistling tunelessly like a child who can’t find his mother. Light from the red and green lamps illuminated his face, making him look especially pale. My heart was filled with a strange pity. It was as if he’d just seen Jesus.

When Li Liang heard that I was going on somewhere with Fatty Dong’s friends, he shook his head disgustedly.

‘Sex maniac, you don’t change,’ he said. ‘Sooner or later you’ll die on a woman’s stomach.’

I countered with a few lines of his poetry:

Li Liang gave me a disdainful look. ‘Don’t say I didn’t warn you. Just by looking at those people you can tell they’re
trouble. It’s better if you don’t have anything to do with them.’

I laughed and didn’t answer him, focusing my attention on the song and dance performance on the platform instead. The handsome singer was chanting in a trance-like way:

I felt confused by these lyrics. I said to Li Liang, ‘Where is heaven? Life is basically just hell.’

He didn’t respond. When I looked back, he’d gone. The disco lights were sparkling, the drums beating. The bar was a sea of shadows. To one side of the stage, where colours flew across the edge of the red sea of people, my friend turned his head and gave me a stupefied look. He seemed like a corpse that had been dead some years.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

A silent night. No moonlight.

My whole face was blood. My cheeks burned. Fresh blood flowed from my nose and dripped onto my Gold Lion suit. My lips were swollen, the flesh split. My mouth was full of stinking saliva and blood while every vibration of the van drilled into my aching body. A guy sat behind me, grabbing my hair. Liu’s face was impassive. He cursed me unceasingly, giving the impression he wanted to rip me apart.

As soon as I got in the van, I’d realised this was a big mistake. Two guys squashed me into the middle so I couldn’t move. Looking around, I decided the situation wasn’t good. I said I needed to piss and got up, ready to leap out. Before I’d even got my head free, a guy in a black jacket threw a punch at me.

‘Fuck you. Do you dare to run!’

He punched me repeatedly until stars swam before my eyes. The bastard on my other side joined in too, squeezing my throat. His strength was terrifying. For a while I couldn’t breathe. My throat kept making a choking sound and I couldn’t say a word. After what seemed like ten thousand years, the van finally started and he loosened his hand. I began to cough, struggling against them and asking ‘Liu, Brother Liu, what does this mean?’

Sat in front of me, Liu turned round and looked at me sorrowfully, then slapped my face. My buzzing head smashed into the van door. I heard him say between his teeth, ‘Screw you! That’s what it means!’

Those giants’ fists and feet fell like heavy rain. Eventually I figured it out. Three months earlier Bighead Wang had taken a group of officers to close down Liu’s club, and had put Liu in jail for several days. The guy looked tough from the outside, but apparently Bighead had conducted his sting very thoroughly; from Liu’s money belt alone he’d shaken out no less than 300,000. After getting out, the guy was furious, and vowed to get revenge on Bighead.

I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at this turn of events. I managed to say: ‘This is a mistake. It has nothing to do with me.’

The thug’s eyes widened and his knee stabbed into my neck. It felt like all my organs were done for. I dropped to my knees in the car but he hadn’t finished. Grabbing me by my ear, he pulled me up towards his feet, stamped on me and cursed me.

‘Fuck you! It was you who informed on me. Otherwise, how would they have found out!’

My stomach was smashed to a pulp. I tried to get up but couldn’t stand. My head crashed on the rubber car mat, my swollen lips so torn and painful that I wept.

‘Brother Liu, it really wasn’t me. I never betrayed you!’

My head was kicked again before I’d finished speaking. As golden stars exploded before me, I heard him say, ‘The cops have admitted it. Do you still dare to play dumb?’

What came next is a blur. I remember a small, dark alley where they dragged me like a dead dog. They surrounded me, continually punching and kicking me. Did I get on my knees and beg them to spare me? I don’t remember.

Finally the punching and kicking stopped. I had no strength to sit up. My head banged on the ground as I crawled along, until suddenly it exploded with pain again.

I heard a guy say, ‘That’s enough. Let’s go.’

The night was as black as hell and for a long time I lay in that still, lonely place. I heard lots of different noises at the same time. The grass was long and there were flowers blooming. All things on earth were being born. The four seasons seamlessly merged. A few people passed by at a distance; some others whispered in corners. A tide of familiar faces washed over me and then retreated.

The tide swelled again. There was a sound of laughter, then crying. One voice from further and further away asked me: ‘Are you OK, are you OK, are you OK?’

I was lying beside a wall. Trembling. Cold. The cold filled me. It reached the pit of my stomach. Slowly the cold flowed into my arms and legs and bones. Every one of my bones seemed broken. The blood on my face ran onto my chest and
stomach and turned into ice. Once more I crawled agonisingly along the ground, my lips pressed against the soil of my beloved Chengdu. Far away I heard a voice say: ‘Rabbit, don’t cry, be a good child, don’t cry.’

My eyes were heavy. I could only keep them open with great effort. Blood was flowing into them, but a few images became clear, like Zhao Yue’s lovely nineteen-year-old face. A few things slowly became blurred, like the spring fog that covered Chengdu every year.

Christmas bells sounded from afar. The whole city was rejoicing. In that dark, cold and dank alley, I lay silent on the ground. Fresh blood congealed around me, from which new grass would grow. I reached through the increasingly splendid Chengdu night and saw the golden brilliant face of God. Now he was high in the clouds, looking benevolently at the earth. It was said that on this night he granted people his blessing.

Celebrated for his darkly funny tales of contemporary Chinese urban life,
New York Times
columnist Murong has emerged as one of China’s leading dissident voices.

Murong was twenty eight and working in the car industry when he started posting his first novel
Leave Me Alone
on the internet. It became a cult hit among young middle class Chinese looking for writing that pushed the boundaries of what was acceptable literature.

www.fortysix.tv