Leave Me Alone (9 page)

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Whenever I returned to Chengdu during my student days, Father met me at the railway station. He wasn’t one for talking much. When he saw me he’d just smile and say, ‘How did you let your hair get so long? It’s a mess.’

I protested that I wasn’t a child who couldn’t find his way home, and he didn’t have to pick me up at all. The real reason I hated him coming was that he always used my nickname, Baby Rabbit, in front of Li Liang and others. This was excrutiatingly embarrassing. Once, after we’d just dropped off Li Liang, I howled at my father, ‘Baby Rabbit! Remember, my name is Chen Zhong. Chen Zhong!’

He stared at me with a hurt and bemused expression, then lowered his head and didn’t say anything.

My father had a deformed right foot, which manifested itself as a limp while walking. This was another reason why I
never wanted him to visit me at the university. In my second year, he went to the coastal resort of Beidaihe to convalesce and on his way through, he stopped by our campus. He showed up just as I’d gone to bed after playing mahjong right through the night. As soon as I saw him I felt aggrieved, fearing that yet again he’d embarrass me. Sure enough when my father came in he acted up, handing round cigarettes, and calling Bighead Wang ‘comrade’. I was so mortified that I almost forcibly dragged him away, and I didn’t even invite him to stay for a meal. My father left feeling emotionally bruised, and when he got to Beidaihe he called to remind me to ‘live a more regular life’.

Lurking in the corridor at the hospital, I felt sad as I thought of my father back then waiting for me at the train station. Zhao Yue was quietly comforting my mother. The old woman had been crying since morning, when she’d found my father collapsed in the bathroom. All the way to the hospital she’d sobbed until her eyes were red. I suddenly wondered whether, when it came down to it, there would be anyone to cry for me in the way my mother was for my father.

My brother-in-law called. He said that he and my sister were on their way. He added: ‘I’ve done what you asked me to do. Buy a paper.’

I bought one from the kiosk downstairs. Fatty Dong looked ridiculous in the newspaper photograph. His mouth was half open and his hands were raised high. He looked like a defeated nationalist general who’d decided to go over to the other side. The only disappointment was that his eyes were blocked out so you couldn’t clearly see his expression.
My brother-in-law had gone to town, putting the story on the front page under the headline:
Immoral Couple Apprehended, Huge Commotion.
I read the colourful article right through. It said that once Fatty Dong realised there was something wrong he’d leapt from the second-floor window in a vain attempt to get away and was seized at once by cops waiting in ambush. Below the article was a 600-word editorial written by my brother-in-law with the headline
A Technical Analysis of Whoring.
It said:
Given the current policy of cracking down on prostitution those who won’t give it up had better practise kung fu. Otherwise it will be hard for them to avoid capture.

I was esctatic that Fatty Dong’s day of reckoning had come. But when I went back to the emergency room and saw my mother crying, my pain returned.

My mother had given birth to two sons but my elder brother died of pulmonary tuberculosis at the age of three. When I arrived she was afraid that I would fail to reach manhood too. Her solution was to give me a childhood name that wouldn’t attract fate’s attention: Baby Rabbit. She also fed me every kind of pill. I reckoned that if my stomach had had the ability to store them, by now I’d have more than enough to open a drug store. My fourth grade primary school teachers were rather alarmed by an essay I wrote entitled ‘A Small Matter’ which related an incident in which my mother gave me an injection in my butt without even knowing what was wrong with me.

Zhao Yue was comforting my mother in a soft voice while holding my hand. Warmth passed from her smooth, warm skin into my hand, and from there to my heart.

A pretty nurse approached and asked whether we were Chen Zhenyuan’s family. Standing up nervously, I asked how my father was. She smiled and said, ‘Don’t worry, there’s nothing seriously wrong with your father. You can go and complete the hospital registration process.’

I was overjoyed and couldn’t help telling my mother: I knew the old man would be okay. It was just you making a big fuss.

The old lady slowly smiled, as if she was just waking from a dream.

There was a problem: I wasn’t carrying enough cash. I’d set out with 1,200 yuan on me, and after the taxi, registration and emergency treatment fees we were 500 yuan short. Zhao Yue searched her pockets but only found 300, and so I called Li Liang on his mobile.

‘If I may disturb the groom for a moment, I’d like to borrow some money from you,’ I told him.

A while later Li Liang arrived, appearing slightly breathless and carrying all manner of health food packages for my dad. When we’d completed the hospital registration formalities, Li Liang and I went outside for a smoke. Fixing me with a serious look, he said he’d like to apologise on Ye Mei’s behalf for the wine-throwing episode at the wedding yesterday.

‘You soft bastard, there’s no need to say that,’ I replied. ‘We’re friends, aren’t we?’

Deep down though, I was afraid that what had happened
between Ye Mei and myself would be impossible to keep hidden from him. I felt ashamed.

At university, our chauvinistic dormitory gang frequently discussed one question: what would we do if we discovered after marriage that our wives weren’t virgins?

Bighead Wang was the most militant. He maintained that second-hand goods were only fit to be used once; after that they should be thrown out. But I was sceptical because at the time of their marriage Wang’s wife, whose name was Zhang Lan Lan, had well-developed breasts and an air of sexual experience. Bighead had always kept quiet on the subject.

For his part, Li Liang said he didn’t care about a woman’s hymen. Even if she comes from a whorehouse I can accept her.

They asked me for my opinion and unexpectedly it seemed they had touched a nerve. ‘You farts, let me sleep,’ I said and snapped off the light. Lying under the sheets I felt wronged, as I thought about Zhao Yue’s background and suspected I’d suffered a big loss. How naive and confused I was.

I sensed that Li Liang was hard on the outside but vulnerable inside. Even though he said he wouldn’t care if his wife had slept around, I believed he definitely would. When he was dating Mount Tai, he went crazy when Mount Tai’s ex-boyfriend called her. On hearing his voice her eyes had started to well with tears. Li Liang told me about it outside the laundry one day and his expression was unusually savage. My impression was that if Li Liang had martial arts skills, that guy would definitely have been bleeding from every orifice.

I felt bad about what had happened in Leshan. Thinking about it even made me start to hate myself a little. The restaurant-owner’s wife I’d slept with a few times once told me, ‘Your brain answers to your dick.’ She had me about right. Once Ye Mei removed her trousers, I didn’t twice about her being Li Liang’s fiancée. I just gazed longingly at her snowy white soft body.

After his operation Father felt low. We took it in turns to keep him company at the hospital, and the May holiday slipped by without us realising. The old man wasn’t talkative, but I knew that in his reticent smile was a strength I could rely on

One night as I was leaving the hospital, I saw Zhou Yan from work walk past with a handsome guy on her arm. They were chatting away happily. I called her name and she turned her head and asked coldly what I wanted. I said I was sorry for what had happened with Fatty Dong and that it hadn’t been deliberate. The handsome guy’s ears pricked up, like a donkey that’s been flogged.

Zhou Yan really seemed to hate me. ‘It doesn’t matter whether it was intentional or not,’ she said. ‘Anyway, I now know what a dickhead you are.’ And she walked away.

I ran after her. ‘Zhou Yan, Zhou Yan, let me explain.’

Her donkey boyfriend turned and shoved me: ‘What do you want?’

Although angry, I stopped chasing them. I felt a real sense of loss and thought, if this had happened a few years ago, I would have given him a good beating. I was more mature now!

Ah, back in the old days, I was pretty hard. There was a guy in our courtyard called Lang Four, and he was the meanest fighter around. During my second-grade year he and two other guys beat this vegetable stall vendor to death and then fled to the north-east. When he returned three years later his infamy spread even further. It was said that he’d slept with every attractive girl in our neighbourhood. My adolescent self admired him immensely. I sought every opportunity to hang out with him at his home or on the street, feeling very tough.

Once, two hooligans were hassling some female classmates on the way to school. When I tried to defend the girls I found the guys attacking them were much stronger than me so I ran to find Fourth Brother.

‘Brother, there are some guys bullying me,’ I told him.

Fourth Brother turned up with a kitchen knife. As soon as I saw him, I felt that I was on the winning side, and with a single punch, I hit one of the thugs in the face and drew blood. This story was recounted admiringly by my classmates for some time. From my point of view it didn’t work out as well as I’d hoped though, because one of the girls I’d saved, the one I’d liked, became yet another of Fourth Brother’s conquests. My heart was broken for the first time the day I went over to his place after class and saw her luscious legs spread over his sofa.

Fourth Brother made amends, however, by arranging a ‘coming of age’ ceremony for me at the end of my second year at high school. He called Pang Yuyan over and said,
‘Little Rabbit is still a boy. Today you can help him become a man.’

Pang Yuyan obligingly stripped. A little while later I came out of the room highly embarrassed and told Fourth Brother, ‘Fuck this — Pang Yuyan has B.O.!’

Today, Lang Four has an internet café on Yinsi Street and a shrewish wife. One day when I dropped by he said, ‘You can go online. I won’t charge you.’