Life and Death are Wearing Me Out (63 page)

I crossed the street, turned east, then headed north, walking slowly toward the train station. Your wife had tossed me four onion rolls that morning and, so as not to appear ungrateful, I ate them all. Now they lay heavily in my stomach. When the Hungarian wolfhound who lived behind a restaurant smelled me out, he barked a friendly greeting. I didn’t feel like responding. I wasn’t a happy dog that morning. I had a hunch that before the day was over, bad things would happen to man and dog alike. Sure enough, I met your wife on the way before reaching her work site. I greeted her with dog sounds to let her know her son was safely in school. She jumped down off her bicycle and said:

“Little Four, you saw it with your own eyes, he doesn’t want us anymore.”

With a sympathetic look, I walked up to her and wagged my tail to try to make her feel better. Just because I didn’t care for the greasy odor that clung to her body didn’t alter the fact that she was my mistress. She walked her bike over to the curb and signaled for me to come to her, which I did. The roadside was littered with white blossoms from roadside Chinese scholar trees. A foul smell from a nearby panda-shaped trash can hung in the air. Farm tractors pulling trailers with vegetables and spurting black smoke from their exhaust pipes rumbled down the street until they were stopped by a traffic cop in the intersection. A couple of dogs had met their end the day before thanks to chaotic traffic conditions. Your wife touched my nose.

“He’s got another woman, Little Four,” she said. “I could smell it on him. You have a better nose than I do, so you must have known too.” She lifted her black leather purse, parts of which had turned white from use, out of her bicycle rack, took out a sheet of paper, and unfolded it. In it were two long strands of hair. She held it up to my nose. “This is her,” she said. “They were on his clothes. I want you to help me find her.” Her eyes were moist, but I saw flames in them.

I didn’t hesitate. This was my job. Truth is, I didn’t have to sniff at those strands of hair to know who I should go looking for. Well, I trotted along seeking out a smell like mung-bean noodles, your wife following me on her bike. Because of her injury, she kept her balance better riding fast than riding slow.

I did hesitate when we reached the New China Bookstore, since the scent from Pang Chunmiao’s body gave me a good feeling. But when I looked back and saw your wife limping toward me, I made up my mind to go through with it. I was, after all, a dog, and dogs are supposed to be loyal to their masters. I barked twice at the entrance, and your wife pushed open the door to let me go in first. I barked twice at Pang Chunmiao, who was wiping down a counter with a damp cloth, then I lowered my head. I simply couldn’t look Pang Chunmiao in the eye.

“How could it be her?” your wife said. Keeping my head down, I whined. Your wife looked up into Pang Chunmiao’s red face. “How could it be you?” she said uncertainly, her voice betraying feelings of agony and forlornness. “Why is it you?”

The two middle-aged clerks gave the newcomer and her dog suspicious looks. The red-faced one, whose breath reeked of pickled tofu and leeks, shouted angrily:

“Whose dog is that? Get him out of here!”

The other clerk, whose rear end smelled of hemorrhoid ointment, said softly:

“Isn’t that County Chief Lan’s dog? Then that must be his wife. . . .”

Your wife turned and glared hatefully at them. They lowered their heads. Then in a loud voice your wife confronted Pang Chunmiao.

“Come outside,” she said. “My son’s class monitor sent me to talk to you.”

After your wife opened the door to let me out, she went through the door sideways and, without looking behind her, walked over to her bicycle, unlocked it, and pushed it down the street, heading east. I was right behind her. I heard the door of the New China Bookstore open and close, and I didn’t need to look to know that Pang Chunmiao had come outside. Her smell was stronger than ever, a case of nerves.

In front of a chili sauce shop your wife stopped and grasped a French plane tree with both hands; her legs were trembling. Chunmiao walked up with obvious hesitation and stopped three yards before she reached us. Your wife was staring straight ahead at the tree trunk. I kept an eye on each of the two women.

“You were only six years old when we started at the cotton processing plant,” your wife said. “We’re twenty years older than you, different generations.

“He must have tricked you,” she continued. “He’s a married man, you’re a young maiden. That’s completely irresponsible of him, he’s a brute and he’s hurt you.” Your wife turned around, rested her back against the tree, and glared at Pang Chunmiao. “With that blue birthmark he looks three parts human, seven parts demon. For you to be with him is like planting a fresh flower on a pile of cow shit!”

A pair of speeding squad cars, sirens blaring, drew curious looks from people out on the street.

“I’ve already told him the only way he’ll get his freedom is over my dead body,” your wife said emotionally. “You know what’s what. Your father, your mother, and your sister are all public figures. If word of your affair were to get out, the shame they’d feel would be overwhelming; they’d have no place to hide their faces. As for me, what do I care? Half my bottom is missing, and I have no reputation worth saving, so I have nothing to lose.”

Children from the kindergarten were just then crossing the street, with one nanny in front, another at the rear, and two more running up and down to keep the children in line, shouting the whole time. Cars in both directions were stopped at the crosswalk.

“I advise you to leave him and find someone else to fall in love with. Get married, have a child, and you’ve got my word I’ll never tell anyone about this. Huang Hezuo may be ugly and someone to be pitied, but she means what she says.” Then your wife wiped her eyes with the back of her hand before sticking the first finger of her right hand in her mouth. I saw her jaw muscles tense. She pulled her finger out of her mouth, and I smelled blood. The tip of her finger was bleeding, and I watched as she wrote two words in blood on the glossy trunk of the French plane tree:

LEAVE HIM

With a moan, Pang Chunmiao covered her mouth with her hand, spun around, and stumbled off down the street, running a few steps, then walking, running and walking, running and walking, the way we dogs move. She kept her hand over her mouth the whole time. The sight saddened me. Instead of going back to New China, she turned and disappeared down a lane. I looked over at your wife’s ashen face and felt chilled. It was clear that Pang Chunmiao, a silly little girl, was no match for your wife, the victim in all this; her tears refused to leave the safety of her eyes. It was time, I thought, for her to take me home; but she didn’t. Her finger was still bleeding, too much to waste, so she filled in missing strokes and reapplied the fuzzy parts. There was still blood, so she added an exclamation mark to the words. Then another, and another . . .

LEAVE HIM!!!

A perfectly good slogan, though she seemed to want to write more. But why gild the lily? So she shook her finger and stuck it in her mouth, then reached under her collar with her left hand and pulled a medicinal plaster off her shoulder to wrap her injured finger. She’d put it on just that morning.

After stepping back to admire the slogan, written in blood to goad Chunmiao into action and as a warning to her, she smiled contentedly before pushing her bike down the street, with me some three or four yards behind her. She stopped to look back at the tree a time or two, as if afraid someone would come along and rub the words out.

At an intersection we waited for the green light, though we crossed with our hearts in our throats, thanks to all the black-jacketed motorcyclists for whom a red light was a mere suggestion and the drivers of cars who paid little attention to traffic lights. In recent days a bunch of teenagers had formed what they called a “Honda Speed Demons Gang,” whose purpose was to run their Honda motorcycles over as many dogs as possible. Whenever they hit one, they ran over it over and over, until its guts were spread all over the street. Then with a loud whistle it was off to the next one. Just why they hated dogs so much was something I never could figure out.

The meeting to discuss Jinlong’s idiotic proposal went on till noon. The elderly Party secretary, Jin Bian — the onetime blacksmith who had fitted my dad’s donkey for shoes — had been promoted to vice chairman of the Municipal People’s Congress, and it was a foregone conclusion that Pang Kangmei was next in line for the Party position. She was the daughter of a national hero and a college graduate with rich experience at the grassroots level. Barely forty years old and still attractive, she had the enthusiastic backing of her superiors and the support of those beneath her. In other words, she had everything she needed for success. The meeting was highly contentious, with neither side willing to back off its position. So Pang Kangmei simply pounded her gavel and announced: “We’ll do it! For the initial phase we’ll need 300 million yuan. We’ll leave it up to the banks to come up with that amount. We’ll form a Merchants Investment Group to attract investment capital from both domestic and overseas sources.”

I was distracted throughout the discussion, using visits to the toilet as an excuse to make phone calls to the New China Bookstore. Pang Kangmei’s gaze followed me like a laser. I could only smile apologetically and point to my stomach.

I phoned the bookstore three times. Finally, on the third try, the clerk with the husky voice said heatedly:

“You again. Stop calling. She was led outside by the crippled wife of Deputy County Chief Lan, and she still hasn’t returned.”

I called home. No answer.

My seat felt like a heated grill, and I know how bad I must have looked as I sat through the meeting, one scary image after another racing through my mind. The most tragic image was of my wife murdering Chunmiao in an out-of-the-way village or remote spot, then killing herself. A crowd of rubberneckers had gathered around the bodies and police cars, sirens blaring, were speeding to the scene. I sneaked a look at Kangmei, who was volubly describing aspects of Jinlong’s blueprints with a pointer, and all my benumbed brain could think about was how, in the next minute, the next second, anytime now, this huge scandal would land in the midst of this meeting like a suicide bomb, sending fragments of steel and flesh flying. . . .

The meeting was adjourned amid applause that carried complex implications. I rushed out of the conference room, followed by a malicious comment by one of the attendees: “County Chief must have a crotch-full by now.”

I ran to the car, catching my driver by surprise. But before he could scamper around to open the door for me, I’d already climbed into the backseat.

“Let’s go!” I said impatiently.

“We can’t,” he said helplessly.

He was right, we couldn’t. The administrative section had lined up the cars by seniority. Pang Kangmei’s silver Crown Victoria sedan was at the head of the line in front of the building. Next in line was the county chief’s Nissan, then the People’s Consultative Conference chairman’s black Audi, the National People’s Congress municipal director’s white Audi. . . My VW Santana was twentieth. They were all idling. Like me, some of the attendees were already in their cars, while others were standing near the gate, engaged in hushed conversations. Everyone was waiting for Pang Kangmei, whose laughter preceded her out of the building. She was wearing a high-collared sapphire blue business suit with a glittering pin on her lapel. She told everyone that she owned only costume jewelry, which, according to her sister, could fill a bucket. Chunmiao, where are you, my love? I was on the verge of climbing out of my car and running out onto the street when Kangmei finally got into her car and drove off, followed by a procession of automobiles leaving the compound. Sentries stood at attention on both sides of the gate, right arms raised in salutes. The cars all turned right.

“Where is everybody going, Little Hu?” I asked anxiously.

“To Ximen Jinlong’s banquet.” He handed me a large red, gilded invitation.

I had a vague recollection of someone whispering during the meeting, “Why all this discussion? The celebration banquet’s there waiting for us.”

“Turn the car around,” I said anxiously.

“Where are we going?”

“Back to the office.”

He was not happy about that. I knew that not only were the drivers treated to some good food at these events, but they were also given gifts. Not only that, Chairman of the Board Ximen Jinlong had a reputation of being especially generous in this regard. To try to console Little Hu, and to cover myself for my behavior, I said:

“You should be aware of my relationship with Ximen Jinlong.”

Without responding, he made a U-turn and headed back toward my office building. Just my luck to run up against market day at Nanguan. Hordes of people on bicycles and tractors, in donkey wagons and on foot, crowded into People’s Avenue. Despite a liberal use of his horn, Little Hu was forced to go slowly with the flow of traffic.

“The goddamn traffic cops are all off drinking someplace!” he grumbled.

I ignored him. What did I care if the cops were off drinking? Finally, we made it to the office, where my car was immediately surrounded by a crowd of people that seemed to have risen out of the ground.

Some old women in rags sat down in front of my car, slapping their hands on the ground and filling the air with tearless wails. Like magicians on a stage, several middle-aged men unfurled banners with slogans: “Give us back our land,” “Down with corrupt officials,” things like that. A dozen men were kneeling behind the wailing old women and holding up sheets of white cloth with writing on them. Then there were people behind the car passing out handbills in the practiced manner of Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution or professional mourners scattering spirit money during rural funerals. People swarmed around us, penning us in with no way out. Fellow villagers, you’ve surrounded the person who least deserves it. I spotted Hong Taiyue’s white hair; supported by a couple of young men, he was walking toward me from the pagoda pine east of the main gate. He stopped just in front of the farmers and behind the seated old women, a space that had obviously been saved for him. This was an organized, disciplined crowd of petitioners, led, of course, by Hong Taiyue. He desperately missed the collective spirit of the people’s commune and the stubborn perseverance of Lan Lian, the independent farmer. The two eccentrics of Northeast Gaomi Township had been like a pair of oversize lightbulbs, spreading their light in all directions, like two flying banners, one red, the other black. He reached behind him and took out his ox hip bone, now yellowed with age, but retaining all nine copper coins around the edge; he raised it in the air, then lowered it, over and over, faster and faster, creating a
hua-la-la hua-la-la
rhythmic sound. That bone was an important memento from his glorious history, like the sword used by a warrior against his enemy. Shaking it was Hong’s special skill. So was clapper talk: