Shifu, You'll Do Anything For a Laugh (7 page)

In order to guard against any unforeseen trouble, Ding deposited his earnings under a phony name and hid the passbook in a hole in the wall, which he sealed with two layers of paper.

After the winter solstice, the temperature began to drop and there were no clients for two or three days in a row. He rode over to his cottage around noon. Frost clung to the fallen leaves on the ground. The dark yellow sun cast precious little heat. He sat under a tree for a while, until his fingers and toes turned icy cold. The lake was quiet, deserted, except for a man walking in circles by the water's edge, gauze wrapped around his neck. He was a man engaged in a life-and-death struggle with cancer, a bit of a celebrity around town, owing to the fight he was putting up; the local TV station had aired a segment on his struggle. The station had sent a crew down to the lake to film the story, scaring the hell out of Ding. Just to be safe, he'd climbed a tree and perched up there like a bird for over two hours.

After that incident, a fire inspection team had come to the area, frightening him half to death. This time he'd hidden behind a tree and waited there with his heart in his mouth. One by one the men had walked past his little cottage, but with no visible reaction, as if it were just another of nature's creations. The sole exception was a fat guy who had walked behind the cottage to release a stream of yellow piss. Ding could actually smell it. Our leaders are suffering from too much internal heat, he thought to himself. The fat guy looked to be getting on in years, but he pissed like a youngster: sucking in his gut, he formed a wet circle on the sheet-metal side of the bus, then another and another; but before he could complete the fourth circle, the stream broke off. After taking his young man's leak, the fat guy rapped loudly on one of the sheet-metal window coverings before buttoning his fly and waddling quickly off to catch up with his partners. Just those two frightening episodes.

The chilled air under the tree was too much for Ding, so he got up and moved into the bus to sit down and have a smoke. After carefully extinguishing his cigarette, he closed his eyes and roughly calculated how much he'd made over the six months or so he'd been in business. The results were gratifying. He decided to come back tomorrow, and if there were still no clients, he'd close up shop until the following spring. If I can keep this up for five years, I'll be in great shape for old age.

He rode out to the cottage early the next morning. Cold overnight winds had nearly denuded the trees; there were hardly any leaves left on the poplar branches, while those on the few oak trees scattered among the pines held on and turned a golden color. As they rustled in the wind, they looked like yellow butterflies swarming amid the branches. He came equipped with a snakeskin-patterned sack and a steel-tipped wooden staff. He picked up all the litter in the broad vicinity of the little cottage, not for any monetary gain, but out of a sense of obligation. He was a beneficiary of the best that society had to offer. After tying off the trash bag, he placed it on his bicycle rack, then went into the cottage to gather up the assortment of articles. The caw of a solitary crow outside made his heart skip a beat. Taking a look out the door, he spotted a man and a woman walking his way up the gray path from the little hill behind the factory.

8

The couple, middle-aged, stopped in front of the cottage. It was half-past noon. The man, his hands thrust into the pockets of his gray windbreaker, was quite tall. The wind behind him billowed the cuffs of his pants and exposed his lower calves. The woman was shorter, but not by much; calling upon his decades of experience in sizing up lengths of iron, old Ding guessed that she was in the neighborhood of five-five or five-six. She was wearing a purple down parka over a pair of light blue jeans and white lambskin shoes. Since neither of them was wearing a hat, their hair was at the mercy of the wind, and the woman frequently reached up to pull her hair back out of her face. As they drew up to the cottage, they subconsciously increased the distance between them, which only served to strengthen the impression that they were lovers, and probably had been for many years. When old Ding saw the cold, pained expression on the man's face and the look of an indignant woman on hers, he knew exactly what was going on between them, as if he'd just finished reading their dossiers.

He decided to stay open for one final pair of clients, not because of the money, but because his heart went out to them.

The man spoke to old Ding in front of the cottage, while the woman stood with her back to the door, her hands in the pockets of her parka, as she absentmindedly kicked at some leaves on the ground.

“It sure turned cold today,” the man said. “All of a sudden, like. Not normal.”

“On TV they say it's a cold front down from Siberia,” old Ding said, reminding himself that he ought to get rid of the old black-and-white TV at home.

“So this is the famous lovers’ cottage,” the man said. “I hear it's the brainchild of the Chief of Police's father-in-law.”

Old Ding just smiled and shook his head, which could have meant almost anything.

“Actually,” the man said, “all we're looking for is a quiet spot so we can talk.”

Old Ding gave him an understanding smile, picked up his stool, and headed over to the locust grove without so much as a backward glance.

Sunbeams burst from a gray cloud, flooding the woods with dazzling light. The locust tree seemed covered with a layer of tinfoil, glittery and magical. As he leaned against the springy limbs of the tree, powerful gusts of a northeast wind felt as if they had turned his spine into cold metal. The man stepped into the cottage, bent at the waist. The woman stood off to one side of the doorway, her head lowered, as if deep in thought. The man emerged from the cottage and walked up behind the woman to whisper something. There was no change in her demeanor. So the man reached out and gently tugged at the hem of her coat. She squirmed, a childish movement, like a little girl's display of temper. The man rested his hand on her shoulder, and even though she continued to squirm, she did not shake off his hand. So he pressed down and turned her toward him; she put up mild resistance, but ultimately turned to face him. Then, with both hands on her shoulders, he spoke to her — to the top of her head, actually. At last, he ushered her into the cottage.

Hidden from view beneath the locust tree, old Ding smiled. The metal door closed with a soft click; he then heard the barely perceptible turning of the lock. With that sound, the little cottage became another dead object in the wintry woods, touched from time to time by the sun's cold and desolate rays, giving off brief bursts of murky reflections. Tan-feathered sparrows shitting on the roof of the cottage flitted back and forth, raising a chorus of chirpings. Monstrous, bloated gray clouds sped across the sky, their dark shadows skittering across the wooded ground. He looked at his pocket watch — it was one o'clock. He didn't expect them to be in there long, probably no more than an hour. He'd been about to go home for lunch when these last two “uninvited guests” had showed up. He was getting hungry, and cold, but he'd have to wait them out before heading home. They were, after all, paying by the hour, so he had no right to ask them to leave before they were ready. Some of the couples stayed inside for up to three hours. Up till now, he'd have been happy if his clients had locked themselves inside and slept for eight or ten hours. But with the wind chilling him to the bone and the pangs of hunger growing stronger, he wished they would finish their business quickly and come out. He passed the time by digging a little hole in the ground in front of him with his walking stick, then lighting up a cigarette. Always conscious of the fire danger in a wooded area, he carefully flicked his ashes into the hole.

He'd been sitting under the tree for about half an hour when he heard muted sobs from inside the cottage. A gust of wind set the leaves rustling loudly enough to swallow up the sobs. But as soon as the wind died down, the sobs found their way back into his ears. He sighed sympathetically. This was the sort of romance lovers like that deserved; theirs was a classical, tragic love, like cucumbers in a pickling vat — all salt, no sugar. Young folks these days have gotten away from that. When they're in the cottage, they take advantage of every second, going at it hot and heavy. They scream lecherously, they moan, some of them fill the air with obscenities that make the birds blush. They all do the same thing, but the way they go about it couldn't be more different. By studying the intimate sounds of the men and women, he gained an understanding into changes in people's concepts. Deep down in his heart, he preferred a tearful love, which seemed more dramatic, somehow. As he listened to the sobs and whimpers, he thought about their story: it had to be a sentimental one, a romantic tragedy. For a number of reasons, marriage was not in the cards for them. Maybe, after being separated by a vast distance, this man and woman had come together to meet secretly. Viewed from that angle, he thought, I'm actually a good Samaritan.

He let his thoughts ramble for another hour before getting to his feet to limber up his achy joints and massage his nearly frozen earlobes. It was time to pack up and go home. He decided that the only way to feel good about how things had worked out was to charge them a nominal fee, then stop at the Lanzhou Noodle Restaurant in town for a bowl of beef noodles. The mere thought of those noodles had his stomach rumbling and his teeth chattering. He was damned hungry, and damned cold. It was unseasonably cold, abnormally cold, ridiculously cold, colder than the coldest days of winter last year. The woman's sobs had stopped, leaving the metal cottage perfectly still, quiet as a graveyard. A crow with a piece of intestine in its beak flew up from some distant place and landed in its nest in a poplar tree.

Another hour passed, and the little cottage remained still as death. The clouds kept gathering, and signs of dusk began to settle around the woods. What's going on? he asked himself silently. They didn't look that robust to me. Could they have fallen asleep in there? No, that's impossible! There's nothing in there but a slat bed covered by a straw mat. No mattress and no blankets. It's cold enough outside, even with a bit of weak sunlight; but once that door is closed, the cottage turns into cold storage. So what are they doing in there? He held off as long as he could before walking up to the door and coughing loudly as a signal for them to wrap things up and come out. No response from inside. Don't tell me they vanished into thin air like the goblins in
Roll Call of the Gods?
No, that's just some supernatural novel. Could they have turned into mosquitoes like the immortal monkey and flown out the window? Impossible, another supernatural story! They couldn't have. … A murky and utterly terrifying scene suddenly flashed before his eyes. His arms and legs began to quake. My god, not that! If that's what's happened, forget about my road to riches. I'll be lucky if I don't wind up in prison. All of a sudden, nothing else mattered. He raised his hand and knocked lightly on the door.

Rap rap rap
.

Then he knocked harder.

Thump thump thump!

Then he pounded with his fist.

Pow pow pow!

Then he pounded with all his might and shouted at the top of his lungs:

Pow pow pow!
Hey, come out of there!
Pow pow pow!
What are you doing in there? A trickle of blood oozed from a split between his thumb and finger. Still there was no sound from inside the cottage; for a moment, he wondered if his memory was failing him. Did a couple like that really go inside?

But then the woman's pale oval face suddenly floated in front of his eyes, incredibly lifelike. Her black, mysterious eyes were filled with a haunting look. She had a pointy chin and a bean-sized black mole by the corner of her mouth, out of which grew one long, curly black hair. The image of the man was just as clear. His raised raincoat collar covered his cheeks. He had a high nose, dark chin, and bushy eyebrows; his eyes were gloomy, he had one gold tooth.. ..

No doubt about it, a cold, hard fact: about three hours ago, a sorrowful middle-aged couple stepped inside this abandoned bus, converted into a little woodland cottage; but now they weren't making a sound, and he just knew that the worst thing imaginable had happened. Bad luck was like a foul-smelling honey bucket, and it had just been tipped over on him. His legs buckled, sending him slumping to the ground right in front of the door.

After about as long as it takes to smoke a cigarette, he managed to climb to his feet. He took several turns around the cottage, banging his hand against the metal skin from time to time.

“Hey, you good people,” he raged and pleaded, “wake up and come out of there. I'll give you every penny I made all summer, okay? I'll get down on my knees and kowtow to you, okay? You bastards, you animals, aren't you afraid lightning will strike you dead for taking advantage of an old man? You adulterers, you fornicators, whore, whoremonger, you'll come to a terrible end. I'll call you Daddy, okay? And I'll call you Mommy, okay? Daddy, Mommy, dear ancestors, be merciful and come out of there. I'm a sixty-year-old laid-off factory worker with a wife at home who suffers from stomach problems. That's bad enough, so don't go adding frost to a layer of snow. If dying's what you want, do it somewhere else, not in my cottage. Go hang yourselves from one of those trees, or go drown yourselves in the lake, or go lie down on the railroad tracks. There are all kinds of places to go kill yourselves, so why choose my little cottage to do it? I can tell you're people of means and status, at least a section chief, if not a bureau chief. Is something like this worth dying over? Dying like that is about as meaningful as a bird's feather. It's not worth it. If even people like you don't want to go on living, what about us folks from the lower classes? Bureau Chief, Section Chief, use your head and put yourself in my place. Come out, please come out….”

He yelled himself hoarse, and still not a sound from inside the cottage. Crows returning to their nests as the sun was setting noisily circled in the sky above the poplars, like a gathering cloud. He picked up a big rock and tried to smash down the metal door. A resounding clang ended in the rock splitting in two; the door suffered no damage. So he hunched up his shoulder and used his body as a battering ram. The door barely moved, but he was thrown back at least three meters and sat down hard on the ground. His shoulder hurt like hell. He could barely raise his arm. It felt like his clavicle was broken.