Beijing Comrades (3 page)

The day I met Lan Yu, I had been in the office most of the day working on various projects. Just as I started mulling over what I was going to be doing that evening, Liu Zheng walked in. He worked at my company; we had been friends since childhood.

“That Russian guy didn't look too happy when he was leaving the office!” Liu Zheng said with a laugh.

“Fuck,” I grumbled. “That guy's really testing my limits. I'm sick of him trying to take advantage of me. As far as I'm concerned, he can stay here and work or he can get the hell out. It's not like he's that good at his job anyway.” I thumbed through the stack of paperwork in front of me then looked up again. “Oh, right. We're going bowling at the Imperial tonight. You coming?”

Liu Zheng smiled. “Did you ask Hao Mei to come? I meant to tell you she called this morning to say hi.”

“She's not coming,” I replied. “I don't want to see her tonight. Listen, do me a favor and get her a present, a little
pocketbook or something. I need to figure out how to get her to stop calling me every day.”

“Ha!” Liu Zheng laughed. “Had enough of your own girlfriend, huh? Well, listen. A few days ago I went over to Di Street to pick up a few workers. I met this kid. He says he just started university here in Beijing. You interested?”

“Excuse me,” I said blithely, “I'm not interested in anyone right now, male or female! How do you always manage to get involved with these sketchy people? They could be full of diseases, you know? It's fuckin' disgusting!” I laughed.

“No, no, no,” Liu Zheng assured me. “This one's totally naive: sixteen, just started school, looking for a job. He doesn't talk much, but he obviously needs to make a little money. You should go for it!”

“And you believe what he says?” I laughed. “He's probably just some migrant worker. Beijing is full of those kinds of swindlers these days. He'll probably mug your ass the second he gets in your car!”

Instead of arguing about it, Liu Zheng continued tallying his grievances against the newly hired Russian interpreter, whom he suspected of being more on the Russian negotiator's side than ours.

Liu Zheng was two years older than me, but we had graduated from university the same year. From primary to middle school we were in the same homeroom, but in high school we were in different classes—me in the humanities, him in hard sciences. After high school he didn't have much luck getting into a good university; he was only accepted by a local teachers' college. Not wanting to be a poverty-stricken middle school teacher after graduation, he came to me looking to fill his stomach. I couldn't turn away an old friend, so although I had no need for a physicist, I let him work at my company as
associate director of management. He had no real job description. He was just sort of my eyes and ears, an exalted company gopher. I liked him because he was smart, honest, sincere, and not particularly competitive or jealous. But he also had another important function: arranging my tricks. A married man, Liu Zheng was remarkably restrained when it came to his own personal life, but fully tolerated and even encouraged my hedonism. Well worth the price of a sinecure.

“All right, so I'll see you at the Imperial tonight,” he said before standing up to leave.

“Great,” I replied. “Hey, by the way, if you really think that kid's legit, go ahead and bring him.” I must have been bored and looking for a distraction.

“Very well.” Liu Zheng smiled.

“What are you going to tell him?”

“I'll tell him it's an interview.”

I laughed. “I've never heard of a company where the boss has to interview a migrant worker just to do some heavy lifting. You know, you're a fucking sneaky guy, Liu Zheng, deceiving an innocent youth like this!”

“Hey, if you suddenly find a conscience buried deep in that soul of yours, we'll just forget about it. I know the guilt would be unbearable.” His smile was angelic, but he was fucking with me.

“What are you talking about? The only thing that would be unbearable to me is not meeting him!”

“Fuck!” Liu Zheng rolled his eyes in feigned exasperation.

“Anyway,” I continued, “as long as he's clean.”

“Relax. He's definitely a
virgin
,” Liu Zheng replied, stressing the final word in English. “My only worry is he'll think
you're
the one who's dirty!”

“Go fuck your granddad!” I said with a laugh.

Two

With the prospect of getting laid dangling seductively before me, I was no longer able to focus on my work. Instead, I spent the rest of the day slacking off and looking forward to the Imperial. It wasn't even the bowling I cared about. I had always loved that place, with its dramatic lighting and vaguely futuristic interior design; it was spacious and never got too crowded. Best of all, it was refreshingly free of riffraff and troublemakers from off the street.

Wei Guo and Zhang Jie were meeting me there. Zhang Jie, tall and lanky with glasses and smooth, almost mannish black hair pushed up behind her ears, was typical of the new elite that had cropped up in the nine years of reform since 1978. A close personal friend, she had powerful connections that I worked as much as possible. She and Wei Guo walked in.

“Hi, hi, have you eaten?” we all asked each other. “Yes, yes, good, good.”

Zhang Jie noticed me glancing toward the door.

“Who are you waiting for?” she asked.

“Liu Zheng,” I replied. “He's bringing the son of a friend of
mine from out of town. The kid just started university here in Beijing and my buddy wants me to keep an eye on him.”

“You've certainly got a lot of projects!” Zhang Jie said with a laugh.

Liu Zheng showed up around six or seven. Trailing behind him was a short and not particularly good-looking kid gazing around absentmindedly as he walked in. This can't be him! I thought. Liu Zheng had been vague when telling me where he'd met him so I wasn't expecting someone sleek and urbane, but this kid? This was your typical Communist Youth League hopeful from the provinces. I felt the stabbing annoyance of disappointment. Fucking Liu Zheng.

“Director Chen, Zhang Jie, Wei Guo.” Liu Zheng greeted us with smile and a nod. He never called me “Director Chen” when we were alone but kept up appearances when others were around.

The kid stood off to the side, staring fixedly at Liu Zheng. He seemed to be waiting for an order.

“Right,” Liu Zheng said, as if remembering why he was there. “Lan Yu, this is Director Chen. Director Chen, this is Lan Yu. The surname's Lan. It's rare.”

My left eye twitched involuntarily as I listened to the introduction. I was annoyed at Liu Zheng for bringing me this stray puppy but resolved to be nice.

“Hi!” I grinned and stuck out my hand.

“Hello.” Lan Yu reached out timidly. He was visibly nervous, and probably surprised a company director would want to shake his hand.

What happened next can only be described as one of the greatest mysteries I have ever experienced. It's something I've gone over a thousand times in my mind, playing and replaying it in a series of failed attempts to revisit the immediacy of the
experience. It's true I was utterly indifferent to Lan Yu when I first saw him walk into the Imperial looking like a child lost at an outdoor market. But all this changed the moment our hands touched and his eyes met mine. It was something about the eyes: uneasy, sorrowful, and deeply suspicious of everything around him. A distant, even haunted expression lingered in his eyes and there was none of the fake, sycophantic smile I was so used to seeing in both my personal and professional life. His skin was dark but clean, his features pretty and delicate, lips clenched together emotionlessly. My heart pounded. I couldn't remember the last time I'd felt that way.

I quickly averted my eyes, telling myself, You're not some kind of fucking schoolboy! I looked beyond Lan Yu's shoulder and saw Zhang Jie and the others bowling.

“You like bowling?” I asked nonchalantly.

“I don't know how.” He had a northern accent.

“You from the North?”

“Uh-huh.”

I didn't like his curt responses. Deciding to play cavalier, I walked over to the rest of the group to join the game. Everyone was gathered near the base of the bowling lane except Lan Yu, who remained rooted to the carpeted side of the room where I'd left him. Nobody seemed to notice his absence.

I leaned against the shining metal table near the opening of lane number three. A few paces ahead of me, Liu Zheng and Zhang Jie were standing, arms folded, on either side of the lane. They were watching Wei Guo, who had struck an ambitious pose, left arm akimbo, right arm held high with a bowling ball perched on his fingertips. Knees slightly bent, he stared in fixed concentration at the pins before him. It was an impressive sight, but evidently not enough to hold the attention of Liu Zheng, who suddenly turned on his heel and
walked toward me. He leaned against the table next to me then moved his head toward mine until our cheeks were parallel and our ears almost touched.

“You eaten yet?” he asked in a quiet, almost furtive voice, eyes fixed on Wei Guo as he spoke. Our earlier greetings of “Hi, hi, have you eaten?” were just customary; now Liu Zheng wanted to know.

“No, why? You wanna go somewhere?” My voice was much louder than it needed to be. I was trying to sound annoyed to hide my emotions. Liu Zheng didn't know it, but my heart palpitated violently in my chest. I was consumed by the desire to know what Lan Yu was doing behind us. Was he still standing there? Was he trying to decide whether to join us? Had he gone to buy a drink, or to the bathroom, or simply left the building altogether? I wanted to know, but couldn't bear the thought of losing face by turning around to find out.

“No, you guys go ahead. I just ate,” Liu Zheng said, his voice sounding unnaturally remote. He stared straight ahead at Wei Guo, who had just knocked down all but one of the bowling pins and was excitedly giving the thumbs-up sign to nobody in particular. I studied Liu Zheng's face carefully. He was making arrangements for me.

“No, really. You and Lan Yu go ahead,” he repeated nonchalantly.

Just then, and with a synchronized motion that was so precise it must have looked timed, Liu Zheng and I craned our heads like two owls to look at Lan Yu. He was still standing at the back of the room, staring at us with a dull expression on his face.

“We'll just grab a bite to eat,” I yelled over my shoulder, as if Lan Yu had been involved in the conversation the whole time. “Walk and talk, yeah?”

He nodded obediently.

“Zhang Jie, Wei Guo,” I called out, getting up from the table and walking toward them. “I gotta go. I gotta feed my bro's kid or I'm going to get accused of neglect! You guys coming? My treat.” For some reason I was still speaking very loudly. I suppose I thought making a spectacle would create the illusion of normalcy.

“You guys go ahead. Have fun,” Zhang Jie said, eyeing me with a smile. She seemed to be insinuating something, as if she knew more than she was letting on. Under the circumstances, I didn't care. I had bigger things to worry about.

With Lan Yu seated next to me, I drove through the city where the cement-colored buildings and narrow, winding alleyways of old Beijing seemed to blend into one another. There were few private cars in China in those days, and it was still early enough in the evening to see the endless rows of workers on bicycles surging forward like swarms of locusts. I glanced to my right as we passed Beijing Railway Station. It was a chaotic scene: hundreds of new arrivals, mostly migrants from the countryside, sitting or sleeping on bags stuffed with clothes or cheap goods they wanted to hawk. Others wandered through the terminal with lost expressions on their sunbaked faces.

Lan Yu sat in the passenger seat next to me surveying the people outside. He seemed completely indifferent to me despite the effort I'd made to talk to him at the Imperial. I glanced over at him repeatedly, noticing the way he folded his hands in his lap while looking out the window. A group of pedestrians darted into the street; I almost hit the car in front of me. I gripped the steering wheel tightly and accelerated. He was so hard to read.

Twenty minutes later we arrived at our destination: the
Country Brothers Hotel. It was in the Chaoyang District, not far from where Liu Zheng had found Lan Yu to begin with. I kept a long-term rental there, a luxury residential suite, for personal use any time of the day or night. I parked the car and walked speedily toward the monumental building at the northern end of the parking lot. Lan Yu straggled a dozen paces behind. Reaching the front entrance, I walked through the lobby without even checking to see if he was still with me. I didn't want to be spotted by hotel employees who might have recognized me or, worse, by any professional associates who might have been there.

We took the elevator to the Cantonese-style restaurant on the tenth floor. Standing there in the cold metal box of the elevator, I stared at Lan Yu's blurred image reflected in the tall, silver doors in front of us. It was bad enough that we had barely exchanged a word in the car. Now, standing shoulder to shoulder and hemmed in by the four walls of the elevator, the silence was killing me. I fought the urge to turn my head and look at him.

The dining room of the restaurant was enormous and very well lit, and a vast collection of window lattices, carved lacquer screens, and miniature pavilions conspired to create a spectacularly classical ambience. The food they served was nothing special, but it was better than the overpriced garbage they served at the French and Italian restaurants next door. I hated European food. To me it was nothing but piles of cheese and tomato.

When we were seated, I started in with the questions:

“How old are you?”

“Sixteen. Almost seventeen.”

“Why are you starting college so early? I was almost nineteen when I started.”

“I started school a year early, then skipped a grade.”

“Where are you from?” I continued my line of questioning.

“Xinjiang.”

This surprised me. Bordering Soviet Central Asia, Xinjiang Province was China's far west. The Uyghur population there spoke a different language. Practically another world as far as I was concerned. Since Lan Yu was ethnically Chinese, I wondered how long his family had been there.

I examined him carefully as he spoke. Still no trace of a smile, but he stared at me with an attentiveness I couldn't fail to notice. His mannerisms were delicate but natural, unaffected, and for a moment he had a vague air of intellectuality about him. This was alluring in itself but wasn't even the chief provocation of my desire. What really tortured me was the excruciating air of anxiety that gripped him. I didn't care what the reason was. All I could think about was getting him into bed.

“S'ow's Beijing?” I spoke very rapidly. “So how” came out as one word.

“Huh?” His face turned red. He didn't understand my Beijing accent.

I laughed. “When I first got here, I couldn't understand what these people were saying either. Especially the guys. They really mumble. It's ridiculous!” I was repeating something Fang Jian, my old college roommate, used to say. He was from a small town and hated the way Beijingers spoke. I was born and raised in Beijing, but Lan Yu didn't have to know that. I didn't want him thinking I had the superiority complex typical of so many city people.

Lan Yu's lips moved a fraction. This I accepted as a smile, even if it was forced.

When our food came, he barely touched any vegetables but
eagerly devoured two full plates of fried rice. He was clearly famished. I tried making conversation.

“You study architecture? That's smart. You can make a lot of money with that. When I was in college I had two good friends who studied architecture. During our third year they helped some guy at a big firm work on a design and made a ton of money. Humanities majors like me were chronically broke, so the rest of us were jealous as hell!”

My efforts were met with monosyllables. I sighed and looked out the window at the sprawling city below, wondering if I should just give up. The restaurant was high up enough that out in the distance I could see the faint silhouette of the Forbidden City, an ancient black square framed by long rows of streetlights. I settled the bill and we left.

Stepping onto the cold marble floor outside the restaurant, I tried again. “Which university are you at?” I pushed the elevator button. “Don't your parents give you money for school?”

If my earlier questions had triggered reserve, this one resulted in total silence. Lan Yu stared at the elevator door in front of us, and I couldn't tell if he was reluctant to answer the question or if he just hadn't decided what to say yet. During dinner I had noticed the way he fidgeted; now I couldn't help but wonder if the things he had told Liu Zheng were true. Based on what I knew about guys like him—out of luck and more than happy to accept a meal from an older guy with cash and a reputation—probably not. The more I thought about it, the more his story about being a student seemed like bullshit.

When the elevator came we descended the building toward the second floor where my room was located. Surrounded by the quiet hum of the elevator, my mind wandered to six months earlier when I'd brought some girl from the School
of Foreign Languages back to my room there. She was no virgin, but it was the first time she had sold herself. I wondered whether Lan Yu's story was similar to hers.

I looked across the elevator at Lan Yu. He wore a pair of dark blue trousers and a plain white T-shirt. Simple and clean, though the trousers were too short at the ankles and somewhat tattered at the seams. He eyed me cautiously from the corner of the elevator where he stood. Subtle but constant. He didn't seem to think I noticed.

When we got to my room he became even more reserved than he had been in the restaurant. He stepped across the threshold but halted abruptly, making it difficult for me to shut the door. He was waiting for an invitation to come inside.

“Have a seat,” I said. “This is the living room. The dining area's over there, and the bedroom's in there.”

Lan Yu remained near the doorway.

I turned on the television and handed him the remote control. “Here. They have a ton of stations. Cable.”

Lan Yu looked unimpressed, but took the remote from me.