Brothers (84 page)

This attendant had originally planned to convince the well-endowed man to take his dog outside, but when the dog lunged at him, he quickly retreated in terror back to the dressing room. Wandering Zhou took this opportunity to move to the side of the rose pool, but as soon as he stood up, the dog turned around and resumed snarling at him. Wandering Zhou couldn't decide whether to advance or retreat, so just stood there staring at the man with a broad smile on his face. The man petted his dog and told it to lie down. Zhou held his breath and, feigning calmness, climbed down the stairs. Then, seeing a door, he pushed it open and walked inside. Song Gang also began to move slowly toward the side of the pool. The dog stared at him the entire time, and he continued staring at the dog with a kind smile. As soon as he stood up at the side of the pool, the dog also stood up and barked. The man again patted the dog and made it lie down, whereupon Song Gang jumped down the stairs. He also saw the wooden door and rushed in.

One after the other, Wandering Zhou and Song Gang entered the sauna. When Song Gang entered, he saw that Zhou was sitting in the sweltering wooden room with a dazed look on his face. Song Gang asked him, "What is this place?"

Wandering Zhou immediately assumed a calm expression and replied, "A sauna."

Song Gang breathed heavily as he sat down next to Wandering Zhou. Zhou picked up a wooden spoon and splashed water onto the stove, generating a cloud of steam. Song Gang felt it was becoming hard to breathe and said, "It's too hot in here."

Wandering Zhou replied proudly, "That's what a sauna is."

At that point the wooden door opened and the brawny man entered. Wandering Zhou and Song Gang jumped in surprise, but when they saw that the German shepherd wasn't following him in, they breathed a sigh of relief. As the man prepared to lie down Wandering Zhou and Song Gang jumped up to give him room. He nodded with satisfaction and lay down on the very top step of the wooden steps while Wandering Zhou and Song Gang sat on the lower steps. After sitting in the steam for a while, Wandering Zhou felt that he couldn't endure it anymore and stood up and announced that he was leaving. When he opened the door, the dog lunged at him through the doorway. Zhou slammed the door shut in terror, turned around, and muttered to himself, "I might as well steam for a little while longer."

He sat down next to Song Gang, and the man lying above them gestured and said, "Add some more water."

"Okay," Wandering Zhou replied, then he poured more water onto the stove and white steam again billowed forth. Song Gang felt that he was about to pass out from the heat and said to Wandering Zhou, "I think I'm going to be sick."

"Then leave." Zhou pushed him toward the door.

Song Gang stood up. Knowing that the dog was lying in the doorway like a tiger eyeing its prey, he gathered his courage and pushed the door open. The dog stood up and started barking as if he were about to bite Song Gang in the crotch. Song Gang shut the door again and retreated, reflexively holding his crotch. He smiled helplessly as he sat back down next to Wandering Zhou. The two felt as though they were about to pass out, but they were more terrified by the dog in the doorway. Therefore, they had no alternative but to continue sitting there, enduring the heat of the steam and hoping that the man lying above them would soon get up and leave, taking his dog with him. But the man seemed to be getting increasingly comfortable and after a while even started whistling. Wandering Zhou felt that if he stayed a moment longer, he would almost certainly pass out and die. Therefore, he staggered over to the man, leaned over, and called out into his ear, "Excuse me, mister…"

The whistling man opened his eyes and looked at Wandering Zhou, who said feebly, "Your bodyguard …"

"What bodyguard?" The man didn't know what Wandering Zhou was talking about.

"Your canine bodyguard is guarding the door," Zhou said. "We can't get out."

The man laughed and said, "Add some more water."

Wandering Zhou wiped the sweat from his face, then headed over to the stove to add more water, producing another cloud of steam. Song Gang seemed about to topple over, and Wandering Zhou staggered forward and said to the man, "I added the water."

"Good," the man said. "You can leave."

"But," Wandering Zhou said, "your canine bodyguard …"

The man laughed as he got up and climbed down. He opened the door and pulled the dog to one side, allowing Wandering Zhou and Song Gang to exit safely, then lay back down in the sauna and left the dog standing guard by the door. Zhou and Song Gang returned to the dressing room, feeling that they had just had a close brush with death. Zhou immediately drank eight cups of distilled water, and Song Gang drank seven. The two sat in the changing room for more than ten minutes, their heads hanging down, before finally recovering. Then they put on their robes and, looking halfway human again, strutted into the rest hall with the virility-enhancing pills in the black bag.

There were about twenty customers lounging about. Some of them were getting pedicures, and others were getting foot massages. A soccer game was playing on the projection TV. Wandering Zhou signaled Song Gang with a look, and the two proceeded to opposite sides of the hall. Song Gang lay down next to a middle-aged man who was watching the soccer game, patiently waited until halftime, then took out the instruction booklet and handed it to the man, asking politely, "Sir, do you have a moment to look at this?"

The man stared in surprise, then took the booklet and began to read it intently. When he finished reading the booklet for the domestic Fierce Zhang Fei pills, Song Gang handed him the one for the imported Apollo pills. After the man finished reading both, he looked around at the other men resting in the hall and whispered, "How much for a bottle?"

Wandering Zhou, meanwhile, was much more direct with his sales pitch. With imported and domestic vials in either hand, he smiled and asked the man next to him, "Do you want to be a real macho man?"

"What do you mean by ‘real macho man'?"

Zhou then launched into a long, complicated explanation, until finally the young man took the two vials to have a look and even opened
his robe to glance down at his member. Wandering Zhou took the opportunity to take a peek as well and told him, "You are already a macho man, but unfortunately you are not yet a top-quality real macho man."

The young man asked Wandering Zhou skeptically, "These aren't counterfeit, are they?"

"You will know as soon as you try them," Wandering Zhou replied with a smile.

When the brawny man and his German shepherd arrived, panic swept through the hall. Several attendants politely intervened, and the man agreed not to bring the dog in. Therefore, the dog lay down in the doorway, as though he were guarding a pass to prevent a thousand enemies from getting through. As a result, none of the customers in the rest hall dared leave, having no choice but to wait for the dogs owner to leave first. Wandering Zhou and Song Gang were now in their element like fish in water and methodically spoke with each member of their captive audience, cajoling them into buying the pills. The dog s owner noticed that they were whispering to all the other customers but hadn't said a word to him. Curious, he pulled Wandering Zhou aside and asked him what they were doing. Zhou handed him the Apollo and Fierce Zhang Fei booklets, adding, "But you don't need these."

When the man finished reading the instruction booklets, he said loudly, "Who says I don't need this? The strong can always get even stronger."

"Well said!" Wandering Zhou exclaimed. He pointed to the other men in the hall and added quietly, "For them, these pills would be like an emergency shot to the arm, but for you they would be like a bonus."

The dog's owner laughed with satisfaction, then held up two fingers and said, "I'll take two vials."

"Two vials is one dose," Wandering Zhou explained patiently. "You need at least two or three doses to see results."

The dog's master said brightly, "In that case, I want eight vials."

"Okay." Wandering Zhou nodded, then asked him, "Do you want imported or domestic ones?"

The dog's master said, "Four of each."

Wandering Zhou hesitated, then, in a expert tone, said, "These imported ones are made with genetic engineering and nanotechnology,
while the domestic ones are made from Ming-Qing dynastic medical files from the Palace Museum. If you mix them together, their effectiveness will be compromised."

"The imported ones are for me," the man explained, then pointed to his dog lying in the doorway. "The domestic ones are for him."

CHAPTER 67

W
ANDERING ZHOU
and Song Gang continued strolling through Fujian, stopping at one bathhouse after another to sell their virility-enhancing pills. Whenever they spotted someone who appeared underendowed, they would recommend a remedy patiently pique their interest, and describe extravagant results. By the time they left Fujian for Canton, they had managed to sell the entire two boxes of pills. Wandering Zhou summed up what they had learned from their experiences when he noted that it had taken them nearly five months to sell the two boxes of pills, meaning that their revenue was much too low and they hadn't earned a trace of profit. In fact, after factoring in their living expenses, they had actually lost money. Wandering Zhou recalled wistfully his glorious experience selling artificial hymens in Liu Town and decided that he would stop selling men's health products, because women were much more willing to spend money on these sorts of things. Therefore, when they reached Canton, the two began to sell a bust-enhancing cream called Boobs.

By this point Song Gang had been away from home for half a year. While in Fujian he had called Lin Hong three times—each time he called her in the evening while standing in front of the convenience store, with dust blowing through the streets and passersby talking loudly in the local Minnan dialect. Song Gang would grab the receiver tightly with both hands, as if he were afraid someone would come and snatch it from him. His palms wet with sweat, he stammered softly, completely incoherent. At the other end of the line, Lin Hong's voice sounded half-crazed with anxiety as she entreated him to return immediately. Repeating "Come home" over and over, she asked Song Gang how he had been feeling, and Song Gang replied that his health had been good and his lung disease was cured. Then, in a voice as soft as a mosquito, he added, "I don't cough anymore."

Song Gang had to repeat himself several times before Lin Hong understood. Then she hollered, "Are you still taking your medicine?"

At this point Song Gang hung up the phone and, as he was putting it down, said softly, "I've stopped taking it."

Then he stood, confused, on the lamplit street, watching one stranger after another pass by and listening to their voices. Finally he shook his head and slowly began to make his way back to the cheap hotel where they were staying.

When he arrived, Wandering Zhou was sitting cross-legged on the bed, wiping his tears as he watched a Korean soap opera on television. While in Fujian, Wandering Zhou had watched three and a half Korean miniseries, and after arriving in Canton he searched through all the television channels but couldn't find the second half of the last miniseries. He proceeded to curse all of Canton and then, when he finally calmed down, went out to peddle his Boobs cream.

For the next several months, the Minnan dialect they heard in Fujian was replaced by Cantonese, and although they went to fifteen different locations, they managed to sell only ten or so vials of the cream. In a moment of despair, Wandering Zhou suddenly had an inspiration and decided to sell the cream to beauty salons at a discount, but he discovered that all the salons were already selling bust-enhancing creams of their own. Wandering Zhou then investigated the pharmacies and department stores and discovered that they too were selling their own bust-enhancing creams. They saw more than a hundred brands of breast creams, and all of them were cheaper than their own Boobs brand. Zhou found himself at an impasse as he and Song Gang wandered aimlessly like headless flies trying to sell their Boobs cream on unfamiliar streets. The two looked around depressed, asking each other what they should do next. Wandering Zhou had lost confidence in selling the Boobs cream, so whenever he saw a young woman walk by, he pushed Song Gang to go speak to her while he stood behind him like a sentry. Song Gang would walk over with a bowed head and respectfully ask the young women, "Do you need bust-enhancing cream?"

The women always looked as if they had been accosted by a thief and scurried away while tightly grasping their purses. One pretty young woman didn't hear clearly and therefore paused and asked, "What?"

Song Gang gestured at his own chest, saying, "Bust-enhancing cream, in order to make your breasts bigger and firmer."

"You hooligan!" The woman backed away as she cursed them. Other passersby also stopped and stared at Song Gang, who started blushing and went back to Wandering Zhou, standing as though nothing was happening.

Around this time, Zhou had found a new Korean soap opera on a local television station, so he would spend the entire day being frustrated at every turn but at night would recover his spirits. During the first hour of the Korean drama he sat attentive on the edge of the bed with the remote control in his hand and asked Song Gang to take a walk outside so as not to interrupt his viewing pleasure. He added that if Song Gang didn't want to leave, he could stay, but "you mustn't make a sound."

Song Gang didn't stay in the room but wandered aimlessly through this foreign city, staring through countless windows of countless buildings. Eventually he stopped under a tree by the side of the road and watched spellbound through some family's window as a young husband and wife walked around inside. Sometimes a single shadow would appear in front of the window, sometimes there would be two, and sometimes there would be only the light of a lamp. Song Gang stood staring for a long time, until the husband and wife walked up to the window together and lowered the curtain, kissing each other as they did so. This scene brought tears to Song Gang's eyes. At that moment he yearned so intensely for Lin Hong and wanted more than anything to soar directly back to Liu Town. But he didn't know when he would start making some money. Dejected, he felt that the day he would finally be able to return to Liu Town was retreating further and further into the distance.