Brothers (92 page)

Popsicle Wang was most satisfied with his hi-tech TOTO toilet, because after you used it to take a shit, you didn't even have to wipe your ass; instead, a spurt of water would immediately rinse it clean, and a jet of air would blow it dry for you. Deputy Liu even installed five satellite dishes on the roof and told Popsicle Wang that with them, he would be able to watch all the television channels of the countries richer than China, all the channels of the countries as wealthy as China, and even some of the channels of the countries poorer than
China. Therefore, all day long Wangs reception area echoed with all sorts of accents and languages, as if he were hosting a meeting of the United Nations.

At that point, Popsicle Wangs most intimate comrade in arms, Yanker Yu, decided to upgrade the quality of his world travels. He now felt that both following a tour group and traveling on his own had gotten old. Therefore, each time he arrived at a new location, he would hire a female interpreter. He was bored with traveling to scenic points; his interests now lay entirely with demonstrations and mass rallies. He participated in rallies in more than a dozen European and American cities. He didn't differentiate based on politics—as long as something was a demonstration or a rally, he would excitedly rush over to participate. If he found two demonstrations taking place at the same time, he would join the larger one. Yanker Yu learned marching slogans in more than ten different languages, and he would often call Popsicle Wang and randomly shout out these foreign slogans while speaking to him.

When Popsicle Wang heard of these rallies and demonstrations, he assumed Yanker Yu was participating in Great Cultural Revolutions in other parts of the world, and every time Yu would call and tell Wang that he was joining a protest march in some foreign city, Wang would immediately call Deputy Liu and tell him which city was currently staging a Great Cultural Revolution.

Yanker Yu was very displeased with Popsicle Wangs explanation, and he upbraided him long-distance, saying, "You country bumpkin, you just don't understand. This is politics."

Yanker Yu explained why he had become so passionate about politics: "This can be explained by the principle that comfortable circumstances breed freethinking, which is why the rich love politics."

Popsicle Wang at first wasn't at all convinced, but one day he happened to glimpse Yanker Yu on a foreign television channel. The left side of his face appeared briefly as he marched. Wang stared in amazement, and from that point on he became extremely respectful of Yu. When Yanker Yu called him up, Popsicle Wang told him he had seen him on television but was so excited he started to stutter. On the other end of the line, Yanker Yu also began to stutter with excitement, and they both shrieked and cawed like exotic birds. Then Yu immediately asked Wang whether he had recorded the segment. Popsicle Wang replied that he hadn't, and Yanker Yu began to blow a gasket right there on the phone, calling Popsicle Wang a son of a gun, son of a bitch,
son of a dirty rotten stinking scoundrel. Then he complained sadly that his dearest friend had failed to record his moment of celebrity. Popsi-cle Wang felt terrible and repeatedly promised Yanker Yu that the next time he would be sure to record any scene in which Yu happened to appear. From that point on, Popsicle Wangs television channels tracked Yanker Yu s every step. Every time Yu arrived in a new country, Wang would lock on to that country's television channels, then conscientiously search for images of protest marches. When he found one, he would stare at the television like a cat watching a mouse, remote control in his hand, on the off chance that Yanker Yu might appear.

When Popsicle Wang saw Song Gang standing outside the building, Yanker Yu happened to be flying from Madrid to Toronto, and therefore Wang had a temporary reprieve from watching the television. Seeing Song Gang reappear after such a long absence, he rushed over and dragged him inside. Wang asked him to sit down on the Italian couch and then started relating various fantastic stories about Yanker Yu. Finally he sighed and said, "How did Yanker Yu become so courageous? He doesn't know a single word of any foreign language, and yet there is nowhere he doesn't dare to go."

Song Gang hadn't heard a word Popsicle Wang had said. In agony, his chest throbbing, and sunk in confusion, he simply peered over his face mask at Wang. When Song Gang realized that Baldy Li wasn't there and that Lin Hong wasn't there either, he no longer knew what he himself was doing there. He sat for half an hour without saying a word. Then, still without saying a word, he stood up and walked out of Popsicle Wang's extravagant reception area. Wang followed him out, rattling on nonstop. When he reached the entranceway, however, Popsicle Wang stood still. He was still talking, but Song Gang didn't hear a word. Song Gang stared vacantly at the streets of Liu and, with a heavy heart, returned home.

CHAPTER 73

A
FTER SONG GANG
returned to Liu Town, he went six days without receiving any news of his wife. During those six days, he cooked six meals, but each day he ate only a single bowl of rice. He kept his door shut and went out only to buy vegetables. He encountered many people he knew, and their brief remarks gave him the vague understanding that something had transpired between Baldy Li and Lin Hong. He looked apathetic and listless. On the evening of the seventh day, Song Gang took out the family photo album and looked at each of the portraits of himself and Lin Hong; then sighed and closed the album. He found the photograph of himself; his father, Song Fanping; his mother, Li Lan; and his brother, Baldy Li. This black-and-white photograph was already turning yellow with age. Song Gang again sighed, put it into the photo album as well, and lay back in his bed with tears streaming down his face.

After mucking about for seven days, Song Gang finally recovered his senses. All the memories of his history with Baldy Lin and Lin Hong came rushing back to him, twenty years passing in the blink of an eye. Now he understood that Lin Hong should never have married him but rather should have married Baldy Li. When he saw things this way, Song Gang suddenly felt relieved, as if a heavy weight had been lifted from his heart.

At sunrise on the eighth morning, Song Gang sat at the dining table and started earnestly writing two letters, one to Lin Hong and the other to Baldy Li. Though he wrote painstakingly, there were a lot of sentences he wasn't sure he had written correctly and a lot of characters he wasn't sure how to write. He remembered how, when he was twenty, he had been so fond of reading and of literature. He recalled how he had written a story and how Baldy Li had praised it highly. During the intervening years, however, life had borne down on him mercilessly, to the point that he could barely breathe. He had stopped reading books and newspapers, with the result that now he realized he couldn't even write a simple letter.

Song Gang therefore made a mental note of the characters he didn't
know how to write, then wore his face mask to the bookstore, where he looked them up in a dictionary. Then he returned home and continued writing his letters. He couldn't bring himself to buy a dictionary, though he had brought thirty thousand yuan back for Lin Hong. He felt that the entire time they had been together, he had never been able to provide for her, and therefore he was determined to leave her this money he had finally earned. Over the next several days, he went to and from the bookstore more than ten times, and every time the clerks saw him they would laugh, remarking to each other that Song Gang used to be Chief Sub but now had become the towns chief scholar. One day the clerks couldn't help calling him first Chief Scholar, then Chief Dictionary. When Song Gang heard this, he laughed but didn't respond; instead he simply lowered his head and diligently looked up the characters he didn't know. Chief Dictionary Song Gang spent five days writing his letters, alternating between composing, looking up characters in the dictionary, and correcting his writing. When he finally finished the two letters, he carefully copied them over, then stood up as if relieved of a heavy burden and went to the post office to buy two envelopes and two stamps. After addressing the envelopes and putting on the stamps, he hid both letters in his breast pocket.

The pain in Song Gang's chest had become increasingly severe. Confused by the binding pain, he slowly opened his shirt and found that it had become stuck to the open wounds under his armpits. As he removed the shirt he felt as though he was ripping away his flesh. The searing pain made his entire body shudder. He waited for it to subside, then lifted his arms and saw that his wounds had become swollen and infected, with the black stitches now stretched tight over them. He remembered that he was supposed to have removed the stitches six days after the operation but now thirteen days had passed. The pain had become virtually unbearable.

Song Gang got up and went to look for a pair of scissors and then, with a mirror, prepared to take out his own stitches. Worried that the scissors weren't clean, he lit a flame and placed them over it for five minutes to sterilize them. He patiently waited another ten minutes for the scissors to cool off, then finally began to carefully clip away until the scissors were covered with bits of black thread. He felt the throbbing pain in his chest gradually subside, as though his entire body had been released from immense tension.

That evening Song Gang used an old newspaper to wrap up the money he had brought home and placed the bundle under his pillow, leaving aside only ten yuan for himself. He took his key out and inspected it carefully then lay it on the table, put on his face mask, and walked to the front door. When he opened it, he turned and looked back at his home and at the key on the table: Everything in his house seemed to be in sharp focus, but the key was a blur in his vision. He carefully closed the door, then stood there for a while. It occurred to him that the key was inside, that he would never be coming back.

Song Gang turned and walked down the street, proceeding on into Wanderless Zhou's Snack Shop. He had never eaten straw-embedded buns, and now he wanted to try some. When he went in, he didn't see Zhou or Missy Su. He looked around and noticed that Mama Su wasn't there either. As it turned out, Zhou had succeeded in converting both of them into fans of Korean soaps, and therefore every weekday at this time the three of them would sit at home, staring intently at the television screen. Song Gang hesitated in the doorway for a moment. Seeing a strange waitress sitting at the cashier's counter, he approached her and, after pondering for a moment, mumbled vaguely, "How do you eat…"

The cashier had no idea what he was talking about "How do you eat what?"

Song Gang realized he had misspoken but couldn't think of the proper way to phrase the question. He pointed to some customers eating the straw-embedded buns and said, "These straw-embedded buns…"

The customers laughed out loud, and one of them asked him, "Did you suckle at your mother's breast as a child?"

Song Gang felt that this person was making fun of him, and therefore he replied smartly, "We all did."

"Did you eat buns after you grew up?"

"We all did."

"Good," that person said. "I'll teach you. First, you suck it like you did your mother's breast, sucking out the juice, then you eat the remaining bun the way you would eat any bun."

All the customers laughed uncontrollably, and even the waitress at the cashier's counter couldn't help laughing. Song Gang, however,
didn't laugh. The customers response allowed him to regain some clarity of mind, so he turned back to the waitress and said, "I was asking how much they cost?"

Understanding him now, the waitress took Song Gangs money and gave him a receipt. Song Gang then took his receipt and continued standing in front of the counter. The waitress suggested that he sit down, because it would be ten minutes before the buns were ready. Song Gang eyed the laughing customers, then sat at a table as far from them as possible. With an expressionless gaze, he sat there patiently like a student, waiting for his straw-embedded buns.

Song Gangs buns were finally brought out and, faced with this wave of hot steam, Song Gang slowly lowered his face mask, put the straw in his mouth, and immediately sucked out the meat sauce. Those customers who had been making fun of him jumped in surprise, because the sauce was at least 175 degrees Fahrenheit. Song Gang, however, sipped it up as though he were sipping cold water. After finishing one bun, he proceeded to another. In all, he sipped the sauce out of three buns, then looked up at the astonished customers and smiled. His smile sent shivers down their spines, making them suspect that he was somewhat deranged. He then lowered his head again and placed one of the buns in his mouth. After he had eaten the three buns, Song Gang put his face mask back on, stood up, and walked out of the snack shop.

By this point it was evening, and Song Gang set off toward the setting sun. He didn't walk down the street with his head bowed, as he used to. Instead, he walked with his head up and looked back and forth at the stores and the pedestrians on either side of the street. When people called out his name, he no longer mumbled in reply but, rather, waved at them amicably. When he walked past a shop window, he stopped to look at the products on display inside. Many of the townspeople of Liu saw Song Gang stroll by that evening. Later they recalled how, in the past, every time he appeared he was always hurrying to get somewhere; this was the only evening they had seen him just strolling. They said he stopped to look in every shop window, turned to greet every person he passed, even displayed considerable interest in the wutong trees on either side of the street. He stood outside a music store for five or six minutes listening to two pop songs, turning to someone walking by and saying, "These two songs sound really good."

When he passed the post office, he took Lin Hongs and Baldy Li's letters from his breast pocket and, after putting them in the mailbox, squatted down and peered inside to make sure that they had gone all the way in. Then he continued walking in the direction of the setting sun.