Brothers (93 page)

Song Gang walked out of Liu Town to where the railroad tracks were. He sat down on a rock next to the tracks, took off his face mask, and contentedly inhaled the evening air. He looked around at the fields full of grain waiting to be harvested. There was a stream not far from him, and the setting sun tinted the water crimson. That made him look up, and he felt that the evening sky was even more beautiful than the earth. The sun glowed crimson, and the clouds shimmered brightly, with layer upon layer of colors pouring in like the tide. As the multi-hued rays shuttled unpredictably through the sky he felt as if he had seen the light. Then he lowered his gaze and once again looked at the fields of grain stretching in every direction, reflecting the evening light like fields full of red roses, he felt as if he were sitting in the middle of a million blooming flowers.

Hearing the sound of a train whistle approaching, he took off his glasses, wiped them, and put them back on. He saw that the sun had sunk halfway below the horizon and that a train was approaching from the same direction as the setting sun. He stood up and told himself it was time to bid farewell to the world of the living. He couldn't bear to part with his glasses but was afraid that the train would crush them. Therefore, he took them off and placed them on the stone where he had been sitting, and again felt everything become blurred. He removed his jacket, folded it, and lay it on the same stone, placing his glasses on top. Then he took a deep breath and put his face mask back on. He forgot that dead people couldn't breathe, and was afraid that his lung illness would be transmitted to the mortician. He walked forward four paces, then lay facedown on the tracks with both arms extended. His chest pressing against the tracks was excruciatingly painful, so he crawled forward until his abdomen was resting on the tracks and immediately felt much more comfortable. The approaching train made the tracks under him tremble, and as a result his body also started to tremble. He raised his head to look at the distant sky, feeling it was truly beautiful. He then turned his head and looked at the fields of roselike grain in front of him and felt they too
were quite beautiful. At this point he noticed with delight a seagull flying overhead. The seagull was crying out, flapping its wings as it flew from far away. As the train rumbled over his back the last thing he saw was the solitary seagull soaring among the million blooming flowers.

CHAPTER 74

B
ALDY LI
and Lin Hong rode into Liu Town in the white Mercedes just before dusk, driving right into Baldy Li's mansion. Lin Hong had had her hymen surgically reconstructed, and Baldy Li had done a lot of business in Beijing and the northeast. When they got out of the car, it was as if they were making a triumphant return. As soon as they walked into the living room, Baldy Li's phone rang. It was Deputy Liu telling him that dinner was prepared, and that he could come eat whenever he wished. Baldy Li closed his cell phone and said, "That bastard definitely thinks of everything."

Baldy Li and Lin Hong deposited their luggage in the living room, then glided into the dining room. By that point, night had fallen, so Baldy Li turned on the chandelier. He saw that the dinner was laid out and that a bouquet of roses had been placed in the middle of the table. A bottle of French red wine was sitting in a stainless-steel ice bucket. The bottle had been opened and the cork reinserted. Baldy Li and Lin Hong sat down across from each other. Baldy Li was very satisfied with Deputy Liu, telling Lin Hong, "That bastard has arranged everything very romantically."

Lin Hong glanced over at the dinner and the roses and began to giggle, remarking that it was as if they were foreigners sitting down to a meal. Like a foreign gentleman, Baldy Li took the wine out of the ice bucket, and after removing the cork, he poured a little into his glass. Then he put down the bottle, raised his glass, swished it around, sniffed it, and drank a sip. He said approvingly, "This wine is not bad at all."

After he got up, he placed his left hand on his back and used his right hand to elegantly fill Lin Hong's glass. At the sight of the uncouth, foul-mouthed Baldy Li acting with such refinement, Lin Hong couldn't help laughing. This being the first time Lin Hong had seen such elegance, she asked Baldy Li, "Where did you learn this?"

"From TV," Baldy Li replied graciously, then lifted his glass and waited for Lin Hong to lift hers and toast with him. She took a tiny sip of her wine, then put her glass down. Baldy Li, by contrast, immediately
downed his entire glass, as if he were engaged in a drinking competition. He was an old dog who couldn't be taught new tricks, and he called out to Lin Hong, "Eat quickly, then go wash up. When you're done, go to the bed and wait for me."

At that moment, Song Gang was sitting in Wanderless Zhou's Snack Shop eating straw-embedded buns for the first time in his life. The piping-hot juice was scalding the inside of his mouth, but he couldn't feel a thing. By the time he walked out of the snack shop and headed toward the railroad tracks to the east of town, Baldy Li had wolfed down his dinner and was urging Lin Hong to finish hers. Thus was life: Someone who was walking toward death might linger over the setting sun's glorious rays, while two others who were hedonistically pursuing pleasure might be completely oblivious to the beauty of the sunset.

The setting sun finally vanished, and a heavy night sky enveloped Liu Town. As Song Gang lay down on the railroad tracks under the faint light of the moon, Lin Hong was sitting on the bed with her pants off, waiting for Baldy Li to emerge from the bathroom. He dawdled for a long time, and just as he turned on the faucet Deputy Liu called again. Liu had figured that Baldy Li would have gone to the restroom and conscientiously told him that in the cabinet there were two new instruments for inspecting hymens. Baldy Li warmly called Deputy Liu a bastard, and after he washed up, he hurriedly dried himself off, then opened the cabinet to see what kind of instruments they were. Surprised to discover miner's implements, Baldy Li stared in astonishment, then once again affectionately called Deputy Liu a bastard.

Lin Hong heard Baldy Li mumbling in the bathroom but didn't know what he was saying. When he finally emerged, she stared at him in astonishment. He had his pants off but was wearing a miner's hat with a lamp. Around his waist he had a leather belt with a battery in back, and a cord ran like a Qing dynasty queue from the hat down to the belt. Noticing Lin Hong staring in astonishment, Baldy Li turned on the lamp on the miner's hat, and a beam of light suddenly shone directly on her crotch. He announced proudly that this time he wanted to appreciate her hymen. Looking like a miner crawling into a cave, Baldy Li chortled as he crawled into bed. Lin Hong finally reacted and let out a huge laugh, never having imagined that Baldy Li would have accoutered himself in this way. She laughed so hard that she couldn't catch her breath and began to cough. Baldy Li was very displeased by
her reaction and lifted his head so that his light shone on her chest, then asked, "In what way is this supposed to resemble a virgin?"

Lin Hong was laughing so hard tears came to her eyes, and she said, "You're killing me. I'm going to die laughing…"

Baldy Li angrily sat down next to her, with his searchlight shining on the wall. He waited for her to finish, then exclaimed, "Damn it, you look like a slut. In what way do you resemble a virgin?"

After Lin Hong covered her mouth to smother her last few guffaws, she adopted a serious demeanor and asked Baldy Li, "How should a virgin act?"

Baldy Li instructed her: "The first time you see a naked man, you should cover your face."

Lin Hong laughed under her breath, then covered her face with both hands but still kept her legs spread wide. Baldy Li was not pleased and said, "Only sluts would spread their legs upon seeing a naked man. What kind of virgin would do that?"

Lin Hong locked her legs together and asked, "How's this?"

Baldy Li continued to instruct her: "You should also cover that area with your hands and not let the man see."

Lin Hong replied unhappily, "First you ask me to cover my face with my hands, and then you tell me to cover that area. Does it look to you like I have four hands?"

Baldy Li thought that Lin Hong had a point. He sought her advice, asking, "What were you like when you did it with Song Gang for the first time?"

Lin Hong replied, "It was under the covers, with the light off."

Baldy Li quickly got out of bed and turned off the lights, making the spotlight on his head appear to shine even brighter, so bright that Lin Hong couldn't keep her eyes open. Lin Hong told him to turn the miner's light off, but he refused, saying that if he did, he wouldn't be able to see her hymen. He then asked her, "How did Song Gang look at your hymen?"

Lin Hong replied, "He didn't look. He was too embarrassed."

"That idiot," Baldy Li said. "I want to look. It would be a waste not to."

Baldy Li then crawled between Lin Hong's thighs, wanting to peer at her hymen. She used both hands to cover herself, not letting him see. He struggled to pull her hands away, but she twisted herself to the side. When he managed to straighten her butt, she once again covered
herself with both hands. After several rounds Baldy Li still had not succeeded in seeing anything and complained, "Let me fucking see!"

Lin Hong replied, "But you told me to cover myself with my hands."

"Fuck," Baldy Li said. "Its true that you should cover yourself, but you should resist and acquiesce at the same time."

"Okay," Lin Hong said. "I'll both resist and acquiesce."

After Baldy Li struggled a couple more times, Lin Hong removed her hands and squealed as she flailed her limbs, parting her legs reluctantly. Baldy Li was very pleased and said, "Good! Excellent performance!"

Baldy Li peered in with the miners lamp, and Lin Hong again pretended to be embarrassed and covered herself with her hands. Baldy Li happily called out his approval, "That's great! Really realistic."

At this point Lin Hong became displeased, asking, "In what way do you resemble a man doing it for the first time? With that ridiculous lamp, you look like an old whoremonger. Men, when they do it the first time, should also be somewhat shy. Song Gang, for instance, was very shy."

Baldy Li decided that Lin Hong had a point, so he turned off the lamp, unfastened his belt, and threw the entire contraption under the bed, saying, "Now it's dark. We are now a pair of virgins."

The two hugged in the darkness, and after they caressed each other for a while, Baldy Li inserted himself. Lin Hong uttered a cry, and this cry was one of genuine pain. When Baldy Li heard it, he trembled with excitement. In all the times he and Lin Hong had done it, this was the first time he had heard her cry out like this. She then started to moan— a moan of agony, but also of ecstasy. Her entire body was bathed in sweat, and her ecstasy was gradually catching up with her agony. Her body had never before experienced this sort of stimulation as she felt her intense agony propelling her sense of ecstasy, like a rocket propelling the space shuttle. Then her orgasm exploded like a tsunami, the wave of pleasure that swept over her making her tremble from head to toe. She cried out hoarsely, "That hurts…"

By that point, Baldy Li felt that he had gone back in time twenty years. Despite having been on the meat market for so long, he had also never experienced such intense thrill. Their bodies mutually stimulated each other, and as Lin Hong clasped Baldy Li, Baldy Li clapsed her back. As Lin Hong's body started to tremble, so did Baldy Li's. As Lin Hong's orgasm approached, her entire body started to shudder,
and Baldy Li felt that he had his arms around an earthquake. At that point his own orgasm came screaming out.

Afterward, the two lay motionless on the bed, their hearts pounding, Lin Hong breathing feebly and Baldy Li gasping for air. Both had experienced mind-blowing orgasms, which had taken them to unprecedented peaks of pleasure. Now it was as if they were fluttering down from the peak of Mount Everest, surrounded by white snow on all sides. Both of them felt that their bodies were like paper fluttering back down to earth.

CHAPTER 75

T
HAT EVENING,
after Lin Hong experienced her unprecedented orgasm, she closed her eyes and lay in bed utterly exhausted. Then, like a lamb to the slaughter, she allowed Baldy Li to vigorously do it a second, a third, and even a fourth time. In Baldy Li's bed Lin Hong experienced over and over again a feeling of narrowly escaping death. The third time she didn't agree and said exhaustedly that they had made a pact to do it no more than twice a day. Baldy Li boldly said that today he considered himself a male virgin who was tasting the flavor of woman for the first time, like a dog falling into a pile of shit and eating to its heart's content. Therefore, how could a mere two times suffice? Lin Hong had no choice but to lie there numbly and allow him to do it a third time, after which he wanted to do it yet again. She almost cried, but he told her that this would be the last time the two of them would ever make love, because after this, he would return her to Song Gang.

When Deputy Liu called at two in the morning, Baldy Li was in the process of having sex with Lin Hong that fourth time, and she was enduring the agony of doing it with this beastlike man. When Baldy Li's cell phone rang, he continued to thrust as he checked the phone. Noticing that it was Deputy Liu's number, he cursed and didn't answer. After a while the phone rang again, and Baldy Li cursed again but still didn't answer. Then the cell started ringing continuously, and Baldy Li, absolutely furious, flipped it open and screamed, "I'm fucking in the middle of something!" Baldy Li then heard what Deputy Liu was trying to say and cried out like a bomb exploding,
"What?"

In a state of shock, Baldy Li jumped off the bed, then stood there like an idiot, naked, holding his cell phone, with his mouth hanging open. Every time Deputy Liu said something, Baldy Li would shudder. When Liu finished and hung up the phone, Baldy Li still stood there with the phone to his ear, completely immobile, as if he had lost his mind. After a while he dropped the phone to the floor and was then startled when it started to ring. When he recovered his senses, he began to curse himself tearfully, saying, "I should fucking die. I don't
deserve to die well, and if I'm not run over by a car, I should be burned to death. If I'm not burned to death, I should drown in freezing water or be run over by a car… I'm such a bastard…"