Brothers (96 page)

These girls would sleep peacefully during the day but then become active each night, when these twenty-three heavily made-up and gaudily attired girls would crowd into the beauty salon, brightly soliciting customers like twenty-three red lanterns at New Years. The men would stand outside and furtively peer in as the girls would glance seductively back out at them. Then the beauty salon began to resemble a black market, abuzz with the sounds of people bargaining. The men would speak carefully, as if they were buying drugs, while the girls would speak boldly, as though they were selling cosmetics. After finding a girl and agreeing on a price, the men and their chosen girls would walk up the stairs, bantering lewdly. After entering a room, they would produce all kinds of sounds imaginable, transforming the six-floor building into a virtual zoo, a veritable encyclopedia of men and women's lovemaking noises.

Everyone in Liu Town referred to the building as the town's red-light district, and since Wanderless Zhou's Snack Shop was directly across the street, his business also increased impressively. In the past, the snack shop would close its doors at eleven each night, but now it stayed open twenty-four hours a day. From one till four or five o'clock each morning, the constant stream of men and young women emerging from the building would pour across the street and into the snack shop, where they would sit and suck down their straw-embedded mini-buns.

Was there anyone in Liu Town who could have accurately predicted Lin Hongs life trajectory? Beginning as a pure and easily embarrassed young girl, she was transformed into a sweet young woman in love, a virtuous wife completely devoted to Song Gang, a crazy lover who made crazy love to Baldy Li for three months, a solitary widow, an expressionless single woman living in complete isolation, a beauty salon proprietess, and finally this business-minded madam who always had a smile for her clients. After those heavily made-up young women started appearing in Liu, Lin Hong became smoother and warmer in her social interactions. The young women didn't call her Lin Hong but, rather, Madam Lin, and gradually the people of Liu started calling her that as well. Lin Hong became a Janus-like figure: Whenever a prospective customer walked in the door, she would break out into a radiant smile and speak to him sweetly, yet when she ran into a man unrelated to her business, she would look at him with eyes as cold as ice.

Although, by that time, Madam Lin's eyes and forehead were full of wrinkles, she was nevertheless very fashionable and wore tight-fitting black clothes, showing off her curvy breasts and buttocks. She always carried a cell phone, grasping it tightly as though it were a strand of gold. Her cell rang throughout the day and night, and she would smile into it, addressing people as Bureau Director, Manager, and Brother, then saying, "A few older ones have left, and some new ones have arrived, each of whom is young and pretty."

If she then said, "I'll send one over for you to take a look," that meant that the person on the other end of the line was a VIP customer— either a powerful provincial official or a rich provincial businessman. If it was a working stiff who had called, however, she would still smile, but in a very different tone of voice would simply say "Our girls are all very pretty."

B
LACKSMITH TONG was one of Madam Lin's VIP customers. He was now more than sixty years old, and his wife a year older than he. Tong had opened three stores of his supermarket chain. Everyone addressed him as Boss Tong, but he wouldn't let his workers call him this, insisting that they continue calling him Blacksmith Tong, since he thought that sounded more vigorous.

The sixty-something Blacksmith Tong was still as randy as a young man, and when he saw a young woman, his eyes would light up like a thief spotting money. When she was in her fifties, his formerly plump wife had two major operations, one that removed half her stomach and the other, her entire uterus. After his wife's body collapsed and she became reduced to skin and bones, her libido also completely collapsed. Blacksmith Tong, however, still full of vitality, needed to have sex at least twice a week and invariably would leave his wife so anguished that she no longer wanted to live. She said that each time they finished, she felt as though she had just had another hysterectomy, and it would take her at least half a month to recover, but within a few days Blacksmith Tong was raring to go again.

In order to survive, Blacksmith Tongs wife resolved not to let him have sex with her anymore, leading him to develop a temper like a boar in heat unable to find a sow. He smashed dishes while at home and cursed his employees at the supermarkets. Once he even came to blows with a customer. His wife felt that if he continued to throw these tantrums, sooner or later something would happen—either another woman would seduce him or else he would take a handful of mistresses, but either way the money he had painstakingly earned and couldn't bring himself to spend would all be taken away by some other woman. After considering every possibility, his wife finally decided to send him over to Madam Lin's and have one of her girls cure his explosive temper. The girls would want a tip, and Madam Lin would charge an administrative fee, all of which wouldn't come cheap, but though it distressed Tongs wife to have to part with all that money, she preferred to think of it as medical expenses for her husband. In this way she was able to put her mind at rest, telling herself that this was well-spent preventive care.

Every time Blacksmith Tong came to Madam Lin's place, he would enter boldly, his wife at his side. His wife was afraid that he would get cheated and therefore insisted on helping him pick the girls herself and negotiate a good price. She would leave only after having settled the bill and go home to wait for Blacksmith Tong to return with his report.

The first time he returned home after going whoring, his wife was very critical of the fact that he and the girl had carried on for more than an hour and demanded to know whether or not he had fallen in love with that slut. Blacksmith Tong retorted that, given that they had already spent the money, why shouldn't he reap the benefits? "This is called having the return be proportional to the investment."

Blacksmith Tongs wife felt that her husband had a point, and therefore each time she would always want to make sure that the girl had done it long enough. Despite his age, Tong was still indomitable, and each time he visited a prostitute, he would go on for more than an hour. His wife was very pleased, feeling they were getting a good return on their investment. Occasionally he would fail to give a good performance, and a few times he finished up after just half an hour, making his wife feel that they weren't getting a good enough return. Therefore, she adjusted her strategy and, rather than allowing him to go whoring twice a week, she switched to a once-a-week plan.

Blacksmith Tong felt humiliated because, in order to save money, his wife would always pick relatively homely girls for him. At first he felt that they were all right and told himself that, although they weren't very pretty, at least they were young. Gradually, however, he began to lose interest in girls who weren't pretty, and therefore the number of rounds he could rouse himself for carnal battle also diminished. In Madam Lin's building there were some very pretty girls whom Blacksmith Tong lusted after with all his heart. He would beg his wife to pick him a pretty one, but she would refuse on the ground that the pretty ones were more expensive and therefore her cost would dramatically increase. Blacksmith Tong swore that if he got a pretty girl, he would definitely do her for at least two hours and therefore make good on their investment.

During the several decades they had been married, Blacksmith Tong had always strutted about proudly in front of his wife. Especially since he opened his store, then his chain of supermarkets, his success in business made him even prouder, and he would often reprimand and curse her. Now, however, he frequently implored her to find him a pretty girl and didn't hesitate to kneel with tears streaming down his face. When his wife saw him like this and remembered his former cockiness, she couldn't help but shake her head and, sighing, ask, "Why are men such losers?"

She then agreed to find him a pretty girl for holidays and festivals. Blacksmith Tong reacted as though he had just received a royal blessing and immediately rushed off to find a calendar and make a list of all of the holidays. Starting with the Chinese Lunar New Year, he first wrote down the traditional Chinese holidays, including the Mid-Autumn Festival, the Duanwu Dragon Boat Festival, the Chongyang Double Ninth Festival, the Qingming Ancestors’ Festival, and so forth. Then he added Labor Day, Youth Day, Army Building Day, and National Day, together with Teachers’ Day, Valentines Day, Bachelors’ Day, and Elders’ Day, as well as the foreigners’ holidays of Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas, and finally added Women's Day and Children's Day as well. When Blacksmith Tong told his wife all of the holidays he had found, she jumped in alarm and cried out hoarsely, "Oh, my God!"

Then the two started bargaining feverishly. Blacksmith Tongs wife first tried to eliminate all the foreigners’ holidays, declaring nationalis-tically "We are Chinese and don't observe foreigners’ holidays."

Blacksmith Tong didn't agree. He had worked in business for more than ten years and naturally knew more than his wife, and therefore he admonished her, "What era do we live in? This is the age of globalization. Our refrigerator, television, and washing machine are all foreign brands. Can you possibly claim that, because you are Chinese, therefore you won't use foreign brands?"

His wife opened her mouth, but no words came out. Finally, she simply said, "I'm no match for you."

After the foreigners’ holidays were preserved, Blacksmith Tongs wife picked out the Qingming Ancestors’ Festival from among the traditional Chinese holidays and said, "This is a festival of the dead, and therefore you can't count it among your own."

Blacksmith Tong didn't agree with that either and said, "The Qingming festival is for the living to mourn the deceased, and therefore it is actually a holiday for the living. On that day every year, we first go visit my parents’ graves and then visit yours. Why wouldn't this count?"

His wife pondered for a long time and finally again conceded, "I'm no match for you."

Therefore, the Qingming festival was also preserved. Next, his wife firmly opposed his inclusion of Youth Day, Teachers’ Day, and Children's Day. Blacksmith Tong agreed to leave out Teachers’ Day but insisted that he be allowed to keep the others. He said that it was only after having experienced his own childhood and youth that he was able to have his current old age, and he declared boldly, "Comrade Lenin taught us:
To forget the past is to betray it."

The two continued going back and forth, and after they had argued for more than an hour, Blacksmith Tongs wife once again gave in, saying, "I'm no match for you."

Finally, the dispute came down to Women's Day, and Blacksmith Tongs wife asked him, "What does Women's Day have to do with you?"

Blacksmith Tong replied, "Precisely because it
is
Women's Day, one must go find oneself a woman."

His wife suddenly became downcast and, wiping her tears, said, "No matter what I say, I'll never be a match for you."

Buoyed by his success, Blacksmith Tong thought of two more holidays. "There are two more: your birthday and mine."

His wife finally became infuriated and cried out, "So you want to go find a prostitute even on my birthday?"

Blacksmith Tong realized his mistake and immediately corrected himself. He shook his head and waved away the thought. "No, no, of course not! I won't go anywhere on your birthday but will spend the entire day with you. I won't go anywhere on my birthday either and will spend that entire day with you as well. Our two birthdays count as my Chastity Days, and not only will I not sleep with other women on either of those days, I won't even look in their direction."

Blacksmith Tongs last concession made his simpleminded wife believe that she had finally achieved a victory. Gratified, she said, "At any rate, I'm no match for you."

Blacksmith Tongs wife continued to personally escort him to Madam Lin's, and every holiday and festival he received a bonus allowing him to hire a more expensive girl. All the married men in Liu Town were extremely envious and remarked that this proved that Blacksmith Tong was indeed born lucky, to have such a sensible and enlightened wife who supported him when he went whoring while she herself remained chaste. They decided that, even if Tong were reduced to a pile of dog shit, he would still manage to find some dog-shit fortune— he was
that
lucky. They then looked again at their own wives, each of whom was unreasonable and had a rigid way of thinking, grasping their husbands’ wallets with one hand and their belts with the other. The men sighed, and when they ran into Blacksmith Tong they would ask quietly, "How did you manage to have such good fortune?"

With a pleasant expression, Tong would say modestly, "I simply had the fortune to find a good wife."

If his wife was by his side, he would add, "This good wife of mine is one of a kind, and even if you took a red lantern to search heaven, hell, and the bottom of the sea, you still wouldn't find another like her."

From the time Blacksmith Tongs wife started accompanying him to Madam Lin's to hire girls, his tantrums abruptly disappeared. The cockiness his wife had endured for decades disappeared too, and he stopped cursing his employees, becoming instead as polite and refined as an intellectual, always smiling and not uttering a single curse word when he spoke. His wife was very pleased with his transformation, because not only did he abandon his cocky attitude but he furthermore became quite subservient when he was with her. Before, he wasn't even willing to go shopping with her, and now he would carry her bag; previously he refused to discuss anything with her, but now he asked her permission for everything. Blacksmith Tong even dismissed the chairman of his company's board of directors and appointed his wife in his place, and he himself settled for being company president. Therefore, his wife had to sign all the company's papers—she had no understanding of what was going on, she just knew that she had to sign everything her husband brought her. When other people brought her documents, she would categorically refuse to sign anything she didn't fully understand—unless she saw that her husband had signed it before her. Blacksmith Tongs wife was no longer a housewife and instead went to work with her husband every day. As a result, she began to pay more attention to her dress and makeup, to the point of wearing name-brand clothing and name-brand lipstick. The company's employees would nod and bow when they saw her, making her feel as if she had a successful career. She liked to lecture others, and whenever she ran into women who had been housewives for several decades, like herself, she would try to enlighten them, saying that women shouldn't rely entirely on men but, rather, should have their own careers. At the end of her lecture, she would add a fashionable phrase: "They should find their own self-worth."