Leave Me Alone (16 page)

I’d already moved most of my personal miscellanea out, apart
from a few last books and DVDs. Zhao Yue silently packed these items for me, putting them into a big bag. I picked it up and started to walk out. But then she called my name and I turned around. She ran her hand through my hair, saying tenderly, ‘Take good care of yourself.’

I took her firmly in my arms.

When my mother found out what had happened, she lost the heart to cook for several days. She spent the whole time sighing, which depressed me no end, and so I locked myself in my room and listened to music and read. Whenever I thought about Zhao Yue, I had this stabbing pain. Downstairs, the old folks were competing to see who could go the longest without speaking. Recently I’d noticed that my father was going really grey. I guessed that I wasn’t a good son at all; although I was almost thirty years old, I still made them worry about me.

After dinner, Zhao Yue called and asked if I was OK.

I said yes, then asked, ‘Can I sleep at home tonight?’

Her firm no provoked an ironic smile. Once she used to beg me to come home. After that I felt even worse.

The old man knocked on the door and walked in with a big forced smile on his face. ‘Baby Rabbit, wanna play Go?’ he said.

My father was still an utterly appalling player. After only a few rounds I’d wiped out most of his pieces. This time he accepted defeat. He wanted to comfort me but didn’t know how. While we sat in awkward silence, Bighead Wang called.

‘I knew she was no good but I never thought she’d really divorce you,’ he said.‘

Anger surged in me. ‘Shut your stinking mouth. It has nothing to do with her.’

He laughed. ‘I know you’re feeling down. We’re on the second floor at Zero Point! Come over. Drink is the best cure for the blues.’

‘Is Li Liang there?’ I said.

‘Yes. He suggested I call you.’

CHAPTER TWENTY

My mother had found out about this dating agency that would introduce me to potential girlfriends. Initially I said I’d have nothing to do with it.

‘What year is this? Can’t I find one for myself?’

My mother harumphed. ‘The kind of person you choose cheats you out of your property and plays with your feelings.’

Recently she’d developed a grudge against Zhao Yue: the week before she’d gone with my sister to visit her, hoping to bring about a reconciliation. What she hadn’t expected was to find Zhao Yue having an apparently intimate dinner with a man. My sister said that my mother let fly a few sarcastic words.

She was still cursing when she got home, saying that Zhao Yue had a bad heart. ‘So many years together as man and wife and she can cast you off as easily as that.’

After that she unscientifically predicted that Zhao Yue’s future children would be born deformed.

When I heard about that, it ruined my day. I called Zhao Yue that evening, making an effort to sound casual, then asked her whether she had a boyfriend. Zhao Yue said she was conducting interviews and this time she’d be sure to look for someone with moral qualities. I criticised her for disloyalty.

‘Didn’t you say you would consider me first?’

She sighed. ‘You’re very naive. Do you really think we have any chance of getting back together?’

After that I lay on the sofa and didn’t speak for a long time.

My mother kept on at me to divide my property from Zhao Yue’s. She helped me do the maths. Deposit on the house: 120,000, of which I’d put up 30,000, and the old man had put up 20,000. Furniture: 30,000, all bought by me. Household appliances: 20,000, of which my sister had paid half. The grand total came to more than 70,000, and that wasn’t including my monthly mortgage payments.

Immediately after the divorce, I’d told my mother that Zhao Yue was just temporarily taking care of my share of these possessions.

‘Whether now or later, it’s still mine,’ I said.

After this recent incident though, she pressed me to settle things.

‘If you’re embarrassed to talk to her about it, then I will,’ she said.

I was suddenly tired of this and fixed my mother with a
glare. ‘Don’t stir, OK? It’s hardly very much.’

My throat choked up.

‘What money does Zhao Yue have?’

Zhao Yue was hard up all through university. At that time my monthly living expenses were around 400 yuan, while she just had 150. With the university’s monthly subsidy of 49 yuan 5 mao, she just about scraped by. Later, she told me sadly that when she saw her classmates buying clothes she would hide inside her mosquito net. When I heard this I felt very sorry for her. At the end of our final year of university, I spent 300 yuan on a grey suit for her. Zhao Yue was so moved that she gripped my hand hard. It was springtime. The oriental cherry tree was in full bloom, and Zhao Yue and I embraced in the grove behind the campus auditorium, full of confidence about life. But seven years later that grey suit was rags, just like the passionate feelings we’d once shared.

My mother set me up with a total of four dates. Each had very distinct peculiarities. The first had the figure of a weight-lifter. I drank tea with her for a while, then made the excuse that something had come up at work. My mother asked how it went.

‘There’s no way I could ever fight with her,’ I explained. ‘Just imagine your son getting beaten up every day.’

The second was better-looking, but caked in make-up. Her hair was like a helmet. Straightaway she asked whether I had a house, or a car. I replied that I had a bike and I’d had to borrow money to buy it, and her face froze over.

Each time I went for one of these ‘interviews’, my mother
urged me to describe myself as ‘briefly married’. The implication was that my marriage hadn’t made any lasting impression on me. I wondered gloomily what the final significance of those three years would turn out to be: a joke, a game, or a wound that would never heal? After going through all that, would I ever dare to go back for a second try?

Li Liang said that marriage and prostitution were the same thing, the only difference being that one was wholesale and the other was retail. That made me feel even more depressed.

That night at Zero Point the three of us consumed twentythree bottles of San Miguel beer. Some time after midnight Li Liang summoned this heart-stoppingly beautiful young girl who was studying tourism. Li Liang embraced her openly.

‘She’s very uninhibited’ he said. ‘Life is for happiness, you don’t have to get hung-up on principles.’ He kissed her face. ‘Am I right?’

The girl nodded shyly.

Glass in hand, I looked at the dance floor’s sparkling lights. A long-haired, handsome dude was crooning softly:

I considered my friend Li Liang. His eyes shone as brightly
as ten years ago, but his face now had a coldness to it. Leaning back drunkenly in my chair, I asked myself: where is the future we hoped for?

Li Liang and Ye Mei were definitely splitting up. As he told me about it, he fixed me with a contemptuous stare.

Bighead Wang said hurriedly, ‘Drink, drink. Tonight no one is allowed to talk about anything bad. I won’t allow it.’

I’d always dismissed Bighead as a non-entity. The strange thing was though, in all these years nothing bad had ever really happened to him. He’d never taken a wrong turn in life. Aside from pure luck, he must possess some life wisdom.

Li Liang said he was Monkey King dressed up as Pig. Bighead Wang looked embarrassed by this.

‘I’m not like you,’ he said, ‘I don’t set my sights too high. As long as I have something to drink during the day and someone to grope at night then I’m happy.’

I’d heard that he was pushing hard for another promotion to procurement manager — a famously lucrative post.

Li Liang said enviously, ‘It’s easier for you to make money than me. There’s no risk and you don’t even have to use your brain.’

Bighead Wang pretended to be offended. ‘I’m a public
servant. It doesn’t matter what hospitality I accept, but I daren’t go on the take.’

I interrupted him bad-temperedly. ‘Well, that 300,000 you used to buy a house didn’t fall from heaven.’

Li Liang backed me up. ‘Are you saying the five-grain wine in your house was just pissed out by you?’

After delivering his punishment that night at the Kaisa Hotel, Li Liang had smiled at me. In the dim lamplight I couldn’t be sure what kind of smile it was. I’d called him numerous times since then, wanting to ask for his forgiveness, implore his pardon. I thought there were very few important things in this world, one of which was Li Liang’s friendship. But each time he hung up without listening to me.

On my desk was a photo of our dormitory gang: Li Liang had his arm around my shoulder, and I was pinching Bighead Wang’s cheek. Chen Chao stood to the side. Big Brother, who then had a bull-like physique but was now dead, was savouring a cigarette. Eight years on I could still hear Li Liang’s voice saying, ‘From now on we should share our joys and sorrows, face difficulties together.’

Big Brother chipped in: ‘Screw girls together.’

Everyone laughed.

Eight years on… I stared at the photo with something like awe. I’d never believed in fate, but at that moment I found myself wondering who had changed the youthful lives in that photo. Who was it who had divided us onto the two banks of life and death? Or, to put it another way — seeing as my
crotch still slightly ached — who’d let Li Liang kick me in the balls?

I often asked myself, if Li Liang didn’t have so much money would I respect him so much? Really, I didn’t have a clue.

That evening we drank too much. Hardly able to stand, I staggered to the restroom, where I clung to the basin like a beached fish struggling for its last gasp of water. The attendant put a hot towel on my neck and massaged my shoulders. Suddenly I remembered the days when I’d lie on the sofa and let Zhao Yue pull my ears.