Leave Me Alone (27 page)

Then she went off to her room. I couldn’t tell whether she
was amused or genuinely annoyed, and my confidence burst like a paper bag.

Ye Mei’s call excited me and made me nervous. This time she wasn’t her usual cold self, but said ‘Happy Birthday’ in a very gentle voice. It made my heart beat faster. Father was still hopelessly entangled in my stratagem while, slightly awkwardly, I chatted with Ye Mei. She said she’d opened a small bar on Bacon Road, called Tang Dynasty Windmill. As soon as I heard the name I guessed it was Li Liang’s idea. For some reason, that irritated me. When we were students, the band Tang Dynasty had just become hot, and Li Liang wrote a song which he called, ‘Dreaming of Tang Dynasty’. A few lines became famous throughout the university:

Ye Mei’s voice was husky with a nasal twang. It sounded as if she had a cold. I told her to be careful of her health, and she said thanked me, then asked: ‘Have you got time tonight? Come and hang out for a while.’ Her tone struck me as being like that of a spoilt child.

My mother was happy because she thought I’d found a new girlfriend. To encourage me, she upended the game board and told me to hurry to make my date. The old man
protested that my mother had gone too far: apparently he’d encircled most of my players and was just about to move in for the kill.

My mother made as if she was going to hit him. ‘My son hasn’t got time to play games with you,’ she said. ‘Didn’t you hear there’s a girl looking for him?’

Still laughing I went downstairs. When I started the car, its worn-out engine gasped like an asthmatic old man. I manoeuvred around the bike awning and the small shop, and emerged to a street crowded with people and cars. As I remembered that wild night of confusion with Ye Mei, and the following seven months of one thing after another, my head felt like it was tangled with a real mess of feelings: happiness, regret, shame.

Driving past the hospital, I was reminded of Zhou Weidong. During the sales fair season I’d arranged for him to do a circuit of Deyang, MianYang and Guangyang. The guy didn’t get a single night’s rest. By the time the sales meetings were over, his ‘gun’ was worn out, red like a carrot and so painful he cried like a baby. I drove him to the hospital and he tossed and turned in agony the whole way. When we arrived, the doctor told him, ‘We’ll do a blood test first. We’ve got to eliminate AIDS.’

Zhou Weidong almost shat himself. My heart was jolted too but later, I realised the doctor was deliberately trying to scare him. It was just gonorrhoea. He had to go in every day for two injections, each one costing 180 yuan. Zhou Weidong didn’t have that much money himself so he’d borrowed 2,000 from me.

I’d written the money off of course. A female pig would become screen siren Gong Li before Zhou Weidong ever paid anyone back. He wasn’t cheap, but he was forgetful. When he had money, you borrowed from him and he forgot that too. Still, the thought of it was painful, because my salary was now just a few thousand a month. The way things were going I’d have to dip into my savings again.

I decided to call Old Lai. At the sales meeting he’d sold more than 2 million, and with all the add-ons, his gross profit wouldn’t be less than 300,000. This time he wouldn’t be able to get away with telling me how hard up he was.

Old Lai didn’t answer for ages and I silently cursed him. Finally he picked up the phone. He said he was talking business in the office with a colleague and asked me to call his landline in half an hour. I pulled the car over at the roadside and vowed to fight with Old Lai to the end.

At that moment Ye Mei called again to ask where I was. After hesitating, I decided to be honest.

‘I want to come, but I can’t betray Li Liang.’

Ye Mei spluttered as if something she was drinking had irritated her throat. She said in a huff, ‘Forget it,’ and then slammed down the receiver.

Thinking of her post-coital body, I suspected that something was wrong with me.

Old Lai didn’t beat around the bush. He said outright that he wouldn’t give me the 50,000. I kicked my cigarette stub in the air, breathed hoarsely for a moment, then said coldly, ‘OK, then are you prepared to receive a legal
summons? You still owe our company 280,000.’

Old Lai just laughed. I wanted to put my fist down the phone and smash his face.

‘There’s no way your company will bring a suit against me,’ he said.

I blustered. ‘Sue or not, it’s not in our hands. You just wait and see.’

There was a background whispering noise, like papers being shuffled.

‘Trying to scare me won’t work,’ Old Lai said. ‘Boss Liu has already promised me they won’t sue.’

I should have sensed from this something was up, but couldn’t prevent myself saying furiously, ‘Boss Liu is HR, he doesn’t understand this kind of thing. When it comes to business matters, our big boss listens to me.’

Old Lai didn’t reply immediately. The whispering sound intensified. Then, after about a minute, he said, ‘Boss Liu is right here next to me. Want to speak to him?’

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

When I arrived at work, Old Yu was waiting in my office for his 170,000. At the end of last year I’d bought 260,000 yuan worth of car parts. I’d heard that the government was going to increase the price of small factory parts and I wanted to help our company cut its procurement costs. I never expected that a few months later the price rise still wouldn’t have materialised. In fact, the more parts that were sold the cheaper they got. I worked out that if I got rid of them at the current price, I’d lose at least 30,000. When I talked to Old Yu about a settlement, however, he said he’d rather die than concede a discount. I told the accountant to suspend payments. After six months had gone by, Old Yu got worried and he made a threatening phone call. He said he was ready to take the case to court. I laughed loudly.

‘You do that,’ I said. ‘Start your case. You’ll definitely win.’

By the time the court reached a judgment, at least another two months would have passed. Old Yu would be sick of the whole thing. And even if the court decided against me, the worst that could happen was I’d have to return the parts. Would he really be willing to give up as much as 170,000 yuan?

After Old Yu had thought it through and reached the same conclusion as me, he got very depressed. After that he visited me every day like a well-behaved grandson, lighting me cigarettes, being respectful. He was stuck to me like a plaster and I couldn’t get rid of him.

Sure enough, when he saw me, Old Yu’s face instantly became fawning. He lit me a cigarette, made tea, and chattered away endlessly. Apparently his family were having difficulties. His kid was about to start school, and his wife needed medical treatment. His eighty-year-old mother needed to be cremated.

Forcing a laugh, I said, ‘This has nothing to do with me any more. You should talk to Fatty Dong. I’ve been fired.’

Old Yu’s mouth fell open, displaying a row of brown front teeth. He stared at me as if he’d seen a ghost.

The decision from Head Office about how to deal with me had two main components. Firstly, fire Chen Zhong immediately, with Liu Three taking over the sales department. Secondly, stop all salary payments, living subsidies
and expense reimbursements. The remaining 260,900 yuan I owed had to be paid off within ten days, otherwise the police would be called in.

Before Fatty Dong had finished reading out the decision, my face felt like it had turned white and my stomach filled with gas. I was petrified.

Afterwards Fatty played Mr Nice Guy, patting my shoulder and saying, ‘Chen Zhong, we are colleagues. I never wanted this to happen. You look after yourself.’

His smile infuriated me. I kicked over a chair with my foot, leapt and thrust my fist into his fat face. Fatty Dong slammed against the wall like a mountain of lard, making a sickening sound. Everyone started as if they’d had electric shocks. I threw open the door, my hair on end and my teeth clenched.

‘Fuck you. Just you wait,’ I yelled at Fatty Dong.

This catastrophe was of course one hundred per cent Dong’s doing. After my telephone conversation with Boss Liu, my mind worked at lightning speed, trying to get it all straight. Now I knew why Fatty Dong had insisted on going to Chongqing during the sales fair. He’d gone to dig up the sales contract from two years ago. It was also obvious why Boss Liu had suddenly gone cool on me. I visualised how they’d plotted, dug their hole and then stepped to one side waiting for me to fall in. Those dogs — fuck! At the same time I felt a confused hatred for myself. I should not have called Old Lai that time. If Boss Liu hadn’t been there, I could have shamelessly insisted there was no evidence other than his word. Where were the written records? What could the company
do? I’d never dreamed the company would go so far as to fire me. Now it didn’t matter what I said — none of it was any use.

In my penultimate year of university, I’d nearly been expelled because of the notorious porn film incident. That was the first serious crisis of my life. Afterwards, I told Li Liang that if I’d been thrown out, I’d have lain down on some icy railway track, just like our idol, Hai Zi.

In the early 1990s, the craze was for university students to run some kind of business. Everyone debated whether those who sold tea or those who sold eggs would be most likely to make a fortune. It was as if we had been rudely woken by a stream of piss and thrown off Chinese students’ historic burden of:
‘standing upright for heaven, giving our life for the people, studying to achieve saintliness and win peace for all ages’.

We almost lost our minds in the struggle to be first; lost our way because we were crazy for cash. At that time, anyone who couldn’t say that they’d at least been a street vendor was embarrassed. At the height of the business craze, our canteen door was plastered with every kind of advertisement: for books, for family education; the words all gaudy and enticing. Outside our dormitory a forest of small stalls sprang up — noisy from day to night, and livelier than the vegetable market. Every individual was a trading company. Our dormitory door was knocked at eighty times a day by people selling shirts and socks, instant noodles and hot pickled mustard, combs, mirrors and make-up. Some even sold condoms. There were lots of urban myths about people getting rich
overnight. It was said that a student at Normal University had made several million from trading steel, and drove a Lincoln to class every day. Another rumour had it that a girl from the politics department had invested a few thousand in stocks and in less than a year had turned a million.

I was no laggard in this matter of making a fortune. I started a beer room, and then rented a book store, then a pool hall. I had a small stand selling cheap clothes and books. Finally, in the second semester of my third year, I hit on the screening room idea.

At that time I had a catchphrase: Money is earned, not saved. Even though I had several businesses, I never actually had much cash: my profits all went on beer. The screening room was a good earner though, the best of all. The English department’s Hu Jiangchao hired it for three months and even his piss turned to oil. Every day he ate all three meals outside campus. My requirements at that time weren’t so grand: I just wanted to be able to buy Zhao Yue clothes once in a while, and treat friends to the occasional meal.

I was in the film business for nearly a whole semester, and made plenty of money, but finally lost it all.

At the start, trade wasn’t actually that great. Each day there were only around fifty or sixty customers and the box office didn’t come close to covering the rental fee. I went everywhere to get big films:
Gone with the Wind, Waterloo Bridge, Jurassic Park, Silence of the Lambs,
and the Kung Fu films of Hong Kong star Chow Yun-fat. I pasted up enough posters to blot out the sun. Every Saturday I screened one session of classics, then all through the night showed TV programs
popular from our youth. Suddenly the business took off. On the best day I sold more than 400 tickets. When you added sales of soda, melon, bread, cigarettes and so on, our profit was more than 1200. I soon felt sick from smiling.

The holidays began on the 2nd of July. I’d planned to suspend my business and go with Zhao Yue to the north-east to enjoy a vacation. However, the PE department’s Hao Feng came looking for me and handed me three ‘porn’ movies:
Lady Chatterley’s Lover, I’m Crazy For It
and
Sex and Zen.

He pleaded with me for ages to put them on, saying that I could charge whatever price I liked. My resolve slowly weakened and I reflected that there hadn’t been an inspection for ages, so it was unlikely anything would go wrong. Showing the films would also avert the possibility of any trouble from the jocks. However, I never expected the guy to immediately round up an audience of thirty or more fellow athletes. I got nervous and told him, ‘Too many people, it’s not safe. I can’t do this.’

Hao Feng encouraged the jocks to join him in egging me on. They kept saying I’d be a hero. After a while I couldn’t resist any longer and I said, ‘Let’s do it. If the sky falls down I’ll hold it up.’

Some poet once said that ‘life is a river’ and I understood. Beneath the smooth surface of the river there were dangerous undercurrents. A little carelessness could lead to the boat overturning.

If I hadn’t been so impetuous that day, I’d never have been barred from getting an honours degree. And if I’d got my honours degree, I wouldn’t have been rejected by the provincial
Communist Party Committee propaganda department and forced to take a job at a car company. If I hadn’t gone to the car company, the chances are I wouldn’t be staggering along now like a stray dog in the polluted air by the West Station: my vision blurred, my face twisted and my spirit depressed.

On that summer night seven years before in the screening room, porn goddesses Ye Zimei and Xu Jinjiang were having a cat fight in a bathtub. More than thirty guys, saliva dribbling down their chins, watched as the girls stripped each other. With more than 200 yuan in my pockets, I was laughing. Then, suddenly, the door was kicked in, the lights turned up. The campus security department’s Boss Tang brutally ordered me to go with him. Behind him, several guards scoured the room like nationalist bandits searching the mountains. The place was thrown into chaos. There was a clamour of running footsteps, of seats banging, of confused voices. Two guys tried to flee through the window, but were stopped by Old Tang’s cry: ‘Not one of you leave! Call their faculty heads to take charge of them!’

Then he grabbed me. ‘You, come with me at once to the security office!’

I felt like my whole world had collapsed. Hao Feng tried to apologise, but I pushed him away and staggered with Old Tang towards the security office. Once there I couldn’t support myself any more, and had to lean against the wall, gasping for breath, my arms and legs turned to water.

I was prepared to die. I vowed tearfully that if the university expelled me, I’d jump from the sixteenth floor of the teaching building. This scared my faculty head so much that the
old guy’s face turned white. He went to the student administration office and risked his position to say good things about me. Meanwhile, I got together all my profits from the past few months, about 10,000, and distributed them as bribes to the Dean and the student administration office. Finally I handed a fat red envelope to the deputy university head who was in charge of student affairs. At first he took the moral high ground, attacking my shamelessness in trying to buy personal favours. After I’d pleaded with him, and sworn to keep it a secret, he finally accepted, looking embarrassed. Still wearing his holier-than-thou holy face he told me, ‘OK, you won’t be expelled. Go back to your dorm.’

From then on, I was very clear about one thing: in this world there was no evil that couldn’t be redeemed by money. There was no incorruptible virtue. Li Liang was very indignant and wrote a poem proclaiming: