Leave Me Alone (7 page)

‘Do you ever stop working?’ I asked.

She lowered her head slightly but had this smile on her face.

I said, ‘There’s someone who’d like to go for a drink with you, but doesn’t know whether you’d agree?’

She pressed her book against my chest, and said, ‘Who’s the shy one? Let’s go!’

I wondered whether Zhao Yue would remember this. We looked at each other solemnly and slowly the corners of her mouth curved into a smile. The smile widened until there came an unexpected snort. Without really knowing why, we both started laughing and our laughter was loud and hearty. Absorbed in the moment we caressed each other until a certain part of my body rose.

Just then my cellphone rang. It was Zhou Yan.

‘Chen Zhong, how can you treat people this way?’ she asked with a sigh.

‘What do you mean?’ I asked.

‘Fatty Dong just came here and accused me of being a traitor. I tell you, I never thought you’d sell me out like that. What kind of man are you?’

Then she hung up.

Zhao Yue asked me who it was but I ignored her. I dialled Liu Three’s cellphone and he didn’t take the call. I persisted, then finally heard his reedy voice. I asked him to explain.

He hesitated a while, then said, ‘Brother Chen, there’s something I’ve always wanted to ask you.’

I spoke through gritted teeth. ‘So, ask.’

‘When Fatty Dong wrote the letter falsely accusing Boss Sun, you knew all about it. Why didn’t you stop it, or at least warn him?’

This was a decision I’d long regretted myself. At the time of plotting his coup, Fatty Dong had said to me, ‘Old Sun is a waste of space. If we got rid of him, everyone would benefit.’

I’d seen this as an opportunity for me too, and so I’d allowed him free rein to set up Old Sun. At no point had I intervened.

I said to Liu Three, ‘So that’s the reason you’ve got together with Fatty Dong to murder me.’

He didn’t reply.

‘Come over here if you dare. Let’s talk face to face.’

He said that as things had come to this, there was no need to talk any more.

My anger erupted. ‘Fuck your mother, Liu Three!’

He laughed but his tone still seemed to retain some of its former warmth. ‘Brother Chen, my mother’s already old. I’ll help you find a couple of younger chicks.’

CHAPTER TEN

Li Liang’s wedding was a Chengdu sensation. On 1 May, twenty gleaming cars, precisely arranged like words in a sentence, set off from Jinxiuu Gardens and cruised smoothly towards the Binjiang Hotel. We’d arranged beforehand with the cops so there weren’t any hold-ups. I was at the head of the motorcade, driving a Mercedes-Benz 320. A little tune danced around in my head, a Zhonghua cigarette dangled from my lips, and whenever I saw a red light I accelerated. Li Liang sat at my side with a solemn expression. In his 30,000 yuan Zegna suit he looked very suave.

I teased him. ‘Li Liang, my son, today you’re marrying your wife. What’s with the serious face?’

He didn’t smile, just asked earnestly, ‘Why do I feel a little scared?’

‘What’s there to be scared of?’ I said. ‘Ye Mei won’t bite you; at the most she’ll give you a blow job.’

He shook his fist. But he soon became solemn again and sighed loudly, apparently gripped with anxiety.

Having been chief witness to Li Liang’s golden years I was intimately familiar with every one of his former girlfriends; even their bra sizes. Don’t get the wrong idea — it was Li Liang who told me. In second semester of our first year at university he fell big time for a Jiangsu girl in the PE department. She had a classically beautiful face — large eyes, red lips, fair complexion, straight nose — but her figure … well, it was unusual. Her lower arms were the width of my calf, her upper arms bloated and her midriff well-padded. She had what was known in campus slang as a ‘tiger back’ and a ‘bear waist’. There was a story that some guy had tried to steal her purse in the dining hall and she’d fought back. Before long the guy’s strength was spent and he sat on the floor and started crying. He refused to get up, as if she’d put a spell on him. This girl liked to go for a long run every morning and she had the physical force of a team of horses galloping. The two magnificent constructions on her chest moved like ocean swell. It was an overwhelming sight. One evening when we were chatting after lights out in our dormitory, Chen Chao from Shandong slapped his hand on the bedboard and expressed his reverence for that imposing chest: ‘Mother, those are quite simply two Mount Tais.’

After that, the name ‘Mount Tai’ got around fast. I didn’t know exactly what Li Liang loved about Mount Tai, but I believed this love was the real thing. Each night when Li
Liang returned from a date, he dragged me to the privacy of the steam room to report on how they’d held hands, how they’d kissed, how Li Liang had used his hands to ‘climb Mount Tai’. He held nothing back.

Li Liang was a brilliant talent in those days and threw himself into things with passion. Every day he’d write a few ‘against the current, hold you in my arms’ type of romantic poems, which caused philistine Bighead Wang to despise him. When no one was around Bighead would ask: ‘Has this asshole Li Liang got water in his brain?’

When the summer holiday came that first year of college, Mount Tai returned to her home town of Nanjing. We saw her off at the train station. The two of them held hands and stared tearfully into each other’s eyes. I found this scene hilarious but restrained myself. When the train started, Mount Tai waved forlornly from inside the carriage but no one could have foreseen what happened next. Li Liang suddenly sprang forward like a leopard, sprinting after the train, slamming his hand against the window and shouting himself hoarse: ‘Little Zhu, I love you. I LOVE YOU!’

His voice boomed across the platform. Finally, about a hundred metres away from where I was standing, he threw himself to the ground with a dramatic thud. I ran over to where he lay completely motionless, blood trickling from his head.

Surprisingly, they broke up straight after the holiday. Li Liang wouldn’t say why, just smoked cigarettes and looked depressed. The next few girlfriends all went the same way — none lasted more than three months. Secretly I started to wonder whether Li Liang had a sexual problem. Once, in the dormitory, I had stayed up all night reading a book, then at dawn stealthily climbed onto Li Liang’s bunk to filch a cigarette. He’d seemed to be asleep, but when he heard me he jumped abruptly. His face was very white and he looked startled. I realised that he’d been wanking.

Some people, like Li Liang, can make sacrifices for love. I both respect and despise these people, because my own feelings are more complex. I have always viewed love as a game. No one
really
loves another; or, to put it another way, we only really love ourselves.

After he split with Mount Tai, Li Liang became mentally unstable. Sometimes he’d go missing for half the night. Bighead Wang and I searched the campus for him once, and eventually found him sitting in a small wood opposite the female students’ dorm. He was facing Mount Tai’s window, and whistling a tuneless melody. I was about to call out to him, but Bighead put his hand on my shoulder. At that moment the moonlight shifted like water, sprinkling the wood with silver, and we saw two fat tears navigating the contours of Li Liang’s face.

Li Liang probably still missed Mount Tai, I thought, all these years later as I accelerated through another red light Nevertheless, his life was definitely better than mine. He earned good money, he had status and he understood all the big questions of life. Whereas deep inside I was still stuck
where I’d been years ago: a shy first-year student wearing a 5 yuan T-shirt.

At the wedding banquet I tried my best to lighten the atmopshere. I asked Ye Mei, ‘Are you willing to accept Li Liang as your husband?’

Ye Mei nodded. I continued: ‘Are you ready, come wind, come rain, thunder or lightning, come warm winters or cold summers, to always love him, comfort him and screw him?

Everyone else laughed but Ye Mei looked angry. I thought of that wild night in the hotel at Leshan when she had given me the silent treatment.

The bride and groom went around the tables and toasted all the guests. Bighead pointed to the wontons and asked Ye Mei about the fillings.

There’s pork, and prawn, and chicken,’ he said, ‘but tell me: how many stuffings have you had?’

She considered carefully. ‘Seven stuffings,’ she said.

The whole table laughed at the double-entendre. Zhao Yue leaned against me and guffawed. I said, ‘Li Liang, you stud: such stamina! Seven stuffings!’

This set everyone laughing again. Ye Mei seemed slow to get the joke, but then quite suddenly she hurled the contents of a wine glass in my face. The 800-yuan-a-bottle wine dripped down my chest towards my groin. I leapt to my feet, Bighead’s gawping mouth filling my vision.

What happened after that was a blur, but certainly everyone was shocked. Zhao Yue helped me wipe the wine from my
face, while Bighead stood up indignantly, then appeared not to know what to do. Ye Mei, her face very red, still clutched the glass, and I noticed that Li Liang was staring at me with a strange smile. It seemed that a new idea had occurred to him. I licked my lips and found a bordeaux with a sweet bouquet and a slightly sour aftertaste.

No one was in the party mood after that. Bighead Wang muttered a few sentences of congratulations into the microphone and the wedding finished early.

On the way home Zhao Yue stared blankly out of the car window. I deliberately drove too fast, wanting to provoke her into saying something, but all the way she didn’t even look at me.

Finally I said, ‘What’s up?’

She was lying on the bed, clawing over and over at the wall with her fingers. When I hugged her, she struggled silently.

‘What’s wrong? At least say something,’ I told her.

‘What is our relationship?’ she muttered.

I jeered, ‘It’s more than just
a relationship
. You’re my wife!’

‘Seems like you’re more interested in someone’s else’s wife,’ she said.

‘What do you mean?’

Zhao Yue met my eyes fearlessly. ‘You tell me.’

I was nervous now. Feigning bewilderment, I turned away from her and spat out, ‘You’re crazy.’

Zhao Yue ignored this and continued to scratch at the wall. I sat there until an idea struck me, and then I hurried downstairs two and three steps at a time. From the public telephone opposite the entrance to our stairwell, I made a call.

A man’s voice answered. ‘Who do you want?’

‘Zhao Yue,’ I said.

He seemed surprised and asked, ‘Who is this?’

‘I’m Zhao Yue’s husband. Who are you?’

The line went dead. After a moment I thought to call Zhao Yue’s mobile phone, but got the following repeated message:
The subscriber you want is busy. Please wait and try again.

I smiled coldly.

My head smarted with frustration. I called Bighead and asked him out for a drink, but he said he needed to sleep. I noticed that his tone was a bit impatient. Next I tried Zhou Weidong, but he said he was on a business trip to Qingcheng Mountain and wouldn’t be back until the day after tomorrow. Finally, I called my brother-in-law’s mobile. He swore at me: apparently, the day before there had been a family dinner and everyone had waited for me to turn up but I didn’t show.

Your mother muttered to herself the whole night, he said.

I hung up. A few fire engines rushed past. Apart from that the night was peaceful. From one apartment building there came the sound of laughter, from another the sound of a fight. Standing in the shadows, a creature of the night, I felt myself smiling but I wasn’t happy.

A taxi slowed opportunistically nearby and the driver gave me a questioning look. I nodded, opened the door and got in.

‘Where are we going?’ he asked.

‘Find me a place to have fun.’

‘What kind of fun?’ he asked.

‘Girls.’

‘Try Longtan, One Fifty Street,’ he said, ‘there are loads of girls there, beautiful ones and cheap ones.’

‘Good,’ I said. ‘Take me to Longtan, One Fifty Street.’