Leave Me Alone (8 page)

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The taxi pulled up by a wall plastered with billboard health warnings about gonorrhoea and syphilis. I handed the driver a generous fifty and he asked if I needed him to wait. I said no, I’d be there all night.

The name One Fifty Street referred to the price because for 150 yuan you could get anything. There were around seventy to eighty karaoke bars on the street, all with tacky coloured lights around the doors. Hideous drunken singing came from inside: sounds like roaring bulls and whinnying horses. Dozens of girls sat outside each place, smiling painfully through their disguise of powder and youth.

Slowly I walked down the street as from each side, fluent patter assailed my ears. There were romantic pitches: ‘Come on, handsome, I love you.’ Shrewd appeals to profit: ‘Beautiful girls and reasonable prices, only an idiot would say no.’ Or it
might tout sexual proficiency: ‘Sir, come and play here. Our girls are good at it!’

One ugly runt kept following me and pushing the unique virtues of his establishment: ‘All our girls are fifteen or sixteen, fresh and tender. Come on, come on.’

I shook off his hand and walked on, still checking out the girls on both sides of the street. My mobile rang: it was Zhao Yue. I cut her off but when she kept calling, I turned off my phone.

It was me who bought Zhao Yue her first ever mobile phone: I realised it was four years ago almost to the day. At that time the Motorola GC87C cost more than 5,000 yuan. Zhao Yue thought this gift was too expensive and didn’t want it, but I used humour to persuade her:

‘You think I bought this for your benefit? Take it! It’s just so I can check up on you more easily.’

Zhao Yue laughed and accepted the phone, but in the first months her monthly call fee was even lower than the plan costs. She didn’t use the phone regularly until she got promoted and her new position included a 150 yuan monthly mobile subsidy.

My head was still processing the implications of the call I’d made earlier.
That
number had appeared regularly in her list of calls in the last two months — the greatest frequency nine times a day, the longest duration one hour seventeen minutes. I’d checked the date of that call and it was the very day I’d bought those roses to present to her during our dinner at the Jinjiang Hotel. While they were talking about who knews what, I’d been waiting there for her to come, wondering how to apologise to her.

The past two days I’d been crazy busy helping with Li Liang’s wedding. I’d organised the loan of cars, been involved in endless back and forth about the banquet, sent out invitations, even decorated the bridal chamber. Being so busy had helped keep my mind off the situation. All the same, whenever I had a few seconds to think I couldn’t help wondering where they met, where they slept together, whether Zhao Yue moaned underneath that guy like she did with me. What was weird was that instead of feeling angry, I mainly felt sad. The night before, after a few drinks, I’d stood in front of the window for ages in a sort of daze. Li Liang had asked me what was wrong, but I’d evaded the issue.

I regretted making that phone call. If it hadn’t been for that, everything might have gone back to normal. I could have chosen to believe that Zhao Yue’s slip had been a one-off and performed the necessary mental contortions to accept whatever explanation she made. No matter that I would have suspected her for the rest of my life. But now this stranger had a voice and the distance between Zhao Yue and me had suddenly grown. We were colder, estranged: it was as if there were thousands of miles between us.

A moon-faced girl pulled my arm and then rubbed against me with her voluptuous breasts. ‘Hey, good-looking, you’re so handsome. I want to make love to you.’

I smiled and reflected coldly how cheap love was that you could enjoy such a generous amount for only 150 yuan. On the other hand, she did have a beautiful round arse which felt firm when I gave it a quick rub. I followed her into a dimly lit room where she removed her clothes
then lay on the bed smiling at me. I buried my head in her breasts and held her, thinking that if Zhao Yue died right then I wouldn’t care at all.

Coming downstairs together afterwards, the girl put on a show of being sweet. She clung to me and called me ‘hubbie’. This made me mad.

‘Who do you think you are?’ I snapped.

She stared at me. ‘Cheap tart,’ I said, and went out the door. Behind my back I heard her shouting after me, something like, ‘Fuck your mother.’

I turned on my mobile to check the time: midnight already. The street was full of cars because this was when many Chengdu men, having stuffed themselves with food and drink, came out to work off some excess energy. How many tales of cruel youth had unfolded on this uneven street amid the colourful lights and the music, the powder and the condoms? I sighed and suddenly felt hungry, remembering that I’d hardly eaten anything at the wedding dinner. Because Ye Mei threw the wine over me, I hadn’t even had a single mouthful of the specially cooked hairy crab.

Zhao Yue called yet again and this time, after a moment’s hesitation, I took the call. When she asked me what I was up to, I adopted my usual strategy to confuse her with truth and told her I was out whoring.

‘I know you’ve got some misunderstandings about me,’ she said. ‘Come back and we’ll talk about it.’

‘I haven’t come yet,’ I told her, ‘so you’ll just have to wait.’

She called me shameless and hung up.

I felt good again as thinking about Zhao Yue’s angry face
gave me a happy glow. Going into one of the several small restaurants along the street, I ordered two bottles of beer, some cold dishes and a portion of twice-cooked pork. I ate with great relish, until it suddenly occurred to me that Li Liang might be doing it with Ye Mei.

The thought of Li Liang made me feel guilty again. Holding up my glass, I addressed the distant fading lights of Chengdu: ‘Li Liang, my brother, please forgive me. Had I known Ye Mei was your woman, I wouldn’t have done her to save my life.’

The hole-in-the-wall restaurant was unhygienic; while I was eating the meat dish I found a long hair. Feeling disgusted, I turned around to expectorate. As I did, I noticed a dark-green Honda Accord slowly driving along the street. Fatty Dong was at the wheel, his fat neck twitching as he inspected the merchandise. Quickly draining my glass, I went outside to the street and watched him cruising the venues one by one. Finally he stopped outside a karaoke bar called Red Moon.

Fatty Dong had the face of a government official: fat, round cheeks and large ears but somehow dignified. In contrast, his wife was frighteningly ugly. Once I’d seen them on the street together; his wife stalked along in front with a cigarette in her mouth; Fatty Dong followed her like a pet pig, a servile gait, an expression of reverence on his face. On the eighth of March last year, International Women’s Day, Fatty Dong had turned up two hours late with bruises and
cuts on his face and neck, bleary-eyed: I guessed his wife must have caught him cheating.

Finding Fatty Dong’s home number in my address book, I hit the dial button with a big grin.

His wife’s dour voice answered, ‘Who is it?’

Just as I was about to reply, more inspiration struck. I ended the call immediately, ran to the public phone and pressed three digits: 110.

The duty cop sounded cutely concerned as she asked me what was wrong. In a low whisper, I told her I suspected someone was dealing drugs. Recently the cops had generated loads of publicity for their campaign against drug crime, and it was said that a drug squad hero from Xichang had just been transferred here to supervise their operation. In fact, only the week before, a high school mate of Li Liang’s who’d opened a spicy soup restaurant, was caught buying 250 jin of poppy shells at Lianhua Pond market. Li Liang had wanted to stand bail for him but Bighead advised him against it. ‘Whatever you do, don’t get involved,’ he’d said. ‘Drugs are the hottest crime right now, and whoever gets messed up with them will fry.’

As soon as she heard the word ‘drugs’ the cop got excited and she pressed me for details about the whereabouts and distinguishing features of the suspect. I told her the approximate location, then gave her Fatty Dong’s car registration and said I hadn’t seen his face clearly.

‘He’s obese and wearing a purple shirt,’ I said. ‘The gear’s on him or maybe concealed in his car tyre.’

She asked me for my name and ID number but I pretended
to be nervous. ‘Please don’t ask,’ I said. ‘I wouldn’t have called the cops if I’d known you’d want my details.’

I found particular satisfaction in setting this trap for Fatty Dong because I’d met some similar misfortune myself a few years ago on a business trip to Mianyan. I’d just undressed when there was a knock at the door and I sensed it meant something bad. Immediately I grabbed my trousers and pulled them back on. But the greater the hurry, the more mistakes you make: somehow I put them on back to front. Just as I was about to rectify the situation, the door was kicked open and two ferocious cops dashed in. I almost fainted and the girl had to hold me up. I was fined 4000 yuan. Fortunately I’d had enough money on me, otherwise things might have escalated.

I hung up feeling great. On second thoughts, however, I decided not to let Fatty Dong off so cheaply. The fine for visiting a prostitute was a few thousand yuan, which was nothing to him. I needed to be more ruthless: if you don’t beat a snake to death you’ll be bitten by it. After some thought, I decided to call my brother-in-law. He edited the gossip section of a tabloid newspaper and every day he published ridiculous news about things like a double-headed snake found somewhere or a rooster that had just laid a double-yolk egg. I called him Na Wuo, after a loveable idiot character in a sitcom played by actor Feng Gong. My brother-in-law was easy-going and would usually smile at my banter, saying, ‘You’re always criticising me, but you never give me any stories.’

My brother-in-law had probably been asleep and sounded
irritable when he answered the phone. I got straight to the point.

‘I’ve got a scoop for you. A drug dealer out whoring and the cops turning out in force to arrest him.’

He sounded interested and so I gave him the details and he said he’d send a reporter to investigate the story.

‘You’ll have to hurry,’ I said, ‘or the guy’ll be nabbed by the cops.’

He said ‘OK’.

Just as he was about to hang up, I muttered hesitantly, ‘Brother-in-law …’

‘What?’ he said.

I thought for a moment, then decided to go for it.

‘You have to publish this guy’s photo in the paper.’

There was a moment’s silence. ‘Is he your enemy?’ he asked.

‘Yeah. And if you don’t help me, then I’m done for.’

After the call with my brother-in-law, I hailed a taxi on the street and said to the driver, ‘Take me to Chengdu.’

He asked how much I’d pay. I told him 200 yuan then got into the car. After that I made an anonymous phone call to Fatty Dong’s home number.

‘Dong Guang is whoring in Longtan,’ I told his wife.

CHAPTER TWELVE

A few years ago, Zhao Yue and I had gone to Emei Mountain12 where we came across a stinky fortune-telling Taoist at Fuhu Temple. The guy smelt as if he’d just crawled out of a sewer. Zhao Yue was usually a big fan of sanitation, but that day she insisted we should let him tell our fortune. After talking some bullshit he told us that we would break up because we’d been enemies in a previous life. Zhao Yue appeared to believe him and turned pale, asking if there was any way we could avoid this fate. As he rubbed his greasy grey goatee, there was an evil look in his eyes. He said he’d help us if we paid him 200 yuan and against my strong opposition Zhao Yue handed over 200 yuan from her bag. That was half her basic monthly salary and I was furious. The Taoist gave her a black piss-pot-like jar, saying it was a saint’s jar that could drive away ghosts and repel demons. Sneering, I asked if it had once contained the
piss of Laozi, creator of the world. My blasphemy earned me a kick from Zhao Yue.

On our way back to Chengdu Zhao Yue acquired a new nickname from me: Pisspot Master. I joked that she belonged to the third generation of the Emei school but she stared tearfully out the window. When I asked what was wrong, she said something that moved me deeply.

‘It doesn’t matter if the jar has magic powers or not, Chen Zhong. You know that what I want isn’t this jar but your heart.’

I patted her hand and reassured her. ‘Don’t worry, my heart is in this jar.’

For about a year after that she bowed and muttered to that pot every two weeks. I mocked her superstition and got glares and punches in reply. Finally I couldn’t put up with it any longer and ‘accidentally’ dropped the jar. Zhao Yue cried and claimed I’d broken it on purpose. From then on, she brought it up every time we quarrelled.

As I climbed our stairwell that night, I was thinking that even if that jar hadn’t been broken, there was no way for any of us to avoid fate. Certainly, when it came to the crunch moments, fate seldom listened to me. This situation reminded me of ‘Zhao’s Family Rules’, drawn up by Zhao Yue shortly after we got married, namely: ‘Tiny things can’t be decided by Zhao Yue, while big things can’t be decided by Chen Zhong.’

According to Zhao Yue’s guidelines, only the first three reports on the evening national news counted as ‘big things’. In those early days she’d read out her rules every night at bedtime, and then jump into my arms, laughing just like a kid.
When did we forget those rules? At what point had our life together lost its hope and laughter?

The TV was on but the screen was a snowstorm and a harsh sound came out of the speakers. I was irritated: why hadn’t she turned the TV off? I did a tour of the whole apartment and found the lights on in every room but nobody there. Where was she?

The balcony door was wide open and I shivered as I felt the cold wind from outside. Looking down, I saw only the endless night. All the hairs on my body stood on end at a suddent thought: had Zhao Yue jumped?

In our last year of university, there’d been an aura of death hanging over our group. First Zhang Jun from Qiqihaer who lived in the dorm opposite died of lymph cancer. When his girlfriend came to collect his stuff she cried until she collapsed. Then, one beautiful spring night, Qi Yan, a talented girl, jumped from the sixteenth floor of the teaching building. Qi Yan was idolised by most of the guys in our dorm. She looked like the film star Rosamund Kwan and was good at singing, playing the piano and hosting parties. It was a true pleasure dancing with her. The day before her body smashed bloodily to the ground, she sat with us in the canteen, picking the slices of greasy fatty meat from her meal and dumping them on the table. When I said it was a waste, Qi Yan glared at me and said, ‘If you want to eat them, just take them.’

There was a retort on my lips, but Zhao Yue stepped
heavily on my foot so I shut up at once. The next day Qi Yan killed herself: she was three months pregnant, it was said.

During our last month at university, we all felt that our lives were like dreams. Alcohol, mahjong or tears — the empty days flashed by. Li Liang wrote a poem:

I understood that somehow we’d started to believe that nothing in the rest of our lives mattered. The main task of life was to be happy. God would break that jar at the moment of truth, and we would not care if the final scene was happy or sad.

Now I was worried. When I called Zhao Yue’s cellphone, it rang forlornly beside her pillow. Her bag was there too, and her lipstick lay on the dresser, reminding me of her red lips that had kissed me many times. It started drizzling outside and I felt like I had tumbled into an abyss.

Finally I took a torch downstairs, fully prepared to find her corpse. As I passed the apartment building entrance, I sensed something skulking in the dark. My scalp was prickling, but I mustered up the courage to check it out. In the circle of light from my torch, my Zhao Yue, sat propped against the wall.
Her eyes swum with tears and there was a bottle of spirits beside her.

I dropped the electric torch and hugged her. I thought you’d died!

Zhao Yue wept; she had a strong alcoholic aroma. The torch rolled crazily on the ground, illluminating raindrops.

I took Zhao Yue upstairs and washed her hands and feet, put a hot towel on her forehead, then watched her fall deep into sleep. The rain stopped and there was a sweet smell of flowers. The smell was fucking good, I thought. Dawn was about to break, and on this sleepless morning I watched the sky gradually turn pale. Zhao Yue still loved me; everything was cool.

It was the first of May — the day my best friend got married; the day I went whoring; the day my enemy’s luck ran out. It was the day my wife got drunk and cried, the day I thought she’d killed herself. Now, at dawn, a white fog hung over the city, making it look surreal.

I boiled some porridge and smoked a cigarette, smirking.

But you never know what’s going to happen next. At 7:50 a.m. my mother called and said, Come home now. Your father is dying.