Shifu, You'll Do Anything For a Laugh (8 page)

9

He rode his clunky bicycle down from the mountain in a daze, never once hitting the brake, as if death were the only solution. He was heading straight into a northeast wind that billowed his coat and nearly froze his abdomen as the wind whistled past his ears; it was as if he were riding the clouds and soaring through the mist. The garbage bag on the rack behind him blew open, sending soiled paper and plastic bags into the air with a loud
whoosh
. As he skirted the lakeshore, he didn't see the cancer-battling celebrity. A flock of gray swans wheeled in the air, as if looking for a spot to land on the frozen lake, the ice blanketed with dust and dirt. He rode into town, totally numb. The streetlights were already on; a constant explosion of broken glass drove his heart up into his throat. A police car cruised past, lights flashing, siren off; he nearly fell off his bike in terror.

Muddle-headed though he was, he managed to make his way to the door of his apprentice, Lü Xiaohu, and had just raised his hand to knock when he spotted a drawing pasted on the door; it was a sketch of a boy with anger in his eyes. Old Ding turned to get out of there just as he saw his apprentice coming up the hallway carrying a plucked chicken. The sight of the dead chicken's pimply skin in the murky light raised goose bumps on his skin. His legs buckled, causing shooting pains in his newly healed broken leg, and he sat down hard on the steps. Lü Xiaohu stopped dead in his tracks.

“Shifu,” he asked anxiously, “what are you doing here?”

Like a little boy who's been picked on, then suddenly sees his daddy, old Ding felt his lips begin to quiver and tears spill from his eyes.

“What's the matter, Shifu?” his apprentice asked as he rushed up to help old Ding to his feet. “Has something happened?”

His knees buckled, and he knelt at the feet of his disciple.

“Little Hu,” he sobbed, “something terrible . ..”

Quickly opening his apartment door, little Hu dragged him inside and sat him down on the sofa.

“Shifu, what's happened? Your wife hasn't died, has she?”

“No,” he said weakly. “It's much worse than that… .”

“Tell me, what is it?” Little Hu was getting worried. “Shifu, tell me before I die of anxiety.”

“Little Hu,” he sobbed, wiping his tears, “I'm in big trouble”

“What is it? Tell me!”

“A man and woman went in around noon today, and they still haven't come out… .”

“So? Just collect more money from them.” Little Hu breathed a sigh of relief. “This is good news.”

“What do you mean, good news? They died in there….”

“Died?” Little Hu was stunned; he nearly dropped the hot vacuum bottle he had in one hand. “How'd that happen?”

“I'm not sure”

“Have you seen their bodies?”

“No.”

“Then how do you know they're dead?”

“They must be … they went in over three hours ago, and at first I heard the woman sob. Then no more sound.” He showed his apprentice his injured hand. “I tried to break down the door, I pounded on the windows, I shouted, and hurt myself doing it, but no sound inside, not even a whisper… .”

Little Hu laid down his vacuum bottle and sat on a stool across from the sofa. He took out a pack of cigarettes, put one in his mouth and lit it. With his head lowered, he took a deep drag, then looked up. “Shifu,” he said, “take it easy.” He took out another cigarette, handed it to old Ding, and lit it for him. “Maybe they fell asleep. That sort of activity can tire a person out.”

Old Ding nervously rubbed his knees with his hands as he sat there gazing hopefully into the eyes of his apprentice.

“My fine young apprentice, you don't need to try to reassure me,” he said sorrowfully. “I knocked till my knuckles were bloody and yelled myself hoarse. I made enough noise to wake the dead. But nothing stirred inside, nothing… .”

“Couldn't they have slipped out while you weren't looking? That sounds plausible to me. Shifu, you should know that there's nothing people won't do to get out of paying what they owe.”

Ding shook his head. “That's not possible, absolutely impossible. First of all, the door is bolted from the inside. Besides, I never took my eyes off the place. I'd have seen a pair of rats scurrying out of there, let alone a pair of full-sized humans.”

“Rats, you say. How about this?” Little Hu said. “They tunneled their way out.”

“My fine apprentice,” old Ding said, his voice cracking tearfully, “forget your wacky theories and help me figure out what to do. I beg you!”

Little Hu lowered his head and puffed away on his cigarette. Deep lines creased his brow. Old Ding stared at his apprentice without blinking, waiting to hear his ideas. Little Hu looked up.

“Shifu,” he said, “I think we just say to hell with it. You've earned a tidy sum this year. Now we wait till next spring and come up with another money-making scheme.”

“Little Hu, we're talking about the loss of two lives….”

“So? That's not our fault,” he said angrily. “Once they decided to die, there was nothing we could do about it. What kind of fuck-ups were they?”

“They looked like educated people to me, maybe party officials.”

“That's even more reason to stay clear of them. With people like that, you know they're having an extramarital affair. No one will shed a tear over their deaths.”

“But,” he stammered, “what if they tie this to me? As the saying goes, you can't bury bodies in the snowy ground. The police will know it was me right off.”

“What are you getting at? Don't tell me you're thinking of going to the police yourself.”

“Little Hu, I've given this a lot of thought. You know what they say: the ugly bride has to face her in-laws sooner or later.”

“Are you really thinking of going to the police?”

“Maybe, they might still be able to save them.”

“Shifu, this is pretty much the same as setting yourself on fire!”

“My fine apprentice, didn't you say you have a cousin who works at the Public Security Bureau? Will you take me to see him?”

“Shifu!”

“I beg you, I need your cousin's help. If I did nothing, I don't think I could get another good night's sleep ever again.”

“Shifu,” Little Hu said in a somber tone of voice, “have you given any thought to possible consequences? What you've been engaged in will seem sordid to people, and it won't take much digging to find a law that'll send you away for a couple of years. And even if that doesn't happen, you can look forward to a hefty fine. And when those people fine you, you know you've been fined. I wouldn't be surprised if the money you've earned over an entire summer, plus the fall, won't be enough to pay it off.”

“I have to live with that,” old Ding admitted painfully. “I don't want that money. From now on, I'll go begging before I do anything like this again.”

“And what if you're looking at jail time?” his apprentice asked him.

“That's why I want you to speak to your cousin,” he said weakly, his head sagging. “If it's jail time I'm looking at, I'll just go get some rat poison and put an end to everything.”

“Shifu! Shifu!” Little Hu said. “All that stuff about a cousin with the police, I just said that to boost your confidence.”

Old Ding stood there woodenly for a moment, then sighed and rose shakily to his feet. After carefully stubbing out his cigarette in the ashtray, he looked over at his former apprentice, who was staring at the wall, his head cocked to one side, and said, “Then I won't trouble you anymore.”

He turned and hobbled to the door.

“Shifu, where are you going?”

He looked back over his shoulder.

“Little Hu,” he said, “you and I worked together for a while. After I'm gone, if it's not too much trouble, would you check on my wife from time to time? If it is, don't worry about it.. ..”

He reached out and opened the door. A cold wind filling the hallway hit him full in the face. He shivered as he reached out to hold on to the dusty banister and walked off into the dark.

“Wait up, Shifu.” He turned and saw his apprentice standing in the doorway. Light streaming out of the apartment made his face appear to be brushed with gold dust. He heard him say, “I'll take you to see my cousin.”

10

They squeezed into a phone booth, with wind whistling all around them, to call the cousin at home. Whoever answered the phone said he was on duty at the station house. Old Ding's former apprentice said happily:

“Great, Shifu. Do you know why I didn't want to take you to see him? You have no idea how arrogant his wife is. If a poor relation like me goes to their house, her nose is bent out of shape, and her face turns all weird. Like any dog, the bitch sees people like us as her inferior. It's more than I can take. We may be poor in material wealth, but not in our ideals. Isn't that so?”

Old Ding said emotionally:

“Little Hu, I'm sorry to put you through all this.”

“But my cousin's a great guy. A little hen-pecked, that's all.” Then, in a singsong voice, he added, “When a man's wife rules, he sleeps with the mules!”

They stopped first at a sundries shop to buy two cartons of China-brand cigarettes. Old Ding went for his wallet, but his former apprentice pushed his hand away.

“Shifu,” he said, “I'll take care of this. You can't afford it.”

When he saw how much the cigarettes cost, he gritted his teeth and said, no matter how much it pained him:

“I should be paying for this, little Hu.”

“Just leave things to me for now.”

When they walked into the police station, old Ding reached out involuntarily and held on to the hem of his former apprentice's shirt. He felt cold all over, and his palms were sweaty. As it turned out, one of the two duty policemen was the cousin, a young man with slitty eyes and a long neck. He picked up his pen and wrote down everything they told him in a notebook.

“That's it?” he remarked impatiently, tapping the notebook with the tip of his pen.

“That's it...”

“Quite a fertile imagination,” he said coldly, looking at old Ding out of the corner of his eye. “Made quite a bundle, did you?”

He opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out.

“Cousin,” old Ding's apprentice said, smiling broadly as he laid the plastic bag containing the cigarettes in front of the policeman, “won't you please look into this for the shifu here? If those two took sleeping pills, we might still be able to rescue them. Ding Shifu taught me everything I know. He's a provincial model worker who once had his picture taken with Deputy Governor Yu. But when he was laid off recently, this was the only way he knew to put food on the table.”

“And what if they took rat poison?” The cousin looked at his watch, got to his feet, and said to the other duty policeman, who was playing computer games off in the corner, “Little Sun, I'm going over to the lake to look into a possible suicide. You take care of things here.”

After visiting the bathroom and picking up all the equipment he'd need, the cousin went out to the garage and returned with a motorized three-wheeler. Once old Ding and his apprentice were seated, they drove out of the station compound.

It was right around dinnertime, but it felt much later, owing possibly to the chill in the air and the paucity of traffic. With the vehicle's lights flashing and siren blaring, they sped along, with old Ding clinging to the icy railing, his heart in his throat, just waiting for him to open his mouth and spit it out.

They were soon in the outskirts of town, where the road quality began to deteriorate, although the cousin fought the impulse to slow down, as if to demonstrate his driving skills; the three-wheeler was now more like a bucking bronco. Old Ding was bouncing around so badly, his poor tailbone felt as if it were being pricked by needles.

Once they were on the asphalt road skirting the man-made lake, the cousin had no choice but to slow down, since the surface was fraught with serious bumps and hollows. He skillfully negotiated the course, but couldn't avoid all the hazards. Once, the three-wheeler stalled as they came perilously close to flipping over.

“Goddamned corruption road!” he cursed. “They paved it less than a year ago, and look at it now!”

Old Ding and his apprentice climbed down off the three-wheeler and pushed it down the road. When they reached the edge of the cemetery, they had to leave it before going any farther. The headlight pierced the inky darkness and illuminated a narrow strip of the cemetery and surrounding trees.

“Where is it?” the cousin asked coldly.

He tried to answer, but his tongue seemed petrified, and he merely grunted. His apprentice pointed in the direction of the cemetery. “Over there.”

The three-wheeler's headlight lit up the little path through the cemetery, but it was clear that they'd have to walk. So the cousin turned off the light, reached into his backpack and took out a flashlight that ran on three double-? batteries. Flicking it on to light the way down the gray path through the trees, he said impatiently:

“Let's go. You lead the way.”

So old Ding jumped out in front in an instinctive attempt to get on the cousin's good side. He heard his apprentice say from behind:

“Cousin, the vehicle . ..”

“How's that? Afraid someone might come by and steal it?” He laughed snidely. “Who but a fucking idiot would be out on a cold night like this?”

With the cousin's flashlight jumping from the tips of the trees to the cemetery ahead, old Ding had trouble keeping his footing, like an old horse with failing eyesight. The path threaded its twisting way through the cemetery, the surface covered by a thick carpet of dead leaves that crackled under their feet. The northeast wind had died down; there was a chilled, eerie quality to the air above the extraordinarily quiet cemetery, except for the human footsteps on the crackling leaves, a sound that sent shivers through the heart. Something icy cold fell on old Ding's face, like raindrops, but not really. Then he saw white floating objects in the flashlight's beam.

“It's snowing!” he said with a trace of genuine excitement.

The cousin corrected him in a chiding tone:

“That isn't snow, it's sleet!”

“Cousin,” the apprentice said, “how come you know so much?”