by Bi Feiyu
It was so sudden that Du Li was caught off guard; Gao Wei snatched her box away before she could react, opened it, and set it on the table.
‘Du Li, none of the daifu can see, but you can. So count them out so everyone can hear.’
Du Li could see, of course, that there were two lunch boxes in front of her and that hers was virtually blanketed by mutton pieces, a staggering sight. She didn’t dare make a sound.
‘You won’t do it?’ Gao Wei said. ‘Well, then, I’ll do it for you.’
‘I didn’t prepare the lunch boxes,’ Du Li blurted out, ‘so don’t blame me. I haven’t touched mine yet. Why should I count the mutton pieces?’
‘You’re right,’ Gao said. ‘You had nothing to do with it. I won’t blame you, so move over.’ Gao took Du’s box to Jin da-jie. ‘Jin da-jie, Du Li says this has nothing to do with her. You packed the boxes, didn’t you? So here, please count them.’
It was not the first time Jin da-jie had done that, and she never worried that anyone would find out. The blind cannot see, of course, and as for the sighted, who would bother to count? Who would do anything like that? But Gao Wei could see, and she didn’t think twice about counting. Beads of sweat formed on Jin da-jie’s forehead.
‘You won’t? All right. I’ll do it for you.’ Gao Wei began to count, taking her time to make sure that none of the numbers she called out escaped the ears of the therapists. The lounge was deadly quiet, but people began to fidget when she reached twelve; it was the sound of indignation, of reproach, and perhaps also the sound of anger. But Gao Wei was not finished. When she reached fifteen, she showed her ability to keep things under control, for instead of saying ‘There are fifteen altogether,’ she said, ‘That’s far enough, isn’t it?’ Her restraint left plenty of room for others’ imaginations to take hold.
‘Jin da-jie, the mutton money is the centre’s, not yours, am I right?’ She paused. ‘Heaven watches our every move.’ Taking the box back to Du Li, Gao continued, ‘Please check my count, Du Li, to make sure I’m not lying.’
Du was getting angry from embarrassment, a state that can make people act rashly without considering the consequences. She reached out and knocked over the lunch box. Rice and mutton rained down around the lounge. ‘This has nothing to do with me!’ she screamed.
‘That’s not quite true,’ Gao Wei replied. ‘How does it make Jin da-jie feel when you push everything on to her? Wasn’t she feeding a dog?’
‘Of course I am,’ Jin da-jie raged. ‘I’m feeding a dog.’
‘I’m glad to hear Jin da-jie tell the truth,’ Gao said. ‘I’m sorry to have interrupted lunch. Let’s eat.’
Sha Fuming had already completed a silent count of the mutton pieces in his lunch box; he hadn’t wanted to and detested his own action, but he couldn’t help himself. The count from his box was an embarrassment for a boss, but his mind shifted from Du Li to the other boss, Zhang Zongqi, or more precisely, Zhang Zongqi’s box. Obviously, he couldn’t reach out and count the mutton in Zhang’s lunch box, but the results could not be good, would in fact be terrible. It would be an extravagant number, overwhelming. Sha had to admit that Gao Wei was petty and her action mean-spirited, but he could not control his own anger. Picking up his lunch box, he left the lounge and opened the door to a foot massage room, where he tossed it aside and lay down. What was the point? Why get all hot and bothered? What did a few pieces of mutton mean anyway? But why would someone keep doing that? Why was someone allowed to keep doing it? How corrupt! Pure corruption. The centre was going downhill.
Zhang stayed put. He was eating; he had to. At a moment like this, eating was probably the only thing he could do. Everyone at the centre knew that he was the one who had hired Jin da-jie, a woman with a tenuous family connection to him. A distant relative. And everyone knew that too. He had ten thousand reasons to be convinced that Du Li was Gao Wei’s target, but who would care about Du Li now?
Who was backing Gao Wei? Who told her to act up like that? The questions raised goose pimples on Zhang’s neck, as he became aware of the seriousness of the situation. When had it started? Why had he been in the dark all along? And you call yourself an old hand?
Something had to be done when it had got to this point. Jin da-jie had obviously incurred the wrath of the whole place and democracy would not work any more.
Zhang had hired Jin da-jie, who had brought Du Li into the centre, so they were commonly considered his people; so he was the only one who could fix the problems. Common practice demanded that. He began chewing at a frenzied pace as his mind went into overdrive. Eventually he made the decision to fire someone. The centre needed a major clean-up, he decided, and Gao Wei must go. If she stayed, there would be no peace.
Jin da-jie had to stay. No matter what she’d done, he could not let her go. If he kept her on, he’d have to also keep Du Li on, or Jin da-jie would leave. He licked his upper lip and then the lower lip; he swallowed hard, aware of the predicament he faced.
There was only one way to deal with a dilemma, and that was to do nothing. Drag it out to a certain point, and then it becomes easy.
Silently Zhang decided to wait, and, after reaching that decision, he got up and went into a massage room with his Braille copy of Dream of the Red Chamber; traditional literature was the best companion during difficult times.
Why couldn’t Jin da-jie leave? Well, that was a long story.
One thing always frightened Zhang Zongqi, and that was people. No matter who it was, they frightened him. The fear had been planted in his heart at the age of five, when his father remarried. He hadn’t been aware that anything was going on until his father, a construction contractor, came home one day with a woman who reeked of perfume. His unscented mother had left, his scented mother had arrived.
But five-year-old Zongqi didn’t think she smelled good. Silently, he called her stinky mum. She had it coming, as she was often beaten at night by his father, who had never beaten Zongqi’s birth mother. He heard it all when stinky mum cried and moaned sadly, bleak and constant, louder and louder; he was happy. But strangely, even though his father beat her up like that, she was nice to Zongqi, rubbing his head with her soft hand the morning after. This woman is cheap goods, Zongqi thought, and he didn’t want to be touched by cheap goods. He turned his head whenever her fragrance came his way. All the world’s fragrances stank.
The situation at home underwent a fundamental change when his baby sister was born. After the baby arrived, the fragrance was gone from stinky mum, and his father stopped beating her late at night. In fact, his father rarely came home now, though he brought back another woman, who was to cook for stinky mum and Zongqi. He didn’t like this woman either, for she gossiped with stinky mum; they were forever whispering, back and forth. And she was a snitch, telling stinky mum that Zongqi said she stank.
After a brief whispered exchange, stinky mum dealt the ‘little blind kid’ his first punishment. Instead of beating or pinching, she twisted his skinny arms behind his back and pulled them upwards; it hurt so much he felt his heart would burst from the pain, but he didn’t cry. It was clear to him that the conniving woman wanted him to cry like her, but he refused to make that awful sound. Stinky mum’s crying at night had elated him, so he’d make sure not to give her the pleasure of hearing him cry. He would not let her kind of sad cries reach her ears. So it hurt like hell, but he didn’t make a sound; he was a bone in pain, flesh that hurt.
Exhausted, stinky mum let go of the pained bone and hurting flesh and admitted defeat. He could still recall the wonderful feeling and sense of relief when he was released from the pain; it was, in a word, bliss. With a smile, he waited for his father’s return, when he would tell him everything, and more, with embellishment and exaggeration.
There’s a night of howling ahead of you!
Obviously stinky mum knew what was going on in his mind and anticipated his move. His cheek felt the heat from her mouth as she pressed her lips to his ear. ‘If you dare say a word, little
blind boy,’ she whispered, ‘I’ll kill you with poison. Don’t think I won’t.’
With a shudder, something lit up inside him, accompanied by a little pop. This marked the only time in his life when he could see the inside of his body – it was empty. A black light burst inside him at the sound of the word poison, and then everything slowly returned to normal. Zhang grew up at the instant the light went out. A grown-up now, he believed her; he knew she could kill him with poison, so could the woman who cooked for them.
He stopped talking to the cook; words were dangerous. No matter how secluded or faraway he was, he must not say anything because his words would spread through other people’s mouths and travel far. Be careful when you talk and be even more careful when you eat. He might ingest any kind of poison. In his attempt at more effective prevention, his hearing became eerily acute, as if aided by a demonic power to exceed the ability of a normal ear. The hearing power in his ears was tube-shaped, like symmetrical outstretched arms, crazily reaching outwards; his ears were now endowed with such unimaginable flexibility that they could change shape, big or small, short or long, going anywhere he wished and making timely adjustments as necessary, omnipresent and omnipotent. They could detect, without error, any movement in the kitchen and on the dining table: the sounds of pots and bowls, plates and chopsticks, ladles and spatulas, chopsticks banging against bowls, bottles and lids, lids being opened and lids being closed, screws, pulling and plugging, the sound of raw rice and cooked rice, flour and noodles. Hearing was not enough; he learned to tell things apart unerringly. He could determine the totality of a rice pot and identify different bowls of rice from that totality. And, of course, he was ever more cautious with his actions; he would never eat anything, anything at all, before he was sure someone else had put the same thing in their mouth and swallowed it. His life was taken over by one thing and one thing only – waging an airtight defence against being poisoned at home. He was still alive, which could only mean one thing – that is, they had failed. But they were alive, too, leaving open the possibility that one day they would succeed. To him, every day posed a harsh test; he tried not to eat or drink, but he could not skip the three daily meals. Starting with breakfast, then lunch, followed by dinner, only after which he felt liberated. He could finally relax his tense mind and body, for now he was absolutely, completely safe.
To Zhang Zongqi, home life was no longer plain old home life, but was being on guard against poison. The vigilance was an organ that took root on his body. It grew as he grew; it developed along with him. As he got older, he sensed that, due to the extreme tension, his heart began to secrete a poison. He had become a toxic person, with poison in his bones, on his skin and in his blood. This was a good thing. He had to become a toxic person before anything happened; then he could fight poison with poison, conquer it with toxicity.
He was convinced that, in the face of food and water or anything else he could put into his mouth, he now possessed nerves of steel. They were as thick as his neck, as thick as his thigh, as thick, even, as his waist. Zhang believed that there were a thousand ways he might die, but that poison was not one of them, not in this lifetime.
Love finally came to Zhang when he was working in Shanghai. But it was more complicated than it sounds. In simplest terms, he went through hell and back to steal his girlfriend from someone else. At this point, it wasn’t just love, but also conquest. It is easy to imagine how he was able to hold his head high. He loved his girlfriend desperately, and it was a high-speed romance. What ‘high-speed’ means here is that it went from strolls to hand holding to hugging, kissing and making love. What else is there to love? That’s about it.
They were already kissing on their second date. She kissed him first. But the moment their lips touched, he stopped short and pulled back. She held his hand without saying anything, and just stood there for the longest time before she began to cry. She told him she had kissed someone before, but only once, just that one time, she would swear to it. Zhang Zongqi touched his fingers to her lips to keep her from saying more. ‘I love you,’ he said, ‘I don’t care about that.’
‘Honest?’
‘Honest. I’d swear to it.’
She kept him from swearing by covering his mouth with her hot lips. Playfully, she stuck the tip of her tongue between his lips and tried to pry open his mouth and then his teeth. He clamped his teeth tight, but a lover’s tongue is a magic incantation: open sesame, open sesame, open sesame.
Zhang relented long enough for his girlfriend to break through the barrier and enter his mouth. Wow! The tongues touched. It was high excitement. One of those private, shuddering moments for two people. His girlfriend manipulated his tongue with hers. On the verge of fainting, he spat out her tongue, and then, to cover that up, pretended to be nauseous. Pretence immediately led to reality, as he threw up right in front of her. What could she do? Love him even more, as it turned out. She thumped him on the back with her hand and followed that with back rubs.
From the day of his first kiss, Zhang developed a fear of kissing. He’d suffered badly on the way home. He actually enjoyed kissing, and his body told him he wanted and needed to kiss. He hungered for it. But he was afraid. His mouth and his tongue were fearful of anything, even his girlfriend’s tongue, violating the space in his mouth. Could they not kiss? It was a question he couldn’t ask.
How could anyone be in love without kissing? Kisses are the air and water, the protein and vitamins of romance, without which love dies.
To kiss or not to kiss, that is the question. To love or not to love, that is another question.
It couldn’t be. His girlfriend couldn’t be toxic. No. Impossible. He told himself over and over that he must have faith, that his girlfriend could not possibly be toxic. But he wavered again when the moment came to act. He could not do it. He dawdled, not just with kissing but also when she brought him food; he would not touch his food until she began eating. He doubted her. He was suspicious. There is no salvation for a person consumed by suspicion. Even in death, the expression frozen on his face will be one of doubt.
The girl broke up with him in the end, and left him a note that said, ‘Zongqi, you don’t have to say anything; I understand how you feel. I’m just like you. It was love that gave me courage. You lack the courage, not because you’re a coward, but because you don’t love me.’ Touching the page with his index figure, he felt the words one by one. He did love her but he had lost her. He now understood what love was by checking the underside of love, like reading braille; only through the underside of the paper can one touch, read and understand. It all seemed predestined.
To his surprise, as he held the letter in his hand, the tear-streaked corners of his mouth slowly curled upwards. After drying the tears, he realised that he was actually smiling. He was liberated.
Internal secrets remain secret forever. When he began running his own business, he was dead set on one thing. He would seek out a cook, he would do the interviews and he would do the hiring. There would be no negotiations.
In fact, when he and Sha Fuming talked about opening a tuina centre together, they had agreed that neither boss would hire his own relatives. Yet in the end, Zhang brought over Jin da-jie. Sha did not pursue the issue, and accepted the arrangement. It was, after all, just for a cook, not a sensitive position, so it didn’t really matter. So go ahead.
Who’d have thought that ‘not a very sensitive position’ would create such a sensitive commotion?
Jin da-jie must go, Sha thought, as he sprawled on the foot massage chair.
Jin da-jie must stay, Zhang Zongqi thought, as he lay on the massage bed.
Unaware of what was on Zhang’s mind, Jin da-jie went back to the dorm, her heart in turmoil. The more she thought about the situation, the worse it appeared to her. For someone in her late thirties, a job like this did not open up every day in Nanjing. She had been left alone in the village when her husband and daughter went to work in Dongguan. Living alone was hard to bear, something m
ost people cannot begin to understand. The fourth year after her husband and daughter left, Jin da-jie had struck up with Second Uncle, a villager from the eastern end. Struck up is not really how it deserves to be described – rape is more like it. She could have screamed when it happened, but a fleeting thought had made her change her mind. A man in his late sixties, Second Uncle was a stallion with his pants off, though his wrinkly body with folds of skin and the aged odour of grime made her want to throw up. She even had thoughts of strangling herself. But she could not resist the stallion’s movements and actually experienced the feeling of losing herself twice, her body floating like a dead fish, something that had never happened to her before. It was frightening yet exciting, and she arched wildly upwards for him; she felt sordid, her mind filled with disgust and an energising smuttiness, all of which drove her crazy. They had only been together once, after which she cried till her eyes were puffy. From then on, the image of him floated around the village day and night like a wandering ghost, and her heart nearly stopped whenever she saw him.
That was why she left home to work, or, to be more precise, fled the village. Now that she had left, one of the hardest decisions in her life, how could she go back? She couldn’t. Her demon was in that village, and she’d rather die than return to it.
It was all Du Li’s fault. That damned girl was well into her twenties, an age when most girls would be interested in what happened between their legs, but not Du Li. All she thought about was food, glutton-like. If not for her, Jin da-jie would never have been involved in such a scandalous affair. And what did she get in return? Nothing. Heaven is my witness, nothing at all. She thanked her lucky stars for the monthly salary of a thousand yuan. She was never guilty of any shenanigans with the meals or reaped even the slightest profit from them.
A naturally kind-hearted person, she could never change her habit of giving more food to people she liked and punishing those she disliked at mealtime. She had recommended Du Li, who never stopped buttering her up. How could she not favour the girl when parcelling out the food? And if Du Li got more, Gao Wei had to take less; it was just her bad luck that she had someone like Gao Wei for an enemy. That girl is a slut, and sooner or later she’ll be selling herself.
