Brothers

by Yu Hua

  "It was because," Baldy Li said proudly, "that bastard wanted to get into some serious big business. That bastard didn't want to be a mere traveling salesman any longer but instead wanted to be a seated mogul."

  Yanker Yu and Popsicle Wang were stirred by Baldy Li's grand vision. They asked him, "After you become a mogul, what will become of us?"

  "You will be shareholders and trustees in my holding company." Baldy Li pointed at himself and said, "I will be the chairman of the board of directors and the company president."

  Yanker Yu and Popsicle Wang looked at each other and laughed, and Popsicle Wang asked Baldy Li, "Will we have trustees’ business cards?"

  "Of course." Baldy Li was feeling generous. "And if you want another position, we could consider also appointing you vice president."

  "Yes, absolutely!" Yanker Yu cried out, and said to Popsicle Wang, "The more titles, the better."

  "Of course." Popsicle Wang nodded, then asked Baldy Li, "Are there any other positions you could give us?"

  "No." Baldy Li grew angry. "How could there be so many positions for you?"

  Sensing Baldy Li's annoyance, Yanker Yu quickly nudged Popsicle Wang and chastised him, saying, "You shouldn't be too greedy."

  After assuming their new titles, Yanker Yu and Popsicle Wang starting distributing their new business cards even faster than Baldy Li. They would stand in the middle of the street handing them out to everyone who walked by, as if they were handing out sales flyers.

  Blacksmith Tong and Little Scissors Guan also received Yu's and Wang's business cards. After Tailor Zhang threw in his lot with Baldy Li, Little Guan found himself with no friends left and with no choice but to renew his friendly alliance with Blacksmith Tong. With Yanker Yu's and Popsicle Wang's name cards in hand, Little Guan remarked to Blacksmith Tong that those two bastards were really letting their petty successes go to their heads, to the extent that even the town's chickens, ducks, cats, and dogs must have received their cards by now.

  The intelligent and capable Blacksmith Tong was the first person in Liu to follow Baldy Li's lead into entrepreneurial wealth. Seeing that the people of Liu were doing better than ever and that even peasants living in the countryside were becoming increasingly wealthy, he realized that there was no future in being a blacksmith. Therefore, he stopped making cleavers for the townspeople and sickles and hoes for the farmers, and suddenly one day his entire blacksmith shop was gone, having been transformed into a specialty store selling all sorts of cutlery.

  Blacksmith Tong didn't smoke or drink, and he worked the counter energetically. His ironworker hands may have looked rough and clumsy, but he could count piles of cash faster than a bank teller. Rapidly licking his finger and counting the bills, he looked as if he could give a banks automated bill counter a run for its money.

  Once Blacksmith Tong opened his cutlery shop, Little Scissors Guan s customers began to dwindle. Scissors Guan became very angry. Feeling that Blacksmith Tong had destroyed his business, he vowed to break off all relations, and once again their friendly alliance was destroyed. As business at Blacksmith Tongs cutlery shop boomed, Scissors Guan lost all his remaining customers, until finally he had no alternative but to close down his shop and simply roam the streets every day. He would frequently run into Yanker Yu and Popsicle Wang, who were similarly wandering aimlessly, and the three of them would then hold meetings like in the old days. Scissors Guan would vehemently curse Blacksmith Tong for first discouraging him from investing in Baldy Li's business and then stealing his livelihood and forcing him to close the knife-sharpening stall, which had been in his family for three generations, leaving him no recourse but to roam.

  Yanker Yu and Popsicle Wang sympathized with Little Guan's predicament, and Wang suggested, "Why don't we go to President Li and ask him to give Scissors Guan a job?"

  "Why ask President Li?" Yanker Yu replied. "We are both vice presidents. We might not be able to offer anything else, but we should at least be able to arrange for him to serve as a doorman."

  "You want me to be a doorman? Fuck that!" Little Guan was enraged when he heard Yanker Yu s suggestion. "If it had not been for a minor mistake in the beginning, I would now be a trustee and vice president like yourselves, and furthermore would have been ahead of you in line."

  Little Guan left in a huff. Popsicle Wang looked at Yanker Yu in astonishment, and Yu sniffed disapprovingly, "That was a classic case of the dog biting the hand that feeds it."

  Little Guan finally made up his mind that if he could no longer get by in Liu Town, he might as well go out into the world to seek his fortune. He remembered the first time Baldy Li traveled to Shanghai and lost their entire investment. The second time, however, he went to Japan and made a fortune. Little Guan decided that if he was going to go away, he should go as far away as possible.

  The spring flowers had bloomed, and as Little Guan determinedly walked down the street to the bus depot carrying one bag and dragging another, his father hobbled pitifully behind him. Little Guan had told everyone who would listen that he was going to travel farther and see even more of the world than Baldy Li ever had and had sworn that by the time he returned he would be richer in experiences and wealthier than Baldy Li. Old Guan couldn't keep up with him and fell farther and farther behind. He beseeched his son not to leave, calling out hoarsely, "You are not fated to be rich. Others might be able to make a fortune by going out into the world, but you certainly won't."

  Little Guan paid his father no heed and energetically waved goodbye to the people of Liu. Everyone assumed he was going to Europe or America, and they shouted their congratulations, asking where he was going first. Little Guan's reply, however, greatly disappointed them: "I'm first going to Hainan Island."

  They replied, "But Hainan Island isn't even as far as Japan."

  "It's true that it's not as far as Japan," Little Guan noted, "but it is much farther than Baldy Li went the first time he left Liu, when he went to Shanghai."

  Little Guan boarded the bus and was about to depart when Old Guan finally caught up. Grasping his walking stick with both hands, he watched as the bus drove away in a cloud of dust. With tears running down his cheeks he cried out, "Son, if you are fated to have only fifteen ounces of rice in this life, then even if you go away to seek your fortune, you still won't end up with a full pound."

  Baldy Li also took his leave from Liu Town. Headed for Shanghai, he was wearing his usual tattered clothing as he made his way to the bus depot. Following behind him was a young man carrying his bags like an attendant. When people saw them, they asked who the youngster was, and Baldy Li replied that it was his driver. The crowds tittered—"So Baldy Li has hired himself a driver but doesn't even have a car"—and reported that they saw Baldy Li and his driver board the long-distance bus to Shanghai.

  Baldy Li returned several days later. This time he didn't take the bus but, rather, rode back in a red Santana sedan he had bought in Shanghai. The driver drove Baldy Li's car into Liu Town and stopped in front of a department store. When Baldy Li emerged from his sedan, he was wearing a black Armani suit, having thrown away his tattered clothing while in Shanghai.

  No one recognized Baldy Li when he first stepped out of his sedan. Everyone had grown accustomed to seeing him in his old and tattered clothing, and for him to suddenly be sporting a fancy Armani suit threw everyone for a loop. Furthermore, in those days only party leaders had sedans, so everyone speculated avidly about which important personage he might be. They felt that his shiny bald pate looked familiar, but they couldn't quite place it. Was he a TV actor? A high-level cadre from the provincial capital? Just as they were concluding that he must be a party leader from Beijing, the infatuated idiot, still wearing his watch set to Greenwich Mean Time, wandered over and called out in a ringing voice, "Director Li."

  The crowds were stunned, marveling, "So it's actually Baldy Li!" Someone added, "This person does look like Baldy Li—in fact, they are virtually identical!"

  CHAPTER 53

&nbs
p; LIU TOWN was turned upside down. The big-shot Baldy Li and County Governor Tao Qing now spoke as one and jointly announced that they were going to tear down the old Liu Town and build a new one. Everyone said that this was a classic case of collusion of business and government, with Tao Qing providing the official documents and Baldy Li providing the capital and labor. They demolished one street after another, gradually transforming the face of the entire town. For five full years, Liu Town was covered in dirt and dust from dawn to dusk. Everyone complained that they were inhaling more dust than oxygen and that the layer of dirt permanently caked on their necks was thicker than a scarf. They said that Baldy Li was like a B-52 bomber, carpet-bombing the formerly beautiful town. A few educated townspeople became more embittered than the rest; they remarked that the classic novel Romance of Three Kingdoms had a scene that was set in Liu, Journey to the West had a scene and a half, while Water Margin had two entire scenes—but now Baldy Li had demolished the town and its landmarks.

  Baldy Li demolished the old Liu Town and built a new one. In just five years he expanded the roads and alleys and built countless new buildings, after which the townspeople stopped finding dirt on their collars and the amount of oxygen in their lungs again exceeded the dust. They still complained, however, saying that even though their old houses might have been old and decrepit, at least they had gotten them from the government. Although the new houses were big and new, it was nevertheless necessary to buy them from Baldy Li. There is a saying that rabbits will spare the grass growing next to their burrow. But Baldy Li was really rotten to the core and had chomped down on every last blade of grass around his home, given that all of his profit was extracted directly from his fellow townspeople. The people of Liu also complained that todays money had depreciated, that one thousand yuan today wasn't worth as much as one hundred yuan used to be. The town elders complained that now that the streets had been broadened, they were full of cars and bicycles, and the sound of horns could be heard from morning to evening. In the past, though it was true that the streets were indeed cramped and narrow, two people could nevertheless stand on either side and chat all day long without growing tired. Now, however, the streets were so broad that if two people stood on opposite sides, they wouldn't be able to hear each other, and even if they stood next to each other, they had to shout to make themselves heard over the din. There used to be only a single department store and one clothing store; but now there were at least seven or eight supermarkets, and clothing stores had begun to sprout up like mushrooms after a shower, to the point that both sides of the street were now lined with displays of garish garb for men and women.

  The townspeople of Liu watched in astonishment as Baldy Li became as rich as a ten-thousand-ton oil tanker. If you ate at the most extravagant restaurant in Liu, it would be owned by Baldy Li; if you bathed at the ritziest bathhouse, it would be owned by Baldy Li; and if you went shopping at the largest shopping center, it also would be owned by Baldy Li. The ties everyone wore around their necks, the socks they wore on their feet, their undershirts and underwear, their leather jacket and leather shoes, sweaters and coats, as well as their Western suits—they were all international name brands whose China-based factories were run by Baldy Li. Baldy Li designed the houses that everyone lived in and supplied the fruits and vegetables they ate. He even bought up the crematorium and cemetery, so that the town s dead had to be handed over to him. He provided those of us in Liu Town with everything, from what we ate to what we wore, from where we lived to what we used, and from birth to death. No one knew for certain how many businesses he owned or how much he earned. He once patted his chest and boasted that the entire fucking county government was run on the fucking taxes he paid. Someone observed obsequiously that Baldy Li was responsible for virtually the entire county's GDP. When Baldy Li heard this he was very satisfied, nodding in agreement. "I am indeed the entire fucking GDP."

  Yanker Yu and Popsicle Wang got filthy rich along with him. Popsicle Wang spent every day strolling down Main Street, now that he no longer had to earn a living. But he would complain anxiously that he didn't know how to spend money since he was meant to be poor. Now he had so much money he couldn't count it all, much less spend it. After Yanker Yu struck it rich, he disappeared without a trace, spending all his time off traveling and sightseeing. He covered the entire country in five years and now was traveling the world as part of a tour group. As for the fourteen handicapped workers at the Good Works Factory, in the blink of an eye they became fourteen senior researchers, and from that point on they enjoyed their high prestige and lived in comfort. Everyone agreed that they had turned into fourteen dandies.

  It was during this period that the metal factory went bankrupt, and as a result Writer Liu and Song Gang became unemployed. Writer Liu ran a gamut of emotions, never having expected that the world would change so quickly or that the scrap-collecting Baldy Li would become the town s multimillionaire while he himself would lose his job and end up with nowhere to go. When Liu ran into Song Gang in the street, they commiserated with each other. Liu patted Song Gangs shoulder, then suddenly thought of something, saying, "No matter what, you are still Baldy Li's brother…"

  Writer Liu cursed Baldy Li passionately, asking how there could be someone like him who, after striking it rich, began looking after everyone yet completely ignored his own brother. Not only Yanker Yu and Popsicle Wang but also the fourteen handicapped workers from the Good Works Factory had become the towns nouveaux riches, while Baldy Li's own brother was so poor that he didn't have enough to eat. Baldy Li seemed to have paid no attention and pretended he didn't know what had become of Song Gang. Writer Liu seized on this issue to suggest, "Your relationship to Baldy Li reminds me of that famous line by Du Fu: Within the vermilion gates everything reeks of wine and meat, while in the street lie frozen bones. "

  "I haven't starved to death," Song Gang replied coldly, "and Baldy Li doesn't reek of wine and meat."

  The day Song Gang lost his job was like any other. That evening he rode his Eternity bicycle over to the knitting factory to pick up Lin Hong, as he had done every day, rain or shine, for more than a decade. By this point, the other women at the knitting factory had their own bicycles, all foreign brands, and many of them rode mopeds. In fact, the stores in Liu Town no longer sold Eternity bicycles. Although Lin Hong and Song Gang didn't live extravagantly, they did have a color television, a refrigerator, and a washing machine; to buy a new bicycle, therefore, would not have been a big deal for them. Lin Hong recognized that their bicycle was old and outdated, but she held off buying a new one precisely because for more than ten years Song Gang had used that Eternity bicycle to take her to and from work. While her other female workmates all rode their brand-new bicycles or mopeds, Lin Hong still hopped onto the backseat of the Eternity bicycle, hugging Song Gangs waist and smiling contentedly. Now her happiness lay not in having her own special bicycle but, rather, in the decade-long faithfulness her man and his bicycle had shown her.

  Having just lost his job, Song Gang stood with his bicycle outside the knitting factory in the evening light, staring through the iron gate at the workers inside. The bell rang, marking the end of the workday, and when the gate swung open, several hundred bicycles, motorized bicycles, and mopeds poured out as if competing in a race, their bells and horns all sounding at once. After this wave of vehicles passed, Song Gang spotted Lin Hong walking down the empty road, looking like a piece of coral the tide had left behind on the beach.

  The news that the metal factory had gone bankrupt quickly swept through the town. When Lin Hong heard it that afternoon, her heart sank. She wasn't concerned that Song Gang would become unemployed but, rather, worried about how he would take it. When she walked out the factory gate and over to his side, she looked up at her husbands bitter smile. His mouth twitched, and he started to tell Lin Hong that he had lost his job. Lin Hong, however, didn't let him continue, but rushed to say, "I already know."

  Lin Hong saw a small leaf in his hair that
she figured he got while passing under a tree on his way to pick her up. She reached out to brush it away, smiled, and said, "Let's go home."

  Song Gang nodded, then turned and climbed back onto his bicycle as Lin Hong sat sidesaddle behind him. Song Gang rode his creaky old-fashioned Eternity bicycle through the streets of Liu, with Lin Hong hugging him from behind and pressing her face into his back. He felt that she was holding him tighter than usual and that her face was pressed into his back more tenderly than before. He smiled.

  When they got home, Lin Hong went into the kitchen to cook dinner, and Song Gang turned his bicycle over and propped it up in front of the door. Taking out his tools, he first removed the wheels, then the pedals and the middle triangular frame. After taking the entire bicycle apart, Song Gang arranged the pieces neatly on the ground and, sitting on a stool, took a rag and started to carefully clean each one of them. Night fell and the lights came on, and after Lin Hong finished cooking dinner, she walked over to call Song Gang to come eat. Song Gang, however, shook his head and said he wasn't hungry, telling her to go ahead and eat first.

  Ling Hong brought over a bowl of food and a chair and also sat down in the doorway, watching Song Gang as she ate. The sight of Song Gang expertly wiping down the bicycle pieces was quite familiar to her; she couldn't remember how many times she had remarked that he took care of his bicycle as he would his own child. Now she said it again, and Song Gang laughed. When he had put back together a piece he had wiped clean, he told Lin Hong that the next day he was going to go look for work, but he didn't know what he would be able to find. In particular, he didn't know when he would have to be at work in the morning and when he would get off in the afternoon, and therefore he might not be able to continue taking her to work and picking her up. Then he stood up, straightened his stiff back, and told her, "From now on, you should ride your own bike home."

  Lin Hong nodded and said, "Okay."