Brothers

by Yu Hua

  "Yes," Poet Zhao answered, adding emphatically, "and at a salary of one hundred yuan a day."

  Wandering Zhou nodded, then started issuing orders like a boss. The first thing he wanted Poet Zhao to do was to help him take the two boxes of artificial hymens to the warehouse. Poet Zhao looked at him blankly, not knowing where the warehouse was. Wandering Zhou saw Poet Zhao standing there without moving and barked, "Go, quick."

  "Boss Zhou," Poet Zhao said, "where is your warehouse?"

  "Where is your house?" Wandering Zhou asked in return, then added, "Your house is my warehouse."

  Poet Zhao finally understood and thought that if this fellow wanted to use his house as a warehouse, that was fine, but he should pay for it. Poet Zhao asked with a grin, "Boss Zhou, how much do you plan to pay to rent the warehouse?"

  Wandering Zhou looked down at the straw mat on the ground and said, "Twenty yuan a day."

  Poet Zhao happily agreed. When he picked up those two cardboard boxes and prepared to go, Wandering Zhou called out to him again, and from one of the boxes he took out two stacks of flyers for artificial hymens. One pile of ads was for domestic Lady Meng Jiang hymens, which sold for one hundred yuan apiece, and the other was for imported Joan of Arc ones, at three hundred yuan apiece. Wandering Zhou took the two thick stacks of ads and, looking around, said, "Originally I was supposed to have twenty salespeople here, but with the car accident they are now all laid up at the hospital. Now I just have you, and that is not going to be enough."

  At this point Song Gang opened his door and walked out. Poet Zhao called out, "Song Gang, I'll hire you to be a salesman and will pay you eighty yuan a day. Are you interested?"

  Song Gang had not yet had a chance to react when Wandering Zhou patted his suit and said to Poet Zhao, "So I hire you to work for me for one hundred yuan a day, and then you turn around and hire someone else to work for you for eighty yuan, allowing you to come out earning twenty yuan?"

  "No." Poet Zhao shook his head. "You will be the one paying the salary, and you will give him eighty yuan and then give me twenty yuan more as my finders fee."

  Wandering Zhou continued patting his suit. "Then it would be me hiring him, not you."

  Wandering Zhou saw that Song Gang was wearing a face mask despite the summer heat and asked curiously, "Is there something wrong with your mouth?"

  "There's nothing wrong with my mouth," Song Gang replied, smiling behind his mask. "Its my lungs."

  Wandering Zhou nodded. "I'll hire you, for one hundred yuan a day."

  Song Gang didn't know what kind of work he was being hired for. He uncertainly mentioned his lung condition, but Wandering Zhou told him, "You won't need your lungs for this job. All you need is your mouth."

  Wandering Zhou divided the flyers into two further piles and handed them to Poet Zhao and Song Gang, explaining that their assignment for the day was to distribute the flyers to every woman they saw. "Don't leave out anyone, not even the old ladies."

  Wandering Zhou asked Poet Zhao and Song Gang to walk up and down the street distributing the flyers under the blazing sun. Meanwhile, he himself retreated to Missy Sus air-conditioned snack shop, from which he didn't emerge all day. He started helping Missy Su create the straw-embedded buns. That morning he ventured into the kitchen and, with the delighted Missy Su, started instructing the chef on how to prepare them. Mama Su sat at the cashier's counter, watching her daughter bustling through the shop with a rare look of delight on her face. She couldn't help feeling uneasy, unable to shake the feeling that this dapper young man was not to be trusted. When she herself was young, she had also been deceived by a handsome young man, who had left her pregnant with Missy Su. Though her handsome young man had sworn his eternal love and devotion, he soon disappeared, and she had never heard from him again.

  Wandering Zhou spent the entire day sampling those straw-embedded buns, alternating between opining that they didn't contain enough juice, or that they were too bland. He began his taste-testing in the morning and continued right through to the afternoon, devouring seventy-two straw-embedded buns in all. He had so many of them that, by the end, he couldn't speak without burping. He had so many that Missy Su looked at him with concern, asking if they shouldn't rest for a bit and continue experimenting tomorrow. He rubbed his belly and readily agreed. Then, sipping the green tea that Missy Su brewed for him, he sat down in the seat nearest the air conditioner and launched into tall tales of his exploits.

  Song Gang and Poet Zhao spent the entire day walking up and down the street, ending up completely covered in sweat. Even Song Gang's face mask became soaked. By this time virtually all of the virgin beauty contestants had arrived, and the streets of Liu were teeming with lovely and not-so-lovely women from all over the country. Accents ranging from the far north to the deep south mingled throughout town. Even though they were hot and tired, Song Gang and Poet Zhao were both upbeat—Song Gang was happy because he was earning one hundred yuan for such an easy day's work, while Poet Zhao was excited because never before had he seen so many comely young women gathered in the same place. Zhao whispered to Song Gang that he felt as though he had entered a women's bathhouse and only regretted that they still had on their blouses and skirts. The two distributed flyers for Wandering Zhou's artificial hymens to these virgin beauties, who would giggle as they stuffed them into their handbags, sniffing, "But of course we have no need for these."

  When the two returned home at noon, Poet Zhao peeked into the snack shop across the street. Seeing Wandering Zhou sucking down his straw-embedded buns, Zhao handed Song Gang his remaining flyers, saying that he had other things to attend to that afternoon and asking Song Gang to distribute the remaining ads. Lin Hong was still working at the knitting factory, so Song Gang had lunch at home alone. After lunch he put on a new face mask, donned a straw hat, draped a towel around his neck, and filled a thermos with cold water before setting off again with his hymen ads. Song Gang could see that Wandering Zhou was still sampling straw-embedded buns in the snack shop and laughed. Wandering Zhou looked up and saw Song Gang about to go outside but didn't catch sight of Poet Zhao, and wondered what new trick that fellow was up to. He nodded to Song Gang, who nodded back before heading east down the street.

  Poet Zhao snuck home to have lunch and, taking advantage of the fact that the two virgin beauties staying there were out, he lay down on the couch and took a nap. Zhao slept until evening, and when the two virgin beauties came home and saw him sleeping on the couch in his underwear, they cried out in alarm. Poet Zhao sprang up and rushed out the door. When he got downstairs, he saw that Wandering Zhou was still in the snack shop, waving his hands about and holding forth. A huge crowd had gathered around him, with some people sitting down and eating steamed buns and others standing around listening to his tall tales.

  Poet Zhao quietly walked over to Song Gang's open door and saw that Lin Hong was inside cooking dinner and Song Gang was on the couch watching television. Poet Zhao asked him, "Did you distribute all of the flyers?"

  Song Gang nodded, and Poet Zhao turned around and glanced over at the snack shop. Making sure that Wandering Zhou hadn't seen him, he sprinted across the street—covering the intervening 180 yards as though he were on a track and ending up bathed in sweat. He wiped the sleep from his eyes and, looking as if he had been diligently distributing hymen advertisements all day, trudged exhaustedly into the snack shop. When Wandering Zhou, in the middle of some tall tale, spotted him, he waved and told the people around him, "Exec. Asst. Zhao has arrived."

  The crowd didn't know what "exec. asst." meant. Wandering Zhou explained that it was short for "executive assistant to the CEO." Poet Zhao therefore found himself suddenly promoted to executive assistant, having thought that he was merely a salesman, and as a result, he quickly shed his look of exhaustion, beamed happily, and proceeded to push aside the people who were standing in his way and walk over to Wandering Zhou. He bowed and announced that all the flyers had been distributed. Then, like a real assistant, h
e discreetly positioned himself behind Wandering Zhou. Zhou looked up and asked, "Have you been asleep all afternoon?"

  "No." Poet Zhao shook his head emphatically. "I spent the entire afternoon walking through town distributing ads."

  "Your breath smells like you just woke up," Wandering Zhou said.

  The crowd erupted in laughter as Poet Zhao blushed furiously. He repeated that he had spent the entire afternoon distributing ads with Song Gang. Wandering Zhou replied with a slight smile, "I saw Song Gang but didn't see you."

  Poet Zhao still wanted to defend himself, but Zhou gestured for him to be quiet. Then Zhou launched back into his account of his legendary exploits. Missy Su sat across from him, hanging onto his every word. Wandering Zhou saw that Poet Zhao's face and neck were covered in sweat, so he paused and thanked him for all his hard work. Then he returned to his account of his adventures in Africa: "African peasants are the most efficient workers in the world."

  The crowd asked, "Why is that?"

  Wandering Zhou replied, "They toil in the fields naked, and shit and piss as they work. That way, even as they are plowing the soil they are also fertilizing it."

  The crowd marveled and sighed their approval, agreeing that this was indeed an ingenious approach. That way the peasants took care of two farming tasks at once, saving both time and energy. What's more, they added, those farmers wouldn't even need to wipe their bottoms, since they could just air-dry them as they worked.

  Then Wandering Zhou pointed to the virgin beauties walking around outside and told the crowd, "If this handful of young women has already got you googly-eyed, how will you deal with having all three thousand of them here?"

  Wandering Zhou said that he once traveled to an island in the Pacific. He uttered a few guttural sounds and said that this was the islands name, explaining that it literally meant "isle of woman." It was not until he had stepped onto the island that he realized he had entered a Country of Women. There were around 45,800 women there, and every one of them was as beautiful as a goddess. Only there were no men. One man before him had traveled to this island, but that had been eleven years earlier. Wandering Zhou looked straight at his audience and said, "Just think, they hadn't seen a single man in more than a decade, and then there I was."

  He took a dramatic pause and slowly sipped some green tea, then asked the waitress for a refill. The men in the shop waited anxiously to hear the rest of his story, grumbling that the waitress was too slow. They waited for Zhou to take another sip of tea, then asked excitedly, "What did they do when they saw you?"

  Wandering Zhou took a deep breath before continuing. "They lined up to gang-rape me. But of course my virginal night was to be spent with the ruler of the Country of Women."

  Wandering Zhou explained that, contrary to what one might expect, the ruler was not an old lady. Instead, they had chosen the most beautiful woman in the land to be their ruler. Sighing, Wandering Zhou described at length the beauty of that eighteen-year-old queen: "Foreigners would call her a Venus, while the Chinese would compare her to the legendary beauty Xi Shi."

  The crowd was now dying to know whether or not he ended up bedding this beautiful young queen. The men prompted, "Did you give her your virginity?"

  "No." Wandering Zhou shook his head.

  "Why not?" the men asked in astonishment.

  Wandering Zhou said, "Although she was very beautiful, we were not in love."

  The men shook their heads in disbelief, then asked, "What happened next?"

  "Next?" Wandering Zhou answered casually. "Then I escaped."

  The men asked, "How did you escape?"

  "Very simple," Wandering Zhou said. "I used makeup to disguise myself as a woman."

  The men heaved loud sighs of regret, and one complained, "Why did you want to escape? If it had been me, even if there had been a pistol aimed at my head, a cannon aimed at my butt, and a fleet of Tomahawk cruise missiles aimed straight at my heart, I still wouldn't have fucking left that island even if my life depended on it."

  "That's right," the other men cried out.

  "I beg to differ," Wandering Zhou said. "I definitely want to save my virginity for a woman I truly love."

  As he said this Wandering Zhou glanced at Missy Su, who blushed in embarrassment. After listening to Zhou's adventures in the Country of Women, several of the women in the crowd asked him, "How many countries have you visited?"

  Wandering Zhou made a show of calculating mentally, and then replied, "Too many. I couldn't even count them with the help of a calculator."

  Poet Zhao's opportunity to brownnose had arrived, and he said, "Boss Zhou can speak the languages of thirty different countries, including of course that of our own China."

  The crowd cried out in amazement, but Wandering Zhou shook his head modestly. "That's a bit of an exaggeration. Of those thirty languages, there are only about ten that I know well enough to conduct business. Another ten I know only well enough to carry on day-to-day conversations, while the final ten I can only use for simple greetings."

  "That's still amazing!" the crowd exclaimed.

  Poet Zhao continued brownnosing, adding, "Everywhere Boss Zhou goes, he always stays in the presidential suites of five-star hotels."

  The crowd cried out in awe, but Wandering Zhou again waved modestly, saying, "Sometimes I don't stay in the presidential suite. For instance, if a visiting president happened to be in the same hotel, then I would stay in the business suite."

  At this point, Wandering Zhou remembered that the previous night he had slept with Poet Zhao on his straw mat on the side of the road, and how some in the crowd might have seen him, so he decided to take a different tack. He said that he was someone who knew both how to stoop and how to hold his head high, someone who could stay in the presidential suite of a five-star hotel but was equally content sleeping by the side of the road. He added that he once slept for three days and three nights in the Arabian desert, where the sun was so strong that he was almost baked into a mummy. He also slept for a week in an Amazonian rain forest, where wild animals wandered by him as he slept. Once a female tiger slept with him, and when he rested his head on a fallen tree trunk, the tiger did the same, and so they spent the entire night sleeping face-to-face. The next morning the tigers whiskers tickling his face woke him up, and only then did he realize that he and the tiger had spent the entire night sleeping together like husband and wife.

  Poet Zhao continued his brownnosing, saying, "Boss Zhao's cell number is not even a Chinese number but, rather, it is from Brit-something or other."

  Wandering Zhou corrected him, saying, "British Virgin Islands."

  Some of the crowd asked in surprise, "Are you a citizen of those tiny islands?"

  Wandering Zhou shook his head and said, "My company has registered there, thereby allowing it to be listed on the U.S. Nasdaq exchange."

  The crowd cried out in surprise, "Your company is traded on the U.S. stock market?"

  Wandering Zhou replied modestly, "Many Chinese companies are registered in the U.S."

  Some of the townspeople bought and sold stocks, so they asked what his company's ticker symbol was. Wandering Zhou replied, "ABCD." Then he told them that if they had a chance to go to the United States, they should buy his stock—its performance had increased three years in a row. Everyone gasped in surprise and eagerly asked him for his cell number. When he told them, they stored it in their pockets as if it were a precious treasure, though he warned them that they shouldn't call without good reason. "Even if you just say hello three times, it could still cost you a full month's salary."

  In this way, the charlatan Wandering Zhou succeeded in captivating the entire town. Everyone crowded around, gazing up at him admiringly and hanging on his every word, not dispersing until one in the morning. Executive Assistant to the CEO Poet Zhao followed Boss Zhou out of the air-conditioned snack shop and laid down his straw mat for the two of them in the muggy street. The thirty-something Missy Su, who had never been in love before, was
now thoroughly captivated by Wandering Zhou. Seeing him and Poet Zhao lying down outside, she hesitantly walked over with a lit mosquito coil. Mosquitoes had also attacked Wandering Zhou the night before, leaving his face covered in so-called acne pimples. Missy Su placed the mosquito coil next to him, saying bashfully, "This was for the shop, but now that we have air-conditioning we don't need it anymore. You can use it."

  Wandering Zhou stood up and politely gave his thanks. Missy Su gazed adoringly at him, then said to Poet Zhao, "Actually, it would be better if the two of you slept in the shop. There's air-conditioning, and no mosquitoes."

  Poet Zhao was about to agree when Wandering Zhou politely declined, saying, "No need. This is far more comfortable than the Arabian desert or the Amazonian rain forest."

  CHAPTER 62

  WANDERING ZHOU enjoyed three days of free buns at Missy Sus snack shop. The day before the Virgin Beauty Competition formally began, however, this charlatan knew it was time for him to take over the reins of the operation. Taking advantage of Lin Hongs being at work, Zhou set up in Song Gang s apartment and spent two hours instructing Poet Zhao and Song Gang on how to sell his artificial hymens. Wandering Zhou was very disappointed to hear that Poet Zhao was unmarried and asked if at least he had a girlfriend. Poet Zhao first shook his head but then nodded. "I don't have a real-life girlfriend, but I do have many fantasy ones."

  "Fantasy girlfriends?" Wandering Zhou shook his head. "We are selling real hymens, not fantasy ones. For that, you need a real girlfriend to serve as your talking point."

  Wandering Zhou surveyed Song Gang, however, with a look of satisfaction. He remarked that Song Gangs wife, Lin Hong, was very beautiful and that he had heard she was once a well-known Liu Town beauty and something of a celebrity. Zhou then became very animated, exclaiming that they should definitely exploit this celebrity angle. He instructed Song Gang to stand on the side of the road and recount his own experiences, describing the various good, excellent, and truly miraculous aspects of Lin Hongs use of an artificial hymen. This was the first time Song Gang had heard Lin Hong talked about in this way, and he blushed bright red. He protested, "But Lin Hong hasn't ever used an artificial hymen."