by Ge Fei
After buying the speakers, a fear that they would suddenly disappear kept me from telling Jiang Songping. Nor did I ever reveal their real value to Yufen. One day I came home from a delivery to find Yufen cleaning the speaker boxes with a goddamn steel wool scrubber and White Cat disinfectant. She scrubbed hard to make them “look a little newer,” and even put a huge fucking flowerpot on top of each box. I almost fainted.
At the time of our divorce, I only demanded one thing: that she leave me all the audio equipment, including the Autograph speakers. That should tell you much I loved them. My sister could only shake her head and call me an idiot. That bastard Chang Baoguo proved even cruder. One Lantern Festival, the two of them visited me at Shijingshan. After a couple of drinks, Chang Baoguo started to lecture me. He said that the primary cause of our divorce could be traced to Yufen’s infidelity. If that filthy bitch couldn’t keep her legs together and wanted other guys on the side, then from a legal standpoint she should be entitled to nothing. Only an idiot would agree to give her the apartment. After bearing this for a good while, I eventually had enough. I walked into the kitchen, grabbed the cleaver and tossed it onto the dining room table. I warned him that if he said another word about Yufen, either I’d kill him or he could kill me.
Chang Baoguo called me “chicken shit” a few times, then grabbed his wife and stomped off without finishing dinner.
In truth, giving the apartment to Yufen in no way turned out to be a bad deal for me. I had gone over the calculation a thousand times. Our place in Shangdi East cost less than a hundred and eighty thousand yuan. By the time of our divorce, the Autograph set was worth two hundred thousand or more on the second-hand market. Seems like an equitable division of assets to me. Plus, the building being so close to Yufen’s workplace made it perfectly reasonable for her to want to stay and keep her easy commute. Then those memories of how poor we had been through our years together, her staying by my side as we barely scraped by, were embarrassing for me to recall. Even that three-thousand-yuan jade pendant she had always pined for hovered beyond my reach.
To keep the speakers in good working order and prevent the sound from deteriorating into fuzziness, I warmed them up once every two weeks or so, usually during the quiet hours of the night. I’d pull out a recording of an Italian string quartet’s rendition of Mozart (my favorite composer to this day), or Walter Gieseking playing Ravel or Debussy, and listen to it at a low volume for a couple hours. I knew that the technical specs of my own system kept the speakers from producing their best sound. But it was like seeing a young, beautiful woman right after she wakes in the morning, face fresh and unwashed, free of make-up. It felt more than enough. I could sense her understated elegance, her every gesture, her intoxicating allure.
Sometimes, when the familiar music separated from the darkness to dance in the living room with its cracked wall, my breath would catch in my throat and hot tears crowd my eyes. It felt as if Yufen had never left me, as if her radiant face emerged out of the music. It felt as if I had no business enjoying this luxury in such a polluted, chaotic world.
No matter where I ended up, or what bitterness, loneliness, or humiliation I had to swallow, I only needed to think of those Autograph speakers, standing silent against the living room wall, waiting for me to come home, and I would hear an assuring voice in my ear: “Your life isn’t so bad, my friend—a little hope waits around the corner.”
•
You can probably guess the gist of my stupid plan by now. That’s correct: I would sell my Autograph speakers to Ding Caichen.
No choice, no way out of it, it had to be done.
I thought back to that day many years ago when I paraded Yufen in front of my family, and of the surprise, hesitation, and worry that crossed my mother’s face. “Marrying this woman for somebody else.” Those were her words. She even had a smile on her face when she said it—a smile that betrayed an almost imperceptible, vaguely terrifying mystery.
It was past one in the morning by the time I got back from sending Yufen home that night. Ma’s congestion seemed worse; she sat on a stool in the yard, wheezing heavily. Lihua pulled me to one side and gravely asked if we should take her to the hospital. I didn’t want to consider that at the moment. I brushed her off and marched directly up to my mother. I pulled her up from the stool and demanded evidence for whatever she meant about Yufen.
Moonlight turned her face a soft, pale blue. She sighed faintly and said, “Sometimes poor people get lucky enough to find treasures, too. But you’ll never be able to keep her. You won’t like to hear this, but the most you can do with a woman like this is take your turn and enjoy it. When the time comes, she’ll still have to go where she must go.”
She noticed my dumbfounded expression and stroked my arm, saying, “Child, that you even get a turn at all is because of good karma passed down from our ancestors. Tell me, what’s the most valuable thing anyone can ever have? It’s your life, isn’t it? But you can hold on to it as tightly as you can for every waking hour, and you’ll still have to let it go when the time comes, won’t you?”
I’ll be honest. For a long time after that, I quietly ridiculed her, hated her, to the point of hoping she would die a little sooner. And when she finally passed away, I didn’t shed a single tear for her at the funeral. It was as if she had held on to life for four more years after being diagnosed with a terminal disease just to see her ill-willed prophecy come true.
But then, right as I was about to go through with it and sell my Autograph speakers, I suddenly understood everything.
And I began to see my mother as the wisest woman in the world, and I loved her more dearly than I did myself.
•
But enough of that for the moment. Having decided to sell the Autograph set to Ding Caichen as part of “the greatest sound system in the world,” my main consideration involved finding and building a stereo system that would be worthy of it. Imagine a father sending his favorite daughter off to be married; no matter how unwilling he is to let go, he must steel himself and collect her dowry. At the very least, he has to find her a nice enough dress to send her off looking fabulous.
The first question to solve was the amplifier. The KT88 had plenty of good, hard push to it, but I found the sound too rigid, and too brittle at higher frequencies. By comparison, the EL34 produced a much more delicate sound, though the density of amplification never seemed sufficient and the sound lacked flavor. I thought about installing a 300B. As everyone knows, the sound produced by the 300B is beyond comparison. Sadly, however, the output maxed out at twelve watts, and I couldn’t guarantee that would be enough to satisfy my beloved Autographs. I could connect two amplifiers together as a “push-pull” set, which would double the wattage, but artificially increasing the output wouldn’t be much different than giving a man with erectile dysfunction an overdose of Viagra. After a long period of indecision, I decided to take a bigger risk: I’d assemble her with a single 845.
The 845 tube amplifier is known by hi-fi experts as “The King.” It would work perfectly with the direct-heading RCA cathode ray tube (which has its own nickname, “The Pillar of Heaven”) I had been saving for so long. Still, building a high-performance 845 was no easy task for an at-home technician like myself. Working with such high voltage requirements involved a certain measure of risk. I had attempted it twice in the past. The first time I got lucky and everything came out right; the second time a misrouted current fried the skin on my palms and I had to stop. But to give my darling Autographs what they wanted, I decided to step into the fray once more.
Thank heaven the process went smoothly. An HR director from Lenovo somehow got wind of my activities and came over to listen to the amplifier. He proceeded to waste the whole evening trying to convince me to sell it to him instead. I refused him.
Concerning the question of the audio source, I was deadlocked between the Swiss Studer 730 and the English Linn 12. I preferred the 730—tracking this rare item down on the Chinese market, however,
would be nearly impossible, and ordering one from abroad through eBay would be more trouble than it was worth. The Linn 12—or Lotus 12, as professionals called it, the word “linn” sounding so much like lian for “lotus”—was widely recognized by the hi-fi community as the best CD player out there, with a sound quality that closely approximated vinyl. I had found a used one for sale online, the seller located in Tongzhou, which bordered the southwest corner of the city. He wanted eighty thousand for the 24-bit unit. I could vaguely recall that the ad had been posted for three months straight without any bids; buyers probably thought the price too high for a secondhand unit. I figured I could maybe gouge him a tiny bit, get the price down to seventy. So I rang him up, and we haggled for a spell. The final price we agreed on: sixty-eight thousand. After hanging up, I picked up pen and paper to make some simple calculations.
Tannoy Autograph speakers were a hot commodity in hi-fi markets everywhere in the world, usually selling the minute they hit the floor. One set the same size as mine sold recently in Melbourne for forty-five thousand dollars, or nearly three hundred thousand yuan. So to offer mine to Ding Caichen for two hundred and fifty was a bargain. For the 845 amplifier I would only charge him forty thousand; for Vovox monitor signal cables and microphone cables, thirty-five thousand; then the Linn 12 would be sixty-eight thousand on top of everything else. (As you must have guessed, I had yet to buy this machine. Doing so would use up almost all my savings, but I had already decided to resell it to Ding Caichen for the same price.) The overall cost for the system soared above three hundred and ninety thousand yuan. This would give me enough money to buy the courtyard outright, with a little extra cash left over. Thus, while I would be weighed down with the sadness of relinquishing something I loved, wouldn’t this sensible decision bring security and relief?
I rang Ding Caichen. An automated recording informed me that he was temporarily unable to take my call. So I left my name and number, hung up, and suffered a tortuous wait. Fortunately, after only twenty minutes, Ding Caichen called me back.
His voice sounded gentle and frail, though perfectly clear. I introduced myself, mentioning my connection with Jiang Songping. Then I told him about the sound system I could build for him, listing the components, capabilities, estimated time of delivery. He listened to me with patience, offering an occasional one-word response to anything I said: “Good.”
I should note that during our phone conversation, I didn’t pick up anything unusual about him, let alone any trace of the dangerous mystique that Jiang Songping had described. He seemed like a perfect gentleman, at least from his voice. Twice he asked if I could speak a little slower because of his poor reception. As I gushed on and on about the ethereal auditory experience the system would provide for him, he even chuckled and commented, “Oh, really?”
If anything could be interpreted as suspicious during our conversation, I guess it could be that, well, his mind didn’t seem fully present. His responses came slow and slightly delayed, as if he had just woken up. And then I did hear him make these weird noises while we spoke. When I told him that the overall price for the system would run around three hundred ninety thousand yuan, and asked if he’d be willing to pay a portion in advance, he immediately responded: “Not a problem. Here, why don’t you give me an account number and I’ll wire a third—will a third work? a hundred and thirty thousand—directly to you. Will that be acceptable?”
I gave him my ICBC account number. To confirm, I requested that he repeat the numbers back to me. Again the mumbling noises, followed by, “I’m sorry. . . I’m actually sitting on the toilet right now, so I can’t write anything down. Must be food poisoning, upset stomach. How about this: just text the number to me and I’ll have someone wire the cash to you.”
So I texted him my account number, then sent another text asking him to confirm receipt. The reason for my circumspection should be clear: this would be, after all, the biggest job I had ever taken on in all my years in this business—I had to make sure everything went smoothly. But Ding Caichen’s reply text came with an unpleasant surprise:
Hufang Bridge West, Unit 37 Apt A. Try to be perfect and where’s the fun, eh? Green light. Bring a few extra hands with you, this might be our last opportunity.
Obviously a wrong number. Ding Caichen must have made an error and accidentally sent me a text meant for someone else—a common enough mistake, nothing strange about it. Yet, as I turned it over in my head, the content of the message caused my suspicions about this new client to deepen. I noted before that I’ve never had any interest in other people’s private lives, no burning desire to get to the bottom of anything. I could easily have sent Ding Caichen a message telling him that he’d sent his text to the wrong person, but for some reason I couldn’t calm my pounding heart. My intuition—that sense of foreboding that always ended up coming true—restrained me from texting back. You’re probably aware of the kind of trouble that can come from accidentally learning someone else’s secrets in today’s society.
Fortunately, Ding Caichen’s confirmation arrived five minutes later:
Received, not to worry.
Sixteen days later, on my seventeenth trip to the ATM in the post office below my apartment, I saw that Ding Caichen’s hundred and thirty thousand had posted to my account. I relaxed, feeling ashamed of my own paranoia and of the two-plus weeks of insomnia and wild delusions. I always imagine the worst, even when I have no cause to.
Over-cautiousness clearly becomes a bad habit that needs to be fixed.
7. THE LOTUS 12
EVER SINCE I first fell in love with the hi-fi industry I’ve been buying equipment from audiophiles across the world. For every purchase, anything from speaker boxes, antique Victrola horns, amplifiers, or CD players, to resistors, capacitors, or record needles, the seller and I have always followed an unwritten rule: “Money comes in, goods go out.” I’ve sent money to unfamiliar accounts everywhere, from Hong Kong, which has a relatively good reputation, to shadier places like Henan, and I’ve never had a problem. Not only have I never been swindled, instances of hidden defects or poor-quality replacements have been extraordinarily rare. In an age where scams and cons are so common you can’t keep up with their manifestations, you have to admit that for the second-hand hi-fi industry to maintain such a standard of trust is a miracle. It also explains why I stick around and continue to love my job, even as the client pool grows shallower and my profits thinner. No doubt, our community is still a haven. I personally attribute this to a higher-than-average ethical conscience among members of the community, shaped by the influence of classical music on human character. You can plainly observe: in an age where brutal competition has pitted friends and neighbors against each other, classical music has served as a special medium to bring like-minded people together into a close-knit community, out of which an honest business environment has naturally formed. If you wanted to call it a “collective,” or even a “utopia,” I wouldn’t object. At any rate, for many years I’ve felt proud to be a part of it.
Yet my optimism once encountered the ridicule of one of my clients, a lawyer named Bai Cheng’en. Counsel Bai was one of my steadier clients. His musical tastes tended toward the Renaissance and the Baroque periods, and he only listened to vinyl. A few years back, he received his law degree at The Hague, then set up a private practice in Beijing’s central business district specializing in international cases. He harbored a deep-seated contempt for the poor that used to make me very uncomfortable—for instance, he never took a case for less than a two-hundred-thousand-yuan retainer. But to be fair, once I got to know him, I quickly realized that he was among the few in our society with the gift of real insight. Every time I talked to him, I would always leave feeling as if my eyes had just been opened.
One afternoon, he listened with strained patience as I extolled the virtues of my classical music utopia, and then immediately dismissed it as “sheer nonsense”:
“Mr. Cui, you really need to read more. Where did this ridiculo
us idea come from? You know, by day the Nazis sent thousands of Jews to the furnaces without batting an eyelash—they even tossed in newborn babies. But that never prevented them from kicking back in the evenings with their coffee while listening to Mozart or Chopin. Plenty of those Nazi executioners were themselves brilliant musicians, but did that ever inspire the tiniest expression of goodness or compassion while they murdered people en masse? You’re a hi-fi guy, you must have heard of Furtwängler, right? The moment capitalism takes root, it creates its own hero. When that hero emerges in the National Socialist Party, it’s Hitler. When it emerges within a new capitalist economy, it’s an all-devouring monster. And when it emerges in music, it’s Beethoven. Obviously, Beethoven and Hitler are not one and the same, though the distinction between the two isn’t as clear as most people imagine. Can you see now why I like Renaissance and Baroque music? In my opinion, society after the Baroque period is just a humongous pile of shit. I gave up on classical music after that period a long time ago.
“The fact that, like you said, you’ve never come across any cheating in the hi-fi community is no evidence at all that the people in it are more civilized or have better character, nor does it prove that their morals are superior in any way. All we can say is that you’ve been relatively lucky. And in a filthy, mediocre world, luck is the only religion. You’ve imagined the hi-fi community to be some sort of secret, egalitarian paradise, and you’re free to believe that if you wish. But if you want to continue with your business, I advise you to be a little more careful. Caution is always best. No telling when bad luck might come knocking on your door.”
