The Fat Years (14 page)

This made Little Xi smile. If she’d been standing nearer, I could have kissed her, but unfortunately, the kitchen table was between us.

“Lao Chen, can I give you a hug?” she asked.

I moved around to the other side of the table and held her as tightly as I could.

“Welcome back to our good hell!” she said.

I so badly wanted to say, “Little Xi, let’s be together,” but the words stuck in my throat.

Just then the intercom buzzed. Little Xi immediately stiffened and I released her. Little Xi, I thought, they’ve caught up with you, and there’s no way out this time.

Readying myself for trouble, I went to the door. When I looked back at Little Xi, she was still standing totally motionless and holding her breath.

I pushed the intercom button and shouted, “Who is it?”

A man’s voice at the other end sounded startled. “Er … is this Mr. Chen?”

I saw Little Xi hurriedly put on her coat, pick up her canvas bag, and come up to listen in.

I shouted again into the intercom, “What is it?”

“Mr. Chen … wait a minute please …” The man seemed to have moved away from the intercom.

“Is there another door out of here?” asked Little Xi. I shook my head.

Then a woman’s voice came over the intercom. “Lao Chen, open the door! Please open the door,” she shouted.

“Who is it?” I yelled back.

“It’s me!”

Then I realized it was Wen Lan’s voice.

“It’s a friend of mine,” I told Little Xi.

Little Xi opened the apartment door and said, “I’ll hide in the corner of the hall, and then you can open the front gate.”

I didn’t think that was necessary, but before I could say anything, she had already bolted out.

I pressed the button and heard the iron gate downstairs open. Little Xi was hiding on the stairwell one floor up. My building doesn’t have an elevator, so I could hear Wen Lan’s high heels clacking briskly up the stairs.

As soon as she got to my floor, she demanded, “Why the hell did you take so long opening the door?”

“What on earth do you want?” I asked, blocking the entrance to my flat.

“Someone’s been picking on me, I’ve been hurt and need a shoulder to cry on,” she said.

You really do think I’m permanently on standby for you, I thought to myself.

She was now clearly agitated and tears were welling up in her eyes. “Why are you looking at me so cruelly? You never used to treat me like this. Didn’t you say you were going to take care of me?”

What would Little Xi think when she heard this?

“Come in,” I hissed.

Wen Lan strode in and I closed the door quickly after her. I knew that Little Xi would take this opportunity to get away, taking with her any misunderstandings about my relationship with Wen Lan.

“What’s wrong with you? Why do you look so shocked?” Wen Lan asked.

“How did you find me here?” I said, really getting angry now.

“Dongzhi Menwai, Happiness Village Number Two. I asked the security guard where that Hong Kong writer lives and he brought me here.”

“Do you really think I’m going to be on permanent standby for you?” I said, lowering my voice.

“What are you talking about?” she asked.

“I don’t ever want to see you again,” I said slowly, and then more deliberately, “never again.”

“What do you mean?” Wen Lan shouted at me suddenly as though she could hardly believe her ears.

“Just leave,” I said coldly, and feeling calmer now I added, “And don’t ever come back.”

“Say that again!”

“I said, get the hell out of here!” I pointed to the door.

“Fine, you’re heartless anyway,” Wen Lan said as though she had finally got the message. “But I’m warning you—you’ve upset me now, and there will be consequences.”

Wen Lan waited till she’d got to the door before she turned around and vigorously gave me the finger. I slowly replied in kind.

I shouldn’t have let Little Xi leave. I should have declared my love sooner. I regret it all now.

It’s been two weeks and there’s been no news. I wrote an e-mail to
wudaokoupengyou,
but there was no response. I searched the net for
wudaokoupengyou,
but received only a great deal of information on
Wudaokou
and
friend.
I could not find any posts by Little Xi. This was quite different from the last time, when she used
feichengwuraook
for her e-mail address, and her Web site name had been “If you’re not sincere, don’t bother, okay.” Now that Little Xi knows she’s under surveillance, her e-mail and her Web site are probably not connected anymore. It’s likely she used
wudaokoupengyou
just to make contact with me. What the hell is her current e-mail and Internet name?

It’s dawned on me too slowly, but every day since Little Xi left, I’ve realized how much I truly love her. I’d be willing to go into hell for her. But the weirdest thing is that my two-year-long feeling of happiness has left me. I’m longing for love, and now I’m no longer happy.

One day, when the Beijing air was fragrant with the scent of willow and crab-apple blossoms, I went over to Dong Niang’s house, walked dejectedly into her bedroom, took off my shirt and trousers, and flopped down on her bed.

Dong Niang started taking her clothes off in front of me. “Take everything off, baby, tonight it’s on the house.”

“Why is it on the house tonight?” I asked.

“Tonight is my last time,” she said.

“What do you mean, last time?”

“I’m leaving. I’m getting out of Beijing.”

“You’re leaving Beijing?” I sat up in dismay.

“No crying, no crying,” Dong Niang teased me. “Baby, Dong Niang has never seen you so unhappy in all these years. You’re still my fun-loving baby, aren’t you?”

“I’m really very unhappy,” I said.

“Let Dong Niang hold you,” she said.

She kissed me, but I held back. “Little Dong, let’s just talk.”

She let go of me and got out of bed. “Let me tell your fortune with the tarot cards.”

I didn’t like to call her Dong Niang. I preferred to call her Little Dong, just like when she was at the Paradise Club. When Little Dong found out that I was a writer, she asked me to recommend novels for her. It wasn’t especially necessary as she loved to read fiction, and even before my suggestions had already read many books by
Qiong Yao, Yan Qin, Cen Kailun, Yi Shu, and Zhang Xiaoxian. I told her to read some fiction in translation, starting with Jane Austen. She actually read all six of Austen’s novels and she read them better than I had. After that, she read quite a few popular novels in translation. I remember asking what her favorite novels were, and she said Robert James Waller’s
The Bridges of Madison County
and Qiong Yao’s
How Long Lasts the Sunset?
Our tastes were different, but because we both liked to read, I always felt closer to her. After she left the club and started seeing her customers at home, I carried on visiting her for years, but I felt like she was still Little Dong who likes to read novels. For a while there were a number of Taiwanese customers who would play poker and smoke cigars at her place, and I joined them a few times. They talked of Dong Niang this, and Dong Niang that, until I too began to call her Dong Niang instead of Little Dong.

“Where is my lover?” I asked casually.

Little Dong started to place the tarot cards, but I changed my mind. “No, no, no, no, predict something else.” I couldn’t put my fate in her hands.

I gave her another scenario, a typically tarot-card conundrum. “I’m standing at a crossroads. The first road will lead me toward a stable and a comfortable life, but I’ll never feel truly satisfied. The second road will lead me into a lot of trouble, even insurmountable trouble, but it could also lead me to find true love and the greatest happiness. Which road should I choose?”

She shuffled the cards a few times and laid them out in two rows. Then she said, “The first road is very peaceful and prosperous; on the second road, there are obstacles and many uncertainties, but there is love there.” Her answer was a complete repetition of my question.

But then she said, “These cards are about change. You’ve been on the first road for a long time. If you want to change to the second road, then you should follow it. If you don’t, you’ll regret it.” This was probably just what I wanted to hear.

“Little Dong—I still like to call you Little Dong—thank you,” I said.

“Lao Chen, this is the first time I’ve seen you in the last two years … seen your true face.”

“My true face? Wasn’t I real before?”

“Before—before you were the same as everyone else, always, always …”

“Full of happiness?” I asked, my heart racing.

“Exactly. It started about two years ago, you and all my other customers. In fact, everybody around me suddenly became extremely happy!”

“Has everybody around you changed?” I quoted Little Xi’s words.

“You could put it that way,” said Little Dong.

“But you haven’t changed, have you? Why not?” I asked.

Little Dong was quiet for a while. Then she said, “Lao Chen, we’ve been friends for over ten years. Can I tell you the truth?”

I nodded.

“You know I’m what the Hong Kong people call a ‘woman of the Dao’—a junkie?”

I was taken aback. I would never have known.

“I don’t use needles. If the customers saw them, they wouldn’t like it.”

“What kind of drugs do you take?” I asked.

“Whatever I can find that can be taken orally,” she said.

“Write them all down for me later. I’d like to know what they are,” I said with a certain caution. “Go on. What happens after you take the drugs?”

“When I take drugs, sometimes I feel really high, but sometimes I feel down, right? And sometimes I become extremely aware of my surroundings. At those times, I can see that the world has changed, that everybody around me is not quite right.”

“How are they ‘not quite right’?” I asked.

“They’re just not right,” she said, “they’re different from before, including you, Lao Chen, they’re all too … they all feel too happy. I can’t explain it, but they’re different from before. It’s not the sort of crazy high like when people like me take drugs. It’s a kind of very mild and very small high.”

I was trying hard to understand what she meant. I thought I did, but I was not sure.

“My boyfriend and I can’t stand it,” she went on. “He’s from Australia. He used to write travel guides for backpackers and he’s been in China for twenty years. He says that the Chinese mentality transforms itself every few years. It changed in 1992 with Deng Xiaoping’s southern tour; in 1994 with economic macro-control; in 1997 with the return of Hong Kong; in 2000 when China entered the WTO; in 2003 after the SARS epidemic; in 2008 with the Olympic torch and the opening ceremony; and now again in the last five years. He says in the past the leading countries in the National Happiness Index were always countries like Nigeria, Venezuela, and Puerto Rico. Their people all reported feeling especially happy. You wouldn’t even know how far down the list China was then, but suddenly for the last couple of years China has ranked as number one. Over a billion people all report being very happy! Don’t you think there is something wrong with the Chinese? How can they be so happy?”