Chilli Bean Paste Clan (9781911221111), page 8
Dad took the fifty cents and left. As he picked his way down the street, he felt mortified. He was only seventeen. That son-of-a-bitch brother of his. He’d never be able to go and screw Baby Girl again.
This evening, just as he was about to go to bed, Dad’s phone finally rang. It was Aunt Coral, asking why he had called her that afternoon.
Dad brought her up to date on the last two days’ family news without, of course, telling her about his stay in hospital.
‘So, Zhiming’s back,’ said Aunt Coral quietly.
‘Uh-huh,’ said Dad, equally quietly. ‘Mother wants him to organize the birthday celebrations so I don’t need to bother.’
‘That’s good,’ said Aunt Coral. ‘She won’t fuss so much if he does it. I’ll give Zhiming a ring in a bit, and ask if he wants any help.’
‘What about my brother-in-law and the rest of them?’ asked Dad ‘Did you tell them? It’s looking like the party will be next Sunday.’
‘I told him,’ said Aunt Coral. ‘Xingchen and his wife will come too. I’ve told them.’
‘Sis, how have you two been getting along lately?’ said Dad, finally asked, after a long pause for thought.
‘We’re fine,’ said Aunt Coral with a sigh. ‘Listen Shengqiang, don’t you worry about my affairs. We’re in our fifties. Nothing’s going to happen. That’s what things are like nowadays. What man doesn’t have a bit on the side?’
‘Sis ...’ Dad started, then stopped. There was so much he wanted to say but none of it seemed right. He finally went on: ‘If there’s anything I can help with, just give me a call.’
‘Right,’ said Aunt Coral, ‘I’ll hang up then. You get to bed. Give my best to Anqin.’ Dad cut the call and went back indoors, where Mum was still watching Golden Wedding and reading a book at the same time. Dad always teased her about this: ‘Comrade Chen Anqin, make up your mind! Are you watching TV or reading a book?’ Mum paid no attention, just reached out and slapped him. ‘What rubbish you talk! What’s it got to do with you?’ Dad glanced at the book in her hand. It had a bright red cover and was called: Rage against Death.
‘Whatever’s that you’re reading? What a scary title!’ He tried to grab it off her but she wasn’t letting go. The fifteen-minute adverts came up on the screen, and she buried herself in its pages, reading furiously and muttering: ‘Ai-ya! You don’t know what you’re talking about!’
He felt suddenly uneasy, and Mum seemed to feel a slight change in the atmosphere too. She raised her head from her book and asked: ‘Who was that on the phone?’
‘Sis. She sent you her best wishes,’ said Dad, glossing over his awkwardness. ‘How is she?’ ‘Fine.’ Dad took off his slippers and got into bed. ‘Have you washed your feet?’ demanded Mum, who had a keen sense of smell. ‘They stink to high heaven! Go and wash them!’ Dad supposed he had walked a good long way that day, and obeyed. Only he couldn’t be bothered to get the enamel foot-basin out, just stood in front of the sink and lifted one foot up and washed it, then the other.
When he thought back on it not long after, he reckoned he must have been missing one of his women just then, one of the ones he’d screwed. He couldn’t remember which one in particular, probably Jasmine, or maybe Baby Girl, or even Miss Pouty Lips. If not them, it must have been Bai’s old lady. She wasn’t bad-looking, a bit too much fat on the belly, but a nice light skin.
He dried his feet and went back to bed. Mum was still watching the soap on TV, clutching her bright-red Rage against Death in her hands. Dad stretched out in bed. At least I can finally go to fucking sleep, was his last thought before he dropped off.
4
The last time the family was all together must have been at Chinese New Year in 2005. Gran wanted them all to have a New Year’s Eve dinner together but Liu Xingchen wanted to go to his in-laws. He and Zhao were just married that year. Dad worked on Gran, saying that if the young folk weren’t happy then no one would enjoy it, and Gran nodded and moved the dinner to the 29th of the first month. It was to start at half past twelve, midday, and would held in the Cuckoo Garden private room at the Floating Fragrance Restaurant.
It was to be the last New Year’s dinner with Grandpa, but since no one knew that at the time, everyone came looking very casual. There was Aunt Coral and Uncle Liu Qukang, Liu Xingchen and his new wife Zhao, who was pregnant with Diandian, Dad, Mum, Grandpa and Gran. The only one missing was Uncle. ‘Zhiming’s gone to Japan,’ announced Gran, looking pleased, ‘so he can’t come back for a New Year’s dinner.’
And I don’t want to see him either! Dad cheerfully opened the bottles, and the men of the family started drinking.
‘This is our New Year dinner,’ pronounced Gran, ‘so I’m not going to stop you. Having a drink livens the party up, but in moderation please, no getting drunk.’ ‘Shengqiang,’ added Aunt Coral, ‘Don’t keep re-filling Qukang’s glass, and you should go easy too.’ Mum was next: ‘Xue Shengqiang, I’m warning you, do stop showing off. And if you drink yourself paralytic, don’t think I’m going to look after you!’ ‘I’m driving, so I’m not drinking a drop,’ said Liu Xingchen. His new wife sat there saying nothing at all.
So the three men, Dad, Grandpa and Uncle Liu, lined their glasses up in the middle of the table and poured out the Five Grain baijiu liquor. ‘Half a glass down in one!’ cried Grandpa. ‘Let’s start on half a glass!’ ‘That’s enough for me!’ said Uncle Liu. ‘Enough! You have a bit more, Shengqiang, I’m going easy tonight.’
Dad was fed up. These men were pussy-whipped. ‘Now you listen to me! Drink up! None of you are going home till you’re properly pissed!’ And he filled their glasses until they brimmed over.
Suffice it to say, that evening the men got pissed as newts. The womenfolk sat there, clucking away at their husbands, sons and brothers: ‘Ai-ya! Go easy on the baijiu!’
The first to concede defeat was Grandpa. He only got as far as the second round when Gran signalled to Liu Xingchen to take his glass away, and share the two digits of liquor left in it between Dad and Uncle Liu. Grandpa said nothing, just raised his glass one last time and drained it to the last drop.
After a while, Aunt Coral told Uncle Liu to stop too. ‘Ai-ya! Sis!’ protested Dad, trying to fill Uncle’s glass again. ‘Let the old man have a bit more! New Year only comes once a year! We’re bros, we want to celebrate!’
‘Xue Shengqiang,’ said Gran. ‘You should look after yourself.’
‘I’ve had enough,’ said Uncle Liu. ‘I can’t drink anymore.’
So Dad poured the remaining six shots into his own glass, covered his glass with the palm of his hand and said: ‘Fine! If you’re not drinking it, I will! And don’t any of you try stopping me!’
No one else at the table could do anything about it. ‘If you want to drink, then you go right ahead,’ said Mum. ‘If your mother’s not bothered, why should anyone else be?’
The meal went well on the whole, however, and Dad didn’t get terribly drunk. Once he had finished his glass of baijiu, he tried to persuade Uncle Liu to split a bottle of beer with him. ‘Have a drop of beer, Dad,’ he offered Granddad. But Gran said: ‘Your father can’t drink beer. He has gout.’
It was nearly three in the afternoon when the party broke up. At the restaurant door, Aunt Coral and her family got into Liu Xingchen’s car and set off for Yong’An City. Mum was going to drive Granddad and Gran back home. Dad said he would walk, they were practically on the doorstep. ‘Fine,’ said Gran, ‘I don’t want to have to breathe in your fumes anyway.’
Dad waved them away and swayed off down the road to his home. The street was full of kids letting off firecrackers. He felt chilled to the bone and there was a buzzing in his ears. Suddenly he thought of Zhao and Xingchen’s baby. It’s got to be a boy! There are far too many bossy women in this family!
In August that year, Liu Xingchen and Zhao had a little boy, Diandian. The senior Mr Liu, his grandfather, was delighted and conferred on him the formal name, Liu Shangqiang. Dad was gloomy. Yes, it was one more male in the family, he reflected as he puffed on his cigarette, but Grandpa had passed on by then, so it made no damned difference at all to the numbers.
They did not go to Diandian’s one-month party—Gran was not in the mood for celebration. Then, a couple of months later, Uncle Liu phoned Dad.
‘Shengqiang,’ he whispered. ‘There’s something I need your help with.’
‘Of course, Qukang, what is it?’ Dad said cheerfully. Of all the men in the family, it always came down to him to fix problems.
He wondered what it could be about. His brother-in-law was the son of officials and, after the regulation few years working on a farm, had landed a job in the Provincial Secretariat Complaints Department where he worked for the next few decades. Maybe his cosseted upbringing had addled his brain: it turned out he was calling Dad to ask him to look out for an apartment on the new development area at the edge of Pingle Town ‘for a friend to live in.’
It was absurd. They were men of the world, and Dad did not need to be told that the ‘friend’ had to be a woman.
As Uncle Liu stammered down the phone, Dad didn’t know whether to laugh or have a go at him. Liu Qukang, you dumb bastard! You’ve been lucky to have Sis as a wife all these years, you don’t earn much, but she pays for your nice clothes and a nice car for you. And now you think you’ll take a mistress just like everyone else?
It occurred to him that his brother-in-law had form in this department. Dad sat in the study, stubbing a half-finished cigarette out in his ashtray and thought back to 1996.
It was just before Chinese New Year, and Dad was busy at the factory all evening hosting a dinner for the staff, their clients and local government officials, and giving out gifts. It was all a huge headache. Then, late that night, his phone rang. Where was Mum? Ah, he remembered, they still hadn’t got back to sharing a bedroom again.
He did not recognize the voice at the other end: ‘Mr Xue, your friend Mr Liu is in police detention. Would you stand bail for him?’
Dad hadn’t been able to think, for a moment, who ‘Mr Liu’ was. ‘Son-of-a-bitch! What dumb ass is that?’ he said. ‘Why’s he messing me around in the middle of the night?’
There was a shuffling at the other end of the line and then Dad heard Uncle Liu’s voice. ‘Shengqiang, it’s me, your brother-in-law,’ he said, almost inaudibly. ‘I’m, er, at the South Street Police Station, um, there’s been a bit of trouble, um, me and my bros, I’m sorry to bother you but could you lend me 3,000. I, um, I’ll pay you back tomorrow.’
Dad had put two and two together. Zhong had warned him a few days before: ‘Shengqiang, you better stay away from Fifteen Yuan Street for a bit. The coppers are out to make a bit of money over New Year. I’ve been told by some of my friends in the police that they’ll be doing a sweep of the red-light district!’
Dad had said. ‘We’re living in the 1990s! You don’t get your head chopped off for going to a brothel! I don’t believe any copper in Pingle Town would dare bang me up!’
‘All the same, don’t go there. I mean it,’ Zhong said earnestly.
Dad was pretty pissed off at that. He gave his friend a punch: ‘You’re really out of order!You don’t think of me when it’s anything else, only when they’re going to raid the brothels!’
And now this unholy mess. Dad had to get dressed and drive to the police station in Mum’s car, to get Uncle Liu out. There were two officers on duty. Uncle and his friends were sitting on sofas in the inner office, clutching paper cups of tea which the police had made them. Dad was well known about town, and when he arrived, he was greeted politely, handed over the money and they were released. Dad then spent the rest of the night driving them home to Yong’An City.
On the way, his friends were as subdued as a bunch of capons, but Uncle Liu sat in the passenger seat gabbling away, effusive with thanks, and giving Dad a blow-by-blow account of the evening’s events. They had been on a New Year’s office outing and, on the way back to the city, some of them had got it into their heads that they wanted to go to Pingle Town’s red-light district. Uncle Liu knew all about Fifteen Yuan Street, after all, he’d married into a Pingle Town family. So he was happy to take them along. And they’d landed right in the shit.
‘Shengqiang, please don’t tell your sister,’ Uncle Liu finally stammered.
‘Ai-ya, brother!’ Dad exclaimed, turning the headlights on full beam and looking at the road ahead. ‘Of course I won’t! We’re all men, we understand each other. There’s no need to tell the womenfolk! Don’t worry, it’s not a big deal after all! Just bad luck!’
And that was when Uncle Liu realized that the lad he had watched grow up had turned into a man. He pushed his glasses up his nose and said: ‘Shengqiang, I’m sorry we’ve caused you all this trouble. You certainly know how to look after your family.’
As Dad smoked, he thought back to that night. He had fucking made a rod for his own back. He had been totally taken in by Uncle, and had responded, in all sincerity: ‘Qukang! How many years have we known each other? You don’t need to go all polite on me! Anything you need, you just tell me. And so long as I can do it, I will!’
Dad had given his word, he decided, and when Uncle Liu came to him about the apartment, well, it wasn’t him who was taking a mistress, and there was absolutely no advantage in telling Aunt Coral, and if Qukang hadn’t asked him, he would go and ask someone else so, right, there it was. Better not wash the family dirty linen in public, it was only a girl after all.
So he gritted his teeth and rented a brand-new, furnished, two-bedroom apartment in the new residential area. It was smart and cosy. When Uncle Liu came and got the keys, he told Dad all about his ‘friend’ who, he said, was from out of town and didn’t known anyone here and just needed a place to live for a while, and so on and so forth.
Dad looked at him. Uncle was in his fifties. His hair was dyed jet-black, and he was still a fine figure of a man, with his gold-rimmed glasses and his air of culture. But he talked as much baloney as a bargirl.
It was all Gran’s fault. In 1980, or maybe 1981, Aunt Coral had been going out with a young man at the Grain Bureau. They were getting on really well, but Gran was trying to match her daughter up with Uncle Liu. ‘Mr Liu senior is in the provincial military. They’re a highly-educated and cultured family. If you marry into a city family, it will do you great credit, Coral. You listen to your mother, my girl. I made a bad marriage, and look at the hardships I’ve had to put up with. If you marry a boy from Pingle Town, things will never be any better for you. I’m not going to say any more, but you know very well that it won’t do you any good to stay around Pingle Town any longer. Of course, I’m not forcing you, I’m just advising you. It’s up to you to make up your mind.’ Dad overheard Gran talking and he also overheard Aunt Coral crying all night in her room. He was only fifteen back then, so Aunt Coral must have been twenty-three or twenty-four. But time flew by and now here were Aunt Coral and Uncle Liu, middle-aged and with their first grandchild a few months old. The fact that Uncle Liu was taking on a mistress in her twenties—yes, that was all Gran’s doing!
That was the first time Dad felt the burden of being in charge, and the first time he felt his family was completely dysfunctional. There he was, setting up Jasmine in her apartment. There Uncle Liu was, getting himself a mistress on the quiet. That day, like a proper head of the family, he got out the keys and gave them to Uncle Liu. ‘I’ve paid six months’ rent in advance,’ he told him. ‘Now it’s down to you.’
‘Now it’s down to you’ was something Dad had heard Gran say but he knew it was nonsense. Of course, Aunt Coral had found out about Uncle Liu’s little frolic, Dad never dared ask how. He reckoned Uncle Liu wouldn’t have dared rat on him, so Aunt Coral probably never knew it was her own brother who rented the apartment for her husband.
Dad felt that this was the worst thing he had done to a woman in his whole life.
But, well, what was said was said, and what was done was done. The next day, on the way to the factory, Dad pulled out his phone and, just like that, gave Jasmine another call. The phone rang a dozen times but no one answered. He leaned back against the soft upholstery of the Audi back seat, feeling uneasy. Eventually, he asked Zhu Cheng: ‘Has Jasmine phoned?’
‘Uh?’ Zhu Cheng, glancing at Dad in the rear-view mirror, was evasive.
‘Jasmine,’ repeated Dad. ‘Has she called you?’
‘Oh!’ Zhu Cheng swung the car round the bend. ‘No, she hasn’t.’
‘Let me know if she does?’ Dad instructed him.
‘Sure.’
At the intersection, there was the usual traffic jam outside the Tian Mei Department Store. It didn’t seem to matter whether it was Monday or the weekend, whether it was blowing a gale or raining, there were always pedestrians overflowing onto the road here. But this time Zhu Cheng kept his temper and just sat quietly in the driving seat, drumming on the steering wheel with his right hand. Suddenly, Dad remembered something: ‘Zhu Cheng, how old’s your little one now?’
‘She’s going to be two,’ said Zhu Cheng.
‘Time flies!’ Dad said, looking out of the window, watching the crowds, some familiar faces among them, flocking across the road like ducks. ‘I don’t know how it happens! Your baby’s nearly two years old! It seems like yesterday that you were only twenty-two or twenty-three yourself!’
‘Ai-ya!’ responded Zhu Cheng. ‘Time does fly. I’m past thirty now! I’m an old man!’
‘You’re in your prime,’ Dad laughed. ‘Don’t try and tell me that thirty-something is old! I’m the one who’s old.’
‘Mr Xue, you’re not old!’ protested his driver. ‘In the eyes of the world, you’re still a kid!’ Zhu Cheng finally managed to squeeze the car through a gap in the crowds and drove on towards the bean paste factory.
