Happy Dreams, page 43
“It’s for the rent. Take it!” I insisted.
Eight went with me to Gem Han’s place, but the door was still padlocked. I was frantic. I thought of my nephew, the Briquette King, but he was no different from Eight; he didn’t have any strings to pull. I put that thought out of my head. I knew only one person, just one, who might swing it for us, and that was Mighty. But I rejected him too. If Yichun was around, I would have gritted my teeth and gone looking for him, but she wasn’t, and I really had no desire to see him. He’d already raised my hopes and dashed them once; there was no point in doing that again.
What to do? I couldn’t think of anything, except to go back to the train station tomorrow morning and wait for Wufu’s wife. Eight wanted to go with me so he could say a final good-bye to Wufu at the crematorium, but I wouldn’t let him. I said good-bye to him, loaded Wufu’s belongings onto our bicycle, and pedaled off on my own. Wufu always was the one who pedaled, with me on the back, but now I had just his bedroll behind me. Sit tight, Wufu. I’m pedaling you now!
62.
I reached the city center. It was nighttime, but the streets were brightly lit, and neon illuminations twinkled on all the skyscrapers. In front of the nightclubs, bars, teahouses, and saunas, the streets were jammed with cars. Groups of men and women, arms draped round one another, were singing, laughing, and exchanging jokes. I looked down and pedaled on. I didn’t feel like stopping. But after I passed West Avenue, I changed my mind. Wufu, why don’t I take you for a ride around Xi’an and show you some of the nightlife? And I set off, in no particular direction, down one lane, into another main road, pedaling, pedaling, anywhere that was lit up, wherever the crowds were.
In one street, I saw what I thought was a freestanding light fixture and was cycling over to it, when suddenly a trash picker popped out from one of the lanes, pulling his cart, head down, back bent. I got the fright of my life. It looked just like Wufu! I stopped to look at him, and he looked at me.
“Hey!” I called.
But he scurried off with his cart. It was piled high with trash, and a bundle of something fell off. When I got to the light fixture, I discovered it was the Chain-Bones Bodhisattva Pagoda, festooned with colored lights on each of its eight corners, all the way to the top.
How had I gotten here? Maybe my feet had brought me of their own accord. Or was it Wufu who’d made me come because he was still concerned about me, or was it some telepathic message sent by Yichun? I leaned the bicycle against a tree and hunkered down. I looked at the pagoda. We’d gone to Xianyang for those five thousand yuan, I thought, and Wufu had died there, but he wouldn’t hold it against Yichun. Was he trying to tell her that he wouldn’t be able to help earn the money? If Yichun’s message had brought me here, what should I do next? I lit a cigarette. The wall enclosing the pagoda was overhung by trees and plunged in deep gloom. The tip of my cigarette provided the only light. I stared at it, and the cigarette fell from my fingers.
I found myself taking a cell phone out of my pocket, pressing numbers. A voice answered. “Hello? Who’s there?” It was Yichun! Her voice was not at all clear—perhaps I’d woken her up and she’d crawled out from under the quilt to grab the phone—but it drew me like a magnet. I could pick her out of a crowd of a thousand, of ten thousand. I’d be able to hear her if she sighed, even if it was in the middle of a rainstorm.
“It’s me, Happy Liu,” I said, my voice shaking.
“Happy Liu! Where did you disappear to?”
“I didn’t disappear. I wanted to give you a nice surprise. I went to Xianyang for a laboring job. I wanted to earn five thousand yuan . . .” I stopped. Had I managed to earn any money to give Yichun? Where was the money I’d earned? I broke down in tears.
“Happy! Happy!” Yichun shouted into the phone urgently. There was a crash. She must have gotten out of bed and knocked her tea mug off the bedside table.
“I’m here.”
“What’s up? What’s the matter?”
“You have to save Wufu!”
I told her what had happened in Xianyang, about how Wufu’s body had been taken to the funeral home. At the other end of the line, she was silent. Here I was, telling her my troubles, when I should be helping her, not adding my own problems to hers. Why was I making her suffer? I was a coward; a man ought to shelter a woman from the storms of life, but I was making her hold the umbrella over me!
“Happy! Happy! Calm down! Have you told Mighty?”
“I don’t want to talk to him.”
“Why not? He’s got his fingers in so many pies, you should go talk to him. What have you got against him?”
“Nothing. He has his life, I have mine.”
“You’re wrong, we’re all in the same boat. Get in touch with him!”
I didn’t answer.
“You must! Go to Mighty!”
A white light was shining on me.
I was suddenly wide awake. It really was a white light, a car’s headlights, speeding down the lane, so dazzling I couldn’t see a thing.
Had I been dreaming? Or daydreaming? Was Yichun’s spirit instructing me to contact Mighty? All right then, I would. For Wufu’s sake. It’s not coming from me, Mighty. This is from Yichun and Wufu. I got to my feet and went looking for a public phone, but the stores were all closed. Dawn was breaking; I had to get to the railway station. I could phone from there.
As usual, Station Square was brightly lit, and the sleepers on the steps outside the waiting room were beginning to wake up, open their puffy eyes, and go to the public toilets. There was a long line outside of them, and a man was standing in line for the women’s restroom. When it got to his turn, he bellowed for his missus who was some distance away combing her hair. She came running over, saying, “Paper, paper, I need toilet paper!” She had long legs, just like Yichun.
In the phone booth, I dialed Mighty’s number. It rang, but no one answered. I was relieved, then felt guilty. I tried again.
This time Mighty answered. “Who is it?”
“Happy Liu. Meng Yichun told me to call you.”
“Is she out?”
“No.”
“Did you visit her? Did you give her my regards?”
I was speechless.
“Happy? You there? Say something.”
“It’s you I want to see. Can you come?”
“Me? Where are you?”
I told him.
“Stay where you are. I’ll be there,” he said.
But he didn’t come. An hour later, the first train from Shangzhou arrived early, and I saw Wufu’s wife and her younger brother, hurrying out of the station and peering around them. I called to them. Her hair had gone completely white, even though it had been jet-black when we’d left Freshwind. I was astonished. I handed over Wufu’s bundle, his bag, and the eight hundred yuan from the site manager at Xianyang, and told her I had another four hundred and fifty that Wufu had saved. I lied. I told her it was in the bank and I’d get it out for her as soon as I could. She licked her finger and counted the bills one by one, then got her brother to count again. He asked me to tell them what had happened. They didn’t seem to blame me, though he did say, “It would have been better to let us know right away.”
I flushed. Then we went to the police station, and none of us said anything more. I’d thought about letting them go in alone, while I waited for Mighty outside, but I said nothing. The police made Wufu’s wife sign lots of documents, using her fingerprint. When I asked if they could get Wufu’s corpse sent back to Freshwind, the police said no; the rules said corpses couldn’t be taken out of the city. Besides, Wufu was already at the funeral home. Outside the police station, Wufu’s wife suddenly went limp and couldn’t walk any farther.
“Will they burn him just like that?” she asked me. “He was right as rain when he left with you, and you’re fine, and he’s going to turn into ashes.”
What could I say? Her brother and I each took her by an arm, but she sagged to the ground like a bag of rice, and I practically had to put my arms right around her from behind to pull her upright.
“Didn’t he say anything?” she asked.
“No, it was all so sudden.”
“The last thing he said to me was, ‘I’m going to Xi’an. Give me forty yuan.’ He . . .”
Tears ran down her brother’s cheeks, and he cried, “Sis! Sis!”
Suddenly, she began to wail, sitting on the ground and pounding her legs with her fists. “You left together. You said you’d bring him home safe and sound. So where is he? Where? Am I going back with a box of ashes?”
My God, if I could have taken out my heart to show her how much I cared, I would have. Where was Lively Shi? Why wasn’t he here to back me up? Wufu, Wufu, where’s your spirit? I had no energy left to try and defend myself, so I didn’t. I said, “I let him down. I let you down. I’m ashamed of myself. I’m a disgrace!” and I slapped myself hard on the face.
Finally, she stopped crying. I found them a taxi and told them to go to the funeral home to say their last good-byes to Wufu before he was cremated. I said I’d go to the depot and sell his cart and get the four hundred and fifty out of the bank, then meet them at the funeral home. When I’d seen them off and gotten back to the phone booth in Station Square, Mighty was waiting for me.
There was no point in asking him to try to stop Wufu’s cremation. I simply told him I’d been to visit Yichun at the Rehabilitation Center, and that she was doing all right and might get an early release.
“That’s excellent news. Did Ms. Meng ask you to tell me?”
I grunted.
“What’s up? Why’s your face so dark?”
“It’s always been dark.”
“Last time I saw you, I offered you a job in my company. Why didn’t you do that instead of trash picking?”
“Wait till Meng Yichun’s released. Let’s talk about it after that.”
“Fine, bring that Wufu with you. It’s steady work in a company. Providing it doesn’t go bankrupt, you can both stay in the city permanently!”
“Thank you,” I said.
Whether or not I went to work for Mighty, I’d stay in the city, forever consumed with regret that Wufu had died and could no longer keep me company. I looked up at the clear sky, then around me at the endless expanse of Station Square, and at the jungle of skyscrapers beyond. Then a new thought occurred to me: Wufu would be staying here too. Not Lively, not Eight, not even Almond and Goolies. Only Wufu, forever an unquiet ghost, hovering above the city streets.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
HAPPY AND ME
One afternoon three years ago, I was at home reading Journey to the West and thinking that the monk Xuanzang and his three disciples were really four different aspects of the same person, when suddenly there was a loud rapping at the door. These days, when everyone has telephones, it is rare for a visitor to turn up unannounced. I wondered who it was. I was not expecting anyone. I deliberately waited awhile before opening the door, to indicate my displeasure at this uninvited guest. Knock, knock, knock, the noise came again, getting louder with each rap. Finally, there was a thud as someone kicked the door.
Indignant, I flung the door open. On the doorstep stood Liu Shuzhen.
“Ai-ya! I thought you weren’t home!” he said.
“It’s you!” I exclaimed. “When did you get to town?”
“I’m a city-liver now!” He never did speak properly.
I smiled and told him to come in and sit down. “Shuzhen, you do have a way with words!”
“Don’t call me Liu Shuzhen. I’ve changed my name to Liu Gaoxing, Happy Liu! Call me Happy Liu.”
And that was my first meeting with “Happy Liu,” the city dweller.
Anyone who has read my novel Qinqiang1 might remember that the character Shuzheng is modeled on Liu Shuzhen. He and I grew up together. When we were little, I wanted nothing to do with him—his hair was a bit crinkly and his nose was always running with yellow snot—but I idolized his da. Where I grew up, we always called our fathers Da. Shuzhen’s da was not one of the Jia family, so to me, he was “Uncle,” and since you had to add a name after “Uncle,” he was Uncle Wulin. Uncle Wulin was illiterate, but he was a wonderful talker. He could recite operas by heart, and he told us stories from The Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Shuzhen’s da was a tall man, at five foot eleven. He was particularly eloquent when he got angry with his wife: he would sit cross-legged on his mat, and out would come a stream of marvelous curses, a sort of rapid-fire comic monologue. He never lost his cool, but he could be extremely sarcastic. During the Cultural Revolution, our junior secondary school closed down, and Shuzhen and I worked on the commune farm together. Afterward, he went into the army, and I went to college. Time passed, and I used to come home to see my parents at New Year and other festivals. By then, Shuzhen was working in the township government offices as a cook, though he soon got fired for poor hygiene and taking leftovers home to feed his family’s pigs. More time passed. I wrote my books; Shuzhen worked as a plasterer, made “hanging noodles,” ground up soybeans for bean curd, and had a fried-breadstick stand at country markets. He turned his hand to just about everything, but never with any success. He eked out a wretched existence and was the butt of jokes in the village. But as soon as I arrived, he always got wind of it, and rushed over to see me regardless of the hour, day or night. We talked and laughed at length, never feeling sleepy or tired, until my mother made a meal for us, and we ate, and he smoked one cigarette, with another stuck behind his ear, and finally left.
I enjoyed talking to him. He had so much to tell me.
One summer when I was back visiting, all my other childhood friends dropped by, but there was no sign of him. Where was Shuzhen? I asked. The others said he might be over in the fields on the river’s west bank, transplanting rice seedlings. This was long after the wheat harvest, and the new seedlings were into their second round of irrigation, so what was Shuzhen doing still transplanting them? I asked.
“His kids are little, so he’s the only one working the land. But it doesn’t matter how many hours he puts in, he’ll never get ahead!”
At nightfall, I crossed over to the west bank to see him. He was working a narrow strip of land, bent over transplanting long rows of seedlings, a wraithlike figure in the moonlight. He had a radio perched on the bank, and he was listening to the folksinger Song Zuying. I shouted his name, and he splashed over to me, with excited shouts. “Let’s go back to my house!”
“You carry on,” I told him.
But he said, “I’m already behind. Getting more behind won’t make any difference!”
He had recently built himself a house at the edge of a stream, leaving no room in front. New Year’s couplets were still pasted on either side of the entrance gate. One read, “The mouth serves not just to eat and drink but also to smile” and the other, “Close your eyes and the darkness will make you sleep sweetly.”
“Did you come up with those yourself?” I asked.
“I did, but they don’t match.” With his finger, he scraped between his teeth, then smoothed back the corner of the left-hand couplet. “I told the whole village, take the tiles off my roof, but if anyone takes my couplets, I’ll break their legs!”
Once we’d reached his yard, he shouted to his wife, “Boil some water! City folk are very particular. They won’t drink it unboiled, so make sure it comes to a rolling boil.” When she brought in the pot of water, he grabbed a handful of sugar to put in the water. “Fry some eggs for us,” he told his wife.
She looked startled. “But we don’t have any hens; there aren’t any eggs!”
“No eggs?”
“It’s much too late in the evening to be eating eggs!” I hastily added.
He cackled with laughter. “Useless woman! If you haven’t got any eggs, why don’t you go borrow some and make yourself scarce, instead of standing there saying, ‘We don’t have any eggs’!”
That made me laugh too.
“Forget the eggs. We have to give Pingwa something to keep him happy! Get our money chest in here!”
His wife was still not playing along. “Money chest?” she queried.
“Brainless woman! What’s our sow if not a money chest?”
So the sow, already penned for the night, was let out. She was driven into the room, belly trailing on the ground, and Shuzhen scratched her hind legs. The sow settled herself comfortably on the ground, all four legs splayed. And a string of twelve chubby little piglets came climbing over the doorstep, one after another.
“Amazing,” he said. “Each piglet is worth fifty-eight yuan, fifty-eight! Times twelve, how much does that make?”
We talked late into the evening, and Shuzhen never made it back to the fields to finish his transplanting. I asked about the village. Things were not good, he said. There was less and less land. The road had been upgraded to a grade one highway, and that ate up land. The railroad was built; more land went. Now they were building an expressway, which would also need land. The villagers now had only two-tenths of a mu2 per capita. It was all very well to have these new roads and railroads, but where were the villagers supposed to plant their crops? The scientists had invented everything else, so why couldn’t they invent a way of growing crops without land? How many girls and boys had I seen in the village, he asked. None? That was because there weren’t any. They’d all left to find factory work. In the old days, your sons went to be cannon fodder for Chiang Kai-Shek, and your daughters were snatched by the local governors. Nowadays, you had kids for the city to take!
“Fucking A went and pulled down his two-room house and sold the rafters over his wife’s head, and with his wife so sick too! Was it her or the money he was after?
“B finally gave up his bachelor life and got married, and the woman came with three kids. Her previous husband had fallen out of a tree and ended up paralyzed. She married B on the condition he support her ex-husband3, and so without an ounce of effort, B got himself three ready-made children!”
Then Shuzhen asked me if I knew a doctor who could treat mental illness.
