Pow! (49 page)

‘It's called an enlargement,’ he explained patiently. ‘If you like, I could make a picture of you as big as a camel.’

‘But I don't have a picture.’

He raised his camera, pointed it at my face, and
—click.
‘Now you do. You'll have an enlargement in a couple of days, Director Luo.’

Jiaojiao ran up.

‘I want one too,’ she bawled.

He aimed his camera at her.
Click.

‘Got it.’

‘I want one of the two of us,’ she said.

He aimed his camera.
Click.
‘Got it.’

This made me so happy I wanted to keep chatting with him, but he was off taking more pictures. A man walked in through Lao Lan's open front door, wearing a wrinkled grey suit, a white shirt with a filthy collar, and a pink bolo tie made of fake pearls. One trouser leg was rolled up, revealing a purple sock and an orange, mud-coated leather shoe. We called him ‘Big Four’—big mouth, big eyes, big nose and big teeth. Actually, his ears were big enough for him to have been called ‘Big Five’. On his belt he wore a beeper, something we called an electric cricket at the time. Lao Lan was one of the few people within a hundred square li who owned a cellphone—the size of a brick, it was carried by Huang Biao and, although seldom used, it was quite a status symbol. While not in the same category as a cellphone, a beeper conferred status too. Big Four, the township head's brother-in-law, was also the best-known contractor of construction labour in the area. He won contracts for virtually every township project, whether a public road or a public toilet. Given to swaggering round most people, he didn't dare try that with Lao Lan or with Mother. Tucking his briefcase under his arm, he went up to my mother, nodded and bowed.

‘Director Yang…’

My mother had been promoted to serve as Huachang Corporation's office manager and assistant to the general manager, as well as chief accountant for United Meatpacking. She had on a full-length black dress with a white paper flower pinned to the breast and a pearl necklace. Shunning make-up, she wore a solemn expression and a piercing glare, like the sharp edges of a Chinese written character, like a sober eulogy, like a stately pine tree.

‘What are you doing here?’ Mother demanded. ‘Why aren't you out supervising the tomb construction?’

‘I've got gravediggers there now.’

‘You should be supervising them.’

‘I have been,’ Big Four said. ‘I wouldn't dare be careless on a job for Boss Lan. But…’

‘But what?’

He took out a notepad from his pocket: ‘Director, the gravediggers are almost finished and next comes the coffin chamber. For that we'll need three tonnes of lime, five thousand bricks, two tonnes of cement, five of sand, two cubic metres of lumber, and other odds and ends…can you advance some money for that?’

‘Don't you think you've bled us enough?’ Mother was not happy. ‘Building a tomb can't cost that much, yet you come asking for money. Use your own and get reimbursed when the job is finished.’

‘Where am I supposed to get the money?’ Big Four whined. ‘I get paid for the project in my left hand and then pass it on to the workers with my right. I'm a middleman, with nothing left over for me. Without some money now, we're looking at work delays.’

‘I can't believe I'm even talking to you,’ Mother said as she headed over to the eastern wing, with Big Four hard on her heels.

Father was sitting stony-faced behind a table on which lay a rice-paper accounts book. A brass ink box with a writing brush on top of it sat to the side. He accepted memorial gifts from a steady stream of people—cash or packets of yellow worship paper, a hundred sheets for some, two hundred for others—and entered them into his account book, while the Inspection Station's assistant head, Xiao Han, manning a squat table behind him,
stamped the paper with the mark of an ancient copper coin, thus turning the paper into spirit money that could then be burnt for the deceased. Some people brought packets of actual spirit money issued by the ‘Bank of the Underworld’ and displaying the imagined likeness of King Yama, in denominations no smaller than a hundred million RMB. Picking up a billion-yuan note, Xiao Han said with a sigh: ‘Won't bills this big cause inflation down there?’

An old man named Ma Kui, who'd brought a hundred RMB in cash and two packets of worship paper, shook his head. ‘That stuff's almost useless. Only imprinted worship paper counts as money in the underworld.’

‘How do you know that?’ asked Xiao Han. ‘Have you been down there to check it out?’

‘My wife came to me in a dream and said that's considered fake money down there.’ He kicked piles of it on the floor. ‘You need to tell Lao Lan to throw it away. If she takes fake money with her, she'll be arrested as a counterfeiter.’

‘There are police down there?’ Xiao Han asked.

‘Of course there are. They've got everything we've got up here,’ Ma Kui replied confidently.

‘We've got a United Meatpacking Plant and we've got you—how about those?’

‘Don't get smart with me, young fellow. Go see for yourself if you don't believe me.’

‘Going down is the easy part. How do I get back? You'd like to see me dead, you old fart!’

Mother walked in and nodded to Ma Kui. ‘Where are you going, Inspector Han? Are you looking for a promotion?’ Mother picked up the phone before he could respond and dialled a number. ‘Is this the Finance Department? Xiao Qi, This is Yang Yuzhen. Big Four's on his way to see you. Give him five thousand RMB, and don't forget to get a receipt with his thumbprint.’

‘Make it ten thousand, Director Yang,’ Big Four said brazenly. ‘Five won't do it.’

‘Don't get greedy, Big Four,’ Mother said sharply.

‘That's not it.’ He took out his notebook. ‘Five thousand isn't nearly enough. See here. Three thousand for bricks, two thousand for lime, five thousand for lumber…’

‘Five thousand, and that's it,’ Mother cut him off.

Big Four sat down in the doorway. ‘In that case, we'll have to stop work…’

‘King Yama would tremble if he ran into the likes of you,’ Mother said as she picked up the phone again. ‘Give him eight thousand,’ she said.

‘You're an iron abacus, Director Yang. Make it an even number. After all, it's not your money.’

‘I can't authorize ten thousand precisely because it isn't my money.’

‘Lao Lan knew what he was doing when he hired you.’

‘Get out!’ Mother spat at him. ‘Just the sight of you gives me a headache!’

Big Four stood up and bowed to Mother. ‘There's no one better than Director Yang, not my mother and not my father.’

‘You can substitute the word “money” for Director Yang! You're an expert at cutting corners on roads and buildings. If you do that on this tomb, Big Four, you'll live to regret it.’

‘Don't give it another thought, Director,’ Big Four said snidely. ‘I'll spend less and work harder, even if the money runs out. I'll build you a tomb that's impervious to an atom bomb.’

‘You can't find ivory in a dog's mouth.’ Mother said, losing her temper. ‘You don't have the money in hand yet,’ she added as she reached for the phone. ‘Let's see which is faster, your legs or my fingers on the dial.’

‘Damn this stinking mouth of mine!’ Big Four said as he made a show of slapping himself. ‘Director Yang, Elder Sister Lan, oh, no, I mean Elder Sister Luo, my dear Elder Sister. I was just trying to soft-soap you. I'm too coarse to say the right thing…’

‘Get out!’ Mother grabbed a handful of spirit money and threw it at him.

The paper fluttered in the air.

Big Four made a face at the others in the room, turned and scooted for the doorway, where, in his rush, he collided with the wife of Huang Biao. ‘You're not fighting to wear the parental mourning cap, are you, Big Four?’
she blurted out, her face red with anger. ‘Don't worry, there's one waiting for you.’

‘I'm sorry, Elder Sister Lan, no, I mean Elder Sister Huang. I can't control this mouth of mine,’ he said, rubbing his head. Then he stuck his face up next to her and said softly, ‘I haven't bruised your breasts, have I?’

‘You can go to hell, Big Four!’ she said as she kicked him in the shin and fanned the air in front of her face. ‘Have you been eating shit—is that why you stink so bad?’

‘For someone like me,’ Big Four replied, feigning humility, ‘the only shit I could find would turn out to be cold.’

She tried to kick him again, but he moved away in time and slunk out through the doorway.

Everyone in the room was still speechless at Big Four's antics and could now only stare blankly at the new arrival. She was wearing a short blue cotton jacket with a floral pattern, a high collar and buttons down the side over cotton warm-ups that scraped the floor. Black embroidered shoes popped in and out of view. Though she had the look of a rich family's nanny, there was also a bit of the modern schoolgirl about her. She wore her oiled hair in a loose bun; dark eyebrows rested atop a pair of limpid eyes over a button nose and fleshy lips. A dimple formed in her left cheek when she smiled. Her breasts jiggled like a couple of little rabbits. I've spoken of her before—she worked for Lao Lan, taking care of his wife and daughter. After I signed on as a workshop director at United, I stopped taking my meals there, so it had been quite a while since I'd seen her, and my impression this time was that she'd somehow become a loose woman. Why? Because just looking at her made my pecker stand up, no matter how hard I wished it back down. To be honest, loose women have always disgusted me, but that had no effect on my desire to keep looking at her, which in turn led to feelings of guilt. I should have looked away. But she was like a magnet for my eyeballs; and when she saw me staring at her she flashed me a smile that reeked of sex.

‘Director Yang,’ she said, ‘Boss Lan is asking for you.’

Mother glanced at Father with the strangest expression.

Father kept his head down and continued making entries in the book.

So Mother followed the shifting buttocks of Huang Biao's wife out the door. Damn her, she made my face itch. She ought to be shot.

Xiao Han, whose eyes had been glued on those buttocks, said emotionally: ‘A man of substance can't find a decent mate, a warty toad winds up with a flower of a woman.’

‘Huang Biao is just a front man,’ said Ma Kui, who was chain-smoking free cigarettes. ‘Who knows who's the real husband!’

‘Who are you talking about?’ Jiaojiao asked.

Father banged his writing brush on the table, spilling ink in the box.

‘What's wrong, Dieh?’ Jiaojiao said.

‘Shut up!’ he barked.

‘Luo Tong,’ Ma Kui said with a shake of his head, ‘why erupt like that?’

‘Fuck off,’ Xiao Han retorted. ‘Do you plan to smoke those free cigarettes till you've got your hundred-RMB's worth?’

Ma Kui plucked two more cigarettes out of the tin, lit one with the smouldering butt of another and tucked the other behind his ear. Then he stood up and walked to the door. ‘If you want to know,’ he said on his way out, ‘Boss Lan and I are related, since his third uncle's daughter-in-law is the niece of my son-in-law's third uncle.’

‘Xiaotong,’ Father said, ‘go home, and take Jiaojiao with you. I don't want you getting mixed up in all this.’

‘No,’ Jiaojiao said. ‘It's too much fun here.’

‘I said take her home, Xiaotong!’ he insisted.

The look on his face, the sternest I'd seen since his return, scared me enough to make me grab my sister's hand and take her home. But she dug in her heels and grumbled, her body swaying as she resisted my efforts. Father was about to slap her when Mother walked in. He dropped his hand.

‘Lao Luo,’ Mother said gravely, ‘Boss Lan wants us to let Xiaotong take the role of the dutiful son. He can join Tiangua to keep a vigil at the bier and smash the clay pot used to burn the spirit money.’

A look of desolation spread across Father's face. He lit a cigarette and puffed on it so intensely that a smoky cloud blurred his features and increased the look of desolation. ‘Did you agree?’ he said at last.

‘I don't see any problem,’ Mother said, slightly embarrassed. ‘Huang Biao's wife says that when he and Jiaojiao were taking their meals there, her mistress said she'd like him as a surrogate son. Lao Lan says that having a son had been her lifelong wish and this would fulfil that wish.’ Mother looked my way. ‘Xiaotong, do you know if that's something Aunty said?’

‘I'm not sure…’

‘How about you, Jiaojiao? Did Aunty ever say she'd like your brother to be her surrogate son?’

‘Yes, she did,’ Jiaojiao confirmed.

Father reached over and rapped Jiaojiao on the head. ‘You can't stop sticking your nose into things! You've been spoilt rotten.’

Jiaojiao burst into tears, and those tears made up my mind.

‘Yes, she did say that, and I told her I'd be happy to. And not just Aunty but Uncle Lan said the same thing, in the presence of Bureau Chief Qin, no less.’