Tales of Accidental Genius (10 page)

The smell of onions reminded Mr. Yi of his father's clothes

when he came in from the fields. When the police arrived,

the old woman explained what happened and what she had said

about family and ancestors—how she had used
her cane to restore harmony.

The police looked at the mangled tricycle,
couldn't believe Weng was not injured.

Volunteers carried the twisted frame to the sidewalk as Mr. Yi

noticed a cabbage-shaped bulge of metal welded to the tubing.

“What's that?” he said, pointing.

The volunteers looked too.

“Golden Helper II,” Weng said.

“But what is it?”

“It's something that makes it easy to go a long way.”

Mr. Yi examined the mechanism more closely.
“But what does it do?”

Everyone on the street was now fascinated
with Golden Helper II.

“It helps with my family business . . .” Weng said.

“. . . in a golden way.”

Mr. Yi thought he was being funny.

“Where's Golden Helper I?”

“Dead,” Weng said.

“Dead? How?”

“Passed away in bed one night.”

The crowd didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

Mr. Yi shook his head. “I'm sorry, but I don't understand you.”

“Golden Helper II was named after my mother.”

“Your mother's name was Golden Helper I?”

Mr. Yi bent down and touched the mechanism with his hand.
“It's still hot! How does it work? A dynamo? A current through
motion? And look! Your tricycle has three chains.”

“It was my father's idea,” Weng said. “He got it one night

after my mother found a tomato in my bed.”

Then the policemen got impatient,
thought Weng was a lunatic,

wanted to know where he lived. Traffic was backed up for miles,

angry voices crackled from their walkie-talkies.

“Drive this man home!” They barked at Mr. Yi.

But Weng refused to leave without
his vegetables and Golden Helper II.

Could he put them on the backseat of Mr. Yi's big car?

Was there some rope to tie the frame of his tricycle to the roof
of the Rolls-Royce?

In the end, Mr. Yi agreed to buy
all the vegetables for a good price,

and told the crowd of people watching,
Please take free onions and cabbages
.

At first they were shy, but after one person
grabbed a bundle, the pile disappeared.

Mr. Yi also pleaded with Fun Weng to let one of his men deliver
the broken tricycle frame to his door as soon as they could get a
truck through the traffic.

The crowd watched as the vegetable seller
was driven away in Mr. Yi's fancy car.

What good luck
, they all said.

“Is this a Rolls-Royce?” Weng asked, pushing buttons.

“Don't touch, Mr. Fun, please.”

“My father loved cars,” said Weng. “He was blind

but would have put his hands on everything—
taken things apart even.”

Although Mr. Yi was a solitary person who rarely enjoyed the
company of other people, there was something about the
vegetable seller he liked, and surprised himself by going into
detail about his humble roots in Guanshan village (Hunan
Province), where he was raised on a pig farm.

“My father was
just
like yours,” Mr. Yi insisted.
“Always inventing things. . . .”

“Yes,” Weng said. “Mine was always doing something.”

“Mine too,” Mr. Yi said, “Once he even built
a ten-foot-high platform

above the river that flowed near our farm.
Every morning he would launch

pigs off the highest plank into the water
because he thought it boosted appetite.”

“Whose appetite?” Weng asked.

“The pigs' of course, Mr. Fun.”

Mr. Yi's car inched through the hutong district,

past stands of fruit, small children playing,
people squatting to eat.

Even though Mr. Yi was only forty-nine,
his father was also dead.

Heart attack. Chopsticks on the ground,
and Mr Yi, with all his money,

helpless as a pauper.

Weng thought of both their fathers sitting somewhere together

like the plastic wise men used to decorate bonsai trees.

Weng told Mr. Yi to stop when they were outside his home.

“I'm sorry about the accident, Fun Weng,
but glad you're not hurt.

I'll provide you with a brand-new tricycle within a few days.”

“I don't want another,” Weng said firmly. “The Shanghai
Forever tricycle was my father's and
must
be returned.”

“I'll do my best,” Mr. Yi said. “Truly I will.”

The next few days were torture,
for Golden Helper II did not come home.

Weng's knee was also hurt. It swelled up and he couldn't walk.

Sitting alone in the kitchen, Weng ate his dinner from cans.

He had also fallen into the habit of checking
his cell phone for text messages,

amazed at how nothing can also bring unhappiness.

Weng remembered the day he bought it
and first showed it to Cherry in the park.

“I got it for a good price,” he had said, flipping it open and shut.

“And it's only two years old.”

After ten days, Fun Weng stared at himself
in the bathroom mirror.

He had lost Cherry and Golden Helper II.

But at least his knee was better.

His neighbor Hui, had an old Pigeon bicycle
in his bedroom with plastic over it.

Weng watched him put on new tires,
then gulp oil across the chain.

“It hasn't been ridden since Mao died,” Hui told him.

“But we all have to work, Fun Weng.”

The next day Weng transported what produce he could

in large bundles strapped to the frame.

But it was less than half his usual cargo.

Without Golden Helper II, Weng got a taste of what other
cyclists had been going through all these years.

It made him sad to think what his mother
would have said about all his misfortune.

Once, on the old spring bed,

In the middle of the night,

he sat up and said her name.

Over time
, he thought,
a person can get used to anything
.

Almost two weeks after the accident,

there was a knock at his door.

The driver had been trying to find Weng's address all morning.

A few of the neighbors came out to watch as an electric tricycle

was lowered off a flatbed truck.

The driver asked Weng to sign some papers.

“It is our best model, Mr. Fun—even before Mr. Yi

called in the customization.”

“But where is Golden Helper II?” Weng asked.

“Where is my old tricycle?”

“What do you want something old for?” the driver said, lighting
a Baisha cigarette. “This has a lightweight high-side bed,
built-in electric lights, heated seat, heated handgrips, air-horn,
radio, CD player, DVD player, low-tire-pressure warning
system, GPS, and custom Chanel handlebar gloves.”

A sticker on the frame in writing Weng couldn't read said:

                             Racing Monument Paris

                             Tour de Farce

But in the days that followed, Weng could not
fully enjoy his new machine.

He went back to where the accident occurred.

Talked to the man in the magazine kiosk,
but learned nothing new.

Contrary to his promise, Mr. Yi had ordered the wreckage of

Fun Weng's tricycle be taken to his apartment

in the central business district of the city,

where he spent several days examining Golden Helper II

in his English pajamas and blue velvet slippers.
It was impossible to dismantle without destroying—
and so Mr. Yi just stared at it, concluding that it was not a
complicated mechanism,

but simply one that hadn't been thought of.

Each evening, Mr. Yi drank single malt

and looked at the broken tricycle in his front room,

marveling at how so basic a principle

could have escaped the engineering minds of history.

When Mr. Yi's friends came over for dinner one night,

they sat admiring the mangled tricycle too.

His business partner's wife liked it so much,

she demanded the name of the gallery.

“I want one for the third guest room,” she said.

“Chinese art is so real!”

When the fruit came, Mr Yi told his business partner

that the metal egg mechanism known as Golden Helper II

could potentially be a candidate for mass production.

He explained what he thought it did,

and how it might take a team of skilled engineers

weeks—even months—to reproduce it exactly.

The business partner looked worried,

didn't know where Mr. Yi found it, was afraid to ask.

Was that blood on the frame?

Or sriracha?

That night Mr. Yi was trying to sleep

when a voice woke him.

At first he thought he was dreaming, but then he heard it again.

He sat up in the darkness and blinked a few times,

then noticed a dark figure at the bottom of his bed.

“How did you get in? What do you want?!”

The figure just laughed.

“Please tell me what you want! Take anything!”

“Calm down,” the figure said. “I'm not a thief.”

Mr. Yi could tell from the voice that it was a woman

and he wondered if one of his staff hadn't let her in

before going home for the night.

“If you are not a thief, then what are you?”

“I'm a ghost,” the figure said coming toward him.

Mr. Yi put his head under the covers.

“I don't know which is worse!”

“Well,” said the ghost, “that all depends.”

“Depends?” said Mr. Yi. “On what?”

“On whether you plan to cheat my son, Fun Weng.”

“No.
No!
” Mr. Yi protested. “I'm an honest man—let me
explain, Mrs. Fun,
please
, I'm actually trying to
help
your son.”

“That may be how you feel, Mr. Yi—but there was a time when
you would not have kidnapped a poor man's tricycle

because you saw opportunity for yourself.”

Mr. Yi said nothing.

“It's not how your parents taught you in Guanshan village.”

“Only my mother is alive now,” Mr. Yi said.

“But she does not work anymore.”

“Why is that, Mr. Yi?”

“Because I send her money.”

“And do you know what she does with the money?”

Mr. Yi thought for a moment. “Buys luxury goods for herself?
Gets facials?”

The ghost of Mrs. Fun smiled.

“She puts it in the bank, every yuan.”

Mr. Yi was surprised.

“In case you ever go broke, Mr. Yi—

she can save the day. It's every mother's fantasy.”

Mr. Yi was astonished. “But I want her to show off,
have banquets, enjoy a closet of Hermès and Burberry.

Drive any car she wants, or be driven. . . .”

The late Mrs. Fun stared curiously

at the sad figure of the businessman.

“There is a generosity in you,” Mrs. Fun said, “but it's
misguided because you're so unhappy with yourself.”

Mr. Yi laughed haughtily. “How could I possibly be unhappy?

Look around, Mrs. Fun, look around. . . .”

A few days later, Mr. Yi typed Fun Weng's address

into his GPS system,

but the car didn't seem to understand

anything behind Wanfujing Road.

By noon, Mr. Yi still hadn't found the right hutong district,

and so ducked into a small restaurant called Han Palace.

The owner was watching an NBA game,

but when he saw the Rolls-Royce pull up,

went to get his best
baijiu
and two glasses.

After lunch, Fang (owner of Han Palace) told Mr. Yi that Fun
Weng was a regular, and gave directions to his house.

When Mr. Yi got there, Weng brought him into the kitchen,

then seated him at the kitchen table in the worst chair.

There was dust on the television screen,

and Mr. Yi had to resist the urge to get up

and wipe it with his handkerchief.

Then Weng gave him some tea.

“I had a big lunch with your friend at Han Palace,

and this will break up the grease.”

There were photos around the room

of Mr. and Mrs. Fun with their son.

Mr. Yi was drawn to one of them in matching hats.

“Nice picture, that one.”

But Weng couldn't wait any longer. “Mr. Yi,” he said.

“Where is Golden Helper II?”

“Your days of worrying are over,” the businessman said with a
chuckle. “You're going to be one of the richest people in China,
thanks to your father's invention.”

Then he leaned in to examine a photograph of Mrs. Fun more
closely. “My only request is that we name it after the honorable
late Mrs. Fun, and drop the II,” Mr. Yi said, turning to Weng.
“At least for marketing purposes.”

Within six months of the accident,

two million Golden Helpers were in use

and the original mechanism had been returned to Fun Weng

in a temperature-controlled glass case,

that was alarmed and bulletproof, with a platinum plaque

that read in diamond script:

GOLDEN HELPER II

(The Original I)

The world was stunned by this miraculous device from China.

International papers hailed Golden Helper

as the first major blow to global warming.