A Yi: A Perfect Crime

Iwent to buy glasses today. I reached for a pair of sunglasses first, but the more you try to disguise yourself, the more you stick out, so I chose a pair of normal ones instead. Much better for diverting people’s attention. They’d think I was short-sighted, and short-sighted people seem trustworthy.

I also bought some duct tape, which I wrapped around my hand. It was sticky stuff. It took ages for me to tear it off and get my hand clean again.

The day’s plans didn’t originally include buying clothes, but somehow I found myself entering a shop, having taken pity on the owner. She was in her thirties, short, with a face grey like dried orange peel. She’d just been humiliated by a handsome customer. Everyone likes beautiful things, why shouldn’t she want her own boutique? Well, that’s what I thought, anyway. But I regretted it as soon as she looked up. Her eyes were submissive, unbearably so, and they trailed after me wherever I went. Just as I was about to leave she addressed me in a funny voice: ‘Uncle, I do a good price. Elsewhere it might cost over a thousand. I sell it for a few hundred. Exactly the same stuff. I’ve got everything you could want.’ She pulled out a T-shirt and continued. ‘Try this on. If you don’t, how’ll you know what it looks like? Try it first, we can talk money afterwards.’

There was an edge to her voice. I headed for the mirror and held it up, but I couldn’t see any noticeable difference to how I normally looked.

‘It really suits you,’ she said as I tossed it aside. ‘What are you after, then?’

‘You don’t have what I’m after.’

I made for the door.

‘Try me.’

‘I can’t explain.’

I walked out and she followed like a disappointed dog. Just at that moment, a suit walked past decked out in the latest fashions from the West, a pair of shiny leather shoes and a briefcase under his arm.

‘Do you have something like that?’ I said.

‘Yes, yes,’ she breathed.

‘Including the shoes and the briefcase?’

‘The whole outfit.’

I figured if I looked professional I’d be trusted. I wouldn’t get caught.

She went in and riffled around in a cardboard box, watching me all the while, scared that I might leave again. It was all there. She wasn’t lying. Only the briefcase was brown. I carried the items into the changing room, tried them on and emerged to check how I looked in the mirror. I spotted some gel on the table.

‘Can I borrow a bit?’

‘Of course. Go ahead.’

I squeezed a blob into my hand and spread it through my hair so that it shone.

‘How old do I look now?’

‘Twenty.’

‘Tell me the truth.’

‘Twenty-six, twenty-seven.’

She couldn’t decide if I was satisfied with her answer and looked on anxiously as I headed back to the changing room. The truth was I was still in school. I’d be lucky to be taken for twenty-six.

I came out again and dumped the clothes to one side. I stared at her for about five seconds and then asked, ‘How much?’

She jumped up as if I’d just thrown her a life jacket and started tapping on her calculator.

‘I’ll give you the best discount. Usually it’d be six hundred for the lot, but for you I’ll do five eighty.’

‘Too much.’

‘The best I can do is knock off another twenty, otherwise I won’t make any profit.’

‘Still too much. I can’t afford that.’

‘Then you name a price.’

I remembered Ma’s instructions: always cut the price in half. But I was even tougher.

‘Two hundred.’

‘Too little.’

‘Two hundred.’

‘Uncle, be reasonable. They’re yours for four hundred.’

‘I’ve only got two hundred.’

‘If I sold all of that for two hundred I wouldn’t have a business left. If you only want to buy one item, we can talk.’

I started to leave. Behind me, nothing but silence. It was a strange feeling, like a nasty break-up after which no one is happy. The further I walked the more I believed her, but by then I was too embarrassed to look back. Just as I was about to turn the corner, just as I was certain I’d lost my chance, I heard her call: ‘Wait, wait! OK, for you two hundred.’

I saw her waving at me. I waved back at her, smiled sardonically and then walked away.

I got what I wanted. I only had ten yuan on me anyway.

At 6.30 that evening, I returned to the military academy compound where I was living with my aunt and uncle. Mr He, our idiot neighbour, was just coming back. Thanks to the state’s military benefits, he lived a miserable life. The whole base was an empty tomb. Me and old Mr He were seemingly the only ones living there and yet the gate was guarded 24/7. The academy sent the latest recruits here as part of their military training and they executed their duties well, keeping their backs and limbs ironed stiff. I had been worried that the guards or Mr He might catch me, but they were all robotic fools anyway.

I followed old Mr He upstairs, waited until he shut his door and eased my aunt’s open. The shady spirits inside pounced, though I knew the apartment was filled only with nothingness.

I sat staring into space, not sure what to do next to execute my plan. I imagined how in three or five or fifty days I might be in prison. Apparently prisoners are taught a vocation. They spend their time inside working so that when they get out they’ve got a trade – as cobblers or carpenters, tailors or carvers. All I’d ever learned to do was to masturbate. I went to my room and pulled across the curtains. It was over pretty quickly.

I drifted off, but before long I was awake and couldn’t get back to sleep again. I had to find something to do. Deciding to take my chances, I turned on the light, pushed aside an empty cardboard box, moved some flowerpots, magazines and a vase with fake flowers and finally pulled away the tablecloth to reveal my aunt’s safe. I stuck the key in and tried to unlock it. After a while I switched off the light and kept trying: darkness sharpens my focus.

Auntie would go mad when she found out the safe had been emptied, of course, but I was going to need money if I was to have any hope of carrying it off. Maybe she’d cry. Mind you, my aunt deserved it. Me and my family didn’t owe her or my uncle a cent. The day it had been decided that I was to come to the city to live with them marked one of the most important business deals to have ever been struck in the history of our family. When they were young, Pa did better at school than my uncle, but only one of them could attend university and Pa let his brother go. While he ended up down a mine, getting lung cancer and dying. Someone had to shoulder the guilt, but my aunt was only ever a bus conductor. It’s not like she could really take care of me. She always thought of herself as better than us just because she was born in the capital of our province. Ma sent me to live with her with bags full of presents from our home town, but Auntie gave them back, all proud, saying, ‘Keep them, keep them. Things are difficult for you lot.’ I wanted to shout at her, ‘My ma’s got more money than you!’ After I moved in, I used to spend my days curled up on the balcony. The whole thing was so humiliating, I wished I was dead. She would turn off the gas when I showered. Sometimes she would promenade up and down in her high heels while I was watching television. She didn’t say I couldn’t sit on the sofa exactly, but as soon as I got up she would be there, wiping it down. She was like a farmer looking for cow pats to fertilise her fields, and that’s exactly what I was to her: a pile of shit.

Her attention had been diverted away from me recently, though. She and my uncle were building a new house and Auntie had to oversee it. Uncle, meanwhile, had been posted to another base, so I was often left on my own, which I’d thought was going to be great. It would be a relief not to have my aunt breathing down my neck. But I quickly realised it doesn’t matter where or how you live, the house always wins over you in the end.