Yu Hua - Brothers

The fourteen loyal minions all applauded, but when Baldy Li gestured, they immediately stopped. Baldy Li looked at each of his followers and sighed. "You have all aged," he said. "I too have aged."

When the three idiots heard Baldy Li say this, they immediately applauded, afraid of being beaten to the punch. The five deaf men didn't know what Baldy Li had said, but when the idiots started clapping, they quickly joined in. The four blind men then blindly joined in the excitement and started applauding as well. The two cripples felt that it was somewhat inappropriate to applaud what Baldy Li had said, but since everyone else was already doing so, they had no choice but to join in. Baldy Li again gestured for them to be quiet and said, "It is not appropriate to applaud what I just said."

The two cripples immediately stopped applauding, as did the four blind men. The five observant deaf men followed suit. The three idiots continued applauding, but when they saw that everyone else had ceased, they lost confidence and stopped as well. Baldy Li looked up at the conference room, then out the window at the trees, and sighed repeatedly. His loyal minions all grew somber. Then Baldy Li emotionally recalled the first time he came to the Good Works Factory, more than twenty years earlier. As he was speaking he pulled Song Gangs copy of his appointment letter out of his breast pocket, opened it up, and read it out loud. When he was finished, he lifted it up for the fourteen loyal minions to see, and as they gazed up at it he laughed bitterly, saying, "This is a handwritten copy. The original is in a file at the county's Civil Affairs Bureau. The seal on the front used to be red but now has turned yellow. Song Gang copied this out by hand, and he drew the seal by hand as well. He carefully kept it all this time because he was happy for me. He even knitted me a Great Prospects Ship sweater…"

Baldy Li became so choked up he couldn't continue. The two cripples and four blind men waited anxiously, while the three idiots, not understanding what was going on, saw that Baldy Li had stopped talking and immediately burst into applause. The five deaf men were more careful this time, noticing Baldy Li's heartbroken expression. The two cripples whispered to the three enthusiastically applauding idiots, "It's not appropriate to applaud."

The idiots looked around and, feeling that the situation had become awkward, stopped applauding. At this point Baldy Li, with an anguished look on his face, began to relate his and Song Gang's history together. When he described Song Fanping's tragic death in front of the bus depot and how he and Song Gang were later left all alone, he found himself unable to continue. The two cripples wiped away their tears, and the four blind men gripped their canes, tears flowing from their sightless eyes. When the five deaf men saw Baldy so miserable, his sorrow was transmitted from their eyes to their hearts, and they too began to cry as sorrowfully as the two cripples. The three idiots, seeing the great Director Li looking so devastated and their workmates sobbing as if their hearts were breaking, also began bawling thunderously, quickly drowning out the sound of their workmates’ sobs.

For the next ten days Baldy Li came every day to the so-called Liu Town Economics Research Business Corporation, recounting over and over stories from the past. Baldy Li himself no longer wept, but his tragic stories caused tears to stream down the faces of his loyal minions. The sorrow of the handicapped workers was a source of great consolation for Baldy Li, as if his own sorrow had somehow been transmitted to them. While recounting his stories of the past, Baldy Li told the workers not to be upset, but the more he tried to reassure them, the more upset they became and the harder they cried. Baldy Li felt that, in all the world, only his fourteen loyal minions were able to share in the sorrow and misery that he felt.

At last Baldy Li returned to work in order to make good on Song Gangs last request. Baldy Li asked Deputy Liu to call his business partners and all the other rich people he knew and invite them to attend a three-day tofu banquet in the restaurant he had founded. After Liu drew up a list of invitees, he spent a day on the phone, telling everyone that Baldy Li's brother, Song Gang, had died and inviting them to commemorate him by attending a tofu banquet in his honor. After a day of nonstop calling, Deputy Liu lost his voice, but he nevertheless managed to invite Baldy Li's business associates throughout China, together with all the important people from the city and province, but no one who was poor or unknown.

Baldy Li's tofu banquet began with breakfast and continued through lunch and dinner. Some guests had sat in an airplane for several hours, then spent another couple of hours on the bus, in order to arrive that evening; therefore Baldy Li extended the banquet late into the night. At Song Gang's cremation Baldy Li and Lin Hong had seen each other once again, but they simply looked past each other as if they were strangers. Both wore mourning shrouds of white hemp and black armbands as they stood in the doorway of the restaurant for three days. Each of the VIPs who attended gave Lin Hong a thick envelope containing anywhere from several thousand to tens of thousands of yuan. The people at the bank saw Lin Hong come by every day to make a deposit, and each time she would arrive carrying a huge sack of bills. In three days she received more than one hundred envelopes, and people estimated that she had received several million yuan. It was said that her fingers had gotten shredded, her wrists cramped, and her eyes bloodshot from counting so much money.

After the conclusion of the tofu banquet, Baldy Li said to Lin Hong, "Song Gang asked that I make sure you are well taken care of. What else would you like me to do?"

Lin Hong said, "This is enough."

THREE YEARS ELAPSED, during which time some people died and others were born. Old Scissors Guan departed from the world, as did Tailor Zhang, but during those same three years three infants named Guan and nine infants named Zhang arrived. Day in and day out, Liu Town was constantly replenishing itself.

No one knew the impact that Song Gangs death had had on Lin Hongs heart; they knew only that she had quit her job at the knitting factory and moved out of the building where they had lived together. She used the money from the tofu banquet to buy a new apartment, then stayed there by herself, living in complete seclusion for half a year. The people of Liu Town rarely saw her, and when they did, she would always have a cold expression — everyone called it a widows expression. There were just a handful of observant people who noticed her gradual transformation, and they pointed out that her clothing was becoming increasingly fashionable. After her old place had been vacant for half a year, she started to appear in public more and more frequently, thereby bringing to an end her period of isolation. She renovated her old place and made it into a beauty salon, then became the salons proprietor. From then on, music emanated from the salon, a neon sign flickered overhead, and business boomed. When the men of Liu arrived at her beauty salon, they wouldn't use the rustic phrase cut their hair but, rather, would speak more fashionably of styling their hair. Even those who were always cursing like sailors wouldn't say cut their hair but rather, style their fucking hair.

During this period, Wanderless Zhou in the snack shop across the street continued to proclaim that within three years’ time he would open one hundred Wanderless Zhou chain stores throughout China. But after repeating this boast for three straight years, not only did he not open a single store outside of Liu Town; he didn't even make any progress on the two proposed stores within Liu Town itself. Wanderless Zhou continued to boast wildly that he would make the price of McDonald's stock drop by half. Missy Su had grown accustomed to his boasts and knew that if he didn't boast during the day and watch his Korean soaps at night, he would be reduced to a state worse than death. Consequently, she had long since lost the capacity of being embarrassed for him.