Yu Hua - Brothers

Blacksmith Tong now had each holiday and festival etched in his memory and therefore became Liu Town's own living calendar. When the women of Liu wanted their husbands to let them buy some new outfit, they would call out to Blacksmith Tong, "Are there any holidays coming up?"

When the men of Liu wanted to find an excuse for their wives to let them spend the night out playing mahjong, they too would ask Blacksmith Tong, "What holiday is it today?"

When children were harassing their parents to purchase them a toy, if Blacksmith Tong happened to walk by, they would ask him, "Blacksmith Tong, is there a kid's holiday today?"

After Tong became Liu Town's famous King of Holidays, he attacked his work with increased vigor, and not only did business at his supermarkets continue to improve but he expanded into a wholesale business in household products. Many of the shops in Liu Town bought their goods through Blacksmith Tongs company, and therefore his profits increased each quarter. His wife decided that this was due to her brilliant tactics, because ever since she made her timely intervention to resolve Blacksmith Tongs libido crisis, his vigor increased dramatically and his company's fortunes rose day by day. Compared with the rise in his profits, the money they spent on girls didn't amount to much. Blacksmith Tongs wife felt that their rewards already far outweighed her investment, and occasionally she would splurge and hire her husband a pretty, high-class call girl even when it wasn't a holiday or a festival.

Twice each week this sixty-something couple would climb up the stairs of Madam Lin's bordello — Blacksmith Tong glowing and his wife panting heavily, the two speaking to each other heedless of who might be listening. After the first time Tong was allowed to hire a pretty call girl even though it wasn't a holiday, he wanted to do so every time. He would stand in front of the building entreating his wife like a child begging his parents to buy him a toy, saying pathetically, "Darling, please find me a high-class call girl."

His wife would say firmly, like the chairman of the board, "No, today is not a holiday, and neither is it a festival."

Like one of the chairman's subordinates, he would reply, "Today an account receivable was deposited to our account."

When his board-chairman wife heard this, she would smile and nod and say, "Okay, I'll find you a high-class call girl."

None of the girls working there liked Blacksmith Tong, and in fact they all agreed they couldn't stand him, because once he got started, there was no stopping him. Tong already had gray hair and a gray beard, but when he got into bed, he was like a man in his twenties, though afterward he would leave a smaller tip than anyone else. Furthermore, his invalid wife would always accompany him and insist on receiving a discount, leading to an exhausting, teeth-grinding negotiation that could last up to an hour. After his wife had spoken for a few minutes, she would have to take a drink of water and catch her breath for a few minutes, and only after resting for a while would she be able to continue to bargain down the girl's asking price. The girls all felt that servicing Blacksmith Tong was more exhausting than servicing any four other men combined, but with him they received payment for only a single customer and even had to grant him a discount. Therefore, they were all unwilling to service Blacksmith Tong, but since he was an important figure in Liu and furthermore was one of Madam Lin's VIPs, they couldn't refuse. Whenever Tong and his wife picked out a girl, she would laugh bitterly and sigh, saying, "That's it. I will need to imitate the revolutionary martyr, Lei Feng."

SUCCESS LIU — a.k.a. Writer Liu, a.k.a. PR Liu, a.k.a. Deputy Liu — was now CEO Liu and also one of Madam Lin's VIPs. After Song Gang's death, Baldy Li gave Liu the position of company president, and after Executive Deputy Liu became President Liu, he decided he didn't like people calling him President Liu and instead asked them to call him CEO Liu. The people of Liu Town decided that pronouncing four syllables was altogether too much trouble and furthermore said that it sounded more like a Japanese name than a Chinese one; therefore they shortened it to C Liu. In this way, Success Liu was transformed from the poor bachelor Writer Liu to the tycoon C Liu. He wore Italian name-brand suits, rode in the white BMW sedan Baldy Li had given him, and spent a million yuan buying his way out of his marriage, saying that this was compensation for his wife's loss of her youthful innocence. In this way he was finally able to rid himself of the woman he had tried to abandon twenty years earlier, and then proceeded to find one, two, three, four, even five pretty girls to be his girlfriends. As he put it, these girlfriends were sunshine girls. His house was already filled with spring beauty, but often he still couldn't resist coming over to Madam Lin's to roam. He said that after eating in most nights, he needed to drop by Madam Lin's and tickle his palate with some exotic flavors.

By this point C Liu had become more disdainful than ever toward Poet Zhao. Zhao still boasted about his constant toiling at his craft, while C Liu said that Zhao's playing around with words was a form of suicide, and that he might as well tie a noose around his neck and hang himself. C Liu held up four fingers and enumerated Poet Zhao's failings: "He has been writing for almost thirty years, starting with that early mimeographed magazine in which he published those four lines of poetry. But after all these years he hasn't published even a single punctuation mark. And he still calls himself Poet Zhao! Wouldn't it be more appropriate if he called himself Mimeographed Magazine Poet Zhao?"

Poet Zhao, who had been laid off and unemployed for several years, was equally disdainful toward C Liu. When he heard that Liu was enumerating his failings and calling him a mimeographed magazine poet, he initially became furious but then laughed disdainfully and said that he didn't even need to hold up four fingers in appraising an opportunist like C Liu, since even one finger would be more than he deserved. Poet Zhao held up one finger and said simply, "He has sold his soul."

After Poet Zhao moved out of his house in Liu Town s red-light district, he rented a cheap room next to the railroad tracks on the west side of town. Every day more than a hundred trains would rumble by, making his room tremble as though it had been hit by an earthquake. His table, chairs, and bed would also tremble, as would his cabinet, dishes, and chopsticks and even his ceiling and floor. Zhao would compare the trembling of his cheap room to contractions from an electrical shock, and this metaphor pleased him to no end. At night, when the trains passing by made his room go into tremors, he would frequently dream that he was sitting in an electric chair and, his face full of tears, bidding farewell to the mortal world.

The abjectly poor Poet Zhao depended for his survival on the rent Madam Lin paid him every month, and although he continued to wear a suit every day, it was now all wrinkled and dirty. The people of Liu had been watching color television for more than twenty years and now were beginning to switch over to high-definition rear-projection and plasma units, while Poet Zhao was still watching his fourteen-inch black-and-white television, which frequently would go blank. Zhao would carry it around throughout the towns streets and alleys but couldn't find anyone able to fix a black-and-white television, so in the end he had no choice but to fix it himself. Therefore, the next time the picture went out, he hit it as if he were slapping someone across the face, and sure enough the picture reappeared. Sometimes, however, the picture wouldn't reappear even after he had hit it several times, and he would have to resort to the leg-sweeping kick of his youth and sweep-kick the picture back on.