Yu Hua: Brothers

Once the policemen realized that they couldn't get anything more out of Baldy Li, they agreed to let him go home with his mother. Baldy Li told them his mother's name was Li Lan and that she worked at the silk factory. A policeman walked out the main door of the station and started yelling out to people on the street, asking if any of them knew Li Lan: "You know, the one who works at the silk factory." After hollering for five minutes or so, the officer finally found someone who was on his way to the factory. The passerby asked the policeman why he was looking for Li Lan, to which the policeman replied, "Just tell her to come to the station to pick up her hooligan son."

Baldy Li stayed at the police station all afternoon, like a lost item waiting to be reclaimed. He sat on the long bench, watching the sunlight streaming in through the open front entrance. At first the ray of light on the cement floor was as wide as the door frame but then it became narrower and narrower, and eventually it disappeared altogether. Baldy Li didn't realize that he had already become famous and that everyone who walked by the station would come in to take a look at him — men and women, all tittering as they strained to see the guy who peeped at women's butts in the public toilet. When no one happened to be gawking at him, one policeman after another would walk over, still hoping against hope, and slam his fist down on the table, asking sternly, "Think carefully, is there anything you forgot to report?"

It was night by the time Baldy Li's mother finally showed up at the station. She hadn't come earlier because she was afraid of people in the street pointing and talking about her. Fourteen years earlier Baldy Li's father had brought her excruciating shame, and now her son had exacerbated her humiliation. Therefore, she waited until after dark, then put on a head scarf and a surgical mask and crept to the station. When she entered the front door, she took one look at her son and immediately averted her eyes. Cowering in front of the lone remaining policeman, she explained in a trembling voice who she was. The policeman, who was supposed to have already gone off duty, blew a gasket, shouting, "Do you realize what fucking time it is? It's already eight o'clock and I haven't even eaten yet, and furthermore I was supposed to see a movie tonight. I had to push and shove at the ticket booth just to get a ticket, and now what the hell am I going to be able to see? Even if I took a plane to the theater, I'd only get to see The End’ flash on the screen." Throughout this tirade, Baldy Li's mother stood there cowering in front of the policeman, nodding at every curse, until finally he said, "Stop nodding your goddamn head and get the fuck out of my sight. I'm going to lock up."

Outside the police station, Baldy Li's mother walked silently, head bowed, along the dark side of the main street. He followed behind her, strutting and swinging his arms blithely, as if she had been the one caught in the latrine and not he. When they got home, Baldy Li's mother walked into her room without saying a word, shut the door, and didn't make another sound. Late that night, in his half-asleep state, Baldy Li thought he sensed her walk up to his bed and, as on other nights, replace the blanket he had kicked off. Li Lan didn't speak to her son for several days, until finally one rainy night she tearfully uttered a single phrase: "Chip off the old block." She sat in the shadow of the dim light and recounted to Baldy Li in an even dimmer voice how his father had drowned while peeping at women's butts in the public latrine. At the time, she had felt so ashamed that she had considered hanging herself, but she had resolved to live on only thanks to her newborn s tears. She said that if she had known then that he would turn out the same as his father, she would have gone ahead and killed herself.

BALDY LI'S peeping ruined his good name but at the same time guaranteed that everyone in Liu Town would know that name for years to come. Out on the street, women shied away from him — even little girls and old ladies avoided him. Baldy Li was indignant, thinking that though he had spent less than two minutes trying to catch a glimpse of some naked bottoms, he was being treated as if he were a serial rapist. But, at the very least, he had gotten to see Lin Hongs bare bottom. Lin Hong was the preeminent beauty of Liu Town, and all the towns men — including old men, young men, and even little boys — stared at her with googly eyes and drooling mouths. Some even got so worked up that blood started running from their noses. It was impossible to calculate how many of these men were lying in bed at night masturbating as they fantasized about two or three key parts of Lin Hongs figure. These poor saps were overjoyed if they had the good fortune to run into her once a week, but even then they'd only see her face, neck, and hands. In summer, they might have a bit more luck and glimpse her sandaled feet and her calves peeking out from under her skirt but not an inch more. Only Baldy Li had seen her bare bottom, and this aroused the envy and admiration of all the men of Liu Town, leading them to conclude that Baldy Li must have done something spectacularly virtuous in a past life to have earned his present-day erotic karma.

Baldy Li became a celebrity. Though women hid from him, the men would invariably greet him with warm and knowing smiles, throwing an arm over his shoulder when they ran into him in the street. When they were sure that no one was within earshot, they would quietly ask, "So, kid, what did you see?"

Baldy Li would answer in a ringing voice, "I saw naked butts!"

The man in question would then flinch and grip Baldy Li's shoulder, saying, "Damn, lower your voice." Then, after looking around once more, he would whisper, "Hey, so what's Lin Hong's like?"

Even at this tender age, Baldy Li fully appreciated his own worth. He understood that though his reputation reeked, it reeked like an expensive dish of stinky tofu — which is to say, it might stink to high heaven, but damn, it sure tasted good. He knew that out of the five butts he saw in the public toilet, four of them were completely worthless while the fifth — Lin Hongs — was a priceless, five-star view. The reason Baldy Li would later become Liu Town s premier tycoon was that he was a born entrepreneur. At age fourteen he started using Lin Hongs butt to do business, knowing instinctively how to drive a hard bargain and adjust for inflation. The moment he saw those lecherous men grinning at him, grabbing his shoulder and slapping him on the back, he knew they were after one thing and one thing only, and that was the secret of Lin Hongs butt. When the five policemen at the station had tried to extract that same secret from him during his questioning, Baldy Li had told them everything, not daring to hold anything back. But after that initial interrogation, he wised up and resolved to stop providing free lunches. From then on, whenever he encountered one of these insincerely buddy-buddy fellows, Baldy Li remained tight-lipped and wouldn't sketch even the shadow of a single pubic hair. Instead, he would only utter the single word Buttocks, and those men who had come forward to unlock the mysteries of Lin Hongs butt would go away empty-handed.

Writer Liu, who was originally a lathe worker at the metal factory, earned the favor of the factory head thanks to his ability to whip up a fancy phrase and talk up a storm, and as a result was promoted to sales manager. He already had an average-looking girlfriend, but as soon as he received his promotion and had his story published, he decided that his girlfriend was no longer good enough for him. He therefore started having designs on Lin Hong, since she represented the ultimate fantasy of all Liu Towns men, unmarried and married alike. Writer Liu tried to dump his girlfriend, but she absolutely refused to be let go of. She went and stood outside the police station and started wailing that she had been bedded by Writer Liu, tearfully holding out all ten fingers. Everyone assumed that she meant that Writer Liu had slept with her ten times; they therefore were flabbergasted when they realized she was counting by tens, meaning that the two of them had slept together more than a hundred times. After this performance, Liu didn't dare dump her. In those days, if a man and a woman slept together, they had to get married, so the factory director summoned Writer Liu and chewed him out, telling him that he had two choices: He could marry his girlfriend and keep his job or dump her and settle for cleaning toilets. Weighing these two options, Writer Liu concluded that his career trumped romance and so crawled back to his girlfriend, apologizing abjectly. Soon the two of them were as good as ever, taking strolls together, going to movies, ordering furniture, and even making preparations for their wedding.