Jia Pingwa - Ruined City

Liu Yue stopped dusting and stared at Huang wide-eyed.

“Why are you looking at me like that, Liu Yue?” Huang asked.

“Who’s staring at you? I was born with big eyes.”

“Your pretty big eyes are like two eggs.”

“And I have fair skin, like bleached flour.”

“Put some things together for me,” Zhuang said, noticing her unfriendly tone. “I’m going to visit Mrs. Huang at the hospital. She treated me well when I was there.”

“You want us to go together?” Huang said. “All right, then. I can show the people at the hospital what kind of friends I have.”

Picking up the gifts that Liu Yue had put together, Zhuang said nothing as he got ready to leave.

“There’s no need to take anything along. Who knows, she may be gone by the time we get there.”

“Why must you say things like that?” Zhuang hissed.

They left together.

When they arrived at the hospital, they were surprised to see that she was sitting up eating noodles. Huang was so stunned his mouth hung open. “You, you’re fine. You’re actually eating?”

His wife threw the bowl at him. He dodged, and the bowl smashed on the floor. “You’d rather I was dead, wouldn’t you? Well, this old lady of yours isn’t going to die, so of course she’ll eat. She’s not going to leave all that money to a man with warts on his you-know-what.”

“She’s getting brassy because you’re here,” Huang said to Zhuang. “This is a case of an earth deity unworthy of being a god, and a woman unfit to be called human.”

As he ran to the emergency room to find out what had happened, his wife asked Zhuang to sit down and shouted for another bowl of noodles, plus one for Mr. Zhuang. He begged off. “How did you get better so quickly? Did the doctor pump your stomach? If so, then you shouldn’t eat anything right away.”

“No pumped stomach for me. I told them I was drowsy and thought I was dying, but I felt fine when I lay down in bed. Really fine. I was just hungry.”

“I see. You were just trying to scare Mr. Huang. You didn’t take the pesticide, did you?”

“The doctor had the same reaction. He said I claimed I’d drunk pesticide so I’d be taken to the hospital. If I hadn’t sat up to tell them I was fine, they’d have pumped my stomach, maybe even operated on me. I wasn’t trying to scare him; I really wanted to die. He brought that slut home with him, and to make sure she didn’t sleep with anyone else, he shaved off her pubic hair. ‘Now that I’ve shaved you down there, no one will sleep with you,’ he told her. I walked in on him while he was doing that, and he had the balls to say, ‘I’m hiring her to be my personal assistant. You’re no match for her. Can you write, can you perform calculations? Do you have fair, smooth skin like her?’ I was so furious I drank a whole mugful of pesticide.”

“What good would killing yourself do? But it’s strange that you’re still fine after drinking that much pesticide. Maybe you were fated to be his wife!”

“I don’t know what happened. Maybe my stomach is different from other people’s. The doctor was curious enough to ask the woman staying with me to go fetch my mug. They’re going to analyze the chemical components of the pesticide. They have it now.”

A while later Huang came back, looking listless and dejected. Zhuang asked him what was wrong, but instead of answering him, Huang told the man with him to take his wife back in the truck. She refused to go, so he went over, picked her up, and stuffed her into the truck. The man drove away, leaving Zhuang bewildered. Huang led him over to a corner and, unexpectedly, wept.

“Mr. Zhuang, I really need your help now.” He got down on his knees. Zhuang reached out to help him up, but he stayed where he was.

“I won’t get up unless you agree to help me.”

“What are you doing? Just tell me what’s going on. Of course I’ll help you if I can. It doesn’t look right for a man your age to kneel like that.”

“You have to keep your word.” Huang got up. “If you don’t, it’ll be me, not my wife, who will commit suicide.”

“What’s going on?”

“When I went to the emergency room to ask them how my wife had recovered so quickly, one of the doctors said, ‘What kind of pesticide did she take?’ I said, ‘I’m Huang Hongbao, and she took 101, No. 101 pesticide from my plant.’ Then I gave him my business card. He looked at it and asked me how much of the stuff I’d sold. I said a lot. He said, ‘That’s good,’ and led me into the hospital director’s office. The man was writing something when I came in, and he said, ‘Our analysis shows that the pesticide your wife took contains no toxic components. We’ve already notified the relevant city government office that No. 101, the heavily promoted pesticide, is a fake, and we must stop peasants from being deceived by it.’ Mr. Zhuang, how would I know it’s a fake? I thought it was toxic when it was put together. Otherwise, why would my own wife use it to commit suicide, and why would I be so scared and take her to the hospital? But now that this has happened, I’ll be done for if it’s publicized. It will be the end of 101. You have to help me. Can’t you write another article to talk up the power of the pesticide? I’ll quit once I’ve made a little more money. Just a thousand characters will do, so long as it comes out in a paper with influence. I’ll pay you ten thousand for it. I promise. Ten thousand yuan.” He was so incoherent, it took Zhuang a moment to understand what he was saying. At first he was amused, but then panic set in. If the pesticide was really a fake, then what about his first article? What would the city leaders say? What would society at large think of him? Zhuang pushed Huang back down to the floor.

“You’re getting what you deserve,” he said. “All you had on your mind was money. Your plant was all you cared about. You didn’t give a thought to the mayor or to the law of the land. You could have faked anything but pesticide. Do you realize how badly you’ve screwed up, how much trouble you’ve caused people? The farmers buy pesticide to kill pests, but it turns out that you’re the pest. A gigantic pest.” Zhuang was relentless. Huang let him rant. When he was finished, Zhuang was exhausted.

“What’s the use of getting mad at you now? I was blind to befriend you. Here’s what I think: I won’t write that article, but you have to hurry over to the city government office and talk to the people in charge. Tell them what happened and write a self-criticism if you have to. Don’t even think about keeping your title as outstanding entrepreneur; you can count your blessings if they don’t shut your plant down.”

“I’ll do what you say. I don’t care about being an outstanding entrepreneur anymore, but once people know about my wife taking the pesticide, who will want to buy 101, even if they don’t shut me down? What’s the point of keeping the plant? How am I going to make a living? The storehouse will be full of useless pesticide. What do I do then?”

“You’re asking me?”

“But I’m on your board, Mr. Zhuang,” Huang said.

“What board are you talking about? I wrote an article for you, and now you’re hanging on to me like a drowning person grabbing someone’s legs.”

“I paid four thousand yuan to be on the board of the art gallery. Hong Jiang came to me on your behalf. Are you denying that?”

Zhuang silently cursed Hong.

“What about Hong Jiang? You cheated people but didn’t expect to be scammed by Hong, did you? Go sue him if you want, but don’t try to hang this one on me.”

“That’s not what I had in mind. I’m in a jam and need some advice, that’s all.” He whimpered. Zhuang couldn’t say anything at the moment, so he lowered his head and smoked a cigarette. Then he laughed.