Big Breasts and Wide Hips (86 page)

Finally, Sima Liang spotted Mother, who was lying in front of the pagoda, bound hand and foot. He stumbled backward and his head rocked from side to side. Tears all but spurted from his eyes. Then he fell to his knees, slowly at first, quickly prostrating himself just as his kneecaps touched the ground. “Grandma!” he said with a loud wail. “Grandma …”

There was nothing contrived about his weeping, as his tear-streaked face proved, that and the snivel running from his nose. With her failing eyesight, Mother tried to focus on him. Her lips quivered. “Is that you, little Liang?”

“Grandma, dear Grandma, it's me, Sima Liang, the boy you nursed as an infant.” Mother tried to roll over. “Cousin,” Sima Liang said as he got to his feet, “why have you trussed my grandmother up like that?” “It's all my fault, cousin,” Lu Shengli said awkwardly. Then she turned to Qin Wujin and hissed through clenched teeth, “You sons of bitches!” Qin's knees began to knock, but he managed to hold on to our celadon bowl. “Just wait till I'm back in my office — no, I'm not going to wait. You're fired! Now go back and write a self-criticism.” She bent down and started untying Mother; when she encountered a knot she couldn't undo, she loosened it with her teeth. It was a touching scene. After helping Mother to her feet, she said, “I'm sorry I came so late.” Mother had a puzzled look on her face. “Who are you?” “Don't you recognize me, Grandma? I'm Lu Shengli.” Mother shook her head. “You don't look like her.” She turned back to Sima Liang. “Liang, let me touch you. I want to see if you've filled out.” Mother stroked Sima Liang's head. “You're my little Liang, all right,” she said. “People may change over the years, but not the shape of their skull. That's where your fate is determined. You have plenty of meat on your bones, my child. You seem to have done well for yourself. At least you're eating well.” “Yes, Grandma, I'm eating well,” Sima Liang sobbed. “We've risen out of our hardships, and from now on you can relax and enjoy the good life. Where's my Little Uncle? How is he doing?”

Sima Liang and I were nearly face-to-face. Should I continue with the mental case act or should I let him see me clearheaded? After a separation of nearly forty years, seeing me as a mental case would be hard for him to take, and I decided that my childhood friend deserved to see me as a normal, intelligent human being. “Sima Liang!” “Little Uncle!” We embraced. His cologne made my head swim. After stepping back, I gazed into his shifty eyes. He sighed, like a man of great wisdom, and I spotted the marks of my tears and snivel on the shoulder of his neatly pressed suit. Then I saw Lu Shengli thrust out her arm as if she wanted to shake my hand; but the minute I stuck mine out, she pulled hers back, which both embarrassed and enraged me. Shit, Lu Shengli, you've forgotten your past, you've forgotten history! And forgetting history means betrayal. You've betrayed the Shangguan family, and a representative of — who can I represent? No one, I guess, not even myself. “How have you been, Little Uncle? The first thing I did after I arrived is ask around about you and Granny.” Like hell! Lu Shengli, you inherited the wild imagination of Shangguan Pandi, who once ran the Flood Dragon River Farm's livestock section, but you didn't inherit her sincerity and openness. The Eurasian woman who came with Sima Liang walked up to shake my hand. I had to hand it to Sima Liang, the way he returned with this mixed-blood woman, who looked like the actress in the movie Babbitt had shown years before, on his arm, to bring glory to his ancestors. Apparently not affected by the cold, the woman was wearing a thin dress and thrusting her breasts out toward me. “How are you?” she said in halting Chinese. “I never imagined that our Little Uncle would wind up like this,” Lu Shengli said sadly. But Sima Liang just laughed. “Leave everything to me,” he said. “I'll make sure this problem goes away. Madam Mayor, I am building the city's most spectacular hotel, right downtown. I'll put in a hundred million. I'll also put up the money to preserve the pagoda. As for Parrot Han's bird sanctuary, I'm waiting for a report now to see whether or not I'll invest in that as well. You are the true descendant of the Shangguan family, and you have my complete support as mayor. But I hope I never again see Grandma tied up like that.” “You have my word,” Lu Shengli said. “Every courtesy will be extended to her and to the rest of her family from now on.”

The contract-signing ceremony for a joint venture hotel between the Dalan Municipal Government and the tycoon Sima Liang was held in the Osmanthus Mansions conference room. After the signing, I followed him up to the Presidential Suite. I could see my reflection on the mirrorlike floor. Hanging on the wall was a lamp in the shape of a naked woman carrying a water jug on her head, her nipples like ripe cherries. “Little Uncle,” Sima Liang said with a laugh, “you don't need to look at that. I'll show you the real thing in a minute.” He turned and shouted, “Manli!” The mixed-blood woman came into the room. “I'd like you to give my Little Uncle a bath and get him into some new clothes.” “No, Liang,” I objected, “no.” “Little Uncle,” he said, “we are like brothers. Whatever comes, good or bad, we share and share alike. Whatever you desire — food, clothing, entertainment — all you have to do is tell me. If you hold back out of a false sense of politeness, it's the same as slapping me in the face.”

Manli led me into the bathroom. She was wearing a short dress with spaghetti straps. With a seductive smile, she said in terrible Chinese, “Whatever you want, Little Uncle, I'm here to provide. Mr. Sima's orders.” With that, she began peeling off my clothes, just as single-breasted Old Jin had done years before. I sputtered feeble objections, but wound up letting her have her way. My tattered clothes wound up in a black plastic bag; once I was undressed, I covered my nakedness with my hands. She pointed to the tub. “Please,” she said.

As I sat in the tub, she turned on the faucets, which sent sprays of hot water from openings all around the tub, gently massaging me as layers of filth were washed away. Meanwhile, Manli, who had put on a shower cap and shed her dress, stood there, her nude figure right in front of my eyes, but only for a moment, before climbing into the tub and straddling me. She began to rub and knead me all over, turning me this way and that, until I finally screwed up the courage to wrap my lips around one of her nipples. She made a clucking sound, then stopped. Another outbursts of clucks, then she stopped again. She sounded like a motor that won't start. It had taken her only a minute to discover my weakness, and her breasts quickly sagged in dejection. The excitement gone, she scrubbed me front and back, then combed my hair and draped a fluffy bathrobe around me.

“So, what do you say, Little Uncle?” Sima Liang was sitting on a leather sofa, a cigar from the Philippine island of Luzon in his hand and a smile on his lips. “How do you feel?” “I feel wonderful,” I said gratefully. “Better than I've ever felt before.” “Your day of salvation has come, thanks to me,” he said. “Now, get dressed. There's something I want to show you.”

We rode to the commercial center of Dalan in a stretch limo, which pulled up in front of a newly decorated lingerie shop. A crowd had gathered around the Cadillac, as if it were a rare dragon boat, by the time we'd stepped out and walked up to a gigantic shop window filled with mannequins. Above the door, the shop's name — Beautify You Lingerie — was written in a florid script; beneath that, the shop's motto: Distinctive Fashions in Ladies' Undergarments. “Well?” Sima Liang asked me. “It's wonderful!” I said excitedly. “That's good, because you're going to run this shop.” What a shock! “I can't handle anything like this,” I protested. Sima Liang smiled. “You're an expert in women's breasts, so who could possibly be more qualified than you at selling brassieres?”

Sima led me through the silent automatic door into the spacious shop, where decorating work was still going on. All four walls were mirrored from one end to the other; the ceiling was a metal material that also reflected images. The foreman of the cleanup crew rushed up and bowed to us. “Now's the time to make any changes you might have in mind, Little Uncle,” Sima said. “I don't much care for the name ‘Beautify You,' ” I said. “You're the expert. What would you like to call it?” “Unicorn,” I said without a moment's hesitation. “Unicorn: The World in Bras.” After a momentary pause, Sima laughed and said, “But they always come in pairs!” “Unicorn,” I repeated. “I like it.” “You're the boss,” Sima said, “and what you say goes.” He turned to the foreman. “Have a new sign made right away. Beautify You has now become Unicorn. Hm, Unicorn, Unicorn. Not bad. It's distinctive. See, Little Uncle, I said you were the man for the job. If you held a gun to my head, I couldn't have come up with a more stylish name than that for this shop.”

“Women won't let you fondle their breasts just because you feel like it,” the head of the Municipal Broadcasting and Television Bureau said as he stirred his Nescafé coffee with a tiny silver spoon. His gray hair, proof of a long, hard life, was combed back neatly. His face was dark, but not dirty; his teeth were yellow, but brushed; his fingers were stained yellow, but the skin was soft. He lit an expensive China-brand cigarette and looked at me out of the corner of his eye. “Are you of the opinion,” he asked, “that you can do whatever you want so long as you have the backing of a rich businessman like Sima Liang?”

“No, of course not.” Somehow I managed to keep my anger in check and appear as respectful as possible. “Bureau Chief,” I said to this man who had made such a name for himself during the Cultural Revolution and was still as powerful as ever, “whatever it is you want to say to me, please just say it.”

“Heh-heh,” he sneered. “This son of Sima Ku — a counterrevolutionary with the blood of Northeast Gaomi's villagers on his hands — has become Dalan's most honored guest on the basis of a few measly coins he's put together. Like they say, ‘If you've got money, you can get the devil to turn the millstone!' Shangguan Jintong, what were you before this? A necrophiliac and a mental patient. Now you're a CEO!” Class hatred turned the eyes of this man they called the Unicorn bright red. He squeezed his cigarette so hard liquefied tar oozed out. “But I didn't come here today to dispense revolutionary propaganda,” he said grimly. “I'm here in the cause of fame and wealth.”

I listened without interrupting. What difference could it make to Shangguan Jintong, who had suffered abuse all his life? “You know,” he said, “and you won't ever forget, that time when you and your mother were paraded through the Dalan marketplace, how I suffered in the name of revolution. That's right, I still recall what it felt like to be slapped by you. Well, I created the Unicorn Struggle Team and had my own program, called
The Unicorn
, over the Revolutionary Committee PA system, which I utilized to air a number of instructive broadcasts regarding the Cultural Revolution. Anyone around the age of fifty knows who Unicorn was. In the thirty years since, I've consistently used the pen name Unicorn, publishing eighty-eight celebrated articles in national magazines and newspapers. The people associate the name Unicorn with me. But now you've linked my name with women's undergarments. You and Sima Liang are so wildly ambitious, you don't care who you hurt. What you're doing is nothing short of insane class vengeance and a brazen defamation of my good name. I am going to expose you in print and take you to court, a double-barreled attack using the weapons of public opinion and the law. It's a fight to the death.”

“Be my guest.”

“Shangguan Jintong, don't assume that just because Lu Shengli is mayor, you have nothing to fear. My brother-in-law is a vice minister in the provincial Party Committee, a higher rank than mayor. Besides, I know all about her checkered past, and it would not take much for Unicorn to pull her down off her pedestal.”

“Go right ahead. I have nothing to do with her.”

“Naturally,” he went on, “Unicorn has only the best of intentions, and you and I are, after all, fellow residents of Dalan. All I'm asking is that you do right by me.”

“Please, get to the point, revered Bureau Chief.”

“What I mean to say is, I think we can settle this privately.”

“How much?”

He extended three fingers. “I'm not interested in extorting money, so let's keep it at thirty thousand. That's peanuts for someone like Sima Liang. I'd also like you to get Mayor Lu Shengli to appoint me as deputy chairman of the Standing Committee of the Municipal Board. If not, there'll be hell to pay.”

I felt cold all over. “Bureau Chief,” I said as I got to my feet, “you'll have to talk to Sima Liang about the financial arrangements. The lingerie shop has just opened and we haven't earned a cent yet. And since I'm ignorant where official matters are concerned, there's nothing I can say to Lu Shengli.”

“Shit, so that's his game, is it?” Sima Liang said with a smile. “He didn't even check around to see what Sima Liang is all about! I'll take care of that bastard, Little Uncle. I'll see that he winds up swallowing his own teeth. He thinks he knows a thing or two about blackmail, how to fleece the well-to-do, does he? Well, our ‘Unicorn' has met his master this time around!”

A few days later, Sima Liang came to me. “You're in business, Little Uncle. Now, let's see what you can do. I've already taken care of that chump Unicorn. Don't ask how. He won't cause any trouble from now on. It's the dictatorship of the propertied class where he's concerned. So go have a good time and make yourself proud. Don't worry about whether you make or lose money in the process. It's time for the Shangguan family to make a real splash. As long as I've got money, you've got money. So go for it! Money stinks, it's nothing but dog shit! I've already made arrangements for someone to deliver everything Grandma will need on a regular basis. Now I have to go away on an important business trip and won't be back for a year or so. I'll put in a telephone for you. That way I can call if anything comes up. Please don't ask where I'm going or where I've been.”