schoolbag on his back, but as soon as he was out of sight, he’d jump on the back of a motor scooter taxi waiting for him at the intersection and head for the train station square. His “driver,” a big, strapping fellow with a full beard, was happy to chauffeur a high school boy around town, especially Huanhuan, who always made it worth his while. The square was Four Little Hoods territory, a place for them to eat, drink, whore, and gamble. The relationship among them was like June weather, always changing. Some of the time they were like four loving brothers, drinking and gambling together in bars, dallying with wild “chicks” in hair salons, and playing mah-jongg and smoking, arms around each other, in the public square, like four crabs strung together. But then at other times they’d split into two hostile groups and fight like gamecocks. There were also times when three of them ganged up on the fourth. Eventually they each formed their own gangs, which sometimes hung out together and sometimes fought. The one constant was that they fouled the atmosphere of the public square.
Your wife and I witnessed one of their armed battles, though she wasn’t aware that Ximen Huan, the good kid, was the instigator. It happened on a sunny day around noon, in broad daylight, as they say. It started with an argument in a bar called Come Back Inn on the southern edge of the square, but before long, four boys with bloody heads were chased out the door by seven other boys with clubs, one of them dragging a mop behind him. The injured boys ran around the square, showing no fear or any effects of the beating they’d sustained. And there was no anger on the faces of the boys chasing them. Several of them, in fact, were laughing. At first the battle looked more like a staged play than the real thing. The four boys being chased stopped suddenly and launched a counterattack, with one of them taking out a knife to show he was that the leader of that gang. The other three whipped off their belts and twirled them over their heads. With loud shouts they took out after their pursuers, and in no time clubs were hitting heads, belts were lashing cheeks, and the square was thrown into an uproar with shouts and agonizing screams. Bystanders were by then fleeing the square; the police were on their way I saw the gang leader plunge his knife into the belly of the kid with the mop, who screamed as he fell to the ground. When they saw what had happened to their buddy, the other pursuers turned and ran. The gang leader wiped the blood from his knife on the injured boy’s clothes and, with a loud whoop, led his gang down the western edge of the square; they ran off to the south.
While the fight was going on outside, I spotted Ximen Huan, in dark sunglasses, sitting at a window inside the Immortal, a bar next to Come Back Inn, casually smoking a cigarette. Your wife, who watched the fight with her heart in her mouth, never did see him, but even if she had, she’d never have believed that her fair-skinned boy could have been the instigator. He reached into his pocket and took out one of the latest cell phones, flipped it open, punched in some numbers, and raised it to his mouth. A few words were all he spoke before sitting back and continuing to enjoy his cigarette, with grace and expertise, like the gangster bosses in movies from Hong Kong and Taiwan.
Now let me relate another incident involving Ximen Huan, this one occurring in your yard after he’d spent three days in the local police station over a fight he was involved in.
Huang Huzhu was so enraged she tore at his clothes and shook him.
“Huanhuan,” she said through tears of anguish, “my Huanhuan, you don’t know how you disappoint me. I’ve done everything I could and sacrificed so much to be here and take care of you. Your father has spared no expense to give you everything you need to go to school, but you pay us back by…”
As his mother stood there crying, Ximen Huan coolly patted her on the shoulder and said nonchalantly:
“Don’t cry, Mother, dry your eyes. It’s not what you think. I didn’t do anything wrong. I wasn’t to blame, no matter what they said. Look at me, do I look like a bad kid? I’m not, Mother, I’m a good kid.”
Well, this good kid went out and danced and sang like a paragon of innocence. And it worked. Huzhu’s tears were quickly replaced by smiles. Me? I was disgusted.
When Ximen Jinlong heard the news, he came running, fit to be tied. But his son’s honeyed words quickly had him smiling too. I hadn’t seen Ximen Jinlong in a long time. Time had not been kind to him – rich or poor, everyone ages. His hair was much thinner, his eyesight much dimmer, his paunch much bigger.
“Don’t worry about me, Father. You have more important things to worry about,” Ximen Huan said with a fetching smile. “No one knows a son better than his father, as they say. You know me well. I have my faults: I’m a little too much of a smooth talker, I like to eat, I’m sort of lazy, and pretty girls drive me crazy. But how does that make me any different from you?”
“You might be able to fool your mother, son, but not me. If I couldn’t see though this little act of yours, I wouldn’t be able to get anything done in this society. Over the past few years, you’ve done all the bad things you’re capable of. Doing something bad is easy. What’s hard is spending your life doing only bad things. So I think it’s time for you to start doing good things.”
“What a great way to put it, Father. From now on I’ll turn bad things into good ones.” He nestled up to Jinlong and adroitly slipped his father’s expensive watch off his wrist. “This is a knockoff, Father. I can’t have my dad wearing something like that. So I’ll wear it and suffer the loss of face for you.”
“Don’t give me that. It’s a genuine Rolex.”
Several days later, the local TV station broadcast the following newsworthy item: “Local high-school student Ximen Huan found a large sum of money, but instead of pocketing the ten thousand yuan, he turned it over to his school.” The shiny, genuine Rolex watch never again adorned his wrist.
One day Ximen Huan, the good kid, brought another good kid, Pang Fenghuang, over to the house. By then she’d become a fashionable young woman with a nice figure, a languid look in her eyes, and a wet look to her hair. We all thought she was a mess. Huzhu and Hezuo, definitely of the old school, could not stand the way she looked, but Ximen Huan whispered to them:
“Mama, Aunty, you’re behind the times. That’s the fashionable look these days.”
Now I know it’s not Ximen Huan or Pang Fenghuang you’re concerned about. It’s your son, Lan Kaifang. Well, he’s about to make an appearance.
It was a splendid autumn afternoon when your wife and Huzhu were both out. The youngsters had asked them to leave so they could hold a meeting. They sat at a table stacked with fresh fruit, including a sliced watermelon, which had been set up under the parasol tree in the northeast corner of the yard. Ximen Huan and Pang Fenghuang were dressed in the latest fashions, and their faces glowed. Your son was wearing passe clothes, and his face was, as always, ugly.
There wasn’t a boy alive who could fail to be attracted to a pretty, sexy girl like Pang Fenghuang; your son was no exception. Think back to that day when he flung mud in your face, and then think back to the day I followed your scent to Ludian Township. Now you see what I mean. Even at that early age, he was Fenghuang’s little slave, someone to do her bidding. The seeds of the tragedy that would occur later were planted way back then.
“No one else is coming, are they?” Fenghuang asked lazily as she leaned back in her chair.
“Today the yard belongs to us three,” Ximen Huan said.
“Don’t forget him!” She pointed her delicate finger at the sleeping figure at the base of the wall – me. “That old dog.” She sat up straight. “Our dog is his sister.”
“He also has a couple of brothers,” your son said, obviously in low spirits. “They’re in Ximen Village, one at his house”-he pointed at Ximen Huan-“and one at my aunt’s house.”
“Our dog died,” Fenghuang said. “She died having pups. All I remember about her is that she was constantly having pups, one litter after another.” She raised her voice. “The world is unfair. After the male dog finishes his business, he takes off and leaves her behind to suffer.”
“That’s why we all sing our mothers’ praises,” your son said in a fit of pique.
“Did you hear that, Ximen Huan?” Fenghuang said with a laugh. “Neither you nor I could ever say something that profound. Only Old Lan here could.”
“There’s no need to mock me,” your son said, embarrassed.
“Nobody’s mocking you,” she said. “That was intended as a compliment!” She reached into her white handbag and took out a pack of Marlboros and a solid gold lighter with diamond chips. “With the old stick-in-the-muds out of the way, we can take it easy and enjoy ourselves.”
A single cigarette popped up when she tapped the pack with a dainty finger tipped with a painted nail and wound up between painted lips. She flicked the lighter, which sent a blue flame into the air, then tossed it and the pack onto the table and took a deep drag on her cigarette. Leaning back until her neck was resting on the back of the chair, faceup, lips puckered, she gazed into the deep blue sky and blew the smoke out like an actress in a TV soap who doesn’t know how to smoke.
Ximen Huan took a cigarette from the pack and tossed it to your son, who shook his head. A good boy, no
