The Fat Years

All these positions, now firmly established principles, seemed like perfectly unexceptional common sense. But why did the Reading Journal have to argue them for so many years before reaching a favorable consensus? No matter what, Zhuang Zizhong believed, Reading had now received positive recognition from the Party, which meant he had the Party’s affirmation of his own devotion to the Party and the Nation. Zhuang Zizhong felt that to be the greatest achievement of his later years.

Now he was sitting in his wheelchair as his new young wife wheeled him toward his new car. Ever since the Politburo member had visited him during the Lunar New Year festival, it had been decided that he should be provided with an official car and driver. One of the official duties of this chauffeur is to drive Zhuang Zizhong every Saturday afternoon to browse around the Sanlian Bookstore.

As Zhuang Zizhong came out of his house, Lao Chen, the Taiwanese writer long resident in Beijing, had just walked out of the Happiness Village Number Two compound and begun his daily afternoon stroll to one of the three nearby Starbucks coffee shops. Since it was Saturday, the Sanlitun Swire Village and the Dongzhi Menwai Ginza Starbucks would definitely be too crowded; his only choice was the Starbucks in the PCCW Tower Mall of Plenty on Gongti North Road. He could only hope that all those white-collar yuppies would be in the gym and not at Starbucks occupying all the comfy chairs and surfing the net, using up all the wireless connection points.

The only unusual thing that day was that, in contrast to the previous two years, Lao Chen was not very happy as he left his house. His feeling of happiness had deserted him. You could even say that as Lao Chen came out the door, he was feeling pretty miserable.

Ever since Little Xi had left his Happiness Village apartment, Lao Chen had not felt good. And Little Dong’s departure from Beijing had only made him feel worse.

A few days after Little Xi had left, Lao Chen went to Wudaokou to visit Big Sister Song. He carefully chose ten o’clock in the morning, when the talented young Wei Guo would probably be in school. He wanted to ask her if she’d heard anything from Little Xi. Lao Chen approached the back door of the Five Flavors restaurant and skulked around, trying to avoid being noticed until Big Sister Song came to open up. He was wearing a beige trench coat of the sort worn by the Hong Kong comic actor Ng Man Tat when playing a private detective, or Law Kar-ying in the role of a sexual deviant, a flasher. Obviously, Lao Chen was not at all thinking of himself in this light. In his mind, when he put on his trench coat he looked more like Hollywood tough guy Humphrey Bogart or the author Graham Greene. Because of this misperception, when Lao Chen nervously showed himself to greet Big Sister Song, she screamed in fright.

After calming her down, Lao Chen asked if she knew any way to contact Little Xi. Big Sister Song pulled a note out of her coat pocket. “I just knew you would come by. A while back when I could still send her e-mails, Little Xi asked me if she should see you, and I told her she should. After that, she didn’t tell me whether she’d seen you or not. Two days ago, I got this text message. I don’t know where it was sent from, but I copied it down because I had this feeling you’d turn up here.”

“What do these letters mean?” Lao Chen said, looking at the note with four Romanized Chinese words- mai zi bu si.

“I don’t know,” said Big Sister Song.

“Did Little Xi send this to you?”

“Definitely, she must have.”

Lao Chen was only half convinced by Big Sister Song until she took his hands in hers, bent her knees in a half bow, and implored, “Lao Chen, you have to save Little Xi, you have to save her.”

“Get up, Big Sister, get up,” Lao Chen said, helping her to her feet.

Big Sister Song started to cry, and Lao Chen began to tear up, too, so he took out a white handkerchief and dabbed at his eyes.

“Lao Chen, I know you’ll save Little Xi,” Big Sister Song said. “You’re a good man, Lao Chen, you’ll save her.”

“I’ll do my best,” Lao Chen said. “I’ll do everything I can.”

When he got home, Lao Chen sat down in front of his computer and stared blankly at that note: mai zi bu si. With the previous message, he had immediately seen that feichengwuraook meant “If you’re not sincere, don’t bother, okay?” But what did this mai zi bu si mean? “Sell appearance cloth thread?” “Bury letter enrich posterity?” He tried out some characters, but the problem with Chinese Romanization is that it does not indicate the tone, so each sound can stand for many different characters.

Lao Chen remembered that when he was a child living in Tiu Keng Leng, his mother worked as a cook in a Protestant church. On Sunday mornings she would take him to the church service because afterward they were given a bag of white flour donated by the people of the United States. His mother would usually doze through the service, but he liked to listen to the pastor’s sermon. Once the pastor quoted from what Jesus had said about a single grain of wheat: “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it will be alone, but if it dies, it will bring forth much fruit.” In other words, a grain of wheat that falls into the ground does not really die- mai zi bu si. Had Little Xi changed her Internet name to maizibusi, “The grain does not die”? And yet he couldn’t remember her ever being remotely religious.

Lao Chen looked up the four characters mai zi bu si on the net and several literary and religious links came up. For example, a book on Zhang Ailing and her banal “boudoir realism” titled The Grain Fallen on the Ground Does Not Die by a Harvard professor, Wang Dewei, and a Chinese translation, Maizi busi, of Andre Gide’s 1924 autobiographical novel Si le grain ne meurt. Lao Chen looked at a dozen or so Web sites, but didn’t find any that appeared to be by Little Xi. He didn’t have the patience to look at any more. His promise to Big Sister Song that he would try to save Little Xi was beginning to weigh on his shoulders like Jesus’s cross. Then again, no matter how heavyhearted he felt, life must go on-so he went out in search of his customary Starbucks Lychee Black Dragon Latte.

What Lao Chen didn’t expect was that Fang Caodi, who once used to be Fang Lijun, had been waiting for him on Xindong Road for almost two hours. Fang Caodi had run into him there before, taken his card, and sent him an e-mail, but Lao Chen had not responded. This time, Fang decided to wait for him at the same spot and feign another chance encounter.

By now, Fang Caodi could almost tell by a person’s appearance whether he or she was a “nonforgetter,” like he and Zhang Dou were. The last time he’d met Lao Chen, his leisurely, contented expression certainly didn’t put him in their camp. But Fang Caodi had always thought that Lao Chen was an intelligent guy, and Fang hardly ever changed his opinion of anyone. He was especially happy today to see Lao Chen coming out of the Happiness Village Number Two compound with a frown and an extremely worried look on his face.

“Master Chen,” Fang called as he took off his baseball cap and began walking toward him. “It’s me, Fang Caodi.” He patted his bald head as if to refresh Lao Chen’s memory.

“Master Chen, you look great today,” Fang said.

“Old Fang, I’m not really in the mood for talking today,” said Lao Chen.

“Not feeling good today, Lao Chen?” said Fang. “That’s okay. How could you feel good? A whole month is missing.”

“I really have things to do, Old Fang,” said Lao Chen. “I’ll talk to you some other time.”

“Where’re you going, Master Chen?”

Lao Chen thought for a minute. He couldn’t say he was off for coffee at Starbucks. “I’m going to the Sanlian Bookstore.”

“I’ll drive you, Master Chen,” Fang Caodi immediately offered. He opened the passenger door of his Jeep Cherokee as if to say, “Get in.”

“That’s okay, there’s really no need.” Lao Chen was still trying to avoid him. “I’ll take a taxi. You must have things to do.”

“No, I don’t,” said Fang. “I came especially to talk to you, Master Chen.”

Lao Chen got into the car resignedly.