Beijing Comrades (25 page)

Lan Yu wasn't the only one with a lot to do that day. I needed to get started on the crisis management I would need to weather the storm I knew was coming in the wake of Yang Youfu's arrest. And yet, instead of doing this, I spent the day on the couch, watching TV and wondering where my life was going.

Twenty-Seven

Liu Zheng ended up staying at the company. I was glad, but not especially surprised. Monumental as our fight had been, quitting wasn't something Liu Zheng would do lightly. Nor was I about to fire him, because I didn't want to lose him as a friend. As for the argument itself, he only had one thing to say when he walked into the office a few days later: “Too much honesty is a form of stupidity.”

Although I had patched things up with Liu Zheng, I was failing miserably at extricating myself from my relationship with Lan Yu. Each time he called, a rejection would form in the back of my mouth, but it always vanished before materializing on my lips. Then I would go see him.

One afternoon, I was on my cell phone at the little blue table in Lan Yu's living room. I needed to jot down a number, so Lan Yu told me to go to the bedroom and dig around in the desk for a pen. Fumbling through the top drawer, I came across a stack of photographs: It was the same guy I had seen squeezing Lan Yu's hand outside the building a few weeks earlier. He was more pretty than handsome, and his wire-rimmed
glasses gave him a scholarly air. There was only one picture of the two of them together: two happy and handsome young men, sitting outdoors on two big rocks next to each other, broad smiles on their faces. I had come to hate the flippant, emotionally distant smirk Lan Yu always seemed to have on his face lately, but in all the years I'd known him this was the first time his true smile made me uneasy. More than uneasy. It was like my heart was being gutted with a knife.

One evening when we were at Gala, there was a knock at the front door. A utility worker had come to read the electricity meter and collect a payment. He and Lan Yu began to do bill calculations, so I stepped onto the balcony and lit a cigarette. The building facing us was barely a stone's throw away—so close that on the summer day when I had visited Lan Yu for the first time, I could hear the thumping sound of children racing around and shouting inside the other homes. But now it was silent. Just faint lights turning on and off and the mundane activities of tenants who'd forgotten to close their window curtains.

I was so absorbed in observing other people's lives that I didn't hear Lan Yu open the door and step out after the worker had left. He grabbed me from behind and I jumped, startled by his interruption of my trancelike musings. I struggled to turn around and face him so I could give him a playful slap on the cheek, but he held me tight, hooking his chin over my shoulder and pinning me to the spot. I felt his hot breath against the nape of my neck, then against my ear. Rapid, excited. Nearly all the curtains in the building opposite were shut by this time, but I still had a vague worry that someone would see us.

“You . . . here . . . just like this . . . it's so . . .,” he whispered, kissing the patch of skin he had exposed by pulling down the back of my shirt collar. “So damn . . .” His tongue darted around at the back of my ear.

“So damn
what
?” I asked with a laugh, throwing off his arms and turning to face him. Our lips touched, but before it could turn into a kiss he pulled away from me, apparently remembering he hadn't finished his sentence.

“So damn
sexy
,” he said, stressing the final word in English. He smiled sheepishly. Perhaps he was afraid I would think he was showing off.

“Quit making fun of me!” I laughed. “You know my English is shit.” I combed my fingers through his hair and looked at him intently. I had something important to say.

“Lan Yu,” I started. “I want things to be like they were before. I'm not seeing anyone else. I don't want to see anyone else. I just want it to be you and me.” I was determined to give this thing the final push it needed to work.

“Give me a chance, Lan Yu,” I persisted. “Give
us
a chance. My feelings for you are stronger than ever before. I'm serious,” I said, and I meant it.

“
Serious
?” he scoffed, incredulous. “Since when is anything
serious
to you?” The excitement that had been in his eyes just moments earlier was gone, replaced by a cold and hostile indifference. Averting his eyes, he grabbed me by the hand and led me back inside. That was his way of ending the conversation.

“But I
am
serious!” I insisted, trailing behind him back into the apartment. “I'm not interested in women anymore, Lan Yu. I'm never going back to that life.”

“You say that now,” he said, “but things could change in the future. Besides, you don't live in a vacuum, remember? You have your mother to think of, your career . . .”

Your mother? I thought sadly. He no longer said “our Ma.”

We entered the bedroom and Lan Yu jumped between the sheets. I stood at the foot of the bed with crossed arms, gazing down at him with an intentionally pouty look on my face.

“What?” he asked, scrunching his face up into a scowl and lifting his fists as if challenging me to a fight. Fine then! I thought. If he wanted to drop the subject and keep things simple and easy, I'd let him. For now, anyway.

“Don't be scared,” I said, as I slowly walked around the bed like a tiger sizing up its prey. “I'm just going to give you a little kiss. Just a little hug and a kiss!” I jumped onto the bed and we both laughed. There was tension between us, but we were doing what we could to avoid an argument.

“Listen, Handong,” Lan Yu said with sudden concentration. “Even if you
are
being real, I have someone now. He's good to me. We're happy together.” He paused for a moment, then tugged at a button on my shirt as if he were thinking. “It's bad enough that I'm here with you. I don't want to do anything else to hurt him.”

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. Here was Lan Yu lying in my arms, telling me about his devotion to another man—a man who had probably been in this very bed with him a dozen, two dozen, a hundred times. I hated it! I hated it with every fiber of my being. But it was no longer my place to question Lan Yu. Or his relationships with others.

“Is he the only guy you've been with these last two years?”

“God no,” he replied. “There's been a bunch. Most were just a quick fuck, then
see ya later
! Pricks.” He laughed.

“How did you meet him? I mean, your boyfriend.”

“When you and I broke up, I started going back to Huada more often, even though I'd already graduated. I don't know why—I was probably lonely and missed the place. Anyway, one day I was sitting alone in this little gazebo they have—the Island, they call it. He came in and sat on the bench opposite me. I could tell he was watching me—he just stared at me for the longest time. Then he sat down next to me, gave me a cigarette, and told me I looked brokenhearted.”

“Was he also a Huada graduate?”

“No, he had gone to a different school. But we had a lot in common. He gave me a lot of—” Lan Yu broke off his own sentence and looked up at the ceiling.

“You know,” he continued, “when you and I were together, no matter how bad things got or how scary things were, as soon as I thought of you, I wasn't afraid anymore. It was only after we broke up that I realized that for people like us—I mean, it's just so fucking hard, you know?” He moved his eyes away from the ceiling and looked at me.

“At the time, I hated you for getting married. But I understand now. You've got a pretty good deal, Handong. You can be with men or women.”

“You can get married too if you wanted!”

“No,” he said firmly. “I can't.”

I took Lan Yu's hand in mine. I didn't want to talk about it. I didn't want to talk about my marriage, and I certainly didn't want to talk about how great his boyfriend was. All I wanted was him. In that moment. The beautiful young man I was with.

So fuck it! I thought. If I can't have all of him, let me at least have this moment. I kissed him roughly on the lips. “Let's fuck,” I said with a devilish grin. He smiled.

I got on top of him, then reached over to the desk next to the bed and grabbed my tie. Lan Yu gave me a puzzled look, but smiled when I lifted his arms and tied them to the steel bed frame. It was something I'd seen in a porn video.

Being tied up excited him. His lips parted in tortured expectation and he looked up at me in silent submission. There it was—that unconditional surrender I hadn't seen for so long. Instant hard-on.

“You'd better behave, little boy, or I'm going to have to discipline you,” I said, trying to sound butch and authoritative.

I stripped the pillowcase off the pillow, then folded it in half
and covered his eyes. With its floral design, it wasn't exactly the black leather blindfold I'd seen in the video, but it would do. After Lan Yu's eyes were covered, I kissed him roughly, then bit him from head to toe like a beast devouring its kill, leaving faint bite marks where my teeth had been. And finally, I dove into his cock like it was my last meal. I sucked greedily, hungrily. It was pleasure, but a strange kind of pleasure, a pleasure tainted by the sadness of knowing he wasn't really mine and never would be. For a moment I thought I was going to cry right there with his thick, pulsing dick lodged in the back of my throat.

I crawled back up to him and kissed him again, wondering if he could taste himself on my lips. I pulled the pillowcase away from his eyes and he looked at me with rapturous excitement. Soon enough, however, he saw there were in tears in my eyes. He looked surprised, but the next thing I knew there were tears in his, too.

“Turn around!” I barked like a military officer. I wasn't going to let a few tears get in the way of the hot scene we had going. I untied his wrists and turned him onto his side as he looked back at me with a wild expression: burning, desperate. His hands were free now, but he kept groping at the tie and bed frame, unwilling to be released from the bondage in which I'd placed him. I lay on my side next to him and slowly pushed inside, but things weren't going as planned because the only sensation I felt was a deep grief forming at the pit of my stomach. It was the agony of not being able to possess him entirely. When it was more than I could bear, I pulled out, turning Lan Yu to face me as I broke into uncontrollable sobs.

“Lan Yu, I can't take this anymore!” I heaved, tears streaming down my cheeks. I pulled him into my arms. “Marry me, Lan Yu! Why can't we . . . why? If I can marry a woman, why
can't I marry you? I'll do anything . . . just tell me what you want me to do!” Frantically, I held him against my chest, then pulled away again to look him in the eye. “Men, women, I don't care anymore! I love
you
, Lan Yu! It's you that I love! I don't care if they say I'm sick, I don't care if people call me a hooligan. I love you!”

He trembled in my arms. I held him so close, so tight, his voice was barely audible.

“I don't want anything else,” he said, choking with sobs. “I've never wanted anything else. I just want to be with you.”

Forty-five minutes later, Lan Yu and I stepped out the front door of his apartment building and into the street, looking like nothing more than two ordinary friends. Even less than friends, I thought bitterly. Everything that had just transpired in his bedroom—none of it mattered now. We had nothing. No recognition from the outside world. None of the pressures keeping couples together, but all the ones keeping them apart. Walking down the street together, it was as if nothing had happened.

Twenty-Eight

When spring came the following year, I had a strange premonition that something bad was coming. Time revealed it wasn't my imagination. Everywhere I turned, spring flowers were blooming. But not for me.

The crisis began to take shape when my mother asked me to come home for one of her late-night talks, which were becoming more and more frequent. She wanted me to marry again, and without delay. With somber earnestness she told me about her life and my father's life, about their marriage, and about the hardship of life in general. Throughout her story, she paused periodically to stress the dangers of life without a woman.

“Handong,” she said. “You can't go on with this lifestyle! It's reckless. You need to start taking responsibility for your life.”

On and on she went while I stared at the floor in grumpy silence, cynically asking myself how a woman with a Republican Era high school education had suddenly become a philosopher.
What she didn't openly state, of course, was her fear that I'd returned to my old “hobby,” a hobby we both knew had not, in fact, been replaced by horse racing.

Before long, I learned that the censure wasn't coming from my mother alone. One weekend in March, I took the family to Beijing World Park to go for a stroll and enjoy the replicas of the Taj Mahal, Eiffel Tower, and other world marvels. My youngest sister, Jingdong, was married by then and had just become a mom like our other sister, so we were a big group. She spent most of the day keeping an eye on the baby, but I noticed her periodically looking at me in disgust. Later that night when I mentioned it to my mother, she said that Lin Ping had told Jingdong everything. It broke my heart to hear this. No longer was I the perfect big brother.

If my relationship with my family was in crisis, my professional life wasn't doing much better. The list of individuals tied to Yang Youfu's case grew in the wake of his arrest, culminating with the police striding into the office of an associate of mine, a bank director, and placing him under arrest. This bank director had been a miracle worker for me, a personal God of Wealth who'd given me major financial backing on more than one occasion. The threat of being dragged into the case was becoming real, so I decided to lie low for a while. I wanted to wait and see how things were going to unfold.

For some reason, the catastrophe crashing down around me made me start examining other aspects of my life. I began looking at my relationship with Lan Yu in a new light. I was in my midthirties at that point, ten years older than Lan Yu and well past the age when a man was expected to marry and have kids. I no longer had time for games, jealousy, or any of the bullshit that I had thrived on when I was younger. I no longer
monitored Lan Yu's every move—who he talked to, where he went. None of this was my business anymore, and, in fact, I really didn't care what he did. All I wanted was to cherish each minute I had with him, for us to be happy in the short time fate had allotted us. I didn't know what Lan Yu needed from me, but I was going to do my best to give it to him.

One night later that month, Lan Yu and I were in bed enjoying the kind of quiet conversation that lovers all around the world have while lying in each other's arms after sex. At first we talked about nothing in particular, but soon the conversation shifted to heavier terrain. We began speaking of the journey of the human soul.

“Would you want to know me again in the next life?” I asked, pressing my lips against his sweaty forehead.

“No.” His reply was blunter than I would have liked.

“So you're saying you regret knowing me in this life?”

“No,” he explained. “I don't regret anything about this life. But I would never want to live this way again.” He smiled faintly and I wondered what he meant.

An instant later, Lan Yu's pager beeped loudly on the nightstand next to us. He picked it up and glanced at it, but made no move to return the call. Instead, he reached farther across the nightstand to pick up a catalog. I stole a glance at the cover. It was a university brochure.

“Anyway,” he said, flipping hastily through the pages, “whatever happens in this lifetime, I don't think MIT is going to be a part of it.” He had told me about MIT. It was a prestigious engineering school in the United States.

“Well, that's okay!” I said cheerfully. “One day your son will go there.”

“What son?” he laughed. “Since when am I having kids?”

His pager rang a second time, so I picked up his cell phone and handed it to him. Lan Yu got out of bed and threw on pants and a T-shirt.

“I'll be right back. I have to make a phone call,” he said. There was something awkward about his manner. “I'll make it from downstairs, okay?”

A few minutes later he returned to the bedroom, moving as quickly and lightly as if he'd been floating in the air. There was a part of me that didn't want to ask what it was, but the part of me that did quickly won out.

“You look like you got some good news!” I said, trying to sound chipper.

“He got in!” Lan Yu exclaimed. “He got an acceptance letter! Twenty-four thousand a year. I can't believe it!”

“Twenty-four thousand
what
?” I asked.

“Twenty-four thousand dollars—a full fellowship! That's more than enough to live on. He's going to be able to do it!” Lan Yu jumped up and down like a kid. That's when I put two and two together and realized he was talking about his boyfriend. He had gotten into graduate school in the US.

“Humph!” I blurted out cynically. “At his age, what's the point?”

Lan Yu laughed. “He's not as old as you are. He's only twenty-eight!” This was an irritating comment, but I wasn't going to say anything nasty in return.

“Well, then you'd better get moving so you can go with him!”

“Easier said than done.” Lan Yu sat back down on the bed and looked at me. “It's almost impossible to get funded with architecture. I have a huge stack of acceptance letters, but
no money to do it.” He scowled and looked lost in thought. “I'm thinking of taking the GRE again. My score was a measly 1980. I can't believe I didn't even break 2000!”

For the rest of the day, Lan Yu was moody and quiet. I thought this could only mean one thing: he was feeling down about the prospect of being separated from his boyfriend, even if it was only temporary.

A few weeks later, the bad news came. Because of my connections to the bank director who had been arrested, there was going to be an investigation into my company's financial records. First I panicked, then I braced myself for the worst. My world was about to collapse.

I rarely visited my mother during those weeks in April. She never smiled in those days, and I was unable to look her in the eye knowing she had lost all faith in me. I had failed her as a son. She was heartbroken.

Lan Yu called me a couple times a week to get together, but consciously or not I began avoiding his calls. When he did catch me on the phone, I usually found a way to turn him down. I still saw him now and then, but had to accept that our relationship simply wasn't enjoying the great renaissance I had hoped for. Either he was incapable of loving me, or he didn't want to. Even if I had wanted to see him, though, it would have been hard, since most of my time was spent doing what I could to halt, or at least mitigate, the approaching catastrophe.

On one of the rare occasions when we were together, we lay in bed after a long session of lovemaking. I'd put him on his stomach with two pillows under him so his ass was up in the air and fucked him that way, slapping his ass until he came. I collapsed next to him, a sweaty, sticky mess.

“Hey, do you still have your old passport?” I asked before we'd even come down from the high.

“Huh?” he replied, still out of breath and apparently thrown off by the randomness of the question. “Why?”

“It's probably expired,” I said. “Give it to me and I'll get you a new one. You're going to need a new reason for going abroad, but I should be able to get you a new passport within a week.” Leaning over the edge of the bed, I reached down to the floor and opened my briefcase. From there I pulled out an envelope with two pieces of neatly folded paper inside. “Here,” I said, handing the envelope to Lan Yu. “These are bank guarantees. One for a bank in China, one in the United States. You said you have acceptance letters, right? Just take this with you when you apply for your visa and they'll give it to you.”

Incredulous, Lan Yu opened up the envelope and looked inside. “They won't automatically give you a visa just because you have these.” He had done his homework.

“I know, but listen. I have a friend, a woman, who handles visas for the Ministry of Economy. She's tight with the Chinese secretary at the US embassy and is on good terms with two of the visa officers there, too. After you get your new passport, she'll take you there and you'll get the visa.”

“You think that'll work?” he asked doubtfully.

“I know it'll work,” I reassured him. “Just get the visa, go to the United States, and worry about what to do next once you get there. I opened a bank account there with $50,000. If you get in a jam, use that money and pay me back later.”

Lan Yu stared at the piece of paper in his hand, silently fingering the corners and biting his bottom lip. I figured he must have been so moved by my kindness that he was unable to speak, but suddenly and unexpectedly he looked up at me with a cold smile.

“You don't have to do this, Handong. I mean, it's obvious the way you've been avoiding me lately. If you're sick of me,
just say so. It's like you're in this big hurry to ship me off.” He folded the papers back up and handed them to me. “Hold on to your money. Sooner or later I'll get to America on my own.” He stood up from the bed to get dressed. I got up, too, and threw on a shirt, but dug around in the pocket of my trousers before putting them on.

“Here,” I said. “This is her card.” I handed him the thick rectangular paper. “When you have your passport, call her. I've already talked to her. She says she wants to help.” Lan Yu looked at the card skeptically, visibly reluctant to take it.

“This is your chance, Lan Yu!” I pressed. “Don't you want to be with your boyfriend in America?” He looked up at me and I continued, “If you don't want to do this, you may as well take the bank guarantees and throw them in the trash. And you can burn your acceptance letters while you're at it.”

Lan Yu continued looking at me in silence, still not taking the business card. Why don't you fucking say something? I felt as if a fire were burning in my belly.

“Anyway,” I said, picking up my wallet and keys, “time to say goodbye. And don't come looking for me, either. There are plenty of guys out there who are a better fuck than I am.”

He looked devastated. I hadn't seen him look like that in ages. But I couldn't, wouldn't, feel sorry for him. The only thing I felt was anger. I slammed my keys back down on the desk.

“You know what, Lan Yu? Ever since we met seven years ago and I gave you that thousand yuan, you've seen me as nothing but a bank account. That's all I've ever been to you. Do you even remember what our first fight was about? Money! Must be pretty humiliating for you, huh?” I tossed the business card of my associate at the Ministry of Economy to the floor. “But if you think that's humiliating for
you
, what about me? Imagine how I must feel knowing that in your eyes, my
only role in this relationship has been to dish out a couple of fucking bills. Now, that's humiliating!”

I stormed out of the bedroom, through the living room, and toward the front door, yelling as I went. “I'm not sleeping here tonight! I'm sick of your fucking heater being broken all the time. I've been freezing my ass off!” I reached the front door, then turned around abruptly. “Are you going to walk me out or not?”

Lan Yu turned his back to me. “You know the way out.”

He was right. I knew the way out.

This time it's really over. Each day, that's what I told myself.

Unlike the first time we had broken up, for some reason this time wasn't especially hard for me. By that point, my heart had been broken so many times there was nothing left for me to feel. This, I imagined, was how Lan Yu must have felt three years earlier when I had left him for Lin Ping.

He called me a few times in the weeks that followed. Each time he asked if I wanted to meet for a drink, and each time I said I was too busy. “Besides,” I lied, “I'm trying to quit drinking.”

They say the human body can't feel pain in two places at the same time. It must be the same with emotional pain, because if there was any sadness in my heart after things ended with Lan Yu, it didn't stay there long. Less than four weeks later, one misery was replaced by another when the police walked into my office and put me in handcuffs.

There's not much to say about the case. Just that on the day of my arrest, two plainclothes cops came into my office, showed me a warrant for my arrest, then made me sign something. I reached out my hands, and the next thing I knew I was cuffed.

It's funny when I think about it now. I know myself well.
Under normal circumstances, if something like that happened I'd be thrown into a panic. But for some reason, I was so calm, so composed, at peace even, as though nothing had been transpiring at all. Perhaps it was because I unconsciously suspected it was coming all along. The charges were big, the dangers acute, and I had done everything I could to rally support and protect myself. But when the ax came down, I found that everyone I had considered a friend wasn't. I can't say I blame them. They were only trying to protect themselves.

The list of offenses I was charged with was long: bribery, smuggling, illegal pooling of funds, on and on it went. It was during those days that I learned that if you really want to nab someone, it's not that hard to come up with a reason.