Shifu, You'll Do Anything For a Laugh (5 page)

After walking down off the overpass, he entered a farmer's market, filled with hope. The canopy over the market was made of green nylon, which gave the faces of all the vegetable sellers a green tint. The smell of vegetables, meat, fish, and fried snacks merged and engulfed him; so did the shouts of hawking peddlers. In front of one of the stalls he spotted Wang Dalan, the one-handed woman who had worked with him at the factory. She was watching over a pile of sticky strawberries.

“Ding Shifu,” she called to him warmly. “Where have you been keeping yourself?”

He stopped in his tracks. And when he did, he spotted three more former workers from the factory. They all smiled at him. Then they asked him to sample their wares.

“Have some strawberries, Ding Shifu!”

“How about a tomato, Ding Shifu?”

“Try one of my carrots, Ding Shifu!”

He was about to ask them how business was, until he got a good look at their faces. There was no need to ask. Life was tough, all right, but as long as you were willing to work hard and put your pride aside, you could always get by. But there was no way a man his age could compete with younger folks in opening a vegetable stall, let alone pedaling a pedicab like his apprentice. He also couldn't sell piglets out on the street; you couldn't call it hard work, but you needed the gift of gab, someone who could talk a dead man into coming back to life. At the factory, old Ding had a reputation for almost never having anything to say. This was all very disappointing, but he hadn't reached the point of despair. He'd take a look around and find something he could do. In fact, that's what he was doing now. He refused to believe that in a city this big, there wasn't a single thing he could do to make a living. And just as despair was beginning to creep in, the old man upstairs pointed out the way to riches.

Dusk was falling when he found himself in front of the hill behind the factory, where the blood-red rays of the setting sun danced on the brilliant surface of the man-made pond behind the hill. Carefree couples strolled along the path ringing the lake. After decades of working at the factory, this was the first time he'd ever made his way out to the hill, let alone strolled around the lake. For all those years, the factory had been his second home; the dozens of awards he'd earned represented buckets of sweat. He turned back to look once more at the factory: a workshop that had once buzzed with activity now stood quiet and deserted. The clang of steel on steel had become yesterday's dream; the chimney that had spewed black smoke for decades was now a sleeping volcano; the factory grounds were littered with tin can rejects and rusty cutting machinery; the yard behind the cafeteria was strewn with empty liquor bottles.

The factory was dead; a factory with no workers was nothing less than a graveyard. His eyes burned, his heart was filled with a mixture of sadness and anger. As the evening deepened, an eerie gloom rose above the hilltop thickets, heralded by the shriek of a bird that startled him. He massaged his sore leg and stood up. He walked back down the hill.

A cemetery occupied the area near the lake at the foot of the hill. It was the final resting place of over a hundred heroes from the life-and-death struggles of the city thirty years before. Lush green trees ringed the cemetery: there were pines, cypresses, and dozens of towering poplars. He walked over to the cemetery on a leg so sore he had to sit down on a stone marker. Crows saturated the night with caws from a nest in one of the poplars and magpies circled above as he massaged his leg. While he was rubbing it, his gaze drifted to the abandoned hulk of a bus on the ground beneath the poplar. No tires, no glass in the windows, and hardly any paint anywhere. Who, he wondered, left that thing here? And why? Occupational habit had him thinking how he could convert the thing into a living space. And at that moment he spotted a young couple skulking out of the cemetery, like a pair of specters, then slipping into the rusty bus. For some strange reason, he began breathing hard. One old Ding wanted only to get out of there as quickly as possible; a second old Ding couldn't tear himself away. While the two old Dings were engaged in a fierce battle of wills, a soft, lovely moan emerged from the bus hulk. That was followed by an irrepressible female scream, not all that different from the screech of a cat in heat, but distinct nonetheless. Old Ding couldn't see his own face, of course, but his ears were burning and even the puffs of air from his nose seemed overheated. There was a rustling noise in the bus just before the man popped out through the door. The woman followed a few moments later. He held his breath like a thief hiding in the bushes, not getting slowly to his feet until he heard a somewhat triumphant cough coming from the line of trees beyond the cemetery.

The old Ding who wanted to leave and the more curious old Ding engaged in yet another battle of wills; on and on they fought as his legs carried him into the bus. The dark, murky interior was damp and musty smelling. Gray litter was scattered around the floor; he nudged some of it with the tip of his shoe and decided it was toilet paper.

A husky voice called to him from outside:

“Shifu — Ding Shifu — where are you?”

It was his apprentice, Lü Xiaohu.

He walked outside and took a few cautious steps forward to calm himself before replying:

“Stop shouting, I'm in here!”

5

Lü Xiaohu was pedaling so hard he could barely talk:

“Your wife was worried half to death, said you had a funny look in your eyes when you left the house, afraid you might do something foolish, try to end it all. I told her you'd never do anything like that, not somebody as smart as you. I told her I knew where you'd be, and I was right. Shifu, screw the factory, now that it's turned into this. If an earthworm in the ground won't starve to death, then neither will we, the working class.”

He was watching his apprentice's back lurch from side to side from his seat in the pedicab and listening to him prattle, and while his heart was awash with feelings, he didn't make a sound. It felt to him as if a hot current were racing through his body, and in that moment, the gloom that had accompanied him ever since getting laid off simply vanished. His heart was like the sky after a rainfall. The pedicab turned into a busy street, where the flashing neon lights gave him an incomparable rush. Barbecue stalls lined the street, filling his nose with aromatic smoke. Suddenly a shout: Environmental cops! The peddlers jumped on their bicycles and pedaled off with their smoky barbecue stalls behind them, straight into the maze of neighborhood lanes. Their dispersal went off like clockwork, like a perfectly executed drill, no straggling, like a school of fish diving en masse to the bottom of a river, leaving not a trace.

“Did you see that, Shifu?” his apprentice asked. “Chickens follow their ways and dogs follow theirs. After getting laid off, everyone comes up with his own brilliant idea.”

As they were passing a public toilet, old Ding reached out and tapped his apprentice on the shoulder. “Stop,” he said.

He walked up to the toilet, a building made of white ceramic tiles with a green glazed tile roof. A young fellow sitting in a glass booth rapped the glass with his finger, calling his attention to the red lettering on the window:

     PAY TOILET          ONE YUAN PER VISIT

He put his hand in his pocket. Empty, not a cent. Lü Xiaohu walked up and pushed two yuan through the crescent opening in the booth. “Come in with me, Shifu,” he said.

A sense of shame welled up in old Ding's heart, not because he had no money, but because he hadn't known that he had to pay to use the toilet. After following his apprentice inside the brightly lit toilet, his nostrils were assailed by a strangely sweet reek that made his head swim. The floor tiles were so glossy he could see his reflection in them, and he faltered, nearly losing his balance. Master and apprentice stood shoulder to shoulder in front of the urinal and stared at the deodorant balls tumbling and rolling under the liquid assault, neither man so much as glancing at the other.

“Who ever heard of having to pay to use a toilet?” he muttered.

“Shifu, you're like a man from Mars. I can't think of anything you don't have to pay for these days,” his apprentice said with a shrug. “But it isn't all bad. If not for pay toilets, lower-class people like us would never have the privilege of relieving ourselves in such a high-class place, not even in our dreams.”

The apprentice led him over to the sink, where they washed their hands; then he showed him how to use the blow-dryer. Their mission accomplished, they walked out of the public toilet.

Back in the pedicab, old Ding kept rubbing his rough, blow-dried hands; they'd never felt so moist and smooth.

“Little Hu,” he said emotionally, “I've just taken a high-class leak, thanks to you.”

“That's funny, Shifu!”

“I owe you one yuan. I'll pay you tomorrow.”

“Shifu, you'll say anything for a laugh.”

Just before they reached his house, he said, “Stop here.”

“We're almost there. I'll take you to your door.”

“No, I want to talk to you about something.”

“Go ahead.”

“Any man who can't make a living and take care of his family is like a woman who can't have children. He can't hold his head up in society.”

“You're right, Shifu.”

“Which is why I need to go out and find some work.” “That sounds good to me.”

“But there are laid-off workers everywhere you look, not counting all those people working on public projects. Just about every job you can think of is taken.”

“That's about how things are.”

“Little Hu, there's no such thing as a true dead-end, wouldn't you say?”

“Shifu, those are the words of a sage, so they must be true.”

“Well, I discovered a path to riches today. Now the only question is, should I do it or not?”

“Shifu, as long as it's not murder or arson you're talking about, or highway robbery, I don't see any reason why you shouldn't.”

“But what I'm talking about, well, it might not be legal….” “Shifu, don't scare me like that. You know I'm not a brave man.”

But once he laid out his plan in detail, Lü Xiaohu said excitedly:

“Shifu, no one but a genius like you could come up with a brilliant idea like that. Now I can see how you were able to invent a two-wheeled, double-shared plow in the 1950s. How could what you're talking about be illegal? If something like that's illegal, well… Shifu, this will be a rest stop for lovers, not only civilized, but humane as well. This may not sound good, but you'll be setting up a … a sort of pay toilet! Forget your misgivings and go to it, Shifu. Tomorrow I'll get a bunch of guys together to help you put it in shape!”

“Don't tell anyone about this. You're the only one who knows.”

“As you say, Shifu.”

“That includes my wife.”

“Don't you worry, Shifu.”

6

He was sitting in the woods between the cemetery and man-made lake, leaning up against a poplar. A little path wound its way up the hill, disappearing from view from time to time. Every once in a while his gaze traveled past the woods up to the edge of the cemetery. He could only see a corner of his little cottage, but it was all right there in his mind.

A few days before, he and Lü Xiaohu had gone back to the factory. After being let in by the gateman, he took advantage of a lifetime of “connections” to pick up discarded sheet metal, rivets, steel plate, and other items. The two men spent the next two days repairing and cleaning up the dilapidated bus hulk. They used the sheet metal to seal up the broken windows, then made doors out of steel plate, with locks on both sides. Once the repairs were made, Lü Xiaohu turned up a bucket of green paint and another of yellow. With the two men slapping on paint, this way and that, a broken-down hulk of an abandoned bus was transformed into something that looked like a military transport in a subtropical jungle. Master and apprentice stepped back to admire their work; the faint smell of paint made them happier than they could have expected.

“Shifu,” Lü Xiaohu said, “it's done.”

“Yes, it is.”

“Should we set off some firecrackers to celebrate?”

“Let's not.”

“As soon as the paint dries, you're open for business.”

“What do we do if there's trouble, little Hu?”

“Don't sweat it, Shifu. I've got a cousin at the Public Security Bureau.”

On the night before he opened for business Ding was so excited he didn't sleep a wink. His wife was so excited she couldn't stop hiccupping. They were both out of bed at four in the morning, and as she prepared his breakfast and lunch, she kept asking him what sort of job he'd found.

“I already told you,” he said impatiently. “I'm going to be an advisor to some peasant entrepreneurs in the suburbs.”

“I saw you and little Hu whispering back and forth,” she said between hiccups. “I doubt you were talking about being an advisor. Don't go getting involved in any shady practice at your age.”

“Can't you find something good to say this early in the morning?” he replied angrily. “Come along with me if you don't believe me. You can let those peasant entrepreneurs feast their eyes on your esteemed countenance!”

His comment took the wind out of her sails, and she shut up.

From his vantage point under a tree, he watched a bunch of old folks hard at work on their morning exercises: airing caged birds, strolling, practicing Tai Chi, doing Chi Kung, some voice training. The sight of all those contented people depressed him. If he had a child — son or daughter, it made no difference — he wouldn't be here sitting under a tree early in the morning, laid off or not; he was like the fool who saw a rabbit run into a tree stump and break its neck, then spent his days after that waiting for a second rabbit to do the same. A layer of mist hung over the man-made lake as an orange glow appeared in the east. An old man doing voice exercises seemed to rock the woods:

“Ow-ke — ow-ke —”

Waves of melancholy washed over him, like the ripples on a breezy lake. But only for a moment. A new stage in his life was about to begin, and the new life, like the woman who bought the little pigs, filled his mind with too many lustful thoughts for him to get sentimental. In the hour or so before sunup, the woods were filled with the songs and chirps of birds; the air had a minty quality that cleansed his lungs and lifted his spirits. It didn't take long for him to see how wrong he'd been to come out so early. At this time of day, only old folks were out, and they preferred the area around the lake to the cemetery; even if they came to the cemetery, they weren't the clientele he was waiting for. But that's all right, he consoled himself. I'll count this as my morning exercise. After breathing the foul factory air for decades, it's time I gave my lungs a break with some fresh air. Picking up his camp stool, he strolled through the woods and around the cemetery to familiarize himself with the area. The discarded birth control paraphernalia he spotted on the ground made him more confident than ever that he'd chosen the right path.