The Dog (8 page)

“You done?” the chief said.

“Just give me the afternoon and I'll have a draft for you. For the sake of our readership,” Ning said. “For the sake of the historical record!”

“Since when have you cared about either of those things?” the chief said.

“The kid missed the whole point of the story,” Ning said, rattling the paper. “Why do you think I've been tied up with it all week? It would take anyone else two weeks to do what I can give you by tonight.”

“Is that so?” the chief said. He put down his pencil and pushed his glasses up to his forehead, where they sat atop his white brows like a second set of eyes. The skin on his big bald skull was as rumpled as a plowed field.

“I've been doing some thinking,” the chief said. “Li Pai's last day and all. You've been on my mind, I'm sorry to report.”

“That can't have been a pleasant experience,” Ning said.

The chief snorted. “I don't spend a lot of time pondering the vagaries of the human condition, but I've made an exception in your case,” he said. “I'm of limited intelligence, but I've given it my best effort, and I've come up with a theory. You used to be a bull with sharp horns. But, now—” The chief made a puffing sound, his fingers releasing chaff into the wind.

Ning jumped in. “
Youth Daily
's constantly doing things like this. Those goat fuckers. We'd never go with something this weak,” he said, shaking the printout. “You'll see what I'm talking about if you read my file.”

“Where is it?”

“I can have it on your desk in a couple of hours. Maybe three.”

The chief's expression softened just enough to change the air in the room.

“What?” Ning said.

The chief studied the dark ravines below Ning's eyes. With age, Ning's eyebrows had all but disappeared, his cheeks had sunk, and he wore a permanently severe, gaunt expression, ever squinting into a fire only he could see. At this moment his lips were pursed with impatience, as though he were dealing with a recalcitrant child. Not so long ago, the chief would have told Ning to get out of his office and file the story, but now he had his own job to worry about. The time had come.

On his best days, Ning was petulant, ill-tempered. His presence soured the mood in the newsroom, and he'd gotten worse in the weeks leading up to Li Pai's retirement. The chief had been under assault from the desk editors, who'd banded together in a campaign to get rid of Ning. He told them he'd take it under advisement, but he really had no choice. If he didn't act, they'd go over his head, and for good measure they'd see that he got tossed out on the street with Ning.

The chief was seventy-one, and he harbored few illusions about his own character. He didn't deny his moral failings, but this one, this long-standing weakness when it came to Ning, was unpardonable. When he was covering the American War in Vietnam he had seen the same lazy sentimentalism in officers who got enlisted men killed by allowing them to talk their way into stupid, heroic-sounding missions. The heart had to be kept out of the command chain. Yet he'd utterly failed to obey that dictum, keeping Ning on purely out of loyalty, payment in return for years of service. That he hadn't been able to discard Ning as he would have a broken car part troubled him. He preferred to think that he was coldly pragmatic, if not ruthless, when it came to assessing the utility of his reporters.

“Do you want to hear my theory now? You lost your will after Li Pai's book came out. That's my theory,” the chief said.

“You might have something there, Chief,” Ning said.

“You thought you deserved more than a footnote.”

“That's possible.”

“Well, I'm sorry,” the chief said.

“What for? You didn't write it.”

The chief laid his hands on the desk in front of him. “I'm afraid you're done here,” he said.

“That's a mistake, Chief. Story's got legs.”

“You're terminated, Ning.”

“How's that?”

“Effective today, you're no longer employed at the
Guangzhou Post
,” the chief said.

“Because of this?” Ning shrieked, holding up the story. On the other side of the door, the chief's assistant looked up from her screen.

“Because I've got fifty kids down there, each one of whom files ten stories a day. Remember how that works? Report it, bang it out, next story! A guy jumps off a bridge, they're not at their desks pondering the ethical implications of suicide. They're bribing the cops so they can get a look at the corpse! Just like you used to do. For all your deep thinking, you haven't filed anything worth reading in years.” The chief didn't mind repaying Ning for all the grief he had caused. Loyalty be damned.

Ning's mouth fell open. He knew he looked like a cliché, his hands lying in his lap like a couple of dead fish, unable to come back with something that would level the chief, or at least wipe that placid, self-satisfied look off his face. In an attempt to get ahold of himself, he fixed his eye on a photograph behind the chief's head, a black-and-white of a PLA artillery crew posing in front of a Type 65 antiaircraft cannon. He'd seen it hundreds of times before, but instead of providing him a lifeline to all those nights he'd waited in that chair while the chief reviewed his copy, he felt as lonely and insignificant as a child who first realizes that, in his absence, his parents laugh and eat and sleep as restfully as ever. The walls of their house do not collapse. The paper without him would go on exactly as it had before. A rasping sound came from Ning's throat.

It wasn't fair. During those nomadic years after Reform and Opening, when the chief had hopped from paper to paper, Ning had followed him like a pack mule, and he'd never said no to an assignment. He'd nearly frozen to death chasing the Panchen Lama on his exodus across the mountains of Nepal. He'd roasted in the sun for weeks at Lop Nur waiting for a subterranean nuclear test. He could have stayed in the newsroom, pulled the Xinhua file off the telex and punched up the copy, but he'd insisted on being there in person to feel the ground tremble. It mattered to him to witness the story. What had all that come to?

It's come to exactly what you always knew it would, he told himself. You've served your purpose and now you're off to the slaughter.

It took an effort of will for the chief to keep from diverting his eyes. He forced himself to suffer this reminder of what happened when he got lazy. Keeping a reporter on past his prime didn't do anyone any good, least of all the reporter. If he'd cut him loose five years earlier, on nothing more than reputation Ning could have landed at another paper. A new start might have energized him. But now he was finished, worn bald as an old tire.

The chief tapped his foot once against the concrete floor to signal that their silent communion had come to an end.

“If you've got anything to say, say it.”

Ning had sunk deep into his chair. He shook his head.

“Well, that's a first,” the chief said. “Listen to me. I haven't put this through official channels, so we can handle it properly, like gentlemen. Submit an official resignation letter to Personnel and you'll keep your pension. If I have to fire you, no pension. Got it?”

“I'm lucky to have you looking out for me.”

The chief didn't respond.

“Why would I resign?” Ning said.

The chief pinched the bridge of his nose. “How about in solidarity with Li Pai?”

“In solidarity with Li Pai,” Ning said.

“Yes.”

“That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard.”

“Your choice,” the chief said. “How's the speech coming?”

“You can't be serious,” Ning said.

“You should add a bit about yourself. Put in something about how brothers always go down together. Allow yourself to save face. Do you hear me? Don't turn yourself into a flaming monk.”

“It's not enough to get rid of me, you're going to put me on parade so everyone can see.”

“This isn't a punishment. You've been with him since
People's Daily
. No one knows him better.”

“I hardly know him at all.”

“Don't give me that. You'll do it, and maybe he'll return the favor. You could benefit from a little character rehabilitation. Maybe he'll write you a recommendation letter, too.”

“You're a son of a bitch,” Ning said.

“We'll all lift a glass to you at the Green Room,” the chief said. “I'm sure Li Pai won't mind sharing the spotlight.”

“That'll be the day,” Ning said. The chief held out his hand, but Ning didn't take it. He went out to the waiting area, pulling the chief's heavy door closed behind him with a sharp click. His lip curled at the sight of the assistant. Repulsive, the way she sat, her dainty arms poised over her keyboard like an insect worrying over the thorax of its prey. From day one he'd disliked this country girl with the erect posture and sharp tongue, and he was relieved to discover that he hadn't, due to his own misfortune, suddenly been visited by a newfound spirit of tolerance.

“What?” she said, her fingers still clacking at the keys.

Ning put his head down and walked out to the elevator bay.

“That's the smartest thing you've ever said,” she called after him.

Back at his desk, he began to work up his resignation letter. Keep it simple, he told himself, but an hour later he had only just begun to air his grievances. He worked on it through the afternoon, and when he was satisfied that he'd communicated his opinions on the matters of the paper's shortsighted appetite for gossip over real news, incestuous hiring practices, inability to recognize and promote talent, and reliance on the fame of its half-wit columnists, he signed it with a flourish and took it to Personnel. From there, he left the building, took a bus across town, and drank at a bar until nightfall, to no benefit other than a slothful heaviness in his legs. When he returned, it was to an almost empty newsroom.

A few stragglers were gathering up Li Pai's gifts and stuffing them into plastic garbage bags, which they threw over their shoulders for the trip to the party at the Green Room. A corner of the red farewell banner had peeled off the wall. One of the young men deftly reached up and with a flick of his wrist yanked the entire thing down. He crumpled the heavy paper into a huge ball before jamming it into a gray trash bin full of beer bottles. Li Pai waved on his coterie and stopped at Ning's desk.

Li Pai was as stooped as an old scholar, his posture the apostrophe's hook and bell. His eyes were pricks of black suspended in rheum, magnified by the thick lenses of his stylish tortoiseshell glasses. Time had worn them both down, but Ning had no sympathy for his colleague's fragility, and he'd lost his appetite for the wandering conversations that inevitably became lectures on Li Pai's singular experience of the world. He couldn't remember when he'd finally stopped admiring Li Pai and had given himself over to jealousy, a soothing contempt for everything Li Pai represented: self-promotion, egotism, shallowness.

“That sums it up, no?” Li Pai said, pointing at the trash bin where the banner was crackling as it unwound itself. When Ning didn't answer, he said, “To the bar?”

Ning made a pained face. “Unavoidably detained,” he said. “I'll be there when I can.”

Li Pai nodded gravely and gave Ning a pat on the back. “Hang in there,” he said, lingering. “You'll find something else.”

“Ah,” Ning said. “Word's out.”

“I hope it's not a show of solidarity,” Li Pai said.

Ning looked at him suspiciously. “Nothing like that.”

“I could find something for you at Beida. They've asked me to lecture in the School of Communications.”

“I think I'd rather not,” Ning said.

“Well, it's a sad day for journalism. You and I are the last of a breed.”

“Maybe not such a sad day,” Ning said. He'd never considered Li Pai much of a reporter, and he didn't appreciate the comparison. In his columns Li Pai had proved himself to be a writer whose self-regard far outweighed his concern for the subjects he addressed. He wrote about poverty and corruption only to make it appear that he was a friend of man, a compassionate soul with a tearstained handkerchief in his breast pocket. Ning had found it impossible to read him any longer after Li Pai held a contest inviting readers to spend a week shadowing him at the paper and three hundred thousand people had written essays explaining why they most deserved the honor.

“You're not resigning because of what happened with your story? There's no point in falling on your sword over a little thing like that,” Li Pai said in an avuncular tone that caused Ning to clench his fist underneath the desk.

Ning shook his head. “It's time to move on. Simple as that.”

“I see,” Li Pai said thoughtfully. He waited for Ning to elaborate, and when he didn't, Li Pai leaned in close, as if to speak in confidence, and said, “I heard the desk editors were after your hide. You know the chief's lost all his leverage. There's nothing he could have done.”

“He begged me to stay,” Ning shot back. He didn't know anything about this business with the desk editors. He got along fine with them. They respected him.

“Of course he did.” Li Pai looked away stoically, with the air of a long-suffering mother whose sons had given her a lifetime of trouble. “A sad day,” Li Pai said, patting him on the forearm.

“If you say so.”

“You'll come later?” Li Pai said as he walked toward the elevators.

“I'll be along,” Ning said, fixing his eye on something beyond his cubicle wall. “As soon as I'm able.”

The chief was making his way across the newsroom, and Ning watched as though tracking a slowly accelerating avalanche, calculating the time until his imminent obliteration. When he got to Ning's desk, he banged his fist on the laminate surface hard enough to make the keyboard jump, and loomed over the reporter like he had a load of brick on his back he was dying to drop right on top of him.