The flame underneath the hotpot licked the sticky bottom and the fish head disintegrated into a gooey mess. The fish bones had melted too. There was nothing solid left to be eaten except for the fish eyes. Xiaolin and I talked. We talked about nothing important: the nearby construction work, the newly built Beijing TV tower, the subway plan released by the government. We were like two managers in a town planning office. It was strange. We avoided talking about relationships. And I didn't want to know anything about his grandmother, his sisters and his parents. I looked at him across the table and wondered if we could be like any other divorced couple, civilised and adult, meeting every two months to discuss their children's future.
At last Xiaolin said, 'Do you know that our white dog died a month ago?'
This was a bit of a shock. When I lived with Xiaolin, I never thought the animals in that flat would die. They seemed immortal, just like his grandmother.
'How did he die?' I asked.
'He was just too old. One day we didn't see him. We thought he had gone outside. Two days later, my grandmother found his body underneath her bed.'
I didn't know what to say.
Xiaolin paid the bill. Then we said nothing more. He drank the last drop of beer, stood up and said goodbye.
He left the restaurant, self-controlled, without turning around.
I sat alone for a while. I gazed at the fish bones melting in the pot. It had been a strange day. Xiaolin felt like the only person in the world I was intimate with. We were like family – family members always hurt each other. And Ben was not my family, Ben lived for himself. A Western body When Ben and I slept together, he could forget all about the love that was lying next to him in the dark. I felt he didn't need much warmth from anybody. His own 37.2° C were sufficient for him. His spirit slept alone.
I thought about how, after Ben and I made love, he'd turn his body away from me. His naked back would face me. Even though our bodies were just two or three centimetres apart, I couldn't bear that distance. I felt abandoned and sometimes, in the dark, I couldn't help myself, I missed Xiaolin. I missed nights with Xiaolin.
Fragment Eighteen
I'D BEEN TRYING TO WRITE SINCE 10 A.M., and now it was half-past two.
'You only need to finish the first draft.' Huizi's words had been echoing in my ears. I wanted to create something exciting, but I felt whatever I wrote was lousy and trivial. Somehow it all referred back to roles I'd played in various pathetic films: Executioner's Assistant, House Cleaner, Steamed-Bun Seller, Woman on Bridge Pushing a Bicycle. I wanted to write a female character who could be everything: wife and mistress, servant and warrior, all at once. But I realised I had no idea how to do this. I didn't understand women. In all my time in Beijing, I'd never managed to have a female friend. It seemed every woman in this city was either busy with her kids or with her mortgage. Money was the only friend she needed. And I wasn't my own friend either. So I gave up on women and started writing about something else.
Very quickly I wrote a two-page outline for a film called The Internet Artist, copying the style from The Matrix. It was about a computer geek obsessed with controlling the internet. This geek created a particularly vicious internet virus and then got himself a job as a virus-hacker. And suddenly this guy had the world at his mercy. He could do anything with the internet he wanted. He had absolute power, he was so powerful that he began to feel disillusioned and couldn't deal with what he'd done. So he tried many different ways of committing suicide. Eventually he succeeded and disappeared for ever. The world sank into chaos and horror, their master was gone…
I finished the story and called Huizi.
The story sounds all right, Huizi said. I've heard about this Producer who's got loads of cash and is desperate for scripts. I've already sent him one of mine. If I give him a call, we might be able to meet him today.
I couldn't believe my luck.
I hung up the phone and decided to make myself a hot cup of coffee. Hot coffee is like a 37.2°C man. They both give you the courage to face a new day.
An hour later Huizi and I arrived at the Producer's office. It was on the 21st floor of the Jian Wai SOHO building, where all the foreign businesses have their offices. Looking for the lift, we got lost in the massive Starbucks on the ground floor. When I saw the Producer, my heart sank with disappointment, and when I saw what was written on the business card he handed me, it sank even lower.
Jin Gui Quan, Manager of the Anti-Piracy Group.
His surname – 'Jin' – literally meant gold. Let's just refer to him as Comrade Loaded-With-Gold.
Comrade Loaded-With-Gold was a man who had worked in the fields for 30 years before suddenly making it rich. He looked like a long sweet potato, his face swollen from a lifetime of struggle, his teeth sticking out from eating endless watermelon. His skin was greasy and his forehead was heavy over his eyes. He looked newly rich and greedy. Comrade Loaded-With-Gold had a thick north-eastern accent, and never once looked straight at me, probably because I wasn't a man.
He sat back in his chair and flipped through my script. He seemed to be thinking. Suddenly he picked up his mobile phone and madly pressed some buttons. At once he started shouting into the phone about stocks and shares, about what was up and what was down. Then he hung up as swiftly as he had started, tossed his phone on top of my script and sat back in his chair. He looked in my general direction and started to speak.
'So, you're a woman writer. I, eh, I've never read anything by a… you know… woman before. And eh, don't be angry, but let me tell you women can't write. You tell me which great writer in China was a woman? There just aren't any. QiongYao, that writer from Taiwan, maybe she counts, if you say that Taiwan belongs to us. That story she wrote, about a little princess or a little swallow or something, that was just about okay… What I love to read are the tabloids. That's where you find some real stories, true stories. True stories are what make great writing. My favourite newspaper is The Police Review. And I just threw some money into making a TV series called I Kidnapped a Woman. Your story about the internet, why not make it from the point of view of the policeman looking for this hacker instead?'
Comrade Loaded-With-Gold took a breather, slurped some of his tea. I looked over at Huizi, but he was staring out of the window.
Comrade Loaded-With-Gold spat a couple of tea leaves back into his cup. He leant back into his chair, getting himself comfortable.
'Huiziiiiiiii, Fenfanghhhhh,' he drawled, 'let me tell you, life is really interesting. I've had so much to, eh… chew over in my lifetime. You know what? Only yesterday, I advertised for new staff and eight girls showed up – all of them over one metre sixty, all wearing the same suit, same make-up. I lined them up to have a good look at them. It was like choosing myself a concubine, heh-heh! I quizzed each one a bit, but aiya! To tell you the truth there just wasn't one that was right. What a shame! So I got rid of them all, and went out to buy a half-kilo of steamed buns instead, and aiya, wouldn't you know, as I'm standing there buying my buns, here comes this sweet young little thing and stands next to me. Aiya, this girl, I tell you, she was something! I started chatting to her.