I went to the ticket hall and started queuing. I was going to buy a ticket for the next day, 4.30 in the afternoon. After standing in the queue for half an hour I realised that the train would only be passing through this station, so there was a chance it could be delayed. I left the queue to think through my options again. I ended up buying a ticket for a train that left the next day at 4.10 because it originated in the city. After that I found an airline ticket office far from the station and called them. I used the video function to show them my ID and bought myself a discounted ticket for a few hundred, leaving at 9.00 in the evening the next day.
In the afternoon I went back to the clothes shop. The owner was wearing an old skirt suit and was taking a nap with her head on the counter. Dribble was leaching from the corner of her mouth and her eyes weren’t fully closed, revealing a ghastly white cleft. The doorbell tinkled as I entered. The shirt, suit, leather shoes and briefcase I’d tried on last time were dumped in a pile and still hadn’t been put away.
I knocked on the counter, bringing her back from distant dreamlands.
‘Anything caught your fancy?’
I pointed to the four items. She looked at them, looked at me and then it came back to her.
‘But I offered them to you for two hundred and you didn’t want them.’
‘No, I want them. Two sets’
I peeled four notes from the bundle of money. She eyed them suspiciously until a smile suddenly opened across her face like an umbrella and she sprang into action. I felt like God sprinkling sweet nectar on this wretched woman.
She poured me tea and kept saying, ‘I knew you were a decent young man.’
I figured that if I gave her a list she could source the stuff for me from other shops if she didn’t have them: a leather belt, shoe polish, cologne, a hat and the rest of the half-used bottle of hair gel – for free, of course. I got her to swap the hat for a bigger one.
After she’d put the stuff in a bag, she rubbed her hands together like a child waiting for her reward. I took out another two hundred.
‘Thank you, Uncle,’ she said. ‘Uncle must be a very important man.’
I also bought some rat poison, a couple of packets of crackers and water to take care of Old He’s dog. I ripped open and polished off one packet as soon as I got back home. Then I poured rat poison onto another packet of crackers, bashing the plastic bag until they were broken into crumbs. After that was done, I started packing excitedly as if I was just a normal tourist off on holiday. I stuffed the money deep into the bottom of my bag and filled it up with underpants, shoe polish, a toothbrush, toothpaste, a towel, shampoo, soap, more crackers and water, then I placed the glasses, briefcase, shirts, suits, socks, the leather belt, leather shoes, hair gel, a comb and the bottle of cologne on top of those. I slipped the train tickets and two ID cards into my wallet. One of them was fake. I got it before I could grow a beard just for a bit of a laugh. It cost me one hundred yuan from a guy who specialised in fake documents. Say hello to Li Ming, from Beijing.
I grabbed the hat and kneaded it before putting it on. Then I checked to see that I hadn’t forgotten anything. I didn’t trust myself, so I opened my bag and tipped everything out. Turns out I was right to, as I’d forgotten to pack a razor. Not that forgetting a razor was a fatal error or anything – I could’ve just bought one downstairs. But it reminded me that this was one of the last things over which I would have total control and responsibility. If they caught me, that is.
After that I started tidying up the flat. The living room was small and when my aunt was here she’d stuffed it with all sorts of useless objects. I closed the windows on two sides, pulled the curtains across and started pushing the TV table, sofa, shoe rack and bonsai into one corner. Then I mopped the floor clean and went to the bathroom to get to the washing machine. I pushed it out and placed it close to the door. I put the switchblade and rope in another corner of the room. I found the end of the duct tape and stuck the roll to the wall.
I lay down on the floor, doused myself in the last remains of my anxiety and called my mother. This was the first time I’d ever picked up the phone and called her of my own volition. We were always fighting.
When Pa died, Ma didn’t shed a single tear. She just launched herself into her business selling fizzy drinks and snacks. She was stingy, my ma, preferring to drink only boiled water and do all her own heavy lifting. If I tried to eat any of her stock she’d bat me away, saying it was unhygienic, that they’d all been fried in second-hand oil. I’d retort that such famous brands couldn’t possibly endanger their customers’ health in such a way and she had to admit that it was also a question of lost profit.
‘Why do you care so much about making money?’ I asked.
‘For you, of course.’
‘For me? And yet I’m not allowed to eat even one packet?’
‘I’m trying my best to scrape together a living. For you, yes.’
‘And what if I get cancer? Won’t it all have been for nothing?’
‘Well, you’re not having it anyway,’ she replied in her arbitrary way.
Money was her only love. Every cent that passed through my fingers made her eyes bulge in anguish. If she was forced to choose between me and one thousand yuan, well, you get the picture. Later I came to see it all differently. Those funny arguments only happened because she was scared to see me grow up, this illiterate woman whose one measure of life was the struggle to make money. It was her sole means of controlling me.
I argued with her less after that. She could do whatever she wanted. But now, as her voice reached out to me from the other end of the phone and I thought about the fact that I was about to leave this world for ever, tears welled up in my eyes. You only have one mother. I’d read that in a book. I sat up quietly and listened to her solemn counsel.
‘Son, you’ve completed an important stage in your life, so make sure you listen to what your uncle and aunt tell you and work hard.’
‘Mm,’ came my reply.
We didn’t have much to say to each other, so I asked, ‘Has Auntie arrived?’
‘Yes, she’s here. She’s very good to me. She brought me lots of expensive clothes.’
‘When’s she coming back?’
‘Tomorrow afternoon.’
That was enough, so I hung up. Only one day left now. It was time. I decided to text Kong Jie. She was the only person I knew who would come over.
My aunt is driving me mad, I can’t take it any more. I could kill her.
What is it? Calm down, we’ll think of something, she replied.
Her voice was like a heavenly waterfall cascading over my body. Moments later it was gone. I hesitated. I could feel excitement in every bit of my body. I heard her voice again and it came clearly – soft, honest. Anxious. Loyal. It was the sound of love, even if I wasn’t the only one to receive it. I burst into loud sobs.
I cried so hard it didn’t feel real. I paced the room. I was miserable, because I knew now I would kill her. Because I could.
I found a notebook and wrote the date, but I couldn’t think of anything to say so I jotted down some random sentences and then wrote:
it’s her, it’s her, it’s her
it’s her, it’s her, it’s her
But I tore that page out and burned it. I needed to leave this for the police. I started again:
cousin cousin cousin cousin
cousin cousin cousin cousin
I wrote page after page, until my hand hurt so much I had to stop.