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.