Determined to make friends, Lin Hong visited again and again, presenting her new stepson with a Nintendo Game Boy, Nike Air Max, imported junk food and other trophies coveted by China’s richest children. Lin Hong enhanced Wang’s status in other ways too, as boys crowded around him after visiting hours with smutty questions about his striking, provocatively dressed stepmother. Year after year, Lin Hong visited his boarding school at weekends and public holidays. And gradually, Wang Jun came to trust and like her, and stepmother and stepson forged a friendship of sorts.
When Wang Jun was eighteen he was offered a place to study history at Beijing University. His father, who had barely finished middle school, was proud of his son’s achievement and invited Wang to spend the summer holidays in the guest room of his brand-new apartment. Wang had spent every summer since he was thirteen in the boarding-school dormitory, but was no longer allowed to stay there after graduation. He thought about his father’s offer and decided he didn’t care about the years of paternal rejection. He needed a place to stay. So after a five-year absence, Wang went back to his father’s home.
At high school Wang had studied punishingly hard, depriving himself of sleep and friends in his single-minded preparation for the gaokao. To recover from this, he spent most of the long hot summer of ’94 lazing about, reading paperbacks and playing video games. Wang’s father was never home. Weekdays he worked until late and slept elsewhere, and weekends he was away at the beach resort of Beidaihe. Wang’s stepmother, however, who had no job or social life, was in the apartment day and night. Whenever Wang slipped out of the guest room for a glass of orange juice, or to grab some food from the kitchen, Lin Hong would be there, flipping through a fashion magazine in one of her floaty summer dresses, strands falling loose from her piled-up hair. Or lounging on the balcony overlooking Chaoyang Park, her long slim legs stretched out in her denim cut-offs, her crimson-painted toes wiggling in the shade as she nibbled slices of watermelon and spat the pips over the rail. Though the east wall of the living room was entirely glass and the apartment heated up like a greenhouse, Lin Hong never turned on the air conditioning. The soles of her bare feet kissed the marble flooring as she wandered aimlessly from room to room. ‘I like to sweat,’ she told Wang, pulling her hair up from her perspiration-damp collar bone.
In the evenings Lin Hong mixed pitchers of cocktails, and she and Wang stayed up drinking until late on the balcony, gazing out at the tenth-floor view of thousands of lights twinkling in the city, as burning coils of mosquito repellent scented the air. Though the vodka and gin went some way to lessening Wang’s awkwardness, he was still very shy, and Lin Hong dominated the conversation most nights. Lin Hong liked to talk. About her lonely sham of a marriage. About how her romantic life was over at the age of twenty-seven. About how worthless she was. Wang nearly fell out of his chair reassuring Lin Hong she was beautiful and clever. All she needed, he assured her, was the courage to live her life. Every night he listened sympathetically to her monologue of sorrows. Every night he was aroused and confused by her flirty little games.
‘Why don’t you have a girlfriend, Wang Jun?’ she asked. ‘You’re a handsome, eligible bachelor, right? I bet you could screw any girl you wanted.’
Wang said nothing and blushed.
‘You must da feiji all the time,’ she added with a knowing smile.
Da feiji. Beat the aeroplane. Wang wanted to spontaneously combust with shame. Did Lin Hong know it had become his habit to do this, twice a day, while stripping her of her sundress and cotton bikini briefs in his mind? His stepmother smiled.
‘One day you’ll do it for real. Why don’t we wait and see. .’
One evening in August Wang’s father showed up at the apartment. He called his son out of the darkened lair of the guest room.
‘Shower! Shave! Put on a clean shirt. And you can borrow a pair of my shoes. I’m taking you for a night out on the town. You can’t spend the whole summer holed up playing computer games.’
As Wang went to take a shower he saw, out of the corner of his eye, Lin Hong flounce into her bedroom and slam the door. But he put it out of his mind. His father was a stranger to him, and the opportunity to visit his shady nocturnal world was too interesting to pass up.
The nightclub, the first one Wang had been to, had a dance floor of pulsing neon and a lounge of faux-brocade-upholstered chairs and velvet curtains. Father and son sat at a table and a waiter immediately brought over a bottle of whisky and a tray of sashimi, sliced Kobe beef and other gourmet snacks. Wang’s father stuffed a Vietnamese spring roll in his mouth and nodded approvingly at the hostesses in spangly dresses on the dance floor. The teenage girls had white gardenias tucked behind their ears, and the way they wobbled in their stilettos reminded Wang of little girls dressed up in their mothers’ shoes.
When his colleagues arrived, Wang Hu introduced his son with pride. ‘He’s going to Beijing University this year. Graduated first in his class at high school. Inherited his old man’s intellect, eh?’ Other work associates joined them. Some CEOs of agribusinesses, one of whom Wang Hu jokingly introduced as a Dirt Emperor, a billionaire of peasant origins who’d made his fortune manufacturing fertilizer. The Dirt Emperor wore a brick of gold on his finger and when he congratulated Wang in his thick Shanxi accent, nuggets of gold winked in his teeth.
After the introductions, Wang sank back with a beer and watched his father. Now forty-eight, Wang Hu had aged remarkably well. His hair, dyed politburo black, was thick as ever, and the lines on his face, instead of diminishing his handsome looks, lent them a distinguished air. Wang Hu was in his element in the company of other powerful men. He was outgoing and charismatic, with a deep and easy laugh that rumbled up from his belly, and a natural ability to strike up a wise-cracking, back-slapping camaraderie with just about anyone. Wang was bewildered by how different he was from the cold and distant stranger he had known as a child. Noticing his son watching him, Wang Hu leant over and grinned. ‘Do you like those girls dancing? Pick one. I’ll invite her over to talk with you.’
Wang shook his head. ‘No thanks.’ His father beckoned over three of the hostesses with a wave of the hand.
As his father was preoccupied with whisky and profiteering, Wang sat with the coquettishly giggling girls. They were Wang’s age and younger, and up close he could see the smoke and mirrors used to create an illusion of sophistication and sex appeaclass="underline" the pancake make-up covering teenage acne, the push-up bras and the crookedly glued-on fake lashes. The girls were well trained, smiling and full of questions, and oohing and ahhing at everything Wang said, but he could not relax in their company. He looked about at the other men basking in the attention of hostesses, inhaling flattery as naturally as they breathed air. ‘Drink more!’ the hostesses cajoled, but Wang refused. The last thing he wanted was to become intoxicated. The last thing he wanted was to be seduced by this pretend world.
After midnight his father’s mistress turned up, a willowy Russian with long blonde hair and curves spilling out of her dress. The girl smoked cigarettes and sipped a glass of cognac, sitting beside Wang Hu as though her sole purpose was to offer her thigh as a resting place for his hand, while he and the Dirt Emperor negotiated contracts. Wang kept glancing at the Russian. Why was she so mute? Couldn’t she speak Chinese? Was she bored acting out the part of the Russian doll? Wang Hu caught his son staring at his mistress and, mistaking his gaze for desire, winked at him. Wang was suddenly exhausted. He rose to his feet and told his father he was going home. Wang Hu’s silver-threaded eyebrows shot up.