Boy in the Twilight: Stories of the Hidden China

FRIENDS

Kunshan left his house with a toothpick in one hand and a shiny kitchen cleaver in the other. He was threatening to slaughter Shi Gang. “Even if I decide to let him off with his life,” he said, “I’m still going to keep a piece of him as a souvenir.” As for just where this cut of meat would come from, Kunshan believed this would depend on how good a dodger Shi Gang proved to be.

It was lunchtime as Kunshan walked along the boulevard, chewing his toothpick, his eyes bloodshot, strands of tobacco caught in his mustache. As he walked, his lips were slightly curled and his jacket was open, revealing the work belt he wore inside. People could tell at a glance that he was off to have another fight. They tagged along behind, peppering him with questions. “Who is it?” “Kunshan, who are you after?” “Who is it this time?”

Kunshan cut an imposing figure as he marched along, and his retinue grew steadily more numerous. He came to a stop when he reached the bridge, and loudly spat the toothpick into the river below, then set down the cleaver on the concrete parapet and pulled a pack of Front Gate cigarettes from his pocket. He gave the pack a couple of shakes, and the tips of two cigarettes poked out. With his mouth he extracted one, then struck a match and lit up. He wasn’t sure yet in which direction he should go. He knew that to go to Shi Gang’s house he would need to turn west after crossing the bridge, and to go to the refinery where he worked he would need to go south. The problem was he didn’t know where Shi Gang would be just then.

As Kunshan inhaled, his nostrils flared. Now he began to scan the crowd of people gathered around him. As he looked grimly at their cheerful features, he noticed a thin bespectacled face. “Hey, you’re at the refinery, right?” he asked. The thin face moved closer. “You know Shi Gang?”

The man nodded. “We’re in the same shop.”

Kunshan soon established Shi Gang was still at work. He looked at his watch. It had just turned one, which meant Shi Gang’s shift had now ended and he’d be on his way to the bathhouse. Kunshan smiled thinly and went on leaning against the parapet. He took a few more puffs. It was at this point that he made his comments to the onlookers about slaughtering Shi Gang or, at the very least, chopping off a piece of him.

I was a boy of eleven then, on my way to the refinery. After lunch I had dumped my textbooks onto my bed, stuffed some clean clothes into my satchel along with a towel and soap, and asked my mother for ten fen. “I’m going to take a bath,” I told her.

With the satchel on my back I headed off, but not toward the public bathhouse in town. One had to pay for admission there, and I wanted to keep those ten fen for myself, so I headed for the refinery bathhouse instead. It was April, and the parasol trees were laden with broad leaves. The sun shone brightly, catching the dust thrown up from the street.

I left the house at eleven forty-five, having calculated the time carefully. I knew I should arrive at the main entrance to the refinery at twelve noon precisely, for that was when the old gatekeeper would be sitting in the reception office eating his lunch. He wore a pair of glasses with heavy prescription lenses, and I was confident that the steam rising from his bowl would completely obscure his vision. Besides, he liked to bury his head in his food. I regularly slipped in at this time, bending double as I crept underneath his window. At twelve thirty, I would be steeping naked in the refinery’s cozy little bathhouse. I would have the place to myself then, and the water would be so hot it would practically scald my bottom and the steam would be so thick it would hang motionless, as though painted on the wall. I would need to be out of there by one o’clock, rinsing off the soap before those greasy workers stepped into the water: when they marched in with their towels over their shoulders, I would have already dried myself, knowing it wouldn’t take long for them to fill the water with frothy white bubbles and turn it into bean milk.

But, this particular lunchtime, I stopped when I got to the bridge and lost all sense of time, forgetting that the old gatekeeper at the refinery would soon finish his lunch and then start pacing back and forth in front of the gate with his hands behind his back. It would be ages before he would stump back to his room and sit down, by which point the water in the bathhouse would be getting cold.

I stood on the bridge, squeezed between the midriffs of the adults there, watching Kunshan as he leaned against the parapet, smoking and spitting out large gobs of phlegm. He fascinated me, the way his mustache grew above his thick mouth, the way the muscles on his face shook like a flag in the wind when he talked. I was amazed by all the muscle this man had just on his cheeks, and after I’d inspected his chest — a thick chest that even a bayonet would not be able to pierce — and studied his arms and legs, I told myself this Shi Gang character was a goner.

I didn’t know Kunshan’s last name — nor did many of the locals — but we all knew perfectly well who he was. He was the man who would borrow money from people and not bother to pay them back. When he ran out of smokes, he would stop passersby in the street and cheerfully pat their pockets with his broad palms, and once he had located a pack of cigarettes he would slip a hand into the pocket and extract the cigarettes, offering one to their owner and depositing the remainder in his own pocket. There was nobody in our town who didn’t know about Kunshan, and even babies could sense the tingle of fear that his name evoked. But we admired him too, and when we ran into him in the street we would call out his name at the top of our lungs. I was already doing that by the time I was five, and the habit had stuck with me ever since. Was this why, when Kunshan was walking along the street, he was always beaming with satisfaction? He liked it when people greeted him and would always give a gracious response. He found it pleasing that everyone in town showed him proper respect.

Kunshan now tossed the cigarette butt into the river and gave a regretful shake of his head. “Shi Gang doesn’t show me proper respect.”

“Why do you say that?”

Kunshan fixed his gaze on the thin-faced man with the glasses. Slowly his hand rose to the level of the man’s head and he made the motion of a box on the ear. “He slapped my wife.”

I heard a collective intake of breath and I myself was thrown for a loop, wondering how on earth someone could dare do that. Then somebody asked the question uppermost in my mind. “He had the gall to slap your wife? Who does this Shi Gang think he is?”

“I don’t know him.” Kunshan’s finger stabbed the air. “But now I’m eager to meet him.”

“Maybe he didn’t realize it was your wife he was beating,” the thin-faced man said.

Kunshan shook his head. “That’s impossible.”

Someone else spoke up. “Whether he knew or not, if he beat her, then Kunshan’s going to make him pay for it. How could you even dream of beating Kunshan’s wife?”

“You’re wrong there,” Kunshan said. “My wife deserves a beating.”

He looked at his dumbfounded audience. “Other people may not know my wife, but I sure do. She really deserves a good beating. With her wicked tongue, she’s always going around making a nuisance of herself. If she wasn’t married to me, I don’t know how many times she would have had her ears boxed …”

Kunshan paused for a moment. “But in spite of all that, she’s still my wife. If she’s done something wrong or spoken out of turn, you can come and see me about it, and if she needs a box on the ears then I’ll do it myself. That Shi Gang never breathed a word about it to me, but just went ahead and gave my wife a box on the ears.”

Kunshan picked up the cleaver from the parapet and smiled thinly. “If he doesn’t show me proper respect, he can’t be too surprised if I don’t take it kindly.”

Kunshan took a step in our direction. We cleared a path for him, and when his massive figure began to move down the street it was as though there was a powerful ship steaming up the river, and we people clustered around him were like the waves thrown up by its screw. Together we marched forward, myself in an excellent position on Kunshan’s right. His glinting cleaver swayed back and forth by my shoulder like a swing. This was proving to be an exhilarating lunch break, the first time I had walked among so many grown-ups. By escorting Kunshan, they had become my escorts too. We made a good deal of noise as we advanced and pedestrians came to a halt, watching us curiously and quizzing us. Each time I made sure I was first to answer their inquiries, telling them Kunshan was going to make Shi Gang pay in blood. I drew out the word “blood” especially loud and long, not minding if I made myself hoarse in the process. This attracted Kunshan’s attention, and he would occasionally glance down at me, his eyes glowing with amusement. It was my heartfelt hope at this moment that the street leading to the refinery could be as long as night, because as we went I kept running into classmates and their eyes were round with envy. I realized I was making a name for myself. The sunlight shone down directly in our faces, making my eyes narrow to a crack, and when I looked up at Kunshan, his eyes had narrowed too.

We were now approaching the main entrance to the refinery and from a distance I could see the old man from the reception office standing outside. This time he wasn’t pacing back and forth with his hands behind his back, but craning his head in our direction like a bird. We walked right up to him and, now that it was obvious he saw me, I suddenly felt frightened, thinking he would very likely come over and grab me by the scruff of the neck, just as my father, my teacher, and my older brother often did. A shiver ran down my spine. I looked up at Kunshan, his face flushed red by the sun, and timidly I cried to the old man, “It’s Kunshan!”

To my ears, my voice sounded faint and thin, seeming to quiver like a leaf. But the old man had already retreated to one side, where he watched us with the same curiosity as the other bystanders. Just like that we swaggered in, the old man not making the slightest effort to stand in our way. What a piece of cake, I thought to myself.

We marched along the concrete road, flanked by open workshop doors wider even than the main gate we had just come through. Oil-stained men stood watching us and somebody asked, “Is Shi Gang in the bathhouse?”

“Yes,” I heard.

“He’s in the bathhouse,” somebody said.

“Right, then,” said Kunshan.

Past the workshops we turned a corner and there ahead of us was the cafeteria, and off to one side was the tall chimney of the boiler room, spewing thick smoke that swirled up in billowing clouds before dispersing in the clear sky. Two boiler workers stood watching us, leaning on their iron shovels as though they were walking sticks. We strode past them and on to the bathhouse. Some people had just emerged from the building in plastic flip-flops and clutching their work clothes, their hair still dripping, their faces and feet as pink as if they had been cooked. Kunshan came to a halt. We all came to a halt. Kunshan said to the thin face with the glasses, “Go and check whether Shi Gang is inside.”

The man went inside, while we waited. More people crowded around us and the two boiler workers came over, dragging their shovels behind them. “Kunshan, who are you looking for?” one of them asked. “Who offended you?”

Kunshan said nothing, so someone answered for him. “Shi Gang.”

“What did Shi Gang do?”

This time Kunshan himself replied. “He didn’t show me proper respect.”

His hand slipped into his pocket, felt about a bit, and brought out a cigarette and a box of matches. He stuck the cigarette in his mouth, sandwiched the cleaver under his armpit, and lit the cigarette. The thin-faced man emerged. “Shi Gang is inside,” he said. “He’s soaping himself.”

“Tell him Kunshan has come for him,” Kunshan instructed.

“I told him that already,” the thin-faced man said. “He said he would be out shortly.”

“Shi Gang must be scared shitless,” someone said.

The thin-faced man shook his head. “No, he’s just soaping himself.”

A look of regret appeared on Kunshan’s face. I’d seen that look before, on the bridge, when he said he hadn’t been shown proper respect. This time he was disappointed because Shi Gang was not as panic-stricken as he had anticipated. “Kunshan, go in and carve him up,” someone said. “With his clothes off, he’ll be like a plucked chicken.”

Kunshan shook his head. “Tell him I’ll give him five minutes. Any more than that and I’ll go in and fetch him out.”

The thin-faced man went inside again. There was a buzz of conversation around me, but Kunshan stood silent. His cigarette was clamped tightly between his lips, and its smoke made his right eye squint.

The thin-faced man came out. “Shi Gang says not to worry. He says five minutes is plenty.”

People were smiling, looking forward to the moment when Shi Gang would come out and trade blows with his adversary. Kunshan’s face darkened and his cheek muscles tightened. He nodded. “Okay, I’ll wait.”

It was then I left him, abandoning the vantage point I had been steadfastly defending for so long. Many times someone or other had tried to elbow me away from my place next to Kunshan, and only with the utmost effort had I been able to retain my position. But Shi Gang so intrigued me I just had to take a look in the bathhouse. There, amid the hot steam, I saw a dozen or so people soaking in the bath and a few others standing around the edge with their clothes on. I could hear them talking about the impending showdown. I studied them carefully, unsure which was Shi Gang. I remembered the thin-faced man had said he was soaping himself, so I had a look at the wiry, broad-shouldered man who was standing in the middle of the bath, wiping soap from his hair with a towel. After brushing away the soap, he sat down on the edge of the bath and rubbed his face. The soap had run into his eyes and he rubbed them a bit, then twisted his towel dry and gave them another gentle rub. I heard someone call Shi Gang’s name. “Do you want us to help you?” he asked.

“No need.”

It was the man rubbing his eyes who answered, so I knew I’d identified him correctly. I watched with excitement as he got up and walked toward me, still toweling his hair. I made no effort to step aside, and when he bumped into me he put out a supporting hand, as though concerned I might fall over. Then he went into the changing room. I followed him, and so did the people who were already dressed. I watched as Shi Gang dried himself and unhurriedly put on a shirt and trousers. Then he sat down on a bench, slipped his feet into his shoes, and began to tie his shoelaces. “Do you really not want us to help?” somebody asked.

“No need.” He shook his head.

He got to his feet, and took down a canvas boiler suit that was hanging on the wall. He rolled it up and wrapped it around his left arm as though it was a bandage, and with his left hand he took a tight grip of the two loose ends. Then, picking up his towel, he went over to a tap, turned on the water, and thoroughly soaked the towel.

It was afternoon by this time, and the shadows had begun to lengthen, so now the spot where Kunshan and the others stood was in the shade. They watched as Shi Gang emerged into the bright sunlight. With the rolled-up boiler suit wrapped around his elbow it looked almost as though he had a basketball tucked under his arm. His right hand gripped the sodden towel, which dripped water like a leaky tap and made a damp patch on the ground.

I had been standing next to Shi Gang, and when I noticed that the people next to Kunshan were beginning to withdraw, I retreated a couple of steps and took shelter underneath a tree. Kunshan marched two steps forward, leaving the shadows for the sunlight. He squinted at Shi Gang, and I looked at him too. The sunshine illuminated him from behind, making his hair gleam. But no light fell on his face and he did not squint, but looked at Kunshan with a frown.

Kunshan took the cigarette from his mouth and tossed it on the ground. “So you’re Shi Gang,” he said. The other man nodded. “Is Shi Lan your sister?”

Shi Gang nodded again. “That’s right.”

Kunshan smiled. He transferred the cleaver from his right hand to his left and took another step forward. “You’re a big boy now,” he said. “Quite a nerve you’ve got, too.” As he said this, he swung a fist at Shi Gang, who ducked the blow. Kunshan looked at him in surprise. “Playing hard to get, are we?” he said.

He aimed a kick at Shi Gang’s knee with his right foot, but Shi Gang jumped out of the way, once again neutralizing the threat. A look of astonishment appeared on Kunshan’s face. He chuckled, then glanced at us spectators. “He’s good.”

As he turned his head, Shi Gang went into action. He lashed Kunshan’s face with the dripping towel and we heard a huge, resounding slap, louder by far than the sound of a hand hitting a face. Kunshan gave a yelp, and the cleaver fell to the ground. He clutched his face with his right hand and stood rooted to the spot. Shi Gang took two steps back and twisted the towel tightly once more, then fixed his eyes on his opponent. When Kunshan spread his arms, we saw that beads of water now spotted his face; his left eye and cheek were bright red. He bent down to pick up the cleaver, grasping it in his right hand while clutching his face with his left. Brandishing the cleaver he flailed out at Shi Gang and, when Shi Gang took evading action once again, Kunshan kicked him in the leg, forcing him to beat such a hasty retreat that he almost slipped and fell. No sooner had he regained his footing than the cleaver was again arcing toward him. With no time to get out of the way, Shi Gang raised the arm encased in the boiler suit. Kunshan’s cleaver thudded into his arm, and at the same moment Shi Gang’s towel smacked Kunshan in the face.

I have never seen such a ferocious fight. Time and again the cleaver thudded into Shi Gang’s arm, and time and again the towel whacked Kunshan’s face. The canvas boiler suit served as Shi Gang’s shield; when he couldn’t dodge he could at least raise his arm. Kunshan used his left hand to ward off Shi Gang’s weapon: when the soaking towel whipped toward his face, it just as often hit his hand. The two men leapt back and forth between the sunlight and the shade, like fighting crickets in the thick of mortal combat. Again and again we heard howls of pain, and their hoarse pants grew heavier and heavier, but they showed no signs of stopping and seemed to want to fight to the bitter end.

During the course of the battle, my bladder got so bloated I had to pee. I couldn’t find a toilet in the refinery, so I dashed out into the boulevard and had to run practically all the way to the ferry wharf before I found one. On my return I forgot about the old man’s sentry duty at the entrance, and when I raced in through the gate I thought I heard him shouting and cursing behind me, but I couldn’t care less. When I finally made it back to the bathhouse they were still engaged in their unremitting struggle, thank God.

I have never seen such a protracted fight or such tireless protagonists. The way they jumped back and forth, they must practically have run the marathon. Some felt they couldn’t afford to wait for the final outcome and left, only to be replaced by others on their way to the night shift, who eagerly seized plum spots where they had a good view of the action. Twice I noticed Shi Gang’s towel was so dry it had become a soft and feeble weapon. Each time friends promptly handed him a newly soaked replacement. Shi Gang would then lash Kunshan’s puffy face so that it swelled all the more, while Kunshan’s cleaver sliced the boiler suit on Shi Gang’s arm into ribbons of cloth, like the end of a mop. It was then we heard the sounds of stir-frying from the cafeteria next door and I noticed people were clutching mess tins.

Shi Gang’s wet towel struck Kunshan’s right hand, knocking the cleaver to the ground. This time he stood motionless, looking at Shi Gang as though in a daze. His eyes and face were red and swollen, and it seemed he couldn’t see Shi Gang clearly, because when Shi Gang took two steps to his right Kunshan continued to look at the spot where he had been standing. After a moment or two, he took a corner of his jacket and cautiously rubbed his sore eyes. Shi Gang stood to one side, his arms hanging loose, his mouth half open, panting as he watched. A minute later, the towel dropped from his hand, and after eyeing Kunshan a moment longer, Shi Gang raised his right hand and gingerly removed the boiler suit from his left arm. That thick canvas suit was now a bundle of rags. Shi Gang took it off and threw it on the ground. We could then see that his left arm was badly cut up. Clutching his left arm with his right hand, he turned and walked off, several of his friends falling in behind. Kunshan was no longer rubbing his eyes — he was simply blinking, as though to test his vision. It was then I saw the sky had reddened with the glow of sunset.

I had personally witnessed the towel’s vanquishing of the blade, and now I knew that a sodden towel could be a formidable weapon. In the days that followed I would always leave the bathhouse with a soaking-wet towel in my hand, and on the long walk home I thought of myself as bold and powerful. I even took my wet towel to school and strutted back and forth on the playground, looking out for troublemakers, and my classmates would cluster around me just as we had clustered around Kunshan. These blissful days carried on for quite some time, until I lost my towel. I never figured out how this happened. It was still dripping wet, and I think I’d hung it over the branch of a tree. All I remember is that we were running around after a ball and later we went home — I never saw the towel again. My mother, always strapped for cash, gave me a tongue-lashing, and my equally hard-up father gave me a couple of slaps on the face, leaving me with aching teeth for a whole week afterward.

Later on, I left the house dejectedly and went for a walk by the riverside, one hand scraping along the parapet. Pink clouds floated in the water, but I was glum and spent, like ashes after a fire. Just as I got to the bridge, I caught sight of Kunshan. The contusions had now gone from his face and he had regained his former air of vitality. He came swaggering along as though he owned the whole town. Suddenly I was filled with excitement, because at the very same moment I saw Shi Gang. He was approaching from the other direction. The arm that had been injured was now swinging casually by his side, and he was heading toward Kunshan.

I felt as though the breath had been knocked out of me, and my heart thumped. Their stirring combat was surely about to resume. But this time there was no cleaver and no towel: their only weapons were their fists and their feet — one was wearing leather shoes, I noticed, the other sneakers. Kunshan went right up to Shi Gang, blocking his way, and I heard him say loudly, “Hey, got a cig?”

Shi Gang didn’t answer; he just stood there, eyeing his adversary. Kunshan began to pat Shi Gang’s jacket, then his hand slipped inside a pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. I knew he was being provocative, but still Shi Gang made no move. Kunshan extracted a cigarette, and I thought he would pass it to Shi Gang and keep the rest for himself. But instead he stuck the cigarette in his mouth, looked at Shi Gang, and handed the pack back. Shi Gang took it, extracted a cigarette, and put it between his lips. What happened next took me completely by surprise. Shi Gang slipped the pack into the other man’s pocket. Kunshan smiled. He took out his matches, lit Shi Gang’s cigarette, then his own.

That evening the two of them leaned against the bridge and there was no end to their banter, no end to their laughter. I watched as the sunset bathed them in a rosy hue, staying on until they were shrouded in darkness. They rested their arms on the parapet, their cigarettes glowing as they held them up to their faces. Though I stood listening just a few feet away, nothing they said really sank in. For a long time afterward, I kept trying to recall the brand of cigarettes they smoked first, but somehow four names would come to mind all at the same time — Front Gate, Flying Horse, People’s Choice, and West Lake.