Fat Years - Chan Koonchung [25]
I don’t know what I was thinking at the time, but I actually went to see Ban Cuntou. He was in my class at university. He grew up in this big courtyard and could be considered a member of China’s Red aristocracy. His whole demeanor implied that this world had been created through his force of arms and therefore it all belonged to him. There were many people like him living in Beijing’s big, old-fashioned courtyards. I’d heard that he was the highest-ranking official among my former classmates, so I went over to ask his advice. When we were in school, he often hinted that I ought to become his girlfriend. He thought that every woman should like him, but I couldn’t stomach his attitude. This time I was really stupid to think that I could take advantage of my “old flame” status to see if he could save my restaurant.
I was in a rotten mood in the first place, and I was overconfident about the drinking capacity I thought I’d built up at the restaurant. That night we didn’t drink Chinese rice wine, but we had something called Rémy Martin. I drank too fast, wasn’t used to foreign liquor, and before I knew it I was plastered … I remember Ban Cuntou pointing at the TV reporting on Mikhail Gorbachev’s visit and asking me, “What do you think about Gorbachev?”
When I woke up, I was in bed and he was sitting on the sofa in his underwear reading the paper. I realized I had slept with him. To get even with Shi Ping? I don’t think I’d have done it for that. Ban Cuntou had deliberately got me drunk. “Well, this time you finally got to me,” he said when he saw I was awake.
“Ban Cuntou, you’ve gone too far this time!” I said angrily.
“Well, you’re no St. Joan the virgin martyr either,” he retorted.
Ever since college, I’d always known that guys like him were smooth-talking and insincere, so I shut up. With a terrible headache, I went to the bathroom, had a quick shower, got dressed, and left without saying another word.
In the days after that, everybody was busy going to Tiananmen Square. Shi Ping wrote a new poem in support of the students. I was still furious with Shi Ping, and we were both busy with our own activities on the Square.
Then they started shooting at us, and Shi Ping and I were separated.
A couple of weeks later, I was arrested, but they let me go when they found out I was pregnant.
Actually, I was already three months pregnant. I was so caught up in the June 4 events that I didn’t even notice. At the time I believed it was Shi Ping’s child, but later on I didn’t dare say for certain.
I lived with my mother and waited for the baby. The big courtyard was full of people from political and legal circles, who all knew of my situation; we had to put up with a lot of tongues wagging and fingers pointing behind our backs. Fortunately, after June 4 everyone felt they had just survived a calamity and they didn’t want to be too nosy and attract attention.
I didn’t hear anything from Shi Ping for a long time. He escaped to Hong Kong in secret. Later on, he went to France and married a Frenchwoman. He never even sent me a single letter to let me know he was safe.
When my son was born, I named him Wei Min, giving him my last name. When Wei Min was twenty years old, he changed his name to Wei Guo, exchanging the word “people”—Min—for “nation”—Guo.
Our restaurant was closed for a year and a half, but the following autumn, we received a notice that we could open again. Did Ban Cuntou help me? I don’t think so.
Mother and I became extremely busy reopening the restaurant and trying to make a living. To begin with, business was very slow. The national economy was in decline, and many people were out of work in Beijing. President Jiang Zemin had let it be known that he intended to crack down on private