Fat Years - Chan Koonchung [48]
I almost said, “What on earth for?” but I held myself in check.
She stood up and added, “I expect you to take care of me.”
In socialist realist fiction, this is known as finishing with a bright tail. It could also be called buying travel insurance. On the one hand acting like a big important woman, and on the other hand acting like a helpless little girl, and all the time taking and taking. It’s amazing that it didn’t embarrass her to say such things.
I felt like I had already become her B-list male escort.
I watched through the window as her driver opened the door for her and she got into a black BMW. It had an armed-police WJ licence plate.
She’s no longer Chinese counterfeit goods, I thought, now she’s a genuine French Baccarat-crystal chandelier. But it doesn’t matter whether she’s a made-in-China kerosene lamp or a French crystal chandelier, she’s still on the market, always on the make, and she still has her price.
The Second Spring
Nothing happened for several days after that and no one tried to contact me. Little Xi was still on my mind, but I resisted trying to get in touch with her.
Two first-Sunday-of-the-month screenings had come and gone. He Dongsheng, the government official, was still at the screenings, but nobody else was invited, and it seemed like Jian Lin had arranged it that way just for He Dongsheng. This time, when I arrived at the usual reception room, Jian Lin had already been drinking quite a bit.
“Wen Lan broke up with me,” he said as I came in. “She dumped me,” he added with obvious embarrassment.
I could certainly relate to that—a man with a midlife crisis getting involved with a femme fatale.
I knew that a woman with Wen Lan’s good looks and culture could easily bewitch a man like Jian Lin, in late middle age with a passion for art and literature.
“Who is she with now?” I asked intuitively.
“My cousin,” Jian Lin said with a sad smile, “but this time she’s going to get the worse of it.”
“He Dongsheng?” I exclaimed.
“No, no, another cousin. We all met at my aunt’s memorial service. Wen Lan attended the Foreign Language School in Baiduizi, and my aunt taught her French.”
“Who’s your other cousin?” I asked.
“Do you know of the EAL Friendship Investments group?”
“The one that’s involved with Wantwant Starbucks’ investments in Africa?”
“That’s small potatoes,” he said. “Think petroleum, mining, large-scale capital construction …”
“So are they also involved in the arms trade?” I asked nonchalantly.
“Of course they’re in the arms trade. Africa, Latin America.”
“What about the ‘E’ for Europe?”
“That’s Turkey, the Caucasus, the former Yugoslavia, and the former Soviet Union,” he replied.
I remembered that the EAL group’s CEO was one Ban Cuntou. “Then Wen Lan is with Ban Cuntou?” I asked.
Jian Lin nodded resentfully.
“You mean he’s even wealthier than you are?” I was deliberately provoking him now.
“I can’t possibly compete with him.”
“You mean he has more power than He Dongsheng?”
“He Dongsheng is very concerned about the nation and the people,” Jian Lin explained, “but he is only an adviser, at most like a high-level brain trust. There are many, many people who have more power than he does. He can’t even match a secretary to the Politburo Standing Committee in influence. But whether or not you have clout depends upon whether or not your faction commands power at Party Central. You don’t understand China’s state system. There are so many unwritten rules that you can’t possibly fathom. You can’t judge the current national situation by superficial appearances, and there’s no way of really explaining it to someone outside the party-government system.” Jian Lin was growing impatient as he spoke.
I am quite familiar with Jian Lin’s idea that outsiders cannot understand the Chinese government system, so I just let him go on thinking that I didn’t understand. He was out of sorts and finding me a little irritating, so I figured I’d best not say too much because I still valued his friendship, however remote it might be.
“I hope you