Fat Years - Chan Koonchung [58]
As Zhuang Zizhong came out of his house, Lao Chen, the Taiwanese writer long resident in Beijing, had just walked out of the Happiness Village Number Two compound and begun his daily afternoon stroll to one of the three nearby Starbucks coffee shops. Since it was Saturday, the Sanlitun Swire Village and the Dongzhi Menwai Ginza Starbucks would definitely be too crowded; his only choice was the Starbucks in the PCCW Tower Mall of Plenty on Gongti North Road. He could only hope that all those white-collar yuppies would be in the gym and not at Starbucks occupying all the comfy chairs and surfing the net, using up all the wireless connection points.
The only unusual thing that day was that, in contrast to the previous two years, Lao Chen was not very happy as he left his house. His feeling of happiness had deserted him. You could even say that as Lao Chen came out the door, he was feeling pretty miserable.
Ever since Little Xi had left his Happiness Village apartment, Lao Chen had not felt good. And Little Dong’s departure from Beijing had only made him feel worse.
A few days after Little Xi had left, Lao Chen went to Wudaokou to visit Big Sister Song. He carefully chose ten o’clock in the morning, when the talented young Wei Guo would probably be in school. He wanted to ask her if she’d heard anything from Little Xi. Lao Chen approached the back door of the Five Flavors restaurant and skulked around, trying to avoid being noticed until Big Sister Song came to open up. He was wearing a beige trench coat of the sort worn by the Hong Kong comic actor Ng Man Tat when playing a private detective, or Law Kar-ying in the role of a sexual deviant, a flasher. Obviously, Lao Chen was not at all thinking of himself in this light. In his mind, when he put on his trench coat he looked more like Hollywood tough guy Humphrey Bogart or the author Graham Greene. Because of this misperception, when Lao Chen nervously showed himself to greet Big Sister Song, she screamed in fright.
After calming her down, Lao Chen asked if she knew any way to contact Little Xi. Big Sister Song pulled a note out of her coat pocket. “I just knew you would come by. A while back when I could still send her e-mails, Little Xi asked me if she should see you, and I told her she should. After that, she didn’t tell me whether she’d seen you or not. Two days ago, I got this text message. I don’t know where it was sent from, but I copied it down because I had this feeling you’d turn up here.”
“What do these letters mean?” Lao Chen said, looking at the note with four Romanized Chinese words—mai zi bu si.
“I don’t know,” said Big Sister Song.
“Did Little Xi send this to you?”
“Definitely, she must have.”
Lao Chen was only half convinced by Big Sister Song until she took his hands in hers, bent her knees in a half bow, and implored, “Lao Chen, you have to save Little Xi, you have to save her.”
“Get up, Big Sister, get up,” Lao Chen said, helping her to her feet.
Big Sister Song started to cry, and Lao Chen began to tear up, too, so he took out a white handkerchief and dabbed at his eyes.
“Lao Chen, I know you’ll save Little Xi,” Big Sister Song said. “You’re a good man, Lao Chen, you’ll save her.”
“I’ll do my best,” Lao Chen said. “I’ll do everything I can.”
When he got home, Lao Chen sat down in front of his computer and stared blankly at that note: mai zi bu si. With the previous message, he had immediately seen that feichengwuraook meant “If you’re not sincere, don’t bother, okay?” But what did this mai zi bu si mean? “Sell appearance cloth thread?” “Bury letter enrich posterity?” He tried out some characters, but the problem with Chinese Romanization is that it does not indicate the tone, so each sound can stand for many different characters.
Lao Chen remembered that when he was a child living in Tiu Keng Leng,