The next day, July 31, Meng Jianmin finally returned after all, safe and sound, without anything having happened to him. Everyone was both surprised and overjoyed.
As for Meng Jianmin himself, he never could have imagined the unprecedented reception waiting for him at the factory.
The moment he and Xiaojing stepped off the train, he looked across the crowd gathered on the platform to meet arriving passengers and was astonished to see someone in the distance holding up a huge white sign with bold black lettering—and his name written across it!
The factory director was stuck at the factory athletic field trying to pacify the workers staging their sit-in and could not get away, so the deputy factory director had personally come to the railway station to escort Worker Meng back to the factory!
The deputy director’s white shirt was soaked with sweat, and a few exhausted strands of hair clung to his balding scalp, making him look faintly ridiculous. Yet when he saw Meng Jianmin, his eyes actually grew wet. He seized Jianmin’s hand tightly. “Jianmin, you’re finally back! Everyone in the entire factory has been desperately waiting for you to come back!!!”
Meng Jianmin was completely baffled. “What happened to all of you? Why were you waiting for me?”
The deputy director shook his head with a miserable sigh and gave a bitter laugh. “Old Meng, if you hadn’t come back, half the workers in our factory were getting ready to load supplies onto trucks and drive all the way to Beijing for disaster relief!”
Meng Jianmin was only an ordinary worker, though he was one of the original veteran employees who had helped establish the factory and had worked there for more than ten years. Never before had he ridden in the factory director’s official car, yet this time he received extraordinary treatment. When the car carried him through the factory gates, word had already spread throughout the plant. Workers poured out of the workshops and lined both sides of the road to welcome him—the first living, breathing person they had seen return from the earthquake-stricken region! The scene rivaled the grand occasion years earlier when their Qishan ordnance factory had welcomed a locally produced hydraulic precision cutting machine with gongs, drums, and enormous red flowers. The only things missing were people beating waist drums and belting out Qinqiang.
That very day, the factory director invited Meng Jianmin onto the platform to speak to the entire workforce and tell them what Beijing was actually like after the earthquake.
A dense sea of people filled the space below, pointing and talking. Many were so excited it was almost as though they had seen their own relatives return. Right then, Worker Meng was practically dearer than family.
“Worker Meng and his younger son are both fine! They weren’t buried!”
“Meng Jianmin’s parents are over there too, and he has four younger sisters—a whole big family! If he managed to come back to the factory on schedule, that means his entire family must be safe. Otherwise he’d have been stuck there and never made it back! The buildings in Beijing didn’t collapse!”
Meng Jianmin spoke at length, recounting what had happened in the early hours of the earthquake and everything he had personally seen in Beijing. He reassured everyone that there was no need to grab weapons, riot, and charge off to Beijing.
“The city’s chaotic enough already. Every household is busy trying to save itself, and the government is handing out tents and supplies. What are all of you going back there for? To make things even more chaotic? Beijing couldn’t hold this many of us flooding into the city at once!”
Meng Jianmin cracked a joke.
Someone asked, “Then where are all the people in the city staying right now? Can they sleep inside their homes? Or are they all sleeping out in the streets?! Do they have food and clothes? Aren’t they freezing at night? Those are our parents. How can we not worry about them?!”
Meng Jianmin’s throat abruptly tightened. He paused for a moment before saying calmly, “Most people have gone back inside to sleep. The buildings didn’t collapse. I didn’t see a single dead person the entire way back.”
The restless crowd gradually calmed down. After this affair, Worker Meng became famous in the factory once again. As one of the veteran workers who had helped establish the plant, his prestige among his coworkers rose another notch.
Once Meng Jianmin returned, one of the first things he did was call Shaotang, knowing the other man must have been worried about him.
That day, as soon as Shaotang finished his official duties, he did not even bother going to the mess hall. He ran hungry all the way to the workers’ family compound, eagerly trotting over to eat the meal his sister-in-law had cooked.
Shaotang wore his uniform jacket open, something tucked beneath one arm. Once they were in the courtyard, he secretly shoved it at Meng Jianmin.
Meng Jianmin took one look. “Xifeng again? Where did you get this?!”
Shaotang grinned innocently. “Scrounged it up somehow.”
Meng Xiaobei strolled over with his hands behind his back. “Dad, you finally came back—when you hadn’t returned yet, my godfather even cried because he was so worried about you!”
He Shaotang immediately looked embarrassed. “Bullshit! Who cried?!”
Meng Xiaobei burst out laughing, only to be seized by his godfather and tucked under one arm. Slightly embarrassed, Shaotang carried Xiaobei into the stairwell and found somewhere nobody could see them, then reached into the waistband of Xiaobei’s trousers and pinched his little pecker until Meng Xiaobei yelped, “Ow! Ow!”
The two brothers talked through the entire night and finished a whole bottle of baijiu…
The two men sat cross-legged on the bed, Meng Jianmin holding Xiaojing in his arms while He Shaotang kept Xiaobei snugly tucked against himself. The sight made it seem as though each son had his own father. Children showed affection much more openly than adults did. Before either boy had spoken three sentences, it was obvious which child was closer to which man and which one liked clinging to whom.
Meng Jianmin said that when the earthquake struck in the middle of the night, everyone in his family had been jolted awake. Every resident in their building had rushed outside.
The dormitory complex for State Cotton Mills No. 2 and No. 3 belonged to large state-owned enterprises under the Ministry of Textile Industry and had originally been built to house the large numbers of cotton-mill workers transferred into Beijing. They were among the most advanced apartment buildings constructed in Beijing during the 1950s, with running water and gas. The red-brick buildings had sloping roofs and a Western-style design reminiscent of the Republican era. They were extremely sturdy. The buildings had swayed violently, but they had not collapsed!
Everyone had been sound asleep in the latter half of the night, and it was summer besides. Plenty of people had rushed outside bare-chested and wearing nothing but their underwear, scared out of their wits. Some of the young women had run outside naked, seen that the building was still standing, then run back inside to put on clothes before rushing out again. Meng Jianmin himself had been wearing an undershirt and briefs. After settling his parents and his several younger sisters, he had actually risked going back upstairs to carry down several thick quilts…
The day after the earthquake, aftershocks continued one after another while increasingly terrible reports about Tangshan came over the radio. Rumors spread everywhere that hundreds of thousands had died in Tangshan. The people of Beijing fell into fear as well and did not dare sleep inside their homes. Everyone slept on the open ground in front of the apartment buildings. Each household marked out a square patch about four meters to a side, spread their bedding there, and slept huddled together as a family for comfort and support.
Poor Meng Xiaojing had suffered terribly on his very first trip to Beijing. He developed prickly heat during those days, but they could not buy any prickly-heat powder. Then sleeping outdoors at night gave him a cold. Alternately hot and cold, he spent his days with tears and snot streaming down his face. And tents? Where were ordinary people supposed to get tents that easily? During the first week after the earthquake, nobody came around distributing tents at all. People had to fend for themselves. Hungry disaster victims even tore the iron-bar gate off the cooperative store belonging to Cotton Mill No. 2 and stripped it bare of grain, oil, rice, and flour.
Meng Jianmin had wanted to make a long-distance call to the factory and extend his leave, but his mother had an exceptionally strong sense of political responsibility and ordered him to hurry back. “Aren’t you a model worker at your factory?!”
The eldest of his four younger sisters and her husband escorted him to the railway station, reluctant to part. All along the way to Beijing Railway Station, he saw disaster victims wandering the streets carrying rolled-up bedding, damaged single-story houses swaying on the verge of collapse, and military vehicles roaring back and forth.
Meng Jianmin’s face and eyes had turned red from drinking, and a trace of moisture glimmered in his eyes.
“Shaotang, tell me—could I really have told everyone the truth?”
“I couldn’t bear to do it. Those are our parents!”
“Who wouldn’t be worried? How could I tell them that our parents are already so old and have spent all these nights sleeping out in the streets…”
Shaotang patted Meng Jianmin on the shoulder. He could tell that Jianmin had a soft heart, along with the scholarly tendency to worry about the country and its people and feel compassion for all suffering.
Meng Xiaobei listened to his father’s story and watched Meng Xiaojing pitifully pinch a piece of tissue between two fingers to blow his nose. He felt increasingly sorry for his little brother. These past few days, Xiaobei himself had been running around with his godfather, enjoying the hidden paradise of the forest barracks and outpost. His life had been so carefree and comfortable that he almost felt guilty.
He Shaotang asked with concern, “Your mother’s health is all right? Will the old couple manage by themselves in Beijing?”
Meng Jianmin laughed. “My mother was incredibly capable even when she was young. She raised five children and managed an entire household by herself. How could she not still be sharp? She kept asking about you too. ‘Where’s Shaotang? Why doesn’t Shaotang ever come visit me in Beijing?’”
Meng Xiaobei was noisily gnawing on a sheep knucklebone. He freed his mouth long enough to say, “Grandma definitely didn’t say it like that. Grandma definitely said it like this…” Then he launched into an exaggerated imitation of her thick Shandong accent: “Where’s Shaotang, then? How come Shaotang never comes all the way to Beijing to see me?”
Meng Xiaobei simply had a gift for this sort of thing. Meng Xiaojing cackled with laughter, and He Shaotang laughed too, affectionately ruffling Xiaobei’s hair. “Your son was fucking incredible this time. One kid shut up an entire factory.”
Meng Jianmin said, “My mother says the two of you must have some kind of fate together. She likes you a lot. She even said next time she sees you, she wants to take you as her godson.”
He Shaotang’s expression became completely serious. “All right.”
Meng Jianmin said, “I told the old lady not to get carried away. You have your own family, and look at the kind of family you come from—a cadre family. How could she possibly be qualified to become your godmother?”
“Why wouldn’t she be qualified?” He Shaotang lowered his head and drained his small cup of baijiu. “I don’t have a mother anymore.”
Meng Jianmin froze. “…I see.”
“Drink.”
“From now on, we’re family.”
That night, for the first time ever, Shaotang slept at the Meng home.
At first, he felt somewhat awkward about it. He was a young unmarried man, and his elder brother’s wife was in the home, so staying overnight was inconvenient.
But after the alcohol went to his head and his face grew hot and flushed, their hospitality became impossible to refuse. In the end, he slept there in an undershirt and long trousers.
This time, Ma Baochun held Meng Xiaojing on the smaller bed, while Meng Jianmin and He Shaotang slept on the larger one with Meng Xiaobei wedged between them.
Meng Xiaobei wriggled happily beneath the quilt like an enormous worm. Shaotang and Meng Jianmin had found true drinking companions in each other and remained awake most of the night, talking intermittently about everything under heaven. Meng Xiaobei looked left, then right. His biological father was on his left and his godfather on his right. Xiaobei had it made. What a damn comfortable life!
He did not dare pester his father, but he had no such restraint with Shaotang. He deliberately picked on the man who spoiled him most, pestering and clinging to him. He hooked one leg over Shaotang’s body, his smooth little calf wrestling against the other man’s thick, hairy leg. Eventually, he fell asleep with both arms around Shaotang’s waist and smeared sticky drool all over his chest!
In the middle of the night, Shaotang got up to use the toilet.
He had drunk plenty of beer and baijiu. He was tipsy, the alcohol pleasantly warm in his head, but not truly drunk—that particularly comfortable, pleasantly buzzed state. Shaotang rose unsteadily. When he passed the small bed where his sister-in-law slept, he still felt embarrassed and tried his best not to brush against it, turning sideways, one hand braced on the table and his narrow waist leaning backward as he carefully squeezed past.
In the pitch darkness, Meng Xiaobei suddenly pounced on him from behind.
Shaotang lowered his voice. “Quit fooling around. I’m going to piss.”
Meng Xiaobei whispered back, “Me too.”
With the door shut behind them, the two stood inside the toilet. Shaotang casually loosened his belt. His face was still hot and red from the alcohol as he grinned and jerked his head. “You first.”
Meng Xiaobei pulled down his shorts. “I’ll show you how far I can piss.”
Shaotang said, “Which one of us can go farther?”
Meng Xiaobei challenged him. “Let’s compete.”
Drunk enough that even his smiling eyes looked watery, He Shaotang said, “That little clay-pot spout of yours isn’t even an inch long, and you want to compete with me?”
The toilet had a white porcelain squat pan. The two of them actually did compete, each backing up about a foot until they were nearly against the door before pulling open the fronts of their underwear!
Shaotang cried softly, “Ah, fuck! You bastard, Meng Xiaobei! You pissed outside the damn toilet!…”
Meng Xiaobei giggled. “Hehehehe… hehehe… hahahaha!”
Chaos erupted inside the tiny dark room. Shaotang was tipsy enough that he could barely stand straight. With his own waistband still hanging open, he hurriedly cleaned up the mess his godson had made and wiped down the floor, terrified that his elder brother and sister-in-law might discover the two of them secretly pulling such a gross little stunt.
As Shaotang bent over, his military trousers hung loosely around his hips, exposing half of his firm backside.
Somehow, it felt different now from the times Xiaobei had seen it before. Beneath the light, it looked quite pale, half hidden and half exposed.
…
The good days in Meng Xiaobei’s little world were about to come to an end. His father had decided to send him to Beijing and make him leave Xigou.
His father sat down and gently explained the decision to him. Xiaobei lowered his head and thought for a moment. The first thing he asked was, “Then my godfather is staying here in the valley. Does that mean I won’t get to see him anymore?”
Biological parents were biological parents. Even if they did not live in the same place, blood tied them together, a bond that could never be broken no matter how much anyone struggled against it. But Shaotang was not related to him by blood. Xiaobei’s first thought was, If we can’t play together anymore, won’t we slowly grow apart? After three years? Five years? Will he even remember who Meng Xiaobei is?!
He did not ask whether his little brother Meng Xiaojing was going to Beijing too. He did not ask whether the little fatty Shen Dawei was going. He certainly did not ask whether Liu Xiaoyang—the prettiest girl in their class, the top student, and the one who always let him copy her homework—was going. Then who am I supposed to copy homework from?!
Meng Jianmin gently pinched his elder son’s ear, his smile complicated. “All you think about is your godfather. Pretty soon there won’t be any room left in that head of yours for your own parents!”
Meng Xiaobei protested, “That’s not true! You and Mom can come to Beijing and see me often. But he’ll probably find some auntie at the factory and get married, just like you did back then. Then he won’t come play with me anymore.”
Meng Jianmin gave Xiaobei a look. “You understand quite a lot… Shaotang may be going back too.”
“His family is in Beijing to begin with. He may transfer back to a unit under the Beijing Military Region.”
That night, Meng Xiaobei lay over his little desk and concentrated on drawing figures in his exercise book, diligently developing his favorite hobby. For some reason, a restless surge rose inside him, and the two men he had seen in the woods beside the pool suddenly surfaced in his mind again. He drew them.
The mind and memory of a boy were strange things. Certain images could leave an extraordinarily deep impression and refuse to disappear. For Meng Xiaobei, the most delicious meal of his childhood was the dog-meat hotpot at the mountain outpost. His happiest boyhood days were spent bathing with Shaotang at the pool, singing on the mountain, and herding sheep. And the most shocking, secret scene in his memory—the one that could never be spoken aloud—was seeing two naked men pressed together in the woods.
He still had no clear sexual awareness at his age. He understood neither intimacy between men and women nor intimacy between two men. He simply could not forget what he had seen. The scene had given him a strange, powerful jolt and lodged itself deep in his memory, yet he dared not speak about it to anyone. Put another way, What exactly had those two men been doing? Did doing that feel really good? He had never figured it out! Even though he did not understand what it meant, he remembered very clearly, more or less, how they had been doing it.
He was too embarrassed to ask his godfather either. He scribbled two naked men on the paper while imagining how two wild boars might possibly hump at each other’s asses. Then he hurriedly tore the sheet into tiny pieces, threw them into the squat toilet, and flushed them away.
The lower half of one naked man in his drawing looked far too much like the good-looking backside he had seen on his godfather from behind that night.
Under the light.
It had looked very pale.
The best part was that it had been half hidden and half exposed.
…
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