Pei Yan realized then that years of heavy drinking really could erode a person’s nervous system. These had to be signs of chronic alcohol poisoning, didn’t they? The old man could hardly think clearly. Some of his words seemed to emerge without logic or awareness, impossible to reason with. Within three sentences, father and son were fighting.
Truly malicious people were uncommon. Often cruelty wasn’t even deliberate; it grew out of confusion, stubborn obsessions, and old emotional knots, tormenting the people closest to someone year after year and causing terrible pain.
Tables and chairs collided and overturned. Household junk flew in every direction.
Zhuang Xiao shoved Pei Yan into a corner near the door and withdrew toward the wall. He met his father’s palm, knocked it aside, dodged sideways, kept evading his punches and kicks, and moved again.
Pei Yan stared in amazement. He’d seen endless explosive battles and blood-soaked spectacles in the ring and on film sets. He’d never seen a father and son fighting each other like this in front of him.
He couldn’t interfere. It wasn’t his affair. He was an outsider, and he couldn’t fix it.
Zhuang Xiao kept blocking, dodging, and retreating without striking back. He vaulted over a table and backed toward the kitchen window. He sidestepped one palm and caught the next, pushing it back to prevent his father’s hand from smashing through the window and sending him to hospital.
It had gone on for so many years.
This scene stirred up countless memories, unpleasant and discordant, absurd and dark.
Back then the old man had still been young, sturdy, and extraordinarily strong. Beating someone hardly cost him any effort. He could leave his son covered in blood.
The memories of Zhuang Xiao’s boyhood made up a spectacular modern martial-arts epic.
There were liquor bottles, fists and kicks, leather belts, and even being stripped naked and forced to kneel in the snow in the dead of winter. So many wounds, visible and invisible…
All of those scenes seemed to appear in Purple Blood, the film for which he’d won the Best Actor award. How easy it was to play yourself. An award was practically guaranteed.
Back then he was thinner, shorter, and much more stubborn than he was now. He’d been able to shout back and curse too.
Later Zhuang Xiao stopped answering back. He couldn’t even be bothered to speak. If the old man wanted to beat him, let him.
After enough years of fighting, one day the father woke up to discover he could no longer beat his son. In the martial-arts world, new waves overtook the old, dynasties changed, and the previous generation was smashed upon the shore.
Who was stronger in this room now? Who could really beat whom?
* * *
The kitchen window rattled and boomed under the impact of fists and feet, threatening to shatter.
Pei Yan rushed forward, trying to squeeze between them and stop the fight.
Zhuang Xiao knocked him aside with a shoulder.
When Zhuang Xiao blocked another palm strike, his arm scraped against the broken half of a liquor bottle still gripped in his father’s hand.
Blood spurted in a thin line from his wrist and dripped onto the floor.
Zhuang Xiao stood against the wall and held his wrist without saying anything. Blood had splashed over the new suit he’d bought.
Even the old drunk stopped short when he saw the blood. He hadn’t meant to injure his son. He immediately loosened his grip on the broken bottle.
That was when Pei Yan finally snapped. He’d been holding in his anger for far too long. This was a terrible test of his patience; normally after half an hour he’d be aching inside and ready to explode like a powder keg. Who the fuck cared whose father this man was?
“Why do you keep hitting him?”
“Why does he still have to look after you? What kind of rotten habits have you been allowed to get away with?”
“You want him to get lost? Fine. I’ll take him away right now, and we’ll never come back to see you. Even if he tries to return, I won’t let him!”
He didn’t care whose elder this was.
“How old are you? You still think you’re such a tough guy?”
“He’s going easy on you, not bothering to fight an old man! With three or five palm strikes he could throw those old bones of yours out of a sixth-floor window! Don’t believe me? He won’t hit you, but I will. Come on. Fight me. I won’t hold back today!”
Pei Yan roared in the man’s face.
He yelled for nearly three minutes, loudly and furiously enough that the entire stairwell probably heard him.
He won this battle through sheer force of personality, making the old man who was practically his father-in-law sink into a seat, dazed and slow to react. After chasing his son around the apartment, the old man was exhausted anyway, wheezing and panting. The fighting temporarily stopped while he caught his breath.
Pei Yan turned around, the fury vanishing from his face. He looked anxiously at the bleeding wrist. “Are you okay? Do we need the hospital?”
“What hospital?” Zhuang Xiao murmured. “It’s just a little cut.”
The wound happened to be in exactly the place and shape of a slash on the wrist, a line of blood across the skin above a vein.
He needed something to press against it and stop the bleeding.
Zhuang Xiao searched his pockets but found no tissues. From his shirt’s breast pocket he pulled out a handkerchief, the embroidered silk Forbidden City handkerchief Mr. Pei had given him the other day.
Once he saw which handkerchief it was, he hurriedly stuffed it back into his pocket. He couldn’t let it get stained with blood.
Picking his way through the wreckage, Zhuang Xiao found sticking plasters and gauze in a drawer in the inner room. He tore the gauze package open with his teeth and wrapped his wrist himself.
Looking apologetic, he turned to Pei Yan. “I’m so sorry about today. Could I trouble you to tell your parents…”
“I know. Don’t worry about those little things.” Pei Yan’s eyes suddenly reddened.
He wrapped his arms around Zhuang Xiao’s waist. “Come back to my place for now. You shouldn’t stay here either.”
He held Zhuang Xiao so tightly in his arms that there was no arguing with him. Need someone to keep the wind and rain off you? I’ve spread my wings. I’m right here.
Just as Zhuang Xiao had protected him unhesitatingly so many times before on film sets, high on wires dozens of meters above ground and beneath galloping horses’ hooves.
He knew this man so well. If anyone in the world could still hit Zhuang Xiao while Zhuang Xiao refused to retaliate, it was this especially troublesome father.
The squashed cake box remained on the living-room table, pitifully ruined on the outside. Yet the cake itself was still good, produced by a master French pastry chef and surely as delicious as ever.
“That cake was supposed to be for my mom and dad! Fine, you can have the whole thing now!” Pei Yan was choking on grievances, and he couldn’t resist adding, “I don’t mind you eating it instead, but couldn’t you treat your son a little better in future? I think he’s such a wonderful person. Why are you the one who keeps bullying him?”
I didn’t bully him. I didn’t bully him… You’re the ones bullying him… The old man seemed to be muttering something like that.
Zhuang Xiao left some money on the table, straightened his suit collar, and said, “Try to drink less. Buy some decent food to eat.”
He didn’t look at his father as he spoke, and his face showed nothing. He was used to it.
After a pause, just before leaving, Zhuang Xiao said, “Mr. Pei is an ordinary friend I met working on a film. Don’t mistake us for anything else, and don’t tell the reporters nonsense, all right?”
There was no way to control whether this alcohol-soaked old man would say something outrageous to a reporter.
The old man’s gaze seemed hooked onto Pei Yan, following him as he walked away. He shook his head.
The instant they were outside and the door had closed, Pei Yan said, “Tell him what we really are. I don’t care.”
“I do,” Zhuang Xiao answered.
* * *
Zhuang Xiao had originally insisted they each go home separately. Pei Yan snatched his car keys, made Zhuang Xiao sit in the passenger seat, and drove Zhuang Xiao’s car himself.
“What if the paparazzi see us? They remember all the trouble you’ve caused. They’re just waiting to catch you doing something wrong,” Zhuang Xiao warned.
“Let them see.” Pei Yan said, “If any of those fuckers dare photograph me, I’ll smash their car.”
His mother’s phone call came in again.
Pei Yan connected the hands-free car audio. “Mom, something came up for both of us today. I’m sorry, but we won’t be coming to dinner.”
Mrs. Xu had probably expected this, but she must have been terribly disappointed. “Oh… your friend can’t come?”
“He’s busy with something personal.”
“Then couldn’t you come have dinner with us, Little Monkey?” Xu Qishang asked. “You’re hardly ever home, and you’re going away for another film in a few days…”
Zhuang Xiao signaled to him with his eyes. Go. Spend time with your parents.
“But I need to stay with him…” Pei Yan had to coax his mother. “Something came up unexpectedly. He didn’t stand you up on purpose. He even bought a new suit and presents for you because he genuinely wanted to meet you. Please don’t be angry with him or blame him. It’s not his fault.”
Xu Qishang apparently spoke to his father for a moment, then returned to the phone. “All right, let’s forget it for today. Take care of whatever you need to do. It’s just that the chef brought so many ingredients and came with his apprentice. We’ll have to apologize and send them away.”
Pei Yan hurriedly replied, “They’re there already. Don’t send them away. You two should enjoy a lovely dinner!”
“Just the two of us? Eat what? A whole table full of delicacies? How could we eat all that? It was all for you… Most days your father and I just make a pot of noodles with gravy and call it dinner.”
Zhuang Xiao could hear most of the conversation through the car’s speaker. He turned to look out of the window, his lips pressed tight.
Pei Yan’s parents were decent, respectable people. They didn’t ordinarily live there, and they’d come such a long way specifically to see him. In the end he’d stood them up, leaving them disappointed.
He shouldn’t have agreed to have dinner with Pei Yan’s parents in the first place.
By nature he hadn’t wanted to go at all. It wasn’t the sort of thing he’d usually agree to. But to make Yanyan happy and avoid disappointing the people close to him, he’d been forcing himself onward and onward.
Zhuang Xiao tore off his new tie. The shirt collar was so tight that he felt as if he were suffocating. He was already standing at the edge.
Pei Yan took him directly back to his own apartment, ignoring whether paparazzi were lurking at the entrance.
His home was a bachelor apartment with two bedrooms and a living room, its layout and furnishings simple. He lived alone and disliked enormous spaces because they felt cold and empty, and he could even get lost in them.
Downstairs he bought two takeaway boxed dinners.
A private banquet had become takeaway boxes. It was enough to break a person’s heart.
He bought the most expensive deluxe bento available: Japanese grilled eel rice with seafood tempura, salmon and surf-clam sushi, plus the red pickled ginger and wasabi potato salad they both liked. They sat across from each other, eating slowly. What they struggled to swallow was their mood.
Zhuang Xiao simply ate without speaking.
Pei Yan glanced at him.
With startling speed he stole a huge lump of wasabi from Zhuang Xiao’s bento and shoved it into his mouth.
“What are you doing?”
“That’s too much. Isn’t it spicy?”
Zhuang Xiao couldn’t stand it any longer. He finally spoke and burst out laughing. “Spit it out!”
Pei Yan struggled to chew the wasabi. His eyes reddened at once and filled with tears. He screwed up his nose and eyes, choking, “Fuck, the smell is so goddamn sharp! Worse than… worse than stinky tofu or chive sauce… Who the fuck likes this stuff?”
Zhuang Xiao cupped a hand beneath his chin. “Hurry up and spit it out.”
Pei Yan wrinkled his nose. “Shouldn’t you… share both my joys and my hardships? Don’t you want a taste of how strong it is?”
He pulled Zhuang Xiao toward him and covered his mouth with his own, sharing the wasabi through a kiss.
Zhuang Xiao broke free of the forceful kiss and gulped down a glass of iced water. The taste was terrible, the fumes overwhelming.
Pei Yan stuck out his tongue, dyed green by the wasabi, and panted noisily for Zhuang Xiao to see. Zhuang Xiao called him crazy.
Pei Yan wiped the moisture from his eyes and blew his nose. Looking utterly bedraggled and tearful, he leaned close to kiss the dimple in Zhuang Xiao’s cheek.
Brother Xiao, I made you smile.
Zhuang Xiao kissed him back, their mouths meeting.
He understood. Yanyan had only eaten the wasabi to make him laugh.
Pei Yan took out a medicine box to redo his bandage. It contained an astonishing collection of topical ointments, poultices, and other remedies for bruises and injuries.
Zhuang Xiao frowned. “Do you get injured often?”
“What do you think?” Pei Yan replied.
“What do you do at home?”
“Nothing in particular.” Pei Yan smiled. “My mother assembled this entire box of medicines for me. She insists on replacing them every six months in case they’ve expired, so half the time we throw out drugs nobody’s even used.”
He took off the messy bandage Zhuang Xiao had wrapped around his wrist, disinfected the cut with a cotton swab, spread on some ointment, and wrapped it neatly in clean gauze until the wrist had a white “wrist guard.”
Zhuang Xiao inspected the items in the medicine box one by one. “These are all for external injuries?”
“I never suffer internal injuries,” Pei Yan declared.
“Really?” Zhuang Xiao said. “Maybe I should give you an ‘internal injury’ one day.”
Pei Yan showed no fear. “Think you’re so tough? Come on, then. Tonight?”
Zhuang Xiao stroked his face. “I couldn’t bear to hurt you inside.”
Pei Yan went to take a shower. Zhuang Xiao, whose wrist was injured, stayed outside.
He wandered silently through the rooms, looking around.
It was his first visit to Pei Yan’s home. The furniture and fittings were simple and comfortable. Everything looked tasteful and expensive, probably selected and arranged for him by his mother.
The bedroom held a large bed, plain and simple.
A big television stood opposite the bed. Zhuang Xiao thought of Mr. Pei’s indecent “hobbies” and discreetly rummaged in the television cabinet drawers. Heh. Even bedtime required all eighteen weapons of martial arts. Didn’t the man ever get tired?
He lifted the pillow.
Beneath it lay that magazine, its cover bearing the striking photograph of the two of them together. His abdominal muscles were outlined in shadow, while Pei Yan’s hair glistened with water and moisture spread over his chest.
He flipped it open at random and found the article about the two of them inside. The pages were crumpled and curled as though they’d been dug out of the earth.
The parts of the photograph showing his chest and abs were creased and wrinkled, even faintly damp in places. Who knew what shameless things that pervert had done while staring at his body in the picture? If they hadn’t been lovers, it would have seemed creepy and disgusting; between the two of them, though, the thought felt oddly sweet…
The sound of the shower came and went.
Pei Yan called, “Sir Zhuang!”
He opened the bathroom door a crack. “Hey, I forgot to take clean clothes in. Could you fetch me some?”
“They’re in the five-drawer chest in the bedroom. Just pick any set.”
Pei Yan’s voice came through the warm steam.
Most of the clothes in the drawers were black, white, or gray, so it really didn’t matter what he picked. Zhuang Xiao took them to the bathroom door. Suddenly the narrow gap swung wider, light pouring out. A hand seized his shirt and an arm went around his waist, dragging him into the bathroom without asking.
Zhuang Xiao still wore a shirt and dress trousers. There were dirty smudges on both the front and back of his trousers, and even half a shoe print on the outside of one thigh from the scuffle with his father.
Pei Yan, on the other hand, was completely naked.
The bathroom lighting made the quiet atmosphere intimate and emotional, especially when one of them wasn’t wearing any clothes. Pei Yan held him, looking both earnest and stubborn.
They comforted each other silently with kisses.
Pei Yan leaned against the wall and drew Zhuang Xiao’s head against his chest.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I want to apologize. This all happened because of me.”
“Again? What are you apologizing for?” Zhuang Xiao buried his face in the crook of his neck and bit his shoulder, rubbing his wet body against him and against the clothes marked by his father’s shoe.
“Have you saved up twenty years’ worth of apologies for other people just to say them all to me?” Zhuang Xiao teased.
He leaned his whole weight on Pei Yan’s shoulder, nuzzled his neck, and stroked him, his fingers pressing as though they might sink into his skin.
A posture of weakness he had never shown before.
He would reveal that weakness only in private, when the two of them were alone.
Pei Yan couldn’t exactly say he regretted luring Zhuang Xiao back. But he knew perfectly well that if he hadn’t pursued every possible way of coaxing him home, Zhuang Xiao would never have needed to relive an entire Purple Blood.
The Southern California horizon veiled in pale mist, the quiet valley, vineyards heavy with grapes ready for harvest, rich soil smelling strongly of horse manure… Driving down country roads, watching the sunset, wandering free beneath an open sky.
Some people were perhaps destined to have few ties to family and to wander far from home throughout their lives. That too was a way of living, and it had been good.
What was wrong was insisting on dragging a person back, forcing him into the life you wanted him to live.
These were two separate worlds. Their timelines had suddenly crossed again, exposing old traces and leaving the ground covered in disordered shadows torn by old injuries. The experience was terribly cruel to the person who lived through it, so cruel that even Pei Yan, only a bystander, could hardly endure it.
“Want me to?” he murmured. “Make you feel a little better…?” His hands worked firmly over Zhuang Xiao’s skin until it flushed red under the friction.
Pei Yan loosened Zhuang Xiao’s collar and gradually peeled his shirt downward, exposing his shoulders and back, searching for the old faded scars on his skin.
He pointed to one scattered pale scar after another. “When did you get these?”
“Old injuries. I don’t remember anymore.”
“They look old. Ten years ago?”
“Maybe. I really don’t remember.”
“Or twenty years ago?”
Zhuang Xiao answered only with silence.
It was a case of fighting poison with poison, forcing the other man to reopen an old wound and tell the truth.
An injury from ten years earlier could be an ordinary scrape sustained while filming a fight scene, nothing unusual in a stunt performer’s career. An injury from twenty years ago meant something altogether different.
Zhuang Xiao laughed and kissed him. “It’s nothing. Stop worrying!”
“My dad and I have fought each other so often we know each other’s moves by heart. That old man has the same few rotten tricks. As soon as he makes a move, I know exactly what he’ll do! I can catch however many palm strikes he throws. Do you really think he can beat me now?”
“He hasn’t been able to beat me for ages. He couldn’t beat me ten years ago. The drink has ruined him, softened his bones. I can’t be bothered arguing with him. What are you worrying about? Why are you worrying about me?”
Zhuang Xiao gave him a handsome smile and pinched his cheek, then tugged it gently. He wasn’t used to seeing Mr. Pei so melancholy and worried.
Could unhappiness be contagious?
The clatter of liquor bottles rolling down the stairs, the arguments and uproar, seemed to echo in his ears.
The bad-tempered man sitting in that dark stairwell had long since ceased to be an opponent.
* * *
They tumbled onto the bed still damp, a fine sheen of moisture clinging to their brows and lashes. The sheets and mattress got wet too. Pei Yan pinned Zhuang Xiao down and kissed every scar he could find, one by one.
As though once his lips had passed over them, the long stripes left by a belt and the little incense-dot scars burned by cigarette ends simply vanished, erased from memory itself.
“After the divorce and the leg injury, of course he grew bitter and started picking fights with everyone,” Zhuang Xiao explained as he lay on the bed. “Alcohol has ruined his brain. He showed mild symptoms of dementia years ago, and now that he’s older it’s worse. He’s sensitive, suspicious, paranoid, and easily loses his temper and turns against his own family. He doesn’t actually bear that much malice toward me. We don’t hate each other. We’re father and son, after all. He wouldn’t truly want to cut me down… Sometimes I pity him too. Don’t take it so seriously.”
Pei Yan shook his head.
He knew it wasn’t that simple, but he didn’t want to argue. He felt so much pain for Zhuang Xiao that he could hardly bear it.
Strings of old scars ran beneath Zhuang Xiao’s ribs and along his thighs. To Pei Yan they looked like cigarette burns.
“You’re mine.” He kissed Zhuang Xiao’s cheek. “Who cares about anybody else? From now on, I’ll be the one to cherish you.”
* * *