I’D KNOWN OLD MR. LIU FOR a long time. When he was locked in a room with Mr. He, I had seen him. At the time, Line and I were dating. We were always crawling around looking for places where no one could see us. We crawled around inside the lab building and found a place between the ceiling and the roof where we could look down to see Old Mr. Liu and Mr. He below sitting face to face. Mr. He sat with a grim look on his face, but Old Mr. Liu wore a goofy grin with his face tilted to a side. Drool seeped out of a corner of his mouth but he was oblivious. At times, he would raise his hand and in a crisp falsetto say: reporting! I have to go to the toilet! The guards wanted to beat his ass so he took off his pants and showed off his snow-white butt cheeks. He climbed onto a table and raised his ass high in the air. That was just who Old Mr. Liu was. It was hard for anyone to take him seriously. I suspect my father cozied up to him just to borrow money.
By the time my father left, it was wintertime. The others had all gone back to Sichuan already. It wasn’t only because they ran out of money but also because the rear battalion kept sending comrades over every day to mobilize. But no one dared to come to my house to mobilize because they were all afraid of me. I had a personal vendetta against those guys, so as long I was alive, they were cautious. The fact that my father made it to the end was all thanks to me. But still, we had our moments of deprivation. We not only ate everything we had, but we had to sell watches, coats, and eventually even newspapers. Anyone with money to lend had moved away. The ones who couldn’t move away had no money. The warehouse was finally empty and we could finally settle in, but by then, my folks we no longer there to enjoy it.
Even though my father never thought much of me, he still offered some amount of biological affection; at his age, he could see that there weren’t going to be any more opportunities available to him (later when he realized he still had opportunities, he reverted to condescension and even envy—Wang Er’s note). He could also see that there was a 1.9-meters-tall son and a beautiful daughter-in-law—a pair of lovebirds—right in front of him, and it made him reluctant to leave. That was understandable, but I began to worry: you guys ate all the food and used up all of Old Mr. Liu’s money. Once you leave, how are we going to live? Of course, I didn’t voice my concern.
Before leaving, my father told me to call Old Mr. Liu grandpa. Fuck that shit; that wasn’t the order of things. Father bowed with his hands folded in front of him as he said: Elder Liu, I place my son in your care, please teach him the way. It’s okay if the idiot can’t learn, but don’t let him lead Little Bicycle Bell astray; she’s a good girl. Old Mr. Liu accepted wholeheartedly. My father then turned to Little Bell and said: Bell, take good care of Grandpa Liu. Bell also agreed wholeheartedly (my father borrowed a lot of money from Old Mr. Liu, leaving us as ransom was a part of his ploy). Finally, he said to me: boy, watch yourself, don’t end up in there (jail—Wang Er’s note) again. After that, they left. The mining school used a big truck to take them to the train station and they refused to take anyone else to see them off. The moment my folks left, I said to Old Mr. Liu: old man, are you really going to be in my business? Old Mr. Liu said: oh nah nah, we were just saying what they wanted to hear. Wang Er, let’s play a game of chess, Mr. He says you play a good game!
When Old Mr. Liu asked me to play chess with him, I knew it was going to be a chore. Just think about it: it had been months since Bell and I had a chance to be intimate. At long last my father is gone, my mother is gone, and if you leave and let me shut the door, we will finally have the world to ourselves. Even though she probably wouldn’t have agreed to taking off her clothes in the middle of the day, she would have at least let me near her. Unfortunately, Old Mr. Liu wasn’t that perceptive, and I didn’t have thick enough skin to lay it out for him. Goddammit!
I hated Old Mr. Liu, not only because he was ruining my good times but also because he was a coward in the face of death. When he asked me to take his blood pressure, he would stare at the mercury meter going up and ask: how high?
Not bad, 180.
Frightening. Bell, hand me my medicine. Systolic pressure at 180! What’s the diastolic pressure?
Not bad, 160.
High diastolic pressure! Oh no, I need to go to sleep. Measure again when I wake.
WHEN HE WAS diagnosed with atherosclerosis, it was like receiving a death certificate. They say eating sour things softens blood vessels so he went on a pregnant woman’s diet. He ate so much sour food that he ruined his gut. Had he not done that, his mouth wouldn’t have smelled like a vat of shit. Is death really so terrifying? In literature, ancient and modern, Chinese and foreign, there are plenty of references to the subject of death.
“General Lü Bu! Death comes for us all, why fear?”
—Zhang Liao in Romance of the Three Kingdoms
“What is death? It is nothing but to be with Napoleons1 and with Caesars?”
—The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great, by Henry Fielding
“Seven have I hewn in pieces, nine have I pierced with my lance, many have I trampled upon with my horse’s hoofs; and I no longer remember how many my bullets have slain.”
—Taras Bulba, by Nikolai Gogol
(In the above reference, Gogol is describing a battle between the Cossack and the Polish. The Cossack all have heroic dying words so the Polish must also have their own dying words: I have been hewn in seven pieces, pierced by nine lances, and I no longer remember how many bullets killed me, or else there wouldn’t be enough Poles to go around!—Wang Er’s note)
“Afraid of death? Without death there is no revolution! Afraid of death? Then how can you call yourself a member of the Communist Party!”
—Protagonist of Model Films
“Si La Si La Deyo!”
—Antagonist of Model Films
I have two entire notebooks full of quotations like these that I copied out. But most people’s dying words tend to be shaped by their moment in history. Within the formalism of the “Cultural Revolution” era, only the very last dying words counted; shouting long live so and so while you were still alive didn’t count. When I was in the hospital in Yunnan, the next bed over was a guy with lung cancer. His wife reassured him by saying: baby’s daddy, if you feel unwell, just yell at me or the kids okay? The guy started spasming and spent the whole night yelling: long live Chairman Mao! No one could get any sleep. Eventually, the head of the hospital came and said to him: you are already dead, those last dying words counted! Only then did he find release. Compared to above-mentioned attitudes toward death, Old Mr. Liu was nothing short of a spineless coward!
Old Mr. Liu and I started to set the chessboard. Clearly, he was no match for me, so I went with the Delayed Opposite Direction Cannon opening. Apparently, Old Mr. Liu knew about the strategy. He muttered, ah, so that’s what you’re trying to do! I said quietly: give it a try, it’s not too late to talk after you win. When he heard this, he became nervous. The DODC strategy calls for brute force; you can’t be subtle about it. He hesitated and immediately lost pieces and after twenty rounds, he was dead. He praised, amazing! During the rematch, I pulled another DODC. In that one afternoon, I played fifteen games using DODC, and Old Mr. Liu’s brain was annihilated!
Old Mr. Liu took endless beatings from the cannon play. People who have studied such things know that it’s a vulgar strategy. At night, he wanted to play me again, what a drag. I wanted to go to sleep, but it would have been impolite to say it out loud. So of course, I kept at it with the DODC. When he saw that I was doing the cannon play again, he said: Wang Er, do you know any other openings? I said: like what? He said: for example, Screen Horses. I said: sure, I know them all, but why don’t you win against my DODC first. He said: it’s not good to always use the same opening. I said: that’s strange, why do you care what I play? Old Mr. Liu had no choice but to play on. He lost before we got to fifteen rounds. The old man let out a long sigh: it looks like I should call you shifu. I said: who am I to teach a venerable elder like you? Old Mr. Liu walked off in anger.
It has been twenty years, and I have reached my doubtless years. With regard to Old Mr. Liu’s chess skills, I have arrived at the following conclusion: his game wasn’t all that bad. When he played with my father, they could go head-to-head for twenty matches. Of course, my father’s game kind of stank. But when we were playing, I could have said to him: you are losing because you are too afraid of risk. He may have lasted a bit longer. I understood this at the time, but I was in such a hurry to make love to Little Bicycle Bell that I just wanted the old man to go away. Had I known that he would die the very next day, I would have put off the lovemaking and given him more of a chance on the chessboard.
Old Mr. Liu was always holding his cane and dozing off in his chair while drooling on the front of his shirt.
1 Wang has changed the original “Plato” in the Fielding to “Napoleons.”