The Cook, the Crook, and the Real Estate Tycoon Read online

  Copyright © 2007 by Liu Zhenyun

  English-language translation copyright © 2015 by Howard Goldblatt and Sylvia Li-chun Lin

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Arcade Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Liu, Zhenyun.

  [Wo jiao Liu Yuejin. English]

  The cook, the crook, and the real estate tycoon : a novel of contemporary China / Liu Zhenyun ; translated by Howard Goldblatt and Sylvia Li-chun Lin.

  pages cm

  ISBN 978-1-62872-520-9 (hardback)

  I. Goldblatt, Howard, 1939- translator. II. Lin, Sylvia Li-chun, translator. III. Title.

  PL2879.C376W6313 2015

  895.13’52—dc23

  2015008545

  Jacket design by Anthony Morais

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-62872-552-0

  Printed in the United States of America

  1

  Yang Zhi

  Yang Zhi first met Zhang Duanduan at Lao Gan’s Xinzhou Restaurant.

  Lao Gan had a throat problem that created a raspy voice; it was hard for him to talk, but that did not stop him from trying. After Yang polished off five flatbreads and a bowl of mutton soup, Lao Gan came up with the check and sat down to inform Yang what had happened the day before. A man had jumped from the Dahongmeng Bridge on Five-Ring road, an attempted suicide—he managed only to break a leg—that created a five-car pileup. A speeding Mercedes was turned sideways and sent flying by a Shanxi coal truck in the adjoining lane. When it landed, it smacked into a bridge pylon, breaking the pelvis of one of the passengers, a man, while the other passenger, a woman, died at the scene. There was more to the story: the dead woman, not the man’s wife, was his mistress, a revelation that caused a commotion at the hospital before the accident was dealt with.

  “You can’t blame him for being careless,” Lao Gan said. “It just goes to show you.”

  Too preoccupied to pay Lao Gan attention, Yang scooped up his fanny pack.

  “That flour you used for the flatbreads, Lao Gan, it was rancid,” he said.

  “So you could tell. But it’s not the flour, it’s the sesame seeds. The vendor mixed last year’s seeds into this year’s. You can see a man’s true colors in a tiny sesame seed.

  “Have you found the man you were looking for?” he added.

  Yang and Gan were both from Shanxi province, Yang from Jincheng and Gan from Xinzhou. One from the north, the other from the south. Yang often ate at Lao Gan’s diner, not because they were from the same province, but because of the mutton soup. It was top of the line. Like everyone else, Lao Gan bought the carcasses in the local market, but for some reason his soup just came out better—fresher, richer, and more aromatic, which justified cutting corners with the flatbreads and other dishes, hot or cold.

  That did not sit well with Yang, especially after he heard a rumor that Lao Gan put opium in the soup to improve the flavor and develop an addiction in his customers.

  On the night of the twenty-fifth of the previous month, a thief had sneaked into Lao Gan’s house while the family was asleep. It was clearly someone who had not cased the place beforehand and knew nothing about Lao Gan. Tables, chairs, and stools out front weren’t worth stealing, and nothing but well used pots, pans, bowls, and utensils filled the kitchen. So the thief, hoping to find some money, went into the bedroom, where the family slept, with the belief that money must be hidden there. But Lao Gan never kept his money in the bedroom. Instead, each night after counting the day’s take, he wrapped it in a plastic bag and buried it in the sesame seed vat. Seeds on top, money at the bottom, ensuring that his wife and children would not get to it. It was a thief-proof hiding place. The thief searched the room, opening the armoire and chest, even checking the clothes strewn around by the sleeping family and the edge of Lao Gan’s pillow, but came up with only three and a half yuan. He squatted by the bed to contemplate what to do next, unaware that Lao Gan had woken up and was silently watching him. When he realized that the thief was baffled, he could not keep from laughing. Now, if he’d called out for help, that would have had little effect on the thief, who had encountered plenty of people doing that. But on this night, what the thief heard was raspy laughter, seemingly coming out of nowhere, which so unnerved him his hair stood on end and he ran out, yelling “Thief!” He did not leave empty-handed, however; as he sprinted through the diner, he swept up Lao Gan’s jacket, which was hanging on the wall. There was no money in the jacket, which was faux leather, sort of like Lao Gan’s diner, a tiny place with the grandiose name Xinzhou Restaurant. There was, however, a school kid’s arithmetic exercise book in one of the pockets.

  Many of the vendors from the market next to the diner, and migrant workers from the construction site just beyond it, ate at Lao Gan’s Restaurant; they were there to fill their stomachs, not sample gourmet food, which was why it was possible for him to cut corners. Since these men did not always have enough to pay for their meals, he ran tabs. Lone diners rarely owed anything, since they would calculate how much they’d spend beforehand. It was groups of customers, with one picking up the tab, who came up short, because people tend to order more when someone else is paying. When the food and drink started running low, the host, wanting to display his generosity, ordered more. They would then run a tab and pay up the next time they came in. Lao Gan kept track of the tabs in the exercise book that had been in the jacket pocket that night. Prior to that, the book had hung on the wall next to the jacket.

  One day, while a carcass seller from Inner Mongolia was waiting for his food, he took down the book and began merrily reading out customers’ names and the amounts they owed. Afraid he’d offend his owing customers and that his business would suffer if diners spread the news, Lao Gan snatched the account book away and stuffed it into the jacket pocket. It was a spur of the moment decision that then became a habit—he put the book there after finishing the accounting each night. He could not have imagined that a thief would steal it one night. All the small amounts added up to over a thousand yuan. In fact, Lao Gan knew who owed how much, since he also kept the accounts in his head. But losing the book was more than bad luck, since he no longer had proof of who had run a tab. What if they denied owing him anything? He had to get it back.

  Yang Zhi was a regular customer, and Lao Gan sensed from their conversations that he seemed to be on good terms with the thieving community. He never asked Yang what he did, and Yang volunteered no information, but the way Yang talked and carried himself gave Lao Gan that impression. So he asked Yang to help him find the thief.

  “I don’t care about the leather jacket. I’ll even give him twenty yuan if he returns the book,” he had told Yang.

  Now he brought it up again with Yang, who spat on the floor and said:

  “First you ask me to find someone for you, then you want me to pay
for my food. You can tell a man’s true colors in a single meal.”

  Money in hand, Lao Gan rasped:

  “You’re right. Here, take it back.”

  Ignoring him, Yang got up and walked to the door. On his way out, he picked up a napkin from a table to wipe his mouth and spotted a skinny girl at a table by the door, a bowl of noodles with sheep entrails in front of her. But she wasn’t eating; she was just gazing out the window at passersby. Yang left the Xinzhou Restaurant, but about halfway to the subway stop he reached for a smoke and realized he’d left his cigarettes on the table. He thought about going back for them, but to save trouble, he bought a pack at a roadside stall. He opened it, took out a cigarette, and lit up. As he continued walking, he noticed the girl from the diner following him.

  “Want a date, big brother?” She caught up with him.

  Now he could see she was a working girl. He took a closer look—small bones and a small face, seventeen or eighteen at most. Another glance told him she was different from the regular streetwalkers, who sized up potential clients like a cat eyeing a mouse. This one acted like a mouse eyeing a cat, as her face reddened when she propositioned him. Yang was tempted, not by the fact that she was a hooker or that she was blushing, but by the rare sight of a blushing hooker. He hadn’t been interested to begin with, but now he couldn’t resist, so he nodded and fell in behind her.

  “Where are you from?” Yang asked as they walked along.

  “Gansu.”

  “How long have you been doing this?”

  The girl glanced at him and lowered her head.

  “You probably won’t believe me, but I started yesterday. I came to Beijing to find my brother, but he’s moved. I called his cell phone but it’s no longer in service. I’m doing this for train fare home. You don’t have to believe a word I say, of course.”

  Yang chuckled.

  “We’ll never see each other again after today,” he said. “I lose nothing if you’ve been at it for a year and gain nothing if you started yesterday.”

  They walked on.

  “How old are you?” Yang asked.

  “Twenty-three.”

  That surprised him. Most girls in her line of work pretend to be younger, but this one, who looked to be in her late teens, wanted to be older. She struck him as someone who was candid and open.

  “May I ask your name?”

  “No need to be so polite. My family name is Zhang, but just call me Duanduan.”

  It had to be a phony name, he assumed, but she answered when he called her, so it became real. What difference could it make, anyway? By then, they’d passed two subways stops. He stopped.

  “How far is it?”

  “Not far.” She pointed ahead. “Just up ahead.”

  Her “not far” took them past yet another subway stop before they turned into a dirty lane barely wide enough to walk side by side and overflowing with the liquid contents of three public toilets. With broken streetlights, he had to watch his step. At the end of the lane, they turned into another, even smaller, lane.

  “Is it safe around here?” Yang sized up the place.

  “We’ve walked this far, Big Brother, just to be safe.”

  Finally, at the end of the lane, they reached a dilapidated house with crisscrossing cracks in the wall. The door was a makeshift entrance made of a sheet of particleboard in a frame of three wooden slats nailed to the wall. After taking out a key, Duanduan bent down, unlocked the door, and stepped inside to turn on the light. Yang looked around and, reassured by the deserted lane, stepped inside. She locked the door while he took stock of the place. It was seven or eight square meters in size, with a bed along one wall and cookware on the floor.

  “Light on or off?”

  “Off,” Yang said after some thought. “Safer that way.”

  They undressed after she turned off the light. Once they were in bed, Yang Zhi was finally convinced that Duanduan was indeed twenty-three years old, for she knew what she was doing. At first he took the lead, but once they got going, she took over. He did not want to be too rough with the scrawny girl, but before long, she was moving like a pro, a tip-off that you can neither judge people by their looks nor measure the ocean with a scoop. Now that she’d gotten him worked up, he began to enjoy himself. But just then the door was kicked open with a bang, and three brawny men, breathing hard and reeking of alcohol, stormed in, so scaring Yang that he broke out in a sweat. He thought at first they were cops, but their rough exterior and thick necks told him otherwise. Quickly realizing what was going on, he grabbed for his own clothes, which had already been snatched away, along with his fanny pack, by one of the men. The second one gave him a savage slap.

  “How dare you come here and rape my wife, you dumb fuck!”

  Yang was stark naked, so his hands went to cover his privates, no time for his face.

  “This is all a misunderstanding.”

  He turned to look at Duanduan, who had become a different person, now sobbing with her hands covering her face.

  “I was making dinner when he broke in and forced me with a knife.” She pointed to the windowsill, where a straight razor lay. The third man picked up the razor and pointed it at Yang.

  “Do we take care of this here or do we go to the police?”

  Yang realized he’d been suckered, that Duanduan was the bait, which he’d carelessly risen to. The man holding Yang’s clothes rummaged through them, taking out his cell phone and wallet, in which he found Yang’s money and ATM cards. Then he picked up the fanny pack, which had a knotted strap, opened it and found a large wad of money. The last thing to come out was Yang’s ID card.

  “Liu Yuejin, it says here.” He read the name on the card, then studied him. “Is that you? You’re Liu Yuejin?”

  Admitting defeat, Yang ignored him, but that did not bother the man, who was checking the photo on the card against the naked man standing in front of him. “Doesn’t look like you.”

  Yang figured it out. Duanduan had been watching when he’d taken money out of his fanny pack to pay at the Xinzhou Restaurant.

  2

  Ren Baoliang

  Everyone at the construction site knew that Liu Yuejin was a thief, but a different kind of thief. Thieves normally steal from people, but not Liu, who preferred to ply his trade at the site. Construction material didn’t interest him, for he was a cook, and his thefts were of food, but at the market, not the kitchen. He rose early each morning to shop for supplies. At the market, prices for the leeks, radishes, cabbages, potatoes, onions, or meat were all clearly marked. But since he shopped for several hundred construction workers, he could drive a hard bargain when buying large quantities of onions and potatoes, and could save five fen for each jin of groceries purchased. That alone added up, and he received special treatment by buying from the same vendors all the time. The various cuts of pork—lean, marbled, necks—were priced differently and offered another opportunity to skim a little more off the top. People said that the workers at the site all grew thick necks because they seemed to be eating nothing but Liu Yuejin’s pork necks. But a thief only becomes a thief when he’s caught; since they never caught Liu Yuejin in the act, he didn’t count as a thief, and that is what upset people.

  “I’ve always thought the worst thief was the one you caught,” Ren Baoliang, the foreman, complained. “But now I realize that the worst thief is the one you can’t catch.”

  Liu and Ren had known each other for decades. Ren was from Cangzhou in Hebei, while Liu was from Luoshui in Henan. Sixteen years before they met, Ren had served two years in Luoshui Prison, where one of Liu’s maternal uncles was a cook. The uncle, Niu Decao, had big eyes as bright as searchlights until he suffered from cataracts at the age of forty, and everything appeared as a blur. Before losing his sight, he had been a slow talker; after the onset of cataracts, he pounded his listeners with loud abuse.

  “Don’t think I can’t see; my mind’s eye is clear as can be.”

  Back when Niu could still
see well, he virtually ignored Liu Yuejin when the boy came with his mother to visit. Yuejin was afraid of his uncle. He may have been a prison cook, but he was haughty—not because he worked in a kitchen, but because he worked in a prison kitchen. Cooks at regular diners prepare the best food they can, while cooks in prison offer the worse food they can manage. For one thing, they couldn’t cook anything palatable for prisoners even if they wanted to, since they’re given the same thing the year-round—pickled vegetables, gruel, and cornmeal buns. Diners curse a restaurant cook when the food is not up to standard; that’s something convicts will never do. In fact, they treat cooks with humility. Restaurant cooks all looked down on Niu Decao, who in turn had nothing good to say about them.

  “Shit,” he’d trumpet, “all over the world you see cooks waiting on diners. Where else do you find diners waiting on cooks?”

  Though he cursed them loudly, his coworkers and friends took advantage of his poor eyesight by bitch-slapping the back of his head when they met. “Swish,” as their hands moved from his head down to his neck before they walked away, giving him no chance to figure out who they were. One winter, Liu Yuejin went with his mother to see his uncle in prison, so Niu took him along to buy pickled vegetables at the market. A friend of Niu’s came up to slap his neck, something he’d gotten used to by then. But eight-year-old Liu went up and kicked the man in the shin.

  “Fuck off.”

  Outraged, the man gave Liu a backhanded slap, making the boy cry and drawing the attention of shoppers.

  “He was just goofing off,” Niu complained to his nephew.

  Once they were outside, Niu rubbed the boy’s head.

  “Rely on blood brothers when fighting a tiger and your own army in battles,” he said.

  That drew uncle and nephew close. By the time Ren Baoliang went to prison in Luoshui, Liu Yuejin was already married. Ren was a long-distance trucker, hauling coal, foodstuffs, fertilizer, and cotton; depending on the season, he transported anything that brought in money. One day, he drove a truckload of live crabs from Gaoyou in Jiangsu to Tongguan in Shaanxi, where he was stopped at a checkpoint by the Luoshui police. The overloaded truck was too high, so Ren quietly stuffed a couple of hundred yuan into the policeman’s pocket. The policeman said nothing, so Ren started the engine, but before he could get back on the road, another policeman came out of the kiosk to check his papers, telling him he was missing something and that he’d have to confiscate his truck. Unwilling to pay off another cop, he checked on the bug-eyed crabs, which were foaming at the mouth, a sign that they needed to get moving. It was bad enough that the second cop was giving him a hard time, but the one who’d taken his money, instead of helping him, turned and walked off. Incensed, Ren ran after him, demanding his money back. The affronted cop insisted he hadn’t taken any money from Ren and clubbed him three times before Ren snatched the club and hit back. Ren had been struck three times, on the shoulder, the hip, and the back, while he only hit the cop once, but on the head, sending him thudding to the ground. Hitting an ordinary person was no big deal, but hitting a cop on the head meant big trouble. It was a minor wound with a little blood, but the doctor at the hospital turned it into something much worse—a concussion. That, along with interfering with police work, earned Ren two years and eight months in prison.