Fatal Weakness—Yang Hengjun (3.1)

致命弱点 Fatal Weakness
扬恒均 Yang Hengjun

第二章 毒品惊魂 Chapter 2 Drug Scare

Part 3.1

Maintaining my composure, I say goodbye to Director Zhou and try my best to walk like people in lobbies of five-star hotels do, holding my head high as I move towards the hotel front door. As I pass through the hotel's majestic pillars, I see a reflection of Director Zhou, still standing in the coffee shop, watching intently as I leave, and I suddenly feel both perplexed and uneasy. Sitting in the coffee shop, Director Zhou noticed the three times I looked at my watch, at each mention that he had phoned my parents. I really would have liked to stay with him a bit longer, but today is Sunday, and now it's almost dinner time. I haven't been to see my parents for three weeks already.

Trotting out the hotel doors, I wave down a taxi, pulling open the door before the car even stops, and jump in. I tell the driver my parents' address, close my eyes and try to relax, but my mind won't stop racing. On my first Sunday in the police station, I thought about giving mom and dad a call, but then I didn't know then how long I was going to be in for, and I wasn't going to lie to my parents in front of the police, not to mention that I had no phone number to give them, so I let that thought go. Then for the two weeks after that I didn't call either; at the time, I just thought that they'd have gotten over me not coming over for dinner the first week, so there was no reason they couldn't in the weeks after. At least that's what I thought at the time.

Dad's a retired high school teacher, mom's a retired doctor. Dad's already 77 this year, and mom just had her 75th birthday. In hopes they'd enjoy their old age, a few years ago I brought them down to Guangzhou from my home in Hubei and put them up in an apartment I'd bought on the south bank of the Pearl River, myself moving up to Huiqiao New City in the new development district in the north side of the city. Ever since, when I haven't been away on business, I go to my parents' place for dinner every Sunday night. Though even now my parents still don't understand a word of Cantonese, and their range of activity is limited to the few surrounding blocks and the boulevard next to the river, nor do they know many people, the climate is pleasant here, the city bustling; compared to the lifelessly cold winters and hot summers back in Hubei, here my parents are usually full of smiles, never letting people forget, exaggeratedly, just how filial and able a son they have. All in all, they are growing old gracefully; but even a more comfortable environment, a better climate or mood still won't take back the years. What is messed up, though, is that just when they started enjoying the good life, they became that much more aware that they don't have that much time left. And the more sentimental they get, the more alarmed they are. Sometimes I can't help but wonder if I've done the right thing; doing all I can to make them as comfortable and happy in their final few years has just made them all the more attached to life. Naturally, fear of death is growing in their hearts, but there's nothing else I can do. It's taken me years of struggle to even just get them out of the countryside.

The taxi stops at our community gate. I don't have change, so I hand the driver a fifty and tell him to keep the change. I dash into the building and step into the elevator. As it slowly climbs up to the tenth floor, I work out how I'm going to explain myself. I'll tell them I was out of the country, but with the time difference I could only phone them between six and seven at night, when I knew they'd be out walking on the riverbank. And the international lines were busy. Then I'll pretend to complain that they didn't answer my calls, or that they don't have an answering machine or something.

When mom opens the door to find me standing there, my I don't get to use my excuses. Mom just looks at me with a smile.

"Hurry, hurry, get in here," mom says in a thick, throaty Hubei accent, pulling it up into a wail.

"We've just finished cooking dinner," declares dad. He says this in Mandarin, which is strange, but after I enter the room, I understand. Someone else is here, she's in the kitchen, busy helping dad cook. I'm a bit surprised, this is the first time I've seen anything like this.

"Dad, mom, how've you been? I—"

"So good, so good," mom cuts me off, wailing into the kitchen, "Ah Hua, come out here, I want you to meet my son."

This woman called Ah Hua pokes her head out of the kitchen, takes a look at me and whips the towel off the stove, carelessly rubbing her face with. I almost laugh; her face was clean right up until she wiped it.

Dad comes out of the kitchen, rubbing his hands. In Mandarin, he introduces Ah Hua to me: "Ah Hua here is a youth ambassador from Pan's Nutritious Oral Tonic, she's been here showing us how to use Pan's Anti-aging Essence Formula for over two weeks already. So tell us, how do we look?"

Dad makes like he wants my opinion, but what can I say? This isn't the first time. Dad's always bringing home nutrition products; from honeybee extract to ginseng essence, they've tried them all. Yet every time, even though it annoys them, I always pour cold ideas on these ideas. But today they went and brought the product salesperson home—what did he call her? 'Youth Ambassador?'—with them, so of course I can't really say anything now. In any case, I'm lucky this "guest" is here, this way mom and dad won't ask where I disappeared to for over three weeks. If they knew I'd just spent three weeks in prison, for sure they'd break down.

Perhaps mistaking my hesitation for consideration, dad gets excited and mom presses close. "Doesn't your dad look so much better? He's only been taking it for two weeks."

Dad's colour does definitely look good, but then I also know that you can tell dad anything is good for him—say, drinking hot water—and his face start giving off a healthy glow. I mumble in agreement and nod my head, then shift my vision towards Youth Ambassador Ah Hua as she carefully sets the table. "Miss Ah Hua, is your company well-known?"

"You can call me Ah Hua, and it is. Our company uses a recently developed American formula in our DNA and metabolism-configuring nutritional products," Ah Hua firmly answers my question, continuing to place down the bowls and chopsticks in her hands, keeping her head down as she does so, avoiding eye contact with me. I guess she doesn't know this old couple's son is a Peking University grad, otherwise she wouldn't dare come in here. But, watching Ah Hua's unnatural and uneasy movements, I can't help but feeling a bit of sympathy for her. Everyone's gotta eat, no need to push the issue. Anyways, mom and dad have only been using it for two weeks, couldn't have put them back more than five hundred yuan. Tomorrow I'll find a way to talk them out of this.

As we eat, mom and dad yak on about the healing effectiveness of new nutritive tonics, telling me all about each and every celebrity who has been rejeuvenated by taking these things, making the old young and strong again and whatnot. Ah Hua sits silently off to the side, smiling from time to time, or cautiously throwing in a word or two, correcting mom and dad's exaggerations. You could say Ah Hua is acting generous and in good taste, not like one of those bloody pyramid scheme pushers you can spot from a mile off. This piques my interest, and I unconsciously keep glancing up at her eyes. She still hasn't wiped her face clean, but it's undeniable that she is one extremely enchanting woman. I reckon she's in her early thirties; she has a high forehead, a full face and loose clothes that still hardly conceal her finely detailed body when she moves. What's especially enchanting are her swollen breasts and, with her back to me, watching her stand up every time she bends down to scoop rice, her round, clearly-defined butt leaves me spaced out more than once. I put my head down and hurriedly gulp down my rice, blaming these things as the reason I've just spent nearly a month in prison.

Over dinner, Ah Hua keeps avoiding my gaze, but every time I even so much as see her in the corner of my eye, I feel my heart give a slight quiver. Her hair is disheveled and her face isn't clean, but I can clearly sense a kind of seductiveness coming from her, the kind of seduction that I can usually forget, but right now she's sitting across from me. That, and I've just spent over three weeks in prison. A kind of lust and desire makes me decide, for the moment, not to expose this pyramid scheme lady as a fraud. Either that, or I'm hoping I'll be able to see her again when I get back from the States.

After dinner, when Ah Hua stands up to leave, my eyes follow her to the door, and I surprise myself by thanking her: "Ah Hua, thank you for introducing my dad to your nutrition tonic, and thank you for taking care of them. I'll be going the US soon for a business trip, but I hope you'll stay on looking after them."

Ah Hua looks back at me, her face flushed red, which puzzles me. This woman must be at least thirty; her skin is white, but a man who looks like I do can turn her face bright read with just a 'thank you'? She might have seen that I have ulterior motives, which is good. These thoughts, they flash through my mind. With the look in her eyes that I've just seen, I once again feel ill at ease.

Dad's probably afraid I'm going to start lecturing them, now that Ah Hua is gone, so he rushes to say, "Ah Hua is a good girl. She used to work in a state-owned factory in Changsha, but lost her job after the factory was privatized. She came by herself to Guangzhou to look for work, and now she's got this pyramid scheme job. But you know, she doesn't seem like most pyramid schemers, she's not out to deceive anyone, she's just promoting a product she herself believes in. We ran into her in Liberation Park, and she kindly invited us to a sales exhibition at their company. The director of the Guangdong Province Health Department was even there, and lots of reporters. Everyone got to treated to a buffet meal, to try their tonic.

Mom throws in a line too, "Ah Hua sure is a good person, so worried that we wouldn't understand the instructions or that we might not know how much to take, that she comes to our house everyday to serve us for free. Like a daughter, she's so filial and smart, and she's as pretty as a painting..."

Mom and dad go on listing all of Ah Hua's good points, and I start to get the picture. Everything they're saying is word-for-word the lines crooks around the streets of Guangzhou have been using lately. I just silently think about leaving soon for a month-long business trip, and calculate that mom and dad's losses won't come to more than two thousand yuan, still within a range that I can handle. So I decide to keep quiet and not expose this fraudster's game.

* * * * * * * * * * *

The plane slides as it takes down the runway at Hong Kong airport. As it slowly rises into the air, my fear of flying begins to torment me again. My hands tightly grip the arm rests on both sides, my eyes are squinted shut, my teeth clenched, and a minute later, my clothes are soaked with sweat. About twenty minutes later, after I feel the airplane steady, I slowly open my eyes, only to see a man beside me with a sneer still on his face. There's nothing much I can do, but if I find a chance during the twelve hour flight, I'll explain to him, I have to let him know, I'm actually not scared of dying, that fear of flying is a kind of disease. Even if we are just strangers who met by chance on a flight, I still don't want to leave people with a bad impression. I think back to when I used to fly around alot, when this thing Westerners call fear of flying used to torment me to no end, which brought me to my knees in front of many an unknown flight passenger. Later, at an American friend's introduction, I went to see a doctor, wanting to find out the reason, but also hoping for some kind of sedative or sleeping pill miracle drug that will keep me as calm as water when I board airplanes, or else knock me out cold. In the end the doctor told me that while fear of flying is a disease, it's not within his field to treat. From there it was suggested I go see one renowned psychologist in New York.

The psychologist charges by the minute, not wholly unlike the 3P girls we have in Guangzhou. Except that massage misses rely on their own hands and other body parts to rub your whole body down and, finally, if the price is right, they'll even make all the foul things exit your body, leaving you in physical and mental ease. But psychologists rely on their words and eyes to help clean your spirit up which, if successful, clears all the hidden shadowy recesses out from your soul, leaving you feeling relaxed. Of course, New York psychologists are are lot more expensive than Guangzhou massage ladies, not to mention that I hadn't been to this clinic before, and the first visit requires "the full service", so as to say starting with my birth, all through growing up into adulthood. Thinking back now, at the time it felt a bit like how I felt up in the Guangzhou police station. It felt different in that at the police station there wasn't ever any hurry, time was on my side, different from being at the psychologist's, where I had to be fast, where I had to answer questions whether I wanted to or not, questions that the psychologist deliberately asked slowly, all while sneaking frequent looks at the clock hung on the wall. My misgivings were later proved right when I got the bill, which showed that every minute of those three hours at the psychologist's office that day cost me five American dollars. I remember when I was answering questions like what I liked most when I was a kid, what I hated, what my hopes were, a few dozen like that, and when I cautiously declared to the doctor that I'm not afraid to die. I told the psychologist that I've always known that motorbikes are the least safe mode of transportation in the world, that I know this to be fact. I also told him that I ride a motorbike to work every day, to save time, and that sometimes even the police can't keep up with me. I wanted to know how it is that people like me, who don't fear death, the second they get on board a plane start sweating like their lives depend on it, cold sweat that just doesn't stop.

Several times during my statements, that blue-eyed, Caucasian psychologist would take off his glasses, then put them back on again, like he wanted to use different lens angles to examine my inner being. In the end, he said, "you say you have no desires or needs, and that you have no personal belongings, no money in the bank, and no women you long for in your life, no hate or grudges to settle up, nothing in your heart that keeps you clinging onto life, no grand ambitions or ideals to realize. None of these mean that you're not afraid to die. Saying you don't fear death only goes to show that you haven't yet had a chance to properly consider death, because in your life there don't exist very many life or death scenes, and that being on a plane is the only time when you can actually consider death, because, deep in your heart, you feel that being on airplanes is as close to death as you get in your life. Am I right?"