When Jiang Youyou was staying in Pu Yuanhui’s car, a Chinese phrase-Wangming Yuanyang (the runaway couple) suddenly occurred to her. And when she had stayed in the car for two solid hours, she saw a beautiful two-story building in a scene of stunning beauty, she began to think of another Chinese phrase-jiantusanku, meaning “a foxy hare has more than one den”.
“Where are you drifting off? Follow me upstairs. It’s very safe here.
He changed a phone card for fear of being tracked.
“I have to go to work tomorrow.” Jiang Youyou took out the phone to call GM assistant Huang Yu. “Ms Huang, I’m going to take a few days off from work for some urgent family affairs. But I’m out of town right now, will you please go through the leave procedure for me?
Huang Yu spoke with a somewhat unhappy tone. “Don’t ask for a leave in a phone call next time. Just this once. Be back to the company as soon as you have finished your family affairs. But you should be back to attend the company’s annual gala, I’ll send you a short message on your phone to tell you the time and the locale.”
Jiang Youyou said thanks and hung up, then looked around to observe the surroundings.
Shaded in the bamboo forest, the house was of classic beauty. In front of it there was a large pong. A residence was far away, a red brick house. Someone was burning wheat stacks in the field, emitting a pleasant smell.
“It was so beautiful.” Jiang Youyou suddenly felt she was far from the madding crowd. There was no city noises, only the rustle of the maple leaves could be heard. The leaves were red as flames.
“Go in and have a rest.” The gate of Pu Yuanhui’s house is equipped with fingerprint lock. And when they entered the house, there was another scenery-the room on the second floor is the master bedroom, from which Jiang Youyou could sit in the bed and see the green mountains in the distance. In the pond a few ducks were swimming. She felt as if she was living in a picture.
“Hide out here for a few days. There was sufficient food and daily supplies at home.” Pu Yuanhui turned on the computer, “and you can surf the internet. Can you live an indoor life?
“Of course I can. I like here.” Jiang Youyou showed her feelings honestly. But suddenly her eyes turned red again. If only the Yellow Tiger were still alive! It liked to run in the field so much. But it would bring the ducks disasters, for the Yellow Tiger would kill all of them.”
Pu Yuanhui smiled. He helpled Jing Youyou pack up her belongings and went into the kitchen to cook some food-plain-fried cucumber, stir-frying pork fillet and tomato and egg soup. And after these dishes, the sweet potato syrup as dessert. They set a table in the yard to have the meal, with the sunshine in early winter. The dishes were so delicious that they were overwhelmed with joy.
It was not important to have food, what dishes were important; it was not important what dishes to have, in which place to have the dishes was important; it was not important where to have the dishes, with whom to have the dishes was important; it was not important whom you had the dishes with, it was really important that whether you were hungry or not…
They took a nap. In the large bed, the sunshine was as soft as a woolen blanket. The two huddled together, like a big cat and a small cat, looking sweet and heartwarming. They didn’t make love, for they forgot to bring condoms with them.
When Jiang Youyou woke up, there was no one beside her. A note was on the desk, saying “I will be back before tomorrow evening. Don’t go out at night. I’ve prepared the supper for you and put it in the fridge. Before going to bed do check whether you’ve locked the door. If I don’t come back, leave the house by yourself three days later. There’s a bank card in the drawer, with the pin number of 259425. Take out all the money in the card, then leave this city.”
Pu Yuanhui was driving at a gallop in the dark. Almost all his competent subordinates were arrested. Obviously this was an attack with purpose and plot for revenge.
He could do nothing but to ask his old father for help.
The old father had denied him as the son long ago. But when he read the news in the paper and say the photo of the charred corpse, he couldn’t help bursting into tears. He couldn’t go to sleep night after night, missing his dear unlovable son, whom he didn’t have the chance to see at his last gasp.
His present wife regretted with guilt as her husband, “It’s me who shouldn’t marry you and elbowed her out. Otherwise your son wouldn’t end up like this. It’s my fault.”
“Alas, I also had let him down. He didn’t have a good life since he was a child. And when he was young, Yuanhui always kept fighting. Later he joined the army, and then he became a mobster after he retired from the army. And now he was burnt to death in the bedroom. What a misery! And another person was hurt at the same time.” Pu Yonglin meant the story of the fire in Belin Garden. He read about it in the paper.
When Pu Yuanhui was twenty years old, he injured his father by stabbing him with a knife. Since then the father and the son broke off completely. They treated each other as strangers, never speaking to each other, nor having contact by phone. Occasionally he could see his father on TV inspecting here and there, but he immediately changed the channel. “You could still be the official, I would still be a thief. We don’t walk on the same path and we have little to say to each other.” Pu Yuanhui thought his mother was abandoned by his father when he was ten because he wanted to marry the daughter of that high official so that he could have a more successful political career. Pu Yonglin had a child with a prostitute. He intended to have the fetus aborted but the medical abortion failed. Pu Yuanhui doggedly survived. But such relations couldn’t come to light. Never.
Pu Yonglin was washing his face in the bathroom. His son, his only natural son, was charred in his bedroom in this way. He wondered if he still remembered him, his irresponsible father, when he was dying.
After he got married, his wife gave birth to a daughter, who married a foreigner after her graduation from the university. There would be a rare call from her once in a year. He could never forget the naught son of Pu Yuanhui when he was young. When he was a primary school pupil, he was often chased home by other children’s parents for being engaged in gang fights. And he had not only to offer money for compensation, but also offer apologies and smiles, promising “I would certainly teach the naughty boy a good lesson.”
But once Pu Yuanhui moved him very much. That was when he was seven, after he gave the son a good beating, Pu Yuanhui ran away from home again, as usual, and was back home in disgrace next morning, even had two pancakes in his hand. They were pancakes from Liu’s breakfast shop, which was far away from his home. So he asked him, “Why should you buy this?”
And Pu Yunahui answered, “You beat me because I brawled. Anyhow, you are my papa. In any case, I was free last night, so I walked to Zhongshi Street to Liu’s breakfast shop, and slept in front of his door. So I bought today’s best pancakes, for you like this very much. Will you please go easy next time you beat me, for you’ll have no son if you beat me to death.”
Pu Yonglin couldn’t stop his tears at the thought. Why was he such a nonesuch papa instead of a normal father who could afford a happy future to the child and the child’s mother.
Later Pu Yunahui’s natural mother died, he had to live with his paternal Aunt for a period. But he, as his father, even didn’t send them a single cent. He now realized what hard life they had lived at that time. He cared only his own success on his official career, but never remembered the ones he had hurt so deeply.
Pu Yuanhui’s car had gone wrong on the way. He opened the front cover of the car and it took him a long time to have the car fixed. He didn’t care about the handful engine oil but smeared it on his face accidentally, so that his face looked like tabby cat.
Suddenly he felt missing Jiang Youyou, wondered if she had had her supper. Then his train of thoughts returned to Christmas Day. It was lucky for him to be with Jiang Youyou at that night, otherwise it must be he who was killed. What Xiang Lizhi had done had sowed the seeds of her own destruction. She didn’t deserve any sympathy at all
Someone was knocking at the bathroom window. It was the eighth floor. Who would knock at the bathroom window on the eighth floor? Pu Yonglin dried his face with a towel.
A black face with red bloodshot eyes. Ghost? The ghost of his son? It must be the haunting soul of his son that came to look for the father.
“It will be better than nothing to see my son’s haunting soul. That means he still has me in his heart.” Pu Yonglin thought and gazed at him.
Pu Yuanhui thought, “What on earth should you look at?” then he knocked hard at the window again. By this Pu Yonglin began to realize that it was a human, not a ghost.
So he hurriedly opened the window and said surprisingly, “Why didn’t you enter from the front door?”
“Damn! Do you think the two armed guards downstairs won’s shoot me to death?” He hadn’t climbed a wall or along a pipe for a long time. It seemed that it was really important to do more exercise when you were young. He felt that his hands and feet were not as powerful and quick in action as they had been when he was younger. Everything became more difficult to do in one’s middle age.
“What has happened to you recently? Many people said that you were killed. Your gang has also been smashed. What are you going to do coming here?” Pu Yonglin pulled his son up into the room. The old man was now sixty-seven years old. At the age of twenty he once went out to have a booty call but the condom was broken, hence the birth of Pu Yuanhui. When Pu Yuanhui was ten, he married the present wife and broke off with Pu Yuanhui and his mother at his wife’s request. Ten years later when Pu Yuanhui returned after the retirement from the army, the first thing he tried to do was to kill the father, but failed, perhaps because he didn’t have the heart to hurt his father.
“You wish me to die, don’t you? You damned old goat.” Pu Yuanhui slumped heavily on the bathroom floor short of breath.
“Pu Yonglin immediately locked the door of the bathroom and turned on the shower mixer, pretending he was having a shower. “You won’t come to me until you got to the dead end. Now tell me how could I help you?”
The men inside the bathroom were whispering, whose conversation was masked by the sound of swooshing water from the shower mixer.
Outside the woman was watching TV. She couldn’t hear clearly now. So the TV was turned on the very loudly. While watching, she thought, “Why should the old husband have the bath so early today. He must hide himself in the bathroom to cry for his son.