The Republic of Wine (7 page)

A bevy of attendants fluttered around the room like so many red flags, sending drafts of cool air his way and spreading that strange odor to every corner of the room; it was, to be sure, mixed with the fragrance of their face powder and the sour smell of sweat from their armpits, plus smells from other parts of their bodies. The more the odor merged with the other smells, the less poignant it became, and Ding Gou'er's attention was diverted.

A steaming apricot-colored hand towel dangling from a pair of stainless-steel tongs appeared in front of Ding Gou'er, catching him by surprise. As he reached for the towel, instead of cleaning his hands, he allowed his eyes to trace the tongs up to a snowy white hand and beyond that a moon face with dark eyes beneath a veil of long lashes. The folds of the girl's eyes made it seem as if she had scarred eyelids, but that was not the case. Now that he'd had a good look, he wiped his face with the towel, then his hands; the towel was scented with something that smelled a bit like rotten apples. He'd no sooner finished his ablutions than the tongs whisked the towel away from him.

As for the Party Secretary and Mine Director, one handed him a cigarette, the other lit it.

The strong colorless liquor was genuine Maotai, the grape wine was from Mount Tonghua, and the beer was Tsingtao. Either the Party Secretary or the Mine Director, one or the other, said:

‘As patriots we boycott foreign liquor.'

Ding Gou'er replied:

‘I said I wasn't drinking.'

‘Comrade Ding, old fellow, you've come a long way to be with us. How does it make us look if you don't drink? We've dispensed with the formalities, since this is just a simple meal. We can't show the intimate relationship between official ranks if you won't drink with us, can we? Have a little, just a little, to let us save face.'

With that the two men raised their liquor glasses and held them out to Ding Gou'er, the colorless liquid sloshing around ever so gently, its distinctive bouquet very tempting. His throat began to itch and his salivary glands kicked in, sending spittle pressing down on his tongue and wetting his palate. He stammered:

‘So sumptuous … more than I deserve…'

‘What do you mean, sumptuous, Comrade Ding, old fellow? Are you being sarcastic? We have a small mine here, with little money and few frills, and a mediocre chef. While you, old Ding, come from the big city, have traveled widely, and have seen and done everything. I imagine there isn't a fine beverage anywhere you haven't sampled, or a game animal you haven't tasted. Don't embarrass us, please,' said either the Party Secretary or the Mine Director. Try to put up with this meager fare the best you can. As ranking cadres, we must all respond to the call of the Municipal Party Committee to cinch up our belts and make do. I hope you'll be understanding and make allowances.'

A torrent of words flowed from the two men as they eased their glasses ever closer to Ding Gou'er's lips. With difficulty he swallowed a mouthful of sticky saliva, reached for his own glass, and held it out, feeling the exceptional heft of the glass and the quantity of liquid it held. The Party Secretary and Mine Director clinked glasses with Ding Gou'er, whose hand shook for a moment, spilling a few drops of liquor between his thumb and forefinger, where the skin turned joyously cool. As that joyous coolness sank in, he heard voices on either side of him say: ‘A toast to our honored guest! A toast!'

The Party Secretary and Mine Director drained their glasses, then turned them upside down to show that not a drop remained. Ding Gou'er was well aware of the three-glass penalty for leaving a single drop in one's glass. He first drank down half the contents, and his mouth was suddenly awash with ambrosia. Not a word of criticism emerged from the two men, who merely held up their empty glasses to show him. Succumbing to the awful power of peer pressure, Ding Gou'er drained his glass.

The three empty glasses were quickly refilled.

‘No more for me,' Ding Gou'er demurred. ‘Too much liquor makes work impossible.'

‘Happy events call for double! Happy events call for double!'

Ding Gou'er quickly covered his glass with his hand.

1 said, no more,' he said, ‘that's it for me.'

‘Three glasses to begin the meal. It's a local custom.' With three glasses of liquor now under his belt, Ding Gou'er was getting light-headed, so he picked up his chopsticks and reached out for some rice noodles, which, with their mixed-in eggs, were slippery. Either the Party Secretary or the Mine Director, helpful as always, anchored the two thin noodles with his own chopsticks and helped carry them to his mouth.

‘Suck!' he directed loudly.

Ding Gou'er sucked with all his might, and with a loud slurp, the quivering noodles slipped into his mouth. One of the attendants covered her mouth and giggled. A woman laughing for all to see raises a man's sense of glee. Suddenly, the atmosphere around the table had turned lively.

The glasses were refilled; the Party Secretary or Mine Director raised his and said, ‘A visit by Special Investigator Ding Gou'er to our humble mine is a great honor, and on behalf of all the cadres and miners, let me offer three toasts. Refusing to drink them will show your disdain for members of the working class, to the black-faced miners who dig the coal'

Noting the blush of excitement on the man's pale face, Ding Gou'er contemplated the eloquent toast, so pregnant with significance that he could not refuse. It was as if the eyes of thousands of coal miners, in their hard-hats and tightly cinched belts, sooty from head to toe, white teeth glistening, were trained on him, raising a tumult in his heart. With a show of bravado, he tossed down three glassfuls, one after the other.

The other man wasted no time in raising his glass to wish Special Investigator Ding Gou'er good health and happiness on behalf of his own eighty-three-year-old mother. Now Ding Gou'er was a filial son whose white-haired old mother still lived in the countryside, so how could he refuse to drink, son to mother?

After nine cups of liquor had sloshed into his stomach, the investigator felt his consciousness being stripped from his body. No, stripped is the wrong image. He was sure that his consciousness had turned into a butterfly whose wings were curled inward for the moment, but was destined to emerge with exquisite beauty from the central meridian of his scalp, stretching its neck as it worked its way out. The empty shell abandoned by the butterfly of his consciousness would be its cocoon, devoid of heft, light as a feather.

At his hosts' urging, he had no choice but to drink, one cup after another, as if trying to fill a bottomless pit, yet leaving not even a tiny echo in its wake. As they drank and drank, an unending succession of steaming, mouth-watering dishes was trundled into the room by three red serving girls, like three tongues of flame, like three balls rolling here and there, lightning-fast. He vaguely recalled eating a red crab the size of his hand; thick juicy prawns covered in red oil; a green-shelled turtle steeped in celery broth; a stewed chicken, golden yellow in color, its eyes reduced to tiny slits, like a new variety of camouflaged tank; a red carp, slick with oil, its gaping mouth still moving; steamed scallops stacked in the shape of a little pagoda; as well as red-skinned turnips, so fresh they could have just been plucked from the garden. His taste buds were alive with aromatic tastes: oily, sweet, sour, bitter, spicy, salty; his mind visited by a welter of thoughts, he gazed around the room through the aromatic haze. A pair of eyes suspended in the air saw molecules of colors and odors of every conceivable shape moving with infinite freedom in the finite space to form a three-dimensional body in the shape and size of the dining hall. To be sure, there were also molecules stuck to the wallpaper, stuck to the window curtains, stuck to the sofa covers, stuck to lamps, stuck to red girls' eyelashes, stuck to the greasy foreheads of the Party Secretary and Mine Director, stuck to all those shimmering beams of light, once shapeless, now possessing bending, twisting shapes…

After a while, he sensed that a hand with many fingers was offering him a glass of red wine. The last remaining dregs of consciousness in the shell that was his body pulled together for one final Herculean effort to help his fragmented self follow the spinning movements of that hand, like the spreading petals of a pink lotus. The glass of wine also grew out in layers, like a doctored photograph, forming a pink mist in those relatively stable, relatively scarlet surroundings. It was not a glass of wine, it was the sun rising in the morning, a fireball of cold beauty, a lover's heart. He would soon sense that it had taken on the appearance of a murky brown full moon that had once hung in the sky, before boring its way into the dining hall, or a swollen grapefruit, or a yellow ball covered with fuzz, or a hairy fox spirit. His consciousness sneered as it hung from the ceiling, and cool air from the air conditioner broke through the barriers that kept it from reaching the top, where it gradually cooled and formed butterfly wings of incomparable beauty. Having broken free of the body housing it, his consciousness spread its wings and soared around the dining hall Sometimes it rubbed against the silken window curtains - of course, its wings were thinner, softer, and brighter than the curtain material; sometimes it rubbed against the chandelier, with its refracted light; sometimes it rubbed against the cherry-red lips and peach-red nipples of the red girls, or other, even more private, more cunning parts. Traces of it were everywhere: on teacups, on liquor bottles, in floorboard cracks, between strands of hair, in the microscopic holes of China-brand cigarette filters … Like a rapacious, territorial wild animal, it left its mark on everything. For a winged consciousness, there were no barriers; it was shapeless, yet had shape; it threaded its way happily and freely through and among the beaded rings on the chandelier, from ring A to ring B and from ring B to ring C. It went wherever it wanted, circulating round, back and forth, weaving in and out without hindrance. But at last it tired of its game and made its way under the skirt of a voluptuous red girl, where it caressed her legs like a gentle breeze, raising goosebumps, until a moist, oily feeling was replaced by a dull, heavy one. It rose at high speed, closed its eyes as it flew through the forest, the tips of green shrubs rubbing the wings with a scratchy sound. Its ability to fly and change shape allowed it to leap tall mountains and ford wide rivers. It teased a little red mole in the valley between the two arched breasts and had some fun with a dozen or so beads of sweat. Its final move took it up into a nostril, where it tickled her nose hairs with its antennae.

The red girl sneezed loudly, spitting the thing out like a projectile, which struck the cactus on the dining table's third tier. It bounced off as if it had been slapped by a thorny hand. Ding Gou'er had a splitting headache, his stomach was churning like a powerful whirlpool, and his skin itched painfully, as if covered by prickly nettles. It stopped on his scalp to rest, to gasp for breath, and to sob. Ding Gou'er's eyes were working again, and he saw the Party Secretary and Mine Director raise their glasses in a toast. Their voices bounced off the walls, like waves crashing on a rocky shore before being dragged back out to sea, or a shepherd boy on a mountain peak calling out to his flock: Wa - wa - wa - Hey-ya -hey-ya - hey-ya -

Here we go again, thirty cups … on behalf of Deputy Head Jin … thirty cups, drink up drink up drink up, anybody who doesn't drink doesn't deserve to be called a man … Diamond Diamond Diamond Jin knows how to drink… the old fellow can drink an ocean of liquor, vast and boundless …

Diamond Jin! The name bored into Ding Gou'er's heart like a diamond drill, and as the wrenching pain seemed to tear it apart, he opened his mouth and spewed a small river of filthy liquid along with a frightening verbal assault: ‘That wolf- urp - who eats braised baby boys - urp - wolf - !' Like a frightened bird, his consciousness returned; his intestines were in knots, causing unspeakable agony. A pair of fists thumped him on the back. Urp - urp - liquor - sticky liquid, tears and snot pouring down: Autumn rains turn the earth and sky gray, a green sheet of water fills the eyes.

‘Feeling better, Comrade Ding Gou'er?' ‘Comrade Ding Gou'er, are you feeling any better?' ‘Go on, throw up, get rid of it. You'll feel better when all that bitter juice is out of your stomach.'

‘All people need to throw up, good hygiene requires it.' He was propped up by the Party Secretary on one side and the Mine Director on the other, each thumping him on the back as they fed encouraging remarks into his waiting ears, like country doctors trying to save a drowned child or teachers trying to educate a wayward youth.

After Ding Gou'er had brought up a stomachful of green liquid, a red serving girl coaxed a cup of green dragon-well tea past his lips, then another red serving girl tried to do the same with a glass of yellow, aged Shanxi vinegar, and either the Party Secretary or the Mine Director forced a piece of candied lotus root into his mouth, while the other held a piece of honeyed snow pear under his nose, and a red serving girl wiped his face with a cool towel treated with peppermint oil, and another red serving girl swept up the mess on the floor, and another red serving girl followed behind her, cleaning the last traces of the mess with a mop treated with disinfectant, and another red serving girl removed the dishes and glasses from the table, and another red serving girl laid out new settings.

Deeply moved by this lightning-quick series of ministrations, Ding Gou'er wished he hadn't blurted out his accusation as he was retching a moment ago; he was about to apologize for any offense when either the Party Secretary or the Mine Director said:

‘Ding, old fellow, what do you think of our serving girls?'

Embarrassed by the question, Ding Gou'er looked into those tender flower-bud faces and said approvingly:

‘Good! Great! Wonderful!'

Obviously well trained, the red serving girls rushed up to the table like a litter of hungry puppies or a troop of Young Pioneers presenting bouquets to honored guests. Empty glasses all but covered the three levels of the dining table, so the girls picked up the nearest glass, big or small, filled it with red wine, yellow beer, or colorless liquor, and raised it raucously to toast Ding Gou'er.