Chapter 18: Yesterday, Today

23RD MAR 2022~ VERALUCTL

They weren’t able to wait until dinner. Around four o’clock in the afternoon, An Jie heard a noise from the opposite door. Mo Cong spoke a few muffled words to the legendary ex-wife of Professor Mo, Li Biyun, and then there was a string of footsteps. It looked like Mrs Mo had gone downstairs.

Her footsteps were unhurried with a special sense of elegance. An Jie remembered the woman in the photo. She wasn’t exactly beautiful, but she was very graceful… but she had made a mistake and married a man who could not grow up, leaving behind a litter of generational traumas. To exaggerate it a little, from how Mo Cong was developing, this failure of a mother had indirectly endangered society.

There was no movement for a long time. Mo Cong seemed to be leaning against the door alone, silent for so long that it wasn’t until An Jie thought he had already left the corridor that his doorbell rang.

An Jie immediately stood up and pulled open the door. His movement was so fast that he managed to see the expression Mo Cong had yet to retract. The young man’s expression was calm… calm but dangerous, his eyes filled with unspeakable hatred, and a barely noticeable loneliness.

An Jie noticed the cigarette butts littering the ground in front of the opposite door and sighed silently. No matter what, he was still just a kid.

Mo Cong didn’t say much and left as soon as he picked up Mo Yu.

An Jie waited for them to enter their apartment before closing his door. He leaned against the door, thought a little, then pushed open the door to his bedroom. A suitcase lay on the ground, his day-to-day clothes already packed inside, making the room a little messy. An Jie hesitated, then reopened the packed suitcase, hanging the clothes back into the wardrobe and stuffing the other things into the cupboard, pushing the empty suitcase under his bed.

After all, as the old man Chuang Tzu had once said, ‘stalk and stem, mange and beauty, the weird and bizarre, are all of one way1.’

He was just a mortal, nowhere near daring to compare himself to a saint, but he should still emulate the virtuous, learn from his ancestors of his great motherland, and see issues through the lenses of equity. And in that case, were Afghanistan and Beijing not just both places? And the Taliban’s big beards versus the resident council’s red badges, not just all people?

Since there was no difference, he might as well stay a while longer.

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Night fell over the city day after day, never breaking its promise. Mo Cong settled Mo Yu down and called Mo Jin to make sure that she would come home at night, before leaving the house by himself, away from that narrow corridor and his sister’s eyes which seemed to know everything and nothing at once.

Xiao Yu was different from Xiao Jin. While Xiao Jin was undoubtedly a foolish girl, Xiao Yu saw everything and placed them in her heart. She never spoke of them, but she did care. He didn’t know which of the two girls worried him more.

Li Biyun’s reason for coming was simple: as the ex-wife of Mo Yannan with two minor daughters, obviously, someone had notified her that Mo Yannan was MIA, and she had come over as a moral and patronizing gesture to see what her little burdens needed.

Coming all the way from Vancouver, she had just gotten off the plane that afternoon and yet had left before it was even time for dinner. Mo Cong was baffled: there were no pins or needles on his sofa, so why did she leave so fast that she didn’t even sit down properly?

When he was seven and Xiao Jin and Xiao Yu were barely four, Li Biyun’s patience had finally reached her limit and she had wanted to completely draw the line with Mo Yannan. His memories of those times were strangely clear. He could remember the days as the couple’s relationship grew colder and colder, as Li Biyun went from throwing tantrums to mockery and ridicule, to acting as if they didn’t exist, all the way until that divorce statement was settled. During that long period of time, Mo Yannan seemed to have only one expression and a single action. He withstood all her anger numbly and helplessly, cowering in a corner of the sofa obediently as he bore witness to her dramatic flare-ups, one after another.

His mouth always uttered the same line, “I’m sorry.”

That singular line never once changed. Mo Cong had thought, even a mimic couldn’t be as dutiful as him.

Later, when Li Biyun had taken the hand of a stranger and left, Mo Yannan had also bore witness to it in a daze, his eyes following her for a long time. Xiao Jin had been young, unable to understand why her mother was suddenly leaving. Mo Cong had failed to pull her back and a little pig-tailed girl had chased after Li Buyun, her small hands gripping tightly onto her clothes, looking up and asking dumbly, “Mom! Mom! Where are you going?”

That stranger’s expression turned dark immediately and Li Biyun had looked down slightly. Even now, Mo Cong could still remember what expression his noble, elegant mother had held: refined, tasteful she had looked at her own child as if seeing a stepping stone.

The world was big enough for anything to happen. The elders had said that even a tiger, though cruel, would not devour its cubs… Li Biyun had always wanted to be different, and so she finally succeeded in obliterating her instincts as a mother.

Xiao Jin’s small hands were broken off. That person who had once been connected to her by flesh never looked back even once. The little girl looked back at her hesitant father before looking towards the direction her mother had left in, then finally broke out in tears.

From that moment on, Mo Cong decided to look down on the useless man next to him.

These three siblings, they were all children without a parent.

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Mo Cong went downstairs and for some reason or other, looked up; the light to An Jie’s study was still on. Their new neighbor had moved in for almost two months, and Mo Cong had mostly figured out his pattern: he didn’t wake very early in the morning, sometimes too late to even have breakfast, and he went to sleep late into the night; often, the light in the study was on past midnight, either due to his schoolwork or his part-time translation job.

For some reason, the way An Jie looked at him always made him uncomfortable. It was a look of condescension; everytime he pressed on An Jie’s doorbell, that person would always reply first with a ‘what happened’, as if he was someone who was used to being the senior, certain that others were coming to him for help with an indulgent appearance.

Mo Cong didn’t know how a young man who hadn’t even graduated high school could give him such a feeling. When he had asked him to take Xiao Yu in today, An Jie didn’t ask him anything, but there was a certain unspoken tolerance and comfort. It was… what he had fantasized of multiple times as a child, something he had longed for in his dreams: the expression a father should have.

But that was many years ago.

Mo Cong wrapped his jacket tightly around him. He still had things to do.

Cao Bing had snatched a business from Si-ge some time ago. Everyone knew it, and an itch for gossip rested in each of their hearts; countless eyes were turned on Si-ge, waiting for him to trip up. Cao Bing might be arrogant, but truthfully, he did have the power to afford to be so. It was clear as day now: behind him, stood Chen Fugui.

The old gun Zhai Haidong could pretend to be vegetarian and chant to Buddha all day long, but he couldn’t be slower in whitewashing his businesses.

Just two years ago he had so peacefully cut off all ties with the American, Chen Fugui. Since that bastard was an imported product evolved from a white monkey2, his original name obviously hadn’t been Chen Fugui; the old bastard had taken in all kinds of businesses from arms to drugs while he was in China, digging up quite the sum, and then claimed he fell in love with the land and insisted on giving himself an Oriental name.

To be honest, that rustic name ‘Chen Fugui’ really was good for him. The old bastard’s power grew stronger and stronger, his heart growing darker and his methods turning more vicious. He was so proud of it that he bragged about the good luck his proximity to the local culture had brought to him at every opportunity, saying that it was much more useful than Jesus or God.

Sometimes Mo Cong would think quite unkindly that the name Chen Fugui wasn’t very traditional, and that was the reason he was never able to rise above old gun Zhai. If he had named himself something even closer to the culture, maybe the title of top gang of the city would no longer belong to old gun Zhai. For example, he could have called himself ‘Chen Gousheng4’.

The foreign devil was no match for the local snake and could only follow the new international concept of a win-win situation. Unfortunately, the old gun Zhai didn’t care for him at all, and repented easily.

But then for some reason, that old wine3 got his eyes on Cao Bing.

Cao Bing, that lucky bastard, had gained a second wind, and walked around with his nose up in the air catching rainwater. His dog paws were unruly as hell, digging at everyone and anyone, ruthless to outsiders, but even more so to his own people. The old rat had been working under him for several years, but that old thing really was untalented; in a few rounds of gambling, he had tossed out quite a bit of money. People went crazy when they were poor and he was the same, not afraid to even commit fraud using Cao Bing’s accounts.

He was finally found out some time ago and Cao Bing had turned the tables against him, now seeing him as an enemy and pushing him to his limits, which was the reason the old rat had been looking for Si-ge earlier.

Having followed Cao Bing for so long, the old rat apparently held some leverage against Cao Bing. As for what it was exactly, the sneaky bastard had refused to say, and now the crowd has gathered its own gossip.

A knife that fell from his hands… had now been pushed into Si-ge’s hands by his own actions.

Mo Cong stood by the road, warding off the wind with his hand as lit up a cigarette, and took a long, leisurely puff. His movements were so natural that it was obvious he wasn’t new to doing this.

Before long, a Honda stopped by the road and from, and a bald man came out of it. As he saw Mo Cong, he respectfully opened the backdoor for him and called, “Hei-ge5.”

Mo Cong nodded and got into the car.

The baldie started the engines as Mo Cong leisurely puffed out some smoke. “Go for a few detours, do whatever you like.”

The baldie looked at him through the rearview mirror. “What happened?”

“I feel like there is someone following me.” Mo Cong paused and rubbed his nose bridge, his expression a little tired. “I might be being too sensitive, but it’s better to be safe.”

Baldie nodded. He had heard of the ‘chancellor in black’ behind Si-ge a long time ago; they were vicious, their heart full of calculations, but when he first had the honor of meeting him, he had been shocked. He had never expected for the shadow-like ‘chancellor’ to be a young man who had yet to finish puberty.

But it was such a young man that even the Cobra Si-ge listened to without question.

“Hei-ge, Si-ge told me to tell you that the old rat wants to see you again today…”

“I’m not going.” Mo Cong pushed him away without even thinking. “I’m busy.”

“Oh,” Baldie hesitated. “Then… the old rat…”

Mo Cong paused and spoke lowly, “Have someone keep an eye on him. Ignore everything he says.”

“Isn’t he Cao Bing’s…”

Mo Cong casually threw down the cigarette butt and twisted it out with his foot, not caring that he was in a car and there was carpet under his feet. “That’s not for you to worry about, just do as I say.”

In this drama, both Si-ge and Cao Bing thought that the old gun Zhai was a barely existent side-character… Mo Cong shook his head. Who it was that was really in the trap, it was difficult to say.

1‘Grass stalks and stems, the ugly and the beautiful, and supposedly odd, deceitful, and bewitching things, are all the same in the eyes of Chuang Tzu.’ A poem by Chuang Tzu.

2A foreigner who is living in China. Very amusing description, but quite racist.

3The ‘chen’(陈) in ‘aged wine’ (陈酒) is the same as the ‘chen’ in Chen Fugui(陈福贵).

4Chen is just the surname, so it doesn’t really mean much. Fugui however, translates directly to ‘good fortunes and riches’, and the name itself sounds very historic and outdated. Gousheng translates directly to ‘left-over dog’. There is an old belief in China that if you name your child a very down-to-earth name like ‘dog balls’ (which, fun fact, is in fact an actual Chinese name), your child will grow up easily and healthily.

5Referring to Mo Cong’s title ‘chancellor in black’, the ‘hei’ means ‘black’ in English. There are no racist connotations.