WHF Ch 23 – “Phimosis: Men Suffer.”

Xiu Ma hated the smell of smoke, hated it intensely. This was something Yu Tianbai had known for two years. So, generally speaking, where there was Xiu Ma, there wouldn’t be smoke, and where there was smoke, there wouldn’t be Xiu Ma. This time, both were present, and Yu Tianbai momentarily forgot how to even hold a cigarette.

He fumbled around for a moment before finding the end of the cigarette, picking it up, and putting it in his mouth. Then he forgot his lighter. As he stuck both hands in his pockets to search, another hand suddenly appeared in front of him, holding a lit lighter.

Yu Tianbai, cigarette dangling from his lips, maintained his hands-in-pockets posture and looked up at Xiu Ma. Xiu Ma was also looking at him, the flame in his hand burning stubbornly.

“If you don’t light it soon, it’ll go out.”

Xiu Ma reminded him, raising his other hand to shield the flame from the wind.

Wind swirled with sand. Yu Tianbai inhaled slightly, lowered his head, and lit the cigarette in his mouth from Xiu Ma’s lighter.

Having someone light your cigarette was an intimate act in itself, let alone the fact that this kid was staring at his profile – he could feel it. The cigarette lit, the taste not yet registered, Yu Tianbai stopped Xiu Ma.

“Where did you get this lighter?”

Had he picked up bad habits from someone else? Yu Tianbai almost asked.

Xiu Ma paused in the act of pocketing the lighter, silently handing over the incriminating evidence. Yu Tianbai took the lighter, squinted at it for a moment, and then read the slogan aloud:

“Phimosis: Men Suffer.”

A small advertisement from the men’s health clinic. He furrowed his brows and turned his face, seeing Xiu Ma looking at him with a complicated expression, a mixture of amusement and exasperation.

“Where did you get this?” Yu Tianbai asked him.

“Where did I get it – it came to me. Not long after you left, someone stuck it on the doorknob.” Xiu Ma answered, and the smiles that had just begun to form on their lips disappeared again. They still had to go back inside the apartment later.

Xiu Ma didn’t seem like himself today. Blinking his eyes, he didn’t say a word, spacing out every now and then. Even when he had the chance, he didn’t bother trying to act cool, which made Yu Tianbai feel strangely uncomfortable.

“What are you thinking about?”

This was practically a rhetorical question. The events of the afternoon were enough for this kid to ponder for a long time. Yu Tianbai silently took a drag of his cigarette, Xiu Ma staring down at his feet.

“Should we turn the gun we found in to the police?”

Yu Tianbai stared at him blankly, almost choking on his smoke. “That’s what you’re thinking about?”

“We can’t just keep it in your car forever, can we?” Xiu Ma didn’t fully lift his head, glancing sideways at him. After being stared at for a while, Yu Tianbai chuckled and took another drag of his cigarette.

He didn’t understand fashion. Young people dyeing their hair strange colors only bothered him, but the sandy blond on Xiu Ma looked perfectly natural. There was no other way to describe it. Yu Tianbai didn’t even want to imagine him with black hair.

“No rush, let me admire it a little longer.” Yu Tianbai looked into the distance, his answer muffled.

Xiu Ma was very confused, unsure whether this person was talking about the gun or something else.

The wind blew for a while, the smoke drifting constantly. Yu Tianbai extinguished the cigarette butt on the edge of the flower bed and looked up at Xiu Ma. “Don’t you want to spend a little more time with your family?”

Xiu Ma’s expression showed reluctance.

“You’re all family, why not have a good talk?” His hand was numb with cold, and Yu Tianbai tucked his right hand back into his pocket. “Whose family wouldn’t be happy to have a college student come home? Your mom must be complaining that you don’t come back often enough.”

The college student didn’t answer him immediately. This person had been looking at the ground for quite a while today, and Yu Tianbai really wanted to lift his face up.

“Maybe my mom doesn’t think that way.” Xiu Ma finally spoke, scratching the back of his head. “She wants me to come back, and she wants me to stay away.”

Four o’clock in the afternoon, the sun hadn’t yet begun to set. Yu Tianbai shrugged with his hands in his pockets.

“Let me ask you something then,” he said, nodding his chin at Xiu Ma. “Does your mom treat you well?”

This was the kind of question a neighbor might ask a child, but when asked of an adult, the meaning changed entirely. Xiu Ma lowered the hand he had resting on the back of his neck. The sound of bicycle axles suddenly came from the entrance to the building not far from them.

“Hey – hey, you’re finally back!”

It was an older man, pushing his bicycle with a child’s seat attached to the back. He stopped, looking like he was ready for a long chat.

“You’re in college now, it’s not far, come back and visit more often! You should come back a few times.”

Xiu Ma seemed to recognize him, nodding in greeting, but making no further move. It didn’t matter; the old man hadn’t finished what he wanted to say. He kicked down the bicycle stand and leaned in conspiratorially.

“Your mother has suffered, you children should be considerate—”

At this point, Yu Tianbai, standing next to him, suddenly interrupted:

“Uncle, are you going to pick up your grandson?”

The old man stopped talking, turning to look at this stranger who didn’t fit in with the neighborhood scene. He looked like a hoodlum.

“I saw a car accident at the intersection when I came back just now, a truck hit someone. Traffic is getting more and more chaotic these days.” Yu Tianbai looked slightly worried and thoughtful, pointing outwards. “It seemed like a child was involved in the accident.”

Seeing no reaction from the old man, Yu Tianbai put his hands back in his pockets and asked, “Aren’t you going to take a look?”

The old man looked at the hoodlum, then at Xiu Ma, and finally at the child’s seat behind the bicycle seat. Without another word, he kicked up the stand and left, the bicycle practically sparking.

When the bicycle had creaked away, Xiu Ma lifted his face and glanced sideways at him.

“What you just said wasn’t much different from what the old man was telling me,” Xiu Ma said, then smiled and pointed his chin at the departing figure. “Why are you getting angry?”

“I have no manners.” Yu Tianbai was still watching the direction the man had gone. “Just looking at him makes me angry.”

The anger came on inexplicably and subsided quietly. At four o’clock in the afternoon, the smell of cooking oil was already drifting through the old neighborhood, a testament to the enviable pace of life in the old city. They each looked in opposite directions, neither turning back, but it wasn’t a solution to just stand there in the doorway.

“Want to go back to the car and sit for a while?” Yu Tianbai made the first suggestion.

When they reached the parked car, it became clear that the Wuling Hongguang had indeed been hit quite badly. It wouldn’t be surprising if the police took notice. As he stood by the car, feeling a slight pang of heartache, Xiu Ma had already settled into the passenger seat.

As if in his own home, as if casually sitting on a heated brick bed. No hesitation, more comfortable than being inside his own apartment.

Was it really more comfortable than being inside his apartment?

Yu Tianbai asked himself, but couldn’t answer. He opened the car door and got into the driver’s seat.

Unwilling to go home after arriving at the doorstep, instead choosing to kill time in the car. Put that way, it sounded like an irresponsible man – or just a so-called bad child in the words of the neighborhood old man. But at this moment, Xiu Ma would rather be chewed on like a piece of overcooked cumin lamb, let alone accompanied by an unreliable adult.

The unreliable adult was still leaning against the door, checking the bumper. “Can this car even make it to the repair shop?”

Xiu Ma leaned back in his seat and watched him. “If it can’t, I’ll have someone bring my car over.”

Yu Tianbai lifted his head from the car door, stood up straight and looked at him, smiling as he replied, “Forget it, yours isn’t as spacious as mine. We’d have to each hold a box on our laps.”

After finishing, he closed the car door. The heater turned on, and the car quickly filled with a familiar scent, the scent of Yu Tianbai.

Xiu Ma sniffed, seemingly still able to smell the old wood scent on himself, a smell he had brought from home, not very pleasant. He searched himself for the source of the smell, stopping before the person in the driver’s seat looked over. The van was parked facing the flower bed behind the apartment building. On this late January afternoon, the dead peony branches in the flower bed swayed in the wind.

“This flower bed has been here since I was a child,” he murmured to himself.

Yu Tianbai also followed his gaze to the flower bed, a typical Northeast flower bed filled with crushed white stones. It didn’t look like it had been renovated and seemed at risk of collapsing after a few more rains.

“This is your childhood home?” Yu Tianbai asked. Xiu Ma answered with a simple “yes,” and then didn’t say anything more.

White brick walls against an old flower bed, a villa district against an old apartment building, security guards against housekeepers. It sounded like a story, but in reality, there was no connection. These two things didn’t seem like they would appear in the same life of the same person, but they were both happening to Xiu Ma, happening to the young master.

Yu Tianbai didn’t like movies and TV shows. He found it difficult to use his imagination to understand how Xiu Ma went from an old apartment to a villa district, and then back to the old apartment.

Could this not be his real mother? Or was the man in the villa not his real father?

The person sitting next to him suddenly spoke, “This is my real mom, and the one in Jilin is my real dad.”

Yu Tianbai responded, belatedly feeling guilty.

“Did I say that out loud?” he started to doubt himself.

“What?” Xiu Ma started to suspect he was hallucinating.

“Nothing.” Yu Tianbai rubbed his face. “Frozen silly.”

“How many years have you been in Northeast China – still not used to the temperature here?” Now it was Xiu Ma’s turn to ask him.

Yu Tianbai took his hand away, looking at him uncertainly. “Do I not seem like a Northeasterner?”

“I wouldn’t be that stupid, would I?” Xiu Ma’s tone rose. “You speak as if you have to add ‘er’ to every word.”

Indeed, as soon as Yu Tianbai opened his mouth, time immediately went back to a summer day in a Beijing alleyway: tank top, slippers, bamboo stool, herbal tea, fermented bean juice, and a pug. This person could sit cross-legged and chat with a local Beijinger who owned a courtyard house for an entire afternoon. Xiu Ma believed he had that ability.

The capable man cleared his throat, and after two seconds, cleared it again. He said, “I have my reasons for being here.”

What reasons? He wouldn’t even say himself.

Nothing to say.

He could sit here for two hours without saying a word, waiting for the crucian carp to be served so he could have a bite. Just as he was trying to remember what crucian carp tasted like, the person in the passenger seat spoke.

“Although it’s quite boring,” Xiu Ma’s light-colored eyes glanced out the window in the rearview mirror, “do you want to hear about me?”