Baldy Li then pulled his hand out of his pocket, rubbed his bald head, and informed Lin Hong's parents, "In the future, I'll take responsibility for buying all your coal and rice for you. You two needn't trouble yourselves with these tasks."
Lin Hong's mother couldn't stand the suspense any longer. She asked Baldy Li, "Who are you?"
"You don't know me?" Baldy Li asked in surprise. "I am the director of the Good Works Factory. My name is Li Guang, and my nickname is Baldy Li."
Baldy Li had barely finished speaking before Lin Hongs parents faces darkened. Realizing that this was the Peeping Tom who, years earlier, had spied on their daughters bottom in the public toilet, and who more recently had repeatedly reduced her to tears, they were aghast that Liu Towns most infamous hooligan would dare come to their door. They roared with anger, "Out, out! Get out!"
Lin Hongs father grabbed a broom from behind the door, his wife took the feather duster from the table, and together they began to strike Baldy Li's bald head. Shielding his head with his hand, Baldy Li sprinted out the door. When he emerged, all the other families were standing in the courtyard watching. Lin Hong's parents were shaking with fury while Baldy Li looked baffled, raising his hands as if in surrender and repeatedly explaining, "It was a misunderstanding, a complete misunderstanding. I taught those children to say to court, but there was a class enemy who messed things up…"
Lin Hong's parents cried, "Get out, get out!"
"It was really a misunderstanding," Baldy Li continued. "That infatuated idiot shot out from the middle of the road; there was nothing I could do…"
As Baldy Li was saying this he turned to Lin Hong's neighbors and explained to some of the onlookers, "It is said that it is difficult for a hero to resist the wiles of a beautiful woman. Turns out it's true for idiots, too."
Lin Hong's parents were still shouting, "Get out!"
Lin Hong's father struck Baldy Li on the shoulder with the broomstick, and his wife repeatedly batted her feather duster at his nose. Baldy Li was dismayed. Ducking their blows, he pleaded with Lin Hong's mother, "Please don't be like this. After all, we're all going to be family. You will be my father-in-law and mother-in-law, and I will be your son-in-law. If you are like this now, how will we be able to get along when we become family?"
"Bullshit!" Lin Hong's father roared as he beat Baldy Li's shoulders with the broom.
"Stinky bullshit!" Lin Hong's mother cried as she pounded Baldy Li's head with the feather duster.
Baldy Li quickly fled to the street, sprinting a dozen yards in a single bound. When he looked back and saw Lin Hongs parents still standing in the doorway, he stopped and was about to offer more explanations. At that point Lin Hongs father turned to the crowd in the streets and gestured at Baldy Li with his broomstick, saying, "You're the proverbial ugly toad who thinks he can have the swan."
"I tell you" — Lin Hongs mother pointed at him with her feather duster as she shouted—"my flower of a daughter will never be planted in a pile of cow dung like yourself."
Baldy Li looked at the people who had come to enjoy the spectacle; looked at Lin Hongs parents, who were beside themselves with fury; and then looked at Song Gang, standing there uneasily. Baldy Li waved Song Gang over, and the two of them walked together down the streets of Liu. Baldy Li had always felt that he was an important personage, and even if he couldn't be considered one in a million, he was at the very least one in a hundred. He had never expected that Lin Hong's parents would regard him as an ugly toad or a pile of cow dung. He felt a great sense of loss and cursed incessantly: "Motherfucker!" he said to Song Gang. "Heroes too can suffer setbacks."
The ugly-toad-and-cow-dung humiliation that Baldy Li had suffered at the hands of Lin Hong's parents left him annoyed for an entire week. But after a week had passed, his determination to court Lin Hong revived, and he once again began to pursue her with great enthusiasm. He decided to employ Song Gang's final stratagem of beating his opponent to a pulp. Therefore, he began to pursue Lin Hong through the streets, always asking Song Gang to accompany him whenever he went out. Wherever Lin Hong was in public, Baldy Li would assume the role of both lover and bodyguard, escorting her around. When she shed tears of humiliation and bit her lips in anger, Baldy Li would chatter warmly with her. He would even play the role of a fiancé and introduce Song Gang to her, saying, "This is my brother, Song Gang, and when we get married, Song Gang will be my best man."
If Baldy Li, acting as both lover and bodyguard, so much as glimpsed another man taking a look at Lin Hong, he would shake his fist and say fiercely, "What are you looking at? If you look again, I'll punch your lights out."
CHAPTER 31
EACH TIME Lin Hong returned home after being trailed around town by Baldy Li, she would lie in bed, hug her pillow, and weep. Ten times she did this, but then she decided it was time to wipe her tears. She realized it did no good for her to hide out and cry— she must instead figure out a way to deal with that shameless Baldy Li. His beating to a pulp stratagem encouraged Lin Hong to hurry up and find a boyfriend. This was a common solution sought by many young women back then, and Lin Hong was no exception. She felt that as long as she had a boyfriend, she would be able to extricate herself from Baldy Li's attentions. She went through each of the Liu Town bachelors in her head and came up with several potential candidates. Then she put on makeup, wrapped a beige silk scarf around her neck, and went out.
Lin Hong, who previously very rarely went out, now became Liu Towns street angel, on whom all the men would feast their eyes. Sometimes she would walk with her mother and sometimes with the other women workers at her factory. Almost every day at dusk she would stroll around in the evening light, and after sunset she would continue walking in the moonlight. She was aware that her reputation as a beauty had already spread far and wide, and she also knew that many of the men of Liu had crushes on her — but what she didn't know was where she would find the man she would love. In the past she had counted on her parents to make decisions for her, but her parents were too easily satisfied, immediately falling for any man who came knocking who was the slightest bit acceptable and saying that at least he was better than that Baldy Li. However, these young men all failed to make an impression on Lin Hong, much less find their way into her heart. As a result, she had no choice but to take the matter into her own hands and pick out a satisfactory husband for herself. She walked back and forth with a pretty smile on her pretty face. Every now and then she would encounter a handsome young man and gaze at him intently. Then she would walk away five paces, turn around, and shoot him another glance, at which point she would invariably see an infatuated face staring back at her.
Altogether there were twenty young men at whom Lin Hong looked more than once, nineteen of whom were infatuated with her. The only one who didn't respond at all was Song Gang. The nineteen who were infatuated with her felt that she clearly meant something when she looked at them. That backward glance, as she was walking away— a glance as rich as a garden overflowing with sensory delights — made their hearts flutter and kept them up at night.
Of those nineteen, eight were married, and they would sigh in disappointment, complaining bitterly that they had made their momentous decision too early in life without having taken the opportunity to sow their wild oats. Of those eight, there were two whose wives were quite ugly, and these two were even more frustrated, waking in the middle of the night completely furious and unable to resist pinching their wives in anger. When their wives woke up from the pain, the husbands would start snoring deeply, pretending to be asleep. One of these men always pinched his wife's thighs, the other her bottom. Both wives were in such pain that they didn't know what to do. When they examined their bruises, they concluded that their husbands must be suffering from a sort of narco-sadism, never suspecting the truth. The women complained incessantly all day, and at night steadfastly refused to sleep in the same bed with their spouses, explaining that it gave them the creeps.