“Where is Zhuang Laoshi?” Niu Yueqing asked after Hong left. Liu Yue said Meng had invited him for a drink. After putting the gifts away, Niu Yueqing sat down to think about what kind of wedding presents they’d take to the banquet. In the afternoon, an inebriated Zhuang returned and went to the toilet, where he stuck his finger down his throat and threw up. Niu Yueqing told him to get some rest, without mentioning Hong’s marriage. Later that night, when Zhuang got up to read in the study, she went in, closed the door, and told him.
“The girl with the long legs?” Zhuang was equally dumbfounded. “I don’t think I’ve seen her more than twice. I didn’t pay much attention when he asked to hire some salesgirls. Later Zhao Jingwu told me that Hong’s standards are higher than you’d find for a model. He detailed the required height, weight, and skin condition, as well as their BWH measurements.”
“What’s BWH?”
“Bust, waist, and hips. So he was already thinking about finding someone for himself.”
“With his sallow skin and puffy face, how did he manage to get remarried so easily after the divorce? What did the girl see in him?” Niu Yueqing wondered.
“Young people these days don’t think twice about getting a brand-new family. You’re too old-fashioned to understand that.”
“His first wife wasn’t very refined, but she seemed trustworthy. The saying has it that one day as husband and wife portends a lifetime of affection. How could it end so abruptly? I can’t understand it. But it’s none of our business, so why worry about it? What concerns me is the bookstore. Won’t the two of them run it from now on?”
“We certainly can’t fire the girl. Maybe you should drop by to check things out more frequently and make sure the accounts are in order. But don’t let on what you’re up to. He may be sincere and aboveboard, and we don’t want to offend him. No matter what we think about the marriage, you should send wedding gifts, and not something cheap.”
Niu Yueqing took out a sheet of paper. “Let’s draw up a list.”
“Can’t you handle it? Why bother me with that?” Zhuang said impatiently. She swallowed hard before walking out without a word.
She went out the next day and bought a bedspread, a coffee maker, and a set of cups. Later that night she went to her mother’s place to find an iron she had left there, a gift to Zhuang from a factory where he’d given a lecture. It had never been used, so she decided to add it to the list of wedding gifts. Her mother recommended a chamber pot, saying it was the most important item, an indispensable object in a bride’s dowry in the old days. But these days people didn’t follow the rules, she told her, so the bride’s family would not include one, and friends and relatives never gave one as a gift. Niu Yueqing thought an enamel spittoon to be used as a chamber pot would indeed be an ingenious gift. People often said that so-and-so could piss in the same pot with someone else. A chamber pot was important to the older generation because it symbolized lifelong affection between husband and wife. But she knew that no one sold spittoons in the mall these days, since someone from her office had failed to find one after going to every shopping center in town; it ultimately would have to be purchased at the ghost market outside the west gate.
She went there early the next morning, where she talked to several stall owners, who told her they were out of spittoons. But she could check out the Hong Jiang purchasing station. The Hong Jiang purchasing station? The name mystified her. She knew a man named Hong Jiang, of course, but could there also be a shop called Hong Jiang?
“That’s an unusual name. Where did they get it?” she asked.
“It’s nothing special. People started out calling it the place run by Hong Jiang, and after a while it just became Hong Jiang’s station.”
“That Hong Jiang, what does he do?”
“He runs a bookstore. We hear he struck it rich and opened a purchasing station to get even richer.” The man paused, “Are you from the Household Registration Office?”
She then asked where the station was located. When it was pointed out, she saw it, located in the middle of the lane. It was being tended by an old man. “Is this the Hong Jiang purchasing station?” Niu Yueqing asked him.
“It was, but not anymore.”
“What happened?”
“What happened? You’ll eat anything when you’re hungry and marry any woman when you’re poor, but illicit thoughts begin to crop up when you’re well fed and warmly clothed. Once he was well off, he laid eyes on a young, fresh girl and wanted a divorce. His wife refused, of course, so he gave her fifty thousand, plus this station, for her consent. Money as payment for a divorce is very popular these days.”
With a jumble of thoughts running through her mind, Niu Yueqing returned home to tell her husband.
“He hid it from us all that time, which must mean it was a messy divorce,” he said.
“That’s not what I meant. Don’t you think something fishy is going on here? He was dirt-poor, and we never heard of a purchasing shop. Where did he get the money to set it up? And when he got the divorce, he gave his first wife fifty thousand. Where did that come from?”
“Don’t you check the accounts with him regularly?”
“Every bookstore makes money, but not ours. At best we break even. I was suspicious, but as a woman, I know little about running a business. And you, when did you bother to check the books?”
“Without any evidence, we can’t confront him.”
“So we’ll continue to raise pigs to supply him with pork, is that it?”
“I have a gallery. Business will improve once it merges with the bookstore.”
“Are you going to have Jingwu keep an eye on him?”
“Well, weren’t you dead set on marrying Liu Yue off to your cousin’s son?”
A happy smile broke out on Niu Yueqing’s face. “Ai-ya! You’re so cunning. So you knew about the problem all along!”
“You thought you were so clever,” Zhuang said, embarrassing his wife.
On the twenty-eighth, Niu Yueqing went to the wedding on behalf of Zhuang, loaded down with gifts. Hong Jiang and his wife were so pleased they laid them out at the head table. They toasted her first during the banquet and announced: “Shimu is drinking for two today. Zhuang Laoshi could not be here, owing to an urgent meeting, so you must drink this one for him.” Niu Yueqing had so much to drink that her face was burning, but Zhuang was not at a meeting. He had gone to see Zhao Jingwu to hurry the project along. Zhao told him that the interior was nearly finished, but they couldn’t open until they had more art. Zhuang suggested they go see the man who forged famous artists’ work.
“It’s better that you don’t. I’ll be honest with you, it’s Wang Ximian, but he told me not to tell anyone, including you. He’s afraid someone might let it slip and ruin everything.”
“I could have guessed even if you hadn’t told me. I know just about every painter in Xijing, and there’s no one better at making counterfeits. A while ago, I heard that Guangzhou and Hong Kong were inundated with fake Shi Lu paintings, and that the family has launched an investigation. There have been rumors implicating Wang, so why didn’t he keep a low profile?”
“I knew about that, too. Those fake Shi Lu paintings were intended for us, with a forty-sixty split in his favor. But a tour guide from a travel agency managed to talk him into taking all the forgeries to Guangzhou. These fakes can only deceive non-Chinese, so they won’t do well in the domestic market. When foreigners visit China, they rely upon their tour guides to show them where to buy Chinese paintings and calligraphy. I managed to strike up a friendship with some guys at a travel agency who promised to bring foreign visitors to our gallery once we open. We’ll only have to give them a commission. Wang has three students helping him forge old paintings for us, like Zheng Banqiao’s bamboos in the wind, Qi Baishi’s shrimps, and Huang Binhong’s landscapes. He’s not doing much Shi Lu, but he’ll still forge a few, since they’re so popular. A few days ago, when I went to take a look, Wang had just finished Grazing Cattle, one of Shi’s earlier works, and Plums and Rock, done after Shi fell ill. They’re incredible. I took Plums and Rock to show Shi’s daughter, who couldn’t tell it was a fake. She even asked me how I got it. I told her I bought it from someone at a roadhouse. She said, ‘After my father fell ill, people like that often took him out to drink, and he’d do a painting to pay for the drinks if he didn’t have money.’” Zhao finished with a hearty laugh.