Chapter 37: Hou San with the Slanted Eyes

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“A-Zhe, what position did they arrange for you?”

After all that commotion, Li Xiangdong had only just remembered to ask.

“Train attendant. I haven’t asked you yet—what position did you get?”

“Water-supply worker.”

“Water-supply worker? What does that even do?”

A-Zhe looked bewildered. It was the first time he had ever heard of such a position.

“Trains need water, right? I suppose my job is to make sure the trains have a sufficient water supply. Yes, that must be it. I’m not entirely sure myself.”

Li Xiangdong had forgotten to ask about it while he was in the Labor and Wages Department. He only had a vague understanding of the job, but he figured his guess could not be far off.

A-Zhe asked, “So do you have to board the trains?”

Li Xiangdong nodded. “Of course.”

“Ah, we really are a pair of wretched souls.”

A-Zhe let out a sigh.

The clerks in the Labor and Wages Department had treated Li Xiangdong so warmly that A-Zhe had assumed his childhood friend must have been assigned some easy, carefree position where nobody kept an eye on him.

Who could have guessed that it would turn out to be the same as his own? Both of them would have to travel out of town with the trains.

Not only would each trip last a long time, they would have to serve people all along the way. Just thinking about it was exhausting.

“For heaven’s sake, A-Zhe, what do you mean by that? If you came to work for the railway system without wanting to ride the trains, then what did you come here for?”

Li Xiangdong now felt that his childhood friend was a complete fool who could not tell good fortune from bad.

Among the railway workers assigned to desk duty, one could ask anyone at random, and not a single one would say they did not want to work aboard a train.

To pacify those desk workers who occasionally brought their entire families to the leaders’ offices to complain, the higher-ups had even raised the pay grade of some positions without any reason at all.

Li Xiangdong had been assigned to travel with the trains because his grandfather had called in a personal favor.

A-Zhe, on the other hand, had suffered because of his father during the Great Movement, and his position was purely a gesture of care and compensation from the higher authorities.

Li Xiangdong was now certain that among this batch of educated youths recruited from outside and brought back to the city, very few would be given jobs that allowed them to ride the trains.

Did they really think such positions grew on trees?

“Dongzi, can you stop looking at me with such contempt? Was I wrong? Traveling with the trains and serving people is exhausting. I think it would be better to be a ticket seller. You don’t get blown on by the wind or drenched by the rain, and you can sit at your desk all day. How comfortable would that be?”

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As A-Zhe spoke, his face was full of envy, as though he wished he could trade places with one of the ticket sellers.

“Don’t do anything foolish and try to switch positions!”

Li Xiangdong was genuinely afraid that his childhood friend might lose his senses and go asking someone to exchange jobs with him. The other person would be overjoyed.

A-Zhe nodded. “I know. I definitely won’t switch. My father said traveling with the trains is a good thing. You get an allowance every time you go out, and you earn more money, too.”

“More importantly, if my mother has already remarried, then my father and I probably won’t be going anywhere else. A job serving people like mine is the sort where the harder you work, the more likely the leaders are to notice you. That should help me get a higher pay grade later on.”

After hearing this, Li Xiangdong could not help laughing. A-Zhe and his father were both clear-headed men who somehow managed to be fools.

Not a single railway worker who could travel with the trains cared about those few dozen yuan in monthly wages.

Forget about getting promoted. Even if your position was only temporary, and even if you were never going to be made permanent, as long as the job let you travel continuously to other places, plenty of permanent desk workers would gladly come and exchange positions with you.

Li Xiangdong did not tell A-Zhe any of this. He wanted to see how long it would take that muddleheaded fool to figure it out for himself.

The two of them chatted and joked their way to the clinic. After explaining why they had come, they handed their medical examination forms to the doctor.

Given the medical conditions of the time, the examination consisted only of basic procedures: measuring height and weight, and checking hearing and eyesight.

The most important test was for color blindness. That mattered greatly, since some positions had extremely strict requirements in that regard.

Anyone who was color-blind could not perform certain jobs, and the leaders would transfer them to another position immediately.

The results were available on the spot, and neither of them had any problems. With their examination forms signed by the doctor, they returned to the large office of the Labor and Wages Department.

The moment Li Xiangdong entered, he saw a young man in his twenties wearing a railway uniform.

He was not tall. Seated on Sister Sun’s desk, his feet did not even touch the floor as he turned sideways and chatted with her.

The two of them were laughing and talking, and Sister Sun showed not the slightest displeasure at the young man’s impolite act of sitting on her workstation.

Young Comrade Wang was especially attentive. Though he stood to one side without managing to get a word in, he continued smiling obsequiously, appearing even more enthusiastic than he had been with Li Xiangdong.

Li Xiangdong took a closer look at the young man’s face, and his heart gave a sudden jolt.

The man bore a striking resemblance to Hou Jianshe—perhaps seven parts out of ten. He was short and scrawny, with prominent cheekbones.

The only difference was the pair of upturned, triangular eyes on his face. They were dull and lifeless.

When Sister Sun saw Li Xiangdong enter, she said to the young man beside her, “Hou San, the Li Xiangdong you were looking for is back from the clinic.”

Hou San glanced over with those upturned triangular eyes. Then he turned back, furrowed his brow, and asked in confusion, “Big Sister, which of the two of them is Li Xiangdong?”

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“Li Xiangdong is the tall one. He’s your own relative—how could you not recognize him? Don’t make your big sister laugh.”

Sister Sun laughed and slapped Hou San lightly. Li Xiangdong could not tell whether she found Hou San’s words funny or his expression amusing.

In any case, when he saw those triangular eyes wrinkled in confusion, he dug his fingernails into his palm and only just managed to suppress his laughter.

Hou San rolled his eyes and said with a grin, “I was only joking with you. How could I fail to recognize my own relative?”

He jumped down from the desk and sauntered over to Li Xiangdong with an air of exaggerated familiarity, trying to drape an arm over his shoulder.

But Hou San was a full head and a half shorter than Li Xiangdong. Once he got his arm up there, the position felt uncomfortable, so he lowered it again.

Folding his arms, he asked, “Did you pass your employment medical examination?”

“I did. Why?”

Li Xiangdong felt speechless. A false Li Kui had somehow run into the real Black Whirlwind.

Fortunately, he had never admitted to being related to Hou Jianshe. That had merely been the guess of these old workplace schemers.

What puzzled him was that this fellow called Hou San had not exposed him outright. He had no idea what the man was really after.

Hou San swayed his head from side to side, unable even to stand properly, and said smugly, “Hand your examination report to Sister Sun, take your work permit, and come with me. I’ll take you to collect your labor-protection supplies first. Hurry up. I’ll wait for you outside the office.”

Li Xiangdong asked suspiciously, “You’re taking me?”

“That’s right.” Hou San nodded. “If you don’t believe me, ask Sister Sun.”

Li Xiangdong saw Sister Sun smiling and nodding. He pointed at A-Zhe beside him and said to Hou San, “I’ve got a friend here, too.”

“Then let him come along.”

Hou San gave A-Zhe an appraising look, then swaggered out of the office.

A-Zhe leaned close to Li Xiangdong’s ear and muttered, “Dongzi, is that man your relative? How come I’ve never seen him before? His face is hilarious. Though he does look a little too smug.”

Hilarious was certainly one way to describe him.

But “a little smug” was far too mild. He was unbearably smug.

Li Xiangdong himself could not understand it. Hou Jianshe was such a shrewd man—how had his family ended up with a creature like that?