The Noodle Maker(2)

The Professional Blood Donor

Without waiting to raise his glass for a toast, the blood donor grabs the fattest chunk of goose (buttock, perhaps) between his chopsticks, and pops it into his mouth. Being a blood donor by profession, he has developed an instinctive capacity to pick out the most nutritious food on the table. He can extract every drop of goodness from each chunk of food, then chew it down to its last scrap.

‘You have a very acute sense of smell,’ the blood donor says, swallowing his first mouthful.

‘I don’t understand those two,’ the writer mutters. ‘They keep dashing about in a terrible hurry. They must have a lot to do.’

‘I’ve been at it for seven years now.’ The blood donor spits out a shard of broken bone. A dark glob of blood falls from the marrow and congeals on the white paper.

‘So have I,’ the professional writer replies, chomping on his chunk of goose. As he chews voraciously and throws his head back to swallow, the rolls of middle-aged fat under his chin squeeze in and out. From a distance, it looks as though he’s weeping. The blood donor knows that the writer’s face will soon assume the form of a swollen walnut, as it always does when the alcohol starts to kick in.

‘I don’t have to tax my brain to get this food on the table,’ the blood donor says provocatively. ‘Still, I have a lot of pain in here,’ he adds, patting his chest. He has used this last phrase many times over the past seven years. He picked it up from the writer. After the donor’s second blood donation, the writer took him in his arms and sobbed, ‘I have a lot of pain in here.’

‘You must add thin slices of ginger to fish-head soup to take away the bitter aftertaste. Everyone knows that!’ The writer lowers his head and spews out a broken bone onto the manuscript paper. ‘My hook is going nowhere. I’ll have to start again from scratch.’

The donor stares at the writer’s balding crown: thin strands of wisdom springing from a shiny scalp.

The blood donor is known as Vlazerim, a nickname he acquired during the Cultural Revolution when he, the writer and their fellow ‘urban youths’ were sent to a re-education camp in the countryside to ‘learn from the peasants’. Vlazerim is the swarthy hero of an Albanian propaganda film. The night after his production team were shown the film, he shouted from his sleep, ‘Hey, Vlazerim!’ and the name has stuck to him ever since. Unfortunately, he is not as tall and strong as the hero of the film. When the Cultural Revolution came to an end, he returned to this town and tried to look for a job, but since he had no particular skills or backdoor connections, he had difficulty finding suitable employment. After two years of living on the streets, he finally picked up a job in the Western District, dredging excrement from the public latrines. Unfortunately, no one told him that when you lug shit about, you have to balance a plank of wood over the top of the bucket to stop it tipping over. However hard he tried, he never managed to wash the stench from his trousers, and ended up selling them to a peasant for one and a half yuan.

Then one day he joined the crowded ranks of the town’s blood donors, and for the first time in his life, received forty-five yuan’s worth of food rations, a doctor’s authorisation to buy pig liver, and coupons for three kilograms of eggs. Everything he could ever have hoped for in life was granted to him in a single day. When he returned home and whacked the doctor’s authorisation and ration coupons onto the table, his parents and elder sister suddenly saw him in a new light. He soon took over as head of the family. When he was awarded a coupon to buy a Phoenix bicycle for helping a textile factory with its donation quotas, his fame spread throughout the district. Neighbours gathered at his home to chat about his latest successes. Three large factories in the Western District issued him with fake identity papers so that he could donate blood on behalf of their staff. Smaller work units tried to bribe him with wine and cigarettes, hoping he would help them out as well, but he could never be bothered to stick his neck out for them.

After seven years of hard work, Vlazerim is now a millionaire. His pockets are stuffed with awards and prizes from government factories and private enterprises. He has coupons to buy electric fans, televisions, matches, coal, gas and meat. A few years ago, he and a couple of friends set up a Blood Donor Recruitment Agency in a public latrine in the middle of town. They position their desk in the yard next to a pool of urine, and place a plank between the desk and the puddle to protect them from stray splashes. At night they lock the desk to the railings with a metal chain so that no one can take it away. They pay just three yuan a month in rent to the local hygiene board, the only restriction on their business being that they are forbidden to put up a signboard. Most days they are able to pull ten or twenty people off the street and persuade them to join the agency. When the new recruits have finished with the formalities, they walk to the hospital across the road to give blood, then return to the latrine, hand over to the agency half the cash they’ve earned, and take home the rest. The blood donor splits the profit with his colleagues, but always keeps the largest share for himself.