The Drunkard

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Rusted love on a rainy day

thoughts play hide and seek

among smoke rings

Push open the window

The rain shimmers on the branches

The rain falls like dancers' steps

Gliding down leaves

Perhaps it was too dark at the bar

or her make-up was too thick

If I hadn't drunk so much

I would definitely not have slept with her

I don't earn much as a writer,

so I can't afford to be this generous

When I'm sober

I often feel sorry for myself

Now I feel more sorry for her

I give her half of my writer's salary

because I'm now sober

Why drink such a strong drink?

Do you come here often to drink alone?

Yeah

You want to forget painful memories?

I want to get rid of happy ones

I want to write a novella called

"Hemingway in Hong Kong"

Hemingway is penniless and sick

He has to eat bread dipped

in sugar water everyday

He approaches various publishers

with the manuscript of

"A Farewell to Arms",

but no one takes it

The publishers urge him

to write martial fiction instead,

and tell him this is

what readers really want

If he can do that

he will no longer have to starve

He could buy himself a large flat, a car,

and have steaks every day

Hemingway refuses

The publishers think he is an idiot

Yesterday I got to the part where

Monk Tung wants to take revenge

but his enemy Iron Abacus

is a hundred miles away

What shall I write next?

Let me have a drink first

I got it

Monk Tung holds

a chopstick with his two fingers,

blows on it and tosses it forward

The chopstick flies through the air

through the mountains and lands

straight on Iron Abacus' solar plexus!

That's it

Mr. Lau, the chief wants today's serial

I'll give it to you later this afternoon

Hemingway refuses

The publishers think he is an idiot

His landlord kicks him out

One morning, a prostitute living on

the second floor comes home

and finds him slumped

at the bottom of the stairwell

and starts to scream.

People gather to watch

When the police come,

he still clutches a manuscript of

"Old Man and the Sea" in his hands.

Want a cup of coffee?

I prefer something alcoholic.

Lily

Marry me

Forget it, have a drink

Have you found a job yet?

I'm still writing.

That's a hard living.

Beats starving.

I have a job, do you want to do it?

What kind of job?

Setting a trap.

I don't know what you mean.

I'm going out with a factory boss.

He is very rich, a decent guy

He's been meeting me secretly

during office hours.

I still don't understand what you mean

I'll set a date with him at a hotel

Then you walk in and take a picture

Did you learn this kind of dirty tricks

from the movies?

As long as there's money to be made,

who cares if it's clean or dirty?

You want me to pose as a photographer

and extort money from him?

No, I want you to pose as my husband

Me

Pretend to be your husband?

That's right

Think about it

If you want to do it, call me

When I was six, I lived on West Bao Xing

Road in Zhabei District of Shanghai

near the train station.

When the Globe Theatre was showing

"The Ten Commandments"

The war came.

War, war, war

Mother was doing the laundry

and I snuck out to watch the war.

To us kids war was fun.

We cheered when the hair salon

across the street got hit by a bullet

Soldiers in green uniform rushed by,

carrying long rifles.

Later on, soldiers in

yellowish-brown uniform rushed by

carrying long rifles.

Everyone stared at them.

They didn't know the reasons to go to war.

We couldn't identify who they were

the difference only rested with

their different uniforms.

These were all Chinese.

Has there been any advances

in Chinese fiction?

Why do you want to talk about this?

Let's have a drink

and talk about women.

What do you think of

Mao Dun's "Midnight"?

In his letters Lu Xun mentions there

are no finer novels than that

How about Ba Jin's trilogy?

These questions are

too taxing for the brain

Why don't we talk about women?

Stop talking, let's drink up

Slow down, don't drink so fast

We live in such tumultuous times.

Why haven't we produced anything

like "War and Peace"?

There's only ever been one Tolstoy

in the whole of Russian history.

It's not so simple

Impossible, impossible

Nowadays all popular literature

is about the same

Let's not talk about this

Let's drink up

I know there's something

you want to say

- No. - Come on

There are several reasons

First, screenwriters' income is not stable

Second, the audience doesn't

appreciate good movies

The government doesn't

protect screenwriters' rights

There is no true film critic

The whole environment is bad

Piracy is ram pant

Screenwriters like me earn too little

But this is Hong Kong for you

What are you talking about?

I asked you about writers.

Didn't you ask me

why all movies nowadays look alike?

You're drunk.

You're the one who's drunk

No one wants to know whether

"thought" is lean or fat.

You're drunk. Let me take you home.

Some are fat, some are lean

I'm not drunk

Not one bit

I have no family in Hong Kong

A soldier in green uniform was

dragged into an alleyway

The one in green uniform

was very young

about 1 5 or 1 6 years old,

and he was injured

Forget it

He took out a big knife

and cut off the younger soldier's head.

Everyone watching from behind

the iron gate was shocked

After I went home I had a high fever

and had nightmares

Have you ever read Francoise Sagan?

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