The Last Chinese Chef

12

In the Peking dialect of my youth, food was always used to describe the basic things. To have work was jiao gu, to have grains to chew. To have lost one’s job was da po le fan wan, to have broken the rice bowl. These words made the difference between life and death for people who were poor. So these words contained a world.

– LIAN G WEI, The Last Chinese Chef

On Thursday evening, after several days of cooking and sleeping and more cooking, Sam found his eyes straying to the clock. Tonight was Yao Weiguo’s banquet for the committee – Yao, his main rival. Tonight was Yao, tomorrow Wang Zijian, and then, Saturday night, the last and tenth night of the competition, Sam. Although radio call-in shows had been burning with exchanges over the merits of the ten chefs, and wagers had been laid, the panel itself had kept completely quiet. None of them had leaked anything about the banquets thus far. Everything in the media was speculation. Sam had not heard a thing.

He felt blessed to have the last slot. His flavors would be the final ones to linger in the judges’ minds. On the other hand, they might be exhausted. He would take care not to overwhelm them. Better to reach for greatness in simplicity. This was what he had in mind anyway.

He had forty-eight hours left. What remained was the last rehearsal of each dish, especially the ones that were new to him – these had to be done over and over. He was also still assembling bowls, plates, platters, paintings, and calligraphy in tune with the arc of the meal. Once any facet of the meal had struck a resonance in the diner, he wanted everything else in the room and on the table to multiply the effect. The effect could not be overt. It had to build quietly.

He looked again at the clock. There was so much to do. He should work. But he felt a nervous and unceasing tug to go out, too, to go to Yao’s side of town, to walk down the hutong that ran behind Yao’s restaurant, the Red Door, to get close to his banquet, see what he could feel, what he could hear, what he could smell. He closed his eyes. Don’t do it. But he knew he would.

Night was dropping as he locked his gate, shadows growing, and he felt a familiar wave of love for the area he lived in. His neighbors felt the same. He could see it in the way the grandmas walked the small children, the old men shouted over their card games and in hot weather pushed their undershirts up to their armpits. It was in the way packs of young girls walked the lake, showing off their gazelle bodies in the latest formfitting clothes. He loved it for all these reasons, and then doubly, because in addition to everything else he was living in the house in which his family had lived, on and off, for more than eighty years.

The amount of effort and money Sam had poured into restoring all but the small north-facing room was another sore spot in Liang Yeh’s refusal to come back. Sam wanted to bring him here. Show him. Here, Ba. Look.

He had told him as much when he called him again, this morning. “The main thing is, Xie needs you. He’s hanging on to see you. And you should come. Your house is waiting, your father’s house. It’s safe.”

In response to this, at least, Liang Yeh had been merely silent. This was an improvement.

Sam walked to the subway, went south and changed lines. A few stops to the west brought him to the neighborhood of Yao’s restaurant. He walked for a while, distracting himself as if on an aimless stroll. In time he gave in and drifted into the hutong that ran behind Yao’s place. No one would see him walking. It was dark.

The high rear windows of the place were flung open. As he crept closer he heard laughter from inside and the clink of dishes, then a rising cheer. “Hao! Hao!” came the voices, Good! Good! Sam felt the reflexive curl of tension. He shouldn’t have come.

He heard a sound to his right and turned to see a figure step out of the shadows – no, not one figure, two. Who?

Sam made a silent mental shriek. It was Jiang. And Tan. Their mouths dropped in recognition too.

The long stare devolved into suppressed laughter, and in a second all three of them were heaving and holding their sides. They hushed one another, which only made it worse.

“Shh!” Sam sent a look to the back windows of Yao’s restaurant, which were open.

“Come!” Jiang croaked, wiping his eyes. “Why should we stand here? Let us walk over to the Uighur night market. It’s just a few blocks. Have you eaten? I have not. I may faint from starvation! I may die! Come.” And the three made their way down the hutong.

In the market, cheap lights were strung across the alley and vendors shouted behind great wok rings with lids that lifted off to stately puffs of steam. Row after row of Uighur men with dark Eurasian faces ran charcoal grills, where they produced lamb in every form, from skewers to the tender minced meat that was marinated, griddle-fried, and stuffed in split sesame flat cakes.

No doubt Yao’s meal had been brilliant, Sam thought as they walked through the people and the tables and the hot smoky aromas. But what was that to him? His meal would be brilliant too. He felt confident when his uncles were beside him.

After much surveying, they settled on thick hand-cut noodles with green vegetables in broth and a huge platter of dense, chewy, cumin-encrusted lamb ribs. They ate in the companionable silence of relatives assigned to one another long before any of them were even born.

As Sam ate, his eyes roved the crowd. After a minute he saw a distinctive curtain of black hair coming toward him – Xiao Yu, the girl he had seen David Renfrew approach that day in a restaurant. “Hi,” he called out when she came close.

She looked over, surprised. “Oh, Liang Cheng,” she said, using his Chinese name. “I read the article in the paper about the competition. I hoped for the best. How was your banquet? Was it successful?”

“I haven’t gone yet,” he said. “Saturday night.”

“Wish you success.”

“Thank you. And you? How are you?”

“Very well. Hao jiu bu jian.” I haven’t seen you in a long time.

“Actually,” Sam said, “I saw you a week ago, but I don’t think you knew. It was in a restaurant. I was on the other side. I saw David Renfrew go over and talk with you.” They were speaking Chinese, but to say David’s name he dropped back into English. The sound of it made her mouth tense. “Sorry,” said Sam, seeing it.

“Don’t be sorry.” But abruptly she looked at her watch. He had touched a sore spot. Something had happened. Sam remembered the odd trepidation he had felt when he saw Xiao Yu and David together. He felt it the minute David asked him for her name. He couldn’t have said why. Sometimes it was not necessary to know, only to feel.

“I should go,” she said.

Looking at her, he saw he had not imagined it. She wore the proud, taut chin of a woman slighted. “Please take care of yourself.”

“You too,” she said. “Success to you.”

“Man man zou,” he said, Walk slow, as he watched her wave and turn and disappear in the close-pressed night crowd. People moved by, under the lights, jostling, their talk and their laughter borne along with them. She was gone.

Jiang and Tan were speaking, and he turned back to them, away from the crowd. He belonged with them. He ate the choice lamb ribs they deposited with love on his plate, and he picked out succulent pieces to place on theirs. Before leaving work for the day, Zinnia stopped off in Carey’s office. “Have you made any calls yet?”

“No.” He felt irritated. “I’ll get to it.”

She sent him her look of prim displeasure, which he knew to be one of her most insufferable and therefore effective weapons. “But you must do it soon. Quickly.”

“Why?”

“It’s Thursday. Tomorrow people will leave for the weekend.”

Carey pursed his lips. “I hate mixing business and pleasure.”

“Really! Is that what you believe?”

“Yes.”

“It’s your philosophy?”

“Yes.”

“Who took Matt out, those nights, when he met Gao Lan?”

Carey sighed. “I did.”

“Look what happened then.”

“All right, Zinnia, Jesus. Okay. I’ll do it.” Defeated once again by a Chinese woman. He was no match for them. Waving her off with one hand, he reached for the phone with the other. “I’ll call.”

Carey got lucky with the fourth call, and within an hour was on his way to a restaurant to meet a woman he had dated a few years before. Still unattached, was what he’d heard. As soon as he called and she answered the phone he knew it was true, for she jumped. Yes, of course she would meet him. Tonight? Certainly. She would be disappointed when she realized Carey had not called her for any personal reason. So be it. Zinnia was right, he needed to help. So he made the call.

The restaurant was on the capital’s northeast end, in a quarter that had once been home to diplomatic offices and hotels but had now been swallowed by the relentless swell of commercial buildings. Inside, the place preserved some semblance of the old décor, with stone stools and wood-scrolled tables. He arrived first and sat drinking tea, watching the door for her to come in.

It was romantic, living in China. There was beauty in it. He heard parrots screeching in cages on the other side of the dining hall, caught the happy tide of dinnertime Chinese as it rose and fell. Always there was something to please him. Wonderful food. Gorgeous women. They never stopped attracting him, even if he had yet to meet one he wanted to stay with.

He knew that staying here was a sort of delaying tactic, a way of stretching out his youth. It was at home he’d be much more likely to find a woman. Laowai men, even the ones most flat-out crazy about Chinese girls, generally went home to marry. They chose one of their own. Girls they knew from high school. Girls from their hometowns. Girls who looked like their mothers, like the men themselves. But not Carey. He reached for his small, thick cup of aromatic tea and sipped it, listening to the ambient well of Mandarin conversation. He would not go home that way.

It was probably moot – the time to go home had come and gone. He had passed the golden point sometime in his late thirties. Now he was forty-five. If he went back he’d step down – on the job, in society, among friends, and with everything having to do with women. Here he was like royalty. Just being a foreigner gave him unassailable value, but it was value he couldn’t take with him. Either go home and retire that part of himself forever which had grown to love his position, or stay here in China. Grow old here. Choose a woman. Just choose one. Die here. He stared gloomily out the window at the blue-bowl October sky.

The door opened and Yuan Li came in, ultra-chic in leopard heels and a fashionable fringe of black hair. She was glorious, in her thirties now, confident. Perhaps he should look at her again. Carey toyed with the idea. She was kind, supportive, lovely. She had bored him, though, as he recalled, and he had ended it. No doubt he would end it again, in time, if they were to restart, which was why he would not. It was clear that she was willing. He could tell by the way she looked at him. No, he told himself, don’t act interested, not that way. Be friendly.

For the first hour of their meeting he engaged her in a sweet, solicitous conversation that traded all kinds of news: about jobs, relatives, travels, hobbies, vacations. He had been in China long enough to know how a meal should be done, with a long exchange of pleasantries and moods preceding any hint of a disclosure or request.

Finally, after they had talked long and the food he’d ordered had arrived and been eaten, he spoke casually. “It happens I am looking for someone. Gao Lan. Am I correct in recalling that you knew her?”

As he spoke he watched her face. First he saw the trace of insult. She understood now why he had called her. Then in her eyes he saw caution and calculation. Good. That meant she knew her.

Still, she took her time before she answered. “I have not seen her in quite a while. Maybe a year or two. I don’t know where she is right now.”

The waiter came with the check, which Carey took.

“So I’m not too clear,” Yuan Li continued.

“I’d appreciate your telling me if you do hear.”

“I can ask.”

“Thank you,” he said, and then returned smoothly to their previous topic, which was the leasing of a building on which she had been a project manager. Altogether he sat with her for more than two hours that night. They consumed three appetizer cold plates and three entrée dishes, plus a small forest of beers, most of which, admittedly, were drunk by him. They observed every nicety and parted as friends, even trading warm and potentially meaningful embraces. And all of it was for those few sentences uttered in the middle, cast lightly on the table – Do you know where she is? No. Will you find out? I’ll try. Thank you.

Carey steered Yuan Li out to the sidewalk and saw her into a taxi, waved warmly from the sidewalk as she pulled into the street. Ah, it was a nice life here, in its way; the gravity of history, the traces of gentility, and the pleasure of now. He liked the freedom and the forthrightness, which had their own way of coexisting with the oppressions of the government. It wasn’t so much that people liked the government or approved of it, such questions being irrelevant anyway; it was that they were good at living with it. Against all odds, despite its severe gray undertone, Carey found China a joyous place.

He sighed. Had he stayed too long, had he let things go sour, was he trapped? Maybe he should have been more like the other lawyers in the firm, like Matt; he should have based himself in Los Angeles and just made sojourns here. But he had been seduced by China. It felt so exquisitely good here. Once he arrived, he had really never wanted to leave.

He held up his hand for a taxi. It was not his world, though, and no matter how long he stayed here, it never would be. He would always be an outsider, and despite a marvelously warm mix of etiquette, kindness, and convention the Chinese did not truly welcome outsiders.

So if he went home – but who was he kidding? It was too late to go home. He was too old. And he climbed into a car and drove off into the Beijing night, thinking instead about where he would go to drink, to hear music, to run into old friends and maybe, with any luck, meet new ones. He named a club to the driver, an address in a hutong off Sanlitun, and lay back to watch his adopted city pass him in a pleasant procession of lights, skyscrapers mixed with the old-fashioned red lanterns that still hung outside restaurants as they had for centuries, wherever people gathered to eat and cement their relationships.

Maybe he would have to stay.

The next morning was Friday. Maggie went by Sam’s house to drop off a good-luck gift. The taxi waited with its engine idling while she knocked on the gate. It was a polite, preemptive knock; she didn’t expect him to be there, intending, if he was not, to leave her gift outside. Where it belonged.

But his footsteps came across the court, a little impatient. He was working. Then he unlatched the gate and saw her, and his face changed. “Hi,” he said.

“Hi.” She smiled a little. He was glad to see her. “I brought you something. I can’t come inside or anything, I know you have to work, I just want you to have this. For luck.”

“You’re so kind,” he said.

“You’ll have to give me a hand.” She stepped back toward the taxi and he followed her out over the sill. As they approached the trunk the driver released the catch and she showed Sam what was inside, a potted evergreen tree that filled the entire space.

He stared. It was the last thing he had expected.

“I brought it for your court,” she said. “It will get tall.” They hauled it out together, and he set it by the gate. It had a shape like a spiral column.

“Of course, if you don’t like it, hey,” she said. “If I ever come back to Beijing and dine in your restaurant and it’s not in evidence, I won’t be hurt. I promise.”

“It’ll be here,” he said, and she could tell by the way he was smiling that it was true. “Thanks.”

“No problem,” she said. It had been easy, with Zinnia powering her through the city flower market and subjecting vendors to penetrating inquisitions on the suitability of various potted shrubs and trees to a Beijing courtyard, to choose one. The whole idea, Zinnia confided to Maggie on the side, was almost quaint now, for no one had courtyards. It was a way of life which had vanished. Nevertheless they settled on the spiral tree, and Zinnia had the young vendor’s assistant carry it outside. When it was in the taxi Zinnia said suddenly that she would take the next one; her lunch hour was over. Maggie could see her busy eyes already thinking ahead to the work that waited on her desk. Maggie hugged her. “Thanks,” she said.

And now the tree was on the ground, outside Sam’s gate, with him looking at it. He did like it. “I loved your father’s memoir, by the way. It was beautiful,” said Maggie. The taxi was still there, engine running.

He looked up slowly. “He came. He’s here.”

“Your father?”

“He got a visa, bought a ticket. He did it. He’s here.”

“You said he’d never come.”

“I said wrong,” said Sam. “It was Xie that got him here. I don’t think anything else could have.”

“That’s where he is?”

“In Hangzhou.”

The news, and the look on his face, gave her a flush of happiness. “That’s wonderful. Good for you. Good.” She looked at the taxi. “I’ve got to go.”

He nodded. “Thanks for the tree.”

“That’s for luck,” she said.

And he said, “I’ll take it.”

That afternoon Maggie worked on her story. She didn’t yet know the ending, but there was no reason not to go all the way up to that point.

As she often did when she started a piece, she began by just writing, following her spine, which in this case was connectedness. She spent some hours re-creating scenes, conversations, and explanations, weaving them in and around her notion, which was her sense of what he had shown her.

Then there was the question of the piece’s forward propulsion. She took a fresh sheet of paper and wrote six words in block letters on three lines:

TEN CANDIDATES.

TEN BANQUETS.

TWO SLOTS.

This was the logical forward movement – the announcement, the whirlwind preparation, the banquet itself. She would write to this. She taped the page up on the wall in front of her. Now she could go back to the beginning. She turned back to her computer and opened a new file. Like any blank page it was filled with possibility. She typed the words Sam Liang and then jumped so hard she almost broke her chair. Someone was knocking at the door.

She pressed her eye to the peephole. It was Zinnia, leaning toward the tiny glass circle with that hurried look in her eye. Maggie pulled back the door. “Hi.”

Zinnia pumped past her, glasses flashing in triumph. “Sorry! So sorry to come without calling, but I just found out, and I was near here.”

“You can come without calling anytime. Found out what?”

“I know where Gao Lan is.”

“Sit.” Maggie steered her to the couch. “Where?”

“Here. Not far. She lives at the Dongfang Yinzuo. The Oriental Kenzo. It’s a big residential and commercial development downtown.”

“How’d you find out?”

“Carey found out.”

“That’s where she lives, or where she works?”

“Where she lives. I don’t know where she works yet. But I called her already. She is home today. She says we can meet her there in an hour. You want to?”

“Yes!” said Maggie.

“Zou-ba,” said Zinnia, happy, Let’s go. She never even sat down. She turned for the door and Maggie followed.

In the back of a taxi, stuttering through choked side streets toward the Dongfang Yinzuo, Gao Lan closed her eyes and cradled her small packages. In her lap she held a packet of tea, an exceptional orchid oolong, and snacks – melon seeds and biscuits – the things that must be offered to guests, and which she did not keep.

Her man was not in town. He was in Taipei with his wife and children, which was why she could receive these people. She wouldn’t want the man anywhere near an encounter like this. He did not know she had a child. If he did, he would end her employment. That was unthinkable. Shuying and her parents lived on the money she sent home every month, though they had no idea what she actually did. She sent home almost everything she earned. She did nothing except work out in the gym, which he paid for. She ate in the apartment, taking as little as possible. Sometimes she walked. She never bought anything, she just walked. When he came she bought the foods he liked just before he arrived. While he was there her only thought was to please him.

Before Shuying was born, life had been different. She let out an ironic laugh. She certainly was not living the life her parents had once had in mind for her. Far from it.

They were old-fashioned, the first people she knew to express nostalgia for the Cultural Revolution. They continued to see it as an experiment of tragic but also noble dimensions. Having been a child in the optimistic eighties, when state-owned enterprises were closing everywhere, Gao Lan remembered being embarrassed by her parents’ pronouncements. Standards of living were improving vastly. Everyone else welcomed the change. It seemed to her back then that her mother and father were the only ones who looked back with longing.

They thought she should seek a simple life close to home, but she had other ideas. She went to school, did well in English, and moved to Beijing to work. There was work in the international sector. The pay was modest but sufficient. It was never stable, for businesses came and went, but there was usually something.

And it was wonderful to be young and unattached in the city at that time, with things opening up so fast. She went with her friends to clubs, to parties, to receptions. She learned about life, and being on her own, and falling in love.

She saw girls around her during those years who went out at night as she did, forming liaisons as she did, yet who turned out later to be married. The husband lived in some other city. Sometimes there was a child, and in that case the child was usually with the grandparents. The women lived as if single. They were not libertines, but if they fell for someone, they had an affair. Gao Lan remembered how shocked she was the first time one of them admitted to her that she was married, that she had a little girl. “I have two minds,” the woman had said. “Two hearts. One loves my daughter and misses her. The other one is here.”

In time Gao Lan had come to understand that many of these girls, when young, had married men toward whom their parents had steered them. At that age obedience was all they understood. Now, though, the deed done, they found it easier to live apart from those husbands and maintain lives of their own.

Gao Lan had been proud then, when she was young, that her life path was hers to choose. Now of course she was alone forever, most likely – especially considering what she had been doing the last few years. Back then, though, she had only been full of joy and freedom.

Her fourth year in Beijing she started a relationship with a foreigner. He was marvelously exciting to her at first – perhaps simply because he was foreign, and so different. He was strong, for one thing. He handled her with confidence. She loved it, but in time she came to see the dark side of the relationship: always, he had to control. He would make a date with her and be effusive in his anticipation, then call her an hour before to break it off. He became cold if she showed too much feeling for him.

Get rid of him, her friends told her. But she felt empty when she tried to do so. Unwise as it was, she cared for him. She kept going back to him, even when he infuriated her. It had become like a game between them, to be cared for, be accepted.

During this time she met Matt. She was in a club with some friends. The other man had angered her and she hadn’t spoken to him in a week. She was bored, tired; even though it was still early she was ready to leave. Then she saw Matt across the room at the same moment he saw her. It was impossible to say who approached whom first; they walked toward each other, smiling. They talked. He was courtly and charming. She wanted to know everything about him. His English was clear, easy for her to understand. She told him about her life, her childhood in Shaoxing, her parents. He seemed to take an interest in everything she said.

After a time his friend, another American from his company, thinner, older, more sinuous, wanted to leave. Matt refused to hear of it. He wanted to stay with her. The other man grew annoyed. Finally Matt said they could go if she could come with him. The other man resisted. They argued, in English too fast and slurred for her to understand; then suddenly it was all right and she was leaving with them. They went to another bar. She and Matt sat close, talking. They went from place to place. She sensed the other man’s displeasure, but neither she nor Matt was willing to leave the other’s company.

Finally at four A.M. the three of them left the last bar. She and Matt left first. They climbed into the back of a car, close.

“Do you want to go someplace else and keep talking?”

“Yes,” she said. She wanted never to leave his side.

His face was a few inches away in the night-dark. “Or do you want to come home with me?”

“Yes,” she said. “That.”

He leaned forward and gave his address in memorized, approximated Chinese, and as soon as he was relaxed in his seat again he slipped his hand under her skirt. He amazed her. She had never known anyone so free. It was as if her saying yes had burst the tension of not knowing that had held them apart all these hours, and now he couldn’t wait another second. Her excitement rose with his, and by the time they got out at his building they could barely make it inside and up the elevator.

He was pure and joyous with her; she felt she had never known a man so openhearted. She was breaking all her own rules by being with him – If a foreigner, it must be someone who lives here, never a tourist or a visitor, never, for such a man will soon leave – but she also felt unaccountably happy. He was present. With him she felt seen.

Afterward he didn’t drop immediately into sleep as she expected. He was awake again, talking. He told her about his life, his travels. He talked about his wife. She lay on top of him like a child, listening, following, realizing things were not simple. It was good with his wife, but not perfect. He loved her, yet he wanted a baby and she did not. How strange, Gao Lan thought, her hand idle on his chest, that she would say no to him.

He had already told her he was coming back to China in several weeks’ time. He promised to call her. Then he left. As the days went by after that, as she relented at last and took her other boyfriend’s calls, she understood a little better that she in her own way had been using Matt. She felt better after their night together, more confident.

She started up again with the other man. Almost at once it turned difficult. She began to think of Matt. By the time he returned she was aflame with anticipation. The day he had mentioned came and went. She watched her caller ID screen constantly. If he was in Beijing, why had she not heard from him? She held out another half-day, then called the cell phone number he had given her.

“Hello, Gao Lan.” His voice had a heavy quality. He didn’t want to hear from her. She dropped as fast and deep as a stone anchor.

Still she was warm and cheerful and said they should get together. “I don’t know,” he said, politely perplexed, as if they were on a business call. “Appointments all day… I have something on tonight…” She heard him turning pages. “Gao Lan, I’m sorry. This doesn’t look good.”

She was shocked by his rudeness. Her opinion of him plummeted.

“Hey,” he was saying, “I’m only here for a couple of days.”

A torrent of curses burned in her throat, but she limited herself to a few cool sentences. “My opinion is like this. We did too much already for you to leave it that way. Whatever you have to say to me, you may say to me directly.”

There was a silence. She heard a long, heavy breath.

“Meet me at four o’clock at Anthony’s on Wangfujing,” she went on, stronger. “It’s right behind the Pacific Hotel.”

A long silence, and then he said, “All right.”

She was waiting there when he arrived. He came in ready, as if he’d rehearsed, which he no doubt had. He moved his big, square body with ease into the seat opposite her. “Before I say anything else,” he began, “I want you to know our night together was special to me. Exceedingly special.”

She was not moved. He seemed so shallow now. “But?” she said.

“But that’s it. I can’t do it again. I’m sorry.”

“No problem,” she said. “All right. But you can tell me. To my face. That’s all.” It almost didn’t matter what she said. The toxic jolt she had felt when he dismissed her on the phone needed to be aired in order to be erased.

“Okay,” he said, chastened. Suddenly he looked helpless. “It’s my wife,” he said, as if bewildered by the force of his own emotions. “I belong with her. I love her so much, I can’t lie to her. She would never know, she would probably never find out, but I still can’t do it.”

“The night we were together you didn’t think this way.”

“I didn’t think about anything else but you! I’m sorry. I take responsibility. But I can’t do it again. Can’t turn off reality twice. I’m sorry.”

“Bu yong,” she said, Don’t be sorry. “I don’t care,” she added, which was not entirely true, and then, “But I wanted you to say it,” which was.

A short time after that she found out she was pregnant. Late the following summer Shuying was born. To Gao Lan, she was always the child of the other man, for he was the one who had vexed her and hurt her and also carried her to the heights. He was the one who against her creeping knowledge of what was right and wrong had become part of the pattern of her life. There had been only the one time with Matt. One time, and then the insult of his dismissal. What were the chances? None. Next to none. No more.

Gao Lan stayed away from Beijing for almost a year. She returned with a story about having gone home to help with a family illness, but work was spotty. The world had moved on. She was not in demand as she had been before. It was difficult to make money enough for herself, much less enough to send home so her parents could care for the baby.

She was also tormented over her inability to identify Shuying’s father. Because of that one night with Matt she could not be sure. It was as if she were being punished over and over for that night. This doubt had kept her from telling either man there was a baby. She knew this was a mistake. At first, though, she had felt that the best thing was simply to wait a little, until Shuying grew into herself and began to look more clearly like one or the other. Then she would approach the man. Meanwhile she kept working.

She lost her job. She didn’t get another one. She refused to give up. She went out every day on interviews until she lost her apartment, too, and then she moved in with women friends, first one, then another. Her parents were calling. They needed money. Shuying, her little yang wan wan, her sweet foreign-doll baby – she was the sun and the stars, but she needed so many things. Then her girlfriend told her she would have to find another refuge, for she was giving up the apartment and moving to Shanghai. And that was Gao Lan’s last stop.

She remembered meeting a woman – not someone she knew well, a friend of a friend – who told her she could do well working for a man, as a woman who was kept. The woman meant this partly as a compliment to Gao Lan’s beauty; not all women were qualified for this work, only women for whom certain men would pay. At the time Gao Lan had laughed, embarrassed. She had waited until another time and place entirely to ask someone what such a man took, and what he gave, and how working as an ernai might be arranged.

She still saw clearly the first man who took her, Chen Xian from Hong Kong. Fifty-six, hair dyed black, rich, careful about how much he spent on everything, including her, yet fair. He used her for his pleasure, used her hard sometimes, but that was his right. That was what he paid for. He was always kind to her. Him she remembered with affection.

He had met her for the first interview in a bar off Sanlitun. It was a dim place, and they lounged on a couch together while they talked. She could feel him looking at her. Finally he asked her if she would like to dance. She said yes and they went out on the floor. At first they danced apart, but then he pulled her to him and she felt him feeling her body. She could tell that he liked her. She liked him too, well enough. It would be all right.

They went out together a few more times, and on their fourth meeting he made an offer.

“Here’s how it works.” They were in a bar. He signaled for another round of scotch. His was empty, though she had barely touched her own. “I pay you three thousand ren min bi a month, plus an apartment. You’ll have a membership at the gym downstairs. I’m in Beijing only a week and a half a month, maybe two. The rest of the time I expect you to keep my face.”

She swallowed. The pay was far more than she could make at a job, especially considering that she’d have no living expenses. He was old. About that she didn’t care. She saw his hand come up from his lap, brown, assured, perfectly manicured. For a second she thought he was going to reach for her, but instead he counted out money, three thousand, the first month. She couldn’t take her eyes away from it. “What do you say?” he said.

She said yes. They were together eight months and then he left her, but only because his wife insisted on it. He let her stay two more months in the apartment. That was the sort of person Chen Xian was, kind.

Since then she’d had her education. Some of it had been cruel, and some of it had been satisfying – like the money she’d been able to send home. That was satisfying. It was good to know Shuying was taken care of.

As the little girl grew, she looked frustratingly like herself, and not really like either man, but Gao Lan still felt pretty certain she was not Matt’s. She was not developing Matt’s type of body, for one thing. Gao Lan had to approach the other man, and she knew it. She kept planning it, and putting it off. She could not stand to see him now, given what she was selling to survive. It would cost her more than she was prepared to pay. She could not bear to tell her parents, who loved her; how could she tell him, who had toyed with her for months and then dropped her so cruelly? When he ended their affair with a terse, abrupt phone call, she demanded he meet her to talk in person. It had worked with Matt, and even though their liaison was over, the fact that they spoke face to face made her feel better. She at least received a minimal level of human respect from Matt. The other man gave her no such thing. When she asked, he hung up on her. She could not tell him about the child.

At first she reasoned that she’d get a real job soon, and after that she’d approach him. But it did not happen. Three months, she vowed. Six. Then it became a year, then two.

She had finally gone to see him a little more than a year before. She had given up on waiting. She carried a picture of Shuying. His response was to curse her out of his office for suggesting any child of hers could be his. He hadn’t seen her in years. It was outrageous. If she ever tried to do it again he would ruin her.

Gao Lan knew he was well connected. He could make it harder than ever for her to return to work if he wanted to. And she had to return to real work eventually or she was finished. She’d take a cut in pay when she did, and she didn’t yet know how she would manage, but she also knew she had no choice. In just a few more years she’d run out of time.

It was soon after that she heard that Matt had been killed. She still remembered her physical reaction, a jolt in her midsection. She knew then she had cared for him, despite the brevity of their encounter, for she’d found her body, in its visceral reactions, to be incapable of a lie. Yet she still didn’t believe Matt was Shuying’s father.

After the Treaty was passed, her parents pressed her to file a claim and she said all right, but not against the other man; against Matt. He was gone. He could not take revenge on her, at least not on this side of the veil.

Not that his wife would be pleased. Gao Lan shivered. That was the woman coming to meet her now. So be it. Just as they said all men were brothers, all women were sisters, and Gao Lan vowed to tell her the truth. She would regard her with respect. The two women already had a connectedness between them, because of Matt.

In the apartment, after she had prepared tea and set flowers in a plain jug, the doorbell rang. She pulled it open to two women. One was American, the widow – older, attractive in the sharp, speckled, brown-eyed way some Westerners had. Almost friendly. “Welcome, welcome,” Gao Lan said, drawing them in. She was relieved she would not have to use English. This big-glasses girl, Chu Zuomin, was obviously here to translate.

In the living room she poured tea, which sat untouched. She and the Chinese girl made small talk about the apartment, and Gao Lan waited for Matt’s widow to begin.

Yet the woman was not in a hurry. She followed right along behind the translator, observing manners, talking, laying small increments of relationship. She complimented the big, modern complex, the neighborhood. She asked about nearby restaurants, and Gao Lan told her of Ghost Street, a nearby stretch jammed with eateries, which was one reason so many men kept mistresses in the Dongfang Yinzuo, few things in life mattering more than proximity to a good meal. The widow even praised little Shuying for being bright and pretty. She seemed to be thinking of ways to advance the conversation, even as she studied Gao Lan centimeter by centimeter. Finally she said that she understood Gao Lan was working hard at the logistics company.

Gao Lan stared. “Logistics?”

“I thought you worked at a logistics company.”

“Oh. My parents must have told you that.”

“Yes.”

“Well, that’s what they think. Would you blame me? Of course I tell them that. It’s not true. I haven’t been able to get that kind of job. I work for the man who rents this apartment. Naturally I would not want them to know this.” Gao Lan saw that the translator colored a slow pink as she put this into English.

“I thought this was your apartment,” said the widow.

“Not at all. Living here is part of my pay.”

“And what is it you do?” said the widow.

“Whatever he wants,” said Gao Lan. “Do you understand my meaning or not? He has a wife and children in Taiwan. He is only here sometimes.”

“Oh,” said the widow suddenly, when she heard the translation. “I didn’t know.”

“My parents also do not know,” Gao Lan reminded her.

“They won’t learn it from me,” the American said. “Don’t worry.”

“Bie zhaoji,” Chu Zuomin translated.

Gao Lan filled the ensuing silence by insisting they have melon seeds and small candies. They thanked her without actually eating any, again showing manners.

Then the wife of Matt sat up straight. “May I ask you a question?” she said.

“Please.”

“I do understand why you would seek support from the father of your child. Why you should. What I want to know is, why did you file against my husband? Why not the other man?”

A charged silence hung, like the kind before a storm’s first crack of thunder. How had the widow known? Finally Gao Lan broke it with a short, formal laugh. “You’ve made a wide cast of your net.”

“If it were your husband, would you do any less?”

“I suppose not.”

The woman went on. “Look. I know there is a chance Shuying is Matt’s, and a chance she’s this other guy’s. You’re the mother. You’re the only one who can say which is more likely. So all I’m really asking is, why Matt? Is it because you think she looks like him? Because I’ll tell you, I went there and met her with an open mind, and I’m going to be honest: I don’t see it.”

Gao Lan nodded. It was true; Shuying did not look much like Matt. She had been aware of it since the girl grew out of her split pants and left babyhood behind. “I did go to the other man first.”

The American woman sat higher in her chair. “And?”

Gao Lan was a woman who hated to show she was afraid, but this man she feared. She had done many things in her life which showed her bravery – she had struck out on her own; she had refused her parents’ suggestions for husbands and come to Beijing to make her way instead. This man was different. She didn’t say his name anymore. She didn’t even like to think it. “He threatened me,” she said.

“What?” The American widow almost rose from her chair, a fierce, instinctive movement.

“He said if I ever said such a thing again, implied Shuying was his daughter, or did anything about it, he would make sure I did not work in Beijing again.”

“He can’t do that.”

“But he can. He can spread talk about me easily, if he wants.”

“Does he know this work you do?”

“Not now,” said Gao Lan. “At least I don’t think so. But secrets are hard to keep. And if he found out, and passed this around” – she trailed her eyes over the apartment, the sparkling plaza down below outside the windows – “the door for me would close.”

“But if he’s the father, he’s responsible for Shuying under the Treaty. He must take care of her.”

“Asking him to do that is like asking a tiger for its hide.”

The American’s eyes softened in understanding. “I see why you’d feel that way. But he still can’t intimidate you. I don’t know about the laws here, but he couldn’t do it in the States. Impossible.”

Gao Lan felt a frisson of surprise. Something in the American woman had changed. It seemed as if she didn’t like hearing that this other man had threatened her. “Unfortunately, though, I don’t know of anything that could stop him here in China,” she said.

“I do,” said the widow. “Carey could stop him. He could straighten him out. Carey James? Remember? You met him.”

The name did not click at once in Gao Lan’s mind. She shook her head.

The foreign woman closed her eyes. “The night you met my husband. The night the two of you were together. The first time.”

“The only time,” said Gao Lan. “I remember. Your husband’s friend.” Now she could see Carey: tall, blond, remote. He was the one who had been with Matt, who had urged Matt over and over to say goodbye to her and go someplace else.

“He will help you,” the widow said. “I’ll make sure of it. That’s if the child is this other man’s and not Matt’s – and we’ll know the answer to that in a few more days.”

Gao Lan decided to give voice to what she noticed a minute before. “Why would you help me? If Shuying is not Matt’s.”

“I’ll tell you why. Women don’t stand by and watch another woman being bullied. That’s a law of nature, as I see it.” The Chinese woman translated this, even though Gao Lan found she could more or less follow Matt’s wife’s English.

Now Gao Lan felt her own guard dropping and tears, for the first time, gathering in her eyes. “You know what? I am sorry. Sorry two ways. First and forever, I’m sorry he took leave of this world. I felt so sad when I heard.”

This made the widow’s tears start up.

“I’m sorry for what we did together, too. It was only once. I thought it would be a secret, safe, separate from you and your life. Well water not intruding with river water – that’s what I thought. I was wrong. Duibuqi.”

“That means I’m sorry,” said Miss Chu.

The American nodded, now with shiny tracks down her face.

Gao Lan pushed on. “But I want to tell you this. Matt was the one who stopped it with us. Not me. I wanted to go on. I’m sorry, but it’s true; I did. He said no, he wouldn’t, because he loved you. He said he had done it once and he would have to live with that, but he would never do it again. He told me, ‘I love her so much.’ That’s what he said.”

Gao Lan had to stop, and she sat in a tremble while the Chinese woman put this in English. The American listened, then reached out and brushed her dry fingers across the back of Gao Lan’s hand. “Thank you,” she said.

“Drink some tea,” Gao Lan said, with a gesture to the table. The other two women murmured agreement, though they still did not touch their cups.

“There is one more thing,” said the American.

“Hai you yijian shi,” translated Miss Chu.

The widow wiped her face with the back of her hand in a movement she had obviously made many times before. Gao Lan felt for her.

Then she opened the bag she had brought with her and withdrew an envelope, and from this she took a picture. She handed it across. “Have you ever seen this?” she said, and Miss Chu translated.

Gao Lan leaned to the left to hold it under the light. She saw a street corner, people on the ground, a car on the sidewalk. She swallowed.

“It’s the accident.” The widow’s voice was thick.

Gao Lan looked at it again. Her heart rushed up into her mouth. That was Matt. On the ground with the woman kneeling over him.

When Gao Lan looked up her eyes were wet again. She handed it back. She didn’t want to look at it anymore.

But the widow stopped her. “Wait.” She pointed to the picture. “See that woman?”

“Yes.”

“Carey says that looks like you.”

“Like me? But how?” Gao Lan looked closer. “Maybe. In a way.”

“So you’re saying it’s not you.”

“How could it be me?”

“You were not there?”

Gao Lan stared as she listened to Miss Chu’s Chinese. Her, in San Francisco? Kneeling over Matt at the moment of his death? “No. I haven’t even been to Hong Kong. The farthest I’ve been from home is here, Beijing.”

The American looked at her again, then at the picture. A tightness faded from her face. “You’re right,” she said slowly. “I see. It’s not you.” She looked at Gao Lan for a long moment, then replaced the clipping in her purse. “Shall I call you when I hear from the lab?”

“Please.” Gao Lan gave her a card, no title, no company. Just her name in two Chinese characters and a cell number. “Get in touch anytime. Dark or light.”

“I will,” said Matt’s wife, and handed over her own card. Maggie McElroy. Writer, Table magazine. “Look, I didn’t say and you didn’t ask, but I want you to know something too. If Shuying is Matt’s, you won’t have any trouble from me. I’ll take care of things.”

“Thank you,” said Gao Lan.

She stood up with them and walked them to the door, where she and the widow clasped hands for a second. “Three days, maybe four,” Matt’s wife said. “I’ll call you.”

The next day, Saturday, Uncle Xie died. Sam called her about it in the morning. She consoled him, sharing the weight of it, as friends had done for her during her year. She also told him how sorry she was about the timing. It could hardly have been worse. Tonight was his banquet.

“It’s true,” he said, “everything’s crazy. So much so that I don’t even have time to call more than one person with this. Just you. And isn’t it funny that I’d call you? Someone I’ve known for only a week.”

“How can you say that? We’ve been to Hangzhou together. I’ve met your uncle.”

“He liked you. They all liked you.”

“That’s why you called me,” she said, “because I was there. I saw how much he loved you. And he believed in you, too. I’m sorry, Sam. I know it’s a blow.”

“It is,” he admitted.

“And don’t think of me as an interviewer. Not anymore. We’ve done that. I’ve written almost all of the article, leaving only one part blank, the ending. What I mean,” she said delicately, “is that when we talk now we talk as friends. I don’t write it down anymore. I don’t use it. You can say what you want without worrying.”

“I wasn’t worried,” he said.

“Just so you know.”

“Well, you might want to write this down,” he said. “Something strange is happening in Hangzhou. It’s beyond Uncle Xie. It’s the whole city. It’s very rare. The bamboo is flowering.”

“All over the city?”

“It will be all over the province before it’s done.”

“What does it mean?”

“The end of an era.”

She thought about this for a second. “If there’s a new era, Sam, I think it will be yours. I wish you luck tonight. I’m sorry about your uncle, but I also think if he’s anywhere, watching, then this is what he wishes too. For a great meal. So good luck.”

“Thank you,” he said. There was a silence and then, almost to his own surprise, he said, “I would like you to come.”

“This is your night. You don’t have to ask me there.”

“I know. I ask because I want to.”

“What if I were in your way? It’s too important.”

“That’s exactly why I want you there, because it’s important. I feel better when you’re around.”

She was silent. Then: “Are you sure?”

“Yes. Please come, well before the panel. Come at six. My grandfather’s house behind the red gate, soon to be my restaurant. You know. Liang Jia Cai.”